------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
CFS Research
Bush meets Wednesday with South Korean President
N. Korea: Hard Line Is Not the Best Line
U.S. Has Much to Offer N. Korea
Suspect may have undone top U.S. spy programs
South Korean leader to urge Bush talks with North Korea
Bush to Pick Up Clinton Talks on N. Korean Missiles
Talking to the North Koreans
South Korean President and Bush at Odds on North Korea
2 Officers Doubted Sub Commander's Orders, Admiral Says
South Korean President to Visit Bush
No conclusions yet in submarine inquiry
Sub rides
Depleted Uranium Harmless, Study Says
Deadly wind from Gulf battlefields
India increases spending to replace old weapons
Senate Chairs Comfortable With Vote
U.N. Aides Cite Payoff Racket in Iraqi Plan
Annan warns Iraq about oil exports
Powell defends sanctions policy
Follow the French
Bush won't negotiate now with North Korea
Bush hopes to build on progress in North Korea
Clinton, Bush and Korea
Ministry of Nuclear Energy promoting spent nuclear fuel
Putin Tries Out Cyberspace
After the Blast
WESTERN STATES RECA REFORM COALITION
MOX fabrication facility EIS
Nuclear power's new day
DOE Cut Under Bush Budget Plan
Errors at INEEL bring citations DOE charges
COMMENTS NEEDED ON PROPOSED MOX FACILITY

MILITARY
Capitol Hawks Seek Tougher Line on Iraq
China Rejects Allegations on Improving Iraqi Weapons
Gunmen wounded in exchange with U.S. soldiers
China says no military aid given to Iraq
More Money Needed for Drug Coverage, Lawmakers Say
Censorship Is Latest Drug War Tactic
INSURANCE POLICY ON MIR:
U.N. votes to impose sanctions on Liberia
Top Marine Calls for a Backup Plan to Replace Osprey
Civilians on Board
PEER REVIEWED MEDICAL RESEARCH PROGRAM (PRMRP)

OTHER
Rub-a-dub-dub Calgary firm making a sub
NEW LAMP SHEDS LIGHT ON ENERGY EFFICIENCY
TIMBER SUBSIDIES REACH RECORD LEVELS
SUIT CHALLENGES AERIAL WILDLIFE SHOOTING
ACT NOW TO SAVE PACIFIC FISH, COALITION URGES
VULNERABLE TODAY, ENDANGERED TOMORROW
MARCH PROCLAIMED SEAGRASS AWARENESS MONTH
NATURE MOPS UP
Organic food is growing
Calming the Madness
CURBS ON LIVESTOCK
Horse race postponed as foot-and-mouth cases climb
Grab a mop
Serono, a Swiss Biotech Company, Posts a 64% Rise in Profit
Gene Research Finds New Use in Agricultural Breeding
TURKEY SEEKING I.M.F.'S SUPPORT
Free trade vs. Europe
Parks Denies Charges in Report
F.B.I. Spy Case May Explain Arrest of a K.G.B. Agent
Ex-Official Had Early Knowledge of Profiling, Aides Testify
Hanssen prosecutor risks spilling secrets
BOMBING CLAIM

ACTIVISTS
Century Institute Summer Program for Undergraduates
New Future for Idaho Aryan Nations Compound
Ex-Daewoo Workers Protest as Auto Production Resumes
Torture of women seen worldwide


-------- NUCLEAR

CFS Research

aminoacidpower.com
http://www.aminoacidpower.com/ResearchCFS.html

Although there are few scientific studies on the use of amino acids in the treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, The Gersten Institute believes that the following article by Bralley and Lord is one of the best, if not THE best studies. The authors of this study have undertaken a difficult task, for a scientific study on CFS and amino acids poses a number of problems. First of all, the diagnosis of CFS remains controversial. There is no question that CFS is a real and debilitating disease. However, as you will read elsewhere on this site, CFS may be a grab-bag diagnosis that includes a host of alphabet-soup diagnoses, such as: Gulf War Syndrome (GWS), Fibromyalgia (FM), Myalgic Encepalopathy (ME), Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)... and more.

So our first difficulty is in making a clear diagnosis that rules out other causes of fatigue. A second major problem in amino acid research is that adequate treatment involves supplementation of all the amino acids that are deficient in a given individual. Typical medical research almost always involves studying a single treatment, and not a mixture of compounds. It could be argued that a research study in which people with CFS were treated with only one amino acid at a time would be unethical. As you will read in the study by Bralley and Lord, there is good evidence that treatment of CFS with a mixture of all the deficient amino acids actually works. Given the results of this study, as well as our own CFS patients at The Gersten Institute, there is solid evidence that this approach works and should be a fundamental treatment for all people with CFS. Of course, it is not the only treatment for CFS. As you will read, not all of the patients in this study improved. Fortunately, there are many approaches to CFS and many good scientists who are researching a variety of other treatment modalities for CFS. We do not mean to minimize the importance of those other approaches and so we encourage our patients to have the most thorough medical work-up possible. There are doctors in America who specialize in medications that help CFS. We encourage our patients to make the most of those resources and to become educated about their illness. There is little question that people with CFS generally know far more about this terrible disease than do most medical doctors. We ask you to be patient with your doctor if he or she does not yet grasp CFS as well as you do! Be patient and help educate them. In turn, learn from those who have something to teach.

Now here's the research study.

REPRINTED FROM: Journal of Applied Nutrition, 46(3):74-78(1994)

J. Alexander Bralley, PhD and Richard S. Lord, PhD

Abstract

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), is a rapid onset of debilitating fatigue with no clearly defined origin or effective therapy. In an open trial,fasting plasma amino acid levels were measured in 25 CFS subjects. Amino acid mixtures were formulated based upon individual test results. Twenty subjects completed the study by taking 15 grams of the formulation daily for three months. Near complete symptom resolution was seen in 75% of subjects, 15% had moderate and 10% had little or no relief. Follow-up testing showed improved amino acid levels. Specific amino acids may affect metabolic processes increasing energy production in CFS patients.

Key Words: Chronic fatigue syndrome, amino acids, cellular energy, ATP, treatment

Introduction

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has received much attention recently, yet it is not known whether this syndrome represents one disease process or several which can cause similar sets of symptoms.(1) No known effective therapy is available. The common symptom of debilitating fatigue may represent an impairment of production of mitochondrial adenosine triphosphate (ATP) chemical energy, the fundamental cellular energy source. Mental/emotional symptoms of poor attention, memory loss, lack of concentration and depression may also be reflective of insufficient central nervous system ATP availability and/or impaired neurotransmitter production. Several essential amino acids supply precursors to the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle for ATP production as well as precursors for neurotransmitters. Oral administration of specific amino acids can significantly affect these processes.(2) Several studies have shown that potassium and magnesium aspartate salts can significantly improve fatigue symptoms in patients presumably by precursor stimulation of the TCA cycle.(3),(4) Blood lactate levels are elevated in CFS patients, (5) indicating suboptimal aerobic ATP production. If CFS symptoms are caused by a metabolic deficit depleting ATP, inhibiting optimal ATP generation and/or neurotransmitter production, then oral administration of amino acids that influence these functions may improve symptomology. The following represents an open trial of the efficacy of amino acid supplementation which may stimulate further interest in the use of amino acids as therapeutic agents in CFS.

Materials and Methods

Subjects were admitted to an open trial of this hypothesis if they met an established definition of CFS.(1) Forty one fasting plasma amino acids were measured in 25 CFS patients (16 females and 9 males, ages 23 to 56) using a Beckman 6300 amino acid analyzer. This apparatus consisted of a dedicated HPLC system for temperature controlled ion exchanged chromatography using three buffer changes and a post column ninhydrin derivitization.

Subjects were administered a free form amino acid mixture formulated according to measured plasma levels. This consisted of a base formulation (Table 1) containing 8 essential and 2 semi-essential pharmaceutical grade free form amino acids with pyridoxal-5- phosphate and alpha-ketoglutaric acid as metabolic synergists (Courtesy of Metabolic

Maintenance, Inc. Sisters, OR). Additional amounts of specific amino acids (including taurine) were added to this base formulation if the amino acid level was below an optimized reference range.(6) The additional amount of an amino acid added varied proportionally with the degree of deviation from the low normal range. The total weight of amino acids in the mixture was brought to 300 grams by adding sufficient amounts of base formula to the total computed amount of low amino acids. All subjects completed symptom questionnaires (Figure 1) at the beginning of the trial, then received 15 grams of their individualized mixture daily for three months and were interviewed at the end of the trial. Using the post-trial interview, changes in 25 symptoms were graded on a 1 to 5 scale, 1 representing no improvement or worsening, 5 indicating 100% improvement. A second fasting plasma amino acid level was taken on those subjects who indicated moderate to high improvements in symptoms.

Figure 1. Symptom Questionnaire
Name:___________________________________________
Date:____________

1. When did you first notice feelings of chronic fatigue?

Severity of fatigue at its worst: Answer the following to best describe your fatigue.

2. _____ Bedridden and could do virtually nothing?
If yes, for how long did this last? ________

3. _____ Shut-in: could not do even light housework or equivalent?
How long has this lasted? _______

4. _____ Can do all the things you usually do at home or work, but feel much more easily fatigued from it: no energy left for anything else?
How long has this lasted? _______________

Description of the frequency of the fatigue:

Check the best description of the frequency of fatigue.

5. _____ Constant fatigue that does not change

6. _____ Always some fatigue that may get better but never goes away completely

7. _____ Fatigue alternates with periods of feeling normal

Please select the response that best describes your symptoms since onset of fatigue:

YES NO

____ ____ 8. Recurrent sore throats

____ ____ 9. Recurrent muscle aches and pains. If YES, answer 10,11 & 12.

____ ____ 10. Muscle aches were so severe you had to stop all activities and rest

____ ____ 11. Could continue normal activity, but muscle aches made it hard

____ ____ 12. Not aware of muscle aches during normal activity, only at rest

____ ____ 13. Associated recurrent headaches. If YES, answer 14, 15 &16.

____ ____ 14. Headaches so severe you had to stop all activities and rest

____ ____ 15. Could continue normal activity, but headaches made it hard

____ ____ 16. Not aware of headaches during normal activity, only at rest

____ ____ 17. Depression or unusual mood changes

____ ____ 18. Difficulty in sleeping

____ ____ 19. Difficulty in concentrating

____ ____ 20. Anxiety

____ ____ 21. Nausea

____ ____ 22. Swollen lymph glands

____ ____ 23. Stomach ache

____ ____ 24. Diarrhea

____ ____ 25. Cough

____ ____ 26. Rash

____ ____ 27. Odd sensations in skin

____ ____ 28. Loss of appetite

____ ____ 29. Joint pain

____ ____ 30. Vomiting

____ ____ 31. Recurrent fevers at home

____ ____ 32. Intermittent swelling of fingers

____ ____ 33. Weight Loss

____ ____ 34. Weight Gain

____ ____ 35. Have you seen more than one doctor for this problem

____ ____ 36. Do you feel any doctor's treatment has been effectiv for this problem

____ ____ 37. Has this problem caused problems or stress at home or work

____ ____ 38. Have you ever thought this problem "might just all be in my head"

____ ____ 39. Do you have a history of allergies?
If YES, what kind? Food ___, Drug ___, Hay Fever____, Chemicals ____

Results

Five subjects dropped out of the trial. Of these, two noticed no effect, two developed gastrointestinal distress (diarrhea and cramping) within one month of starting the amino acids, and one had a complete relapse of symptoms after 2 months of modest improvement. Of the 20 subjects who completed the trial period, the post-trial interview regarding questionnaire symptoms showed 75% (15) experienced 50 -100% improvement, 15% (3) had a 25-50% improvement, and 10% (2) had no improvement in symptoms. No other changes in treatment or lifestyle during the three-month period were offered by subjects which they felt may account for this improvement. Of the subjects exhibiting the greatest positive response, energy levels were reported to increase substantially within 2 weeks. Some cases improved dramatically within several days, including two subjects with a 15 year history of this disease process. The most commonly reported improvement was in mental function with greatly enhanced ability to concentrate and elimination of mental fatigue or "brain fog". After the trial, 90% of these subjects have continued to take the amino acid mixture (often at a reduced dosage) as they report a decrease in energy level and recurrence of other symptoms when the formulation is discontinued.

All subjects exhibited multiple amino acids levels out of reference range (Table 2). Retesting of subjects after three months showed improvement in these levels. There was no discernible difference in initial amino acid level patterns between those experiencing improvement and those who did not or dropped out. All subjects experiencing 50 -100% symptom improvement showed marked improvement of amino acid levels, although no consistent pattern of which individual amino acids was noted. In this group an average of 3.67 amino acids returned to normal reference range after treatment. In the 25 - 50% symptom improvement group, an average of 2.5 amino acids returned to normal reference range after treatment.

Table 1

Table 2 Base Amino Acid Formulation

Percentage frequency of amino acids below reference range in 25 CFS subjects Amino Acid Percentage by weight

Amino Acid Percentage
L-Valine 11.0
L-Histidine 0
L-Leucine 12.70
L-Valine 4
L-Isoleucine 9.40
L-Threonine 4
L-Phenylalanine 12.70
L-Lysine 8
L-Tryptophan 2.00
L-Methionine 20
L-Methionine 7.60
L-Arginine 24
L-Threonine 6.80
L-Leucine 52
L-Lysine 9.30
L-Isoleucine 60
L-Histidine 10.50
Taurine 64
L-Arginine 9.30
L-Phenylalanine 72
Pyridoxal-5-Phosphate 0.30
L-Tryptophan 80
Alpha-ketoglutaric acid 8.40

Discussion

The difficulty in defining and diagnosing this illness suggests a potential multifactorial etiology. (7) Regardless of the cause, a common etiology in this disease may be one or more metabolic blocks that prevent optimal ATP production in cells. CFS patients exhibit elevated blood lactate levels which could reflect such a deficit. (5) Recent organic acid profiles on CFS patients in a post-exercise condition reveal significant abnormalities in levels of the citric acid cycle intermediates indicating derangements in this critical ATP production cycle. (8) Red blood cell magnesium was also found to be deficient and intravenous administration of magnesium improved symptoms in CFS patients. (9) Magnesium is an essential element in ATP utilization. The considerable energy requirements of the brain would make this organ particularly susceptible to a deficit in ATP production and utilization. Amino acids directly impact the TCA cycle and could ATP production.

Adenosine monophosphate (AMP) has been used successfully to treat other viral infections perhaps by stimulating increased ATP production. (10) If CFS has a viral origin, an increase in ATP production may be a factor in recovery.

The two most commonly deficient amino acids seen in CFS subjects are phenylalanine and tryptophan. These serve as precursors to catecholamines and serotonin, neurotransmitters that are intimately involved in depressive disorders. Depression is a common symptom in CFS patients. Significant improvement was seen in fibromyalgia patients (a disease similar to CFS) with administration of 5-hydroxytryptophan. (11) Yet electrophysiological evidence can apparently differentiate CFS type patients from patients with clinical depression,suggesting an additional metabolic impairment in CFS patients.(12)

Determination of deficient metabolic factors, such as amino acids, that can be reintroduced into the system to correct potential metabolic blocks by mass action may represent a new, effective approach to treatment of CFS patients in whom a final common defect is an inability to generate optimal amounts of cellular energy or other critical metabolites. Additional double- blind/placebo controlled clinical trials are needed to confirm the efficacy of amino acid therapy for CFS as well as research into underlying mechanisms regarding the metabolic fate of these substances and their mode of action.

References

1.Holmes GP, Kaplan JE, Gantz NM, et al. Chronic fatigue syndrome: A working case definition. JAMA 1988; 108:387-389.

2.Wurtman JL, Wurtman NJ. Nutrition and the Brain, Vol.1-4. New York: Raven Press, 1977-83.

3.Shaw DL, Chesney MA, Tullis FI, Agersborg HP. Management of fatigue: A physiological approach. Am J Med Sci1962; 243:758-769.

4.Hicks JT. Treatment of fatigue in general practice. Clin Med 1964; (Jan):85.

5.Riley MS, O'Brien CJ, McCluskey DR, Bell NP, Nicholls DP. Aerobic work capacity in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. Br Med J 1990; 301:953-956.

6.Pangborn JB. Nutritionally correct amino acid ranges: Urine and plasma. Technical memorandum, Bionostics, Inc., Chicago,1984.

7.Swartz MN. The chronic fatigue syndrome: One entity or many? N Engl J Med 1988; 319:1726-28.

8.Cheney P. Personal communication. 1994.

9.IM, Campbell MJ, Dowson D. Red blood cell magnesium and chronic fatigue syndrome. Lancet 1991;337:757-760.

10.Sklar SH, Blue WT, Alexander EJ, Bodian CA. Herpes zoster: The treatment and prevention of neuralgia with adenosine monophosphate. JAMA 1985 253:1427-30.

11.Caruso I, Sarzi Puttini P, Cazzola M, Azzolini V. Double-blind study of 5-hydroxytryptophan versus placebo in the treatment of primary fibromyalgia syndrome. J Int Med Res 1990; 201-9.

12.Prasher D, Smith A, Findley L. Sensory and cognitive event-related potentials in myalgic encephalitis. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1990; 53:247-53.

This research was supported in part by Metabolic Maintenance, Inc.

---

U.S. President George W. Bush meets Wednesday with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung at the White House.
Bush wary of talks with Pyongyang
Hard line at odds with 'sunshine' policy of S. Korean leader

01/03/07
MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/news/540363.asp?cp1=1

WASHINGTON, March 7 - President Bush told South Korean President Kim Dae-jung on Wednesday that Washington views North Korea as a threat and would not immediately resume negotiations with the communist regime. The South Korean president was expected during his White House visit to press Bush to pick up talks with the North where the Clinton administration left off, and to promote Kim's more conciliatory "sunshine policy" toward the isolated nation.

'There are suggestions that there are imminent negotiations about to take place... That is not the case.' - COLIN POWELL U.S. Secretary of State

BUSH SAID he had no immediate plans to resume negotiations on ending North Korea's missile program and questioned whether Pyongyang would honor such an accord.

In a meeting with South Korea's Kim, who hoped the new administration would quickly restart the talks begun under Clinton, Bush also made clear that he viewed the reclusive Communist state as a threat to U.S. security and that he was troubled by its weapons exports.

"We look forward to, at some point in the future, having a dialogue with the North Koreans but ... any negotiation would require complete verification," Bush told reporters in the Oval Office with Kim at his side.

"Part of the problem in dealing with North Korea is there's not very much transparency. We're not certain as to whether or not they're keeping all terms of all agreements," Bush added. "When you make an agreement with a country that is secretive, how are you aware as to whether or not they are keeping the terms of the agreement?"

The comments contrasted with moves under the Clinton administration, when the United States came close to a deal to normalize relations with North Korea in exchange for ending North Korea's missile program. Up until the end of his term, Clinton held out hope of visiting the communist nation.

The new team in the White House appeared to be taking a more conciliatory approach Tuesday, when Secretary of State Colin Powell said the Bush administration would examine "some promising elements" of Clinton's policies but was holding off on any policy decisions until after consulting Kim. "In due course, you'll hear about our plans," Powell said.

Kim, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his reconciliation efforts with the North, also was scheduled to meet Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and several members of Congress.

PROGRESS WITH PYONGYANG STALLS

Bush inherits the tensions on the Korean peninsula at an awkward juncture. Kim and the Clinton administration had been involved in a process of engagement with North Korea.

The process led to two much-ballyhooed summits in 2000 - one between Kim Dae-jung and North Korean President Kim Jong Il and a second meeting in Pyongyang between U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the North Korean leader.

However, progress stalled after these high-profile events. South Korea (with the backing of 37,000 U.S. troops) and North Korea remain in a face-off at the 38th parallel - the most heavily armed border in the world.

In Seoul, Kim Dae-jung has faced growing criticism that he had been too soft on Pyongyang, giving too much food aid and other help while getting little in return. He also suffers under complaints that his economic reforms have not revived the South Korean economy.

The Clinton administration was unable to make a breakthrough in talks aimed at getting North Korea to halt its missile program in return for assistance launching satellites.

Since the U.S. elections, Pyongyang has made belligerent noises towards the United States, which it views as taking a harder line than under Clinton.

In February, government officials in Pyongyang warned that they might scrap a moratorium on long-range missile tests and revive a nuclear program that Washington fears was being used to develop nuclear weapons.

"We might stop the missile export if the relevant compensation is made in hard currency because the missile export is aimed to earn foreign currency," the official Korean Central News Agency quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying. "But the new U.S. administration is not poised to seriously study the issue," the spokesman said.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency ranks North Korea as the world's biggest exporter of ballistic missiles, earning up to $1 billion each year in sales to countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Other sectors of North Korea's economy are in ruins, and hunger is widespread in the country.

BUSH POLICY IN LIMBO

But what Bush will do remains a mystery. Not surprisingly, while campaigning for the presidency, he did take a harder line than then-Vice President Al Gore, suggesting that the Clinton administration had been subject to North Korean blackmail and accepted deals that lacked means to ensure that Pyongyang complied.

But also not surprisingly, since taking office, there are some signs that Bush's position has softened.

Kim's South Korean government has been worried that the Bush administration could strike a new stance toward the communist North that might upset the work done under Kim's "sunshine" policy of reconciliation and engagement on the divided peninsula.

"We haven't begun that consultative process yet with the North Koreans because we thought it was important to first talk with our South Korean friends," Powell said Wednesday.

"And so we are not avoiding North Korea," he said. "Quite the contrary, we think we have a lot to offer that regime if they will act in ways that we think are constructive, ways that reduce the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles and ways that help open their society and give transparency into their society."

Powell said Tuesday that the administration wants "to make sure that our North Korea policy is totally synchronized with what our South Korean friends are doing."

"The Bush administration seems to be in no particular hurry to come out with a new policy or to embrace the old policy," said Nick Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, which will host Kim for lunch on Thursday. "It seems to feel comfortable with weighing and waiting and evaluating. And my guess is President Bush will have his ears open and will listen to President Kim, who is very persuasive."

Democrats in Congress think there is some urgency to adopt a policy.

"We believe ... the stakes are high and the issues involved demand urgent attention, and it is evident to us that the continued engagement of the U.S. government on this matter could serve to reduce a serious potential threat to our national security," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., said in a letter to Bush on Tuesday.

CATCH-22 OVER MISSILE DEFENSE

But from the outset the Bush administration has set an aggressive pace in moving ahead with a national missile defense system - ostensibly to guard against "rogue" nations.

North Korea which test-fired a three-stage missile over Japan in August 1998, has been cited as the main justification for national missile defense, a scheme opposed not only by China and Russia, but also by key allies in Europe and Asia. Many in South Korea also oppose the missile defense system because they fear it would push North Korea back into its isolated and belligerent stance.

Some analysts have speculated that the Bush team might hesitate to finish the missile deal that the Clinton negotiators were working on because it would remove a major rationale for the President's pursuit of a national missile defense system. Bush aides have stressed that the main stumbling block is finding a way to verify that Pyongyang is adhering to the terms of a deal.

Wendy Sherman, Clinton's top adviser on North Korea, argued that the deal to end North Korea's missile program that she helped negotiate was sound and should be completed by Bush. "An agreement to verifiably stop all missile exports and related activities and to verifiably stop the production, deployment and testing of whole classes of missiles was within reach," she told the United States Institute of Peace.

"It is unimaginable that the Bush Administration would not pursue a diplomatic effort that can verifiably reduce or eliminate a North Korean missile threat at probably less cost in dollars and diplomatic relations even as it pursued its stated intention to build a national missile defense," Sherman said. The two are not incompatible, she added.

1994 DEAL UNLIKELY TO CHANGE

Despite statements that seemed to indicated otherwise during his election campaign, Bush is "not walking away from the Agreed Framework," an aide said on Tuesday. Under the 1994 deal, Pyongyang halted its nuclear program in return for $5 billion in nuclear power reactors.

The aide stressed that "implementation of the framework has run into some difficulties so we have to take a look at whether we think it can be implemented, how to move it forward."

Amendments may be needed. "We always leave open the possibility of improving something like this," he said.

But he added that since there are four parties to the deal - the United States, South Korea, North Korea and Japan - "we understand that it would not be a unilateral U.S. decision."

On Kim Dae-jung himself, there is no apparent difference between the two administrations. Former Secretary of State Albright was an enthusiastic supporter of Kim's efforts to ease tensions with the North, and Powell echoed that view Tuesday.

"Kim Dae-jung has certainly earned his Nobel Peace Prize by what he started last year," Powell said.

What is less clear is whether Bush and Kim together can come up with a plan that now moves the process forward from there.

MSNBC.com's Kari Huus, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

---

N. Korea: Hard Line Is Not the Best Line

Wednesday, March 7, 2001
Los Angeles Times
By JON B. WOLFSTHAL
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20010307/t000020150.html

Relations between the U.S. and South Korea will be put to the test today as South Korean President Kim Dae Jung meets with President Bush to push the United States on improving relations with North Korea. The mixed signals from South Korea over U.S. plans to deploy national missile defenses that emerged from Kim's recent summit with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin complicate Bush's first foray into East Asian security affairs. This potential conflict adds to the concerns sparked by recent statements from North Korea hinting at a restart of its missile and nuclear programs. By moving to engage North Korea and end its missile program, Bush can quickly move to secure the future of the U.S.-South Korean alliance and improve the overall security outlook for the region.

North Korea's development and export of long-range missiles continues to top the U.S.-North Korean agenda and will occupy much of the discussions between Kim and Bush. North Korea has signaled its willingness to eliminate this program if the United States will arrange for North Korean satellites to be launched by other countries. The U.S. rightfully opposed a suggestion that North Korea be given space launchers, which are virtually identical to long-range missiles. But the broader agenda of improved relations between the two states, as part of a larger opening up by North Korea, must also be pursued if the security picture in East Asia is to improve.

The risk of war on the Korean peninsula has existed almost unchanged for decades. Moves over the past two years by North and South Korean leaders, however, offer a radically different future on the peninsula. The historic summit last year has been followed by symbolic but important steps to reunite families and establish rail links between the two countries. Key to continuing this process is improved U.S.-North Korea relations, which require resolution of the missile and conventional military picture on the peninsula.

North Korean officials have shown their growing impatience with the slow pace of U.S. diplomatic moves, stating that "We promised not to test-fire long-range missiles during the duration of talks on the missile issue, but we cannot do so indefinitely." Longtime observers of North Korea know such language is part of Pyongyang's attempt to maintain U.S. interest in improving relations.

North Korea could reasonably interpret the lack of ongoing dialogue since President Bush took office as a sign that the winds in the United States have changed. Even analysts in the U.S. wonder what direction the new administration will take. Bush can quickly put these fears to rest by declaring his desire to pursue a comprehensive settlement with North Korea.

For all of the campaign criticism, progress can be made with the North if President Bush picks up where Bill Clinton left off. The major components of a missile deal were all but completed after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's visit last year. Elements of a broader deal could include:

Providing North Korea with access to satellite launches (but not the launchers themselves) in exchange for a ban on tests and exports of long-range missiles;

Negotiating a final peace treaty to the Korean War if North Korea reduces the size and forward deployment of its armed forces;

Orchestrating a large economic and agricultural assistance package to relieve the massive human suffering in North Korea.

The potential payoffs of engaging North Korea are enormous. Negotiating a comprehensive peace agreement, including the elimination of the North's long-range missile and nuclear weapon programs, and a reduction in conventional forces on both sides of the demilitarized zone would reinforce positive trends on the peninsula, and reduce the tensions felt in Seoul, Pyongyang, Tokyo and even Beijing. It would also allow both sides to redirect major budget resources toward economic pursuits, helping the local and regional economic outlook.

Domestically, such a settlement could free up considerable resources for Bush's military reform agenda. Ending North Korea's missile program would reduce the need to rapidly deploy missile defenses and buy more time for researching more effective and less costly alternatives. Moreover, reducing the conventional military threat from North Korea would give Bush more flexibility in reshaping the U.S. military into a lighter, more mobile fighting force.

Some critics of Clinton-era engagement will surely push President Bush to maintain a hard-line attitude toward North Korea, and condemn these proposals as appeasement. But reaching a package deal with the North offers Bush several things he wants and needs, including stability in the region, greater freedom of action at home and one thing all new presidents want: foreign policy success to strengthen their image as a strong leader.

-

Jon B. Wolfsthal, an Associate in the Non-proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, Worked at the U.s. Department of Energy From 1995 to 1999, Where he Specialized in Nuclear Security and Non-proliferation Issues in Russia and North Korea

---

U.S. Has Much to Offer N. Korea, Powell Says,
But missile deal is prerequisite; policy decisions on hold until Bush confers with S. Korean president

Wednesday, March 7, 2001
Salt Lake Tribune
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BY GEORGE GEDDA
http://www.sltrib.com/03072001/nation_w/77426.htm

WASHINGTON -- On the eve of a White House visit by South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday the United States has "a lot to offer" North Korea if it curbs its missile development and missile export programs.

Powell said the administration has yet to make policy decisions on North Korea because it first wants to consult with Kim, who will meet with President Bush today after conferring with Powell.

Kim, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his reconciliation efforts with North Korea, also will meet with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and other officials, as well as several senators and House members.

Powell said the administration wants "to make sure that our North Korea policy is totally synchronized with what our South Korean friends are doing."

The United States is concerned about North Korean medium- and long-range missiles that are capable of reaching Japan and U.S. territory. Also of concern are North Korean sales of missiles and missile technology to Iran and other countries.

As U.S. goals in the process, Powell listed steps to reduce the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles, and ways to help the North Koreans open their society. In return, the United States would take steps to assist the North Korean economy, which has declined sharply over the past decade.

A senior official who briefed reporters hours before Powell spoke said a missile deal will be hard to conclude because verification would be a challenge in a country as secretive as North Korea.

Last weekend, North Korea signaled impatience with the slow process of the administration's review of its policy options on the peninsula. Government officials in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang reaffirmed a warning that they might scrap a moratorium on long-range missile tests and revive a nuclear program that Washington fears was being used to develop nuclear weapons.

The senior official suggested that such warnings are counter-productive and said the new administration sees North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and his regime as a problem.

While the administration has made no decisions on its Korea policy, it has made clear in several ways that it is less deferential toward Pyongyang than the previous administration.

Last fall, President Clinton's aides were praising Kim Jong-Il as a "visionary" for his willingness to consider policy shifts. In his January confirmation hearing, Powell called Kim a "dictator."

There is no apparent difference between the two administrations on South Korea's Kim Dae-jung. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was an enthusiastic supporter of Kim's efforts to ease tensions with the North, and Powell echoed that view Tuesday.

---

Suspect may have undone top U.S. spy programs

Wednesday, March 7, 2001
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Lenny Savino
lsavino@krwashington.com.
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/03/07/front_page/SPY07.htm

WASHINGTON - Robert Hanssen, the veteran FBI agent accused of spying, may have sold Russia some of America's most precious intelligence secrets, including information on how the United States tracks foreign submarines and sniffs out nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, intelligence experts said yesterday.

The loss of such technical secrets could dwarf the damage from Hanssen's alleged disclosure of a secret tunnel under the Russian Embassy in Washington, demolishing a number of the nation's most important intelligence programs and wiping out more than a billion dollars in research and investment, they said.

Hanssen was one of a handful of FBI counterintelligence experts whom the Pentagon and other agencies called upon to protect a wide range of exotic high-tech intelligence programs collectively called Measurement and Signature Intelligence, or MASINT, said a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Hanssen also accessed CIA and Defense Department computer databases to collect highly classified information on MASINT programs, according to counterintelligence experts who asked not to be named.

MASINT programs detect, find and track submarines, missiles and other weapons by analyzing the sounds they make, the heat they generate, the radiation they emit, the chemical traces they leave, or other physical evidence.

Such programs have become increasingly important to the United States as other nations have learned how to combat more conventional forms of intelligence gathering, such as satellite photography and communications intercepts, said the senior intelligence official. They also have become critical to America's ability to monitor the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and keep track of mobile Russian nuclear missiles.

"If Hanssen sold the Russians everything he knew about these programs, the damage would be devastating, among the worst we've ever seen," the official told the Inquirer Washington Bureau. "These things can be compromised in an instant. They only work as long as the other side doesn't know what we can do."

Officials are still trying to assess how much damage Hanssen allegedly did, but his arrest affidavit charges that he passed on details of at least one "Top Secret SCI" (Sensitive Compartmented Information) MASINT program. SCI is a level of security clearance higher than Top Secret that restricts information to a small number of people cleared for a specific code word.

The MASINT document Hanssen is accused of giving the Russians detailed recommendations for the CIA director on how MASINT information would be collected and used into the 21st century, according to the affidavit.

The document was "highly specific and technical" and disclosed "the Intelligence Community's consensus on specific MASINT objectives and studies leading to needed capabilities," the affidavit said.

FBI spokesman Bill Carter said he could not comment on what MASINT documents were passed or what threat they represent to national security.

"We can't go beyond what's in the affidavit," Carter said. "Damage assessment is under way."

Retired Air Force Gen. James Clapper, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which coordinates U.S. MASINT programs, said the technology is used for many purposes, including monitoring the size and characteristics of nuclear test blasts.

"A lot of this is pretty exotic technology," Clapper said. "It's conceivable [the alleged Hanssen disclosures] could be quite egregious."

"It's the Holy Grail of antisubmarine warfare," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based government watchdog group. "That would be something that a foreign intelligence service would be eager to get their hands on. Their interest would not so much be in duplicating it as much as discovering ways to evade our collection abilities."

Hanssen, 56, was arrested Feb. 18 and charged with espionage and conspiracy to commit espionage for allegedly passing 6,000 pages of secret documents to the Russians. In exchange for spying over 15 years, court papers say, he received $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and deferred deposits in a Moscow bank.

Robert D. Steele, the head of OSS.net, a Virginia-based counterintelligence consulting company, estimated the cost of MASINT technology development in the United States in the "low billions."

Some MASINT technologies identify specific Russian nuclear subs by their engine and propeller sounds. Others detect chemical and biological weapons through traces of their components.

The loss of MASINT information could eliminate U.S. nuclear submarines' ability to avoid detection, make it easier for Russian subs carrying missiles to hide off the U.S. coast, and help Russia conceal data on its missile and weapons tests, experts said.

Based on MASINT intelligence taken from soil samples, the United States in 1998 fired 13 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a factory in Khartoum, Sudan, believed to contain the precursors of a chemical weapon, Aftergood said.

U.S. intelligence officials said the factory was linked to suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden.

A lawsuit by the plant's owner later raised questions about the accuracy of the information.

MASINT technology arose in large part as a response to shortcomings in intelligence collection during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf war, according to Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine.

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South Korean leader to urge Bush to pursue talks with North Korea

3/7/2001
Boston Globe
By John Donnelly,
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/066/nation/South_Korean_leader_to_urge_Bush_to_pursue_talks_with_North_Korea+.shtml

WASHINGTON - Facing a US administration stacked with backers of missile defense, President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea meets with President Bush today to push for renewed engagement with North Korea that could lessen the missile threat - and possibly undercut the argument for missile protection.

The Bush administration has been skeptical about the motivations of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, believing that any deal with North Korea would have to yield a guarantee to stop missile production and export.

The summit takes place less than three months after the Clinton administration abandoned an attempt to get a deal that would force North Korea to abandon its long-range missile program in exchange for unspecified hundreds of millions of dollars in food aid as well as help to launch commercial satellites.

''We do plan to engage with North Korea to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off,'' Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday. ''Some promising elements were left on the table and we will be examining those elements.''

Powell was more hopeful yesterday than during Senate confirmation hearings in January, in which he said engagement with North Korea would be done in a ''very, very realistic way'' and only ''unless we get something in return, something that is really valuable to us, something that moves them in an entirely different direction - away from missiles, away from the export of this technology to other parts of the world.''

North Korea tested a long-range missile over Japan in 1998. Some have used that capability as one of the major reasons for a US missile defense system. The CIA estimates North Korea generates roughly $1 billion annually in sales of ballistic missiles.

The South Korean leader also is expected today to talk about his reasons last week for signing a communique in Seoul with President Vladimir Putin of Russia to ''strengthen'' the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The treaty forbids the building of missile defense.

Another security concern that could arise is a 1994 deal to sell North Korea two light-water nuclear reactors. Three members of Congress, including Representative Edward J. Markey, a Malden Democrat, wrote to Bush on the reactor issue, urging him to ''avoid making any commitments to foreign governments that would prejudice your ability to refine US policy toward North Korea.''

Those difficult issues come against a backdrop of warm ties between the two countries. The United States maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea, and an additional 50,000 US citizens live there.

The South Korean leader's efforts toward peaceful coexistence with North Korea, which led to a meeting in June with the reclusive Kim Jong Il, won him plaudits worldwide.

''I don't think this administration is going to want to get itself crosswise with what South Korea is trying to do,'' said Stephen W. Bosworth, the US ambassador to South Korea until last month and now dean at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. ''The issue is whether this administration is prepared to begin active engagement on its own with North Korea.''

Bosworth said the Bush administration was ''not likely to continue the Clinton policy,'' but he said he expects the differences would be of ''tone and pace, rather than real substance.''

Kim Dae Jung also will meet with Powell, representatives of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and a group of Korean scholars. One scholar, William J. Taylor Jr. of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, said he hopes the South Korean leader will urge Bush not to allow the conservative voices in the US administration to ''demand a deal too quickly from North Korea.''

''You don't take a hard line now,'' Taylor said. ''I think there was a temporarily missed opportunity with Clinton. And I think we can recover the ground that has been lost if we keep on truckin', steady as she goes.''

------

Bush to Pick Up Clinton Talks on N. Korean Missiles

Wednesday, March 7, 2001
Washington Post
By Steven Mufson
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32792-2001Mar6.html

The Bush administration intends to pick up where the Clinton administration left off in negotiations with North Korea over its missile programs, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday.

Powell spoke on the eve of a visit to the White House by South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, who is seeking President Bush's support for his "sunshine policy" of trying to open the isolated regime in North Korea.

In the last days of the Clinton administration, the United States had been close to completing a deal to normalize relations with North Korea and provide substantial economic aid in return for a permanent end to North Korea's missile development and proliferation programs. "We do plan to engage with North Korea to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off," Powell said at a news conference. "Some promising elements were left on the table, and we'll be examining those elements."

He also praised South Korea's Kim, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his overture to Pyongyang, and said the United States would coordinate policy with him before engaging North Korea.

"And so we are not avoiding North Korea; quite the contrary," Powell said. "We think we have a lot to offer that regime, if they will act in ways that we think are constructive -- ways that reduce the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missiles, and ways that help open their society and give transparency into their society."

Some notes of caution, however, were injected by another senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.

"We're all for what Kim Dae Jung is trying to do by trying to open up the regime and engage the regime," the senior official said, "but you have to have a very clear-eyed view of what [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Il is trying to do . . . because it's a failed regime that is trying to stabilize itself."

The official also responded sharply to a Feb. 22 threat by North Korea's foreign ministry to restart long-range missile tests if the United States did not continue negotiations on normalizing relations and supplying aid. "We sent a very strong message to North Korea that if the intention was to get our attention, it did -- but in the wrong direction," the official said.

Noting that the new administration is still "taking stock" of the situation, the official said that North Korea remains a "bazaar for missile sales to just about everybody else we're worried about" and that any agreement on missiles would require extensive verification procedures. "You cannot rely on Kim Jong Il's word to verify what would be an extremely important agreement," the official said.

Still, the official added, the United States is likely to continue to supply food aid to North Korea, despite concerns that much of it is diverted to leading party members and the military. And the official said that the Bush administration was "not just looking to walk away from" a 1994 nuclear agreement known as the Agreed Framework, but rather would look at whether to restructure it. Under that accord, North Korea stopped work on a nuclear reactor in return for $5 billion of U.S., South Korean and Japanese assistance in building newer, safer nuclear power plants.

While the Bush administration has hailed South Korea's importance as an ally in Asia, the approach to North Korea is just one of several issues that threaten to strain relations between the two allies. South Korea's Kim also is skeptical about the need for a U.S. missile defense system.

Separately, some members of Congress are also pressing Kim to buy American military equipment, especially F-15 fighter jets. House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) and Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), who represent the state where McDonnell Douglas makes F-15s, both traveled to South Korea recently. Sen. Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.) pressed Bush's nominee for deputy secretary of defense, Paul D. Wolfowitz, at his confirmation hearing on whether the administration would support the sale.

In fiscal 2000, South Korea budgeted $4.45 billion for military modernization, a $1 billion increase from the year before. Chyung Dai-Chul, a leading member of the South Korean assembly's defense committee, said in a recent interview that South Korea is also considering Russian and European fighter jets. He said South Korea also plans to buy offensive helicopters, such as the U.S.-made Apache.

Wolfowitz said the administration would stress the advantages of using compatible equipment because of the close U.S.-South Korea alliance. Chyung said South Korea was concerned about price, restrictions on technology transfers and the danger of being too dependent on the United States.

---

Talking to the North Koreans

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By WENDY R. SHERMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/opinion/07SHER.html

WASHINGTON - President George Bush campaigned on a promise to defend America against missile threats from countries like North Korea. His intention is to build a national missile defense system. But such a system is not only unproven; it would undoubtedly be costly in both dollars and in diplomacy.

Although there is some logic in trying to construct a missile defense system, there is also logic in seizing every opportunity to reduce or eliminate the missile threats through the less costly means of arms control negotiations. In dealing with North Korea, President Bush has an opportunity to take this latter approach. The question now is whether he will seize it. We may know the answer after President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea meets with President Bush today.

Reconciliation and engagement with North Korea have been the centerpiece of President Kim's three years in office. Although some believe that continued international isolation would bring a welcome demise of the dictatorial North Korean regime, its sudden collapse would pose terrible security and economic challenges that South Korea and the world can ill afford. Any international crisis with North Korea, particularly one involving the United States, would be likely to halt efforts, heightened by last year's summit between North and South Korea, to bring the North out of its isolation. Undoubtedly, such a crisis would also doom for the foreseeable future prospects for a final peace agreement between the North and the South.

Because Mr. Kim knows that North Korea's long-range missile threat is uppermost among America's concerns, he will most likely want to know if President Bush will close the deal with North Korea that came tantalizingly close for President Bill Clinton in his final days in office. That agreement, when completed, would both halt North Korea's exports of missiles and related technology and stop further production, deployment and testing of long-range missiles.

The clock ran out on the Clinton administration before it could nail down the final details. For two years, the administration had pursued a practical, step-by-step policy that achieved a moratorium on missile testing by Pyongyang, gained access to an underground area suspected of being a nuclear reactor site and saw the first visit of a high-ranking North Korean military official, Vice Marshal Cho Myong Rok, to the United States.

After a series of negotiations that led to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's visit to Pyongyang in October 2000, North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, appears ready to make landmark commitments about the missile program. To ensure the survival of his regime, he has to improve the country's disastrous economy by reducing the burden of a vast missile program and opening the doors to trade.

There are many challenges in ending this lingering Cold War conflict, and many would assume that Kim Dae Jung would first want to get North Korea to move back its million-man army from deployment along the North-South border. But he knows that he can counter that with conventional forces. So his priority is to reduce the destabilizing force of weapons of mass destruction, particularly long-range nuclear missiles. The world saw the threat they pose in 1998, when a missile being tested by North Korea flew over Japan and set off an international crisis that could have undone the 1994 nuclear agreement with the United States that halted the North's fissile material production.

President Bush, for his part, does not need to make a false choice between negotiating a missile agreement with North Korea and pursuing his already stated intention to build a national missile defense. It will take time to achieve a missile agreement and test North Korea's compliance with it. It will also take considerable time to develop and test virtually any national missile defense system. So Mr. Bush can move forward on both strategies without foreclosing any options. If negotiations do achieve a real reduction or elimination of the North Korean missile threat, Mr. Bush can then decide if he should change his approach to national missile defense.

Although President Bush has time to consider his approach to negotiations, North Korea, a country of immense pride, will not wait forever. Kim Jong Il is capable of creating a crisis absent a clear signal that negotiations are possible. He is certain to be listening closely to the tone and substance of reports from this week's meeting between Mr. Bush and Kim Dae Jung. President Bush should restart talks with North Korea, and if an agreement is at hand, be ready to meet with Kim Jong Il.

Some are understandably concerned that a summit with President Bush would only legitimize the North Korean leader. But, if such a meeting verifiably eliminated a major missile threat to the United States and the world, drew North Korea into the international community and began to open a window of freedom for that country's starved and desperate citizens, it would be more than worth the risk.

Wendy R. Sherman was special adviser to the president and the secretary of state on North Korea policy in the Clinton administration.

---

South Korean President and Bush at Odds on North Korea

March 7, 2001
Associated Press
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/world/07CND-KOREA.html

WASHINGTON, March 7 - President Bush told President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea today that he would not resume negotiations with North Korea on missile talks anytime soon, putting the United States and a major Asian ally at sharp odds over how to deal with the communist regime.

Mr. Kim had come to Washington to urge Mr. Bush to pick up immediately where the Clinton Administration left off in its dealings with North Korea, which in the last six months has emerged from the diplomatic seclusion that has surrounded the country for nearly half a century. Mr. Bush told the South Korean leader, who is preparing to sign his own peace declaration with the North, that the United States still regards the North Korean regime as a threat.

``When you make an agreement with a country that is secretive, how are you aware as to whether or not they are keeping the terms of the agreement?'' Mr. Bush asked, in a brief exchange with reporters.

At another point he added: ``We're not certain as to whether or not they're keeping all terms of all agreements.'' It was an apparent reference to the 1994 accord under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze operations at its main nuclear weapons facility. There have been suggestions but never any proof that the country has moved its plutonium-producing operations elsewhere.

Today's meeting marked the first time that Mr. Bush has publicly clashed with a visiting leader, and Mr. Kim, winner of last years Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to reach an accord with the North, sat stoically in the Oval Office, saying little.

He is supposed to have dinner tonight with a group of American experts on Korea, and see Congressional leaders on Thursday.

Mr. Kim, sitting next to Mr. Bush in the Oval Office, offered a tepid assessment of his conversation with Mr. Bush.

``The greatest outcome today has to be that, through a frank and honest exchange of views on the situation on the Korean peninsula, we have increased the mutual understanding,'' Mr. Kim said, using a phrase that is often used in Asia to mark substantive disagreement.

Mr. Kim said he would continue his efforts to open up North Korea but South Korea ``will consult with the United States every step of the way so that the progress in South-North Korean relations serves the interests of our two countries.''

In a sign of Washington's new, hard line Secretary of State Colin Powell backed away from his statements on Tuesday that there were promising elements in the missile control deal that President Clinton nearly completed late last year. While Mr. Powell said on Tuesday that the United States would pick up where the Clinton Administration had left off, today he struck a very different tone.

He told reporters that Mr. Bush told Mr. Kim that the United States was still conducting a full review of the United States' relationship with North Korea.

``There are suggestions that there are imminent negotiations about to take place'' between the U.S. and North Korea,'' Powell said. ``That is not the case.''

A quick resumption of talks is exactly what Mr. Kim had hoped to achieve on his visit here. He has told American visitors and his Korean aides that he believes the window for striking a deal with North Koreas leader, Kim Jong Il, may be closing. A hard line from Washington, he fears, could prompt a similarly tough backlash from the North Korean military, which has been skeptical of the openings to South Korea, Japan and the West.

---

2 Officers Doubted Sub Commander's Orders, Admiral Says

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/national/07HAWA.html

HONOLULU, March 6 - As new details emerged about how civilians affected the operations of the submarine Greeneville on the day it collided with a Japanese vessel, an admiral investigating the incident testified today that two officers on board had doubts about orders given by the submarine's commander in the moments before the collision.

Testifying for a second day, the admiral, Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths Jr., turned for the first time to the role of Capt. Robert L. Brandhuber, chief of staff for the Pacific submarine fleet, who was escorting the civilians and who was the senior officer on board.

Although the Greeneville's captain, Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, had authority over his submarine, Captain Brandhuber was in a position to raise questions about what Admiral Griffiths said was a rush to complete a series of maneuvers.

"I think he should have had a sense that corners were being cut," Admiral Griffiths said. In interviews after the collision, Captain Brandhuber told investigators, The Associated Press reported, that he thought Commander Waddle was rushing preparations for the emergency surfacing drill.

Today's testimony also raised questions about whether the crew was reluctant to speak up in front of Commander Waddle. Even the Greeneville's second-ranking officer, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald K. Pfeifer, did not voice doubts he had about the pace of the preparations to surface, including the time spent rising to periscope depth and the height of the periscope itself during the search of the horizon, Admiral Griffiths said.

"He was thinking these things, but did not articulate them to the commanding officer or the officer of the deck," he said.

Much of today's testimony also delved into the Navy's program to build public support by taking civilians aboard its warships and the extent to which the 16 civilians aboard the Greeneville affected its schedule and its operations before the collision with the trawler Ehime Maru, leaving nine people lost and presumed dead.

The Greeneville left behind important crew members on that day because it was cruising for only a few hours to accommodate a group of civilians, Admiral Griffiths said.

He noted that the Navy generally discouraged submarines from putting to sea solely to carry civilians, as the Greeneville did on the day of the collision. "This is an exception to the rule," Admiral Griffiths said, adding that Commander Waddle's superiors had approved the cruise to accommodate the "significant efforts" the civilians made to get to Hawaii for a submarine ride.

Admiral Griffiths said two civilians who were at control positions, including the helmsman's chair, did nothing to contribute to the collision and behaved appropriately. But in his remarks and in answers to questions from the court's presiding officers, he outlined instances in which the civilians at least indirectly interferred with normal operations.

A fire-control technician who was aware that sonar showed a ship within 2,500 yards did not report that information to Commander Waddle, at least in part because he felt inhibited speaking up over the crowd crammed into the control room in the moments before the submarine surfaced and collided with the Japanese vessel, the Ehime Maru.

"It's a very disturbing thing in that one case that could have made such a difference," Admiral Griffiths testified. Also, he said, the Greeneville embarked that day with only 106 of its crew of 163 officers and enlisted sailors. Among those not aboard were the senior sonar operator and senior fire control technician. "There may have been some missing ingredients," he said.

The admiral's testimony provided still more seemingly damaging details about the operation of the Greeneville. When the court opened on Monday, he detailed a litany of technical problems, mistakes and questionable decisions that occurred as the Greeneville surfaced in a maneuver called an emergency main ballast blow.

As it surfaced abruptly, the submarine's steel rudder, designed to break through Arctic ice floes, knifed through the Japanese vessel's hull, sinking it within minutes. Nine of 35 Japanese aboard the ship - four teenage students, two teachers and three crew members - were lost at sea and are presumed drowned. A critical sonar display on the Greeneville was broken on the day of the collision, Admiral Griffiths testified. With the submarine falling behind schedule after lunch for the visitors ran long, the submarine also rushed through a series of maneuvers required before surfacing, he said.

Commander Waddle also ordered the submarine to prepare to rise to periscope depth in five minutes, he said, even though it would take at least 10 minutes to do so safely. The Greeneville then spent only 80 seconds at periscope depth, far too short a period, Admiral Griffiths said.

The court of inquiry is not a trial, but rather an investigative forum. It can result in disciplinary actions ranging from reprimands to courts martial for Commander Waddle, Commander Pfeifer and Lt. j.g. Michael J. Coen, the officer of the deck at the time of the collision. The court's presiding officers can recommend disciplinary actions against others as well.

The second day of the inquiry, which is expected to last two weeks or more, began with a tour of the Greeneville, now in dry dock.

---

South Korean President to Visit Bush,
but They Could Be at Odds

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/world/07KORE.html

WASHINGTON, March 6 - South Korea's president, Kim Dae Jung, arrived here tonight for what could prove to be a clash with the Bush administration over the right strategy for dealing with North Korea as it emerges from self-imposed isolation for the first time in nearly 50 years.

Mr. Kim, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his efforts to end the armed standoff that has existed with the North since the end of the Korean War, has told his aides and some visiting Americans that he intends to sign a peace "declaration" with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Il, in the next few months. While that declaration would fall short of a peace treaty, Mr. Kim believes that it is essential to making irreversible the North's tentative moves to engage the outside world.

But it comes just as the Bush administration is undertaking what it calls a "thorough review" of American policy toward North Korea, with a clear view toward taking a far harder line than the Clinton administration did when it negotiated a major nuclear deal in 1994, and tried, unsuccessfully, to close a deal on missile controls last year.

Senior administration officials indicate that they continue to view North Korea as a major threat, and they are clearly wary that Mr. Kim's peace initiatives have moved too fast, with too few concessions from the North. One senior American official told reporters today that "the North Korean regime is a problem and Kim Jong Il is a problem."

American military and intelligence officials, fearful that the North is stringing out negotiations while it hardens its military emplacements along the demilitarized zone, recently warned the Bush administration that the North had begun laying fiber-optic cables just north of the DMZ so that it could stymie American intelligence gathering and bolster its ability to unleash a devastating conventional attack on Seoul and the 37,000 American troops still on the Korean Peninsula.

This conflict in views between the new occupants of the White House and a Nobel Prize winner who "is in a big hurry," in the words of one of his occasional advisers, poses a major challenge for Mr. Bush. Until now his encounters with foreign leaders have been largely friendly get-togethers with the leaders of Mexico, Canada and Britain. On Wednesday he will meet an American ally who views the world very differently, and believes that Washington could get in the way of a strategy that is working.

"Bush is like a cop and Kim Dae Jung is like a priest," said Douglas Paal, who heads the Asia Pacific Policy Center here and is allied with many critics of Kim Dae Jung in the Bush administration. "The cop wants to get the North Koreans disarmed and off the streets and the priest wants to give him the resources to become a very different person."

The two leaders will doubtless appear to straddle the difference on Wednesday, and the White House has made sure that they are not subjected to more than brief questioning.

Mr. Bush's aides say the president will mostly be listening on Wednesday, assuring Mr. Kim that the alliance between Seoul and Washington is strong and that he will review North Korea issues in the next few months. Already Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has expressed some interest in picking up the missile negotiations that never came to fruition last year, saying today that he saw "promising elements" in those talks and offering to "pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off."

But the South Koreans know that other aides rank among their greatest critics.

Among them is Paul D. Wolfowitz, nominated as Deputy Secretary of Defense, who told Congress two years ago that the 1994 deal that froze North Korea's one known nuclear weapons production facility was deeply flawed. "The real issue is how much are they producing elsewhere, covertly, and possibly underground," he said. He has also offered blistering critiques of Mr. Clinton and Mr. Kim's strategy of paying the North - with food, oil or a commitment to build nuclear power plants in North Korea - to give up its weapons programs.

Today the senior American official said the administration would not walk away from the 1994 deal, saying "it was a commitment involving several governments," including Japan. Privately, however, many Bush administration officials say they want to explore a way to stop delivery of two conventional nuclear power plants to the North - the quid pro quo for halting its operations to reprocess nuclear waste - and to replace them with conventional coal- fired plants. The nuclear facilities, they worry, could ultimately provide the North with the raw material to make small nuclear weapons.

President Kim's view is that any effort to reopen the 1994 accord would be disastrous, and could kill the nascent peace talks between North and South. He has quietly told visiting American officials and the administration that he is ready to sign a peace "declaration" with Kim Jong Il even if the North does not back it up by pulling its army back from the DMZ, or make progress on the missile deal with Washington.

That has left White House officials clearly wary. "We will ask President Kim to consult us before he goes forward with anything like that," one official said today.

But President Kim is not likely to be deterred. He is coming under increasing criticism at home for his handling of the South Korean economy, and opposition leaders contend that he has been seduced by the North. Meanwhile, he is racing to build rail links and trade ties that could ultimately bring North and South Korea into a commercial, if not a political, confederation.

"This is his legacy, and he believes he does not have much time to make sure the North Koreans don't reverse course," said one South Korean who has talked about the plans with President Kim. "And he's ready to go his own way if he has to."

But Mr. Kim needs Washington's cooperation. Few doubt that North Korea's real aim is to normalize relations with the United States, in hopes of opening the spigot of aid from the World Bank and others who could provide the starving country with a chance to rebuild a country shattered by war and mismanagement.

At the Wednesday meeting, Mr. Kim will also have to step lightly around another conflict with Washington, over national and regional missile defense systems.

Last week Mr. Kim angered the Bush administration when he stood alongside President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and strongly suggested that he shared Russia's distaste for Mr. Bush's plans for a missile shield - and said the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty was "a cornerstone of strategic stability" around the world.

"We certainly don't consider it the cornerstone," said the senior administration official, whose protests to South Korea led to a half-hearted retraction of the statement as soon as Mr. Putin had left Seoul.

President Kim's aides say they fear that the Bush administration, in its enthusiasm to promote the missile shield, is not too eager to have North Korea defanged as the prime example of a "rogue state" capable of hitting the United States.

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No conclusions yet in submarine inquiry

03/07/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-03-07-sub2.htm

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) - The admiral leading the inquiry into the collision between a U.S. submarine and a Japanese fishing boat said Wednesday that no conclusions have been reached yet. The Navy court of inquiry began its third day of hearings into the Feb. 9 accident that killed nine Japanese boys and men. The three court members - Vice Adm. John Nathman, Rear Adm. Paul Sullivan and Rear Adm. David Stone - resumed their questioning of the chief investigator, Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths Jr.

"We heard a lot of things yesterday that give us a strong indication there's lots of areas we need to examine," Nathman said. "I just don't want anyone jumping to the conclusion that somehow we've set our course in one way or another."

Griffiths testified Tuesday that respect for the USS Greeneville's commanding officer may have stopped the crew from voicing misgivings about his orders the day the submarine crashed into the Ehime Maru.

Cmdr. Scott Waddle was widely respected by the Greeneville crew, and the crew had come to trust the captain's hands-on approach, Griffiths said.

But the submarine's second-in-command was quietly concerned the Greeneville was preparing too swiftly for an emergency surfacing drill before it struck and sank the Japanese ship, Griffiths said. The submarine was running behind schedule at the time.

Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer's silence apparently was not due to intimidation, Griffiths said.

"This was not a command where people were shot when they brought things to the commanding officer," he said. "It's more a respect for his abilities and, 'If he says that's the way, well that's OK for me."'

Waddle's authority also was respected from above. A higher-ranking Navy official who was leading 16 civilian guests on a tour of the submarine that day was aware the excursion's schedule might be rushed but did not intervene.

Capt. Robert Brandhuber, chief of staff of the U.S. Pacific Fleet's submarine force, should have "had a sense that corners were being cut" during preparations for the surfacing drill that led to the collision, Griffiths said.

He said Brandhuber believed things were going "too quick for the complexity of the evolutions and their importance," but he didn't say anything because he felt his concerns were not serious enough to bring to the captain's attention.

On the other hand, Griffiths said it was Pfeifer's "duty to bring up concerns he has with the way the ship's operating. I don't know why he didn't bring them up."

Waddle's civilian attorney, Charles Gittins, told The Associated Press early Wednesday that much of Griffiths' testimony has been "based on incomplete and erroneous data."

Gittins also criticized Griffiths for "his failure personally to interview the witnesses whose secondhand statements he bases his opinions upon."

Waddle, Pfeifer and Lt. j.g. Michael Coen, officer of the deck during the collision, face courts-martial. The court of inquiry could continue for weeks.

Gittins said no decision has been made on whether Waddle will take the stand. He is still awaiting a ruling on a request for testimonial immunity.

The Ehime Maru was carrying 35 people on an expedition to teach high school students from Uwajima, Japan, how to fish. Four teens, two teachers and three crewmen never were found.

Griffiths said Tuesday that because the submarine was running late, Coen and Waddle performed an 80-second periscope check before ordering the submarine to descend to 400 feet and begin its rapid rise to the surface. Generally, Griffiths said, a thorough periscope search takes about three minutes.

He also said Waddle might have spotted the white fishing vessel against a white haze and in waves of 4 feet to 8 feet if he had raised the periscope higher.

Pfeifer felt the submarine should have risen higher for the periscope sweep but did not say so to Waddle or Coen, Griffiths said.

He said interviews with crew members revealed Coen also "may not have had as forceful a role in being a safety backup" because Waddle was very involved in the preparations for the emergency drill.

---

Sub rides

March 7, 2001
Washington Times
John McCaslin
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm

Passing the time during this week's lousy weather, a reader named Rob rented the World War II submarine thriller "U-571" from his local video store. Just before the feature began, right after the previews, Rob was surprised when a contest appeared on the screen in which lucky winners received rides on a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine.

"I wonder if that contest is still valid?" Rob asks, referring to the fallout from last month's collision between the submarine USS Greeneville and a Japanese fishing boat that killed nine men and boys aboard the Japanese ship.

The Navy this week convened a court of inquiry into the fatal collision off Pearl Harbor, during which it was revealed that the submarine was at sea only to take civilian visitors for a cruise.

"U-571" director Jonathan Mostow told this newspaper last year that while the U.S. Navy loved his script, it had no equipment to lend or sell for his production. Nor was he offered any free submarine rides, although he did duck into one sub dockside in Connecticut.

"I saw this sign offering tours of a World War II American submarine for only $2," he says. "So I bought my ticket."

-------- depleted uranium

Depleted Uranium Harmless, Study Says

Wednesday, March 7, 2001
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20010307/t000020162.html

Depleted uranium used by NATO in armor-piercing weapons in Kosovo had no detectable effect on health, a European Union panel of experts concluded.

The findings concurred with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's own studies, which said there was no link between depleted uranium, a substance used for its penetrating power, and cancer among peacekeeping troops.

U.S. aircraft used munitions containing depleted uranium, a slightly radioactive heavy metal, in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

--------

Deadly wind from Gulf battlefields
The Gulf War has been over 10 years,but its cancerous fallout is on the rise in southern Iraq,

March 7, 2001
Sydney Morning Herald
Paul McGeough
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0103/07/pageone/pageone9.html

The doctors speak with resignation about the wave of disease that has afflicted the people of southern Iraq since Operation Desert Storm 10 years ago.

They don't fully understand what confronts them. But out on the desert flats there are echoes of Agent Orange and troubling reminders of the radiation sicknesses that come after nuclear disasters.

Dr Jawad El Ali, at Basra General Hospital, talks about the cancers: "We had 88 cases in 1988 but in 1998 we had 405 cases. That's more than a four-fold increase." Only later does he add that seven members of his wife's family are among the dead and that she has developed a lump.

Dr Janan Ghlib Hassan, at Basra Children's Hospital, talks about the birth defects: "Last year we had 221 cases of congenital deformity." She mentions that most of their fathers had served in the armed forces, and only as an afterthought does she produce the book in which she has begun to keep a photograph and details of each of these terrible births.

The people of the region are gripped by a fear that the illnesses are caused by exposure to depleted uranium (DU), which was contained in about 300 tonnes of the armour-piercing ammunition used to drive Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait and back into Iraq and to destroy any of his war machine abandoned during the retreat.

Women are afraid to get pregnant, and if a child develops a fever they immediately suspect leukemia, which has increased six-fold since 1991.

As war's losers, the Iraqis' cry ordinarily might have gone unheeded. But all the governments that joined then-US President George Bush's Gulf coalition are under pressure to investigate the effects of DU exposure on their servicemen, thousands of whom have been hit by what is known as Gulf Syndrome.

Worries about the health risk to United Nations workers who frequent the region are driving inquiries by various agencies of the UN into the use of DU weapons in the Gulf, where they were used in combat for the first time, and later in the Balkans, where big numbers of NATO peacekeepers and a considerable UN staff served.

The difficulty with an issue as emotive as DU is that it can be exploited for propaganda purposes - on both sides of a conflict.

So it needs to be stated that the experts who spoke to the Herald in Iraq last week were not delivered up by the minders from the regime's Information Ministry - they were identified to the Herald by the staff of UN and other agencies working in Iraq.

Confirming that they had not attended the Hill & Knowlton school of public relations, a victim interview organised by ministry staff backfired because it revealed that despite trade sanctions, money or friendship with the regime still secures effective medical treatment.

General Hussain Jasim Salih was blessed. A measure of the trust vested in him was the five-year posting to Moscow where he topped the class in his studies of sea mines and torpedoes.

So when the Gulf crisis erupted, he was in command of the Iraqi minesweeper fleet at Um Qasir, Iraq's only port, which is at the top of the Persian Gulf. He had a substantial home in Basra and, as he put it, "I had cars and my wife had gold and jewellery."

But the gaunt, thin-haired man sitting in the Basra garden, talking to the Herald during yet another air-raid alarm as US jets prowled high above the city, is not the handsome, well-built officer in the photographs which he produced from the family album.

His 51-year-old body is wrecked by leukemia, and the car and jewellery have been sold and more money borrowed to pay for the life-saving $US100 vials from which he injects himself daily. Ironically, the vials are produced in Ireland but the profit ends up in the US - the manufacturer is a subsidiary of the US drug-maker Schering & Plough.

To demonstrate the cost, he sends one of his sons to fetch a big platter, on which there are more empty drug containers than the Herald had seen in visits to three Iraqi hospitals last week. They are brought to Iraq by members of his family who buy them in neighbouring Jordan.

In his sickness the general has become philosophical: "Look at me now - it is better for humans not to be arrogant about money and the beauty of youth."

What about arrogance with power? "Yes, of course, because our religion and culture motivate us to be humble."

In Basra last week the humble and humiliated were at the children's hospital. Waves of worried mothers, shrouded in black from head to toe, throwing themselves in turn at the day clinic staff or at the door of Dr Janan's room for comfort or succour.

On entering the drab, ill-equipped 10-bed leukemia ward, the sight of two empty beds brought a moment of cheer - but only until it was explained that their occupants had died in the previous 48 hours.

Dr Janan, who has worked at Basra for 19 years, said the child leukemia figures for last year represented a 600 per cent increase since the year before Desert Storm.

Most cases - she has pictures of the children strewn on her desk - come from the border village of Safwan, a windswept, dusty last stop on the road to Kuwait.

And here is a hospital at which the leukemia sufferers have whole heads of hair, because the hospital does not have the drugs which might treat the cancer but which invariably cause the patients' hair to fall out.

Then the doctor takes the deformity book from her bookcase. The pictures are appalling - children with grossly oversized heads and no limbs, with whole sets of organs outside their body, with no facial features except a single over-sized eye.

"Last week we had three leukemia deaths and five of these births," she said. "They all died too. And of the 1,200 births we had here last year 221 were deformed. We have had 20 in the last month, whereas we used to have one or two such cases a year.

"In most cases their fathers served in the military. If we had a specialist laboratory we'd be able to take samples and prove the link to DU; we do not have the formal and professionally proved link, but I'm sure it is the cause of all this, not because of its chemical toxicity but because of the radioactivity."

Dr Jawad, the cancer specialist, is impatient, but his promise of 10 minutes becomes 40 minutes as he outlines the cancer epidemic.

He said: "The figures are even more troubling if you look at the mortality rate - in 1988 we had 11 deaths per 100,000 people in Basra; in 2000 we had 83 deaths per 100,000 people. That is an increase of 7.5.

"We also have to deal with a rare development - family clusters of cancer cases. There is a family with eight cases [only the Herald's efforts to identify the family brought forward the admission that it was his wife's] and another with six cases. There is a number of families also that have two or three cases.

"The graphs are getting steeper and more alarming. I have looked at the geographical distribution of cancer in relation to the areas where the DU was used [only a few kilometres from the city].

"There has been a significant increase in lung cancer near it, and leukemia has increased further to the north, where the Qurna winds come in off the Gulf and blow the desert dust.

"I don't know what we are to do. The area is 2,000 square kilometres, and that's too big to decontaminate. And there are many farmers still living in there.

"It's a great problem for the French and the Italians because one or two of their soldiers have died. But where does that leave me? I've had 400 or more die."

That's the extent of Dr Jawad's foray into propaganda before he agrees to talk about his wife.

"The thing about these family clusters is that they cannot be put down as hereditary because there are different cancers within the clusters. In my wife's family there is leukemia, there is breast cancer, there is colonic cancer and there is Hodgkin's lymphoma.

"My wife is 47 years old. She is complaining of pain but she is refusing to have an ultrasound or to allow me or anyone else to examine her. She says she will die without a diagnosis."

Dr Hooda Amash, Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Baghdad, claims that the evidence is compelling, but she too wants a formal and detailed study into the link between the illnesses and exposure to DU.

In her city pathology practice, above the din of a teeming city market, she said: "I want to deal in academically proven facts. But the evidence appears to be compelling.

"Geographic - the cancer increases are across the country, but mostly in the south; nothing was done to clean up the area - tanks and other vehicles are still there producing radiation and pollution; the types of cancers - the ones that have increased are the ones that are associated with radiation."

She warns that after last week's 10th anniversary of the Gulf War, Iraq could be on the verge of an even more dramatic increase in some of the cancers, in the same way that the populations of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were affected 10 years after they were bombed.

US authorities argued that Gulf Syndrome could have been caused by the vaccines given to coalition servicemen in the Gulf, she said. But this could not be said of the Iraqi victims, because they had not been vaccinated.

Other worrying trends that were becoming apparent were an increase in spontaneous miscarriages and miscarriages late in pregnancy.

UN sources in Baghdad said that when the Iraqis had first raised the alarming statistics from the south, they had been dismissed as propaganda.

Work is being done on the subject by various agencies of the UN in the Middle East and in the Balkans. Two preliminary reports are due to be published in the next few weeks.

Despite this, some medical experts in Iraq and UN staff in Baghdad share a fear that some countries, notably the US and Britain, are reluctant for the research teams to get the funds or resources needed to arrive at an effective conclusion.

Their fears are based on the British and US insistence that there is no link between exposure to DU and Gulf Syndrome and two sets of formal advice issued to workers who might be exposed - by the British Ministry of Defence to its servicemen and a memo to UN staff around the world.

The UN memo says that the World Health Organisation does not have sufficient information on exposure to DU in the Gulf or the Balkans to make firm conclusions, and that areas of high concentrations of DU should be cordoned off.

The British advice to its servicemen in 1999 was: "Do not climb on or enter a damaged hard target or loiter within 50 metres, do not eat, drink or smoke near the damaged vehicle."

Some Iraqis express the hope that the pressure from Italy and Germany in particular will force a complete investigation into the impact of DU on servicemen in the Gulf from which they can interpolate the impact on the people of southern Iraq.

A senior UN staffer in Baghdad said: "A lot of my colleagues are worried by the possible effect on them, and they are only mildly reassured by that memo from headquarters."

-------- india / pakistan

India increases spending to replace old weapons

7 March 2001
Rahul Bedi JDW Correspondent New Delhi
http://www.janes.com/regional_news/asia_pacific/news/jdw/jdw010307_2_n.shtml

India has increased its defence spending by about 13% to Rs620 billion ($13.3 billion) for Fiscal Year 2001-02 (FY01-02) to enable it to replace obsolete weapon systems and build a credible nuclear deterrent based on a triad of aircraft, mobile-based missiles and sea-based assets.

When adjusted against inflation, the real increase in spending is about 7.9%. The defence budget is 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP). Pakistan's defence budget is 2.8% of GDP, while that of China is estimated at around 3% of GDP.

"The increased provision is to meet enhanced expenditure on pay and allowances and modernisation of defence forces," the Ministry of Finance said in its budget document.

Departing from previous budget presentations, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha made no reference to defence expenditure in his speech to parliament. Local analysts interpreted this as an effort to avoid fears of an arms race.

However, India's nuclear rival Pakistan reacted sharply to India's increased defence spending, saying it would upset South Asia's military balance. "The massive acquisition of armaments by India is a cause for concern for Pakistan as the bulk of its army is deployed along our border," said a Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman.

Indian defence officials said around a third of the budget will be spent on equipment programmes. The Indian Air Force (IAF) will receive Rs151.72 billion, or 24.% of the total budget. Officials said the increase in the IAF's capital outlay from Rs19.91 billion last year to Rs49.45 billion is for the purchase of aircraft and engines and indicates the purchase of 66 BAE Systems Hawk advanced jet trainers is likely to be finalised soon (Jane's Defence Weekly 14 February).

Later this year the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited is to begin upgrading its first of 125 MiG-21bis (NATO reporting name: 'Fishbed') fighters with Russian, French and Israeli help in a project expected to cost $500 million-$700 million. The IAF is also negotiating mid-life upgrades for its MiG-27M ('Flogger-J'), MiG-29 ('Fulcrum'), SEPECAT Jaguar and Dassault Aviation Mirage 2000H fighters. The Mirage will form part of India's nuclear deterrent (JDW 1 September 1999).

The army receives Rs374.98 billion in the budget - 60.4% of the funds - a minimal increase over last year, to enable it to close negotiations with Israel for unmanned air vehicles and to acquire artillery-locating radar and surveillance devices for use along the border with China and Pakistan.

The Indian Navy (IN) has been allocated Rs91.38 billion, or around 14.7% of the budget. The service is finalising the acquisition of the Admiral Gorshkov, the 44,500-tonne former Soviet carrier for the price of its refit estimated at around $700 million. More than 40 carrier-based MiG-29K fighters are expected to cost an additional $1.2 billion. The IN has also opened negotiations with France for six submarines, is planning to lease a Russian nuclear-powered submarine and is awaiting government approval to revive its own submarine-building facilities.

There is no specific indication in the budget statement of expenditure on India's nuclear deterrent, estimated to be $500 million annually in recent years. Local defence analysts said it had been "cleverly hidden". However, official sources said one indication could be the capital expenditure of Rs82.46 billion on unspecified "other equipment" for the services, with the army getting Rs47.36 billion.

In January India successfully test-fired its Agni II intermediate-range ballistic missile. Officials said the nuclear missile would likely be introduced into service later this year. India is also developing the 3,500km-range Agni III (JDW 21 January).

The allocation for ordnance factories has been increased nearly five times to Rs11.82 billion, signalling a move to increase self-sufficiency and improve the output of India's sluggish defence industry. The government will spend Rs9.16 billion on research and development, an increase of Rs915 million.

-------- iraq

Senate Chairs Comfortable With Vote

Wed, 07 Mar 2001
SLATE NEWS:
by Scott Shuger

Under a headline referring to an Iraqi "PAYOFF RACKET" the NYT front reports charges by UN diplomats that Iraqi officials have begun to demand kickbacks and illegal commissions on contracts for food, medicine and other civilian essentials sold to the country under the UN-supervised "oil for food" program. If taking place, the paper explains, this scheme would be diverting money intended to help a population suffering under international sanctions to a "slush fund" for Saddam Hussein, his associates and perhaps for his weapons projects. The Iraqi ambassador to the UN tells the paper the allegations aren't true.

---

U.N. Aides Cite Payoff Racket in Iraqi 'Oil for Food' Plan

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/world/07SANC.html

UNITED NATIONS, March 6 - Iraqi officials have begun to demand in recent months kickbacks and illegal commissions on contracts for food, medicine and other essential civilian goods bought from foreign companies under a supervised "oil for food" program, diplomats and United Nations officials said today.

Awash in cash from high oil prices over the last year, Iraq has become an attractive market for numerous foreign companies, some of which are apparently willing to pay for the privilege of securing business there, officials and diplomats here said.

In trying to make illegal profits from a United Nations-supervised oil-sales program, officials said, Mr. Hussein is essentially diverting money intended to help a population that is suffering from sanctions into a slush fund for himself, his associates and, perhaps, his weapons projects.

The scheme, which may be enriching Mr. Hussein's inner circle through millions of dollars deposited in banks outside Iraq, and therefore beyond United Nations control, parallels the more established policy of adding illegal surcharges to each barrel of oil sold.

In a report today on the oil-sales program, Secretary General Kofi Annan again warned Iraq and buyers of crude oil that surcharges were not permitted and that no payments of any kind should be made to non-United Nations accounts. Mr. Annan's report did not touch on the broader problem of illegal payments, which has recently come to the attention of diplomats who have tried to raise the issue of kickbacks in the Security Council sanctions committee that monitors Iraq.

In an interview tonight, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed al-Douri, dismissed the accusations that his country is imposing extra charges on companies selling goods under the oil-sales program as "like other allegations made against Iraq."

"The official position," he said, "is that there is no truth to these reports." Diplomats and officials here say the new Iraqi ploys to earn money outside United Nations control work in various ways. In some cases, they said, Iraq adds supplemental charges to contracts with foreign suppliers, often in side letters that are not part of a transaction's formal records.

Or foreign suppliers secretly offer Iraq discounted prices on commodities - goods recorded as having been sold at prevailing world prices - with the difference paid to the Iraqi leadership, the experts added. Or foreigners pledge to pay a higher price, to hide kickbacks that may be deposited abroad for Iraq, the diplomats and officials said.

Iraq continues to say the sanctions, imposed after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, are the chief cause of the hardships. Mr. Annan's report said Iraq, with abundant money to spend, "is in a position to address urgently the nutritional and health status of the children of Iraq." The report said that in the four years since the United Nations started the oil for food program to meet civilian needs, the number of neighborhood health-care centers for children has grown, from 100 to 2,388. The Iraqis can now import goods as diverse as refrigerated trucks, dental equipment and musical instruments for schools.

Since 1996, Iraq has sold nearly $40 billion in oil. More than $10 billion in goods to meet civilian needs has been delivered, with an additional $8.8 billion in goods bought and awaiting shipment. An additional $3 billion in cash sits unused by Iraq in an escrow account supervised by the United Nations. The rest of the oil earnings go to a compensation fund for victims of the Kuwait invasion, to a relief program for Iraqi Kurds in the north and to United Nations expenses in Iraq.

Some relief experts said the upbeat sales figures masked the extent to which the government has been trying to manipulate the money at Mr. Hussein's disposal to add to unsupervised accounts already fat from oil smuggling.

When food or other civilian goods, including large capital projects for electricity or water, are ordered from abroad, diplomats said, the Iraqis add bogus additional charges like "inland transportation" when the goods arrive at ports, or buy goods at inflated prices, often 10 percent or more over the necessary price. The difference between the prices for commodities like wheat, sugar, rice or cooking oil and the prices that Iraq is willing to pay is thought by experts to be deposited abroad by the contractors.

That money could be used for illegal purchases. Disarmament experts fear that such money is readily available to buy weapons components or other high-technology items. The history of Mr. Hussein's arms programs features many shopping expeditions in Europe, the United States and elsewhere, as a defector from the Iraqi nuclear program, Khidhir Hamza, wrote in a recent book, "Saddam's Bombmaker."

Typically for the United Nations, which has no international police force or anticrime agency of its own, there is almost no proof on paper of the scope of the practices or the extent to which companies and governments cover up illegal payments to continue doing business. But it is widely assumed here among officials and diplomats that Iraq is intent on making under-the-table payments a prerequisite for obtaining contracts.

Iraq buys staple commodities and consumer goods from countries in the region, as well as from Russia, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Pakistan, among others. Manufactured goods are largely bought in Europe, including items from France and Switzerland, although Egypt also sells machinery and other equipment.

Diplomats from several countries said their governments were looking into reports from their citizens about Iraqi demands. But, as one diplomat remarked, the reports have predictably come from companies that rejected Iraq's demands, meaning that there was no contract to leave a paper trail. And any illegal transactions are presumably not part of the formal record.

Even if there were hard evidence, there is the question of how the United Nations could act on it, officials said. Security Council sanctions against nations that break embargoes are the ultimate weapon. But they have not proved very effective in less difficult cases like the diamond trade in Africa. In any case, diplomats said, several Security Council members have business links with Iraq and are unlikely to punish companies from their countries.

Officials of the oil program, who work for the United Nations and not their respective countries, said they had to depend on governments to watch companies registered in their nations. Diplomats said the United Nations should be doing more to flag abnormally high prices on contracts.

The issue is further complicated by rules that the Council set in 1999 that allow contracts for thousands of civilian items to be processed without the approval of the sanctions committee, though the panel still has to be notified of all sales.

Where committee reviews are required, Mr. Annan said in his report, there are too many contracts frozen by Council members - usually the United States, although it was not mentioned by name. Among the blocked purchases, the report said, are 30 locomotives and railway telecommunications and signaling equipment.

Mr. Annan indicated that Iraq had poured cold water over a Syrian plan to reopen an oil pipeline under the guidelines of the oil-sales program. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria told Secretary of State Colin L. Powell last month that he would not try to import oil from Iraq outside the supervised program, a step that diplomats considered significant in seeking to reassure the United States as it reviewed the Iraq sanctions.

---

Annan warns Iraq about oil exports

03/07/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-07-iraq.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A drop in Iraqi oil exports could hurt ordinary Iraqis by draining money from the U.N. program that allows the sanctions-bound country to buy humanitarian supplies, Secretary-General Kofi Annan says.

Iraq temporarily halted oil exports in December in a pricing dispute with the United Nations and has since only resumed modest exports. Annan said Tuesday that had led to a loss of $1.8 billion in oil revenues by the end of January.

Annan called on Baghdad to increase oil sales, saying there is no alternative to the oil-for-food program as long as sanctions remain in place. It is essential for Iraq and the Security Council "now more than ever," to stop inserting politics into the aid program, he said.

Annan's comments came as The New York Times reported Wednesday that Iraqi officials have begun demanding kickbacks and illegal commissions from foreign companies seeking to sell humanitarian supplies in Iraq.

The paper quoted unidentified diplomats and U.N. officials saying Iraqi officials required companies to pay bogus fees or hide commissions behind false prices for commodities such as wheat, sugar, rice or cooking oil. The money would then be deposited in foreign accounts for Iraq.

Diplomats told the paper that some governments were investigating reports from companies that said they had refused Iraq's demands for kickbacks.

The 4-year-old oil-for-food program allows Iraq to sell oil, provided most of the money goes for food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies, and equipment to rebuild its frayed oil infrastructure.

The report on kickbacks comes after accusations that Iraq was demanding buyers of its crude pay a per-barrel surcharge directly into its coffers in violation of sanctions. Industry analysts say Baghdad is still trying to force oil companies to pay the premium and as a result, buyers have stayed away.

Annan issued his quarterly report Tuesday on the oil-for-food program, saying, "The Iraqi people must receive all the assistance that they direly need and deserve."

The report follows his meetings last week with Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Sahhaf aimed at breaking a stalemate over U.N. sanctions, which were imposed by the U.N. Security Council after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The sanctions cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors declare that Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons have been destroyed. Inspectors pulled out of Iraq in December 1998 ahead of U.S. and British air strikes and the Iraqi government has barred them from returning.

The report also comes as the United States is proposing changes in the sanctions regime that would lift curbs on trade in consumer goods and focus on trying to plug leaks in a ban on weapons trade with Iraq.

Annan said that while Iraq has been authorized to export unlimited amounts of oil, and to import a wide range of goods to reduce malnutrition levels and improve the health of its people, its oil exports have dropped substantially.

Saying he was "very much concerned" that the export drop will leave the humanitarian program without enough money, Annan urged the Iraqi government to increase its daily exports to its pre-December rates "given its proven capacity."

Annan also complained in the report about Iraq's delay in submitting plans to spend oil-for-food money, including just $35 million of the $600 million allocated for oil industry spare parts and equipment.

He reiterated his "grave concern" over the dramatic increase in the volume of Iraqi contracts being held up in the sanctions committee - now 16.5% of all applications, with a total value of $3.1 billion. The United States, which is concerned about possible dual use of many items, is primarily responsible.

---

Powell defends sanctions policy

March 7, 2001
Washington Times
By Ben Barber
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-20013721447.htm

Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday defended U.S. moves to ease some sanctions on Iraq, saying he was "fairly confident" this is the right policy.

Arab leaders have shied away from any public backing for his plan, but Mr. Powell insisted in his remarks to reporters yesterday that, in private, the backing of Arab leaders "remains intact."

U.N. sanctions on Iraq under the Clinton administration were "about to crash," Mr. Powell said. He argued that the best way now to contain Saddam Hussein was to ease the pain of Iraqi civilians while clamping down harder on Saddam's oil and weapons transfers.

"Frankly, the alternative was just to keep on a downward path crashing into a hillside. The sanctions policy was collapsing before our eyes."

President Bush said last month the sanctions were like "Swiss cheese" and "that meant that they weren't very effective. . . . We're going to review current sanction policy and review options as to how to make the sanctions work."

Mr. Powell has been asked to appear before the House International Relations Committee today to explain why he proposed to ease the sanctions after having promised in January to "reinvigorate" the program imposed by the United Nations after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Mr. Powell may also be asked whether the Bush administration is committed to getting weapons inspectors back into Iraq.

Vice President Richard B. Cheney said in an interview with The Washington Times published this week that the administration did not "want to hinge our policy just to the question of whether or not the inspectors go back in there."

But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday that a return of weapons inspectors remains a central goal of the United States.

Mr. Powell said yesterday that the notion the sanctions were killing Iraqi children, combined with U.S. support for Israel during the latest Palestinian uprising, had created a perception in the Middle East that America was anti-Arab.

"There is linkage to the situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians. . . . This is now a regional situation," he said.

"This is an effort - and I think it will be a successful effort - to stabilize it and get it to a new altitude where . . . we will keep [Iraq] from moving toward weapons of mass destruction, and we will keep them from developing their military capability again, just the way we have for the last 10 years.

"But we will not be the ones to blame because the Iraqi people, it is claimed, are not getting what they need to take care of their children or to take care of their needs."

After his barnstorming three-day visit to five Arab capitals last week, Mr. Powell said Arab leaders supported blocking Iraq from developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

He told reporters the Arab leaders also backed his plan to ease restrictions on Iraqi imports of consumer goods, even some with possible weapons applications such as refrigerated trucks and water pumps.

But after he left the region, there was little public backing for his plan, and several Arab officials criticized it in the Arab press. Nevertheless, Mr. Powell said yesterday that private backing by leaders remained firm.

"The expressions of support that I received there remain intact - I still feel that there is support for this kind of a change," he said.

"I am still optimistic about the support that I received, and I think that support will become public in the days and weeks ahead as [Arab leaders] consider how to support the initiatives we will be taking with the United Nations to bring such a change in policy into effect."

Mr. Powell's goal has been to clamp down on unsupervised Iraqi oil sales, which bring Saddam millions of dollars he can then use to try to obtain material to rebuild his military and obtain weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq has been allowed to sell about 2 million barrels of oil per day under a U.N. sanctions program that funneled the revenue into food and medicine for Iraq and reparations to Kuwait for destruction during the 1990 Iraqi occupation.

But in recent months, Iraq has been smuggling out another 450,000 barrels of oil per day, said Jim Placke, director for Middle East Research at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

The oil is leaving Iraq by tanker truck to Turkey and Jordan, by ship to Gulf ports and by pipeline to Syria.

"It's too early for us to see if there has been any change" in the smuggled oil shipments, Mr. Placke said.

Much of the oil came to the United States until November, when Iraq tried to force the purchasers to kick back a surcharge outside of the oil-for-food program.

Since then, Iraq has dropped the French and Russian oil buyers it had favored and now sells through small, little-known middlemen. U.S., British and Japanese companies have long been blocked by Iraq from directly buying its oil.

---

Follow the French

March 7, 2001
Washington Times
Helle Bering
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-200137182719.htm

Few things, surely, would give Saddam Hussein greater pleasure than knowing the contortions we go through here in Washington to formulate a coherent approach towards his country - unless it be plotting the murder of a disfavored son-in-law or the beheading of a dozen of his countrymen before breakfast. We are now on the second Bush administration with two Clinton terms in between. We have tried sanctions, inspections, containment, internal and external pressure - in fact we have tried war itself - and still Saddam grins mockingly at us from his lair in Baghdad. Perhaps the problem is that we have not tried any of these hard enough to destroy this awful little man.

One certainly hopes that our problematic Iraq policy has not increased the job stress that could be a factor in Vice President Richard Cheney's hospitalization with heart trouble this week. As defense secretary, Mr. Cheney did his bit to create the strategy that drove Saddam out of Kuwait a decade ago, setting up an alternative planning staff that wrote the attack plan and circumvented the adamantly opposed chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell. Who is in charge of the policy today is rather unclear, however.

Meeting with editors and reporters of The Washington Times on Friday, Mr. Cheney talked about a policy under review. Secretary of State Powell went through the Middle East and Europe looking for answer, and "it was important for his trip to go out and talk to everybody in the region, which he's done, as well as some of our European allies." Mr. Cheney spoke of finding a way to rebuild the Gulf War cohesion and gain "the support of the front line states out there, as well as the other major members of the coalition."

As of this moment, coalition rebuilding seems to mean modifying the sanctions regime against Iraq and perhaps the demand for inspections as well. Mr. Cheney suggested as much in our interview when he said that, "I don't think we want to hinge our policy just to the question of whether or not the inspectors go back in there." Interesting, the State Department vigorously disagreed. According to spokesman Richard Boucher, "If Iraq wants to get out of the box, they're going to have to invite the inspectors and comply with the U.N. resolutions." Hmmm. Which is it? Actually, the crux of the matter lies in the meaning of "sanctions." (Sorry to sound Clintonian.)

On one point the administration clearly agrees with itself - that the current sanctions regime has collapsed. As Mr. Cheney pointed out, "The Chinese have been in there with fiber optic cables for the air defense network. The Syrians opened up the pipeline, selling oil . . . with the cash going back directly to the Iraqis, not going through the U.N. escrow account. You've got flights going in there now."

Complicating the task of reconstructing the Gulf War coalition is the fact that the Arabs countries hate the Iraqi sanctions regime and what it does to Iraq's children (though we might contend that Saddam Hussein is the real plague on his people). Another important fact is that Saddam is now setting himself up as the alleged protector of the Palestinians in Israel, a cause all Arab countries can rally around. The two issues have by now become all but inseparable, according to Mr. Cheney.

So, while the difficulty of producing a coherent sanctions policy ought not be underestimated, the question is whether the recently floated option of "smart sanctions" is the way to go. Mr. Powell appears wedded to the idea, and in a press conference yesterday with Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, talked about the pressure he had encountered from Arab leaders "to modify the sanctions so their effect is reduced on the Iraqi people and strengthened as regards anything else that could contribute to the production or development of weapons of mass destruction."

A couple of thoughts on "smart sanctions" - if that is the way we are headed: A broad sanctions regime is undoubtedly easier to enforce than a highly selective one. In one case, you block the point of entry, Iraq; in the other, the point of export, which will be any country willing to sell the goods.

Secondly, "smart sanctions" will be a concession to Saddam Hussein, an easing of the noose around Iraq (tattered though it might be). As best can be told, Saddam will not be asked to give anything in return for this favor.

And finally - for heaven's sake - does anyone realize this is the policy proposed by the French government in January 1999? In a formal break with the United States and Britain, the French proposed that the U.N. Security Council lift the oil embargo on Iraq and institute a new weapons monitoring system to prevent Saddam Hussein from rearming. The idea was huffily rejected by the Clinton and Blair governments, but under the Republican administration, which promised a harder line, this may now become U.S. policy. Fascinating.

Considering the relatively soft line taken by Mr. Powell on the Palestinian problem during his Middle East trip, urging Israel to open check points and release tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, we seem indeed to be falling more and more in line with French thinking. Next, will the United States be making oil deals with Iraq? We could even veto our own resolutions in the Security Council. Who knows? No one at this time, that much is clear.

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

-------- korea

Bush won't negotiate now with North Korea

03/07/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-03-07-korea.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush took a hard line against North Korea on Wednesday, ruling out an immediate resumption of Clinton-era negotiations between the United States and the communist government in Pyongyang and urging South Korea's president to be skeptical of his neighbor. Bush praised President Kim Dae-jung, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for reaching out to North Korea's leaders, but said any deal in which North Korea agrees to limit its missiles must include verifiable terms that would prevent cheating. "I do have some skepticism about the leader of North Korea," Bush said of Kim Jong Il.

The most sensitive foreign policy session of Bush's presidency produced discussions that Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell termed candid and frank - signals that Bush and Kim Dae-jung took at least slightly differing approaches toward the same goal of a peaceful Korean peninsula.

Kim has moved close to what he calls a declaration of peace with North Korea, which worries Bush administration officials that he may move too quickly without demanding strong concessions from North Korea.

Powell told reporters Bush would not be fooled by the North Koreans.

Bush himself said he would push for agreements that don't jeopardize America's national security interests.

"The president was very forthright in describing his vision, and I was forthright in describing my support for his vision, as well as my skepticism about whether or not we can verify an agreement in a country that doesn't enjoy the freedoms that our two countries understand," Bush said.

Clinton administration officials said the United States came close last year to striking an agreement to curb North Korean missile development and missile exports in exchange for aid to the wretchedly poor North Korea. Until the end of his term, President Clinton held out hope of visiting the communist nation.

Powell ducked out of the Bush-Kim meeting to tell reporters that negotiations will be on hold until the United States completes a "full review" of U.S.-North Korean relations, with a focus on threats posed by the communist regime. Bush himself suggested that more work needs to be done before talks can resume.

"We look forward to at some point in the future having a dialogue with the North Koreans, but ... any negotiation would require complete verification of the terms of a potential agreement," he said.

Bush's stance was strikingly different than the conciliatory tone Powell offered a day earlier. The secretary of state said Tuesday the Bush White House intends to pick up where the Clinton administration left off in negotiations with North Korea.

Asked to explain the shift, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer acknowledged that there were "promising developments" in talks with North Korea last year but said verification of any missile agreement remains a problem.

Kim suggested he, too, is skeptical. "There are many problems that remain" on North Korea, Kim said, and he promised to consult with the United States as talks progress.

The South Korean also backpedaled from remarks attributed to him in Russia that seemed to suggest opposition to Bush's proposed missile-defense system.

Bush said Kim understands his concerns about North Korea.

"There is no question in my mind that the president the Republic of Korea is a realist. He knows exactly with whom we're dealing with. He's under no illusions," the U.S. president said.

The pair met in the Oval Office for an hour before taking questions from reporters and retiring for a private lunch.

Vice President Dick Cheney joined the session a day after leaving the hospital where he was treated for recurring heart trouble. Wearing black cowboy boots and a dark blue suit, Cheney sat against an Oval Office wall thumbing through papers while Bush and Kim conducted the brief news conference.

"Hopefully, the efforts that the president makes will convince the North Koreans that we are peaceful people and that they need not be fearful about the intentions of America and of Republic of Korea, that we want the peace," Bush said. "But we must be wise and strong and consistent about making sure that peace happens."

Powell was more blunt, calling North Korea a threat to the United States. "It's got a huge army poised on the border within artillery and rocket distance of South Korea" and the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, Powell said.

"The president has made it clear that he understands the nature of the regime in Pyongyang and will not be fooled by the nature of that regime," Powell said.

Bush, too, said he is concerned "about the fact that the North Koreans are shipping weapons around the world. And any agreement that would convince them not to do so would be beneficial, but we want to make sure that their ability to develop and spread weapons of mass destruction was in fact stopped."

Bush has met with leaders of Mexico and Canada, countries with which there are no issues pertaining to U.S. security. Bush tread carefully during the Kim sessions, dispatching Powell and another senior administration official to brief reporters.

---

Bush hopes to build on progress in North Korea

March 7, 2001
Washington Times
By David R. Sands
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-200137214619.htm

The Bush administration said yesterday it will pursue the diplomatic opening to North Korea begun by the Clinton administration, as President Bush prepared for a summit today with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

"We are not avoiding North Korea, quite the contrary," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters. "We think we have a lot to offer that regime, if they will act in ways that are constructive."

Mr. Kim, whose efforts to ease 50 years of hostility with the North earned him the Nobel Peace Prize last year, will have his first face-to-face meeting with Mr. Bush at the White House, and will also meet with Mr. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"The South Korean-U.S. summit is a crucial meeting, the first since the launch of the Bush administration," Mr. Kim said in Seoul before leaving yesterday for a five-day U.S. trip. He will also meet with International Monetary Fund and World Bank officials in Washington and spend a day in Chicago before going home.

South Korean analysts said Mr. Kim hopes to get the new administration's explicit backing for his "sunshine policy" of rapprochement with Pyongyang and also wants assurances that Washington's own efforts to engage the North have not been shelved.

Tensions have risen on the Korean peninsula over the uncertainties surrounding the new U.S. administration.

Mr. Powell has previously praised the Clinton administration's North Korea initiatives, but many of Mr. Bush's appointees have been critical of Pyongyang's active ballistic missile development and export program.

In addition, despite recent diplomatic moves, North Korea remains a prime target of the proposed U.S. missile defense system - a top Bush priority.

Mr. Kim faces domestic political criticism for the lack of results to date from the sunshine policy. And he raised new questions last week when he seemed to endorse an effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin to oppose the U.S. missile defense idea, although officials in Seoul quickly moved to reassure Washington.

North Korea only increased the unease with a stinging broadside last month, accusing the United States of reneging on the deal outlined by Mr. Clinton that would curb Pyongyang's military programs in exchange for economic and technical aid.

"This again reveals the aggressive and brigandish nature of the United States to overturn the past trend in U.S.-North Korean relations," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in one statement.

But Mr. Powell said the new administration had moved cautiously because it wanted to hear from Mr. Kim before proceeding.

"We haven't begun that consultative process with the North Koreans because we thought it was important to first talk with our South Korean friends," Mr. Powell said, speaking with reporters yesterday after a meeting with leaders of the European Union.

China, North Korea's primary patron in Asia, also played down fears yesterday of a fresh round of confrontation.

"I don't see relations between the United States and North Korea as being that tense," Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said in a Beijing news conference.

"I do not think there will be a retrogressive step involving this important question," he said.

North Korea stunned its East Asian neighbors by firing a three-stage rocket over Japan in 1998, raising fears that it could develop ballistic missiles that could reach U.S. bases and territory.

The CIA ranks North Korea as the world's biggest exporter of ballistic missiles. North Korea claims it earns up to $1 billion each year in sales to countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

But North Korea's secretive dictator, Kim Jong-il, has begun to open his country's ravaged economy to the world, and hosted South Korea's Mr. Kim at an unprecedented summit in June. The North Korean leader is expected to visit Seoul sometime this year.

In addition, Pyongyang agreed to suspend its missile-launch program while it held talks with the United States on economic aid and international assistance in launching its telecommunications satellites.

"Some promising elements were left on the table" by the previous administration, Mr. Powell said, "and we'll be examining those elements."

On other subjects, Mr. Powell:

• Called for "restraint on all sides" as Macedonia dealt with an ethnic Albanian extremist group that has held a border town across from the U.N. protectorate in Kosovo for more than three weeks. He said the NATO-dominated peacekeeping force is beefing up its patrols along Kosovo's border with Macedonia.

• Harshly condemned Afghanistan's Taleban regime for its reported efforts to destroy ancient monumental Buddha statues. "It's horrible. It's a tragedy. It's a crime against humankind, and I deplore it," he said.

• Warned Ukraine that recent government violations of press and political freedoms have sidetracked the country's economic reform.

"The United States and the EU are standing by wanting to help Ukraine, but they've got to get these political difficulties behind them and show that they're worthy of that kind of investment," Mr. Powell said.

-------- missile defense

Clinton, Bush and Korea

March 7, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/opinion/L07KOR.html

To the Editor:

In "How Politics Sank Accord on Missiles With North Korea" (front page, March 6), you say it is unclear how much Bush administration officials "will use diplomacy to try to head off missile threats, instead of relying primarily on their plans for missile defense."

Given the cost of deploying a missile defense system, how can the Bush team not take the route that might save us all that money? Think of how much good could be done with the $60 billion we'll waste if we aren't willing to talk to countries like North Korea. If the Bush team wants to prove it's still living in a cold-war world, this is the way to do it.

STEVEN G. BRANT Brooklyn, March 6, 2001

To the Editor:

The rationale you report for former President Bill Clinton's decision not to visit North Korea makes no sense (front page, March 6). If he thought it unwise to leave the country during a "potential constitutional crisis," why did he travel to Vietnam in November and to Ireland in December?

Perhaps the Clinton administration for once decided to think twice before rushing into an imperfect - and possibly dangerous - international agreement. If true, there is no need for excuses.

KENNETH WEISBRODE Boston, March 6, 2001

-------- russia

Russian Ministry of Nuclear Energy (Minatom) is actively promoting the project to import spent nuclear fuel

2001-03-07
Bellona
http://www.bellona.no/imaker?id=19450&sub=1

Spent fuel import Russian Ministry of Nuclear Energy (Minatom) is actively promoting the project to import spent nuclear fuel to Russia from foreign countries for storage/reprocessing. The project may turn Russia into an international nuclear dumpsite.

Russian nuclear minister corrupt The Russian State Duma anti-corruption commission has issued a report about Russian nuclear energy minister's illegal business activities which undermine nuclear safety. Vladislav Nikiforov

On March 2nd, Greenpeace-Moscow released a report from the Russian State Duma anti-corruption commission detailing the large-scale illegal business activities of the minister for nuclear energy, Evgeny Adamov. Adamov's attempts to commercialise Ministry for Nuclear Energy and use its resources for his private commercial projects are not only illegal but also undermine nuclear safety, Russian Nuclear Regulatory says.

Duma's anti-corruption commission recommended that all information related to Adamov's activities be submitted to the President, Security Council, Russian Federation Government, Federal Security Service (former KGB), and General Prosecutor's office, Moscow Times writes. The 20-odd page document by its tone reminds an indictment and contains three chapters: Adamov's entrepreneurial activity, Adamov's personnel policy, Adamov's financial policy.

Family business

While working as the head of secret NIKIET Institute in Moscow from 1986to 1998 Evgeny Adamov violated many security regulations and created "various commercial organisations in Moscow and abroad and continues to be actively involved in entrepreneurial activities". As an employee of the Ministry for Nuclear Energy, Minatom, and previously director of NIKIET Institute, it has been forbidden for Adamov to have any private business interests, however, the report reveals a complex business portfolio since the early 1990s.

For example, on August 24th 1994, he established consulting and management company "Omeka, Ltd". Registered in Pensylvania, USA, however, according to the report, at the end of 1999, the company's $5 million in assets were controlled by Adamov ($3.15 million), his wife ($1.5 million) and his US partner Mark Kaushansky ($410,000). This is a violation of article 289 of the Russian Penalty Code (illegal participation in entrepreneurial activities). Mark Kaushansky is also the main actor in a number of other Adamov's commercial projects.

In March 1998, in the speech to the Duma Adamov said he had not been engaged in business since his appointment as minister. "There have been no deposits to my personal [bank] account since I have been minister," Adamov said.

The report, which says Adamov has admitted having a U.S. social security card, went on to say that when Adamov applied for a Diner's Club card in 1996, he stated his total annual income at over $120,000. The Commission believes no tax have been paid in Russia, what violates article 198 of the Russian Penalty Code (deviation from tax payment).

The first chapter concludes that "The facts about Adamov's engagement in commercial activity, while he worked as NIKIET director and being a minister of atomic energy, which were raised in the press, State Duma members' letters and statements addressed to the Russian leadership, have been fully confirmed".

Nuclear safety undermined

The chapter about Adamov's personnel policy lists numerous cases when Adamov appointed people with no experience in the atomic industry to key positions in the ministry and state companies controlled by the ministry. Some of these officials were also listed as shareholders of private companies formed by Adamov before he became minister. He also illegally tried to take control over all the branches of nuclear industry in Russia and monopolise it as well by eliminating competitors and seizing license functions from the Russian State Nuclear Regulatory, or GAN.

GAN for its turn says that appointment of incompetent people to the key positions in the ministry have undermined the nuclear safety in the nuclear related industry. A disregard to the nuclear safety regulations has become an official stance of Minatom's top rank officials when Adamov became the minister, GAN states.

Russo-American government deal on HEU involved

The last chapter reveals some facts about Adamov's financial policy. The ministry's international deals (about $2 billion annually) were channelled through the ministry-affiliated bank Konversbank. Then, according to the report, he ordered the bank's officials to sell the bank's controlling stake to MDM-Bank, an institution associated with Kremlin. Thereby, the report said, MDM got control over such lucrative deals as a $12 billion contract with the USA for processing weapons-grade uranium.

"At the present time, the purchase of Konversbank stakes for the benefit of MDM-Bank continues," the report said. MDM has been reported to have assets worth $850 million, while Konversbank has some $400 million to $500 million on its books.

Minatom rejects accusations

Talking to the Russian daily Segodnya, Minatom rejected accusations saying that interpretation of the mentioned facts and episodes was tendentious and incomplete. "Some groups want to shake up the government, which supports the program of importing foreign spent nuclear fuel to Russia," Minatom representatives said.

Until recently Evgeny Adamov felt untouchable enjoying Kremlin's absolute trust. But more and more competitors appear on the scene: managers of Unified Energy System of Russia, among them Anatoly Chubais, numerous top officials fired by Adamov as well as antinuclear lobby including some green activists and few State Duma deputies.

Deputy chairman of the Duma Security Committee Sergey Yushenkov in an interview to Segodnya said that if this report is just the Duma members initiative, then examination of Adamov's activities would be just a formal procedure without any result, if some people are not pleased with him, his illegal activity would be definitely confirmed.

Spent fuel import a private business of Adamov?

The currently most discussed business proposal to import spent nuclear fuel to Russia is one of the initiative being actively promoted by Adamov. The commercialised minister says Russia may earn up to $20 billion on importing 20,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from abroad. The required amendments to the Russia legislation to allow the project passed the first hearings in the State Duma in December 2000. The second hearing was scheduled for February 22nd but was postponed until March 22. The reason for postponement may well be the anti-corruption commission report.

Commenting once on the fuel import project, head of GAN, Yury Vishnevsky, said that "money [earned] will be either stolen or eaten up." The first option seems to be quite true on the background of the report, which obviously shows only the tip of all Adamov's private business activities.

---

Putin Tries Out Cyberspace

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/technology/07RUSS.html

MOSCOW, March 6 - Last year President Vladimir V. Putin flew in a jet fighter to Chechnya and sailed in a nuclear submarine in an Arctic sea. Tonight he entered cyberspace for the first time.

Greeting a mostly young audience from around the world in a 40-minute live encounter on the Internet that was broadcast by the BBC, Mr. Putin defended Russia's policies in Chechnya, praised the achievements of the Soviet education system, and insisted that he was taking the country in the right direction toward greater democracy.

The 48-year-old Russian leader took the opportunity of the worldwide forum to again warn the Bush administration that if Washington withdraws from a 1972 treaty banning national missile defenses, "the whole of today's international security structure will collapse."

The discussion on the Internet did not break much new ground in conveying Mr. Putin's well-known views. He has already established himself as the most talkative president in the country's modern history, but the Internet session was significant as an attempt by the Kremlin to go over the heads of Russian and Western media in carrying Mr. Putin's message directly to a worldwide audience.

A BBC moderator said at one point that more than 15,000 questions were received in the run up to the Web cast from Russian Internet users, and also from users as far away as Australia, England, Switzerland, Denmark and the United States.

A Kremlin spokesman said tonight that the event had been two months in the making with a special studio set up in the Kremlin. "We also had to make sure that the site was well enough protected against hackers," who have broken into Kremlin Web sites in the past, the spokesman said.

The Internet format was apparently an idea hatched by Mr. Putin's staff.

"We wanted to show that we understand that the Internet is an important part of forming public opinion," the spokesman said. "This is well known in the West, but not yet so widespread here."

In the online session, Mr. Putin said he gets up early every morning and swims for 20 minutes before heading to his Kremlin office and then takes another 90-minute break for exercise later in the day before resuming work until 10 p.m. or midnight. He said he is currently reading a book about the rule of Catherine the Great and another about the history of Russian literature and culture.

Asked to name a favorite Western cinema actor, Mr. Putin pondered and came up with Romy Schneider, who starred with Rod Steiger in "Innocents with Dirty Hands" in 1975.

Mr. Putin confessed that he did not use the Internet because he has been too lazy to learn, though he said his two daughters use it extensively, so much so that their mother is trying to cut back on the time they spend on the computer. Mr. Putin said he received most of his information from a large staff of aides "who provide me with a kind of ready product" of daily information.

In one bit of news, Mr. Putin said that in "the very near future" he would present to Russia's Parliament a "whole package of proposals" to reform Russia's judicial system, one of the most long-awaited reforms of his year-old presidency. Many young Russians wanted to know what Mr. Putin was going to do about the deteriorating education system in Russia.

"I think that some elements of our past life, our Soviet life, do deserve to be remembered with kind words," he responded. "Education, medicine and science - they were all things the former Soviet Union could be proud of, and rightly so."

But he offered no prescription on how to rescue ailing education institutions beyond saying, "I am going to try to preserve what was best in the previous education system."

Many questions were about democracy and freedom of the press, one of them from a Texan identified as Jonathan Jones. Mr. Putin said he realized that there were "those living abroad" who "worry about how the state will develop."

"I can say that for as long as I remain head of state, we will adhere precisely to democratic principles of development," he said, adding, "I am sure that this country simply has no alternative but democratic development and market economy."

In an apparent reference to the fight between private and state interests for control of Russia's only independent television channel, NTV, Mr. Putin asserted that "a group of people" had taken over parts of the mass media "not quite legally."

Then he added: "Anarchy and permissiveness should not flourish in Russia. Some people simply do not like it when we are trying to put things in order, to make everyone live according to the law." He finished making his point simply by saying that fears of government suppression of criticism are "groundless."

Mr. Putin acknowledged that many people in the world have a "poor opinion" of Russia's actions in suppressing rebellion in Chechnya, where tens of thousands have died and hundreds of thousands of civilians have been left homeless by two brutal wars.

The Russian leader countered that many people also have a "good opinion" of Russia's military operations. "I can tell you why," he said. "It is because the Chechens themselves received nothing from their self-appointed rulers apart from robbery and fraud."

"And we think that the actions of the Russian army are aimed at the liberation of the Chechen people from the terrorists who have seized power there," he added.

Mr. Putin acknowledged that the promise of reform had yet to be fulfilled for most of the Russian people.

"We have been marking time," he said, referring to the 1990's when "there was no consensus either in society or the Parliament itself" and therefore "it was impossible to adopt any decisions." He pointed out that in his first year in office he had succeeded in winning approval from Parliament for a 13 percent flat income tax as well as for customs reforms to promote growth in trade.

But he agreed with a critic from Kazan that reforms could have made "better and faster progress." He added, "But it probably ought to be acknowledged that although we are not happy with the pace and perhaps even the quality, we are still moving ahead."

Mr. Putin also said he is determined to build a more effective Russian military force, but he did not reveal further details about the large troop cuts that were announced last fall.

"We should strive for our army to be highly professional, well trained, provided with modern equipment and - beyond all doubt - for it to remain outside politics so that the army - and the other power structures of the country - should be under the control of society."

-------- ukraine

After the Blast
Political Squabbling has paralyzed efforts to clean up Chernobyl.

Harvard Political Review
Winter 2001
By Christine A. Telyan
http://www.hpronline.org/world/telyan.chernobyl.shtml

Nearly 15 years after the Chernobyl disaster, the embers of political repercussion continue to smolder. While the case of the fourth reactor has drawn attention to economic and energy interests in the Ukraine, the immediate problems of environmental damage have yet to be addressed. Chernobyl has come to symbolize not human devastation, but rather the discontent of industrial laborers and the dominance of nuclear power. Correspondingly, the international community continues to follow political rather than humanitarian logic by withholding direct aid to Chernobyl.

This "hands-off" attitude has been perpetuated in two ways. First, the Chernobyl crisis has been categorized as a domestic issue, discouraging participation by the international community. Despite medical findings that indicate the need for an environmental overhaul of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the United States has been unwilling to act. For the Ukraine and Belarus, the industry has meant employment and economic activity. Second, the U.S. has used aid to Chernobyl as a bargaining tool, given in exchange for the restructuring of Ukrainian economic and energy policy. As the U.S. attempts to stake a claim in the country's development, its protracted promises of IMF and World Bank loans are contingent upon normal economic policy with property reforms and flexible tariffs.

When Vice-Pres. Gore urged Pres. Leonid Kuchma and the Ukrainian government to help their own country before asking for foreign assistance, it was made clear that the U.S. would not become involved in the Chernobyl incident. On the other hand, the U.S. has not hesitated to promote the transport of Caspian oil to Europe. The preeminence of nuclear energy is largely a function of its integration into the economy of the Ukraine, which runs 14 nuclear reactors with several more under construction. Labor unions further contribute to instability-one day championing the economic benefits of nuclear energy, while striking the next day for lack of post-hoc health programs. The inability of the Ukrainian people to reconcile their differences to form a coherent policy has inspired similarly noncommittal world initiatives. The minimal international involvement has yielded little more than an "official" closure of the Chernobyl crisis: a $2 billion entombment of the reactors, completed in mid-December.

But while this much-publicized "sarcophagus" is a necessary step in contending with this vicious aftermath, is it sufficient? The answer depends on the residual effects of the explosion. Specialists from the Belarusian Gomel Medical Institute, for example, have already linked it to 11,000 incidences of thyroid cancer, projecting an eventual total of some 65,000. But in truth, these figures fail to represent the full scope of potential devastation, considering that 4 million people live in areas of contamination. Furthermore, the Ukraine cannot account for the health of the 800,000 state employees who participated in containment efforts. The U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation discounted these concerns, reporting that "there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation." The World Health Organization has corroborated these findings, despite the continued pleas of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who most recently appealed for $9 million to aid the victims.

Experts agree that the decomposition of cesium isotope 137 will, at the very least, result in three decades of food and soil contamination. In light of this, can the U.S. justify removing itself from the Chernobyl crisis? The burden of emergency relief has fallen instead to private organizations such as the Children of Chernobyl Relief Fund, an alliance of Ukrainian-Americans and corporate sponsors. Their efforts have funded airlifts, the purchase of medical equipment, and training for doctors. Although a small operation, the Relief Fund has delivered over $40 million in aid to the victims. This humanitarian, non-political intervention ought to be a model for U.S. involvement. The fiscal and economic concerns of foreign politics should end where the suffering of fellow human beings begins.

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

WESTERN STATES RECA REFORM COALITION

3/6/01
kiyaani@frontier.net

Contacts:
Lori Goodman (970) 259-0199
Ed Brickey (970) 523-7460/216-1175
Melton Martinez (505) 287-3848

(R.E.C.A.) RADIATION EXPOSURE COMPENSATION ACT 2000

A campaign to be launched next week by the people of the Four Corners states is intended to send a strong message to the U.S. government. "Obey The Law" is the message of the region-wide campaign, sponsored by the Western States RECA Reform Coalition during the week of March 12-17.

"Last year, Congress clearly mandated payments under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to former miners and other former uranium workers," said Sylvia Clahchischilli, a member of the Coalition from Teecnospos Chapter. "But now, the government is stalling the whole process, by not issuing required regulations and issuing IOU's instead of payments. This is unjust and only adds to the physical and emotional injury done to the uranium workers."

Serving as a follow-up to the historic "Day of Remembrance" gathering, held in Salt Lake City on January 27th, the campaign will originate at key points in each of the Four Corners states, where meetings and educational forums will be held. The road shows will converge on Cortez, Colorado from all four directions on Saturday, March 17, where the campaign will be rounded-off with a rally.

"Talk of possible program mergers only creates confusion, delay and chaos," said Earl Tulley, Coalition member from St. Michaels. "The manipulating of RECA in D.C. without the knowledge of the grassroots communities only creates mistrust of our congressional people to where we have to stay a step ahead of them through guess work on the issue." Mr. Tulley concluded: "All we ask is for our elected leaders to obey the laws governing the RECA compensation program so that some of our people can still receive the benefits due them."

There have been some hopeful developments. Last week, Senators Hatch of Utah and Domenici of NM introduced two bills in the Senate, S.448 and S.449, that would change the RECA trust fund from an annual appropriation to a permanent appropriation and provide for "timely payment" of benefits to RECA claimants. "We need to support those two bills and get them passed ASAP, so the uranium workers can get some relief," said Melton Martinez, Coalition member from Haystack, NM.

The Western States RECA Reform Coalition consists of representatives of grassroots radiation victim's organizations from the states of NM, CO, AZ & UT working together in a force uniting people of different ethnic, geographic, religious and political backgrounds. Organizations includes: Colorado Plateau Uranium Workers, Colorado Uranium Workers Council, Navajo RECA Reform Working Group, Utah Navajo Downwinders, Northern Arizona Navajo Downwinders, Eastern Navajo Uranium Workers and Dine' CARE.

ITEMS OF CONCERN

We have four areas of concern, all of which tell the federal government to 'OBEY THE LAW'.

1.RECA AMENDMENT 2000 REGULATIONS

By law, the regulations were supposed to be out in 180 days from July 10, 2000. January 10, 2001 was 180 days, but it is now almost two months past and the regulations are still not out. Uranium workers are concerned, because the delay only adds to the physical and emotional injury done to the workers.

II. RECA TRUST FUND

The RECA Amendment 2000 law required payment by the federal government within 6 weeks. However, uranium workers who qualify for compensation are receiving 'IOU's from the Federal Government. There is no money in the RECA Trust Fund to pay those who qualify. Congress should replenish the RECA Trust Fund, so all-eligible uranium workers can receive the money owed to them.

III. PROPOSED TRANSFER OF THE RECA PROGRAM FROM DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (DOJ) TO DEPARTMENT OF LABOR (DOL)

Some congressional representatives are recommending moving the RECA Program from DOJ to DOL without consulting their constituents. This transfer would create further delays in the compensation process, as it would require legislation going through both the House and Senate again. Why create further delays while radiation victims are dying and many more are sick and want their compensation?

IV. MERGER OF THE RECA PROGRAM WITH THE ATOMIC WORKERS PROGRAM

If the RECA Program is moved to DOL, Congress might merge it with the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program (HR-5408). Currently, it is easier under the RECA Program for uranium workers to get compensation than it would be under the HR-5408 Program. This merger may undo the gains made by the RECA 2000 Amendment law passed last summer

You are invited to attend meetings in AZ, NM, CO & UT, during the week of March 12-17, 2001 to discuss the above issues. We need to let U.S. Congress know what we want. RECA 2000 is the people's bill and it should stay that way. Listen to the radio and the newspapers for meeting locations.

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MOX fabrication facility EIS

March 7, 2001
[Federal Register:
[wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr07mr01-108]

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility

AGENCY: United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

ACTION: Notice of Intent (NOI).

SUMMARY: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announces its intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for construction, operation and deactivation of a proposed Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility (Facility) to be constructed at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. The EIS is being prepared pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and will examine the potential environmental impacts of manufacturing MOX fuel from surplus weapons plutonium. The MOX fuel is eventually planned to be used in two existing domestic commercial reactors, thus helping to ensure that plutonium produced for nuclear weapons and declared excess to national security needs is converted to forms that are inaccessible and unattractive for nuclear weapons.

TENTATIVE DATES; FUTURE NOTICES OF OPPORTUNITY FOR HEARINGS: The public scoping process required by NEPA begins with publication of this NOI in the Federal Register and continues until May 21, 2001. Written comments submitted by mail should be postmarked by that date to ensure consideration. Comments mailed after that date will be considered to the extent practical. However, this May 21 date, and the proposed meeting dates listed below, are subject to change for the following reasons. The NRC is presently conducting its initial administrative acceptance review of the construction authorization request (CAR) regarding the MOX Facility.

Following the acceptance review (if the CAR is acceptable), a detailed technical review of the CAR begins. The CAR was submitted to the NRC on February 28, 2001, by DCS (a consortium formed by Duke Engineering & Services, COGEMA, Inc., and Stone and Webster), the engineering firm which, if NRC grants approval, would build the MOX Facility. The acceptance review of the CAR is expected to take 30 days to complete. If the CAR is accepted and formally docketed, the EIS scoping process will continue. If, for any reason, the CAR is not accepted and formally docketed, the scoping process will be suspended, and a notice postponing the meetings listed below will be published in the Federal Register. Additionally, if the CAR passes the acceptance review, a notice of opportunity for hearing regarding the CAR will be published in the Federal Register.

DCS plans to submit to the NRC a separate license application requesting authority to operate the MOX Facility. This DCS request, which would also be subject to the NRC's acceptance review procedures, is expected in the summer of 2002. If this request is accepted and formally docketed, another notice of opportunity for hearing regarding operating authority would then be published in the Federal Register.

NRC will conduct public scoping meetings to assist it in defining the appropriate scope of the EIS, including the significant environmental issues to be addressed. NRC plans to hold scoping meetings in April 2001. Please note that meeting attendees will be requested to participate in the scoping process through small working groups within the larger meeting setting. (See Section entitled Scoping Meeting Format, below, for more details.) To effectively plan for this type of meeting, NRC staff will need to know how many participants to expect. If you do plan to attend any or all of the meetings, please help us by registering ahead of time. Contact information for registration is provided below in the section ``Addresses.'' The meeting dates, times and locations are listed below. Prior to the Scoping Meetings, NRC staff will be available to informally discuss the MOX project and answer questions in an ``open house'' format.

April 17, 2001 North Augusta Community Center, 496 Brookside Drive, North Augusta, SC Scoping Meeting Time: 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Open House Time: 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

April 18, 2001 Coastal Georgia Center, 305 Martin Luther King Boulevard, Savannah, GA Scoping Meeting Time: 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Open House Time: 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

ADDRESSES: To register for a meeting, to provide comments or suggestions on the scope of the EIS, or to make requests for special arrangements to enable participation at scoping meetings (e.g., an interpreter for the hearing impaired), please contact: Tim Harris at (301) 415-6613 or Betty Garrett at (301) 415-5808.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For general or technical information associated with the license review of the MOX Facility, please contact: Tim Johnson at (301) 415-7299 or Drew Persinko at (301) 415-6522. For general information on the NRC NEPA process, please contact: Jennifer Davis at (301) 415-5874 or Tim Harris at (301) 415-6613.

Availability of Documents for Review: Information and documents associated with the MOX project, including the DCS Environmental Report submitted in December 2000, and the CAR, may be obtained from the Internet on NRC's MOX web page: http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/NMSS/MOX/ index.html (case sensitive). In addition, documents are available for public review through our electronic reading room: http://www.nrc.gov/ NRC/ADAMS/index.html. Documents may also be obtained from NRC's Public Document Room at U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Public Document Room, Washington, DC 20555.

DCS states that some of the detailed technical material in the CAR is confidential information which should be withheld from public disclosure. DCS has submitted an affidavit with its CAR, in support of its confidentiality statement. Until the NRC makes a determination as to whether the information at issue can be properly withheld, the publicly available copy of the CAR will be an edited version. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Background

In January 2000, the DOE issued its Record of Decision (ROD) for the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Final EIS [65 FR 1608]. The fundamental purpose of the DOE program is to ensure that plutonium produced for nuclear weapons and declared excess to national security needs is converted to forms that are inaccessible and unattractive for nuclear weapons. In its ROD, DOE announced that it had decided to use two approaches for the disposition of surplus weapons plutonium, and that the facilities would be located at its SRS. The first approach is immobilization of approximately 8.4 metric tons of surplus plutonium. The immobilization will consist of placing the weapons-grade plutonium into canisters that will be filled with vitrified glass from the SRS high-level waste tanks. The second approach will convert up to 25.6 metric tons of surplus plutonium into MOX nuclear reactor fuel. (The scoping process discussed in this notice is focused on this second approach.) A third facility to disassemble the plutonium pits (the current form) and convert the recovered plutonium into plutonium dioxide suitable for disposition will also be located at SRS, but will not be reviewed by NRC and is not included in this scoping meeting.

The DOE has selected DCS to provide the MOX fuel fabrication and reactor irradiation services. DCS submitted its Environmental Report for MOX fuel fabrication to NRC on December 19, 2000. DCS submitted its CAR to NRC on February 28, 2001. NRC will evaluate the potential environmental impacts associated with MOX fuel fabrication in parallel with the review of the CAR. This evaluation will be documented in draft and final Environmental Impact Statements in accordance with NEPA and NRC's implementing regulations at 10 CFR Part 51.

MOX Fuel Fabrication at SRS (New Construction)

The MOX Facility, if licensed, would produce completed MOX fuel assemblies for use in two domestic, commercial nuclear power reactors. Feed materials would be plutonium dioxide from the pit conversion facility at SRS, and uranium dioxide made from either the DOE stockpile of depleted uranium hexafluoride from another DOE site, or another source selected by DCS and approved by DOE. MOX fuel fabrication involves purification of the plutonium dioxide to remove other metals present in the weapons pit; blending the plutonium dioxide with depleted uranium dioxide; pressing the mixed oxide into pellets; sintering the pellets; loading the pellets into fuel rods; and assembling the fuel rods into fuel assemblies. Once assembled, the fuel assemblies would be transported to a domestic, commercial reactor for use. (The McGuire and/or the Catawba nuclear power plants near Charlotte, NC, have been tentatively selected.) Following irradiation to generate electric power, the MOX fuel would be removed from the reactor, and managed at the reactor site as spent nuclear fuel.

Final disposition would be at a geologic repository in accordance with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

Purpose and Need for Agency Action

On October 17, 1998, Congress amended Section 202 of the Energy Reorganization Act, giving licensing authority to the NRC regarding any MOX Facility to be built (42 U.S.C. 5842(5)). Accordingly, in order for DCS to construct and operate the MOX Facility, it must be licensed/authorized by the NRC. Such action would be a major federal action, thus requiring NRC, pursuant to NEPA, to prepare an EIS for construction, operation and deactivation of the MOX Facility. The EIS will consider facility-specific environmental impacts (an earlier EIS prepared by DOE addressed generic impacts) associated with constructing and operating the MOX Facility. The EIS prepared by NRC will also consider indirect effects from MOX fuel fabrication, such as transportation to the domestic, commercial reactors, MOX fuel use in those reactors, and eventual spent fuel disposal.

Alternatives To Be Evaluated

No Action--Do Not Issue Construction Authorization for MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility at SRS

Alternative 1--Issue Construction Authorization for MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility at SRS

Note that NRC is limited to issuing or denying the construction authorization and/or license to operate the MOX Facility at SRS. The DOE has already decided to pursue the two disposition approaches for surplus weapons plutonium, and has already decided to site the MOX Facility at SRS. These decisions will not be revisited by NRC. Other alternatives not listed here may be identified through the scoping process.

Environmental Impact Areas To Be Analyzed

The following areas have been tentatively identified for analysis in the EIS. This list is neither intended to be all inclusive, nor is it a predetermination of potential environmental impacts. The list is presented to facilitate comments on the scope of the EIS. Additions to, or deletions from this list may occur as a result of the public scoping process.

Health and Safety: potential public and occupational consequences from construction, routine operation, transportation, and credible accident scenarios;

Waste Management/Pollution Prevention: types of wastes expected to be generated, handled, and stored; pollution prevention opportunities and the potential consequences to public safety and the environment;

Hazardous Materials: handling, storage and use; both present and future;

Background Radiation: cosmic, rock, soil, water, and air and the potential addition of radiation;

Water Resources: surface and groundwater hydrology, water use and quality, and the potential for degradation;

Air Quality: meteorological conditions, ambient background, pollutant sources, and the potential for degradation;

Earth Resources: physical geography, topography, geology and soil characteristics;

Land Use: plans, policies and controls;

Noise: ambient, sources, and sensitive receptors;

Ecological Resources: wetlands, aquatic, terrestrial, economically and recreationally important species, and threatened and endangered species;

Socioeconomic: demography, economic base, labor pool, housing, transportation, utilities, public services/facilities, education, recreation, and cultural resources;

Natural Disasters: floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and seismic events;

Cumulative Effects: impacts from past, present and reasonably foreseeable actions at, and near the site(s);

Indirect Effects: transportation to the domestic, commercial reactors, MOX fuel use in those reactors, and eventual spent fuel disposal;

Unavoidable Adverse Impacts;

Natural and Depletable Resources: requirements and conservation potential; and

Environmental Justice: any potential disproportionately high and adverse impacts to minority and low-income populations.

Alternatives other than those presented in this document may warrant examination, and new issues may be identified for evaluation.

Scoping Meetings

One purpose of this NOI is to encourage public involvement in the EIS process, and to solicit public comments on the proposed scope and content of the EIS. NRC will hold public scoping meetings in the SRS vicinity to solicit both oral and written comments from interested parties.

Scoping is an early and open process designed to determine the range of actions, alternatives, and potential impacts to be considered in the EIS, and to identify the significant issues related to the proposed action. It is intended to solicit input from the public and other agencies so that the analysis can be more clearly focused on issues of genuine concern. The principal goals of the scoping process are to:

Ensure that concerns are identified early and are properly studied;

Identify alternatives that will be examined;

Identify significant issues that need to be analyzed;

Eliminate unimportant issues; and

Identify public concerns.

Scoping Meeting Format

Traditionally, scoping meetings begin with agency speakers, then attendees make oral comments. The scoping meetings for the MOX Facility will follow a different structure, which was recommended by the Council on Environmental Quality in its ``Memorandum for General Counsels, NEPA Liaisons and Participants in Scoping,'' dated April 30, 1981.

The first part of the meeting is devoted to a discussion of the proposal in general, covering its purpose, proposed location, design, and any other aspects that can be presented in a lecture format. A question and answer period concerning this information is often held at this time. Then . . . the next step is to break . . . into small groups for more intensive discussion. At this point, numbers held by the participants are used to assign them to small groups by sequence, random drawing, or any other method. Each group should be no larger than 12, and 8-10 is better. The groups are informed that their task is to prepare a list of significant environmental issues and reasonable alternatives for analysis in the EIS. These lists will be presented to the main group and combined into a master list, after the discussion groups are finished.''

A member of the NRC staff, or NRC contractor staff will be part of each group to answer questions and listen to the participants' concerns. The agency person will not lead the group discussions, but will serve as the recording secretary for each group. This will ensure he/she is listening to group views. Each group will choose a member to lead the group discussions. In addition to the group discussions, participants will be able to express their oral views to a recording secretary in five minute blocks. NRC encourages those providing oral comments to also submit them in writing. Comment cards will also be available for anyone who prefers to submit their comments in written form.

Scoping Comments

Written comments should be mailed to: Michael T. Lesar, Acting Chief, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Rules & Directives Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Office of Administration, Mail Stop T6D59, Washington, DC 20555.

Comments will also be accepted by e-mail. Interested parties may e-mail their comments to teh@nrc.gov. Comments will be accepted by fax at 301-415-5398, Attention: Tim Harris.

NRC will make the scoping summaries and project-related materials available for public review through our electronic reading room: http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/ADAMS/index.html. The scoping meeting summaries and project-related materials will also be available on the NRC's MOX web page: http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/NMSS/MOX/index.html (case sensitive).

The NEPA Process

The EIS for the MOX Facility will be prepared according to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Council on Environmental Quality's Regulations for Implementing the Procedural Provisions of NEPA (40 CFR Parts 1500-1508), and NRC's NEPA Regulations (10 CFR Part 51).

The draft EIS is scheduled to be published in February 2002. A 45-day comment period on the draft EIS is planned, and public meetings to receive comments will be held approximately three weeks after distribution of the draft EIS. Availability of the draft EIS, the dates of the public comment period, and information about the public meetings will be announced in the Federal Register, on NRC's MOX web page, and in the local news media when the draft EIS is distributed. The final EIS, which will incorporate public comments received on the draft EIS, is expected in September 2002.

Signed in Rockville, MD, this 1st day of March 2001. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Charlotte E. Abrams, Acting Chief, Environmental and Performance Assessment Branch, Division of Waste Management, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards. [FR Doc. 01-5509 Filed 3-6-01; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

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Nuclear power's new day
Energy crisis raises profile

Mar. 7, 2001
Arizona Central
Gannett News Service
Doug Abrahms
http://www.azcentral.com/azc-bin/print.php3

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration could be ushering in a new energy era in the United States - the construction of nuclear power plants for the first time in more than 20 years.

California's electricity woes, coupled with sharply higher natural gas prices, are making nuclear power look more attractive, said Vaughn Gilbert, a spokesman for Westinghouse Electric, which has built about half the world's nuclear power plants. Today's plants employ better technology and cost far less than models built 30 years ago, he said.

"Clearly, the energy crisis in California has had a positive impact on how people view nuclear power," he said. "We're getting a lot more interest, but we're not going to sell one tomorrow (in the United States)."

Under a sweeping energy bill proposed by Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would be required to streamline licensing new nuclear plants and the industry would get more subsidies and tax breaks worth at least $500 million over 10 years.

According to a January survey by the Nuclear Energy Institute, 51 percent of Americans support building more nuclear power plants, compared with 42 percent in October 1999.

Many environmentalists dispute the survey. Support for nuclear power would be far lower if people were asked if they favor placing a nuclear plant near their homes, said Erich Pica, an economic policy analyst at Friends of the Earth, an environmental group.

"The general sentiment of the public hasn't changed at all," he said. "The nuclear energy companies have been working to change their image."

Protests over nuclear power have died down, especially in the face of higher energy prices.

In January, environmentalists and public officials protested restarting a nuclear power plant about 35 miles outside New York after radioactive water leaks were detected. But the plant is running at full speed today after federal officials deemed the facility safe.

Nuclear power's heyday was in the 1960s and '70s, when U.S. utilities ordered about 100 nuclear plants. But the bottom dropped out of the market because of high construction costs. Also, the near-disaster at Three Mile Island in 1979 ended utilities' plans to build more nuclear projects.

A lingering problem is what to do with nuclear waste, which continues to pile up around existing nuclear plants. The United States has yet to choose a nuclear waste repository, despite the Energy Department's assessment of Yucca Mountain in Nevada for depositing most hazardous waste.

But the nuclear industry, which generates about 20 percent of the nation's electricity, sees opening up a nuclear waste dump as more of a political than technical issue.

"I do not think the high-level waste issue will hold up this industry," said Oliver Kingsley, chief nuclear officer at Exelon Corp., which operates 17 nuclear power plants. "I definitely think nuclear will come back, but there are still things that have to fall in line."

The price of natural gas, which fuels most new electric plants, must remain high to make it economically viable to construct nuclear plants, he said. The permitting process also must become easier so that utilities do not have to apply with numerous state and federal agencies, he said.

The nuclear industry sees so much potential that Westinghouse developed a next-generation nuclear power plant, whose design was certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 1999, Gilbert said. The new plant would have half as many valves and 80 percent fewer pipes than existing models; two 600-megawatt modules could be constructed within three years on a site already housing a power plant.

Westinghouse, now owned by British Nuclear Fuels, is shopping its new nuclear plants around the world and hopes for sales in China and the United Kingdom, he said.

"We would clearly like to build the plant in the U.S.," Gilbert said.

-------- idaho

DOE Cut Under Bush Budget Plan

2001
States News Service
By Megan Scully
state.nv.us
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2001/nn11063.htm

WASHINGTON -- Assigned to solve the largest energy crisis that Idaho and other western states have faced in recent memory, and handle a continuing task of nuclear waste cleanup, the U.S. Department of Energy received more bad news last week.

The president wants to cut its budget.

A summary of President Bush's 2002 budget proposal indicates that the administration is seeking to slash the department's budget by 3 percent, or $700 million, leaving the department with $19 billion.

The cuts come as Bush tries to weigh budget concerns against goals to dramatically decrease taxes, expand education programs and pay down the debt over the next decade.

The vague outline of the full budget proposal, which will be released in April, does not reveal which energy programs would be targeted for a cut. It does, however, say the administration will evaluate the performance of major projects across the department, including environmental and science programs.

At least one Idaho Republican, Rep. Mike Simpson, is concerned the budget cuts could prevent the federal government from making good on its promise to clean up nuclear waste at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

"I'm very concerned about possible funding shortfalls at the INEEL, both in the current fiscal year and in the future," Simpson said.

Simpson said he has written Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, urging him to beef up the environmental management program budget, which funds INEEL cleanup.

But Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said he believes the full budget will contain adequate funding for waste management.

"My one priority is to get the appropriate and necessary funding for the Department of Energy and its commitment to Idaho and INEEL for cleanup projects," Craig said. "We're going to make those commitments. That's our responsibility and I am confident that we can get that done."

The future for INEEL cleanup looks a bit shaky, with reports from the Associated Press revealing that the laboratory exceeded its budget this year by $37 million when it tried to meet a deadline to ship nuclear waste out of the state. As many as 370 jobs could hang in the balance.

Despite the cutbacks, Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., who sits on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee with Craig, said the budget cut does not portray a weakened resolve by the administration to address the West's growing energy problem.

Rather, Thomas said, Bush's attempts to "move around" and "rearrange" funding priorities demonstrate an effort to turn the department around and find a solution to energy shortages.

"The fact is, we had an Energy Department that hasn't done much in regards to solving the energy problem over the last eight years," Thomas said.

Chris Changery, a spokesman for Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., another member of the energy committee, likewise expressed confidence in the administration's ability to deal with energy issues.

"Given that we have a former Texas governor and a former Wyoming congressman (in the White House), Sen. Campbell has always been very confident that this administration is in touch with the West and energy concerns," Changery said.

But on the other side of the aisle, Democrats such as Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., a ranking member of the energy committee, fear budget cuts will hinder research and development.

"This proposal appears to cut programs -- such as basic science, renewable energy, and oil and gas research and development -- by about $1 billion," Bingaman said in a statement. "Clearly, we don't know all the details of the plan, nor do we know where a majority of the cuts will fall, but it's hard to see how we can have a comprehensive energy strategy while making cuts to R&;D. "

Budgets for several Energy Department programs, however, would be beefed up.

That includes a 100 percent increase over the next 10 years for the Weatherization Assistance Program, a plan to help low-income families properly insulate their homes in an effort to decrease their energy costs.

The Bush plan focuses on research and development of solar energy and other alternative resources, promising to "winnow out those projects that are less than promising" and direct greater attention to more successful projects.

To further encourage the use of renewable resources, the plan also provides a tax credit for homes and businesses that use rooftop solar equipment or fuel produced from renewable sources.

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Errors at INEEL bring citations DOE charges
Argonne failed to follow rules

01/03/04
Idaho Statesman
Associated Press
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/daily/20010304/LocalNews/86392.shtml

IDAHO FALLS -- The University of Chicago, operator of the Argonne National Laboratory-West, was cited Friday for several nuclear safety violations at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environment, Safety and Health announced the enforcement action involving violations last year at the eastern Idaho laboratory would have been accompanied by a $110,000 civil penalty.

But the University of Chicago is a not-for-profit institution exempt from civil penalties under federal law.

"We support this action not because there were serious injuries or environmental releases, but because we understand the value of identifying and correcting problems before they result in serious worker injuries, or accidents that could hurt the public," Marvin Gunn, manager of the Energy Department's Chicago Operations Office, said in a statement issued by the agency.

"Argonne has already made significant management changes, and we expect this action will reinforce the commitment to make those changes permanent and effective," Gunn said.

One issue addressed in the preliminary notice of violation involved the April 2000 contamination of a worker who had been patching holes at the Fuel Conditioning Facility, which is used to prepare spent fuel for disposal.

The Energy Department found that the laboratory failed to effectively analyze the planned work and its hazards, and did not use design and administrative controls that would minimize worker exposures to hazardous materials.

While the level of contamination received by the worker was small, the agency said, there was potential for a much more significant problem.

Argonne also was cited for:

• Failing to follow procedures for moving containers into a radiologically controlled area at the Fuel Conditioning Facility; the Energy Department found that similar violations had been occurring for several years.

• Failing to effectively implement a formal quality improvement effort that involves processes for detecting problems, routine performance of root-cause analyses and adequate performance of corrective actions.

The Energy Department said management changes since the violations took place have placed greater emphasis and visibility on nuclear safety requirements, including training and strengthening of procedural requirements for nuclear work.

Argonne National Laboratory-West is part of the Argonne National Laboratory, which is operated for the Energy Department by the University of Chicago. The laboratory performs large-scale nuclear facility testing and development supporting research in the areas of energy, nuclear safety, spent nuclear fuel disposal, non-proliferation, and decontamination and decommissioning technologies.

-------- south carolina

COMMENTS NEEDED ON PROPOSED MOX FACILITY

March 7, 2001
Lycos News
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2001/2001L-03-07-09.html

AIKEN, South Carolina, March 7, 2001 (ENS) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is preparing an environmental impact statement to support its license review of a proposed mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility on the Department of Energy's Savannah River site.

The agency has scheduled public meetings in South Carolina and Georgia to collect public comments on the proposal. The meetings will help determine the scope of the environmental impact statement for the proposed MOX facility.

The MOX fuel facility would convert surplus weapons grade plutonium from the Department of Energy (DOE) into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. Commercial nuclear power plants in the U.S. now use uranium as fuel.

The mixed oxide fuel is a combination of uranium and plutonium. Some environmentalists and nuclear activists believe it is too dangerous to burn MOX in commercial reactors that were not designed to use such fuel.

The MOX fuel fabrication facility would have to be built in accordance with strict safety requirements set forth in the agency's regulations. If the NRC review proceeds on schedule, and if the agency approves construction, the DOE's contractors could begin construction in mid-2002.

The public meetings in April will assist the NRC staff in determining the range of environmental impacts and alternative actions to be considered in the environmental impact statement. Some areas to be covered in the environmental impact statement include: health and safety, waste management, transportation, handling of hazardous materials, background radiation, water and earth resources, air quality, land use, noise, ecological resources, socioeconomic issues and natural disasters.

Those interested in attending the meetings are asked to register in advance by calling Betty Garrett, 301-415-5808 (email: bsg@nrc.gov).

More information on the MOX project is available at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/NMSS/MOX/index.html

-------- MILITARY

Capitol Hawks Seek Tougher Line on Iraq

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By JANE PERLEZ

WASHINGTON, March 5 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is taking the lead in shaping a new policy toward President Saddam Hussein of Iraq that is being criticized by conservative Republicans in Congress as too lenient.

In what is becoming the first major fight on foreign policy in the Bush administration, some Republicans are contending that senior Bush officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, are failing to live up to their pre-election advocacy of stepping up efforts to overthrow President Hussein.

So far, they said, the results of General Powell's trip to the Middle East last week, when he talked to Arab leaders about sharpening sanctions, sent confusing signals about what the administration planned to do about the increasingly assertive Iraqi leader.

Reflecting a sense of frustration among Republican foreign policy hawks, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, said, "It seems that with Saddam Hussein, we're saying we don't like this man in power, but we're then not willing to go ahead and take steps to remove him."

In an effort to answer the criticism, two senior administration officials said today that the Powell strategy on sanctions was only the first part of an emerging policy. But they said thinking was still crystallizing on how vigorously to empower Iraqi opposition groups that want assistance in toppling Mr. Hussein.

One of these officials said, "I don't know anybody who has said we should just do the sanctions."

On Capitol Hill, though, there were suspicions about whether the Bush administration would go beyond sanctions and whether it would actually assist the opposition groups with weapons and back them up, if necessary, with American firepower.

Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Wolfowitz and Richard Armitage, the nominee for deputy secretary of state, signed a public letter two years ago urging a more muscular Iraq policy. The senior official acknowledged that since it would now be more difficult to overthrow a more confident Iraqi leader, the enthusiasm Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Wolfowitz had when they were private citizens might now be tempered.

General Powell, who has positioned himself as the administration's chief policy maker on Iraq and who is trying to rebuild the international coalition that supported sanctions, is expected to face stiff questioning when he appears before the House International Affairs Committee on Wednesday and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday.

The National Security Council has held several meetings to work out a new Iraq policy, but administration officials acknowledge that they are hobbled because senior positions at the Pentagon and the State Department remain vacant.

Mr. Wolfowitz, a supporter of Iraqi opposition groups, was sworn into office only last Friday. Mr. Armitage has yet to be confirmed for his post, although he is working informally at the State Department.

In his confirmation hearings, Mr. Wolfowitz gave a thinly veiled criticism of the Iraq policy so far, saying that sanctions could be only one part of it. He said that if there was a "real option" to overthrow Mr. Hussein, "I would certainly think it was worthwhile."

A former colleague of Mr. Wolfowitz's, Richard Perle, who was a foreign policy adviser to the Bush campaign, was more direct. "The changes that are being talked about will be no more effective than what we've had in the past," Mr. Perle told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee panel last week. "Improved sanctions or smarter sanctions, none of them are going to end the threat from Saddam Hussein"

Instead, Mr. Perle said, the Iraqi National Congress, one of the opposition groups, should be supported so that it could re-establish its presence in parts of Iraq not under Mr. Hussein's control. Then, if Mr. Hussein made a "military response," the United States should have "assets in the air to protect that opposition."

The State Department official responsible for dealing with the Iraqi opposition, Allen Keiswetter, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, met with the Iraqi National Congress on Monday, as part of a series of meetings since the Bush administration took office.

---

China Rejects Allegations on Improving Iraqi Weapons

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/world/07BEIJ.html

BEIJING, March 6 - After conducting "serious investigations," China has rejected American allegations that Chinese companies helped improve Iraqi air defenses in violation of United Nations sanctions, the foreign minister said today.

At a news conference on the second day of China's annual Parliament meeting, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan also warned the United States of grave consequences if it sold Taiwan advanced weapons systems, an issue that may come to the forefront next month, when the United States is to decide on Taiwan's arms requests.

Underscoring China's determination to press Taiwan to rejoin the "motherland" with force if necessary, even if it means some day confronting American might, China also announced that military spending this year would increase 17.7 percent, accelerating its drive for a more powerful and modern military.

Last month, after American and British warplanes bombed what they said were enhanced Iraqi air defenses, the United States said it had evidence that Chinese companies were selling and installing fiber optic cables and other equipment being used to improve antiaircraft equipment in Iraq.

Chinese officials initially denied the contentions, but their position then seemed to soften. Now the government has declared its sometimes freewheeling international technology companies to be innocent of any improper aid or sales to Iraq.

"Relevant agencies in China have carried out some serious investigations," Mr. Tang said. "Chinese enterprises and corporations have not assisted Iraq in building the project of fiber optic cable for air defense."

In Washington, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Mary Ellen Countryman, said: "The Chinese government has reiterated its understanding of China's responsibilities to uphold U.N. Security Council resolutions and to insure that Chinese companies abide by these resolutions. We will continue to work with the Chinese government to address this issue."

Ms. Countryman did not say whether the United States considered the incident closed.

Mr. Tang's wording appeared to leave open a possibility that a Chinese company had worked on nonmilitary telecommunications in Iraq, but he insisted that China had carefully obeyed the sanctions.

China's top foreign policy official, Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen, will visit Washington on March 18 for the first high-level contacts with the United States since President Bush took office, meetings that both sides see as potentially pivotal. Mr. Tang said today that Chinese-American relations could "continue to move forward," but only if "the American side handles the question of Taiwan well."

China is waging a diplomatic offensive to head off Taiwan's requests to buy warships equipped with the advanced Aegis radar system, which could be used against Chinese planes and missiles, and upgraded versions of Patriot missiles.

"The American side should come to a recognition of the serious dangers involved" in providing such weapons, Mr. Tang said.

"It should rein in its wild horse right on the edge of the precipice," he added, using a Chinese adage.

Releasing the national budget this morning, Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng said official military spending for the year would increase 17.7 percent over last year, putting the total at just over $17 billion. But Western experts said true military spending might be two to three times that amount and it is unclear whether part of the announced increase includes a shift of expenditures into the announced budget.

Seeking to modernize its huge but modestly trained and equipped forces, China has increased its announced military budget by more than 0 percent a year for more than 10 years, and has purchased advanced Russian arms from a separate budget. Still, this year's increase appears to represent an acceleration compared with last year's 12.7 percent.

Mr. Xiang said the increase was mainly to raise military salaries but also reflected "the need to adapt to drastic changes in the military situation of the world and prepare for defense and combat given the conditions of modern technology." The government also provided new funds to offset revenues lost when the military was forced to give up industries.

Even if unreported spending is included, China's military budget remains small compared with that of the United States.

Mr. Tang also confirmed reports that China and Russia would sign an unusual treaty on "good-neighborly friendship and cooperation" in July, when President Jiang Zemin visits Moscow.

At the news conference, Mr. Tang spoke in scathing terms about Washington's recent annual report on human rights in various countries including China, calling it hypocritical.

---

Gunmen wounded in exchange with U.S. soldiers

03/07/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-07-kosovo.htm

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - U.S. soldiers in Kosovo traded fire Wednesday with gunmen near the Macedonian border, where American troops have been working to contain an ethnic Albanian insurgency. The U.S. military said two gunmen were wounded. The incident occurred inside Kosovo just across the border from the Macedonian village of Tanusevci, where Macedonian troops and ethnic Albnanian guerrillas clashed for two days this week. No American soldiers were injured in the gunbattle, the U.S. military said in a statement.

The U.S. troops - part of a NATO-led peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo - were on patrol near the border village of Mijak when a group of five or six men pointed their weapons at them.

When the gunmen began moving toward the soldiers, the U.S. peacekeepers opened fire, the military said. The men shot back before three or four of them retreated back across the border into Macedonia.

American troops were trying to evacuate the wounded men from the rugged mountainous area, the military said in a statement.

U.S. peacekeepers, backed with armored vehicles and helicopters, have poured into the the Kosovo border village of Debelde, just east of Mijak, this week in an attempt to help Macedonia prevent the conflict with the guerrillas from spreading.

Ethnic Albanian guerrillas have stepped up activity in northern Macedonia - raising fears of more widespread Balkan conflict. Macedonia has a restive ethnic Albanian community which makes up about one-fourth of its 2 million people.

Battles on the Macedonia side of the border - within shouting distance of Debelde - killed three Macedonian soldiers this week.

Macedonian security officials reported an exodus of local population fleeing the possible widening of clashes.

Macedonian police spokesman, Stevo Pendarovski, said Wednesday that about 300 ethnic Albanians, mostly women and children, fled their homes since Monday in villages along the border.

"We have noticed the movement of armed groups in the border area, not only near Tanusevci," said Gjorgji Trendafilov, Macedonian defense ministry spokesman. He warned of "possible new provocations in other places on the border."

---

China says no military aid given to Iraq

March 7, 2001
Washington Times
COX NEWS SERVICE
By Julie Chao
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-20013722941.htm

BEIJING - China said yesterday it had conducted a "serious investigation" and found no basis for U.S. charges that Chinese companies helped Iraq build a fiber-optic network for its military.

Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan accused the United States of making the charges - that it had assisted the Iraqi military in violation of U.N. sanctions - to divert attention from the U.S. and British bombing of Iraqi military installations last month.

"The result of the investigation is that Chinese enterprises and corporations have not assisted Iraq in building the fiber-optic cable project used for air defense," Mr. Tang told reporters at a news conference touching on a wide range of diplomatic issues.

Mr. Tang also warned the Bush administration not to sell advanced weapons systems to Taiwan, and said China would sign a friendship treaty with Moscow.

Washington protested to Beijing last month after its intelligence reports found Chinese workers were helping to lay fiber-optic cables in Iraq for air-defense communications. The U.S. and British air strikes were aimed at weakening Iraq's air-defense system.

Although China initially criticized the U.S. complaints, it later said it would investigate them. Mr. Tang said all enterprises and individuals in China are made to abide by regulations prohibiting activity that violates the U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

"We in China have been very serious and responsible on this question, and we have a very good track record in the U.N.," Mr. Tang said.

On Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province to be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary, Mr. Tang said China views the United States as one of the main obstacles to peaceful reunification.

"If the United States had not wreaked havoc at certain times, the Taiwan issue would have been resolved long ago," he said.

Earlier yesterday, China announced an increase of more than 17 percent in its own defense spending, citing "drastic changes" in the international military situation.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Washington that it was not clear whether that money would be used to modernize existing forces or to increase China's ability to challenge U.S. interests and allies in Asia.

"I'm not prepared to say this creates a new state of conflict," Mr. Powell said. "I think we have to learn more about it, we have to monitor it and we have to ask the Chinese about it when we have that opportunity."

The secretary of state said U.S. officials would be "especially sensitive" to whether the buildup presents any new dangers for Taiwan, a U.S. ally that Beijing insists is a renegade province.

Mr. Tang said the main barrier to reunification apart from U.S. interference was the refusal of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian to recognize that there is only one China, a principle Beijing regards as the starting point for any negotiations.

The Taiwan Relations Act requires the United States to sell Taiwan arms sufficient for its defense. The Bush administration must decide by April what items it will sell.

China has mounted a diplomatic offensive to prevent sales of advanced weapons systems to its political rival. Zhou Mingwei, a senior Chinese official in charge of Taiwan affairs, visited the United States last week. Vice Prime Minister Qian Qichen will visit Washington on March 18.

Mr. Tang said arms sales would send the wrong signal to Taiwan authorities and "feed the arrogance" of independence activists on the island. Polls in Taiwan have consistently shown that a minority of residents support independence, while more prefer maintaining the status quo.

"If the U.S. side continues to fail to honor its commitment on the Taiwan question and insists on selling advanced weapons to Taiwan, including particularly the Aegis missile destroyers and the Patriot anti-missile defense system, that would send a very wrong signal to the Taiwan authorities," he said.

He stopped short of making any specific threat should the United States decide to go through with the sale.

While prospects for smooth relations with the United States remain uncertain, China's relations with Russia appear headed for a new zenith.

Mr. Tang said Chinese President Jiang Zemin would visit Moscow in July to sign a good-neighbor treaty. He said the two countries have been enjoying positive cooperation in economic, scientific and military areas, but their relationship is not targeted against any "third party."

"The relationship is a normal state-to-state relationship," he said.

Ties between China and Russia have been warming, and the two have found common ground in many areas, especially their opposition to U.S. plans to build a missile defense system.

-------- drug war

More Money Needed for Drug Coverage, Lawmakers Say

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/politics/07HEAL.html

WASHINGTON, March 6 - Members of Congress drafting a budget blueprint said today that they would provide substantially more money than President Bush requested to subsidize prescription drug benefits for elderly people in the coming decade.

In his request to Congress last week, Mr. Bush proposed spending a total of $153 billion for drug benefits as part of a comprehensive plan to overhaul Medicare from 2002 to 2011.

But lawmakers said more money would be needed to provide minimally adequate drug coverage.

New estimates from the Congressional Budget Office suggest that drug spending for the elderly and the disabled in the next decade will be much higher - perhaps 33 percent higher - than the agency predicted just 10 months ago.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman of the Finance Committee, said the Republicans' budget blueprint would include a "considerably larger" sum than Mr. Bush requested for prescription drugs.

The budget blueprint will be drafted mainly by the Budget Committees of the Senate and the House. Senate Republican aides said Republicans would probably earmark $190 billion to $200 billion for drug benefits and Medicare changes in the coming decade. That is 24 percent to 31 percent more than Mr. Bush proposed.

Mr. Bush developed his proposal before the budget office revised its estimates, Mr. Grassley noted. "That's not a condemnation of the administration," he said, vowing to use the president's request as "a starting point."

Lawmakers examined the president's request at a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee, where they questioned Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services.

Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the senior Democrat on the committee, said Mr. Bush's request for $153 billion was "inadequate, based on the new numbers we've gotten from the Congressional Budget Office."

Mr. Thompson's defense of the president's request appeared to be rather tepid. "I can't sit here and tell you that $153 billion is the right amount," he said.

Secretary Thompson said the government could get more money for drug benefits from two sources, by making Medicare more efficient and by dipping into a "contingency fund" proposed in the president's budget.

Mr. Thompson reaffirmed the president's desire to provide $12 billion a year in immediate assistance to the states, so they could help buy prescription drugs for the elderly, while Congress works on legislation to revamp Medicare.

But Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said he had seen no indication of how Mr. Bush would obtain discounts or help control drug costs.

Mr. Thompson listed several options. States, he said, could hire private companies to manage drug benefits; could create financial incentives for the use of low-cost generic drugs; and could establish lists of recommended drugs, known as formularies, with patients required to pay extra for drugs not on the list. Also, he said, states could seek "negotiated discounts" from drug makers.

On a related issue today, federal health officials reported a reduction in improper Medicare payments to health care providers. Improper payments cost Medicare $11.9 billion last year, down from $13.5 billion in 1999, they said.

The acting inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, Michael F. Mangano, said 6.8 percent of all payments in the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program were improper last year. By contrast, the error rate in 1999 was 8 percent.

Improper payments include inadvertent mistakes as well as outright fraud and abuse. The government did not estimate the amount attributable to fraud. By curtailing improper payments, federal officials said, they make money available for new benefits like prescription drugs.

The amount of improper payments and the error rate, as measured by the inspector general, have both declined by about half since 1996. The federal crackdown on fraud, waste and abuse has slowed the growth of Medicare, making doctors and hospitals much more cautious in submitting claims.

"The continued reduction in losses is good news for Medicare and taxpayers," said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa.

--------

Censorship Is Latest Drug War Tactic As Government Seeks To Put Rave Promoters In Prison

mi2n.com
Business News [03-07-2001] more news
http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=19540

NEW ORLEANS, LA--A local music promoter and a concert hall manager who face up to 20 years in prison and $500,000 in fines simply for staging the electronic dance music events known as "raves" said today that the charges against them amount to censorship and have asked a federal court here to dismiss the case.

"The prosecution by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is part of a novel -- and entirely unconstitutional -- strategy to curtail use of the drug Ecstasy, which has been associated with raves, by using federal 'crack house' laws," said Arthur Lemann, a local attorney who is representing one of the defendants.

Youth culture expert Douglas Rushkoff as well as music industry professionals are speaking out against the prosecution of rave organizers as an unfounded attack on a vibrant music culture. The American Civil Liberties Union has also said that it opposes such prosecutions on constitutional grounds.

"Holding club owners and promoters of raves criminally liable for what some people may do at these events is no different from arresting the stadium owners and promoters of a Rolling Stones concert or a rap show because some concertgoers may be smoking or selling marijuana," said Graham Boyd, Director of the ACLU's Drug Policy Litigation Project.

Today's case marks the first time that the government has used the "crack house" law to prosecute organizers of raves. Prosecutors around the country are watching the case and have already publicly announced an interest in applying the same strategy in their districts, Boyd said.

"If the government is successful in shutting down raves," he added, "what's to stop them from applying this tactic to other music genres, such as hip-hop, heavy metal and jazz, where drug use is known to exist?"

At a hearing today in federal district court, James D. Estopinal -- known to worldwide fans of electronic music as "Disco Donnie" for his legendary rave parties -- and Brian Brunet, a manager of the State Palace Theater here, will enter "not guilty" pleas and seek a dismissal of the case.

Lawyers for Brunet and Estopinal are charging a violation of their clients' basic constitutional rights to free speech and due process. Their clients, they said, "have been targeted because of the genre of music that they promote and the unsubstantiated association of that genre with rampant drug use."

New Orleans attorney Lemann, who will appear in court tomorrow with Brunet and Estopinal, noted that both men had fully cooperated with "Operation Rave Review," a joint investigation by the New Orleans police department and the DEA.

But under pressure from the media and the public, according to the brief, "the DEA has revised its strategy, ignoring drug dealers, and instead prosecuting electronic music concert promoters, whom the government does not accuse of providing drugs, assisting anyone in providing drugs, or of being directly involved with drugs in any way whatsoever."

Passed by Congress in 1986 to combat crack cocaine, the federal "crack house" law was designed to punish the owners or operators of houses used for the manufacture, storage, distribution or use of illegal drugs.

Yet Congress specifically rejected using the crack house tactic last year when it passed the Ecstasy Anti-Proliferation Act. Passed in October 2000, the Act strengthened penalties for those caught trafficking in the drug and provided money for educational programs. Significantly, however, lawmakers eliminated a controversial provision that would have limited speech about ecstasy and other drugs.

Raves are a legitimate cultural event just like rock concerts, art exhibitions and film screenings, and can be an important outlet for young people, according to journalist and youth culture expert Douglas Rushkoff, a Professor of Media Culture at New York University and author of "Coercion: Why We Listen to What 'They' Say."

"In a world where most every authentic expression of youth culture is commodified by a media conglomerate and sold back to teens at the mall, rave culture stands as one of the few, relatively uncorrupted outposts for America's kids," he said.

Grassroots organizing has already sprung up in response to this latest government censorship threat: the newly established Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund (EMDEF), is spreading the word to rave enthusiasts and music industry professionals.

William Patterson, an EMDEF activist, said that concert promoters are concerned about drug use in their community and have taken proactive steps to alleviate problems of drug use by some patrons. The Lindesmith Center, a drug policy organization working to broaden and better inform the public debate on drug policy and related issues, sponsors the group.

-------- space

INSURANCE POLICY ON MIR:

MARCH 7, 2001
THE MORROCK NEWS DIGEST
http://morrock.com

The Russians are taking out a $200 million insurance policy on the crash landing of the Mir space station, scheduled between March 18 and 20, to assuage fears of possible problems associated with the decommission. On Tuesday, a Russian space expert raised the possibility that when the Mir is dropped out of orbit to crash into the Pacific Ocean, it might bring down with it fungi that have mutated during 15 years in orbit. (Thanks, phre3e)

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

U.N. votes to impose sanctions on Liberia

03/07/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-07-liberia.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The Security Council voted Wednesday to impose sanctions on Liberia to pressure the government to stop supporting Sierra Leone's rebels with alleged weapons and diamond sales.

In a resolution unanimously adopted, the council re-imposed an arms embargo that had first been imposed during Liberia's 1989-96 civil war. The council also warned that a diamond embargo and a travel ban on top Liberian officials would automatically kick into force in two months unless the council finds Liberia has stopped backing the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front.

The measures would remain in force until May 2002, unless the council decides Liberia has abided by its demands to completely sever relations with the RUF. The council could extend the embargoes beyond May 2002 if Liberia hasn't complied. The United States and Britain sponsored the resolution in a bid to further curb the abilities of the rebel group to wage war against Sierra Leone's feeble government, which is now being supported by a U.N. peacekeeping force. 'The rebels violated a peace deal and restarted the country's 9-year conflict last May by taking 500 U.N. peacekeepers hostage.

A U.N.-appointed panel reported in December that Liberia was the rebels' key supporter, allegedly supplying them with weapons in exchange for diamonds.

Liberian President Charles Taylor, who was implicated in the report, has denied the charges but has promised to expel all members of the Sierra Leonean rebel group from Liberia and says he has grounded Liberian aircraft.

He also requested U.N. monitoring of Liberian airports and diamond exports.

The United States and Britain in January proposed an immediate arms, diamond, travel and timber embargo against Liberia. But The West African regional bloc known as ECOWAS asked the council for a delay to give Liberia time to show it was taking measures to comply with the council's demands.

The United States and Britain agreed to a delay to ensure ECOWAS' support for their initiative. The underlying rationale was that a diamond and arms embargo, already difficult to enforce, would be nearly impossible to implement without the support of countries in the region.

The resolution demands that Liberia immediately cease all support for the rebels, including financial and military support, and expel all rebel members from the country.

It also calls for Taylor to ensure that the rebels allow U.N. peacekeepers to move freely throughout Sierra Leone and return all weapons seized from them.

The resolution calls for the creation of a panel of experts to investigate violations of the embargoes and to collect information on Liberia's compliance with the council's demands.

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

Top Marine Calls for a Backup Plan to Replace Osprey

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/national/07OSPR.html

WASHINGTON, March 6 - The Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James Jones, has ordered the Marines to search for helicopter alternatives to the V-22 Osprey, the innovative but problem-plagued aircraft, as within the Pentagon concerns grow that the $40 billion Osprey program will be canceled, Marine officials said.

General Jones's order is the first clear acknowledgment by the Marines that the program is in peril. The Osprey faces a series of potentially debilitating inquiries into its safety, cost and reliability. Two Osprey crashes killed 23 marines last year, and the Pentagon is investigating accusations of falsified maintenance records at the Marines' lone Osprey squadron, in North Carolina.

Marine officials asserted today that General Jones's move did not mean he had lost faith in the safety or capability of the Osprey, which can land and take off like a helicopter and cruise like an airplane. If the Osprey survives the investigations, the Marines still hope to buy 358 of them to replace their Vietnam-era troop transport helicopters.

But there is also a growing sense within the Pentagon that support for the Osprey in the White House and Congress, as well as among many marines, has waned in recent weeks, as newly released reports by Congressional and Pentagon officials have raised questions about the Osprey's effectiveness, affordability and safety - as well as the Marines' management of the program.

"We've got to be pragmatic about this," one senior Marine Corps officer said, noting that General Jones wanted to have a backup plan for replacing aging CH-46 and CH-53 helicopters if the Osprey program was killed.

Senior Marine officials continue to be unenthusiastic about the available helicopter alternatives, none of which can fly as fast or as far as the Osprey.

The main alternative, Marine officials said, would probably be some version of the H-60 Black Hawk, which is made by Sikorsky and is one of the Army's main infantry transport helicopters.

Another option would be to build a new version of the CH-53E Super Stallion, also by Sikorsky, which can carry more troops than the Osprey but is slower and has less range.

In 1991, Dick Cheney, who was then defense secretary and is now vice president, canceled the Osprey program, calling it too expensive. But Mr. Cheney was overruled by Congress, led by delegations from Texas and Pennsylvania where the Osprey is being built by Boeing and Textron's Bell Helicopter unit.

Mr. Cheney has declined to comment on the Osprey since taking office. But Bush administration officials have said the aircraft is high on a list of expensive military programs being reviewed for potential cuts.

A four-member panel conducting a review of the Osprey program is preparing to hold its first public hearing this Friday. Witness are expected to include relatives of marines killed in an Osprey crash last year and their lawyers, who are contemplating suing the manufacturers.

The panel, which is expected to send its final report to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld next month, has already received private briefings from a number of experts who contend that the Osprey may be more aerodynamically unstable, harder to maintain and costlier to operate than the Marines have been willing to acknowledge.

In one briefing, a Navy investigator reported that between 1998 and 2000, two Osprey caught fire after hydraulic lines broke. A frayed hydraulic line, combined with a computer malfunction, is thought to have caused an Osprey crash last December that killed four marines.

In another briefing, the General Accounting Office reported that the Marines canceled important tests on the Osprey in 1997 and 1998 to save time and money. Those tests might have shed light on a potentially dangerous aerodynamic condition known as vortex ring state, which was later ruled the primary cause of an Osprey crash in April 2000 that killed 19 marines, the report said.

"Major concerns about the aircraft's performance and operations remain unresolved," the accounting office said. "These known and potential problems and their associated costs leave open the question of the V-22's real value, as demonstrated, for Marine Corps operations."

Yet another report to the panel, by the Pentagon's chief testing office, raised concerns about the apparent inability of the Osprey to "autorotate," a crash-landing maneuver used when a helicopter loses all power. The Marines contend that the Osprey can glide down to a crash landing like an airplane.

The Department of Defense's inspector general is conducting a separate investigation into accusations that maintenance records were falsified at the Osprey's home base, New River Air Station in North Carolina.

Although the former commander of that squadron, Lt. Col. Odin F. Leberman, is at the center of that inquiry, the investigators are also looking into the possibility that Marine generals who oversaw the Osprey program knew of and perhaps even encouraged improper behavior at New River, military officials say. Colonel Leberman has been reassigned pending the investigation.

The swirl of inquiries and public criticism of the V-22 program have contributed to rising concern within the Marine Corps itself about the safety of the Osprey and the integrity of the program, Marine Corps officials said. It is in part to assuage those fears that General Jones has ordered the search for potential alternatives, those officials said.

In addition, General Jones has made a point in recent weeks of declaring his willingness to cancel the program if the Osprey is proven unsafe, to assure marines and their families that he is not "a zealot" about the aircraft, a senior Marine Corps official said.

"I think what we have to do is essentially not be blinded and not have tunnel vision on this," General Jones said in a recent interview.

He added that he would try to make sure the Marines "never get so far down the road that we have no other options" other than the Osprey.

The option the corps seems to favor most would be to avoid killing the Osprey by putting it back into research and development for possibly a year or longer. The Marines could then spend the money saved on keeping their aging helicopters flying or buying a small number of Black Hawks as an interim measure while the Osprey undergoes new tests or even a redesign.

It is unclear whether efforts by the Bush administration or the Marines to delay or cancel the Osprey program will run into opposition on Capitol Hill. Many members of Congress still view the V-22 program as an important source of jobs for their constituents. And many aerospace industry officials contend that the Osprey's tilt-rotor technology could have commercial applications.

But several Pentagon officials say the driving force behind the Osprey has always been the Marines. If the Marines cool to the program, Congress is likely to follow, one Pentagon official said.

"If the Marines aren't willing to fight for it, people will back away from it," the official said.

---

Civilians on Board

March 7, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/opinion/L07MIL.html

To the Editor:

Re "Military Joy Rides: Image at a Price" (letter, March 6):

As a retired Navy public affairs officer who was responsible for planning public visits to Navy ships, I strongly disagree with the writer that civilians have no business on military ships and aircraft.

Many in the military are deeply concerned over the gap between the military and civilians. The military is concerned that a civilian lack of understanding of military life and power could result not only in a lack of financial support but also a lack of public discourse and commitment on the use and limits of military force.

Increasingly, civilians aren't sharing a common frame of reference with the military. Only the military has the motivation and organization to initiate the necessary outreach.

TIM O'LEARY Westfield, N.J., March 6, 2001

-------

PEER REVIEWED MEDICAL RESEARCH PROGRAM (PRMRP)

FISCAL YEAR 2001 (FY01)
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD)
PEER REVIEWED MEDICAL RESEARCH PROGRAM (PRMRP)
Potential Sources Sought

Wednesday, March 07, 2001 10:49 AM EST

NOTICE TYPE: Potential Sources Sought
NOTICE DATED: 030601
OFFICE ADDRESS: Director, USAMRAA, 820 Chandler St, Fort Detrick, MD 21702-5014 ZIP CODE: 21702-5014

SUBJECT: A - FISCAL YEAR 2001 (FY01) DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD)PEER REVIEWED MEDICAL RESEARCH PROGRAM (PRMRP) SOLICITATION NO.: SOL CBD-PRM-0305

CONTACT: POC Kathryn M. Dunn, Contracting Officer, 301-619-7354,
email: kathy.dunn@amedd.army.mil

NOTICE TEXT: The Defense Appropriations Act of 2001 (Public Law 106-295) provides $50 million to fund peer-reviewed research pertinent to the health of our military forces in 31 topic areas. As the executive agent for this program, the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) requests intramural and extramural research proposals relevant to military health on the following topics: Acute Lung Injury Research; Arthropod-Transmitted Infectious Diseases; Biological Hazard Detection System/Bio-sensor Microchip; CAT Scan Technology for Lung Cancer; Childhood Asthma; Dengue Fever Vaccine; Digital Mammography Imaging; Freeze-Dried Platelets; Fungi Free; Gulf War Illnesses Research; Health System Information Technology; Health Care Informatics; Human Imaging Institute/Magnetoencephalography Laboratory; Medical Surgery Technology; Medical Records Management; Microsurgery and Robotic Surgery Research; Molecular Biology for Cancer Research; Neural Mechanisms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; Obesity-Related Disease Prevention Especially for Minorities; Paget's Disease; Quantum Optics; Remote Emergency Medicine Ultrasound; Smoking Cessation; Social Work Research; Tissue Regeneration for Combat Casualty Care; Venus 3-D Technology Program; Vitamin D Research; Military-Relevant Disease Management; Laser Eye Injury; Alcohol Abuse Prevention Research; and Sleep Management. Submission, evaluation, and selection criteria and guidelines are described in the USAMRMC BAA 99-1 and the FY01 PRMRP supplement to the USAMRMC BAA 99-1. Both documents are available at http://www-usamraa.army.mil. Proposals are being requested from agencies of local, state, and federal governments; educational institutions; nonprofit organizations; and private industry. Applicants are encouraged to collaborate with federal agencies (military treatment facilities and research laboratories, Department of Veterans Affairs, Centers for Disease Control, etc). Proposals will be assessed for complementing existing DOD research. Letters of Intent are due by April 25, 2001. Complete proposals are due no later than 4:00 p.m. on May 16, 2001. RECEIVED: (W-065 SN50F3L6) Issue No. PSA-2800

CONTACT: 301-619-7354

SUBJECT CODE: DFC RND A -- Research and Development

Commerce Business Daily - FIND, all rights reserved.


-------- OTHER

Rub-a-dub-dub Calgary firm making a sub
F & D Scene Changes is on a mission: build a 100-metre submarine from scratch, and make it quick!

Wednesday 7 March 2001
Calgary Herald
Bob Blakey
http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/stories/010307/5055394.html

Russian submarines surface in the oddest places, but almost never in southeast Calgary.

Now there's an exception -- a 1960s vintage Soviet K-19 nuclear sub in which Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson will fight for their lives against a disastrous radiation leak.

But nobody needs to worry about geiger-counter readings in the community of Ramsay, where the sub is in dry dock. It's a movie set being built by F & D Scene Changes, the company that has created film magic for such Hollywood hits as Unforgiven, Legends of the Fall, Snow Day and Cool Runnings.

While a genuine Soviet sub will be filmed near Halifax for exterior scenes, the Calgary-made interior set -- which will be almost 100 metres long when it's assembled -- will dominate the movie K-19: The Widowmaker, scheduled for release next year by 20th Century Fox.

The sub interior isn't the biggest movie project F & D has tackled, but it's the most challenging because of an extremely tight deadline.

"I can't remember the last time we spent $4 million in 11 weeks," says F & D vice-president Bruce Robinson. By comparison, set builders for last year's movie U-571 had two years to do their jobs.

The movie, in which Ford plays the vessel's captain and Neeson is the second in command, is based on a real incident. The K-19 was originally a conventional submarine but the Soviet government hastily converted it to nuclear power after the United States launched its similarly powered sub, Nautilus.

In 1961, the K-19's nuclear reactor shut down and it is believed nine crew members volunteered to enter the highly radioactive compartment to attempt a repair. Eight of them died soon after of radiation poisoning. The drama was one of three known disasters involving the ill-starred vessel in the 1960s and '70s.

Now the scene of numerous underwater deaths is being recreated by carpenters, painters, electricians and other craftspeople in F & D's 75,000-square foot building just east of Stampede Park. About 25 per cent of the company's business, which grosses about $20 million a year, is from movies, the rest coming from live theatre in New York and Los Angeles, shopping malls and theme parks.

A walk along the submarine compartments eerily evokes the atmosphere of the cramped vessel, with hundreds of electrical cables, hydraulic lines and gauges stencilled in the Cyrillic alphabet with Russian words.

Some 150 workers have been labouring round the clock to get the job done. They've manufactured thousands of components for the sub's curved walls and cramped passageways, including life-size imitation torpedoes and a nuclear missile silo.

Last December, all that was nothing more than sketches on paper. Just before Christmas, the movie's producers approached F & D with a proposal to build a replica of the K-19's interior, to be completed by March 17.

Feverish research led to the acquisition of Soviet-era sub blueprints, plus interior photos from the sub now moored at Halifax and owned by a company that plans to use it as a Florida tourist attraction. That boat is a Juliet-class sub, which is slightly smaller than the K-19 and powered by diesel and electricity, but similar enough to get F & D started.

Seven of the required 10 compartments of the K-19 have already been shipped to Toronto, where much of the filming will take place. The three remaining in Calgary are almost complete.

At times during the filming, all the compartments will be connected to form a complete sub interior; at others they will be separated to permit more extensive camera movements.

Although most movie fans wouldn't know the inside of a K-19 from a West Edmonton Mall submersible ride, K & D's designers have gone to great lengths to ensure the authenticity of their creation. A retired Soviet sub captain was flown in to inspect the project, suggest changes and translate the Russian labels in photos and on hardware removed from the Halifax Juliet sub for reproduction.

"They (the construction crew) understand a lot of aspects of submarines that we never thought they would," says Bryn Finer, the project's technical submarine decorator.

"The real problem was just the logic of it -- this connects to this, that is there because of this."

The trades people have used wood, steel, aluminum, rubber, paint and other materials to replicate electrical control boxes, plumbing and hydraulic valves.

Dana Schnirer, head scenic co- ordinator, says even though most details in the false sub won't easily be seen in the movie, the attention to detail is essential.

"You have to be accurate because, from our end, we don't always know where the camera is going to be placed," Schnirer says.

Like most movie sets, this one is probably destined for the scrap heap when K-19: The Widowmaker is completed.

The people who lovingly crafted the "boat" are philosophical about where their finest work inevitably winds up.

"You get used to it," Robinson says with a shrug and a laugh.

"The attraction of the business is that you've got something new to work on each time -- and it lives on in film or the stage. It's the memory of the show."

-------- alternative energy

NEW LAMP SHEDS LIGHT ON ENERGY EFFICIENCY

March 7, 2001
Lycos News
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2001/2001L-03-07-09.html

BERKELEY, California, March 7, 2001 (ENS) - Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a new high performance, energy efficient table lamp that is designed to save energy in homes and offices while boosting lighting quality and visibility.

"Widespread use of this lighting system in offices and homes could greatly reduce the current power problems we have in California while increasing the quality of the lighting environment," said Michael Siminovitch, a scientist in Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division. "To our knowledge, nothing currently available in the office, hospitality or residential marketplace has both the high performance lighting quality characteristics and energy efficiency of this new lamp."

Shown here without its shade, the new lamp is able to direct light up, down or both (Photo courtesy Berkeley Lab)

At full power, this two lamp fluorescent system matches the combined luminous output of a 300 watt halogen lamp and a 150 watt, incandescent table lamp, while using just one quarter of the energy.

Berkeley Lab is working with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric to acquire and field test the first production lamps based on the new high performance design.

The new lamp uses two independent, dimmable compact fluorescent lamps. One lamp's light is directed downward, illuminating the table or desk. The other directs light up toward the ceiling, providing indirect lighting.

"This lamp is clearly an energy saver in homes, but it is also a great energy efficient alternative in office spaces," said Berkeley Lab staff research associate Erik Page. "Substantial savings can be had by turning off overhead room lighting altogether and using this lamp. The 'down' light gives the user more than enough flux (light output) for most tasks, while the 'up' light provides a low glare ambient light that is ideal for computer environments."

More information is available at: http://lighting.lbl.gov/projects/table/table.html

-------- environment

TIMBER SUBSIDIES REACH RECORD LEVELS

March 7, 2001
Lycos News
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2001/2001L-03-07-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, March 7, 2001, (ENS) - Taxpayer subsidies for logging on National Forests are at an all time high, shows a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS).

"Money doesn't grow on trees, but in this case it may," said Jonathan Oppenheimer, program director at Taxpayers for Common Sense. "This report makes clear that timber companies have squandered millions of taxpayer dollars with federally subsidized, inefficient logging practices."

In 1997, the USFS reported a loss of $88 million. This week's report, "Timber Sale Program Information and Reporting System," (TSPIRS) the agency lost $126 million as a result of money losing logging operations in the national forests.

The USFS's timber sale program generated $546 million in fiscal year 1998, but the program cost $672 million to operate. The loss equals a $2,200 subsidy per timber job.

"This free lunch for the timber industry must end. This is a clear cut case of corporate welfare," continued Oppenheimer.

By providing timber to private logging companies at a substantial loss, the USFS wastes millions of taxpayer dollars every year. General Accounting Office (GAO) reports have estimated the losses to be much higher than the USFS figure - about $2 billion between 1992-1997.

The annual TSPIRS report is supposed to be prepared by May of the following year, but the USFS has pushed the release date further back each year. This year, the agency delayed more than 29 months before releasing the findings of the 1998 TSPIRS report to the public.

"If the President is serious about reducing corporate welfare, he can start by taking an ax to timber subsidies," concluded Oppenheimer.

For a list of the states with the most timber subsidies, go to: http://www.taxpayer.net. A copy of the USFS report is available at: http://www.fs.fed.us/land/fm/tspirs/1998tspirs/

--

SUIT CHALLENGES AERIAL WILDLIFE SHOOTING

March 7, 2001

WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS) - A lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday seeks to stop the aerial gunning of wildlife until the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Wildlife Services program and the Colorado office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) comply with federal law.

"Wildlife Services and the BLM have violated federal law by failing to conduct adequate analyses that reflect the true environmental and economic costs of their aerial gunning program," said Robin Cooley, attorney for AGRO: A Coalition to End the Aerial Gunning of Wildlife, the organization behind the suit.

AGRO is comprised of environmental, animal protection, and citizen advocacy groups. The suit was with help from the Western Environmental Law Center in Taos, New Mexico.

Through its aerial gunning program, Wildlife Services uses low flying aircraft to kill predators on public and private lands throughout the western and midwestern United States. In 1999, Wildlife Services shot and killed 33,706 animals from the air to benefit private ranchers.

Accidents are frequent. "Since 1989," noted Wendy Keefover-Ring of Sinapu, "Wildlife Services has crashed 17 helicopters or airplanes while hunting predators, killing seven people and injuring 21 others. Taxpayers pay for all investigations and workers' compensation related to these crashes."

The BLM has failed to perform certain site specific and cumulative environmental assessments as required by law, the groups charge.

"Wildlife Services operates its aerial gunning program under a veil of secrecy and has effectively excluded the public from the planning process," said Andrea Lococo of The Fund for Animals.

"Wildlife are the property of the entire public, yet we foot the bill to kill thousands of wild predators under the guise of performing a 'public service'," said Camilla Fox of Animal Protection Institute. "It is our hope that this lawsuit will help to focus public scrutiny on this outmoded, wasteful and shameful activity."

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ACT NOW TO SAVE PACIFIC FISH, COALITION URGES

March 7, 2001

PORTLAND, Oregon, (ENS) - The Ocean Wildlife Campaign (OWC), a coalition of six national conservation organizations, has issued comprehensive recommendations to prevent overfishing and reduce incidental catch of large, oceanic fish in the U.S. Pacific.

The recommendations, which affect highly migratory species (HMS) including tunas, swordfish, marlins and oceanic sharks in the waters off California, Washington and Oregon, will be presented at the Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting this week in Portland.

"Unless we act now, highly migratory Pacific fish may be in danger of decline because of overfishing and indiscriminate, non-selective fishing practices that are common in West Coast waters," said David Wilmot, Ph.D., director of the Ocean Wildlife Campaign. "We want to avoid the devastation done to Atlantic HMS populations, so we are urging Pacific fishery managers to act now to protect ocean health as well as the economic health of the fishing industries."

Fishery management plans are developed by regional councils and administered by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). There is no comprehensive federal plan for Pacific HMS caught off the U.S. West Coast.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council meets this week, with participation from representatives from industry and conservation groups, to finalize its draft fishery management plan for HMS off California, Washington and Oregon.

The Ocean Wildlife Campaign is urging the Council to adopt three principles:

1.Minimization of bycatch. The fishery management plan should establish a bycatch reduction plan with specific targets and milestones as well as performance standards for all gear 2.A moratorium on all new fishing gear. New gears may be allowed in the future, but only if the fishing industry demonstrates that the gear meets conservation standards 3.Precautionary catch limits to prevent overfishing. Catch quotas with a margin of safety are needed to guard against depletion while scientists develop population assessments and address data gaps and uncertainties

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VULNERABLE TODAY, ENDANGERED TOMORROW

March 7, 2001

WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS) - A new nationwide study has found that areas considered danger zones for endangered species, such as the ocelot, often host other species that are at risk.

The report was coauthored by Environmental Defense ecologist Dr. David Wilcove and University of Idaho scientists Drs. Robbyn Abbitt and J. Michael Scott.

"By protecting habitat for endangered species, we can also keep today's vulnerable species from becoming tomorrow's endangered species," said Wilcove.

By protecting the habitat of endangered species like the ocelot, other at risk species can also be protected (Photo by Tom Smylie, courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

In South Texas, for example, restoring thorn forests to protect the ocelot could also help the ferruginous pygmy owl, the Audubon's oriole and other scarce but not yet endangered plants and animals.

The lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas, the ocelot's last U.S. stronghold, is a haven for wildlife. This sliver of arid land, which once included riparian woodlands, sabal palm forests and oxbow lakes, harbors a multitude of plants and animals found nowhere else in the U.S.

But under intense development and agricultural pressure, wildlife habitat along the lower Rio Grande is shrinking. The new study offers additional reasons for protecting this vanishing ecosystem.

The peer reviewed study, published in the journal "Biological Conservation," focuses on 23 rare birds and 106 rare butterfly species located in areas under high development pressure, such as Arizona, California, Florida and Texas. The study predicted future "hot spots" by concentrating on species with limited geographical ranges where habitat loss is imminent.

The methodology in the study can also help other countries with highly localized species, including Mexico and Ecuador.

"We live in a world where species are disappearing at 100 to 1,000 times the historical rate," said Wilcove. "With limited time and resources, we need to set priorities."

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MARCH PROCLAIMED SEAGRASS AWARENESS MONTH

March 7, 2001

TALLAHASSEE, Florida, (ENS) - The Seagrass Outreach Partnership, a Florida Keys based coalition that includes local, state and federal agencies, conservation groups, and commercial and recreational fishing groups, got a helping hand taking their message statewide when Governor Jeb Bush acknowledged March as "Seagrass Awareness Month."

The Partnership was formed in 1998 to bring awareness about the economic and ecological impacts that damaged seagrasses has on Florida. Seagrass is a flowering grass that lives underwater and can be found in estuaries, lagoons and shallow, open shelves off of Florida's coast.

Seagrass provides habitat for Florida's large population of invertebrates and fishes, acts as a filtering system for nutrient runoff; and helps to stabilize bottom sediments.

"Protecting seagrass habitat makes good sense for Florida," said Governor Bush. "The seagrasses help support a healthy manatee population and contribute to Florida's clean, clear waters bringing divers, snorkelers and swimmers here from around the world. In addition, they serve as nursery grounds for commercial fish and shellfish, which is a multi-million dollar industry."

Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary David Struhs said the world class fishers that come to the Florida Keys each year are there because of seagrass.

"It is the largest seagrass meadow in the world and without it hundreds of species of fish would not be living there," said Struhs. "On the east coast, more than 70 percent of Florida's commercial and recreational fish species spend part of their life in the seagrasses of the Indian River Lagoon."

"However, there is a downside," Struhs continued. "Every seagrass bed throughout Florida now shows some sign of damage and propeller scarring. Without our seagrasses we all lose. There'd be diminishing sea life, our water would not be as clean without the seagrass to filter it and Florida would be out billions of dollars without the commercial fishing industry."

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NATURE MOPS UP

March 7, 2001

WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS) - Dredging up contaminated sediments could do more harm than good, suggest studies funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

Scientists funded by ONR have found evidence of a natural process called intrinsic bioremediation, in which native organisms in contaminated marine sediments can degrade or become a sink for hydrocarbons and other organic pollutants.

The natural bacteria in the sediment - adapted by years of exposure to the problem - may be are doing a clean up on their own, functioning as a filter within the ecosystem.

In harbors, waterfronts and shorelines around the world, sediments that have been contaminated by even small amounts of oil, chemicals or other pollutants may pose a risk to humans and to natural ecosystems.

The traditional solution is to remove the contaminated sediments and dispose of them on dry land, where they must be further managed to prevent exposure to other ecosystems. For many years, the U.S. Navy has looked for the best way to manage this contamination without disrupting ecosystems that are fragile, but still functional.

Bacteria discovered by Navy funded researchers metabolize hydrocarbon pollutants, such as gasoline and oil. Removal of the sediments that have adapted to do this clean up may increase the problem, particularly if the dredging is done in estuaries with ongoing discharges, that can again be contaminated, the scientists argue.

"What could happen," said Mike Montgomery of the Naval Research Laboratory, "is that we'd spend millions of taxpayer dollars to dredge the sediments, and end up doing more harm than good. We could create an even worse buildup of oil by removing the very elements that are solving the problem for us."

The strategy now is to learn how to identify sediments that may be undergoing intrinsic bioremediation, to aid site cleanup programs.

---

Organic food is growing
Companies move to fill market niche

Wednesday 7 March 2001
Montreal Gazette
MARY LAMEY
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/pages/010307/5054665.html

Food-processing has come a long way since David Masson's father started a wholesale import company nearly 40 years ago.

Back then, Masson recalled yesterday, fruits and vegetables from Europe were treated with sulphur dioxide, a chemical preservative that "made your eyes tear up when you took the lid off the container." It also bleached the fruit white and left it tasteless.

Today, Charles Masson Inc. deals mostly in fresh frozen fruits and vegetables, and consumers are more wary than ever of preservatives, pesticides and other chemicals that come in contact with the food they eat. Seeing an opportunity, the company now offers organically grown produce among its product line.

The company has annual sales of about $80 million. Last year, organic food accounted for about one per cent of those sales. This year, they will account for between 2 per cent and 3 per cent, predicted Masson, the company's vice-president.

Charles Masson was one of 700 companies taking part in SIAL, the three-day International Exhibition of Food, Beverages, Wines and Spirits that wound down yesterday at the Palais des Congres.

With images of dead and diseased farm animals in Europe dominating nightly newscasts and the safety of genetically modified foods a matter of public debate, some businesses see organically grown food as an interesting niche opportunity.

A survey by Statistics Canada indicates that a majority of consumers are willing to spend more for food that is pesticide-free. One-quarter of those surveyed said they would willingly spend as much as 50 per cent more.

Charles Masson and Au Printemps Gourmet, Canada are two companies that have seized the opportunity, by hooking up with organic farmers here and abroad.

Au Printemps, a specialty-food company in the Laurentian town of Prevost, has just launched an affiliate in Morocco, where it procures organically grown peppers, eggplant and other produce for its tapenades and sauces.

"It's still a niche market, but one that we think has great potential," said Marilyn O'Connell, Au Printemps' vice-president.

An affluent, educated segment of the population is clamouring for fresher, healthier food. "There are those who are willing to pay more. That's who we're after."

Charles Masson began supplying organically grown Quebec blueberries, and broccoli and cauliflower from Chile, to the Le Commensal health-food restaurant chain about a decade ago. Its frozen fruits and vegetables are now sold in health-food stores across Canada and in the U.S.

"This is my baby," Masson said of the company's Champlain Valley Farms organic brand. "I believe in the cause of preserving the planet."

Certified organic produce is grown without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. Crops are also rotated regularly to prevent soil erosion.

Masson buys the 15 or 16 types of fruits and vegetables from registered growers in Canada, the U.S. and South America. The fields and processing plants where the food is sorted, bagged and shipped undergo regular inspections and audits by organic regulators.

There's a price to pay for not spraying crops with bug-killers or shoveling chemical fertilizers into the soil. Organic farms generally yield smaller crops, and the produce may not be as large or perfectly shaped. Devotees say the difference is in the taste.

Consumers appear to be developing that taste, according to Statistics Canada, which reports that sales of organically grown produce has increased by 20 per cent a year over the last decade.

The biggest impediment to quicker growth may be the shorter shelf life and special handling that keep green-grown produce out of most large grocery stores. Consumers still buy most of their organic veggies directly from farmers who grow them.

"There's no doubt that it's a little more difficult than working with conventional produce," acknowledged Masson. "As time goes on and people develop more expertise, the gap is closing. It's getting less expensive and more widely accepted as the years go by."

---

Calming the Madness
America's panic over mad cow disease has been fueled by misinformation, inexact science and alarmist media reports.

Monday, March 5, 2001
Los Angeles Times
By EMILY GREEN
http://www.latimes.com/health/lat_madcow010305.htm

For the last several months, a bizarre, miniaturized replay of the British mad cow crisis has gripped the United States. Except this time, there's been no cattle epidemic and no human victims. Just speculation, publicity, more speculation, more publicity.

In part, the furor was triggered by our own regulators. In early January, the Food and Drug Administration began clamping down on feed mills to ensure that safety measures intended to prevent mad cow-type diseases from circulating in this country are strictly followed. This was business as usual. It is the agency's job to consider worst-case scenarios, then to work with industry to reduce risks.

Within days of the FDA's action, however, the media speculation began. There were reports that mad cow disease might occur spontaneously and that the U.S. might have mad cow disease in its livestock feed. There were not only reports of mad cows in the U.S., but mad elk, mad deer and mad hunters. There were even rumors of mad squirrels.

As television reporters joined the fray, and pollsters were dispatched to measure our anxiety, the notional danger swung from what we eat here to what U.S. travelers might have encountered while dining in Europe. An argument erupted over the safety of blood. By late last week, the American Red Cross was disclosing plans to unilaterally disqualify thousands of Americans who had lived more than a year in Western Europe from giving blood.

Blood bank switchboards lit up with calls from donors worried about a steak and kidney pie they had eaten in England or questioning whether the semester they had spent at the Sorbonne made them ineligible to give blood.

Federal officials struggled to allay fears. The FDA has taken "very aggressive steps" to protect blood and other products, stressed Dr. Jay Epstein, director of the FDA's office of blood research and review. "These steps are directed at a theoretical risk."

How theoretical? The problem isn't that the risk of contracting mad cow disease on holiday in Europe is remote; it's that it's almost too remote to calculate. Its deadly human form is a tragedy, but outrage at this too often obscures that it is also very rare. Last year in Britain it struck one out of every two million people. To understand how mad cow disease spreads, and how to prevent it, one has to look at its larger school of disorders. This is called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. Big name, simple meaning: transmissible, i.e., they're catching; spongiform: They leave sponge-like holes; encephalopathy: The holes appear in the brain.

Spongy-brain disease dates back to 1732, when a disease in sheep was named scrapie because the infected animals would scrape themselves. The disease, endemic in European sheep for centuries, was brought to the United States in 1947 from sheep imported from Britain. Since 1952, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has tried to contain the disease by routinely destroying affected animals. The latest destruction order, of three flocks of sheep in Vermont, generated international headlines. The sheep had been imported from Europe, and worries swirled that they had brought mad cow disease. It now appears that four sheep among many hundreds had scrapie

Sheep scrapie has never been shown to infect people, in spite of extensive epidemiological studies that looked for an association. The first hint that scrapie was part of a larger school of diseases, including some deadly to humans, came in the 1950s, when researcher Dr. Daniel Carleton Gajdusek discovered a disease endemic among the Fore-speaking tribe of Papua, New Guinea. The disease was called kuru. It means "tremble" and referred to the uncontrollable shaking of the victims.

Gajdusek, who knew of the Fore's habit of cannibalizing their dead, helped to discourage the practice, and kuru died out. Back in the United States, tipped by a veterinarian that kuru resembled a sheep disease, he performed research that found that not only was kuru a relative of scrapie, but so was a disease discovered in 1920s Germany, called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In 1976, Gajdusek received a Nobel Prize for discovering the new school of diseases.

Even so, spongy-brain diseases were still quite rare in people, and only a handful of scientists worldwide were familiar with them. By the late 1970s, it was becoming clear that Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease kills about one in a million every year, and that this rate held the world over.

In Scotland, British scientists perfected a technique to strain-type these new diseases. Their work has allowed scientists to tell one type of spongy-brain disease from another. They helped record new versions as these were spotted on mink farms in Wisconsin in 1947 and elk in the Western U.S. in the late 1970s. In 1985, a fearful new strain erupted in England: bovine spongiform encephalopathy, otherwise known as "mad cow disease."

Epidemiologists speculate that by the time the new cattle disease in Britain had been named and strain-typed, an epidemic had been festering in British dairy herds for more than a decade. This is often construed as testimony to the runaway virulence of mad cow disease. In fact, mad cow disease is not carried in the wind. It requires concerted assistance from agribusiness.

Since World War II, British livestock-feed suppliers recycled meat and bone meal made from dead cows and sheep as an unlabeled "protein" constituent of dairy feed. This was thought to boost yields and increase protein content in milk. But by turning cows, in effect, into unwitting cannibals, the industry created the bovine answer to kuru in British dairy herds.

First Cases Are Diagnosed

The infectious agent had been recycled through cows and feed for more than a decade before the first cases of mad cow were diagnosed in cows in the late 1980s. By the time the epidemic became apparent, however, it was on farms throughout Britain.

British scientists struggled to pinpoint the potential risk to humans. If mad cow disease infected humans, they reasoned, it would appear in a novel form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

What they did not anticipate was an eruption in 1990 of mad cow disease in cats. The first victim of feline spongiform encephalopathy was Max, a 5-year-old Siamese in Bristol, England. The British tabloids dubbed him "Mad Max."

Researchers in Britain and the United States have found that spongy-brain diseases concentrate in the immune and central nervous system. The organ meats, brains and scraps mechanically removed from spinal cords of old dairy cows routinely went into cheap meat fillings and pet foods.

Starting in 1989, British law required the destruction of these animal parts.

Even with the restrictions, another 86 cats have died since Max. But the safety controls can be seen clicking in with a sudden fall-off of cases. Eighty of the cat cases were between 1990 and 1996, with only seven cases since then.

In late 1995, a string of Creutzfeldt-Jakob cases appeared in British youths in their teens and 20s. On March 1996, British health secretary Stephen Dorrell announced the deaths of 10 young people from an illness that scientists believed to be caused by bovine spongiform encephalopathy. This "human BSE" was named "new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease." The same agent had killed the cows, cats and now people. Spongy-brain experts began referring to Britons as "the human experiment."

In the six years since its emergence, there have been 90 cases of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob in Britain, three in France and one in Ireland. At its peak last year, it struck one in 2 million people.

The United States banned British bovine products and feed in 1989. "The most important point to make is we do not have any cases of mad cow disease recognized in the U.S., nor have we had any new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease," says the FDA's Dr. Jay Epstein.

For lack of real mad cows, some news reports focused on hunters who died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and intimated there was a connection with chronic wasting disease in elk. But experts who examined the hunters' brains concluded that the human and animal diseases were different strains. The hunters died from known forms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the kind found the world over. "The tentative conclusion based on this evidence is that the disease was not acquired by consuming contaminated game," says Pierluigi Gambetti, professor of neuropathology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Beth Williams, a veterinary pathologist with the University of Wyoming who first diagnosed the elk disease in 1989, stresses that "this is not mad cow disease."

While there is no evidence that the elk disease or scrapie has affected humans, Williams also thinks we can learn from Europe's mad cow experience. "It would be foolish not to be prudent," she says. "It is prudent to get the information to hunters: Don't eat the brain, don't eat the spinal cord."

That the U.S. has so far escaped mad cow disease seems a mixture of luck and precaution. Britain was not the only country to include meat and bone meal in its dairy rations. That was a standard practice across Europe and North America. Eventually, episodes of spongy-brain disease on mink farms and the dire example of the British disaster with mad cow disease prompted the FDA to ban meat and bone meal from rations of grazing livestock in the U.S. in 1997.

Then, in January, the FDA published a report citing compliance failures by agribusiness, including some feed mills that lacked adequate safety measures for preventing meat and bone meal from getting into cattle rations. Within weeks, the agency quarantined more than 1,200 cattle in Texas--not because the animals had mad cow disease, but to send a message to the industry about the importance of complying with safety laws.

Start of Food Scare

It was a handsome show of power, but one that would soon escalate into a food scare. In mid-January, the New York Times published a front-page story that included speculation that mad cow disease arises spontaneously, probably at a rate of one in a million, and, therefore, 38 mad cows might be entering our food chain each year.

This surprised one of the country's longest-standing veterans of spongy-brain disease research. "There's no evidence for any spontaneous disease in any animal," declared Bruce Chesebro, chief of the Laboratory of Persistent Viral Diseases at the National Institutes of Health's Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont.

The problem, says Chesebro, is uncertainty. Scientists don't know what causes spongy-brain diseases in cows, cats and other animals, or in humans. Some say they are caused by viruses; others suggest the cause may be novel proteins called prions. To date, there is no test to screen blood.

This makes it tough for the FDA to design safety controls for blood testing. In 1999, the FDA's specialist committee on spongy-brain diseases recommended deferring donations from people who had lived in Britain for more than six months between 1980 and 1996.

As the same committee gathered again in January, the focus was on other European countries with appreciable levels of mad cow disease. The committee chairman, neurologist Paul Brown, underscored the unknowns to the group. "We don't know if someone is exposed if they are going to get infected. We don't know if they are infected, if they are going to have blood that is infectious. And we don't know if the blood that is infectious is going to transmit the disease."

But based on mini-outbreaks of mad cow disease in France and Portugal, the committee calculated the risk to be 20 times less than that in Britain, and voted to defer donations for Americans who have resided in Europe for more than 10 years at a time since 1980.

Last week the American Red Cross said it is considering exceeding FDA standards and banning donations from all Americans who have spent more than one continuous year in Western Europe since 1980. "Without a blood-screening test available, it's absolutely vital that we act prudently," says Chris Thomas, an American Red Cross spokesman in Washington, D.C.

The Red Cross supplies about half of this country's blood. The organization says it could make up the loss of blood by promotional efforts and blood drives.

But the other half of the blood transfused in American hospitals comes from America's Blood Centers. There, Executive Vice President Dr. Celso Bianco worries that the Red Cross is overreacting. In doing so, he adds, it risks replacing a theoretical threat with a very real one: blood shortages.

"It's such a change," he says. "We eliminate immediately about a million donations out of the 13 million we have every year. That, he says, "would have an immediate, very serious impact."

An emergency-room patient bleeding to death due to lack of blood supplies, he notes, is not a theoretical risk.

Our recent mad cow carries a salutary lesson. By viewing a remote theoretical risk through a hype-filled hall of mirrors, we became terrified. We have overreacted and prompted the danger of a real killer: blood shortages. Farm failures. Stress.

As Paul Brown, chairman of the FDA's specialist committee on spongy-brain diseases, recently put it: "There are more suicides among farmers whose herds have been slaughtered in France than there are cases of BSE [mad cow]."

To learn more about mad cow and related diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has some information on its Web site, www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no1/brown.htm.

---

CURBS ON LIVESTOCK

March 7, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/world/07BRIE.html

BELGIUM: The European Union restricted cross-border livestock movements and suspended livestock markets in a bid to contain Britain's foot-and-mouth outbreak. The Union extended the ban on British exports of livestock and meat to March 27. So far the virus has been confined to the United Kingdom. Tests on livestock in France, Denmark and Belgium have proved negative. (Reuters)

---

Horse race postponed as foot-and-mouth cases climb

03/07/2001
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001-03-07-foot.htm

LONDON (AP) - Horses raced in England on Wednesday for the first time since foot-and-mouth disease fears canceled many competitions, but Europe's most prestigious steeplechase event was postponed after an outbreak near stables used by some of the animals involved.

The British Horse racing Board announced that the Cheltenham Festival will not be held next week as scheduled and that attempts will be made to hold the meet in April.

The decision came a day after a suspected foot-and-mouth outbreak was reported at a farm that houses England's main steeplechase training center and stables used by many leading contenders.

At the same time, the horse racing board went ahead with races Lingfield Park, a major track south of London. The board said it was confident that it was taking enough precautions against foot-and mouth disease, including requiring racegoers to disinfect their footwear.

While agriculture officials have expressed confidence that quarantines and mass killings of livestock are bringing the ailment under control, the National Farmer's Union had urged the racing industry to wait another week.

Officials reported 14 new cases of the disease in England and one in Scotland, bringing the total to 96 since the beginning of the outbreak on Feb. 19.

Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer Richard Cawthorne said he hoped to see results soon from the Feb. 23 ban on livestock movements, which has now lasted nearly 14 days, the usual incubation period for the disease.

"If that has worked we would expect to see the peak some time this week," Cawthorne said.

Britain resumed some transportation and slaughter of livestock this week in areas certified to be free of the disease. All other livestock movements remain suspended.

Although no confirmed cases have been found outside Britain, the European Union on Tuesday ordered the closure of all livestock markets across the bloc for two weeks and extended until March 27 a ban on all exports of meat, livestock and milk products from Britain.

France has begun destroying 20,000 sheep imported from Britain after Feb. 1, as well as 30,000 French sheep that had contact with them.

Italy - which has so far escaped the contagion - banned all imports of livestock considered at risk for the disease. Officials in the north of the country announced that, starting Friday, visitors from Britain will be disinfected when they arrive at some local airports.

In the Vienne region of central France, police were questioning a sheep breeder suspected of illegally importing 70 sheep from Britain.

Ireland called off its Six Nations rugby union games against England and Scotland because of fears that the disease could be brought to Ireland if fans were able to travel to rugby games.

Foot-and-mouth disease - which strikes cloven-hoofed animals like sheep, pigs and cows - is easily spread by afflicted animals or carriers such as humans, horses and wild animals. It can also become airborne.

Meat from an infected animal is safe to eat, unlike in the case of mad cow disease, which has been linked to a brain-wasting disease in humans called variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease.

Instead, the concern is much more economic. Animals that recover from the disease produce less meat or milk. So a country that imports livestock touched by the disease risks infecting its own herds, thereby endangering its own export business.

About 80,000 livestock either infected or believed to have been exposed to the disease have been slaughtered and incinerated in Britain. Thousands more have been destroyed around Europe as a precaution.

---

Grab a mop

March 7, 2001
Washington Times
John McCaslin
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm

Congress today will be presented with evidence pointing toward "dramatic, human-induced changes occurring in the world's climate," including a prediction of a rapid rise in global temperatures and sea levels in the next 100 years.

The third chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, representing the efforts of more than 2,000 scientists around the world, is called the most comprehensive and authoritative study on climate change ever.

Congress will be presented with findings (disputed in some quarters) that include:

• The global average surface temperature increased 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit during the 20th century, and could rise by 10.4 degrees this century.

• Snow cover and ice have decreased, with glaciers in non-polar regions in retreat during the 20th century, and a 40 percent decline in Arctic sea-ice thickness during late summer and early autumn in recent decades.

• Global average sea level rose between 0.1 and 0.2 meters during the 20th century, as ocean temperatures increased.

-------- genetics

Serono, a Swiss Biotech Company, Posts a 64% Rise in Profit

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By ELIZABETH OLSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/business/07GENE.html

GENEVA, March 6 - Serono S.A., Europe's biggest biotechnology group, reported $301 million in profit for 2000 today, up a sharp 64 percent from the $183 million recorded in 1999. The company, which makes the multiple sclerosis drug Rebif and hormone treatments for infertility and AIDS wasting, reported in January that its sales had risen 15.2 percent in 2000 compared with 1999.

The company's chief financial officer, Jacques Theurillat, said in an interview that the group's sales would grow 15 percent to 20 percent in 2001, because of promising research and the introduction of seven new products.

"Serono is on track," he said. "We have a strong pipeline that will allow us to continue delivering strong profits." His forecast for 2001 profit growth is 20 percent, he said.

Analysts had been skeptical of the company's growth prospects after two consecutive quarters of disappointing sales last year.

The company has high hopes for a multidose version of Gonal-F, an infertility treatment that has just won regulatory approval in the United States. But Serono's outlook also depends on the performance of Rebif in the American market, where Serono is seeking to persuade the Food and Drug Administration that Rebif is more effective than the Avonex multiple sclerosis treatment from Biogen. If Serono fails to demonstrate Rebif's effectiveness in trials against Avonex, it will have to wait until 2003 to market Rebif in the United States.

Serono has $1.14 billion in cash and has been seeking to diversify through acquisitions, but has yet to conclude a deal. The company, which first produced its hormone drugs using a process based on extraction from urine but has switched to using recombinant DNA technology, wants to enter new product areas in part to reduce its reliance on Rebif, a leading seller in Europe.

Over all, Serono's revenue increased to $1.24 billion in 2000 from $1.13 billion in 1999.

-----

Gene Research Finds New Use in Agricultural Breeding

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By ANDREW POLLACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/business/07BREE.html

As the controversy surrounding genetically modified foods intensifies, scientists are trying to use the rapidly growing knowledge about genes to enhance conventional breeding of crops and livestock rather than implant genes from one species into another.

Many say such an approach is less likely to arouse the public objections that have been raised by the development of genetically altered plants and animals.

The enhanced breeding approach involves testing which genes are in a plant or animal, allowing researchers to select more easily which ones to cross. That can shave years off the breeding of a new variety.

"Before we knew where the genes were, we were still breeding in the dark," said Dr. Steven Briggs, head of genomics for Syngenta, a Swiss seed and agrichemical company.

Compared with genetic engineering, this enhanced breeding has technical advantages and disadvantages. But its biggest advantage is political. Many opponents of bioengineered foods do not object to the technique because it avoids artificially transferring genes between organisms. It is that transfer that opponents say is unnatural and poses risks to human health and the environment.

Indeed, some opponents of genetically altered plants and animals even champion the approach as a way for society and companies to reap some of the benefits of genetic science and avoid the risks.

"I think that's where the future is, to upgrade classical breeding," said Jeremy Rifkin, a prominent critic of the biotechnology industry. "Classical breeders and geneticists can use the genome but not do gene splicing." Mr. Rifkin calls this approach the soft path, and says better understanding of genes could even be used to improve organic farming.

But agricultural biotechnology companies like Monsanto and Pioneer Hi-Bred International, say that the two technologies are good for different tasks but cannot be substituted for each other. So, while they are using the new breeding techniques, they remain committed to genetic engineering as well.

"We don't see it as an alternative to genetic engineering," said Tony Cavalieri, vice president for trait and technology development at Pioneer, a unit of DuPont.

And some executives say that even with improvements, crossbreeding is inefficient compared with genetic engineering. With genetic engineering, scientists can transfer just the gene they want, whereas with crossbreeding, the genes of two parents are thoroughly mixed.

"It's sort of a blunt instrument," said David W. Summa, chief executive of Mendel Biotechnology, a plant genetics company in Hayward, Calif. "You're moving around lots and lots of genes when you breed."

Still, a number of companies are turning to the approach because it avoids the regulatory reviews required of genetically modified foods and is not expected to stir resistance from consumers. The approach is called marker-assisted breeding because it uses genetic markers to guide the process.

"Marker-assisted selection is the first choice if we can solve the problem," said Wally Beversdorf, head of plant science and agribusiness for Syngenta, which was formed by the merger of the agricultural businesses of Novartis and AstraZeneca. While Syngenta is still committed to genetic engineering, Dr. Beversdorf said, it is applying that technique "where we have to, where there is no opportunity for marker-assisted breeding."

Some newly formed companies are deliberately steering clear of genetic engineering. AniGenics, a start- up in Concord, Mass., aims to identify genes associated with higher milk production, more tender meat and other desirable traits of cattle and other livestock. But that knowledge would be used to guide conventional breeding, not to create genetically altered herds.

"It may or may not be faster biologically," said Steven M. Niemi, the president. "It's certainly faster politically."

The marker-based approach is being made easier by an explosion of knowledge about genes. In January, Syngenta announced it had determined the complete genetic code of rice, the first crop to have its genome sequenced. A month earlier, scientists had completed the DNA sequence of arabidopsis, a weed that is the plant world's equivalent of the laboratory rat. And there are less detailed genetic maps available or being developed for virtually every other important crop or farm animal.

The biggest drawback of the breeding approach is that it is limited to traits that are already contained in a species. Scientists would be able to use it, say, to breed a blue tomato if they could not find a tomatoe containing blue-pigment genes to start the process.

Syngenta, for instance, tried for 12 years to use conventional breeding to develop corn that was resistant to the European corn borer but ended up with a variety that reduced the pest damage only about 10 percent, Dr. Beversdorf said.

But some bacteria make a toxin that kills the borer. It took the company only five years to splice the bacterial gene into corn and develop a crop - known as BT corn - that can almost completely eliminate damage from the borer.

Dr. Cavalieri of Pioneer said it would probably be impossible to develop plants with healthier oils without genetic engineering. And scientists say it would also probably be impossible to use breeding alone to develop "golden rice," which could help combat vitamin A deficiency in developing countries. The genes to provide the vitamin A were transferred to the rice from daffodils and bacteria.

Still, scientists say that many important traits - bigger fruit, higher yield, disease and pest resistance - can often be found within the crop species itself.

At the Agriculture Department, Anna McClung recently used the technique to develop rice that would be soft on the outside and firm on the inside after processing. The work was done with a company hoping to sell the rice in Europe, where opposition to genetically modified crops is high. So genetic engineering was out of the question.

Both Pioneer and scientists at Purdue University used the technique to develop soybeans that are resistant to the cyst nematode.

Classical breeding can be a long and tedious affair. Breeders might take a plant with a desirable characteristic, like disease resistance, and cross it with another plant with other desirable traits, like high yield. They then examine the offspring, hoping to find plants that have both disease resistance and high yield. Those desirable plants might be then crossed to make a new generation. The whole process can require 10 or more generations, thousands of crosses and 5 to 15 years.

To see which offspring have the desired traits, the new generation usually must be allowed to grow up, and even then detection is often not easy. To test which of her rice plants had the right cooking characteristics, Dr. McClung would have had to analyze them chemically.

If scientists can test the genes, however, they can tell if the plant has the desired trait when it is still a seedling. "By having a genetic tag, you're able to see the presence or absence of the trait every time," Dr. McClung said. With the marker, she developed the rice in 5 years, instead of the 7 to 10 it would have otherwise taken.

Usually, scientists do not test for the genes themselves, since many of the genes are still not known. Instead, they look for markers along the chromosome that are near the gene and therefore tend to travel with the gene from one generation to the next. The advantage of this technique is that the markers can be used even if the breeders have not identified the gene. Genetic engineering can be done only if the gene is known and isolated.

It is also possible to use markers to follow numerous traits through the breeding process. Genetic engineering is at present limited to transferring only one or a few genes. Yet many traits, like the yield of a crop, are governed by multiple genes.

But marker-assisted selection can be extremely difficult and has not lived up to the expectations scientists had when the technique was first developed in the late 1980's, said Nevin D. Young, professor of plant pathology and biology at the University of Minnesota. "Traditional breeding is like a dice-rolling experiment," he said. "Markers are like loaded dice, but they're hardly precise surgical instruments."

It can take years to find the associations between markers and traits, and sometimes links cannot be found at all, he said. It also now costs about $1 to test one marker in one plant, which makes it very expensive to test numerous genes in thousands of plants. Still the costs of such genetic analysis are expected to drop rapidly with the advancement of new DNA testing methods that are also being developed for medical diagnosis.

One of the biggest opportunities presented by marker-assisted selection is to improve the harnessing of wild relatives of crops. Human beings domesticated plants by selecting for obvious traits, like bigger fruit. But over time, the genetic variation in commercial crops has become limited, so when breeders cross these crops, the possible outcomes are also limited.

"We've left behind in this process a huge reservoir of natural variation," said Steven D. Tanksley, professor of plant breeding and plant biology at Cornell. All the commercially grown tomatoes in the world, from the tiniest cherry tomato to the beefiest beefsteak, have less genetic variation than the wild tomatoes in a single valley in Peru, he said.

Breeders have tried to cross wild relatives with commercial crops but with limited success. One problem, Dr. Tanksley said, is knowing which wild plants to pick. Wild tomatoes often are small and green and taste bad. Someone just looking at them would not think of using them in breeding.

But even small, green tomatoes can contain some genes for redness and large fruit. The marker studies allow these genes to be found. "The markers allow you to scan through the whole genome," he said. "You can pick out the flavor genes away from the yucky gene."

Indeed, Dr. Tanksley has crossed wild green tomatoes with commercial red ones and produced even redder ones. And he crossed small wild tomatoes with big commercial ones and got even bigger ones.

Robert Goodman, a professor of plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin, said there was still a risk that marker-assisted breeding could run into the same opposition as transgenic crops because people might fail to make any distinction. But if that does not happen, he said, the breeding approach could provide a way out of the contentious debate.

"Maybe in five to eight years we'll look back on this argument over transgenics and say, `How arcane,' " said Dr. Goodman, who once headed research at Calgene, the company that marketed the first genetically modified crop, a tomato. "Not because it became unpopular but simply because it got bypassed by the advances made by breeding powered by genomics."

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

TURKEY SEEKING I.M.F.'S SUPPORT

March 7, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/business/07FOBR.html

Turkey's new economy minister, Kemal Dervis, said he would fly to Washington today to meet with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to try to win backing for a new package to strengthen the economy. Mr. Dervis would not give any hints about the new program, reached in recent days after Turkey was forced to stop defending its currency on Feb. 22, leading to an initial 30 percent devaluation. (Bloomberg News)

---

Free trade vs. Europe

March 7, 2001
Washington Times
Doug Bandow
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-200137182926.htm

The United States reigns supreme around the world. Yet potential adversaries lurk in the background, including an economically protectionist and politically unified Europe centered in Brussels.

The European Union's (EU) future direction is obviously uncertain. But the French, in particular, have long bridled at American dominance.

The late President Francois Mitterand reportedly said: "We are at war with America." It was, he admitted, "a war without death," but nevertheless was "a permanent war, a vital war." Washington should be prepared to fight such a war. One means to do so is to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to European states which prefer American freedom to European statism.

Although the EU has created a continental market, it has not created a free market. A meddlesome and inefficient international bureaucracy - independent auditors accuse it of wasting $6.4 billion 1999 - the EU increasingly inserts itself in national life. Tens of billions of dollars are tossed down the drain to maintain uncompetitive farmers and promote "economic development."

In February the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, reprimanded Ireland for planning to cut taxes. "Sometimes the teacher has to punish the best pupil," explained Commission President Romano Prodi. Irish Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy responded with some asperity that his nation had achieved economic success - in contrast to other EU members.

Tensions within the EU are likely to grow. Disagreements among the existing 15 members were strong at the recent EU summit in Nice, France. The political traditions, security concerns and economic positions of potential new members, ranging from the Czech Republic to Romania, vary even more dramatically from those of current members.

Yet most European governments seem more likely to circle the continental wagons than relax their controls, except Great Britain. Although London is an EU member, it has long resisted Brussels' dictates. Today it, and other Euro skeptics, such as Denmark, which recently voted to reject the Euro, can block major new policies, which require unanimity.

But Mr. Prodi is pushing to make the EU more democratic, and thus more dangerous. London can accept such a change only at great risk. Britain refused in Nice to yield its veto over tax and pension policies, but Mr. Prodi is sure to try again.

Moreover, Britain must soon decide whether to join the European Monetary Union, submerging the pound sterling, at its strongest level in more than a decade, in the anemic Euro.

Yet London's economic ties with America are in some ways stronger than with the EU. Britain is the largest single investor in the United States, while the United States invests twice as much in Britain as do EU countries. Thus, an obvious opportunity beckons: Washington should encourage Britain to shift its economic links from Europe to America. John Hulsman of the Heritage Foundation proposes encouraging Britain to join NAFTA as an associate member, creating a new Free Trade Association (FTA).

London could first try to renegotiate the Treaty of Rome, allowing it to opt out of EU restrictions over sovereignty and join NAFTA. Failing that, Britain could shift from the EU to the European Free Trade Area and European Economic Area (which include Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), and then sign up with NAFTA. This, Mr. Hulsman argues, provides "the last real chance for Britain to choose an alternative future path, one that recognizes that its natural economic and political partner remains the United States and not the European Union."

Britain is not the only potential FTA member. In 1992 President George Bush promised Chile membership in NAFTA. Washington should offer to liberalize commerce with Japan, America's most important trading partner after Canada. Danish voters recently rejected economic centralization. Ireland has become an economic tiger, out of place in an increasingly statist Europe. Switzerland has remained relatively aloof from Europe and shares America's commitment to economic liberty and political decentralism.

An FTA would also benefit nations currently lining up to join the EU. To sign up, observes Kevin Hassett, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, "requires new entrants to buy most of the Western European statist agenda." The FTA would provide a better opportunity for potential EU members such as the Czech Republic and Poland, which are more free economically than their neighbors.

An FTA could include other regional islands of economic freedom: Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand, for instance. The prospect of belonging to an FTA should be presented to any nation willing to reform; the only requirement should be a willingness to remove restrictions on investment and trade.

America's first goal should be to expand trade. After all, the American gross domestic product has grown by almost a quarter over the last decade, the period of most intense globalization. Since the approval of NAFTA the United States has generated 14 million jobs and dropped its unemployment rate below 4 percent.

Creating an FTA would promote greater economic liberty elsewhere, by offering an alternative to more statist regional blocs, such as the EU. Indeed, an FTA would force the EU to reconsider its policies, as well as encourage the World Trade Organization to pursue its mission of liberalizing international markets.

Finally, an FTA would discourage creation of a centralized, monolithic Europe arrayed against America. Although some political differences between the United States and Europeans are inevitable, strengthening transatlantic economic ties with individual states would discourage an "us-against-them" mentality.

Although Washington is the world's strongest power, it will not go without challenge for long. Creating a new global association of trading nations would be a solid first step in perpetuating American prosperity and influence.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

-------- police

Parks Denies Charges in Report
Police: Chief says accusations that he tried to withhold information from prosecutors are false.

Wednesday, March 7, 2001
Los Angeles Times
By MATT LAIT and SCOTT GLOVER,
http://www.latimes.com/news/state/reports/rampart/

Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks on Tuesday dismissed as blatantly false a report by the LAPD's civilian watchdog that concluded the chief sought to withhold information from county prosecutors investigating the Rampart corruption scandal.

Parks, swarmed by reporters after a meeting of the Los Angeles Police Commission, also denied findings by Inspector General Jeffrey C. Eglash that he made misleading statements about the controversy at a news conference last year and then later during the inspector general's investigation into the matter.

"At no time was the D.A.'s office ever not given information they wanted," said Parks, adding that he had not yet read the inspector general's report. "I will categorically state that I have not misled the public nor any member of the commission or this department."

Eglash concluded otherwise after a 10-month investigation that included a review of documents and interviews with 28 witnesses.

The commission discussed the inspector general's report during a closed meeting Tuesday, but put off any action on the matter until its next meeting, officials said. It will be up to the commission to determine what discipline, if any, to impose on the chief. By law, the commission would have to impose any discipline within a year of the date of the chief's alleged misconduct. The statutory deadlines on some of Parks' alleged offenses will expire within the next two weeks.

Eglash's 17-page confidential report, which was obtained by The Times, gave Parks' critics ammunition.

Ramona Ripston, the executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, said Eglash's report reinforces her long-standing assertion that the chief and the LAPD cannot be trusted.

"[The] revelations that Chief Parks refused to cooperate with the district attorney's office in its Rampart investigation, then publicly misrepresented the Department's actions, constitute yet another piece of compelling evidence that the chief is incapable of leading the Department through the reform process," the American Civil Liberties Union leader said in a prepared statement.

LAPD union officials, who have clashed with the chief over many issues, were more subdued in their public reaction. While some members privately advocated calling for the chief's ouster, the president of the Police Protective League tempered her remarks.

"We are deeply disturbed by the inspector general's allegations that Chief Parks may have made misleading statements at a press conference and to the inspector general's office," said Mitzi Grasso, the president of the police union. "Police credibility is vital. Without it, public trust evaporates."

Grasso added: "We urge the Police Commission to consider the inspector general's allegations in the context of Chief Parks' long career of exemplary public service. People are imperfect. . . . We expect the chief to be held to same disciplinary standards as those applied to all other Los Angeles police officers."

Some police officers and union officials noted that the chief has fired officers in the past for making false and misleading statements.

At the Newton Division, where police had gathered to hear Mayor Richard Riordan speak on an unrelated matter, several officers wondered aloud if Parks would be held to the same standard of conduct as they are.

"If it's being applied to us," said one plainclothes detective, "it should also apply to the chief."

Riordan deflected questions from reporters. "I am not going to be the judge, jury and executioner," the mayor said.

The commission last year directed Eglash to investigate the chief's actions after then-Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti accused the LAPD of refusing to cooperate with prosecutors.

According to some of the witnesses interviewed by the inspector general's office, Parks sought to deny county prosecutors access to information regarding the unfolding corruption investigation. Parks wanted to deal exclusively with the U.S. attorney's office in connection with the ongoing corruption probe, Eglash reported.

When the feuding between the district attorney and LAPD became public, Parks unjustly accused Garcetti of fabricating the controversy, Eglash concluded.

Eglash reported that the LAPD denied at least four requests from local prosecutors for information. He noted, however, that Parks maintains that much of that information had previously been in the district attorney's possession or was turned over shortly afterward.

Parks and Eglash have previously clashed over the level of access the inspector general should have when investigating alleged wrongdoing by police officers. The chief argued that the inspector general should be denied some material in ongoing criminal probes, while Eglash contended he needed free rein.

Times staff writer George Ramos contributed to this story.

---

F.B.I. Spy Case May Explain Arrest of a K.G.B. Agent

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/national/07SPY.html

WASHINGTON, March 6 - For years, the former C.I.A. officer Jack Platt has been burdened by doubt about the case of his onetime adversary turned friend and business partner, a former major in the K.G.B. named Gennady Vasilenko.

At the height of the cold war, Mr. Platt was part of a team of Central Intelligence Agency officers and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents trying to lure Mr. Vasilenko into spying for the United States.

While working for the K.G.B. in Washington and Latin America in the 1970's and 1980's, Mr. Vasilenko repeatedly rebuffed the American entreaties, offering little more than office gossip. In C.I.A. parlance, Mr. Vasilenko was a "developmental" agent, singled out for recruitment but still out of reach. Mr. Platt grew to like his quarry, and ultimately the two men became friends.

But the K.G.B. somehow found out about the relationship, and in January 1988, Mr. Vasilenko was arrested in Havana and sent back to the Soviet Union. He was questioned and imprisoned for about six months. After being cashiered from the K.G.B., he went about quietly trying to rebuild his life in Moscow.

Mr. Platt said in an interview today that he had long felt a sense of guilt that Mr. Vasilenko was arrested even though he had never become a spy. He suffered only because a mole in the United States intelligence community had told Moscow that Mr. Vasilenko was the target of recruitment efforts.

Mr. Vasilenko's betrayal was thought to have been the work of Aldrich H. Ames, a senior C.I.A. officer arrested for spying in 1994. But new evidence points to Robert Philip Hanssen, the F.B.I. counterintelligence agent arrested on espionage charges last month.

Mr. Platt, 65, who left the C.I.A. in 1988 soon after he learned of Mr. Vasilenko's arrest, has long wondered how Mr. Vasilenko was betrayed.

The arrest of Mr. Ames in 1994 seemed to provide an answer. Mr. Ames's betrayal of Russian agents working for the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. was sweeping, and many observers believed that Mr. Vasilenko, whom the C.I.A. had referred to by the code name Glazing, was one of the Russian agents fingered by Mr. Ames.

Mr. Platt was always skeptical about that explanation. After talking with Mr. Vasilenko following the end of the cold war, he became convinced that the K.G.B. had questioned Mr. Vasilenko about information from an October 1987 report that Mr. Platt wrote about a meeting the two men had in Guyana, where Mr. Vasilenko was then stationed. Mr. Ames was assigned to the C.I.A.'s Rome station at the time that Mr. Platt wrote the report, and Mr. Platt believes that he was unlikely to have gained access to it.

"I have had my own suspicions about whether Ames did it or not," Mr. Platt said, "because at the time that my contact with Vasilenko was betrayed to the Russians, Ames was in Rome, and possibly out of the loop."

Now, Mr. Platt says he thinks the arrest of Mr. Hanssen provides new clues about how the Soviets found out about his relationship with Mr. Vasilenko. An F.B.I. affidavit filed in federal court after Mr. Hanssen's arrest last month says that Mr. Hanssen, using the code name B, left a package for the Soviets at a drop site in suburban Virginia that included a "cable-type report about a meeting in October 1987 with a valuable source, whom the K.G.B. referred to as M." On Feb. 8, 1988, the K.G.B. left a package for Mr. Hanssen at a drop site containing $25,000 in cash and "a letter conveying thanks of the K.G.B. Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, for the information about the valuable source M," according to the affidavit.

Mr. Platt said he believed that the affidavit referred to Mr. Vasilenko and their October 1987 report. He also noted that while the C.I.A.'s internal code name for Mr. Vasilenko was Glazing, the code name that the F.B.I. and C.I.A. used jointly for the case started with the letter M. He declined to give the full code name.

A law enforcement official confirmed today that the reference in the affidavit was to the Vasilenko case.

Mr. Platt lost contact with Mr. Vasilenko after his arrest in 1988 and did not learn that Mr. Vasilenko had survived his imprisonment until after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. But the two men eventually re- established contact, as well as their friendship. Today, they are in business together, through a joint venture providing security services for foreign businesses operating in Moscow.

---

Ex-Official Had Early Knowledge of Profiling, Aides Testify

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/nyregion/07TROO.html

TRENTON, March 6 - New Jersey's former attorney general, Peter G. Verniero, knew as early as May 1997 that racial profiling by the state police was as extensive along some stretches of the New Jersey Turnpike as it was in Maryland, where a federal court had stepped in to curtail the practice, his aides have testified before a State Senate committee.

And though Mr. Verniero was informed in July 1997 that the state police were searching the vehicles of blacks and Hispanic drivers far more often than those of whites, that information was withheld from investigators for the United States Justice Department, one of his aides has said under oath.

The testimony before the State Senate Judiciary Committee appears to contradict Mr. Verniero's sworn statements, at his May 1999 confirmation hearing for a seat on the New Jersey Supreme Court, that he had no detailed knowledge of any statistical evidence of profiling until his office conducted its own review of the state police in 1999.

Those revelations, among others, emerge from 4,000 pages of transcripts released today by the Senate panel, which has deposed or interviewed 29 law enforcement officials and is to begin public hearings on March 19. Justice Verniero has agreed to testify. The transcripts provide context for many of the documents that state officials have made public in recent months on an issue that has stained the national reputation of the New Jersey State Police.

With the previously released documents, the 150 hours of testimony paint a picture of the halting, defensive manner in which New Jersey's highest-ranking law enforcement officials came to grips in 1997 with racial profiling - a problem they would not publicly acknowledge for two more years.

The attorney general's office began looking into racial profiling after March 1996, when a judge sided with defendants in a criminal case, finding that troopers in Gloucester County, along the southern stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike, were stopping minority drivers far more frequently than white drivers. Late that year, the Justice Department requested information about traffic stops and searches by troopers, and a state police sergeant, Thomas Gilbert, began "crunching numbers," Sergeant Gilbert testified before the Senate panel last month.

Looming large in the thinking of Sergeant Gilbert and other New Jersey officials was a federal case in Maryland, where in 1995 the Maryland State Police signed a court decree and agreed to be monitored to ensure against racial profiling after a private lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union showed that troopers were far more likely to request permission to search vehicles driven by minorities than by whites.

By February 1997, Sergeant Gilbert testified, his data showed that troopers in New Jersey were about as likely to ask to search minorities' vehicles as those in Maryland.

Sergeant Gilbert, concerned about the similarity with Maryland's numbers, testified that he gave a deputy attorney general, George Rover, a comprehensive summary of his findings in late February 1997. Mr. Rover was then the attorney general's contact with the state police on profiling; he reported to Alexander P. Waugh Jr., the executive assistant attorney general, who in turn reported directly to Mr. Verniero.

Three months later, on May 20, 1997, Mr. Rover, Sergeant Gilbert and other officials from the attorney general's office and the state police met with Mr. Verniero and discussed the findings about Maryland's rate of searches and what information would have to be turned over to the Justice Department, according to testimony from the participants.

In a deposition on Feb. 26, Mr. Rover confirmed that Sergeant Gilbert made his concerns known at the May 1997 gathering. "My recollection of the meeting, with respect to production of consent-to-search documents," he testified, "was that Tom Gilbert spoke about the Maryland case and said that our numbers were in the same ballpark as Maryland."

Sergeant Gilbert also testified that those who attended the May 1997 meeting were "up to speed" on his figures regarding the so-called consents to search.

The subject of the May 1997 meeting also arose in testimony given Feb. 28 by Lt. Col. Robert Dunlop of the state police. Colonel Dunlop said that around April 1999, when state officials first acknowledged the practice of racial profiling, he heard that the attorney general's office was considering prosecuting Carl Williams, the former police superintendent, on criminal charges that he had withheld evidence of profiling. Mr. Williams resigned in February 1999.

Colonel Dunlop said he called Paul Zoubek, by then Mr. Verniero's top deputy. "I hit him with the fact that I had heard information that they were looking to discredit Colonel Williams," Colonel Dunlop testified. "And I said to him very clearly: `I wouldn't go there. I wouldn't go there, Paul.' " He then told Mr. Zoubek that Mr. Verniero had been at the May 1997 meeting where concerns were raised about the rate of searches of minority vehicles.

Colonel Dunlop said he heard back from Mr. Zoubek that Mr. Verniero denied remembering such concerns being raised at the May 1997 meeting. But he said Mr. Zoubek added, "We're not going there."

Ultimately, Sergeant Gilbert's information on searches was withheld from the Justice Department, according to the transcripts.

Under questioning by Michael Chertoff, the committee's special counsel, and Jo Astrid Glading, a lawyer for Senate Democrats, Deputy Attorney General Rover said he kept from the Justice Department a damaging July 29, 1997, memo from Mr. Waugh to Mr. Verniero.

The memo had details of Sergeant Gilbert's findings, including the fact that 62 percent of the searches conducted with drivers' consent by troopers at the Moorestown station were of vehicles driven by minorities.

Mr. Rover, who was the attorney general's liaison to the Justice Department, said he repeatedly asked Mr. Waugh whether he should turn over the memo and its attachments to federal investigators. "He said to you, `Don't turn them over yet, I'll get back to you about what to do,' right?" Mr. Chertoff said.

"Yes," Mr. Rover replied.

"About a week or so later you asked him about it again," Mr. Chertoff asked, "and he said, `I'll get back to you,' again?"

"Yes," Mr. Rover replied.

"And then he never got back to you," Mr. Chertoff said.

"Correct."

Mr. Rover said that he was not asked to turn over the memo until February 1999, when he was told to turn over his profiling files.

-------- spying

Hanssen prosecutor risks spilling secrets

March 7, 2001
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Bill Gertz
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200137224052.htm

Federal prosecutors will face difficulties in winning a court case against accused spy Robert P. Hanssen, despite strong evidence, legal and intelligence experts said yesterday.

The most serious problem is dealing with the disclosure of some of the U.S. intelligence community's most sensitive secrets should the case go to trial.

Lawyers for Mr. Hanssen, a 27-year FBI special agent, are expected to try to reveal some of the highly classified intelligence programs that prosecutors say were compromised by his activities, which spanned 15 years.

The process is known as "graymail" - a derivative of blackmail - and involves threats to disclose secrets as a way of forcing the government to back down from prosecution and seek a plea deal.

"Graymail is the No. 1 issue in this case," said Joseph E. di-Genova, a former U.S. attorney who prosecuted Israeli spy Jonathan Jay Pollard. "The whole issue is going to be to what extent is the intelligence community willing to reveal information, even in a sanitized form, to make this case."

"All espionage prosecutions are difficult when you're dealing with classified information," said Kenneth deGraffenreid, who was the White House intelligence director during the Reagan administration. "But my view is that juries don't like spies, and most of the time the government wins."

Another potential problem for prosecutors is the fact that the FBI did not arrest Mr. Hanssen picking up a bundle of cash left for him by the Russians as payment for an earlier drop off of secret documents. The FBI also failed to catch and arrest the Russian intelligence officer who was supposed to pick up the document package Mr. Hanssen left.

Doing so would have made the case stronger, analysts said.

However, the case is strong enough that any ultimate plea deal will come after a conviction.

"The deal will be over sentencing, not over a conviction," Mr. deGraffenreid said. "The issue is whether he gets the death penalty. [Prosecutors] will use that as a hammer to get him to confess."

The Classified Information Procedures Act, passed by Congress in 1980, provides some help to spy prosecutors by allowing evidence to be reviewed in secret during trial.

However, the Hanssen case involves secret intelligence operations and methods involving multiple U.S. spy agencies, including the supersecret National Security Agency, which conducts code-breaking and electronic spying.

U.S. officials said Mr. Hanssen had access to ultrasecret special access programs, known as black programs.

During the 1985 trial of NSA officer Ronald Pelton, who was convicted of spying for Moscow, the National Security Agency at first opposed prosecuting him because of the potential exposure of secrets. The case went ahead with the minimal disclosure of compromised secrets, including an underwater electronic eavesdropping program known as "Ivy Bells."

The lead prosecutor in this case is Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Bellows. Mr. diGenova described him as one of the government's most experienced espionage prosecutors.

Mr. Hanssen's lawyer, Plato Cacheris, is also a veteran, having defended CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames. Ames pleaded guilty in a deal that allowed his wife to be given a lighter sentence. He is serving a life prison term.

Mr. Caheris told reporters on Monday that he currently is not negotiating any deal with prosecutors on the Hanssen case. Mr. Hanssen would plead not guilty to the spy charges "at the appropriate time," he said.

Mark Hulkower, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Ames, said linking Mr. Hanssen to evidence of spying also might be difficult. "They have to establish that the documents came from the KGB and that they are tied to Hanssen," Mr. Hulkower said. "They have to authenticate the evidence. This is far from an open-and-shut case."

-------- terrorism

BOMBING CLAIM

March 7, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/world/07BRIE.html

ISRAEL: The armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement claimed responsibility for the terrorist bombing in Netanya on Sunday that killed three Israelis and the bomber, identified by Hamas as Ahmed Omar Aliyan, 23, from the Nour Shamas refugee camp outside the West Bank city of Tulkarm. Residents of the camp, where Mr. Aliyan worked in a mosque, held a celebratory parade in honor of the Hamas bomber's memory, Palestinian news media said. Hamas vowed to carry out more attacks in Israeli territory. William A. Orme, Jr. (NYT)

-------- activists

Century Institute Summer Program for Undergraduates

Wed, 07 Mar 2001
"mike sysiuk" <msysiuk@hotmail.com>

Applications are now being accepted for The Century Institute Summer Program, a two-week fellowship designed to introduce undergraduate students to the progressive tradition in American public policy. The program will be held at Williams College in Williamstown, MA from July 1 through July 14, 2000. The program is open to any student who is a sophomore or junior in the 2000-2001 year, who has an interest in public policy and civic engagement. More information and an application is available at the The Century Institute's web site: <http://www.centuryinstitute.org/>

------

New Future for Idaho Aryan Nations Compound

March 7, 2001
New York Times
By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/national/07IDAH.html

SEATTLE, March 6 - A silver bust of Hitler and stained-glass swastikas adorned the "church," and Nazi flags flew over the guard tower. German shepherds patrolled the grounds. And for 28 years, ever since he moved to the woods of Northern Idaho to escape what he once called the "alien scum" in Southern California, Richard Butler held sway as the self-proclaimed pastor of the Aryan Nations.

That was the past at Mr. Butler's 20-acre compound near Hayden Lake, Idaho. The future, it seems, will be very different. Just weeks after Mr. Butler was forced by the courts to turn over the compound to a mother and son who were beaten by young Aryan Nations members there, an Internet millionaire said today that he had bought it from the victims.

With their blessing and that of Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and other state and local leaders, he said, he planned to dedicate the compound as an education and conference center for human-rights issues.

The millionaire, Greg Carr, an Idaho native who is the founder and former chairman of the Internet service Prodigy, said he and others had first thought of having a giant fire at the compound. They would burn down the church and other buildings and a shed on the grounds that still contains Nazi flags, copies of "Mein Kampf," weapons and racist posters and flyers.

That would have been too easy, he said.

"We're not just going to tear the place down and pretend it never happened and say, `There, we've cleaned up our image as a state,' " Mr. Carr said today. "We're going to leave it there and acknowledge that this kind of hatred still exists and that we'll battle against it. The center will be an acknowledgment of the fact that we've got work to do."

Public officials and people across Idaho say they have been vexed by the presence of a small number of white supremacists who they say have given the entire state an undeserved reputation as a haven for neo- Nazis and other racists. The announcement by Mr. Carr is only the latest, though the most symbolically powerful, step by the state to counteract the message of those groups.

Idahoans, responding to a challenge grant from the 41-year-old Mr. Carr, have already raised nearly $1 million to erect the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial in Boise. Mayors and school officials have established human-rights task forces and school curriculum plans and even created a coordinating job that Mayor Steve Judy of Coeur d'Alene once gave the title "Aryan buster." Rallies by the Aryan Nations and other groups have been dwarfed by of protesters.

Yet there is still plenty of evidence of white supremacist groups in Idaho, a state where barely half of 1 percent of its people are black and few Jews live as well, though there is a growing Hispanic population.

Boise's public-access television station is about to run two new white supremacist shows. And the Aryan Nations' leader, the 82-year-old Mr. Butler, is still around. Vincent Bertollini, a former Silicon Valley millionaire investor who moved to north Idaho and became one of Mr. Butler's staunchest supporters, has bought Mr. Butler a small bungalow in the town of Hayden, not far from the old compound.

In September, a state jury in Coeur d'Alene ordered Mr. Butler and other leaders of the Aryan Nations to pay more than $6 million to the victims of a 1998 attack by three men who were security guards at the compound. The victims, Victoria Keenan and her son, Jason, were beaten and shot at as they drove along a road at the edge of the compound one night; two of the men later said they were so drunk they did not remember the incident.

The jury concluded that Mr. Butler had been negligent in training and supervising the so-called security guards and ordered him to pay damages so large that they bankrupted the Aryan Nations altogether.

Mr. Carr, speaking in a telephone interview from Cambridge, Mass., where he now lives and where he has financed the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, said he had paid $250,000 from his personal foundation to the Keenans, who had taken title to the property last month in bankruptcy court and announced their desire to sell it to a group promoting human rights.

"We hope to get the evilness out of there and turn it around to something positive," Jason Keenan said.

The move was praised by several elected leaders and by Governor Kempthorne, a Republican.

"This begins to erase a scar that existed," the governor said. "And this center will continue to send the clearest of signals of what Idaho is truly about."

Mr. Carr said that plans were still being drawn up for the new center, but that he hoped it could serve as a place to teach young people about why hatred and racism exist and how to counteract it.

Mr. Butler has vowed to continue the work of the Aryan Nations, either by finding a new site for a compound or concentrating on the Internet. But a spokesman for Governor Kemp thorne, H. D. Palmer, said Mr. Butler would not be welcome in Idaho, and he praised Mr. Carr.

"It's a real victory," Mr. Palmer said. "It's kind of the ultimate form of Capture the Flag."

---

Ex-Daewoo Workers Protest as Auto Production Resumes

March 7, 2001
Associated Press
By DON KIRK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/business/07CND-DAEWOO.html

INCHON, South Korea, March 7 - Laid-off employees of the Daewoo Motor Company pounded columns of policemen with rocks, bricks and one or two Molotov cocktails today in the streets near the plant where they once worked, while car production resumed with little hindrance inside the gates.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions promised to expand the protest into a general movement against the government of President Kim Dae Jung, even as Daewoo Motor managers said they thought the worst of the protests was over.

"It will be impossible for the factory to return to normal," said Dan Byong Ho, president of the confederation. "They can only resume partial operations."

Moreover, he told reporters in front of a Roman Catholic church where union leaders have set up a protest headquarters, "the factory will always need the police to protect the facilities."

The workers' words and acts of rage had no visible effect on production at the Daewoo factory, which reopened today after three weeks of suspended operations while the company tried to sell its excess inventory of vehicles. Though the union was able to marshall many of the 1,750 workers whose jobs were eliminated during the shutdown to join the protest, nearly all of the 7,000 workers still employed at the plant appeared to have reported for work.

They rode in to the plant on 100 buses from four different pickup points early today, guarded by some of the 9,300 policemen deployed at the scene. About 200 people who attempted to block some of the buses were detained briefly by the police. Other protesters' efforts to get into the plant grounds were frustrated by police lines.

"Everything is going very well," said Kim Sung Soo, a Daewoo Motor official. "Maybe they will demonstrate for a few more days, that's all."

The views of workers inside the plant contrasted sharply with those protesting outside on the most important issue facing them and Daewoo Motor: the efforts by the committee of creditors who now control the bankrupt company to sell it to the General Motors Corporation. G.M. has said it is unwilling to make a firm offer while Daewoo's labor problems remain unresolved.

"Most of the workers believe G.M. should take over Daewoo," said Jin Hyun Sik, chief of an assembly line where 105 workers were assembling Magnus and Leganza cars. "There's not much conflict."

Kim Myung Sun, a worker hammering trim onto car doors as they moved down the line, was more equivocal. "I have very much mixed feelings," Mr. Kim said. "I'm upset because my friends are out there. Whether it's G.M. or another buyer, I just hope everything will work out all right."

But the union's leaders and the laid-off workers maintained that a G.M. takeover would spell disaster for Daewoo Motor, which has slipped from second to third place among South Korean motor vehicle manufacturers since collapsing under a debt load of more than $10 billion in mid-1999.

"G.M. will close this factory if they take over Daewoo," said Hwang Sung Jin, one of the dismissed workers taking part in the protest. "They want only the other plants," he said, referring to factories at Kunsan on the Korean west coast and at Changwon in the south, which are much more modern than the 29-year-old Inchon plant. "We have to struggle for our survival, for our lives, for our nation," Mr. Hwang said. "I don't like foreigners to take over."

As South Korea struggles to restructure its economy and cope with huge overhangs of debt, it has run into mounting resistance from unions whose members' jobs are threatened by cost-cutting. Bank workers have repeatedly protested government-mandated mergers in the banking industry, at one point trapping one bank's chief executive in his office for several days. Cutbacks in heavy industries like auto manufacturing and shipbuilding, long a strength of the South Korean economy, have also brought bitter reactions.

About 1,500 of the protesters outside the Daewoo plant today surprised the police by marching to the campus of the Inchon University of Education, about a mile from the plant, where they were joined by about 500 radical students waving flags and banners. A scuffle broke out, and a dozen workers and students and six policemen were injured, none seriously, before the demonstrators suddenly halted. Protest leaders tried to redirect the march toward the Pupyong railway station, but lines of policemen blocked the way, and the protest dissolved.

"It's not just a fight against Daewoo Motor," said Mr. Mun Seong Hyeon, president of the Korea Metal Workers' Union, a principal member of the labor federation. "We will expand the issue in protest against the government of President Kim Dae Jung."

Mr. Mun said protests would resume Thursday.

---

Torture of women seen worldwide

March 7, 2001
Washington Times

LONDON - The torture of women and girls is widespread, and many suffer at the hands of people they know, Amnesty International said in a report released yesterday.

"The general perception is always that torture happens in police stations," said Angelika Pathak, of the human rights group. "That is not true. It happens in many contexts. It is a global phenomenon. It is based in discrimination which prevails everywhere."

Women are beaten and raped by husbands and boyfriends in every country, and in poorer places, many suffer violence after being sold for their labor, traded into marriages or forced into human trafficking networks, said the report, titled "Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds."

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