NUCLEAR
Missile Defense: A Global Approach
Nuclear Warning Watchdogs eye Duke's salvage operation
Nine Mile Point is Backwards
Hanford reactor may be landmark

MILITARY
North Korea Gives Priority to Military
U.S. Finding Tangled Alliances on Rights
Seven Americans Among 16 Killed in Vietnam Helicopter Crash
Senator alleges Lockheed scammed up to $100M
Rushing to Failure

OTHER
Less Alarm in Hong Kong Over Disease of Livestock
Thailand bans genetically engineered crop trials
Bush Team Is in Search of Way Out of Impasse
China Buildup Has Taiwan on Edge
China Is Demanding That U.S. Do More to End Standoff
American Aides Make Third Visit to Crew of Downed Spy Plane

ACTIVISTS
TV Takeover Stirs Protest in Moscow
The Land Is Ours


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- missile defense

Missile Defense: A Global Approach

By Max M. Kampelman and Frederick Seitz
Sunday, April 8, 2001; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52637-2001Apr7?language=printer

In response to President Bush's commitment to national missile defense, Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for a limited, Europe-wide missile defense program. We ought to welcome this Russian proposal and link it to U.S. objectives.

The established "wisdom" is that acting on missile defense would require withdrawal from the ABM Treaty -- a very controversial idea in this country. Our allies and friends, observing this domestic debate, contribute their concerns that national missile defense is threatening to Russia and China.

We believe it would be irresponsible for the U.S. government to leave its people defenseless in the face of clear signs that a growing number of countries are developing ballistic missiles capable of reaching this country with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Our government needs to lead us into a creative international approach to missile defense designed to resolve the domestic and international controversy.

One promising approach would be to revisit earlier proposals that have not been pursued -- proposals reflecting President Ronald Reagan's early pledge to share the fruits of U.S. strategic defense research with other countries.

Nearly 10 years ago, in October 1991, Vladimir Lukin, vice speaker of the Russian Duma, stated that "we could be talking about a strategic defense system for all mankind." Russian President Boris Yeltsin embraced a global protection system in a United Nations speech the following year. From June through October 1992, the United States and Russia pursued high-level -- and promising, although unpublicized -- talks regarding a cooperative approach to missile defense, one that transcended the ABM Treaty.

President Putin also has called for "new mechanisms" to protect against certain Third World countries, and he has advocated "umbrellas" so that "we could jointly protect all of Europe." It is time to welcome, however belatedly, the initiatives presented by Yeltsin, Putin and others.

The ABM Treaty provides for negotiations between the parties regarding new futuristic missile defense technologies, defined as those based on "other physical principles." In informing the Russians that the United States wishes to discuss their proposals, along with other ideas, we should make it clear that we wish those talks to be expanded at the appropriate time to include NATO, China, Japan, Israel and others.

The U.S. objective should be to create an international consortium dedicated to a missile defense designed to protect everyone. It should also be understood that our efforts to defend ourselves will continue, whether or not the talks proceed constructively.

Should Russia prove not to be serious about its proposals, the United States and its NATO allies should nevertheless form an international missile consortium. Its goal, using both cutting-edge scientific research and farsighted diplomacy, would be to create a global missile defense system within the decade, the fruits of which could be shared by all nations.

This proposal dovetails with the new administration's desire to reduce U.S. reliance on nuclear-based deterrence, since an effective global defense would lessen the value of long-range nuclear missiles.

It is now almost universally acknowledged that missile defense technology is maturing, but more work is needed to achieve highly reliable, deployable systems. Substantial effort at the conceptual level has gone into space-deployed global defensive systems that would detect and destroy missiles in their highly vulnerable and slow initial boost phase, well before warheads are deployed. Space-based systems could destroy attacking missiles during boost phase using conventional, not nuclear, explosives.

Although the engineering challenges of developing such systems are complex, the underlying principles involved are scientifically valid. If and when an effective missile defense system is developed, protocols should be established concerning all rocket launches worldwide, whether or not the launching nation is a consortium member. It would be in the best interests of responsible nations to join such a cooperative program, assuming they share the goal of achieving peace and stability while avoiding the threat of nuclear blackmail or attack.

Some say the concept of strategic defense is misguided because individual nuclear bombs could still be used against us by clandestine means. But while such an event would be devastating, the destruction would not be comparable to the paralyzing damage that could be wrought by a half-dozen missiles, each containing multiple nuclear, chemical or biological warheads.

The diplomatic effort to create an international consortium for global missile defense should be a vital national initiative. It would provide us with an opportunity to serve the national interest as well as the objectives of peace and stability.

Protection of our nation is not a principle open to compromise. The time has come to put partisanship aside and, under the leadership of the president, work toward a domestic and international consensus on global missile defense.

Max M. Kampelman was State Department counselor and, from 1985 to 1989, head of the U.S. delegation to the negotiations with the Soviet Union on nuclear and space arms in Geneva. He is chairman of the Georgetown University Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. Frederick Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University, is past chairman of the Defense Science Board and past president of the National Academy of Sciences.

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

Nuclear Warning Watchdogs eye Duke's salvage operation

San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, April 8, 2001
Scott Winokur, Christian Berthelsen, Chronicle Staff Writers
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/04/08/BU161920.DTL

Robin Mills, a Washington, D.C., handyman, and Dick Sears, a Winston- Salem, N.C., professor, have little in common besides their mutual distrust of the company whose stock both own, Duke Energy Corp., and they say Californians should know why they're down on their investment.

While Duke may serve its 396,000 shareholders well and have Wall Street's admiration, it's also a company, Mills and Sears say, that will openly defy the government on vital but costly air-pollution measures and move ahead with a risky nuclear program no other energy producer would touch. Duke, the third-largest U.S. utility, acquired three Pacific Gas and Electric Co. plants in 1998 and today accounts for about 5 percent of California's power. It plans to expand in the Golden State.

In recent shareholder resolutions, Mills and Sears accused Duke of polluting the air by burning coal, and of jeopardizing the safety of millions in the Southeast by proceeding despite fierce opposition with a plan to convert plutonium warheads to nuclear fuel.

Sears' antipollution resolution, introduced in November, came a month before the Environmental Protection Agency charged the company and others with numerous violations of the federal Clean Air Act. The pollution that Duke allegedly caused, the government said, was responsible for increased sickness and mortality from lung disorders among residents of the Southeastern United States.

"I went to the emergency room twice last summer. I didn't know what was happening to me," said Nina Layton, 53, of Charlotte, N.C., where Duke is headquartered. "My asthma doctor said the coal-fired plants were one of the main culprits."

Duke denied the federal charges, saying it will defend itself vigorously.

Energy-industry watchdogs and concerned shareholders say that Duke warrants close scrutiny from California consumers, regulators and elected officials seeking solutions to the state's energy problems without eroding the high standards that have made it the nation's environmental pacesetter.

Today, California may be an environmentally by-the-book state where new plants run by coal and nuclear sources -- which account for 98 percent of the fuel Duke uses nationwide, about equally divided -- are economically impractical or close to unthinkable, legally and politically. But no one can say how its energy needs will shape public opinion and government policy in the future.

"If I were a resident of California, I wouldn't want to give a large economic interest in the state's energy market to them (Duke) because we know their policy: To fight pollution-control efforts," said David Hawkins, director of the air and energy program of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C.

Coal-fired generation of electricity is legal in California, although environmental laws and the state's lack of coal pose costly obstacles.

No nuclear plants have been licensed here since Diablo Canyon (near San Luis Obispo) in the early 1970s, but the technology remains attractive to the industry, despite debacles at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, because nuclear plants don't pose emissions problems common to fossil-fuel plants.

According to Claudia Chandler, spokeswoman for the California Energy Commission, state law says no nuclear plants may be built until a safe way to dispose of nuclear waste is found.

While there is no legal reason Duke couldn't build coal-fired facilities in California, the nuclear option is unlikely right now. That could change if the radioactive waste problem were solved or de-emphasized due to the need for more power.

"The winds seem to be shifting politically. I'm sure they're considering their options," said Barbara Puklin Silverman, an energy analyst for Arnold & S. Bleichroeder of New York.

DUKE CLAIMS TO OBEY RULES

Company spokeswoman Cathy Roche said Duke will rely on natural gas to fuel three of its California plants (a fourth in Oakland's Inner Harbor runs on diesel). She dismissed attacks on Duke's plutonium project as the criticism of "a very small group of antinuclear activists who will go as far as they can to shut down that option."

Roche said blame for air pollution in the Southeast should be laid on the auto industry, other industries and power plants in other states, particularly those in Tennessee. She pointed to honors Duke has won from financial publications and its consistently high customer-satisfaction ratings.

"We do very tenaciously defend our record when we have complied with the rules," Roche said, with reference to Duke's reputation for litigiousness when challenged or resisted by regulators and private citizens -- a reputation that hasn't dimmed its luster on Wall Street.

"The company has been one of the best-regarded builders and operators of power plants in the country and one of the early movers in the merchant energy business created through the deregulation," said Thomas Hamlin of First Union Securities in Richmond, Va.

In recent months, Duke's stock has been selling in the low to mid-40s, near the top of its trading range -- and up more than 50 percent from last year.

'IT MAKES ME COUGH'

Duke says California's environmental laws and other regulatory hurdles are why more than 25 percent of its generation capacity in the state frequently has been unavailable. Chief Executive Officer Richard Priory blames special- interest groups in California. He told the Winston-Salem Journal, hometown paper of one of North Carolina's polluted cities, "(I)n the Carolinas, we're committed to getting it right."

But what's "right" for the Carolinas is far from clear.

"It makes me cough a whole lot more, and coughing is what upsets my lungs," said Virginia Richardson of Winston-Salem, who lives near Duke's coal-fired Belews Creek plant, one of the company's dirtiest.

Richardson, 70, has a chronic lung condition that gets worse, she said, when the plant is spewing emissions.

"I notice smells in the area. Sometimes the air looks foggy, smoky or whatever. I come in the house," Richardson said. "It's the same stuff over and over, shortness of breath, I get tired, I get bad colds in the wintertime."

Clay Ballantine, a physician at a large hospital in Asheville that serves 22 counties in western North Carolina, said that during the summer of 1999, one of the worst in local memory for pollution, he treated at least a half- dozen patients for severe respiratory problems. They later sold their second homes in the Blue Ridge Mountains and returned to their home states. A dozen other physicians on the staff treated similar numbers, he said.

"The tourists come here thinking they'll get clean mountain air, and they end up with flareups of normally stable breathing problems they had before -- with severe asthma and emphysema," Ballantine said.

"We're seeing more lung disease than when I came here four years ago," Ballantine added. "My opinion is the emissions from the coal-fired power plants are the main correctable variable."

A study published in October tabulated the death and disease caused by air pollution from all sources, focusing in part on pollution from coal-fired plants such as Duke's.

The study was conducted by a private consultant, Abt Associations of Cambridge, Mass., for Clear the Air, a joint project of the Clean Air Task Force, the National Environmental Trust and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. Among its findings: -- California, which has relatively few coal, oil and diesel plants, ranked 46th in per capita deaths from power-plant pollution. North and South Carolina,

where Duke's eight coal-fired plants are situated, ranked 6th and 7th, respectively.

-- An estimated 1,800 North Carolinians die each year from power-plant pollution, compared with an estimated 259 in California, which has a population 4.2 times larger.

-- Two North Carolina cities -- Charlotte and Greensboro -- rank among the nation's worst in annual incidence of deaths, asthma attacks and hospitalizations attributable to power-plant pollution.

A third city, Asheville, has the nation's sixth-highest rate of deaths related to power plant pollution, the study found. Asheville Mayor Leni Sitnick said her tourism-dependent city faces economic doom unless the pollution problem is solved.

COMPANY CRITICS SILENCED

Sears' antipollution measure, proposed Nov. 10, never received a public hearing. Duke told him Feb. 19 that, with the approval of the Securities and Exchange Commission, it would refuse to put it before the annual shareholders' meeting in Charlotte on April 26.

Mills' antinuclear resolution, opposed by Duke in repeated legal objections,

expired during a two-year period and eventually was removed from the ballot, despite the support of thousands of shareholders, among them Peter Gill Wylie, great-grandson of one of the company's founders.

In an interview, Wylie said that when Mills' antiplutonium measure failed a second time last year, he began to sell his large holdings of stock in the company.

"It's very scary to me," Wylie said, "that if Duke makes one wrong step, not only would potentially millions of people be hurt, but the stock would be worthless."

The dissident shareholders say there's a lesson for California in their experiences.

"You have to be very careful with them. They're willing to use their lawyers wherever and whenever they need to," Mills said.

'ARROGANCE OF POWER'

A 22,000-employee company with a global reach (it has done work in more than 50 countries), Duke is accustomed to having a free hand in North Carolina,

political observers in the South say, because it has been a big employer (10, 128 people are on its payroll in the state) and liberal-spending political powerhouse there for decades.

Bob Hull, research director for Democracy South, a Chapel Hill, N.C., watchdog group, said North Carolina's political culture has encouraged big businesses like Duke to assert themselves in ways not seen elsewhere.

"Unlike other states that have found government a hindrance," Hull said, "North Carolina has had a hegemony of industrial, financial and agricultural interests that have used government as an engine. Duke has been a part of that for decades."

As an example, critics point to Duke's pressure on then-Gov. Jim Hunt in October to lobby state officials to set a lower overall air-pollution standard than more than 11,000 residents said they wanted in hearings. Higher standards result in fewer pollution-related deaths, data show.

In exchange for a weaker and less costly standard, Duke -- which had teamed up with the state's other large utility, Carolina Power & Light -- agreed to show restraint. It said it would not sue the state if the tougher standard was set aside. It got its way.

Duke's Roche, backed by the chairman of the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission, David Moreau, denied allegations that the company pressured Hunt improperly.

But environmental commissioner Bob Epting, a Chapel Hill, N.C., lawyer who voted against the lower standard, told local reporters that Hunt, Duke and CP&L had made a backdoor and backroom deal. Five months later, he's still angry.

"It abused the dignity of the commission and spat in the face of the citizens," Epting told The Chronicle. "It reflects the arrogance of unfettered power, whether in the governor's office or the Duke presidential suite.

"To the extent you permit that in California, Duke will do the same thing there," he added. "The people of California ought to be on the lookout.

"There's never been anybody at Duke," Epting asserted, "who stood up and said, 'We're going to make the environment as important as our bottom line.' I don't know there ever will be."

DUKE'S POLITICAL DONATIONS

Duke has one of the two largest corporate political action committees in North Carolina; CP&L has the other. Together, they donated more than $1.5 million to candidates and measures in North Carolina between 1989 and 1998, and more than $100,000 to Hunt since 1990, including donations from executives and lobbyists, according to Democracy South.

In California, Duke donated $14,000 on Aug. 3 to Gov. Gray Davis, state Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Marina del Rey, chair of the Senate Energy Committee, and to the Senate Democratic Leadership Fund.

Duke also pumped money into a ballot measure in Morro Bay (San Luis Obispo County), where it plans a controversial plant modernization opposed by a group of local residents. The company spent nearly $13,000 in support of an initiative that called for approval of the project. It spent an additional $4, 300 backing state Sen. Jack O'Connell, D-Santa Barbara/San Luis Obispo, who endorsed it. O'Connell is a member of the state Senate Committee on Environmental Quality. The measure passed.

"Morro Bay is a beautiful place to live," said resident Jack McCurdy, a founder of the anti-Duke Coastal Alliance, "but it's spoiled, having to live with Duke and the people they bought off."

O'Connell said: "Any attempt to link any contribution to my position on the ballot measure is absurd and laughable. The project is sound. We're in an energy crisis. A clear majority in the community understands that."

But McCurdy's group claims the plant, fueled by natural gas, will put an additional 76 tons of particulate matter into the air, an amount equivalent to more than 300 percent of all emissions produced each year by diesel buses in the Bay Area. Particulates are particles small enough to enter and lodge in the lungs. McCurdy said health hazards to children, who will be attending school close to the new facility, will increase, water quality will deteriorate and marine life will die. The bay is one of three California estuaries protected by the Clean Water Act's National Estuary Program.

The Coastal Alliance calls the plant there now "a moral and ethical abomination" and contends Duke wants to make a bad situation significantly worse.

"They have sought and pretty much succeeded in making Morro Bay a company town," said McCurdy, a retired Los Angeles Times reporter.

With the assistance of Santa Barbara's Environmental Defense Center, a public-interest legal group, the Coastal Alliance plans to fight Duke's Morro Bay expansion project before the California Energy Commission as it proceeds through the review process this year.

Duke says the Morro Bay project will meet all the requirements of state and federal law and use the best available technology to lower smog levels.

'A PUTRID HALO'

Epting, the environmental commissioner, is a pilot who flies a small plane over the central part of North Carolina.

"You can see an orangish-yellow plume that connects these plants. It's a putrid halo that sits over the top of Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Greensboro and Charlotte. That's what these companies give us," he said.

But state regulators have not found much to complain about, at least with regard to Duke. Environmentalists say that's because they haven't looked hard enough.

"Nobody here is doing anything about this," said Janet Zeller of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League in Glendale Springs, N.C.

North Carolina air-quality official Mike Aldrich contended that wasn't the case.

"Sometimes they'll make you make them do it right," Aldrich said of Duke, "but they will do it right."

The federal government's experience has been different.

In December, the Justice Department took Duke to court on behalf of the EPA,

which had failed to persuade the company to bring its eight coal-fired plants in the Carolinas into compliance with the Clean Air Act.

The government charged Duke with more than 50 violations punishable by fines upward of $25,000 a day, saying the company had gone at least a decade without installing costly equipment to control power-plant emissions containing sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxides and particulates.

While the suit's ultimate fate may be uncertain under the Bush administration, environmental groups and power company watchdogs in the Southeast see it as confirmation of what they have been saying for years.

DUKE NUKE REBUKE

Under a controversial federal program, Duke is the only energy company with a lucrative government contract (it comes with a $130 million credit) to dispose of plutonium, a byproduct of disarmament. Its partners in the contract are French energy company Cogema and a U.S. plutonium-facility contractor, Stone & Webster.

The radioactive waste would be salvaged near Georgia's second-largest city, Augusta, at a secured 300-square-mile Energy Department site on the Savannah River in Aiken, S.C., from decommissioned plutonium warheads shipped from Amarillo, Texas.

It would be mixed with uranium to form MOX, mixed oxide fuel, then used at Duke facilities close to Charlotte -- one of which, the McGuire Nuclear Station on Lake Norman, sits amid planned residential communities partly developed by a Duke-owned real estate company.

Construction, under a contract with the federal Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Agency, is scheduled to begin in 2003; operations are expected to continue through 2022, when the lethal leftovers of the nuclear arms race have been consumed.

Roche said the company has a good record on its nuclear operations and was invited to run the MOX program because the government has confidence in it.

But critics call the project economically and environmentally risky, as well as a magnet for terrorists, because recycled plutonium can be converted back to weapons-grade materiel with relative ease.

"It's going to be a fiasco," said Mills, the Duke shareholder, a onetime electrician on a nuclear submarine who inherited stock and uses it as a paper pulpit for his clean-energy views. "The question in California is: Will they expand by building nuclear?"

Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog Project for the Nuclear Information and Referral Service in Washington, D.C., predicted that as California continues to map out long-term plans to address its energy needs, nuclear-powered generation inevitably will be a focal point.

Notwithstanding barriers to development now in place, he said, plutonium fuel and the substantial hazards that accompany nuclear energy may become major concerns in the state.

Zeller of the Blue Ridge group said it's unlikely the Savannah River project, if completed, can be confined to the two North Carolina plants Duke says it now has in mind for MOX fuel.

"It's absurd for anyone to believe this plutonium factory at Savannah River is for just those reactors," she said. "These are the first phase. Others will be slated for weapons-grade plutonium. Where? Nobody knows. Every state with a nuclear power plant better be interested."

Duke Exerts Energy in Business and Politics

-- About the company: Duke Energy is a multinational energy company composed of 14 operating units. It entered California July 1, 1998, with Duke Energy North America's purchase of 2,645 megawatts of production from PG&E. Duke generates 3,450 megawatts in Oakland, Moss Landing (Monterey County), Morro Bay (San Luis Obispo County) and Chula Vista (San Diego County), accounting for about 5 percent of the state's electricity. It plans to add 1, 560 megawatts at these plants, which run primarily on natural gas. The company employs about 22,000 people in more than 50 countries, including more than 1, 000 in California.

-- Financial performance: It has $58 billion in assets. Revenue in 2000 was more than $49 billion, up 127 percent from 1999; earnings per share were a record $4.20, up 17 percent. It was the second-highest-ranking company for return on equity on the Dow Jones utility average in 2000. The stock is held by the top seven utilities mutual funds and given second-highest overall weighting in those funds, according to Morningstar of Chicago. By the end of 2000, shares were worth 70 percent more than when the year began.

-- Political spending: DukePAC, the company's political action committee, more than tripled its donations to U.S. House and Senate candidates in the1999- 2000 election cycle, with House Republican candidates receiving $39,000 from Duke in 1997-98, more than twice as much as Democrats. Senate Republican hopefuls, including Matt Fong of California, got $2,500, compared with $1,750 donated to Democrats. During the next election, however, Duke's donations grew enormously. House Republicans received $93,875 and House Democrats $55,000; Senate Republicans received $33,000, Democrats $9,500. In California, Duke donated comparatively small amounts last summer to Gov. Gray Davis, state Senate Energy Committee Chairwoman Debra Bowen, D-Marina del Rey (Los Angeles County), and the Senate Democratic Leadership Fund. The company spent $126,394 on lobbying in Sacramento in 1999-2000.

-- CEO compensation: CEO Richard Priory's 1999 pay package totaled more than $2 million; a salary increase, $1.9 million bonus and other compensation pushed it to $3.2 million in 2000. Both years exclude value of stock holdings, including options, which vary in value depending on market conditions. Priory exercised stock options and sold shares Nov. 1-2 that netted him more than $1 million.

Chronicle librarian Charles Malarkey contributed to this report. / E-mail Scott Winokur at swinokur@sfchronicle.com and Christian Berthelsen at cberthelsen@sfchronicle.com.


-------- new york

Nine Mile Point is Backwards

Power Reactor
Event Number: 37900

FACILITY: NINE MILE POINT
REGION: 1
NOTIFICATION DATE: 04/08/2001
UNIT: [] [2] []
STATE: NY
RXTYPE: [1] GE-2,[2] GE-5

EVENT TIME: 16:15[EDT]
NRC NOTIFIED BY: RICHARD LANGE
HQ OPS OFFICER: BOB STRANSKY

PERSON ORGANIZATION EMERGENCY CLASS: N/A JACK MCFADDEN R1 10
CFR SECTION: INA 50.72(b)(3)(v)(A) POT UNABLE TO SAFE SD

UNIT SCRAM CODE RX CRIT INIT PWR INIT RX MODE CURR PWR CURR RX MODE
2 N Y 100 Power Operation 100 Power Operation

EVENT TEXT
BOTH EMERGENCY DIESEL GENERATORS DECLARED INOPERABLE

"Both Division 1 and Division 2 standby diesel generators were declared inoperable. This report is being made per 10CFR50.72(b)(3)(v)(A), in that both standby diesels were in a condition such that they may not have been able to fulfill their intended safety function.

"The division 1 diesel generator was declared inoperable because both diesel generator room exhaust fans were found rotating backwards. The division 2 diesel generator was declared inoperable due to one exhaust fan rotating backwards and the outside air temperature exceeding 72ºF. The cause of the fan blades' reverse rotation is under evaluation. Reverse fan blade rotation may cause longer in-rush starting currents which could cause the fan motors to trip.

"With two diesel generators inoperable, the plant entered Technical Specification 3.8.1, a 2-hour shutdown Action Statement.

"Division 1 and 2 diesel room exhaust fans stopped rotating, and the outside air temperature lowered to less than 72þF The Technical Specification Action Statements were exited. Periodic monitoring of the fans has been established to address reoccurrence of the condition."

The NRC resident inspector has been informed of this event by the licensee.

-------- washington

Hanford reactor may be landmark

Seattle Times
Sunday, April 08, 2001
By The Associated Press
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=landmark08m&date=20010408

RICHLAND - A reactor on the Hanford nuclear reservation may become a national landmark.

Congress has asked the Energy Department to study the possibility of decontaminating and preserving B Reactor so that one day it could be open to the public.

Hanford was established in 1943 as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb during World War II. Plutonium created at Hanford was used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.


-------- MILITARY

-------- korea

North Korea Gives Priority to Military

New York Times
April 8, 2001
By DON KIRK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/world/08KORE.html

SEOUL, South Korea, April 7 - North Korea announced financial measures this week that place top priority on improving living standards but emphasize the primacy of the armed forces.

The package, approved Thursday in a one-day session of the Supreme People's Assembly, addressed the devastation of the nation's economic base, including several years of famine, while perpetuating the military establishment, which dominates the power structure. The details were provided on the official North Korean television and by its news agency.

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, was shown sitting in front of the gathering in the huge Mansudae assembly building in Pyongyang, the capital. Although he was assumed to have directed the proceedings, Mr. Kim was not reported as having addressed the 687 delegates.

Instead, Prime Minister Hong Song Nam was quoted, saying the need "to improve the standard of the people's living" is the "most urgent task." But he made clear that North Korea's 1.1-million-member military establishment bore the main responsibility for insuring the program's success, calling it "an all-powerful treasured sword for socialist construction."

Finance Minister Mun Il Pong also addressed dual economic and military goals, saying the aim of the budget for 2001 was "to build up invincible military power and powerful state economic potential."

The reports said 40 percent of the $9.9 billion budget was dedicated to rescuing an economy in which most factories were idle and farms were notoriously underproductive. The armed forces would get $1.4 billion, up from $1.3 billion last year.

The package seemed to reflect a desire on Mr. Kim's part to demonstrate that his economic planners have absorbed some of the advice offered by Beijing during his visit there this year.

There was no mention of the North's rising complaints against the United States as Mr. Hong said the North would "expand and develop relations with all those countries that are friendly to our country." But he left no doubt Pyongyang would stick to old habits when he said North Koreans would deal with "the management and operation of the socialist economy our own way."

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

U.S. Finding Tangled Alliances on Rights

New York Times
April 8, 2001
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/world/08RIGH.html

UNITED NATIONS, April 5 - Midway through the annual United Nations review of human rights around the world, the Bush administration has made no significant breaks with recent American policies but is finding it harder to count on the support of traditional European allies, the leader of the American delegation says.

The official, Shirin Tahir-Kheli, who represented the earlier Bush administration at the Human Rights Commission in 1991 and 1992, said in a recent interview that she was finding "that the world has changed, not only in East-West terms but in West- West terms as well."

"We still like to think of it as partnership across the Atlantic, and we work with that in mind," she said. "But that partnership with what used to be a small group of countries has expanded to a full range of opinions. That assumption of close collaboration is somewhat changed. It's not a disagreement on the philosophy. The values are shared, which makes it even more puzzling."

Human rights groups concur, saying the problem stems in part from divisions that appeared between the Europeans and the Americans during the Clinton administration because of American reluctance to give active support to agreements important to Europeans. Among these were the treaties barring land mines and the use of child soldiers, and setting up an International Criminal Court.

The Clinton administration signed the court treaty at the last possible moment, on Dec. 31, after several years of fighting to change it to meet objections from the Pentagon and the Republican-led Congress. The Bush administration has said it would not send it to the Senate for ratification.

Moreover, the confrontation with Beijing over the American spy plane came just as Washington was hoping to censure China at the Human Rights Commission, now meeting in Geneva. Europe has been reluctant to lend support to such a move.

European attitudes are also being shaped by the perception that the new administration "has brought the cold war back," said Carroll Bogert, of Human Rights Watch in New York. "U.S. criticism of other countries on human rights grounds is being held in some suspicion in Europe because they feel that it's part of a return to cold war politics, in which human rights are really an instrument of something else."

The issue of China is to be debated around April 18, but the Chinese tactic - successful every year but one over the past decade - is to pre- empt discussion by persuading a majority on the 53-member commission to take China off the agenda. It is the only major country to have used this strategy.

Both Russia and the United States now allow themselves to be criticized, and speak in defense of their policies and practices. On Thursday, for example, Russia answered criticisms of the actions of its military in separatist Chechnya. The answers did not satisfy human rights groups, but Russian diplomats at least stated their case.

The Chinese, on the other hand, are now lobbying "extremely hard" for what is called a no-action motion, Ms. Tahir-Kheli said. "They do business very differently from us," she said. "They play hardball with countries. There are offers of assistance and offers of withdrawal of assistance. For a lot of countries, they loom very large."

Ms. Tahir-Kheli, a scholar of South Asia who has been a diplomat at the United Nations and a member of the National Security Council, said that in the resolution the United States aims to introduce on China, there is ample praise for what Beijing has accomplished, including a better standard of living for the people.

"But the issue is that this is the human rights commission, and if you look at their human rights record, that has deteriorated," she said. "We must shine the light on China and what is happening there."

The American delegation wants to focus on the use of psychiatric hospitals for dissidents, limits on political and religious expression and repression in Tibet, among other issues, she said.

The American position is made even more difficult because of the composition of the current Human Rights Commission. Among the members are Syria, Libya and Vietnam, backed by a strong lobby from the nonaligned movement, which has been resurgent in the United Nations system. Leaders of this group, including India and Pakistan, do not always allow scrutiny of their rights practices by commission-appointed monitors.

Ms. Tahir-Kheli praised independent human rights groups for fighting to open up more countries to scrutiny, and added that the United States would not close its doors.

"The U.S. is one of the few countries that says, `Come in, have a look,'" she said.

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

Seven Americans Among 16 Killed in Vietnam Helicopter Crash

New York Times
April 8, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/world/08CRAS.html

WASHINGTON, April 7 - Seven Americans and nine Vietnamese were killed today in a helicopter crash in Vietnam, the Pentagon said.

The helicopter was believed to be carrying a team searching for Americans missing in action from the Vietnam War when it crashed in central Vietnam, Vietnamese officials said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Terry Sutherland, said 7 Americans were among the 16 people killed.

At the American Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam, David Monk, a spokesman, said the embassy had little information about the crash but had heard that at least one passenger might have been assigned to the M.I.A. task force.

Officials in Vietnam reported that all 20 people on board had been killed. There was no immediate word from the Pentagon about the helicopter's mission.

Villagers saw the helicopter making unusual swinging movements in the air before it crashed into the side of a mountain, a local official said.

The authorities found 19 badly burned bodies, the police said. A man who was alive when they reached the site told them the plane was carrying an M.I.A. search team, officials said. He later died.

The sky was somewhat hazy when the helicopter crashed in midafternoon near the village of Thanh Tranh in Quang Binh Province, officials said. The area is about 280 miles south of Hanoi.

Officials were investigating the cause of the crash.

Since 1973, the remains of 591 American servicemen formerly listed as unaccounted for have been identified and returned to their families. There are 1,992 Americans still unaccounted for from the war in Southeast Asia, including 1,498 in Vietnam.

The United States spends $5 million to $6 million annually on M.I.A. recovery operations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

There are no large-scale excavations for missing American servicemen under way in Vietnam now, but some Americans remain in the country year-round doing advance work for future missions.

-------

Senator alleges Lockheed scammed up to $100M

USA Today
04/08/2001 - Updated 08:36 PM ET
By Edward T. Pound, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-09-lockheed.htm

WASHINGTON - Lockheed Martin Space Systems has created fictitious losses on the sale of some defense facilities in a scheme to reap tens of millions of dollars in windfall profits at taxpayers' expense, Sen. Thomas Harkin, D-Iowa, alleges.

In an interview and in a letter to the Defense Department, Harkin accused the space systems unit of Lockheed Martin Corp. of using "an apparent accounting trick" in an attempt to gouge taxpayers of perhaps $100 million. He cited three confidential reports done by Pentagon auditors. He says they found that the unit's accounting methods on the sale of facilities in California's Silicon Valley and elsewhere were "flawed, unreasonable, and inequitable to the government."

Lockheed Martin, the nation's largest defense contractor, says its actions are proper. But, officials say, there is "an honest disagreement" between Pentagon auditors and the company over accounting methods. "We are in negotiations with" Pentagon auditors "about that disagreement," says James Fetig, chief spokesman for Lockheed Martin, "and we are committed to reaching a mutually acceptable agreement on the issue."

Lockheed Martin's space systems unit is based in Denver. It has $5.5 billion in business with the Pentagon and NASA.

Harkin is a leading critic of wasteful defense spending. He says that the Pentagon paid for improvements on the buildings, depreciation, and repair and maintenance expenses under its defense contracts with Lockheed Martin. When the company sold the facilities, however, it allocated all proceeds to the land and none to the buildings, Harkin says. That meant the Pentagon could not receive any of the proceeds. Regulations prohibit it from sharing in gains on land sales.

Harkin says Lockheed Martin considered the buildings worthless. He says it now is proposing "to charge government contracts with over $95 million in losses for the supposedly worthless buildings."

He says Pentagon auditors described the losses as "fictitious." He says that the buildings were valued at millions of dollars on tax rolls, that Lockheed Martin had made $22 million in improvements on some facilities as late as 1999 and that it now "plans to lease back some of the 'worthless' buildings at a cost of over $11 million." That expense will be charged to its defense contracts, he says.

Lockheed Martin maintains that the buildings had no value. Officials say various buyers wanted only the land and have torn down the buildings or plan to do so. The buyers are putting up new office facilities on the sites, Lockheed Martin says.

Harkin worries that the case is not unique, that other contractors may be attempting to use the same scheme. Senior defense officials say they are taking the case "very seriously" and plan to look into it.

-------

Rushing to Failure

Sunday, April 8, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54816-2001Apr7?language=printer

AN OFFICIAL investigation into the causes of the latest crash of the Marines' V-22 Osprey has strengthened the evidence that the aircraft was rushed through development and testing by senior commanders who ignored or even suppressed evidence that the helicopter-airplane hybrid simply is not safe to fly. The Pentagon probe found that the Dec. 11 crash, which killed four crew members, was caused by a hydraulics failure, compounded by a software glitch; the underlying problem, chafing of hydraulic lines by nearby wire bundles, was identified in 1999 but never resolved. After the accident, the same problem was found in all eight of the Marines' remaining Ospreys.

Several Osprey pilots involved in the investigation told Thomas Ricks and Mary Pat Flaherty of The Post that the flaws were not addressed because the Marines were too intent on winning Pentagon approval for the aircraft to go into full production. That sounds right; after all, another Pentagon investigation already is examining allegations that the chief of the Osprey training squadron told his crews to falsify maintenance records, possibly with the encouragement of senior Marine commanders. And the accident report pointed out that even the formal plan for testing the V-22 was set up to meet a timeline, rather than to satisfy performance criteria. Taken together, the evidence points to the disturbing possibility that Marine officers knowingly subjected Osprey crews to increased risk of an accident rather than compromise their procurement goal -- with tragic results. As the investigations proceed, it is essential that the commanders involved in those decisions be held accountable.

With a blue-ribbon panel studying its viability even as the Bush administration looks for weapons programs it can modify or kill, the future of the Osprey now looks bleak. Vice President Cheney already tried to kill the program a decade ago when he was defense secretary. Perhaps that's appropriate; many defense experts believe that, even if it were problem-free, there is little justification for buying all 360 of the V-22s the Marines want, at a cost of $40 billion. Still, the Marines do need new transport aircraft, and some of the missions they may be needed for require speed and range beyond that of conventional helicopters. It's also true that new aircraft often crash while in development, but later prove reliable in practice once flaws are worked out.

That's not to say that production of the Osprey should go forward at this point -- it shouldn't unless and until all technical problems are resolved and the craft proves it is safe, a process that, if done correctly, should take at least a year or two. But it's worth noting that the Osprey's current problems have less to do with its design or ability to meet real needs than with a Pentagon culture that tends to rush weapons systems through development and testing not to meet any enemy, but to win a political race for congressional favor and procurement dollars. Several years ago another Pentagon review panel labeled this phenomena "rush to failure." Its subject was not the Osprey, but another weapons system that soon will be back in the news: missile defense. As the Bush administration contemplates a major effort to expand and accelerate that program, it would do well to remember the lessons of the Osprey.


-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Less Alarm in Hong Kong Over Disease of Livestock

New York Times
April 8, 2001
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/world/08HONG.html

HONG KONG, April 7 - In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair has mobilized the army to bury a half- million slaughtered sheep in a desperate attempt to contain foot-and- mouth disease. But in Hong Kong, which has more confirmed cases of the disease than Britain, the official response can best be described as relaxed.

No animals have been slaughtered, no restrictions have been placed on the sale of meat and there is no ban on importing meat or dairy products from other countries with the disease. When pigs die after having the disease - as at least 574 have in the last year - some farmers simply dump the carcasses on the side of the road in secluded parts of the New Territories.

"We get a lot of these," said a sanitation worker the other day as she sprinkled lime on a dead pig a few feet from a sign warning farmers not to dispose of animals there.

Foot-and-mouth disease is more a nuisance than a crisis in this former British colony for several reasons. The disease has been endemic in Asia for nearly 50 years. In the last year there have been 3,282 confirmed cases here in Hong Kong, compared with 1,061 in Britain.

Hong Kong does not export pork or other meat, which means it does not have to worry about conforming to the health standards of its trading partners. But other Asian countries, like South Korea and Taiwan do export, and foot-and-mouth disease has devastated their livestock industries.

South Korea slaughtered more than 350,000 cattle last year after an outbreak of the disease, while Taiwan destroyed 3.8 million pigs in 1997. Hong Kong rears only 440,000 pigs on 300 farms, and it is sensitive to any suggestion that it may have spread the disease.

Britain said recently that its epidemic might have started with pig swill being contaminated by illegally imported tainted meat.

Officials here said it was unlikely that the meat had come from Hong Kong because the strain of the foot- and-mouth virus in Britain is different from that found in pigs here.

With the disease so deeply rooted in Hong Kong - and in mainland China and Taiwan - the authorities have sought to contain it with vaccinations.

"People say that if you're not slaughtering animals, you're not taking it seriously enough," said Leslie Sims, the government's assistant director of agriculture quarantine. "But if we did that we would be quickly re-infected. The other approach is to try to live with the disease."

Dr. Sims was one of the first experts who investigated the deadly avian flu in Hong Kong in 1997. In that case, he said, it made sense for Hong Kong to kill more than a million chickens because it successfully stamped out a virus that posed a serious threat to human beings. Foot-and-mouth has much less effect on people.

This month the British government said it would consider vaccinating animals - an option once considered untenable because it could bar the country from exporting livestock and meat for at least a year.

Hong Kong's low-key approach to vaccination, however, has its limits. Farmers are supposed to administer two doses a year to pigs, one just before they go to market. That costs about $3 a head. To save money, some farmers give only one injection or skip the procedure altogether.

Despite the general agreement that foot-and-mouth disease is under control, there is some dispute over how widespread it is. Farmers say 6,000 pigs have died in the last year, 10 times the official estimate. Dr. Sims acknowledged that some farmers did not report cases because they feared damaging their livelihood.

The same fear may account for the clandestine way farmers dispose of pigs. They are supposed to leave the carcasses at one of 78 collection places and call the authorities to cart them away. But many simply stuff them into feed bags and dump them on the roadside in the middle of the night.

It is a jarring image for a city that prides itself on its first-world amenities. On a recent Monday morning, the carcasses of 10 pigs were found in or near public trash cans in the New Territories. At one bus stop, commuters in suits stepped gingerly around a dead pig to get on a bus.

"This is really a nuisance for people, and also a potential health hazard, since it attracts dogs, rodents and insects," said Lo Wing-lok, a specialist in infectious disease. "The government has to upgrade its enforcement."

-------- genetics

Thailand bans genetically engineered crop trials

Sun, 8 Apr 2001

Greenpeace today applauded the Thai Government's decision to stop the release of all Genetically Engineered (GE) crops into the environment and no longer allow any GE field trials in Thailand. With this decision Thailand takes the lead in Asia to protect its environment, biodiversity and farmers from genetic pollution.

The cabinet of the Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra decided to instruct the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives to halt all approvals for GE field trials (1). The decision should also mark the end of ongoing field trials on GE cotton and GE corn, conducted by agribusiness giant Monsanto, the second largest seed provider in Thailand (2). Thailand has already banned all commercial growing of GE crops on its territory (3).

"Thailand's biodiversity is unique and precious. It is our culture, our food and our future. Greenpeace congratulates this Government action to protect our food and fields from the dangers of genetic engineering and encourages other ASEAN governments to follow. We demand that Monsanto respects this decision and terminates their existing field trials," said ecologist Dr Jiragorn Gajaseni, Executive Director of Greenpeace South East Asia.

By making this bold decision Thailand can avoid the environmental and economic problems already being experienced by those countries that have adopted GE crops. In Canada GE canola is developing into a major weed problem, which requires the use of conventional toxic herbicides for removal. In the United States over a billion dollars have been spent trying to recall a genetically engineered potentially allergenic Starlink corn, which contaminated 430 million bushels of harvest.

In order to truly assure Thailand's GE free status, Greenpeace calls on the government to now urgently check and control remaining imports of genetically engineered food and commodities, such as corn and soybeans from the US.

"Thailand has taken the first step to protect Asia from the threat of genetic engineering. The message is clear: The only way to prevent genetic pollution from GE crops is never to plant them in the first place," said Auaiporn Suthonthanyakorn, Greenpeace GE campaigner for South East Asia.

For more information:

In Thailand: Auaiporn Suthonthanyakorn, Greenpeace Genetic Engineering Campaigner, Thailand, Mob: +6618207006;

In the UK: Charlie Kronick, GM campaign Manager 0207 865 8228; Louise Edge, Greenpeace UK Press Office 0207 865 8255.

Greenpeace International: Isabelle Meister, Greenpeace International GE campaigner, Mob: +41794184455; Greenpeace International Press Office, Teresa Merilainen, Tel: +31205236637 {HYPERLINK http://www.greenpeace.org} http://www.greenpeace.org

1) The decision of the Prime Minister 50/2001, made on 3 April is an instruction and it translates: the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperative to halt all GE crop field trials. On the same day it was decided to set up a panel to draft a biosafety act, farmers, consumers and academics will participate in this panel.

2) In 2000, the two GE crops allowed for field testing in Thailand were Monsanto's Bt (bacillus thuriengiensis) Bollgard cotton and Monsanto's Bt corn, both genetically engineered to kill insects. For the Bt Bollgard cotton, Monsanto has a permit to conduct field trials for this and the next year. Monsanto's field trials have been contested by Thai farmers' organisations and environmental groups.

(3) In October 1999, the Thai Economic Policy Committee decided to ban the import of GE seeds for commercial cultivation, but continued to allow research-oriented imports. The ban will continue until GMOs are scientifically proven to be safe.

-------- spying

Bush Team Is in Search of Way Out of Impasse

New York Times
April 8, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/world/08POLI.html

WASHINGTON, April 7 - If the administration is able to defuse its dispute with China without opening President Bush to charges that he is appeasing Beijing, administration officials suggest it could result from a change in strategy decided at a meeting on Wednesday morning in the Oval Office.

On Monday and Tuesday, Mr. Bush had stepped into the Rose Garden to deliver two toughly worded messages, the first demanding access to the 24 Americans, the second to demand their immediate release. Little was said about the missing Chinese fighter pilot, beyond an offer to help in the search for him in the South China Sea.

Some lower-level diplomats and officials at the National Security Council had expressed concern that Mr. Bush's wording had been too harsh - and could drive President Jiang Zemin into a corner. But other White House officials argued that Mr. Bush could not appear to be softening his tone, especially before American officials in China had been granted a first meeting with the detained crew members.

"We had no idea what condition they were in, beyond the Chinese assurances that they were fine," said one senior administration official. "What choice did we have but to issue a strong statement?" But by Wednesday morning, Mr. Bush himself seemed to be wondering if his strong language needed to be recalibrated.

In a morning meeting in the Oval Office with his top advisers, Mr. Bush was briefed on a meeting the previous night between the Chinese ambassador to Washington, Yang Jiechi, and the deputy secretary of state, Richard L. Armitage. Mr. Yang had emphasized for the first time the need for an "explanation" - as opposed to an apology - and had urged American officials to focus attention on the Chinese pilot, who by then was presumed dead.

"The president said: `We should really be looking for a way out of this,'" according to one official familiar with the conversation. Mr. Bush was addressing his comments to Vice President Dick Cheney, chief of staff Andrew Card, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and his counselor, Karen Hughes. It is not clear if other officials also attended.

Ms. Rice mentioned that twice the previous night she had briefly described to reporters, in two separate background briefings, American regrets about the apparent death of the Chinese pilot.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had issued similar words of regret, speaking on the record to reporters on his airplane, returning from Florida late Tuesday afternoon.

Ms. Hughes, who is Mr. Bush's top communications official, told the president that even if the words were uttered, "no one had picked up on it," and the Chinese certainly did not hear it, officials recounted.

That, White House officials said, triggered the decision to send General Powell out later Wednesday morning issuing a fuller statement of regret. Mr. Bush repeated it, adding on Thursday that the Chinese pilot and his family were in his prayers.

Mr. Bush has been careful in his public statements, not going beyond wording agreed upon with his closest advisers. And initially the president's more conciliatory statements appeared to have some effect: The pace of negotiations picked up, and Mr. Armitage and Adm. Joseph W. Prueher, the American ambassador to China, began working on formalizing the statement of regret in a letter that Admiral Prueher plans to sign on behalf of the United States.

American officials were heartened on Friday when Mr. Jiang, speaking in Chile, seemed to signal that a statement that included the equivalent of the words "excuse me" - he said the phrase in English - would pave the way to a solution.

But there is growing concern in the White House that those comments may have been inspired by the foreign ministry and political officials in Beijing who are more invested in the totality of China's relationship with the United States, and did not reflect the feelings of hard-liners in the People's Liberation Army. "There are multiple signals coming from Beijing," one senior official said. "They may be meant to keep us off balance, or they may be because they are still arguing with each other."

---

China Buildup Has Taiwan on Edge

New York Times
April 8, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/world/08CHIN.html

CHIAYI AIR BASE, Taiwan, April 6 - The collision between an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet has focused attention on China's military buildup. But none of the pilots at this air base in southern Taiwan need any reminders.

With the Chinese mainland just 100 miles away, Taiwan's F-16 fighter aircraft roar into the air to patrol the uneasy Taiwan Strait. Their Chinese counterparts, in turn, take to the air in SU-27's and other Russian-designed fighters.

"We have a fuzzy peace," said the deputy commander of the F-16 squadron here, who asked to be identified only by his pilot's call sign, "Benson" Kao. "Recently, they have been flying a lot."

China has steadily expanded its arsenal of missiles, aircraft, submarines and destroyers over the last several years as its economy has grown. Much of that buildup is aimed squarely at Taiwan. In fact, the midair collision near Hainan island arose in the context of Beijing's efforts to extend its reach in the air and seas around the Taiwan Strait and beyond, and the intensified American efforts to monitor the Chinese buildup.

Whatever the outcome of the dispute over the collision, China and the United States are increasingly likely to jostle for dominance in the region, and in particular over Taiwan's fate.

China has objected vociferously to the United States' sale of sophisticated weapons to Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province. The Bush administration is scheduled to decide on a package of arms sales later this month.

President Bush, in his campaign for the White House, put Beijing on notice that the United States would come to Taiwan's assistance if it was attacked, going far beyond the ambiguous assurances made by previous presidents. "It's important for the Chinese to understand that if there's a military action, we will help Taiwan defend itself," Mr. Bush said.

China's strategy behind its buildup along the Taiwan Strait is two-fold. First and foremost, it is a form of political pressure to compel Taiwan to accept Beijing's sovereignty. And it is also a way to frighten the United States from coming to Taiwan's aid by raising the specter of American casualties.

But there is also a military strategy that draws on lessons China absorbed from the United States' success in the Persian Gulf war. If Beijing decided force was needed, the aim would be to use long-range weapons to shock Taiwan into submission and win decisively at a low cost. The victory also has to come quickly - before Washington can decide whether it wants to take the risk of intervening militarily.

"China would not try to destroy the economy or kill the population, and it is unlikely they would launch an all- out amphibious attack," said Parris H. Chang, a defense specialist and legislator in President Chen Shui- bian's Democratic Progressive Party. "They would try to destroy our will to resist and then call for negotiations."

The centerpiece of China's new arsenal is its force of short-range ballistic missiles, which are at three bases in or near Fujian province along the Taiwan Strait: Yongan, Leping and the newest at Xianyou.

American intelligence officials estimate that there are about 300 CSS-6 and CSS-7 missiles, which have the range to blanket the island. Taiwanese military officials put the number of missiles higher, at 400 or more. The main targets would be Taiwan's radars, command posts, airfields, ports, fuel depots and power plants.

The weapons, however, are very inaccurate and would do well to land 300 to 600 meters from their target. Still, the Chinese are beginning to incorporate improved guidance systems that rely on information from satellites.

According to American intelligence, China only has about 50 mobile launchers, which limits the size of each salvo and could leave an hour or more between each. That could be enough time for Taiwan to repair its runways and keep its air force flying, assuming its military made the necessary but unglamorous investments in such maintenance programs.

In addition to missiles, China has more than 4,000 warplanes. But few are modern fighters. China has acquired about 50 SU-27 fighters from the Russians and is planning to buy almost 200 more. It has also deployed about 10 SU-30 Russian-made attack planes and is expected to deploy as many as 50.

But Chinese pilots have never practiced flying in formations greater than 20 planes, and in general China's pilots receive far less training than those in Taiwan, which also has a greater number of top-line fighters.

Other military options are more problematic. China does not have a convincing capability to conduct an amphibious assault across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan's coastline is unsuitable for such a landing, and China has only enough military craft to move about 10,000 troops, far too few to seize the island.

Nor would it be easy to mount an airtight blockade. China has only two supply vessels that can carry fuel and water to the ships that would be enforcing the quarantine, and only one ship that can transport munitions. And the longer a blockade takes to put in place, the more time the United States has to intervene.

Still, Taiwan's military experts worry that a missile attack could frighten and demoralize the population while China's submarines and ships placed added pressure on the island by mining harbors.

Tyson G. Fu, the director of the Institute of Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Taiwan, said the Chinese People's Liberation Army was "good at finding its enemies' weak points and exploiting them."

Aware that Taiwan lacks an effective missile defense, the Chinese are brandishing their missile threat. "China's missiles may be more of a psychological threat than a military one," Mr. Fu said, "but sometimes psychological threats can be more powerful."

A senior Taiwanese official said the island's best hope would be to defend against China's first blows and hold out until the United States had time enough to decide to intervene - perhaps several weeks.

Much of China's buildup, then, has been acquired with the intention of making the United States at least think twice about getting involved in a fight over Taiwan.

To deter Washington from dispatching carrier battle groups to the region, China has bought four Russian Kilo-class submarines. The submarines can operate using their diesel engines or batteries, which makes them quiet and hard to detect.

China has also bought two Russian-made Sovremenny-class destroyers. The ships are equipped with a sea-skimming antiship missile, a major worry for both Taiwan and the United States. But China has little capability to find targets at sea at long-range, and the Sovremenny destroyers have no real way to defend against submarines.

While most analysts believe the United States Navy could decisively defeat the Chinese fleet, Beijing is calculating that the prospect of American casualties would temper Washington's commitment to Taiwan's security.

Nobody in the region is eager for a war, least of all the Chinese, who are intent on developing their economy, absorbed with internal political struggles and hopeful of winning international acceptance by hosting the 2008 Olympics.

"China has a political strategy toward Taiwan with a military component, not vice versa," said James Mulvenon of the Rand Corporation. "The best option for the Chinese military is to win without fighting. The second best is to win by brandishing the swords or with low levels of military activity. The next to worst option is to fight an all-out war and win, and the absolute worst is to fight a war and lose. That would mean de facto independence for Taiwan and the end of the regime in Beijing."

Still, Beijing has not hesitated to rattle its sabers to press Taiwan to accept that it is part of China. During Taiwan's 1996 presidential election campaign, when China believed that the island was beginning to drift away politically, China fired missiles close to Taiwan's two major ports: the northern port of Keelung and the southern port of Kao-hsiung, where most of Taiwan's fleet is based. And many analysts believe that Beijing is prepared to attack Taiwan should it declare its independence.

Taiwan's leaders say the island needs to have a credible military force and close ties to the United States to stand up to Beijing's pressure. An acceptable political arrangement leading to greater integration between the two sides may eventually be possible, they say, but not at the point of a gun and only if Beijing moves toward democracy.

The result has been a slow-motion arms race as China buys arms from Russia and Taiwan seeks to counter by buying weapons from the United States. And as the United States' commitment to Taiwan's defense has become less unambiguous, Taiwan's leaders have begun to argue that Washington's credibility in the region is linked to Taiwan security.

"There is no one-shot solution," said Pi-chao Chen, Taiwan's vice defense minister, of Taiwan's relations with China. "There is only an evolutionary process with an open-ended outcome. If we can succeed in deterring China from ever taking a punch, that will not only serve our interests. It will also serve the interest of China, Japan and America."

---

China Is Demanding That U.S. Do More to End Standoff

New York Times
April 8, 2001
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/world/08PLAN.html

BEIJING, April 7 - China insisted in a strongly worded statement released today that the United States has not done enough to end the crisis over 24 Americans detained after their spy plane made an emergency landing nearly a week ago. While negotiations to find a way out of the crisis continued, official propaganda in China both reflected popular anger and kept it ratcheted high.

"Regrettably, the U.S. statement on this incident so far is unacceptable to the Chinese side, and the Chinese people have found it most dissatisfying," Qian Qichen, China's top foreign policy official, wrote in a letter delivered to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Friday night and made public today by the official New China News Agency.

The news agency, without providing a direct quote, paraphrased Mr. Qian as saying that the United States should apologize. In his letter, written as Mr. Qian accompanied President Jiang Zemin of China on a tour of Latin America, Mr. Qian stated: "The position of the Chinese government on this incident is very clear. The U.S. side should take up its responsibilities for the incident."

The official Chinese news media also featured the wife of the Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, who collided with the American plane and is presumed dead at sea. He has been turned into a national hero, and Chinese television gave prominent treatment to an angry letter his wife is said to have written to President Bush from her "sickbed."

It showed her being greeted today by China's defense minister, who repeated assertions that "this collision was entirely caused by the U.S. side."

In Washington, a senior American official said that "the multiple signals coming from the Chinese" have created apprehension in the Bush administration that the Chinese military could delay resolution and release of the 24 Americans detained when their spy plane made an emergency landing on Hainan island off southern China after the collision.

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said today that negotiations with the Chinese "remain sensitive" and would continue, but demurred at the continuing Chinese calls for an apology.

"The response is that the United States is going to continue its diplomatic efforts to secure the release of the men and women," he said. "There's still a series of ongoing diplomatic meetings in Beijing and the conversations continue."

President Bush was at Camp David, where he was briefed on developments, but officials said there were no meetings today between the two sides in Washington.

Earlier, American officials said that Mr. Qian's letter seemed to be following up on private Chinese demands for an "explanation" from the United States, which the American officials interpreted as being different from an apology.

"It's a word they have been using with increasing frequency since the middle of the week, and we think that may create an opening," said a senior official involved in the talks.

In public, however, China's words were sharp, matching the anger voiced by many Chinese. The obvious ease with which an American plane could spy on China from international waters, and the quick American statements ascribing blame to the Chinese pilot and demanding the immediate return of the plane and its crew, struck raw nerves here.

The exact manner in which the incident is described and resolved has become a matter of national honor, which could complicate efforts to reach a compromise.

The agency report said, "It is essential for the U.S. side to face up to the facts squarely, adopt a positive and practical approach and apologize to the Chinese people." It went on to quote directly from Mr. Qian's letter, saying: "Then, the two sides may move on to discuss matters concerning the U.S. military plane and other remaining problems."

The Chinese report added what it said was a quote from a letter from General Powell to Mr. Qian. "We very much regret the pain this accident has caused," the general was quoted as saying. "President Bush is very concerned about your missing pilot. His thoughts and prayers are with the pilot's family members and loved ones, as are mine and all Americans.' "

On Friday, China's television news, guided by the Communist Party propaganda department, reported President Bush's "regret." But tonight's news broadcast described the uncompromising letter from Mr. Qian and gave featured treatment to the pilot's wife, Ruan Guoqin, who has been described as severely stricken by grief. She was shown being brought to Beijing, supposedly for improved medical care, and where she was greeted in her hospital room by the defense minister, Gen. Chi Haotian.

In the carefully crafted letter to President Bush, written in refined, often literary Chinese and reportedly delivered to the American Embassy in Beijing this morning, Ms. Ruan began by saying, "I'm an ordinary Chinese woman writing you this letter in tears from my sickbed."

She described how the news had wrecked her health and said that "our 6-year-old son has kept asking when his father will come home."

While voicing understanding for American worry over its crew, she added: "What is incredible is your and your government's apathetic attitude towards my husband's life," according to a translation released by People's Daily.

"You are too cowardly to voice an `apology' and have been trying to shirk your responsibility repeatedly and defame my husband groundlessly," she wrote in an apparent reference to Pentagon charges that Mr. Wang was known as a reckless hot dog who had often shadowed planes too closely.

"What the Chinese people desire most is peace," Ms. Ruan said. "In conclusion, please accept my best wishes for your family."

After meeting with Ms. Ruan, General Chi said the People's Liberation Army would not let Washington evade its blame. "It's impermissible for them to want to shirk responsibility. The People's Liberation Army does not agree to it, the Chinese people don't agree to it. The people of the world also won't agree to it."

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American Aides Make Third Visit to Crew of Downed Spy Plane

New York Times
April 8, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/world/08CREW.html

HAIKOU, China, Sunday, April 8 - Two American diplomats held a third meeting with the 24 detained American servicemen and women here early this morning, nearly a week after the EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane they were flying collided with a Chinese fighter jet and made an emergency landing at a military base on the south end of Hainan island in southern China.

On Friday, American officials said the Chinese had agreed to provide American diplomats with regular access to the crew members until they are released. But China has not made any public statements about those agreements and appears intent on emphasizing its control of the situation and restricting diplomatic access to the crew.

Following the pattern that the Chinese government set for two previous meetings, the seven American diplomats waited all day before being summoned shortly before 10 p.m. to board three black Toyota Crown sedans and a red minivan at the Hainan Mandarin Hotel, where the American diplomats are staying.

They were taken to the Hainan provincial government compound in downtown Haikou, where they met with Chinese officials for more than two hours before two of the diplomats were allowed to go to a nearby military base for China's Southern Fleet to meet with the crew members.

The American diplomats handed over to the Chinese items to be passed to the crew, including contact lens solution, nail clippers, playing cards, cigarettes and a copy of Saturday's International Herald Tribune, which carried extensive coverage of the diplomatic standoff.

The Americans have asked that they be allowed to visit the crew during the daytime and without the laborious meeting beforehand, in which everything said must be translated into the other language and written down and in which the Chinese repeat their charges, for example, that the crew entered China illegally.

As with the past two meetings, only the American Embassy defense attaché, Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, and the chief of the consular section at the United States Consulate in Guangzhou, Ted Gong, were allowed to visit the crew.

Their hourlong meeting, which the two men were able to conduct without Chinese representatives present, began at about 1 a.m.. Much of the meetings have consisted of administrative matters, such as securing powers of attorney for family members of some of the crew so that they can take care of business back home. The crew asked for more toiletries, such as cotton swabs, to be delivered at the next visit.

At a news briefing after the meeting, General Sealock repeated his earlier report that the crew are in "very high spirits."

"They are looking forward to going home," the general told a crowd of more than 50 reporters gathered in a hotel conference room after the meeting. "They do offer that they very much appreciate the e-mails that they've been allowed to receive from home."

General Sealock took no questions and left after his brief statement to telephone President Bush at Camp David, the presidential retreat.

Friday's optimism that the crew would be released soon dimmed on Saturday after China published the contents of a letter that Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen delivered Friday to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

Many Chinese say the crew members will not be released until Beijing abandons the search for the pilot of the F-8 jet that collided with the American plane. The pilot, 33-year- old Wang Wei, ejected from his aircraft and has not been found.

-------- activists

TV Takeover Stirs Protest in Moscow

New York Times
April 8, 2001
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/world/08RUSS.html

MOSCOW, April 7 - Journalists opposing the takeover of Russia's sole independent television network by a state-dominated monopoly took their cause to the streets again today, telling a huge crowd of demonstrators that their voices were the network's best hope for survival.

But even before the rally began, the first crack in the journalists' ranks appeared when a prominent reporter quit to protest the way the resistance was being conducted.

Thousands of people thronged to the city's television center north of downtown for the protest on a rainy morning so gloomy that barely a third of Moscow's 1,800-foot Ostankino television tower was visible in the background.

Journalists and supportive politicians denounced the government for allowing the takeover, by the vast natural-gas monopoly Gazprom, to proceed. One correspondent told the crowd that the journalists would refuse to "turn into machine tools for the state."

Yevgeny Kiselyov, the network's best-known journalist, said the reporters would prefer to cover the news rather than engage in protests, but had no choice.

"The entire world community is watching us today," he said. "They can now see that Boris Jordan, Mikhail Lesin and Alfred Koch should not be trusted." Mr. Lesin is the Kremlin's press minister and Mr. Koch is the Gazprom official supervising the takeover. Mr. Koch appointed Mr. Jordan, an American investor of Russian descent, to run the company.

NTV's parent company, Media- Most, and its maverick owner, the tycoon Vladimir A. Gusinsky, have been under steady assault by criminal prosecutors and Gazprom lawyers for close to a year. Gazprom contends that its 46 per cent stake in the network is being mismanaged.

Mr. Gusinsky, who has been jailed once, fled to Spain last fall saying that the Kremlin was politically persecuting him for his companies' critical journalism.

Gazprom, of which 38 per cent is owned by the government, threw out NTV's board and installed new management on Tuesday after persuading an American investment firm to vote its stake in the network with Gazprom's 46 per cent ownership.

But the journalists have refused to recognize the managers, and a five- day standoff has yet to break. The journalist who quit today, Leonid Parfyonov, took aim at Mr. Kiselyov, NTV's general director until Tuesday, contending that he had mounted an autocratic and "Soviet-style" resistance to Gazprom.

The Moscow police, who were heavily in attendance at today's protest, estimated the crowd at 6,500. But NTV said that at least 25,000 showed up - an enormous crowd in Moscow, where political demonstrations by anyone except Communists are rare. Reuters said the turnout appeared to be considerably larger than the crowd that gathered in downtown Moscow last Saturday for an NTV protest, estimated at about 10,000.

The crowd was varied, from families with young children to retirees and ordinary citizens who simply showed up on their own. NTV handed out baseball caps in the network's signature green color, and the network covered the demonstration live.

"NTV is my program," said Vladimir Blinkov, 55, a businessman. "It does reflect what is going on in my motherland. It's not like the first and second programs" - a reference to the state-controlled ORT and RTR networks - "where there are a lot of lies."

Asked who he thought was behind the takeover, Mr. Blinkov replied, "Our authorities don't like it when people begin to think differently from them. They press on NTV, but they want to suppress the nation."

An older woman who identified herself simply as Romena, a musician, was more pointed. "In 1938, the most intelligent, the most highly skilled people were arrested in the Soviet Union," she said. "No one was ashamed of it, and they were sent God knows where. This is what is going on with NTV."

Gazprom has insisted that it will not interfere with the journalists' or the network's freedom of speech. But it has refused to accede to the reporters' choice of Mr. Kiselyov, a bitter Gazprom critic, as their chief editor.

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The Land Is Ours

08/04/01
By Sophie Style
Interview w/ Gustavo Esteva on Zapatista March

This article will appear in the May issue of Z Magazine (www.zmag.org) The interview was carried out a week after the Zapatistas arrived in Mexico City.

Gustavo Esteva is a grassroots activist and deprofessionalized intellectual. Author of many books and essays, he is a columnist for Mexican newspapers and member of many grassroots organizations.

S: Seven years after the Zapatista uprising, 23 indigenous comandantes and subcomandante Marcos travelled from Chiapas through 12 of the poorest states of Mexico with mobilisations by the tens of thousands along the way - in order to convince the Congress in Mexico City to approve the law on indigenous rights and culture. What do you think has been the impact of this historic march for indigenous dignity?

G: I think the whole march has had three main impacts. The first was to take off the mask of decency and tolerance that was hiding a profound racism in Mexican society. This is the racism of the elite that has always governed Mexico, but it has spread throughout the whole of society and is now a very profound, hidden wound that expresses itself in many different forms. Right after the march it was evident, particularly in the reactions of leaders of the private sector and the government. They were in a kind of hysteria reacting against the march, and this meant that we could start to speak clearly about the real situation. Now we have the proof of this racism that has always been denied, and it will be one of the main issues in our public debate.

A second and very important function of the march was to make clear to everybody what we can call the fiesta of diversity. It removed the blindfolds from our eyes and showed this diversity in a very effective way, even for the most closed minds and for the media. This diversity was of course about the Indian peoples about their many different kinds of cultures, dresses, languages but it was also about all the other groups that took part in the march, including the foreigners. This was particularly clear in the final event in the Zocalo [the biggest square in Latin America]. The simple fact is that we have a very diverse society, and this is the main endowment of Mexico. We can now see that even among those opposing the Constitutional Reform, there is a very obvious change in the discourse. They can no longer speak clearly about the idea of a homogenous and uniform society, and this is also very important for the public debate.

Finally, I think the most important impact of the march is that it was a perfect illustration of a different political style for modern society. The definition of politics in all the theories and practices around the world can be summed up in the words of the Interior Minister after the march, when he was asked why foreigners were being allowed to participate in it and express opinions against the government. He replied saying that they are not participating in political activities because politics is only about getting votes and taking power to govern the country. That is the classical conception of politics. And as we know, there is a radical disenchantment with formal or representative democracy - people everywhere are abandoning the ballot box. So I think what we are seeing is an alternative notion of politics that we call radical democracy, the possibility that people take their destinies into their own hands and have a legitimate political activity. I think this was very well illustrated by the march, particularly by the discourse in the Zocalo which said something very important about the role of the Zapatistas: we are not showing you the way, we are not guiding the way.

S: Still many people look towards them as a vanguard. As a revolutionary movement, how do you think the Zapatistas have challenged the traditional role of leadership?

G: Marcos stated in a recent interview on Mexican television that the Zapatistas consider themselves more as social rebels than as revolutionaries. They are not classical revolutionaries because their aim is not to seize power and transform society from the top down. Instead, the whole caravan and the words used in the communiqus imply that the problem of power is not upstairs but in the hands of the people, and that the transformation of society should happen from the bottom up, starting with the people.

Another important point is that in the past all revolutionaries have considered themselves to have the truth in their hands, that they know the way. What the Zapatistas are saying is we don't have the truth, we are not the ones who should lead anyone. Marcos also makes a strong argument for this in the interview saying that as a military struggle, they should never govern, because violence should never be used to convince. Instead therole of an armed movement is to bring awareness to the problem and then step aside, which is what the EZLN have done in relation to the autonomous municipalities. So in many different ways they are destroying the idea of the great leader, of the party, of the organisation, of whoever is at the top, and creating the possibility of the people organising themselves.

S: However in spite of these claims, there is still an enormous focus on Marcos as the leader of the movement, and many have commented on the Marcomania displayed throughout the march and his status as a pop-idol for some.

G: Most of the focus on Marcos as the leader of the movement comes from the mainstream media, and has been perpetuated by the business and economic elite. This has been part of a seven year strategy to undermine the movement, to claim that it is being led by outsiders, and of course it has at its roots the racism that maintains that only a mestizo can speak for and represent the Indians. Instead, we can see that Marcos has played a key role as a bridge between the Indian communities and modern society. Many of the communiqus and ideas coming directly from the Indian people would be incomprehensible to the modern mind, would make no sense at all, and Marcos has been able to act as an interpreter, and to allow the communities to speak through him, and to give a wider, international perspective to the struggle.

There is also a human tendency to look for leaders, and today there is a void in society, especially among young people, that gets filled in one way or another. Marcos admits that this has been one of the errors of the movement: that they did not anticipate and do enough to avoid the personification around Marcos, which has blinded people to see what is behind him, namely the organisation, the indigenous communities.

S: And it is here in the communities that this alternative notion of politics you talk about is being born. What kind of examples do you see that can be relevant to the rest of the world?

G: I think we have examples all over the world. I don't want to make too much of the analogy, but just to stimulate the imagination, I think a good analogy for this whole process is the telephone system across the world.

You can now call anyone in any country from any place, but you don't really have a structure of power at the centre. You have thousands of companies, thousands of technologies operating the telephone system, and the only thing you need are some agreed rules of the game. If you want to participate in that game, you need to follow certain rules of behaviour and then youre part of the whole system. Using that analogy, to be part of Mexican society, to have good co-ordination, we need some common rules of behaviour. We dont need a structure of power, just rules of behaviour establishing limits that can be accepted by everyone.

S: Like the rules in the COCOPA law that would give indigenous communities autonomy within the state? What might these look like in practice, at a local level?

G: Yes. For example, there are now very well defined limits in the law of the state of Oaxaca. It is the first law in Mexico that incorporates what we call a juridically pluralistic regime that explicitly recognises the normative systems of the Indian peoples. First it entails the explicit recognition of the Indian peoples themselves in the legal system. This is one of the problems of the Constitutional Reform. Then it acknowledges that in Mexico we have different juridical systems, meaning that in every Indian group you have a specific normative system defining what is justice and how to implement it.

One example of the different rules established in this law is in the case of homicide. In half the communities of Oaxaca, when a person kills another person, the problem is not the punishment of the killer but compensation for the victim. The point is first of all to understand why the killing happened. Although there is opposition from human rights activists, they tie the person to a tree for a few hours in order to bring the elders to talk to him, to understand what happened, how he was out of his mind killing another person. After that he is liberated, but he has the obligation of being economically responsible for the family of the dead person. And that is very healthy for that society. It is not only that they don't have prisons, but that person has a real opportunity for rehabilitation. He usually becomes a very good citizen because he has two families on his shoulders. In many cases, hes one of those that go to the U.S. to work to get a few dollars, because he needs the money for the family. But he cannot leave the community for good, because he belongs to the community and to abandon it is worse than jail or death. It is an expression of the basic affiliation to the community as the basic definition of yourself. They are accepting that in this case, they can resolve the question of killing within their normative system. At the same time the general law is accepting its own limits. If an outsider --a foreigner or a Mexican-- commits a crime in the community, he will be referred to the conventional courts. This is just one example of the different rules established in this law, with mutual respect and mutual limits for the operation of the different systems.

S: In terms of defining these commonly agreed limits, different groups coming from diverse cultures or opposite ends of the political spectrum will have different standpoints, and this will inevitably lead to conflicts. How can these tensions be resolved effectively?

G: These kinds of conflict are particularly challenging for the so-called developed societies that are ruled by reason. They assume that there is a common reason or shared conceptual system. But what is called universal reason is really the reason or the conceptual system of one specific group. Dialogue has always been on the terms of one specific rational system. How you can have agreement between people that have different conceptual systems? Dialogue for us implies transcending the logos (reason), not reducing the agreement to the conceptual system of any of the parties.

I have a beautiful story. I was present during a long conversation between a very gentle officer of the Canadian government and a Mohawk, and at one point, after many hours of discussion, the Canadian officer lost his patience and said, But Chief, you need to understand that the Canadian government will never accept the sovereignty of the Mohawk people. And then the Mohawk Chief jumped to his feet and said, We are not interested in your notion of sovereignty. For you, sovereignty implies causing some harm to our Mother Earth, establishing lines of division and signs of no trespass. For us, in our language, in our notion, our conception of sovereignty is to be free like the wind. That is what we want.

This notion of being free like the wind cannot be understood by the Canadian government. You cannot expect to have, even after many long conversations, a real agreement in rational terms, because the rationality of the Mohawks and the rationality of the Canadian government are basically different. They cannot have a common understanding. So what we are talking about are accords that go beyond rationality, rules that can be accepted even if there are different interpretations of the meaning of these rules. What we are talking about are accords from the heart (accord comes from the Latin cor, heart), not from the mind.

S: And in the context of the global economy, which is devouring peoples physical and cultural spaces across the world, how can communities be free like the wind?

G: I think there are great opportunities for doing this. The nation-state was created with capitalism because that was the perfect model for its expansion. The main function of the nation-state was the administration of the national economy. Now the nation-state becomes an obstacle for the expansion of capital, and in a sense the nation-state and traditional sovereignty are being demolished. There isn't any country that still has something that can be described as a national economy; even the economy of the U.S. is no longer in the hands of the Americans - it is absolutely permeated by global forces. This means that now the nation-state is being confronted by a two-pronged challenge: by transnational corporations, by the expansion of capital, and by people in their regions that are no longer satisfied by this model. We are seeing a real opportunity for the transformation of the political regimes of the world.

Protectionism never protected the people. It protected local and national business. Now if people have no trust in bureaucrats and no trust in the market, then the solution is people themselves at the local level, not at the national level, deciding about investment and trade. In a specific village or town, people can come together and say, we want or we dont want this investment, we want or we dont want this kind of trade, we can accept or not that these products can go out or come in.

I think it is absolutely feasible and practical that a small village can win over a big corporation. We say that David can always win over Goliath if David fights in Davids territory. We cannot win against the World Bank in Washington. One of the reasons is the logic of globalisation itself. Corporations are looking for opportunities for profit everywhere. They have the whole planet as their horizon. Then if we at a local level increase the social costs of investment through our opposition, then there is a point at which the corporation says, Well, this is not the place to stay. I will look for another place because these stupid people are blocking my profits. We are not solving the problem, but we are solving the problem of a specific group of people, because they go to some other place. I think as many more people do the same we are in a sense suffocating the space of capitalism.

S: The Zapatista movement has played a key role in linking groups in Mexico and around the world, and has triggered a shared understanding of the forces that are destroying communities and ecosystems around the world, hasn't it?

G: Absolutely. What we are talking about now is localisation, as a word that is both opposite to globalisation and localism. I think this is one of the basic elements defining Zapatismo. There is a sense that what we had before Zapatismo was a form of localism in which people were resisting in their small communities, in a region, but concentrating their forces internally. This resistance is not only the traditional resistance of Indian peoples entrenched in their own communities --you can see this in the U.S. or in England or wherever, a small group of people resisting Walmart, or a road or whatever. They become localists, and in many occasions this localism can become fundamentalism, a very dangerous form of localism that is highly authoritarian and inward-looking.

What we are now describing is a transition from resistance to liberation - because people are still rooted in their own place, committed to that place, strengthening their roots in that place, but also opening themselves to wide coalitions of others like them, looking for solidarity, mutual support, new ideas, learning from others. This process of learning from others has been the definition of Zapatismo from the very beginning. This is really a critical point. Now you can have these great coalitions of discontent that are really very effective, not only in classical terms of solidarity where people support a group fighting elsewhere, but as a process of mutual solidarity, a shared learning process. I think these coalitions evolve into what was defined by the Zapatistas as the politics of one No, many Yes'. Yes, we share this opposition to something, to neoliberalism, to a nuclear plant or to whatever, but we can accept at the same time many different reasons for this opposition, many different ideas, many different affirmations.

S: Chomsky commented during the march that the Zapatistas are one of the most important movements fighting neoliberalism and that their ripple effect could change the course of contemporary history. What are your thoughts on this?

G: At one point in the Intercontinental Encounter, the Zapatistas said a phrase that was accepted as a poetic suggestion but not really as something feasible: that we are not here to change the world --which is very difficult, next to impossible-- but we are here to create a whole new world. You may say that it is very beautiful, but it is not pragmatic. However we are seeing this as a very pragmatic principle that is extremely effective.

The best example is perhaps in terms of real initiatives in the case of education. If you want to change the education system in the world, or in any country or city, it is almost impossible. You have the opposition of teachers, or bureaucrats, or almost everybody. And now you have Bill Gates talking everywhere about the global campus and that everybody will be educated through programs on the internet. This is another illusion that will not destroy the oppression of education that basically creates two classes of people, the educated and the uneducated or undereducated. But in South-East Asia only 0.04% have access to the internet, and 70% of people on earth have never made a phone-call, so even the global campus will only be for a minority of people. Again, the point is not trying to change the system. The discussion for us is no longer about what education is doing to the educated, if the education is good or bad, if it is critical or oppressive. We have abandoned that struggle and our debate and practice now are to create opportunities for learning in an alternative way, of which there are many examples in Oaxaca. We are creating many different opportunities for practical learning beyond the classroom, as well as the social recognition for this learning that takes place out of school, by giving out diplomas. We know there is symbolic power in diplomas, so we are using these dominant symbols and changing their meaning.

This is something I also associate with the Zapatistas. From the very beginning, many people, particularly Germans, were asking, Why are they using the flag? They are against a nation-state. Well, what the Zapatistas have been doing is been reclaiming symbols that have been in the hands of the leaders until now.

The flag was used by the elite as a tool to impose domination on the people, to establish the nation-state. Now by reclaiming the flag we can see that the Zapatistas were very clever to do this from the beginning: to express that this is not a separatist movement, that they are not trying to create an Indian republic, that this is not the Basque movement, or one trying the create the reservations of the U.S. They say, we want a different kind of society, but they use these symbols with a different meaning: we want to be together, but we dont want uniformity, homogeneity.

S: You mentioned the small percentage of people in the world who have access to the internet, yet it has played a fundamental role in the Zapatista struggle against oblivion. How can we make sense of the use of high-technology alongside land-based cultures with oral traditions and minimal resources?

G: The Zapatistas have always insisted that they are not traditional but absolutely contemporary. The difference is that they are implicitly saying, in my words, that one of their best traditions is the tradition of changing traditions in the traditional way! That is, to have historical continuity. Modernity implies a break with the past. What the Zapatistas are saying is, I am remembering my tradition, I am not breaking with it, but I will not be trapped by tradition, or even worse try to go back which is impossible.

What we have learnt is the need to be aware of the dangers of technology. I think we learned the hard way by accepting new technologies uncritically. The Green Revolution is a technology that we adopted and now it is very easy to see its damaging consequences. We learnt the hard way, and we know that it is very hard now to escape from the addiction to chemicals and to recover the soil.

So we are more and more aware of the need to be careful. Basically we need to do two things. One is to establish limits to technology. The problem with many modern technologies is not the technology itself, but the size, the scale. If it goes out of proportion, then it is damaging. Nobody can really be against the very idea of the combustion engine. You have a problem because of the scale, when everybody uses private cars we have 4 million in Mexico City. The first thing in the consideration of any kind of technology is the scale of its use. The second element is the relation between people and that technology. The problem with many of these technologies is that after some time they dominate and control the user. This is happening with the computer, where the mind is being formulated in terms of the screen. In Oaxaca we have a kind of workshop every day to discuss how we can use the computer, the internet, email. For example, the trap with email is using it as a substitute for personal interaction. You can see that many so-called modern people are in the same office, two metres apart, and are writing messages to each other, which is absolutely stupid. To use email is very useful as a means of contact between different groups. One of its main uses is to convene meetings. But then you meet! And that means knowing the importance of meeting.

I think that Seattle or Prague or other mobilisations are a good example of this. The internet was used to convene people, but then they came together. And then they learnt from the experience of being in Seattle, they talked to each other and started to have a different kind of relation, not through email, but person to person. So it is a question of how to use this technology, at the proper scale, with a sense of proportion, and, secondly, to establish limits, so as to use the machine, but not be used by the machine.

S: Finally, in relation to the march, how do you see the next steps developing?

G: Of course there is a danger that the Congress will postpone the reforms, or approve a Constitutional Reform that will be unacceptable for the Zapatistas. This would create a lot of tension, and would be a signal for many people that do not believe in the dialogue to use violence. Not only the so-called guerrilla groups, of which there are around 20 in Mexico, but many other people, even people from the old regime, that will say, The Zapatistas have moved millions and even so cannot get any reaction from the powers that be. Then lets try direct action with violence. This can be very dangerous and create a terrible mess in the country. My hope is that this will not happen because even the U.S. corporations, the U.S. government, the World Bank, the local interests, the rich people, the bankers, Fox, everybody sees this as the great danger and cannot accept this scenario. It is not good for anyone. It has no winners but only losers.

So I think that sooner rather than later we will have a constitutional reform acceptable for the Zapatistas and for the Indian peoples - in the following weeks perhaps, before the end of the period of the sessions of Congress, at the end of April. Then I think that we will have the dialogue and this dialogue may include very soon the transformation of the Zapatistas into a political force, into the Zapatista Front. At the same time, it will mean the continuation of the dialogue about the other five points of the agenda already established in San Andres (democracy and justice, economic development, women, local conciliation, and the question of weapons). I think in the end the Zapatistas will never give back their weapons, but they will be legalised and transformed into legal tools for the self-defense of the community. This can be fully accepted by the government. In the case of Oaxaca, the governor can give weapons to communities for self-defense. It is very clear that they need this, but it is a legal force, it is not an insurgent group. Then we will have the so-called peace that was supposed to be signed at the end of the march, which could mean a process of one to three years. This process is the consolidation of the Zapatistas as a political force, no longer as an army. There may be a lot of tension, but I think this is a probable scenario that would be very healthy and good for the Zapatistas and for Mexico.

The Land Is Ours ... A Landrights Movement for All

The Land Is Ours campaigns peacefully for access to the land, its resources and the decision making processes affecting them, for everyone - irrespecitive of race, age, or gender.

Postal address: 16B Cherwell St, OXFORD, OX4 1BG, England. or contact us at: office@tlio.demon.co.uk Press enquiries: 0961 460171 website: http://www.oneworld.org/tlio/

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