------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Turner's anti-nuke group seeks strategy
Cancer cluster found close to nuclear plant
China Asked To Join The WTO, Didn't It?
Europeans Trying to Size Up Bush Team
German Nuke Waste Shipment Arrives
Document Reveals 1987 Bomb Test by Iraq
'This Land Is Our Land'
Bush To Propose Missile Defense
China Looks to Foil U.S. Missile Defense System
Putin Meets Chinese Leader
Stagnation Looms for Ukraine
U.S. Considers Shift In Nuclear Targets
Say What You Mean. Vaguely.
A Commitment to Europe

MILITARY
Union Workers in Colombia Are Easy Prey for Gunmen
In Latin America, Foes Aren't the Only Danger
Missionaries: On a Frontier of Danger
Celebrity Victims of the Drug War
New Mexico
Navy Bombing Is Betrayal, Puerto Rico's Governor Says
Navy halts exercises for a day in Vieques
5 Seals With Kerrey Back Him on War Raid
Healing in Vietnam
Commander will review Saudi dress code

OTHER
Use of Herbicide Is Proposed in Weed-Choked Lake George
In Early Battles, Bush Learns Need for Compromises
States
IMF endorses program to improve crisis-prevention
Top Industrial Nations Meeting About Lagging Global Economy
Mother Faults 'Signal' Sent in Diallo Case
When the Police Shoot, Who's Counting?
D.C.
Confessions of a Hero
U.S. to inspect downed plane

ACTIVISTS
Backyard Eco Conference 2001
3 Mile Island Sabotage To Be Discussed Friday Night
protest pix on website now
Vieques Turns Into a Symbol of Discontent
Conneticut


-------- NUCLEAR


Turner's anti-nuke group seeks strategy
Part of mission: Making clear that threat exists

Don Melvin - Staff
Sunday, April 29, 2001
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/sunday/news_a3be3ad4f17d329a009b.html

Washington --- Charlie Curtis faces a daunting task.

His mission as the full-time manager of Ted Turner's Nuclear Threat Initiative is to create from nothing an international organization whose influence will be felt from Washington to Moscow and --- who knows? --- even the Indian subcontinent and maybe the Middle East.

But first he had to find office space, get the phones hooked up, hire some people and get connected to the Internet.

"A lot of people talk about starting an organization from scratch," he said in a recent interview. "And we are in the scratch stage."

Not for long.

Turner, the Atlanta billionaire who came up with the idea for the new organization --- and whose gift of $250 million over five years is paying for it --- is a man who likes quick action. Prime Washington office space has been found, 12,000 square feet on the seventh floor of an office building in the 1700 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, a block from the Old Executive Office Building. What Curtis calls a "core staff" has been hired, including three vice presidents and a senior vice president who will be Curtis' deputy. The phones are connected, everyone's on the Web, and the initial directions of the organization are starting to emerge.

Judging from the titles of the new officers, the organization will focus at first on trying to stop the spread of nuclear materials and knowledge from Russia and other former Soviet countries to other nations or organizations; on reducing the threats posed by biological weapons; and on developing a campaign to convince people that the threat of nuclear disaster did not end when the Berlin Wall came down.

The direction of the organization should snap into sharper focus on Monday, when its board holds its first substantive meeting. Curtis said he does not expect large expenditures to be authorized until a second meeting, scheduled for October. What he does expect Monday, he said, is "program direction" --- instructions from the board to flesh out proposals that will be ready for funding in the fall.

"We want to make prudent investments," he said.

Turner railed against the dangers of nuclear weapons for years but, like many others, thought the danger had eased with the end of the Cold War. His attention was drawn back to the issue in 1998 when India and Pakistan each fired missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

More than a year ago, he began working on creating an organization to reduce the threat, enlisting the help of former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who is known for his expertise on military matters. In January, the two men announced that they were creating the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Nunn and Turner are co-chairmen of the board of directors, and Nunn is also the organization's chief executive officer, retaining his law practice but devoting half his time to the new initiative. The former senator has immersed himself in the details of setting up the initiative, Curtis said, doing everything from interviewing job candidates --- more than 180 applications were received --- to supervising the selection of telephones.

"He is very much the chief executive officer of this organization," Curtis said.

A little-known chief officer

But the chief operating officer, the man who will be at the helm 100 percent of the time, is another member of the initiative's board --- Curtis, a 61-year-old lawyer and former federal official who has been little known outside government circles.

Born in Pennsylvania and raised in Massachusetts, Curtis has been in Washington for 36 years --- 18 1/2 in government and 16 in private practice.

As deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy from 1994 to 1997, he had responsibility for the national laboratories and the nation's nuclear weapons complex. During that period, he helped establish a program designed to help ensure that nuclear materials, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, in former Soviet laboratories were accounted for and secure. And the department also began efforts to reduce the prospect that nuclear know-how, in the person of newly unemployed Soviet scientists, would spread to rogue states or terrorist organizations offering much-needed jobs.

Curtis is also a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and a former counsel to the House Commerce Committee. He came to Turner's attention when he was hired in 1999 as chief operating officer of the U.N. Foundation, the organization set up to disburse Turner's 10-year, $1 billion grant to United Nations projects.

"Charlie is the best public policy mind I've ever worked with," said Tim Wirth, president of the U.N. Foundation, who spent 25 years in politics and government. "I've never known anyone as good as Charlie."

Curtis, Wirth said, is unflappable, universally respected, the rare person who is able to design policy, execute it, build consensus and lead.

Wirth said he spent two years trying to persuade Curtis to join the U.N. Foundation. Curtis finally accepted, then got to know Turner --- who was so impressed he hired him away within months.

Sounding the alarm

Some observers say that the Nuclear Threat Initiative's most significant contribution would be in finding ways to inform the public that nuclear dangers still exist. Opposition to nuclear weapons, which once motivated thousands of protesters, has faded over the last decade.

"They can build the political will that is needed to de-alert the thousands of weapons that are now on a hair-trigger approach to what could be nuclear oblivion," said John Anderson, the former independent presidential candidate who now is head of the World Federalist Association, which is dedicated to establishing a world government.

And some who work for nonprofit advocacy groups had expected the Nuclear Threat Initiative to resemble Turner's U.N. Foundation and work primarily to grant money to organizations already tackling nuclear issues.

But, like Nunn and Curtis, all the members of the initiative's "core staff" have deep government experience, mostly in the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, or both. And officers of the initiative have made clear that the organization, while it might make grants to other organizations, will work largely on developing its own programs.

Curtis said the initiative will open an office in Moscow by the end of this year and later, perhaps, in regions of the world that are likely to be nuclear hotspots.

"Our co-chairmen are very intent on making this an international endeavor," Curtis said. "Over time, we will both grow our board with greater international participation, and we are likely to establish a physical presence in other countries."

The initiative appears likely, as well, to work on an area that has long been of concern to Nunn --- securing the nuclear weapons and knowledge left untended by the downsizing of Russia's nuclear weapons program.

As a senator, Nunn worked with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to set up a program under which the U.S. government works with Russian officials --- whose government has neither the wherewithal nor the will to accomplish the task on its own --- to make the former Soviet arsenal safer. And last month, he hosted international experts at a Sam Nunn Policy Forum at Georgia Tech on, among other issues, how to help the thousands of unemployed nuclear scientists and engineers in Russia's 10 "closed nuclear cities."

This early direction by the initiative surprises Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

"When I heard Ted talking about this at the annual meeting of the Physicians for Social Responsibility . . . what this was intended to do in part was to provide seed money, if you will, for a significant amount of new funding in an area that has been traditionally underfunded," Schwartz said.

But Schwartz said the initiative seems to have evolved and will probably "act as an adjunct" to government-funded programs such as Nunn-Lugar. And he said he is not sure this is the best way to put Turner's money to use.

"I'm sensing that it is evolving away from Ted's vision into something more along the lines of what Sen. Nunn and Charlie Curtis and other people in the foundation think is doable and practical," Schwartz said.

But there is no disagreement between Curtis and Schwartz that the nuclear dangers are great and the work, whatever form it takes, is important.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is the creator of the Doomsday Clock --- a theoretical measure of the world's nuclear danger. In 1991, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, the clock read 17 minutes to midnight. But since 1998 it has been set at nine minutes to midnight, signifying greater risks.

"We still have plans to incinerate millions of people, and people don't understand that," Schwartz said.

And Curtis, asked why he took the job, said nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction pose the biggest threat to U.S. security.

"When you come to a certain age you focus on future generations," said Curtis, who turned 61 on Friday. "And this is kind of the responsibility of our generation."

-------- britain

Cancer cluster found close to nuclear plant

Anthony Browne, health editor
Sunday April 29, 2001
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0%2C6903%2C480235%2C00.html

One of the most significant leukaemia clusters in Britain has been discovered among children living near the Oldbury nuclear power station on the banks of the Severn. A study has found that people living near the river, which contains high levels of radioactive particles, are up to twice as likely to die of cancer as people elsewhere. The report claims children in Chepstow, South Wales, are 11 times more likely to get leukaemia than the national average and that the probability that this is just coincidence is one in a thousand. One primary school near Chepstow had three cases of leukaemia at the same time. The study is based on figures from 1974 to 1990, but The Observer has discovered that over the past two years there have been at least two more cases of childhood leukaemia in the town.

The report highlights a particularly high incidence of myeloid leukaemia, a very rare and dangerous form of the disease that has been linked to radiation.

The author, Dr Chris Busby, a former adviser to the Irish government on the health effects of radiation in the Irish Sea, said: 'This is a discovery of a new nuclear site child leukaemia cluster. The high level of myeloid leukaemia suggests that radiation is the cause.'

The study also finds that men living near Oldbury are 37 per cent more likely to die of prostate cancer than expected. Women living along the coast downstream from Oldbury are 50 per cent more likely to die of breast cancer than those living more than three miles inland. The chance of this being random is one in 50,000.

In Gordano, downstream from Oldbury, men are 80 per cent more likely to die of cancer than elsewhere, and women 40 per cent.

The work was commissioned by Michael Holmes, an Independent MEP for the South West, who works in co-operation with the Green Party. Holmes said: 'If the possibility of cancers is related to living near a nuclear power station, they should be closed down.'

Leukaemia clusters were first discovered around Sellafield nuclear processing plant in 1983, and have now become widely accepted by cancer epidemiologists. However, there is no consensus on whether they are caused by radiation. BNFL, which runs Oldbury, insisted that the levels of radiation emitted there are far too low to cause cancer.

A spokesman dismissed Busby's findings: 'He comes up with these things virtually every week. Every time he comes out with a report it is rubbished by people.'

-------- china

China Asked To Join The WTO, Didn't It?

By Steven Mufson
Sunday, April 29, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16396-2001Apr28?language=printer

Last autumn, China achieved a goal its government had been aiming forsince 1986 -- it finished lining up the necessary agreements to get into the World Trade Organization. It had won permanent normal trade relations from the United States. It had ironed out differences with the European Union. All but one of the then-137countries in the WTO had approved its membership.

Everything was set for the communist giant to join the ultimate capitalist club, ushering in a new era of foreign investment and economic progress for China. A Hong Kong newspaper trumpeted it as the "biggest milestone since 1978," when Maoism gave way to Deng Xiaoping's reform campaign.

Except it hasn't happened.

What went awry between the champagne toasts of October 2000 and the sour standoff of today? Why is the U.S. Congress likely to open a new round of debate over a trading status that was supposed to have been permanently settled seven months ago?

The answers to those questions reveal some important truths about a very complex country.

What happened is that the Chinese Communist Party leaders -- despite what we journalists routinely call a "monopoly on political power" -- have been reluctant to force the trade agreement down the throats of the country's farmers, laborers, corporate bureaucrats and other entrenched interest groups. The moment China joined the WTO it would have to eliminate tariffs and other barriers that have protected these groups from competition with well-financed, high-tech international conglomerates. And so China has not put the finishing touches on its WTO application, opting to haggle over a handful of points -- and thus delay the need to confront vocal trade pact foes at home.

Americans often have a black-and-white image of China. They see a government that detained 24 American military personnel for 11 days last month, and which has missiles aimed at democratic Taiwan. They read about government suppression of the Falun Gong, police detentions without charge or trial, and the Tibetans' futile appeals for greater autonomy and religious freedom. And they think, on such evidence, that the Chinese government can afford to disregard the will of the Chinese people.

But that's not entirely true. A few years ago, an American economist told me about visiting a key Communist Party elder named Bo Yibo, and telling him how China, then suffering rapid inflation, should use monetary policy to slam on the brakes. Afterward, making small talk, the American asked Bo what it was like to help lead such a huge country. Bo said, "It is like being at the head of a parade with 1.2 billion people behind you and then having some smart foreigner tell you to stop the parade."

Bo's point was plain. China's leaders have to worry about those they govern. The situation is far different than it was 25 years ago, when Mao Zedong could cling to paramount status even after his disastrous Great Leap Forward campaign led to the starvation of tens of millions of people.

Today, much like democratic governments, the ruling Chinese Communist Party and its official hierarchy have to respond to domestic constituencies, albeit in ways far different from the way we do here. That's why, when a deadly explosion took place last month in a school where students had been put to work making firecrackers, popular outrage forced Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji to apologize and promise an investigation. That's why, when villagers upset over arbitrary local taxes rioted recently, the government didn't just send in troops -- President Jiang Zemin also issued a conciliatory statement about standardizing rural taxes.

And that's why the WTO deal hasn't gone through.

The biggest of those domestic constituencies is the country's agricultural sector. Farming has also wielded tremendous power over trade positions in such countries as the United States and France, but in China, farmers have even more clout: Forty-seven percent of Chinese workers are in agriculture -- compared with less than 3 percent of their American counterparts. China is, at heart, a rural nation. Just past the Beijing city limits, high-rise buildings quickly yield to flat farmland. In Sichuan, hillside after hillside is awash with the yellow flowers of rapeseed plants, raised for their oil. In the small towns in Jinan province, giant grain warehouses dominate the landscape. And the soggy soil along the roadways in the south is planted in sugar and rice.

China's farmers have good reason to fear they could be trampled by the corporate behemoths that dominate American farming. Even after two decades of economic reforms and better incentives, most of them lack the equipment and the economies of scale that foreign agriculture has. If American firms didn't wipe the local farmers out, they could at least drive down food prices. Those anxieties may explain why a separate accord to eliminatecertain barriers to beef, wheat and citrus imports -- considered an indication of Chinese commitment to WTO -- hasn't been fully implemented yet.

China's aging industries make up another big and nervous constituency. A price war is going on in the color television market, where Dutch-owned Royal Philips Electronics has recently cut prices of three models by 10 percent to 13 percent. Banks (where until recently some tellers did their calculations by abacus) soon will face direct competition. And the once-sleepy insurance business is scrambling so it can compete with U.S. firms such as AIG as they seek to replace the vanishing government safety net.

The country also has scores of automobile factories, only a few of which will survive competition from foreign imports or foreign-funded Chinese-based manufacturers. Honda has set up a factory in Guangzhou, Ford hasentered a joint venture in Chongqing, and General Motors is churning out cars from Pudong. Even before these were these were launched, Volkswagen was selling almost half the new sedans in China.

When I worked in China, I visited a number of township and village enterprises (TVEs) -- poorly funded, poorly managed ventures that survived in rural areas essentially because pent-up demand for any goods was great. TVEs accounted for an increase of more than 100 million local jobs over a 15-year period ending in the mid-'90s. But as foreign ventures arrive, the TVEs could easily die, giving way to Hong Kong, Korean, Japanese or American chain stores and distribution networks. I remember an earnest furniture salesman near the town of Zibo. Business was slow and the quality of his merchandise was bad. Think what Home Depot could do to him.

Chinese intellectuals, especially the more nationalist ones, also have reservations about the WTO. While U.S. business executives and policymakers want to bind China by international rules and in so doing promote the rule of law, China worries that WTO rules are fundamentally American ones. Even in April 1999, when Zhu was in the United States trying to make a WTO deal, one Chinese commentator published an article called "Behind Globalization: An analysis of the U.S. and British strategic trap." Recent talk of the WTO imposing environmental and labor standards must only increase China's fears of foreign meddling.

If all that is true, why did China's leaders seek WTO membership in the first place? Because they knew it would bring tremendous benefits as well as prestige to their country. Already the program of economic reform and opening to the outside world launched by Deng in 1978 has vastly improved the lives of ordinary Chinese.

Trade makes up roughly 40 percent of China's gross domestic product. China had a trade surplus of more than $80 billion with the United States last year; it sells Americans six times what it buys from us. The export industries along the coastal areas have transformed quiet fishing towns into bustling cities, and people who flock to work there send hundreds of millions of dollars back to the poorer inland areas they came from. Now China needs economic engines for the future. WTO membership would bring new infusions of foreign investment as well as foreign technology and expertise.

In short, for all the dislocations that come with opening up its economy, new investment and open markets hold out the only hope for China to keep a growth rate rapid enough to keep the average person happy -- and employed. Moreover, foreign competition could force state-owned industries to adopt reforms that the central leadership has been unable to bring about by command.

And given the Communist Party's virtual abandonment of communist ideology, huge helpings of economic growth and slices of nationalism are the new staples of political stability.

China will almost certainly plunge ahead with the next step of "reform and opening up" -- and get back on track to join the WTO. A delegation of trade negotiators came to the United States in March, before heading to Europe. A Shanghai municipal committee was here last week to talk about WTO implementation. Some American business executives say they hope that a deal can be completed in Geneva by July. The final sticking points affect the insurance industry, the definition of a chain store, and whether China should, as a developing country, be able to dole out farm subsidies equal to 10 percent of output, or as a developed country only 5 percent. These are not insurmountable problems.

Meanwhile, however, politics can create some uncomfortable interludes. The May 1999 U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war led to a short break-off of talks. Now the Navy surveillance plane standoff and the U.S. sale of arms to Taiwan have strained ties some more. As one American business leader with interest in China wondered last week, how much diplomatic burden can trade carry on its own?

At times like this, China wants to stand up to the West, particularly the United States, while simultaneously realizing that it needs the outside world's help.

"America is both a source of hope and frustration, an unwieldy giant holding the key to China's future," Yong Deng, a U.S. Naval Academy assistant professor, and Sherry Gray, a Stanley Foundation program officer wrote in a recent issue of the Journal of Contemporary China. "This ambivalence has proven hard to overcome."

There's ambivalence on this side of the globe as well. Those who have promoted China's entrance into the WTO see its membership as a way to tame the unruly giant, getting Beijing accustomed to playing by international rules. But there is also fear that China is so big that if it fails to live up to those rules, it could wreck the WTO. And there are those who worry that China, once admitted to the WTO, will be even less concerned about world opinion and less respectful of human rights than it is now.

Many of those feelings will undoubtedly come out in Congress in the coming weeks, when debate likely begins again on the one-year renewal of China's normal trade status. Even though lawmakers felt they had cast their final votes on the issue last fall, until China actually enters the WTO, the old rules apply here in the United States as well as in China. That means that at any time before June 3, a member of Congress can introduce a measure to block China from getting a one-year renewal of the tariff treatment that almost every other country in the world receives.

Last week, China's newly arrived ambassador, the urbane Yang Jiechi, spoke to a sympathetic group of U.S. policy analysts. In the wake of U.S.-China discord over the EP-3 and the announcement on Taiwan arms sales, Yang said pointedly that when international markets failed during the Asian economic crisis, China had been able to look inward to sustain rapid growth. "Whatever happens in the world economy, the Chinese government and people can always fall back on the nation's vast domestic market," he said.

In the end, though, China will almost undoubtedly dot the i's, cross the t's and make its long-sought entry into the WTO, not as a gesture to the United States but because of its own calculated self-interest.

"China's leaders have some domestic interests they need to mollify," said an American businessman following the talks anxiously. "But they all recognize that this is what they have to do."

Steve Mufson, who covers the State Department for The Post, was a foreign correspondent in Beijing from 1994 to 1998.

-------- depleted uranium

-------- europe

Europeans Trying to Size Up Bush Team

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 29, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14613-2001Apr28?language=printer

PARIS -- When the Bush administration last Monday offered to help Taiwan buy eight diesel submarines to be built using blueprints and technology from Germany and the Netherlands, there was one small problem: Both of the European countries have longstanding policies against selling weapons to Taiwan.

Some Europeans were aghast, seeing the announcement as the latest example of what Europe's media often portray as America's new lone ranger-style foreign policy - announce first, consult with allies later. If the Bush administration did not consult, said Francois Heisbourg, a French defense analyst, "that would indicate an enormous degree of sloppiness."

Other Europeans were more benign, calling the incident a minor glitch for a generally competent new administration that still is assembling its team. Probably "people in the administration concentrated on putting the package together without thinking about things like licenses," said Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank in London.

As Bush marks his first 100 days in office, Europeans are still trying to take measure of a still largely unknown American president, and discern future policy directions from the administration's limited forays so far into foreign affairs.

The emerging view in Europe is of an administration more competent, but also more conservative, than people here initially thought; less engaged globally and less likely to put Europe at the center of its foreign policy; more prone to unilateral steps and statements, like the Taiwan arms sales affair may indicate, and somewhat less likely to factor European sensibilities into decision-making. In Washington, Bush has already had face-to-face meetings with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland. At a European Union summit in Sweden in June and at subsequent stops Bush will make in Belgium, Spain and Poland, other European leaders will get a chance to size him up in person.

The Europeans' views of the new administration tend to be colored by their own place on the ideological spectrum, analysts here point out. This helps explain why many of Europe's left-of-center news organizations have been quick to portray Bush as a dangerous cowboy, an incompetent, or both. "Presidency of dunces," was the headline on an opinion piece in Britain's Guardian newspaper, summing up Bush's first 100 days. Der Speigel magazine in Germany calls him "the little sheriff."

"The left is very critical," said Sergio Romano, a former Italian ambassador to the ex-Soviet Union and now a writer on foreign policy and political issues. ". . .They got along with Clinton. They felt there was some kind of synergy. Clinton was part of the Atlantic Left, shall we say."

As for Bush, he said, "the right is less critical because they feel he belongs to their family. They have the same economic theories," such as support of large tax cuts.

Much welcomed in European capitals was Bush's decision to fill his foreign and defense team with professionals known and respected on this side of the Atlantic, such as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was once the U.S. ambassador to NATO. The China surveillance plane crisis, many analysts here believe, showed the new team's ability to manage a crisis.

"Individually, the present team is probably more competent than the previous one, with the exception of the president," said Dominique Moisi, a political analyst with the French Institute of International Relations. "They have started to reassure Europeans, especially Colin Powell."

And on some issues, such as U.S. interest in building a missile defense system, the administration has been quite willing to consult with the allies, and with Russia, many Europeans feel. They expressed relief when U.S. officials said there would be no immediate pullout of American troops from the Balkans, as the Republicans' pre-election campaign rhetoric suggested.

But then came Bush's announcement, again, without prior consultation, that the United States would not abide by the Kyoto protocol on global climate change. Many Europeans saw this as confirming a new "unilateralist" trend.

"The perception has gone in waves," said Karl Kaiser, research director for the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. "Initially great concern about unilateralism due to prior statements has become on the whole - with the exception of Kyoto - a more positive view."

On the Kyoto treaty, he added, "some Europeans are being disingenuous" in their outrage, since the treaty had already faced serious opposition in the Senate and was unlikely to be ratified, whatever Bush's position. "In that sense," he said, "Bush is more honest about the realities of American politics."

Other analysts said the European uproar over the Kyoto decision might have had less to do with the announcement itself than with the fact that the allies were not warned beforehand.

That is a key worry for many Europeans. With the Cold War over, they fear that their part of the world is sliding on Washington's scale of what's important. They feel this anxiety even as they say that Europe needs its own foreign policy, its own military force independent of NATO.

Moisi says Europe feels it is becoming less of a priority of the United States. He sees the U.S. priorities as the Americas - as evidenced by the Quebec summit of western hemisphere leaders earlier this month - and Asia, with a concentration on security.

Likewise, Europeans worry that the United States is in a state of drift on policy toward their giant neighbor Russia. "There's a feeling in Europe that America doesn't take Russia seriously," Eyal of the London think tank said. "It appears they are ready to talk to Russia, but they are not ready to talk to Russia as America's equal." With no meeting between Bush and Russian President Vladmir Putin scheduled until summer, the relationship "is now in suspended animation," he said.

The main issue that people here initially expected to test the Atlantic alliance was the administration's outspoken support of an advanced missile defense system. Europeans feared that such a system would undercut existing arms-control agreements with Russia and ignite a new arms race. They also feared that the Bush administration would forge ahead with the plan over the outspoken objections of its allies.

So far, that has not happened. When Rumsfeld made an early trip to Germany to make a speech on the missile defense project, he largely succeeded in assuaging European concerns. He convinced even skeptics that no specific plan, among several competing alternatives, had been selected, and showed that, on this issue at least, the United States would consult closely with Russia.

"Regarding missile defense, I think in the last month the anxieties have been defused," said Rafael Estrella, president of the NATO parliamentary assembly, in Madrid. ". . . We are more aware it is not something that will happen tomorrow."

Yet even those Europeans willing to give Bush better-than-expected reviews are under no illusion that foreign policy and trans-Atlantic relations will remain unchanged as the new team settles in.

Many here said they expect future clashes to erupt over trade issues - they disagree on a range of subjects including taxation of companies' international earnings and trade in farm goods, notably genetically modified ones. They also clash over the importance of international organizations and treaties, and possibly over the European preference for diplomacy and economic pressure as opposed to military might to resolve international threats.

Also, say some here, Europeans and Americans will find themselves increasingly diverging over questions that might be called "values issues," such as America's continued use of the death penalty, which Europeans find inexplicable, and the environment.

-------- germany

German Nuke Waste Shipment Arrives

The Associated Press
Sunday, April 29, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010429/aponline231141_000.htm

LONDON -- Germany's first shipment of nuclear waste to a British reprocessing plant in three years arrived quietly in Britain on Sunday after a protest-filled, five-day journey through Europe.

British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., a company wholly owned by the British government, said there were no protesters at the port in northwestern town of Barrow-in-Furness when the radioactive material arrived.

"It arrived today very quietly," said spokesman Bill Anderton, adding that the final, 50-mile rail journey to the Sellafield reprocessing plant will be made "during the early part of this week."

Anti-nuclear protesters harassed the shipment - five containers of spent fuel rods from two southern German nuclear plants - within hours after its Tuesday departure. Protesters staged a sit-in on a road near at the Neckarwestheim power plant in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, briefly delaying part of the shipment.

In northern France, protesters threw smoke bombs onto a rail line Thursday, slowing a train carrying the waste to the port town of Dunkirk.

Germany halted all nuclear shipments in 1998 after it emerged that radioactive emissions from the special containers had exceeded safety limits for years. It also suspended dealings with Sellafield plant last year in the wake of a scandal over fake records.

Germany also resumed nuclear shipments to France earlier this month for processing at the Cogema plant at La Hague, near the English Channel.

-------- iraq

Document Reveals 1987 Bomb Test by Iraq

New York Times
April 29, 2001
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/world/29IRAQ.html

Iraq tested a bomb in 1987 that cast a radioactive cloud in the open air and was designed to cause vomiting, cancer, birth defects and slow death, according to a secret Iraqi report on the weapon's construction and testing.

Radiation sickness from the bomb, the document said, would "weaken enemy units from the standpoint of health and inflict losses that would be difficult to explain, possibly producing a psychological effect." Death, it added, might occur "within two to six weeks."

The bomb, 12 feet long and weighing more than a ton, according to the document, could be dropped on troop areas, industrial centers, airports, railroad stations, bridges and "any other areas the command decrees."

While the existence of Iraq's effort to build a radiological weapon has been known for several years, the 1987 report sheds light on the secret effort. The New York Times obtained the document from the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a private group in Washington that said it acquired it from a United Nations official.

Radiation or radiological weapons, sometimes known as "dirty nukes," are the poor cousins of nuclear arms. Their conventional high explosives scatter highly radioactive materials to poison targets rather than destroying them with blast and heat. Their effects on people can range from radiation sickness to agonizingly slow death, which is why military experts often see them as ethically bankrupt.

"It shows what kind of guy we're dealing with," said Gary Milhollin, the roup's director, of the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein. The bomb, he added, was "nasty stuff meant to kill people over a long period of time" and thus, he said, "crossed the line into moral barbarism."

It was basically a dud, however, Mr. Milhollin said, and that caused the Iraqis to scrap the project. The radiation levels were considered too low to achieve the grisly objectives.

The episode nonetheless "shows Iraq's intention" to develop weapons of mass destruction, he added. The official who disclosed the document, Mr. Milhollin said, is "concerned that Saddam is going to get the bomb."

The United Nations rarely discloses documents gathered in Iraq, but David Albright, formerly a nuclear inspector in Iraq, said he had seen the document and that it he did not doubt it was authentic.

He and other experts agreed that the document, which is to be posted on a Web site Monday, gives away no secrets that could aid weapons development and no indication that the project was a resounding failure.

Nuclear experts say Iraq today has neither programs to develop radiological weapons nor the reactors needed to make radioactive materials for them, and no fuel for nuclear arms. The reactor used in making the prototype radiological weapon was itself bombed during the gulf war in 1991, and inspectors tried to keep Iraq from resuming its nuclear efforts for years afterward.

But today the inspectors are largely gone and American experts worry that Iraq may be quietly shopping for bomb fuel and parts on the international black market.

"There's growing concern that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program and will make steady progress because it knows so much already," said Mr. Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, an arms control group in Washington.

Iraq's testing of its radiological weapon was done in 1987 as it waged a war of attrition against Iran and considered the radiation bomb as a way to cripple enemy forces. The document said the work was undertaken by Atomic Energy Agency and the Al Qa-Qa and Al Muthanna centers of the Iraqi Military Industrial Commission.

To make the radioactive materials, Iraqi engineers prepared special metals to irradiate in a reactor at Tuwaitha, Iraq's primary nuclear site. The document said the metal was mostly zirconium, which is often used in atomic reactors because it resists corrosion. The zirconium mixture also included hafnium, uranium and iron.

Zirconium was chosen, the document said, because a production process for it already existed since the metal was used for incendiary bombs. When finely powdered, the metal ignites spontaneously in air.

The half-life of zirconium 95, the document said, was 75.5 days. This relatively short period of radioactive decay, it said, "helps to dissipate the effect of the bomb after several weeks so that it is difficult to track, analyze, or recognize." The brevity, it added, gives "the desired biological effects" while making it "possible for our units to go to the bombed area without great danger after this period has expired."

The document has many diagrams. They show at the bomb's core a thick three-foot lead case, shielding workers from its radioactive rays, that held the zirconium. This leaden case fit inside an eight-foot casing that held fuses and explosive charges and was capped by tail fins four feet long.

The weapon and its parts were tested three times in 1987, the document said. The first sought to see if the thick lead case holding an irradiated charge could be blown apart, in order to discharge. It could.

The second test was of a bomb sitting on the ground. "The explosion was awesome," said the report. "We saw the blast wave moving out of the center of the explosion in the form of a circle moving at great speed." The radioactive cloud rose more than 600 feet.

In the third test, the Iraqi Air Force dropped two bombs, which again produced huge clouds. "We must point out," the report said, "that a significant part of the fallout went with the cloud into the air and it was not possible to follow this small amount of radioactive matter by means of the portable equipment."

Radiation readings on the ground were rather low, in one case "290 times above the highest level allowed nationally for foodstuffs." The document reported no readings taken in the air - a critical oversight for a weapon eant to hurt and kill people largely through the inhalation of radioactive particles.

The main flaws of the weapon, the report said, were that its radioactive charges lost strength quickly. The irradiatiated charge had to be used within a week. Calm weather was also essential. Another drawback, it said, was that the work had to be done in strict secrecy, "even with regard to those doing the work, so as not to give rise to psychological feelings leading to hesitation because of a fear of radiation."

A final problem, it said, was that an alert enemy might come to realize that the exploding bombs packed a lingering punch, allowing the future development of defensive precautions. It even suggested that satellites might be able to spot radiation from "a concentrated strike," a feat that seems unlikely.

Iraq gave the document to the inspectors and the United Nations apparently referred to it in a April 1996 report of the United Nations special commission set up to monitor Iraq's disarmament. "Iraq declared," it said, "that no order to produce radiological weapons was given and the project was abandoned."

The document is to be posted Monday at www.iraqwatch.org, a new initiative of the Wisconsin Project. The main supporter of the Web site is the Smith-Richardson Foundation, a private group in Westport, Conn., that specializes in issues of national security.

Mr. Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project said that the radiation effort was clearly a flop, despite the report's upbeat language.

"When you read this, you get the impression that the guys in Iraq were trying to put best face on the results, to exaggerate them," he said. "But if you look at the figures, it's obvious it didn't work."

-------- israel / lebanon

'This Land Is Our Land'

Sunday, April 29, 2001
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16390-2001Apr28?language=printer

Lebanon's Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who came to Washington last week for talks with President Bush, is a man on a tightrope. He returned to the prime minister's post last fall with the goal of helping his battered nation rebuild its economy. But the country's stability and future are tied up with two formidable presenceslargely beyond his control: Syria, which exercises considerable influence in Lebanon and has 35,000 troops stationed there; and the Syrian-backed guerrilla group Hezbollah, which attacks Israel from its base in the south of Lebanon. Washington Post columnist and Newsweek contributing editor Lally Weymouth talked with the 57-year-old Hariri during his visit to the capital. Excerpts:

How did your meeting with President Bush go?

It went well. My impression is that the president is keen to see peace in the Middle East and wants to encourage moderate governments that are working hard to achieve peace. He said if there is an impression in the area that he is not as committed to peace as the previous administration, this impression is not correct.

But there is that impression, don't you think?

The impression is there [but] he is trying to send a message. My assessment is that he will use different means [than former president Bill Clinton] but I feel strongly that he is committed to peace.

Speaking of the peace process, didn't you think that former Israeli prime minister [Ehud] Barak made a generous offer last year to the Palestinian Authority, and that [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat made a mistake by rejecting it?

We are a small country and Israel doesn't respect international law and United Nations resolutions. . . . [But] I believe the mood in the Arab world has shifted since [the talks in] Madrid from not believing in peace to believing in peace.

How much more can Israel give than 95 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza, parts of the Jordan valley and much of East Jerusalem?

Let me ask you a question. Why 95 percent and not 100 percent?

So you think Arafat did the right thing?

I'm not saying that. [But] you are not talking about a business deal. We are talking about the future of a people. If we believe in peace truly, we have to sacrifice for peace. In my opinion, strong people make peace; war can be made by anyone.

Does that mean Israeli Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon?

I'm not naming anybody in particular. This is a general rule.

Do you agree with Hezbollah that Shebaa Farms [territory that Israeli says is part of the Golan Heights but Lebanon claims as its own] is Lebanese territory?

This is not the theory of Hezbollah; this is the theory of the Lebanese government. We believe it is Lebanese territory for sure.

Why haven't you sent your army to control the border in the south with Israel?

We'd like to see peace in the Middle East. Israel withdrew from Lebanon on May 25 [last year] but continues to violate our air space and our water -- by [having] planes survey all the time. . . . The most important thing is notfor us to send an army but to achieve a peace agreement.

Hezbollah is staging attacks on Israeli soldiers at the border and it is said that you need to send your army there if you're going to restore order. You're a man who wants to see his country grow. . . .

[The best way] to restore Lebanese sovereignty is to see the Israelis withdraw from all Lebanese territory.

Some say that Syria wants to keep that area hot and that is why Hezbollah attacks continually. I saw an editorial the other day in your newspaper [the Al-Mustaqbal, which Hariri owns], which questioned whether the attacks against Israel are wise.

The editorial was talking about the timing.

The attacks are okay otherwise?

Nobody wants to see a war or attacks. This land is our land, and I would like to see Israel leave as soon as possible.

It's been said that Iran has deployed missiles on your territory under Iranian command and control.

No.

But aren't there missiles deployed in your country?

I don't know. I don't think so. Have you seen any missiles used?

Presumably there is something called intelligence. . . .

If this is true, then you [would be able to]see a picture.

Some say that this is like a Cuban missile crisis, that Iran's missiles don't work well [at long distances]. And so the reason that they are deploying the missiles in Lebanon is to get them close enough to hit Israel.

But this is too close. Logically, when you build a missile to go 1,000 kilometers, you don't move it for a target of 300 meters or 500 meters.

Okay, but are there any missiles that Iran sold to Lebanon?

None. This is for sure. We have never bought any arms from Iran.

Are there any missiles deployed by Lebanon in your country?

That is our army, and I don't think that it is a good idea to speak about our army.

Sharon has said there are missiles deployed in Lebanon.

Aren't there missiles in Israel? Aren't there tanks in Israel? Isn't there an atomic bomb in Israel? You know that Israel has all kinds of arms. If we have more arms, or they do, it will not solve the problem.

I don't see the region heading toward peace negotiations.

No, it's not.

Do you think it's heading for a wider war?

I am afraid it is heading for instability. . . .

Many in Israel have given up on the peace process. They saw Israel make an offer and Arafat respond with violence. Indeed, Barak was thrown out of office. Many Israelis believe they have walked the last mile. What more can they do?

If you walk 97 percent, you can walk 100 percent.

What about the Arabs?

I don't want to talk about Arafat.

What about the recent conference, held in Beirut, of various terrorist and militant organizations?

It was not a terrorist conference. People came and expressed how they think. They did not commit any act. I do not want to defend anybody, but the [Lebanese] government was not there.

The final communique included phrases such as, "The Jerusalem issue cannot be based on co-existence with the Zionist enemy, but rather we must uproot it from our land. . . . America is the second Israel." And they called for a boycott of American products. Why would you allow a conference of this kind to be held in your country?

In Israel, there are many people who are talking much worse than that.

But aren't you worried that Lebanon could be labeled a terrorist country by the U.S.?

I'm not [worried].

You know the new president of Syria. How do you assess him as compared to his father?

He is young [and] ambitious. He believes in peace.

Really. Do you think there is any hope for an Israel-Syria agreement?

We have to see what will happen with the Palestinian-Israeli track. It is difficult for any Arab to move toward any solution because of what is going on in the West Bank and Gaza.

What is your view of Sharon?

I am the first Arab leader who said we know his past and remember him with sadness. But the day he became prime minister, I announced that despite all that happened to us because of him personally, we are ready to make peace with Sharon.

Would you like to see the Syrian troops withdraw from Lebanon?

They will withdraw when we see that it is necessary to withdraw, but now we see that they are needed.

When you were 20 years old, you answered an advertisement and went to Saudi Arabia, where you made a fortune.

I started teaching and then became a manager of an accounting office. Then I worked for a construction company and later started my own company -- a joint venture with a French company. I bought the shares of my partner, and then I bought the mother company.

You returned to Lebanon in '92 to become prime minister?

Yes, and I am still in politics today. And the one who is taking care of my business is my son. I know how much peace can give our children and grandchildren.

Should you try to disarm Hezbollah?

When we have peace, everybody will do their part. We in Lebanon are afraid of Israel. We are a small country. We don't have enough means to defend ourselves.

So you're saying Hezbollah is one way to defend yourself? What is your attitude toward Hezbollah?

Look at me. You know the answer. During the occupation, they were an important part of resisting the occupation. But I know that peace one day has to come.

-------- missile defense

Bush To Propose Missile Defense

By Robert Burns
AP Military Writer
Sunday, April 29, 2001
The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010429/aponline132630_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The missile defense favored by President Bush - a shield of global reach rather than covering only U.S. territory - bears a striking resemblance to the approach his father's Pentagon was pursuing a decade ago. The Clinton administration quickly killed it.

Bush will outline his intentions for missile defense in a speech Tuesday that aides say will link the concept to his desire for substantial, perhaps unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear missile arsenal.

The question Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been mulling is how to go beyond the current missile defense approach that is focused on a land-based intercept system designed to protect just the 50 U.S. states.

One approach reported to be under consideration by Rumsfeld and Bush is known as a "layered" missile defense.

It might combine the Clinton approach, which would use ground-launched rockets to intercept missiles midway through flight, with sea- and space-based weapons that would make the intercept during the hostile missile's ascent phase, or while its rocket plume was still burning inside the atmosphere.

The result - if it worked - would be a missile defense system with global reach.

Brig. Gen. Michael Hamel, director of space operations for the Air Force, said last week he supports that approach.

"Layered missile defense is absolutely the right way to go," he said.

More than 30 scientists and missile experts who oppose the administration's push for missile defense planned to gather at the Capitol on Wednesday to assert that the science of missile defense is too immature to justify moving ahead with a project expected to costs tens of billions of dollars.

The administration has made clear it will press ahead; when, at what cost and with what blueprint are the only questions.

How far-reaching a missile defense should be is a sensitive issue.

For one, it affects the degree of political support by Canada and U.S. allies in Europe. It also bears on the prohibitions against certain missile defenses spelled out in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

The first Bush administration believed that with the demise of the Soviet Union the emphasis in missile defense should shift from protection of the United States against an attack by thousands of nuclear missiles to protection of America and its allies against perhaps several dozen missiles of any origin.

It was called Global Protection Against Limited Strikes, or GPALS, and was made public at a Pentagon news conference Feb. 12, 1991.

The official who presented the $32 billion plan was Stephen J. Hadley - then an assistant secretary of defense, now a deputy national security adviser to Bush. The defense secretary at the time was Dick Cheney, now the vice president.

Rumsfeld may come up with a different acronym, but the concept of global protection is likely to be a key aspect of whatever missile defense program the administration decides to pursue, in the view of many private analysts who follow the subject closely.

"After the president's speech we will no longer talking about national missile defense," but instead a global or international approach that is much broader - and probably much more expensive - than the Clinton administration was developing, said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Alan Frye, an arms control expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said he believes, based on his contacts with administration officials involved in the matter, that Bush will adopt a GPALS-like approach. He also thinks it highly unlikely Bush will announce a U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty, but rather that he is willing to discuss possible missile defense cooperation with the Russians.

Morton Halperin, director of policy planning at the State Department during the Clinton administration, said he believes the Russians would be more likely to engage in missile defense talks if Bush also committed to reducing the U.S. offensive nuclear arsenal to 1,500 or 1,000 warheads.

The United States now has about 7,200 active warheads and is committed to cutting to 3,500; Clinton favored cutting to 2,500, although that has not been made a binding commitment.

Rumsfeld has made a point lately of saying that he has stopped using the term "national missile defense," because "what's 'national' depends on where you live," as he put it to reporters March 8. His point was that if a U.S. missile defense is capable of protecting, say, Japan, then it is "national" to the Japanese but is global to everyone else.

--------

China Looks to Foil U.S. Missile Defense System

New York Times
April 29, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/world/29CHIN.html

BEIJING - Fearful that an antimissile defense could embolden the United States to intervene in crises on China's doorstep, Beijing is focusing on low-cost ways to thwart the plan, including ways to attack the defense system itself, China's top arms control official said.

"We have seen that the United States wantonly bombed Yugoslavia and that Yugoslavia had no means to retaliate," the official, Sha Zukang, said in an interview. "Once the United States believes it has both a strong spear and a strong shield, it could lead them to conclude that nobody can harm the United States and they can harm anyone they like anywhere in the world. There could be many more bombings like what happened in Kosovo."

Determined to establish its sovereignty over Taiwan, or at least to stop Taiwan from declaring its independence, China has steadily built up its military power in the region. In so doing, it has become a rival of the United States for influence in the western Pacific.

The conflicting interests led to the recent collision between a United States Navy reconnaissance plane and a Chinese F-8 fighter. They ripple through the highly charged debate over American arms sales to Taiwan. And now they are shaping the debate over missile defense, an issue that is moving to the top of the Chinese-American agenda as the Pentagon develops its plan for a missile shield.

Mr. Sha, a veteran arms-control official famous for his blustery style, spoke in English at the hourlong interview. He made plain that China's fear was not that the United States would launch a surprise attack on China, but that a missile shield would lead American politicians to believe that the United States was so powerful and well protected that it could act with virtual impunity.

"Even when national missile defense was not there they bombed the Sudan, they bombed Afghanistan and they bombed Iraq," he said. "It could lead to the development of a tendency of the use or threat of use of force, more often than is necessary by the United States, in the conduct of international relations."

Mr. Sha did not directly refer to the tense situation in the Taiwan Strait. But even though he talked of Yugoslavia, his comments reflected deep-seated Chinese concerns that the Pentagon would develop closer ties with Taiwan's armed forces and that a missile shield might make Washington more comfortable in rushing to the island's defense.

It is not yet clear when an American missile defense might be developed or how well it might work. But some American officials say that an antimissile system could be useful in a future crisis over Taiwan. They reason that it might protect American territory against potential Chinese missile threats and could provide Washington with more diplomatic leverage. Indeed, during the election campaign President Bush spoke of the need to defend against nuclear-tipped Chinese missiles.

The dispute over missile defense is compounded by the modest size of China's nuclear force. Unlike Russia, which has enough warheads to overwhelm a limited American missile defense, China has what arms control specialists call a minimal deterrent. So any substantial American effort to build a missile defense might neutralize China's small force - even if that is not the intent - and that is a big worry for Beijing.

Apparently in an effort to ease Chinese concerns, Mr. Bush has proposed a discussion on strategic issues in a letter to President Jiang Zemin, Mr. Sha said. China is willing to listen to any ideas that the Bush administration may have. But Mr. Sha said the dialogue had not yet begun because the Bush administration was still putting its national security team in place.

He also stressed that deep cuts in American nuclear arms would not placate China if they were made in parallel with the development of a missile defense. The Bush administration has been working on a plan for deep cuts in the hopes that it would make missile defense more politically acceptable to allied nations, as well as to Russia and China.

Certainly, the American force is so large that even deep cuts would leave the United States with an overwhelming advantage over China's small deterrent. China's long-range nuclear force consists of 18 DF-5 missiles; they are old, liquid-fueled weapons that are maintained at a low level of alert, and their warheads are stored separately. The United States has a triad of air-, sea- and land-based nuclear weapons. But China has no intercontinental-range bomber force, and its lone strategic submarine rarely leaves port.

To upgrade its arsenal, China is developing the DF-31, a solid-fuel mobile missile with the range to strike Alaska and the northwestern United States, as well as a long-range follow-up, the DF-41. There has been considerable discussion about how China might respond to a missile defense program and speculation that China might expand its projected arsenal of DF-31 and DF-41 missiles to be sure to maintain its retaliatory punch.

But Mr. Sha suggested that instead of engaging in a large, costly buildup, China would concentrate on a range of relatively low-cost responses, such as developing plans to attack the radar network and communication nodes that would form the nervous system of America's defense. "We will do whatever possible to ensure that our security will not be compromised, and we are confident that we can succeed without an arms race," he said. "We believe defense itself needs defense. It is a defense system. It has many, many parts and most of them are vulnerable to an attack."

Mr. Sha did not say in detail how that might be done. But American experts say that the Chinese, for example, could target battle-management radar for the United States with land-based ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles, cruise missiles or other means. Another response, he implied, could be to put sophisticated decoys on missiles.

Yan Xuetong of Qinghua University suggested a possible compromise on the missile defense issue. The United States could build a system that could intercept no more than five missiles. That, he said, would protect against a possible threat from, say, Iran or Iraq without jeopardizing China's force. But the multitiered defenses the Pentagon has in mind are more ambitious than that.

-------- russia

Putin Meets Chinese Leader

By David McHugh
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, April 29, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010429/aponline112447_000.htm

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin received Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan in the Kremlin on Sunday for a high-profile meeting underlining the growing ties between Moscow and Beijing.

Tang was in Moscow for a foreign ministers' meeting Saturday of the Shanghai Five, comprising Russia, China and three Central Asian countries. He spent Sunday in talks with Russian officials.

Greeting Tang at the Kremlin, Putin said relations between Russia and China had "a very good dynamic."

"This is reflected not only in many meetings at the highest level, but those meetings have their continuation and intensification in contacts between business people, representatives of culture and between all levels of society," Putin said.

Sino-Russian relations have improved dramatically in recent years following decades of Soviet-era rivalry for dominance in the Communist world. Russia and China have declared their opposition to what they describe as a "unipolar world," their term for alleged U.S. global domination.

Putin noted that trade between Russia and China grew 40 percent last year to a record $8 billion. China is the No. 1 customer for Russia's ailing defense industries, purchasing billions of dollars worth of jets, missiles, and ships.

At a news conference, Tang dodged a question about whether Beijing had asked Moscow to sell it more arms in the wake of President Bush's declaration that the United States would do "whatever it took" to defend Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province.

He said only that he and Putin had discussed "the latest moves in American diplomacy."

Tang and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov signed a protocol on a draft treaty on friendship and cooperation that Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin are to sign during Jiang's visit to Moscow in July. The two presidents will also meet in June at a Shanghai Five summit in Shanghai.

"We are unanimous in agreement that this document will play a great role in enriching the relations between our countries in all spheres," Ivanov said. The treaty "will further strategic stability and security around the world," he added.

The Russia-China relationship is not free of tensions, however. A Siberian physicist, Valentin Danilov, was arrested earlier this year for allegedly selling secret research materials to a Chinese company. On Sunday, he was charged with state treason, Russian media reported.

Tang said he was unaware of details of the case.

"But, I can categorically say that no matter what is the reality in this case, it will not affect normal Chinese-Russian relations, including in the scientific and technical field," Tang said.

-------- ukraine

Stagnation Looms for Ukraine
Political Turmoil May Sap Recent Momentum for Reform

By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 29, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17726-2001Apr28?language=printer

KIEV, Ukraine, April 28 -- Serhey Tihipko wanted to talk to Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, but couldn't get through.

Tihipko's Ukrainian Labor Party, one of several tied to big business interests controlling much of the country's wealth, is the second-largest group in parliament after the Communists and had backed Yushchenko's dogged efforts to reform the economy. Yet it held no cabinet posts.

Tihipko said he tried for a month to get a meeting with Yushchenko to talk about it. Finally, he gave up. "During this month I met with the U.S. ambassador four times!"

Yushchenko, a leading reformer and democrat, says he refused to cede control of his government to business tycoons who wanted to further their own financial interests.

So in a gridlock of politics and principles, Yushchenko's 16-month-old government -- widely described, even by critics, as the best in Ukraine's 10 years of post-Soviet independence, met its demise on Thursday. Big business parties such as Tihipko's united with the Communists to oust the prime minister by a vote of 263 to 60.

Now Ukraine is being governed only by the president, Leonid Kuchma, who is accused of masterminding the kidnapping of a muck-raking journalist and who escaped the start of impeachment proceedings Thursday by only 21 votes.

"Ukraine is a big mess," said Markian Bilynskyj, director of the U.S.-Ukrainian Foundation in Kiev.

So much political turmoil raises Western fears that Ukraine, a strategically placed former Soviet republic of 49 million people, could go the way of neighboring Moldova and return to Communist control. Or that the country could back away from Western Europe and the United States into Russia's willing arms.

None of that is likely, according to political analysts and Western diplomats here. What is possible is that a government that seemed to be confronting some of its economic ills will slide back into the inertia of the last decade.

Ukraine's politics are like a ball of mercury, slippery and ever-changing. Excluding splinter parties, the 450-member parliament, whose power has grown as Kuchma's dwindles, divides roughly into three mutually hostile parts: Communists, pro-Yushchenko democrats, and a mix of big business and pro-Kuchma factions.

For a few months last year, the liberals and pro-Kuchma forces united behind crucial economic reforms. Then Kuchma's former security officer released secretly taped recordings that appeared to reveal Kuchma condoning corruption, ordering the kidnapping of a journalist and otherwise besmirching Ukrainian democracy.

"All the factions lost their unity," when the tapes were released, said Tihipko. "Because they all had different reactions."

Many liberals began agitating for Kuchma's ouster. Kuchma's supporters rallied around him. Yushchenko -- a Kuchma appointee -- tried to keep a foot in both camps. But when he publicly supported a key liberal whom Kuchma tossed into jail, Yulia Tymoshenko, the president drew away from him.

It didn't help that Kuchma, 63, a short, balding former Soviet missile factory manager, sank to the bottom of public opinion polls while Yushchenko, 47, a tall, handsome, former central banker, was routinely ranked as Ukraine's most trusted politician.

Pro-Kuchma forces in the legislature, sensing the widening gap between the president and the prime minister, started to demand a coalition government, partly made up of allies of big business. Tihipko said in an interview that the appointees would have helped Yushchenko reform the government and the economy. Yushchenko refused to accommodate them, he says, because of widespread corruption in Ukrainian businesses.

In an interview Friday, Yushchenko said the victory by the business interests shows that Ukraine's democracy is not yet firmly rooted.

"The real detonating force was the interest of three or four political figures," he said. "They needed direct political protection of financial and economic and property interests. . . .

"But I am optimistic because today lots of democratic forces were able to hear the bell they couldn't hear before," he said. "You have to fight for transparent politics and a non-criminal economy and democracy. If we want to have it, we have to fight for it."

Yushchenko vowed to unite the liberal democratic parties, but not to join those who want to unseat Kuchma, although he fears the tapes are authentic.

"A lot of those things that were heard might be true," he said. "Everyone wants to know the truth. Not speculation or rumors, not the ideas of the prime minister or anyone else, but the real truth."

Tihipko and other Kuchma allies say public outrage over the purported recordings has faded, and the main task is to form a new reform-minded government to work with the president. "Can you imagine what would happen in this country if the president resigned?" said Tihipko. "Then the problem would be huge."

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

U.S. Considers Shift In Nuclear Targets
Defenses to Focus on China, Experts Say

Washington Post
Sunday, April 29, 2001; Page A23
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18077-2001Apr28?language=printer

The Bush administration is considering major changes in America's nuclear posture, including slashing the number of strategic warheads, taking most B-52 and B-2 bombers out of the nuclear force and shifting some targets from Russia to China, according to administration officials and independent experts.

President Bush is scheduled to outline his goals for building missile defenses and reducing nuclear weapons in a speech Tuesday at the National Defense University at Fort McNair. But officials said the speech would deal with these subjects only in general terms and probably would not go much beyond Bush's campaign promises to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal while developing a missile shield to protect the United States and its allies.

Meanwhile, an inter-agency review of nuclear strategy and weaponry, one of several reviews of the military ordered by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, is generating specific ideas as it moves closer to completion in June.

The Pentagon, some officials said, is prepared to cut the number of strategic warheads from about 7,500 today to below 2,500 if the president changes the formal guidance on what nuclear forces are needed to meet the declining threat from Russia, the smaller but growing challenge from China, and the limited danger posed by nations such as Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

The Air Force, in particular, may absorb major changes, such as switching most B-2 and B-52 bombers to conventional missions. This was proposed in 1997, when the Clinton administration discussed reducing to 2,500 warheads.

In addition, the Air Force may "de-alert," or lower the readiness of, its 50 MX "Peacekeeper" intercontinental ballistic missiles, each carrying 10 warheads. They are scheduled to be withdrawn by 2007 under the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START II.

The Navy also may reduce its fleet of Trident ballistic missile submarines from 18 to as few as 10. "You may see some changes" in the submarines' operations announced by Bush on Tuesday, a senior administration official said.

Bush said during the election campaign that some cuts could be made unilaterally, and other senior officials have said the administration intends to gradually move away from the Cold War system of negotiated, equal reductions and mutual verification procedures.

One Bush adviser, former Reagan administration nuclear strategist Richard Perle, claimed this month that U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was "imminent." Asked about that comment, a White House official described Perle as "an adviser and not a spokesman."

Another senior administration official said there was no need to withdraw from the treaty, which bans national missile defenses, for at least a year, because it would take that long to begin building the first elements of a missile shield.

However, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the House International Relations Committee on Thursday that the United States would no longer participate in the U.S.-Russian Standing Consultative Commission, the group that regularly has met to discuss potential violations of the ABM Treaty.

Instead, Powell said, he would meet in three weeks with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to emphasize "our total commitment to missile defense programs."

Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, an independent organization, said yesterday he expects that the Bush administration's new guidance to the Pentagon on nuclear weapons needs "to shift away from Russia and toward China," with perhaps "a 50 percent reduction in Russian targets and a 100 percent increase in China targets."

Blair said the shift might entail basing more Trident submarines on the West Coast and placing some B-2s in Guam.

A strong indication of the administration's thinking came in a January report by a panel of national security experts that called for sharp reductions in strategic nuclear forces, lower alert rates for remaining ICBMs, and freedom to develop and test smaller warheads.

The panel, brought together by the National Institute for Public Policy, included Stephen J. Hadley, now Bush's deputy national security adviser; Robert Joseph, a member of the National Security Council staff with responsibility for nuclear weapons and arms control; Stephen Cambone, who has been nominated to be deputy undersecretary of defense for policy; and William Schneider Jr., a Rumsfeld adviser.

The panel cited the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the Senate rejected last year, as a prime example of Cold War arms control agreements "negotiated in good faith [that] can become harmful to national security when they effectively preclude the U.S. capabi lity to adapt to changing times."

Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.

---

Say What You Mean. Vaguely.

New York Times
April 29, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/weekinreview/29GORD.html

PRESIDENT BUSH has been criticized abroad for failing to spell out his foreign policy. But last week he received a painful lesson: Clarity can be even more risky.

Mr. Bush found that out when he declared that the United States would do "whatever it took" to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. The bald assurance was at odds with Washington's longstanding position of leaving its military response somewhat unclear, a policy known as strategic ambiguity.

But very soon after, Mr. Bush resorted to more cautious formulations, leaving many diplomats confused about what he was trying to say. In the end, it seems, Mr. Bush's main contribution has been to introduce a new degree of confusion into the issue, making it ambiguous whether the United States still holds to "strategic ambiguity."

Properly used, strategic ambiguity can be an important tool of foreign policy. Sometimes, the purpose is to keep America's adversaries off balance. At other times, the purpose is to keep Washington's options open.

During the cold war, for example, the United States reserved the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear attack by the Warsaw Pact, but left it unclear whether it would do so. The calculation was that uncertainty over the West's response would discourage an attack. It also masked an enormous debate in the West about the utility of nuclear weapons in a crisis.

In the months leading up to the Persian Gulf war, the first Bush administration decided that a vague threat could be a powerful one. It warned Saddam Hussein that his regime would pay a terrible price if it resorted to terrorism or chemical weapons. The administration had no intention of using nuclear or chemical weapons but was happy to let the worry linger.

Just as vagueness can be useful, too much precision can be risky. James Steinberg, deputy national security adviser during the Clinton administration, noted that it would be a mistake for the United States to try to specify all of the circumstance in which it would be prepared to use force. An adversary might miscalculate and try to exploit a situation that was not on the list.

"If you say you will use force in the following circumstances you could be giving a green light when you don't want to," Mr. Steinberg said. Dean Acheson, as secretary of state, may have inadvertently encouraged North Korea's decision to start the Korean War by leaving South Korea off the list of countries within the American "defense perimeter" in a speech in January 1950.

There can also be liabilities in being too precise about the nature of an American military response. President Clinton initially indicated that America had no interest in using ground forces during the Kosovo conflict. That was intended to secure Congressional support for the war, but limited America's leverage over Belgrade. Prodded by Britain, Washington eventually moved to reconsider the option of a land attack.

Taiwan has long been a delicate case. The United States has sought to deter China from attacking Taiwan while seeking at the same time to discourage Taiwan from precipitating a crisis by formally declaring independence. The solution has been to keep both sides guessing by saying Washington cares about Taiwan's security without offering ironclad guarantees.

When China fired missiles off the coast of Taiwan in 1996 the Clinton administration privately warned Beijing that there would be "grave consequences" in the event of a Chinese attack. It also dispatched two aircraft carriers to the waters east of Taiwan. That response, a senior Clinton aide recalled, was prompted by a concern that the policy of strategic ambiguity was a bit too ambiguous. Still, the United States stopped well short of saying how it would respond or creating a de facto military alliance with Taiwan.

CONSERVATIVE Republicans don't like strategic ambiguity, warning that China might conclude erroneously that Washington would stand on the sidelines during an attack on Taiwan; in other words, ambiguity could invite an attack. Democrats counter that an explicit American commitment to defend Taiwan might encourage war by letting Taiwan think it safe to defy China and declare independence.

While the debate goes on, American military officials have been careful to stick to an ambiguous policy line. Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the head of the Pacific Command, was careful not to mention the possibility of an American military intervention when he testified to the Senate last month, adjusting his response in mid- sentence. "They reserve the right to use force," he said, referring to the Chinese. "And we reserve the right to - for them not to use force."

Then President Bush challenged this policy in his interview with ABC News, broadcast on "Good Morning America." He said the United States had a duty to defend Taiwan. In so doing, he appeared to put the American interest in Taiwan's security on the same level as Washington's commitment to its NATO allies. But he tried to adjust his stance in later interviews, stressing that the United States does not support the independence of Taiwan and would do everything it could to help Taiwan defend itself. White House officials insisted there had been no change in policy, but were loath to attempt any more clarifications.

"The President," Mr. Bush's spokesman insisted, "has said what he wanted to say,"

-------- us nuc politics

A Commitment to Europe

Sunday, April 29, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16367-2001Apr28?language=printer

THE OPENING months of the Bush administration have demonstrated that, as much as at any other time since World War II, the relationship between the United States and Europe is open to question. America is at odds with its traditional European partners on an array of issues -- from missile defense to global warming to hormones in meat -- and the arguments are so wide and deep that some on both sides wonder whether an unbridgeable gap is opening. Meanwhile, in the half of the continent freed from Soviet domination a decade ago, a dozen countries are struggling with fundamental issues about the shape of their economic and political systems and about the kind of relationship they should have with the United States -- questions that in many nations are inextricably linked.

The common denominator of the uncertainty across the continent is this: How strong is the U.S. commitment to Europe? The answer may seem obvious, but it is not. With no Soviet threat, the need for the United States to help defend Western Europe -- the original purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- is no longer so obvious. Some in Washington question whether there is any U.S. interest in the security of countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The appeal of unilateralism is growing. Many in the Republican Party, where some seem to oppose almost any treaty or alliance that constrains American action or limits U.S. sovereignty. The manifestations of that sentiment -- most recently in the Bush administration's abrupt abandonment of the Kyoto treaty on global warming -- are one of the main factors behind the souring of European opinion on the United States.

Yet U.S. engagement with Europe remains critical, both to U.S. interests and to global stability. By strengthening its military ties with Western Europe, the United States has the opportunity to preserve the peace not only in Europe but in other regions, retaining leadership while spreading the costs -- as it has done in the Persian Gulf and the Balkans. And by engaging closely with the states of Central and Eastern Europe, it has the chance to ensure that they evolve into stable democratic countries that are allied to the West -- an outcome that, without U.S. leadership, is not at all ensured.

The way for the Bush administration to accomplish both these aims is to make the reinforcement and expansion of NATO a high priority during the next two years. NATO has already decided to take up the question of expansion at a summit scheduled for Prague next year, and no less than nine nations are hoping for invitations: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on the Baltic coast; Slovakia and Slovenia in Central Europe; and Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia and Albania in the south.

In some ways the debate over expansion should be simplified by NATO's successful integration of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary since 1997. Though all three countries, like their West European neighbors, have been slow to increase defense spending and upgrade their militaries, all three have made valuable contributions to NATO operations in the Balkans. All three have become flourishing democracies and have been more supportive of the United States diplomatically than Germany or France. And contrary to much overheated rhetoric in both Moscow and Washington five years ago, all three of these former Warsaw Pact countries have retained good relations with Russia despite their NATO membership.

The next group of countries inspires many of the same doubts that were raised about Poland and Hungary in the early 1990s. Some worry that admission of the Baltic states, which are former republics of the Soviet Union, will be too provocative to Russia. Others argue that countries like Romania and Albania have not yet proven to be stable democracies. But the problem with both these arguments is that they risk becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. The Baltic states now are relatively free from Russian bullying, but if NATO decides to exclude them for fear of offending Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin will surely conclude that he has been granted a license to restore suzerainty. Similarly, the hope of joining NATO has helped preserve the fragile democratic institutions of Romania; but were Bucharest rejected by the West, it would be more likely to take the road of its neighbor, Moldova, which recently restored the Communist Party to power.

Clearly it would be difficult both politically and militarily for NATO to integrate all nine candidate nations at once. But it could resolve at Prague that all are, in principle, accepted as NATO partners, while setting specific political and military standards that must be met for full integration. These standards should include such democratic tests as freedom of the press, civilian control of the military and respect for minority rights as well as purely military criteria. Nations should win full admittance as soon as they fulfill the standards. Some would get in almost immediately, while others would require more time. But all would have a powerful incentive to meet Western norms and the security of knowing that their future lay with an alliance of democracies led by the United States.

Europe's uncertainty about the future of its relationship with the United States means that NATO expansion will never occur if the initiative is left to Europe. But if President Bush makes NATO expansion a priority, it will surely move to the center of the transatlantic relationship, offering a ready means to revitalize the alliance and ensure that democracy and American leadership define the future of Central and Eastern Europe. President Bush will make his first trip to Europe as president in six weeks' time. NATO expansion should be at the center of his agenda.

-------- MILITARY

-------- colombia

Union Workers in Colombia Are Easy Prey for Gunmen

New York Times
April 29, 2001
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/world/29COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, April 28 - Ricardo Orozco, vice president of the hospital workers' union, had pleaded with the government to provide him with bodyguards. For weeks, he had been certain that his name was on a list of potential targets for right-wing gunmen. But the government had determined that the chances of assassination were slim, and no bodyguards were assigned.

So on a recent morning, Mr. Orozco was unprotected as a gunman attacked from behind and fired five bullets at him in Barranquilla in northern Colombia. Mr. Orozco, 36, married and the father of a baby girl, was left dead on the street.

That attack and dozens of others is part of a terror campaign, mostly carried out by an illegal paramilitary group, that has debilitated the union movement and undermined the efforts of labor leaders involved in peace talks with leftist rebels. Labor officials say that at least 120 union workers were slain last year and 69 in 1999. Thirty-five have died so far this year.

Union leaders here and foreign labor organizations say the government could have prevented many slayings by expanding a program that assigns bodyguards and other protection. Along with groups like Amnesty International and the International Labor Organization, they also argue that the government has allowed the problem to worsen by not effectively focusing on paramilitary gunmen and others who attack union workers.

The paramilitary groups, who have waged their own war against the two largest rebel forces and anyone suspected of backing them, regard union organizers, with their leftist leanings and sometimes vocal criticism of the paramilitary movement, as akin to guerrillas, union leaders said.

More than 1,200 unionists have been slain since 1991, most by paramilitary groups or assassins believed to have ties to the right, according to labor leaders and the National Union School, a research and educational center in Medellín.

The problem, union officials say, is that the Interior Ministry's General Office for Human Rights, which is responsible for assessing the risks against union leaders and offering protection, operates on a meager budget that fell almost 30 percent, to $1.7 million this year from $2.4 million in 1999.

The government failed to allocate even that money until the end of last month, said Labor Minister Angelino Garzón. "They were practically paralyzed for lack of resources," said Mr. Garzón, who announced his resignation this month, possibly to run for president.

After prodding by Mr. Garzón and labor leaders, an additional $1.3 million has been allocated for the Administrative Department of Security, which provides bodyguards and other protective measures. Labor leaders, however, say the resources are too scant to cover the dozens of endangered people.

"The truth is that this entity doesn't work at all," said Alex Iván Ortiz, president of the union that represents electric utility workers, who remains unprotected despite requests for bodyguards. "People are killed, people are threatened, and then nothing is ever done."

Interior Ministry officials disagree. Yet even they acknowledge shortcomings. One official explained that the lack of protection was "because of the lack of resources."

Héctor Fajardo, secretary general of the Unified Confederation of Workers, is among the leaders who have received some protection. His office here is outfitted with rocket- proof windows. Bodyguards accompany him around the clock.

"But when you look at all the union workers who have died, you see that this is not enough," Mr. Fajardo said. "Yes, they protect my life. But meanwhile, the killers knock down 100. What we need is for the government to take the necessary measures."

His confederation, the largest in Colombia, represents 750,000 workers.

Labor officials said the violence had severely damaged organizing, especially among unions in the fields of education, health care, petroleum and utilities.

Unions consider themselves a legal and legitimate opposition to fiscally conservative governments that have been bent on privatizing industries and holding down labor spending. But many union leaders say their once fiery enthusiasm was inhibited with each slaying and threat.

After a series of assassinations and threats, the oil workers' union in the Middle Magdalena River Valley has closed offices in isolated regions. A member of the union's Human Rights Commission, Ramón Rangel, said union workers were often "found out by these groups, threatened, told to submit, not to do anything, say anything or else risk becoming military targets."

For those without bodyguards, Mr. Ortiz of the electric workers' union said, the key to survival is to take as many precautions as possible. Mr. Ortiz varies his routes to and from his office. He gave up jogging, and he rarely ventures out at night.

"I'm terrified," he said recently before going to lunch. "My wife is about to pick me up in a few minutes, and we might get killed out there. That is because I don't have protection."

The most active or vocal union leaders are those most at risk, particularly the leaders who are critical of regional governments or who advocate negotiated settlements with the insurgencies.

The paramilitary group tied to most of the killings, the United Self- Defense Forces of Colombia, has vehemently opposed talks with the rebels. In one of its more spectacular assassination attempts, the group tried to gun down the swaggering president of the Federation of State Workers, Wilson Borja, who had been encouraging talks.

The shooting, in broad daylight in December on a street in Bogotá, left Mr. Borja alive but with three bullet wounds, two bodyguards wounded and a bystander dead. One gunman was killed.

Prosecutors said a police captain, who was later charged, had cooperated in the attack. The press also reported that investigators had found that in the days before the attack the gunman who was killed had called military and police officials on his cellular telephone and had received calls from them.

"The fundamental reason why the union movement is being attacked is because of intolerance," Mr. Borja said by telephone from Cuba, where he is recuperating from his injuries. "That intolerance means that everything smells like Communism, everything smells like a leftist, and what they want is to maintain the status quo."

-------- drug war

In Latin America, Foes Aren't the Only Danger

New York Times
April 29, 2001
By TIM WEINER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/weekinreview/29TIMW.html

WHEN the fighter pilot's fire ripped through a plane carrying an American missionary family over Peru last week, the bullet holes opened up ironic points of light into American foreign policy in Latin America. "Know your enemy and know yourself; in 100 battles you will never be in peril," Sun Tzu wrote in "The Art of War." In Latin America, though, it is its friends and allies that the United States does not seem to want to know too well. Today, particularly where the drug war rages, it finds itself, as it has so often in the past, in the awkward position of an arm's-length embrace.

The American drug warriors working hand-in-hand with the Peruvian Air Force pilot were there as part of a pact struck with Peru's disgraced and exiled former president, Alberto K. Fujimori. "It was a compact with Fujimori rather than with Peruvian society," said Robert E. White, a former United States ambassador in El Salvador and Paraguay. And Mr. White, who is now president of the Center for International Policy in Washington, said that such deals may be seen as something less than a bargain by the general populations south of the border: "We don't understand in this country how much Latin Americans look on drugs as our problem and not their problem."

The killing of a missionary and her baby in a plane that C.I.A.-employed spotters had first noticed on radar raised questions that go far beyond the drug war: What is America doing down there, and with whom? Who are its friends, and what happens when it befriends them?

Last year, the United States sent more than $1 billion in weapons, equipment and training to Latin American security forces, largely in the name of fighting drugs. It was more than all the economic and development assistance it provided to the region. A decade after the end of the cold war, Washington is working with every army in Latin America save Cuba's, and military officers, spies and their political cohorts are often its primary points of contact.

The Pentagon says democracy can grow out of this association: that working side-by-side will teach Latin American armies American values. "The sometimes overeager and trigger-happy officers of our partners in the drug wars" will learn discipline that way, as Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal.

But the picture is larger than that. The Latin American military still serves and represents a ruling class far smaller and proportionately more powerful than the United States has seen since the days of the robber barons. The armies no longer run Latin America's governments directly, and they have rewritten their doctrines since the end of the cold war - no longer scorching the earth as they did in the days of dictatorships. But they have kept their mandate to preserve the power of elites who still wield immense influence even under the region's new civilian governments. And the United States values its own ties to those powerful people - businessmen, bankers, dynastic families and generals - as it pursues the varied aspects of its policy, particularly the drug war and free-trade pacts.

What the United States gets out of these alliances, in part, is a variety of stability, which is useful for oil companies seeking to pump Venezuela's crude, for clothing chains seeking cheap Central American labor and for Pentagon officers trying to enforce American drug policy. The argument for such stability is that it could allow prosperity to flourish, and prosperity could transform the region's politics. The problem, though, is when stability becomes stasis and it merely preserves the old economic and political order, in which prosperity has proved to be the most difficult thing to share.

Look back 40 years, to President John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, the cold- war carrot that went with the stick of coups and counterinsurgency. The program helped build factories in El Salvador. They were run by the same people who ran the rural haciendas. They dealt with their workers as peons - same as ever - and the factories did little to lift the lives of the poor. This fed a cycle of rebellion and repression that burst out in the late 1970's and continued until 1992.

Twenty years ago, as that violence began, a New York Times reporter asked José Napoleón Duarte, the centrist leader of El Salvador's new ruling junta, why the guerrillas were in the hills. The answer was pithy: "Fifty years of lies, 50 years of injustice, 50 years of frustration. This is a history of people starving to death, living in misery. For 50 years the same people had all the power, all the money, all the jobs, all the education, all the opportunities." By and large, they still do.

The American left has had its own set of prisms, often idealizing guerrillas who were no more than bitter men with automatic weapons. Lori Berenson, the American activist imprisoned for life as a Marxist revolutionary in Peru by a hooded military judge in 1996, might possibly be a case in point: Miguel Rincon, a member of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, testified at her retrial last week that she had no idea with whom she had become mixed up.

But over the years, military and political leaders in places like Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama and Peru developed a clearer sense of the rules. They learned that it paid well to appear to be a partner of the United States and a part of American foreign policy. Even better if, like General Manuel Noriega, Panama's dictator in the 1980's, or Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's spymaster in the 1990's, you were a close friend of the Central Intelligence Agency, providing inside information while nibbling the American embassy's canapes. And better still if you told the gringos what they wanted to hear, reinforcing their preconceptions, creating a closed loop of political analysis.

Such allies received "resources, prestige, legitimacy, and this appeal to the higher authority of the United States - higher than the fragmented and fractured politics of their own nations and existing institutions," said Marc Chernick, a professor of government and Latin American studies at Georgetown University. The payoff often included access to arms and gentle treatment when issues like corruption, torture and inequality arose.

Peru is a particularly pointed case. It strongly suggests that "we are working with untrustworthy rogue allies," said Coletta Youngers, a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America, which monitors human-rights issues in the region. "We are trying to impose a military and intelligence solution to a problem that in Latin America is fundamentally economic."

Mr. Fujimori, Peru's president from 1990 until he fled the country in November, had assumed a dictator's mantle. But as he brought inflation under control, attracted new foreign investment, crushed the Marxists and appeared to fight the cocaine trade, he won a measure of approval from Washington. Even after he appeared to steal a third election, the American ambassador in Lima, John Hamilton, attended his inauguration last July. His presence, a senior official of the Clinton administration told The Times, signaled "the reality" that Mr. Fujimori "is going to head the government of Peru at least for the foreseeable future, and we acknowledge that we have mutual, bilateral business to conduct."

Reality has shifted since then. Mr. Fujimori's government lasted less than four more months. It now appears clear that it was a mafia. Mr. Montesinos, the C.I.A.'s old interlocutor, fled into hiding after videotapes showed him as a corrupter of the highest rank. The commander of Peru's armed forces from 1992 to 2000, Gen. Nicolás Hermoza, now stands accused of working with drug smugglers and depositing $14.5 million in Swiss bank accounts. Other senior Peruvian officers stand accused of selling intelligence to drug traffickers to protect them from the shoot-first, ask-later air war - a key part of the bilateral business between Washington and Lima.

The C.I.A. contractors who man the spotter planes over the Andes were officially out of the chain of command that gave the order to fire on the plane carrying the American missionary, Roni Bowers, 35, and her seven- month-old daughter, Charity, who died. But the plane that fired was made and paid for in America. The pilot was American- trained. And even though some American officials argue that the pilot shouldn't have pulled the trigger without further checks on the airplane's identity, the intelligence that first put the missionaries in the crosshairs was American intelligence, gathered by American personnel, in furtherance of American foreign policy - which is an attempt to solve the problem of Americans' desire to smoke, snort and shoot cocaine.

Two more deaths will matter little to thousands of peasants growing coca leaves in the Andes because growing corn and beans does not pay them enough to survive. And in the end, they may matter little in a multibillion-dollar American policy, executed by American military and intelligence officers who rely on friends in Latin America for whom past American support has meant much - a little more immunity, a little more impunity and a lot more power.

---

Missionaries: On a Frontier of Danger

New York Times
April 29, 2001
By LARRY ROHTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/weekinreview/29ROHT.html

RIO DE JANEIRO - AMERICAN missionaries working in Latin America have always had to contend with obstacles, starting with distrustful local churches and governments. But the death of a Baptist missionary and her infant daughter, shot down in Peru on April 20 after their plane was confused with that of drug traffickers, is a sobering reminder that even as the success of their evangelization effort has grown, so have the risks faced by the more than 10,000 American missionaries now in the region.

Since they first began heading south in the mid- 1800's, American missionaries have had to labor under the twin burdens of being foreigners and, for the most part, Protestant. In a region where the original Iberian conquerors themselves imposed Catholicism by "the sword and the cross," it was probably inevitable that the Americans would end up being stigmatized as agents of cultural and political imperialism.

Nonetheless, in recent years, Protestantism, especially of the evangelical variety, has made remarkable gains in countries ranging from Guatemala to Brazil, most notably in cities. As a result, according to David Stoll, the author of "Is Latin America Turning Protestant?: The Politics of Evangelical Growth," "the frontier of the faith is now out in rural areas" like the Amazon, where Veronica and James Bowers were living when their plane was attacked.

But missionary organizations that choose to work in such remote areas, where the state's presence is weak and the population is largely Indian, have been regarded with a particularly suspicious eye. In country after country, groups like the New Tribes Mission and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, a branch of the Wycliffe Bible Translators, have been accused of spying for the C.I.A. or of clandestinely prospecting for gold, diamonds, emeralds or uranium.

"We are fully aware that we have been accused of being duplicitous," said David Oltrogge, director of Latin American Initiatives for the Wycliffe Bible Translators, which has compiled dictionaries in more than 300 American Indian languages. "But our motivation is to translate the Bible into as many languages as we can."

On the other hand, because American missionary groups have modern organizational and record-keeping skills, the United States Agency for International Development sometimes awards contracts to their local affiliates, and a congressional investigation in the 1970's found that many missionaries returning to the United States were debriefed by the C.I.A.

In recent years, "those criticisms have dwindled to insignificance compared to the problem of drug lords and paramilitaries killing people who will not cooperate with them," said Dr. Stoll, a professor of anthropology at Middlebury College. But the overall level of danger faced by missionaries - including kidnapping for ransom - has grown, especially in Peru's neighbor Colombia, where some organizations are pulling back from "portions of the country that it is ridiculous even to think of entering," as Dr. Oltrogge put it.

Many American missionary groups working in Latin America began their activities in Asia or Africa, where they served as bearers of Western values. When they first arrived in Latin America, they quickly discovered they were on different terrain: this region is part of the West, and Christianity is the native religion.

Still, until recently the relationship between Protestant missionaries and the local Catholic hierarchy was largely one of mutual hostility and suspicion.

"Even today, the majority of Protestant American missionaries are more likely to be conservative evangelicals than from the so-called mainline denominations," said Robert T. Coote of the Overseas Ministries Study Center. "We grew up thinking Catholicism couldn't possibly be right, that it was harmful even."

During the 1970's and into the 1980's, military regimes were "interested in ways of clipping the wings of the Catholic Church," as Ralph della Cava of Columbia University puts it, and in Protestantism they thought they had found an ideal vehicle. Like religious minorities in other parts of the world, Protestants sought to cooperate with whatever government was in power - rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.

For Roman Catholic missionaries from the United States, many of them drawn to Latin America by the theology of liberation, the situation was almost exactly the opposite. The 1980 rape and murder of three American nuns and a lay worker by soldiers in El Salvador was only the most grotesque example of American missionaries suffering the same repression as the liberals among their Latin American brethren.

Today, the byword for American missionaries in the region appears to be "cultural sensitivity," said Mr. Coote. Particularly among Protestants, "Christian anthropology" has developed, aimed at making proselytizing less intrusive - and more effective.

---

Celebrity Victims of the Drug War

New York Times
April 29, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/opinion/L29DRUG.html

To the Editor:

Ethan Nadelmann ("An Unwinnable War on Drugs," Op-Ed, April 26) makes an important point regarding two notable victims, Darryl Strawberry and Robert Downey Jr.

That these men have failed to stop their drug use despite imprisonment and coerced treatment is no indication of their weakness. Rather, it underscores the complexity and depth of the demon called addiction, a condition for which approximately 10 percent of us are vulnerable.

The war on drugs has cost Mr. Downey and Mr. Strawberry their careers and possibly their freedom. Such punishment will serve no positive end. We must stop this insane war and develop policies based on common sense, science, public health and respect for individual rights.

DONALD M. TOPPING President, Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii Honolulu, April 26, 2001

•To the Editor:

Re "An Unwinnable War on Drugs," by Ethan Nadelmann (Op- Ed, April 26):

Alcohol Prohibition gave us Al Capone and organized crime, widespread corruption, homemade liquor that killed or blinded thousands, and easy access to a drink for anybody who wanted one.

Drug prohibition has given us international drug cartels that rival the power of small countries, widespread corruption, impure drugs that kill or injure thousands, and easy access to drugs for anybody who wants them.

Drugs are a medical and social problem that we're trying to treat as a law-enforcement problem. Mr. Nadelmann is correct: the "war on drugs" is unwinnable because we've stated the problem incorrectly.

STEVE WELLCOME Bolton, Mass., April 27, 2001

---

New Mexico

USA Today
04/29/01
States
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Albuquerque - A federal judge ruled that the Hobbs Police Department deserves a new trial in a lawsuit filed by a man who alleged an officer planted a small amount of marijuana on him. Jurors relied on their own incorrect definition of planted evidence in ruling for Liberato Olivas, Judge Bruce Black ruled in dismissing the verdict.

-------- puerto rico

Navy Bombing Is Betrayal, Puerto Rico's Governor Says

April 29, 2001
By ANDREW JACOBS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/national/29SILA.html

SAN JUAN, P.R., April 28 - As Sila M. Calderón hopscotched across this island during her successful campaign for governor last year, she promised that, if elected, she would end the Navy's bombing runs on the island of Vieques that have so inflamed the nationalistic passion of Puerto Ricans. It is a promise that helped make her the first woman to become governor of this commonwealth, but one she has not been able to keep.

In the last two days, as hundreds of protesters gathered in Vieques, where the Navy is holding military maneuvers, Governor Calderón remained at La Fortaleza, the Governor's Mansion here in the capital, largely out of sight, keeping a frenzied press at bay.

But today, in her first interview since the Navy resumed exercises on Friday, the governor said she felt as angry and betrayed as fellow Puerto Ricans.

"I'm so sorry it has come to this," she said, sitting in her office in this 16th century palace. "It has been a very difficult time for us."

While Governor Calderón refrained from attacking the Bush administration for its unwillingness to stop the military maneuvers, she did not hide her disappointment, saying that she had believed the Navy would abide by an accord reached in January. That agreement, between the governor and Richard Danzig, the secretary of the Navy at the time, called for a halt to shelling until preliminary findings of a health study of Vieques could be reviewed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

The study, by a panel of Puerto Rican researchers, showed a high incidence of cardiac problems among Viequenses.

In February, in a meeting with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Governor Calderón said she was told that the accord was still valid under the Bush administration. The discussions were going so well, she said, that she decided to withhold legal action seeking an immediate closing of the bombing range though she had promised to pursue such a course during her campaign.

But in announcing its decision two weeks ago to resume training on Vieques, the Pentagon dismissed the health study and said the more pressing issue was military readiness. Opened about 60 years ago, the firing range is the only site in the Atlantic where simultaneous bombardment from sea, air and land is possible. To Navy officials, the 900-acre bombing area is irreplaceable.

Under a deal reached by her predecessor, Gov. Pedro Rosselló, the Navy was allowed to continue training with inert ammunition for three years. In exchange, Vieques residents are to decide in a referendum in November whether they want the Navy to leave by May 2003 or stay indefinitely.

But after visiting Vieques and learning about health problems among its 9,400 residents, Ms. Calderón decided that to wait three years was too much. Today, she recalled meeting with about 300 residents at a community center. When those in the room were asked how many relatives had cancer, Governor Calderón said, nearly everyone raised a hand.

"You don't have to be a genius to see that something is happening there," she said. "People are dying."

The study showing a high incidence of a cardiovascular ailment in Vieques and a possible link to the noise of explosions fortified her decision to disregard Mr. Rosselló's deal with the United States.

"These are very poor people and someone has to speak for them," she said. "It is my obligation to speak for them."

Governor Calderón said she hoped that a federal judge in Washington would decide to halt the Navy maneuvers. Hearings on the case begin next month. The judge, Gladys Kessler, denied the Puerto Rican government's request for a temporary restraining order last Thursday but she voiced support for the underlying health concerns.

Despite her vocal stance against the Navy, Ms. Calderón criticized protesters who tore up the fence at Camp García in Vieques on Friday. "All eyes of the world are on Puerto Rico," she said. "We should show them we are peaceful people."

Mindful of the growing public outrage here - and its possible impact on Washington - Governor Calderón made it clear that her opposition to the Navy's presence in Vieques should not be construed as anti-military or anti-American. "This is not an ideological issue, nor is it a political issue," she said. "This is about human rights."

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Navy halts exercises for a day in Vieques

USA Today
4/29/2001 - Updated 05:53 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-04-29-navy.htm

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (AP) - The U.S. Navy halted bombing exercises on Vieques as a gesture of respect as the Vatican beatified the first Puerto Rican ever on Sunday, bringing a pause to two days of clashes between protesters and federal authorities.

The exercises are to resume Monday morning and are expected to last several more days, Navy Lt. Jeff Gordon said. The Navy avoided exercises Sunday as the largely Catholic U.S. territory observed the ceremony putting Carlos Manuel Rodriguez on the path to sainthood.

Rodriguez - one of five people beatified by Pope John Paul II on Sunday - was a layman who died in 1963 after a life dedicated to the church. The Vatican has attributed a miracle to him: a woman recovered from non-Hodgkins lymphoma after praying to Rodriguez.

Some 25,000 people, including many Puerto Ricans, attended the ceremony in St. Peter's Square. Rodriquez, an office clerk, gained fame in Puerto Rico for his piety and his efforts to spread the study of liturgy and bring laypeople into the church.

On the occasion of the beatification, Puerto Rico's governor, Sila Calderon, asked the pope to act to bring a permanent stop to U.S. bombing exercises on the outlying island of Vieques. She made the request in a letter delivered to John Paul by her secretary of state.

On Vieques, dozens of protesters formed picket lines near Navy land on Sunday, but there were no reports of conflicts with military security.

The Navy did not report any new arrests of protesters trespassing on the bombing range. So far, 128 protesters have been arrested since Thursday night for entering the range in hopes of thwarting the exercises, which began Friday.

Activists claimed they still had about 40 people on the Navy bombing range.

"We're going to keep putting people on the bombing range because we have demonstrated that we have been more efficient at getting people in there than the Navy has been at taking them out," said protest leader Carlos Zenon.

Three people were injured in clashes between authorities and protesters on Friday and Saturday, including a sailor and two demonstrators.

Calderon on Sunday urged protesters to behave in "a pacific and orderly manner."

The Navy has used its Vieques range for six decades and says it is vital for national defense. It denies anti-Navy activists' claims that the exercises cause health problems.

Opposition to the exercises grew after an April 1999 accident in which two off-target bombs killed a Puerto Rican civilian guard on the range.

The current exercises involve about 15,000 sailors and Marines and a dozen cruisers and destroyers in the battle group led by the Norfolk, Virginia-based aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. Jets also were dropping non-explosive bombs.

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5 Seals With Kerrey Back Him on War Raid

New York Times
April 29, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/world/29VIET.html

Bob Kerrey has been joined by five members of his Navy Seals team in denying that they knowingly killed civilians during the Vietnam War in a wanton raid. The statement disputes assertions of a seventh member of the team that it herded civilians into a group and killed them.

Mr. Kerrey, a former Democratic governor and senator from Nebraska, and his five wartime colleagues provided their statement to The Washington Post for today's issue. It followed a five-hour meeting of the six men on Friday night, the newspaper said. It contradicts interviews with the seventh team member, published today in The New York Times Magazine and scheduled to be broadcast on the CBS News program "60 Minutes II" on Tuesday.

In interviews for the magazine article, Mr. Kerrey acknowledged that the mission he led in 1969 in Thanh Phong caused the deaths of 13 to 20 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children. He said his team received fire and returned it.

In an interview last night with The Associated Press, Mr. Kerrey lashed out at The Times and CBS, saying: "The Vietnam government likes to routinely say how terrible Americans were. The Times and CBS are now collaborating in that effort."

Joseph Lelyveld, the executive editor of The Times, said, "I think he knows better." A spokesman for CBS, Kevin Tedesco, said, "We stand by our story 100 percent."

Mr. Kerrey could not be reached for further comment last night.

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Healing in Vietnam

New York Times
April 29, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/opinion/L29KERR.html

To the Editor:

Just "remembering the horrible lesson" of the Vietnam War is not enough ("The War Within Bob Kerrey," editorial, April 26). We also need to pursue justice and true reconciliation. Although it is late, we need to take serious measures to redress the gross pain and sufferings inflicted on the Vietnamese by American leaders and foot soldiers like Bob Kerrey.

Bob Kerrey should go back to the village of Thanh Phong, offer his apology and the Bronze Star, and build a monument for the civilian victims.

At the same time, the United States government should undertake a thorough review of the killing, prosecute those responsible, and offer just compensation to the survivors or families of the victims.

Only then can true peace and reconciliation be realized for Vietnamese and Americans alike, including Bob Kerrey.

JOHN H. KIM New York, April 26, 2001 The writer is president of the New York chapter of Veterans for Peace.

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Commander will review Saudi dress code

USA Today
04/29/2001 - Updated 08:19 PM ET
By Edward T. Pound, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-04-30-dress-usat.htm

WASHINGTON - The senior U.S. military commander in Saudi Arabia will review and may change a policy requiring female personnel deployed in that country to wear a neck-to-toe robe known as an abaya, military officials say.

The review was disclosed in the wake of complaints about the dress policy by Maj. Martha McSally, 35, the highest-ranking female fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force. In an interview published April 18 in USA TODAY, McSally said that the policy discriminated against women.

Military spokesmen say that Air Force Gen. Gary Dylewski, who assumed the command earlier this month, would review the policy. As the new commander, they say, he is reviewing all operational policies.

Officials say they don't know when the review of the dress policy would be completed. And, they say, Dylewski may keep the policy intact.

McSally met with Dylewski on Thursday at the Eskan Village military command, near the Saudi capital of Riyadh, to discuss the policy. She says she told him she agrees the military needs to "be aware of and comply with the customs of our hosts," but not when they "fundamentally conflict with the values of our nation." But in the case of the abaya, she says she explained that "there is a fundamental conflict with one American value: that all humans are