------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Indian Armed Forces Begin Exercises
N. Korean Leader to Continue Sale of Missiles
EU Says NKorea Visit Was Important
Nuclear Defence
Disastrous defense Plan will trigger new arms race
The mastermind of 'Star Wars'
Russia Scientists Await Nuke Decision
Limiting uranium in water could be costly
Los Alamos Rebuild After Fire
N-plant set to go offline for refueling

MILITARY
Colombia Steps Up Anti-Drug Fight with U.S. Help
U.S. Green Berets Train Colombians
Iraq Asks U.N. About Aggression
North Korea Refuses to Stop Arms Exports, Delegation Says
Macedonia To Ask for War Declaration
U.S. Attacks Rights Group for Ousting It
Revolt at the U.N.
In the Arabian Desert, U.S. Troops Settle In
Something of an Enigma at Pentagon

OTHER
Danes Open Largest Windmill Park
Old Fuels and Poor Policy
Both Sides in Forest Debate Await Administration's Next Move
Babies Born in Experiments Have Genes From 3 People
U.S. Student Says Russia Tried to Recruit Him
U.S. Spy Plane Deemed Flyable
Hackers Leave Pro-China Trail on U.S. Sites

ACTIVISTS
Vieques Arrests
Protest Over Algeria Riots Blocks Paris Traffic
N.J. Rally Protests Police Killing
Thousands Protest Marijuana Laws
Thousands Protest at U.N. Sanctions on Liberia


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- india / pakistan

Indian Armed Forces Begin Exercises

May 5, 2001
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-India-Military-Exercise.html?searchpv=aponline

NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- India's military began the country's biggest military exercises in 13 years on Saturday, training troops to face future battle scenarios involving nuclear, biological and chemical weapon strikes.

More than 50,000 troops and at least 120 aircraft were participating in the exercises, named ``Complete Victory.''

The exercises, which continue until Thursday, are being held in the Thar desert in the western state of Rajasthan. India's last major military exercises were held in 1988 in the same area.

The exercises were to include a mock battle involving ground troops, artillery units, combat aircraft and commandos, the United News of India news agency said. Fighter jets of the Indian air force were to practice launching strikes, while elite commando units and paratroopers were to attempt to ``seize enemy assets,'' the news agency said.

The exercises end with a massive demonstration of firepower at India's Pokharan test range, the site of nuclear tests in May 1998. India's 1998 tests were followed by nuclear tests conducted by its neighbor and rival, Pakistan.

India's latest exercises sparked a new controversy before they had even begun, when Pakistan complained it had not been informed in advance. India said it had informed its neighbor of the exercises when top military officers of the two countries met on April 17.

Indian officials said the exercises were being conducted well away from the India-Pakistan border. The site of the tests is about 45 miles from the frontier.

-------- korea

N. Korean Leader to Continue Sale of Missiles
A Conciliatory Kim Tells Europeans He Will Keep Promises, but Cannot Give Up 'Trade'

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 5, 2001; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44997-2001May4?language=printer

SEOUL, May 4 -- North Korea's leader has pledged he will keep past promises to Washington and Seoul to show that he wants good relations, but Kim Jong Il said he cannot afford to stop selling missiles, according to European officials who met him this week.

Kim said his missile sales to other countries are "part of trade. If he finds people who want to buy it, he will sell it," said Javier Solana, chief of foreign policy and security affairs for the European Union.

But the officials who met with the enigmatic North Korean leader for five hours this week said they found a reasonable man eager to have closer relations with the United States and willing to make concessions. That portrait is in sharp contrast to the shrill rhetoric and clumsy threats that come out daily in North Korea's propaganda.

Kim's announcement of a lengthy extension of his country's moratorium on missile testing is an overture, even though he feels rebuffed by the Bush administration, according to Solana and Prime Minister Goran Persson of Sweden.

"At one point, he made a comment on the side: 'Well, the U.S. called me a rogue state again,' " Solana said in an interview in Seoul.

Solana said Kim "assured us -- he insisted -- that he is committed to all the declarations" made to the United States and South Korea. These include a 1994 agreement to freeze North Korea's nuclear program, the 1999 missile test moratorium, and pledges he made last June to advance reconciliation with South Korea and visit Seoul.

The European officials said Kim offered to extend the moratorium on missile tests until 2003 as a "big concession" to prove his sincerity to Washington. Kim did not explain why he chose that date, and the offer goes well beyond the next decision point in relations with Washington -- the Bush administration's review of North Korean policy expected to be completed soon.

"I don't know exactly why he picked 2003, and I didn't want to ask why," Solana said. "It's a longer period than it will take for the [Bush administration's] review. The message is, he wants to continue" his overture to the United States, "and he is going to continue it even after the review is over."

In the interview and at a news conference in Seoul, Solana joined Persson in describing a North Korean leader whose style differs from that suggested by the hostile official statements from Pyongyang that have been increasing recently. The Europeans said Kim reasonably and knowledgeably discussed a wide range of issues and was willing to debate points of view.

Until last year, Kim Jong Il was a mystery to the world: Accounts swirled of a hermit given to excessive drinking and movie binges in his private theater. Since his "coming out" last year at the historic summit with the South Korean president, successive visitors have described Kim as a polite host, articulate and in command of the issues.

But his one-man control and personal diplomacy with visitors in Pyongyang is fraught with the risk of misunderstandings: A scheme he reportedly advanced with President Vladimir Putin of Russia to give up his missile launches in exchange for money and help launching satellites from the West was later described by Kim to other visitors as a "joke," but then again pursued in seriousness by the Clinton administration. The Europeans said the idea was not mentioned this week.

The EU officials said Kim extended the missile test moratorium even though he feels that Bush's official freeze in talks broke the 1999 understanding, under which the test moratorium was predicated on continued dialogue between the countries.

"He felt free, once the dialogue was stopped, not to continue with the moratorium. But he said he would like to express restraint," Solana said.

The 1999 moratorium came after Washington, alarmed by Pyongyang's launch of a ballistic missile over Japan the year before, promised to ease economic sanctions and Kim promised to halt the tests.

The European diplomats said they did not discuss the missile defense system proposed by Bush because "we were trying very hard not to be an interpreter for the United States," Solana said.

But he said Kim indicated he did not think Bush's policy review would put the two countries back on the same footing they were on at the end of the Clinton administration.

"I think he feels that the review very likely is going to toughen some of the elements," Solana said.

Kim also said he wants to see the results of the U.S. policy review before setting a date for his promised visit to Seoul. But Solana said Kim made it clear he wants to go.

"He wants to have the second meeting with President Kim [Dae Jung]," Solana said.

In the EU officials' meetings with Kim, Solana said, "the message we gave very clearly was that to have a relationship with the European Union, you have to be a state who behaves by the rules of the game." He said the officials told Kim his export of missiles was "not acceptable."

North Korea is believed to supply short-range missiles to a variety of Third World countries. Despite its own global arms sales, Washington has demanded that North Korea stop those sales.

But Solana said Kim dismissed the U.S. objection to the sales.

"His message was, 'I need money. I'm able to produce this, and I will sell it,' " Solana said.

Staff writer Alan Sipress reported from Washington:

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that the Bush administration has been making progress on a review of overall policy toward North Korea and a more specific evaluation of how to monitor restrictions on Pyongyang's development, testing and sale of missile technology.

He acknowledged he had spoken prematurely in March by saying that the United States was prepared to resume missile talks previously conducted by the Clinton administration. President Bush contradicted Powell a day later, telling visiting President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea that those discussions would be suspended because of concerns about verification.

"Sometimes you get a little too far forward in your skis," Powell told reporters yesterday. "We didn't have the monitoring and verification regime in place. And now we're working on the monitoring and verification regime."

--------

EU Says NKorea Visit Was Important

May 5, 2001
New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-NKorea-EU.html?searchpv=aponline

NYKOEPING, Sweden (AP) -- The European Union on Saturday summed up its visit last week to North Korea as an important step toward opening up the totalitarian state, but stressed it was only a beginning.

``I'm not a starry-eyed optimist about human rights or other issues in North Korea,'' EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten said.

``We're at the beginning of ... a very long and winding and stony road.''

Patten and other members of a high-level delegation to both capitals on the divided Korean peninsula said the North had pledged to extend a moratorium on missile testing and to open discussions on human rights.

But reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il refused to stop exports of missile technology unless he is compensated for the important source of foreign currency for the impoverished country, the envoys said.

``He said that this was a purely commercial issue,'' Swedish state secretary Hans Dahlgren said.

Patten, Dahlgren and EU security chief Javier Solana spoke at a news conference after briefing EU foreign ministers on their May 2-4 trip to North Korea led by Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.

Dahlgren said North Korea saw the United States as the biggest obstacle to reconciliation with the South but said Kim Jong Il had confirmed his commitment to the process. The United States has 37,000 troops in South Korea.

Kim said his ``personal friendship'' with President Kim Dae-jung was important but felt the South Korean leader was too influenced by the United States, Dahlgren said.

Government contacts between the two Koreas have ebbed since President Bush decided to suspend talks with North Korea while awaiting a policy review.

The United States views the communist North as a threat to efforts to curb missile proliferation and Kim's decision to extend the missile testing moratorium for three years was seen as a major accomplishment.

The North Koreans ``said they would be patient until the year 2003,'' but their position after that would depend on U.S. policy, Dahlgren said.

The Korean Peninsula was divided into the communist North and pro-Western South in 1945. The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, but a peace treaty was never signed.

-------- missile defense

Nuclear Defence

Saturday, May 5, 2001
Irish Times
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2001/0505/edi2.htm

President George Bush set out his plans for a nuclear missile defence system this week, in an important elaboration of his central foreign policy platform. He coupled them with proposals for radical cuts in US stocks of nuclear weapons and with significant undertakings to have genuine consultations on the new system with allies and the other powers involved. That has helped to mitigate hostile reaction to what is potentially a very dangerous development, which could trigger a new nuclear arms race.

Mr Bush insists it is necessary to go beyond assumptions built into Cold War strategic balances between the United States and the Soviet Union. They were guaranteed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which left both sides open to destruction if they initiated a nuclear exchange. An effective missile defence system, removing that vulnerability from one of the states involved, would give it a crucial advantage to assert its power and interests, in the sure knowledge that it could not be matched by its adversaries. Such an imbalance is what analysts fear will trigger a new arms race.

To prevent that happening it will be essential to ensure any changes in nuclear strategy are made through multilateral negotiations rather than unilateral actions taken by one superpower to protect its own interests. That is the critical test to be applied to Mr Bush's announcement this week. His promise to engage in a genuine consultative process dulled the edge of potentially hostile responses, notably from President Putin of Russia. But there are clear distinctions between informing other states, consulting them and negotiating such changes multilaterally. In an international system still so based on power politics and national interests, Mr Bush must not be surprised by suspicions that his plans are intended to bolster the US unilaterally. Analysts say shifts in the vocabulary used may signal important modifications in the nuclear doctrines involved. Thus, Mr Bush no longer refers to a national missile defence system but to ballistic missile defence - possibly a move towards a more negotiated change. There is renewed emphasis on a multi-layered system encompassing land and sea-based missiles which could be deployed against the "rogue states" such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran which preoccupy Mr Bush's advisers without threatening other large powers such as Russia and China. Nonetheless, the space-based elements which do worry them are still firmly there in the plans, although they need years of more highly expensive research and development to bring them anywhere near deployment.

Considering these proposals one is left with a firm sense of the dangerous redundancy of nuclear weapons in a changing world. Ireland has played an active role in campaigning against nuclear proliferation and in favour of phasing these weapons out altogether. To confront theoretical risks from such "rogue states" with such elaborate and costly technological fixes, devalues the roles of politics and diplomacy, which are surely much more capable of tackling them. Mr Bush has an awful lot of convincing to do before missile defence is generally accepted.

editor@irish-times.ie

-------

Disastrous defense Plan will trigger new arms race

Sunday Symposium From Journal Sentinel readers
May 5, 2001
http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/may01/enslow06050501.asp

I commend the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for its editorial in opposition to Bush's plans for a national missile defense ("The president's missile gap," May 1). The administration's proposal for an expanded missile defense based on land, sea and space will be a financial, diplomatic and security disaster for this country.

The cost has been projected to be hundreds of billions of dollars for a program that does not work, having failed every test. It will not protect us from terrorist attacks smuggled into our cities in suitcases or trucks or ships. It will abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia upon which all subsequent arms control treaties are based.

The U.S. missile defense system also will trigger a new arms race, both offensive and defensive. Russia has stated that it will develop "asymmetrical" weapons to foil our missile defense. China plans to increase its nuclear arsenal tenfold if the United States goes ahead with missile defense. This would trigger increased nuclear weapons development in India and Pakistan and could push Japan into the nuclear weapons camp.

The American government does not need to spend our tax dollars on an unworkable, dangerous missile defense system that takes money away from basic human needs. Who benefits from pursuing this system? The corporate military contractors - Lockheed Martin, TRW Inc., Boeing Co. and Raytheon Co.

Julie Byrnes Enslow Shorewood

We've rejected this idea before

The cartoon in the May 2 Journal Sentinel regarding the proposed missile defense system was right on the money. This boondoggle for the defense industry was thoroughly discredited when it was first proposed by the Reagan administration. It has failed every test that has been attempted.

When it was clear that even if it worked, it could not protect us against Russian missiles, its justification was changed to defending us from possible missile attacks from North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

The probability of such an attack is minuscule compared with other threats facing our nation. Surely no rational person in the administration really believes in this fiction. So one is led to the conclusion that either there are no rational people with power in this administration, or there is some other reason for this resurrection of "Star Wars."

The latter seems more likely, but I can only guess what the true reason might be.

Gilbert G. Walter Shorewood

Terrorists just waiting to prey on U.S.

The May 1 editorial "The president's missile gap" was on the mark. The highest cost of this project may not even be the billions of dollars spent. International security will be eaten away by the black market for plutonium. The price of plutonium will go up with arms-race demands, making it all the more likely that it will fall into the hands of those who would do us harm. And no missile defense will ever change that.

Ballistic missile defense is indeed a welcome distraction to terrorists. The problems terrorists would create must be part of our national defense, not a footnote in Bush's "framework."

We should devote our national energy to diplomatic efforts that move plutonium stocks to places that are forever out of reach - and chemical and biological stocks as well. Missile defense will never be a global defense. It will never do the whole job.

William Sell Milwaukee

What could Bush be thinking?

I am beginning to question whether President Bush has actually stopped using mind-altering chemicals. His latest proposal to spend billions on a missile defense system that all tests show cannot work would indicate that perhaps his old problem persists. I can think of no other possible explanation for this scheme.

Barbara Tuchman in "March to Folly" has pointed out that the destruction of the world's great civilizations has almost always been the result of "willful wrongheadedness." Those of us who are not so tactful just call it stupidity.

Sally Derrwaldt West Bend

Expense can't be justified

You could almost say that the move to build a three-tier missile defense system is the highest form of theft from the American people. It is like stealing hundreds of billions of dollars away from the dire human and infrastructure needs we face as a country.

Not only is stealing criminal and immoral, but the reasons that are used to justify this policy direction are unconscionable.

For one, it violates the long-standing Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and threatens other existing arms control agreements with Russia. At a time when our relations are already strained, this drives an even deeper wedge between our two countries.

Second, most of our allies are opposed to our building this system because it will reinvigorate the arms race and further militarize the political arena.

Finally, it proposes to move the "theater of war" from the land and sea up into space. This may be an appealing idea to "Star Wars" fans, but the reality is that we are already polluting outer space, and the ultimate pollution from space - lethal radioactive materials - could do us all in.

President Bush is downplaying the issue that the system won't work by changing the objectives for what the system can be expected to accomplish. It is an undertaking that is ill-conceived, ill-advised, unwanted by most - including many highly reputable military officials - and a flagrant misuse of American dollars.

Barbara Markoff Shorewood Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on May 6, 2001.

-------

The mastermind of 'Star Wars'

Saturday, 5 May, 2001, UK
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/from_our_own_correspondent/newsid_131 2000/1312666.stm

US President George W Bush recently announced plans to develop the so-called Son of Star Wars missile defence system. Over the years, BBC correspondent David Shukman has gained access to many of America's most secret laboratories, and met the man who first conjured up the Star Wars vision. There aren't many people who can walk into a crowded room and cast an immediate spell on everyone there.

The most hawkish of nuclear experts, he thought the atom bomb wasn't powerful enough, and pushed America towards the hydrogen bomb

But when I first saw Edward Teller we all stopped talking. This ancient stooped figure, in a crumpled suit and carrying a walking stick the size of a spear, holds a unique - some would say dangerous - position in American defence thinking. As one of his critics put it, if evil walks this earth, it's Teller. And if you had to choose one man as the visionary behind the American dream of a shield against missiles, it would have to be Teller.

I found myself suddenly nervous in his presence. On the face of it, here was an old Hungarian emigre, a scientist, now retired.

Nuclear expert

Yet Teller was never an ordinary scientist. As the most hawkish of nuclear experts, he thought the atom bomb wasn't powerful enough, and pushed America towards the hydrogen bomb.

Teller is the role model for the mad scientist in the film Dr Strangelove, the doom-laden boffin with wild schemes for nuclear war.

We sat down for an interview. Teller's watery blue eyes fixed on me, unblinking. I imagined him in the White House fixing those eyes on Ronald Reagan and persuading him, as he did in the early 1980s, to launch a vast research programme into developing a shield against Russian attack.

Teller had planted an idea that has dominated American defence planning to this day, and according to some, also forced the Soviet Union into a race it could never win, and didn't.

Teller, with me, just talked, non-stop, in his heavy accent. He described how interceptors and lasers could save America.

I didn't get a word in, if I'm honest, and wondered if Reagan had been treated in the same brusque way.

He can't have minded because Star Wars was the result.

Top-secret research

The interview, for me, was disorientating. Maybe it was the altitude. We were high in the mountains of New Mexico at the Los Alamos laboratory, the top-secret birthplace of the nuclear age.

The scent of pine hung in the thin air, the sun was unusually bright, and the atmosphere was one of total isolation.

Los Alamos boasts it has more PhDs than anywhere else on the planet, genius minds harnessed by the military.

Huge rooms are packed with lasers. There are miles of cable, flashes of mysterious light, and the hum of new technology.

Everywhere there's talk of The Threat, of the world outside bristling with malevolence, of unpredictable foreigners plotting America's destruction.

These people may be on a mountain but the mindset belongs in a bunker.

And the scientists are not alone of course. The billions of dollars they receive are the result of heavy lobbying in Washington.

Party support

For the American Right, for the Republican party, a defence against missiles is a patriotic crusade. One lobby group calls itself High Frontier and compares its cause to guarding the Wild West against Red Indians.

The editor of a right-wing magazine once asked me if I believed in missile defence.

When I hesitated, he said firmly: "For us it's an article of faith." I felt I'd been through the Spanish Inquisition.

So when George W Bush announced his plans a few days ago, there was an almost religious context to what he said. It leaves critics out in the cold. One scientist, a genial character in a cardigan, described to me how he'd once questioned whether the missile shield would ever work.

He had calculated how many flights of the space shuttle would be needed to assemble just one laser battle station in space - 350.

In other words, the scheme looked totally impractical, but the scientist was severely rebuked for pointing this out.

Faked tests

The pressure to succeed is intense, and many of the tests have been faked. In video footage of a laser destroying a rocket, it turned out the laser had been helped with a hidden explosives.

Yet it's often the case with big Pentagon projects that so much money is thrown at a problem, that it has to work. That may well be the case this time - there's certainly the political will to try.

Edward Teller ended our interview - the guru had said all he wanted to.

I shook his bony hand. It was strong and again I marvelled at the force of a single man able to persuade a president, convincing enough to push a dream that now more than ever is being felt in capitals around the world.

Teller shuffled away. He was to talk to the current generation of Los Alamos scientists. He was loudly applauded, the eager young faces gazing at this living monument to the nuclear age.

Perhaps another Teller was among them, another pushy, cantankerous but brilliant scientist, who would strive to make America safer, even if the rest of us are left wondering if it's wise, if we'll be left far more vulnerable.

-------- russia

Russia Scientists Await Nuke Decision

New York Times
May 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Junking-Nukes.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- A thief or terrorist trying to get at the seven nuclear reactors at Moscow's Kurchatov Institute will have to break through a sophisticated, $3 million set of safeguards financed by American taxpayers.

The research center's security system is just one result of a 10-year-old U.S.-Russian program to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction. The joint effort has also brought much more dramatic achievements, including eliminating nuclear weapons stockpiles in the former Soviet republics of Kazakstan, Belarus and Ukraine, and deep cuts in Russia's own vast nuclear arsenal.

But some U.S. Congress members are questioning the cost and value of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. President Bush has ordered a review -- and that's making Russian nuclear scientists nervous.

On a broader front, trust has been undermined over such issues as NATO expansion, Moscow's ties with Iraq and North Korea, and the Bush administration's missile defense plans. Also, some U.S. officials involved in the arms reduction program are being expelled from Russia as part of a wider, tit-for-tat spy scandal between Washington and Moscow.

``We've achieved very important results, which are visible not just on paper but in the physical (security) systems,'' said Nikolai Ponomaryov-Stepnoi, the vice president of the Kurchatov Institute, named for the father of the Soviet atomic bomb.

Over the past five years, the institute has won contracts to develop security systems for the Russian Navy, one of the institutions that Russian and U.S. officials had considered most vulnerable to theft and potential leaks of weapons-grade nuclear materials.

``The risk of proliferation of nuclear materials is lessening significantly,'' Ponomaryov-Stepnoi said.

The joint threat reduction program was launched in December 1991 in the final days of the Soviet Union with a law authored by U.S. Sens. Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar that sought to seize a rare opportunity to cut strategic weapons arsenals.

The program is aimed broadly at cutting Russia's nuclear arsenal, preventing the leakage of nuclear and biological weapons technology to terrorists or other countries, and destroying stockpiles of chemical weapons.

Those aims are being promoted through more than two dozen separate projects that have cost the United States some $4.7 billion so far.

``It's a very effective defense by other means: Spending relatively little money, you seriously decrease the military potential of your probable enemy or rival,'' said Ivan Safranchuk, the nuclear arms control project director at the independent PIR institute in Moscow.

According to the Pentagon program's director, Jim Reid, the United States has helped to junk 300 of Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles, 2,000 nuclear warheads, 52 ICBM silos, 308 submarine launchers, 18 submarines and 42 bombers.

The program helped accelerate Russian disarmament and put Russia on track to meet the Dec. 5, 2001 deadline for arms cuts under the 1991 Start I treaty, which should bring each side down to 1,600 strategic missiles and bombers and 6,000 warheads.

Considering Russia's economic difficulties, ``it would have taxed them significantly to try to use those funds to meet the treaty themselves,'' Reid said.

Other goals have been partially met. Sensored fences, the first step in comprehensive security systems, have been built around more than half of Russia's nuclear weapons storage places, Reid said. The rest haven't been secured, and the Soviet-era protection systems have broken down, leaving potentially serious security breaches.

Two of the highest-profile projects -- to build a fissile materials storage plant in the town of Mayak and a pilot plant for destroying nerve agents stored at Shchuchiye -- have been stalled by U.S.-Russian differences over how they should be run.

The spy scandal hardly helps. An analyst who has seen the list of 50 U.S. diplomats to be sent home by July said about a dozen are involved with the Pentagon's threat-reduction program. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

Scientists at the Kurchatov Institute said they were already feeling the effects, with American partners introducing new financing procedures that could set back some projects.

``I don't know who's pulling the strings, but we already feel that the work is facing difficulties,'' Ponomaryov-Stepnoi said morosely. ``It seems they feel they have to introduce a tougher line.''

The harshest U.S. critics question whether the program should be continued at all, especially in light of Russia's increasing cooperation with such potential nuclear proliferators as Iran.

In general, U.S. aid programs to Russia face increasing American criticism for inefficiency and vulnerability to corruption, and Russians complain that much of the money ended up in U.S. contractors' pockets.

In the arms reduction field, the Russian security service may feel the U.S. monitors are getting too intrusive.

The program gives the monitors ``unique access,'' said Alexander Pikayev, an arms control expert at the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment. ``If political relations deteriorate, Russia will be less interested in transparency.''

Gennady Khromov, a Russian negotiator, said the Americans demanded only plutonium from weapons be stored at Mayak. ``But to prove that, we're being asked to strip naked and show everything we have,'' he said.

Reid rejected the criticism, saying there were demonstrated ways of providing those guarantees without revealing Russian secrets.

The National Security Council is supposed to wind up its review of the program in mid-May, according to Reid.

Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council: http://www.ransac.org

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

-------- nebraska

Limiting uranium in water could be costly

Nebraska Journal-Star
May 5, 2001,
The Associated Press
http://www.journalstar.com/nebraska?story_id=3190&date=20010505&past=

SCOTTSBLUFF - In two years, uranium levels in drinking water will be regulated for the first time by the Environmental Protection Agency, and that could prove costly to many Nebraska cities.

The EPA issued a rule in December limiting uranium levels to 30 micrograms per liter of water. The rule takes effect in 2003.

Anne Pamperl, drinking water program specialist for the state Health and Human Services System, said at least 32 towns and cities either will or could have a problem meeting that standard.

There may be more cities, Pamperl said Friday, but she was still checking measurements of uranium.

Options for many towns would include drilling new wells or treating the water, she said.

"It's going to be expensive," Pamperl said. "Most of the towns affected are small. New wells are not cheap, and treatment plants are not cheap, either."

Uranium is found in rocks and soil in parts of Nebraska, particularly the North Platte, Platte and Republican river valleys, which largely run from western to south-central Nebraska.

High levels of uranium can lead to cancer and kidney disease. Pamperl said she was not sure how prevalent any health problems might be across the country from uranium content in water.

The town farthest east that would be affected is Silver Creek, Pamperl said, which is about 25 miles southwest of Columbus.

Bridgeport and Morrill in the west will have to take measures to lower uranium levels in drinking water, Pamperl said.

Communities including Bayard, Broadwater, Gering, Lyman, Minatare, Mitchell and Terrytown are on the edge of the new standard, and will have to test their uranium levels to determine whether action is needed, she said.

Bridgeport City Manager Finley DeGraffenreid called the EPA rule an unfair, unfunded mandate.

"I don't think the EPA has properly assessed those costs," he said.

Nebraska officials have criticized certain other EPA regulations on drinking water as expensive and unnecessary. Attorney General Don Stenberg has filed lawsuits challenging orders to reduce copper and arsenic levels.

Deputy Attorney General Steve Grasz said Friday the uranium regulation may be out of the reach of a state lawsuit.

"It's my understanding that this is final," he said.

-------- new mexico

Los Alamos Rebuild After Fire

New York Times
May 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Los-Alamos-Fire.html?searchpv=aponline

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- The tears come for Lucy Thomas when she thinks about the family Bible and other precious possessions that burned in the Los Alamos fires a year ago. If she smells smoke, she becomes anxious until she finds its source.

Like many others here, Lucy and Edgar Thomas lost nearly everything, salvaging only a few clothes and some jewelry when the flames swept through last May.

They recently discussed fireplace dimensions with a contractor as shingles were nailed to the roof of their new three-bedroom home on their old lot. As a visitor stopped by, the couple cheerfully spoke about their plans to return and pointed out the new skylights.

``In one sense, we're excited about the new house. We never planned anything like this before,'' Lucy Thomas said. ``But the other side is there's not one thing in our new house that was there before the fire.''

The National Park Service set the Cerro Grande Fire on May 4, 2000, to clear underbrush in Bandelier National Monument. But the fire, pushed by high winds and fueled by low humidity, rampaged into town six days later, forcing 25,000 people to evacuate.

No one died and only three people were injured. But the fire destroyed more than 220 structures, left more than 400 families homeless and burned some 43,000 acres. It destroyed or damaged 115 buildings at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, and flames drew within 50 yards of a building with radioactive tritium.

The devastation was astounding -- tracts of empty lots where homes once stood, barren and blackened hillsides, the stench of ash. Some of those lots carry ``For Sale'' signs today.

The effects are felt daily by the people of Los Alamos, from couples like the Thomases in their new homes to those still stuck in trailers as they wait for federal help in starting over.

``We're tired of dealing with the dirt and the mud,'' said postal worker Steve Williams. ``We want to get out of here.''

By the end of April, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had compensated, to some degree, 4,840 claimants and $102 million had been distributed to residents, business owners and others, said Don Erbach, director of FEMA's Santa Fe claims office.

As fire season dawns this year, some worry that the fire danger remains strong -- in part because the area remains choked with trees and brush that could fuel another blaze.

``What we have now is unnatural, unhealthy and unsafe,'' said Roy Weaver, then-superintendent at Bandelier, who took responsibility for approving last year's prescribed burn.

The Park Service stopped prescribed burns after the fire, but plans to resume them this summer with new rules, including one requiring a qualified consultant to review all burn plans.

``We're all trying to learn from what happened last summer,'' said Park Service fire director Sue Vap. ``I think one of the biggest things that we learned is that you can never become complacent, even with a successful program.''

An Interior Department investigation last year said Park Service officials did not follow proper procedures and didn't have enough fire crews on hand to keep the blaze under control. The Park Service has completed its own investigation, but results have yet to be released.

``If we would have known then what we know now, we certainly would not have started the fire,'' Weaver, who retired in July, said recently by phone from his home in Grand Junction, Colo. ``We learned from this experience and we really do care about what happened.''

Weaver hopes the pending Park Service report will partly exonerate him and clear up perceptions about the planning and execution of the prescribed burn, from how Bandelier workers got their information on burn conditions to the roles of the crews involved.

``It was such a helpless, anguished feeling when that wind kicked up and the embers blew across the road,'' he said.

``I just didn't see how anybody could forgive me and could even have a kind thought, and as it turns out, a lot of people did.''

Many in Los Alamos have moved beyond the fire's emotional and physical damage. There's a sense of urgency to get back to normal -- hammering and drilling ring out and flatbeds tote lumber to homesites. Volunteers have planted seedlings and grasses that are sprouting, and some wildlife has returned to the burned area.

``You can't believe how much that bolsters your spirits just to see the trees get placed on the lot,'' said Walter Temple, 59.

He lost nearly everything -- but not what was most important.

``We're all alive and we're all together and we're all still a family,'' he said.

Associated Press reporter Jeff Simons contributed to this story.

-------- washington

N-plant set to go offline for refueling

Seattle Times
By Linda Ashton
The Associated Press
Saturday, May 05, 2001
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=nuke05m&date=20010505

RICHLAND -- The Northwest's only nuclear-power plant shuts down May 18 for refueling, leaving the Bonneville Power Administration without its workhorse electricity producer for 30 days in the worst drought in a quarter-century.

The BPA and Energy Northwest, the 13-utility public-power consortium that owns the Columbia Generating Station, have been planning for the outage for almost two years.

"We arranged for power and made purchases to cover that outage months ago," said Ed Mosey, a spokesman for the BPA in Portland. "It will have absolutely no effect on reliability or price."

The Columbia Generating Station, which typically produces about 5 percent of electricity in the Northwest, will contribute about 10 percent of the region's generation over the next year because of diminished water supplies here in hydropower country.

This is the shortest outage ever planned at the plant, with twice as much fuel loaded to stretch the time between outages - plans that seem almost prescient now but were made long before this year's drought threatened summer hydropower capacity, salmon survival and irrigated orchards.

The board of directors of Energy Northwest understood the power market and believed the plant's weather-independent operation would one day be appreciated, said Scott Oxenford, the general manager of the Columbia Generating Station.

Since the plant came online in 1984, refuelings typically have been scheduled in the spring, when river water is abundant and power demand is relatively low. But water isn't plentiful this year, although the Northwest Power Planning Council has said the region can probably get through the summer without rolling blackouts.

John Dabney, outage manager, has been working on this outage since the last one ended. His workforce will nearly double in size; 800 contract workers will be added to the regular staff of 1,050.

Nuclear plants function much as other thermal-power plants, using heat to boil water for steam to drive turbine-generators to make electricity. The critical difference is how they make the heat. Rather than burning coal or natural gas, nuclear plants produce heat by fissioning atoms of uranium.

The price of a successful outage: $33 million, excluding lost power production.

The 1,200-megawatt Columbia Generating Station generates enough electricity to light a city the size of Seattle and produced more than $1 billion worth of electricity in just eight months.

-------- MILITARY

-------- colombia

Colombia Steps Up Anti-Drug Fight with U.S. Help

Saturday May 5 5:13 PM ET
By Ibon Villelabeitia
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010505/ts/colombia_narcotics_dc_1.html

LARANDIA, Colombia (Reuters) - U.S.-built helicopters thunder overhead. Camouflage-painted soldiers, clutching assault rifles, storm a cocaine laboratory deep in the Colombian jungle, firing back at leftist guerrillas as U.S. military advisers look on approvingly.

It is only a training exercise, but soon this Colombian anti-narcotics brigade will undertake its first real mission, joining a vast U.S.-funded drug offensive to destroy the world's No. 1 cocaine industry.

As part of a $1 billion aid and assistance package, the United States is training and equipping an elite 3,000-strong Colombian anti-drug force to curb an annual flow of 580 tons of cocaine out of the Andean nation.

Two anti-drug brigades have already gone into action in rebel-riddled southern Putumayo and Caqueta provinces, which grow roughly 60 percent of Colombia's 336,000 acres of coca -- the raw material from which cocaine is derived.

Backed by Vietnam-era Huey helicopters, the battalions have destroyed 85,900 acres of coca leaf in aerial fumigations between last December and May in the steamy province of Putumayo on the border with Ecuador.

That is roughly half the coca acreage originally targeted for destruction in the first two years of the Plan Colombia offensive.

With the third and last battalion set to graduate late this month and 16 U.S. Black-Hawk helicopters scheduled for delivery between July and December of this year, officials are hoping to double anti-drug efficiency.

``We hope to double the successes we have seen so far. And that is a conservative estimate,'' said a U.S. military official in Colombia.

Green Berets Train Colombians

On Friday, a group of foreign journalists was ferried in to the sprawling Larandia base in the jungle province of Caqueta, training site of the anti-narcotics brigades.

For the first time, reporters were allowed to talk to U.S. Green Beret trainers on the site and to witness action drills. Despite the complexity of the drug-fueled guerrilla war, U.S. officials said they are confident they can separate the fight against cocaine and Colombia's internal conflict.

The main task of the force is to stage airborne forays to destroy what U.S. and Colombian drug officials say is the key source of financing for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Latin America's largest rebel group.

According to estimates by Colombian officials, the 17,000-member FARC reap up to $600 million a year from drug proceeds. U.S. officials believe the figure is much lower, but still more than $200 million. Outlawed right-wing paramilitary groups targeting rebels also profit from the drug trade.

The brigades are trained by 90 U.S. personnel, including 44 crack Green Beret fighters. Each 1,000-strong brigade receives an 18-week training course in Larandia, surrounded by dense jungle, grasslands and slow-moving rivers. The training includes reconnaissance missions, movement techniques, combat training and training on human rights issues.

The Colombian army has one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere and rights groups have accused army officers of links to paramilitary groups thought to be involved in massacres of suspected leftist collaborators.

During a mock mission on Friday, members of the third brigade, deployed in Huey helicopters, attacked a cocaine laboratory hidden under a jungle canopy.

As soldiers stormed their target yelling: ``Anti-narcotics brigade! You are surrounded! Surrender!'' other soldiers portraying as FARC guerrillas fired blank rounds at them.

Mock guerrillas and soldiers fell to ground covered in fake blood. ``Injured'' fighters were placed on stretchers and carried to helicopters as an investigator interrogated lab workers.

``They did a really good job,'' one senior U.S. trainer said, ''These guys are top notch.''

U.S. and Colombian officials insist the anti-narcotics aid will be used strictly to fight drug trafficking and not to escalate a 37-year-old guerrilla conflict which has killed nearly 40,000 civilians in the last decade.

But Gen. Mario Montoya, commander of the Colombian military's Joint Southern Task Force, in charge of the anti-drug brigades, acknowledged to reporters the line between counter-narcotics operations and counter-insurgency is thin -- suggesting a U.S. foreign policy nightmare scenario.

As coca hectares are reduced, the emphasis of the brigades, officials said, will shift from fumigation to interdiction -- raising the chances of fighting with rebel groups.

``Not a single kilo of cocaine is moved in Putumayo and in Caqueta without the consent of the FARC or the paramilitaries,'' Montoya told reporters in Larandia, 235 miles south of Bogota.

``We make no distinction between FARC and paramilitaries. For us they are all drug-traffickers.''

Asked if he agreed with Montoya's assessment of the difficulty separating the anti-drug fight from the government's war against the rebels, a U.S. military official based in Colombia said: ``We are not at that point now. We are now fumigating industrial coca fields. When we move to interdiction, we will cross that bridge.''

Montoya, in charge of an area more than five times the size of El Salvador (news - web sites) which is thick with FARC rebels, said about 30 rebels have been killed so far in 75 anti-drug operations.

U.S. INVOLVEMENT?

Critics of Washington's aid say the United States could find itself caught up in a Vietnam-style expeditionary war.

According to U.S. officials, 250 U.S. personnel are involved in the ``Push Into Southern Colombia,'' including 170 service men, intelligence officers and 180 civilians contracted by the U.S. Defense and State departments, in missions ranging from piloting fumigation planes to engineering to logistics.

Under U.S. law no more than 500 U.S. service men and 300 civilian contractors are allowed in Colombia at any one time. None of the U.S. personnel are allowed to enter combat zones.

The FARC, Latin America's oldest and most powerful guerrilla force, has warned it would attack U.S. ``mercenaries'' who took part in military operations in Colombia.

Montoya believes the drug offensive will force FARC rebels to lay down arms and sign a peace accord with the government.

``It will take a year or two before what we've done so far affects the finances and the war machine of the FARC, but we are going to win this war.''

----

U.S. Green Berets Train Colombians

New York Times
May 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Colombia-Green-Berets.html

LARANDIA ARMY BASE, Colombia (AP) -- U.S. Green Beret trainers watched proudly as Colombian troops reacted to an ``ambush'' with a withering blast of gunfire and by hurling hand grenades.

The aggressive response during training exercises -- opened for the first time to journalists on Friday -- was one the U.S. Special Forces have been instilling into their charges, who will soon combat drug trafficking in an area swarming with rebels and paramilitaries.

The battalion will finish its months-long training in this sprawling jungle base on May 24, and will join two other counternarcotics battalions -- a total of 3,000 soldiers -- that have been trained by the Green Berets since April 1999.

Amid criticism from human rights groups and even the U.S. State Department that Colombian security forces have a poor human rights record, the U.S. Embassy investigated each of the 3,000 soldiers to make sure they have not been accused of abuses or drug trafficking.

But they will likely be conducting joint anti-drug operations with Colombian counterguerrilla battalions which have not undergone such scrutiny -- and which have a reputation of maintaining covert links with the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which has been massacring suspected rebel collaborators.

Under a brooding gray sky, the Green Berets -- from the 7th Special Forces Group based in Fort Bragg, N.C. -- watched their students stealthily approach a mock drug lab manned by soldiers pretending to be rebels and peasant farmers who were processing coca leaves into cocaine.

The bit of Hollywood theatrics was eerie, considering that not far from the perimeter of this huge base in southern Caqueta state there are real coca labs guarded by rebels.

``We are troops of the counternarcotics battalion! You are completely surrounded,'' shouted one of the Colombian soldiers after his squad had closed in.

A ``rebel'' clad in a dark green uniform and black rubber boots opened fire, and was immediately cut down by the soldiers, who rushed into the muddy clearing. A furious exchange of gunfire, using blanks, ensued.

The U.S. trainers, clad in camouflage fatigues and wearing floppy ``boonie'' hats, said they try to instill ``target discrimination'' in their students, in the hope they will not blow away noncombatants in real action.

``That's the only thing we can do, really. When people are in the area we're expecting them to identify them before they shoot,'' explained a trainer. ``It's not just spray -- it's identify and then engage.''

Army Gen. Mario Montoya, the commander of Colombia's southern region where the U.S.-trained battalions will be based, rejected allegations by human rights groups that some army units are fighting a dirty war against rebels.

``If we were as bloodthirsty as people say, the war would have been over by now -- we would have killed all the bad guys,'' Montoya declared.

The newly trained troops will join the other two counternarcotics battalions in operations against coca plantations and drug labs, mostly in Putumayo and Caqueta states, which together produce more than 60 percent of Colombia's cocaine.

The U.S backing of Colombia's military, which has been fighting a 37-year war against rebels, has some critics suspecting the assistance is more geared at helping wipe out the rebellion instead of stemming drug trafficking.

Since the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- the biggest rebel group -- earns millions of dollars by protecting and taxing drug crops, as do the rival paramilitaries, the U.S.-trained troops will have wide clearance to launch attacks.

A U.S. military official based in Colombia, speaking on condition of customary anonymity, said the U.S.-trained troops can target any of the thousands of rebels and paramilitary gunmen in Putumayo and Caqueta, because he asserted they are there only to make money off the drug trade.

The anti-drug troops provide protection for low-flying fumigation planes and seek out and destroy drug labs. The two battalions have destroyed 86,000 acres of coca and killed 52 ``narcotraffickers'' since December, Montoya said. He did not give a breakdown on how many of the dead were rebels and paramilitaries.

In the clashes, one officer, three non-commissioned officers and six privates have been slain, Montoya said.

Under the $1.3 billion U.S. aid package, 16 Blackhawk and 25 Super Huey helicopters will begin arriving in July for the counternarcotics battalions.

They will give the battalions far greater mobility and fire support, the U.S. military official said.

``We'll be able to double the rate of success we're having now, and that's a modest estimate,'' he predicted.

-------- iraq

Iraq Asks U.N. About Aggression

New York Times
May 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-UN.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq has asked the United Nations if it has the right to retaliate against military aggressions from neighboring countries, a government newspaper reported Saturday.

The query came in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, accompanied with a separate list that pointed at Iran and Turkey and detailed attacks and violations against Iraq from inside those countries.

``Does Iraq have the right to use the same means in attacking outlawed groups based in neighboring countries (that are) used in attacking Iraq?'' Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz asked in the letter, published in the official Al-Jumhuriya newspaper.

The letter also accused the United States and Britain of funding and arming outlawed groups in Iraq to destabilize internal security and threaten national unity.

Iraq has previously complained of daily allied warplane patrols taking off from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, holding the two countries responsible for damages and casualties.

Aziz said the destruction of Iraq's defensive power and the ban from rebuilding its defense capabilities ``encouraged regional and out-of-region parties to commit armed aggressions against Iraq.''

The letter criticized the U.N. Security Council's silence and its double standards in dealing with the Iraqi issue. This policy endangered regional security and stability, Aziz said.

Iraq has been exposed to direct military acts from Turkey and Iran. Turkey claims to chase fighters of the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party (the PKK) into areas of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, while Iran conducts operations against opposition groups based in Iraq, particularly the Mujahedeen Khalq.

U.S. and British jets patrol no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq to protect Kurdish and Shiite groups against Iraqi government forces. Baghdad has challenged the patrols' legitimacy since late 1998, saying the zones violate its sovereignty and international law.

-------- korea

North Korea Refuses to Stop Arms Exports, Delegation Says

May 5, 2001
New York Times
By DON KIRK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/05/world/05KORE.html

SEOUL, South Korea, May 4 - North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, refused to renounce exports of missiles and missile technology, the European Union's top security official said today.

"He claimed technology was part of trade," said the official, Javier Solana, a member of a European Union delegation that met with Mr. Kim on Thursday.

Mr. Solana said Mr. Kim had cut short efforts to discuss missiles and missile technology exports during the five-hour session, making it clear that, "If he finds people who want to buy, he will sell it."

Mr. Solana indicated, however, that the delegation had been equally firm in emphasizing the European Union's opposition to such exports.

"You can imagine this is an answer we cannot take," said Mr. Solana as the delegation concluded its mission to North and South Korea aimed at reviving the stalled peace effort between the two countries.

Mr. Kim's rejection of suggestions that North Korea stop missile exports contrasted with his pledge to the European Union delegates to extend North Korea's moratorium on missile-testing, which began in 1999, until 2003.

Goran Persson, the Swedish prime minister who led the delegation in his role as president of the European Union, had not mentioned missile exports in his upbeat assessment of the delegation's visit after meeting this morning with President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea.

Analysts noted, however, that North Korean negotiators bargained hard with American diplomats last year on the export of missiles and missile technology, demanding aid equivalent to North Korea's earnings from sales abroad, mainly to Middle Eastern countries. Choi Jin Wook, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute of National Unification, an adjunct of South Korea's Unification Ministry, noted that North Korea had suggested last year that it might stop missile exports if compensated with loans and payments.

A formula under which the United States would provide the North with such aid was the focus of negotiations in the final weeks of Bill Clinton's presidency.

North Korea is "so desperate to resume talks with the United States that their intention is not so tough as it seems," said Mr. Choi, suggesting that the North Korean leader's latest refusal to renounce missile exports may be a bargaining ploy to draw the United States back into talks.

President Bush, citing the problem of verifying any agreement, has suspended talks pending the completion of a review of policy toward North Korea.

Mr. Solana said the European delegation also impressed on Mr. Kim the need to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency on inspections of nuclear power plants to be built under the 1994 Geneva framework agreement. "He has to comply with the international community," said Mr. Solana. Mr. Persson and Mr. Solana both seemed impressed by the informal atmosphere of the talks.

"He was able to listen and argue with us," Mr. Persson said, referring to Mr. Kim. "He listened, then said, `That's a good point,' or `I must consider it.' "

The talks went nowhere, though, when they touched on human rights.

"We don't share the same values so it's much more difficult to have a dialogue on these issues," said Mr. Persson. "On the other hand, he was very much interested to learn from us. It was he who proposed to send a study group to Europe to learn about the market economy."

-------- kosovo / macedonia

Macedonia To Ask for War Declaration

New York Times
May 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Macedonia-Prime-Minister.html

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) -- Macedonia's prime minister said Saturday he plans to ask Parliament to declare a state of war, just hours after soldiers hammered ethnic Albanian rebel positions with artillery fire in an escalating offensive.

The comments from Prime Minister Ljbuco Georgievski came before an emergency session of his governing party leadership, which followed a week of attacks on rebels holding ground in the northern part of the country.

Georgievski told reporters that one of the issues on the party's agenda Saturday night would be the declaration of a state of war in Macedonia, to be taken up by Parliament.

A state of war would give the government the power to seal the borders, ban public gatherings, rule by decree and implement a curfew.

``What is happening on the territory of Macedonia is war,'' he told reporters outside the meeting in the Parliament building. ``Those people who are doing this have the aim of conquering the territory.''

Under the Macedonian constitution, a declaration of a state of war can only happen with the approval of a two-thirds majority of the 120-member Parliament. That means that 81 members would have to vote for the measure --including 26 ethnic Albanian deputies.

The body is expected to meet Tuesday, but the statements from Georgievski suggested he planned to try to re-shuffle the existing government and declare a state of emergency to deal with the crisis.

The rebels are fighting for greater rights for Macedonia's minority ethnic Albanians, arguing that they are treated as second-class citizens. They want the Macedonian constitution be rewritten to give them more rights.

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

U.S. Attacks Rights Group for Ousting It

New York Times
May 5, 2001
By MARC LACEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/05/world/05DIPL.html

WASHINGTON, May 4 - Bush administration officials said today that the vote removing the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Commission raised questions about the group's commitment to human rights. But the officials vowed that the United States would continue lobbying the body from the sidelines as an observer.

"A commission that purports to speak out on behalf of human rights, that now has Sudan and Libya as members and doesn't have the United States as members, I think may not be perceived as the most powerful advocate of human rights in the world," a White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said.

Administration officials said they were stunned by the vote on Thursday, especially because the United States delegation to the human rights group had lined up 43 votes of support, more than enough to win a seat on the 53-member commission. In the end, only 29 nations backed the United States.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that the United States had "43 solid written assurances" going into this week's tally but lost out in the vote-swapping that is a regular part of the United Nations.

Some allies of the United States, Secretary Powell said, had swapped their votes because they thought the United States had its seat locked up. "They're as astonished as we are about what happened," he said.

But administration officials acknowledged that there were also many nations who voted against the United States deliberately, for reasons that include resentment over the American delegation's criticism of countries that violate human rights and anger over the White House's recent decision not to sign the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gases.

Secretary Powell said he did not intend to quiz the various member countries to determine which ones reneged on their votes and why.

"I suspect there are lots of different reasons," he said. "I'm not going to spend any of my time trying to break into what was essentially a secret vote to try to find out what happened. We're going to continue to pursue human rights. We're going to put out our human rights reports. We're going to call nations to account when they violate basic principles of human rights."

But others were seeking to piece together the motivations of the member countries. The United States has drawn criticism in recent years for building up a large debt to the United Nations, for rejecting a number of treaties and agreements and, more recently, for rejecting the Kyoto treaty and criticizing the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty as it pursues a missile defense shield.

"I think there's an annoyance with the United States on a variety of issues that is not so far below the surface," said Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey and vice chairman of the House International Relations Committee.

Still, Mr. Smith, who attended the commission's recent meeting in Geneva as part of the Bush administration's delegation, said he did not understand the human rights vote.

"I happen to be in favor of the Kyoto treaty," he said. "But environmental issues and other issues should not be used to punish the United States when it comes to things like torture."

Lawmakers said the human rights vote would only increase the reluctance on Capitol Hill to participate in international agreements, and might reverse the improvement of relations between Congress and the United Nations that resulted in a deal to pay back dues. In recent years, the United States has declined to join a variety of pacts - including a treaty on land mines, the Law of the Sea treaty and the agreement setting up an International Criminal Court - because they contain provisions opposed by Washington.

"If this is the way the international court is going to adjudicate cases, totally on a partisan basis, that will make the court a complete farce, as well," Mr. Smith said.

The human rights commission, which Eleanor Roosevelt helped create in 1947, has long been a polarized group, which is no surprise given the delicate nature of its subject matter. China, Cuba and other countries have grown adept at using procedural rules to outflank the efforts of the United States to use the commission to condemn them.

On Wednesday, as the commission was voting to exclude the United States, the House International Relations Committee was urging the Bush administration to seek the ouster of member countries that do not allow their human rights situation to be scrutinized.

Former Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro, who led the American delegation to the commission from 1993 to 1996, said today that the Bush administration had not done enough to round up support before the vote.

"This should have been anticipated, and this should have been prepared for," Ms. Ferraro said. "We should not have lost the vote. Eleanor Roosevelt is probably turning over in her grave, and if I were dead, I'd be turning over, too."

--------

Revolt at the U.N.

New York Times
May 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/05/opinion/05SAT1.html?searchpv=nytToday

Thanks in part to the inattention of the Bush administration, the United States lost its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission this week for the first time since the panel was established in 1947. But the administration's failure to detect and defeat the brewing rebellion among other nations was only one element of an embarrassing defeat. Even more important was the rising resentment abroad about America's often patronizing treatment of the U.N. and Washington's disdain for international compacts on issues ranging from the environment to the use of land mines.

Critics of the U.N. in the administration and Congress will doubtless blame the world organization for the loss of the seat and cite it as another reason to withhold Washington's financial support and to take other punitive actions. Such a response would ignore the underlying issues that precipitated the revolt and only worsen American relations with the U.N., an institution with the potential to be a major asset to American diplomacy.

The Human Rights Commission itself is an example of the positive role the U.N. can play. The commission, which meets in Geneva, is often frustratingly bureaucratic, and counts among its members some of the world's most egregious violators of human rights, including Sudan, Pakistan and Togo. But this year the commission condemned human rights abuses in Cuba and Iran, and censured Russia for its actions in Chechnya. It sends special rapporteurs to investigate violations, a spotlight that is profoundly embarrassing to dictators. International human rights groups have correctly warned that the commission may be inactive without American leadership and that Washington's voice on human rights issues will be weakened.

The United States was dropped from the commission when the three seats reserved for Western nations in this year's balloting went to France, Austria and Sweden in a vote of the 54 members of the Economic and Social Council, the U.N. body that oversees the commission. American diplomats apparently complacently assumed the American seat was safe after 43 nations assured Washington of their support and did not realize a revolt was developing, encouraged by human rights abusers, including Cuba and China. Washington also failed to persuade Austria or Sweden to pull out of the race. The breakdown may be partly due to the absence of a new American ambassador to the U.N. The White House has selected John Negroponte, an experienced diplomat, but has yet to submit his nomination to the Senate.

President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell must be mindful of the erosion of international respect for the United States, even among some of its European allies. Not all the foreign complaints are justified. Washington has long been the commission's fiercest defender of Israel and the author of the most aggressive resolutions condemning nations such as China and Cuba. Those policies are entirely appropriate.

But other American behavior, including a tendency to treat the U.N. as a benighted and irritating stepchild, has needlessly provoked opposition. Washington's failure to pay U.N. dues is the most conspicuous example. But member states are also angry about the Pentagon's insistence that Americans not be covered by an international criminal court, the Bush administration's withdrawal from talks about global warning and even Washington's policies of pushing poor countries not to make copies of AIDS drugs. President Bush's open contempt for the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty has alarmed not only Russia, the other signatory to the accord, but NATO allies as well.

Until a new election next year when Washington can try to reclaim membership on the Human Rights Commission, the organization is likely to take a softer line on most nations, and a more aggressive one toward Israel. But the more important fallout from this week's vote will probably come in Washington. The Bush administration and responsible members of Congress must move quickly to prevent a backlash against the U.N.

Payment of Washington's back dues is vital to maintaining American influence at the U.N. The payment plan that was carefully negotiated by Richard Holbrooke in the last days of the Clinton administration remains a reasonable deal for the United States and should be approved by the House, where it has been stalled. The lesson of the commission vote is not that the U.N. is inherently inimical to American interests, but rather that Washington has to do a better job of working with other nations if it wants to retain its authority at the U.N.

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

In the Arabian Desert, U.S. Troops Settle In
Temporary Deployment Has Permanent Feel

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 3, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34476-2001May2?language=printer

PRINCE SULTAN AIR BASE, Saudi Arabia -- The U.S. Air Force Combat Fire Dawgs were on a roll, but no one on the team took the lead for granted. There may still be patrols in the skies over southern Iraq, but the focus on this mild April night was to coax a few more runs across home plate at a sandy, floodlit softball diamond.

"Line drives, base hits," the teammates shouted at one another. Their T-shirts were hand-decorated with brands of beer they cannot drink in this conservative Muslim monarchy, and a gun-mounted Humvee scouted for trouble in the desert beyond.

Behind them, a game of touch football was underway. Behind that, the beach volleyball pit was full. Behind that, pick-up basketball was in full swing. Over by the pool, a rare venue for mixed-sex public bathing in the Saudi kingdom, the deejay at the Oasis Lounge had attracted only a few patrons for country and western night, although one couple was into a brisk two-step.

A decade after the Persian Gulf War ended with Iraq's withdrawal from neighboring Kuwait, the U.S. military has settled in for the long haul in the Persian Gulf. U.S. warships, fighter planes and Patriot missile batteries, and the more than 10,000 troops who run them, have become the oil-heavy region's chief guardians. Building on alliances nurtured through the 1980s and cemented during the 1991 war, the United States has military equipment and personnel in six of the eight countries on the gulf. Iraq and Iran are the exceptions -- and the main reasons the U.S. forces are here.

The division of labor has put cargo planes in sleepy Oman, fighters in Kuwait, an armored brigade in Qatar, the Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain, airborne refueling tankers in the United Arab Emirates and a high-tech panoply of reconnaissance jets and fighters here to keep an eye and ear on President Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi military.

It is a network that increasingly has the look and feel of a permanent presence, even though local officials and U.S. commanders insist that much of it has been "forward deployed" only temporarily, to deter another possible Iraqi move against the region and to police U.S.-imposed restrictions on military movement in a "no-fly" zone covering the southern third of the country.

But the deployment is not a fully comfortable fit, particularly at this base near Al Kharj, 60 miles southeast of Riyadh, in an arid stretch of central Saudi Arabia. The Americans fly and play in the heartland of a nation where more than a few resent the presence of a powerful non-Muslim force on a peninsula that the prophet Muhammad's followers fought 1,400 years ago to cleanse of outside influence.

Islamic militants such as the Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden have made the U.S. presence here a rallying cry, which U.S. officers say has made even members of the Saudi royal family skittish about embracing the operation too openly. Speaking in Iran this week, the Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef, discounted the more than 3,500 U.S. personnel on the base, saying that Saudi Arabia allows "some flights" from its territory to help the United Nations.

"They don't want to be seen publicly as too supportive of the supporters of Israel," said Brig. Gen. Gary R. Dylewski, commander of the Joint Task Force Southwest Asia, the Saudi-based command that coordinates much of the surveillance of southern Iraq. "They want as low a profile as possible."

This is a difficult aim for a diverse force of F-15s, AWACS, odd-shaped U-2 photo reconnaissance planes and other aircraft making more than 1,000 flights a month, circling through northern Saudi Arabia and refueling in the air to carry out four- and five-hour missions.

The U.S. flag is not flown outside the base, a protocol followed because this is still technically a coalition effort including British, French and Saudis, but the policy also avoids advertising the dominant partner's presence. Base entrances are "no salute" zones, so officers cannot be identified for sniping. Sightseeing trips in the country are allowed to only two or three designated sites, well-scouted by security. No one leaves the base in uniform.

With memories acute of a 1996 bombing in Dhahran that killed 19 U.S. servicemen, security is severe, from a "shred everything" policy meant to keep local contract workers from gathering information about the base to an underlying suspicion of even Saudi officers. After the Dhahran bombing, U.S. troops deployed there and in Riyadh were moved to this more remote site, which is under heavily armed patrol and electronic surveillance and is itself inside a much larger, also tightly secured, 80-square-mile base of the Royal Saudi Air Force.

Inside the U.S.-policed portion, an intense military mission has evolved side by side with such a relaxed social scene that psychiatric officials regard it as among the healthiest settings under U.S. command -- alcohol-free, and without evidence of combat-level stress.

Previously housed in tents for their 90-day tours in the desert, the Air Force and Army personnel here live in two-story, U.S.-built dormitories in a complex where off-duty service members can snack on Baskin-Robbins ice cream, shop for duty-free electronics and videos at a base exchange, browse the Internet and e-mail family from a 60-terminal computer room, or buy trinkets from a local gold merchant.

There is a cavernous gym and a well-appointed chapel, perhaps the only one in a country where group worship of any religion other than Islam is typically punished by deportation.

There are five feature films a day -- prints are destroyed at the end of each film's run to assure Saudi censors they will not reach the black market -- and rowdy rounds of "Combat Bingo" on Tuesday night. There are baskets of condoms in the clinic and souvenir T-shirts poking fun at the environment, including a Hard Rock Cafe logo with a "Closed for Prayer" sign stamped across it.

American playfulness set to the roar of a fighter plane. Even the pilots say it is easy to forget this is serious business.

'This Is for Real'

Lt. Col. Chip Shepherd fired the afterburners on his F-15, held the plane close to the ground down most of the runway, then pulled into a steep "combat takeoff." As much as 4 Gs of force pressed against him, he recounted, but the pitch of the ascent was necessary to assure he would be high enough, before leaving the controlled boundaries of the base, to avoid any effort to shoot him down with a shoulder-launched missile or other portable weapon carted to the perimeter.

Larger planes, without the power of fighter jets, spiral upward for the same reason during their takeoffs. The enemy may be Iraq. But operations here are organized with the knowledge that, since the end of the Gulf War, U.S. pilots have flown more than 200,000 sorties from this Saudi base without a scratch, while 22 servicemen have died on Saudi soil. Nineteen of those died in the Dhahran bombing, three in a traffic accident.

It was mid-March when Shepherd left on the first mission of his 90-day stay here, and if the angle of his ascent was not a reminder of the risks, then he was soon to get another. After coursing an hour or so northward across the unbroken and featureless Saudi desertscape, he entered Iraqi airspace with other members of the 493rd Fighter Squadron.

Off his wing, Iraqi antiaircraft fire blossomed, flowers of light during a post-midnight expedition. He said he was slow to realize he was under attack for the first time.

"It struck me: This is for real, this is really it," he said.

In the decade since the Gulf War ended, the sight of antiaircraft fire and exploding surface-to-air missiles have become part of the routine for pilots enforcing the no-fly zone. And particularly since December 1998, when Iraqi air defense batteries began more aggressively trying to shoot down U.S. or British planes, coalition forces have been shooting back -- more than 200 times since early 1999. The strikes have ranged from shots taken when Iraqi radars illuminate coalition jets to coordinated, multi-plane attacks. In February, for example, U.S. military officials targeted an upgraded and more threatening Iraqi radar and communications center.

Iraq has repeatedly condemned the airstrikes and the overflights as illegal and in no way grounded in U.N. resolutions. Baghdad says coalition bombs have in the past 2 1/2 years killed more than 300 people, including many civilians.

In the view of U.S. commanders and pilots here, the exchange of fire over southern Iraq is proof of Hussein's bad intentions and justifies what they say is more than just policing his country. If the only aim was to ensure that Iraqi jets stayed north of the designated 33rd parallel, Dylewski said, the pace and design of the sorties would look much different from the near daily combinations of fighters, reconnaissance jets and tankers that ply the air over Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq itself, a dozen or more at a time.

Limited Iraqi Response

Iraqi pilots on occasion buzz across the line, which is designated in theory to make sure Hussein's air force cannot be used against southern Iraq's restive Shiite population or to threaten Kuwait. A similar zone has been created in the north to oversee Iraq's Kurdish regions, leaving Baghdad with only the middle portion of the country, about 108 miles from north to south, under full sovereignty.

But the Iraqi jets never arrive in large numbers and never stay long. After a decade of U.N. sanctions that have limited Iraq's access to spare parts, Dylewski said, its air force's active combat fleet may number as few as 50 planes. And the pilots are restricted to only a few training flights a month around Baghdad, hardly a regimen to stay in fighting shape. The last air-to-air encounter between coalition and Iraqi aircraft was in 1992.

In fact, despite the concerns expressed in February about the increasing accuracy of Iraqi anti-aircraft fire, pilots here agreed that the risk they face over Iraq is, in Shepherd's words, "slim to none."

From the U.S. perspective, the current state of affairs is serving other ends. High on the list is surveillance, to ensure Iraq abides by U.N. demands that it not strengthen military forces in the south and to provide information on what the Iraqi government is more broadly attempting, even outside the no-fly areas.

"If it is only no-fly zone enforcement, you don't need to be so aggressive," said Brig. Gen. Allen G. Peck, commander of the 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing, the designation given to the fleet of planes and people deployed here, in Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

"We get a lot of benefit by enforcing the way we do," he said. "We benefit from an up-close and personal look at what he [Hussein] is doing."

On a given day, U.S. troops here might send up a "package" that includes the U-2 reconnaissance craft snapping pictures from on high, the AWACS scanning for Iraqi planes, the RC-135 eavesdropping on Iraq's airwaves, a Marine Prowler jamming the other country's radars, F-15s and F-16s providing protection and tankers flying set routes over northern Saudi Arabia to keep everyone in motion. If an attack has been planned for the day, the planes come from Kuwait or a gulf-based aircraft carrier; under an agreement with the Saudis, the planes leaving here are equipped only with defensive weapons in case they are attacked by another plane or targeted by ground-based radar.

The public equations are simple: If Hussein's gunners stop shooting, so, say base officials, will the U.S. and British fighters. If Iraq complies with U.N. resolutions, then the Gulf War's 10-year endgame, and the justification for the dozens of U.S. warplanes still circling the Arabian peninsula, might end.

Changes in Attitudes

The underlying politics are broader: containment aimed at Iraq and Iran. As one Western diplomat in Saudi Arabia said, "The United States hasn't tried to overthrow any governments here. Iraq sure has. The United States hasn't tried to destabilize. . . . Iran sure has."

Allied gulf countries have begun reorganizing their own defenses, in close consultation with Western governments that have competed for the estimated $50 billion in weapons sales made in the region over the last 10 years. A recently signed pact among the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, could, for example, put a combined force of several hundred fighters at the disposal of any threatened country once current purchases are completed. Among the sales: 80 F-16s to the United Arab Emirates for $6.8 billion.

But at the same time, for U.S. commanders and planners in the region, "the relationship is getting more profound" between the United States and the gulf countries that only 30 years ago targeted the United States with an oil embargo, said Dylewski.

"Our attitude is changing from a temporary attitude to a long-term attitude. For the last 10 years . . . we've been in a put up a tent mindset. We are changing that," he said. "We don't want to control the resources of the region. We want to make sure they are available uninterrupted to the rest of the world."

----

Something of an Enigma at Pentagon

The New York
May 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Reading-Rumsfeld.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In reviewing the state of America's military, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld might heed one of his favorite adages about people who complain: ``Why wasn't I consulted?''

Rumsfeld has excluded military insiders from the review and is so tightlipped about his ideas that few people know what direction he plans to steer the nation's defense.

While he's a leader for the Bush administration's plans for a missile defense, the 68-year-old plainspoken secretary is mysterious when it comes to the top-to-bottom review he's doing of the U.S. military.

His recent public statements have only added to the bewilderment.

Just this week, Rumsfeld slipped on China policy. First he appeared to suspend all military contacts, then said he meant all future contacts would have to be approved on a case-by-case basis. The Pentagon called it a misunderstanding.

Last month, Rumsfeld said the administration wanted to withdraw American troops from a peacekeeping force on the Sinai Peninsula. But after Israel thought that signaled U.S. desire to distance itself from the Middle East, Rumsfeld was forced to clarify. He said he was simply sounding out Israel and Egypt about a troop reduction.

``He seems to be making policy for the administration rather than coordinating his policy ideas with the administration,'' said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

It's partly because of Rumsfeld's no-nonsense, let's-get-things-done personality, he said.

``His political antenna tells him that he is in tune with the president's wishes and that he is doing the right things,'' Cirincione said. ``I think his antenna just needs a little adjustment.''

Cirincione, a critic of missile defense, said the White House has full confidence in Rumsfeld. Bush has given him more latitude than the previous administration in making public policy statements.

This is Rumsfeld's second tour as secretary of defense. He held the job under President Ford after the Vietnam War had ended but the Cold War still raged.

Rumsfeld then went to work in the private sector and has stayed largely out of the public spotlight. He says he would rather spend an evening reading a book or playing with his grandchildren than hitting the Washington social circuit.

When he took his job, the Defense Department's Web site began to feature ``Rumsfeld's rules'' -- 150 of the secretary's favorite reflections and quotations about life, politics and government service. No. 70 reads: ``Stubborn opposition to proposals often has no other basis than the complaining question, `Why wasn't I consulted?'''

It could easily apply to Rumsfeld's first assignment from President Bush -- to challenge the status quo inside the Pentagon and develop a strategy to have a force equipped for 21st century warfare.

To do that, Rumsfeld launched 18 reviews of defense issues -- everything from the quality of life for U.S. servicemen to financing the annual $310 billion Pentagon operation to deciding whether to cut certain weapons programs.

For his review panels, Rumsfeld sought input mainly from outside the Pentagon, prompting uniformed personnel to privately criticize their civilian boss.

Though steeped in Washington politics, Rumsfeld has chosen not to do the review by building coalitions. Instead, he asks people's opinions upfront and involves them in discussions so they're not blindsided by decisions, said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at Lexington Institute, a research group in Arlington, Va.

``He's snubbed all of them. He's managed to exclude every senior military officer in the Pentagon,'' Thompson said, adding that the review process is being run mostly by retired military officers and employees of think tanks.

Thompson said there has been little, if any, input from Congress and that two Republican senators have told him they have no idea what will be in the Defense Department blueprint when it arrives on Capitol Hill.

Articulating the purpose of the U.S. military following the end of the Cold War is a difficult challenge, said Bill Arkin, a former Army intelligence analyst and an author on military affairs. But he said Rumsfeld's decision to do the job without input from the armed services was a bad idea.

``There's been a little bit of backpedaling in terms of reaching back out to the military and they're changing to make the process a little more open,'' Arkin said. ``But I think Rumsfeld came into office with the undivided respect of the U.S. military and for some reason, he's squandered that.''

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Danes Open Largest Windmill Park

New York Times
May 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Denmark-Windmills.html?searchpv=aponline

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- A string of 20 white windmills spinning at the entrance of Copenhagen's harbor stand as a symbol of Denmark's position as the worldwide leader and pioneer in the pollution-free wind energy sector.

The world's largest offshore windmill park, with a capacity of 40 megawatts of electricity -- four times more than its nearest rival offshore windmill park in Sweden -- will be inaugurated by city officials and start producing energy on Sunday.

The Middelgrunden park will supply 32,000 households or 3 percent of the Danish capital's electricity consumption.

Ever since the late 1970s, when renewable, nonpolluting wind power emerged as an alternative energy source, environmentally aware Danes have been up front.

``This is the fastest growing energy generating industry,'' said Soeren Krohn of the windmill manufacturers' association, adding that Danish production was expected to double by 2005.

The local industry, which employs 12,000, held a 50 percent share in the world market last year by supplying 2,500 megawatts, the equivalent of a medium-sized nuclear power station.

Denmark's largest producer Vestas alone had 26 percent of that.

Middelgrunden's 211-foot-tall windmills with a rotor diameter of 250 feet are co-owned by Copenhagen Energy, the city's electricity company, and the 8,500-member Middelgrunden Wind Turbine Cooperative.

Spokesman Jens H. Larsen said 90 percent of the cooperative's members were Danes who ``wanted to be sure they get green energy,'' while the remainder were companies and trade unions.

In 1979, Denmark began a national windmill program under pressure from grass root organizations demanding new electricity sources. Since then, the government has encouraged Danes to invest money in windmills through co-ops, like Middelgrunden.

``You get a lot more support when people get a say,'' said Tarjei Haaland of Greenpeace. ``People have no say when oil companies are in charge.''

Rising awareness about the so-called greenhouse effect linked to increasing temperatures widely blamed on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants using fossil fuels like oil and coal also has increased the focus on wind energy.

Today, more than 5,600 windmills dot the Scandinavian nation, producing about 10 percent of Denmark's electricity. In 2030, half of Denmark's energy should come from windmills, according to the government.

Depending on technological capacity and winds, the price per kilowatt hour hovers at about 4 cents, which is competitive with other energy sources, Krohn said.

The idea is catching on.

Last year, Denmark exported windmills to key markets including the United States, Germany, Britain, India and China. Its sales have increased sixfold in the last five years, amounting to $1.5 billion in 1999, according to the industry association.

Middelgrunden will retain its position as the world's largest offshore park for at least a year.

Two bigger seaside parks are expected to open in Denmark next year, and more are planned off Sweden and the Netherlands, some producing as 160 megawatts -- four times the size of the Middelgrunden.

----

Old Fuels and Poor Policy

The New York Times
May 5, 2001
By BILL RICHARDSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/05/opinion/05RICH.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's energy policy, centered primarily on increasing the supply of oil, coal and nuclear power, is shortsighted and misaimed, focusing too much on the wrong fuels and too firmly on supply.

There is no question that we need to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. Energy companies now enjoying record profits should use their newly minted resources to pursue additional exploration and to build desperately needed refining capacity. But drilling for oil need not be conducted in environmentally sensitive areas. And since oil is not a major fuel for power plants, finding more of it will do little to address an issue that demands immediate attention: providing for our growing needs for electricity.

Coal is an abundant energy source. But it should not be the fuel of choice for power plants, either, as President Bush signaled it would be when he rescinded a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Vice President Dick Cheney said last week that coal would be a primary source of power generation for years to come.

We are likely to need 1,000 new power plants by 2020. It is preferable that they be clean, efficient, gas-fired plants that emit few pollutants. Technological investment and changes in plants to increase energy efficiency will be curtailed if we continue on an exclusively pro-coal path.

Despite current capacity and price problems, clean-burning natural gas should be recognized as America's best source of energy for supplying electricity in the future. Meeting the nation's generation demands will require that we not only find and produce 60 percent more natural gas, but deliver it to markets. We need to be aggressive in the construction of 30,000 miles of new gas transmission lines and 275,000 miles of new distribution lines. All Americans should support construction of the proposed transcontinental natural gas pipeline, following the most economical route from Alaska's North Slope to the lower 48 states.

As for nuclear power, we have not yet resolved the intractable problem of where to store the thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste scattered across the country. False expectations should not be raised. We cannot build new power plants before we decide whether Yucca Mountain in Nevada is scientifically and environmentally suitable as a long-term depository. The contentious debate on its suitability should be made on the basis of science and not politics.

But no matter what the fuels, supply is only one element of energy policy. And because it takes a long time to develop new sources or build new infrastructure, the supply side is necessarily the longer-term part of our planning. Energy efficiency - investments in developing and deploying technology to increase the efficient use of our scarce energy resources - is our best bet for meeting the nation's shorter-term energy needs.

Last week's speech by Vice President Cheney cleverly showered energy efficiency and conservation solutions with faint praise. With the federal government the biggest energy consumer, the administration is right to cut its own energy consumption, if only by repeating the guidelines given last year. But much more can and must be done.

Increasing the efficiency of our vehicle fleet by just three miles a gallon would save us one million barrels of oil per day, out of the roughly 10 million barrels we import. Regrettably, Mr. Bush reduced the Energy Department's budget for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs by 30 percent. A partnership with automakers to increase mileage in vehicles to 80 miles a gallon was also significantly cut. The Bush Energy Department also caved in to the air conditioning industry to block a rule requiring residential central air conditioners to be more efficient.

It is important to the nation's future that we take a bipartisan and balanced approach to energy policy. Everyone needs to recognize that energy and environmental policy are two sides of the same coin. Perhaps most important, we need to emphasize supply and demand in equal measure. In the end, this balance will be the true recipe for success.

Bill Richardson, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, was secretary of energy from 1998 to 2001.

-------- environment

Both Sides in Forest Debate Await Administration's Next Move

May 5, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/05/politics/05FORE.html

WASHINGTON, May 4 - The White House's decision to put in place a Clinton administration rule to protect national forests but allow changes to be made locally kindled a tense and unsettled debate today over how the rule would be carried out.

The decision was made public this afternoon by Ann M. Veneman, the agriculture secretary, and it prompted swings of reaction. Some environmentalists said it would reverse a major advance by the Clinton administration, but Western state officials and timber industry representatives said it would restore to states and communities a vital role in decision making.

At a news conference this afternoon, Ms. Veneman said the administration would put in place rules issued under President Bill Clinton that would bar road building and most logging across about one-third of national forest lands. The rules were issued in the last days of the Clinton administration but never went into effect. But Ms. Veneman said the rules would be subject to amendments that the new administration will propose next month.

"Because roadless protection is the right thing to do, it is important that we do it right," Ms. Veneman said. "The actions that we are announcing today are responsible. They ensure forest protection and address important concerns that could adversely impact local communities."

Ms. Veneman and Dale Bosworth, the new Forest Service chief, said they believed that the broad thrust of the Clinton rules would go forward, despite the amendments planned by the Bush administration.

But the two officials would not say how many of the 58.5 million acres put off limits under the Clinton approach might now be reopened to logging, road building and other activity, or describe the changes to be proposed by the new administration.

In states that would be most directly affected by the decision, people on both sides of the debate were left wondering just how far the new administration might go to uphold or undermine the Clinton rules, now due to take effect on May 12.

"By finally persuading the administration to abide by and enforce a law already on the books, we've set the stage for constructive debate on the environmental issues," said Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, a leader in efforts to defend the Clinton approach.

The announcement honored an administration pledge to tell an Idaho judge by May 4 how the White House intended to proceed on the plan, which has been challenged in court by the State of Idaho and Boise Cascade, the giant timber company, among others. But the State of Idaho and others opposed to the Clinton plan indicated tonight that they would continue to seek an injunction blocking the rule from taking effect.

The administration cast its decision, in large part, as an effort to address concerns raised last month in a preliminary ruling by Judge Edward J. Lodge of the Federal District Court in Boise.

Judge Lodge could still issue a ruling barring the Clinton rule from taking effect, but unless that happens, opponents of the regulations said they would continue to object to them in federal court.

In Idaho, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican, issued a statement saying he was "hopeful that the Bush administration will find the means to resolve the critical issues that Idaho and other Western states have raised."

But Governor Kempthorne said the state would go forward, at least for now, with its legal fight to prevent the rules from taking effect.

"Absent any specifics, and until such a resolution occurs, Idaho has no recourse but to continue to press its case in federal court to prevent a flawed policy from being implemented," the governor said.

In political posturing before today's announcement, at least 20 Republican lawmakers had joined with more than 100 Democrats in urging President Bush to leave the rule intact. But tonight, a spokesman for Representative Sherwood Boehlert of New York, a leader of the Republican effort, said today's announcement had left unresolved what course the supporters of the Clinton rule might take.

In telephone interviews today, leaders of environmental organizations expressed exasperation at the Bush administration's proposed course, saying it was impossible to say, at least for now, just how much land might be reopened to development, compared with the Clinton approach.

Some experts, including Michael Francis of the Wilderness Society, said today that they feared that at least nine million acres and perhaps many more, particularly in the Tongass National Forest of Alaska, the nation's largest, that would have been protected under the Clinton plan might now be reopened to development.

But in a conference call with reporters, the experts said the real effect of any changes could not be measured until after the Bush administration comes up with its amendments, as is expected sometime in June.

Several Republicans and Democrats who have been close to the forest-planning process said tonight that they would not comment specifically until they understood what the administration might propose next month.

"The administration, while not overturning roadless designations where they may make sense, has moved to bring some rationality back into the forest planning process," said Senator Frank H. Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who is chairman of the Senate energy committee.

-------- genetics

Babies Born in Experiments Have Genes From 3 People

New York Times
May 5, 2001
By GINA KOLATA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/05/health/05DNA.html

Some babies born from a new method used to treat a rare form of infertility have genes from three different people in their cells, researchers are reporting.

But the researchers emphasize that the added genes appear to be of no consequence. They are of a type that does not vary much from person to person and appear to have no effect on a child's characteristics, the researchers say. They say that their patients' babies who were born through use of the technique appear to be healthy.

The treatment has been used solely for a rare form of infertility occurring in only a small percentage of patients at fertility clinics. Women with this condition have eggs that can be fertilized, but the resulting embryos simply fall apart, dying before they can implant in the uterus.

Dr. Jacques Cohen, an infertility researcher at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, N.J., reasoned that the problem might be in the cytoplasm, the material that surrounds the nucleus of the egg and that directs its development after fertilization. So, in experiments that began a few years ago, Dr. Cohen and his colleagues began injecting cytoplasm from the eggs of fertile women into the eggs of these infertile women.

The group has treated 30 women, Dr. Cohen said, and they have given birth to 15 babies. About 30 babies have been born worldwide as a result of this technique, he added.

But the cytoplasm of an egg contains more than just proteins to help an embryo grow. It also contains mitochondria, which are self-contained tiny structures that use oxygen and nutrients to create energy for the cells. And mitochondria have their own genetic material.

That gave rise to a question. If the investigators injected cytoplasm containing mitochondria into an infertile woman's egg and then fertilized the egg and created a successful pregnancy, would the baby have genes from three people: the infertile woman, the man whose sperm fertilized the egg, and the woman whose egg was the source of the additional cytoplasm?

The answer, Dr. Cohen and his colleagues reported, was yes. In the March issue of a British journal, Human Reproduction, they described a genetic fingerprinting method they used to detect mitochondrial genes from the donor cytoplasm in blood cells of two 1-year-old babies born with this technique.

They tracked the one region of the mitochondrial genetic material that normally varies from person to person, a region, Dr. Cohen said, in which genes are inactive. "There are differences, but they are not meaningful," he said.

But in an editorial published in the journal Science on April 20, two ethicists, Erik Parens of the Hastings Center in Garrison, N.Y., and Eric Juengst of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, suggested that such treatments, because they result in permanent genetic alterations that in turn will be passed on to the babies' children, might not have been approved by a federal committee that oversees experiments that involve gene transfer. But, they explained, since the work was privately funded, the researchers had no obligation to ask the committee's permission to go ahead. The federal government does not pay for research related to human fertilization and early embryo development.

Dr. Cohen said: "We didn't come to them because they didn't give us federal funds. I would be happy to talk to them if they gave us funds."

-------- police

U.S. Student Says Russia Tried to Recruit Him

New York Times
May 5, 2001
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/05/world/05MOSC.html

MOSCOW, May 4 - An American student imprisoned on marijuana charges in a southwest Russian city asserted in a handwritten note last month that Russian officials set up his arrest in January, then asked him to conduct unspecified work for them.

The note, written by John Tobin, 24, states that Mr. Tobin rejected the proposal for work and added that he expected to remain in jail for some additional time as a result.

The message was secretly taken from his cell in Voronezh and delivered in March to his home in Connecticut, his father, John Tobin Sr., said in a telephone interview today.

Mr. Tobin said he was making a portion of the note public because the alternative - an enforced silence as the younger Mr. Tobin's case wound through a Voronezh court - had failed to win his son's freedom or even a reduced punishment.

"We thought if we minimized things, if we kept this off the radar screen, so to speak, that perhaps they would treat him like they treat their own students: at the worst, fine him and send him home," the father said. "We're dealing with an insignificant amount of marijuana."

He called his son's arrest and conviction "a dirty little setup" on the part of Russian officials, and said his son might be guilty only "of picking up a matchbox of unknown content."

John Tobin Jr. was sentenced last month to 37 months in a prison colony for possessing and distributing marijuana. A third charge, on which he could have drawn up to 15 years in prison, operating a drug den, was dropped.

His lawyer plans to appeal the sentence on the ground that it is out of proportion to the offense.

The elder Mr. Tobin said access to his son had been limited. He did not say how he had obtained the message, which he said was addressed to a girlfriend in the United States and generally described the conditions of his imprisonment.

According to Mr. Tobin Sr., the note states: "So what happened? Well, the local authorities constructed a nice little setup that I fell for hook, line and sinker. So what now? I've rejected their offer to work for the local man, so I might sit here for a while."

The elder Mr. Tobin quoted his son as writing that he had been "beating myself up so long over this that my head hurts."

The note and its recounting of a proposition from officials is but the latest turn in a case that seemed routine but has grown ever stranger.

Mr. Tobin was a Fulbright scholar studying changes in Russian political attitudes at Voronezh State University, an institution popular with foreign students, when he was arrested on Jan. 26 after the police said they had found marijuana in his clothes.

The arrest went all but unnoticed for weeks. But it blossomed onto Russian television and newspaper front pages in late February when Voronezh officials of the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., Russia's domestic security agency, charged that he was actually in training to become an American spy.

That conclusion apparently stemmed from Mr. Tobin's military record. A member of a military intelligence unit in the Army Reserve, he studied Russian at a Defense Department school and was trained in interrogation at an Arizona military intelligence institute.

The State Department took the unusual step of denying that Mr. Tobin was a spy. The F.S.B. later said it had no interest in Mr. Tobin because he had not committed any espionage- related offenses, although it did not retract the allegation that he was preparing for espionage.

The case has remained in the Russian public eye anyway, to the point where youngsters demonstrated outside the Voronezh courtroom where he was sentenced last month, carrying placards reading "No to American Drugs."

Reports of the amount of marijuana that the police say they found in their investigation of Mr. Tobin have ranged as high as two ounces, but a Web site devoted to Mr. Tobin's case - www.geocities.com/freejacktobin - states that the amount he was sentenced for possessing was 0.47 grams, or about a sixtieth of an ounce.

-------- spying

U.S. Spy Plane Deemed Flyable

New York Times
May 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Spy-Plane.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The American technicians who inspected the damaged Navy spy plane on China's Hainan island concluded it could be repaired and safely flown off the island, U.S. officials say.

The Bush administration has not decided, however, how to proceed with retrieving the $80 million aircraft, officials said Friday after the Lockheed Martin Corp. technicians finished their inspection.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said privately that he prefers that it be flown off Hainan, but Chinese officials have indicated to American officials in Beijing that they would not permit that, according to two defense officials who discussed the matter on condition they not be identified.

An alternative would be to partially disassemble the four-engine turboprop plane and transport it by barge or aircraft, but that would take more time.

``We want our aircraft back as soon as possible,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. ``We continue our discussions with the Chinese on the return of the aircraft.''

Rumsfeld was expected to consult with Adm. Dennis Blair, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, this weekend before deciding how to proceed. The Lockheed Martin team that inspected the plane was heading Saturday to Blair's headquarters in Hawaii to submit its findings, officials said.

At stake for the United States, besides the practical issue of cost, is the political value of ending this contentious episode with a dignified departure rather than being forced to cart off the prized plane in pieces.

China, of course, sees it differently. It contends that the Navy EP-3E Aries II was to blame for colliding with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea, leading to the fighter pilot's death.

China also strongly objects to the kind of surveillance flights that the EP-3E was conducting off its southern coast. It held the EP-3E's 24-member crew for 11 days after they made an emergency landing April 1 at a naval air base on Hainan. There apparently have been no U.S. surveillance flights in that area since, although the Pentagon insists such flights will resume.

The collision damaged two of the surveillance plane's engines and one of its four propellers. It also caused the plane's nose cone to break off, and pieces of metal punctured parts of the fuselage.

The plane, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, is about the size of a Boeing 737 commercial airliner. It was packed with sensitive electronic eavesdropping equipment used to collect intelligence on China's military. U.S. officials have said they believe the EP-3E crew managed to destroy the most sensitive information and equipment before they left, but that China probably has gained some valuable insights.

Before the five-member Lockheed Martin team began inspecting the plane in detail on Wednesday, it was unknown whether the aircraft had sustained structural damage that would make it unsafe to fly. The inspection team reported Friday that it could be flown, although U.S. defense officials said it was too early to know how extensive the repairs might be.

The inspection took one day longer than originally planned because the Chinese military on Thursday refused to provide the electric power that the U.S. technicians requested to run the plane's on-board electronics. On Friday, the Americans received full cooperation and their six hours of work went smoothly, said Lt. Cmdr. Terry Sutherland, a Pentagon spokesman.

If the plane is repaired and flown off the island, it most likely would go first to Kadena Air Base on the Japanese island of Okinawa, officials said. That is where the EP-3E began its surveillance mission and where some of the 10 remaining planes in the EP-3E fleet are stationed.

-------- terrorism

Hackers Leave Pro-China Trail on U.S. Sites

May 5, 2001
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/05/technology/05HACK.html

WASHINGTON, May 4 - After federal officials issued warnings that Chinese hackers were planning a wave of attacks against United States-based Web sites, more than 650 American sites were defaced this week, culminating in a two-hour attack this morning that partly paralyzed the official White House site.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation had said last week that attacks were being planned to protest the collision last month of an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet that led to the death of the Chinese pilot. The strikes were expected to coincide with Chinese holidays this week. "The attacks were destructive but relatively unsophisticated, ending with the large statement by trying to take down the White House," said Michael Cheek, a manager at iDefense, an Internet security company.

Most attacks were the equivalent of graffiti. Hackers posted slogans like, "Beat down the imperialism of American," and, "Attack anti-Chinese arrogance," in a campaign that defaced hundreds of sites, including credit unions in California and the National Football League. Many assaults were accompanied by an audio version of the Chinese national anthem.

In a few cases, the hackers temporarily brought down sites. One was www.cogentmedicine.com, which advises physicians on cancer studies that can help with treatment. "Every day we are down, physicians are left in the dark about information they could use," said Dr. Brian Goldsmith, who manages the site.

-------- activists

Vieques Arrests

FirstHand Report:
From: Kathy Gannett
Sat, 05 May 2001

I am safe at my home in Vieques after spending three days in the bombing range in Vieques and three days in the federal prison near San Juan. I was released on Tuesday evening after posting $3000 bail for a trespass charge. I was privileged to be part of a massive show of civil disobedience to stop the bombing which resulted in approximately 180 protesters arrested and sent to prison with bail amounts set as high as $10,000 (and some were refused any bail). Hundreds more protested outside the base, in Puerto Rico and around the world.

On Wednesday evening, two fisherman carried our group of six to Playa Blanca,a beach on the northeast coast of Vieques close to the live impact area.

Beginning on Tuesday, April 24th until Tuesday, May 2, many other groups of protesters entered the range by seas and by land through the Navy fence. Our group was led by local leader, Ismael Guadalupe, and also included another valiant Viequense, Angel Aponte. Also in my group were Zoraida Santiago, Raul Quinones, and Pablo O'Leary. We camped near the beach until Saturday morning hiding under dwarf trees from the Navy helicopters and police boats which passed by frequently.

Twice contingents from our group traveled into the live impact area, once to send up a flare close to the Navy's observation tower and once to hang in the road a huge banner made from a bed sheet -- both excursions were to prove to our presence to the Navy in order to stop the bombing. In that process a member of our group, Raul, was separated from us and apprehended later by the Navy. The bombing was delayed for 2 hours on Friday morning, April 27 but lasted the entire rest of the day.

On Saturday morning before the bombing began, in another attempt to stop the bombing, three of us walked by open road towards the Navy's Observation tower. We were arrested by Navy police on the beach just below the famous protest camp, Monte David. We were exposed to the sun continuously until about 4 PM when we arrived at Roosevelt Roads base on the main island. We were transported across the ocean in a large open Navy barge and forced to sit handcuffed on burning hot metal decks in the mid-day sun. We were refused many requests for life jackets. At one point I stood up to breathe some air, and the Navy soldier in charge told me to sit down or "I'll throw you down on the floor on your face".

Meanwhile, on Friday, hundreds of peaceful protesters in front of the main gate to Camp Garcia were sprayed with pepper gas and some, including Pastor Nelson of the catholic church, were hit with rubber bullets. Some, including Congressperson Luis Gutierrez, were arrested and beaten by the military police or federal marshals. On Sunday, during an activity for children with a clown, the Navy spayed gas resulting in children running and crying and an infant of three months being treated in the hospital.

Among those also arrested were 3 Puerto Ricans senators ; 3 Puerto Rican Mayors; environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr.; US Congressperson Luis Gutierrez; SEIU leader [Local 1199 - MC] Dennis Rivera; Ruben Berrios, leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party; actor Edward James Olmos; Robby Rosa, songwriter for Ricky Martin; singer Danny Rivera, civil rights leader Al Sharpton; many elected officials from New York, and priests, teachers, actors and actresses, artists, doctors and many more. On Saturday, after being arrested, 48 protesters spent the night in Vieques in a tiny ancient jail in Camp Garcia (similar to a cage for zoo animals) that had a cement floor and no roof. The prisoners spent a cold night exposed to rain, roaches and salamanders (lizards) with very little food.

I arrived to the Guaynabo prison, near San Juan, about 5:30 pm on Saturday and was strip-searched and given a uniform. About 6 PM after a day without any food, we were given a ham sandwich and an apple. We arrived in our cells upstairs by about 8 pm and were given a warm welcome by the four women who had been arrested on Friday doing civil disobedience (by Tuesday our total was about 20 women imprisoned from actions in Vieques). I was not allowed to make a phone call until about noon on Sunday and was never given a chance to speak to a lawyer until 8 pm on Monday night at our bail hearing. I was finally released from the Guaynabo Metropolitan Detention Center about 4 pm on Tuesday, May 2 after my $3000 bail was paid in cash to the federal court. The magistrate before which I appeared on Monday night tried unsuccessfully to pressure me into promising not to return to the bombing range.

Since "locked down" to our cells began at 9:45 pm at night and ended most days at 6 AM, were were able to spend time speaking with the approximately 125 women who were serving lengthy sentences in this prison unit, most for drug related crimes. They were very much in solidarity with the Vieques struggle. This support comes despite the fact that our presence in the institution often leads to cancelations of visiting hours or court dates.

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW that these inmates told us that we were given many privileges that they do not receive, such as making a phone call "only" one day after we arrived to our cells. They have had to wait two weeks without any communication with a family member after being arrested. They also informed us that the food we were served was improved because we protesters were there and that we had not been exposed to the many of the hostile guards that work there (actually many of the personnel were very kind). Consistently every inmate complained about the lack of recreational and educational programs. All their regulation clothing must be purchased in their commissary where the prices are sky high. Those lucky few who have a job are paid $17 per month to work.

BUT MOST OF ALL, I was reminded of what I already knew - that the poor people and people of color of the U.S. and P.R. are being enslaved in prisons with long sentences for minor offenses, such as drug offenses, and that the public is incorrectly believing that this harsh treatment will rehabilitate them. Drug treatment on demand, education, counseling, job training and building self respect is the only thing that will help them to lead a prosperous and happier life when they leave prison. Please do your part to dispel the myth that our streets will be safer by expanding this brutal system of punishment that the U.S. society is so proud of. Dismantle the U.S. prison system as we know it!

I can categorically say that participating in this protest was the single greatest deed of my life. I am so proud to have had the chance to stand up against US imperialism in this way with the Viequense and Puerto Rican people. Our action was well prepared with adequate food and water and we took the necessary precautions to protect our safety (as much as could be expected when entering a bombing range.) We delayed and shortened the hours of the bombing each day and we believe that the excercises were scaled back and they were unable to do some of their maneuvers. The unity of Puerto Rico was overwhelming and we believe that this huge public outcry from a range of people from the Puerto Rican Governor Calderon to the small Vieques school children who went on strike during the bombing demonstrates that victory is just around the corner.

Please write back.
Love, Kathy