------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Lawmakers Urge Renewal of Sanctions
Northrop Grumman Bids for Newport
Northrop Makes Play for Newport News
Nuclear-fuel producer favored in trade ruling
Pakistan joins DU producer nations
New German Waste Shipment Arrives
Iraq Mulled Building Radiation Bomb
U.S., S. Korea discuss proposed missile defense
U.S. Stresses Missile Defense
Missile shield could build peace --envoy
Plan for Missile Defense Not Clear
Out to Torpedo Missile Defense
"Loose nukes" get shortchanged?
Russia Recalls WWII Nazi Defeat
Whither nuclear waste? Energy
Shame and Courage
Radioactive waste passes through area
Bush 'Will Restart Nuclear Tests'
Bolton survives battle to be czar
Negroponte in Honduras, now UN nominee
Nuclear power, Capitol radiation
New German Waste Shipment Arrives
German Police Escort Nuclear Waste Shipment

MILITARY
Military Analysis: U.S. Weighing Future of Arms Pacts
Kostunica struggles to stabilize Yugoslav coalition
Cuts Urged In Patrols Over Iraq Risk of Allied Pilot Being Downed Cited
Citing Pilot Safety, Fewer Patrols Over Iraq Recommended
Palestinian Arsenal Worries Israel
New Zealand to Scrap Air Defense
Rumsfeld Plan Skirts Call for Stationing Arms in Space
Kicking U.S. off rights panel
White House hits U.N. panel ouster
House Threatens to Hold Back U.N. Dues for Loss of Seat
U.N. Chief Asks for New Funds to Fight AIDS
German School Damaged by Rounds
Pentagon panel sees need for stealth fighter and Osprey

OTHER
Japan PM Koizumi urges ministers to go green
Danish green policy could hit wind power
Cheney Is Backing Plan to Expand Cleaner Sources of Energy
Cheney Panel Backs Power Plant, Hybrid-Car Incentives
UN Climate Boss Seeks Early Draft on Pollution Pact
Pesticide Waste Raises U.N. Concern
Congress Grapples With Species Law
Moratorium on Alteration of Salmon
F.D.A. Cautions Against Eating Certain Fish During Pregnancy
Federal bench at a tipping point
Big brother is watching
Beijing Aide Tries to Explain Its Stance on U.S. Spy Plane
Bargaining Is Under Way in Spying Case of F.B.I. Man
Cheney to Lead Anti-Terrorism Plan Team

ACTIVISTS
Falun Gong Stages Protests as Jiang Visits Hong Kong


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- business

Lawmakers Urge Renewal of Sanctions

By Eun-Kyung Kim
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010509/aponline171951_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- A law that punishes foreign companies for doing business with Iran or Libya drew support Wednesday from lawmakers considering whether to renew the measure for another five years.

The 1996 law, set to expire in August, imposes economic sanctions against foreign companies that invest in the Iranian or Libyan oil industries.

The measure was intended to change "unacceptable" behavior by the two nations, or at least hamper their efforts to promote terrorism, said Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., chairman of the International Relations Subcommittee on the Middle East.

"It is regrettable that Iranian behavior has not changed for the better," he said. "In fact, it seems to be getting worse - in its training of terrorists, in its production of chemical and biological weapons and the production of long range missiles."

The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) has drawn criticism from energy companies, who argue the sanctions keep U.S. companies from helping Iran develop new energy facilities including pipelines, refineries and drilling rigs.

But Gilman insisted the law does not affect American companies because they already are barred from doing business in Iran.

"All we are doing is telling foreign companies that are willing to deal with Iran that they may have to pay a price when it comes to their dealings with the United States," he said. "Clearly this can create problems for our diplomacy with the Europeans and others."

Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, agreed the law had created "diplomatic damage," but said it had accomplished little else. He urged lawmakers to let the law expire.

"We are strongly convinced that ILSA has been entirely ineffective and that it is counterproductive for U.S. interests," Reinsch said. "It's time to give it a decent burial."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday that the administration has not decided whether it supports renewing the law. However, President Bush indicated last month that he has no plans to lift the sanctions "anytime soon" as part of his energy strategy, although he considered it important to review all sanctions policies to "make sure they're effective."

Many European nations also oppose the law because they see it as an attempt by the United States to impose trade policy on them.

But that's because those nations are more concerned about their economic interests than reforming international criminals, said former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, one of the authors of the 1996 law.

"They are not nearly as interested in taking on the terrorist tactics because in many cases they have been spared these kinds of terrorist attacks," he told lawmakers. "It's not their citizens, it's not their troops on the line."

D'Amato said the actual impact the law has on U.S. companies is "nickels and dimes" compared to the "billions and billions and billions of dollars that would have been invested in the money machine for Iran, which is oil and gas production."

Patrick Clawson, research director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that even Iranian officials have acknowledged the sanctions have deterred investment in Iran's oil industry.

"This development has reduced the Iranian government's income, thereby slowing its arms acquisitions plans," he said.

Clawson warned that if the law is allowed to lapse, the Iranian government would conclude that "the United States as well as Europe puts commercial interests ahead of national security."

----

Northrop Grumman Bids for Newport

By Alan Clendenning
AP Business Writer
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010509/aponline164608_000.htm

NEW YORK -- Northrop Grumman Corp. officials on Wednesday said their proposed purchase of Newport News Shipbuilding Inc. is better than General Dynamics Corp.'s offer because the latter combination would create a nuclear shipbuilding monopoly.

Not surprisingly, General Dynamics officials disagree, saying there has been no competition in nuclear shipbuilding for years.

But the decision on who is correct rests with government officials, who won't say yet which suitor they prefer.

Questions about a possible monopoly were raised yet again after Northrop Grumman made it a central strategic theme behind its surprise bid for Newport News. The offer came just two weeks after General Dynamics and Newport News revealed plans to merge in a deal valued at $2.1 billion.

In a letter made public Wednesday, Northrop Grumman chairman and chief executive Kent Kresa said his company's matching offer for Newport News has better odds of being approved by federal regulators.

"In short, we believe the General Dynamics-Newport News combination would eliminate competition, endanger national security and be costly both to the Navy and the American taxpayer," Kresa said in the letter to Newport News chairman and CEO William Fricks.

General Dynamics spokeswoman Norine Lyons said the monopoly issue doesn't apply because her company and Newport News have cooperated in building Virginia-class submarines since 1997. Newport News is the only manufacturer of nuclear aircraft carriers.

"There is no competition anyway," she said.

Newport News spokeswoman Jerri Fuller Dickseski said company officials would not comment on Northrop's claims, except to say that the firm's board will consider the Northrop Grumman offer.

Regardless of what Newport News wants, the ultimate decision likely rests in the hands of the Navy and the Defense Department - and they may prefer that the Newport News, Va.-based builder of nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers remains independent.

That's the course the Pentagon took two years ago, when then-Defense Secretary William Cohen said a purchase of Newport News by General Dynamics or Litton Industries Inc. - bought by Northrop last month for $3.8 billion - would stifle competition.

The Defense Department "in essence said, 'Not now' in 1999 and it could say this again in 2001," Merrill Lynch defense analyst Byron Callan said Wednesday in a research note sent to clients.

Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said the Defense Department officials had not seen an official announcement from Northrop Grumman. He had no comment except to say that if Northrop Grumman submits a bid, the Pentagon would play its usual role in reviewing it for the Justice Department.

General Dynamics, based in Falls Church, Va., and Newport News said their proposed combination would streamline management of the two U.S. nuclear shipyards and save the Navy more than $2 billion over the next decade.

After the General Dynamics-Newport News combination was announced last month, analysts had mixed opinions on whether it would be approved by a Bush administration seen as sympathetic to business interests. Company officials have said they anticipate no problems.

Northrop Grumman, with headquarters in Los Angeles, received regulatory clearance in March to buy defense electronics and shipbuilder Litton, paving the way for completion of that deal.

Still, some analysts question whether Northrop Grumman can manage such a large deal so soon after closing on the Litton purchase.

Northrop Grumman treasurer Al Myers said his company anticipates no financial or integration problems, however. "We've got a lot on our plate, but we're confident we can handle it," he said in an interview.

General Dynamics said its purchase of Newport News could result in some management job cuts, but the company said the overall work force would probably increase. The company also said there were no plans to close shipyards.

Northrop Grumman spokesman Randy Belote said some job cuts would be inevitable if the company buys Newport News, but added that "there are no plans for wholesale layoffs or facility closings."

General Dynamics has about 46,000 employees, while Newport News has about 17,000. Northrop Grumman's work force doubled to 80,000 after the Litton purchase.

Northrop's bid for Newport News, based in Newport News, Va., would come in at the same $67.50 per share price as General Dynamic's offer, Kresa said.

The offer is 75 percent stock and 25 percent cash, while General Dynamic's proposal is an all-cash transaction. Both offers also include the assumption of $500 million in Newport News' debt.

In trading on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, shares of Northrop closed down $3.50, or 4 percent, at $88, while shares of General Dynamics closed down 15 cents at $78.15. Shares of Newport News closed up 4 cents at $65.04.

----

Northrop Makes Play for Newport News
New Suitor Matches $2.1 Billion General Dynamics Bid for Builder of Aircraft Carriers and Subs

By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A226-2001May8?language=printer

Northrop Grumman Corp. yesterday made an aggressive offer to buy Newport News Shipbuilding Inc., attempting to elbow past the deal General Dynamics Corp. announced two weeks ago to acquire the nation's only builder of aircraft carriers.

Arguing that the General Dynamics deal would be bad for the Navy because it would concentrate all nuclear shipbuilding capabilities in a single company, Northrop Grumman is offering the same total amount of money -- $2.1 billion, plus assumption of $500 million in debt -- but claims it has a better chance of winning regulatory approval.

"If one deal can close and the other can't, it's pretty clear which deal is the superior one," said Albert Myers, corporate treasurer and head of mergers and acquisitions for Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman.

The warring bids dramatize what could be the final consolidation of the U.S. military shipbuilding industry, which has been reduced to three major players: General Dynamics, which builds submarines; Newport News, with its submarines and carriers; and Northrop Grumman, which bought Litton Industries Inc. just last month to become the leading builder of conventional surface combatants.

Northrop chairman and chief executive Kent Kresa faxed his offer to Newport News late yesterday, then spent the evening briefing key senators and staffers on Capitol Hill. While General Dynamics agreed to pay $67.50 a share in cash, Kresa proposes to pay one-fourth in cash and the rest in Northrop Grumman stock.

Myers said Northrop Grumman had asked Newport News for a chance to bid on the company several weeks ago, and that it was surprised when General Dynamics popped up with its announcement April 25. "We didn't pick the timing here," he said. "I suspect somebody might have noticed we might be a little distracted" by the Litton deal.

A Newport News spokeswoman said the company received Northrop Grumman's outline of an offer and planned to issue a news release today.

General Dynamics defended its original position. "We are disappointed that Northrop Grumman has chosen to interfere in a proposed transaction agreed upon by the respective boards of directors of General Dynamics and Newport News Shipbuilding," spokeswoman Norine Lyons said from company headquarters in Falls Church.

One of the drivers of General Dynamics' proposed acquisition was the prospect of saving money for the Navy by consolidating the management of nuclear shipbuilding. Lyons repeated yesterday that theirs "is the only combination that can provide synergies necessary to achieve significant merger-related savings. It is also the only combination that offers the Navy depth of experience in the safe management of nuclear shipbuilding."

But Loren Thompson, an expert with the Lexington Institute think tank who consults with defense companies, said Northrop Grumman's offer could change the way the Navy regards any deal involving Newport News.

"Newport News is a unique national asset. The first question the Navy is going to ask in looking at these bids is who can do a better job of preserving the capabilities of that asset," Thompson said.

The Navy is extremely protective of its shipyards. It blocked attempts by both General Dynamics and Litton Industries to acquire Newport News in 1999.

Now that Northrop Grumman has bought Litton, it may have additional leverage because one of its shipyards, Ingalls, is in Mississippi, home state of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.

One high-ranking Senate staffer said some in Congress welcome the Northrop Grumman offer. Citing a 1999 Navy study, the staffer said combining General Dynamics with Newport News would concentrate nearly three-quarters of annual shipbuilding revenue, and nearly all of the Navy's shipbuilding research money, in one company.

"The Northrop-Newport News merger would create two equals -- General Dynamics as it currently is, and Northrop Grumman," the staffer said.

But another source familiar with the proposals said the Navy had encouraged the General Dynamics offer as a way to cut costs at Newport News. Northrop's move will cloud that issue and provoke a lengthy review process, the source said.

----

Nuclear-fuel producer favored in trade ruling

Nation & World
Wednesday, May 09, 2001
By The Associated Press
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=uran09&date=20010509

WASHINGTON - The Commerce Department said yesterday that European countries have subsidized the uranium-enrichment industry, a preliminary ruling that favors the United States' only producer of fuel for nuclear-power plants.

The department said the French have given a subsidy of nearly 14 percent, while Germany, the Netherlands and Britain provided subsidies of less than 4 percent each.

U.S. Enrichment Corp. (USEC), based in Bethesda, Md., filed the trade case against Eurodif, a French company, and Urenco, which exports uranium from Britain, Germany and the Netherlands.

USEC complained that it lost millions of dollars worth of business because government subsidies let Eurodif and Urenco charge less for power-plant fuel.

The European companies fought the complaint, arguing that USEC's prices were high because of its electricity-intensive, World War II-era technology and because it was weighed down by a money-losing contract to sell uranium retrieved from former Soviet weapons.

Backing up the position of those competitors were lawmakers from North Carolina and South Carolina who said they didn't want their constituents to pay more for electricity.

North Carolina gets more than 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear reactors, and nuclear-power plants generate more than 56 percent of South Carolina's electricity, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Even though the latest ruling is only preliminary, it can have a swift impact on prices because importers will have to pay a bond to cover the amount of the punitive duty, should that duty be upheld in a final ruling.

USEC filed its trade complaint in December after more than a year of declining profits.


-------- depleted uranium

Pakistan joins DU producer nations

Janes Defense Review, May 9, 2001

http://www.janes.com/defence/land_forces/news/idr/idr010509_1_n.shtml

Among the exhibits at IDEX 2001 was a model of the new 125mm armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) projectile with a depleted uranium (DU) long-rod penetrator, which is being developed by the Pakistani National Development Complex (NDC) for use with T-80UD tanks.

It follows the development of a DU round for the Pakistan Army's Chinese-designed T-59 tanks, which have been re-armed with 105mm guns and currently fire a license-built version of the British L64A4 tungsten APFSDS projectile. The latter is credited with a range of 4km against a NATO single heavy target. The 105mm DU APFSDS round has a muzzle velocity of 1,450m/s and can penetrate more than 450mm of rolled homogenous armor at an unspecified range.

The performance of the 125mm round is said to be 25% greater. A noticeable feature of the saddle-type sabots of the NDC 125mm projectile and of the Norinco 125mm tungsten APFSDS projectiles (now being license-produced by Pakistan Ordnance Factories) is the reconfiguration of their forward bore-riders so that the projectiles align accurately with the autoloading system of the T-80UD.

(It was reported in 1998 that unspecified 'loadability' problems had arisen between Chinese projectiles and Ukrainian autoloaders. The same problem is not thought to have been encountered with the loading systems of the 125mm smoothbore guns mounted in Chinese Type 85-IIAP tanks.)

Among the exhibits at IDEX 2001 was a model of the new 125mm armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) projectile with a depleted uranium (DU) long-rod penetrator, which is being developed by the Pakistani National Development Complex (NDC) for use with T-80UD tanks.

-------- germany

New German Waste Shipment Arrives

The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010509/aponline095307_000.htm

BERLIN -- A train carrying spent nuclear fuel from a closed power plant in eastern Germany arrived at a storage site in the north of the country Wednesday after a six-hour journey marked by small protests.

The shipment of 246 spent fuel rods in four containers was the latest in a series that have set off massive protests by anti-nuclear activists trying to stop the transport of waste.

About 40 protesters tried to block the tracks near the defunct Rheinsberg power station, where the train started its journey, police said. Another demonstration managed to bring the train to a brief halt about 12 miles short of its destination in Lubmin, near the Baltic coast and the Polish border.

Both blockades were quickly broken up and the protesters detained. Some 6,500 police officers were deployed to protect the shipment.

The waste will be kept at Lubmin until Germany designates a permanent storage site.

Nuclear waste shipments in Germany resumed in March after a three-year break imposed by the previous government after radiation leaks were found in some containers.

The government last year struck a deal to scrap the country's 19 nuclear plants, though the shutdown could still take over 20 years to complete.

The resumed transports have brought protest action by opponents who who want Germany's plants closed faster and say shipments are unsafe. They aim to make the transports so costly that the government and power companies will be forced to stop them.

-------- iraq

Iraq Mulled Building Radiation Bomb

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-Bomb.html?searchpv=aponline

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq says it had once considered building a radiation bomb to use against Iran, but later discarded the idea.

Mohammed al-Douri, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, said in a letter Tuesday to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that in 1987 an ``Iraqi expert introduced the idea of making a defensive radiation bomb'' to protect the country from an Iranian invasion, according to the official Iraqi News Agency. Iraq and Iran fought an 8-year war that began in 1980.

``Specialists studied the technical and practical aspects of the idea and then decided it was not useful,'' al-Douri said in his letter.

``It was found out that the bomb would contaminate soil and plants,'' said al-Douri. ``The idea died and the bomb was not manufactured.''

The news agency said the letter to Annan was delivered Monday.

The New York Times published documents on April 29 that reportedly revealed Iraq had conducted a radiation bomb test in 1987.

Radiation weapons such as neutron bombs are designed to release deadly radiation but with a smaller blast and less fire damage than other nuclear bombs.

The documents were said to have been obtained by the Washington-based Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, which said it had acquired them from a U.N. official.

On May 2, Iraq denied it had conducted such a test.

In his letter, al-Douri said the report was timed to prolong the U.N. economic sanctions imposed on the country following the 1991 Gulf War and ``to divert attention from the American crimes committed against the people of Iraq,'' according to the news agency.

He said that Iraq had informed the International Atomic Energy Committee of the incident, without mentioning when.

-------- korea

U.S., S. Korea discuss proposed missile defense

May 9, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/05/09/missile.defense/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage met Wednesday with South Korean officials to brief them about a proposed U.S. national missile defense program.

The meeting was part of a coordinated White House effort begun this week to consult with U.S. allies who may be concerned about global reaction to the proposed system.

This month, President George W. Bush's announced his intention to implement a high-tech system to protect against missile attacks from so-called "rogue nations."

Armitage met Wednesday with South Korean officials in Seoul to brief them about the missile plans. Top Bush administration aides are fanning out around the globe to consult on U.S. plans to build the system.

Armitage also delivered a letter from President Bush to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung outlining Washington's support for Seoul's engagement policy toward North Korea.

"At the moment, we are not talking with North Korea on anything, but I suspect that we will in the near future," Armitage said after separately meeting Kim and Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo.

Protests greet U.S. delegation

About 30 South Korean opponents of U.S. missile defense protested at Incheon International Airport, but police kept the demonstrators away from Armitage and his entourage, The Associated Press said.

"The aim of their visit is to twist South Korea's arm to get it to be involved in the U.S. missile defense system," the Korean Federation for the Environmental Movement, a civic group that organized the protest, said in a statement obtained by the AP.

Another group of 100 anti-U.S. protesters, mostly students, marched in downtown Seoul. They carried a banner that read: "U.S. Diabolic Nightmare" and handed out leaflets saying: "Armitage, envoy of death."

The United States has proposed a mix of land- and sea-based rockets and airborne laser weapons to shoot down missiles from such countries as Iraq and North Korea. The Americans say their initiative is part of a new strategy of deterrence the United States and the entire 19-nation NATO alliance.

On Tuesday in Belgium, according to The Associated Press, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman and Stephen Hadley, deputy White House assistant for national security affairs, told NATO ambassadors that the allies must stand together against the threat from nations able to threaten global security with long-range missiles of mass destruction.

U.S. officials acknowledged the project would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, now Russia. But Grossman said the treaty is outdated now that the Soviet Union no longer exists and Russia is not an enemy, the AP reported.

Speaking to reporters, Grossman called the reaction from the allies positive. He cited none of the concerns some have expressed about scrapping the ABM treaty and deploying the proposed new system over Russian objections. NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson welcomed U.S. efforts to consult the allies. However, his statement stopped short of a declaration of support for the missile defense plan, according to the AP.

U.S. officials head to Moscow

Meanwhile, Paul Wolfowitz, the undersecretary of defense, is heading up a delegation of U.S. officials due to arrive in Moscow late Thursday night for consultations with their Russian counterparts on the missile defense initiative.

They expect to meet Friday with advisers to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been cool to the Bush plan.

The delegation is part of a team that has been visiting several European capitals. From Moscow, they are scheduled to go to Western Europe.

The U.S. officials have so far not made any requests to meet with Putin.

Earlier this month Bush outlined his general plans for a national missile defense system, saying a "new framework" is needed for national defense and saying the 1972 ABM Treaty should be scrapped. The president also called for a reduction in the nation's nuclear stockpile, although he did not cite precise numbers.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has identified "near-term options" that could allow the United States to deploy an "initial capability" against limited attacks, possibly as early as 2004. A complete missile defense shield, however, is believed to be at least a decade away the AP reported.

-------- missile defense

U.S. Stresses Missile Defense

By Elaine Ganley
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010509/aponline173347_000.htm

PARIS -- A ranking U.S. delegation worked Wednesday to convince skeptical French officials that President Bush's missile defense plan will not start a new arms race.

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz held talks with officials of the French Foreign Ministry to explain the plan on the second day of his European tour.

According to Wolfowitz, a there is a need to build the system in order to protect the United States and its allies against attacks by small "rogue" nations.

But there are fears in Europe that the U.S. plan will undermine arms control agreements, possibly beginning a new arms race.

France has voiced misgivings about the plan, but details of the talks were not available, though Wolfowitz said French officials were "very open to discussion."

Cold War concepts are "deeply ingrained," Wolfowitz told reporters, adding that he hoped discussion would convince allies of the need for a new approach.

Some nations have expressed fears that the missile defense plan, which would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, will also undermine arms control agreements.

Wolfowitz said the ABM Treaty was a "major" topic of discussion.

"It's not that we want to protect the United States and not anyone else," Wolfowitz said. "Once people begin to realize that this is not something that is a matter of gaining advantage over anyone, but is a matter of reducing vulnerability for everybody, then I think they will begin to think about it differently."

A separate delegation visited the Netherlands on Wednesday as part of an information blitz about the plan.

In The Hague, Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman said the Netherlands "welcomes the comprehensive approach" proposed by the United States.

In Copenhagen, Danish Foreign Minister Mogens Lykketoft reiterated Denmark's position that "a missile defense must not start a new arms race."

Bush's plan is not a new version of the so-called "star wars" missile shield of the 1980s, Wolfowitz said.

The U.S. delegation was heading to Germany and Poland then to Moscow on Friday, where criticism was likely to be most overt.

A separate delegation was also in Asia, visiting Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday.

----

Missile shield could build peace --envoy
Remarks suggest Canada may be softening its views

Wednesday 9 May 2001
Mike Blanchfield
Southam Newspapers; Ottawa Citizen
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news1/stories/010509/5042332.html

The proposed U.S. anti-ballistic missile shield might not be as damaging to global security as initially feared and, if carefully implemented, it could help build a new post-Cold War stability, says Canada's nuclear disarmament ambassador.

"It's important to say that ballistic missile defence is not incompatible with nuclear disarmament," Chris Westdal, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations for disarmament, testified Tuesday before the Commons foreign affairs committee.

While Westdal reiterated Canada's concerns about the proposed missile shield, some of his comments suggest Canada might be softening its view towards Washington's national missile defence (NMD). In the past, Ottawa has warned that the project could spark a new nuclear arms race because it would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which has been the cornerstone of nuclear stability for decades.

The ABM treaty forbids missile shields and entrenches the concept of mutually assured destruction as the major deterrent to nuclear attack.

But in saying he wants the elaborate missile shield built, President George W. Bush wants the U.S. to move beyond the framework of the ABM treaty and focus on the threat posed by possible missile attacks from rogue states such as North Korea or Iraq.

The United States is attempting to persuade many of its skeptical allies to embrace the missile shield. Some European countries, as well as Russia and China, oppose a shield. U.S. officials are to meet with their Canadian counterparts in the coming weeks to discuss NMD.

Westdal testified that Canada opposes scrapping the ABM treaty because that could provoke a new arms race, but he also acknowledged the treaty was a creature of a different era.

"I think that there is risk of self-fulfilling prophecy in overstating the value, the current relevance of the anti-ballistic missile treaty," he said.

"It codified mutually assured destruction ... It poses far more problems for nuclear disarmament, for example, than does missile defence."

Westdal said missile defence could make the world a safer place if it is incorporated into "carefully adapted post-Cold War global security conceptions and architecture."

Also on Tuesday, an American delegation, called the Middle Powers Initiative, urged the government to oppose NMD and support the ABM treaty during talks with American officials.

"It's not too early for Canada to mention to its partner to the south that there are certain important issues it cares about in this process," said Thomas Graham Jr., a top arms control expert in the Clinton administration.

----

Plan for Missile Defense Not Clear
ABM Treaty Has Banned Testing of Options, Rumsfeld Says

By Roberto Suro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64381-2001May8?language=printer

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday the administration has no clear plan for how to build the global missile defense that is at the center of its new strategic policy.

"People think, you know, 'My goodness, they obviously have something in their heads that's all firm and all fixed, and they're going to suddenly pull open the curtain and there it is.' Not true," Rumsfeld said during a Pentagon news conference.

The administration has not decided what kind of missile defense to build because experimentation on various options has been banned under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Rumsfeld said. As a first step, the administration has undertaken consultations with key allies, and later it will seek agreement from Russia and China to lift the treaty's restrictions on development and testing, he said.

"These consultations are serious. They're real," Rumsfeld said, indicating the talks could last until the end of the year.

In a major address last week, President Bush denounced the ABM Treaty as antiquated and reemphasized his campaign pledge to build a global missile shield. Rumsfeld yesterday offered the first detailed view of how the policy will be presented to the many nations that have urged the administration not to abandon the ABM Treaty because it is considered a keystone of nuclear arms control.

"There is no question but that the ABM Treaty has prevented research and development and testing and experimentation with a host of things . . . and that is the subject of the consultations that are taking place," Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld was responding to questions at a news conference called to announce an administrative reorganization of Pentagon space programs. An Air Force four-star general will coordinate all space-related programs by the armed services. Rumsfeld emphasized that no decisions have been made about the programs themselves, or whether to deploy new defensive or offensive weapons in space.

The reorganization is designed only to create "a more comprehensive management and organizational approach" to the Pentagon's space programs, Rumsfeld said.

In the ABM Treaty, the United States and Soviet Union agreed not to build nationwide missile defenses as a way of ensuring that neither superpower would feel safe enough from retaliation to attack the other with a nuclear strike. To prevent the development of such defenses, the treaty also prohibited development and testing of sea, air and space-based defenses as well as mobile land systems.

The Clinton administration tried to persuade Russia to accept changes in the treaty to allow a limited national missile defense but believed the treaty should be preserved. During last year's campaign, Bush repeatedly criticized this stance and won wide support from conservatives who favor abandoning the treaty altogether.

However, the new administration's policy, as it has emerged over the past week, does not propose nullifying the treaty's core prohibition of a national missile shield -- at least for several years.

Rumsfeld said yesterday that the administration wants to experiment with as many as a dozen different missile defense systems. "To the extent they work, terrific, we'll put more money behind them. To the extent they don't, we'll try to find a better way to do these things," he said.

----

Out to Torpedo Missile Defense

By Robert Kagan
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1096-2001May8?language=printer

Anyone who thinks politics stops at the water's edge must have missed the past 225 years of American history. Politics loves water. Even so, when a very famous and very important American diplomat publicly encourages foreign countries to oppose the American government's policies, that is something special.

In an interview with a German newspaper, published on Monday, former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke called on European governments to "stand up" and oppose the Bush administration's missile defense proposals. The Europeans "can't just sit around grumbling in the background," Holbrooke barked. They need to complain loudly and publicly. And if they don't, "the Americans will decide for them." Beware the hyperpower, quoth the humble Holbrooke.

Holbrooke's attempt to rally European opposition to Bush came just as top officials from the Bush administration arrived in Europe to begin allied consultations on missile defense, arms reductions and arms control. One might have thought that an old pro like Holbrooke would see the value of these talks in furthering a transatlantic dialogue on such sensitive issues, that he wouldn't want to toss in a monkey wrench at the very moment President Bush is actually trying to work with the allies.

But Holbrooke is a pro in more ways than one. Back in the United States, Holbrooke's Democratic Party has decided to make a big issue out of Bush's missile defense plans. Sen. Joe Biden is the designated pitchman for the new campaign. But the moving force behind it is Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, who recently signaled that he wants the Democrats to play hardball.

Yesterday 43 Democrats inaugurated the new campaign by gratuitously voting against the confirmation of John Bolton as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs. Bolton's sin? He supports the president's policy on missile defense. And what's more, according to Sen. Paul Wellstone, Bolton is "too partisan." When it comes to missile defense, though, Wellstone's party knows a thing or two about partisanship. A year ago, Biden, Daschle and most other Democrats were dutifully following President Bill Clinton as he prepared to deploy the first phase of a missile defense system. If Al Gore were in the White House today, the United States would already be pouring concrete in Alaska as the first stage in a fairly robust system that would eventually have been capable of knocking out as many as two dozen incoming warheads -- the size of China's arsenal today. And lest everyone forget, the Europeans were plenty unhappy with Clinton's plans, too. Months of negotiations with the Russians last year went nowhere, and Clinton had warned that he might withdraw from the ABM treaty if he couldn't negotiate a deal with Moscow. If Gore had been elected, Secretary of State Holbrooke would probably be holding the very same talks in Europe he is now so energetically trying to disrupt.

But Gore wasn't elected, and politics is politics. Daschle and his team now want a win. The Democrats know they'll have a hard time beating Bush on missile defense if the Europeans go along with the administration and don't make a fuss. Enter Richard Holbrooke.

Nobody knows better how to push European buttons. First Holbrooke pricks European sensitivities about American bullying. Then he suggests that European leaders suffer from a testosterone shortage. Finally, he plays to their worst fears: that Bush is delusional. Bush's passion for missile defense, Holbrooke told the German newspaper, is "almost a religious matter." Bush sees threats everywhere, but there are no threats. "We have to ask ourselves," Holbrooke exhorted the Europeans, "in what way are we really threatened." Osama bin Laden, he noted, has no missiles. Of course the Clinton administration of which Holbrooke was a part had no difficulty identifying potential missile threats other than bin Laden. Otherwise why was Clinton building a missile defense system at all? But that was then and this is now. Now Holbrooke takes the French view and doesn't mind saying that the Americans are nuts.

As it happens, the Europeans are unlikely to pay him much mind. Holbrooke may have his eyes riveted on 2004, but the Europeans need to deal with Bush and have apparently decided that missile defense is not worth the fight. Some European officials actually think it's a good idea. Others see a chance for the European defense industry to get a piece of the missile defense pie. Most Europeans think they have no interest in playing American domestic politics. And they're right. Holbrooke's little gambit may backfire. As partisan manipulations go, it's a bit crude -- as Secretary of State Holbrooke will no doubt be the first to point out when some future Republican tries the same dirty trick on him.

The writer is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

-------- russia

"Loose nukes" get shortchanged?

By Scott Peterson
Christian Science Monitor
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/05/09/p6s1.htm

Some Russia experts say money for a missile shield should be spent on nonproliferation programs.

MOSCOW - It is the biggest nonreligious holiday on the calendar, when Russians relive past military glory to celebrate the World War II defeat of Nazi Germany.

But today's traditional Victory Day military parade in Red Square is but a shadow of its former Soviet-era self. No strategic missiles will lumber ominously past the Kremlin gates; no tank battalions will rumble over the worn cobblestones.

While the show may signify that Russia is no longer a superpower - a point often made by President Bush's policy team - analysts warn that administration plans to trim US funding for nonproliferation programs dangerously neglect the threat that Russia's vast remaining nuclear arsenal still poses.

Mr. Bush pledges to spend tens of billions of dollars to build a new missile defense shield. But proliferation experts argue that a fraction of that spent to control Russia's "loose nukes" - and to prevent the spread of bomb-grade enriched uranium, plutonium, and scientific expertise - may be a better bargain.

"When you consider the contributions these programs are making to US security, they cost far less than one-half of 1 percent of the defense budget - it's small change," says James Clay Moltz, a director of the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California.

"We're seeing the [US] defense budget increasing for new weapons," Mr. Moltz says, "but decreasing for the kind of cooperative security approaches that really will reduce the long-term threat."

A bipartisan task force commissioned by the Energy Department noted in January that Russian weapons or nuclear material could be sold to "terrorists or hostile nations" - and that "dozens" of attempts to do so have been thwarted in recent years. This is the "most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today," it found. "It really boggles my mind that there could be 40,000 nuclear weapons ... in the former Soviet Union, poorly controlled and poorly stored, and that the world isn't in a near-state of hysteria about the danger," Howard Baker, the former Senate majority leader and task force co-chair, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a month ago.

The panel called for a four-fold funding increase to $3 billion per year for the next decade. Bush's proposed 2002 budget chops some 10 percent off nonproliferation funding for Russia, which now stands at $874 million.

The debate is emerging as the administration is conducting a comprehensive review of all such programs for Russia. The political atmosphere, too, is acrimonious. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has taken a tough stance, accusing Russia of being an "active proliferator." Moscow complains that Washington is gripped by the "spirit" of the cold war.

Russia has been a chief opponent of Bush's missile defense plans, and President Vladimir Putin has made a point of improving relations with US arch-foes from Cuba to Iran. Tension grew further in February over the tit-for-tat expulsion - begun by Washington - of 50 diplomats from each side for spying.

One result, analysts say, is that politics is mixing with security concerns. Under the microscope is Russian transparency - especially in nuclear dealings with Iran and India - and access by American officials to sensitive sites.

"The danger is still there, it's a serious problem, and US assistance has been important in dealing with it," says Oleg Bukharin, a proliferation expert and researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey. "The problem is that if you stop this train, it might be very difficult to get it moving again."

Russian political support for US nuclear-control programs could fall away too, he says, and while "Russia does not behave politically correctly all the time," the US should not forget that Russia holds a unique strategic card. "If you look objectively at threats, the only possible scenario in which the US could be destroyed is if Russia launched its nuclear weapons," Mr. Bukharin says. "All other threats, like terrorism or rogue missiles, are nothing [in comparison]."

Just days before the Bush inauguration, that point was made by the Russia task force. While citing "impressive results thus far," it said that if funding wasn't boosted, there would be an "unacceptable risk of failure" that could lead to "catastrophic consequences."

Hardest hit are those programs that focus on finding alternative work and payment subsidies for scientists, to minimize the risk that they apply their knowledge elsewhere.

Such programs include the Nuclear Cities Initiative, which seeks to convert military facilities and jobs in 10 "closed" cities. While it is a regular target of critics, supporters say it provides a key blueprint. "This is the best strategy to guarantee that Russia's nuclear reductions are irreversible," says Alexander Pikayev, head of nonproliferation at the Carnegie Moscow Center. "Cutting this program undermines the solution itself."

The "human factor" is the reason, he says, citing cases in which guards - meant to be monitoring US-funded video surveillance systems - might not show up for work in winter.

"The long-term solution is not just to deliver these technical systems, but to do something about the human factor." Failure to do so, he warns, will cause "significant leakage of [Russian] materials and expertise that could trigger nuclear missile development" in rogue states, which in turn could undermine Washington's missile defense plans. "This acceleration would be very high," Mr. Pikayev says. "This is why, by the time the US would be ready to deploy an efficient missile shield, those [hostile] countries might already have strong nuclear and missile capabilities."

A study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace illumines the risk. Surveying scientists in five Russian nuclear cities, it found that 62 percent earn less than $50 per month. Also polled were experts in missile enterprises, 21 percent of whom said they would want to work in a foreign military complex.

Changing such attitudes has been the aim of US nonproliferation policy. And while Russian analysts say Moscow is more aware of the problem and is increasing its own funding, it is the tip of the iceberg. "There is not enough money for anything in Russia, even for nuclear arsenals, which deserve much more attention," says Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the independent Politika Foundation think tank in Moscow.

"The idea of punishing Russia by not cutting its nuclear arsenal is a strange idea, with a strange logic," he adds. "If you spent half of that sum [proposed for the US missile defense shield] on Russian disarmament, you probably wouldn't even need the shield."

----

Russia Recalls WWII Nazi Defeat

By David McHugh
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010509/aponline130540_000.htm

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin, marking Wednesday's 56th anniversary of the Nazi defeat, warned that no nation should pursue its own security at the expense of others, an apparent chastisement of the United States and its missile defense plans.

Putin's statement came as World War II veterans, bent and shuffling with age but proudly draped in medals, gathered at commemorations throughout Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The holiday known as Victory Day is one of the most solemn and resonant in the former Soviet Union, which lost some 27 million people in the war.

"We remember the ravaged towns and the burnt-down villages, the ruin of treasures of national culture, everything that we lost in those years," Putin said in a speech in Red Square. "Today, the first time we look on this victory from a new century, its significance only grows."

"The war's lessons are what we need today. Those lessons teach us to find balance between force and reason ... no one has the right to forget this," he said. "The entire experience of the postwar history shows it is impossible to build a safe world for oneself alone and, still less, at the detriment of others."

The statement appeared directed at the United States' plans to build a national missile defense system, which Washington says it needs to protect against attacks by small "rogue" nations, but which Russia says will wreck the foundations of global security and provoke a new arms race.

Hundreds of veterans joined Putin in the Red Square reviewing stands, the first time they have not marched through the sprawling expanse.

About 5,000 troops - including some returning from service in hot spots including Chechnya - and military cadets marched straight-legged in dress uniforms, as a 600-piece military band played martial tunes and drummers beat out a rapid tempo.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov rode past the troops standing in a silver-blue ZiL convertible, stopping several times to greet the troops. Ivanov wore a business suit, reflecting his status as a civilian defense minister - a switch from the Soviet and Russian practice of giving the job to generals.

Mikhail Rugaryov, an 85-year-old veteran of the battle of Stalingrad, said he marked Victory Day by visiting schools beforehand to talk about the war.

"I go to speak to schoolchildren so the younger generation knows the truth about the war. It's important that the younger generation knows what war is, so they can preserve peace," he said.

Several thousand Communists and others nostalgic for the Soviet Union marched to a rally in front of the former KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square, some carrying portraits of wartime dictator Josef Stalin. Veterans gathered in Moscow parks to dance, drink shots of vodka and eat boiled barley scooped out of huge cauldrons as they did at the front during World War II.

In the Ukrainian capital Kiev, veterans marched down the city's main street, joined by children and grandchildren. Thousands of the veterans chose to march under red Soviet banners in groups organized by the Communist Party and other hard-line movements. Support for hard-liners is high among Ukraine's veterans, many whom have suffered severely in the country's post-Soviet economic downfall and who often rely on meager pensions to survive.

Many veterans walked with obvious difficulty and leaned heavily on canes, but still managed to raise their hands to salute onlookers.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko marched at the head of a commemoration parade in the capital Minsk. On the eve of Victory Day, he alleged that foreign organization have formed a "fifth column" of traitors to work against his authoritarian rule.

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

Whither nuclear waste? Energy
Dept. continues long-term trucking to New Mexico

Nation & World : Close-up
Wednesday, May 09, 2001
By The Associated Press
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=nuke09&date=20010509
http://www.sltrib.com/05092001/nation_w/95897.htm

ARLINGTON, Texas - Federal energy officials yesterday started a new phase in a 35-year program to ship nuclear waste by truck to New Mexico.

The latest shipments are from Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., and include items such as gloves, shoe covers, rags and tools that were exposed to plutonium and discarded during the production of nuclear weapons. The material is destined for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., where it will be stored nearly a half-mile underground in rooms surrounded by massive salt deposits.

Similar shipments from Washington state's Hanford nuclear reservation began last year. Other shipments have come from various nuclear-weapons sites around the nation.

"This is all part of taking care of the legacy of the Cold War," said Tom Welch, a spokesman for the U.S. Energy Department in Washington.

The leader of a Waste Isolation Pilot Plant watchdog group warned there is some risk in transportation.

"The reason we're spending billions of dollars burying stuff 2,150 feet underground isn't because we need to find a place to put booties and gloves," said Don Hancock, executive director of the Southwest Research and Information Center of Albuquerque, N.M. "It's because this stuff is contaminated with plutonium. Microscopic amounts of it can cause fatal lung cancer."

Energy Department officials are confident in the safety of the complex transportation system: Large stainless-steel storage casks, described as "virtually impenetrable," will be hauled by trucks that are tracked by satellites and driven by specially trained drivers who are required to follow stringent safety protocols.

According to the Energy Department, the activities at the pilot plant are just part of the nation's nuclear-weapons cleanup challenge. For example, the agency says it must also deal with 1.7 trillion gallons of contaminated groundwater and 40 million cubic meters of contaminated soil and debris at various sites, including Hanford.

The agency concludes that the nationwide cleanup will require "long-term care and monitoring - or stewardship - for potentially hundreds of years at an estimated 109 sites."

The department estimates it will spend as much as $212 billion through 2070 to get rid of waste from the nation's weapons plants.

Pilot-plant officials said the material from Savannah River is "contact handled transuranic," or CH-TRU, waste, which emits radioactive alpha rays that are dangerous only if inhaled or ingested.

"It won't penetrate a piece of paper, or your skin," said Dan Balduini, spokesman for Westinghouse TRU Solutions, the company that operates the pilot plant through a contract with the Energy Department. "It's not like you would get immediate radiation poisoning.

"It has a long-term effect: Twenty years down the line there is a possibility that you would develop a cancer."

Pilot-plant officials confirm that increasingly more radioactive shipments are scheduled to begin about 2004 from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

This "remote handled transuranic" waste is considered more dangerous because it emits gamma rays, which can penetrate the human body.

Energy Department officials estimate there will be 473 shipments from Oak Ridge. Balduini noted, however, that before the more hazardous waste can leave Oak Ridge, the pilot plant must finish designing a more robust cask capable of shielding gamma rays.

"It's not the same thing as what you'd encounter from nuclear fuel or a reactor core. It can't cause fission," he said. "But I don't want to minimize it. It is dangerous. It is toxic. It requires shielding."

Cheney wants permanent dump

WASHINGTON-- The Bush administration's turn to nuclear power as a long-term energy strategy will necessitate a permanent nuclear-waste dump, Vice President Dick Cheney said yesterday. "Now, with the gas prices rising as dramatically as they have, nuclear power looks like a pretty good alternative from an economic standpoint, if the permitting process is manageable and if we find a way to deal with the waste question," said Cheney, who is developing energy-policy recommendations for President Bush.

In an interview on CNN, Cheney said his recommendations would include changes meant to speed federal permits to utilities seeking to build nuclear-power plants. The industry has not sought a government permit to build a new plant in more than 20 years, since before the accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island spread fear about nuclear power.

Nuclear power provides 20 percent of the nation's electric capacity today.

As to the thorny question of nuclear waste, Cheney said: "Right now we've got waste piling up at reactors all over the country. Eventually, there ought to be a permanent repository. The French do this very successfully and very safely in an environmentally sound, sane manner. We need to be able to do the same thing."

He did not say where the government might put such a site.Waste from various Department of Energy sites has been coming to Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation for decades, a few thousand cubic meters a year. Last year, the Clinton administration named Hanford one of two permanent dumps for low-level radioactive byproducts of Cold War research. The other is in Nevada.

In 1987, Congress passed a law designating Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the nation's only high-level nuclear-waste repository. Such a site would receive waste from both nuclear-power plants and from defense uses.

Nevadans have been bitterly fighting the proposal for 14 years.

-------- california

Shame and Courage
The Navy's unconscionable nuclear recklessness and dissembling at Hunters Point should draw the attention of Congress

By John Mecklin,
05/09/2001
SF Weekly
http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2001-05-09/mecklin.html

A well-placed friend of mine tells me that way back in the ancient times of the Carter administration, the federal government was already aware that cleaning up after nuclear operations of the U.S. defense establishment would likely run into the trillions of dollars. Because $1,000,000,000,000 is a fairly daunting figure, even to a congressman, deliberate ignorance became the standard federal response to the wastes left by Cold War weapons production and research. The Navy's dissembling during the attempted transfer of the Hunters Point Shipyard to civilian control is just the latest example of this refusal to face the nuclear past. Still, it's one hell of a shameful and frightening example.

In her series "Fallout," Weekly staff writer Lisa Davis managed to lift the veil from a small corner of Cold War research. After more than 20 years in journalism, I had thought I was essentially unshockable when it came to matters of official malfeasance and lying. What Davis uncovered about the United States Navy has shocked me, and ought to shock every San Franciscan who has a conscience, or a normal concern for his or her own health.

As Davis has laid out in enormously documented detail, the Navy attempted to transfer to the city of San Francisco, for use as a residential and commercial neighborhood, a 500-acre piece of property that the Navy knew had been at the center of the U.S. nuclear research effort. The Navy knew that the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, a top-secret facility that migrated through many buildings at the shipyard between 1946 and 1969, had handled significant amounts of plutonium and other extremely long-lived and dangerous radioactive substances. Yet until Davis began to ask questions backed up by months of documentary research, the Navy did not take the first step at finding out what the NRDL had actually done with those substances -- the very ordinary step of looking at the historical record.

Davis looked at as much of that record as the government would allow. Records declassified at her request (the series says "at SF Weekly's request," but there should be no mistake about whose perspicacity forced those records into the public domain) paint a horrifying picture of nuclear recklessness at Hunters Point. There can be little doubt that, in those first years of the Cold War, NRDL scientists thought their research was vital to the country's national security. Thanks to Davis' research -- which showed, among other things, NRDL personnel spreading fission products on Hunters Point docks, just to see if they could clean them up; hanging radioactive material in the bay, just to see what would happen; and dumping huge amounts of radioactive sand and acid in and around the shipyard, just because it was easy -- there can be even less doubt that these researchers mishandled nuclear substances that persist for thousands, or even tens of thousands, of years. As confirmed by a team of Monterey Institute of International Studies researchers commissioned by SF Weekly, there can be no doubt at all that the Navy's pitifully limited plan for finding and dealing with nuclear contamination at Hunters Point is fundamentally flawed.

The Navy has shamed itself by claiming not to have documentation about the use of nuclear materials at Hunters Point (even though such documentation exists just down the highway at the National Archives in San Bruno) and simultaneously claiming that radioactive contamination at the shipyard was minor and limited in scope.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is supposed to have final say over the shipyard cleanup, has served, shamefully, as a Navy enabler, failing to press for the shipyardwide surveys and detailed documentary research that would help identify contamination at the former naval base.

In November, Mayor Willie Brown -- perhaps not that shamefully, but certainly ignorantly -- signed an agreement that all but ratified ludicrously incomplete plans for cleaning up the shipyard. Under the agreement, the shipyard would be transferred to the city in pieces, over a period of years, with the first transfers happening this year.

"This is a landmark day for the Bayview-Hunters Point community,'' the San Francisco Chronicle quoted Brown as saying. "This means jobs, affordable housing, open space, nonprofit space, new cultural facilities and new economic opportunities for the community.''

At Monday's Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell responded to a history of shameful behavior with reason, and more than a little courage. Maxwell announced she would sponsor legislation (to be co-sponsored by Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano) that would make citizen health the primary consideration in any plan for transferring the shipyard to civilian uses. In a later interview, Maxwell said the legislation would require the Navy to identify pollutants throughout the shipyard, and clean each piece of the former base to "the highest standard," before any piece is transferred from Navy to city control.

Maxwell's move is courageous not so much because it runs counter to an agreement made by the mayor -- who, to be fair, had no way of knowing anything like the full nuclear history of the shipyard -- but because in making her move, Maxwell put the health of people in her district, which includes Bayview-Hunters Point, ahead of financial considerations, even though the Bayview has long been an economic stepchild and needs jobs desperately. As Maxwell rightly points out, the Bayview has also long been the city's environmental dumping ground, and has long had the cancer and asthma statistics to prove it. And, as Maxwell again rightly notes, if the military had slung radioactive waste around the Presidio like so much fertilizer, the wealthy neighborhoods abutting that former Army base -- and very likely the city as a whole -- would be up in arms.

There is reason to hope the city is getting itself up in arms, finally, about the Navy and Hunters Point. Citing Davis' revelation of "unbelievable levels of nuclear radiation" handled, and mishandled, at Hunters Point, Supervisor Aaron Peskin also stood Tuesday in support of Maxwell's proposal to deal "very harshly" with the Navy.

Saul Bloom, executive director of ARC Ecology, a San Francisco organization that has played a lead role for years in watchdogging the Navy's shipyard cleanup, notes that a recent fire at the shipyard landfill -- a fire that burned for weeks before the Navy notified anyone -- galvanized community opinion against the Navy's handling of the situation. Coming on the heels of the fire, Bloom says, "Fallout" has led many in the Bayview community -- and, at long last, in City Hall -- to understand that they'd been "bamboozled" by the Navy's blithe assertions about the levels of contamination in different parts of the shipyard.

Many people and organizations have worked for years, attempting to get the Navy to come clean about the incredible pollution at Hunters Point Shipyard. The Navy has resisted, consistently claiming it lacked documentation. "Fallout" has stripped the Navy of its ability to claim ignorance, at least as regards nuclear activity. There are 650 cubic feet of records on NRDL operations sitting on the shelves of the National Archives. These records remain classified on national security grounds. Someone outside the Navy needs to examine those records -- the most recent of which is more than 30 years old -- and determine what part of them can be released.

Environmental groups, community organizations, city officials, and even determined weekly newspapers might work for years without advancing such a declassification effort very far. Some members of Congress, on the other hand, deal with classified material on a regular basis.

Senators Feinstein and Boxer, do you read me?

-------- georgia

Radioactive waste passes through area

Jingle Davis -
Atlanta Journal Staff,
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/wednesday/local_news_a38f0e2c86c1918300e1.html

If travelers on I-20 and I-285 south of Atlanta noticed the westbound tractor-trailer Tuesday afternoon, it was only because the white-cabbed rig was obeying the posted speed limit.

Nobody, especially not the more reckless drivers bobbing and weaving past the tractor-trailer, even glanced at the three large silo-shaped containers it carried, even though each was clearly marked with a symbol indicating it contained radioactive material.

The specially reinforced silos were carrying 55-gallon steel drums filled with 60,000 pounds of so-called transuranic wastes --- protective clothing, masks, tools and rags contaminated with small quantities of radioactive elements, primarily trace amounts of plutonium.

The shipment was the first of dozens planned to move nuclear material from the Savannah River Site north of Augusta to a new underground disposal site in southeastern New Mexico. Although the truck traveled through Atlanta in heavy traffic with no official escort, it posed little risk to the public, said Bill Taylor, a spokesman for SRS.

"You can walk up to those 55-gallon drums without wearing protective gear; I've done it myself," Taylor said. "Only if the drums were open and the material was flapping around would you be in danger of inhaling it, which could cause cancer in 25 or 30 years," he said.

The waste has been bunkered at SRS since Cold War years when the plant manufactured plutonium for weapons.

State Rep. Nan Orrock (D-Atlanta) said she isn't concerned about shipments of low-level nuclear wastes but opposes a plan to allow shipments of weapons-grade plutonium to SRS.

"Any time you put more of this material on the roads," she said, "you statistically increase the chances of an accident."

-------- us nuc politics

Bush 'Will Restart Nuclear Tests'
Must resume testing

Sky News,
May 9, 2001
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/010509/140/bpduc.html

Teams of high-level US officials are in Europe and Asia this week trying to sell Bush's new approach to the nuclear weapons issue, in particular his Son of Star Wars programme.

The president has said the national missile umbrella will allow him to make cuts in America's huge stockpile of nuclear weapons, even if Russia or other countries are not willing to reciprocate.

But Gaffney, a former defence official and prominent conservative analyst, said the US needed to make sure its nuclear forces were "modern, safe and reliable... Toward that end, we're going to have to resume on a limited basis underground testing of our nuclear arms".

Covert tests

The United States has not tested nuclear weapons since 1992, and China, Britain, France and Russia are publicly committed to a moratorium. But Gaffney said he believed Russia and China had "covertly tested."

The US has blocked efforts to draw up a formal agreement based on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In 1999 the Senate voted against ratifying the pact.

Bush opposes the treaty, but has said he will not test, and says he will cut the nuclear arsenal to the "lowest possible number consistent with our national security".

But Gaffney said: "I think you're going to find that (Bush's) nuclear posture review is going to conclude that this (testing) has to be part of a revised approach." He added that missile cuts would be no more extensive than those promised by Bill Clinton.

----

Bolton survives battle to be czar

May 9, 2001
By David Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010509-11690953.htm

Seven Senate Democrats broke party ranks yesterday to confirm John Bolton as the Bush administration´s arms-control czar in the most contentious confirmation battle since that of Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Democrats mustered 43 votes against Mr. Bolton, an outspoken critic of past arms-reductions accords, one more than the number who opposed Mr. Ashcroft and the highest negative tally yet against one of President Bush´s nominees.

All 50 Senate Republicans voted to confirm Mr. Bolton as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, as did Democratic Sens. John B. Breaux and Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, Zell Miller of Georgia and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Mr. Bolton served in the Reagan administration´s Justice Department and in the State Department under Mr. Bush´s father.

Conservative lawmakers hailed the Bolton nomination as proof the Bush administration would adopt a new approach to arms control, taking a more skeptical view of multilateral treaties and organizations than the Clinton administration.

Mr. Bolton, who most recently worked at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as a foreign policy scholar, has the "courage of his convictions," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican.

Mr. Helms noted that Mr. Bolton´s nomination had been backed by four previous arms-control agency chiefs and by three former secretaries of state: Henry Kissinger, James A. Baker III and Lawrence Eagleburger.

"I think there are some who don´t like this nominee because he will capably implement President Bush´s own policies," Mr. Helms said.

But Democrats in the four hours of Senate debate Monday and yesterday said a nominee who hailed the 1999 rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and favors a U.S. missile defense plan even if it conflicts with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty should not be given the government´s most visible arms-control post.

"I see this as a significant step backwards," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat.

Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said he did not question Mr. Bolton´s honesty or intelligence, but contended he was not the right person for the job.

"I have always voted against who oppose the avowed purpose of the position to which they have been nominated," Mr. Biden said.

He criticized Mr. Bolton´s opposition to the CTBT and questioned the depth of his expertise on arms-control issues.

In his post, Mr. Bolton will be a leading voice in the administration on the coming missile defense debate, on arms proliferation, and on foreign civil and military assistance programs.

Mr. Biden and other critics have pointed to a number of provocative articles and speeches Mr. Bolton authored while in private life. He openly criticized the United Nations, called for the U.S. government to recognize Taiwan and opposed U.S. participation in the proposed international criminal court.

"His penchant for inflammatory rhetoric gives me pause over his capacity for handling this job," Mr. Biden said.

At his March 29 confirmation hearings, Mr. Bolton withstood a sustained grilling by panel Democrats, noting that his skepticism of the test-ban treaty and his support of the missile defense idea were also the positions laid out by the president and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"I personally consider that sound, verifiable arms-control agreements and energetic nonproliferation strategies can and should be critical elements of American foreign policy," Mr. Bolton told the committee.

Democrats accused the AEI scholar of a "confirmation conversion" soft-pedaling his past views in order to get confirmed. In the end, the nomination was passed on to the Senate by a 10-8 vote early last month, with Mr. Feingold joining the panel´s nine Republicans in supporting Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Bolton proved a particularly contentious choice because the undersecretary´s post has traditionally been seen as the institutional voice within the government pushing multilateral arms-controls deals. Mr. Bush with his choice signaled a sharp departure from the Clinton approach.

John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, who opposed the nominee, said Mr. Bolton will "stick out like a sore thumb" in his new post, predicting he may soon clash with Mr. Powell over the usefulness of international arms-control accords.

Mr. Isaacs said the 43 votes against the nomination demonstrated that there is "still strong Democratic support for arms control and that might mean some real fights with the administration in the near future."

--------

Negroponte in Honduras, now UN nominee
NEW RIPPLES IN AN EVIL STORY

by Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h.
From: Max Obuszewski <MObuszewski@afsc.org>
Wed, 9 May 2001

John D. Negroponte, President Bush's nominee as the next ambassador to the United Nations? My ears perked up. I turned up the volume on the radio. I began listening more attentively. Yes, I had heard correctly. Bush was nominating Negroponte, the man who gave the CIA backed Honduran death squads open field when he was ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985.

My mind went back to May 1982 and I saw myself facing Negroponte in his office at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa. I had gone to Honduras on a fact-finding delegation. We were looking for answers. Thirty-two women had fled the death squads of El Salvador after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 to take refuge in Honduras. One of them had been Romero's secretary. Some months after their arrival, these women were forcibly taken from their living quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed into a van and disappeared. Our delegation was in Honduras to find out what had happened to these women. John Negroponte listened to us as we exposed the facts. There had been eyewitnesses to the capture and we were well read on the documentationthat previous delegations had gathered.

Negroponte denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women. He insisted that the US Embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the Honduran government and it would be to our advantage to discuss the matter with the latter. Facts, however, reveal quite the contrary.

During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million; the US launched a covert war against Nicaragua and mined its harbors, and the US trained Honduran military to support the Contras.

John Negroponte worked closely with General Alvarez, Chief of the Armed Forces in Honduras, to enable the training of Honduran soldiers in psychological warfare, sabotage, and many types of human rights violations, including torture and kidnapping. Honduran and Salvadoran military were sent to the School of the Americas to receive training in counter-insurgency directed against people of their own country. The CIA created the infamous Honduran Intelligence Battalion 3-16 that was responsible for the murder of many Sandinistas. General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a graduate of the School of the Americas, was a founder and commander of Battalion 3-16. In 1982, the US negotiated access to airfields in Honduras and established a regional military training center for Central American forces, principally directed at improving fighting forces of the Salvadoran military.

In 1994, the Honduran Rights Commission outlined the torture and disappearance of at least 184 political opponents. It also specifically accused John Negroponte of a number of human rights violations. Yet, back in his office that day in 1982, John Negroponte assured us that he had no idea what had happened to the women we were looking for. I had to wait 13 years to find out. In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in 1996, Jack Binns, Negroponte's predecessor as US ambassador in Honduras, told how a group of Salvadorans, among whom were the women we had been looking for, were captured on April 22, 1981 and savagely tortured by the DNI, the Honduran Secret Police, before being placed in helicopters of the Salvadoran military. After take off from the airport in Tegucigalpa, the victims were thrown out of the helicopters. Binns told the Baltimore Sun that the North American authorities were well aware of what had happened and that it was a grave violation of human rights.

But it was seen as part of Ronald Reagan's counterinsurgency policy.

Now in 2001, I'm seeing new ripples in this story. Since President Bush made it known that he intended to nominate John Negroponte, other people have suddenly been "disappearing", so to speak. In an article published in the Los Angeles Times on March 25 Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster reported on the sudden deportation of several former Honduran death squad members from the United States. These men could have provided shattering testimony against Negroponte in the forthcoming Senate hearings. One of these recent deportees just happens to be General Luis Alonso Discua, founder of Battalion 3-16. In February, Washington revoked the visa of Discua who was Deputy Ambassador to the UN. Since then, Discua has gone public with details of US support of Battalion 3-16.

Given the history of John Negroponte in Central America, it is indeed horrifying to think that he should be chosen to represent our country at the United Nations, an organization founded to ensure that the human rights of all people receive the highest respect. How many of our Senators, I wonder, let alone the US public, know who John Negroponte really is?

Sister Laetitia Bordes, s.h. marylandlatinocoalitionforjustice@eGroups.com

-------- us nuc waste

Nuclear power, Capitol radiation

May 8, 2001
Steven Milloy
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20010508-704313.htm

Vice President Dick Cheney just announced nuclear power should be part of our national energy strategy. But a little-noticed 11th-hour regulatory action by the Clinton administration may block the way. To the rescue is Rhode Island founder Roger Williams or, at least, a statue of him in the U.S. Capitol Building. Williams, you see, spews far more radiation than the Environmental Protection Agency deems safe, and that raises some perplexing questions. One controversy over nuclear power is what to do with the radioactive waste or "spent fuel" generated by nuke plants.

A typical plant produces about 20 metric tons of spent fuel annually. Spent fuel produced over the last 40 years would, if stacked end to end, cover an area the size of a football field to a depth of about 5 yards. Spent fuel is being temporarily stored on site in steel-lined, concrete pools. But plants are running out of pool space. By the end of 2006, about 60 plants will have no more pool space. Alternative on-site "dry" storage is possible, but is expensive and politically unpopular. So permanent disposal is sought. Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982 directing the Energy Department to find and build a disposal site for the spent fuel.

The law requires customers of nuclear-generated electricity to pay for the storage facility. So far, ratepayers have contributed about $15 billion to the Nuclear Waste Fund. The DOE selected Yucca Mountain, a site in the Nevada desert 100 miles from Las Vegas. The plan is to build a storage location about 800 feet underground to be ready by 2010. Though the DOE is tasked with building the spent fuel storage facility, the EPA is responsible for setting the environmental safety standards the facility must comply with. Therein lies the rub. Some are using the EPA-issued standards as a way to achieve their special interests.

Anti-nuclear activists have long seen obstruction of efforts to dispose of spent fuel as a way to stop nuclear power. The activists hope that with nowhere to store spent fuel, nuke plants will be forced to shut down. The Nevada congressional delegation, led by Democrat Sen. Harry Reid, doesn´t want its state stigmatized as a nuclear waste dump. Toward this end, the activists and politicians have hijacked the EPA´s standard-setting process for Yucca Mountain. In August 1999, the EPA proposed to set unduly stringent standards for radiation exposures to the public from Yucca Mountain. Adding insult to injury, the DOE must ensure compliance with these standards for 10,000 years, according to the EPA proposal.

The standards are so stringent that in the best case, they will only add greatly to the cost of Yucca Mountain without enhancing safety. In the worst case, they will disqualify Yucca Mountain as disposal site thereby wasting 14 years and $6 billion of the DOE´s efforts, not to mention casting a pall over the future of nuclear power. On Jan. 19, 2001, Clinton EPA Administrator Carol Browner moved to finalize the Yucca Mountain standards by submitting the regulations for White House sign-off. Sensing the absurdity of the EPA standards, Dr. Michael Gough and I commissioned radiation experts to measure radiation levels in the U.S. Capitol Building and compare them with the proposed Yucca Mountain standards. The Capitol contains a great deal of granite and marble building materials that naturally emit the same type of radiation as spent fuel.

Our experts measured radiation dose rates at the Roger Williams statue, located between the Rotunda and Senate Chamber, to be up to 65 times greater than what the EPA plans to allow at Yucca Mountain. For added perspective, the measured radiation dose rate is up to 550 percent higher than the dose rate received at the fence line of a nuke plant and about 13,000 times higher than the average annual radiation dose from worldwide nuclear energy production. Though our measurements were undertaken solely to illustrate the silliness of the EPA´s plans for Yucca Mountain, a worried constituent contacted a member of Congress about our report.

The member requested the Architect of the Capitol to investigate. In an escalation of comedic proportion, the Architect of the Capitol called in the U.S. Public Health Service. The PHS ended the alarm by reporting radiation levels in the Capitol were not dangerous which brings us back to Yucca Mountain. If radiation dose rates up to 65 times higher than those planned for Yucca Mountain aren´t dangerous to Capitol Building employees and visitors, what is the point of even more stringent standards for Yucca Mountain?

Many erroneously think the 1979 Three Mile Island incident doomed nuclear power in the U.S. Not so. A new Associated Press poll reports that 50 percent of Americans support nuclear power, and 56 percent of the supporters said they wouldn´t mind a nuclear plant within 10 miles of their own home. Though support for nuclear power is rising, our national energy strategy will be need to address the real threat to nuclear power anti-nuclear activists and politicians who have commandeered the Yucca Mountain standard-setting process.

Steven Milloy is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and publisher of www.JunkScience.com.

----

New German Waste Shipment Arrives

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Germany-Nuclear-Waste.html?searchpv=aponline

BERLIN (AP) -- A train carrying spent nuclear fuel from a closed power plant in eastern Germany arrived at a storage site in the north of the country Wednesday after a six-hour journey marked by small protests.

The shipment of 246 spent fuel rods in four containers was the latest in a series that have set off massive protests by anti-nuclear activists trying to stop the transport of waste.

About 40 protesters tried to block the tracks near the defunct Rheinsberg power station, where the train started its journey, police said. Another demonstration managed to bring the train to a brief halt about 12 miles short of its destination in Lubmin, near the Baltic coast and the Polish border.

Both blockades were quickly broken up and the protesters detained. Some 6,500 police officers were deployed to protect the shipment.

The waste will be kept at Lubmin until Germany designates a permanent storage site.

Nuclear waste shipments in Germany resumed in March after a three-year break imposed by the previous government after radiation leaks were found in some containers.

The government last year struck a deal to scrap the country's 19 nuclear plants, though the shutdown could still take over 20 years to complete.

The resumed transports have brought protest action by opponents who who want Germany's plants closed faster and say shipments are unsafe. They aim to make the transports so costly that the government and power companies will be forced to stop them.

--------

German Police Escort Nuclear Waste Shipment

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-energy-.html?searchpv=reuters

RHEINSBERG, Germany (Reuters) - Thousands of German police on Wednesday escorted a train carrying nuclear waste from a power plant shut down over a decade ago.

Police said there were only about 20 anti-nuclear activists protesting against the train, which carried 246 spent fuel rods from a Soviet-era power plant in Rheinsberg, 50 miles north of Berlin.

The demonstrators were outnumbered by a force of 6,500 police officers. The train, on its way to a temporary storage facility in northern Germany, started its journey shortly after 0300 GMT.

Thousands of demonstrators protested in March when Germany took back the first cargo of reprocessed waste from France since the German government banned the shipments in 1998 over concerns about radioactive leaks.

In April a small group of German environmental activists chained themselves to rail tracks for several hours hoping to stop wagons they said were due to carry a shipment of nuclear waste.

-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

Military Analysis: U.S. Weighing Future of Arms Pacts

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
Military Analysis
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/world/09ARMS.html

WASHINGTON, May 7 - President Bush's decision to build missile defenses and eventually break with a central treaty of the cold war was the first outward sign of a far-reaching debate over whether the United States should simply abandon the business of negotiating strategic arms treaties.

So far, the debate is percolating at senior levels of the administration and among experts outside the government.

In its starkest formulation, the argument comes down to this: with the end of the cold war, there is no need to begin yet another drawn-out arms control negotiation with a Russia that is no longer an enemy.

Facing an uncertain world, Washington should be careful not to lock itself into a new set of treaty limits, proponents say. Rather, the United States should decide on its own how many nuclear weapons it needs, cut or modify its nuclear arsenal and maintain the flexibility to adapt its forces as the nation's civilian and military leadership sees fit.

The Russians, this argument goes, would follow the American lead out of their own national interest, primarily because they can no longer afford to maintain a large nuclear arsenal.

In an administration that is still struggling to put its national security team in place, not everyone supports such a radical shift, and the secretaries of state and defense have not openly addressed the issue. Still, it is clear that traditional arms control is being questioned as never before.

That has stirred fears among treaty supporters that the entire edifice of strategic arms control may be under siege and that the United States may find itself in a nuclear relationship with Russia that is less predictable, less stable and less verifiable.

"There are different views in the administration," said one senior Bush administration aide, "and a lot of work still needs to be done. But I don't think we are going to have a treaty or a long negotiation. There is a real strong desire not to do that."

Certainly, the new debate is a wrenching departure from decades of thinking about arms control. The Clinton administration, like its predecessor, took the view that reductions in long-range nuclear arms were needed and that the best way to make them was part of a formal, legally binding and verifiable treaty.

Faced with budgetary pressure, the Russians pressed for a reduction to still lower levels of 1,500 warheads on each side.

And during President Clinton's final year in office there was considerable speculation that the two sides might strike a "grand bargain": a deal in which the United States would move toward the deeper cuts that the Russians wanted in return for Moscow's agreeing to amend the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 to allow for a limited national missile defense.

As it turned out, the deal was never struck, and when President Bush took over, the "grand bargain" was no longer the issue for his conservative national security team. It was whether the United States should try to strike any bargain with Russia that would also tie its own hands.

"We need to move away from weapons and mutual vulnerability as the principal currency of our strategic relationship with Russia," a senior Bush administration official said.

To be sure, Bush administration officials are not the only ones who have proposed new approaches to arms control.

But what is striking about the administration is not just that it has only the sketchiest of plans for a missile defense and reductions in strategic arms. It is also that the administration has yet to make clear to what extent its hopes to act unilaterally and to what extent it hopes to codify its strategic plans in a formal understanding with Moscow.

Declaring that the United States was breaking with the past, President Bush talked last week about the need for a new strategic framework, without saying whether it would involve the negotiation of new treaties, or more informal understandings with Moscow, to limit antimissile systems or offensive nuclear arms.

At least some of the cuts would be unilateral, leaving the door open for more debate within the administration.

While Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has yet to declare his hand, he appears more interested in gaining more flexibility to deploy missile defenses and develop nuclear forces than in nailing down an airtight treaty with Moscow.

Before taking office Mr. Rumsfeld argued that the United States should not ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty because it might need to develop new nuclear weapons.

And while Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has been circumspect, he has to take diplomatic considerations into account. Allied nations attach a high value on stability and formal agreements, and they are already anxious about the Bush administration's proclivity to take unilateral action.

But the debate cuts across government agencies. The radical thinking of some top aides is reflected in a January report that argued that the United States should not be limited by treaty limits but should be open about its weapons deployment plans.

"Rather than `locking in' ceilings that may soon be excessive or inadequate, arms control should encourage `full disclosure' and predictability with regard to nuclear forces," said the study, which was published by the National Institute for Public Policy, a private group.

Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush's deputy national security adviser; Robert Joseph, the top National Security Council aide on missile defense issues; and Stephen Cambone, a senior Pentagon official who is close to Mr. Rumsfeld, took part in that study.

"This is a paradigm shift," said a senior Pentagon official. "We are probably not going to be hampered by arms control agreements."

Another senior official took a more moderate view. He said the White House might eventually opt for a less revolutionary approach: one that might include a mixture of unilateral cuts, formal limits on weapons and streamlined verification.

Former Clinton administration officials, for their part, insist that a treaty-less approach is too risky. During the administration of President Bush's father, they noted, the United States tried an informal approach to arms control with mixed results. It announced that it was withdrawing battlefield nuclear weapons, prompting the Russians to declare that they were reciprocating.

But Moscow later said it had run short of money for the withdrawal. Today, nobody in the West is sure how many Russian tactical weapons are still in the field, and Moscow has no legal obligation to say.

Leon S. Fuerth, a professor at George Washington University, who was the national security adviser to Vice President Al Gore, said such a situation would be far more worrisome if it involved long-range nuclear arms.

"I don't think that this or future administrations will sleep that well," he said, "not knowing the whereabouts or status of hundreds or thousands of Russian strategic nuclear weapons, especially without any legal rights to demand accurate information."

Michele Flournoy, a ranking Pentagon official during the Clinton administration, asserted that talk by Bush administration officials of a more informal approach to arms control was not a strategic shift but a simply making a virtue of necessity.

By proceeding with an ambitious, almost urgent plan for an antimissile shield, she noted, the Bush administration was, in effect, abandoning the ABM treaty, an accord that Moscow has cast as a foundation for past as well as future treaties.

And as the Bush team begins its consultations, response of the allies is also a factor. Allies and other foreign governments traditionally have seen accords, and not reductions alone, as part of a long process to reverse the arms race and curb the spread of nuclear weapons, a commitment enshrined in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

And this week the White House sent teams of high-ranking officials to consult with allies, as well as Russia and China, on its decision to build missile defenses and on Mr. Bush's suggested framework.

Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, recently indicated his government's view about the importance of strategic agreements. He recently told General Powell that if the United States was determined to abandon the ABM treaty it should draft another treaty to replace it, American officials say. General Powell was noncommittal.

-------- balkans

Kostunica struggles to stabilize Yugoslav coalition
Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica is visiting New York and Washington this week.

By Justin Brown (brownj@csps.com)
Special to The Christian Science Monitor

BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA - When Serbs talk about last year's ouster of Slobodan Milosevic, they refer to it not as a revolution or even an uprising. Rather, it is called "October 5th," a term that is both ambiguous and noncommittal.

Six months after Vojislav Kostunica became president of Yugoslavia, it remains to be seen where this country is headed - whether it will continue moving forward into Europe or slip back into its old nationalist ways of conflict and economic ruin.

Mr. Kostunica, who anticipates gaining massive international aid at a donor conference next month, is visiting Washington this week. He plans to meet with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and possibly with US Secretary of State Colin Powell. It will be the first visit of a Yugoslav leader hosted by the US since the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo.

Back home, the difficulties facing Kostunica's new government are expanding daily. The struggle can be seen in the streets, where many people have in fact grown poorer. It can be heard in the backrooms of political parties, where a deep and bitter rift is developing between the very people who once joined forces to defeat Milosevic.

"Our country is like a building that was destroyed, and a mountain of rubble was left in its place," says Nebojsa Spaic, who heads the independent Media Center in Belgrade. "The problem we have is that we don't know how to clean it up. We're fighting over who gets to use the shovel."

Analysts predict it is only a matter of time before Kostunica's 18-party coalition shatters, and he is openly challenged by Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.

Kostunica has his hands full. Montenegro is threatening to leave the Yugoslav federation. Kosovo is unstable and violent. The northern province of Vojvodina is seeking autonomy. And the question of what to do with Milosevic - send him to The Hague or try him in Serbia - remains.

As long as these questions remain, others issues are postponed. For example Kostunica has promised to form a constitutional assembly to begin rewriting Yugoslavia's laws. He cannot do that until he knows the status of Montenegro, which could take a year or two to clarify. Without a new constitution, it will be difficult to extradite accused war criminals such as Milosevic.

And what can they do about the Serbian presidency, which is now occupied by another accused war criminal, Milan Milutinovic?

Kostunica and Mr. Djindjic are unable to agree on what to do with Mr. Milutinovic.

"I'm worried that these issues will divide the government so much that the radical nationalists could rise again," says Mr. Spaic.

Equally tenuous are the state security structures, which at the moment are trying to wrestle power away from the organized criminals that helped control the country for the past decade. The new police chief, Dusan Mihailovic, has "declared war" on the Serbian crime rings. Within the police department itself, 240 officers are under investigation.

"Some of these people need to go to The Hague, some need to go to court here, and some need to be witnesses," says a police source who is close to the investigation. "Until we achieve that, the country will not be stable."

Ultimately, many of these problems will fall into the hands of Kostunica, whose nationalism will probably lead him to draw a hard line on territorial issues and anything involving Serbian sovereignty. He's unlikely, for example, to fully compromise on Montenegro's desire to have greater federal rights - or become independent. On one hand, that makes him acceptable to many Serbian voters, and helps explain his approval rating, which is as high as 70 percent.

"Kostunica's a nationalist, but he's more clever than the others," says Rade Dimic, a member of the Citizen's Alliance party, which is part of the ruling coalition. "He knows how to get what he needs from the West."

Despite his flaws, Kostunica has for the first time in recent memory given the Serbs a sense of hope, however measured it may be. "We saw what happened in the rest of Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall," says Aleksandar Krsanovic, a waiter at a Belgrade cafe. "The same thing happened here, but 10 years later. It will take a long time for us to catch up."

-------- iraq

Cuts Urged In Patrols Over Iraq Risk of Allied Pilot Being Downed Cited

By Thomas E. Ricks and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 9, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A881-2001May8?language=printer

The two U.S. military commanders overseeing the "no-fly" zones in Iraq have recommended that the Bush administration sharply reduce the number of patrols conducted by American and British pilots, mainly because of the mounting danger that an allied plane could be shot down, a Pentagon official said yesterday.

Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, and Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, the top U.S. military officer in Europe, have recommended "major changes in the way we do the patrols" to enforce a U.S. ban on all Iraqi flights over large swaths of northern and southern Iraq, the official said.

Administration officials said yesterday that the United States remains committed to maintaining the no-fly zones, and neither Franks nor Ralston is recommending that Iraqi planes be allowed to resume flying. But the generals, concerned about an intensified Iraqi campaign to shoot down an American plane, are pressing the administration to change the way they are enforced.

Franks's Central Command enforces the ban on flights over southern Iraq, which was imposed by the United States with allied support in 1992 to protect the restive Shiite population in the south from a crackdown by President Saddam Hussein's military, as well as to prevent his forces from massing near the Kuwaiti and Saudi borders. Ralston is in charge of the American forces based in Turkey that patrol the northern no-fly zone, which was declared in 1991 to protect rebellious Iraqi Kurds from air attack.

Franks has recommended reducing the patrols in the south but maintaining a minimum number of allied flights to keep a close eye on Iraqi troops who could approach the Saudi and Kuwaiti borders, a second Pentagon official said.

Ralston has indicated that he would prefer a halt to the flights in the north, this official said. But, he added, Ralston would like to keep warplanes at the ready in Turkey and declare that the United States reserved the right to launch retaliatory strikes if Iraq flew warplanes in the zones to harass the Kurds or other minority groups.

Reducing the number of patrols would decrease the need for frequent U.S. bombing of Iraqi air defenses. This could mark an end to the undeclared war that has pitted American and British pilots against Iraqi gunners since 1998. It also could ease the concerns of American allies in Europe and the Middle East who have urged the United States to adopt a less aggressive posture.

Last year, U.S. aircraft dropped bombs or fired missiles on Iraq 98 times, according to congressional testimony by Franks and Ralston in late March. The Iraqi government estimates that U.S. airstrikes have killed 300 people, mostly civilians, since 1998.

The military recommendations come as the administration is conducting an overall review of Iraq policy that officials hope will be completed by summer. In addition to examining the no-fly zones, Bush officials are trying to build international support for a new system of "smart sanctions" targeting Saddam Hussein's military capability, and they are reviewing what support to provide Iraqi opposition groups seeking to overthrow the Baghdad regime.

One top commander stressed to the administration that the risk of losing a U.S. pilot has grown so great in recent weeks that continuing the operation may no longer be justifiable, a person familiar with the administration's policy discussions said.

The danger to the U.S. and British pilots who fly in the two zones has skyrocketed as Iraq's military has made an unusually determined effort to shoot down a pilot, this person said. Almost every flight has been fired on by Iraqi antiaircraft guns, and well over 100 surface-to-air missiles have been launched since the last large-scale U.S. and British air raids in mid-February, he added.

In addition, he said, the Iraqis are rarely turning on their air-defense radars, making them harder to target and so lessening the military benefit of flying in the zones. Without radar to guide their missiles, the Iraqis are firing almost blindly, but in such great numbers that U.S. commanders fear that eventually they will get a lucky hit. Worried U.S. pilots call this getting hit by a "golden BB."

Administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in congressional testimony last week, have repeatedly said they intend to maintain the no-fly zones.

A senior State Department official said yesterday the administration continues to view them as necessary on two counts: preventing Saddam Hussein from using Iraqi air power against Kurds and Shiites, and precluding him from building up military forces where they could threaten neighboring countries, namely Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

"The issue under review is what is the best way to implement the no-fly zones, not whether there should be no-fly zones," the State Department official said.

Administration officials involved in reviewing various elements of U.S. policy toward Baghdad say they have made the most progress in developing a new approach toward the United Nations sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

In recent weeks, U.S. diplomats have repeatedly visited European and Middle Eastern capitals to build support for a policy of lifting most economic sanctions while tightening the restrictions on imports and revenue that Hussein could use to develop weapons of mass destruction and to strengthen his army. The administration plans to finalize its sanctions proposal before a U.N. review in June of the current oil-for-food program.

At the same time, Bush officials have been debating how much financial, military and covert backing should be provided to the Iraqi opposition. They are also weighing whether to extend American support beyond the Iraqi National Congress, now the main recipient of U.S. aid, to other opposition figures and organizations.

--------

Citing Pilot Safety, Fewer Patrols Over Iraq Recommended

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/world/iraq-usa.html

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - Two U.S. military commanders overseeing air patrols over ``no-fly'' zones in Iraq have recommended reducing the patrols by American and British jets because of growing danger to pilots, Pentagon officials said on Wednesday.

``It has become pretty obvious thatSaddam Hussein wants to shoot down a coalition aircraft and attempts to do so are increasing,'' one of the officials, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

The officials confirmed a Washington Post report that Army Gen. Tommy Franks and Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston recommended to the Bush administration major changes in the patrols to enforce a decade-long ban on Iraqi military flights in large areas of northern and southern Iraq.

No allied aircraft have been shot down by Iraqi missiles and anti-aircraft fire while patrolling the zones since the 1991 Gulf War. But officials told Reuters the recommendations for cuts were being studied as part of a review by the Bush administration of Iraqi policy.

KEEP UP 'TIT-FOR-TAT'?

``Either you keep bombing air defense sites tit-for-tat and take chances of losing a pilot in the whole process, or perhaps make some changes,'' one Pentagon official said. ``These things go in cycles, and Iraq has recently increased targeting our planes.''

But he and others stressed that neither Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, nor Ralston, the top U.S. military officer in Europe, had suggested Iraqi planes should be allowed to resume flying in the zones. The four-star generals, they said, were concerned about an intense campaign to shoot down an American plane.

The Central Command enforces the ban on flights over southern Iraq to protect the resident Shiite population from Saddam's military.

Ralston is in charge of U.S. forces based in Turkey, who patrol the northern no-fly zone. That was declared off-limits to Iraqi military planes and helicopters in 1991 to protect Iraqi Kurds from attack.

Franks recommended reducing the number of patrols in the south but maintaining a minimum number of allied flights to keep close watch on Iraqi troops, officials told Reuters.

KEEP PROTECTING MINORITIES

But they declined to confirm the Post report that Ralston, who is also supreme allied commander of all NATO forces in Europe, would prefer a halt to the flights in the north and keep warplanes based in Turkey ready to launch retaliatory flights if Iraq uses its aircraft to harass Kurds or other minority groups.

The Bush administration is conducting a review of Iraqi policy that defense officials said could be completed before the end of the summer.

One top commander stressed to the administration that the risk of losing a U.S. pilot had grown so great in recent weeks that continuing the operation may no longer be viable, the Post quoted a person familiar with the administration's policy discussions.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was making progress toward a new package of sanctions against Iraq and hoped to change the system when the United Nations reviews it in June.

The United States wants to relax restrictions on goods for civilian use while tightening the controls on imports of military equipment.

-------- israel

Palestinian Arsenal Worries Israel

By Jason Keyser
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010509/aponline152807_000.htm

TEL AVIV, Israel -- Anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons smuggled into the Palestinian territories pose a serious threat to Israeli cities and could be used to shoot down passenger airliners landing at Israel's international airport, a military official said Wednesday.

A navy boat off the coast of Haifa this week seized a fishing vessel carrying a cargo of weapons on what officials said was its fourth smuggling run to Gaza. Of greatest concern to Israel were four SA-7 Strela anti-aircraft missiles, a missile developed in the 1970s that has a range of about 5 miles.

The missile is "accurate enough to take a jumbo (jet) out of the sky," said Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, head of the army's operations directorate. "When an airliner that goes to land at Ben-Gurion airport or takes off, it's an easy target."

Israeli Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh downplayed the threat, saying "there is no evidence of anti-aircraft weapons in the West Bank."

Also aboard the boat were a variety of mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, land mines, Kalashnikov assault rifles, and Katyusha rockets of the type that for decades were often fired from Lebanese territory at northern Israel. Such weapons are more powerful than any used so far by the Palestinians, who have faced off against Israel with little more than stones, automatic rifles and mortars. Israel has used tanks, artillery and attack helicopters in the conflict.

From the West Bank, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv would be within easy Katyusha range.

"This indicates that they want to initiate another stage of escalation against the Israeli population inside Israel," Harel said. He added that he feared the Palestinians already had weapons of the kind that were seized.

Israeli military officials worry that weapons of greater caliber and range are also reaching the Palestinian territories via fishing boats, trucks crossing the Jordan River and through crudely dug tunnels along the border with Egypt.

"If they have Strelas it would be very disturbing," said Yiftah Shapir, coeditor of the Middle East Military Balance, an annual report published by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

The confiscated weapons shipment was organized by a radical Palestinian group headed by Ahmed Jibril, a bitter enemy of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Palestinian officials deny having ordered the shipment.

-------- new zealand

New Zealand to Scrap Air Defense

MAY 09, 06:33 EST
By RAY LILLEY
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=AUSANT&STORYID=APIS7BSHQ400

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - Combat pilots, devastated by New Zealand's decision to eliminate its air defense, warned Wednesday they would look for work overseas.

Defense cuts announced Tuesday will eliminate all jet fighters from the air force, leaving it with just six aging maritime patrol aircraft and some unarmed transport planes.

Wing Commander Nick Osborne, who commands 75 Squadron, the main fighter group, said his troops had no desire to fly unarmed transport planes. He said many were considering seeking work elsewhere.

``There is a real art to becoming a combat pilot. It's not something I want to give up,'' Osborne said. ``There is a lot of anger at the government. Many feel the decision hasn't been thought through, but we're not politicians.''

The navy also is being cut back - to two frigates and a clutch of fishery protection vessels. Prime Minister Helen Clark insists the cuts are not a risk because New Zealand faces no serious security threat.

The cuts come at a time when other nations in the region are boosting their armed forces, amid rising tension between China and Taiwan and instability in Indonesia and the South Pacific. Analysts predicted New Zealand would be left internationally isolated and vulnerable.

``This independent policy envisages us relying more on other peoples' contributions of money and lives,'' said Gerald Hensley, a former senior defense official.

It also means New Zealand will no longer play a meaningful role in the Five Power Defense Arrangement, Hensley said, which links it with Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Great Britain.

The air force cuts will eliminate about 700 jobs, ending a tradition stretching back to World War I and World War II, when New Zealand pilots earned a reputation for skill and bravery.

``The government yesterday destroyed No. 75 Squadron - something Hitler's (anti-aircraft) flak and fighters couldn't do,'' the New Zealand Press Association said.

-------- space

Rumsfeld Plan Skirts Call for Stationing Arms in Space

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/world/09SPAC.html

WASHINGTON, May 8 - Unveiling a new plan to strengthen the military's space programs, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld stopped short today of advocating putting weapons in outer space, an idea that has come under sharp criticism from Congressional Democrats.

"More than any other country, the United States relies on space for its security and well-being," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference.

"It's only logical to conclude that we must be attentive to these vulnerabilities and pay careful attention to protecting and promoting our interest in space."

But Mr. Rumsfeld repeatedly sidestepped questions from reporters about whether his efforts to give space operations a higher profile in the Pentagon would inevitably lead to building anti-satellite weapons or other types of space-based military hardware.

"These proposals have nothing to do with that," he said.

His plan calls for consolidating a number of military space programs - including spy satellite operations - under the Air Force. He also said he will create a new position filled by a four-star Air Force general who will serve as the Pentagon's chief advocate for space programs.

Still, Mr. Rumsfeld, in his longest news conference of the year, clearly did not close the door to putting weapons in space or to expanding the anti-satellite programs that the Pentagon has financed for years.

Indeed, a Congressional commission Mr. Rumsfeld led until last December recommended that the Pentagon increase spending on military space technology and study ways to project power from space.

Reading from the National Space Policy, written in 1996, Mr. Rumsfeld said the Department of Defense has the authority to "develop, operate and maintain space control capabilities to ensure freedom of action in space, and if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries."

There was sharply mixed reaction on Capitol Hill today to Mr. Rumsfeld's announcement, with several senior Democrats saying they would oppose any efforts by the Pentagon to militarize space.

"Congress should thoroughly scrutinize Secretary Rumsfeld's proposals to reorganize the management of D.O.D.'s space activities to assure the American people that this is not the first step toward deploying weapons in space," said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. "Such a step would be unwise and could lead to an arms race in space."

The Democratic leader, Senator Thomas A. Daschle of South Dakota, called placing weapons in space "the single dumbest thing I've heard so far in this administration."

He added: "I think Democrats will be universally opposed to doing something as foolish as that. It only invites other countries to do the same thing."

But several Republicans said that they not only support putting weapons in space, but that they also expect Mr. Rumsfeld to move in that direction.

"I think Rumsfeld is saying, `Let me start with the structure, let me see if I can get this reorganization done so we can move to phase 2, which may be developing the defense capability to knock out some of these enemy satellites,' " said Senator Robert C. Smith, a Republican from New Hampshire who sits on the Armed Services Committee.

For instance, Mr. Smith said, he believes the Bush administration plans to increase spending on what are known as kinetic-kill vehicles - capable of damaging or destroying enemy satellites.

"It speaks legions about Rumsfeld that he started out his first major press conference on space, because that's the future," Senator Smith continued. "The country that controls space is the country that wins the next war."

Representative Mac Thornberry, a Republican from Texas who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, said he would have favored going further than Mr. Rumsfeld by creating a separate space force that might be a fifth service or a major corps within the Air Force.

"I think we need to prepare for the time when conflict in space could come about," Mr. Thornberry said.

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

Kicking U.S. off rights panel

By Bill Nichols,
USA TODAY
05/09/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-05-09-panel.htm

WASHINGTON - Furious members of Congress are looking for ways to lash back at the United Nations over last week's ejection of the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Action on the issue could come as soon as today, when the House of Representatives is scheduled to take up an $8.2 billion State Department authorization bill that contains $582 million in back U.S. dues to the United Nations.

Members from both parties are looking to possibly scuttle the U.N. dues payment as a protest. While the United States was taken off the 53-member rights commission, a number of countries accused of significant human rights violations stayed on.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., says he will try to bar any U.S. money from going to the Human Rights Commission.

"When the lunatics take over the asylum, responsible people are forced to act," Rohrabacher said. "I don't plan giving the lunatics any more American tax dollars to play with."

The commission's funding, approximately $300 million last year, comes from the regular U.N. budget, of which the United States pays 22%.

Among other House measures in response to the U.N. vote is a bid to revoke $67 million earmarked for allowing the United States to rejoin the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Washington left UNESCO 17 years ago to protest management flaws and what was seen as an anti-Western bias.

Congress agreed in 1999 to pay nearly $1 billion in back U.S. dues. That legislation was conditioned on the United Nations lowering the assessment charged the United States for both the regular and peacekeeping U.N. budgets. The U.N. General Assembly voted to make those changes late last year.

In an effort to preserve this year's payment of back dues, House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., has crafted a compromise with Rep. Tom Lantos, D.-Calif. The Hyde-Lantos amendment would preserve the $582 million in back U.N. dues in this year's State Department budget. But it would make next year's scheduled final payment of U.S. arrears, $248 million, conditional on the United States rejoining the Human Rights Commission.

Bush administration officials say the United Nations has badly hurt itself by leaving on the panel countries accused of significant human rights violations. Among them, according to the State Department:

Libya: A dictatorship in which political prisoners are held for years without charge. Freedoms of speech and the press do not exist. Sudan: Security forces regularly beat, harass and arbitrarily arrest opponents of the ruling regime. China: Authorities crack down on religion and anyone perceived to threaten the government. Nation employs forced abortion and forced sterilization. Cuba: Government violates civil and political rights of all its citizens. There are no free elections. Political dissidents are beaten and imprisoned.

Anger continues to reverberate throughout Washington about the Human Rights Commission decision, as well as the removal of the United States from a U.N. drug-monitoring body. In both cases, several nations gave the United States written assurances of support, then reneged. Both votes were conducted by secret ballot.

"It's not very effective for these entities within the U.N. to remove the United States from those panels," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "It's a good question to ask the U.N. what kind of signal it is sending the world."

Administration officials have suggested various possible motives for the snubs, ranging from a new surge of anti-American feeling within the United Nations to anger over some of President Bush's early foreign policy decisions. Bush also has been handicapped by not having a new U.N. ambassador in place. He has selected career diplomat John Negroponte for the post but has yet to officially nominate him.

----

White House hits U.N. panel ouster

May 9, 2001
By Bill Sammon and Tom Carter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010509-91602965.htm

The White House yesterday criticized the United Nations for voting the United States off the U.N.´s international drug monitoring agency and human rights commission, but said it would not support a move in Congress to withhold U.N. dues.

"The president believes that we should pay the dues that we owe to the United Nations, but the president is also concerned about the signal the United Nations, through these two entities, is sending to the world about the seriousness with which these entities will carry out their mission in fighting for human rights or fighting against drugs," President Bush´s spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said.

It was the second time in less than a week that the Bush administration has chastised the United Nations for evicting the United States from important commissions. On Friday, the White House complained about being voted off the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Yesterday, Mr. Fleischer groused about losing America´s seat on the International Narcotics Control Board. "The White House views that as a disappointment," Mr. Fleischer said in response to a question from The Washington Times. "It is not going to stop this president, however, from vociferously carrying out America´s role around the world in reducing the flow of narcotics and fighting the drug war at home.

"In fact, the president this week will have some announcements to make about fighting the war against drugs," Mr. Fleischer added. "And so despite this action, the president will continue to hold America high in fighting the scourge of drug abuse around the world."

An amendment to the State Department authorization bill was put before the House yesterday, to condition payment of $244 million in back dues to the United Nations on whether the United States regains its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

The State Department authorization contains a $582 million payment for 2002 and the final arrears payment of $244 million for 2003. No money would be withheld this year, giving the United Nations a year to redress the grievance.

" the United Nations to set things straight and return the United States to the UNHRC while ensuring that the bulk of our U.N. arrears payments go forward," said Rep. Tom Lantos, California Democrat, sponsor of the legislation and the ranking minority member on the International Relations Committee.

The amendment was co-sponsored by Rep. Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican and chairman of the International Relations Committee. The amendment is expected to have broad support from both sides of the aisle when the $8.2 billion authorization bill comes before the House in the next few days.

"It is a bipartisan amendment from two of the most respected members on foreign policy in the House. I´d be surprised if it did not have a large following," said John Feehrey, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert.

Mr. Hyde said: "For more than a decade the U.S. has urged reform of the U.N. system. What occurred last week was a step backward. Some of the world´s premier human rights violators are now prominent members of the human rights commission.

"In a clear voice, we must express our disapproval of this outrage, and work to restore some credibilty to this agency," he said.

Mr. Fleischer said: "It´s hard to be committed to the cause of human rights when you´ve put Sudan and Libya on a panel that´s dedicated to fighting for the cause of human rights." Both are notorious violators of human rights and Sudan condones widespread slavery.

Mr. Fleischer said: "The real losers in this equation are the people around the world who are struggling to be free. The United States is going to continue its role as a beacon of freedom and human rights, and the president will continue to speak out. It´s unfortunate that this panel of the United Nations will be a weakened voice in that effort."

Some critics have blamed Secretary of State Colin Powell for losing the seats on the commissions by failing to vigorously lobby other nations for support. But the White House strongly rejected such talk. "Does the president have a blame-America-first reaction to something that hurts people all around the world, when it was these other nations that caused this to take effect?" Mr. Fleischer said. "The answer is clearly no."

Other Bush detractors have noted that while the president has named John Negroponte as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the nomination has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. "I don´t think the fact that the Senate may or may not have confirmed somebody for the U.N. ambassador position would have had an impact on people keeping their word when they made a written promise to the United States government," Mr. Fleischer said.

The administration insists it will spend no time trying to figure out which nations voted against the United States on secret ballots. Washington was promised 40 votes on the balloting for membership on the Human Rights Commission, but received only 29 when the votes were cast on Thursday.

"In a secret ballot, where people give you a written assurance, saying, 'Yes, we are voting for you,´ and then they don´t keep their word when it counts, it´s not likely that they´re going to keep their word when you ask them, or tell you, 'Oh, yes, we´re one of those nations that gave you a written commitment, but then we voted against you in reality,´" Mr. Fleischer said. "It´s not exactly the type of action or behavior that most nations 'fess up to,´" he said. "The United States had the written assurances of those nations. Those nations did not keep their word."

----

House Threatens to Hold Back U.N. Dues for Loss of Seat

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/world/09NATI.html

WASHINGTON, May 8 - Administration and congressional officials expressed anger today at the United Nations for the loss of a United States seat on the Human Rights Commission, and influential Republicans and Democrats in the House threatened to hold $244 million in dues to the organization if Washington's seat is not restored next year.

In a telephone interview this evening, shortly after the deal was reached, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged that American officials had been taken by surprise by members of the United Nations Economic and Social Council who voted the United States off the panel in a secret ballot last week. "One thing I can guarantee you is that we will be back on it next year," General Powell said today.

He said that the vote, combined with another secret ballot that resulted in the loss of the American seat on the International Narcotics Control Board, reflected the fact that "we left a little blood on the floor" in votes involving the Palestinians, Cuba and China, and that a number of countries were looking to retaliate.

General Powell spoke as the Administration was both venting its anger over the committee seats and attempting to head off a movement in Congress to cut off American funding for the United Nations. In the last days of the Clinton administration, the United States agreed to pay more than a billion dollars in back dues.

Representative Dick Armey, the House majority leader, predicted that when the House took up a bill later this week on State Department programs it would vote to restrict the repayment of some of the dues. "This is an affront," he said, "more to the whole notion of international human rights than it is to us as a nation."

Today, Democratic and Republican leaders of the House International Affairs Committee agreed to go ahead with the next United Nations dues payment of $582 million. But in an effort by Republicans to calm conservatives who are demanding a cutoff of money to the United Nations, an accord was reached in which a later payment of roughly $244 million would be withheld unless the United States is reinstated. The next election for slots on the Human Rights Commission is in spring 2002.

General Powell did not say whether he thought withholding dues might further inflame relations between the United Nations and Washington. "We have to look at the language," he said. General Powell, in a telephone call he made to The New York Times, said that a number of countries were seeking to dilute American influence at the United Nations. "As one of my colleagues here said, this was a vote looking for a venue to happen."

The ratcheting up of pressure on the United Nations began today at the White House, where Mr. Bush's spokesman, Air Fleischer, blamed the countries that had reneged on promises to the United States to vote for American seats on both panels.

"It's hard to be committed to the cause of human rights when you've put Sudan and Libya on a panel that's dedicated to fighting for the cause of human rights," he said in a briefing. "The real losers in this equation are people around the world who are struggling to be free."

But in private, some American officials acknowledged that they had failed to detect a sea change in the 54-member Economic and Social Council, which selects the members of the human rights and drug commissions.

China had quietly lobbied to get the United States removed, striking back for the annual resolution that Washington sponsors condemning Beijing's treatment of dissidents and, this year, the Falun Gong movement.

Other developing nations joined. Europe's vote was split: Three European countries and the United States were vying for three slots. France received 52 votes, Austria 41, and Sweden 32. The United States came in fourth, with 29, losing the seat it has held since Eleanor Roosevelt helped establish the commission.

Some American officials say the seat might have been saved if the American nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, had been confirmed by the Senate and in place. Others say that the Bush administration had relied too heavily on the 43 promises from other nations that they would vote to keep the United States on the panel. Such vows are regularly broken.

Tonight General Powell said that he was "reviewing the vote to see if we were not anticipating things right." But he declined to release a list of the countries, 14 of which voted for other nations. "I think that would just complicate our relations with those countries," he said.

He also defended the diplomat temporarily running the United States mission at the United Nations, James Cunningham. "He's no rookie," General Powell said. "We just have to take our hit and move on."

The loss of the seat on the Human Rights Commission has a practical effect: The United States cannot sponsor resolutions within the group, like the resolutions it offered up earlier this year condemning China and Cuba for their human rights violations. The China resolution failed; the Cuba resolution passed.

Now at least for the next year, those countries do not have to worry about dealing directly with the Bush administration. If the United States wants to renew those resolutions next year, it must find another country on the committee to act as the main sponsor, and the United States will not be able to vote.

The loss of the seat on the International Narcotics Control Board has less dramatic effect. The 13-member board monitors compliance with United Nations' drug conventions on trafficking and substance abuse, but has little real power. Herbert Okun, the American representative for the past decade, was voted off the panel. Iran, Brazil, Peru, India, the Netherlands, France and Austria were elected to the board.

General Powell said tonight that "A lot of this has to do with the aggressiveness with which we have pressed our human rights agenda." But he said "we will continue to show that aggressiveness this year."

Harder to measure, however, is whether the vote was also a reflection of mounting resentment over America's role as the world's sole superpower, and the Bush administration's suggestions that it would walk away from the Kyoto treaty on global warming and eventually replace the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

When the United Nations vote took place on Thursday, Congress was just going out of session for the weekend, so the reaction was delayed. But when it reconvened today, the anger at the United Nations was not limited to its conservative critics.

Representative Tom Lantos of California, the ranking Democrat on the House International Affairs committee, reached the accord on back dues with Henry J. Hyde, the Republican chairman of the committee. "The vote to exclude the U.S. from the U.N.H.R.C. last week was outrageous and only damaged the institution and undermined the cause of human rights worldwide," he said. But he added, "We should not compound the damage by withholding the bulk of our arrears payments to the United Nations."

--------

U.N. Chief Asks for New Funds to Fight AIDS

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/world/09CND-NATIONS.html

UNITED NATIONS, May 9 - With anger rising in Congress over the United States' loss of seats on two United Nations panels, Secretary General Kofi Annan went to Washington today to ask the Bush Administration for more money to fight AIDS in Africa.

The Secretary General's trip, in advance of a special General Assembly session on AIDS next month, was planned to focus strictly on his proposed global fund to combat infectious diseases that are shortening African lives and creating havoc in already weak economies. The administration is expected to make a decision about its support in coming days.

But officials here said that broader questions about United States relations with the United Nations were expected to arise.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is expected to join in a scheduled meeting between Mr. Annan and Tommy Thompson, secretary of health and human services, officials said here. If the Congressional timetable allows, Mr. Annan is also planning to meet with Senator William H. Frist, Republican of Tennessee.

Mr. Frist, a well-known surgeon before turning to politics, was among a group of senators to introduced a bill in early April committing the United States to a contribution of $1 billion to fight AIDS over the next two years. Various programs taken together now total less that half of that, though the United States remains the largest single contributor to anti-AIDS campaigns globally.

In March, Senator Frist, who is chairman of the Senate African Affairs Subcommittee, asked the General Accounting Office to study how effectively American money was spent in Africa to combat AIDS through the United States Agency for International Development, which handles a large part of the budget. That study found that while the agency had been allocated a 53 percent increase in funds - from $174 million to $114 million - for this budget year, there were hurdles to overcome in the distribution of assistance.

The study found, for example, that Congressional restrictions on assistance to foreign military forces got in the way of programs aimed at troops and police officers. The General Accounting Office referred to a National Intelligence Council report that between 10 and 60 percent of troops in sub-Saharan African countries were infected with HIV-AIDS. In Tanzania, the report said, the infection rate in the armed forces is between 15 percent and 30 percent, compared with 8 percent in the general population. Similar patterns were found in other countries.

The G.A.O. report said that laws limiting American aid to foreign troops were a `disincentive` to pursuing prevention campaigns where they may be most needed.

Members of Congress have also restricted family planning assistance in efforts to prevent money going to organizations that advocate abortions. Family planning experts say that contraceptives, particularly condoms, are the most effective weapon in AIDS prevention.

Diplomats and members of Congress say it is hard to judge what effect the confrontation between Washington and the United Nations will have on Mr. Annan's efforts to involve the United States in his global campaign against the AIDS epidemic. Officials here say that Mr. Annan regrets the unexpected votes that dropped American representatives from international panels.

On May 3, the 54-member United Nations Economic and Social Council voted the United States off the Human Rights Commission and the International Narcotics Control Board, bodies that have always had American representation. The votes shocked the United States, which had counted on comfortable support for its candidacy in secret balloting in both organizations.

In Washington, some members of Congress called this week for the withholding of some of the overdue payments on bills owed the United Nations. For much of last year, Richard C. Holbrooke, the Clinton administration's United Nations envoy, had to drop most other issues to campaign for reduced American dues in return for a promise to pay arrears totaling over $1 billion. On Tuesday, Republican and Democratic leaders of the House International Affairs Committee agreed to pay $582 million but to withhold an additional $244 million until the United States was returned to the commission, which meets annually in Geneva. The next election takes place in the spring of 2002.

Today, Fred Eckhard, spokesman for Mr. Annan, said that the secretary general had told a meeting of senior United Nations officials this morning before leaving for Washington that he was concerned about calls in Congress to punish the organization for votes cats by fewer than one-third of its member nations.

"Punishing all 189 member states would be counterproductive, and punishing the bureaucracy would be unfair," Mr. Eckhard quoted Mr. Annan as saying. The secretary general also recognized the significant contributions the United States had made to the commission since its inception in 1947, and he hoped the United States will be voted back on the commission next year, Mr. Eckhard said.

Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, who was here for the senior officials' meeting, said that there was "shock and dismay" in Geneva last week when the results of the voting became known.

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

German School Damaged by Rounds

By Geir Moulson
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010509/aponline175040_000.htm

BERLIN -- The U.S. Army admitted Wednesday that it had misfired two training rounds, which hit and slightly damaged the roof of a southern German elementary school where children were playing in the yard.

Classes were over for the day Tuesday when the rounds hit in the town of Kirchenthumbach, said Mayor Johann Kleber, and no one was injured. The town is a half-mile from the edge of the Army's largest European training range at Grafenwoehr.

The Army apologized for the incident and launched an investigation.

"This is really a rare incident, and it's bad," said Capt. Jeff Settle, public affairs officer for the 7th Army Training Command. "That it hit a school, of all things, is terrible."

The incident occurred during live-fire training. The rounds involved were 25 mm aluminum training rounds.

"They were not high explosive, they were not depleted uranium," Settle said.

It remained unclear Wednesday how the accident occurred, Settle said. But the rounds, fired about two miles from the school, "went in the wrong direction."

"It's the first time I know of that there's been a misfire by the U.S. Army," Kleber said. "It's in the interests of both sides to clear this up" and discuss ways to prevent future accidents.

Although relations between the Army and town residents remain predominantly good, there is growing concern about military safety standards. It was revealed last year that depleted uranium rounds - which is alleged to have caused illness among several former soldiers serving as peacekeepers in the Balkans - had been fired at the training grounds.

----

Pentagon panel sees need for stealth fighter and Osprey

May 9, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010509-69138750.htm

An ongoing Pentagon review has spared major aircraft programs from recommended terminations, including the Air Force´s futuristic stealth fighter and the Marine Corps´ Osprey, according to Defense Department officials.

A Pentagon panel on transformation, the latest group to submit recommendations to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, does not propose terminating the F-22 fighter, the multiservice Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) or the Marine Corps´ V-22 Osprey troop carrier, say two sources close to the panel.

The transformation report marks the second study group dealing with conventional weaponry to decline to recommend cancellation of major developing aircraft systems. An earlier study group on conventional forces came to similar conclusions.

The aircraft programs have been thought to be vulnerable as planners look for ways to carry out President Bush´s order to leap current technologies to prepare the armed forces for future threats.

The panel reports, however, do not mean the programs are out of danger. The final decision rests with Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff, who could decide to ax or shrink the programs, or leave them as is.

"It doesn´t mean they can´t get shaped," said a senior official familiar with the panels´ work.

Mr. Bush directed Mr. Rumsfeld in February to spearhead a "top-to-bottom" review of strategy, weapons and force structure before submitting to Congress a final plan to boost the current $296 billion budget over the long term. More than 20 panels went into operation, most populated from retired military officers and outside arms specialists.

The Air Force and Navy have urged Pentagon panels not to recommend cancellation of the F-22 or JSF, arguing they already represent technological advances. The new fighters are needed, the military says, to replace aging fighters pushed to the limit during 1990s peacekeeping and regional conflicts.

Current plans call for buying 339 F-22s for $62 billion, and 3,000 JSFs for $300 billion for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

Pentagon sources said the transformation panel recommended a series of changes in command and communication systems, intelligence gathering and logistics, but left major weapon systems virtually untouched.

One official said the panel became known among some officers as the "happy panel" because its recommendations will not upset the four branches who are counting on new advanced aircraft.

The panel was dominated by hardened combat veterans, such as retired Adm. Stan Arthur, a carrier pilot in Vietnam and top naval commander in the Persian Gulf war, and retired Gen. Carl Mundy, a former Marine Corps commandant who saw action in Vietnam. The study group is led by retired Air Force Gen. James McCarthy.

If Mr. Rumsfeld decides to keep all developing aircraft programs, he would likely have to cut personnel to generate savings to augment the billions in extra dollars he would need from Congress.

Officials say one option is to amend the military´s current overarching requirement: that it be sized and equipped to fight and win two major wars nearly simultaneously. They said that since the requirement dictates the number of fielded troops, ships and planes, a less ambitious goal would allow a smaller force than the current 1.4 million active duty troops.

One idea is to shift to a "one-war, plus." This would require that the military be able to win a major theater war, plus have sufficient forces to execute major peace-enforcement mission, said one senior officer. The requirement may also include language saying the military must be able to counter new threats, such as terrorist attacks on the United States.

Sources said Mr. Rumsfeld has not decided to amend the two-war scenario, although officers in the Pentagon assumed one of the top-to-bottom review´s major goals was to draft a more futuristic requirement before congressionally mandated deadline next month.

Asked about his progress in deciding on a strategic requirement, Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters yesterday, "Mightn´t we want to size our forces also for some other things, like a Bosnia or a Kosovo or a noncombatant evacuation in some country, or maybe one or two or three of those things? ... It links to requirements as to what kinds of equipment and capabilities you need. And it is very complicated."

Mr. Rumsfeld said the strategic review is taking time because he had not predetermined the outcome.

"Some people think I arrived in this job from the pharmaceutical business with a head full of plans ready to bring out. Unwrap the cellophane package and hand them over to the Pentagon. I didn´t."

Said the senior officer, "I know don´t like it, but they don´t like a one-war scenario either. You don´t want your second enemy, once you are engaged with the first enemy, to think you´re out of beer."

Pentagon sources also said that neither the conventional forces, transformation nor strategy panels have targeted big-deck carriers for extinction.

There has been speculation that one or more panels might urge constructing carriers one-third the size of 92,000-ton Nimitz-class flattops. But officials say they know of no panel report that explicitly makes that proposal.

"I don´t think Rumsfeld is going to terminate any major weapon except the Army´s Crusader" self-propelled artillery, said a senior congressional defense aide. "That´s what I´m being told."

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Japan PM Koizumi urges ministers to go green

JAPAN: May 9, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10754

TOKYO - Japan's new Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is setting out his administration's green credentials by urging government officials to switch to environmentally friendly cars, a member of his cabinet said yesterday.

Trade Minister Takeo Hiranuma told a news conference that Koizumi had asked cabinet members to ensure action was being taken on his goal of having a fully low-emission fleet of government cars in place within a few years.

Hiranuma's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) will for its part switch 40 percent of its cars to low-emission models by the end of the just-started business year, he said.

"Japanese carmakers have excellent environmental and energy-saving technology. By getting it more broadly accepted in society, we can be a leader on environmental issues and make it a source of economic growth," he said.

Koizumi, who rose to power last month on a reformist platform, has singled out the environment as a key policy area for his government.

His environment minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, has pledged to seek a global consensus on global warming following the United States' rejection earlier this year of the Kyoto climate treaty, signed in Japan in 1997.

Hiranuma said he and Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi would meet Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association and of Toyota Motor Corp, later yesterday to ask for cooperation from carmakers in keeping up the supply of low emission cars.

A METI advisory panel is due to draft a report within a few month on environmentally friendly cars, setting a target of having 3.22 million electric, natural gas, methanol or hybrid vehicles on the road by 2010, Hiranuma said.

----

Danish green policy could hit wind power

NORWAY: May 9, 2001
Story by Jeff Coelho
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10747

OSLO - New Danish measures to promote green energy may rebound to harm the sector's flagship wind power industry, Soren Krohn, a managing director at the Danish Wind Turbine Manufacturing Association, told Reuters.

Denmark has ambitious plans to boost offshore wind power with a scheme to trade so-called "green certificates" to help cover the high costs of such output.

"In our view the certificate system is not suitable for offshore wind at all," Krohn said in a telephone interview yesterday.

"One of the basic problems we are facing is that it will be a very small market initially and therefore, it may be difficult to get a well-functioning market."

A new government-backed system for renewable energy, such as wind power, obliges Danish power consumers to buy 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2003.

Denmark aims to cover about 50 percent of the country's electricity usage with wind power by 2030, replacing much used coal-based power plants with cleaner methods of generation like wind or biomass.

The system is backed by a market for green certificates, which producers are issued for their output and can sell on to the highest bidding electricity supplier.

HITCHES

Yet the market in green certificates, supposed to be launched by January 1, 2000, has been postponed by two years due to complexities surrounding its creation, which could include futures and options.

Instead turbine owners with contracts for new installations between 2000-2002 would get a fixed price of 0.33 Danish crowns plus a green certificate with minimum and maximum values set by the government at 0.10-0.27 crowns.

Although turbine owners entering deals after January 1, 2000 would be eligible for green certificates once trading began, very few contracts have been signed since then.

The absence of a functioning market would also make estimating a price for the green credit, which may not be in the market in two years, difficult for producers, Krohn said.

He said the green certificate route may not be the best way to cover costs, since the cost of electricity produced from offshore wind hovered 10-20 percent higher than coal-fired power plants - largely due to heftier construction costs.

"The cheapest way to do this for the electricity consumer, who has to pay in the final analysis, would be to make a public tender for each park, where you simply bid on the kilowatt hour price," he said.

"If you pay people anything other than money, and in this case it is partly certificates, then you increase the uncertainty and thus the risk premium will increase," he said.

Denmark's target for wind power is to get 4,000-5,000 megawatts in 2030, most of which will come from new offshore parks. The country already has about 2,200 megawatts of wind power installed in its energy system.

--------

Cheney Is Backing Plan to Expand Cleaner Sources of Energy

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/politics/09CHEN.html

WASHINGTON, May 8 - The Bush administration will encourage the widespread use of agricultural, animal and human waste to produce energy as part of an effort to expand environmentally friendly energy supplies along with fossil fuels, administration officials said today.

The so-called biomass refining effort would be modeled on a government-industry partnership that produces ethanol from corn, a program that is popular in farm communities and is seen by some as a relatively clean source of energy that reduces reliance on imported oil.

The effort would seek to refine organic waste, like corn fiber, manure, even saw dust, into a new kind of ethanol. It would require hundreds of millions of dollars in government tax incentives and research spending but could rival corn-based ethanol as a source of energy within a decade, industry lobbyists said.

Vice President Dick Cheney has backed the plan as one of the most promising renewable sources of energy, and it is expected to feature prominently in the final report the administration's task force issues this month, officials confirmed.

Mr. Cheney, speaking on television today, also sought to show that his task force had put a balanced emphasis on increasing energy efficiency as well as expanding supplies of oil, coal and natural gas.

In a surprise, Mr. Cheney said the administration had not ruled out raising government-mandated fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. But he said the administration would not make a final decision until a scientific study on the matter was completed this summer.

Some Democrats and environmentalists have urged the administration to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. They have not been increased since the 1980's, and the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks has declined in recent years with the rise of minivans and sport utility vehicles.

The automobile industry has tended to oppose any change in government mandates for fuel economy, arguing that tax incentives for highly fuel efficient vehicles work better.

"We think they have made a significant contribution over the years, improve the efficiency, if you will, the mileage of our automobiles," Mr. Cheney said of the standards in an interview with CNN. He said that when the National Academy of Sciences completed a study of the subject, the administration would decide "whether or not to go forward" with a change in standards.

Mr. Cheney also suggested that the administration would seek powers of eminent domain for electrical transmission lines, and President Bush, speaking to an electronics group tonight, indicated that was a priority.

"We need more electricity wires carrying product across the country," Mr. Bush said, warning that the nation "can't conserve our way to energy independence."

Mr. Cheney also said his energy report would recommend financial incentives for energy conservation, renewable energy and efficiency programs. Environmentalists and some scientists have criticized the administration as for playing down the potential of energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The vice president said, however, that renewable sources like solar, wind, biomass and geothermal were unlikely to account for more than 6 percent of total energy supplies by 2020, meaning that it was still necessary to drill for more oil and gas and ease regulatory barriers for the coal and nuclear power industries.

The energy report, Mr. Cheney said, would instruct Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to review regulatory requirements on coal- fired power plant companies.

Many coal-using utilities have complained that the agency's regulations, which were designed to make sure that old coal-fired power plants adopt pollution controls, made it difficult for them to upgrade old plants.

In biomass production, enzymes break down organic waste into sugars that can be fermented into ethanol. But while the process of turning corn into ethanol is well established, development of a refinery system that can use waste products is considered less advanced.

Administration officials have indicated that they plan to increase Department of Energy spending on biomass greatly in the 2003 fiscal year. In the 2002 fiscal year, President Bush's first budget, the administration sharply cut spending for renewable energy.

-------- energy

Cheney Panel Backs Power Plant, Hybrid-Car Incentives

By Mike Allen and Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 9, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64665-2001May8?language=printer

President Bush's energy task force will recommend regulatory changes to encourage the construction of new power plants and tax credits for the purchase of cars that run on a combination of gas and electricity, administration officials said yesterday.

The administration also plans to propose legislation allowing the seizure of private property to accelerate the construction of electrical power lines to alleviate shortages in transmission capacity that have worsened California's energy shortages and are threatening other parts of the country this summer, officials said. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission already has eminent domain authority over the siting of natural gas pipelines, but has no such power over long-distance electricity transmission lines.

Vice President Cheney said the final report of an energy task force he leads will sidestep a major controversy over whether the Bush administration should drop a series of government lawsuits begun by the Clinton administration to force utilities to install modern pollution controls in aging coal-fired power plants.

The energy plan, the culmination of three months of meetings by Cheney's task force, will be announced by Bush next week. Until now, administration officials have stressed the need to increase oil, gas and coal production to address the country's energy needs. But the details that emerged yesterday suggested the administration was attempting to respond to criticism that the plan had slighted conservation and environmental priorities.

Even so, the plan will be heavily weighted in favor of increased production and transportation of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy, officials said.

"We're going to get a lot from conservation," Cheney said in a CNN interview. "The bottom line is we can't close the gap all the way . . . unless we provide additional supplies."

The plan will direct the Energy Department to study possible energy efficiency requirements for televisions, computers and other appliances that do not now have them, with the instruction that such standards be set if they would not make the products so expensive people would be reluctant to buy or manufacture them, officials said. It also will ask the Energy Department to study the restoration of some funding for research into energy efficiency, which the administration was widely criticized for cutting in its budget for next year.

But many of the proposals will be general in nature, leaving it to Congress to fill in the details, and there will be little offered to help alleviate gas prices or California blackouts this summer, officials said.

People who have read the report say the bulk of it concerns ways to encourage the construction of more power plants and transmission lines. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the report will be specific about "what regulatory actions can be taken, what incentives can be given so that new plants can be built."

Another official said the emphasis will be on "streamlining the permitting process" for new power plants. "The point is not to roll back regulations," an official said. "It's to create a business climate that has certainty in it."

Bush also plans to call for increased use of eminent domain, in which government can require the sale of private property for a project like a railroad, stadium or power line.

"The issue is whether or not we should have the same authority on electrical transmission lines" as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has for gas pipelines, Cheney told CNN. "That's never been granted previously. That's one of the issues we've looked at." Other officials said he had decided to recommend the change.

Cheney drew criticism from California officials after telling CNN that this year's blackouts are a result of state policymakers who have "taken the route of saying, 'Well, we can conserve our way out of the problem. All we have to do is conserve; we don't have to produce any more power.' "

"So they haven't built any electric power plants in the last 10 years in California, and today they've got rolling blackouts, because they don't have enough electricity," he said. "They've got a whole complex of problems that are caused by relying only on conservation and not doing anything about the supply side."

California Gov. Gray Davis (D) later issued a statement calling Cheney "grossly misinformed about California's aggressive program to build new power plants."

Cheney told CNN the task force would not address the question of whether the administration should drop a series of government lawsuits begun during the Clinton administration to force utilities to install modern pollution controls in aging coal-fired power plants.

The suits were brought under the Clean Air Act, which exempted many older plants from strict emissions controls but required modern controls when owners modified plants in ways that increased their emissions. Energy industry groups say if the government drops the suits, power plants could increase the output of electricity by as much as 40,000 megawatts over the next four years -- the equivalent of 5 percent of the total generating capacity available nationwide.

-------- environment

UN Climate Boss Seeks Early Draft on Pollution Pact

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-environment-c.html?searchpv=reuters

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. forum on climate change said Wednesday he would consult with several countries to help draft an outline pact on cutting global warming gases in the run-up to a July U.N. conference in Bonn.

Jan Pronk, also Dutch environment minister, said he would hold bilateral talks with several industrialized and developing states in coming weeks before inviting all nations to an informal meeting in the Netherlands sometime in June.

The Netherlands' meeting had originally been scheduled for May 22-23 but was pushed back for logistical reasons, he said.

``I will have a round of meetings to seek advice. At the end of June I will be meeting with all countries,'' Pronk told Reuters.

The meetings are a bid to smooth over international differences before the Bonn conference to avoid the breakdown that hit U.N. talks in The Hague in November, when EU and U.S. negotiators clashed on how to implement the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

That accord calls for industrialized states to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, by an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2010.

A U.N. scientific body has said carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels is at least partly responsible for higher temperatures, rising sea levels and harsher storm systems in recent years.

Pronk said the new round of meetings will work from compromise proposals he issued last month in an attempt to help bring the United States back into the pact. Those discussions should yield a paper that will be the basis of the Bonn talks.

But convincing the United States -- the world's largest greenhouse gas producer -- to return to the negotiating table will be a difficult task.

President Bush in April declared the Kyoto Protocol dead, criticizing it as unfair because it did not require emissions cuts by developing nations. He also called it a threat to the U.S. economy.

Pronk said he was optimistic the new U.S. administration would finish its review of the issue and come up with its own proposals on slowing global warming in time for the July Bonn meeting.

``I expect more information about the U.S. position before President Bush meets his European colleagues,'' he said, referring the G8 summit scheduled for July in Genoa.

Pronk also said he did not support boycotts called by environmental groups against U.S. oil companies they blame for Washington's condemnation of the Kyoto Protocol.

``At the moment, I don't think that antagonizing individual countries will be helpful,'' he said.

----------

Pesticide Waste Raises U.N. Concern

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Toxic-Pesticides.html

ROME (AP) -- At least 550,000 tons of obsolete and unused pesticides threaten people and the environment in developing countries, a U.N. agency warned Wednesday.

The figure has soared from the estimate of about 110,000 tons two years ago, the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report.

The pesticide waste has accumulated in the last 30 years because a number of products have been banned for health or environmental reasons, or because they were found to be ineffective, the agency said.

In some places, the FAO said, pesticide stocks are located near farm fields and wells, contaminating water and making soil unfit for use.

Former Soviet republics and Eastern European countries account for a combined 220,000 tons of toxic pesticides, the same amount as Asia. Africa and the Middle East are estimated at 110,000 tons together.

An inventory of obsolete pesticides in the United States is still being prepared, the agency said.

Major pesticide producers are based in Europe, United States, Japan, India and China.

Disposal of the pesticides is estimated to cost about $1.30 per pound, putting the cost for destruction of all stocks at $1.5 billion.

About 3,300 tons have been removed in Africa and in the Middle East with funds provided by the FAO, the United States and some European countries.

In its report, the agency urged chemical companies to contribute to pesticide disposal.

``Support from industry is crucial ... because aid agencies and governments cannot cover all the costs,'' said Alemayehu Wodageneh, a FAO expert.

--------

Congress Grapples With Species Law

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Endangered-Species.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's premier law to protect wildlife is facing new scrutiny in Congress now that the Bush administration wants to limit the ability of environmental groups to get rare plants and animals added to the endangered species list.

Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, suggested on Wednesday that in reauthorizing the 1973 Endangered Species Act, lawmakers establish objective criteria for the Fish and Wildlife Service to use in deciding how threatened species are protected.

``Extinction of species is not an acceptable outcome, but neither are policies that cause economic hardship or burden private landowners unfairly,'' he told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's subcommittee on fisheries, wildlife and water, which he chairs.

Lew Ginzburg, a mathematician at the State University of New York, said a scientific system for classifying risk using specific guidelines and quantitative data would speed up the listing process and promote consistency in which species make the list.

But ecologist David Wilcove of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group, said Congress instead should triple Fish and Wildlife Service's budget for listing species, increasing it to about $20 million.

``Assuming a backlog of about 2,000 imperiled, unlisted species, it would take the service nearly 32 years to catch up'' under the current funding scheme, he said. ``A reasonable goal would be to erase this backlog within a decade.''

President Bush's budget proposal for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 would still permit citizens and environmental groups to bring suits that have shaped the Interior Department's priorities in adding or removing rare animals and plants from its list of endangered and threatened species.

But it also would cap at $8.46 million Interior's ability to respond to those suits and give department officials more discretion in determining which species and ``critical habitat'' areas should be addressed first under the 1973 Endangered Species Act.

Developers, industry and government agencies have complained for years that environmental groups use the endangered species law to tie up projects like dams and airport expansions.

Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., said the fact that 1,243 species have been put on the list since its inception but only nine species ever have been taken off due to their recovery should be cause for concern.

He said he plans to introduce a bill to create a new fund of matching grants to encourage private landowners to protect endangered and threatened species on their property.

The department has said it would cost up to $120 million for the listing program to eliminate the backlog.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Congress should put that money in the budget as part of ``a five-year plan to get this work done rather than shutting the courthouse door to our citizens.''

The Bush budget request would provide nearly $112 million overall for Fish and Wildlife endangered species programs next year, a cut of $9.1 million from this year's spending.

-------- genetics

Moratorium on Alteration of Salmon

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By ANDREW POLLACK
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/science/09FISH.html

More than 60 environmental and fishermen's groups will ask the Food and Drug Administration today for a moratorium on the approval of any genetically modified fish, arguing that the environmental and health risks have not been adequately studied.

The food and drug agency is considering a company's petition for approval of a salmon with a gene that allows the fish to reach full size and maturity much more quickly than a natural salmon. If approved, the salmon, being developed by Aqua Bounty Farms of Waltham, Mass., would be the first genetically modified animal to reach American dinner plates.

"This is a precedent-setting regulatory action by the F.D.A.," said Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, the Washington group that is leading the action.

Elliot Entis, president of Aqua Bounty, said the food and drug agency had already promised to do a thorough review of all the health and environmental aspects of the fish. "What we really have here is an attempt to grab a headline," Mr. Entis said of the environmental petition.

The groups are filing a legal petition, which requires a response from the food and drug agency in 180 days, arguing that the current regulations are inadequate to deal with genetically modified fish.

"There's no law governing these particular fish," said Matt Rand, biotechnology campaign manager for the National Environmental Trust.

The Food and Drug Administration is regulating the fish because it considers the added gene to be an animal drug. But the agency does not have deep experience in assessing environmental consequences.

The groups argue that the fish could damage the environment. Farmed fish, they say, inevitably escape into the wild. Computer simulations have suggested that these fast- growing genetically engineered salmon might out-compete natural salmon for food and for mates.

Mr. Entis said the salmon his company was developing were not larger than other salmon at sexual maturity, they just grew faster. In addition, he said, the females will be sterile to prevent reproduction.

-------- health

EATING WELL
F.D.A. Cautions Against Eating Certain Fish During Pregnancy

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By MARION BURROS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/living/09WELL.html

IN January, for the first time, the Food and Drug Administration issued a health alert warning pregnant women to avoid four species of fish - swordfish, king mackerel, shark and tilefish - because of mercury contamination. At the same time, the agency urged them to continue eating up to 12 ounces of other fish a week.

The agency's advice is at odds with recommendations issued last summer by the National Academy of Sciences. That report called the standards that the F.D.A. used for its health alert seriously outdated and offered guidance on how to modernize them - guidance that might have resulted in a much longer list of fish to avoid. The Food and Drug Administration's warning sets exposure levels at four times what the academy considers risky. Two environmental groups have just added some other species to their lists of fish that pregnant women should avoid.

It is not known if any children in the United States have neurological defects or delays in mental development because of mercury contamination from their mothers' bloodstreams. But the academy's report estimated that the contamination increases the chances that more than 60,000 babies born each year could have neurological problems. It also said that the Environmental Protection Agency was correct in setting standards four times as strict as the F.D.A.'s. Some studies in other countries have found subtle effects in children whose mothers ate fish with high levels of mercury, such as a reduction of 7 to 8 points, on a 100-point scale, on intelligence tests.

The Food and Drug Administration says it has made the proper recommendation.

"We feel we've evaluated the science in an appropriate way and our advisory is right on target," said Dr. Michael Bolger, a toxicologist and the chief of risk assessment at the agency's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. "We identified the four species of greatest concern."

Beyond that, Dr. Bolger said the agency held three focus groups before releasing the advisory and found that it was difficult to communicate to people the concept that there are safe fish, unsafe fish and some fish that should be eaten infrequently. When given such detailed information, members of the focus groups said they would stop eating fish altogether.

The agency said fish is an important source of nutrients, and that eliminating it entirely would be riskier than consuming some mercury. Among the nutrients are fatty acids that foster brain development.

Mercury is naturally present in the environment, and the mercury in emissions from coal-burning power plants has caused widespread pollution. Still, the levels of mercury in the air are minute. It isn't until it ends up as sediment at the bottom of lakes, rivers and oceans, where it is consumed by fish, that it causes a problem, said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician who directs the division of environmental medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The larger and older the fish, the higher the concentration of mercury in its flesh. In water, mercury converts to methyl mercury.

Last month, two environmental groups issued a report after analyzing fish contamination records from government sources. The two, the Environmental Working Group and the United States Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, also called the Food and Drug Administration's standards outdated and too low. They said the agency's advice encourages consumption of seafood with dangerous levels of mercury.

The report, "Brain Food: What Women Should Know About Mercury in Fish," went a step further than the National Academy of Sciences, naming nine additional species that pregnant women, or women planning to become pregnant, should avoid: tuna (in the form of steaks), sea bass, oysters from the Gulf of Mexico, marlin, halibut, pike, walleye, white croaker and largemouth bass. The report said that such women should not eat more than one meal a month of canned tuna, mahi-mahi, blue mussels, Eastern oysters, cod, pollock, Great Lakes salmon, blue crab from the Gulf of Mexico, wild channel catfish and lake whitefish.

But the "Brain Food" study said it is a good idea to eat fish and fish products, as long as they contain only low levels of methyl mercury. Specifically, it listed farmed trout, farmed catfish, fish sticks (which are usually made from fish with low mercury) summer flounder, wild Pacific salmon, croaker, mid-Atlantic blue crab and haddock. Shrimp is on the list, too, though the report says that there are serious environmental concerns related to shrimp fishing and farming practices.

Dr. Robert A. Goyer, chairman of the committee that wrote the National Academy report, said: "The F.D.A. should be providing people with the best available information and let them be the judge. The F.D.A. has stopped short of what it should have done. I had thought the F.D.A. would pay more attention to our report."

The academy based its call for stricter standards on several studies done in the late 1990's in the Faroe Islands, New Zealand and the Seychelles. The studies from the Faroes and New Zealand showed neurotoxic effects, such as delays in mental development, from chronic exposure to fish and marine animals with high levels of methyl mercury, particularly shark and whale meat. (Whale has levels of methyl mercury somewhere between those in tuna and shark.) Those studies, along with various studies of animals and two of humans accidentally exposed to high mercury levels, convinced the committee that stricter standards were necessary. The Seychelles study did not show any effects, but Dr. Goyer said the reason for that is not clear.

The Food and Drug Administration should tighten its standards, Dr. Landrigan said. "With two highly credible positive studies in hand and an exhaustive review of those studies undertaken by the National Academy of Sciences, there is no need to wait," he said. "We can always relax the advisory if we get reassuring information later, but we can't replenish brain cells."

The "Brain Food" report took factors like body weight into account in recommending limits on how much fish a pregnant woman should eat. The Food and Drug Administration standards are based on a single formula, geared to a 154-pound man; those standards have not changed since the 1970's.

The F.D.A. warnings also assume that women have no mercury in their blood when they become pregnant. But in March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data showing that 10 percent of American women 16 to 49 - roughly seven million - already have mercury levels that are "within one-tenth of potentially hazardous levels, indicating a narrow margin of safety" for damage to fetuses.

"The short-term strategy is to eat fish with low mercury levels and to avoid or moderate intake of fish with high mercury levels," said Dr. Thomas Sink, an epidemiologist and the associate director for science at the national center for environmental health of the Centers for Disease Control.

Even if the lists provided in the "Brain Food" report are more complicated than the one provided by the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Goyer, of the National Academy of Sciences, said that his committee correctly assessed the risks.

"During their reproductive years, particularly during pregnancy, women should not avoid fish as a source of nutrition," he said, "but should consume it in an informed manner by selecting species which are known to have very little mercury."

-------- police

Federal bench at a tipping point
Thirty-one of 179 federal appeals judgeships are open, giving Bush the possibility to tilt the courts to the right.

By Warren Richey (richeyw@csps.com)
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
MAY 9, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/05/09/p1s1.htm

It usually takes years for a new president to be in a position to shift the balance of power among the judges on a federal court of appeals.

But George W. Bush can do it right now in a Cincinnati-based circuit court that in recent years has become a magnet for hot-button issues like school vouchers, campaign-finance reform, and affirmative action.

With five vacancies on the 16-judge US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and two more expected by summer's end, the court could soon emerge as ground zero in the much anticipated fight over President Bush's nominees to the federal bench.

A similar fight is likely over the composition of the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, where Mr. Bush has an opportunity to eliminate a 5-to-4 Democratic appointee advantage. Two seats are open, and another is expected to be vacant soon.

But these two circuits are just the beginning. Overall, with 31 of the nation's 179 appeals-court judgeships open, Bush is in an unprecedented position to install or significantly bolster a Republican majority of lifetime-appointed judges in all but two of the nation's 13 appeals courts.

"This was the big prize in the presidential election. As went the presidency, so goes the judiciary," says Clint Bolick, legal director of the conservative Institute for Justice in Washington.

The stage is set for what many Republicans hope will become a concerted effort by the Bush administration to tip the balance of the judiciary, circuit by circuit, in a conservative direction.

The Democratic leadership in the evenly divided US Senate is pledging to do all it can to prevent a judicial shift to the right, saying that the president should appoint moderates to the federal bench.

How this presidential-congressional clash over the future composition of the courts plays out is unclear. But the stakes for both sides are high.

The only two appeals courts where Democratic-appointed judges are not under immediate risk of being outnumbered are the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, and the Second Circuit, based in New York City.

Although not as high profile as US Supreme Court justices, appeals court judges are becoming increasingly powerful. The Supreme Court has opted in recent years to take up fewer and fewer cases, which means that for the vast majority of Americans the de facto court of last resort is a circuit court of appeals.

"The federal judiciary has an enormous effect on the lives of every American, whether people realize it or not," says Elizabeth Dahl of the Constitution Project in Washington. "Only a small percentage of the decisions they make will ever be reviewed by a higher court - civil rights, employment law, the environment, states' rights, civil liberties issues, they are all at stake here."

The party affiliation of an appointing president by no means guarantees a particular ruling in a particular case. But legal analysts say as a broad measure, presidential appointments can be an important indication of the direction of the courts.

In most cases, appeals are heard by a randomly selected three-judge panel. Such selection helps counteract the effect of a concerted effort by a president to pack the courts with judges of a particular judicial philosophy.

Nonetheless, the power of like-minded judges can be enormous, legal analysts say. That is because an appeals court may elect to decide any case deemed by a majority of the judges to have particular significance.

It is in such en banc hearings that the judicial philosophy of a majority of the judges - whether liberal or conservative - may mean the difference between victory or defeat for the litigants.

For example, the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati will likely have an opportunity within the next year or two to rule on one of the most contentious legal issues facing the nation: the use of affirmative action in university admissions programs. At issue is whether the University of Michigan law school violated the equal-protection rights of white student applicants by adopting an affirmative-action admissions program aimed at attracting minority students to the school.

Under the current composition of the Sixth Circuit - with six judges appointed by Democratic presidents (who generally support affirmative action) and five appointed by Republicans (who generally oppose it) - an en banc review of the case might uphold the affirmative-action program by as little as one vote.

But that outcome would likely change if President Bush selects conservative judges to fill the seven vacant seats on the court.

"This is one of those issues where, unfortunately, partisanship does seem to affect how at least lower federal judges are deciding the case. So these appointments may make an important difference," says David Mayer, a law professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio.

Senate Democrats say they are prepared to use the same combination of delaying tactics and outright obstruction employed by Senate Republicans last year to prevent many of President Clinton's appointees from reaching some of these same vacant judicial seats.

"This should be a process of comity and consensus," says Marcia Kuntz, who runs the judicial selection project for the liberal Alliance for Justice in Washington.

But she warns: "With the Senate this close, the Democrats do have a lot of leverage and have shown an inclination over the last couple of weeks to use it."

Thomas Jipping, director of the Center for Law and Democracy at the conservative Free Congress Foundation in Washington, says the key to success for Bush is personal involvement and a strong commitment to defend his nominees. "I think this is going to require some real and ongoing presidential leadership," he says.

----

Big brother is watching

EDITORIAL •
May 9, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010509-100439.htm

To get a bad case of the creeps, simply drive a few miles over the posted speed limit on Northern Virginia´s scenic George Washington Parkway. A week or so later, a present will arrive for you in the mail: a ticket for speeding issued courtesy of photo radar traps set up by the National Park Service (NPS), a federal agency which has jurisdiction over the parkway.

The photo radar was set up last year, very quietly, as part of a demonstration project run jointly by the NPS and Lockheed Martin IMS, in return for a percentage of the fees generated by the fleecing of hapless motorists.

All of this has been done without congressional or local approval -- and if not strangled in the crib, will surely grow to become, in time, the means by which Big Brother constantly watches us on and off the road.

House Majority Leader Dick Armey has been trying to get the attention of Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, who is in a position to yank the chain of the NPS. As a conservative Republican, Mrs. Norton also ought to have an instinctive fear and loathing of this kind of government snooping -- especially when it´s done as part of a for-profit enterprise in cahoots with a private company. Lockheed Martin, which also contracts its photo radar traps with local governments in the Washington region, stands to make billions off motorists if photo radar becomes commonplace across the country.

Describing this business as a "significant privacy concern for millions of Americans" in a letter to Mrs. Norton, the majority leader added that while he is "committed to doing what it takes to make our roads safer," he is nonetheless opposed to doing so "at the cost of our fundamental rights" -- such as the right to confront one´s accuser in court and enjoy due process of law. With photo radar, there is no due process. A ticket is simply mailed to you via an automated process. And "you can´t argue your case to a machine," as Mr. Armey pointed out.

In addition, the action taken by NPS to set up photo radar is probably not legal in and of itself. Executive Order 12866 requires review by the federal Office of Management and Budget of any proposals that "raise novel legal or policy issues" and certainly the use of photo radar/automated ticket machinery qualifies under that definition.

More fundamental, though, are entirely legitimate worries about privacy. "I am concerned," wrote Mr. Armey in his letter, "that this may be seen as a step toward a Big Brother surveillance state, where the government monitors the comings and goings of its citizens." Well, the fact is that photo radar does indeed do precisely that, and the public has every reason to be concerned.

-------- spying

Beijing Aide Tries to Explain Its Stance on U.S. Spy Plane

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/world/09CND-CHINA.html

HONG KONG, May 9 - A senior Chinese official sought today to explain China's decision not to allow the United States to fly home its damaged spy plane, which is stranded on Hainan island, saying it would arouse "strong indignation and opposition in the Chinese population."

The official, Deputy Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, said in an interview, "If we allow such a military plane, which had a mission of spying on China, to be flown back out of China, that will further hurt the dignity and sentiments of the Chinese people."

Mr. Li said the Chinese government was open to other alternatives for removing the plane, such as putting it on a ship. He said he hoped the United States would take a "diplomatic and reasonable" attitude in the negotiations, which are continuing.

Mr. Li said Beijing was surprised that the American military had resumed surveillance flights off China. But he did not say that this would hamper talks over the return of the plane.

"We hope that the two countries will properly handle the incident without letting it further damage relations," Mr. Li said.

The Chinese government has kept a close eye on public opinion throughout its handling of the surveillance plane incident. It released the 24 American crew members only after conducting a widespread search for the pilot of the Chinese fighter, which was lost after it collided with the American EP-3E Aries II.

And it turned the fallen pilot, Wang Wei, into a national icon, memorializing him in relentless news media coverage.

Mr. Li said feelings were still raw among Chinese people about Mr. Wang's death and the fact that the United States conducts surveillance missions close to its coastal waters. But on the streets of Chinese cities, overt signs of anger toward the American government have largely dissipated.

The tension between the United States and China has scarcely been felt at a business conference here held by AOL Time Warner. President Jiang Zemin, who addressed the meeting on Tuesday, did not mention the plane, Washington's decision to sell arms to Taiwan, or any other contentious issues.

This morning, before he returned to Beijing, Mr. Jiang held a 70-minute meeting with former President Bill Clinton, who is at the conference as a paid speaker. Mr. Clinton said in an interview later that he and Mr. Jiang discussed a wide range of issues, including the recent tension between Washington and Beijing.

"I told him I was convinced that the Bush Administration was interested in having good relations with China," Mr. Clinton said. "I also told him to remember that when we first came into office that we had some tough times as well."

Mr. Clinton spoke to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell over the weekend about China. But he declined to say whether he conveyed any messages from the White House. He said he would brief General Powell after he returned to the United States.

--------

Bargaining Is Under Way in Spying Case of F.B.I. Man

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/national/09SPY.html

WASHINGTON, May 8 - Federal prosecutors and lawyers for Robert P. Hanssen, the F.B.I. agent charged with spying for Russia, have opened plea bargain negotiations, government officials said today.

But the prosecutors, the officials said, have so far been unwilling to make any commitments to waive pursuit of the death penalty in return for Mr. Hanssen's admitting espionage.

Neither side has publicly acknowledged that the conversations are under way, and Plato Cacheris, Mr. Hanssen's lawyer, would not comment on the case today.

But the officials said the discussions began in secret several weeks ago. The talks have proceeded sporadically, however, and it is unclear whether the two sides are close to an agreement or can reach one before a court hearing scheduled for May 21.

The government seeks an agreement in which Mr. Hanssen would give a complete account of his espionage activities in a thorough debriefing. Legal documents filed when he was charged in February say he began spying for the Russians in October 1985 and continued until he was arrested on Feb. 18 in a Virginia park where, the government says, he had dropped off a bag of classified documents.

Among other things, prosecutors want Mr. Hanssen to explain what he did with $1.4 million he is believed to have received from the Russians. Investigators are perplexed in their efforts to unravel how he spent much of that money. The Hanssen family lived modestly and had heavily mortgaged its home, and Mr. Hanssen himself displayed few signs of wealth.

The matter of the death penalty appears to be central to the current negotiations. Officials said that Mr. Hanssen's lawyers had asked specifically whether the government intended to seek it but that so far the prosecutors had been unwilling to say.

Among the information that Mr. Hanssen is charged with selling Moscow are the names of three Russians who had been recruited as spies for the United States. Two of the men were subsequently tried and executed by Russia for their betrayal.

A federal law allows execution in cases of espionage that leads to the death of agents working for the United States. That law was enacted after the 1994 arrest of Aldrich H. Ames, the C.I.A. officer who spied for Moscow for nine years, disclosed the names of many Russian agents working for the United States and is now serving a life sentence as a result.

The Russian agents whom Mr. Hanssen is charged with identifying had already been compromised by Mr. Ames, who began spying for the Soviets roughly five months before the time when, prosecutors say, Mr. Hanssen volunteered his services to them.

American officials believe that Mr. Hanssen provided Moscow corroboration of Mr. Ames's information about those agents. But Mr. Hanssen's lawyers may argue that the fact that the agents had been previously identified by Mr. Ames means that Mr. Hanssen should not be held responsible for their death.

In any event, the decision whether to seek execution of Mr. Hanssen will ultimately be made by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The Russians, federal officials say, paid Mr. Hanssen mainly in cash, often with stacks of $100 bills delivered in plastic trash bags to drop-off sites in suburban Virginia. Other payments, the officials say, were made in untraceable diamonds and deposits into a bank account that the Russians told Mr. Hanssen they had opened for him in Moscow.

Mr. Hanssen, the government says, had papers for an active Swiss bank account in his briefcase on the day of his arrest. For reasons that are still unclear, he spent thousands of dollars on a nightclub stripper whom he befriended for several years in the mid-1990's, giving her a credit card, cash and a used Mercedes-Benz. The money Mr. Hanssen spent on the woman was first detailed by The Washington Post.

Mr. Hanssen is married and has been described as devoutly religious, and law enforcement officials said they had not uncovered evidence that he had had an illicit relationship with the woman. They said the money he gave her did not nearly account for all he is believed to have been paid by Moscow. Moreover, the balance in the Swiss account is said to be so low that it cannot provide much insight about what Mr. Hanssen did with the money.

-------- terrorism

Cheney to Lead Anti-Terrorism Plan Team
New FEMA Office Will Coordinate Response Efforts of More Than 40 Agencies, Officials Say

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 9, 2001; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64420-2001May8?language=printer

Vice President Cheney will oversee development of a plan for responding to terrorist attacks in the United States, while a new office within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will coordinate terrorist response efforts by more than 40 federal agencies, the Bush administration announced yesterday.

Testifying at a joint hearing of three Senate committees, FEMA Director Joe M. Allbaugh said he would soon be establishing an Office of National Preparedness to coordinate federal programs and assist local governments in responding to terrorist attacks involving so-called weapons of mass destruction.

"No government responsibility is more fundamental than protecting the physical safety of its population," Allbaugh told members of the Senate Appropriations, Armed Services and Intelligence committees. "In today's world, this obligation includes protection against the use of weapons of mass destruction involving nuclear, biological or chemical agents and materials."

President Bush, in a statement announcing the plans for Cheney and the new office within FEMA, said that "the threat of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons being used against the United States -- while not immediate -- is very real."

While the Justice Department will remain the lead federal investigative agency in cases involving terrorist attacks and retain responsibility for "crisis management," FEMA will assume a role previously played by the FBI's National Domestic Preparedness Office for working with local police, fire and emergency management agencies, administration officials said.

Richard A. Clarke, whom the Bush administration has retained on an interim basis as national coordinator of counterterrorism and computer security programs at the National Security Council, has acknowledged that the FBI badly bungled its domestic preparedness mission.

But in choosing to transfer those duties to FEMA, the Bush administration stopped well short of creating a high-level coordinating council in the White House, as called for last year in legislation that passed unanimously in the House but died in the Senate.

Also in choosing FEMA, the administration declined to act on the recommendations of a congressionally mandated commission on national security that recommended combining the duties of the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, FEMA and the Border Patrol into a new National Homeland Security Agency.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said in an interview after the hearing that the administration's plan highlights the need for better coordination of responses to terrorism. But Gregg said he hopes Cheney's review will clearly define the roles of FEMA and the FBI, which remain murky.

During the hearing, Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) noted a recent $200 million cut in FEMA's budget and said that "rather than coordinating, we're dis-coordinating the effort being made in the prevention of terrorism."

Hearings into the issue continue today and Thursday with testimony scheduled from Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other Cabinet officials.

Testifying yesterday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said that the Pentagon would remain in a "supporting role" to civilian agencies in responding to terrorist attacks in the United States, with the military reserves acting as "the nation's forward-deployed units for domestic consequence management."

Wolfowitz said that any deployment of military forces in the United States in response to a terrorist attack would require direct authorization by him or Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The Pentagon has 27 rapid-response teams in "varying stages of development," Wolfowitz said. Five more rapid-response teams have been authorized by Congress.

Robert J. Lieberman, the Defense Department's deputy inspector general, was far more critical at a hearing last week, reviewing a recent inspector general's report that faulted the Army for failing to provide even the first 10 teams with adequate guidance, training and equipment.

Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, in his testimony, highlighted the role of the Customs Service as the nation's "first line of border defense." But he did not dispute a claim by Hollings that Customs inspects only one of every 10 containers unloaded each day at ports in New Jersey.

"One of the stunning things to me, when you sit and think about the compact nature of some weapons that can be transported fairly easily and concealed fairly easily, is how enormous this job is for people who are on the front line," O'Neill said.

Amy E. Smithson, a researcher on chemical and biological weapons at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, concluded in a recent report that the federal government has wasted large sums of money by mismanaging an array of domestic preparedness programs.

But Smithson also concluded that terrorist experts inside and outside the federal government have consistently hyped the threat of chemical or biological attacks.

-------- activists

Falun Gong Stages Protests as Jiang Visits Hong Kong

New York Times
May 9, 2001
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/09/world/09HONG.html

HONG KONG, May 8 - President Jiang Zemin of China hailed the freedom in Hong Kong today, as protesters from the Falun Gong spiritual movement rallied throughout the city, accusing Mr. Jiang of imprisoning and torturing their members on the Chinese mainland.

Mr. Jiang was the main attraction at a business conference here held by AOL Time Warner, the media and publishing conglomerate. Time Warner's executives spent part of the gala dinner at which Mr. Jiang spoke trying to figure out among themselves how to persuade China to lift a ban on the company's flagship magazine, Time.

It was an awkward day for this former British colony and the American corporation, both of which have deep, complicated ties to China.

Hong Kong struggled to balance its commitment to civil liberties with its desire not to offend Mr. Jiang, who has led the campaign against Falun Gong. AOL Time Warner juggled its desire to cultivate Mr. Jiang and the Chinese government with its need to defend one of its most prominent magazines.

Only the Chinese president, who jauntily greeted a parade of well- wishers, seemed not to notice the conflicts.

"Hong Kong residents have enjoyed full freedom and more democratic rights than ever before," he declared, referring to the semiautonomous status Beijing granted Hong Kong after China resumed sovereignty here in 1997. "The Chinese government will never waver in or change this policy, come what may."

As Mr. Jiang spoke, adherents of Falun Gong tested his claim, mounting the first major protest against the president on Chinese soil since before the sect was banned on the mainland in July 1999. It is still permitted to operate here.

The police did not interfere in the protests, though Falun Gong members complained that they were kept far from where Mr. Jiang spoke. The group also said that nearly 100 members who had traveled to Hong Kong for the rallies were turned back at the airport yesterday and today.

The American Consulate here said American citizens had been among those refused entry. A spokeswoman, Barbara A. Zigli, said the consulate had sought an explanation from the Hong Kong government.

The editors of Time have been concerned about issues of freedom since early March, when the magazine stopped being available on newsstands in mainland China (it continues to be sold here). The ban came 10 days after Time published an article about the activities of Falun Gong in Hong Kong.

"We regret it appears Time's distribution in China has been restricted," said Walter Isaacson, the editorial director of Time Inc. and the former managing editor of Time. "We're making inquiries, but either way, Time's journalists in China will continue to do their jobs vigorously."

A delegation from the company met with Mr. Jiang this afternoon, but Time's status was not broached. As executives mingled with Chinese officials this evening, their understanding of the situation became murkier rather than clearer. Some officials told them that Time had not been formally banned.

But nobody was in the mood to play sleuth at what was supposed to be a conference about the opportunities for American business in China.

In his remarks, Mr. Levin described Mr. Jiang as a "man of honor" and called him "my good friend." He used the same phrase two years ago, when Time Warner held this conference, the Fortune Global Forum, in Shanghai.


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