------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Today In History
THE SECRET NUCLEAR WAR
New Technology Enlisted to Save Aircraft Carrier
Missile Defense May Not Bring Jobs
Missile Defense Plan Is Uniting U.S., India
No Delusions on What Russia Might Do
Democrats Plot Strategy on Missile Defense
Russia's Battered Military Internal Violence Illuminates Decay
U.S. Germ Warfare Review Urges Pullback From Talks
THE OUTRAGEOUS TRACK RECORD
Nuclear Energy Industry Reclaims Spotlight
Future use of the B-2 stealth bomber may not include nuclear weapons
Change in Plutonium Disposal Plan Draws Complaints
Bangor's in a nuclear league of its own
How to Lose Friends and Inspire Enemies

MILITARY
NATO Plans Increase in Kosovo Buffer
U.S. Germ Warfare Review Faults Plan on Enforcement
President advised on germ warfare
Taliban's Ban on Growing Opium Poppies Is Called a Success
Venezuela Seeks 'Strategic Alliance' with Iran
Recasting the Iraq Sanctions
Shimon Peres Defends Use of Force
Egypt, Jordan Back Peace Efforts
Saudi Crown Prince Hailed for Turning Down U.S. Visit
Hezbollah Rejects U.S. Contact
Military to evolve slowly
Rumsfeld on High Wire of Defense Reform

OTHER
Bright Ideas, All Along
Burn, Baby, Burn
Russia to Begin Overhaul of Electricity Industry
World Aid and Trade Accord Reached
Dam Project in Paraguay Mirrors Rift Over Riches

ACTIVISTS
A summer against Trident...


-------- NUCLEAR

Today In History

May 20
The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010519/aponline200058_000.htm

One year ago: The five nuclear powers on the U.N. Security Council agreed to eventually eliminate their nuclear arsenals, as part of a new disarmament agenda approved by 187 countries.

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THE SECRET NUCLEAR WAR

May 20, 2001,
The Ecologist
http://www.theecologist.org/nuke.html

The equivalent of a nuclear war has already happened. Over the last halfcentury, millions have died as a result of accidents, experiments, lies and coverups by the nuclear industry. Eduardo Goncalves pulls together a number of examples, and counts the fearful total cost.

Hugo Paulino was proud to be a fusilier. He was even prouder to be serving as a UN peacekeeper in Kosovo. It was his chance to help the innocent casualties of war. His parents did not expect him to become one. Hugo, says his father Luis, died of leukaemia caused by radiation from depleted uranium (DU) shells fired by NATO during the Kosovo war. He was one of hundreds of Portuguese peacekeepers sent to Klina, an area heavily bombed with these munitions. Their patrol detail included the local lorry park, bombed because it had served as a Serb tank reserve, and the Valujak mines, which sheltered Serbian troops. In their time off, the soldiers bathed in the river and gratefully supplemented their tasteless rations with local fruit and cheeses given to them by thankful nuns from the convent they guarded. Out of curiosity, they would climb inside the destroyed Serbian tanks littering the area. Hugo arrived back in Portugal from his tour of duty on 12 February 2000, complaining of headaches, nausea and 'flulike symptoms'. Ten days later, on 22 February, he suffered a major seizure. He was rushed to Lisbon's military hospital, where his condition rapidly deteriorated. On 9 March, he died. He was 21. The military autopsy, which was kept secret for 10 months, claimed his death was due to septicaemia and 'herpes of the brain'. Not so, says Luis Paulino. 'When he was undergoing tests, a doctor called me over and said he thought it could be from radiation.' It was only then that Luis learnt about the uranium shells ­ something his son had never been warned about or given protective clothing against. He contacted doctors and relatives of Belgian and Italian soldiers suspected of having succumbed to radiation poisoning. 'The similarities were extraordinary', he said. 'My son had died from leukaemia. That is why the military classified the autopsy report and wanted me to sign over all rights to its release.' Today, Kosovo is littered with destroyed tanks, and pieces of radioactive shrapnel. NATO forces fired 31,000 depleted uranium shells during the Kosovo campaign, and 10,800 into neighbouring Bosnia. The people NATO set out to protect ­ and the soldiers it sent out to protect them ­ are now dying. According to Bosnia's health minister, Boza Ljubic, cancer deaths among civilians have risen to 230 cases per 100,000 last year, up from 152 in 1999. Leukaemia cases, he added, had doubled. Scientists predict that the use of DU in Serbia will lead to more than 10,000 deaths from cancer among local residents, aid workers, and peacekeepers. Belated confessions that plutonium was also used may prompt these estimates to be revised. But while NATO struggles to stave off accusations of a coverup, the Balkans are merely the newest battlefield in a silent world war that has claimed millions of lives. Most of its victims have died not in warzones, but in ordinary communities scattered across the globe.

The hidden deaths of Newbury Far away from the wartorn Balkans is Newbury, a prosperous whitecollar industrial town in London's commuter belt. On its outskirts is Greenham Common, the former US Air Force station that was one of America's most important strategic bases during the Cold War. The base was closed down after the signing of the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) Treaty by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The nuclear threat was over. Or so people thought. In August 1993, Ann Capewell ­ who lived just one mile away from the base's former runway ­ died of acute myeloid leukaemia. She was 16 when she passed away, just 40 days after diagnosis. As they were coming to terms with their sudden loss, her parents ­ Richard and Elizabeth ­ were surprised to find a number of other cases of leukaemia in their locality. The more they looked, the more cases they found. 'Many were just a stone's throw from our front door,' says Richard, 'mainly cases of myeloid leukaemia in young people.' What none of them knew was that they were the victims of a nuclear accident at Greenham Common that had been carefully covered up by successive British and American administrations. On February 28 1958, a laden B47 nuclear bomber was awaiting clearance for takeoff when it was suddenly engulfed in a huge fireball. Another bomber flying overhead had dropped a full fuel tank just 65 feet away. The plane exploded and burnt uncontrollably for days. As did its deadly payload. A secret study by scientists at Britain's nearby nuclear bomb laboratory at Aldermaston documented the fallout, but the findings were never disclosed. The report showed how radioactive particles had been 'glued' to the runway surface by firefighters attempting to extinguish the blazing bomber ­ and that these were now being slowly blown into Newbury and over other local communities by aircraft jet blast. Virtually all the cases of leukaemias and lymphomas are in a band stretching from Greenham Common into south Newbury,' says Elizabeth. However, the British government continues to deny the cluster's existence, whilst the Americans still insist there was no accident. Yet this was just one of countless disasters, experiments and officially sanctioned activities which the nuclear powers have kept a closely guarded secret. Between them, they have caused a global human death toll which is utterly unprecedented and profoundly shocking.

Broken Arrows In 1981, the Pentagon publicly released a list of 32 'Broken Arrows' ­ official military terminology for an accident involving a nuclear weapon. The report gave few details and did not divulge the location of some accidents. It was prepared in response to mounting media pressure about possible accident coverups. But another US government document, this time secret, indicates that the official report may be seriously misleading. It states that 'a total of 1,250 nuclear weapons have been involved in accidents during handling, storage and transportation', a number of which 'resulted in, or had high potential for, plutonium dispersal.' Washington has never acknowledged the human consequences of even those few accidents it admits to, such as the Thule disaster in Greenland in 1968. When a B52 bomber crashed at this secret nuclear base, all four bombs detonated, and a cloud of plutonium rose 800 metres in the air, blowing deadly radioactive particles hundreds of miles. The authorities downplayed the possibility of any health risks. But today, many local Eskimos, and their huskies, suffer from cancer, and over 300 people involved in the cleanup operation alone have since died of cancer and mysterious illnesses. We may never know the true toll from all the bomb accidents, as the nuclear powers classify these disasters not as matters of public interest but of 'national security' instead. Indeed, it is only now that details are beginning to emerge of some accidents at bomb factories and nuclear plants that took place several decades ago.

Soviet sins In 1991, Polish filmmaker Slawomir Grunberg was invited to a little known town in Russia's Ural mountains that was once part of a topsecret Soviet nuclear bombmaking complex. What he found was a tragedy of extraordinary dimensions, largely unknown to the outside world, and ignored by postCold War leaders. His film ­ Chelyabinsk: The Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet ­ tells the story of the disasters at the Soviet Union's first plutonium factory, and the poisoning of hundreds of thousands of people. For years, the complex dumped its nuclear waste ­ totalling 76 million cubic metres ­ into the Techa River, the sole water source for scores of local communities that line its banks. According to a local doctor, people received an average radiation dose 57 times higher than that of Chernobyl's inhabitants. In 1957, there was an explosion at a waste storage facility that blew 2 million curies of radiation into the atmosphere. The kilometrehigh cloud drifted over three Soviet provinces, contaminating over 250,000 people living in 217 towns and villages. Only a handful of local inhabitants were ever evacuated. 10 years later, Lake Karachay, also used as a waste dump, began to dry up. The sediment around its shores blew 5 million curies of radioactive dust over 25,000 square kilometres, irradiating 500,000 people. Even today, the lake is so 'hot' that standing on its shore will kill a person within one hour. Grunberg's film tells of the terrible toll of these disasters on local families, such as that of Idris Sunrasin, whose grandmother, parents and three siblings have died of cancer. Leukaemia cases increased by 41 per cent after the plant began operations, and the average life span for women in 1993 was 47, compared to 72 nationally. For men it was just 45.

The secret nuclear war Russia's nuclear industry is commonly regarded as cavalier in regard to health and safety. But the fact is that the nuclear military industrial complex everywhere has been quite willing to deliberately endanger and sacrifice the lives of innocent civilians to further its ambitions. The US government, for example, recently admitted its nuclear scientists carried out over 4,000 experiments on live humans between 1944 and 1974. They included feeding radioactive food to disabled children, irradiating prisoners' testicles, and trials on newborn babies and pregnant mothers. Scientists involved with the Manhattan Project injected people with plutonium without telling them. An autopsy of one of the victims reportedly showed that his bones 'looked like Swiss cheese'. At the University of Cincinnati, 88 mainly lowincome, black women were subjected to huge doses of radiation in an experiment funded by the military. They suffered acute radiation sickness. Nineteen of them died.

The effect on people's lives: Luis Paulino (left) at a press conference following the death of his son, Hugo; Greenpeace protesters (right) pour concrete into a discharge pipe from the Aldermaston nuclear and weapons research facility.

Details of many experiments still remain shrouded in secrecy, whilst little is known of the more shocking ones to come to light ­ such as one when a man was injected with what a report described as 'about a lethal dose' of strontium89. In Britain too, scientists have experimented with plutonium on newborn babies, ethnic minorities and the disabled. When American colleagues reviewed a British proposal for a joint experiment, they concluded: 'What is the worst thing that can happen to a human being as a result of being a subject? Death.' They also conducted experiments similar to America's 'Green Run' programme, in which 'dirty' radiation was released over populated areas in the western states of Washington and Oregon contaminating farmland, crops and water. The 'scrubber' filters in Hanford's nuclear stacks were deliberately switched off first. Scientists, posing as agriculture department officials, found radiation contamination levels on farms hundreds of times above 'safety' levels. But America's farmers and consumers were not told this, and the British public has never been officially told about experiments on its own soil.

Forty thousand Hiroshimas It is believed that the estimated 1,900 nuclear tests conducted during the Cold War released fallout equivalent to 40,000 Hiroshimas in every corner of the globe. Fission products from the Nevada Test site can be detected in the ecosystems of countries as far apart as South Africa, Brazil, and Malaysia. Here, too, ordinary people were guinea pigs in a global nuclear experiment. The public health hazards were known right from the beginning, but concealed from the public. A 1957 US government study predicted that recent American tests had produced an extra 2,000 'genetically defective' babies in the US each year, and up to 35,000 every year around the globe. They continued regardless. Ernest Sternglass's research shows how, in 1964, between 10,000 and 15,000 children were lost by miscarriage and stillbirth in New York state alone ­ and that there were some 10 to 15 times this number of foetal deaths across America.

Scientists at St Andrew 's University recently found that cells exposed to a dose of just two alpha particles of radiation produced as many cancers as much higher doses of radiation. They concluded that a single alpha particle of radiation could be carcinogenic. Herman Muller, who has received a Nobel Prize for his work,has shown how the human race's continuous exposure to so called 'low-level' radiation is causing a gradual reduction in its ability to survive, as successive generations are genetically damaged. The spreading and accumulation of even tiny genetic mutations pass through family lines, provoking allergies, asthma, juvenile diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, high blood cholesterol conditions, and muscular and bone defects. Dr Chris Busby (right), who has extensively researched the low-level radiation threat, has made a link between everyday radiation exposure and a range of modern ailments: 'There have been tremendous increases in diseases resulting from the breakdown of the immune system in the last 20 years: diabetes,asthma, AIDS and others which may have an immune system link, such as MS and ME. A whole spectrum of neurological conditions of unknown origin has developed'. Around the world, a pattern is emerging. For the first time in modern history, mortality rates among adults between the ages of 15 and 54 are actually increasing,and have been since 1982. In July 1983, the US Center for Birth Defects in Atlanta, Georgia, reported that physical and mental disabilities in the under-17s had doubled despite a reduction in diseases such as polio, and improved vaccines and medical care. Defects in new born babies doubled between the 1950s and 1980s, as did long-term debilitating diseases. The US Environmental Protection Agency adds that 23 per cent of US males were sterile in 1980,compared to 0.5 per cent in 1938. Above all,cancer is now an epidemic.In 1900,cancer account- ed for only 4 per cent of deaths in the US. Now it is the second leading cause of premature mortality. Worldwide, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates the number of cancers will double in most countries over the next 25 years. Within a few years,the chances of getting cancer in Britain will be as high as 40 per cent virtually the toss of a coin.

Those who lived closest to the test sites have seen their families decimated. Such as the 100,000 people who were directly downwind of Nevada's fallout. They included the Mormon community of St George in Utah, 100 miles away from 'Ground Zero' ­ the spot where the bombs were detonated. Cancer used to be virtually unheard of among its population. Mormons do not smoke or drink alcohol or coffee, and live largely off their own homegrown produce. Mormons are also highly patriotic. They believe government to be 'Godgiven', and do not protest. The military could afford to wait until the wind was blowing from the test site towards St George before detonating a device. After all, President Eisenhower had said: 'We can afford to sacrifice a few thousand people out there in defence of national security.' When the leukaemia cases suddenly appeared, doctors ­ unused to the disease ­ literally had no idea what it was. A nineyearold boy, misdiagnosed with diabetes, died after a single shot of insulin. Women who complained of radiation sickness symptoms were told they had 'housewife syndrome'. Many gave birth to terribly deformed babies that became known as 'the sacrifice babies'. Elmer Pickett, the local mortician, had to learn new embalming techniques for the small bodies of wasted children killed by leukaemia. He himself was to lose no fewer than 16 members of his immediate family to cancer. By the mid1950s, just a few years after the tests began, St George had a leukaemia rate 2.5 times the national average, whereas before it was virtually nonexistent. The total number of radiation deaths are said to have totalled 1,600 ­ in a town with a population of just 5,000. The military simply lied about the radiation doses people were getting. Former army medic Van Brandon later revealed how his unit kept two sets of radiation readings for test fallout in the area. 'One set was to show that no one received an [elevated] exposure' whilst 'the other set of books showed the actual reading. That set was brought in a locked briefcase every morning.'

Continuous fallout The world's population is still being subjected to the continuous fallout of the 170 megatons of longlived nuclear fission products blasted into the atmosphere and returned daily to earth by wind and rain ­ slowly poisoning our bodies via the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink. Scientists predict that millions will die in centuries to come from tests that happened in the 1950s and 1960s.

Lost dreams: Ann Capewell, who succumbed to acute myeloid leukaemia aged 16, and the plant at Sellafield near where she lived.

But whilst atmospheric testing is now banned, over 400 nuclear bomb factories and power plants around the world make 'routine discharges' of nuclear waste into the environment. Thousands of nuclear waste dumping grounds, many of them leaking, are contaminating soil and water every day. The production of America's nuclear weapons arsenal alone has produced 100 million cubic metres of longlived radioactive waste. The notorious Hanford plutonium factory ­ which produced the fissile materials for the Trinity test and Nagasaki bomb ­ has discharged over 440 billion gallons of contaminated liquid into the surrounding area, contaminating 200 square miles of groundwater, but concealed the dangers from the public. Officials knew as early as the late 1940s that the nearby Columbia River was becoming seriously contaminated and a hazard to local fishermen. They chose to keep information about discharges secret and not to issue warnings. In Britain, there are 7,000 sites licensed to use nuclear materials, 1,000 of which are allowed to discharge wastes. Three of them, closely involved in Britain's nuclear bomb programme, are located near the River Thames. Over the years, the Harwell, Aldermaston and Amersham plants have pumped millions of gallons of liquid contaminated with radioactive waste into the river. They did so in the face of opposition from government ministers and officials who said 'the 6 million inhabitants of London derive their drinking water from this source. Any increase in [radio]activity of the water supply would increase the genetic load on this comparatively large group.' One government minister even wrote of his fears that the dumping 'would produce between 10 and 300 severely abnormal individuals per generation'. Public relations officers at Harwell themselves added: 'the potential sufferers are 8 million in number, including both Houses of Parliament, Fleet Street and Whitehall'. These discharges continue to this day. Study after study has uncovered 'clusters' of cancers and high rates of other unusual illnesses near nuclear plants, including deformities and Down Syndrome. Exposure to radiation among Sellafield's workers, in northwest England, has been linked to a greater risk of fathering a stillborn child and leukaemia among offspring. Reports also suggest a higher risk of babies developing spina bifida in the womb. Although the plant denies any link, even official MAFF studies have shown high levels of contamination in locallygrown fruit and vegetables, as well as wild animals. The pollution from Sellafield alone is such that it has coated the shores of the whole of Britain ­ from Wales to Scotland, and even Hartlepool in northeastern England. A nationwide study organised by Harwell found that Sellafield 'is a source of plutonium contamination in the wider population of the British Isles'. Those who live nearest the plant face the greatest threat. A study of autopsy tissue by the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) found high plutonium levels in the lungs of local Cumbrians ­ 350 per cent higher than people in other parts of the country. Cancer clusters' have been found around nuclear plants across the globe ­ from France to Taiwan, Germany to Canada. A joint White House/US Department of Energy investigation recently found a high incidence of 22 different kinds of cancer at 14 different US nuclear weapons facilities around the country. Meanwhile, a Greenpeace USA study of the toxicity of the Mississippi river showed that from 196883 there were 66,000 radiation deaths in the counties lining its banks ­ more than the number of Americans who died during the Vietnam war.

Don't blame us Despite the growing catalogue of tragedy, the nuclear establishment has consistently tried to deny responsibility. It claims that only high doses of radiation ­ such as those experienced by the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs ­ are dangerous, though even here they have misrepresented the data. They say that the everyday doses from nuclear plant discharges, bomb factories and transportation of radioactive materials are 'insignificant', and that accidents are virtually impossible. The truth, however, is that the real number and seriousness of accidents has never been disclosed, and that the damage from fallout has been covered up. The nuclear establishment now grudgingly (and belatedly) accepts that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation, however 'low', yet the poisonous discharges continue. When those within the nuclear establishment try to speak out, they are harassed, intimidated ­ and even threatened. John Gofman, former head of Lawrence Livermore's biomedical unit, who helped produce the world's first plutonium for the bomb, was for years at the heart of the nuclear complex. He recalls painfully the time he was called to give evidence before a Congressional inquiry set up to defuse mounting concern over radiation's dangers. 'Chet Holifield and Craig Hosmer of the Joint Committee (on Atomic Energy) came in and turned to me and said: Just what the hell do you think you two are doing, getting all those little old ladies in tennis shoes up in arms about our atomic energy program? There are people like you who have tried to hurt the Atomic Energy Commission program before. We got them, and we'll get you.Ó' Gofman was eventually forced out of his job. But the facts of his research ­ and that of many other scientists ­ speak for themselves.

The final reckoning But could radiation really be to blame for these deaths? Are the health costs really that great? The latest research suggests they are. It is only very recently that clues have surfaced as to the massive destructive power of radiation in terms of human health. The accident at Chernobyl will kill an estimated half a million people worldwide from cancer, and perhaps more. 90 per cent of children in the neighbouring former Soviet republic of Belarus are contaminated for life ­ the poisoning of an entire country's gene pool. Ernest Sternglass calculates that, at the height of nuclear testing, there were as many as 3 million foetal deaths, spontaneous abortions and stillbirths in the US alone. In addition, 375,000 babies died in their first year of life from radiationlinked diseases. Rosalie Bertell, author of the classic book No Immediate Danger, now revised and rereleased, has attempted to piece together a global casualty list from the nuclear establishment's own data. The figures she has come up with are chilling ­ but entirely plausible. Using the official 'radiation risk' estimates published in 1991 by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and the total radiation exposure data to the global population calculated by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) in 1993, she has come up with a terrifying tally: ¥ 358 million cancers from nuclear bomb production and testing ¥ 9.7 million cancers from bomb and plant accidents ¥ 6.6 million cancers from the 'routine discharges' of nuclear power plants (5 million of them among populations living nearby). ¥ As many as 175 million of these cancers could be fatal. Added to this number are no fewer than 235 million genetically damaged and diseased people, and a staggering 588 million children born with what are called 'teratogenic effects' ­ diseases such as brain damage, mental disabilities, spina bifida, genital deformities, and childhood cancers. Furthermore, says Bertell, we should include 'the problem of nonfatal cancers and of other damage which is debilitating but not counted for insurance and liability purposes' ­ such as the 500 million babies lost as stillbirths because they were exposed to radiation whilst still in the womb, but are not counted as 'official' radiation victims. It is what the nuclear holocaust peace campaigners always warned of if war between the old superpowers broke out, yet it has already happened and with barely a shot being fired. Its toll is greater than that of all the wars in history put together, yet noone is counted as among the war dead. Its virtually infinite killing and maiming power leads Rosalie Bertell to demand that we learn a new language to express a terrifying possibility: 'The concept of species annihilation means a relatively swift, deliberately induced end to history, culture, science, biological reproduction and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the gift of life, an act which requires a new word to describe it: omnicide'.

Eduardo Goncalves is a freelance journalist and environmental researcher. He is author of the reports Broken Arrow ­ Greenham Common's Secret Nuclear Accident and Nuclear Guinea Pigs ­ British Human Radiation Experiments, published by CND (UK), and was researcher to the film The Dragon that Slew St George. He is currently writing a book about the hidden history of the nuclear age.

In 1998 The Ecologist published an article by Terry Tempest Williams. Titled The Clan of OneBreasted Women, it is the author's account of her Utah Mormon family who one by one succumbed to cancer after military atomic testing in the Utah desert between 1951 and 1962. (See The Ecologist (printed version) Vol 28 No 2)

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New Technology Enlisted to Save Aircraft Carrier

May 20, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/national/20NAVY.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, May 18 - With the Pentagon undergoing a major review of its global military strategy, the aircraft carrier, the backbone of the United States Navy since World War II and the very symbol of American military power abroad, is finding itself under siege.

The threat comes not from a rival navy, but from a group of influential military thinkers who argue that carriers are becoming too costly, too slow and too vulnerable for modern warfare. Their advice to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld: reduce the number of carriers in the fleet or stop producing new ones.

But such ideas are akin to a declaration of war to the Navy's top leadership, where carrier commanders and aviators hold immense sway. And now, the Navy's top brass has rolled out new technology to save the favored old war horse that has served it so well, from the Battle of Midway to the Persian Gulf war.

This month, the Navy completed testing on a new communications technology born in secrecy more than a decade ago that ties together the radar systems of far-flung ships and planes. With it, ships will be able to detect enemy aircraft and cruise missiles sooner, track then more accurately and potentially shoot them down more consistently than ever before, the Navy asserts.

If all goes as planned, the Navy hopes to begin deploying the technology - known as cooperative engagement capability - in carriers early next year, with the goal of outfitting all 12 carrier battle groups by 2010.

In that way, the Navy argues, the new could save the old. Not just the carrier, but all warships will be transformed from yesterday's technology into cutting-edge weapons, more lethal to enemy aircraft and less vulnerable to the kinds of increasingly accurate, sea-skimming supersonic missiles that Russia, China and possibly other nations have in their arsenals, top Navy officials say.

"C.E.C. isn't just about protecting the carrier," said Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations. "This is the next evolution in technology: shared data streams dramatically improving the probability of kill."

At a time when President Bush has urged the Pentagon to "skip a generation" of weapons, the Navy's new technology typifies efforts by all the services to keep their favored cold war-vintage weapons and strategies from becoming obsolete.

The Marine Corps is developing a faster amphibious vehicle for beach landings. The Army is trying to build a more powerful, faster-loading mobile artillery system. And the Air Force wants to buy hundreds of stealthy fighter jets.

But advocates of sweeping change in the military say those kinds of weapons are legacies of the past. They contend that the Pentagon should be spending its money on unmanned aircraft and submarines, space weapons or information technology to help aircraft, ships and soldiers cut through the fog of battle.

"You can't say the things we said and not expect to see fewer carriers, fewer short-range fighter aircraft, fewer Crusaders," said John Hillen, a military analyst who helped write Mr. Bush's campaign speech calling for "skip a generation" technology.

Navy officials worry that such analysts are particularly influential with Mr. Rumsfeld. One of them, Andrew W. Marshall, has written a strategic review for the secretary that warns about the increasing accuracy of cruise missiles, which pose a major threat to carriers. And a disciple of Mr. Marshall, Andrew Krepinevich, who is also helping on Mr. Rumsfeld's policy reviews, has recommended that the Navy eliminate two carrier groups.

Mr. Rumsfeld, a former Navy aviator whose father worked on an aircraft carrier in World War II, says he has made no decisions yet. But he brushes aside suggestions that carriers have become obsolete.

"We're going to have aircraft carriers for a long time," Mr. Rumsfeld said in a recent interview.

Carriers are also under attack because they cost so much to build, $5 billion each. And a battle group - typically, a carrier, six surface combatant ships, an attack submarine, a supply ship or two and a 70-aircraft fighter wing - costs more than $1 billion a year to maintain, Congressional analysts say.

The Navy has nearly completed its newest nuclear-powered carrier, the Ronald Reagan, and has plans to bring another one, CVN-77, into the fleet by 2008. And Congress last year approved $21 million in development money for a new generation of carriers known as CVNX.

Some of his advisers are urging Mr. Rumsfeld to cancel or delay CVNX, and to end the policy of keeping a carrier group in the Mediterranean. Those advisers recommend gradually replacing carriers with submarines or destroyers that are able to launch long-range cruise missiles at a fraction of the cost.

But such ideas infuriate top Navy officers who tend to equate the carrier with naval power itself. They are not alone in that view. Since the great Pacific battles of World War II, most presidents have viewed carriers as the most effective way to project American power into almost any corner of the globe.

"When there's a crisis, the president asks, `Where are the carriers?' " said Thomas Donnelly, deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century, a conservative policy group that has been critical of carriers. "This is not something that you can change overnight."

To its advocates, cooperative engagement capability is the ideal response to the carrier's critics. On one hand, it is the kind of new technology that futurists like Mr. Marshall have been advocating, using radar and other sensors to give soldiers, pilots and ship commanders better awareness of what the enemy is doing.

On the other hand, it is relatively inexpensive by Pentagon standards; outfitting an entire carrier battle group would cost about $75 million. That is because the technology uses existing radar systems, linked by special antennas, computers and software. Since 1994, the Pentagon has spent slightly more than $600 million developing the system.

The new technology allows every ship in a battle group to share radar information, including from the powerful Aegis systems. That composite picture is more accurate, and covers a far larger area, than the radar on any single ship. Ships can already share radar data, but transmission delays in conventional equipment make the information ineffective for tracking supersonic planes or missiles. With the new technology, ships share radar data almost instantaneously. That means that if a ship's radar is being jammed, or if terrain or weather conditions cause its radar to "fade," it will still be able to track, and therefore shoot down, an attacker using the composite picture provided by other ships.

The Navy says, carrier groups will also be able to detect incoming missiles and aircraft before they have crossed the horizon, enabling them possibly to get more than one shot at downing them. "Instead of a few seconds to make a decision, they will have tens of seconds," said Conrad J. Grant of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, which has helped develop the defensive shield with the Navy. "That could make all the difference."

The Navy contends that the new technology could become part of a ballistic missile defense system or be linked to land-based weapons. And Pentagon officials say the technology will allow the Navy to replace some planes used to defend a carrier with attack fighters, giving the battle group more offensive might.

Mr. Krepinevich, while an admirer of C.E.C., says the technology is no panacea, because it will not protect carriers from submarines, mines or cruise missiles fired in swarms.

"The carrier isn't going the way of the horse cavalry," Mr. Krepinevich said. "But it is time that the Navy develops other options."

-------- missile defense

Missile Defense May Not Bring Jobs

MAY 20, 20:44 EST
By ANDREW BRIDGES
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7C46D800

LOS ANGELES (AP) - While pie-in-the-sky to critics, President Bush's missile defense plan could deliver billions of dollars to a handful of states as the Pentagon moves to develop the system.

However, spending on the multifaceted program would create fewer jobs than other lucrative defense contracts that regularly buoy the economies of states like California and Texas, analysts say.

Instead of jobs, the money would fund highly focused research and development efforts and later lead to ``boutique'' production of the small number of aircraft, rockets, lasers, radar and satellites that would make up the system designed to intercept and destroy incoming missiles.

Although far more advanced technologically, the work would require less labor than more traditional, large-ticket defense projects, like the production of aircraft, ships or tanks.

``They're not bending a lot of metal,'' William Hartung, a senior fellow with New York's World Policy Institute said about the missile defense program. ``The same amounts of money might not generate as many jobs as previous defense contracts.''

Nor might the money - perhaps as much as $200 billion over the next few decades - flow to as many states, since consolidation in the defense industry has left fewer companies positioned to do the work.

``Where you might have had five choices to send a contract to, and geography might have ruled, today you might have only two choices,'' said Jon Kutler, chairman and chief executive officer of Quarterdeck Investment Partners, a Los Angeles investment bank focused on the aerospace and defense industries.

Hartung said analysis of past missile defense contracts show two-thirds of the work went to just four firms: The Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Co. and TRW Inc.

Although all four have facilities scattered throughout the United States, work on developing the missile defense program is likely to stay highly focused in only a few states. That means politics may have little to do with where the contracts eventually go.

``I don't think it's going to have a lot to do with Republicans or Democrats. There's going to be a small number of people who can do it, and they'll get the contracts,'' said Martin Anderson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute who advised Bush on missile defense during his campaign.

In fiscal 2000, 42 states shared $2.4 billion in unclassified missile defense contracts. However, just three - Alabama, California and Virginia - captured 83 percent of that total, according to Eagle Eye Publishers Inc.

``That's a highly stratified market,'' said Paul Murphy, president of the Fairfax, Va. company, which crunches government contract data.

Total spending, classified and unclassified, on the program could hit $5 billion this year. That number could increase in the next several months, when the Bush administration announces how it intends to proceed with the program, said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Rick Lehner.

Even if annual spending on missile defense doubles, as some predict, it will not necessarily translate into a net increase in military spending.

``I'd expect there would be some element of a zero-sum game to this: The money you spend on this program will come at the expense of other programs,'' Quarterdeck's Kutler said.

If money to fund missile defense should come from the budgets of traditional weapons programs, it could benefit California, since little of that current work is done in the state.

``Anything that shifts from traditional platforms to space, to electronics, to rockets is probably advantageous to California,'' said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

Even limited amounts of spending could lift the lagging defense industry in Southern California, which has shed 200,000 workers in Los Angeles and Orange counties alone over the past 15 years.

``You're not going to create as many jobs, but the jobs you do create will be great jobs,'' said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the nonprofit Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

----

Missile Defense Plan Is Uniting U.S., India
Americans Hint at Possibly Lifting Sanctions

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign
Service Sunday, May 20, 2001; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50483-2001May19?language=printer

NEW DELHI, May 19 -- Three years after India exploded five nuclear devices in the Rajasthan Desert, triggering U.S. economic and military sanctions, the two countries are finding common ground on nuclear policy that Indian officials hope will lead to a full-fledged strategic partnership.

The unexpected turnaround is a result of President Bush's proposal for a missile defense system, which Indian authorities have greeted enthusiastically, in sharp contrast to skepticism from U.S. allies and antagonists alike.

At the same time, U.S. officials are hinting strongly that the Bush administration might reduce or lift sanctions Congress imposed after India conducted the nuclear tests in May 1998. Next-door Pakistan quickly staged its own tests, setting off Western fears of a nuclear arms race on the volatile subcontinent.

Now, after decades of wary relations because of India's tilt toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and months of fruitless negotiations on nuclear nonproliferation, India and the United States seem equally eager to turn a new leaf.

"The commitment of the Bush administration to build [a missile defense program] has opened the door for substantive cooperation between India and the U.S. to build a new global security order," C. Raja Mohan, a pro-government columnist, wrote in the newspaper The Hindu. "A moment may be at hand now to put behind the wasted decades of the past and begin to [build] an Indo-U.S. security partnership."

Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, echoed this upbeat assessment when he visited here May 11 -- coincidentally, the third anniversary of India's first nuclear test -- to consult with Indian officials on the missile defense proposal.

[ET's Note: On May 22, the Post published the following correction: "A May 20 article incorrectly referred to May 11 as the third anniversary of India's first nuclear test. India first tested a nuclear device on May 18, 1974."]

"It should be quite clear . . . that we are on the verge of moving forward with our relationship," Armitage said, noting that he had been "sent here so quickly . . . to consult with our friends" on the issue, and that Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will visit India next month.

Relations between New Delhi and Washington have been warming since last year, when President Bill Clinton made a cordial one-week tour. But his emphasis was on trade and economic ties, because Washington was still uneasy about India's nuclear policy and frustrated by its refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Now, a new administration in Washington has indicated that it wants to radically revamp the existing nuclear order, veering away from the nonproliferation emphasis that had frustrated endless rounds of U.S.-India negotiations and focusing on missile defenses against smaller nations considered potential threats by the United States.

Although other governments, and critics in India, have expressed concern that the missile defense proposal could undo arms control agreements and aggravate nuclear insecurity, Indian officials hailed it as a "far-reaching" concept that could "make a clean break with the past" and overcome the "adversarial legacy" of the Cold War.

Analysts said India had several motives in welcoming Washington's proposal. It has long sought global prestige as a major democracy and emerging nuclear power, and it is eager to have the U.S. sanctions lifted and to gain a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Moreover, India is keen to replace Pakistan, its neighboring rival and a Cold War-era ally of the United States, as Washington's strategic partner in the region.

But while U.S. officials are inclined to lift the sanctions, they have stressed that this would not be a quid pro quo for India's support of missile defense. They have questioned the political usefulness of sanctions in general and have said they might end similar sanctions imposed on Pakistan after its nuclear tests.

Some Indian experts said that beyond missile defense, Bush's recent proposal on nuclear policy contains basic principles that India has long endorsed, such as the need to reduce nuclear arsenals and the argument that mutually assured destruction -- the mantra of Cold War nuclear policy -- was not the correct approach to limiting nuclear dangers.

"It is a godsend for India to open this debate," said Uday Bhaskar, an Indian air force officer and deputy director of the Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis. "India is a reluctant nuclear power, and we aspire to global disarmament. If the major powers can set a new discourse, the idea of missile defense may make sense for us, too."

Not everyone here shares this enthusiasm. Many in India's establishment have expressed indignation at New Delhi's rush to embrace Bush's space-based plan. Critics pointed out that just a year ago Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said his government strongly opposed the "militarization of space." Since a successful visit to Washington last month, however, Singh has been at the forefront of welcoming the Bush plan.

"We have unnecessarily given the impression that we are kowtowing to America," said Natwar Singh, a former foreign minister and senior leader of the opposition Congress party. "Why did we jump the gun? Even the U.S. doesn't know what final shape this will take. The shifting of our nuclear strategic policy without national debate is very dangerous."

Some Indian experts worry that the missile defense program would unleash a regional nuclear arms race by provoking China, a longtime adversary of India, into rapidly developing its nuclear arsenal. They envision a chain reaction in which India would ratchet up its nuclear capability in response, and Pakistan would then do the same.

Antinuclear activists in India strongly oppose missile defense. The Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace called on India to vigorously oppose the U.S. plan, adding, "this is the least that the nation of Buddha and Gandhi can do."

Antinuclear groups have also demanded that India roll back its own nuclear program and have said the decision to test nuclear weapons was a serious mistake. They said the 1999 border conflict between Indian troops and Pakistan-based guerrillas in the Kargil region of the Himalayas proved that India's nuclear status could not deter conventional conflict or enhance regional security, as Indian officials claimed.

Even some hawkish analysts expressed concern that India has made little progress since 1998 in defining its nuclear capability and policy. The government has pledged to refrain from further tests and first use of nuclear weapons against an enemy, but it has not produced a formal nuclear doctrine or a detailed outline of its nuclear operational structure.

"Three years after the tests, we still haven't gotten our act together," complained Bhaskar. India's security establishment, he said, has a "deep-seated distaste for nuclear weapons. It's like a squeamish father at childbirth. He wants to benefit from the results, but he doesn't want to know the details."

Special correspondent Rama Lakshmi contributed to this report.

----

No Delusions on What Russia Might Do

Sunday, May 20, 2001
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48187-2001May19?language=printer

George Will [op-ed, May 10] misinterpreted my concerns regarding the potentially dangerous consequences of U.S. national missile defenses for our relations with Russia. He wrote that I "evidently [think] Russia will respond to U.S. defenses by multiplying its ICBMs." My concern is not so much that Russia would attempt to build a significant number of new missiles, which it cannot afford. It is that Russia would cease dismantling existing missiles and warheads and pose a greater risk of nuclear proliferation.

Moscow has indicated that it might respond to U.S. abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty by no longer adhering to nuclear reductions under the START I and II treaties. It could suspend the highly successful Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which has deactivated more than 5,000 nuclear warheads and destroyed more than 500 nuclear missiles. Russia could retain weapons, warheads and tons of nuclear materials that are scheduled to be dismantled.

The danger of such a course was highlighted by a bipartisan task force on nonproliferation led by former Senate majority leader Howard Baker and former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler. They concluded that the threat of Russian nuclear weapons and materials falling into the hands of nations or terrorist groups hostile to America is "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today."

Mr. Will asked whether I think decisions on U.S. missile defense "should be controlled by" Russia. Of course not: No foreign nation can ever hold a veto over efforts to increase our security. But neither should we hold any delusions about the potentially dangerous actions other nations may pursue in the face of unilateral U.S. missile defenses.

CARL LEVIN
U.S. Senator (D-Mich.)
Washington

----

Democrats Plot Strategy on Missile Defense
Lawmakers to Take Aim at Technological, Financial Aspects of Global Shield Plan

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 20, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46660-2001May18?language=printer

In closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill this month, Democratic members of Congress have been honing a response to President Bush's call for a global shield against ballistic missiles. Their strategy is not to attack the idea of missile defense, but to question whether the technology works and whether the diplomatic and financial trade-offs are worthwhile.

Party leaders believe this message has two major strengths: It mirrors voters' practical concerns, as shown by opinion polls, and it maintains unity in Democratic ranks. If that unity continues, they predict, they will be able to derail, delay or modify whatever concrete plan the administration eventually unveils.

"On whether or not it's ultimately desirable to pursue [missile defense], there's some division" among Democratic lawmakers, said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). "But there's overwhelming agreement . . . that a major financial commitment at this point is a mistake."

Frank was one of 12 House Democrats who gathered in the office of Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) to begin hashing out their strategy May 3, just two days after Bush gave a major speech on missile defense at the National Defense University.

The issue had the potential to split the party's hawks and doves. But instead, all of the Democratic lawmakers at that first meeting -- from the liberal Frank to the more conservative Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) -- agreed they could take aim at Bush's speech and avoid the pitfall of looking soft on defense, participants said. One called Bush's vague plan a new Maginot Line, comparing it to the French fortifications that created a false sense of security and were easily circumvented by Germany in the first year of World War II.

"This knits together our pro-defense people with our more liberal doves," said a source close to Gephardt. "They come at it from different ways, but even our most pro-defense people think that A: The technology doesn't work yet, and B: The money is not there."

Most Democrats also argue for trying to amend, rather than abrogate, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. They say that scrapping the treaty, which Bush called outdated, would erode trust with Moscow and perhaps encourage the Russians to keep their nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.

The first test of Democratic unity will come when the Bush administration seeks money to start construction of the first elements of a missile defense system. One possibility is a request for money to break ground at Alaska's Shemya Island, which would be used for long-range radar. At that point, the administration might be able to peel off some Democrats, many of whom back the idea of a limited missile defense system and most of whom support continued research and development.

Nearly 100 Democratic experts on defense and foreign policy have formed a group called Americans for Forward Engagement. They have made nuclear weapons issues, including missile defense, their first priority and have been advising members of Congress.

Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) also has met recently with senators, House members and former Clinton administration officials to plot strategy on missile defense. One senator said he wanted to avoid leaving himself open to a 30-second campaign attack ad that would say he voted to leave San Francisco exposed to nuclear annihilation. But most Democrats see relatively little danger in criticizing Bush's plan at this point.

"The number of people who have stopped me in the street and said, 'The North Koreans are coming!' is quite small," Frank said. "More people are worried about gasoline prices. More people in public housing are worried about drug crime."

Skelton, with two military bases in his district, is more hawkish than Frank but still is skeptical of Bush's pledge to build a worldwide missile shield, possibly including weapons based on land, at sea and in space. "I'm not opposed to [missile defense] at all. I just think we should take a deep breath and treat it like other weapons systems: Don't rush to judgment," Skelton said. "To deploy something that doesn't work is not the right thing for the American people. Who's going to argue about that?"

A January Washington Post-ABC News opinion poll of 1,513 adults supports Frank's and Skelton's assessment of the electorate. Asked whether they favor building a system designed to protect the United States from missiles, 80 percent said yes. But when various qualifications were added to the question, support plummeted.

If the system were to cost $60 billion to $100 billion, support dropped to 45 percent and opposition grew to 47 percent. Asked whether they would support missile defense if scientists raised doubts about whether it ever could completely protect the United States, supporters outnumbered opponents 50 percent to 44 percent.

If missile defense were to lead to a new arms race, 45 percent said they would support it; 49 percent were opposed. Asked how they would feel about the system if it broke a treaty with Russia, respondents who support missile defense plunged to 37 percent, with 56 percent opposed.

The Bush administration's push for a tax cut also could complicate the case for missile defense. With a big government surplus, the question for lawmakers would have been whether they favored missile defense at all. But after a $1.35 trillion, 11-year tax cut, the question may become whether they support missile defense vs. something else.

"They have exacerbated this by not budgeting for this," Frank said. "Once it becomes clear what the implications of the tax cut are, people are going to feel more threatened by illness, by hazardous waste, whatever -- all of which are going to have to back off for this."

Skelton worries about possible trade-offs with other military programs. "We have the finest military in the world today," he said. "I would hope the research and development money for this would not dig into the dollars we need to keep our ships afloat and armies deployed."

Other Democratic foreign-policy experts say Bush, by focusing on missile defense, is already ignoring more likely threats. One example: The administration's budget proposes a cut in money for the Nunn-Lugar program, which helps Russia dismantle old nuclear weapons and safeguard the weapons materials.

Another concern is whether the administration is doing enough to guard against weapons of mass destruction that might be delivered in a car, suitcase or boat. "I think we're looking at this from the wrong end of the telescope. We have our priorities wrong," a former government official said. "We're going to spend $100 billion or $200 billion on this and believe that we have security when the real vulnerability is not being addressed."

But a Democratic Senate staffer said that at some point, congressional Democrats will have to forge their own position, rather than criticize Bush's, and that could prove difficult. "It's much more easy to be against what might be proposed than to craft a clear, affirmative message," he said.

The Democratic position has shifted since 1999, when the Senate voted 97 to 3 to endorse a national missile defense system. That came after a long-range missile test by North Korea. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) was one of the co-sponsors of the measure.

"There was kind of a bipartisan fever on this, and the only question was not whether, but what," said the former government official. "On the Democratic side of the Hill, the fulcrum has shifted from 'I've got to be for this because I can't be against it' to . . . a greater desire to ask harder questions."

Those questions, he said, include: Will it work? Will it stimulate an arms race in Asia, with China adding to its arsenal and followed by responses by Japan, South Korea and India? Will Europe pay to be included in a missile defense system? And, if not, will the United States pay for Europe or allow a divergence between U.S. and European security?

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speaking at a May 10 meeting of the World Affairs Council, said, "The overarching question is whether a national missile defense will make our country more secure, or less so."

-------- russia

Russia's Battered Military Internal Violence Illuminates Decay

By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 20, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46641-2001May18?language=printer

MOSCOW -- Sgt. Sergei Ivanov, a handsome 21-year-old with a deep indentation over his left brow, has gotten better in the half year he has spent in military and civilian hospitals. He can answer simple questions now with a yes or no. He can tell his mother when he is tired and when he wants to walk the hospital corridor.

He has never asked how he ended up like this, and his mother, Tatiana Ivanova, is afraid to bring it up. The doctor warned her that recalling the incident might trigger a setback for Sergei.

She can't forget it, not for a moment. As his fellow soldiers explained it to her, Sgt. Ivanov, of military unit 25654 stationed in the southern Russian city of Georgievsk, was sick that day. He was lying on his cot in the barracks, nursing a fever, when the commanding officer, a major, walked in. Music was playing on a cassette player near the bed. The major ordered it turned off, but Sergei did not hear him.

The major beat him so badly he was in a coma for three days. The doctor warned his mother he might not survive. It was Oct. 21, two weeks before he was to complete his two years of army service and be discharged.

As ruinous as his condition is, it could have been far worse. On condition of anonymity, Russian military officials acknowledged in interviews this month that roughly 500 servicemen are killed every year by officers or comrades. In the U.S. armed forces, with 40 percent more people, there were 28 murders in 1998, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

The real murder rate among Russian military is suspected to be even higher because, as military prosecutors concede, some killings are falsely reported as suicides. Some parents discover the truth by opening the sealed coffins delivered to them for burial.

The spread of violence in army barracks is part of a much larger tale of the Russian military's decay. In late 1994, Pavel Grachev, then the defense minister, described the Russian army as the most neglected military force in the world. Conditions have deteriorated since.

Equipment is decrepit, training is inadequate and the conscripts, increasingly, are society's rejects. If military budgets are divided by the number of personnel, Russia ranks at the bottom of major countries, behind even Turkey and India, according to Alexei Arbatov, deputy chairman of the defense committee in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. Russia's military budget is equivalent to about $4,000 per serviceman per year, compared with $180,000 per serviceman in the United States, according to Arbatov.

A soldier's pay is about a dollar a month. Soldiers are sometimes forced to ask townspeople for toothbrushes and soap, or work in local shops in exchange for supplies. Officers moonlight driving taxis and loading trucks. Officials acknowledge theft is a problem at all levels of the military.

The military is at only about 80 percent of its authorized strength, according to experts, because most eligible conscripts either bribe their way out of the draft or are exempted. Several thousand soldiers desert every year, and military prosecutors, knowing the conditions, are reluctant to punish them. The suicide rate quoted by Russian military officials is four times higher than in the U.S. armed forces.

Arbatov contends the army has not been this close to ruin since the start of World War II.

"Any other army under these conditions would have rebelled," Dmitri Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Center, said in an interview.

The Russian army doesn't, in the view of Trenin and others, because of a vestige of Soviet-era military pride. The military campaign in Chechnya shows both the strength of this heritage and the depravity that thrives in a military short on discipline. Russian soldiers have plugged away unsuccessfully in the rebellious southern region for 20 months, despite a loss officially estimated at about 3,100 troops. At the same time, their treatment of Chechen civilians -- described by human rights groups as wholesale looting, rape and murder -- has helped dash chances of peace.

Low-paid, poorly disciplined troops also are deployed to operate the submarines, warplanes and rockets that carry Russia's superpower-size arsenal of nuclear weapons. While some troops who handle nuclear weapons are better paid and considered to be elite -- such as the Strategic Rocket Forces -- the strains also have been evident among them. Wives of rocket forces troops in Siberia blocked the road to the missile silos in 1998 to protest unpaid wages.

To many experts, it is clear that Russia can no longer maintain a massive army and must reconstitute it as a smaller, volunteer, professional force designed mostly for regional conflicts. But that would require Russia to give up its posture as a military counterweight to the West. And that concept, however hollow, is still enshrined in its military doctrine and strategic plans.

"The only way for Russia to have military reform is to say we are not willing to fight the West, ever," said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst. "Our real threats are elsewhere. But to be an ally of the West is of course to be a junior partner. And Russia is still in the posture of counterbalancing the United States, a country with a defense budget of $300 billion. It's hopeless."

The Russian military fell to pauper level under former president Boris Yeltsin. It shrank from 2.7 million to 1.2 million troops, and its budget shrank faster. Though Yeltsin signed decrees requiring an all-volunteer force by last year, and spoke of the need to modernize, his basic strategy was to leave the military alone in exchange for its loyalty.

President Vladimir Putin is politically stronger, and better positioned to revamp the military. In September, he ordered the armed forces reduced by almost one-third over three years. His defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, last week promised to raise military pay and reiterated the goal of a professional, volunteer force. But he said the changeover could take a decade or more.

Sins of 'Grandfathers'

Alexei Dolnev, a 6-foot-2-inch 19-year-old with wide-set blue eyes, had heard some appalling stories about the army before he was drafted two years ago. He was still willing to go, even maybe to become an officer. His grandfather, father and mother all served in the army. His mother, Galina, was all for it. "I wanted him to get wiser, to become a real man," said the 47-year-old bank employee in an interview in her Moscow apartment.

In his training unit, Dolnev said, his supervisors warned him of what was to come: Once transferred to a regular division, he would have to confront the "grandfathers," second-year soldiers renowned for their practice of dedovshina, or physical abuse and humiliation of younger conscripts.

In the worst units, the grandfathers create a prison-style atmosphere, minus the guards. Conscripts are stripped of their watches, money and packages from home. And when the officers aren't around, they become punching bags, either for the older soldiers' entertainment or as a crude form of discipline. Every month, staff at Mothers of Soldiers, a Moscow-based organization dedicated to soldiers' rights, fill up another red plastic three-ring binder with painstakingly handwritten complaints about the abuses.

Col. Sergei Deineko, of the Russian military prosecutor's office in Moscow, said every reported case of dedovshina is vigorously investigated. But many commanders cover up incidents. Even so, Deineko said, military prosecutors investigate about 2,000 cases a year.

Barring an all-volunteer force, Deineko and other officials from the prosecutor's office advocate the creation of a military police force to spot abuses and a law on alternative service that would keep out the less willing conscripts. Other former military officials recommend replacing the ill-trained, teenage conscripts who now serve as sergeants with a professional sergeants' corps.

In his own small way, Dolnev, the young recruit from Moscow, hoped to help curb the excesses by setting an example. But he said he hadn't spent two weeks at the unit near the southern Russian city of Volgograd when a drunken second-year soldier woke him in the middle of the night, directed him to the washroom and beat him for an hour, dislocating his jaw. "I couldn't eat for two weeks. I couldn't speak. I could hardly drink water," he said.

An officer who later saw his bruises demanded that Dolnev identify the culprit. When he refused, fearful of retaliation, the officer beat him. Dolnev said he knew better than to talk, because if the grandfathers found out, he would be worse off.

Many more attacks followed, he said -- once with the leg of a pool table, other times with shovels or rubber tubes. When Dolnev became a sergeant after a year, he said the others told him, "If they don't understand something, hit them on their heads." His turning point came when, standing guard one day, he felt a powerful urge to shoot the first person he saw. He said he decided if he lived any longer "with the beasts and jerks with whom I was drafted," he would become one of them.

So in early September, he walked away from the base, flagged down a car and made his way home. He estimates about one-seventh of his division did the same.

This spring, he learned he had not completely escaped the trauma of the army. A blood test showed he now has hepatitis C, a serious disease that can cause liver failure. He suspects he contracted it by sharing razors with other soldiers, because they didn't have enough to go around.

In between trips to the clinic with her oldest son, Dolnev's mother is focused on how to keep her younger boy, now approaching draft age, out of the army. "I will never let him go! Never! I will do anything but I will never give him to the army!" she said, her face rigid with determination.

About the time Dolnev was escaping from his unit in Volgograd in September, Sgt. Ivanov was counting the days until his release from his unit in Georgievsk, a small town about 350 miles southeast of Moscow.

He shaved his head when he had 100 days to go -- an army tradition. At home, in his little village of Vyzaniki, northeast of Moscow, his mother's birthday was coming up. A girlfriend was waiting; they had talked seriously of marriage.

When his mother got the telegram in October and rushed to the military hospital, she said the military doctor insisted her son was near death because of sinusitis -- a treatable sinus infection. She didn't learn otherwise until three soldiers from Sergei's unit described the beating to her; they put their accounts in letters she keeps with her in a plastic folder and which she showed to a reporter.

After two months of medical treatment, Sergei could say just one word: Tanya, his mother's name. "He was just like a big baby," said his mother, sitting in the Moscow hospital where she spends most of her days. "He couldn't even chew."

On Friday, when visitors came to the dingy eight-story hospital in central Moscow where he is undergoing treatment, ex-Sgt. Ivanov was sitting on an imitation leather couch in an alcove, clad in maroon and gray jogging suit, staring at a television. He could understand questions, but he could not frame answers longer than one word. Asked how old he was, he traced his reply with a finger on the window pane, 21.

The military prosecutors first declined to look into his case, then opened an inquiry this spring after his mother's second letter. It is far from the worst incident in their files.

The case of Kostya Lavrov, an 18-year-old from a Moscow suburb, is still open. Kostya's parents never believed he committed suicide in the army, as the official documents claimed, especially when they opened thecoffin and found his body covered with bruises and wounds.

The boy's letters, secretly handed to a kindly townswoman and delivered after his death three years ago, described how he suffered in his weeks in the army.

"I can barely write now," he said in his last letter. "It hurts everywhere. Dedovshina is awful. When I got here, I was beaten up right away. They broke my nose several times. They beat me against the wall, and they beat my head against a table. . . . If you complain, then maybe they will be reprimanded, but then you are a dead man. . . . Mom, please do whatever you can to get me out of here. Don't write to the officers. If they ever find out about this letter, I am a dead man. . . . Mom, please do something. . . . Mom, PLEASE! I CANNOT STAND IT ANYMORE.

-------- treaties

U.S. Germ Warfare Review Urges Pullback From Talks

New York Times
May 20, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/20GERM.html?pagewanted=all

A confidential Bush administration review has recommended that the United States not accept a draft agreement to enforce the treaty banning germ weapons, according to American officials.

The recommendations appear certain to distress allies, who back the draft accord and are concerned that the new administration is concentrating too much on new military programs and not enough on treaties and nonproliferation.

After six years of negotiations, diplomats in Geneva have produced the draft agreement, known as a protocol, which would establish measures to monitor the ban on biological weapons.

A 1972 treaty, which 143 nations have ratified, prohibits the development, production and possession of biological weapons. But the treaty has always lacked a means of verifying compliance.

The Clinton administration cast the new protocol as an important tool to stem the spread of biological weapons. And international negotiators in Geneva have been rushing to complete it by November.

But the new Bush administration has taken a far more skeptical approach. In a unanimous review, its interagency team concluded that the current version of the protocol would be inefficient in stopping cheating, and that all its deficiencies could not be remedied by the negotiating deadline.

"The review says that the protocol would not be of much value in catching potential proliferators," a senior American official said.

The White House has yet to formally endorse the review's conclusions, but since all the relevant agencies agreed to it, the White House is considered virtually certain to go along. The real issue is what steps to adopt in light of the recommendations, and how to proceed diplomatically. Although the review strongly objects to the current version of the protocol, it does not rule out fresh attempts to address monitoring.

And the review is also emerging as a sensitive diplomatic problem. President Bush heads to Europe next month, and his administration has already been under fire for steering too unilateralist a course on foreign policy, by backing away from the Kyoto accords on global warming and, to a lesser extent, the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. So the White House is eager to avoid a new split.

Tibor Toth, the Hungarian diplomat who has overseen the effort to negotiate the protocol, will fly to Washington this week to try to change the Bush administration's mind, American officials said.

"Different constituencies seem to see different flaws, which indicates it is a pretty good compromise," Mr. Toth said in a telephone interview. "If it still needs to be fixed, we have the time. Barriers have been raised to nuclear and chemical proliferation. If the world community fails to agree on a protocol to strengthen the ban on biological weapons after six years of talks, it will send a very unfortunate message."

The first step to ban germ weapons was taken when President Richard M. Nixon and other world leaders signed the treaty in 1972, at the dawn of arms control. But the agreement had no means of enforcing compliance. That became an enormous concern after President Boris N. Yeltsin conceded in 1992 that the Soviet Union had violated the accord by maintaining a long-standing biological-weapons program after the treaty went into force. Then evidence was acquired after the Persian Gulf war confirming that Iraq also had germ weapons, heightening fears over biological warfare. Most of the dozen or so countries that are believed to have biological weapons programs - like Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea - are members of the 1972 treaty.

So a decade ago, during the administration of Mr. Bush's father, the United States and other nations began studying what could be done to monitor the treaty. Six years ago, they began talks on a new protocol.

There have been many obstacles. China, which has little experience with formal arms-control treaties, is reluctant to allow on-site inspections. Pakistan is concerned that inspectors searching for germ weapons might investigate its nuclear weapons sites. And in the negotiations Iran has been trying to weaken controls on the export of biological equipment and materials, saying they hurt its civilian economies.

The United States, for its part, has had conflicting motivations. On one hand, it has worked to limit the scope of visits by foreign inspectors in order to protect American pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, which dominate the worldwide industry and are concerned with protecting their trade secrets.

And at the behest of the Pentagon, the government tried to limit inspections of American biodefense installations, which develop vaccines and protective equipment and analyze the germ warfare threat.

As a result, the United States has not been as tough on verification as most of its allies. And yet Washington also hoped that the protocol would discourage cheating.

Under the 210-page protocol, parties agree to make known their vaccine production facilities, the largest biodefense installations and facilities that do genetic engineering or aerosol studies with germ agents that are most likely to be used in weapons. But it would not require a declaration of all types of facilities that could be used to make weapons, including food and beverage plants and some pharmaceutical plants.

As for inspections, a new executive council would be established and a majority vote of the body would be required before an investigation of a suspicious plant could be carried out. That procedure, insisted on by American industry, is less strict than a similar provision in the treaty banning chemical weapons, which stipulates that such investigations are to be done unless there is a vote by three-fourths of a similar body to block them. Inspectors under the biological protocol would have to be granted access 108 hours after an inspection was approved.

Defenders say the goal of the protocol was never to provide air-tight verification but rather to increase the chances that cheaters would be caught and thereby deter violations. Some monitoring and openness, they say, is better than none.

But critics of the protocol say the accord would not really provide much security. A nation that was determined to cheat could find a way to do so and might use the limited inspections to throw other nations off the trail, they say. In this view, the United States would open itself up to inspections and get little in return.

When the Bush administration took office, the issue came to the fore. Donald A. Mahley, the American negotiator at the talks, proposed a review. The interagency group he led included working-level officials from the State Department, the Pentagon, the Commerce Department, the Energy Department and intelligence agencies.

The review found 38 problems with the protocol, a handful of them serious. But its basic assessment was very critical. It concluded that the verification measures in the treaty were unlikely to detect cheating. At the same time, the review concluded that these same provisions might be used by foreign governments to try to steal American secrets.

The review recommended that the United States not support the draft protocol that Ambassador Toth had overseen. And it concluded that there was not enough time to fix all the problems before the negotiating deadline.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has approved the review, which has been circulating in the administration. Officially, however, the White House insists that the review has not been completed, in part because it has yet to figure out a new policy.

But as word of the review has begun to seep out, it is already prompting debate. Barbara H. Rosenberg, a specialist at the Federation of American Scientists, said the Bush administration should have worked to improve the accord during the last negotiating round if it did not like it. Instead, the United States was passive, with the new administration claiming that it could not act while the policy review was supposedly under way.

"The U.S. sat quietly throughout the sessions and said nothing," Dr. Rosenberg said. "It made no effort to improve the text."

But Michael L. Moodie, a senior arms control official in the first Bush administration, said the protocol was severely flawed and needed to be replaced by a new approach.

"The protocol was not going to get the job done," Mr. Moodie said. "It is it not going to deter proliferation." And if it was put into effect, he said, "we still would not be confident that there were not major violations going on."

If the White House, as expected, affirms the review, it has several alternatives. One is to try to improve the accord before the November deadline but to accept the fact that the United States is unlikely to obtain all the changes it would like. But there is little or no support for that approach in the administration.

Another is to ask that the deadline be extended so that negotiators would work on a substantially different protocol.

Or the United States could take a significantly different approach. Supporters of that idea, which is being actively discussed in the administration, say Washington should propose a stripped-down version of the protocol that would provide for investigations when violations of the convention are suspected. Such inspections, for example, might be carried out if there was a suspicious outbreak of disease, as happened in Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1979 when anthrax spores escaped from a biological weapons plant.

There is a recognition within the administration that breaking off talks on biological-weapons monitoring altogether is not feasible because of diplomatic costs. That is especially the case because the administration is already involved in sensitive talks with its allies on the missile defense issue and has been eager to show that it is not ideologically opposed to arms control.

Still, the turnabout in American policy is likely to provoke concern from American allies, particularly the British, who have been very active on the treaty.

When Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Washington in February, he insisted that the United States promise to pursue nonproliferation measures and not just missile defense, and the Bush administration agreed to mention nonproliferation in the statement that both leaders issued.

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

THE OUTRAGEOUS TRACK RECORD

by Jack Shannon,
May 20, 2001
http://www.mindspring.com/~kapl/jpsrecord00.html

What is reported on this WEB site is only a very small part of a very large and ongoing criminal activity, carried on by the Department of Energy, Naval Reactors, and the General Electric Company. They have been at it for at least 50 years, and it has been reported on in Congress, in the media, in the Courts, to the Justice Department and to many others. But no reform has ever occurred. And no punishment has been levied that amounts to anything approaching the magnitude of the crime. If you, as a citizen of this country were found guilty of fraudulent activity, even once versus the multiple convictions of the General Electric Company, you would be in jail for the duration. These people should all be behind bars ... permanently. This collusion of evildoers has succeeded in polluting the entire United States of America and the rest of the world with radioactive contamination. What follows is a sampling of what's been said and what's been reported in the media about this ongoing scandal. It sort of paints a pretty repulsive picture.

CONGRESSIONAL and CITIZEN COMMENT ... about DOE, KAPL et al (1/20/01)
http://www.mindspring.com/~kapl/jpsrecord01.html

MEDIA COVERAGE of KAPL ... the KEYSTONE KOPS in action (1/20/01)
http://www.mindspring.com/~kapl/jpsrecord02.html

MEDIA COVERAGE of GE ... "GE brings BAD things to life" (1/20/01)
http://www.mindspring.com/~kapl/jpsrecord03.html

IDAHO SUES DOE/NAVAL REACTORS ... to get the TRUTH (1/20/01)
http://www.mindspring.com/~kapl/jpsrecord04.html

Radioactive Contamination from from a Nuclear Bomb Test Cloud ... Really Scarry Map (5/20/01)
http://www.mindspring.com/~kapl/jpsbomb01.html

-------- u.s. nuc energy

Nuclear Energy Industry Reclaims Spotlight

May 20, 2001
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/politics/20LOBB.html

WASHINGTON, May 19 - "Busy, busy, busy - hundreds of details." That is how Angelina S. Howard, executive vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, described the frenetic schedule of interviews on the day President Bush unveiled his energy plan.

The nuclear energy industry is back in the spotlight, cited in the report of the National Energy Policy Development Group headed by Vice President Dick Cheney as one of the cornerstones of a broad, national effort to produce more power. Suddenly, nuclear power plants have become respectable again, and Ms. Howard and her colleagues at the institute, the industry's lobbying and public relations arm, were in demand for television appearances from 7 in the morning until 7 in the evening on Thursday.

The Bush plan contains much good news for the industry, which has not gotten much respect in recent years. The cartoon comedy "The Simpsons," for example, tweaks the industry frequently, with its bumbling patriarch, Homer Simpson, working at a nuclear plant.

Now the nuclear power industry is getting new consideration, as Mr. Bush calls for new plants and the resumption of reprocessing nuclear fuel. And the nuclear power industry got one clear concession in the plan: a break that would eliminate the double taxation of money put aside for decommissioning plants. Those taxes, experts said, have been a deterrent to buying and selling nuclear plants.

Mr. Bush's plan to re-evaluate nuclear reprocessing, in which nuclear waste is converted into reusable fuel, is also expected to draw attention to the industry. Britain and France currently reprocess fuels, but it has not yet proven profitable, group officials said. Anti-proliferation organizations have long argued that reprocessing creates bomb-grade nuclear fuels that could be converted into weapons. In fact, Mr. Bush's report noted the problem and urged an examination of "more proliferation-resistant" fuels.

While the accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in Ukraine damaged the reputation of the industry, Joe F. Colvin, the institute's president, said the Bush plan presented a chance to talk about more recent advances in nuclear power.

"What we have done in the past two decades in the nuclear energy industry has made tremendous progress in improving the safety and the reliability and reducing the cost of nuclear generation," Mr. Colvin said. "And we have a tremendous story to tell. In fact, what we have the opportunity to say through this administration and their leadership is to have nuclear energy be looked at as part of the solution to our nation's energy needs."

Ms. Howard said the time was right to engage the public in the energy process. Other countries, she said, including China, Japan and Korea, are looking to the United States to be a leader in the nuclear industry. "I had a 64-year- old grandmother call me after I was on the radio this morning, and say this stuff is interesting," Ms. Howard said on Thursday.

There are 103 commercial nuclear power plants in the United States. And the institute has nearly 300 member organizations in 15 countries. In addition, the group has assembled a task force on nuclear deployment, which has met four times to draw up a business plan for new reactors. The task force will meet again this summer.

The industry plans to discuss its strategy for building new nuclear plants over the next 20 years at its annual meeting here next week. Representative Billy Tauzin, a Republican from Louisiana who is the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Senators George V. Voinovich of Ohio and Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, both Republicans, are expected to speak at the meeting. Mr. Cheney has also been invited, but has not confirmed whether he will attend.

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

Future use of the B-2 stealth bomber may not include nuclear weapons

By SCOTT CANON
The Kansas City Star
05/20/01 22:15
http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/printer.pat,local/3accb005.520,.html

Since the early 1960s, west central Missouri figured as a battleground in a war unfought -- World War III.

First the hills and farms surrounding Whiteman Air Force Base held underground silos loaded with nuclear-tipped missiles. Next, as treaties ordered the elimination of those launchpads in the early 1990s, the nuclear-ferrying B-2 bomber landed at Whiteman.

Like the missiles that preceded it, the stealth bomber's range includes the entire planet.

Yet unlike the continent-to-continent rockets subtracted from America's nuclear equation, the long-range stealth bomber comes in handy for other things. It can carry the stuff of conventional warfare, and it dropped satellite-guided explosives on Yugoslavia in 1999.

In fact, those lesser munitions may guide the bomber's future.

Some published reports suggest a Bush administration proposal to overhaul the military -- parts of which could be released thisweek -- could soon make the country's fleet of 21 B-2s nuclear-free. The suggestion may also call for taking America's B-52s out of the nuclear force, which some analysts say is more likely because those bombers are so old.

The B-2 speculation comes as the plane's maker, Northrop Grumman, is hoping to land an order for more of the bat-winged planes. They would probably be delivered more cheaply than the existing $2 billion-plus planes partly because they would not be made for nuclear war.

Eighteen months ago, Northrop Grumman said it could make a series of B-2C (C for conventional) bombers for $500 million each.

Company spokesman Larry Hamilton said last week that the B-2 construction could begin on relatively short notice and that the new versions could be made cheaper by using the existing designs.

Experts note that the planes could come cheaper because their electronics would not need to be "hardened" against the radiation a jet would absorb after dropping a nuclear bomb.

Freeing existing B-2s of their nuclear chores could make them more efficient conventional bombers available for short-notice, first-strike missions around the globe, experts said. Its pilots, mission planners and bomb loaders could streamline their training and preparation. The plane's bomb bay could be permanently configured to carry larger numbers of smaller, more precise munitions.

Work is already under way to alter B-2s to carry as many as eighty 500-pound bombs at a time, instead of the fifteen 2,000-pound bombs it can haul now. But when set up for the smaller bombs, the aircraft couldn't hold nuclear weapons.

"One argument might be that the bombers have better things to do with their time" than stand ready for nuclear war, said Karl Mueller, an international relations and defense policy analyst at the Rand Corp.

"The downside to (losing the bombers from America's nuclear force) wouldn't be enormous," Mueller said. "Things have gotten relatively safe."

At any given time, 17 B-2s are in working order at Whiteman while four undergo routine maintenance and overhauls. Of that 17, a classified number remain unavailable for missions, such as the 30-hour flights to bomb Belgrade two years ago, so they could remain ready for use in a nuclear attack.

But switching the B-2 would mark an abandonment of the so-called triad strategy that kept nuclear weapons ready to fire from land, sea and air.

Through much of the Cold War, submarine-launched nuclear weapons were not as accurate as other missiles, but they hit closer to their targets and could hit faster -- before, say, a Russian bomber could get off the ground. Land-launched missiles were more accurate, but took longer to reach their targets. Bombers lacked the protection of underground silos and, on the ground, the relative invisibility of a submarine. But once airborne they are hard to find and can be called back in flight.

But no longer is nuclear strategy an elaborate chess match with the Soviets. Now there is no Soviet threat, just smaller and less predictable potential nuclear players. Meantime, submarine-based missiles have become far more accurate, U.S. administrations have voluntarily worked to retire warheads by the thousands and the B-2 has been drafted into conventional bombing.

That's not to say their nuclear days are numbered. A report on nuclear weapons released in January by the National Institute for Public Policy seemed to argue for keeping a nuclear bomber force. The report, whose authors include key players subsequently hired for President Bush's National Security Council and the Defense Department, trumpets the virtues of the triad.

"The multiplicity of platforms contributes to the overall survivability of U.S. deterrent forces" and discourages other countries from entering a nuclear arms race, the report said.

Other analysts tend to conclude that the United States could scare off potential adversaries just fine with its submarine fleet and missile fields. But they say that the advantages gained by narrowing the B-2's job probably won't be enough to take their nuclear weapons away.

"For at least the next 10 to 15 years it's pretty safe to assume that the B-2 will keep its nuclear mission," said Brett Lambert, vice president of aerospace and defense consulting firm DFI International.

Today, officials at Whiteman say the pilots, the computer-intensive mission planners and the teams who load the bombers spend roughly 60 percent of their time training for conventional missions and 40 percent for nuclear war.

A Pentagon spokesman said elimination of the stealth bomber's nuclear role "does not generate an immediate savings but could make future upgrades and modifications to B-2 hardware and software less expensive."

The B-2 ended up at Whiteman in large part from the lobbying of U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, a Lexington, Mo., Democrat. But it also came with the argument that the bomber would be safer from attack in the middle of the continent.

That same decision put it long distances from targets in Asia and Eastern Europe. The plane had to refuel in midair coming and going on its 1999 bombing runs to Serbia and Kosovo. Those long distances also meant fewer flights.

Still, there are no predictions that Whiteman will lose its paycheck. Millions have already been spent on sophisticated support systems at the base to keep the bomber, and its sensitive radar-absorbent skin, airworthy.

"I don't think it will be based anywhere else," said Andrew Krepinevich, the executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "There's too much invested there to move."

Instead, the Air Force is developing portable shelters that would allow the B-2 to work for long stretches flying out of England or Guam or the British-controlled island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

"What you end up is not so much big savings in losing the nuclear weapons," said David Mosher, a nuclear policy analyst at Rand. The cost of the people who guard and handle and design missions for the estimated 500-plus nuclear bombs at Whiteman would not look huge in the context of the Pentagon's budget, he said.

Instead, Mosher said the Air Force would lose the so-called "nuclear withhold" that makes planes unavailable for conventional bombings.

"If you're out of the nuclear business," he said, "that's no longer an issue."

To reach Scott Canon, national correspondent, call (816) 234-4754 or send e-mail to scanon@kcstar.com.

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

Change in Plutonium Disposal Plan Draws Complaints

May 20, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/national/20NUKE.html

WASHINGTON, May 19 - The Bush administration has postponed a major part of the Energy Department's plan to dispose of plutonium left over from nuclear weapons production, because of budget constraints and technical problems.

But two states, South Carolina and Colorado, are complaining that the decision violates the federal government's agreements with them to clean up nuclear wastes.

Five years ago, the Energy Department, which manages the nuclear stockpile, set out to get rid of 52.5 tons of weapons plutonium as part of a deal with Russia, which agreed to remove the same amount from its stockpile. The plan was to convert some of the plutonium from warhead form into fuel for civilian power reactors.

But much of the plutonium is in forms not suited for fuel, including a large quantity at the Rocky Flats plant, in the suburbs of Denver. The plan was to bake that plutonium into a ceramic to stabilize it and then to embed it in highly radioactive glass, to protect it from being stolen for weapons use.

The first part of that plan is moving ahead, although the costs of making reactor fuel are uncertain. But instead of immobilizing the rest of the plutonium in glass, the Energy Department now plans to ship it to the Savannah River Site, near Aiken, S.C., and seal it in storage containers.

Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina said this violated an agreement with his state.

"They committed that they would not send it to us unless there was a clear exit strategy for the plutonium," Mr. Hodges said.

Recalling that Cecil D. Andrus, then governor of Idaho, threatened to call out the state police in the late 1980's to block a shipment of nuclear waste to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Mr. Hodges said, "We have troopers in South Carolina, too."

In December 1996, when the Energy Department announced its "dual track" approach of conversion to fuel and immobilization, officials said that they were not sure which approach would prove the fastest, easiest or most economical, but that the prudent step was to do both.

That policy has changed. Two top officials of the agency, speaking on the condition that they not be named, said that getting anything done required concentrating all efforts on one approach.

Conversion to fuel requires two factories, they said: one to take apart the plutonium at the heart of the warheads and another to turn it from metal to oxide and process it into the proper shape. Immobilizing plutonium would require a third factory.

"We're not so sure Congress can support pursuing three significant facilities simultaneously," one of the officials said.

The department estimates that the immobilization work being put off would cost between $500 million and $1 billion.

At a hearing last month, John A. Gordon, the under secretary of energy for nuclear security, noted that the budget request for the Energy Department's weapons program next year was $100 million less than in the current year.

The Energy Department's plans also trouble some officials in Colorado, who are eager to have the department meet its target of shipping all the plutonium at the Rocky Flats factory out of the state by 2006.

Groups that focus on nuclear proliferation are even more concerned. Tom Clements, the executive director of the Nuclear Control Institute, a nonprofit group in Washington, said technical problems could arise with the plan to use plutonium in civilian power reactors; for example, the reactors might have problems being relicensed for the fuel. But, he said, "immobilization could perform the entire mission, and do it cheaper."

There is a technical problem, however, with the process for embedding the plutonium in highly radioactive glass. The Energy Department built a $2 billion factory at the Savannah River Site to mix radioactive sludge from its aging underground tanks with molten glass, solidifying the sludge and storing it, perhaps eventually in a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.

But the glass is not as radioactive as it is supposed to be to prevent anyone from recovering the embedded plutonium. The recipe the agency wanted to use created benzene, a gas that can burn or explode. Until it can solve this problem, the department has changed the recipe, resulting in finished glass that is not radioactive enough.

-------- maine

Bangor's in a nuclear league of its own

The SUN, May 20, 2001
From: Max Obuszewski <MObuszewski@afsc.org>

Bangor, Washington, The submarine base is now the only facility on the West Coast to have an active nuclear stockpile.

The Naval Submarine Base Bangor apparently is now the only military facility on the West Coast that still has active nuclear weapons.

The facility, home to the Navy's West Coast Trident missile submarine fleet, gained that distinction after a cache of 85 nuclear bombs at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane was removed, according to an Associated Press report.

That leaves only the Bangor nuclear stockpile on the West Coast, since all nuclear weapons reportedly were removed from California bases by 1998.

"I cannot confirm or deny that," Bangor spokesman Paul Taylor said Monday.

However, according to earlier reports by the National Resources Defense Council, a nuclear weapons watchdog group, the Bangor base has an estimated 1,760 nuclear warheads.

Of those, about 1,600 are W-76 warheads that are mounted atop submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

The other 160 are believed to be cruise missile warheads that are in storage but not carried aboard Navy ships.

Some experts believe that the more powerful W-88 nuclear warheads will be transferred to Bangor after the fleet transitions to the D-5 missile.

The Air Force refused to confirm or deny the presence of nukes at Fairchild, the same policy the military extends to all its facilities.

"I really have no comment on that," base spokesman Maj. Perrin Ashmore said.

Ashmore had appeared earlier to confirm that nukes were no longer part of Fairchild's arsenal. The comment came last week when he was asked about plans to build a new administration building for people who maintain the weapons at Fairchild.

"We still store some munitions here," Ashmore told the Spokane Spokesman-Review newspaper, including bullets and non-nuclear cruise missiles. Asked about nuclear weapons, Ashmore said "no," according to the newspaper.

On Monday, he refused to say if the newspaper's account was accurate.

"I've told you as much as I can," Ashmore said.

Fairchild's membership in the nuclear club began sometime after 1949, when a fleet of B-29 bombers were stationed at the base.

Fairchild's B-29s were replaced by B-36s in 1951 and by B-52s in 1956.

While the United States and Soviet Union pursued a policy of mutual assured destruction, bombers sat on the flight line at Fairchild with nuclear bombs in their bellies or nuclear missiles on their wings.

In 1982, the Air Force announced it was sending 300 cruise missiles to Fairchild. That was a de facto announcement that the base had atomic weapons because at that time, cruise missiles only came in a nuclear version.

The last B-52s were removed from Fairchild in 1994. But nuclear munitions workers remained at the base, apparently overseeing the weapons stored in special bunkers.

In 1998, the Natural Resources Defense Council environmental group did a study of government documents and estimated Fairchild had about 85 bombs in storage. The Air Force didn't comment.

These days, Fairchild is a base for KC-135 air tankers.

-------- us nuc politics

How to Lose Friends and Inspire Enemies

By Walter C. Clemens Jr.
Sunday, May 20, 2001; Page B02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48206-2001May19?language=printer

The United States at the end of 2000 was an unrivaled superpower presiding over a Pax Americana. But the new White House team seems determined to alienate and possibly lose America's friends abroad, while antagonizing other nations (notably China and Russia) so they turn into foes rather than partners. During last year's campaign, candidate George W. Bush admonished the United States to practice humility. Now, as president, he insists others bow to whatever new rules are devised by his administration. He ignores understandings and consensus built up among many parties over many years.

Bush's brand of rugged individualism is spawning wide opposition to America's leadership. Thus, Europeans joined Third World countries and China earlier this month to exclude the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Commission. This rebuff is probably just one of many snubs to come.

American unilateralism makes the worst of possible worlds more likely. A true conservative would prolong and enhance the unipolar stability that took shape in the 1990s. If only to minimize costs, a conservative statesman would rely on persuasion and example to influence other nations and avoid needless offense to their sensitivities. Only when absolutely necessary would he go his own way or use brute strength to shape others' behavior.

The Bush commitment to a Fortress America exemplifies his unilateralism. The White House spits on the 1972 ABM Treaty -- a cornerstone of strategic stability -- in favor of an unproven defense system that is likely to inspire more and smarter weapons. Instead of consulting NATO partners and others on life-and-death issues, Washington informs them to expect changes in U.S. policy. In its first 100 days, the Bush team treated the world's other nuclear giants as nonentities even though Russia can destroy much of the United States in just over 30 minutes, or sell its nuclear assets to others who might pose a threat to U.S. security.

The president has jolted America's two most important Asian allies, Japan and South Korea, by asserting that talks with North Korea aren't worthwhile. He jeopardizes one of the greatest arms control achievements of the last decade: the mid-1990s arrangement to defang North Korea's nuclear capability in exchange for a few billion dollars worth of fuel oil and nuclear power equipment provided by three rich countries.

The Bush team seems to lack any sense of how words can shape relationships. China and the United States can cooperate in many domains to mutual advantage -- or they can become bitter rivals. Bush refers to the Chinese as "strategic competitors" -- not "strategic partners," as the Clinton administration called them. Such formulations can be self-fulfilling: Bush's words bolstered the chance that an incident (such as the downing of the U.S. surveillance plane last month) might turn a troubled relationship into an all-out confrontation.

Then, soon after the plane's crew was released, Bush chose a morning talk show (is that how a true conservative prefers to announce a change in foreign policy?) as the venue for saying that the United States would "do whatever it takes" to defend Taiwan from an attack by mainland China. A loose cannon shatters a deliberate ambiguity without consulting Congress or U.S. allies. The administration's subsequent attempts to back away from the president's words only served to raise additional questions about his intentions and leadership.

Is there a rationale for these actions? Does the president seek to restore the Cold War alliance between China, Russia and a rogue North Korea? Perhaps he does. If Bush manages to reunite America's erstwhile communist foes, he would then have a stronger case for building a national missile defense!

Bush keeps NATO partners on edge by saying the United States intends to withdraw from Balkan peacekeeping operations. Even as Bush casts doubt on America's dependability as an ally, his secretary of defense warns Europeans not to build a military force autonomous from NATO.

In March, Bush offended an even larger range of countries by abruptly withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol painstakingly negotiated by rich and poor nations to reduce global warming. Adding fuel to this fire, the president seeks more carbon-based energy for American motorists, factories and homes -- ensuring that America continues its lion's share contribution to the problem. The White House calls for 1,300 to 1,900 power plants to be built during the next two decades -- which works out to more than one a week -- while ignoring energy efficiency measures that government scientists say could cut demand by 20 to 47 percent in coming years.

Bush has sought to help Azerbaijan and Armenia resolve their long dispute, perhaps because their quarrels complicate U.S. efforts to pump and sell Caspian oil. Otherwise, he disdains the mediating role used by many presidents to reduce conflicts and increase U.S. influence around the world. Theodore Roosevelt probably did it best when he helped to end the Russo-Japanese War and avert a French-German war in Morocco. Bill Clinton was not able to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but his representatives did much to stop the killing in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.

Bush shows so little interest in international cooperation that he has still not asked the Senate to confirm his nominee for ambassador to the United Nations. Bush's Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, pulls away from a multinational initiative that is geared to clamp down on tax havens, saying he is troubled by "the notion that any country, or group of countries, should interfere with any other country's decision about how to structure its own tax system." Major donors to Republican causes applaud.

And Washington joins Tokyo in undermining a pact endorsed by some 150 countries to ban cigarette advertising -- because, says the U.S. delegation, it violates free speech guarantees sacred to Americans. While the rest of the world fumes, American tobacco growers beam.

The Bush approach has been efficient and systematic. In 100 days, the MBA president and his managers have succeeded in reversing the maxims of Dale Carnegie: They have antagonized old friends and pushed potential partners into the role of adversaries. Given this accomplishment, Bush might want to defer a hefty chunk of his trillion-dollar tax cut plan: He will need the money to pay for the clashes his aggressive and unwise policies will undoubtedly foster.

Walter Clemens is a professor of political science at Boston University and an associate at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is the author of the recently published "America and the World, 1898-2025: Achievements, Failures, Alternative Futures" (Palgrave/St. Martin's Press).

-------- MILITARY

-------- balkans

NATO Plans Increase in Kosovo Buffer

MAY 20, 16:18 EST
By FISNIK ABRASHI
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C42G3O0

GNJILANE, Yugoslavia (AP) - In what could be the most dangerous operation since international troops entered Kosovo, NATO-led peacekeepers said Sunday they will increase their presence near a volatile buffer zone ahead of the planned return of Yugoslav forces.

Brig. Gen. Kenneth Quinlan, the head of the American-run sector of Kosovo, urged the families who live in the three-mile buffer zone to remain in their houses when Yugoslav army and Serbian police forces start moving into the last 20 percent of the zone on Thursday.

Despite concerns of possible unrest, Quinlan said that the de facto removal of the zone marks a ``significant step toward regional normalcy once completed.'' He did not say how many reinforcement troops would be deployed to the area.

The buffer zone was established as part of a peace deal that ended NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. The zone was created to keep Yugoslav troops away from NATO-led peacekeepers who took control of Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the main republic in Yugoslavia. NATO-led troops never entered the zone.

The Serb army was originally barred from the zone, but ethnic Albanian militants began using it as a safe haven, and NATO began allowing the Serb army back in to clear it of rebels.

The Yugoslav army had already entered 80 percent of the zone, but what remained was by far the most sensitive area on Kosovo's eastern boundary, home to large numbers of ethnic Albanians.

Earlier Sunday, Serbian officials and Lt. Gen. Thorstein Skiaker, the commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping force, signed an agreement stipulating the details for the return of the government forces to the remaining fifth of the zone.

It was signed in the village of Merdare near the Kosovo border. The deal had been approved last week at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

A Yugoslav military source said that more than 4,000 government troops have been deployed in the buffer zone so far, and up to 2,000 more are planned to take up positions and patrol the last sector.

``The entry of our security forces into the Sector B (of the buffer zone) is seen as a peaceful operation with full protection of all citizens in the area,'' Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic said.

He warned that any hostility by local ethnic Albanian insurgents would be met with ``adequate response.''

Meanwhile, the U.N. refugee agency warned Sunday that without effective confidence-building measures before and during the Yugoslav troop deployment, there are concerns that up to 20,000 people might flee from the buffer zone into Kosovo.

``Our fear is that an escalation of the situation and fighting which might erupt can send people fleeing into Kosovo,'' said Astrid van Genderen Stort, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

She said that the refugee agency in conjunction with other international organizations had made contingency plans for people who might leave the buffer zone.

``We have stocks transferred from Geneva and Sarajevo, and emergency teams are on standby, if the situation escalates,'' Van Genderen Stort said.

To alleviate long-standing mistrust and hostility, authorities launched an intense campaign in local electronic media, broadcasting messages in Albanian, saying the locals ``have nothing to fear.''

It also urged the mostly ethnic Albanian local population to hand over arms in exchange for an amnesty from prosecution.

-------- biological weapons

U.S. Germ Warfare Review Faults Plan on Enforcement

May 20, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and JUDITH MILLER
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/20GERM.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/20GERM.html?pagewanted=2

A confidential Bush administration review has recommended that the United States not accept a draft agreement to enforce the treaty banning germ weapons, according to American officials.

The recommendations appear certain to distress allies, who back the draft accord and are concerned that the new administration is concentrating too much on new military programs and not enough on treaties and nonproliferation.

After six years of negotiations, diplomats in Geneva have produced the draft agreement, known as a protocol, which would establish measures to monitor the ban on biological weapons.

A 1972 treaty, which 143 nations have ratified, prohibits the development, production and possession of biological weapons. But the treaty has always lacked a means of verifying compliance. United States support for the protocol is critical to the effort to give the treaty teeth.

The Clinton administration cast the new protocol as an important tool to stem the spread of biological weapons. And international negotiators in Geneva have been rushing to complete it by November.

But the new Bush administration has taken a far more skeptical approach. In a unanimous review, its interagency team concluded that the current version of the protocol would be inefficient in stopping cheating, and that all its deficiencies could not be remedied by the negotiating deadline.

"The review says that the protocol would not be of much value in catching potential proliferators," a senior American official said.

The White House has yet to formally endorse the review's conclusions, but since all the relevant agencies agreed to it, the White House is considered virtually certain to go along. The real issue is what steps to adopt in light of the recommendations, and how to proceed diplomatically. Although the review strongly objects to the current version of the protocol, it does not rule out fresh attempts to address monitoring.

And the review is also emerging as a sensitive diplomatic problem. President Bush heads to Europe next month, and his administration has already been under fire for steering too unilateralist a course on foreign policy, by backing away from the Kyoto accords on global warming and, to a lesser extent, the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. So the White House is eager to avoid a new split.

Tibor Toth, the Hungarian diplomat who has overseen the effort to negotiate the protocol, will fly to Washington this week to try to change the Bush administration's mind, American officials said.

"Different constituencies seem to see different flaws, which indicates it is a pretty good compromise," Mr. Toth said in a telephone interview. "If it still needs to be fixed, we have the time. Barriers have been raised to nuclear and chemical proliferation. If the world community fails to agree on a protocol to strengthen the ban on biological weapons after six years of talks, it will send a very unfortunate message."

The first step to ban germ weapons was taken when President Richard M. Nixon and other world leaders signed the treaty in 1972, at the dawn of arms control. But the agreement had no means of enforcing compliance. That became an enormous concern after President Boris N. Yeltsin conceded in 1992 that the Soviet Union had violated the accord by maintaining a long-standing biological-weapons program after the treaty went into force. Then evidence was acquired after the Persian Gulf war confirming that Iraq also had germ weapons, heightening fears over biological warfare. Most of the dozen or so countries that are believed to have biological weapons programs - like Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea - are members of the 1972 treaty.

So a decade ago, during the administration of Mr. Bush's father, the United States and other nations began studying what could be done to monitor the treaty. Six years ago, they began talks on a new protocol.

There have been many obstacles. China, which has little experience with formal arms-control treaties, is reluctant to allow on-site inspections. Pakistan is concerned that inspectors searching for germ weapons might investigate its nuclear weapons sites. And in the negotiations Iran has been trying to weaken controls on the export of biological equipment and materials, saying they hurt its civilian economies.

The United States, for its part, has had conflicting motivations. On one hand, it has worked to limit the scope of visits by foreign inspectors in order to protect American pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, which dominate the worldwide industry and are concerned with protecting their trade secrets.

And at the behest of the Pentagon, the government tried to limit inspections of American biodefense installations, which develop vaccines and protective equipment and analyze the germ warfare threat.

As a result, the United States has not been as tough on verification as most of its allies. And yet Washington also hoped that the protocol would discourage cheating.

Under the 210-page protocol, parties agree to make known their vaccine production facilities, the largest biodefense installations and facilities that do genetic engineering or aerosol studies with germ agents that are most likely to be used in weapons. But it would not require a declaration of all types of facilities that could be used to make weapons, including food and beverage plants and some pharmaceutical plants.

As for inspections, a new executive council would be established and a majority vote of the body would be required before an investigation of a suspicious plant could be carried out. That procedure, insisted on by American industry, is less strict than a similar provision in the treaty banning chemical weapons, which stipulates that such investigations are to be done unless there is a vote by three-fourths of a similar body to block them. Inspectors under the biological protocol would have to be granted access 108 hours after an inspection was approved.

Defenders say the goal of the protocol was never to provide air-tight verification but rather to increase the chances that cheaters would be caught and thereby deter violations. Some monitoring and openness, they say, is better than none.

But critics of the protocol say the accord would not really provide much security. A nation that was determined to cheat could find a way to do so and might use the limited inspections to throw other nations off the trail, they say. In this view, the United States would open itself up to inspections and get little in return.

When the Bush administration took office, the issue came to the fore. Donald A. Mahley, the American negotiator at the talks, proposed a review. The interagency group he led included working-level officials from the State Department, the Pentagon, the Commerce Department, the Energy Department and intelligence agencies.

The review found 38 problems with the protocol, a handful of them serious. But its basic assessment was very critical. It concluded that the verification measures in the treaty were unlikely to detect cheating. At the same time, the review concluded that these same provisions might be used by foreign governments to try to steal American secrets.

The review recommended that the United States not support the draft protocol that Ambassador Toth had overseen. And it concluded that there was not enough time to fix all the problems before the negotiating deadline.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has approved the review, which has been circulating in the administration. Officially, however, the White House insists that the review has not been completed, in part because it has yet to figure out a new policy.

But as word of the review has begun to seep out, it is already prompting debate. Barbara H. Rosenberg, a specialist at the Federation of American Scientists, said the Bush administration should have worked to improve the accord during the last negotiating round if it did not like it. Instead, the United States was passive, with the new administration claiming that it could not act while the policy review was supposedly under way.

"The U.S. sat quietly throughout the sessions and said nothing," Dr. Rosenberg said. "It made no effort to improve the text."

But Michael L. Moodie, a senior arms control official in the first Bush administration, said the protocol was severely flawed and needed to be replaced by a new approach.

"The protocol was not going to get the job done," Mr. Moodie said. "It is it not going to deter proliferation." And if it was put into effect, he said, "we still would not be confident that there were not major violations going on."

If the White House, as expected, affirms the review, it has several alternatives. One is to try to improve the accord before the November deadline but to accept the fact that the United States is unlikely to obtain all the changes it would like. But there is little or no support for that approach in the administration.

Another is to ask that the deadline be extended so that negotiators would work on a substantially different protocol.

Or the United States could take a significantly different approach. Supporters of that idea, which is being actively discussed in the administration, say Washington should propose a stripped-down version of the protocol that would provide for investigations when violations of the convention are suspected. Such inspections, for example, might be carried out if there was a suspicious outbreak of disease, as happened in Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1979 when anthrax spores escaped from a biological weapons plant.

There is a recognition within the administration that breaking off talks on biological-weapons monitoring altogether is not feasible because of diplomatic costs. That is especially the case because the administration is already involved in sensitive talks with its allies on the missile defense issue and has been eager to show that it is not ideologically opposed to arms control.

Still, the turnabout in American policy is likely to provoke concern from American allies, particularly the British, who have been very active on the treaty.

When Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Washington in February, he insisted that the United States promise to pursue nonproliferation measures and not just missile defense, and the Bush administration agreed to mention nonproliferation in the statement that both leaders issued.

----

President advised on germ warfare

05/20/2001 - Updated 09:04 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-05-20-germ.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Bush administration team has recommended that the White House reject proposed rules for enforcing a germ weapons treaty, concluding that the guidelines are not tough enough.

The administration supports the 1972 germ weapons ban, but is skeptical of the current protocol under which the treaty would be carried out. An interagency group has unanimously concluded that the protocol would not stop cheating, and the problems likely could not be fixed before the negotiating deadline, according to administration officials familiar with the review.

The recommendation was first reported by The New York Times.

The treaty, ratified by 143 nations, prohibits the development, production and possession of biological weapons. It still lacks a vehicle for ensuring compliance, and negotiators are trying to create one by November.

The Clinton administration blessed the protocol.

The Bush White House has not taken a position, but officials said the review will carry great weight with the president and his advisers. The administration has not ruled out fresh attempts to write new rules.

The topic is a sensitive one, given concerns by allies that the new administration is spending too much on new military programs and not enough on treaties and nonproliferation. It could be a major talking point next month, when Bush travels to Europe for the first time as president.

-------- drug war

Taliban's Ban on Growing Opium Poppies Is Called a Success

New York Times
May 20, 2001
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/20AFGH.html

UNITED NATIONS, May 18 - The first American narcotics experts to go to Afghanistan under Taliban rule have concluded that the movement's ban on opium-poppy cultivation appears to have wiped out the world's largest crop in less than a year, officials said today.

The American findings confirm earlier reports from the United Nations drug control program that Afghanistan, which supplied about three-quarters of the world's opium and most of the heroin reaching Europe, had ended poppy planting in one season.

But the eradication of poppies has come at a terrible cost to farming families, and experts say it will not be known until the fall planting season begins whether the Taliban can continue to enforce it.

"It appears that the ban has taken effect," said Steven Casteel, assistant administrator for intelligence at the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington.

The findings came in part from a Pakistan-based agent of the administration who was one of the two Americans on the team just returned from eight days in the poppy-growing areas of Afghanistan.

Mr. Casteel said in an interview today that he was still studying aerial images to determine if any new poppy-growing areas had emerged. He also said that some questions about the size of hidden opium and heroin stockpiles near the northern border of Afghanistan remained to be answered. But the drug agency has so far found nothing to contradict United Nations reports.

The sudden turnaround by the Taliban, a move that left international drug experts stunned when reports of near-total eradication began to come in earlier this year, opens the way for American aid to the Afghan farmers who have stopped planting poppies.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announced a $43 million grant to Afghanistan in additional emergency aid to cope with the effects of a prolonged drought. The United States has become the biggest donor to help Afghanistan in the drought.

"We will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to the Afghans," he said in a statement, "including those farmers who have felt the impact of the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome."

The Afghans are desperate for international help, but describe their opposition to drug cultivation purely in religious terms.

At the State Department, James P. Callahan, director of Asian affairs at the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs who was one of the experts sent to Afghanistan, described in an interview how the Taliban had applied and enforced the ban. He was told by farmers that "the Taliban used a system of consensus-building."

They framed the ban "in very religious terms," citing Islamic prohibitions against drugs, and this made it hard to defy, he added. Those who defied the edict were threatened with prison.

Mr. Callahan said that in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, where the Taliban's hold is strongest, farmers said they would rather starve than return to poppy cultivation - and some of them will, experts say.

In parts of Nangahar province in the east, where the Taliban's hold is less complete, farmers told the visiting experts that they would flee to Pakistan or risk illegal crops rather than watch their families die.

The end of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has come at a huge cost to farmers, Mr. Callahan and Mr. Casteel said. The rural economy, especially in the usual opium-poppy areas, had come to rely on the narcotics trade. "The bad side of the ban is that it's bringing their country - or certain regions of their country - to economic ruin," Mr. Casteel said. "They are trying to replace the crop with wheat, but that is easier said than done."

"Wheat needs more water and earns no money until it is sold," Mr. Casteel said. "With the opium trade they used to get their money up front."

The Taliban, who used to collect taxes on the movement of opium, is also losing money, adding another layer of difficulty for a government that is already isolated and not recognized diplomatically by most nations.

Afghanistan is now under United Nations sanctions, imposed at the insistence of the United States because the Islamic movement will not turn over Osama bin Laden for trial in connection with attacks on two American embassies in Africa in 1998.

American experts and United Nations narcotics officials say that the Taliban are likely to face political problems if the effects of the opium ban are catastrophic and many people die. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans are already suffering and many are dying from the drought that has destroyed other crops.

"The fact that the drought is so severe also makes their accomplishment all the more astounding," Mr. Callahan said.

"If you look at what we normally do - and we've had success in Thailand or Pakistan - you spend many years trying to develop the alternative infrastructure and crops that will allow people" to stop producing poppies, he said.

-------- iran

Venezuela Seeks 'Strategic Alliance' with Iran

May 20, 2001 By REUTERS http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-iran-ve.html

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called on Sunday for an ``strategic alliance'' with Iran to work toward world peace and stability, the Iranian news agency IRNA reported.

``We have come to Iran to further consolidate unity between the two nations...and to pave the way toward justice, peace, stability and progress in the 21st century,'' Chavez told reporters after talks with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.

Chavez, who seeks to broaden Venezuela's foreign relations beyond its traditional past strong alliance with the United States, has been in Iran since Friday as part of a three-week tour of seven nations -- including Russia, Malaysia and China.

He also sought a ``strategic alliance'' with Russia on during a visit to Moscow last week.

IRNA had earlier said the two leaders would discuss ways to stabilize oil prices.

Venezuela currently holds the presidency of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), of which Iran is a leading member. Both countries have been advocates of stronger oil prices.

Tehran and Caracas were also to discuss forming a joint committee for economic and industrial cooperation, IRNA said.

-------- korea

S.Korea Denies Change in N.Korea Nuclear Project

May 7, 2001 http://news.excite.com/news/r/010507/00/news-korea-north-usa-reactor-dc

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea on Monday denied local media reports that Washington wants to replace light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea with steam-powered plants to allay concerns over possible nuclear weapons proliferation.

"It is not true that the U.S. made a decision to replace the reactor project with steam-powered generators and delivered the decision to our government," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement.

The JoongAng Ilbo newspaper, quoting "a high-ranking government official," reported on Monday that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage would negotiate the issue with South Korea and Japan on a visit this week.

Armitage is scheduled to arrive in Seoul on Wednesday from Japan.

South Korea, the United States and Japan jointly lead a $4.6 billion project to build two light-water reactors for North Korea and provide free fuel oil in exchange for Pyongyang's agreement to freeze a nuclear program suspected of developing weapons.

The project, agreed in 1994, has made little progress since a high-profile ground-breaking ceremony in 1997 and is expected to run years behind the scheduled completion date of 2003.

The JoongAng Ilbo quoted the official as saying Washington believes it was possible to produce weapons-grade plutonium from light-water reactors and it would be dangerous to build them.

The 1994 "Agreed Framework," which defused a crisis on the Korean peninsula, is regarded as one of the chief foreign policy successes of the eight-year Bill Clinton presidency.

The North Korean engagement policy gathered momentum after South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's ground-breaking summit in Pyongyang last June with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

The Bush administration is in the midst of reviewing North Korean policy and there is speculation the 1994 deal could be scrapped under a more hardline stand.

Bush caused some dismay in Seoul after telling visiting President Kim that Washington had no immediate plans to resume talks with Pyongyang, saying he was not sure he could trust a government as secretive as that of communist North Korea.

Washington said on Friday it favored a second inter-Korean summit, regardless of the pace of the U.S. policy review.

An extension of a North Korean moratorium on missile tests, as North Korean leader Kim Jong-il pledged to a European delegation last week, would be "constructive," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. The leader of the European delegation, Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, quoted Kim Jong-il as saying his next summit with South Korea's Kim would only take place once the Bush administration decided on a new North Korea policy.

Kim Dae-jung on Friday called on the United States to wrap up the policy review promptly to clear the way for the summit.

"We've supported the engagement policy of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), and we think continued North-South dialogue, including a second inter-Korean summit, would also be a positive development," Boucher said.

"We have our interaction with Korea under review. That review is ongoing. Frankly, we don't think that review should affect the pace of the inter-Korean dialogue, and we would look forward to that second summit happening," Boucher said.

Boucher gave no indication of progress in the policy review, which Bush ordered when he took office in January, or of when it would be finished.

South and North Korea remain technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armed truce that has never been replaced by a peace agreement.

-------- iraq

Recasting the Iraq Sanctions

May 20, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/opinion/20SUN2.html

Recognizing that the international embargo on trade with Iraq has become increasingly untenable, the United States and Britain will soon propose a reasonable narrowing of the sanctions to bar the shipment of arms and weapons-related material to Saddam Hussein's regime. Even nations that are weary of the 11-year ban on trade with Iraq should support restrictions designed to prevent Baghdad from rearming and once again threatening its neighbors. But Washington and London will have to make a concerted diplomatic offensive if they hope to prevail at the United Nations Security Council and gain Mr. Hussein's assent for a plan that would return international weapons inspectors to Iraq.

A decade after the Persian Gulf war, most of the world has lost interest in isolating Iraq. Some nations are lured toward complacency by short memories of Mr. Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and the prospect of profitable business deals with Baghdad. The change in attitude is shortsighted, but with permanent members of the Security Council like France, Russia and China anxious to abandon the embargo, the United States and Britain have no choice but to fashion a new approach.

Under the British-American proposal, the Security Council would develop a specific list of military and industrial items that would be banned from sale to Iraq. Iraq would still be required to deposit all its legitimate oil revenues in an escrow account controlled by the U.N. Yet the country would be free to import whatever nonmilitary goods it wished, effectively ending the embargo on civilian commodities. The U.N. has permitted Iraq to import food, medicine and other essential items, but Mr. Hussein has cynically limited such purchases to stoke foreign complaints about the hardships the embargo has inflicted on the Iraqi people.

In return for a relaxation of the trade ban, Mr. Hussein would have to allow the U.N. to resume weapons inspections, which have been suspended since 1998. He is unlikely to accept the deal unless he is convinced that the Security Council is united in its determination to maintain an arms embargo and will not set aside the broader trade restrictions until he lets inspectors back into Iraq to monitor weapons programs. He may well reject the plan even if faced with an undivided Security Council, but there will be no hope of obtaining his agreement if France, Russia and China remain wobbly.

The plan will also prove unworkable if nearby nations like Syria, Iran, Turkey and Jordan are unwilling to enforce the prohibition on arms sales by carefully inspecting overland cargo shipments to Iraq. All these nations now openly permit the smuggling of banned goods in and out of Iraq.

If the new diplomatic initiative fizzles, President Bush is sure to face escalating pressures to support Iraqi efforts to unseat Mr. Hussein. American financial assistance might be appropriate if there were an organized, well-led opposition within Iraq, or in the Iraqi exile community, but that is not the case. Mr. Bush should not entertain any proposals to use American military forces or weapons in concert with Mr. Hussein's foes.

Engineering a change in governments is easy to champion but extremely difficult to execute, even in the rare cases when it may be justified and consistent with American principles. A bungled program to remove Mr. Hussein from power would embarrass the United States and recklessly endanger the lives of Iraqis who would like to see a democratic government installed in Baghdad.

-------- israel

Shimon Peres Defends Use of Force

May 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Mideast.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Arriving Sunday in Moscow for meetings on Mideast peace, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres defended the use of force against Palestinians in two days of rocket attacks his country said were in retaliation for a deadly suicide bombing.

``We don't take any actions on our own initiative,'' Peres told reporters at the airport. ``Our action is a reaction to Palestinian actions, which are very cruel and aggressive toward Israel.''

He said he was looking forward to meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Monday and hearing Russia's view of the current situation in the Middle East.

``Russia is a country which experienced many wars and endured terror,'' Peres said. ``It is a big country that is responsible for peace throughout the world, including the Middle East,'' he said.

Peres, a former Israeli prime minister, has repeatedly emphasized that Russia has been a constructive force in the Middle East in the post-Soviet era and that its policies complement those of the United States, which has taken a more visible role in the Mideast peace process.

Peres was to meet Putin on Monday, then hold talks with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. He was also to meet with Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov and Alexy II, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.

Putin spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by telephone on Saturday, and the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement that condemned terrorism but said that '' the clearly improper use of military force by Israel is impossible to explain and justify.''

----

Egypt, Jordan Back Peace Efforts

May 20, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Arabs-Israel.html

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A day after a threat by Arab ministers to halt all political contacts with Israel, President Hosni Mubarak said Sunday that Egypt and Jordan will not give up their efforts to relaunch the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

``The Egyptian-Jordanian initiative is still on the table, and we should continue (efforts) to reactivate it,'' Mubarak told reporters.

Mubarak accused the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of trying to undermine the initiative, seen as one of the more serious efforts to quell eight months of violence between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Egyptian president also condemned Israel for using excessive military force, saying he was stunned by Israel's use of warplanes ``against people who use only stones or even mortar guns.''

He warned that ``recent events in the region will lead to a catastrophe that will harm the interests of all foreign powers in the region.''

On Saturday Mubarak talked with President Bush and other world leaders on the telephone and urged them to intervene to stop the violence that has killed 469 people on the Palestinian side and 84 on the Israeli side since Sept. 28.

Anger in the Arab world is at high-pitch as Israeli-Palestinian fighting has escalated to the use of warplane attacks, which Israel used Friday in retaliation for a suicide bombing. Six Israelis and 16 Palestinians were killed in two days of violence.

On Saturday, the Arab League follow-up committee recommended ``stopping all Arab political contacts with the Israeli government as long as the aggression and blockades against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority continue.''

The meeting at the league's Cairo headquarters was attended by delegates from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen.

In Jordan on Sunday, Palestine National Council Speaker Salim Zaanoun told reporters that the Arab foreign minister's recommendation constituted ``a method of pressure'' on the Jewish state to move toward resuming peace negotiations.

``But it is imperative that there should be a collective Arab action, especially from oil-producing nations in the Gulf, to tell the United States, 'Stop your bias toward Israel and stop watching the tragedy of the Palestinian people','' Zaanoun said.

Zaanoun said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has no plans to meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell because the Palestinian leader wishes to meet first with Bush. ``The meeting should be with President Bush because this is the norm and in order to preserve the dignity of the Palestinian people,'' he said.

Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab countries to have signed peace agreements with Israel.

The Egyptian-Jordanian proposal calls on Israel to freeze construction of Jewish settlements before a truce, then resume negotiations for a peace deal from where they had left off under the previous Israeli government of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

----

Saudi Crown Prince Hailed for Turning Down U.S. Visit

May 20, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-usa-sau.html

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabian commentators on Sunday lauded Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah for reportedly turning down an invitation to visit the United States in protest at Washington's pro-Israeli policies in the Middle East.

``This courageous Saudi stand declared by Prince Abdullah is in defense of the dignity and freedom of the Arabs and their natural right to regain what they are entitled to,'' al-Youm newspaper said in an editorial.

``Washington's illogical support of Tel Aviv has whetted (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon's appetite to spill more blood and escalate the aggression against unarmed Palestinians,'' it added.

At least 441 Palestinians, 13 Israeli Arabs and 87 Israelis have been killed in an eight-month-old Palestinian uprising for independence from Israel.

Another newspaper, al-Riyadh, said the crown prince wanted the United States to play a more honest and active role to ``end the tragic situation in Palestine.''

The papers were commenting on a report on Friday by the New York Times in which it quoted U.S. officials as saying that the crown prince had turned down the invitation to visit Washington in June following a scheduled trip to Canada.

The New York Times said the prince, who runs the day-to-day affairs of the world's biggest oil producer due to King Fahd's illness, was protesting at the failure of the U.S. administration to stop Israeli military attacks against the Palestinians.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, made no official comment on the New York Times report. But Saudi analysts said the fact that the report was published in the government-controlled newspapers gave it credibility.

``American and European reluctance to deter Israeli aggression gives a cover up for these attacks, which with the Israeli madness could eventually set the whole region on fire,'' al-Jazeera newspaper said.

The editorials are the latest additions to a growing chorus of the anti-U.S. sentiments in the oil-rich conservative kingdom for what Arabs see as Washington's blind support of Israel.

The Saudi crown prince, a pan-Arabist, has recently surprised observers by his unprecendented criticism of the United States, which provides protection for Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies.

----

Hezbollah Rejects U.S. Contact

MAY 20, 19:44 EST
By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=MIDEAST&STORYID=APIS7C45H180

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - The leader of Hezbollah said on Sunday the Iranian-backed guerrillas have turned down repeated attempts by the U.S. administration to establish contact.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said the United States has tried to initiate contact with Hezbollah - despite calling the group a terrorist organization.

``The U.S. says that we are terrorists and works day and night to open a contact line or contact channel with us,'' he told a rally in Bednayel in the Bekaa Valley, 28 miles east of Beirut.

``We are the ones who reject it, and we are the ones who decide what we should do. We reject the honor of sitting with an American official,'' he said.

A U.S. State Department official in Washington declined immediate comment on Sunday.

Nasrallah did not explain what kind of contacts were made, when or by whom. But in a speech, he indicated that the purpose was to persuade his group to end guerrilla attacks against Israel.

``The (Hezbollah) is the side that decides where the battlefield should be, its geographic scope, place and time. It imposes the rules of the game on the enemy (Israel),'' he said.

The U.S. State Department, in its latest annual report on terrorism released in April, referred to Hezbollah as a radical Shiite Muslim group that is ``strongly anti-West and anti-Israel.'' The same report ranked Iran, Hezbollah's backer, as the world's No. 1 terrorist country, an accusation that drew condemnation from Tehran.

Meanwhile, Sheik Naim Kassem, Hezbollah's No. 2 leader, accused the U.S. ambassador in Beirut, David Satterfield, of creating confusion when he said Lebanon had formally agreed to a U.N.-drawn border with Israel.

The so-called Blue Line, established after Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon on May 24, 2000, left undecided the fate of the disputed Chebaa Farms area on the eastern edge of the 60-mile-long line.

Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war when it took the Golan Heights from Syria. It annexed the Golan in December 1981, a move that is not recognized internationally.

Syria and Lebanon now say the Chebaa Farms area is Lebanese and should be returned. The United Nations say the territory belongs to Syria and should be part of Syrian-Israeli negotiations.

U.N. Mideast envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said in a television interview aired Sunday night that Chebaa Farms is ``occupied land defined as land occupied by Israel in Syria.''

As occupied land, it should be vacated by the occupying power, he told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. International, adding that it was a separate issue from the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and the Blue Line.

The area is the scene of frequent attacks by Hezbollah and Israel's retaliation. Hezbollah, which led a guerrilla war against Israeli forces during their 18-year occupation of Lebanon, has refused to lay down arms before the territory is returned to Lebanon.

In a statement to reporters last week, Satterfield caused an uproar when he said Lebanon formally agreed to the Blue Line last year, adding: ``This issue should not be reopened.''

Lebanon's government did not respond officially, but Salim Hoss, who was the prime minister when the line was drawn, said approving the Blue Line did not contradict Lebanon's claim to the Chebaa Farms area.

Kassem addressed a rally in the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Melki to commemorate Hezbollah militiamen killed in clashes with Israeli troops during their occupation.

Two protest rallies scheduled for Sunday in the southern Lebanese villages of Bint Jbeil and Khaim were canceled because of rising tensions related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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

Military to evolve slowly

05/20/2001 - Updated 09:30 PM ET
By Andrea Stone,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-05-21-rumsfeld.htm

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the changes he's considering in the size and structure of the military will be "very difficult to accomplish" and may take at least a decade.

Despite speculation that major changes are imminent, Rumsfeld said efforts to transform the military for 21st-century threats will be "annual and incremental" and will affect a "relatively modest fraction of the total force." He even suggested that some current weapons systems may still be around in 30 years.

As such, Rumsfeld appears to have parted ways with President Bush's plan to "skip a generation" of weapons. Bush is expected to outline his defense vision when he speaks at the U.S. Naval Academy commencement Friday.

In a wide-ranging interview in his office Saturday, Rumsfeld said his strategic defense review has revealed more questions than answers about how to deter and defend against emerging threats, such as ballistic missiles, biological weapons and cyberattacks.

Despite years of debate about the decade-old standard that requires the military to be able to fight two major wars simultaneously, Rumsfeld said, "We have not seen an alternative."

Still, Rumsfeld is leaning toward scrapping the strategy, which is used to structure the force. He says it doesn't fit a military that in recent years has been consumed with peacekeeping, airstrikes, humanitarian missions, evacuations of U.S. citizens abroad and enforcement of no-fly zones over Iraq.

The issue of troop reductions has "never come up," Rumsfeld said, despite Army and Marine Corps concerns that ground troops will be cut to free up money for air and space power. He said he wants to devise a strategy first, then decide on how many and what kind of troops are needed to implement it.

Rumsfeld, a former ambassador to NATO, said an increased focus on Asia will not come at Europe's expense. He said the broad strategic review conducted by Pentagon guru Andrew Marshall, who sees China as America's next great rival, "does not suggest any less emphasis on Europe."

Rumsfeld made clear that he would chart a far different course on overseas commitments than the Clinton administration.

He hinted that he would end President Clinton's 5-year-old program to teach peacekeeping skills in African nations. He said the Pentagon would "do what we agreed to do" to fulfill previous obligations but not necessarily more. He said the military mission in Bosnia was completed several years ago, yet "not a lot of energy" was put into establishing a civilian infrastructure that would allow peacekeepers to go home.

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Rumsfeld on High Wire of Defense Reform
Military Brass, Conservative Lawmakers Are Among Secretive Review's Unexpected Critics

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 20, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45657-2001May18?language=printer

In his first four months at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has launched a score of secretive studies and posed hundreds of tough questions as he has tried to create a new vision for the American military, looking at everything from missile defenses and global strategy to the flaws of a Truman-vintage personnel system.

Yet, in that short span, he has also rallied an unlikely collection of critics, ranging from conservative members of Congress and his predecessor as defense secretary to some of the generals who work for him. In dozens of interviews, those people expressed deep concern that Rumsfeld has acted imperiously, kept some of the top brass in the dark and failed to maintain adequate communications with Capitol Hill.

"He's blown off the Hill, he's blown off the senior leaders in the military, and he's blown off the media," said Thomas Donnelly, a defense expert at the conservative Project for the New American Century. "Is there a single group he's reached out to?"

The criticism has focused on Rumsfeld's score of study groups, staffed by retired generals and admirals and other experts who are probing everything from weapons programs to military retirement policies. In Pentagon hallways, "the Rumsfeld review," as the studies are collectively called, is mocked by some as a martial version of Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan, which failed spectacularly in 1994 when it was offered up to Congress.

"It's arrogant theorists behind closed doors," said one person offering the Clinton analogy, retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, now a prominent writer on military strategy.

The military is already responding in significant and striking ways. On Thursday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff held a closed-door meeting in the "Tank," their secure conference room at the Pentagon, where they posed scathing questions about Rumsfeld's intentions on strategy and possible cuts to the Army, defense officials said. Yesterday, retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, a former Army chief of staff, delivered an angry speech assailing the apparent direction of Rumsfeld's reforms as "imprudent."

One point on which both Rumsfeld and his critics agree is the gravity of his reform effort. Reshaping the military to meet the new threats of the 21st century -- and to keep the U.S. armed forces by far the strongest in the world -- was a key campaign pledge of President Bush. To be successful, Rumsfeld must not only come up with specific answers but also find enough support in Congress and across the military to fund them and carry them out. The job will be made all the more difficult because the reforms could anger members of Congress by closing bases, terminating major weapons programs and shifting some spending from tanks, ships and aircraft into newer areas such as space and missile defenses.

In an extensive interview in his Pentagon office last week, Rumsfeld argued that his review has been necessary, rational and inclusive, involving more than 170 meetings with 44 generals and admirals. "Everyone who wants to be briefed I think has been briefed," he said. "Everyone cannot be involved in everything."

Far from reaching concrete conclusions behind closed doors, he said, he simply has been posing questions about how to change the military to deal with a world where even Third World nations can buy long-range missiles, terrorists have attacked sites inside the United States, and the American economy is increasingly reliant on vulnerable satellites. "I've got a lot of thoughts, but I don't have a lot of answers," he said.

Overall, Rumsfeld swung in the interview between being conciliatory toward his critics and being dismissive of them. "Is change hard for people? Yeah," he said sympathetically. "Is the anticipation of change even harder? Yeah."

But a moment later he added: "The people it shakes up may very well be people who don't have enough to do. They're too busy getting shook up. They should get out there and get to work."

Brusque Style

Rumsfeld, a bright, impatient man who is not a schmoozer by nature, spent years as an executive in the pharmaceutical industry and honed a top-down management style. That approach may be the only way to overhaul America's huge and conservative military establishment. But his brusque manner has exacerbated anxiety about change in the Pentagon and could, in the end, undercut his effort.

Generals who have met with him report that communications tend to be one way. "He takes a lot in, but he doesn't give anything back," one said. "You go and you brief him, and it's just blank."

Neither that general nor any other Pentagon official critical of Rumsfeld would agree to be quoted by name. Indeed, one said Rumsfeld's aides would "have my tongue" were it known that he had talked to a reporter.

Many of those interviewed said they are worried that the future of the institution to which they have devoted their adult lives is being decided without them. One senior general unfavorably compared Rumsfeld's stewardship of the Pentagon with Colin L. Powell's performance as secretary of state. "Mr. Powell is very inclusive, and Mr. Rumsfeld is the opposite," said the general, who knows both men. "We've been kept out of the loop."

Added another senior officer: "The fact is, he is disenfranchising people."

Some noted that the Bush administration came into office vowing to restore the military's trust in its civilian overseers. "Everyone in the military voted for these guys, and now they feel like they aren't being trusted," a Pentagon official said.

The Army, which has the reputation of being the most doggedly obedient of all the services, appears to be closest to going into opposition against the new regime. Army generals are especially alarmed by rumors that they could lose one or two of their 10 active divisions under the new Pacific-oriented strategy that Rumsfeld appears to be moving toward but has not yet unveiled.

At the Joint Chiefs' "Tank" session on Thursday, one defense official said, the Army led the charge against the conclusions of a Rumsfeld study group on conventional weapons that suggested big cuts in Army troops. The service chiefs told their chairman, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, that they could not make sense of that recommendation without knowing precisely what strategy Rumsfeld wants to pursue. "It wasn't just the Army, but [Army officers] took the lead" in the criticism, the official added.

Retired generals often say in public what the active-duty leadership is thinking but can't utter. Sullivan, the former Army chief, appeared to play that role yesterday in a speech to a conference of Army reservists. He said he is worried that Rumsfeld would "propose a world in which we will be able to hide behind our missile defense," which he went on to liken to the expensive but useless Maginot Line that France erected against Germany after World War I.

In another recent talk, Sullivan referred to Rumsfeld's new emphasis on space as a "rathole" for defense spending. He also sent an e-mail criticizing Rumsfeld, and that message has circulated widely inside the Army.

Wary Generals

The military now appears so wary of Rumsfeld that officers perceive slights where none may have been intended. The generals are especially peeved by what they believe is a pattern of moves by Rumsfeld to reallocate power from the military to himself.

Earlier this month, for example, Rumsfeld dumped his military assistant, a one-star admiral who had been picked for the job just four months earlier, and replaced him with a three-star admiral. "It turned out I made a mistake, just to be blunt about it, thinking that a one-star could, simply because he was in the secretary's office, get the place to move at the same pace that a three-star could or a two-star," Rumsfeld explained. In other words, one flag officer commented, Rumsfeld felt he needed someone who could crack the whip over the top brass.

Rumsfeld also caused a stir in the services by bringing in retired Vice Adm. Staser Holcomb, who was his military assistant during his first term as secretary of defense, under President Gerald R. Ford, to look over the current crop of generals and admirals. Holcomb's queries may indicate that Rumsfeld wants to take over the selection of top generals -- one of the last prerogatives left to the service chiefs. The chiefs generally have little say about operational matters, which are the province of the regional commanders, or "CinCs," and they don't have much sway over weapons acquisition, which is a civilian responsibility. But they do get to pick who joins the club of top generals.

Rumsfeld said Holcomb is working on military personnel matters, especially in helping him look at who should become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Shelton steps down later this year. Asked whether he is stepping on the toes of the service chiefs by getting involved in the selection of two- and three-star generals, Rumsfeld grinned and laughed, but said nothing.

Rumsfeld has also been planning to start a new "Crisis Coordination Center" to be overseen by his office, defense officials said. They report that Rumsfeld believes that communications and responsibilities during crises have been handled hazily. Creating such a center -- a move that has not previously been reported -- almost certainly would diminish the power of the staff of the Joint Chiefs, which oversees operations.

Rumsfeld's views on crisis communications may have been crystallized by an undisclosed foul-up that occurred during the Feb. 16 air strikes against Iraq, the Bush administration's first use of military force. At the last minute, military commanders moved up the timing of the strikes by six hours.

But word somehow didn't get to Bush, said several defense officials. The president had expected the bombs to begin dropping as he headed home from a summit meeting in Mexico. Instead, the strikes started just as he arrived for that meeting, overshadowing his first foreign trip as president and infuriating him, officials said.

Rumsfeld declined to comment on that incident. But he said that, generally speaking, miscommunications are "inevitable when people are new on the job."

Tensions With Congress

If anything, Rumsfeld's relations with Capitol Hill have been even more tumultuous. The military, after all, ultimately will follow orders. But Congress expects to have a big say in the orders.

"There really could be a huge collision between Rumsfeld, the services and Congress," predicted Harlan Ullman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There's an iceberg out there, and there's a Titanic."

Ullman said he thinks Rumsfeld has done a fairly good job, considering how understaffed the top of the Pentagon has been, with only a few senior officials in place.

But he also said that the Bush White House has badly miscalculated on the politics of defense. "I don't think the administration understands how much political capital it will take to change the U.S. military," he said. He and others warn that defense isn't a major issue on the Hill, and that no clear constituency exists for military reform. At the same time, there is a clear bloc against change, consisting of members of Congress who worry that bases and weapons plants in their districts could be closed.

Rumsfeld said he has devoted enormous effort to congressional relations, holding about 70 meetings with 115 lawmakers over the past four months. "I am on the Hill frequently," he said. "I frequently have breakfasts and lunches down here that include members."

But the view from the Hill appears to be different. "There are lots of members concerned about the lack of communications," a Senate staffer said last week.

One warning sign has been a spate of "holds" placed on Rumsfeld's nominees by angry senators. These holds, which prevent a confirmation vote from taking place, aren't made public. But it is striking that Republican senators appear to have held up some of the nominees of a Republican administration. The Senate majority leader, Trent Lott (R-Miss.), controlled two of the holds -- on the nominees to be the Pentagon's general counsel and assistant secretary for public affairs -- that were lifted late Thursday.

Rumsfeld's predecessor as defense secretary, William S. Cohen, took the unusual step last week of publicly criticizing Rumsfeld's handling of Congress. "However brilliant the strategy may be, you cannot formulate a strategy and mandate that Congress implement it," Cohen, a former Republican senator, told a group of reporters.

"The less they're involved in the beginning," Cohen warned, "the more they'll be involved in the end, and not necessarily in a positive way."

Rumsfeld appears to have strong backing not only from Bush but also from Vice President Cheney, his former protégé when Rumsfeld was a White House counselor and then chief of staff in the Ford administration. Earlier this month, a senior White House official said: "The vice president indicated to the secretary that he would be as helpful as he could. As a former defense secretary, he has a special interest in the Pentagon."

Where the White House stands on Rumsfeld's efforts should become clearer this Friday, when Bush is scheduled to speak about U.S. military strategy in a commencement address at Annapolis.

In the following weeks, Rumsfeld will engage Congress in hearings, then will begin making critical decisions on high-profile weapons systems and on whether to cut the size of the military to pay for new weapons. Every one of those decisions could antagonize members of Congress.

Rumsfeld said he looks forward to working with lawmakers to find the right answers. "Hell, I know what I can do and I can't do," he said. "I can do some things, but I can't simply stick a computer chip in my head and come out with a perfect answer to big, tough important questions like that for the country. Even if you could, change imposed is change opposed."

The transcript of Rumsfeld's interview is available at www.washingtonpost.com

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Bright Ideas, All Along

By Steven Mufson
Sunday, May 20, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48215-2001May19?language=printer

Talk about alternative energy policies.

"To speak exclusively of conservation is to duck the tough issues. Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis -- all by itself -- for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." That was Vice President Cheneythree weeks ago, speaking as chair of President Bush's energy task force.

"Our new energy plan begins with a 21st century focus on conservation. . . . Our energy plan will speed up progress on conservation where it has slowed and restart it where it has failed." That was President Bush three days ago, in a speech that used the word "conservation" 11 times.

Faster than an overnight poll, the Bush administration's rhetoric has done an about-face on energy conservation, changing its tone from condescending to respectful. But the new spin failed to convince many environmentalists -- unsurprisingly -- that the administration's goals have, in fact, changed. Many who heard Bush's speech and read his energy plan thought that the president was simply putting a greener face on a fossil-fuel-basedpolicy. They saw his marquee conservation proposal -- $10 billion worth of fuel efficiency tax credits, only half of them new -- as a mere drop in the barrel of a $1.35 trillion tax cut, and said its impact would be dwarfed by his overall promotion of more oil, more coal and more nuclear power plants.

Let's hope Bush defies the expectations of his critics. The fact is, conservation is good business, sound economic policy and a symbol not of limits, but of the degree to which American ingenuity can stretch the limits of what we have.

It has worked in the past: Without the efficiency and conservation measures that have become entrenched over the past 25 years, the current U.S. lifestyle would require the equivalent of 13 million more barrels of oil a day -- about the same as the current output of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Venezuela combined.

And conservation can make a real difference in the future. If, for example, the United States raised average automobile fuel efficiency by about four miles a gallon, the country would immediately start saving more oil per year than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could produce at its peak, which, if drilling were allowed there, wouldn't happen until 2030.

"Efficiency is cheap, quick, and it works. The potential is just enormous," says Greg Kats, a principal at Capital E, a clean-energy technology consulting and investment advisory firm. "If this administration looked at it with green eyeshades and said, 'What can we do that makes the most sense on a cost-effective basis,' the entire thrust of the plan would be different, with greater focus on conservation and renewables."

Conservation got a bad political reputation 22 years ago, when the United States was in the throes of its second oil price shock in five years. Fuel prices, which had soared after the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74, had risen again after the Iranian revolution of 1979. Jimmy Carter wore sweaters around a pointedly underheated White House, speed limits were lowered to a miserly, fuel-saving 55 mph, and cub newspaper reporters like me were collecting irate quotes from people in line at gasoline stations.

But in the two decades since I covered the oil and gas industry for the Wall Street Journal, creative and profitable ways of saving energy have rescued the United States from dire forecasts of deprivation and limits to growth.

For the most part, the advances were market-driven. In the industrial sector, for example, oil refineries harnessed the excess steam produced by their boilers and used it as an energy source -- the process is called "cogeneration" -- thereby cutting energy costs by 15 to 30 percent. The aluminum, glass and steel industries, which require extremely high temperatures in their manufacturing processes, started treating energy like any other expensive raw material, and came up with smart ways to use less. Some utilities discovered it was actually cheaper to offer customers money to install more efficient furnaces than to finance expensive new power plants.

Regarding consumers, meanwhile, appliance makers found that efficiency was an effective marketing strategy. As a result, a refrigerator built this year, equipped with automatic defrost and a top-mounted freezer, uses fewer than 650 kilowatt-hours annually, whereas the typical model sold in 1973 used nearly 2,000. Central air conditioners are more than 50 percent more efficient, on the average, than they were in 1976. Washing machines and furnaces have made similar leaps. Double-paned windows and increased insulation have become standard in new buildings.

But market forces alone wouldn't have been enough. Government prodding helped, too. In 1975, Congress ordered automakers to double the average fuel efficiency of new automobiles to 27.5 miles a gallon by 1985 or face hefty fines. Even though the autos on the road still fall short of that target, improved fuel efficiency has saved the United States about 2 million barrels a day -- the same amount currently produced in Alaska. Efficiency standards were later set for an array of other products, including appliances, light fixtures, and heating and cooling equipment.

The effects of this all-out effort were impressive -- especially at first. The average American's energy use dropped from 361 million BTUs (British thermal units, the common way to measure energy) to 314 million between 1978 and 1983. Oil consumption in the noncommunist world dropped from 51.6 million barrels a day to about 45 million between 1979 and 1983. Conservation was so effective that oil prices actually declined during the war between two giant producers, Iraq and Iran, in the early 1980s.

Republicans were as happy about this as Democrats. "Conservation has shown itself to be a unique, economic, and highly flexible energy resource applicable to all energy technologies and fuel types," said the 1983 energy plan produced by the Reagan administration. "No other energy resource can be tailored to individual needs or employed in increments as effectively as conservation, and each additional increment results in immediate energy savings, thus promptly reducing costs and offering return on capital."

But 1983 was a turning point; energy consumption has been creeping upward ever since -- at first slowly, then more quickly. Years of prosperity and cheap fossil fuels took the wind out of the sails of innovative efficiency. Americans started buying gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles -- today, automobiles heading for the junkyard get better mileage on average than the ones rolling off assembly lines -- and more spacious houses. By 1999, per capita energy consumption was up to 354 million BTUs -- just about back to where it was in 1978. (Total consumption, of course, is higher, because there are 60 million more of us than there were then.)

More than halfthe growth in U.S. energy consumption of the past 25 years has taken place during the past six years, according to the Energy Department. Those were Clinton years, and President Bush should follow through on his new rhetoric and try to reverse the trend. He should set new targets and standards, as well as tax incentives for energy efficiency, and help keep factories, auto makers and consumers from backsliding. The auto fuel efficiency standard of 27.5 miles per gallon, for example, hasn't changed in 16 years. Bush said Thursday that he would "review" the standard; why not a commitment to raise it? He could also require utilities to make it easier for small producers to sell excess power back to the grid, which could spur the use of fuel cells and renewables in office buildings and households.

He might find inspiration in his own state of Texas, where utilities, farmers and private business are expected to install wind generating capacity this year that will produce more than half as much energy as a typical nuclear power plant, according to Kats.

Far from stunting our way of life, energy conservation has made it possible to continue to improve it. But clearly, with the U.S. population growing and the economy expanding, energy use will rise even with conservation. Whatever other solutions the United States pursues, now is the time to give energy conservation another vigorous boost. This is not a matter of self-denial; it is in our national self-interest.

Steven Mufson is a reporter on The Post's national staff.

-------- energy

Burn, Baby, Burn

By PAUL KRUGMAN
May 20, 2001
RECKONINGS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/opinion/20KRUG.html?searchpv=nytToday

Who knew that Dick Cheney had such a sense of humor?

He had us rolling in the aisles after the famous put-down in which he dismissed energy conservation as nothing more than a "sign of personal virtue." But the joke got much better Thursday, with the release of the administration's energy plan. Just for laughs, Mr. Cheney threw in a few mock conservation measures. Topping the list was a tax credit for - get this - people who purchase hybrid gas-electric cars.

In case you don't quite get the joke: during the campaign one of George W. Bush's favorite gag lines involved making fun of Al Gore's proposal for - you guessed it - a tax credit for purchase of hybrid cars. It got big laughs because it symbolized his opponent's supposed preoccupation with trivialities. Now, in a fine satirical gesture, Mr. Cheney has made the very same proposal his lead conservation measure. Take that, you wimps!

It seems that the pundits, having misjudged Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney during the campaign, have done it again. We now know that the moderate rhetoric Mr. Bush used during the campaign was insincere; but it turns out that the administration's libertarian rhetoric during the selling of the tax cut was equally insincere. These guys don't believe in free markets: what they're really into is heavy metal. Refineries! Pipelines! Nuclear power plants! That's the stuff!

To justify their lust for tubular steel, Mr. Cheney and his collaborators have gone to great lengths to fabricate an energy crisis - and they have also suddenly decided that free markets don't work after all. "Estimates," says the report, "indicate that over the next 20 years U.S. oil consumption will increase by 33 percent." Whose estimates? We are never told. But that's an awfully high number. In the 20 years ending in 1999, the last year for which official data are available, oil consumption rose less than 5 percent. All I can figure is that Mr. Cheney's people are extrapolating from the abrupt decline in automobile fuel efficiency over the last few years, as people have switched from ordinary cars to S.U.V.'s. And what they are saying is that we should base our energy policy on the assumption that this quite recent trend will continue unabated for decades.

This doesn't have to happen. In fact, it isn't going to happen, even in the absence of any serious conservation measures. To burn as much oil as the Cheney report says we need, everyone who still drives a mere car would have to acquire an S.U.V., and everyone who now drives an S.U.V. would have to start driving something the size of a Sherman tank.

What's behind Mr. Cheney's greasy math? It goes without saying that he wants to scare us into relaxing environmental regulation. But there's more: the Cheney plan provides an array of subsidies, explicit and implicit, for energy producers. Indeed, the libertarian Cato Institute calls the plan a "smorgasbord of handouts and subsidies for virtually every energy lobby in Washington."

Strange, isn't it? If you're a low- paid worker, or an energy consumer, the free market is sacrosanct - it would be a terrible thing if government provided you with any assistance. But energy producers apparently need special encouragement to do their regular job.

In fact, of course, they don't. Mr. Cheney loves to talk about our alleged need to build a new power plant every week for the next 20 years, implying that this is a herculean task that can only be accomplished with a lot of help from Washington. But high prices have already sparked a huge construction boom in the power industry, which will add three or four plants per week for the next few years. As some wags have put it, if the power industry wants to meet Mr. Cheney's target it will have to slow down its building program.

The truth is that the administration has things exactly the wrong way around. It claims that we face a long-run energy crisis, and that there are no short-term answers. The reality is that in the long run the forces of supply and demand will take care of our energy needs, with or without Mr. Cheney's expensive new program of corporate welfare. What we need is a strategy to deal with the temporary problem of sky-high prices and huge windfall profits. But we're not going to get it, at least not from Washington.

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Russia to Begin Overhaul of Electricity Industry

May 20, 2001
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/20RUSS.html

MOSCOW, May 19 - Russia said today that it would begin a sweeping overhaul of its electricity industry, one of President Vladimir V. Putin's first major reform efforts, despite critics who warn that the changes would hurt foreign investors.

The program, which would gradually create a market for electric power, was given tentative approval in a government meeting today, and would be official within a month. The electricity sector, comprising dozens of companies, would be divided into generation, distribution and sales units. The government would sell stakes in them, but would retain full control over the grid itself, and thousands of miles of power lines.

Its critics, including Mr. Putin's own economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, strongly oppose the plan, saying it does not provide adequate safeguards for the current owners of Russia's electricity companies.

The reform has been the object of debate since Anatoly Chubais - the former government reformer best known for his state-asset sales program in the mid-1990's - proposed a radical version last year. Mr. Chubais, who runs Russia's biggest electric company, Unified Energy System, incurred the wrath of foreign investors with his plan; they feared that it would ruin their holdings. Mr. Putin ordered a compromise.

Unified is the world's largest electric grid, but its value is not one-tenth the value of utilities in Western countries. The industry needs outside investment to modernize.

Unified, which is 52 percent owned by the government, has many minority owners, including foreign investors who hold about a third of it.

The debate centers on how property should be redistributed within the new system. Investors who own parts of the regional companies oppose the proposal to remove chunks of property from those companies through share swaps or buyouts. Unified itself would be liquidated, and investors say they are not confident that they will get a fair payment.

-------- globalization

World Aid and Trade Accord Reached

MAY 20, 15:24 EST
By CONSTANT BRAND
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C41MV00

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Poor and wealthy countries agreed on a new aid and trade partnership Sunday aimed at bringing the most destitute countries out of poverty in 10 years time.

While admitting that the past two United Nations conferences on poverty- in 1981 and 1990- failed to improve economic conditions in the world's 49 poorest nations, representatives at the end of a weeklong meeting set out a new plan to end the decline.

``We do not want another conference,'' said Donald Kaberuka, finance minister from Rwanda. ``In 10 years we should have met the needs of some 600 million people living in poverty.''

The 60-page plan sets out commitments for both wealthy and poor countries to provide greater development aid, and debt relief, as well as giving greater priorities to trade and investment.

The plan also calls for several trust funds to be set up to improve food safety, foreign investment, as well as a $10 billion global fund to fight AIDS and other diseases.

Poul Nielson, the European Union's development commissioner, was optimistic that the number of poorest countries could be cut but warned it was up to all participants to cooperate and implement the new 10-year plan.

In a declaration, participants said they had a ``shared responsibility'' to eradicate poverty and deprivation of some 630 million people who live on less than a dollar a day.

Despite decades of global growth and development aid, the number of countries the United Nations calls ``least developed'' - those with per capita income of less than $900 a year and scarce investment in health, nutrition and education - has nearly doubled since 1971, from 25 to 49.

The United Nations has said aid to those countries- mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia but also Haiti and some Pacific island nations- has dropped by 45 percent since 1990.

At the start of the meeting on Monday, leaders from the world's poorest nations urged richer countries to deliver practical results.

``We should be ashamed of ourselves that we could not deliver in the past,'' said Eveline Herfkens, Dutch minister for development and cooperation. ``We as a donor community have to commit ourselves.''

As part of the plan donor countries said they would cancel more outstanding debts for the poorest countries, a key demand by the 49 at the meeting. Donors also promised to offer them special status within the World Trade Organization.

Participants agreed to increase development aid was also agreed to and reduce the conditions such aid comes with. Much aid obliges recipient countries to spend the money on products and services from donors.

Out of $8 billion of development aid, $5 billion will now be sent with no strings attached, officials said.

In trade, the conference agreed to offer the 49 nations ``duty free and quota free market access'' on goods coming from these countries, but failed to give a date by which this could be applied.

It was made clear, that new aid would come at the condition that poorer countries move to implement not only economic reforms, but political ones too, including improvement of human rights and democracy, and reducing corruption.

Aid groups criticized the plan for not setting dates by which market access could be achieved.

``We get the impression that there was not any political will ... it was not ambitious,'' said Anna Eriksson, speaking for the Non-Governmental Organization Forum - representing hundreds of aid and charity groups active in the world's poorest nations.

-------- imf / world bank

Dam Project in Paraguay Mirrors Rift Over Riches

May 20, 2001
By LARRY ROHTER
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/20PARA.html

ENCARNACIÓN, Paraguay - More than a decade ago, when the giant Yacyretá dam, west of here, was still budgeted at about $2.5 billion, one partner in the venture called it "a monument to corruption." Today, with the cost of the dam at $10 billion - and climbing - a political movement to block its completion is gaining strength.

"This dam was badly planned and unviable from the very beginning, the delusion of a pair of dictatorial governments, and I can guarantee you that even as I speak, people are still misappropriating money," said Ángela Vergara de Miranda, a dentist and civic leader here.

"So why should anyone want to raise the water level another 23 feet and displace thousands of people beyond those who have already been dislocated?"

The Yacyretá (pronounced ya-see- reh-TA) extends for 40 miles across a series of islands in the Paraná River, which forms the border between Paraguay and Argentina. Work on the hydroelectric dam began in 1983, and it finally began to generate electricity in 1994.

But because of the dispute over raising the water level its final 23 feet, the project is functioning at only 60 percent of its planned capacity - while government authorities have watched their debts mount.

"It's as if you've constructed a 12- story building but are only allowed to use seven floors," complained Juan Erasmo Candia, public relations director for the project.

Both Yacyretá and Itaipú, an even larger dam built farther upriver in partnership with Brazil, were conceived in the early 1970's by Paraguay's dictator at the time, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, who promised that the projects would make this poor, landlocked country of five million people "an energy superpower."

A small group of businessmen, construction magnates and lawyers with close ties to Paraguay's long- ruling Colorado Party did indeed become rich, though few other Paraguayans have benefited.

The fallout has been especially strong in this port town, which with nearly 120,000 people is Paraguay's third largest city. Some low-lying areas have already been flooded, and several thousand residents have been forced to move to the city's outskirts, leaving behind their homes and livelihoods,

"To this date, we have not received a single cent of compensation," said Heriberto Cabral, an ironworker and leader of a local organization of displaced residents. "All they have done is create a belt of misery around the city that is growing daily."

Mr. Candia contends that "all those affected by the creation of the reservoir have already been properly indemnified." But critics say dam administrators are belatedly pinching pennies at the expense of the poor after years of free spending and corruption.

Those abuses led Carlos Saúl Menem, then president of Argentina, to blast Yacyretá as "a monument to corruption," but he eventually acceded to the argument that so much had already been spent that it would be wasteful to turn back.

Today both Paraguay and Argentina are deep in recessions and would welcome the surge in jobs, spending and income that completion of the project would presumably bring.

In neighboring Brazil, on the other hand, the economy is strong but an energy shortage looms. And with an eye to the Brazilian market, in late February the Yacyretá Binational Enterprise, which operates the dam, asked the World Bank and Inter- American Development Bank, which helped finance the project, for permission to finish it.

"We anticipate a prompt answer and do not see any further barriers arising," said Walter Reiser, the Paraguayan representative on the commission.

At the same time, Paraguay and Argentina are dusting off old plans to build yet another giant hydroelectric project a few miles upstream, at a binational site called Corpus. That dam proposal must first be approved by voters in the Argentine province of Misiones later this year.

"I believe that Corpus is going to go through," the president of Paraguay, Luis González Macchi, said in an interview in Asunción. "Without a doubt the buyer of its electricity will be Brazil, and we are more than willing to cooperate with them."

This time, though, government officials promise that the dam will be built with private rather than government funds. That, they argue, should prevent the kind of graft and the cost overruns that made Yacy retá a synonym for greed.

"The best guarantee that such problems will be avoided is Yacyretá itself," Mr. Reiser said. "Because of all the bad things that have happened, Yacyretá serves as an example of what should not be done."

-------- activists

A summer against Trident...

Date: Sun, 20 May 2001
From: Stephen Kobasa <skobasa@pop.snet.net>

International activists plan to disarm Trident-bases in Scotland this August

Gent, Belgium 15 May 2001 -For Mother Earth is calling for people from all over the world to join an action camp for a nuclear free world in Scotland this August. The camp is part of the Trident Ploughshares campaign which aims to disarm Trident, UK's nuclear weapon system, by non-violent and accountable direct action. Trident consists of four nuclear powered submarines carrying nuclear missiles which have the destructive power of nearly 1000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs.

The camp will take place 27 July - 11 August 2001 in Peaton Woods, Scotland, near to the two main Trident bases of the UK, Coulport (Trident warhead depot) and Faslane (Trident submarine base). Non-violent direct action to disarm UK's illegal weapon of mass destruction will happen through the whole camp. Activists form affinity groups to take part in the actions, and the consensus decision making process at the camp. There are also support roles needed, such as cooking and building work at the camp, as well as media and legal support. Actions at the similar two-week camp last August involved fence cutting, blockades, attempts to swim to the submarines. There were 161 arrests.

Peace campaigners and activists from Belgium, Finland, France and the Netherlands are already planning to join the British ploughshares activists at the camp, and further mobilisation is happening. "Trident endangers all life on Earth. Therefore it's important that we all take action against it and all the other nuclear weapon systems on our planet", says the spokesperson of For Mother Earth.

Trident Ploughshares is a campaign of direct people's disarmament launched in 1998. Since then, there have been hundreds of nonviolent direct actions at nuclear weapon sites across Britain, resulting in numerous court cases.There have also been several disarmament actions where activists have actually succeeded in dismanteling Trident-related equipments.

For Mother Earth campaigns for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. During its latest action at NATO base in Kleine Brogel, Belgium, 850 people trespassed the base where 10 U.S. nuclear bombs are stored illegally. For Mother Earth has been active with the Trident Ploughshares campaign since 1998.

Both Trident Ploughshares and For Mother Earth use international law in their campaigns for nuclear disarmament. According to the International Court of Justice "..the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally contrary to the rules of international humanitarian law..". However, the governments of the nuclear weapons states and NATO states that participated in the nuclear planning group continue to threaten the rest of the world with nuclear destruction. It's up to all of us to take non-violent direct disarmament action.

People who are not able to participate on the camp are invited to support the campaign by sponsoring it.

More information:

For Mother Earth Phone: +32-9-242.87.52 E-mail: international@motherearth.org http://www.motherearth.org/ International postal account:#000-1618561-19

Trident Ploughshares Phone:+44-(0)1324-880744 Fax:+44-(0)1436-677529 E-mail:tp2000@gn.apc.org www.tridentploughshares.org


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