------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Industries to Feel Effects of Senate Power Shift
U.S. Seeks Data on Bid for General Dynamics
Pakistan Welcomes Talks on Kashmir
U.S. to Discuss North Korea Policy
Russia Says Kursk's Salvage Safe
Russia Vows to Lift Veil of Secrecy From Kursk Sub
Singapore Develops New Proton Beam
What's Wrong With the Modular Pebble Bed Reactor?
THE PEBBLE BED MODULAR REACTOR
Labor Department Meets First Deadline
Congress Limits Survivor Benefits
Age May Disqualify Victims' Kids
Likely New Senate Committee Chairmen

MILITARY
Powell sees instability of Gadhafi
U.S. Slates $3 Million for Sudanese Opposition
Secret Deal Threatens Macedonian Coalition
Operation in Yugoslavia Highlights a New Alliance Army
Milosevic accused of covering war crimes
Milosevic Tied to War Crimes
Colombia Troops Set for Drug Battle
Mexican police arrest former governor
Indian PM Invites Pakistan Talks
List Targets Export Controls to Iraq
China, Russia Judge Sanctions Plan
Israel Downs Lebanese Plane
Rights groups shuffled in U.N. body
Join the Navy and Kill the Whales?
Bush Promises Better Military
The Illusion of a Grand Strategy
Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs Spar Over Roles in Retooling Military
Bush Tells Naval Graduates to Embrace Innovation
Notes from the Pentagon.

OTHER
Cheney Says He Can't Help Calif.
Brazil Unveils Energy Savings Plan
Limits on Radiation Compensation
Mexican State OKs Indian Bill
Abidjan Denies Child Slaves Used on Plantations
Red-light cameras boost revenues
China claim on plane sparks denial by U.S.

ACTIVISTS
Spaniards Silently Protest Killing
CONVICTED NUCLEAR PROTESTER TO BEGIN PRISON SENTENCE


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- business

Industries to Feel Effects of Senate Power Shift

By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 25, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A73411-2001May24?language=printer

The moment yesterday that Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont changed the balance of power in the Senate by announcing he was leaving the Republican Party, Stanley Collander tried to set up a conference call with some three dozen public affairs specialists around the country whom he oversees for corporate consultants Fleishman-Hillard.

Apparently, others had the same idea. "The conference operator said that all hell was breaking loose, there were conferences going on like crazy," Collander said.

He finally got everyone on the line around 4 p.m. From Oregon to Texas, representing industries from finance to defense to health care, the staffers were asking the same basic question everyone else in business was asking yesterday: What happens now?

"All of a sudden, everything we had been telling our clients since the election results were announced had to be reexamined," Collander said.

Proposals that had seemed to be dead under the Republican-controlled Senate -- such as a patients' bill of rights -- were immediately back in play. Others -- such as ballistic missile defense -- now look shaky at best. But the basic expectation for the new Senate, summarized by Collander but shared by a range of lobbyists and executives interviewed yesterday, is that the legislative priorities of the Bush administration are going to start moving a whole lot slower.

"Gridlock, stalemate, any way you want to put that," Collander said. "I've been surprised all year long that the administration has been going for something other than incremental changes, and this moves them back in the other direction."

Several issues could be particularly affected by the shift in power. The change will have a major impact on trade policy -- both by giving Democrats greater clout in the fight over new presidential authority to negotiate trade agreements, and by giving individual industries greater status in their battles to obtain protection from imports.

In addition, the Bush administration's effort to set a new national energy policy could be significantly slowed by a Democratic Senate, probably ending Republican plans of reporting an energy bill by July 4.

And the odds increased that the Senate will pass a patients' protection bill, according to lobbyists for the health insurance industry, who have opposed such measures. Jeffords is likely to be replaced as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who is one of the chamber's most liberal members.

Kennedy is "a well-respected member who on any given day will compromise," said Charles N. Kahn III, president of the Health Insurance Association of America, a trade group with 294 members. "But on the other hand, you've got to pause some that you've moved from a chairman who is a card-carrying moderate to somebody who's willing to push the edge."

Throughout the day yesterday, lobbyists and senators alike began taking stock of the new mix of personalities who will be ascending to power on various committees. At an afternoon Senate press conference, Rep. John J. LaFalce of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Banking Committee, jokingly knelt before Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes of Maryland and pretended to kiss his hand.

Financial industry lobbyists and congressional staffers crowded into the room to listen to Sarbanes outline his agenda as the new chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee, which oversees the nation's banks, securities markets and federal financial regulators.

Sarbanes, a liberal Democrat, is keenly interested in bolstering consumer and investor protections, including those involving financial privacy and mortgage-lending practices. His Republican counterpart, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), has said he did not see a need for legislation in those areas.

"We can expect a more serious discussion of predatory lending than in the past," said Howard Glaser, senior staff vice president for the Mortgage Bankers Association of America.

Consumers also could be affected by the change in leadership at the powerful Commerce Committee, where Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) is set to replace John McCain (R.-Ariz.). Some privacy advocates suggested that Hollings would take a more aggressive role in making sure a consumer's privacy is protected, particularly on the Internet.

In addition, Hollings is known to take a tougher stance against media consolidation. While he cannot stop the Federal Communications Commission from dismantling rules that prohibit consolidation in the broadcasting industry, he can keep closer tabs on FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who had particularly strong support from McCain.

"It's going to make Powell's job harder," said Blair Levin, a Washington analyst with the Legg Mason investment firm.

A Hollings chairmanship also could be a setback for the regional Bell telephone companies. Hollings is expected to use his position to block a bill supported by House Commerce Committee Chairman W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) that would make it easier for local telephone companies to get into the long-distance telephone business. The bill, which is also supported by Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), already faced an uphill battle, but it now "has no chance," according to Levin. Finally, it will also fall to the Commerce Committee to oversee the escalating feud between Ford Motor Co. and Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. over the recall of Firestone tires. With Firestone's newest manufacturing plant being located in Akin, S.C., Hollings could be a bit more sympathetic to the tiremaker's plight.

New chairmen will bring new pet interests to various committees. On the Finance Committee, big steel is probably a big winner, along with U.S. lumber and wheat producers -- constituencies dear to the heart of Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who is succeeding Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) as chairman.

The finance panel will move "in the next couple of weeks" to initiate discussions that could lead to quotas on imported steel, a top committee staff member said. The staffer said that while Grassley had been staving off action, Baucus is itching to proceed.

Beyond that, Senate Democrats will be in a better position to insist on the inclusion of tougher provisions protecting worker rights and environmental standards in trade agreements when Congress considers legislation giving the president "trade promotion authority," also known as fast-track authority, to negotiate new deals.

"They have to get the Senate to pass fast-track, and with the committee held by Baucus . . . we're not going to schedule what we don't like," the committee aide said. "Senator Baucus is generally friendly to the big-picture trade agenda of the administration, but he has some big differences with them on labor and the environment and on preserving the unfair trade [or anti-dumping] laws, which are likely to come much more into focus now."

The Jeffords announcement was welcomed by Scott Shotwell, executive director of the U.S. Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, which is pressing a case to impose anti-dumping duties on softwood lumber from Canada. Baucus is a fervent advocate for U.S. lumber producers, and Shotwell said Baucus's new position gives him more leverage to get what he wants.

"Baucus comes from a timber state, and he's been working this issue many years," Shotwell said. "Grassley's background is more agricultural. In his state, I think the telephone poles are taller than the trees."

Military contractors said they expect a Democratic Senate to slow the pace of change that is being pushed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Because the Bush administration has yet to present its defense budget for next year, several industry officials said they now expect the military spending plan to get hung up for several months in haggling with Senate Democrats.

One expected casualty of the Democrats' new muscle: National Missile Defense, which could face a slowdown or worse. Arms control advocates crowed over that possibility yesterday, and industry officials agreed that emphasis could shift toward building less technologically challenging missile defense systems that protect troops in the field instead of the entire U.S. mainland.

Another defense issue that could be affected by the change is the fight between General Dynamics Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. over purchasing Newport News Shipbuilding. Northrop Grumman, whose Ingalls shipyard is located in Mississippi, had been enjoying political help from that state's senior U.S. senator, Majority Leader Trent Lott.

Now that Lott is losing his status, some experts said, the company will have to round up another patron across the aisle -- possibly Democrat John Breaux of Louisiana, where Northrop Grumman's Avondale shipyard is that state's biggest employer.

The company played down the significance of the change in power. "We don't have a need to change our strategy," a spokesman said. "Obviously the congressional delegations of both Louisiana and Mississippi are vitally important to Northrop Grumman."

Defense companies in general lost ground on U.S. stock markets yesterday as investors seemed to conclude that Democratic control of the Senate was bad for the industry. General Dynamics fell $2.19, to $77.82 a share, and Lockheed Martin Corp. dropped 84 cents, to $38.16.

Drugs and oil services also dropped, on concern that Democratic control may hurt their profits. Pfizer fell $1.22, to $42.36 a share, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. declined $2.03, to $52.23. Among oil and natural gas drillers, Transocean Sedco Forex Inc. slipped $1.67, to $53.15, and Noble Drilling Corp. declined $1.56, to $44.44.

Despite these declines, financial experts said investors showed a restrained response to the news that shook the political world. And Collander told his far-flung staffers not to expect immediate U-turns in public policy. "It's really an agenda-setting, parliamentary-controlling situation, rather than totally new substance coming up," he said.

Staff writers Peter Behr, Paul Blustein, Bill Brubaker, Kathleen Day, Sandra Fleishman, Caroline E. Mayer, Cindy Skrzycki, Christopher Stern and Carol Vinzant contributed to this report, which includes material from Bloomberg News.

----

U.S. Seeks Data on Bid for General Dynamics

New York Times
May 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-arms-newport.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Antitrust enforcers at the U.S. Justice Department are taking a closer look at General Dynamics Corp.'s(GD.N) proposed acquisition of Newport News Shipbuilding(NNS.N).

General Dynamics said it had received a request from the department for information about the proposed deal, a sign that it intends to closely scrutinize its competitive impact.

Newport News is the subject of rival bids from General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman Corp.(NOC.N) Northrop and its supporters in Washington, D.C. have argued that the General Dynamics proposal would create a monopoly in nuclear shipbuilding, leaving the United States vulnerable with only one company capable of building nuclear ships and submarines for the U.S. Navy.

-------- india / pakistan

Pakistan Welcomes Talks on Kashmir
Critics Fear India May Avoid Key Issues

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 25, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A72557-2001May24?language=printer

NEW DELHI, May 24 -- The government's surprise invitation to Pakistan's military ruler to visit India for talks on the disputed territory of Kashmir has received a cautious welcome from Pakistan, making it likely that the leaders of the world's two newest nuclear powers will meet for the first time in more than two years. But it is far from clear where such talks might lead, who would be included in them and whether both sides are prepared to address the fundamental issue of Kashmir's future.

"This is a recognition of ground realities and a change in tactics," Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, Pakistan's ambassador to India, said today. "It is good and welcome, but we shouldn't for a moment underestimate the difficulties that lie ahead."

On Wednesday, India suddenly announced it was ending a six-month-old cease-fire in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, the turbulent border region claimed by both India and Pakistan and divided between the two. The Indian portion has been plagued for 11 years by conflict between Pakistan-based insurgents and Indian security forces.

But in a radical policy shift, Indian officials asked Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the head of Pakistan's military government, to visit for discussions, after insisting for months that they would not talk with Pakistan unless it stopped supporting the Kashmiri insurgency.

Officials in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, said today that they would "respond positively" once they received a formal invitation. Pakistani analysts urged the government to seize the offer, saying India's gesture proves it has reluctantly acknowledged that Pakistan has a critical role in solving the Kashmir conflict.

But Pakistani diplomats and political opposition leaders in Kashmir expressed concern that even if talks were held, India might skirt the critical question of whether Kashmir is a part of India and whether its populace should be free to choose its future allegiance.

India has always insisted that its portion of Kashmir is an integral part of the nation and can never be given up. But pro-independence and Muslim separatist groups there have long sought the right to let Kashmiris decide for themselves. Some groups want to join Pakistan; others call for self-determination.

"Ultimately, the Kashmiri point of view must be brought into the picture, and Kashmiris must be brought into the dialogue," said Qazi. No matter what the outcome of bilateral talks, he said, "any settlement has to be acceptable to them and to those who represent the aspirations of the Kashmiri freedom struggle."

But this week's breakthrough could instead end up sidelining important Kashmiri opposition groups -- including those that have insisted adamantly that they would not negotiate with India unless Pakistan were also included.

Leaders of the All Parties Hurriyet Conference, the main umbrella organization of separatist groups, have tentatively welcomed India's initiative while expressing concern that its real motive is to exclude Kashmiri groups.

"As a Kashmiri, I am happy this has happened because the prospects were dim without India and Pakistan talking. But where does this leave Kashmir?" said Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, a Kashmiri Muslim religious leader and former Hurriyet Conference official.

Of the three parties to the Kashmir dispute, Farooq said, "we Kashmiris are the weakest, because we are not states and nuclear powers. In the past, bilateral efforts have failed. But if bilateral talks can eventually lead to trilateral talks, then this could really open a new chapter."

The leaders of India and Pakistan last met in March 1999, but the resulting atmosphere of goodwill was shattered within months. Islamic insurgents based in Pakistan crossed into Indian territory in the Kargil Mountains of Kashmir and fought Indian troops for 10 weeks before Nawaz Sharif, then Pakistan's prime minister, agreed to withdraw them.

Since then, tensions between the two countries have been high, and guerrilla violence in Kashmir has continued steadily. Musharraf, the Pakistani army chief, seized power from Sharif in October 1999, and since then Islamic militant groups in Pakistan, who strongly support the Kashmiri rebels' cause, have grown in power.

Already, some Kashmiri insurgent groups have rejected India's offer to Musharraf as a tactical ploy and have said they would continue fighting to free Kashmir from Indian control. Even if Musharraf can reach an agreement with India, some analysts said, it is not certain that he could rein in all the rebels.

"What has happened this week is positive because the two sides will be talking directly, and the taboo on General Musharraf has been broken," said Karan Sawhney, an Indian academic who studies the Kashmir conflict. "Now one hopes there is some behind-the-scenes understanding that India will accept Pakistan's role and Pakistan will restrict the activities of the [Islamic] organizations. That is the only way things can go forward."

-------- korea

U.S. to Discuss North Korea Policy

New York Times
May 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-North-Korea.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHNGTON (AP)-- The Bush administration will discuss North Korea Saturday with East Asian allies, even as U.S. officials disagree over how to verify that Pyongyang complies with any missile control agreement.

A U.S. official said Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly will outline the administration's review of North Korea policy when he meets in Honolulu with top officials from South Korea and Japan.

Kelly and five other U.S. officials met separately with six South Korean counterparts at a Waikiki hotel Friday as part of bilateral talks ahead of Saturday's session.

In March, President Bush ordered a fresh look at the policy he inherited from President Clinton, who sought during his last months in office to encourage Pyongyang to curb its development and export of long-range missiles.

Bush said he was concerned about whether any missile agreement negotiated with the North could be verified.

Some U.S. officials are holding out for ground rules that will provide absolute assurances of compliance with a missile control agreement, while others would be willing to accept a less stringent standard. During the review period there have been no negotiations, so the United States doesn't know what North Korea would be willing to do to prove they are in compliance.

Angered by the delay in negotiations, North Korea has issued a number of statements hostile to the United States and has cut off reconciliation efforts with South Korea.

Weeks after the policy review got under way, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that, once negotiations resume, the administration may try to expand the agenda to include the large military presence that North Korea maintains near its border with South Korea.

The U.S. official, asking not to be identified, said that proposal continues to be an option.

The administration has had little to say about the North's military posture. But the Council on Foreign Relations has said that North Korea, even as it was making overtures to the outside world over the past two years, was also ``building up its capacity to inflict damage on South Korea and Japan with new deployments of artillery, fighter aircraft, special operations forces and ballistic missiles.''

The United States is sensitive to North Korea's military capability, partly because of the presence of 37,000 U.S. troops across the border in South Korea.

Japan, South Korea and the United States have been coordinating their respective North Korea policies for two years under what is known as the Trilateral Consultation and Oversight Group (TCOG). The consultations ensure that the interests of all three allies are taken into account as each negotiates with North Korea.

Kelly will be joined in Honolulu by Yim Sung-Joon, a South Korean deputy Foreign Affairs Minister; and Kunihito Makita, a director general in the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a visiting European Union delegation earlier this month that he intends to continue the export of missiles because his country needs the cash. The United States is strongly opposed to such sales.

On a more conciliatory note, Kim told the Europeans that he would observe a moratorium on tests of long-range missiles until 2003. The moratorium dates from a 1999 agreement between the United States and North Korea.

Among those who have expressed impatience with the delay in talks with North Korea is Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who is in line to take over the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee now that the Republicans have lost their Senate majority.

``I hope the administration will engage soon,'' Biden said Wednesday. ``When the administration completes its policy review, I believe they will conclude, as I have, that the best way to advance our interests is to join with our South Korean, Japanese and European allies in a hardheaded strategy of engaging North Korea and luring it out of its isolation.''

-------- russia

Russia Says Kursk's Salvage Safe

New York Times
May 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Submarine.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- At least half the torpedoes aboard the Kursk nuclear submarine survived the disaster that exploded and sank it, but they won't pose a threat to a Dutch company's costly effort to raise it from the Arctic depths in September, the Russian navy chief said Friday.

The Kursk sank in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12 when some of its combat torpedoes detonated in a powerful blast that was comparable to a small earthquake. But Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov said Friday that ``50 percent of torpedoes and maybe more have not detonated.''

Kuroyedov admitted the surviving torpedoes pose some danger. But he insisted the Dutch company Mammoet Transport BV, which last week won the contract to raise the mangled Kursk, had taken all safety precautions.

``The fleet experts have analyzed the project and are confident that no negative events will occur,'' he told a news conference in Moscow.

Kuroyedov said the Kursk had been carrying 24 cruise missiles, which remained intact, and an unspecified smaller number of torpedoes. Russian officials insist there were no nuclear warheads aboard because the Kursk had been out only for exercises, though the sub was equipped to carry them.

In a weekslong process scheduled to begin in July, Mammoet plans to sever the torpedo compartment from the rest of the Kursk's hull. The hull is then to be raised Sept. 15 using a huge barge equipped with 20 hydraulic lifting devices, and hauled to the Russian port of Murmansk.

The front compartment will be left on the seabed, and the navy will decide later whether to raise it.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov played down concerns voiced by some experts that the Kursk's two nuclear reactors could leak radiation during the lifting.

``We will ensure full safety of all elements of the submarine, including nuclear reactors,'' Klebanov told the news conference.

Although the reactors were automatically shut down when the vessel sank, and regular monitoring has shown no radiation leak, Klebanov insisted the primary reason for raising the Kursk was the need to remove a potential radiation threat to the region's rich fishing grounds.

The cause of the disaster, which killed all 118 Kursk crew members, is still unknown. Officials said they hope to determine it after raising the submarine. They also hope to recover more remains, in addition to the 12 bodies raised during a salvage operation last fall.

Kuroyedov said the investigators have concluded the explosion was triggered by one of the Kursk's torpedoes, but remained unsure about how.

``The conclusion is that the main damage to the first compartment came from a big practice torpedo,'' he said. ``It had no warhead, and the damage was inflicted by its combustible fuel.'' He did not elaborate.

Klebanov agreed the torpedo had played a role in the disaster, but said it was still unclear whether it had been caused by an internal malfunction in the torpedo -- the theory favored by most outside experts -- or a collision.

Mammoet has said it would form a joint venture with Smit International, a Rotterdam-based maritime company that specializes in salvage operations. Klebanov said Friday the Norwegian arm of the U.S. company Halliburton may also join the effort.

Klebanov said the government would make an advance payment to Mammoet this month. The value of the contract hasn't been disclosed, but the project has been estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars.

--------

Russia Vows to Lift Veil of Secrecy From Kursk Sub

New York Times
May 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia pledged on Friday to make this summer's salvage of the Kursk nuclear submarine a model of multi-media openness, after weathering fierce criticism for its handling of a tragedy which is still shrouded in mystery.

But having devoted a Web site to the Kursk lift and promised full media access to the operation, government and navy officials said again they might leave the torpedo bay where the unexplained disaster began at the bottom of the Barents Sea.

All 118 men on board died on the Kursk last August, when two blasts tore open its torpedo bay.

Officials were lambasted at home and abroad for failing to seek speedy foreign help. President Vladimir Putin also came under fire for adopting a hands-off approach to the disaster.

Russian navy officials have blamed a NATO vessel for hitting the Kursk and the Russian press has been feverish with theories of secret torpedoes on board and collisions with foreign ships.

After a presentation of the new Web site and fielding questions submitted by Russians over the Internet, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's media coordinator, said the Kremlin wanted the world to get a clear view of the Kursk lift.

``In the information field, many things were unfavorable last year, but we have tried to learn lessons from it and are trying to make information on the operation as open and objective as possible for everyone,'' he said.

Navy chief Vladimir Kuroyedov -- who has maintained a NATO submarine struck the Kursk -- said transparency was vital to a nation gripped by unanswered questions about its worst-ever submarine accident.

Kuroyedov also outlined the danger of the lifting operation.

``There is danger. The project is prepared according to a technical plan which foresees this danger, including that from radiation,'' Kuroyedov said, adding that regular checks showed there was no such radiation risk at the moment.

Updates on the salvage will be screened on Kremlin-aligned Internet site www.kursk.strana.ru until its scheduled completion between September 15 and 20.

WHAT DETONATED TORPEDOES?

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said his commission on the cause of the Kursk blasts would have to wait until the vessel was raised to get closer to knowing what crippled it.

``What was the cause? The unstable state of the torpedo itself or something that happened as a result of a collision?'' Klebanov said at the briefing. ``Maybe we will find out after we see the first compartment.''

Computer imagery on the Kursk Web site showed on Friday how the mangled torpedo bay at the vessel's bow would be cut away, while the rest of the wreck would be drilled with holes, attached to cables and lifted to the surface.

From there, the truncated wreck would be taken to dry dock, and a decision on the abandoned section would be taken later.

``We will decide whether or not to raise it when we see its condition,'' Kuroyedov said. ``We must consider whether it would shed light on the cause of the catastrophe and whether we can lift it safely.''

Dutch heavy transport firm Mammoet won the contract to lift the Kursk for an undisclosed fee when it pledged to complete the task this year.

Smit Internationale NV has agreed to aid Dutch compatriot Mammoet and the Russian navy in the project, after its consortium lost out on the full contract. Klebanov said U.S. firm Halliburton another member of the rejected group, might also join the operation.

St. Petersburg's Rubin bureau, which designed the highly advanced Kursk, will also help lift the vessel from more than 330 feet of Arctic water.

-------- singapore

Singapore Develops New Proton Beam

New York Times
May 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-science-singa.html?searchpv=reuters

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - High-tech manufacturers may soon be able to use proton beams to chisel out minuscule components and circuits thanks to pioneering research from a Singapore institute.

The proton beam is a stream of speeded up sub-atomic particles which scientists have been trying to narrow down for practical use over the last 25 years.

The National University of Singapore Research Center for Nuclear Microscopy, which officially opened this week, currently holds the record for the narrowest proton beam -- which measures just 1,000th of the diameter of a human hair.

``The proton beam as it goes through material will cause a rearrangement of the electronic structure of the atom,'' Professor Frank Watt, the center's director and a former Oxford University researcher who was instrumental in developing the beam, told Reuters Friday.

``The re-arrangement of the atoms causes damage which we can actually then use...for micro machining,'' he said.

The center, which is a culmination of eight years of Watt's work in Singapore, is patenting its proton beam micro machining processes.

Proton beams, which are used in ultra-sensitive microscopes and in experimental cancer therapy, have never been used for micro machining before. The center will set up the world's first proton beam micro machining facility in about two months.

``What we're doing is 'writing' in resistant materials and making very very tiny three-dimensional channels and structures,'' Watt said.

Proton beams are well suited to micro machining and offer very precise incisions as its particles maintain a straight line even after hitting a surface, unlike electrons which scatter.

Watt said the center is also working on using the proton beam to create micro fiber optic switches, which will be a boon to the telecommunications industry.

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

What's Wrong With the Modular Pebble Bed Reactor?

http://www.tmia.com/pebbles.html

The pebble bed reactor is being touted as nearly "accident proof." It is being hailed as the savior of the nuclear industry. Three Mile Island Alert opposes this reactor design because of its inherent dangerous safety defects.

1. It has no containment building.

2. It uses flammable graphite as a moderator.

3. It produces more high level nuclear wastes than current nuclear reactor designs.

4. It relies heavily on nearly perfect fuel pebbles.

5. It relies heavily upon fuel handling as the pebbles are cycled through the reactor.

6. There's already been an accident at a pebble bed reactor in Germany due to fuel handling problems.

COMMENTS

1. The lack of a containment building is a necessity because cooling is by natural convection. Also, a containment building would hinder the modular design - that is - no additional reactors could be added onto the plant after initial construction. This modular capability is what is so appealing to utilities because it requires less investment from the beginning.

Frankly, this single point is enough to conclude that this reactor design is unsafe. The United States has criticized Soviet reactor designs for not having containment buildings. It is the last line of defense for containing a radiological release.

Furthermore, the lack of a containment building leaves the reactor(s) wide open to a terrorist attack.

2. The uranium is covered by a layer of graphite. The graphite is covered by several other layers of materials including a silicon carbide. The graphite could burn if defects in the fuel defeat the outer coverings. The industry acknowledges that there is approximately 1 defect per pebble associated with these layers. There are approximately 370,000 pebbles in a pebble bed reactor. One tennis ball sized pebble comes out the bottom of the reactor every 30 seconds. It can be returned to the top of the reactor for additional use.

The 1957 Windscale accident and the 1986 Chernobyl accident both involved burning graphite. The burning graphite dispersed radioactivity. At Chernobyl, the burning graphite released radiation for ten days.

3. Although the volume by "configuration for long term storage" is lower than current design, the actual amount of high level waste by weight is higher. The pebbles are less radioactive than conventional fuel assemblies and more pebbles are required to produce the needed heat inside the reactor. There will be many more truck and railroad transports needed to remove the wastes. This will increase the numbers of vehicle accidents and the odds of another radiological accident involving these vehicles traveling across the country.

Creating even more nuclear waste without a final depository plan is unconscianable.

4. The industry acknowledges that "fuel pebble manufacturing defects are the most significant source of fission product release." Recent history shows that some companies have falsified fuel quality. In fact, there have been instances of fuel sabotage and tampering over the last few decades. Germany and Japan have shut down plants or refused fuel shipments once the problems were discovered. The industry can't produce "defect-free" fuel and therefore it is a certainty that a pebble bed reactor will experience an accident. The industry acknowledges that there is approximately 1 defect per pebble associated with these layers.

5. & 6. There was a pebble bed reactor accident at Hamm-Uentrop West Germany nine days after the Chernobyl accident. On May 4 1986, a pebble became lodged in a feeder tube. Operators subsequently caused damage to the fuel during attempts to free the pebble. Radiation was released to the environs. The West German government closed down the research program because they found the reactor design unsafe.

ECONOMICS

The nuclear industry has been subsidized an average of $3 billion dollars per year. The industry was also just bailed out nearly $100 billion dollars by rate payers . The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site is now approaching $100 billion dollars. If we use just a portion of that money for renewables (solar, wind, fuel cells etc.) we'd have plenty of electricity and very little wastes. Using the "yard stick" of economic feasibility, the nuclear industry is a complete failure.

Anyone whom recommends a "nuclear revival" has not reconciled the costs.

---

THE PEBBLE BED MODULAR REACTOR
THE PBMR: "OLD WINE IN A NEW BOTTLE"

http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/PBMRFactSheet.htm

The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) is being re-introduced in an industry effort to revive an all-but-moribund nuclear power technology. The PBMR's basic design concept, the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR), has been commercially abandoned time and again without tangible benefit over the past thirty years in England, France, Germany and with the 1967 and 1989 closures of the Peach Bottom Unit 1 and Fort St. Vrain reactors in the United States. Small HTGR non-power research reactors currently operate in Japan and China. For as many years, the concept has been offered as an "inherently safe" design.

The current PBMR project is a hybrid of these past efforts and is piloted by an international conglomerate of U.S.-based Exelon Corporation (Commonwealth Edison, PECO Energy, and British Energy), British Nuclear Fuels Limited and South African-based ESKOM as "merchant" nuclear power plants. The consortium plans to begin the construction by 2002 of a full-size prototype of a 110 MW modular unit in Koeberg, South Africa. If successful, commercial operation would begin in 2006.

Exelon hopes to use this prototype to obtain a license through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin construction of seven new reactors on an unspecified site in the U.S. by the summer of 2004. The PBMR is proposed as a standardized design that can be built in as little as two years, with multiple modular units combined onto a single site.

NO REACTOR CONTAINMENT BUILDING AND REDUCED SAFETY SYSTEMS CUT PBMR COSTS

Unlike light water reactors that use water and steam, the PBMR design would use pressurized helium heated in the reactor core to drive a series of turbine compressors that attach to an electrical generator. The helium is cycled to a recuperator to be cooled down and returned to cool the reactor while the waste heat is discharged to the environment. Designers claim there are no accident scenarios that would result in significant fuel damage and catastrophic release of radioactivity.

These industry safety claims rely on the heat resistant quality and integrity of the tennis ball-sized graphite fuel assemblies or "pebbles," 400,000 of which are continuously fed from a fuel silo through the reactor "little by little" to keep the reactor core only marginally critical. Each spherical fuel element has an inner graphite core embedded with thousands of smaller fuel particles of enriched uranium (up to 10 %) encapsulated in multi-layers of non-porous hardened carbon. The slow circulation of fuel through the reactor provides for a small core size that minimizes excess core reactivity and lowers power density, all of which is credited to safety.

However, so much credit is given to the integrity and quality control of the coated fuel pebbles to retain the radioactivity that no containment building is planned for the PBMR design. While the elimination of the containment building provides a significant cost savings for the utility-perhaps making the design economically feasible-the trade-off is public health and safety.

The protective containment building also is nixed because it would hinder the design's passive cooling feature of the reactor core through natural convection (air cooling). Exelon also proposes a dramatic reduction in additional reactor safety systems and procedures (i.e. no emergency core cooling system and a reduced one-half mile emergency planning zone as compared to a 10-mile emergency planning zone for light water reactors) to provide for further reducing PBMR construction and operation costs.

To date, however, Exelon has not submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission descriptions of challenges that could lead to a radiological accident such as a fire that ignites the combustible graphite loaded into the core. Fire and smoke then become the transport vehicle for radioactivity released to the environment from damaged fuel.

In addition, the lack of containment would require 100%-perfect quality control in the manufacture of the fuel pellets-an impossible goal. Imperfections in fuel pellet manufacture could lead to higher radiation releases during normal operation than is the case with conventional reactors.

"INHERENTLY SAFE" GERMAN PBMR COVERS UP RADIATION ACCIDENT AND SHUTS DOWN

As Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb said, "Sooner or later a fool will prove greater than the proof even in a foolproof system." Accidents can and do happen in the inherently dangerous business of splitting the atom. Human error occurs at every level of development, construction and operation of the process. Material and component failures along with aging can break down or defeat operational and safety systems.

In 1985, the experimental THTR-300 PBMR on the Ruhr in Hamm-Uentrop, Germany was also offered as accident proof--with the same promise of an indestructible carbon fuel cladding capable of retaining all generated radioactivity. Following the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident and graphite fire in Ukraine, the West German government revealed that on May 4, the 300-megawatt PBMR at Hamm released radiation after one of its spherical fuel pebbles became lodged in the pipe feeding the fuel to the reactor. Operator actions during the event caused damage to the fuel cladding.

Radioactivity was released with the escaping helium and radioactive fallout was deposited as far as two kilometers from the reactor. The fallout in the region was high enough to initially be blamed on Chernobyl. Government officials were then alerted by scientists in Freiburg who reported that as much as 70 % of the region's contamination was not of the type of radiation leaking hundreds of miles away in Ukraine. Dismayed by an attempt to conceal the reactor malfunction and confronted with mounting public pressure in light of the Chernobyl accident only days prior, the state ordered the reactor to close pending a design review.

Continuing technical problems including a lack of quality control resulting in damage to unused fuel pebbles and radiation-induced bolt head failures in the reactor's gas channels resulted in the unit's closure in late 1988. Citing doubts about reliability, the government refused to further subsidize utility funding and instead approved plans for decommissioning the reactor.

NUCLEAR WASTE REMAINS INTRINSICALLY DANGEROUS

A single 110-megawatt PBMR will produce 2.5 million irradiated fuel elements during a 40-year operational cycle. Nuclear waste remains dangerous over geological spans of time and a threat to life from radioactive contamination would persist long after a PBMR has closed. The health and environmental uncertainties associated with a historically mismanaged radioactive legacy from continued operation of nuclear technology is yet another reason the public will not accept the PBMR.-Paul Gunter, March 2001

Nuclear Information and Resource Service 1424 16th Street NW, #404, Washington, DC 20036. 202-328-0002; fax: 202-462-2183; nirsnet@nirs.org; www.nirs.org

Nuclear Returns From the Dead http://whyfiles.org/130nukes/3.html
TMIA control room http://www.tmia.com/croom.htm

----

Labor Department Meets First Deadline For Energy Workers' Compensation Program

To: National Desk, Labor Reporter
Contact: Sue Hensley of the U.S. Department of Labor, 202-693-4650

May 25 2001
U.S. Newswire
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0525-112.html

WASHINGTON, An all-out effort by the U.S. Labor Department to meet the first deadline for the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act has passed its first hurdle. Proposed regulations for the new law, which were due May 31, appear in today's Federal Register.

"Our goal was to issue these proposed regulations as soon as possible, to start the process of collecting comments and allow us to begin processing claims when the statute becomes effective on July 31, 2001," said Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao. "This is the first step of many toward implementing a very complicated compensation program. As part of our commitment to helping those workers who were harmed in service to our country, we want to make sure this program is launched correctly and on time."

On May 31, the department will launch a toll-free number that affected workers can call with questions about the program: 1-866-888-3322. The toll-free number can also be used to request application forms. Updated information will be posted on the department's Web site at http://www.dol.gov. Between May 31 and July 31, the Labor Department will host community meetings where workers can ask questions about the program, and at least nine resource centers run jointly by the Labor and Energy Departments will be opening near Department of Energy facilities throughout the country.

The Department of Labor, which will administer compensation and medical benefits, has primary responsibility under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, but three other departments share some responsibilities.

The Department of Energy's Office of Worker Advocacy will help workers file state workers' compensation claims and list facilities where covered workers were employed; the Department of Health and Human Services must establish guidelines for estimating radiation doses and the likelihood that they caused a worker's cancer; and the Justice Department is obligated to notify uranium workers eligible for benefits under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that they may also receive compensation under the energy workers' program.

Passed in October 2000, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act pays medical expenses and lump-sum compensation to employees who are seriously ill because they were exposed to radiation, beryllium or silica while working in the nuclear weapons industry. Compensation will also be available to survivors in certain instances, and to uranium employees who received benefits under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

The interim final regulation published in today's Federal Register establishes procedures for filing applications and determining compensation eligibility. Although the interim regulations provide 90 days for public comment, they will go into effect 60 days after publication so the Labor Department can begin processing compensation and medical benefit claims on July 31.

----

Congress Limits Survivor Benefits

New York Times
May 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Workers.html?searchpv=aponline
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A77377-2001May25?language=printer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some children of nuclear weapons plants workers who died from exposure to radiation and other harmful substances during the Cold War may not be eligible for survivor benefits.

Some members of Congress said Thursday that they never meant to exclude some children when they came up with a plan to compensate the victims' families.

``Oftentimes the devil is in the details and this is an important detail,'' said Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio. ``I do think that the intent was these other folks (grown children) be included.''

The Labor Department's rules governing the program, published Friday, spell out eligibility for sick workers and for the survivors of exposed workers who already have died.

``This is the first step of many toward implementing a very complicated compensation program,'' said Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

Chao said her department will have a toll-free number, 1-866-888-3322, beginning May 31 for sick workers and survivors to call with questions and to request application forms. The department also will go to communities near weapons plants to answer questions about the program.

The program will distribute $150,000, plus lifetime medical care to each worker exposed to health-robbing levels of radiation, silica or beryllium while working at weapons plants or factories.

Early drafts of the regulations found their way to Capitol Hill and raised some eyebrows; Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., circulated a letter among lawmakers laying out changes to jointly suggest.

Most of the survivor benefits are expected to go to widows and widowers. Children of the dead workers won't qualify unless they were under 18 or still dependents when their parent died.

Ken Silver, a public health advocate in New Mexico, said that was not made clear before. ``It's a real kick in the teeth to families that have suffered,'' he said.

``This is a travesty,'' said Shaun McKinney of Pickerington, Ohio, who was 30 when his father died of lung cancer. ``The day they diagnosed my dad with cancer, he said, `I got this from work. I had a hydrogen fluoride burn in my lungs in the exact place where the doctor says I got this cancer.'''

McKinney said he had been counting on the $150,000 both as recompense for a life cut short and as a college fund. ``I was going to tell my kids, `This is from your granddad.'''

Sam Ray of Lucasville, Ohio, said cancer, beryllium disease and silicosis -- the diseases for which the government will compensate exposed workers -- can be slow killers, and a child under 18 when the parent got sick will no longer be a dependent by the time the person dies.

``The bad thing about it is the latency period,'' said Ray, who lost his larynx to cancer.

Stuart Roy, a department spokesman, said that part of the regulation followed the instructions of Congress. ``Qualified survivors were spelled out in the law,'' he said.

Congress created the program last year to compensate workers who contracted cancer and other diseases while building the nation's nuclear deterrent.

About 600,000 people worked in the nuclear weapons complex during the Cold War.

The Energy Department initially estimated 3,000 to 4,000 might be eligible for the new compensation program, but the accuracy of that estimate is unclear because of poor record keeping over the decades.

The Labor Department said it expects claims to be much higher -- about 43,000 applications a year from sick workers still living and 28,000 applications a year from survivors.

Congress enacted the program after hearing testimony about workers breathing dense clouds of silica dust with no breathing protection, empty radiation-measuring badges pinned to those working with uranium and a chronic inattention to safety measures during the Cold War.

On the Net:
The rule will be posted at www.dol.gov.

----

Age May Disqualify Victims' Kids

By Katherine Rizzo
Associated Press Writer
Friday, May 25, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A75481-2001May25?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- Some children of workers who died from exposure to toxic chemicals they were exposed to when they worked at nuclear weapons plants during the Cold War may not be eligible for survivor benefits.

Some members of Congress said Thursday that they never meant to exclude some children when they came up with a plan to compensate the victims' families.

"Oftentimes the devil is in the details and this is an important detail," said Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio. "I do think that the intent was these other folks (grown children) be included."

The Labor Department's rules governing the program, to be published Friday, spell out eligibility for sick workers and for the survivors of exposed workers who already have died.

The rules would distribute $150,000, plus lifetime medical care to each worker exposed to health-robbing levels of radiation, silica or beryllium while working at weapons plants or factories.

Early drafts of the regulations found their way to Capitol Hill and raised some eyebrows; Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., circulated a letter among lawmakers laying out changes to jointly suggest.

Most of the survivor benefits are expected to go to widows and widowers. Children of the dead workers won't qualify unless they were under 18 or still dependents when their parent died.

Ken Silver, a public health advocate in New Mexico, said that was not made clear before. "It's a real kick in the teeth to families that have suffered," he said.

"This is a travesty," said Shaun McKinney of Pickerington, Ohio, who was 30 when his father died of lung cancer. "The day they diagnosed my dad with cancer, he said, 'I got this from work. I had a hydrogen fluoride burn in my lungs in the exact place where the doctor says I got this cancer.'"

McKinney said he had been counting on the $150,000 both as recompense for a life cut short and as a college fund. "I was going to tell my kids, 'This is from your granddad.'"

Sam Ray of Lucasville, Ohio, said cancer, beryllium disease and silicosis - the diseases for which the government will compensate exposed workers - can be slow killers, and a child under 18 when the parent got sick will no longer be a dependent by the time the person dies.

"The bad thing about it is the latency period," said Ray, who lost his larynx to cancer.

Stuart Roy, a department spokesman, said that part of the regulation followed the instructions of Congress. "Qualified survivors were spelled out in the law," he said.

Congress created the program last year to compensate workers who contracted cancer and other diseases while building the nation's nuclear deterrent.

About 600,000 people worked in the nuclear weapons complex during the Cold War.

The Energy Department initially estimated 3,000 to 4,000 might be eligible for the new compensation program, but the accuracy of that estimate is unclear because of poor record keeping over the decades.

The Labor Department said it expects claims to be much higher - about 43,000 applications a year from sick workers still living and 28,000 applications a year from survivors.

Congress enacted the program after hearing testimony about workers breathing dense clouds of silica dust with no breathing protection, empty radiation-measuring badges pinned to those working with uranium and a chronic inattention to safety measures during the Cold War.

-------- us nuc politics

Likely New Senate Committee Chairmen

Friday, May 25, 2001
Washington Post
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A74747-2001May24?language=printer

Vermont Sen. James M. Jeffords's decision to leave the Republican Party and support Democrat Thomas A. Daschle for Senate majority leader means all 20 Senate committees will get new chairmen.

In many cases, the differences in leadership will be stark. On the Foreign Relations Committee, for example, avowed internationalist Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) is expected to replace Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), a strident opponent of U.S. involvement in the United Nations and other international governing bodies. But sources say Biden might instead want the Judiciary Committee, where he is second in seniority to Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who plans to take over the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. That would leave the second-ranking Democrat on Foreign Relations, Paul S. Sarbanes (Md.), with a choice between Foreign Relations and the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, and repercussions down the line.

Barring last-minute jockeying over assignments, these 11 Democrats and one independent will wield the gavels on some of the Senate's most powerful panels: Finance | Appropriations | Judiciary | Armed Services | Foreign Relations | Health, Education, Labor and Pensions | Commerce, Science and Transportation | Agriculture | Environment and Public Works | Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs | Governmental Affairs | Energy and Natural Resources

Finance

Max Baucus (D-Mont.), 59, now in his fourth term, played a leading role in fending off attacks on environmental regulations during his tenure as ranking minority member on the Environment and Public Works Committee.

But he is now the senior Democrat on the more powerful Finance panel, which controls the progress of tax cut legislation to the Senate floor. Baucus has a moderate-to-liberal voting record and a reputation as a Democratic loyalist. But he split with his party this year and helped draft the Senate version of President Bush's tax cut bill with outgoing Finance Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).

Appropriations

Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), 83, enjoys a reputation as both Senate historian and champion pork-procurer for West Virginia. He also will take over from Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) as Senate president pro tempore, placing him third in the line of presidential succession.

Byrd, who stepped down as majority leader in 1989 to assume the chairmanship of the Appropriations panel, would replace Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

Judiciary

Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), 61, is among the Senate's most liberal members. A dogged advocate for Vermont, he once managed to temporarily have Lake Champlain designated as the sixth Great Lake.

Leahy took a lead role in seeking a ban on land mines. He has also pushed to retain funding for food stamps and other social programs. On Judiciary, Leahy has given the Bush administration headaches over its choice of Theodore B. Olson for solicitor general and is expected to give conservative judicial nominees a hard time. He would replace Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) as chairman.

Armed Services

Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), 66, who would replace John W. Warner (R-Va.), has made his mark on Capitol Hill on non-military issues, from ethics causes to lobbying reform. But as he climbed the seniority ladder on Armed Services, he became an influential force on military issues -- regarded as pro-defense but skeptically so, especially when it comes to expensive new weapons programs.

He opposes Bush's plan to deploy a national anti-ballistic missile defense system and has been a vigorous but unsuccessful proponent of shutting down obsolete military bases.

Foreign Relations

Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), 58, is an internationalist and serious student of foreign affairs with a knack for forging bipartisan agreements, even with his irascible predecessor as chairman of the committee, Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).

Biden, first elected to the Senate in 1972, has been the senior Democrat on the committee since 1997. Before that, he was chairman or ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. He failed in a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and led the successful fight in 1997 for ratification of the treaty banning chemical weapons. He supported the nuclear test ban pact that the Senate ultimately rejected.

Commerce, Science and Transportation

Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), 79, has served in the Senate since 1966, concentrating initially on fiscal issues and serving briefly as chairman of the Budget Committee 20 years ago. He argued for budget freezes and was co-author of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill that helped contain budget deficits during the 1980s. He ran unsuccessfully for the White House in 1984.

Recently he has concentrated more on the commerce panel, especially telecommunications issues. As a representative of a tobacco-growing state, Hollings parted company with John McCain (R-Ariz.), whom he would succeed as chairman, on the big tobacco bill that McCain tried to steer through the Senate. And as a senator from a textile state, he has fought trade liberalization.

Agriculture

Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), 61, is a prairie populist with a generally liberal record, although he's made a few detours to more conservative positions demanded by his Iowa constituents. He served in the House for a decade before coming to the Senate in 1984 and ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992.

He supports most core Democratic positions, champions the causes of organized labor and midwestern farmers, and has been a leading foe of GOP efforts to end federal farm subsidies. He was a principal leader of the fight for the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 and has helped lead efforts on behalf of other health-related initiatives. Harkin would replace Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.).

Health, Education, Labor and Pensions

Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), 69, a hero to liberals and a major irritant to conservatives, would resume control of the Senate's major social services committee, which he headed before Republicans took over six years ago.

Third in seniority, Kennedy has served in the Senate for nearly four decades, becoming one of its most powerful and resilient members. He has been an unlikely White House ally on education reform this year and would succeed Jeffords as chairman.

Environment and Public Works

James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), 67, normally would not have a claim on a chairmanship, but Harry M. Reid (Nev.), the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, who is in line for the chairmanship, has deferred to Jeffords.

Jeffords gets generally high marks from environmental groups for his efforts to rid appropriations bills of extraneous "riders" aimed at loosening or killing environmental regulations. He has also sponsored legislation to mandate reducing certain power plant emissions and was a principal negotiator of the 1990 Clean Air Act.

The former Republican would succeed Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.).

Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs

Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), 68, has been a legislator most of his adult life, first in Annapolis and then in Washington. Serious, reserved and steeped in policy nuances, he has become an expert on the wide array of issues that come before the panel, from banking to public housing.

He is one of the more liberal senators but also has a record of working with Republicans. He fights for consumer protection and took a leading role in the passage of last year's financial institutions overhaul bill. Early in his career, Sarbanes was critical of the Federal Reserve's policy of raising interest rates, because of the impact on employment, but he has since become a supporter of Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Sarbanes was chairman of the Joint Economic Committee in the early 1990s. He would replace Phil Gramm (R-Tex.).

Governmental Affairs

Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), 59, would take over for Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.). The moderate Lieberman decided last year to run simultaneously for vice president and for reelection to a third Senate term, narrowly losing the first race and easily winning the second.

Lieberman, an orthodox Jew, is a prominent member of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and has been outspoken on moral issues, criticizing sex and violence in movies and on television. He also gave a high-profile speech denouncing former president Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky.

On Governmental Affairs, Lieberman has promoted the use of the Internet as a governing tool.

Energy and Natural Resources

Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), 57, is a studious, low-profile workhorse in the Democratic caucus, drawn to energy and other resource issues in part because of home-state concerns. He has a generally moderate voting record and is regarded as a conciliator.

Bingaman is schooled in complex nuclear and other energy issues at stake in New Mexico's two national laboratories, Los Alamos and Sandia. He has fought for increased federal research spending and promotion of dual-use technologies for domestic and defense applications. He was state attorney general before winning election to the Senate in 1982. He would succeed Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska).

-- By staff writers Ben White and Helen Dewar

-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

Powell sees instability of Gadhafi

May 25, 2001
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010525-36526588.htm

PRETORIA, South Africa - Libya remains a source of instability in West Africa, where 10 years of civil wars have killed or driven from their homes hundreds of thousands of people, a senior U.S. official said yesterday.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell discussed the involvement of Libya in the civil wars affecting Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea during talks with Mali President Alpha Konare on Wednesday, the first day of Mr. Powell´s trip through four African countries.

"President Konare recognized that Libya is involved in a lot of problems but thinks Gadhafi has the potential to change," said the U.S. official, who was traveling on Mr. Powell´s plane.

"Secretary Powell said he has not seen evidence of any change," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Powell and Mali officials also voiced support for sanctions on Liberia, whose leader, Charles Taylor, has been accused by West African nations of fueling the civil war in Sierra Leone.

Mr. Taylor received weapons from Libya during his struggle in the 1990s to seize power in the former U.S. colony of Liberia, said Western diplomats interviewed in neighboring Burkina Faso at the time.

Libya also has been accused of backing rebels in Senegal and of being behind the military coup that overthrew the government in Gambia in 1994, say West African diplomats.

Libya has long harbored anti-Western terrorists and sought to rally Third World nations against the West.

But it proved powerless to respond when President Reagan bombed Tripoli in 1986 in a reprisal for a terror attack in Europe.

Libya was unable for years to throw off international sanctions imposed over the bombing of a Pan Am plane over Scotland in 1988 and a French passenger aircraft over the Sahara.

Mr. Konare and Mr. Powell "had brief discussions of Libyan actions in West Africa and the role taken to destabilize a number of places," a State Department official, also aboard Mr. Powell´s aircraft, said yesterday.

"The secretary said he needed to see more change" in the behavior of Col. Gadhafi.

The cornerstone of Libya´s meddling in West Africa has been Mr. Taylor, say Western and West African diplomatic sources.

Mr. Taylor has been accused of supporting the Sierra Leone guerilla movement known as Revolutionary United Front (RUF), known for severing the arms and legs of thousands of civilians, including children.

Despite a U.N. peacekeeping mission approaching 17,000 strong in Sierra Leone, the RUF rebels continue to export diamonds through Liberia and to sow violence in large swaths of Sierra Leone under their control.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians who fled the Sierra Leone fighting are in Guinea.

Liberia, for its part, accuses Guinea of providing "sanctuary" for Liberian rebels of the United Liberation Movement, led by Alhadj Kromah, a sworn opponent of Mr. Taylor.

The members of the Economic Community of West African States, whose current president is the Malian leader, Mr. Konare, have put in place this year a series of sanctions aimed at curbing Liberia´s destabilization of Sierra Leone.

The sanctions include an embargo on weapons and diamond sales as well as a ban on visas for Liberian leaders and their family members.

----

U.S. Slates $3 Million for Sudanese Opposition

By Nora Boustany and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 25, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A73080-2001May24?language=printer

The State Department has reached an agreement to supply $3 million in logistical support to a Sudanese opposition alliance that includes the main group fighting for autonomy in the African country's war-torn southern provinces, according to government sources familiar with the arrangement.

Under a contract with DynCorp, a Reston government and defense contractor, the Bush administration will provide funding for office space, equipment, radios, vehicles, staff and training in an effort to enhance the political effectiveness of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the sources said.

The goal, they said, would be to strengthen the alliance's position as it confronts Sudan's Islamic government, led by President Omar Hassan Bashir, a general who took power in a military coup in 1989.

While the NDA was constituted as an umbrella organization of opposition groups across Sudan, some analysts, human rights groups and Sudan experts have expressed concern that the aid program could fuel government fears of heightened U.S. support for an 18-year-old rebellion in the south.

"This package feeds false hopes and expectations on the part of the southerners and sustains excessive paranoia in Khartoum," said Steve Morrison, a Sudan and Africa specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He said the assistance could bolster the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), a rebel group that since 1983 has been fighting the Khartoum government, which is dominated by Arab Muslims from the north. The rebels seek greater autonomy or independence for southern Sudan's largely black population, mostly Christians or followers of traditional religions.

The SPLA is the main armed group in the National Democratic Alliance, once a coalition that included prominent Muslim and northern opposition figures. But it has "melted down" with the recent withdrawal of former prime minister Sadiq Mahdi, among others, Morrison said.

"The NDA is a bit of a phantom. It is basically the SPLA and a few elements," he said.

Other human rights activists warned that supplying such assistance without a broader strategy for ending the war would do little but prolong the country's suffering.

A State Department spokesman said yesterday that he had no information about the contract with DynCorp, which previously gained media attention as the leading U.S. government contractor for anti-drug work in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. A company spokeswoman did not return two telephone calls this week requesting information.

The $3 million program was initially approved during the Clinton administration. It is separate from $10 million in assistance that was added last year to the foreign operations bill by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), chairman of the Foreign Relations subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian affairs. That money, which has yet to be spent, is designated for logistical support for the SPLA and other groups in southern Sudan.

"The $3 million contract with DynCorp is a first step in a good direction, and now the administration should take the second step and spend the next $10 million," said Brownback's spokesman, Erik Hotmire.

Staff writer Steven Mufson contributed to this report.

-------- balkans

Secret Deal Threatens Macedonian Coalition
Albanian Leaders' Pact With Rebel Criticized

By William Drozdiak
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 25, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A72549-2001May24?language=printer

BRUSSELS, May 24 -- Macedonia's emergency government was threatened with collapse today after Slavic parties sharing a ruling coalition with ethnic Albanian politicians expressed outrage over a secret peace deal reached by their partners with an Albanian guerrilla leader.

The controversial accord, reportedly backed by a former U.S. diplomat in the region, underlines the distrust between Macedonia's majority Slavs and the ethnic Albanian minority. President Boris Trajkovski warned that unless ethnic Albanian politicians renounced the deal, the 11-day-old government could fall apart and Macedonia would drift closer to all-out civil war.

"If they don't do that, it will be impossible for us to work together," the Macedonian leader said.

The United States and the European Union also condemned the agreement, insisting there could be no place at an negotiating table for the ethnic Albanian fighters known as the National Liberation Army who earlier this year began firing on government forces.

NATO Secretary General George Robertson echoed that criticism, saying the international community "will work only with legitimate political representatives -- not with the armed extremists."

U.S. and European officials said they were mystified that Robert Frowick, the former U.S. diplomat who serves as a Balkan envoy for the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, would become involved in a delicate mediation exercise with the rebels when he was aware of the dismay it would engender in Western capitals.

Macedonian officials today castigated him and told him that "his services are no longer needed," according to a spokesman in Trajkovski's office. Frowick flew to Bucharest, Romania, later in the day to report on the situation to the country's foreign minister, who is chairman of the OSCE.

At the airport in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, Frowick declined to comment on his role.

The swift condemnation by the United States and its European allies reflected their anxiety about any move that could lend legitimacy to ethnic Albanian nationalists who are waging what to date remains a low-level war against the Macedonian government. The insurgents say they want greater rights for the country's Albanian minority; the government contends they want to carve away part of the country.

Western governments have sought to encourage reconciliation between Slavs and ethnic Albanians while isolating the rebels.

The U.S. government issued a statement through its embassy in Skopje, saying it "rejects any kind of attempt to bring the so-called NLA into the negotiating process."

The 15-nation European Union issued a similar denunciation, contending that the ethnic Albanian rebels "who have planned and directed this terrorist campaign" must not be welcomed into the political process. "If anyone has illusions that the so-called NLA has international support anywhere, they had better forget them," the EU statement said.

According to EU diplomats, the peace deal called for the rebels to halt the fighting in exchange for amnesty guarantees provided by the ethnic Albanian coalition partners. The rebels would also gain the right to veto future political decisions about the scope of ethnic Albanian rights.

The accord was apparently sealed at a meeting Wednesday between the leaders of the two ethnic Albanian parties in Macedonia's coalition government and Ali Ahmeti, who is the only known political representative of the NLA.

The two party leaders, Arben Xhaferi and Imer Imeri, have spurned any claims that Albanian regions of Macedonia should become independent, but they share rebel demands for changes in Macedonia's constitution that would foster greater rights for ethnic Albanians.

The European Union, acting with uncommon speed, urged the two ethnic Albanian parties to distance themselves from the rebels and renounce the secret peace document "in a way which shows no ambiguity." The EU defended the Macedonian government's right to crush the rebels by force, but has urged moderation.

----

Operation in Yugoslavia Highlights a New Alliance Army,
NATO Cooperate to Push Rebels From Buffer Zone

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 25, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A72540-2001May24?language=printer

CEREVAJKA, Yugoslavia, May 24 -- Yugoslavia today sent 4,000 troops and police officers into part of a mountainous buffer zone just outside Kosovo, squeezing a demoralized and dwindling ethnic Albanian rebel force in a sweep approved and monitored by NATO, Yugoslavia's former enemy.

NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, a separatist Yugoslav province, stood ready to detain and disarm guerrillas retreating across the border in the face of the Yugoslav advance.

Operation Bravo underlined the 180-degree swing in alliances that has occurred since NATO bombed Yugoslavia and its army two years ago in a bid to protect the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo from a military crackdown. NATO now sees ethnic Albanian guerrillas as the region's main threat to peace and is cooperating with Yugoslavia to disarm them.

Today's largely peaceful operation also showed the new softly-softly approach of the security forces of Yugoslavia, where last October a popular uprising established a democratic government.

The forces met little resistance as they advanced along narrow roads, although their progress was slowed by mines planted by the retreating rebels, according to military officials. Only a small section of the buffer zone now remains to be reclaimed and the officials said that in a week's time they would enter that area, where skittish armed rebels continued to move around in uniform today.

In many of the villages that the Yugoslavs entered today, ethnic Albanian civilians had already fled into neighboring Kosovo out of fear of fighting or vengeance violence. But the army and police that had earned a reputation for terror in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in years past were today a model of restraint, circulating leaflets in Albanian saying they intended to respect human rights and property.

Yet as one restless corner of the Balkans appeared to settle down, another, Macedonia, plunged into a new round of violence and political crisis. The sound of shelling carried in today from nearby Macedonia, where government forces pounded another group of ethnic Albanians who have taken up arms against the government to secure greater rights and, some suspect, separate part of the country to create a Greater Kosovo.

There were unconfirmed reports from the Macedonian village of Slupcane that government shells had slammed into cellars where civilians had taken shelter. A rebel commander who uses the name Shpati told the Reuters news agency in an e-mail message that six cellars were hit, killing 10 people and wounding 200.

If confirmed, the civilian deaths could threaten Macedonia's 11-day-old inter-ethnic government coalition of Slavs and ethnic Albanians, which was already reeling today from disclosures that the two ethnic Albanian parties had signed a secret peace deal with the so-called National Liberation Army, in violation of policies against any dealings with the guerrilla group.

In 1999, NATO waged a 78-day air campaign to stop the Yugoslav army's violent repression of an ethnic Albanian guerrilla movement seeking independence for Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic. But since then, as Yugoslavia has become democratic, NATO has found itself increasingly at odds with those same ethnic Albanian guerrillas, many of whom kept their weapons.

The guerrillas set up bases in a buffer zone that was created to separate NATO peacekeepers from the Yugoslav army. Today's operation was the latest in a series of steps that NATO and the Yugoslav army have planned to return the zone to full Yugoslav control and deny the guerrillas their sanctuary.

The rebels, known as the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, after the principal towns in this valley, agreed this week to demilitarize; about 450 have crossed into Kosovo, sometimes with weapons, and given themselves up to NATO. The decision effectively acknowledged the Yugoslavs' superior force and the lack of international support for the insurgents' aims.

Today the Yugoslavs entered the heavily forested and mountainous zone along five different paths, designated A, B, C, D and E. Last night forms were circulated among occasionally bemused journalists inviting them to select the route on which they'd like to accompany the troops.

Processions of reporters followed them out this morning but were kept at a safe distance from the advance, which at one point brought convoys of U.S. soldiers and Serbian paramilitary police, all traveling in Humvee military vehicles, face-to-face.

The police, who stopped just short of the U.S.-patrolled border with Kosovo, were among the most notorious ethnic-cleansing units in Bosnia, known then as Frenki's Boys after their commander at the time, Franko Simatovic. This morning they offered coffee to reporters and, as one British journalist put it, the Serbs were guilty only of excessive friendliness.

Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, speaking at a former guerrilla base in Djordjevac today, said NATO's agreement to allow the Yugoslavs to move up beside its troops along the border was "a sign that democratic forces trust us and a sign that we can achieve more with political tools and methods than through violence."

Djindjic also said the new government in Belgrade wanted to address ethnic Albanian grievances. "We'll offer the Albanian community here a very fair opportunity to participate in the political system," he said. "I think normality can return after this day."

As part of the agreement with the rebels, both NATO and the Yugoslav authorities said militants who turned over weapons by midnight Wednesday would be free to go after having their photographs taken.

Dozens of agitated rebels, however, continued to mill around the village of Veliki Trnovac in the central zone, brushing off all requests for comment. Locals said the guerrillas were prey to panicked reports that the Yugoslavs would enter the central zone before the guerrillas exit; at one place the forces are only 250 yards apart.

"They had this whole region and in one sweep it's gone," said Zanza, a 30-year-old ethnic Albanian in a cafe below a rebel headquarters in Veliki Trnovac, where guerrillas scurried in and out carrying automatic weapons and ammunition. "Nobody understands how this could happen."

According to unconfirmed reports late today, one guerrilla commander, known by the nom de guerre Hairy, was shot and killed this afternoon near the village. Shortly before his death, he had fended off a reporter's questions, saying there were too many problems to attend to.

Just outside the village, guerrillas fled one of their checkpoints after an exchange of gunfire in nearby hills that the Serbs now control, leaving behind empty coffee cups and sugar in a sandbagged shack.

Elsewhere in the valley, rebels fired at an army column, and an army truck hit a land mine, but there were no injuries, Yugoslav army officials said.

----

Milosevic accused of covering war crimes

05/25/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/world/balkans/2001-05-25-milosevic.htm

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Police said Friday they had launched an investigation against former President Slobodan Milosevic on allegations he ordered evidence of Kosovo war crimes destroyed to cover up atrocities.

The accusations mark the first time that Yugoslav authorities have officially linked Milosevic to war crimes. The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, has charged Milosevic with war crimes against Kosovo Albanians during the 1999 crackdown, which led to NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia.

Police official Dragan Karleusa said Milosevic had ordered top police commanders "to remove all evidence which could point to" civilian casualties during the Yugoslav army and police crackdown against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in March 1999.

He said Milosevic ordered his police to remove corpses "which could become the topic of possible investigation by The Hague tribunal."

Milosevic was arrested on April 1 on charges of abusing power during his 13-year tenure. Yugoslav authorities have so far been reluctant to hand him over to the war crimes tribunal.

Allegations were made last month that a refrigerated trailer truck was dumped into the Danube river in 1999 with bodies of people from Kosovo province, possibly ethnic Albanian victims of the war.

Karleusa confirmed that over 50 corpses were found in the dumped truck and that the case was declared state secret by Milosevic's associates. He said Milosevic was being investigated in connection with the find.

"For now it's clear that this was a case of removing evidence of criminal acts," said Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic, when asked war crimes charges against Milosevic in Yugoslavia could result.

The conflict between Kosovo's independence-seeking ethnic Albanians and majority Serbs erupted in 1998 and ended in 1999 when NATO launched airstrikes against Serb-led government troops accused of committing atrocities under Milosevic, then Yugoslav president. The clash left thousands dead and missing on both sides.

Reacting to recent findings by local human rights groups and subsequent witness testimonies in the media, authorities opened a formal investigation into the Danube river case and possible attempts by Milosevic and his regime to destroy evidence about victims of the Kosovo conflict.

--------

Milosevic Tied to War Crimes

MAY 25, 18:55 EST
By DUSAN STOJANOVIC
Associated Press
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=WORLD&PACKAGEID=yugoslavia&STORYID=APIS7C7E5OO0&SLUG=YUGOSLAVIA%2dMILOSEVIC

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Police linked former President Slobodan Milosevic on Friday to a cover-up of atrocities in Kosovo, including the dumping of bodies in the Danube River - a revelation that could help the U.N. war crimes tribunal.

The accusations, the first time Yugoslav authorities have tied Milosevic to war crimes, could pave the way for sending him to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague. Milosevic has been jailed since April 1 on charges of corruption and abuse of power.

The government is now drafting a law on the extradition of war crimes suspects to the Netherlands-based tribunal that would permit handing over suspects like Milosevic only if local courts found a basis for war crimes accusations.

The new allegations came after police investigated reports that a truck containing 50 bodies, reportedly those of ethnic Albanians, was found in the Danube River outside Kosovo near the Romanian border in 1999.

Police Capt. Dragan Karleusa said that in a March 1999 meeting, Milosevic ordered top police commanders ``to remove all evidence'' of civilian casualties in the crackdown in Kosovo and to remove corpses that could be subject to ``possible investigation by The Hague tribunal.'' Those present at the meeting included former Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, who is also wanted by the U.N. tribunal.

Bodies of more than 4,000 ethnic Albanians were exhumed in Kosovo after Yugoslav troops were forced to leave the Serbian province following 1999 NATO airstrikes to punish Milosevic for the crackdown. More than 3,000 ethnic Albanians remain missing.

Police made it clear Friday that they considered the evidence about the bodies in the Danube one link in Milosevic's alleged large-scale attempt to remove traces of thousands of civilians killed by his troops in Kosovo.

``When we finish the investigation, we will file criminal charges,'' said Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic. ``For now it's clear that this was a case of removing evidence of criminal acts.''

Milosevic's lawyer, Toma Fila, told The Associated Press the new allegations are ``ridiculous.''

``This is totally absurd, and has nothing to do with reality,'' Fila said by telephone. He refused to comment further until formal charges are filed against Milosevic.

Milosevic's Socialist Party said in a statement that the police were distributing ``hideous misinformation launched deliberately before the expected parliamentary debate about the law on cooperation with the Hague tribunal.''

The party said the accusations were aimed at ``trying to justify the totally unacceptable act of opening the way for possible extraditions.''

Police said that the bodies found in the dumped truck were reloaded in April 1999 and taken to another, still undisclosed location. The whole operation had been officially declared secret by Milosevic's authorities, and those who had witnessed the operation were ordered to remain quiet.

The police quoted witnesses who spoke of an ``unpleasant smell,'' when the truck was pulled out of the Danube.

Zivadin Djordjevic, a diver employed in the operation to raise the truck, recently spoke of ``a terrible mixture of congealed blood, stench, and decomposing twisted bodies'' when the truck was lifted. He said the bodies included women and children.

At The Hague, Jean Jacques Joris, a top adviser to chief war crimes court prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, said the police accusations make ``clear that Milosevic was directly involved in the crimes committed in Kosovo.''

Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt told AP that ``if this is new evidence this would be very valuable to us, because this is somebody standing up, saying, 'Milosevic ordered to cover up evidence.'''

The conflict between Kosovo's independence-seeking ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs erupted in 1998 and ended in 1999 when NATO launched airstrikes against Serb-led government troops accused of committing atrocities under Milosevic.

-------- colombia

Colombia Troops Set for Drug Battle

MAY 25, 04:50 EST
By RICARDO MAZALAN
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7C71PI00

LARANDIA ARMY BASE, Colombia (AP) - The last of three Colombian army anti-drug battalions to be trained by Green Berets has graduated at a ceremony attended by top U.S. military commanders and the American ambassador.

The battalion will soon be prowling the jungles and coca fields of southern Colombia's Putumayo and Caqueta states, which together produce 60 percent of Colombia's cocaine and are teeming with leftist rebels and rival paramilitary forces who both earn huge profits by ``taxing'' cocaine producers.

Green Berets have been training the battalions as part of a U.S. aid package aimed at bolstering Colombia's efforts to wipe out drug crops and illicit laboratories. U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson watched the graduation ceremony Thursday at of this army base near southern Colombia's war zone.

U.S.-donated Huey helicopters buzzed past as Patterson, Gen. Peter Pace, commander of the Miami-based Southern Command - which oversees U.S. military operations in Latin America - and Gen. Charles Holland, chief of the elite Special Operations Command, observed the ceremony in a grassy field.

The U.S. trainers instructed the battalion how to aggressively react to ambushes and other combat techniques while trying to instill ``target discrimination'' in the hope the soldiers will not accidentally kill civilians in drug raids.

The newly trained troops will join the other two anti-drug battalions for a total of about 3,000 soldiers.

The U.S. Embassy said that because Colombian security forces have a poor human rights record, it investigated each of the prospective soldiers to make sure they were cleared of any accusations of rights abuses or drug trafficking.

The troops seek and destroy drug labs and provide protection for low-flying fumigation planes. The two battalions already in the field have destroyed 86,000 acres of coca - the raw material for cocaine - since December, according to Colombian army Gen. Mario Montoya.

Under a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package, 16 Blackhawk and 25 Super Huey helicopters are to begin arriving in July for the three anti-drug battalions. U.S. officials say they will give the troops far greater mobility and support.

Most of the Green Berets have reportedly returned to their home base, at Fort Bragg, N.C.

-------- drug war

Mexican police arrest former governor

05/25/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-05-24-mexico.htm

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Federal police arrested a former governor Thursday who was suspected of protecting drug smugglers, ending a two-year search for one of Mexico's most sought-after fugitives, Mexico's attorney general said.

Investigators of the attorney general's office arrested Mario Villanueva in the coastal resort of Cancun, in his home state of Quintana Roo, Rafael Macedo said at a news conference. Villanueva disappeared on March 28, 1999, two weeks before the end of his term as governor of the state.

Villanueva, who faces drug-smuggling and organized-crime charges, is the highest-ranking Mexican official ever to face a drug-related investigation while in office.

The main accusation against him is that he used police to help protect drug smugglers of the Juarez Cartel. Villanueva has denied the allegations, saying they were motivated by political rivalries.

After being questioned by Mexico's anti-drug czar and being summoned for further testimony, Villanueva disappeared days before his term expired on April 1, 1999.

The prosecution of a ruling-party governor intrigued Mexicans accustomed to the virtual impunity enjoyed by officials of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had governed Mexico for 70 years until Vicente Fox won the presidency last year.

Mexican authorities have accused Villanueva of helping drug smugglers during his 1993-99 administration in which the drug trade boomed.

Villanueva was traveling in a car in Cancun when he was arrested with two others, including a former state judicial police officer, Manuel Jesus Kan, Macedo said. He did not resist arrest.

Macedo said Villanueva would be taken to Mexico's highest-security prison, outside Mexico City.

Macedo said the arrest was the result of his office's work since Fox named him to the post six months ago.

After his Villanueva's disappearance, he sent a videotaped statement to the television network Televisa, in which he denied any wrongdoing and said prosecutors had "fabricated evidence, paid for testimony from some witnesses and pressured others" to build a case against him.

Villanueva's ability to elude authorities led opposition lawmakers to charge that the attorney general's office had allowed him to escape to avoid further embarrassment to the governing party.

Then-Attorney General Jorge Madrazo denied the accusations, saying his office did not have enough evidence to arrest Villanueva before his term ended.

Officials have said drug trafficking grew substantially in the Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo during Villanueva's administration, when former law enforcement officials joined drug smugglers.

One of those former officials is Ramon Alcides Magana, alias "El Metro," who heads the Cancun operations of the cocaine-smuggling organization that grew out of the Juarez Cartel after the death of its leader in 1997. Some say Alcides Magana, a former police official, is the world's top drug lord.

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

-------- india / pakistan

Indian PM Invites Pakistan Talks

New York Times
May 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-India-Pakistan.html?searchpv=aponline

NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee sent a formal letter of invitation to Pakistani military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf, urging him to attend talks on ending decades of tension over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

The letter called on Musharraf and his wife to visit the Indian capital ``at your early convenience.''

Pakistan has indicated that it would respond favorably to the offer of talks, which would be the first between the two countries in two years. Musharraf, who was born in New Delhi and migrated with his family to the Pakistan port city of Karachi, has often said that he was willing to meet with Vajpayee.

In Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, Musharraf's chief spokesman told The Associated Press on Friday that the general would place no conditions on his acceptance of India's surprise invitation, but believes the Kashmiri people should also be included in the talks.

The South Asian nuclear rivals have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. Two of those wars have been over Kashmir, which both countries control part of but want all of.

Vajpayee's letter was delivered by India's acting high commissioner in Islamabad to the foreign secretary of Pakistan.

``India has, through dialogue, consistently endeavored to build a relationship of durable peace, stability and cooperative friendship with Pakistan,'' the letter read. ``Our common enemy is poverty. For the welfare of our peoples, there is no other recourse but a pursuit of the path of reconciliation, of engaging in productive dialogue and by building trust and confidence. I invite you to walk this high road with us.''

The letter from Vajpayee went on to say that when he visited Pakistan in 1999, ``with the objective of beginning a new chapter in our bilateral relations,'' he had stressed that a ``stable, secure and prosperous Pakistan was in India's interest.''

His letter said, ``that remains our conviction.''

In February 1999, Vajpayee visited Lahore, Pakistan, on a peace mission. He and former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif signed the Lahore Declaration, saying they would pursue peace.

Within months, however, hundreds of Pakistan-based guerrillas had occupied the icy heights of Kargil in northernmost Indian-controlled Kashmir. India fought back the incursion in a 50-day confrontation that witnessed fierce artillery shelling from both sides.

Then Sharif was overthrown and imprisoned and Musharraf, whom Indian security officials accused of planning and executing the Kargil attack, took over.

``We have to pick up the threads again,'' Vajpayee said in his letter, ``so that we can put in place a stable structure of cooperation and address all outstanding issues, including J&K.''

Vajpayee was referring to the Indian state of Jammu-Kashmir.

More than 30,000 people have been killed in Kashmir since Islamic separatists launched an insurgency in 1989, demanding independence or a merger with Pakistan. Human rights activists put the death toll at 60,000.

In November 2000, Vajpayee began a unilateral cease-fire in Kashmir during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan in an attempt to get Islamic separatists to talk peace. He extended the cease-fire three times, but the guerrillas rejected the cease-fire and fighting has continued.

When Defense Minister Jaswant Singh unveiled India's surprise invitation to Pakistan on Wednesday, he also lifted the six-month cease-fire, saying it had failed to halt cross-border terrorism.

India has insisted that it would not hold talks with Pakistan until it ended support of the guerrillas based in Pakistan. Islamabad has denied that it aids the separatists, saying it provides only moral support.

P.N. Dhar, a key aide to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who witnessed the 1972 talks to formalize a Kashmir cease-fire line with Pakistan, expressed little hope for the latest moves.

``It's a good initiative. But I doubt its success,'' Dhar told AP. ``It's a long, drawn-out process, and whether Pakistan will be prepared for that will determine the prospects of the initiative. I think India will persist but am not so sure about Pakistan.''

-------- iraq

List Targets Export Controls to Iraq

New York Times
May 25, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Shopping-For-Saddam.html?searchpv=aponline

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- It took a special, high-powered computer to create the mammoth wave and the ships it swallowed up in the movie ``The Perfect Storm.'' That same system can also design missiles and target weapons.

Even if there were a Hollywood studio in Iraq, the computer would still be on a list of items the United States wants to keep away from Saddam Hussein, along with dozens of other consumer goods with possible military applications, including underwater cameras and night vision goggles.

The list, drafted by Washington and obtained by The Associated Press, is a controversial element of a joint U.S.-British proposal to overhaul sanctions on Iraq. The proposal before the U.N. Security Council would lift restrictions on most civilian goods but alert U.N. monitors to attempts to bring in weapons technologies.

The United States and Britain say the plan would ease life for Iraq's impoverished citizens while preventing the oil-rich nation from rearming 11 years after it stormed into Kuwait and fired missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The 23-page list includes hundreds of items, and is only one of four itemized breakdowns of red-flagged goods.

An American involved in the drafting process, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the lists were designed to prevent Iraq from getting weapons of mass destruction, missile delivery systems and the technologies to build them.

American officials say they are still being worked on, but drafts circulated to council members have already become a source of contention. Some argue the lists are too long, too complex or too difficult to enforce.

Explaining items on the list, military experts said that underwater cameras could be used to track U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. Image enhancers could be used to refine satellite photos. Fiber optic cables, also on the list, are hard to disrupt or intercept. Sophisticated drilling equipment could open the ground up just wide enough to insert a missile.

Digital computers that work at 6.5 million theoretical operations per second are also on the list. Ellen Pasternack at George Lucas Digital said the company used the same computers to produce images in the movies ``The Perfect Storm,'' ``The Mummy Returns'' and ``Pearl Harbor.'' The company used other listed items in the production, including certain graphics and high-resolution capabilities.

``We've had preliminary conversations with the U.S. Navy about doing on-screen graphics for them,'' she added.

One British diplomat, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said cellphones and keyless entry systems would be allowed into Iraq even though they contain surface acoustic wave devices -- an item placed on the list because it also can be used to interpret intercepted radar signals.

Although the joint proposal would allow civilian flights to Iraq to resume, the review list includes all airplane parts. If any commercial plane required repairs in Iraq, a request for the items would have to be submitted for review, and if approved, then flown to Baghdad.

U.S. and British officials say they hope to work out those kinds of details once the resolution is approved. An American involved in the process said there would be ``rules of reason'' applied to the review procedure when those types of items are requested for import.

Critics note Iraq could simply import the products and then extract components that have military use. Others argue it would at least make it harder for Iraq to get the components to make banned weapons.

``Lots of items have military applications,'' said Larry Korb, director of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. He said ``the point is to make it harder'' for Iraq to get them.

David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who heads the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, thinks the United States and Britain are making a serious miscalculation.

``Export controls are meant to go hand-in-hand with inspections, and if you have only one of these things, you're going to have a hard time succeeding.''

U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes. Iraq has banned their return.

Albright said he was disappointed that the proposal does not link the easing of sanctions with renewed ground checks.

``We should hang tough on where we are now and pressure the Iraqis to accept inspections,'' he said.

Under the current U.N. oil-for-food program, Iraq is allowed to export oil provided the revenue is used to buy approved humanitarian goods.

The U.S.-British draft resolution would enable most civilian goods to enter Iraq freely. But it would toughen enforcement of an arms embargo and tighten control over Iraq's oil revenues.

A counterproposal by Russia, a key Iraq supporter, does not mention lifting sanctions on civilian goods or tightening border inspections to prevent illegal weapons and goods from entering Iraq. It would extend the oil-for-food program for another six months and add some elements favorable to Baghdad.

--------

China, Russia Judge Sanctions Plan

MAY 25, 22:38 EST
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=MIDEAST&STORYID=APIS7C7HE400

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - China joined Russia Friday in criticizing a U.S.-British plan to overall sanctions against Iraq, saying it appeared aimed at punishing Baghdad rather than easing life for Iraqis.

The split among the veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council signaled tough negotiations ahead and raised a major obstacle to U.S. and British efforts to win council approval for their overhaul by June 4th.

France, which also has a veto, has taken a more conciliatory approach in an effort to achieve consensus among all 15 council members. The French proposed changes to the British draft resolution which were discussed Friday at a closed meeting of the five permanent members, diplomats said.

But it was clear that major differences remained among the five major powers.

The British plan would lift restrictions on most civilian goods entering Iraq while toughening enforcement of an arms embargo on Baghdad and tightening U.N. control over Iraq's oil revenues.

The United States and Britain want the sanctions overhaul to be included in the resolution extending the U.N. oil-for-food humanitarian program for another six months. The current phase expires at midnight June 3.

China's deputy U.N. ambassador Shen Guofang questioned the underlying concept of the U.S.-British plan.

Washington and London maintain that their goal is to ease the flow of civilian goods to Iraqis hard-hit by sanctions imposed by the council after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait while making it more difficult for Iraq to rearm and smuggle oil.

But Shen said: ``The final intention of that (British) draft, I believe, is to further consolidate the sanctions rather than to adjust the humanitarian problems in Iraq ... I don't think it's a basis for discussion.''

Russia's Ambassador, Sergey Lavrov, has repeatedly said there isn't enough time to consider such a major change, and he complained Friday that the British and Americans haven't provided ``enough information ... for us to understand what it is about and what consequences this might involve.''

Started in late 1996, the oil-for-food program allows Iraq to sell oil provided proceeds are used primarily to buy humanitarian supplies.

Lavrov introduced a rival resolution Tuesday which makes no mention of lifting sanctions on civilian goods or tightening border inspections. It would simply extend the current program for six months and add several controversial elements favorable to Baghdad. Russia proposed similar measures in December.

-------- israel

Israel Downs Lebanese Plane

By Dina Kraft
Associated Press
Friday, May 25, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A74813-2001May24?language=printer

MIKHMORET, Israel, May 24 -- An Israeli attack helicopter shot down a small Lebanese civilian plane that crossed the tense border today, the first anniversary of Israel's pullout from southern Lebanon.

The pilot, identified as a Lebanese flight student unauthorized to fly alone, was killed as the Cessna 152 crashed near this Mediterranean resort town, about 60 miles south of the border.

The Israeli military, which had been on high alert for possible attacks by Hezbollah guerrillas because of the anniversary, fired after the pilot failed to respond to 30 minutes of repeated radio contact, according to the air force commander, Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz. He said the Israeli military suspected the pilot might have been planning a suicide attack on a populated area.

The shooting came as clashes continued between Israel and the Palestinians, despite stepped-up international efforts to end eight months of violence that has killed 559 people. Two Palestinians were shot dead in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian militants earlier fired mortar shells at a Jewish settlement, and five Israeli tanks responded by moving into Palestinian-run territory, witnesses said.

The Israeli military denied its forces entered Palestinian territory or fired at a Palestinian civilian area.

With the heightened tensions, Israel said its fighter planes started pursuing the Cessna after it crossed the border. Halutz said the civilian aviation authority in Cyprus alerted Israel that the Cessna had left Beirut's airport without authorization.

Most of the Cessna's debris came down on a navy training school on the beach near Mikhmoret, about 30 miles north of Tel Aviv. The pilot's mangled body crashed through the roof of the school and into the office of assistant principal Nitza Kramer.

"Suddenly, from the corner of the ceiling, a flash of light came through and then everything went black and the room was full of smoke," Kramer said. "I couldn't see anything, but I stepped on something soft which must have been the body."

Smaller pieces of wreckage fell on a road and were scattered through a residential area near the coast.

There was no immediate word on whether the plane was carrying any weapons or explosives.

The pilot of the Cessna, Stefan Nikolian, 43, had flown three or four times this week with an instructor and had been scheduled to do the same today, said Nemeh Malek, director of JR Executives, the plane's owner. "Today, he got on the plane, started the engine and took off, leaving the pilot behind," Malek said in Beirut.

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

Rights groups shuffled in U.N. body

By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Friday, May 25, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010525-10575882.htm

NEW YORK -- Human rights watchdog Freedom House will have to wait at least six months to renew its accreditation to the United Nations after last-minute questions by the Cuban delegation delayed a vote expected yesterday.

However, a conservative American women´s group has been accredited and two pro-Tibet groups have for the first time been approved to take part in a U.N. conference, over Chinese objections.

New York-based Freedom House, founded even before the United Nations, has run afoul of several members of the accreditation committee, who oppose renewing its U.N. recognition as a nongovernmental organization (NGO).

On Tuesday, the Cuban government revived accusations that Freedom House officials, while attending last month´s Human Rights Committee session in Geneva, had given their own U.N. passes to Cuban dissidents who might try to harm the Cuban delegation.

"Absolutely false," said Freedom House spokesman Michael Goldfarb, who was monitoring the proceedings yesterday. "That is not something we would ever do."

The majority of NGOs that wish to take part in U.N. conferences, treaty-drafting and other activities must be accredited by a 19-member committee of the Economic and Social Council.

A number of nations with questionable human rights records are on the NGO committee, including Russia, China, Cuba and Sudan. Seats on the council, like most U.N. bodies, are apportioned among regional groupings.

NGOs whose accreditation is deferred are not automatically shut out of activities, but must work harder to be allowed to participate. Those with U.N. credentials have entry passes for U.N. buildings and are automatically allowed to take part, to some extent, in international conferences and meetings.

"Membership on is self-selecting," said one State Department official. "If Sudan or China wants to sit on the Human Rights Committee, and their neighbors send them, there is nothing we can do about it."

The United States lost its seat on the Geneva-based Human Rights Commission in a secret Economic and Social Council vote last month. However, Washington maintains its seats on the council and the NGO subcommittee.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with members of the House International Relations Committee in Washington yesterday to mend fences with legislators, who voted to withhold $244 million in U.N. dues until the United States regains its seat on the Human Rights Commission.

Rep. Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican and chairman of the International Relations Committee, called the one-hour closed-door session successful.

"It went very well," he said. "Every hot issue that could be brought up was brought up."

Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican, said he raised the issue of NGO accreditation with Mr. Annan.

"He listened politely. He said the member states decide these things. He did not promise to weigh in. He didn´t promise anything."

The socially conservative Family Research Council learned that a vote on its credentials was also posponed yesterday, after India raised questions about its work against sex trafficking.

But another conservative American group, the Washington-based Concerned Women for America, on Wednesday won recognition from the NGO committee.

Wendy Wright, CWA´s director of communications, said the group -- which evaluates the impact of public policy on women and families -- has been very active since 1997 in U.N. conferences on the rights of women, population issues and housing.

Two pro-Tibet human rights groups -- the International Campaign for Tibet and the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy earlier this week were accredited by a separate group to the upcoming U.N. World Conference on Racism, marking the first time Tibetan groups have been allowed to participate in official U.N. activities. The Chinese have consistently worked against such

groups, saying that Tibet is an internal matter. • Tom Carter in Washington contributed to this article.

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

Join the Navy and Kill the Whales?

By Lanny Sinkin - light@ilhawaii.net
Wed, 25 Apr 2001

Make no mistake about it. The U.S. Navy's new low frequency active (LFA) sonar is a serious threat to the health of marine mammals, particularly whales, and other marine life.

A NATO LFA exercise in 1998 left numerous dead beaked whales on the coast of Greece. LFA testing off the Island of Hawai`i in 1998 caused humpback whales to leave the test area, apparently resulted in separation of whale and dolphin calves from their mothers, and seriously injured a snorkeler in the water.

The Navy claims this technology is necessary to detect newer, more silent submarines. Yet a naval admiral testified before Congress that advances in passive listening devices means that the Navy now can rapidly deploy passive devices that can detect the same silent submarines.

The truth is that the Navy invested more than $350 million preparing to deploy LFA before preparing the legally required environmental impact statement (EIS). When the threat of legal action forced the Navy to prepare an EIS, the resulting document is, not surprisingly, designed to justify deployment rather than illuminate the truth.

For example, the EIS does not even discuss the reports filed in 1998 by whale watch boat captains, a helicopter tour pilot, and shore observers that the humpback whales left the LFA test area off Hawai`i as soon as the test broadcasts began.

The EIS claims that there is no credible evidence that LFA broadcasts harmed any humans in the water. That claim ignores the admission by the scientists conducting the test program that the tests exposed a snorkeler to a 125 decibel broadcast leaving the snorkeler in a condition her doctor described as similar to a trauma patient in a hospital.

While acknowledging that independent observers saw an isolated baby humpback whale breaching and tail slapping hundreds of times over many hours during the broadcast period, the EIS denies any LFA responsibility for this very rare case of separation. The separated dolphin calf and separated melon headed whale calf do not warrant any concern in the EIS.

At one point, the EIS argues that studies of four whale species - blue, fin, gray, and humpback whales - is sufficient to reach conclusions about all marine mammals and that these species are indicators for all the remaining whale species.

When a comment to the draft EIS directs attention to evidence that gray whales avoid very low levels of sound, the EIS adopts the exact opposite position and claims that gray whales are unique and that their experiences cannot be applied to any other species.

Disavowing a fundamental assumption of their study when the evidence suggests they have a problem is only further evidence of the Navy's intent to deploy this system no matter what the evidence.

These deliberate omissions and contradictions are only a tiny sample of the abundant evidence available that the Navy is not interested in the truth about the threat LFA poses to marine life. The bureaucratic momentum created by huge financial investments and careers built around this technology are pushing the Navy to deploy this system over the whales' dead bodies.

In March 2000, various species of beaked whales stranded in the Bahamas with at least seven dead. The investigation of this event concluded that it was highly likely that the mid-range sonar used by a passing naval fleet caused serious physical injury to the whales. A marine biologist, who has studied the beaked whales in the Bahamas for years, recently reported that all the beaked whales studied to date have disappeared from the Bahamas. The biologist assumes that the Navy killed all the beaked whales in the area.

The mid-range sonar killing the whales is already deployed with an obviously inadequate assessment of its environmental impacts. For the Navy to now decide to deploy LFA as well would be a deliberate decision that killing whales is not a problem for the Navy.

Stopping LFA deployment is going to take congressional action. Your two senators and your representative need to hear from you. Please write today and ask that Congress stop deployment of low frequency active sonar. The whales, dolphins, turtles, and other marine life will be the beneficiaries of your action.

The author is an attorney in Hilo, Hawai`i and has filed three law suits on behalf of environmental organizations challenging the Navy's plan to deploy LFA systems.

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Bush Promises Better Military

MAY 25, 16:10 EST
By SONYA ROSS
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=ELECTION&PACKAGEID=bush&STORYID=APIS7C7BOCO0&SLUG=BUSH%2dNAVAL%2dACADEMY

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - Pledging to ``keep the peace by redefining war,'' President Bush told graduates of the Naval Academy on Friday that he wants the nation's military to be faster and more high-tech, but not necessarily larger.

In a commencement address to the academy's class of 2001, Bush praised those who have served in the military through the years and told graduates that they face a more difficult challenge than their predecessors did.

``America today has the finest Navy and Marine Corps the world has ever seen. With your help, I am committed to ensuring that we have the world's finest Navy and Marine Corps tomorrow and every day after,'' Bush said. ``To do so, we must build forces that draw upon the revolutionary advances in the technology of war that will allow us to keep the peace by redefining war on our terms.''

Bush avoided specifics on how he might transform the military. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is leading a review of the armed services, and is grappling with whether the United States should abandon the principle that its military must be ready to fight two major regional wars at the same time.

``I am committed to building a future force that is defined less by size and more by mobility and swiftness,'' Bush said. ``One that is easy to deploy and sustain. One that relies more on stealth, precision weaponry and information technology.''

Bush lingered at the ceremony, conferring degrees on all 903 midshipmen and jokingly absolving those who were on restriction for missing curfew or breaking other rules of conduct. Kevin Terrell Young, 23, of Shady Side, Md., started a trend when he ran up on stage and clasped the startled president in a tight bear hug.

After that, so many midshipmen hugged Bush that Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, tallied the exuberance as ``high-fives, hugs and a couple of cross body blocks disguised as hugs.''

Bush took note of students with the best grades, and the worst ones. He gave a boxed golf ball to Bobby Rashad Jones, the 2001 ``anchor'' for his bottom-of-the-class standing. The excited Jones gave Bush a high-five and wrapped the president in a hug that spun him around.

``Some of you gave the left-handed salute to Tecumseh, the god of 2.0,'' Bush joked. Recalling his own academic mediocrity at Yale, he said: ``They didn't have that statue where I went to school. I wish they had.''

The president encouraged the graduates to approach their military service with a spirit of innovation, noting that the greatest military leaders stood out because they rejected the ``old bureaucratic mindset.'' He promised to encourage a military culture ``where intelligent risk-taking and forward thinking are rewarded, not dreaded,'' and those with visionary ideas are promoted, not stifled.

``Creativity and imaginative thinking are the great competitive advantages of America and America's military,'' Bush said. ``Our national and military leaders owe you a culture that supports innovation and a system that rewards it.''

Even so, Bush cautioned: ``Officers willing to think big thoughts and look at problems with a fresh eye are sometimes wrong. New ideas don't always work. If you pick up this mantle, some of your ideas may fail. But we need to give you this freedom, and we will.''

Bush renewed his pledge to improve quality of life in the military - what he has called his administration's first order of business as it conducts a top-to-bottom review of the armed services.

An example of the challenge Bush faces in providing an improved quality of life for troops is shown in the results of an Army study that asked more than 13,000 officers about job satisfaction.

The Army said Friday that its survey showed that 69 percent of officers believe military housing is inadequate, and nearly 73 percent say they cannot achieve a proper balance between work and family life. Junior officers said they are not getting adequate training to be leaders and that there is ``friction between Army beliefs and practices,'' prompting some to quit their Army career early.

After the commencement ceremony, Bush went by helicopter to the presidential retreat at Camp David for the weekend. He is scheduled to return to Washington on Monday for Memorial Day events.

On the Net:
Naval Academy: http://www.usna.edu/

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The Illusion of a Grand Strategy

May 25, 2001
New York Times
By JAMES DER DERAIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/25/opinion/25DERI.html?searchpv=nytToday

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Today President Bush will deliver what has been billed as a major defense policy statement. Coming on the heels of a Pentagon "top-to-bottom" defense review - the result of two dozen panels of experts meeting for several months behind closed doors - his speech has been preceded by high expectations and not a small amount of controversy. Will he come to the Naval Academy armed with a revolutionary plan to transform the military, as his earlier statements have suggested? In the end, it may not matter. No plan, said Clausewitz, the Prussian strategist, survives the first battle; and the counterattacks have already begun.

On Capitol Hill, military reform has the unpleasant ring of bases being closed and pet weapons projects getting axed. Largely excluded from the planning process, Congress is likely to put up a fight - a prospect that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has belatedly recognized this week in his trips to the Hill.

Fearing the loss of a division, carrier group or fighter program, each of the armed services has launched both public and private protests. In the defense industry, cracks will further widen between the heavy-metal advocates (those who favor tanks, ships and planes) and the electronica faction (who prefer precision munitions, remote sensors and robotics).

Public debates are already heating up over readiness to fight simultaneously one, one and a half, or two major regional conflicts. The power and vulnerability of aircraft carriers are being contrasted to the speed and cost of "streetfighter" ships, and the advantages of piloted aircraft against those of precision strike weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Whatever the outcome, much of the credit, or blame, is likely to be laid at the doorstep of one man: Andrew Marshall. He was handpicked by Mr. Rumsfeld to guide the strategic review. Yet Mr. Marshall and his views remain enigmatic. Well-known if not adored by a tight circle of civilian and military strategists - the so- called "church of St. Andrew" - Mr. Marshall has been nearly invisible outside the defense establishment. A RAND Corporation nuclear expert beginning in 1949, he was brought by Henry Kissinger onto the National Security Council then appointed by President Nixon to direct the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment.

He has been there ever since, despite efforts by some defense secretaries to get rid of him. His innocuous-sounding office comes with a big brief: to "assess" regional and global military balances and to determine long-term trends and threats.

Insiders say Mr. Marshall was behind some of the key strategic decisions of the Reagan years. His strategy for a protracted nuclear war - based on weapons modernization, protection of governmental leaders from a first strike and an early version of Star Wars - effectively beggared the Soviet war machine. He advocated providing Afghan resistance fighters with the highly effective Stinger missiles. He tagged AIDS as a national security issue.

Supporters call Mr. Marshall "iconoclastic" and "delphic"; his detractors prefer "paranoiac" or worse. No one has ever called him prolix. At a future-war seminar that he sponsored, Mr. Marshall mumbled a few introductory words and then sat in silence, eyebrows arched, arms folded, for the remaining two days. His only intervention came at the end. He suggested that when it came to the future, it would be better to err on the side of being unimaginative. After that experience, I better understood why he has been called the Pentagon's Yoda.

Five years ago, I sought him out because of his legendary seven-page memo, "Some Thoughts on Military Revolutions." First circulated in August 1993, it promoted the "revolution in military affairs," a new movement in military analysis, in which information technologies combined with innovative military doctrine transform the nature of war.

My interview with Mr. Marshall took place in his paper-strewn Pentagon office. With one eye on the primitive rocket that stood between our chairs, I asked him about his current concerns. Even then Mr. Marshall saw Asia looming on the horizon. But his gaze was also directed backward, to Europe between the world wars. He had teams analyzing the failure of Great Britain, the leading power of the day, to formulate effective strategies of defense and deterrence from new technologies like the tank, airplane and radio. Relying on past glories, antiquated doctrine and international institutions like the League of Nations, Britain missed the revolution in military affairs of its day. Germany did not, and subdued most of Europe by blitzkrieg.

The rest may be history, but not for Andrew Marshall. In a time of great transformations, the interwar period shows what might happen if a "peer competitor" gets the technological jump on a complacent United States. "The 20's," he told me, "turned out to be a period of illusion."

Andrew Marshall is unusual in that he may have the power to make his vision of our enemies - whether illusionary or true - into reality. However, the horse-trading, pork-barreling, balkanizing process called "defense policy making" has a way of chewing up grand visions, even when they are proclaimed by presidents.

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Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs Spar Over Roles in Retooling Military

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 25, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A73198-2001May24?language=printer

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld held a combative session with the Joint Chiefs of Staff this week at which he expressed frustration about leaks of his plans to change the military. The service chiefs responded that they felt they had been excluded for months from his deliberations about those changes, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

But the two-hour meeting Tuesday in the Joint Chiefs' secure conference room, known as "the Tank," ended well, the officials said, as Rumsfeld and the service chiefs agreed to hold intensive discussions over the next six weeks to hammer out a new defense strategy.

Taking steps to repair strained relations in two areas, Rumsfeld went to Capitol Hill yesterday to meet with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and also made plans to meet with the Joint Chiefs every working day next week, and probably into the weekend, officials said.

The strategy sessions with military leaders will be especially significant. From the strategy will flow conclusions about how big the military should be, what sort of weaponry to buy and the rough size of the defense budget.

Rumsfeld opened Tuesday's session in the Tank, at which only senior officials were present, with a 15-minute defense of his actions since coming to the Pentagon in January, emphasizing that he was determined to take a fresh look at defense issues and so had gone outside the military for help. He added that it had never been his intention to be exclusionary.

"It was very clear that the secretary wanted to get something off his chest," said one Defense Department official.

Despite its positive outcome, not everyone emerged from the meeting entirely pleased. At one point in the session, a service chief complained to Rumsfeld that he still hadn't been given a copy of the latest version of the overall strategy paper being written for Rumsfeld by Andrew Marshall, head of the Pentagon's in-house think tank. The services are worried about that paper because it appears to prescribe major shifts in the military, with new emphases on Asia and on long-range precision weaponry, but less use for large ground forces.

In response to that pointed question, the official said, Rumsfeld leaned back in his chair, turned to assistant Steven Cambone and said, "Steve, has anyone asked for it?" Cambone said no one had.

The Defense official said the chiefs were bothered by that exchange because it indicated that Rumsfeld doesn't understand that they think of themselves as his principal military advisers -- and don't believe they should have to ask an aide for papers being written under his guidance on military strategy.

The message the chiefs conveyed to Rumsfeld, the official added, was that, "This organization will work tremendously if it is included, and we will execute orders, even if we don't like them."

In a brief session with reporters at the Pentagon yesterday, Rumsfeld spoke generally about the state of his review of the military. "I think things are going along pretty well," he said. "There's no question but that change is not easy for people."

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a spokesman for Rumsfeld, declined to comment about what was said in Tuesday's Tank session, except to say, "I think it's a travesty that he can't have a private conversation with the services' uniformed leadership."

Navy Capt. T. McCreary, a spokesman for Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Henry H. Shelton, said, "General Shelton doesn't discuss what goes on in Tank sessions. Those are periods of time set aside for the chiefs to talk off the record amongst themselves on serious issues. The conversations there aren't supposed to go outside the Tank."

In another effort to clear the air with his critics, Rumsfeld yesterday held the second of two meetings this week with members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees. He emphasized, as he did with the Joint Chiefs, that he has come to no conclusions about how to change the military and only has some initial "impressions." He also promised to include interested senators in future deliberations.

To convey his view of the world, and especially of the necessity to change the military to meet the threats of the 21st century, Rumsfeld distributed to the senators a four-page handout. A major theme was the inevitability of strategic surprise -- the notion that threats will come from unexpected directions.

"History should compel planners to humbly acknowledge that 2015 will almost certainly be little like today and certainly notably different from what today's experts are confidently forecasting," the document said. "And recent events suggest that [the Department of Defense] at least give some thought to the flexibility of a capability-based strategy, as opposed to simply a threat-based strategy."

That jargon-laden sentence basically means that the U.S. military needs to move away from a Cold War structure designed to counter one large, clear threat -- from the Soviet Union -- and to develop capabilities to respond to everything from ballistic missiles to terrorist attacks.

"I would give the secretary the highest marks," Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said after Rumsfeld's appearance on Capitol Hill yesterday afternoon. "I think he's doing the best job he possibly can."

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Bush Tells Naval Graduates to Embrace Innovation

New York Times
May 25, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/25/politics/25CND-BUSH.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, May 25 - President Bush told new naval officers today that the country will need a spirit of innovation and sensible risk-taking as well as old-fashioned patriotism to defend its shores and its ideals in the years ahead.

"Our national and military leaders owe you a culture that supports innovation and a system that rewards it," Mr. Bush told graduates of the Naval Academy at nearby Annapolis, Md.

"Officers willing to think big thoughts and look at problems with a fresh eye are sometimes wrong," the President said. "New ideas don't always work. If you pick up this mantle, some of your ideas may fail. But we need to give you this freedom, and we will. It is from your failures that we will learn and acquire the knowledge that will make successful innovation possible."

Mr. Bush's remarks were not surprising, given what he has said before about the need for a flexible, technology-friendly military in a world where the Soviet Union and the cold war have been supplanted by smaller, less predictable foes and the threat of terrorism.

But his words were still noteworthy, given a Pentagon culture that is often seen as too slow to change (at least by outsiders) and considering the Navy's reputation as the most tradition-bound of the services.

"We must build forces that draw upon the revolutionary advances in the technology of war that will allow us to keep the peace by redefining war on our terms," Mr. Bush said. "I'm committed to building a future force that is defined less by size and more by mobility and swiftness, one that is easier to deploy and sustain, one that relies more heavily on stealth, precision weaponry and information technologies."

The President asked the newly commissioned ensigns to imagine the world 15 years from now, when many of them will be in command positions. "Building tomorrow's force is not going to be easy," he said. "Changing the direction of our military is like changing the course of a mighty ship - all the more reason for more research and development, and all the more reason to get started right away.

"Yet building a 21st-century military will require more than new weapons; it will also require a renewed spirit of innovation in our officer corps. We cannot transform our military using old weapons and old plans, nor can we do it with an old bureaucratic mindset that frustrates the creativity and entrepreneurship that a 21st-century military will need."

Mr. Bush invoked the memory of Adm. Arleigh Burke, "the father of the modern Navy," and other heroes of yesteryear. Just as significantly, given his speech's forward-looking theme, he paid tribute to Adm. Hyman Rickover, who launched America's nuclear submarine program. While his place in naval history is now secure, the brilliant but prickly Admiral Rickover was not widely popular in the Navy of his time, given his tendency to question old ways and old tactics.

"I am committed to fostering a military culture where intelligent risk-taking and forward thinking are rewarded, not dreaded," Mr. Bush said. "I'm committed to ensuring that visionary leaders who take risks are recognized and promoted."

The President closed with an exhortation: "These values - honor, courage, commitment and humility - must be both your anchor and your compass... The best days of our Navy and our nation are yet to come and you, by the grace of God, will help us reach the next shore."

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Notes from the Pentagon.

May 25, 2001
Inside the Ring
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010525-67453052.htm

Rumsfeld's busy month Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has spent an especially busy couple of weeks. Known for working 6 and 1/2-day weeks, the former corporate dynamo marked his fifth month on the job by pressing the White House for big increases in the defense budget and reaching out to those he needs to support his budgets.

Amid complaints of a lack of communication, Mr. Rumsfeld met Tuesday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the secure Pentagon enclave known as the "tank." The gathering produced a few hours of lively back-and-forth on the evolving new defense strategy.

On Wednesday, Mr. Rumsfeld traveled to Capitol Hill to meet privately with members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees.

Pentagon insiders described the "tank" session as a robust discussion of ideas, with particular emphasis on the course for the restarted Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The QDR, the congressionally mandated process for sizing the armed forces, was pushed to the side when Mr. Rumsfeld took his post Jan. 20 and ordered his own top-to-bottom review of forces and strategy.

With most of his 20-some panels completing their work, the QDR is now back on stage No. 1 and will be used to produce the final strategy.

"He listened," said one official, describing Mr. Rumsfeld´s demeanor during the two-hour chat.

He did not buy into everything, the chiefs said.

Mr. Rumsfeld is expected-- but is not certain -- to amend the current national military requirement that the nation be able to fight two regional wars nearly simultaneously. As one Pentagon insider told us, there are insufficient forces to carry out that mission anyway, so why keep it.

Meanwhile, the defense secretary is urging the White House to follow through on President Bush´s campaign promise to rebuild the military. The Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps estimate they need from $60 billion to $100 billion annually in additional funds to modernize.

But Mr. Bush is telling the Pentagon a big defense boost may have to wait, and it´s doubtful that even the $60 billion mark will be reached. "The White House wants to put some points on the board first with the American people," one well-placed adviser told us. He was referring to the president´s priorities: to get a tax cut and education reform bills signed.

The president is expected to give some hint of his new military strategy today when he delivers the commencement address at the Naval Academy. His speechwriters have been busy for weeks gleaning all the information they can on where the top-to-bottom review is headed. Sources say Mr. Rumsfeld is still weeks away from settling on a final product.

The budget scenario looks this way: Mr. Rumsfeld is on the verge of requesting a $6.5 billion emergency supplemental budget for 2001, followed by augmentation of the pending 2002 budget of $310 billion.

Major decisions on force size and weapons purchases will await the 2003 budget drafted this fall and presented in early 2002.

Williams moves on

Chris Williams, the former national security adviser to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Mr. Rumsfeld´s temporary defense policy adviser, is now working at the National Defense University.

Mr. Williams is waiting for a position in the private sector to come along, we are told.

Mr. Williams was the fall guy for White House intervention to reverse Mr. Rumsfeld´s decision earlier this month to kill the questionable program of military-to-military exchanges with China. He had written a memorandum carrying out Mr. Rumsfeld´s decision. The April 30 order called for "suspension of all Department of Defense programs, contacts and activities with the People´s Republic of China until further notice."

Two days after the memorandum was circulated, the White House got wind and reversed the policy shift. Pro-China officials still in place from the Clinton administration made back-channel appeals to the White House not to end the program. Critics contend the contacts help the communist regime learn valuable war-fighting skills, while providing little of value to the United States.

Hours after television news reports broadcast that the exchange program was dead, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was on the telephone to Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, then Pentagon chief spokesman, dictating a press release backtracking on the cancellation.

Officials privately put out word that it was Mr. Williams who "misinterpreted" Mr. Rumsfeld´s position on the exchange program. The corrected memo says each contact will be reviewed on a "case-by-case basis." Defense sources blamed "Clinton holdovers" -- officials in place from the past administration -- for the reversal.

Pearl Harbor

The Pentagon wholeheartedly supported the production of "Pearl Harbor," which opens today in theaters around the world in time for Memorial Day commemorations. Disney went out of its way to tell the story of the deadly Japanese sneak attack without demonizing Japan. Pentagon script reviewers blessed this approach, but did object when they believed the storyline strayed too far from the facts.

For example, an early script said Jimmy Doolittle´s raiders returned home after the daring 1942 bombing of Tokyo. The Pentagon objected because the draft left out the fact that Japan executed three of the 82 fliers, that one died in prison and that four did not return until war´s end. After the Pentagon objected, the scriptwriters deleted all references to the crew returning home.

The Pentagon is billing Disney for about $1.5 million in production support. But it did provide the carrier USS John Stennis free of charge so Disney could debut the film in style -- on the ship´s flight deck in Pearl Harbor, a stone´s throw from the memorial to the sunken battleship USS Arizona.

The Navy argues it got its money´s worth, Stennis sailors did scores of media interviews seen or heard by the folks back home. It´s exposure that will help recruiting, the Navy predicts.

Beret battles

Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland Republican, has attracted 34 co-sponsors to his bill to prevent the Army from handing out black berets to non-beret-wearing units.

Among the names on the updated list is Rep. Floyd D. Spence, South Carolina Republican, who heads the House Armed Services subcommittee on military procurement. The endorsement raises the possibility that Mr. Spence may include the beret ban in the chairman´s mark-up of the fiscal 2002 procurement budget. If he does, it would take a majority at the committee or House floor level to knock out the amendment before the bill goes to a House-Senate conference.

Democrats are countering with a letter to colleagues urging them not to meddle in the beret decision by Gen. Eric Shinseki, Army chief of staff. Calling the general a "selfless patriot and war hero," the letter states, "He should be allowed to do his job and to make decisions about what uniforms soldiers should wear unencumbered by congressional meddling."

The beret policy, announced as a symbol of a lighter, more agile Army, has run into bumps at nearly every turn. Special operations soldiers say it cheapens berets already issued to elite units. Gen. Shinseki was forced to reject berets being made in communist China in the face of protests. Millions of other berets made overseas were found to be substandard.

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-------- energy

Cheney Says He Can't Help Calif.

MAY 25, 18:04 EST
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=BUSINESS&PACKAGEID=BIZenergy&STORYID=APIS7C7DDMG0&SLUG=CHENEY%2dENERGY

WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday that nothing more can be done to help solve California's power problems this summer.

He criticized the state for not taking steps sooner to fix a flawed electricity market.

``They knew years ago they had a problem,'' Cheney said at an energy conference for small business. ``They postponed taking action because all of the action was potentially unpleasant.''

The vice president's assessment came as Democrats and Republicans in Congress tried to work out a compromise on legislation to bring some relief to California this summer. President Bush plans to visit the state next week and meet with Gov. Gray Davis to discuss the issue.

A group of West Coast Democrats, in a letter to Bush on Friday, urged him to use his trip to California to respond to the Western energy crisis.

It ``is a problem that only federal intervention can solve,'' said the Democrats from California, Oregon and Washington. They urged Bush to call on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to impose temporary price controls on wholesale power markets in the West.

Cheney, addressing a U.S. Chamber of Commerce energy conference, said, ``The bottom line is there isn't anything that can be done short-term to produce more kilowatts this summer.'' He also rejected price controls, saying they have added to the lack of an adequate power supply.

Davis has sharply criticized the Bush administration for opposing temporary price controls to reduce record high wholesale electricity prices across the West.

Cheney said this week's upheaval in the Senate, with a shift from GOP to Democratic control, ``can conceivably have an impact'' on getting much of the administration's long-range energy plan approved.

Still, he said he thinks the administration can make progress on the energy package unveiled last week. He acknowledged it would be easier if Republicans had remained in control of the Senate.

Cheney outlined key points of the energy package before several hundred people, many of them entrepreneurs from across the country, at an energy conference sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Asked by a Californian what the federal government could do to lower power costs that have gone from $7 billion in 1999 in California to $40 billion over the last 12 months, Cheney reiterated his opposition to price controls.

``We think that's a mistake,'' he said, contending that part of California's energy problem today is the result of price caps put in place a few years ago.

While acknowledging that California's attempt to deregulate its electricity market had bipartisan support, Cheney suggested that Davis, a Democrat, added to the problem by not seeking retail price hikes sooner. ``We're now in a situation where the prices have to go up anyway,'' he said.

California in 1996 allowed its wholesale electricity markets to be deregulated, but continued controls on retail prices, leaving major utilities unable to pass on their high costs. Only recently have state regulators imposed sharp increases, as high as an 80 percent hike on retail prices.

Democrats in both the House and Senate argue the Western energy markets are broken and rife with manipulation by a small number of energy companies, many of which are based in Texas and support the president.

They maintain price controls can be crafted in such a way as to allow companies to still make substantial profits and increase supplies. They claim generators now are holding back power to force up prices - allegations denied by the companies.

A bill before the House Energy and Commerce Committee is aimed at bringing some help to California this summer, its sponsors say. But progress on the bill has bogged down over disagreement on the price cap issue.

The legislation cleared a subcommittee May 10 on a 17-13 party-line vote without a provision to cap wholesale electricity prices as Democrats had wanted. Both parties were trying to work out a compromise on price caps Friday, but Democrats said no progress was made.

``We are obviously frustrated,'' declared House minority leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., who accused Republicans of bottling up the legislation in committee.

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Brazil Unveils Energy Savings Plan

MAY 25, 16:34 EST
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=BUSINESS&STORYID=APIS7C7C3EO0

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - Even as its emergency plan to force Brazilians to make 20 percent electricity savings is being challenged in the courts, the government on Friday outlined mandated cuts ranging from 15 percent to 25 percent for various industries.

Pedro Parente, head of Brazil's emergency energy task force, announced the cuts as part of a plan to stave off a collapse of the power grid across huge areas of Latin America's biggest country.

Years of low rainfall have left some reservoirs at record low levels and Brazil's mainly hydroelectric power stations cannot keep pace with demand from its growing economy.

Parente, who has been popularly dubbed the ``minister of blackouts,'' announced in a brief statement that industries producing aluminum, industrial gas, chlorine, paper, cement, sodium and iron alloy would have to cut consumption by 25 percent starting June.

Other industries such as petrochemicals, mining, iron ore and steel would have to save 20 percent, while producers of beverages, food, textiles, leather, footwear, vehicles and car parts must reduce electricity usage by 15 percent, he said.

Commerce and service industries faced a 20 percent cut, the same reduction as the government has demanded from private consumers.

A federal court in Sao Paulo state dealt the emergency plan its first serious blow Thursday, suspending government plans to punish consumers who fail to cut back with surcharges and power cutoffs.

Under the government plan, consumers who fail to make savings of 20 percent will have to pay up to 200 percent more for their electricity and face power cuts of up to six days.

But a federal court in Marilia, 325 miles west of Sao Paulo, ruled that was unconstitutional. And officials at the Supreme Court in Brasilia agreed, the Agencia Estado news agency reported.

Alcides Tapias, minister for industry, development and foreign trade minister, warned Friday ``there is only one way of solving the problem of the lack of energy and the judges must understand this.''

Attending a business seminar in Sao Paulo, Tapias told reporters that ``the only thing that is missing is an official declaration that the country is in a state of emergency.''

The rationing plan has angered Brazilians. Many complain the government, which prides itself on keeping Brazil's finances under strict control, ignored experts' warnings of a looming energy crunch for years.

Now, many fear that rationing could plunge the country into recession and cause widespread layoffs.

-------- health

Limits on Radiation Compensation

WASHINGTON POST
Friday, May 25, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A74783-2001May24?language=printer

Children of nuclear weapons workers are disqualified from $150,000 in compensation if they turned 18 before the parent died of exposure to radioactive material and other dangerous substances they worked with in the Cold War era.

The children lose eligibility even if they were underage at the time the parent got sick. The restriction is explained in rules the Labor Department is releasing today.

Cancer, beryllium disease and silicosis -- the diseases for which the government will compensate exposed workers -- all can be slow killers.

About 600,000 people worked making nuclear weapons in 37 states during the Cold War. The Energy Department initially estimated 3,000 to 4,000 might be eligible for the compensation program, but the accuracy of that estimate is unclear because of poor record-keeping.

-- Compiled from reports by the Associated Press

-------- human rights

Mexican State OKs Indian Bill

MAY 25, 14:04 EST
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7C79TGG0

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Veracruz has become the first state to ratify a government-sponsored Indian rights bill opposed by many of Mexico's Indians.

The bill was approved by Veracruz's legislature on Thursday, despite protests from Indian groups that it had been watered down by the Senate, which made revisions before both houses of Congress passed it last month.

Because it alters Mexico's constitution, the initiative must be approved by a majority of the country's 31 state legislatures.

Passage of a bill granting Mexico's Indians broad autonomy was one of the three conditions set by Zapatista rebels for renewing peace talks with the government. The rebels staged an uprising in 1994 in southern Chiapas state.

The Zapatistas want greater regional autonomy for Indian areas, as well as traditional government and law based on councils of elders or village assemblies.

The Senate's revisions weakened the regional autonomy proposed in the original bill and made laws based on Indian customs subject to approval by state legislatures.

In response, the Zapatistas broke off all contacts with the government and called on Indian groups to march against the bill.

----

Abidjan Denies Child Slaves Used on Plantations

New York Times
May 25, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-ivoryco.html

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Authorities in Ivory Coast say not a day passes without them finding children sold into slavery. But they deny this is widespread on the West African country's cocoa plantations.

Interior Minister Emile Boga Doudou told a news conference on Friday that since the beginning of the week, around 60 children believed to be victims of a trade in minors had been found across the country.

But, although he admitted that child trafficking was a problem the government had to tackle, he said migrants from neighboring countries, not Ivorian cocoa farmers, were responsible for it.

``We find some children virtually every day,'' Boga Doudou said. ``But they are not Ivorians. They come from Mali, Burkina Faso and, most recently, Guinea -- and so do the traffickers and their sponsors.''

Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa producer, has been campaigning hard over the past few months against allegations -- particularly in British media -- that up to 90 percent of the country's cocoa output is tainted by child labour.

The issue drew world attention last month in a hunt for a ship thought to hold up to 250 child slaves off the West African coast. Although that number was wildly inflated, aid workers in Benin said 13 children on board were being trafficked.

Ivorian authorities say they have stepped up border security and plan to improve cooperation to stop child trafficking with neighboring countries. An accord has already been signed with Mali.

Tighter police controls paid off this week, Boga Doudou said. Four buses carrying 49 children, including 13 young girls, were stopped by police on Wednesday at Ouangolo, near the border with Burkina Faso.

Nine more children, thought to come from Guinea, were discovered in the southern town of Lakota with two suspected traffickers the next day.

Boga Doudou said at least some of the children appeared to be heading to Abidjan, the country's commercial capital.

``We are investigating. But it looks like most of those children were not going to work in a plantation. They were more likely to end in the street begging for money or, for the girls, to become prostitutes,'' he said.

Officials also say the structure of Ivorian cocoa farms, which are small and family-owned, means children often help out their parents.

``Ivory Coast has been unfairly accused and we want to put the record straight,'' Prime Minister Pascal Affi N'Guessan told reporters. ``Cocoa production is not based on children, let alone on slaves.''

-------- police

Red-light cameras boost revenues

May 25, 2001
By Daniel F. Drummond and Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20010525-5611624.htm

Few traffic safety experts agree on how long a yellow light should stay yellow. But one thing is for certain -- local governments are cashing in with red-light enforcement cameras that snap away when drivers get caught by a quick light.

"One of the difficulties we have here is that there is no clearly articulated set of standards that is known to the public," said Lon Anderson, a spokesman for the AAA´s Mid-Atlantic Region. "[The red-light cameras] are a proven cash cow, and we all know that greed is a very strong element."

In the Washington area, the red-light cameras and the fines they generate have become a big part of municipal budgets. The District, for example, has taken in $11 million from 39 cameras since 1999. In Howard County, Md., more than 70,000 tickets were written between 1998 and 2000, bringing in more than $4 million in fines. Those figures will likely rise as more and more cameras come online, and as more governments turn to law enforcement as a way to balance the books. In Montgomery County, local officials recently asked that the fines for running a red light be raised from $75 to $250.

In "The Red Light Running Crisis: Is It Intentional?" -- a report released this week by House Majority Leader Dick Armey -- some traffic safety engineers contend the lack of uniform standards has gives local governments too much latitude on how to set the timing cycles for traffic signals. The Texas Republican says that latitude means some communities have put traffic fine revenue ahead of motorists´ safety, and he´s called for congressional hearings on the matter.

According to the Armey report, the private Institute of Transportation Engineers started in 1985 to recommend reducing the duration of yellow lights at traffic signals from an average of five seconds to as little as three seconds. The ITE´s recommendations on traffic signals are followed almost verbatim by the Federal Highway Administration, which, in turn, serves as a general guide for localities. But there is no nationally accepted standard for yellow-light timing, and across the country, the duration can vary from five or six seconds to as little as three.

These short-cycling lights are causing crashes on the nation´s roadways, according to highway engineers like Peter S. Parsonson, professor of transportation at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He says municipalities need to be held to a national standard.

"This idea that 'We don´t have to follow anything´ -- this is an utterance you will hear from an engineer who just doesn´t have any experience with his or her agency being sued," he said.

Mr. Parsonson has served nationally as an expert witness in scores of trials involving personal injury due to collisions, testifying on roadway design and operation, including traffic signals.

Accident reconstructionists doing a scientific analysis of a crash often find that yellow lights have been timed impossibly short, he said.

"There is such a thing as a yellow that is so short that the driver can neither stop comfortably at the stop line, nor clear the intersection without entering on the red signal," Mr. Parsonson said.

Yellow signals that are timed properly give drivers time to decide to either stop or proceed safely through an intersection. But at intersections where cars are going at least 35 mph, there´s something called the "dilemma zone," or zone of indecision, where the driver has to decide whether to jam on the brakes or continue through the light.

For regulars who know the intersection, it´s not always a problem.

But with no accepted standards in place, drivers who don´t travel through the intersection often have no way of knowing how long the yellow light will last.

A short stop may end in a rear-end collision from the driver behind. Trying to clear the intersection may result in a ticket or, worse, a right-angle collision.

Chuck Emick, a retired traffic engineer who lives near Atlanta, made it his hobby to travel around the country and look into the timing of traffic lights.

"What I see has happened over time is [the yellow light] has been reduced by nipping away a fraction of a second at a time by chipping pieces of the formula -- that could mean your rate of braking has become an unreasonable 15 feet a second, which pretty much puts your nose up against your windshield," he said.

"What has also taken place is your perception-reaction time [has been reduced]. . . . It was a 2 1/2 second perception-reaction. The current technology is using one second," Mr. Emick said.

Richard Baier, Alexandria´s director of transportation and environmental services, said he doesn´t think federally imposed national standards would be a good idea.

Smaller cities and counties, he said, would suffer because they would be forced to adopt inefficient traffic signal standards that might be based on urban traffic patterns.

And setting longer yellow lights, he said, will only encourage more drivers to try to race through intersections.

"They begin to sneak through the signals," Mr. Baier said.

Richard Retting, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said the timing of yellow lights is essential to maintaining the credibility of red-light cameras, which he says save lives and deter crashes.

Mr. Retting concedes that "there is some benefit when you increase the yellow timing," but he adds that his group´s research shows shorter yellow lights can deter red light running, once persons in the community get used to it.

-------- spying

China claim on plane sparks denial by U.S.

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Friday, May 25, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010525-13366524.htm

China announced yesterday that the Bush administration had given up hope of flying out the downed EP-3E reconnaissance plane and will take it out in pieces - a claim that baffled Washington and brought a denial.

This latest flap over how to reclaim the $80 million Navy aircraft began in Beijing, where a Foreign Ministry spokesman said the United States had proposed dismantling the Chinese-held plane.

"The U.S. side submitted a proposal to take apart the U.S. aircraft and to transport it back," Agence France-Presse quoted spokesman Zhu Bangzao as saying. "The Chinese side has agreed to that and the two sides will continue to have consultations on the technical aspects."

If true, Mr. Zhu´s version of events would represent a setback for the Pentagon, which wants to send in technicians to repair the four-engine aircraft before flying it off Hainan island.

But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, along with other U.S. officials, said no such agreement had been reached.

"The discussions are going on, and we have not received anything official back from them with respect to that," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon.

Still, many in the administration are becoming resigned to the fact the only way to bring the plane back is to disassemble the airframe in a way that allows it to be flyable again.

"The quickest, cheapest, most efficient way to get that plane off of Hainan island is to repair it to the point where it can be safely flown off the island," said Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman. "It´s fewer people. It´s less equipment. It´s less time. The whole footprint is smaller. ... But there are alternatives. If it comes to that, yes, the plane could be disassembled and removed that way."

Adm. Quigley expressed bafflement at China´s announcement of a breakthrough.

"I can´t explain for you why that was said earlier today, coming out of China," he said. "But we checked and double-checked and triple-checked over the course of the morning and there has just been no final agreement as to the methodology by which the plane is removed."

Beijing has taken a belligerent tone toward the United States ever since the EP-3E electronic eavesdropping aircraft was struck and damaged April 1 by an intercepting Chinese fighter jet, sending its pilot to his death. The EP-3E, two of its four engines damaged and its nose cone sheared, limped onto the airfield at Hainan island.

The People´s Liberation Army held the 24-member crew 12 days despite U.S. protests, while PLA technicians stripped the aircraft of valuable intelligence information. Talks to retrieve the now-gutted aircraft have gone on for weeks between the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Mr. Rumsfeld said there are two options. Washington´s preference is for China to let a team of Lockheed-Martin technicians repair the plane and fly it home. The second option is to dismantle the wings and load them and the fuselage into a huge cargo jet. That process would take 30 to 40 days and a team of up to 25 technicians, government officials say.

But that, too, presents problems. China is concerned the airfield will not support the weight of a multiton transport. It is pressing to cut the plane into smaller pieces, a tactic that could leave it unusable.

"There is a question, I´m told, with respect to the stress factors on the runway as to whether it can take a transport that large," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

At the State Department, spokesman Philip Reeker said the administration was "prepared, if necessary" to ship, rather than fly, the EP-3E.

"As we´ve said before, our strong preference remains to repair and fly out our airplane," Mr. Reeker said.

-------- activists

Spaniards Silently Protest Killing

MAY 25, 17:55 EST
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C7D9P80

SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain (AP) - Thousands of Spaniards joined a silent procession through the Basque city of San Sebastian on Friday to protest the latest killing blamed on the separatist group ETA.

Basque President Juan Jose Ibarretxe, who favors a non-violent struggle for independence for the region, was among those holding a banner that read: ``No to ETA. We want peace and freedom.''

The rally came a day after an assailant pumped seven bullets into Santiago Oleaga, 52, chief financial officer of the newspaper El Diario Vasco. The attack took place in a hospital parking lot in this northern coastal city when he went to undergo treatment for a shoulder injury.

It was the first killing attributed to Basque separatists since May 13 regional elections won by Ibarretxe's party. The vote was a stinging rebuke to pro-ETA parties, which saw their number of seats fall from 14 to 7 in the 75-seat Basque Parliament.

``We the Basques reject violence and infringement of human rights. That's why we are here,'' said Alberto Garcia, a 58-year-old insurance salesman at the rally. The size of the rally was estimated at under 10,000 people.

Earlier in the day, Basque journalists held a similar protest beside a curved iron sculpture on a ridge looking out over the ocean. The work, by artist Eduardo Chillida, has come to symbolize the yearning for peace in the Basque country.

The violent separatist groups has been accused of killing about 800 people since it launched violent attacks 1968. It was the eighth killing this year.

----

CONVICTED NUCLEAR PROTESTER TO BEGIN PRISON SENTENCE
STAY PENDING APPEAL IS DENIED

May 25, 2001

MADISON, Wisconsin, -- This afternoon, Magistrate Judge Stephen L. Crocker of the Western District of Wisconsin denied a motion by nuclear weapons protester Michael Sprong requesting a stay of sentence pending appeal.

The ruling means that Sprong, 38, of Marion, S.D., will begin serving a two-month sentence Friday, May 25 at the Federal Prison Camp in Yankton, South Dakota.

On May 4, Magistrate Crocker sentenced Sprong and Bonnie Urfer to prison for sawing down three transmission poles at the Navy's ELF facility near Clam Lake, Wisc., on June 24, 2000. ELF stands for Extremely Low Frequency, and the ELF transmitter sends one-way messages to the U.S. and British submarine fleet loaded with nuclear warheads. Along with the two-month sentence, Sprong received one year of probation, and was ordered to pay $7,492.44 in restitution.

Urfer, 49, of Luck, Wisc., declined to move the court for a stay, and is currently in custody in Madison, WI. Urfer received a sentence of six months, with one year of probation, and was also ordered to pay $7,492.44 in restitution.

In denying the motion for a stay, Magistrate Crocker found that Sprong hadn' t shown a likelihood that an appeal would result in a reversal or a new trial. Attorney John Bachman argued that the Magistrate had erred in several jury instructions and in pre-trial orders that excluded essential defense evidence.

One instruction in particular allowed the jury to consider the "reasonableness" of the advice given to Sprong and Urfer prior to their action by an attorney -- advice that convinced the two that their pole-cutting action would be lawful. However, during the trial the Magistrate did not allow the defense to present any evidence of the reasonableness of the attorney's advice, only the government's ridicule of it.

"When the prosecutor said no one has the right to act above the law, that includes the U.S. government and the Pentagon," Sprong said in his May 4 statement to the Court. U.S. readiness to wage nuclear war is, he said, "a violation of the UN Charter and binding humanitarian law."

In her statement to the court, Urfer said, "I withdrew my consent a long time ago to this mad acceptance of mass extermination. It doesn't matter that U.S. courts legitimize our genocidal weapons of total destruction; I must and I will continue to work for complete nuclear disarmament in the spirit of nonviolence no matter the consequence because it is, for me, the decent and humane thing to do."

Urfer is co-director of Nukewatch, a nonprofit public interest group based in Luck, Wisc., that is opposed to militarism, nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The maximum sentence that Judge Crocker could have imposed on each defendant was one year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Bonnie's lawyer, Margaret Danielson, and Michael's lawyer, John Bachman have filed appeals of their case, which may result in a new trial which may or may not allow in evidence including international law.

Bonnie's new mailing address is (mail sent to the old address should find her, we hope):

Bonnie Urfer #253-879 Dane County Jail 210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Madison, WI 53709


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