------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Is it comeback time for nuclear power?
Nuclear Deal With Russia
Georgian Unit Returns to Barracks
Japan Village Starts Vote on Use of Nuclear Fuel
Russians Said to Oppose Waste Bill
Russia Sees Payoff in Storing Nuclear Waste From Around the World
U.S. Nuclear Proposals Envision Sharp Cuts in Missiles, Bombers
Energy secretary calls for new nuclear plants

MILITARY
War in Sierra Leone Loosens Its Grip on Child Soldiers
Indonesia's Wahid Issues Warning
Ethnic Albanian Rebel Commander Turns Himself In
Rebels Counter Macedonian Offensive
Ex-Mexico Governor Arrested and Linked to Cocaine Traffic
Battalion Revolts at Base in Georgia
India's Leader Speaks of Reconciliation in Letter to Pakistan
Cubans Protest US Military Presence
UN Threatens Afghan Food Distribution
Powell's Past Is a Factor in Africa
Navy Displays High - Tech Warfare
Bush Calls for Flexibility and Innovation in the Military

OTHER
Energy Thefts Climb Amid Power Crisis
Senator Calls for Hearings Into Energy Regulators' Moves
Energy Company Chairman Testifies on California Sales
Brazilian Oil Spill Latest in Unexplained Series
Peru to Establish Truth Commission
Taliban Bar Women in UN Survey, Food Threatened
NJ Investigators May End Searches
Students' Report of Being Strip-Searched at Jail Is Investigated
Worldwide spying network is revealed
Facing Prison, Algerian Cooperates

ACTIVISTS
Energy Policies Faulted


-------- NUCLEAR

Is it comeback time for nuclear power?

An invitation for letters -- Sunday Soapbox:
Evansville Courier
May 26, 2001
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200105/26+soapbox052601_news.html+20010526

A particularly thought-provoking and controversial part of President George W. Bush's recently proposed energy policy is a revival of the nation's nuclear power business.

Indeed, since March, Vice President Dick Cheney has urged an increase in the nation's nuclear generating capacity.

A ferocious debate is at hand.

Once before, nuclear power held great promise for America. But safety concerns short-circuited that initiative. The best-known problem was at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which in 1979 underwent a partial meltdown.

Even in our area, people still remember Marble Hill, the failed proposal for a nuclear energy plant in Southeastern Indiana.

Now, critics of nuclear power say America should not again visit that dangerous, expensive energy alternative. In fact, no new nuclear plants have been ordered since 1980, and the last one was completed in 1996.

On the other side, supporters argue that nuclear energy is cleaner than the burning of fossil fuels. It greatly reduces air pollution.

And, they point out, no one has ever been killed by radiation exposure in an American plant.

So what do you think? Should America take another look at nuclear energy, or should it leave that one alone?

You will have the best opportunity of having your letter selected if you keep it short, no more than 250 words.

Please send us your letter by June 5. Those selected will be published on June 10. Sign your letter and include your daytime phone number.

Send it by mail to Letters, the Evansville Courier and Press, P.O Box 268, Evansville, Ind. 47702.

Send it by e-mail to letters@evansville.net or by fax to 422-8196.

-------- business

Nuclear Deal With Russia

Saturday, May 26, 2001
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A79769-2001May25?language=printer

The May 7 Business article "Nuclear Fuel Firm Fights for Russia Deal" quoted me out of context, thus distorting my views.

I was quoted as saying that USEC Inc.'s privatization has "worked pretty well." But I made this remark in reference to the accomplishments under the U.S.-Russian highly enriched uranium (HEU) purchase deal. One can be a strong supporter of the HEU deal and the fact that it has resulted in the elimination of Russian weapon-grade nuclear material but still have reservations -- as I do -- about the implementing agent and its ability to balance profit-making goals with the execution of a major U.S.-Russian security initiative.

BILL HOEHN
Washington Office Director
Russian American Nuclear Security
Advisory Council
Washington

-------- europe

Georgian Unit Returns to Barracks

MAY 26, 10:59 EST
Associated Press
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C7S9GG0

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - National Guard troops returned to their barracks Saturday after taking over an Interior Ministry base in a brief mutiny to demand payment of overdue wages, military officials said.

``This morning, the National Guard battalion with its military equipment completed its relocation and returned to its base in Noria,'' Defense Ministry spokesman Dmitry Lezhava said. Noria is about 12 miles east of the capital, Tbilisi.

The mutiny began Friday morning when a 400-strong National Guard battalion left military exercises and occupied an Interior Ministry base in Mukhrovani, about 15 miles east of Tbilisi. The mutineers had three tanks, two armored personnel carriers and submachine guns.

They were joined by Interior Ministry troops, and their number grew to about 1,000 at the height of the protest. Protest leaders said some military officers had not received salaries in more than a year and soldiers were so poorly equipped that some ``serve practically barefoot.''

The protest was defused after President Eduard Shevardnadze met with mutiny leaders into the night Friday.

He said afterward that the troops had promised to abandon their protest in exchange for a promise to address complaints about overdue pay and dismal conditions in the military. He also pledged that they wouldn't be prosecuted for the action.

As the troops were returning to their base, about 400 of supporters of the late President Zviad Gamsakhurdia held a protest rally in downtown Tbilisi against Shevardnadze. Gamsakhurdia was Georgia's president from 1991 until he was killed in 1993.

At least 16 policemen were injured - two seriously - when they attempted to break up the rally, police chief Soso Alavidze said. One demonstrator said about 50 of the protesters were injured, but that figure could not be confirmed.

-------- japan

Japan Village Starts Vote on Use of Nuclear Fuel

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-japan-n.html?searchpv=reuters

KARIWA VILLAGE, Japan (Reuters) - Residents of a tiny Japanese village on Sunday began casting votes on whether recycled nuclear fuel should be used in their local power plant, a vote that could affect the country's nuclear policy.

The 4,092 eligible voters of Kariwa, a farming village about 186 miles north of Tokyo, are voting on whether Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), should be allowed to use recycled MOX fuel in its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in the village.

``Despite the heavy campaigning from both sides until yesterday, it is very quiet today,'' said Kazue Suzuki from Greenpeace Japan, which supports the anti-MOX camp.

Such a referendum, while not legally binding, is rare in Japan, and the voting brought nationwide media attention as camera crews and photographers waited outside polling places for voters to appear.

Although an official from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said last week that the use of MOX will go ahead anyway, the government's response to the vote is by no means clear. The newly elected government of Junichiro Koizumi has shown a more populist bent than previous administrations.

The use of MOX -- a blend of uranium and plutonium recycled from spent nuclear fuel -- is a cornerstone of Japan's energy policy.

The resource-poor country depends on nuclear energy for a third of its power needs and the recycling helps avoid the thorny issue of what to do with nuclear waste.

Japan's power industry had planned to begin commercial use of MOX fuel in 1999 but was forced to postpone its plans after controversy over falsified data on MOX fuel shipped from Britain to Kansai Electric Power Co in western Japan.

The MOX fuel to be used at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, if approved, is made from nuclear waste from Japan which was processed by a Belgian firm Belgonucleaire.

GOOD OR BAD?

Anti-MOX campaigners say the fuel is dangerous and does not make economic sense because it is more expensive than conventional nuclear fuel.

``It is just dangerous,'' Suzuki said. ``We hope that the people will make the right decision.''

However, others say that the use of MOX fuel should be allowed because it not only produces energy but does so by recycling nuclear waste.

``It is nonsense to say that MOX is dangerous,'' Yukio Irisawa, leader of the local pro-MOX activists said. ``We need electricity and by using MOX we can do so by while recycling nuclear waste.''

On Wednesday, the Japanese government took the unprecedented step of issuing a letter asking people living near nuclear power plants to understand the importance of using nuclear fuel.

But the government has not officially said what it will do if the village votes against the importation of the fuel.

On Tuesday, head of the Agency of Natural Resources and Energy Hirobumi Kawano and other trade ministry officials visited Kariwa to attend a public debate with the villagers.

With both camps heating up their campaigns to attract votes, the outcome is uncertain.

A poll conducted by Kyodo news agency on a randomly selected 100 eligible voters showed on Friday that 51 people opposed the plan to use MOX fuel while 41 supported it. Eight withheld their views.

A string of nuclear power-related accidents in recent years, including the country's worst nuclear accident in which two workers were killed and hundreds of residents exposed to radiation, has eroded public faith in Japan's nuclear industry.

-------- russia

Russians Said to Oppose Waste Bill

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Waste.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- A leading Russian environmentalist said Saturday that legislation to allow the import of nuclear waste could face an uphill battle if lawmakers listen to their constituents.

Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, is to vote June 7 on a third and final reading of the legislation, which passed by a wide margin in its second reading last month.

Alexei Yablokov, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a leading anti-nuclear campaigner, said recent opinion surveys, including a poll by Greenpeace on Friday, showed that 90 percent of voters are against the plan.

``I think that it will make the deputies think (twice) about passing this law,'' Yablokov said.

If it passes the Duma, the bill will face a vote in the upper parliament house, the Federation Council. Yablokov said the chamber's chairman, Yegor Stroyev, was opposed the project and had branded it as a plan ``designed either for madmen or the mafia.''

Russia's new energy minister, Alexander Rumyantsev, has pushed for the legislation allowing the import of spent nuclear fuel rods from other nations since his appointment in March, saying it was essential for Russia to be able to export new nuclear fuel.

Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry has also lobbied for the plan. The ministry says Russia would earn up to $20 billion by importing 22,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel over a 10-year period. Nuclear power stations around the world have about 200,000 tons of waste in temporary storage

Officials have said spent fuel would be sent by armored train to a facility near Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains for reprocessing. The recycling process extracts useable nuclear material from the spent rods while reducing their potential to be used in weapons, the Nuclear Power Ministry has said.

A 1992 law forbids importing nuclear materials from countries other than former East Bloc nations with existing contracts. Russia now imports spent fuel rods from Ukraine, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary for reprocessing, a system established during Soviet times.

--------

Russia Sees Payoff in Storing Nuclear Waste From Around the World

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/26/world/26RUSS.html?searchpv=nytToday&pagewanted=all

MOSCOW, May 25 - Despite some strong opposition from the public at home and by the government in the United States, Russia is preparing to open its borders to become the largest international repository for radioactive nuclear wastes.

With strong backing from President Vladimir V. Putin, the Ministry of Atomic Energy is expected to get a new legal mandate from Parliament next month to offer permanent storage for the highly toxic spent nuclear fuel that has been piling up in temporary storage basins at power plants around the world.

Moscow estimates that it can earn $21 billion in the next two decades by accepting 20,000 tons from 15 countries Russia has identified that would send used reactor cores by ship and train to new installations in Siberia, one of which is nearing completion.

The program would represent a far-reaching development in the international nuclear power industry, as governments in Germany, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are in the midst of national debates over how to dispose of highly radioactive reactor fuel cores. Spent fuel assemblies, filled with toxic byproducts of the nuclear fission that occurs inside reactor cores, must either be buried in secure geologic formations for thousands of years, or reprocessed to recycle the plutonium and uranium in them as new fuel.

But the reprocessing of nuclear fuel has become one of the most delicate issues of the nuclear safety debate because it separates plutonium and uranium in forms that might be stolen or diverted to illicit nuclear weapons programs. Russia, France and Britain reprocess fuel for civilian reactor programs, and Germany and Japan ship spent fuel to England and France for reprocessing, but the issue of permanent storage for most of the world's spent nuclear fuels and their wastes remains an open question.

The United States abandoned reprocessing technologies in the Ford and Carter administrations, citing proliferation dangers in creating a "plutonium economy," higher costs and environmental concerns. The United States is still evaluating whether it can safely store spent fuel and wastes from 104 American reactors at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

A key element in the Russian proposal is to accept the world's spent fuel, charging up to $1,600 per 2.2 pounds to hold it in perpetuity, but also preserving the option to reprocess and resell it should national policies and economics lead to safer reactor designs and new fuel configurations.

Russian officials say they hope to use profits from the new industry to help pay for an extensive environmental cleanup program here and to promote the development of more efficient reactors that would use plutonium-based fuels in a form designed to prevent their diversion for weapons use.

Russia faces enormous cleanup tasks from Soviet-era radiation accidents and illicit dumping at sea by the Soviet and Russian navies. At the same time, the country has trouble meeting the demand for electricity and has five nuclear plants in various stages of completion to bolster the 29 existing plants.

At the heart of Russia's proposal, officials here say, is an attempt to seize a large share of the future market for nuclear energy at a time when industrialized nations are facing increasing demand for electricity and growing concerns about global warming.

"Russia will demonstrate to the world that its technological potential is high, and it will pave the way to new projects," said Aleksandr Rumyantsev, the country's new minister of atomic energy.

Valentin B. Ivanov, the deputy minister, said in an interview this week that Russia was not sure what shape the nuclear industry would take, but that by garnering a significant share of the nuclear fuels market, it could secure a place for itself as an international supplier of nuclear technology.

The Russian initiative comes at a time when the Bush administration has cut funds for joint projects with Russia to reduce plutonium stockpiles, close Soviet-era bomb-making installations and provide financing to Russian nuclear scientists formerly employed in weapons production. At the same time, President Bush has ordered a broad review of nuclear power in the United States, including an examination of safer reactor designs and nuclear fuels resistant to diversion.

The Russian proposal faces immediate obstacles because the United States controls the movement, through licensing agreements, of nuclear fuels now powering most of the reactors operating overseas.

Nonetheless, Russian officials say they hope to reach an agreement with the Bush administration to enter this business. And Washington is expected to come under some pressure to cooperate from governments that have not resolved what to do with their spent nuclear fuel. Some is stored in high-risk earthquake zones, like Taiwan, which has six American-built nuclear reactors and will soon have two more.

Japan has 53 operating reactors and is in the midst of a national debate over how to store its nuclear wastes. In Europe, there are more than 150 nuclear reactors, and France generates 76 percent of its electrical power with nuclear energy.

Though American companies like Westinghouse and General Electric have sold nuclear reactors around the world, the United States government has made no commitment to assume responsibility for the long- term storage of spent fuel and its wastes. Washington does retain veto power over where that fuel can be transported.

During the Clinton administration, Washington encouraged Russia to remove a ban on importing spent fuels. By removing the ban, American officials calculated, Russia could help solve the coming crisis over the long-term disposal of toxic wastes, most of them from reactors sold by American companies.

A group of influential Americans, including a former director of central intelligence, William H. Webster, helped to create the Nonproliferation Trust, a private company that has worked to win support and financing for a permanent repository in Russia for 10,000 tons of spent fuel from reactors operating outside the United States.

Despite those efforts, an agreement has been stymied by American concerns over proliferation, Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran, and Moscow's ambition to make use of spent fuels.

Thomas B. Cochran, a longtime environmental activist who promoted the idea of building a Russian repository as a consultant to the Nonproliferation Trust, said Russian officials were unwilling to accept a moratorium on reprocessing spent fuel. For this reason, he said, the new Russian plan will be "dead on arrival on this side of the Atlantic."

Russian officials disagree. They said this week that as soon as they won legislative approval, they would seek to acquire from foreign customers several thousands tons of spent fuel whose movement does not require United States approval. An installation that can hold the first 3,000 tons of fuel is nearing completion in the closed nuclear city Krasnoyarsk- 26 in central Siberia.

"We will act in parallel," said Mr. Ivanov, the deputy atomic energy minister. He added that "we understand that without an agreement with the United States, it is impossible to use the spent fuel" of many countries. But at the same time, he said, "we know that approximately 10 percent of spent fuel exists outside the U.S. umbrella, and we have received information from some governments that they will start negotiations with us if we get this legislation."

Mr. Ivanov, a physicist and reactor designer, said the United States and Russia could decide to work together on a world standard for proliferation-resistant nuclear fuels and reactors, or they can work separately. In any case, it appears that the two nations now face contentious negotiations on competitive strategies for future energy technologies.

From the outset, a major obstacle will be Russia's plans to supply as many as five nuclear reactors to Iran, creating an atomic energy industry in a country that is believed to support terrorism and seeking to develop nuclear weapons in secret.

Rose Gottemoeller, a former Department of Energy official who supervised nonproliferation programs involving Russia in the Clinton administration. said: "The Bush administration could just continue to stiff-arm Russia on the spent fuel storage issue, saying, `No way, no how' because it can't keep its own nuclear material safe, so why encourage more."

"But there is a new game in town," she said, noting Mr. Bush's interest in re-examining overall nuclear energy policy.

"The administration will at least want to examine this storage idea with the Russians in order to get them to come to the table and get our Iran questions resolved," she said, adding that new technologies in Russia also may warrant study.

Still, there is high-level resistance in Washington to any strategy that would add to Russia's inventory of nuclear fuels and wastes when major issues of radioactive contamination in parts of Russia remain outstanding, along with security concerns over the safe storage of weapons- grade uranium and plutonium.

Kathleen Crane, a geophysicist from Hunter College in New York who mapped radioactive contamination in Russia from 1993 to 1997, said she had long been opposed to allowing spent fuel to be stored in Russia.

But, she said, "nuclear waste is going to be imported by Russia whatever we do, and instead of just letting it happen, we and the rest of the world should take an active role in trying to control it."

Though they acknowledge a grim Soviet legacy that includes the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine and other serious accidents, Russian officials seem determined to take this new legislative step - despite polls that show that the public overwhelmingly opposes it - if only to position Russia to profit from an industry that, worldwide, may be discovering a new momentum.

Russian officials say they have conducted experiments on a new type of fast breeder reactor, long thought to be too dangerous because its fuel "breeds" more plutonium, creating proliferation risks when that plutonium is recovered in reprocessing.

In coming months, a Russian research reactor will begin testing a new fast reactor fuel that combines plutonium and uranium in a form that cannot be used for nuclear weapons and that does not require traditional reprocessing, said Anatoly S. Polyakov, deputy director of the Bochvar Research Institute here.

"We have a lot to offer," he said, "but the only way for cooperation with the United States is that it be mutually beneficial."

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

U.S. Nuclear Proposals Envision Sharp Cuts in Missiles, Bombers

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 26, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A77887-2001May25?language=printer

Proposals are circulating inside the U.S. defense establishment for radical changes in America's nuclear arsenal, including a phaseout of all land-based intercontinental missiles and a sharp reduction in the strategic bomber force.

Described by some experts as the first revolutionary ideas in nuclear thinking since the end of the Cold War, the proposals have been triggered by President Bush's repeated statements that the United States must move beyond the concept of mutually assured destruction.

Bush said May 1 that America "can, and will, change the size, the composition and character of our nuclear forces in a way that reflects the reality that the Cold War is over." But he has not discussed specifics, such as how many of America's nuclear warheads should be eliminated, or how the cuts should be apportioned among the current "triad" of long-range bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ICBMs.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has ordered a review of nuclear strategy intended to help decide those questions. Underlying many of the proposals is the notion that the United States should pay more attention to China's small but growing nuclear forces and less attention to Russia's huge but declining arsenal.

Some strategists also argue that the U.S. effort to develop missile defenses, if successful, would eliminate the need to maintain thousands of nuclear weapons as a deterrent against attack. Bush administration officials have suggested that the United States might make some cuts unilaterally, avoiding drawn-out treaty negotiations, because in any event Russia's cash-strapped forces are likely to fall below 1,500 operational nuclear warheads within a decade.

A recent Air Force Academy research paper said that if the United States cuts its current arsenal of more than 6,500 strategic bombs and missile warheads to between 1,500 and 1,000, "most [national security] officials agree this will by necessity drive the United States to eliminate one offensive leg of the current triad."

The authors of the paper, all active-duty Air Force officers, contended that the most logical step would be to eliminate the entire U.S. force of 550 land-based ICBMs, most of which are aimed at Russia.

Those missiles "stand today as aging giants, the relics of the Cold War nuclear confrontation," they wrote. "In the event of an actual nuclear exchange, they would be the first to be targeted because they are fixed, land-based weapons."

While many experts consider the elimination of all land-based ICBMs to be unlikely, the provocative proposal is an indication of how much ferment is taking place inside the military.

Since land-based ICBMs belong to the Air Force, the authors were arguing against the narrow interests of their own branch of the armed services. But they urged the preservation of something even more dear to the Air Force: at least 40 of the country's 96 B-2 and B-52H long-range bombers devoted to nuclear missions.

Another paper circulating inside the Air Force breaks that taboo. Written by a senior Air Force officer at Space Command in Colorado Springs, it proposes ending the nuclear mission for B-52Hs.

At an Air Force nuclear posture review in April, the officers present discussed both reduction of bombers and elimination of land-based missiles, according to William Arkin, a nuclear weapons specialist. "Space is the future of the Air Force, and they are ready to get out of the missile business," Arkin said.

While stopping short of calling for the militarization of space, Rumsfeld has championed the need to protect vital U.S. satellites as well as to develop missile defenses. But his study of nuclear deterrence, which officials once indicated could be finished by early summer, now appears unlikely to be ready until late fall, around the same time that a congressionally mandated nuclear posture review is due.

In the meantime, resistance to deep cuts already is developing.

Frank Gaffney, director of the Center for Security Policy and a leading conservative arms control expert, said publicly at a Washington seminar this month that he was worried Bush might reduce too deeply "to buy support for missile defense."

It would be "dangerous," Gaffney argued in a subsequent interview, to go below 3,500 warheads, the level that Russia and the United States are scheduled to reach by the end of 2007 under START II, the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

"Deterrence needs you to err on the side of having too much rather than too little," Gaffney said. "A static number reduced by some formula is not necessarily a wise idea, particularly if doing it is tied to selling missile defense."

Brent Scowcroft, a retired Air Force general who was national security adviser to former presidents George Bush and Gerald Ford, agreed that "reductions below the START II level get complicated."

Bombers are the "easiest" of the nuclear delivery systems to cut back, Scowcroft said, "but once you start getting into drawing down the nuclear land-based and submarine fleet, you could affect stability."

So far, members of Congress have not weighed in on the debate. But lawmakers are certain to become involved if the theoretical proposals for restructuring the nuclear arsenal are translated into concrete moves to mothball bombers, decommission submarines or close bases, which will require substantial appropriations and could severely affect some congressional districts.

The Navy already is planning to reduce the number of Trident missile submarines, each of which carries 24 missiles, from 18 to 14. Dropping below 14 could force the elimination of one of the Trident home bases, either in Georgia or Washington state.

Dismantling of the first of 50 Peacekeeper land-based ICBMs, each with 10 warheads, also has begun. But the W-87 warheads on the Peacekeeper are being refurbished and will eventually, under current plans, become the warheads on the remaining 500 Minuteman III land-based missiles.

And despite the proposals to phase out the Minuteman IIIs, the departments of Defense and Energy have plans to replace their solid-fuel cores and guidance systems to extend their operational lives for 20 more years.

In his May 1 speech, Bush promised that he would retain nuclear forces necessary to meet "obligations to our allies," an apparent reference to roughly 150 nuclear B-61 bombs now stored by the United States in Europe.

A five-year, $10 million program is now underway to modernize the Air Force computer systems that monitor the B-61s, which are kept in vaults at NATO air bases in England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Greece and Turkey.

Some experts are also advocating the development of new types of warheads, even if that might require a resumption of nuclear testing. The Pentagon is particularly interested in creating "mini-nukes" with relatively small explosive yields that could be used to destroy underground command bunkers without causing large numbers of casualties.

Retired Gen. William Odom, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, supports nuclear reductions but believes Bush's remarks about a new "composition" and "character" for the nuclear stockpile referred to requirements for new warhead types.

"We absolutely need new ones," Odom said. "You want to keep a nuclear weapons development program, get rid of old big ones, and have the flexibility to investigate new ones. . . . That's why the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was so stupid."

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

Energy secretary calls for new nuclear plants
`STOP LIVING IN THE PAST,' HE SAYS OF '79 DISASTER

Saturday, May 26, 2001,
San Jose Mercury News
BY HEATHER DEWAR
Baltimore Sun
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/nation/docs/nuclear26.htm

CALVERT CLIFFS, Md. -- Speaking to an audience of nuclear power workers and TV cameras, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Americans need to get over their mistrust of nuclear power, which he said dates back to 1979 and the disastrous accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear reactor.

Abraham toured the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant near Solomon's Island to stump for the White House's energy plan, which calls for the federal government to encourage the construction of new nuclear plants and the rapid re-licensing of existing ones.

The administration wants to dramatically boost nuclear power production. Today, 103 U.S. nuclear plants nationwide produce about 20 percent of the nation's electricity.

The plan instructs the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider licensing new nuclear plants and to expedite the re-licensing of existing ones, many of which are nearing the end of their original 40-year operating licenses.

``We need to stop living in the past,'' Abraham said. ``We need to stop thinking of this industry in terms exclusively dictated by Three Mile Island.''

That accident near Harrisburg, Pa. -- a partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor, which remains unusable because of radiation contamination -- reversed the fortunes of the U.S. nuclear power industry. The last time a U.S. utility committed to building a new nuclear power plant was in 1978, the year before the accident, said Steve Kerekes of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group.

Three Mile Island's bitter aftertaste is not the only obstacle to the administration's plans for nurturing nuclear power. Other potential stumbling blocks include the lack of a facility to safely store nuclear waste, uncertainty about whether new nuclear plants would turn a profit, and opposition from environmentalists, public-health advocates and consumer groups.

David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group opposes the administration's plan to streamline permitting and re-licensing requirements.

``I would agree that the Three Mile Island accident was like a wake-up call and led to a number of tangible improvements in safety,'' Lochbaum said. ``To say that that is a foundation for streamlining the process seems like a contradiction in terms. That implies that the existing regulations were developed willy-nilly, and they're not.''

The Bush administration has suggested that utilities could quickly double the country's nuclear power capacity by building a new reactor alongside each existing one.

-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

War in Sierra Leone Loosens Its Grip on Child Soldiers

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/26/world/26LEON.html

MAKENI, Sierra Leone, May 25 - The children, 424 of them, began filling the stands in the soccer stadium this morning just before the oppressive heat blanketed this town in West Africa. Most had been brought here to the center of Sierra Leone a few days earlier, in preparation for their big day today.

Many of them looked younger than 10 years old, some of them said they were as young as 6 and all of them had spent large chunks of their lives fighting in one of Africa's cruelest wars, a war that still rages in parts of the region. But these child soldiers were being released today by the Revolutionary United Front, or R.U.F., the rebel group that has terrorized this country for the last decade by kidnapping children and chopping off the arms of ordinary citizens.

A year after the rebels took more than 500 United Nations peacekeepers hostage and raised doubts about the West's commitment to peacekeeping in Africa, the situation has clearly begun improving in recent weeks. About 2,600 rebels and pro- government militia members have surrendered their weapons in the last week and, with today's ceremony, almost 600 child soldiers have been freed. But the government says the rebels still hold 1,400 children.

In the ceremony attended by officials from the United Nations, the government and the rebel group, uniforms belonging to some child soldiers were burned. The children now wore donated T-shirts that carried strange, dissonant messages from overseas - a "N.Y. Yankees" jersey here, a "Hooters, Albany, N.Y.," there. After the ceremony, the children were taken to camps where they will embark on a process that may eventually reunite them with their families.

"This clearly demonstrates the commitment of the R.U.F. to the total stoppage of this war," said Oluyemi Adeniji, the United Nations special envoy to Sierra Leone. Speaking of the peace process, he added, "There is no stopping it until it gets to its final destination."

Mr. Adeniji did not mention that the rebel group and pro-government militias were fighting in the country's eastern diamond areas, having broken a week-old cease-fire pledge. Still, Mr. Adeniji, who had watched the United Nations mission nearly collapse last year, had many reasons to be pleased.

Peacekeepers have begun deploying again in rebel-held territory, including in the eastern diamond mine regions that have fueled and financed the war. British troops continue to train Sierra Leonean soldiers and rebuild its army. Military officials from the United States, criticized for not doing enough in Sierra Leone, have been training West African peacekeepers, and about 1,500 American-trained Nigerian soldiers are now in Sierra Leone, including here in Makeni, a rebel stronghold.

At the same time, while the situation has stabilized in Sierra Leone, it has deteriorated in Liberia and neighboring Guinea - fueling fears that the fighting, involving many of the same actors, has simply moved to new ground. In recent months, the Liberian-supported revolutionary front has fought against Guinean troops on the borders between Sierra Leone and Guinea, because the government of Guinea is believed to be supporting Liberian rebels. The fighting has caused a refugee crisis in Guinea.

Adding to these worries, the rebels have a history of making pledges that they have repeatedly failed to respect. The group's longtime leader, Foday Sankoh, who remains in prison at an undisclosed location, broke almost every agreement he made in his quest for power. But now the rebels' leaders say their desire for peace is genuine.

"The R.U.F. has realized that the time for fighting is over, and it is time for them to tell their side of the story," Omrie Golley, a lawyer who left the group last year but returned to become its political and peace council chairman two months ago, said in an interview in the capital, Freetown. He said the revolutionary front had cut its ties with Charles Taylor, the president of Liberia who has long been regarded as the real leader of the organization, when rebel leaders based in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, left that city two months ago.

The rebels have begun talking peace, United Nations officials and Western diplomats say, partly because of the increasing pressure on Mr. Taylor. The United Nations Security Council, which accused Mr. Taylor of leading the trafficking in diamonds and weapons in the region and of stirring up the war in Sierra Leone, imposed sanctions on Liberia early this month.

United Nations officials received a reminder of the dangers of the widening war last week when they began disarming combatants in the western region of Kambia, where clashes between the revolutionary front and Guinean soldiers have occurred. Shortly after United Nations officials left, Guinean troops began shelling a town called Rokupr.

Early this week, the United Nations force commander, Lt. Gen. Daniel Opande, a Kenyan, toured the Kambia area, to make sure that the shelling would not interrupt the disarmament. "We must see the entire country free of armed combatants, so that genuine peace can come," General Opande told a rebel leader, Col. Bai Bureh. "So people can return to their farms, or to school, or to politics. I know you want to become a politician."

Later, Colonel Bureh exhorted disarmed followers at a camp in nearby Port Loko, "War is over." The disarmed combatants are supposed to stay for orientation in the camps for several weeks before being set free.

"It's promising," a Western diplomat said of the disarmament process. "This time, they've come in and they've given up not only piddling stuff, but also quality weapons. The question is what do they do after the camps? How do they earn a living without a gun or machete? That won't be easy."

The biggest difficulty may be bringing peace to the diamond mining region in eastern Sierra Leone. Most of that area has been under the control of the revolutionary front, with a smaller section in the grip of the pro-government militia known as the Kamajors. The rebel group and the Kamajors mined diamonds, co- existing in the area and selling diamonds and buying provisions in a town called Kenema.

But in recent weeks, with the rebels apparently weakened, the pro- government militia has been trying to gain territory in the region.

"Their thinking seems to be that by grabbing territory now, and with the peace process under way, they will be able to keep control of the diamond mines later on," said Margaret Novicki, the United Nations mission spokeswoman.

It is unclear whether the pro-government militia has been acting on the orders of some government officials or other local leaders.

Early this week, in Koidu, a big town in the diamond district of Kono where United Nations peacekeepers deployed recently, revolutionary front leaders accused the pro-government militia of going up to Guinea for training and weapons.

Asked whether his rebel group was willing to disarm, a top leader, Brig. Gen. Morris Kallon, snapped his fingers: "We can be like this! But we are afraid of the government."

Maj. Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, an energetic Nigerian who is the United Nations deputy force commander, talked of having fought in Nigeria's Biafra war. Nigeria, he said, had survived its civil war and remained one nation, and so would Sierra Leone.

"In my tribe," General Agwai told the rebel officers, "there is a saying. The tongue and the teeth live together in the mouth. But one day the teeth will bite the tongue. It's not because the teeth hate the tongue - it's an accident. You must live together."

The general flew by helicopter to nearby Jagbwema, a village that had recently been seized by the pro-government militia. Many of the militiamen were tribal hunters, who wore feathers and hats and wigs, and sprinkled lotion on their bodies in the belief that it would deflect bullets.

A couple hundred of them, armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, swarmed around a meeting hall in the deserted village. Many were children.

"The war has been going on for 10 years," General Agwai told them. "That means some of the boys I am seeing here were not yet born. Do you want war to go on for another 10 years?"

"No!" several of them cried out.

The general pleaded with them not to continue fighting.

But the very next day, pro-government militias attacked two villages held by the revolutionary front in the diamond region. And, today, about 100 heavily armed militiamen - including some fighters from Jagbwema whom the general had addressed - advanced toward the rebel stronghold of Koidu, coming as close as eight miles before United Nations peacekeepers persuaded them to give up their weapons in town.

-------- asia

Indonesia's Wahid Issues Warning

MAY 26, 09:44 EST
By DANIEL COONEY
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=WORLD&PACKAGEID=indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesia's embattled president said Saturday he has considered declaring martial law to stave off impeachment and urged his popular deputy to accept a power-sharing agreement. He warned that his ouster could trigger the breakup of the nation.

With parliament expected to call for his impeachment next week, President Abdurrahman Wahid acknowledged for the first time that he had discussed the possibility of dissolving the legislature. In comments to reporters, he did not say whether he has now ruled out that approach.

Wahid spoke a day after Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who has emerged as his main rival, rejected his offer to surrender most of his power to her in exchange for a guarantee that her legislative allies would drop their campaign against him. Her aides said the deal was unconstitutional.

Megawati's private secretary, Bambang Kesowo, said that during Friday's Cabinet meeting, Wahid not only threatened to declare martial law, but also have people arrested and call national elections within the next six months if parliament did not back down.

Wahid said Saturday that he hoped Megawati would change her mind and accept the deal. He also said he had no intention of resigning, asserting that his departure could plunge the country into chaos.

The president also accused legislators of abusing a constitutional mechanism to oust him. He has said that there is not sufficient evidence to justify the corruption charges being used to impeach him.

``The best solution is to find a political solution that will not violate the constitution,'' Wahid told reporters. ``The developments look encouraging,'' he said, without elaborating.

But lawmakers, angered by Wahid's talk of dissolving parliament, said they were more determined than ever to press for his ouster. The 500-seat parliament has formally censured Wahid twice in recent months over allegations of corruption and incompetence and is scheduled to meet Wednesday to consider demanding his impeachment by the national assembly.

``His threat of martial law is a bluff. He has no power,'' said lawmaker Alvin Lie, one of Wahid's most vocal critics. ``Wahid will be gone by the first week of August.''

The national assembly, which includes lawmakers, is expected to hold an impeachment hearing in early August.

Adding to Wahid's woes Saturday, Indonesia's second largest party, Golkar, denied his claim that it opposed an impeachment hearing.

Wahid, a 60-year-old Islamic scholar who is nearly blind, is Indonesia's first freely chosen head of state after four decades of authoritarian rule. The national assembly elected him over Megawati in October 1999 with high hopes that he would deliver democratic and economic reform, but his support soon faded amid erratic policies, infighting and alleged impropriety.

He has also been criticized for failing to rein in separatist, ethnic and religious violence that threatens the unity of the sprawling nation of islands. In the latest violence, 13 people were killed Friday and Saturday in the Aceh province on Sumatra Island 1,100 miles northwest of Jakarta, where fighting between separatist rebels and the government has killed more 6,000 people in a decade.

Wahid, who has suffered a series of strokes but says he is fit to run the world's fourth most populous country, underwent what his doctors said was a routine medical checkup.

-------- balkans

Ethnic Albanian Rebel Commander Turns Himself In

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-yugosla.html

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - The commander of an ethnic Albanian rebel group gave himself up to NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo early on Saturday, saying ``it's time to stop the war,'' a spokesman for the KFOR mission said.

Shefket Musliu, commander of the National Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB), along with two other guerrillas and the group's political officer Jonuz Musliu came to the boundary between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia early on Saturday morning.

The four were released as part of a conditional surrender, said Colonel Gene Kamena, deputy commander of U.S. forces in Kosovo.

Several more rebels turned themselves in on Saturday afternoon, bringing with them an additional four trailer-loads of weapons and other military equipment, including automatic rifles and land mines.

Although a KFOR amnesty to rebels who have operated for 16 months in southern Serbia's Presevo Valley ended on Thursday, Kamena said he would recommend that those who have given themselves up since then should also be allowed to go free provided they were not wanted for any crimes.

``My recommendation is, if we can send them back home, we will,'' Kamena said. ``It's a common-sense policy.''

Musliu was dressed in civilian clothes and unarmed when he surrendered. He had just come from the funeral of Ridvan Qazimi, commander ``Lleshi,'' another guerrilla commander killed by Yugoslav forces on Thursday during a NATO-backed operation to take back control of a buffer zone used by the rebels.

``I can say we've turned in our weapons and it's time to stop the war,'' Musliu said in a press statement issued by U.S. peacekeepers who control the part of Kosovo where guerrillas are turning themselves in.

``I hope now all villages and all children can go to school,'' Musliu said in the statement.

Musliu signed an agreement with Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojse Covic last Monday pledging to disband his forces by the end of the month, paving the way for Thursday's return of Yugoslav armed forces to the Presevo Valley area of southern Serbia.

More than 450 guerrillas took advantage of the total amnesty prior to Thursday's cutoff. All signed statements that they would not give up fighting.

In response to questions Kamena said some of the guerrillas who surrendered to KFOR might try to go to neighboring Macedonia to help ethnic Albanian guerrillas there pledged to fight for more rights for the country's one-third Albanian population.

Noting that KFOR was actively patrolling the border in a bid to stop any such infiltration, he said: ``I can't prevent them, but at some point you have to take a person's word.''

``We think this (the surrender) shows their intent that they want to do the right thing.''

On Friday, Shawn Sullivan, NATO's adviser to Belgrade, said the ethnic Albanian community in the Presevo Valley had decided to continue the process of demilitarization of the UCPMB, ''especially in light of yesterday's incident in which one of their commanders was killed.''

--------

Rebels Counter Macedonian Offensive

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Macedonia.html

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) -- Vowing to ``kick out every last terrorist,'' Macedonia's government pounded a northern village with helicopter gunships and heavy artillery Saturday in its offensive to drive out ethnic Albanian rebels.

The militants answered with heavy mortars and machine guns, wounding two soldiers and a police officer in a bloody reminder that the rebels don't intend to give up without a fight.

In a fierce and sustained assault, two military helicopters fired rockets and strafed the village of Slupcane near the rugged border with Kosovo with machine guns as ground troops fired artillery shells. The rebels responded with 82mm mortars in fighting that lightly injured two soldiers and sent a thick plume of smoke rising over the village center.

The shelling came after an undetermined number of civilians trying to leave Slupcane came under rebel sniper fire and had to rush back, said Col. Blagoja Markovski, an army spokesman.

Earlier Saturday, police in the nearby village of Matejce reported heavy mortar and sniper fire on their positions, and an officer was hit, Markovski said.

The insurgents say they are fighting for greater rights and recognition for Macedonia's minority ethnic Albanians. But the government contends they are bent on seizing territory and carving out an ethnic Albanian mini-state. The military launched a fresh offensive Thursday.

``We will advance step by step until we restore order to these villages,'' Interior Minister Ljuben Boskoski said Saturday as he toured Vaksince, a virtual ghost town of bullet-riddled houses and streets littered with spent shells. Government troops drove the rebels out of Vaksince and several other villages in fighting Friday.

``We will make every effort to facilitate the return of citizens to their homes this summer so they can resume a normal life,'' Boskoski said. ``We will kick out every last terrorist -- there's no doubt about it.''

There were unconfirmed reports Friday that as many as 60 civilians were killed in the recent fighting. Police said dozens were likely killed but insisted they were all rebels, some of them in civilian clothing.

Up to 3,000 refugees crossed into Serbia, including many ethnic Albanians, officials said.

The government has spoken of thousands of civilians being held by the rebels as human shields, something both the insurgents and evacuated civilians have denied.

In the capital, Skopje, a political crisis threatened Macedonia's fledgling national unity government, formed with two ethnic Albanian parties in an effort to avert a wider crisis and ease the threat of civil war.

On Thursday, it was revealed that the ethnic Albanian coalition parties had negotiated a peace deal with the insurgents, an action that angered Macedonia's majority Slavs. The deal provided that the rebels would agree to stop fighting in exchange for amnesty guarantees and the power to veto political decisions on ethnic Albanian rights.

The government, however, refuses to negotiate with the rebels or include them in the political process, and it is backed by the United States and the European Union who share its reluctance to legitimize the rebels' use of force.

On Saturday, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe urged the Macedonian government to show restraint and to use ``only that force which is necessary and proportionate to respond to armed extremists.''

``Political dialogue is the only feasible solution to the Macedonian situation,'' said OSCE chairman Mircea Geoana, the Romanian foreign minister.

A government split could doom efforts at ethnic reconciliation and deepen the conflict, which erupted in February. Fighting raged into late March and then subsided, only to flare again last month after rebels killed eight Macedonian government commandos in an ambush.

-------- drug war

Ex-Mexico Governor Arrested and Linked to Cocaine Traffic

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By TIM WEINER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/26/world/26CANC.html

MÉRIDA, Mexico, May 25 - One of Mexico's most wanted men, a fugitive former governor, was arrested late Thursday night in the resort town of Cancún and charged on Friday in New York with helping to ship 200 tons of cocaine to the United States in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes.

Mario Villanueva was governor of the State of Quintana Roo on Mexico's Caribbean coast from 1993 to 1999. He was jailed in a maximum security prison in Mexico City on Friday after two years on the run, officials said.

Mr. Villanueva was the highest- ranking politician in Mexico ever to face a drug investigation while in office. He disappeared in March 1999, less than two weeks before his term in office expired, and with it his constitutional immunity from prosecution in Mexico.

He stands accused of taking bribes to let cocaine traffickers, including former Mexican law-enforcement officials, freely ply the coastlines, highways and airports of his state.

In a 1997 report obtained by The New York Times, a senior Mexican counternarcotics official, Lt. Col. Edgardo Cedillo González, wrote that "great quantities of drugs, including cocaine, are being smuggled through Quintana Roo, approximately four tons a week," and that "among those implicated in the criminal organization is the state governor, Mario Villanueva, alias `el Chueco,' " or "the crooked one."

The drug trade expanded rapidly in his state during his tenure, and federal investigators in Mexico believe that the explosive growth of resorts in Cancún and south down the coast during the 1990's was spurred in part by money laundered from the cocaine trade.

Mexico's attorney general, Rafael Macedo, said Mr. Villanueva had been moving in and out of Mexico freely before his arrest. He was believed to have lived in a retreat in the jungles of Belize, which borders Quintana Roo. It was unclear whether he had intended to turn himself in, as his family said today.

Mr. Macedo and Mary Jo White, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said Mr. Villanueva had been tracked and arrested by the Mexican authorities working with agents of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

While on the run, Mr. Villanueva issued taunting statements and gave interviews in which he confessed to taking millions in graft from tourism developers, but denied connections to cocaine. He accused prosecutors of trying "to destroy me physically, psychologically and morally," and warned that he had evidence against unidentified Mexican officials that would rock his Institutional Revolutionary Party, which governed Mexico for seven decades until Vicente Fox was elected president last year.

Mr. Villanueva is accused in Mexico of having worked with the Cancún- based branch of the Juárez cartel to transport cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the United States.

The two-count conspiracy indictment unsealed today included two cocaine shipments to New York whose delivery he was said to have aided: 3,586 pounds that wound up "in the vicinity of the Holiday Inn, Middletown, N.Y." and 235 pounds sent to an unspecified place in the Bronx. He faces a life sentence and a $4 million fine on each count if extradited, tried and convicted.

-------- georgia

Battalion Revolts at Base in Georgia

Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 26, 2001
Sharon LaFraniere
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A79761-2001May25?language=printer

MOSCOW, May 25 -- An armed National Guard battalion of about 400 men mutinied in northeast Georgia today, taking over part of a military base about 25 miles northeast of the capital, Tbilisi, and forcing officials to alert security forces to a possible coup attempt.

The crisis seemed to abate late in the evening after President Eduard Shevardnadze met with the battalion's leaders. The president told state television that the men would return to their own garrison soon.

Shevardnadze said the battalion wanted better conditions. According to the servicemen's leaders and relatives, the battalion hadn't been paid for months and didn't even have boots, only torn sneakers.

Earlier in the day, Shevardnadze's aides cast the incident in more ominous terms, saying the battalion hoped to provoke a military overthrow.

The rebellion is the latest sign of Shevardnadze's growing weakness in this impoverished nation of 5 million on Russia's southern border. With the economy failing and corruption rampant, the 73-year-old former Soviet diplomat is perhaps more unpopular than ever in his nine years as head of state.

-------- india/pakistan

India's Leader Speaks of Reconciliation in Letter to Pakistan

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/26/world/26INDI.html

NEW DELHI, May 25 - In a graceful letter, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee today officially invited Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to India for the first talks between the two nations since an earlier peace program was ruptured by a violent conflict in Kashmir two years ago.

"Our common enemy is poverty," Mr. Vajpayee wrote. "For the welfare of our peoples, there is no other recourse but a pursuit of the path of reconciliation."

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry issued a brief statement today saying General Musharraf had received the invitation and would respond soon. Officials in Islamabad have said since Wednesday, when India announced it was prepared to reopen talks, that Pakistan would accept.

India paired its offer with an end to its unilateral, six-month-old cease- fire in Kashmir, a fabled land of valleys and mountains that lies between the two countries. Anti-India militants, some of them backed by Islamic Pakistan, have been battling predominantly Hindu India's rule of Kashmir since 1989.

Today was a violent one in Kashmir, where the numbing pace of killing usually merits only a few paragraphs in the daily newspapers here. Fourteen people died: eight Indian soldiers were killed in three land- mine explosions and six people, including two Islamic guerrillas, died in other violence, the police said.

Mr. Vajpayee's letter made no direct reference to India and Pakistan's history of war over Kashmir, nor to India's mistrust of General Musharraf. Many in India hold him responsible for a raid into the Indian- controlled portion of Kashmir two years ago that brought the two nations to the brink of full-scale war and ended a promising peace plan.

Until this week, India had insisted it would not negotiate until Pakistan reined in the militants it sponsored, a condition India has now dropped.

Mr. Vajpayee, who has written poems about peace, today struck a philosophical note that was notable for its absence of animosity and was reminiscent of the speeches he gave in February 1999 when he took a bus to Lahore, Pakistan, where he embraced Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (who was later toppled in a coup) and they both pledged to work out their differences peaceably.

In his letter Mr. Vajpayee, leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, alluded to his visit to the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore, the site where Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, described his vision of a Muslim state in South Asia. Mr. Vajpayee's respectful words at that site in 1999 were taken then as a sign of his acceptance of Pakistan's right to exist. The two nations were carved from the subcontinent at the time of their independence from Britain in 1947.

"When I visited Lahore in February 1999," he wrote, "with the objective of beginning a new chapter in our bilateral relations, I had recorded at the Minar-e-Pakistan that a stable, secure and prosperous Pakistan is in India's interest; that remains our conviction.

"We have to pick up the threads again."

He said the two leaders would discuss "all outstanding issues," including Kashmir. The timing of the talks is not yet clear, though both sides say they want to meet soon.

Mr. Vajpayee has left the sweltering heat of New Delhi for a vacation in the cooler climes of Himachal Pradesh, and he is scheduled for knee-replacement surgery on June 7. When he had the same surgery on the other knee, it took several weeks before he was back in his office, so it seems unlikely that talks can take place before the end of June.

-------- puerto rico

Cubans Protest US Military Presence

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Cuba-Vieques.html
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7C7VGH00

HAVANA (AP) -- President Fidel Castro joined thousands of Cubans on Saturday morning in a protest of U.S. military exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

``We are willing to die at their side,'' Cuban student leader Ernesto Fernandez said of Puerto Ricans who are demanding that the U.S. Navy abandon its use of the island.

The Navy has used its range on Vieques, home to 9,400 people, for six decades and says it is vital for national security. Critics say U.S. maneuvers on the island pose a health threat, which the Navy denies.

Participants in the government-organized rally cheered speakers and waved tiny Cuban flags outside the U.S. Interests Section -- the American mission in Cuba.

``The struggle over Vieques has become decisive in the liberty of Puerto Rico,'' Fernando Martin, a leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, told protesters.

For more than a year, the Cuban government has organized a weekly Saturday rally, usually to protest U.S. policies toward Havana. This was the first time the rally was dedicated to lending support to a cause in another country.

Opposition to Navy exercises on Vieques grew after a civilian guard was killed on the range in 1999 by two off-target bombs. The Navy has since stopped using live ammunition. Islanders will vote in November on whether the Navy must leave in 2003 or can stay, resuming the use of live ammunition.

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

UN Threatens Afghan Food Distribution

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan-Food.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- The United Nations' food agency on Saturday threatened to suspend most food distribution in Kabul if Afghanistan's Taliban rulers do not allow it to prepare a new list of needy residents in the war-ravaged capital.

The World Food Program would shut most of its 157 bakeries in Kabul on June 15, affecting 282,000 poor people who get subsidized food, program director Gerard van Dijk said in a statement released in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

Only 21 bakeries distributing food to about 40,000 people, mostly widows and their children, would remain open, he said.

The U.N. program says the current list of people eligible for food aid in the capital, compiled five years ago, no longer represents those who need food most. Each person on the list is issued a card that allows them to purchase five loaves of bread a day from bakeries for about one cent each -- or 12 percent of their market value.

Khaled Mansour, a spokesman of the U.N. program, said efforts were being made to convince the Taliban of the importance of having a new list, but so far they have failed to persuade the Islamic militia.

Kabul's population has increased in the last few years as tens of thousands of people migrated to the capital because of a persistent drought and the protracted civil war. Many people on the program's list have sold or rented cards to others, while some cards have been forcibly taken and redistributed, van Dijk said.

No immediate comment was available from the Taliban, who rule 95 percent of Afghanistan. The Taliban face U.N. sanctions for providing protection to Osama bin Laden, whom Washington accuses of running a global terrorist network.

Devastated by two decades of civil war, Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest countries. A drought has killed most livestock, destroyed fields and forced people to migrate in search of food and water to major cities in Afghanistan, as well as to neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

In Kabul, most people are dependent on international assistance for survival.

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

Powell's Past Is a Factor in Africa

MAY 26, 13:22 EST
By TOM RAUM
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=AFRICA&STORYID=APIS7C7UCJO0

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Colin Powell, the first black secretary of state, is drawing strong reactions during his four-nation Africa tour - from adulation at many stops to being denounced as ``Uncle Tom for both Bushes'' by student demonstrators in Johannesburg.

After four months on the job, he is also clearly borrowing from his military past.

The warrior-turned-diplomat addressed U.S. embassy employees in Pretoria, South Africa as ``my troops,'' yet quipped, ``My wife keeps telling me to stop acting like a general.'' He cannot help thinking about some new allies in Europe as former invasion targets, he confesses.

On Saturday, standing alongside Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, the retired four-star general said: ``Let me take off my secretary's hat and put on my general's hat for a moment.'' He then praised Kenya's past cooperation with U.S. military forces.

Powell's tour has brought forth philosophical reflections on both his military past and his distant African roots.

Powell, 64, was born in the Bronx, the son of Jamaican immigrants, but does not know exactly where in Africa his ancestors came from. Still, he told reporters traveling with him, ``There is an emotional connection, and I always feel it when I am in Africa.''

``When you find an African-American with Caribbean roots, those roots are closer to Africa than the average African American,'' said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the author of major Africa trade legislation.

But Timothy Bork, director of the African Policy Initiative for the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, thinks too much can be made of Powell's African heritage.

``It's a continent of survivors. They are looking for people who are able to deliver,'' Bork said. ``I don't think that race is their first reaction or concern.''

Essentially, Powell agrees. While emphasizing his roots on his current trip, the secretary of state has been careful not to appear to promise too much.

In Mali, Foreign Minister Modibo Sidibe suggested Powell's visit brought ``a clear commitment'' from Washington on peacekeeping forces, even though Powell made it clear such support was extremely limited.

At an HIV-AIDS treatment center in Soweto, South Africa, one victim, Prudence Mabele, 29, told Powell, ``You are an African. And as an African, you will see to it that African issues'' get high billing in Washington.

Later, in a South African television interview, Powell had some pointed advice for African nations: ``Don't sit around waiting for money to come your way.''

Asked at a news conference on Saturday in Nairobi if he could deliver on the expectations he had raised in many Africans, Powell said: ``I hope the high hopes and expectations are not just because of me.''

Powell frequently cites his 35 years as a soldier to try to put his new job in perspective.

While in South Africa, Powell recalled his last trip there - for the 1994 inauguration of former President Nelson Mandela.

``As the cheers got louder, I could see out of the corner of my eye Mr. Mandela approach the stage. I noticed suddenly that he was not coming up alone. In front of him were four white generals of the South African Defense Force, as his escort ... showing their allegiance to their new president.

``And as a general and as a soldier, I saw that. I truly knew I was watching history being made.''

Sometimes, Powell chuckles at his military flashbacks.

He recalled that when he was in the Balkans last month at a regional meeting in Macedonia, ``here were all these Eastern and Balkan nations around a table with me, all talking about democracy. And I couldn't resist saying to them, just 12 years ago, you were all on my target list.''

He will get another chance when he meets NATO ministers this week in Budapest, Hungary, once part of the Soviet empire and now part of NATO.

At the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg on Friday, the former Persian Gulf War commander found himself having to defend anew the U.S. policy toward Iraq.

A student questioner accused him of being ``a sellout ... a hero for having bombed black people in Iraq.''

``As a general, as a soldier, I have always been reluctant to go to war because I know what the consequences of war are,'' Powell said.

Then, in a turn that was less than diplomatic, Powell added: ``But it was not America that invaded Kuwait. It was your friend Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Army that invaded Kuwait.''

----

Navy Displays High - Tech Warfare

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nyregion/AP-High-Tech-Fleet.html?searchpv=aponline

NEW YORK (AP) -- One high-tech gadget can be used to drive a Cadillac at night -- or to blow up a bridge. Another quickly seals a wound, on the battlefield or at a car wreck scene.

With Fleet Week celebrations under way in New York Harbor, the Navy is showing off its military technology, how it works in war time and how it can double for civilian use. Much of it is aboard the training vessel Starfish, a floating showcase for the military's people and technology.

Under the Starfish's decks, a video screen flashes images of the USS Zumwalt, which the Navy hopes to deploy in 2011.

``This is not the Starship Enterprise! This is your Navy!'' booms a voice from the screen showing the new destroyer's command center.

The reenactment of a missile launch under enemy attack is managed from eight computer stations, with a woman as the chief engineer. Officers face each other at their computer stations, sharing the same information and video-conferencing as they stage simulated war at sea.

``The system is in three parts: hardware, software and people,'' says John Lackie, director of software development for this new Integrated Command Environment. ``We're trying to build a ship around people, not the other way around.''

The Starfish is also loaded with military technology with peacetime uses, like an infrared heat-seeking sensor that could guide bombs or help a Cadillac DeVille driver ``see'' objects on the road at night, such as a deer.

At the tip of a Mark 84 bomb, a pre-stored image of the target enables the Direct Attack Munition Affordable Seeker, or DAMASK, to ``seek'' that image and zero in for an attack.

``A hard, dumb bomb just falls, but this sensor can guide it to a target,'' says Lt. Commander David Street, of the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va. ``This picks up the energy, the heat signature, of a target like a jeep, a truck, a helicopter.''

Also on display is a bandage laced with an algae-based substance that can stop bleeding and seal a wound before the victim is evacuated from the battlefield.

``You can bleed to death in minutes, and this will allow us to save more lives during that first 'golden hour,''' Street says. ``This would be great in emergencies like car wrecks.''

Another device promises to regenerate hearing. A microcatheter injects medication spurring growth of hair cells in mammals' ears, technology created to combat hearing loss suffered by those working on aircraft carrier flight decks.

There is also a 360-degree camera lens first developed by a Columbia University researcher that can be used for real-estate advertising, travel shots and crime scenes -- or as a submarine periscope that scans the entire horizon at once.

The Office of Naval Research, with $1.5 billion in annual funding and branches in London, Tokyo and Singapore, develops military technology with private companies and universities.

The infrared sensor was derived from an option to the Cadillac DeVille that was itself an offshoot of technology the military used during night missions in the Gulf War.

The future of the military is also on display during Fleet Week in the form of 6,000 sailors, Marines and soldiers and 15 naval vessels, including the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy and the state-of-the-art guided missile destroyer USS Mahan. The ships are scheduled to leave Wednesday morning.

The military also celebrates an annual Fleet Week in San Francisco in October.

--------

Bush Calls for Flexibility and Innovation in the Military

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/26/politics/26BUSH.html?searchpv=nytToday

ANNAPOLIS, Md., May 25 - A day after President Bush discovered that a touch of political risk-taking cost him control of the United States Senate, he told new naval officers they needed the freedom to roam in new directions even if "some of your ideas may fail."

Mr. Bush's speech to the 902 graduates of the United States Naval Academy was drafted days before the White House discovered that it was losing control of the Senate.

In his appearance here, just before he flew to Camp David for the weekend, Mr. Bush made no reference to Senator James M. Jeffords's decision to abandon the Republican Party or to the ensuing speculation that the new Democratic chairmen of Senate committees might now block elements of Mr. Bush's effort to remake the military, design a missile shield or overhaul Social Security.

Instead, Mr. Bush hewed to his text, focusing on the need to take chances - even if, like his apparent tactic of courting conservatives at the expense of moderates, they do not work out quite as planned.

"Our national and military leaders owe you a culture that supports innovation and a system that rewards it," Mr. Bush told the graduates. "Officers willing to think big thoughts and look at problems with a fresh eye are sometimes wrong."

"New ideas don't always work," the president said. "If you pick up this mantle, some of your ideas may fail. But we need to give you this freedom, and we will."

White House officials declined to draw parallels between Mr. Bush's remarks about how to build a flexible military, able to maximize its power on modern battlefields, and the calls within his own party for a more flexible agenda, to maximize his power in a now-divided Congress.

The officials said the president's words were intended as a warning that the Pentagon culture must change. It was notable that he gave the speech here, because the Navy has a reputation as the most traditionbound of the armed 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."

He used similar words this year in Norfolk, Va., describing the mission of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is putting together a new strategic vision for the military.

Some Pentagon officials had expected that vision to be unveiled today. But a month or two ago, the White House determined that it would not be ready for this speech.

The president asked the newly commissioned ensigns to imagine the world in 15 years, 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."

Mr. Bush invoked the memory of Adm. Hyman Rickover, who began the United States' nuclear submarine program. While his place in naval history is now secure, Admiral Rickover was not widely popular in his time, given his tendency to question old ways and old tactics.

-------- OTHER

-------- energy

Energy Thefts Climb Amid Power Crisis
Utilities Pass Along Losses in Higher Rates

By William Claiborne
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 26, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A77865-2001May25?language=printer

CHICAGO -- As the price of natural gas and electricity climbs in many parts of the country, energy thieves are becoming more aggressive and resourceful in bypassing gas and electric meters -- or tapping directly into distribution lines, utility officials say.

At considerable risk to themselves and others, the energy thieves often use garden hoses or even bicycle inner tubes to divert natural gas around meters and into their homes or businesses. Many use jumper cables to bypass electricity meters or run wires to their neighbors' electrical lines. Some simply turn the meter upside down to subtract from the kilowatt total, or slow down the meter disk with magnets.

Energy cops say they have found just about everything stuck in meters to jam them, including coat hangers, tools and cutlery.

"You think of it, we've seen it," said Leo Dalbec, revenue protection administrator for National Grid-USA in Worcester, Mass., which operates four utilities in New England. "We've got our hands full, and the more we look, the more we find."

Dalbec and other energy theft specialists for utility companies from coast to coast say there are signs that last winter's price spikes in natural gas have exacerbated energy theft significantly, although reliable estimates of losses are hard to come by.

Most revenue protection officials put the nation's electrical power losses between 0.5 percent and 3.5 percent of annual gross revenue, a relatively small proportion compared with the 20 percent to 40 percent losses estimated in countries such as India and South Africa. Still, the losses represent $1 billion to $10 billion worth of stolen electricity each year.

The Edison Electric Institute, which represents utility companies, has estimated annual energy theft at $2 billion.

Dalbec said the wide range of estimated U.S. losses reflects the differences in utilities' responses to energy theft. Companies that move aggressively to catch offenders record the highest estimated losses, and those that "assume a ho-hum attitude and just pass along the cost in higher rates" report smaller losses.

One of the more aggressive utilities, Duke Power Co. of Charlotte, N.C., has estimated its losses at $20 million a year, or half a percent of gross revenue, according to a survey of energy theft published in Electrical World magazine. In 1998, the company had an estimated 20,000 cases of electricity theft, representing about 1 percent of its customers.

Commonwealth Edison in Chicago, which has 3.5 million customers, estimates its annual theft at "under $10 million," according to Mark Falcone, director of revenue management.

In Colorado, Xcel Energy estimates it loses at least $14 million a year to theft, a cost it passes on to customers. Detroit Edison Co. reportedly lost $40 million to theft in 1999. After beefing up its investigative team, the utility said it expected to recover as much as $20 million of its annual losses.

Not all violators are small-time crooks. In one recent case, a meter reader who was checking a 15-story commercial building put his hand on a connector and thought it was too hot for the number of kilowatt hours recorded on the meter. The building had been rewired so the meter recorded only half the electricity used, and the owner had to pay $50,000 in back charges.

For years, most Americans were just grateful to be able to flip a switch and get dependable, cheap electrical power, Dalbec said. But recent price spikes and the threat of rolling blackouts have left many customers feeling hostile toward their utility companies and more inclined to consider stealing electricity or gas, officials say.

"Locks and seals on meters are no longer boundaries that they respect," Dalbec said.

Cleve Freeman, chairman of the International Utilities Revenue Protection Association, which represents officials of more than 400 utility companies worldwide, said concern over increased theft is rising not only in California, but also wherever deregulation or a tighter supply of energy has led to higher prices or the threat of rate increases.

"Naturally, when you have higher gas or electricity prices, people who never thought of stealing it are doing it now," said Freeman, who is also the revenue protection coordinator for Southern California Gas Co. "It crosses all economic levels, from the needy to the greedy."

Freeman said that although the majority of thefts are detected in residences, the heaviest dollar losses to utilities are likely to come from commercial customers whose businesses are on the edge, providing an incentive to rig a bypass or tamper with a meter.

Frequently, the investigative trail leads to marijuana growers who are trying to save on the high costs of running the 1,000-watt bulbs they use to simulate sunlight in basement greenhouses. In those cases, drug enforcement agencies are brought in.

Despite the hazardous nature of many gas meter bypasses, Freeman said, "there amazingly have been few serious explosions or other accidents." He attributed that to the utilities' increasing proficiency in detecting bypasses and meter tampering, and to the fact that most meters are outside, providing a less volatile mixture of air and gas.

Utility officials said the most reliable method of detecting illegal gas or electrical taps is to watch for abnormal increases in consumption or use at an address where gas or electricity was shut off for nonpayment of bills. Tips from customers, often through special fraud hot lines, are becoming a reliable method of catching energy thieves, experts say.

Kurt W. Roussell, a former sheriff's deputy who is energy theft and fraud coordinator for Wisconsin Electric Power Co. in Milwaukee, said his inspectors sometimes cruise the streets at night looking for lights on in homes and businesses whose service has been disconnected.

But the easiest and most common detection method is simply to monitor consumption records. If the utility suspects fraud, it can even remotely monitor a meter in real time.

"They're doing more things to bypass the meter," Roussell said. "They're definitely getting more sophisticated."

But sometimes the thieves are too smart by half. Roussell recalled the Milwaukee machine shop owner who had a switch in his office that would turn off the meter; he activated the meter only during the week it was scheduled to be read. One week last year the businessman forgot to turn the switch off after the meter reader had left, and the "interesting spike" in his bill was enough to alert the energy cops that something was amiss.

Roussell said he believes the shop owner, who since has gone to jail on an unrelated firearms charge, stole at least $25,000 worth of electricity before his scam was detected.

Roussell said that his company usually seeks the prosecution of energy thieves only in the most flagrant cases and that it generally would rather help offenders, particularly those with low incomes, clear up unpaid bills. But he said that in the case of the machine shop owner, he would probably seek a civil judgment to recover the loss.

"I'm not in the business of putting people in jail," he said. "I just don't want them blowing themselves up."

----

Senator Calls for Hearings Into Energy Regulators' Moves

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/26/politics/26POWE.html

WASHINGTON, May 25 - Accusing federal regulators of not doing their job, Senator Dianne Feinstein called today for hearings into possible improprieties between members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and private energy interests.

Ms. Feinstein, a California Democrat, said the commission, which is responsible for regulating the energy industry and is known by the acronym FERC, had not acted to protect residents of her state from companies that were reaping undue profits through spiraling energy costs.

"Despite evidence of manipulation and price gouging in both the electricity and natural gas markets in California and the West, and a finding by FERC last November of `unjust and unreasonable' rates," the senator said, "the commission has failed to take the actions necessary to bring reliability and stability to the marketplace."

Ms. Feinstein made the request in a letter to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, who is poised to take over the Committee on Governmental Affairs once the Democrats regain control of the Senate. Mr. Lieberman, who has already asked the General Accounting Office to investigate price gouging, could not be reached for comment today.

In her letter, Ms. Feinstein cited an article in The New York Times today reporting that Kenneth L. Lay, chairman of the Enron Corporation, had told the commission's chairman, Curtis Hébert Jr., that he would support his continuation in the job if the commissioner endorsed the company's views on energy deregulation. Enron is the nation's largest electricity trader.

Mr. Hébert said he had rejected Mr. Lay's offer. Mr. Lay told The Times that it was Mr. Hébert who had asked him to intercede with White House officials. The president appoints members of the commission and names its chairman.

"It would be unconscionable if any of the nation's electricity traders or generators were in a position to be able to determine who chairs or becomes a member of the commission," Ms. Feinstein said.

Environmental groups and other critics say the Bush administration has granted unprecedented access to leaders of the energy industry. They note that both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made their fortunes in oil and that the president's national energy strategy, unveiled last week, relied heavily on exploiting new resources rather than conservation or fuel efficiency.

But in a recent interview, Mr. Cheney said the White House was motivated by "sound public policy" and not what the energy companies sought.

The Senate today confirmed Mr. Bush's nominees for two Republican vacancies on the five-member panel. They are Patrick Wood, a former head of the Texas Public Utilities Commission, which deregulated electricity in the president's home state, and Nora Brownwell, a Pennsylvania utility regulator.

Mr. Cheney has indicated that Mr. Wood will take over as chairman.

--------

Energy Company Chairman Testifies on California Sales

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By BLOOMBERG NEWS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/26/national/26POWE.html

WASHINGTON, May 25 - In testimony today, the chairman of the El Paso Corporation, William A. Wise, shed some light on a transaction that California officials say was used to drive up natural gas prices in the state.

An administrative law judge, Curtis Wagner, has been listening to testimony in Washington that the company's pipeline unit, El Paso Natural Gas, sold more than a billion cubic feet of pipeline capacity into California to its merchant energy subsidiary. The state has asserted that the merchant unit then withheld gas shipments on the pipeline to cut supplies and drive up prices.

Mr. Wise testified that while he did not come up with a plan to have El Paso's merchant energy group bid for capacity on the company's pipeline, he did approve it. "I in essence approved them going forward with the bid," Mr. Wise said. "I didn't see any reason for them not to."

State officials are looking for evidence that either top executives ordered the merchant unit to buy the capacity and withhold gas supplies, or that officials of the two units conspired to do so.

Ralph Eads, an executive vice president of El Paso and president of its merchant energy group, previously testified that he and other merchant energy executives met with Mr. Wise to tell him about the merchant unit's plans to bid for the space against other competitors.

Mr. Wise did not want to hear too many details because of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission prohibitions against merchant gas units and pipeline units of the same company colluding on contracts, Mr. Eads said.

Judge Wagner asked about an affidavit by Mark Mitchell, a former senior vice president with the merchant energy unit now in charge of South American trading for the company. Mr. Mitchell said a meeting with Mr. Wise on Feb. 14, 2000, was "prepared in an effort to solicit endorsement of Merchant's participation in the auction" for the pipeline capacity.

The judge asked Mr. Wise if officials from El Paso's regulated pipeline group had spoken to him about the auction, and Mr. Wise responded that they had not, nor would he have expected them to do so.

California's regulators and utilities accuse El Paso of withholding pipeline capacity to drive up the "basis spread," the difference between the price of natural gas sold where it is produced and the price at the California border. Later, after the border price rose, the company increased shipping to take advantage of the better returns, they contend.

-------- environment

Brazilian Oil Spill Latest in Unexplained Series

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-brazil-.html

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil's state oil giant Petrobras was cleaning up a small oil spill on Saturday off the coast of Rio de Janeiro which environmental officials called troubling because it was the latest in a series of unexplained spills.

Petrobras, infamous for a series of spills over the past two years, shut 12 oil rigs, responsible for nearly 9 percent of Brazil's oil output, on Thursday night after detecting an oil slick on the ocean surface.

Company officials said boats using retention barriers were cleaning up oil in the northern part of Campos basin, while engineers were still checking for leaks in the system.

They could not say when production would be resumed.

Carlos Mendes, chief coordinator for government environmental agency Ibama, said the agency was monitoring the clean-up effort and planned to audit the investigation.

Speaking from Rio de Janeiro, Mendes said that as of Friday night, there were two oil slicks some 55 miles off the coast, one of approximately 29,000 gallons and another of some 2,230 gallons of crude.

Both were moving away from the coast.

``The spill is relatively small. But it's strange and is getting stranger every time,'' Mendes said, referring to a similar accident last week, when a slick of about the same size was detected in the same area.

Petrobras concluded at the time that the oil did not come from any of its rigs in the area. Mendes denied local media reports that Petrobras could be ordered to stop all production if it did not find out where the oil was coming from.

A senior company source told Reuters on Friday the area where the slick appeared lay close to tanker routes and over the intersection of several underwater pipelines.

He ruled out any connection with the sinking of Petrobras' biggest oil rig in the basin. The March incident, triggered by a series of blasts that killed 11 crew members, led to a major oil spill.

Mendes said he considered Petrobras' clean-up measures adequate for this kind of spill. ``They are using oil retention barriers, which is enough. Dispersing agents have not been used,'' he added.

Oil production losses accounted for 120,000 barrels of crude per day, or nearly 9 percent of Petrobras' average daily output of 1.38 million bpd so far in 2001. Petrobras also halted natural gas production of 830,000 cubic meters a day.

A week ago, output at 13 offshore platforms in the area was stopped for two days with production losses of 135,000 barrels of crude per day and 830,000 cubic meters of natural gas a day.

Production was resumed last Friday after Petrobras said the composition of the oil in the slick was different from those of the crude produced in the area.

-------- human rights

Peru to Establish Truth Commission

MAY 26, 07:07 EST
Associated Press
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7C7OSJ80

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Peru will establish a truth commission to investigate human rights abuses committed by leftist rebels and government security forces during the 1980s and early 1990s, the justice minister said.

The commission will aim to clarify the causes and responsibilities for the political violence that left 30,000 people dead and at least 4,000 missing, Justice Minister Diego Garcia Sayan told reporters Friday.

He said a law will be issued next week to formally establish the commission. The commission will have seven members, who will be appointed by the president, he said. It will have 18 months to complete its work.

The Maoist-inspired Shining Path insurgency terrorized Peru for much of the 1980s and early 1990s, planting car bombs in Lima, assassinating politicians in the countryside and regularly blowing up electric pylons, plunging the capital into darkness.

Peru's military and the Shining Path guerrillas both regularly attacked rural communities that were seen as sympathetic to the other side.

The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a much smaller rebel group, is blamed for about 200 deaths since its inception in the early 1980s.

Rebel violence dropped off dramatically in 1992 after the capture of Shining Path founder and leader Abimael Guzman.

----

Taliban Bar Women in UN Survey, Food Threatened

New York Times
May 26, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-afghan-.html

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement said on Saturday it would block a poverty survey by the United Nations because it involved hiring women, forcing an end to bread supplies for nearly 300,000 people in the Afghan capital.

``We are not ready to compromise on our Islamic principles,'' Taliban Foreign Ministry spokesman Maulvi Abdul Rahman Zahid told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press.

Zahid spoke after the U.N. World Food Program had given the Taliban until June 15 to agree to a survey to ensure food aid was reaching the neediest people in the city of some 1.6 million.

``All the government's authorities are ready to cooperate but WFP wants to use some 700 Afghan women in this survey,'' Zahid said. ``We do not have any objection to the recruitment of foreign women, but it is based on our principles that we do not want Afghan women recruited for this program.''

The Taliban refusal to allow the Kabul survey is the latest in a growing number of confrontations over the movement's efforts to impose its hardline interpretation of Islam.

The Taliban triggered worldwide outrage this week with a decree that Hindus in the overwhelmingly Muslim country would have to wear yellow badges, a plan that evoked memories of the Nazi order that Jews in Germany wear yellow Stars of David.

The U.N. World Food Program has been warning the Taliban for more than a year that a survey was vital to be sure that the bread, distributed to 282,000 people from bakeries at 12 percent of the retail price, was reaching those most in need.

But the Taliban have consistently objected to the hiring of women, which is necessary because men cannot enter homes to interview women under Taliban rules. Women are barred from almost all work outside the home.

``WFP informed the Taliban authorities today that the general bakeries will be closed down on 15 June if WFP surveyors remain unable to conduct their work,'' the WFP said in a statement.

The distribution of subsidized bread through 157 bakeries has been under way since 1995, the year before the Taliban swept into Kabul. They now claim control over 90 percent of the country.

The WFP said it will continue to operate 21 bakeries in the city run by women -- also a constant source of tension with the Taliban -- that serve 40,000 widows and their children.

International aid organizations provide almost all basic services in Afghanistan in the absence of normal government functions by the Taliban and their opponents.

But Taliban religious police raided a new Italian-run hospital 10 days ago, beating staff and arresting three employees on grounds that men and women had been eating in the same room. The United Nations a week ago complained of widespread and increasing Taliban harassment of foreign and Afghan aid workers.

The WFP said its existing bread distribution lists no longer identified those in most need, especially with poverty deepening after 21 years of war and the worst drought in three decades.

``The population of the capital city has swollen over the past five years as Afghans fled conflict and severe economic hardships in other parts of the country,'' said WFP head for Afghanistan, Gerard van Dijk. ``Moreover, beneficiary cards are being rented, sold and often forcibly appropriated and redistributed.''

A WFP official told Reuters in March the Taliban had been warned the program could not continue without a survey. But, in the brinkmanship that has been a feature of the controversy, WFP sources said this month the Taliban had relented.

The WFP said that optimism had now proved unfounded.

``The Taliban had permitted WFP in April this year to survey widows who had previously received food assistance from the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul. WFP's plan was to include the 6,000 poorest widows and their orphaned children as bakery beneficiaries,'' it said.

``However, last Monday the Taliban withdrew its permission,'' WFP said. ``That means that about 6,000 widows and their children, who have no recourse to provide for themselves other than begging, will now be deprived of the urgently required food.''

-------- police

NJ Investigators May End Searches

MAY 26, 16:04 EST
By JOHN P. McALPIN
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?PACKAGEID=race&FRONTID=ELECTION

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - State troopers would be banned from asking permission to search a driver's vehicle during a routine traffic stop under a plan being considered by lawmakers who investigated allegations of racial profiling.

Lawmakers also want to create an Office of Professional Responsibility, an independent committee that would monitor state police.

The recommendations are part of a 110-page Senate Judiciary Committee draft, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press on Saturday. The final report is expected to be released by Friday.

``There is vivid proof in the record before the committee that the issue of racial profiling was mishandled throughout the 1990s,'' the draft report reads.

The report summarizes the committee's recent hearings into racial profiling and supports nearly a dozen legislative recommendations, including many long-delayed bills proposed by minority lawmakers. One measure specifically outlaws racial profiling.

Chief among those proposals in the draft report is a request that Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco sign an executive order ending so-called consent searches. Members of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey have repeatedly called for such a ban.

``The committee finds that the possible utility of consent searches is outweighed by the violations of civil rights, accompanying their abuse,'' the draft report reads.

Last year, 81 percent of people who consented to searches by troopers from the Moorestown barracks, near the southern end of the turnpike, were minorities, according to statistics provided by Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr.

If approved, the standards office would be part of the attorney general's office, with the director appointed by the governor.

``The evidence is compelling that there is a need for permanent independent oversight of law enforcement by state agencies. Throughout the 1990s, clear warning signs of problems within the NJSP were ignored,'' the report states.

Earlier this month, the Senate approved a resolution urging Supreme Court Justice Peter G. Verniero to resign because he allegedly lied about racial profiling by state police when he was attorney general.

Minorities accounted for 73 percent of people searched by troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike in the year 2000, down from 84 percent from 1994 to 1996.

In January, the state released its first batch of statistics on traffic stops. They showed that more than 40 percent of the motorists stopped by state troopers on the turnpike during one six-month period were minorities. Sixty percent of those arrested by troopers on the turnpike were minority drivers.

Consent searches of motorists, which had been declining in the past two years, dropped to an all-time low in January and February.

----

Students' Report of Being Strip-Searched at Jail Is Investigated

New York Times
May 26, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/26/national/26STRI.html

WASHINGTON, May 25 - Nine middle school students said they were strip-searched during a visit to the city jail, prompting a federal civil rights investigation.

A dozen boys ages 11 to 15 who were serving in-school suspensions for misconduct were taken to the Central Detention Facility by school officials on May 17. The trip had been arranged by a teacher and a disciplinary official at the school, Evans Middle School, in Northeast Washington. They wanted to provide the students with a lesson on the consequences of breaking the law.

A spokeswoman for the Washington office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the bureau would investigate whether the students' civil rights were violated by an improper search and seizure. It will report its findings to the civil rights division of the Justice Department.

Groups from three other schools in Washington - all high schools - have visited the jail this year, and a male student has said he was forced to disrobe in a tour of the jail in early April, said Steven G. Seleznow, chief of staff for the school system.

The schools superintendent, Paul L. Vance, said that he was horrified by the reports and that he had ordered an internal review.

Mr. Seleznow said the prison visits had been suspended indefinitely. The teacher and aide involved in the incident have been placed on administrative leave, he said.

Darryl J. Madden, spokesman for the District of Columbia Department of Corrections, said three jail officers remained on leave pending the end of the investigations. But a preliminary review, he said, has found that three students were strip- searched, rather than nine.

Mr. Madden said group tours of prisons and jails were common. The department receives about 12 to 15 requests for visits each month, he said. Guards regularly "pat search" visitors, checking pockets, waistbands and pant legs for weapons or contraband, but strip-searches are obvious violations of the rules, Mr. Madden said.

"This was extremely poor judgment on the part of school staff and the department of corrections staff," said Odie Washington, director of the department.

The incident involving the middle school students does not reflect standard tours, Mr. Washington said. It was an effort, he said, to show the students the "realities of jail life and the procedures faced when you are committed to jail."

Mr. Washington said it was unclear whether any inmates saw the searches, which were conducted in front of jail staff members and other students.

-------- spying

Worldwide spying network is revealed
MEPs confirm eavesdropping by Echelon electronic network

Stuart Millar, Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Black
Guardian
Saturday May 26, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4193270,00.html

For years it has been the subject of bitter controversy, its existence repeatedly claimed but never officially acknowledged.

At last, the leaked draft of a report to be published next week by the European parliament removes any lingering doubt: Echelon, a shadowy, US-led worldwide electronic spying network, is a reality.

Echelon is part of an Anglo-Saxon club set up by secret treaty in 1947, whereby the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, divided the world between them to share the product of global eavesdropping. Agencies from the five countries exchange intercepts using supercomputers to identify key words.

The intercepts are picked up by ground stations, including the US base at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, and GCHQ's listening post at Morwenstow in Cornwall.

In the cold war, eavesdropping - signals intelligence, or Sigint as it is known in the trade - was aimed at military and diplomatic communications. Helped by increasingly sophisticated computers, it has now switched to industrial, commercial targets - and private individuals.

Echelon computers can store millions of records on individuals, intercepting faxes, phone calls, and emails.

The MEP's report - which faced opposition from the British and American governments and their respective security services - was prompted by claims that the US was using Echelon to spy on European companies on behalf of American firms.

France, deeply suspicious of Britain's uniquely close intelligence links with the US, seized on reports that Echelon cost Airbus Industrie an £8bn contract with Saudi Arabia in 1994, after the US intercepted communications between Riyadh and the Toulouse headquarters of Airbus - in which British firms hold a 20% stake.

The MEPs admitted they had been unable to find conclusive proof of industrial espionage. The claim has been dismissed by all the Echelon governments and in a new book by an intelligence expert, James Bamford.

More disturbing, as Mr Bamford and the MEPs pointed out, was the threat Echelon posed to privacy. "The real issue is whether Echelon is doing away with individual privacy - a basic human right," he said. The MEPs looked at statements from former members of the intelligence services, who provided compelling evidence of Echelon's existence, and the potential scope of its activities.

One former member of the Canadian intelligence service, the CSE, claimed that every day millions of emails, faxes and phone conversations were intercepted. The name and phone number of one woman, he said, was added to the CSE's list of potential terrorists after she used an ambiguous word in an innocent call to a friend.

"Disembodied snippets of conversations are snatched from the ether, perhaps out of context, and may be misinterpreted by an analyst who then secretly transmits them to spy agencies and law enforcement offices around the world," Mr Bamford said.

The "misleading information", he said, "is then placed in NSA's near-bottomless computer storage system, a system capable of storing 5 trillion pages of text, a stack of paper 150 miles high".

Unlike information on US citizens, which officially cannot be kept longer than a year, information on foreigners can he held "eternally", he said.

The MEP's draft report concludes the system cannot be as extensive as reports have assumed. It is limited by being based on worldwide interception of satellite communications, which account for a small part of communications.

Eavesdropping on other messages requires either tapping cables or intercepting radio signals, but the states involved in Echelon, the draft report found, had access to a limited proportion of radio and cable communications.

But independent privacy groups claimed Britain, the US and their Echelon partners, were developing eavesdropping systems to cope with the explosion in communications on email and internet.

In Britain, the government last year brought in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which allowed authorities to monitor email and internet traffic through "black boxes" placed inside service providers' systems. It gave police authority to order companies or individuals using encryption to protect their communications, to hand over the encryption keys. Failure to do so was punishable by a sentence of up to two years.

The act has been condemned by civil liberties campaigners, but there are signs the authorities are keen to secure more far reaching powers to monitor internet traffic.

Last week, the London-based group, Statewatch, published leaked documents saying the EU's 15 member states were lobbying the European commission to require that service providers kept all phone, fax, email and internet data in case they were needed in criminal investigations.

-------- terrorism

Facing Prison, Algerian Cooperates

MAY 26, 14:06 EST
Associated Press
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7C7V1B80

SEATTLE (AP) - An Algerian man facing up to 140 years in prison for his April conviction in a terrorist bomb plot is trying to win a lighter sentence by cooperating for the first time with federal prosecutors, The Seattle Times reported Saturday.

Ahmed Ressam, 33, is scheduled for sentencing June 28. The Times reported sentencing may be postponed to allow Ressam to testify in the July trial of alleged coconspirator Mokhtar Haouri in New York.

The newspaper quoted sources close to the talks as saying Ressam has broken more than 17 months of silence, providing federal authorities with ``a major breakthrough'' in their ongoing investigation into the alleged plot to bomb U.S. sites at the turn of the millennium.

The Times said the sources refused further details, as did Jerry Diskin, chief prosecutor in the case and now interim U.S. attorney in Seattle, and Ressam's lawyers.

Ressam was arrested in December 1999 - two weeks before millennial New Year's Eve celebrations - as he entered the country by ferry from Canada, where had lived since 1994, in a rental car containing bomb-making components.

He was convicted in Los Angeles, after a month-long trial, of conspiring to commit international terrorism and eight related counts. The trial was moved from Seattle because of pretrial publicity and security concerns.

Federal prosecutors described an international plot involving Islamic extremists in Canada, France and the United States who wanted to ``punish America.''

On April 6, the day he was convicted in Los Angeles, Ressam also was convicted in absentia in Paris and sentenced to a five-year prison term for involvement in terrorist activities there.

Prosecutors in both countries believe Ressam has information on targets and on Saudi businessman Osama bin Laden's organization and its ties to the Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, where Ressam was born.

Federal agents linked Haouri, Ressam and another man, Abdel Ghani Meskini of New York City, through monitored telephone calls after Ressam's arrest.

Haouri, accused of providing assistance to Ressam, is believed linked to higher-ups in the Islamic fundamentalist movement. He has denied any involvement in the alleged plot.

Meskini, who traveled to Seattle to assist Ressam, has already made a deal with the government. He faced up to 105 years in prison, but was given an 18-month prison term and a visa allowing him to stay in the United States.

At Ressam's trial, Meskini testified that he never was given details about why he was to meet with Ressam. He also is expected to testify against Haouri, who allegedly sent him to Seattle.

-------- activists

Energy Policies Faulted

In Brief
Washington Post,
Saturday, May 26, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A79787-2001May25?language=printer

Thirty-nine Protestant, Orthodox and Jewish leaders attacked U.S. policies that emphasize fossil fuels and nuclear power, an implicit criticism of President Bush's energy plan.

The group said the approach jeopardizes human well-being "by depleting energy sources, causing global warming, fouling the air with pollution and poisoning the land with radioactive waste."

The nation has "a moral obligation to choose the safest, cleanest and most sustainable sources of energy" to preserve God's creation, they said.

The group issued an open letter to the president but did not refer specifically to his proposals.

Endorsers included a coalition of top leaders from all branches of Judaism, the chief executive of the National Council of Churches and ranking leaders from 21 of the council's Protestant and Orthodox denominations. No Roman Catholic or Evangelical Protestant leaders participated.


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