------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Baltics Appear Closer to NATO
New Talks on Kashmir
Japanese Decline Nuclear Recycling
Major cuts in nuke arsenal urged
Cornell Trustees Vote to Close Old Reactor Despite Protests
Nuclear Power: A Cleaner Source

MILITARY
U.S. Training For African Peace
U.S. weapons fan violence in Mideast, critics charge
War Crimes Debate May Split Yugoslavia
Despite Pentagon Pressure
Macedonian Troops and Rebels Keep Battling
Bombing Wave in Colombia Continues
Columbian Rebels confident on Birthday
Big Ramifications Expected for Politicians Jailed in Vieques Protest
No big change to US military, says Pentagon

OTHER
Texas House Votes to Spare Retarded Killers
Work on New Power Plant Begins After Final Approval
Biz School Grads Rediscover Energy
It Gets 78 Miles a Gallon, but U.S. Snubs Diesel
Senator Plans to Examine Gas Prices
Californians brace for a summer of blackouts
Explorer Says Arctic Ice Thinning Noticeably
U.N. Expert: Crucial Battle Against AIDS Is Prevention
Political Crimes Bill Passes in Iran
Pakistani Police Arrest Hundreds
Hundreds of Police Rushed to Riot - Hit British Town
BODY OF SECRETS

ACTIVISTS
Hong Kong Activists Remember Tiananmen Crackdown


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- europe

Baltics Appear Closer to NATO

MAY 27, 13:30 EST
By MICHAEL TARM
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C8JJ5O0

KARMELAVA, Lithuania (AP) - Major Viktoras Samochinas beams like a proud parent at 20 dots moving slowly across a giant screen inside a new radar station shared by all three former Soviet Baltic republics.

The dots, projected on a regional map, indicate the height and speed of all aircraft flying over the roughly 70,000 square miles of the combined territory of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

The technology is common in the West, but here it's a leap forward. And for the Baltic nations, the radar base - funded largely by the United States and Norway - is one sign of how they are ready to join NATO, a decade after they regained their independence from the Soviet Union.

But with Baltic claims about being ready to join growing more credible, the United States and its NATO allies are forced to face the prospect of offending Russia, which vehemently opposes the bid. That has made Baltic membership one of the most contentious hurdles to NATO enlargement.

Russia made its displeasure known by refusing to send a delegation to a session of NATO's Parliamentary Assembly that began Sunday in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. Russian legislators usually attend the meetings as part of post-Cold War cooperation.

Parliamentarians from 19 NATO member countries and 12 candidate nations will discuss enlargement at the five-day meeting. Sunday's session was introductory with the real work beginning Monday.

NATO, which admitted the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in 1999, has said the door to the Baltic states is open but that they weren't ready militarily.

When the Baltic republics became independent of the Soviet Union, they found themselves with ragtag armies of a few hundred soldiers toting hunting rifles. Since then, they have worked at modernizing their militaries and their government to help their effort to join NATO.

All three are spending nearly 2 percent of their national budgets on defense, a figure similar to many west European nations. They now have a combined 20,000 active duty troops with sleek, Western-made arms. They also have pooled their resources in a joint peacekeeping battalion, in part to show they could work within a multilateral alliance.

The Baltics also have established dynamic economies and unambiguously placed their militaries under civilian control - all prerequisites for NATO membership.

And now they have the radar station at Karmelava, a village 60 miles west of Vilnius, which NATO parliamentarians will tour during this week's gathering.

Samochinas, a radar division commander, said that before the $100 million network became fully operational last year, any plane could easily fly undetected through Baltic air space. Key systems at the station were installed by U.S manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp.

``This radar's proof we're on course to qualify for NATO,'' said Samochinas.

With the modernization in the Baltics, the question of their membership becomes more a political one for alliance members.

Members including Germany are reluctant to upset Russia by actually admitting them, saying the door is open but it's too early to decide who to let in.

But President Bush has signaled the Americans could back expansion including the three countries - though still not clearly enough for Baltic tastes - as he appears less concerned than his predecessor about offending Russia.

``NATO must be open to all of Europe's democracies ready and able to meet NATO's obligations and contribute to Europe's security,'' Bush said in an open letter to participants of a conference of NATO hopefuls in Slovakia last month.

``We are moving toward a position where, for the first time, Baltic membership can be considered on its own merits,'' said defense and political affairs analyst Nicholas Redman, of the English political consulting group Oxford Analytica. ``The fears of upsetting Russia are receding.''

Moscow says it would see expansion to any former Soviet republics as a threat.

Also galling for Moscow is that former Red Army bases could be used by NATO - like the Lithuanian radar station, which is on the site of what was a major Soviet army base until 1991.

Silos that housed Soviet SS2 missiles are still visible. The bunker housing the new pan-Baltic radar's command center was constructed by Soviet troops.

Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Ilves says the Baltics shouldn't be penalized for having been forcibly annexed in 1940 by the USSR.

``What's the statute of limitations? When do we declare the Soviet Union over and done with?'' he said.

-------- india / pakistan

New Talks on Kashmir

New York Times
May 27, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/27/opinion/27SUN2.html?searchpv=nytToday

Any short list of the most dangerous international conflicts would include Kashmir, where the world's two newest nuclear-armed states, India and Pakistan, are locked in a military confrontation that has twice erupted into war. So it is encouraging that Indian and Pakistani leaders have now agreed to resume the negotiations about Kashmir and other issues they broke off two years ago.

Pakistan had been pressing for new talks and New Delhi had long resisted, angered that pro- Pakistani fighters had infiltrated Indian territory shortly after the last discussions. But last week, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee unexpectedly invited Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to begin new talks. India's initiative is welcome, although no early breakthroughs are likely.

Although Mr. Vajpayee comes from a Hindu nationalist party, he has lately taken a moderate line toward Kashmir, a Muslim-majority province where an armed insurgency against Indian rule has been going on for the past 12 years. Inviting General Musharraf was probably his own idea. But Washington's consistent encouragement to India and Pakistan to resume diplomacy played a helpful role.

During the cold war, America built close ties with Pakistan. More recently, as Pakistan turned away from democracy and maintained links with terrorists in Kashmir and with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, its relations with America have chilled, and Washington's ties with democratic India have warmed considerably. This realignment was evident during President Bill Clinton's visit to the subcontinent last year and has been carried further by the Bush administration. India has given a surprisingly warm reception to Mr. Bush's nuclear policies, including his controversial missile defense plans. Washington should use its new influence in New Delhi to help defuse the Kashmir issue.

More than 30,000 people have been killed in Kashmir since 1989, and 350,000 Indian troops are tied down there. Pakistan has recklessly supported armed terrorists. India has abused the rights of civilians and has been too slow to recognize that there can be no military solutions for Kashmir's political discontent. Now both countries have a chance to explore more constructive approaches.

-------- japan

Japanese Decline Nuclear Recycling

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Japan-Nuclear.html?searchpv=aponline

TOKYO (AP) -- In a vote that could affect Japan's nuclear policy, residents of a village that is home to the world's largest nuclear power plant voted against a proposal Sunday to use recycled plutonium at the facility.

The first-ever referendum on one of Japan's most contentious energy policies was not legally binding. But the vote in Kariwa, a village of 5,000 people about 160 miles north of Tokyo, was closely followed by the national media.

The result was expected to ratchet up pressure on the Japanese government and utility companies to rethink plans to introduce plutonium-based mixed oxide, or MOX, in nuclear reactors around the country over the next 10 years.

Resource-poor Japan depends on nuclear energy for about a third of its electricity needs. MOX is made by mixing uranium with plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel, and Japanese energy planners see it as one long-term solution to the troublesome problem of nuclear waste disposal.

Environmentalists are worried because MOX is much more volatile than conventional fuel. And the Japanese public has become increasingly uncomfortable with the government's commitment to all forms of nuclear power following a series of accidents and cover-ups in recent years.

Japanese utility companies planned to begin using MOX fuel two years ago, but the plans were postponed after the nation was shaken by its worst-ever nuclear accident in September 1999.

Two workers died and hundreds of people were exposed to radiation following an uncontrolled nuclear reaction in the town of Tokaimura, just 70 miles northeast of Tokyo.

More than 88 percent of all eligible voters cast ballots in Kariwa on Sunday. According to village official, Naoki Yoshigoe, 1,925 of 3,605 residents who voted were opposed to the plan and 1,533 in favor.

It was a clearly a difficult choice for a community where one household in four has a member working for Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the 16-year-old nuclear plant, or for a related business.

Kazuyuki Takemoto, the leader of a citizen's group campaigning against the MOX project in Kariwa, told NHK television news that the referendum was ``historic.''

The president of Tokyo Electric Power said that he was ``disappointed'' by the result but did not say how it would affect the company's plans to use recycled fuel in Kariwa or elsewhere.

The Japanese government -- which has drawn up plans to introduce the recycled fuel in 16 to 18 nuclear reactors around the country by 2010 -- has not said how it will react to the vote.

But with newly elected Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi promising reforms and an end to politics as usual, a popular outcry against the nuclear industry may get a more sympathetic hearing than under previous administrations.

The MOX fuel intended for use at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant was processed by the Belgian company Belgonucleaire and imported by Tokyo Electric Power. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa's light water reactors produce 8.2 million kilowatts of energy per year, making it the world's largest in terms of power generated.

Another Japanese utility company, Kansai Electric Power Co., suspended its own MOX project following revelations last year that safety data about fuel imported from Britain had been falsified by the processing company.

Plutonium is used by 32 plants in nine countries including France and Germany, according to Greenpeace. The environmental group is strongly opposed to the Japan's MOX program.

``Japan's plan for using plutonium was going nowhere before today's result,'' said Greenpeace spokeswoman Kazue Suzuki. ``Tonight it is in ruin.''

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

Major cuts in nuke arsenal urged

By The Associated Press,
May 27, 2001
Evansville Courier
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200105/27+nuke-052701_news.html+20010527

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 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 bombers, land-based missiles and submarine-launched ICBMs.

Defense Secretary Donald 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 warheads within a decade.

An Air Force research paper said that if the United States cuts its arsenal of more than 6,500 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 Air Force officers, contended that the most logical step would be to eliminate the entire force of 550 land-based ICBMs, most of which are aimed at Russia.

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

-------- new york

Cornell Trustees Vote to Close Old Reactor Despite Protests

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By KENNETH CHANG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/27/nyregion/27NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday

The Cornell University board of trustees voted yesterday to close a little-used 39-year-old nuclear research reactor at the edge of campus despite the protests of some students and the federal Energy Department.

The board voted unanimously during a 40-minute meeting to support a recommendation from university administrators, who argued the reactor was outdated and little used.

The closure of the Cornell reactor, the only remaining research reactor in New York State, drew the opposition of students, more than 1,900 people who signed petitions and senior officials at the federal Energy Department.

An Energy Department advisory committee, which is looking into ways to keep university reactors in operation, recommended that the government give Cornell $250,000, half of the reactor's operating budget, for the coming year.

The reactor, known as the Ward Center for Nuclear Sciences, opened in 1962. It produces a thousandth of the power of a typical commercial nuclear power plant, and was originally used in the university's department of nuclear engineering, which closed five years ago. Today, researchers use neutrons generated by the reactor to study material composition.

The number of research reactors at the nation's universities peaked at 64 in the 1960's but has since dwindled to 28.

-------- us nuc power

Nuclear Power: A Cleaner Source

Sunday, May 27, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A80282-2001May26?language=printer

A May 19 letter by Tom Clements said that nuclear power contributes to global warming because enrichment of uranium depends in large part on coal-fired electrical plants.

However, the coal-fired electrical energy needed to produce a given amount of enriched uranium is far less than the electrical energy that can be produced in a commercial power plant using that amount of enriched uranium. Thus, the system produces far less greenhouse gas than would be the case if coal-fired generation were used entirely.

Of course, if the enrichment process were powered by nuclear power, then even that contribution to greenhouse gas production would disappear. Further, programs to convert highly enriched uranium from dismantled nuclear warheads into low-enriched uranium provide another source of fuel for nuclear power plants and have the added advantage of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

WILLIAM BAILEY
Oakton

-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

U.S. Training For African Peace

MAY 27, 12:23 EST
By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=AFRICA&STORYID=APIS7C8IK0O0

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) - Using rocks to demarcate where walls would be and branches to represent bomb-detecting equipment, about 100 Mali troops practice searching vehicles at a checkpoint in a dusty clearing under the watchful eye of U.S. Army Special Forces trainers.

Trained to fight in some of Africa's bloodiest conflicts, Mali's soldiers are now developing their peacekeeping skills under the U.S.-sponsored African Crisis Response Initiative.

With the United States ever more reluctant to send its own soldiers into foreign wars, this sort of hands-off program promises to be the way of the future for U.S. peacekeeping help in Africa.

But four years into the training program, it is hard to see that it has had any impact on the war-ravaged continent.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, making his first - and closely watched - African tour as America's top diplomat, drew heckles last week in South Africa when he made clear the United States would avoid direct military involvement in African disputes.

In Mali, he insisted that resolving African conflicts ``is a problem for Africans, with the help of others, but fundamentally a problem for Africans.''

No U.S. peacekeepers have deployed on the continent since 18 U.S. soldiers were killed in Somalia in 1993 - a mission approved when Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

When Sierra Leone's rebels overwhelmed a poorly equipped and badly trained U.N. peacekeeping force last year, restarting a 10-year civil war, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed to Western powers to send their better-trained forces to help.

Britain, the country's former colonial ruler, sent 1,000 soldiers to Freetown, where their presence did much to stabilize the situation. The United States provided only logistic support, although it is now training Nigerian and other reinforcements for the U.N. mission.

``We are past that era where the United States was willing to risk American lives,'' said Tim Bork, director of the Carnegie Endowment's African Policy Initiative. ``The cost politically is just too high.''

Under the training program, the United States spends about $20 million a year on peacekeeping instruction and nonlethal equipment for nations committed to democracy in Africa.

The goal is to train national battalions that could be quickly melded into a pan-African force to handle humanitarian disasters and prevent violence like the 1994 massacre of a half-million people in Rwanda - a blood bath the Clinton administration was criticized for not helping to stop.

So far, close to 8,000 troops have received at least initial training in eight countries - Kenya, Senegal, Malawi, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Ghana, Benin and Mali. But the process is slow - the first multinational exercises are only planned for later this year.

U.S. officials say several participants have deployed troops in international operations since training began, including conflicts in Congo, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic and Guinea-Bissau.

It is unclear, however, that the United States has anything to show for its efforts.

``At the end of the day, it is very difficult to point to any single situation where the troops were deployed to any significant effect,'' said Stephen Morrison, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Africa Program.

He cited a number of drawbacks. Funding for the training has been limited, and many of the continent's most capable armies have been unable or unwilling to participate.

Nigeria was until recently ineligible because it was under military rule. South Africa declined. Ethiopia was interested, but barred when it went to war with Eritrea in 1998. Uganda was suspended the same year when it entered Congo's civil war, as was Ivory Coast after its first military coup in 1999.

Morrison also questioned the relevance of the training, which is restricted to peacekeeping without use of lethal force. African cease-fires often collapse, requiring the peacekeepers to turn into peacemakers.

U.S. officials say the training is under review, with more robust, peacemaking instruction a future possibility. There have also been talks with Nigeria about bringing it into the program.

But it is unclear whether the United States will sustain the program long enough for it to have an impact on security in Africa.

In Mali, Powell stated his support for continued ``limited'' training of African peacekeepers. But he acknowledged there were divisions within the Bush administration concerning the extent of U.S. commitments overseas.

Mali was one of the first countries to sign up for the training, which includes computer simulation and field exercises on protecting refugees and negotiating with warring factions.

Participants say it is helping them recondition reflexes learned in brutal conflicts, including Sierra Leone and Liberia, to ones appropriate for maintaining peace.

``Before, when we took up arms, it was to kill,'' explained Sgt. Diarra Mountago, as a soldier waved a branch under a car to simulate checking for bombs. ``Now, when we take up arms, it is to defend someone.''

But Mali's officers insist the impoverished country's soldiers - who use sticks and stones as training aids - will need gear and money if they are to put their training to use.

``We have a battalion ready to go to Sierra Leone, we're just waiting for the U.N. to send the plane tickets,'' said operations chief Col. Soumana Kouyate. ``Even if your head is full of ideas, without the means to act, you can't do anything.''

-------- arms sales

U.S. weapons fan violence in Mideast, critics charge
Some allege Israel uses arms in ways that violate human rights

The Baltimore Sun
May 27, 2001
By Mark Matthews
Sun Foreign Staff
http://www.sunspot.net/bal-te.israel27may270.story

JERUSALEM - Israel's use of American-supplied F-16 fighter jets against Palestinian targets last week fueled a growing debate over whether the United States, as Israel's chief arms supplier, is indirectly contributing to the bloodshed even while U.S. officials work to end it.

The F-16s were only the most startling American weapon used in the 8-month-old resurgence of violence, which has killed at least 446 Palestinians, 87 Israeli Jews and 13 Israeli Arabs, and produces new casualties almost daily.

On numerous occasions, Israel has used U.S.-made attack helicopters to fire on Palestinian targets in areas inhabited by civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as U.S.-made rockets. Other weapons contain American components or are based on U.S. patents.

Critics, including human rights groups and Arab-American organizations, say the American weapons are used by Israel to commit serious human rights violations that inflame the cycle of revenge and violate U.S. law.

While reviewing how U.S. weapons are used and occasionally criticizing Israel, the United States hasn't taken steps to cut off or delay the arms supply. Israel says the weapons are used in self-defense - either to retaliate against shooting, mortar and bomb attacks by Palestinians against Israeli soldiers and civilians or to prevent acts of terrorism.

Gerald Steinberg, a military affairs expert at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, described charges of human rights abuses as "a cynical manipulation to connect Israel to Serbia." He said Israel's action "falls within the letter of the Israeli-American relationship and also the spirit."

$1.8 billion in U.S. aid

Israel gets $1.8 billion a year in U.S. military aid, and the amount is expected to increase to $2.4 billion as U.S. economic aid is reduced. The aid is used both to buy American weaponry and to buy arms made in Israel.

Israel is awaiting $4 billion worth of American military hardware, including new F-16s and Apache and Blackhawk helicopters.

As Israel's main ally and supporter internationally, the United States is committed to maintaining the Jewish state's qualitative edge in weapons over its regional adversaries.

Unlike America's Persian Gulf allies, Israel has steadfastly insisted on defending itself, asking only for the United States to help with the means.

But for the first time in many years, weapons acquired mainly to protect Israel against attack by a regional enemy are being used against a neighboring people who lack both a state and an army and whose weapons - even the mortar bombs used in recent months - aren't comparable to Israel's. Their most lethal weapon is the suicide bomber.

Hefty firepower

Given the hefty firepower at its disposal, the Israeli army has been sparing in its assaults, and officials insist that they are trying to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. But, in addition to the number of civilians killed by live fire and rubber bullets, Israeli tanks, machine guns and helicopters have damaged thousands of homes, displacing and terrifying residents.

Human rights groups say that as an occupying power, Israel has a particular responsibility under the Geneva Conventions to protect Palestinian civilians.

"The evidence available shows that most cases of unlawful killings and injuries have been committed by the Israeli security forces using excessive force," Amnesty International said in a report in March. "The IDF [Israeli Army] has used U.S.-supplied helicopters in punitive rocket attacks during incidents where there was no imminent danger to life and has used helicopter gunships to fire on Palestinians, including children, some of whom have reportedly been killed or injured as a result."

Some of the attacks using American weapons have drawn public American criticism. The annual State Department human rights report described Israel's assassinations of suspected terrorist or militia leaders as "extra-judicial killing," an internationally recognized human rights violation.

The report described the use of an attack helicopter in November in the first such assassination, which killed Fatah official Hussein Mohamed Salim Ubayyat and two Palestinian women walking nearby.

Edward S. Walker, who recently retired as assistant secretary of state for the Near East, told The Sun that U.S. officials had also complained to Israel about the use of attack helicopters in areas where civilian casualties could result.

"It was a clear administration position that this was an excessive use of force," he said. For a while, he noted, Israel stopped using the helicopters.

Attacks on Palestinians

On Monday, U.S. Ambassador Martin Indyk sharply criticized Israeli attacks on Palestinian policemen. His rebuke came a day after Israeli tank fire hit the home of the Palestinian security chief in the West Bank, and three days after an F-16 attack against a police headquarters in Nablus killed 12 policemen.

"Those who would stop the violence - Palestinian police or the head of the Palestinian security organization in the West Bank, Jibril Rajoub - are being hit, bombed, shelled, killed by the Israeli Defense Forces," Indyk said in a speech at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva.

In Washington, the Arab-American Institute lobbying group has been pushing the State Department for months to stop supplying weapons used against Palestinians.

In a recent letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the group's president, James Zogby, said the weapons were "dangerously escalating the current conflict," which he said Arab leaders are coming to see as an "Israeli-U.S. war against the Palestinians."

The administration's role in scrutinizing the use of the weapons stems from the U.S. Arms Export Control Act and a 1952 mutual-defense pact between the United States and Israel. Both require that American weapons be used for the purposes of defense or internal security.

The president and Congress each can cut off military supplies if either finds a "serious violation" of these requirements. In addition, the president can delay or block weapons shipments if a serious violation is suspected but unproved. A separate law, the Foreign Assistance Act, bars aid to countries that commit gross human rights abuses.

Possible rules violations

Several times, the U.S. administration has notified Congress that Israel might have broken the rules on how U.S. weapons are used: in 1978, 1979 and 1982 during fighting in Lebanon, and once after Israel's bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981.

On at least two occasions, the United States delayed new shipments of warplanes to Israel and, from 1982 to 1988, barred Israel from acquiring cluster bombs.

Administration officials, including experts in the Defense, Commerce and State departments, have been reviewing for weeks how Israel has acted during the Palestinian uprising.

While they may conclude Israeli actions constitute defense or protecting internal security, they will also have to weigh whether use of the weapons was proportional to the danger posed by Palestinian gunmen and bombers. Any decision to notify Congress of a suspected violation would likely be made at the top level.

Israeli officials voice confidence that the United States won't punish Israel for its actions during the current uprising.

-------- balkans

War Crimes Debate May Split Yugoslavia

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Yugoslavia-War-Crimes.html

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- A draft law enabling Slobodan Milosevic's extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal is touching off internal squabbles so serious that Yugoslavia's government could fall or be forced into early parliamentary elections, a key official said Sunday.

The comments by Vladan Batic, the justice minister in Yugoslavia's larger republic, Serbia, indicated that opposition was building within the government to a draft measure that would make it possible for the former president to face charges at the court in The Hague, Netherlands.

Coalition partners from the country's smaller republic, Montenegro, object to the measure, calling it a humiliation to cave into pressure from Western powers by handing Yugoslav citizens over to foreign courts.

Speaking at a meeting of his Christian Democrat party, Batic said the objections of Montenegrin coalition partners ``could bring into question the survival of the federal government and mean the possible calling of early parliamentary elections.''

Yugoslavia's president, Vojislav Kostunica, has argued that the new law is needed to end the pariah status the country faced during the 13 years Milosevic was in power before he was ousted last year. Western countries, particularly the United States, have threatened to cut off economic aid unless the country makes progress in cooperating with the tribunal.

Meanwhile, the key Montenegrin leader tied to the federal government, Predrag Bulatovic, warned that his Socialist People's Party ``will not accept pressure and ultimatums.''

Bulatovic and other Montenegrin officials are to hold consultations with Serbian leaders Monday in Belgrade. An official parliamentary debate on the law is expected later.

``Our stand is clear. We want to cooperate (with the Hague Tribunal) but also to preserve our national dignity,'' Bulatovic said.

Serbia and Montenegro's relations are already troubled, with Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic's supporters calling for the two republics to go their separate ways. Bulatovic's supporters have objected to calls for a breakup.

Bulatovic's camp has been vital to Serbian politicians who want to preserve Yugoslavia, but the discord over cooperating with the war crimes court has increasingly affected the shaky federal government.

----

Despite Pentagon Pressure,
NATO Plans Modest Cutback in Bosnia

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/27/world/27BOSN.html

RUSSELS, May 25 - While the Pentagon has said it wants to reduce NATO's peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, the alliance has decided that only modest cuts can safely be made at this time, Western officials say.

Under a plan approved by NATO ambassadors this week, the alliance's peacekeeping force will be reduced from 21,000 to 18,000. The American contingent in Bosnia, which is already in the process of being cut to 3,600 troops, would be reduced to 3,100.

And while NATO will consider steeper cuts in the future, the alliance's top military commander cautioned in an interview that they could not be carried out until Bosnia had an effective police force and a functioning judicial system. Those are ambitious undertakings in a nation still struggling to build a civil society.

"We need a functioning system of law and order" in Bosnia, said the commander, Gen. Joseph Ralston. "I want those conditions as soon as we can get them, but I don't have a time frame for it."

NATO's deployments are expected to be taken up by the alliance's foreign ministers when they meet in Budapest on Tuesday.

The decision about the size of the Bosnian deployment has important ramification for the Balkans, which in addition to Bosnia are racked by tensions in Kosovo and fighting in Macedonia.

The decision is also the latest chapter in a dispute over peacekeeping that continues to divide the Bush administration.

The United States played a central role in negotiating a peace settlement for Bosnia and commands the international peacekeeping force there. When NATO dispatched 60,000 troops to Bosnia in the mid-1990's, 20,000 of them were American.

Since then the NATO force has steadily shrunk, as has the American contribution. American forces no longer make up a third of the peacekeeping force; they are now 18 percent of it.

But some Bush administration officials find that figure too high. During the election campaign, Condoleezza Rice, now President Bush's national security adviser, advocated a new arrangement in which the Europeans would assume the burden for peacekeeping in the Balkans while the American military would train for major wars.

Those remarks created a furor in NATO capitals, and soon after it took office the Bush administration backed away from that view. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told NATO nations during a trip to Europe that American and allied peacekeeping troops went to the Balkans together and that they would leave together.

But the behind-the-scenes battle within the administration over peacekeeping has continued. At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that NATO's military job is done and that the alliance is being drawn into civil tasks that are outside its mission. While Washington asserts that the European and American troops should leave together, Mr. Rumsfeld is arguing in effect that they should leave sooner rather than later.

He has also questioned the deployment of fewer than 900 soldiers in the American peacekeeping force in Sinai and the use of United States forces to train African peacekeeping units.

Mr. Rumsfeld's skepticism toward peacekeeping appears to be part of a broader shift in thinking of Defense Department civilians that puts more emphasis on the planning for major wars, and the development of new high-technology weapons to fight them, and less emphasis on relations with allies and the use of American forces to maintain order in a tumultuous post-cold-war world.

Reducing forces in Bosnia, however, is a complicated issue. Bosnia is less of a tinderbox than Kosovo, but experts say it is not nearly stable enough to function without a substantial NATO peacekeeping force. The force was dispatched after Washington and its allies belatedly put an end to years of ethnic violence.

A new report by the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization, warned that the withdrawal of American troops would encourage extremists in the region, spur allied nations to pull out their troops and jeopardize NATO's entire peacekeeping effort there.

Pondering its options in Bosnia, NATO conducted a six-month review. One option was to keep the current force. Those who advocated that noted that the alliance had yet to fulfill some of its plans. NATO, for example, had hoped to deploy 19 platoons of special policemen like Italy's carabinieri for a total of 570 gendarmes, but so far has managed to deploy only 11.

A second option, and the one recommended by General Ralston and approved by NATO ambassadors, was to make modest reductions in the force. To develop that option, General Ralston ordered a detailed study of the villages in Bosnia and how many patrols were needed.

Under this plan, one battle group is to be removed from each of the three peacekeeping sectors in Bosnia. That will reduce the force under General Ralston's command from 21,000 to 18,000.

The United States contingent will be reduced by an additional 500 troops, shrinking it to 3,100, or 17 percent of the NATO total. Even so, the American deployment is currently costing about $1.5 billion a year.

That will still leave the United States as the largest troop contributor in Bosnia, but the French are close behind. Germany, Britain, Canada and the Netherlands also have significant forces there. Russia and some other nations not in NATO have also contributed peacekeeping troops.

Significantly, General Ralston considered, but rejected for now, options for much deeper cuts. NATO planners, for example, have prepared plans for a "deterrent force." That option would involve slashing the NATO peacekeeping force to 12,000 while maintaining the ability to rush more troops to Bosnia if trouble breaks out.

The long-term hope is that even the "deterrence force" will be slashed to a token "monitoring force" once Bosnia has a functioning civil society and is peaceful.

A Western diplomat said the Pentagon accepted General Ralston's recommendation. But the Pentagon, he added, would still like to put the "deterrent force" in place within the next 6 to 18 months.

"The Clinton administration," he said, "took a longer view."

General Ralston, however, has cautioned that much needs to be done before the deterrence option can be put into effect. Specifically, he cited the need for a local police force and court system to keep order.

"We need to have conditions on the ground that would permit such a DFOR," General Ralston said, referring to the deterrence force option. "Those do not exist at this time."

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Macedonian Troops and Rebels Keep Battling

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/27/world/27MACE.html

SKOPJE, Macedonia, May 26 - Macedonia's government pounded a northern village with helicopter gunships and heavy artillery today in its offensive to drive out ethnic Albanian rebels. The rebels answered with heavy mortars and machine guns.

The government helicopters strafed the village of Slupcane near the rugged border with Kosovo with machine guns and fired rockets while ground troops fired artillery shells. The rebels responded with 82- millimeter mortars.

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

Earlier today, the police in the nearby village of Matejce reported heavy mortar and sniper fire on their positions, Colonel Markovski said.

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

"We will advance step by step until we restore order to these villages," Interior Minister Ljuben Boskoski said 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 on Friday.

Reports that circulated on Friday suggested that as many as 60 civilians had been killed in fighting. The police said dozens had probably been killed but insisted that they were rebels, some in civilian clothing.

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

Here in the capital, a crisis threatened Macedonia's fledgling national unity government, formed with two ethnic Albanian parties in a reaction to the threat of civil war.

On Thursday, it became known that the ethnic Albanian coalition parties had negotiated a peace accord 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 Albanian rights.

The government, however, refuses to negotiate with the rebels or to include them in the political process.

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.

-------- colombia

Bombing Wave in Colombia Continues

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Colombia-Explosions.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Two small bombs exploded in Colombia's third-largest city Sunday, the latest in a wave of bombings that have unnerved the nation.

The pre-dawn explosions in front of a police station and a prison in Cali injured one person and damaged nearby buildings. It wasn't immediately clear who was responsible for the attacks, said police spokesman Jose Barrera.

The explosions followed two bombings in the capital Bogota on Friday that killed four people and injured 26 and an explosion earlier this month in Medellin, Colombia's second-largest city, that killed eight and wounded 138.

Another car bomb blew up May 4 in a hotel parking lot in Cali, wounding dozens of people, including members of a Colombian soccer team. Police have also disarmed several potent car bombs this month throughout the nation.

President Andres Pastrana said suspects in Friday's attack in Bogota ranged from drug traffickers to right-wing paramilitaries and leftist guerrillas. The nation's 37-year armed conflict, pitting the guerrillas against the outlawed paramilitary army and the government, kills some 3,000 people a year.

Meanwhile, paramilitary gunmen on Saturday night executed eight people -- among them a 15-year-old girl -- in two separate attacks in the provinces of Cesar and Santander, the army said.

------

Columbian Rebels confident on Birthday

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Colombia-Rebel-Birthday.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- A U.S.-backed offensive against cocaine crops threatens one of its main sources of cash. Kidnappings, extortion and attacks on defenseless towns have turned public opinion against it.

Yet nearly four decades into its struggle, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is brimming with confidence. As it quietly celebrated another birthday Sunday, Colombia's largest rebel army feels it has never been stronger.

``At 37 years of age, the FARC is at its peak,'' senior rebel commander Andres Paris said in telephone interview from the rebel-controlled village of Los Pozos, the headquarters for peace talks between the guerrillas and the government.

``We have a nationwide presence, politically and militarily, and we have become an important reference point for all Colombians who dream of peace,'' he added.

Paris said the FARC had no plans to hold huge celebrations. There was no immediate news of military attacks Sunday aimed at underscoring the rebels' might.

Two small bombs exploded in Cali, the third-largest city, on Sunday, the latest in a wave of bombings that have unnerved Colombians. The explosions in front of a police station and a prison injured one person and damaged nearby buildings. It wasn't immediately clear who planted the bombs, however. Criminal gangs, paramilitary militias and guerrilla groups are all waging violent campaigns.

For most Colombians, the FARC's rapid rise from ragtag band of communist peasants to Latin America's most powerful insurgency, has meant only grief.

Once largely confined to the jungle, 16,000-member rebel group army has emerged on the battlefield, inflicting pain on government forces and gaining control of huge areas outside Colombia's major cities.

The rebel advance has translated into unprecedented government concessions.

Seeing guerrilla sincerity about peace where few others did, President Andres Pastrana handed over a huge southern territory to the rebels in November 1998. Paris spoke from inside the so-called demilitarized zone, a Switzerland-sized region he called a ``monument'' to the FARC's long fight.

The government hopes the DMZ will become a laboratory for peace. However, peace talks have so far gone nowhere, and Pastrana's own military claims the area -- which is off-limits to government troops and police -- has become a haven for arms and drug smuggling, and kidnap negotiations.

Guerrillas are blamed for more than half of the roughly 3,000 ransom abductions carried out each year in Colombia.

Although few observers believe the rebels stand a chance of taking power, the rising FARC threat sent off alarm bells in Washington -- which approved a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package last year including combat helicopters and Green Beret training.

U.S.-trained battalions are spearheading a massive coca eradication push in southern Putumayo and Caqueta states. The states are rebel strongholds were the FARC and the paramilitaries ``tax'' drug production for profit.

While not renouncing plans to take power by force should the peace process fail, Paris said the FARC is trying to pick up political support in order to match its growing military might.

Colombian officials hope the group will one day disarm and participate in elections, as did guerrillas in Central America during the 1990s.

The FARC formed a clandestine political wing two years ago and has toned down its Marxist rhetoric. It now says its hero is not Lenin, but Simon Bolivar, the 19th century South American liberator.

However, polls give the guerrillas less than 5 percent support nationwide, and almost none outside poor rural areas that are its main recruiting grounds. ``Those percentages indicate the big challenge for the insurgency: to reach the major cities where its message is not being heard,'' Paris said.

-------- puerto rico

Big Ramifications Expected for Politicians Jailed in Vieques Protest

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By JONATHAN P. HICKS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/27/nyregion/27VIEQ.html

With the chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party, the organization's choice for borough president and the Rev. Al Sharpton locked in a federal detention center in Brooklyn, many of New York's politicians have been wondering what the political consequences might be for the men, three-quarters of the self-described "Vieques Four."

For Mr. Sharpton, who is no stranger to acts of civil disobedience that have resulted in incarceration, there was a renewed round of media attention on the heels of his public consideration of a presidential campaign in 2004. Mr. Sharpton found himself featured prominently in the news, a position the onetime mayoral and United States Senate candidate clearly relishes.

But for others, too, there are significant political ramifications. For Roberto Ramirez, the chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party and a chief strategist for the mayoral campaign of Fernando Ferrer, being imprisoned means being absent from the political scene at a crucial moment. The Democratic organization is about to begin collecting signatures for candidates, and Mr. Ramirez's absence has caused officials in the Ferrer campaign and the party to redouble their efforts.

Then there is City Councilman Adolfo Carrión Jr., the Democratic organization's choice to succeed Mr. Ferrer as borough president. Mr. Carrión, a freshman member of the Council, has gained immediate celebrity in the Bronx because of his incarceration. Many politicians in the borough suggested that Mr. Carrión's imprisonment would breathe new life into a race in which he faces fierce competition from at least three other candidates.

Mr. Carrión, Mr. Ramirez and Mr. Sharpton were jailed in Puerto Rico last Wednesday along with Assemblyman José Rivera for protesting near the United States Navy bombing site on Vieques earlier this month. Mr. Sharpton was sentenced to 90 days in jail, while the three other politicians got 40 days each. They were transferred on Friday to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Yesterday, about 100 protesters gathered outside the center for a rally, chanting demands for the immediate release of the four as prisoners inside banged in unison on windows of a common area.

Officials in the Ferrer campaign insisted that Mr. Ramirez's arrest and jailing, while deeply regrettable, would have no significant impact on the campaign. "On a personal level, Mr. Ferrer and the campaign are hoping for Roberto's quick release," said John Del Cecato, a spokesman for Mr. Ferrer's campaign. "But from a campaign perspective, everything is on track. We have a campaign plan that we're continuing to execute, and everything is moving forward as we have planned."

But some officials have harbored concerns. "Roberto Ramirez has played such an important role in guiding the Ferrer campaign," said one member of the Legislature from the Bronx who is close to the organization, "and his being away, even for a week, could have an impact on the campaign."

The Democratic organization in the Bronx, widely known as County, has been a hotbed of activity in the past two days. By yesterday morning, there had been strategy sessions with volunteers, briefings with a steady stream of politicians and discussions with teams of lawyers in the organization's storefront office in Westchester Square.

Indeed, many affiliated with the organization have wondered what impact Mr. Sharpton's incarceration with Mr. Ramirez and the others might have on endorsements that Mr. Sharpton has yet to make. Mr. Sharpton was said to be prepared to endorse Mr. Ferrer several weeks ago, but backed away. In a highly public set of negotiations, Mr. Sharpton said he wanted Mr. Ferrer to endorse black candidates for comptroller and Bronx borough president in exchange for an endorsement, a proposal Mr. Ferrer rejected.

Talks between the Ferrer and Sharpton camps have continued, but with Mr. Sharpton, Mr. Carrión and Mr. Ramirez sharing time together in jail, many Bronx politicians suggest that Mr. Sharpton is now more likely to endorse Mr. Ferrer more enthusiastically, as well as Mr. Carrión.

For his part, Mr. Carrión is facing a tough contest with three other Democrats: State Senator Pedro Espada Jr.; City Councilwoman June M. Eisland; and Willie Colon, the salsa performer and onetime candidate for Congress. City Councilman Lawrence A. Warden is considering running but has not announced his intentions. If he enters the race, he would be the only black candidate.

Although Mr. Sharpton has made headlines in the daily newspapers and on the television news broadcasts, Mr. Carrión's name has been just as prominent in the city's Spanish-language newspapers and broadcast stations since he was sentenced. And, in the Bronx, where Hispanic residents account for nearly half of the population, Mr. Carrión and the others have received much attention.

"I think this is something that doesn't hurt him at all," said Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr., referring to Mr. Carrión. "To many people in the Bronx, the situation in Vieques is an important issue. And Adolfo Carrión has shown that he is willing to sacrifice his freedom for this issue. That means a lot to a lot of people. Plus, he is getting thousands of dollars' worth of publicity for this."

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

No big change to US military, says Pentagon
Rumsfeld's review creates perception of dramatic new policy moves

Agence France Presse,
May 31, 2001
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/world/story/0,1870,47873,00.html?

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has played down expectations of dramatic changes in United States military strategy stemming from a four-month defence review by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Pentagon spokesman Rear-Admiral Craig Quigley said: 'I think there was a widespread perception that there would be many more announcements of dramatic change than we're actually going to see.'

Mr Rumsfeld would most likely fold his thinking into a formal defence review, conducted by the military services every four years, and ultimately into the 2003 defence budget, he said.

He would not say whether the Defence Secretary had settled on an overarching strategy for transforming the military.

'No final version has yet been presented to the President,' he said.

More than a dozen study groups, formed by Mr Rumsfeld, have been tackling an assortment of issues.

These include reaching an overarching strategy on the structure of the military, the nuclear position and military quality-of-life issues.

But the Pentagon says those studies were only intended to get Mr Rumsfeld up to speed and to stimulate his thinking about how to change the military to deal with 21st-century challenges.

A review of strategy by Pentagon futurist Andrew Marshall has attracted intense interest because of reports that it called for a shift in US strategic planning from Europe to Asia and a greater emphasis on the development of long-range high-tech weapons.

But Rear-Admiral Quigley said: 'Andy's paper is just a paper.'--AFP

-------- OTHER

-------- death penalty

Texas House Votes to Spare Retarded Killers

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/27/national/27TEXA.html

AUSTIN, May 26 (AP) - Texas would ban executions of mentally retarded murderers under a bill the State House of Representatives approved today.

"This is a statement of our public policy," said Representative Juan Hinojosa, a Democrat, who sponsored the measure. "It is wrong to execute a person who is mentally retarded."

The State Senate has only until Monday, the last day of the legislative session, to approve or reject the compromise bill.

A joint House and Senate committee approved the compromise on Wednesday.

Under the bill, defendants convicted of murder but found to be mentally retarded would be sentenced to life in prison.

Gov. Rick Perry has indicated that he wants to wait for a United States. Supreme Court ruling on such executions.

Six mentally retarded people have been among the 246 people executed in Texas since the death penalty was reinstated, said Senator Rodney Ellis, a Democrat, who sponsored the bill in the Senate.

-------- energy

Work on New Power Plant Begins After Final Approval

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/27/nyregion/27POWE.html

ALBANY, May 26 - After receiving final approval late Friday, work began today on a power plant 30 miles south of here, beginning a new generation of power plant construction in a state whose demand for electricity is rising fast.

Plants were built in New York at a great pace in the postwar years, but new construction came to a halt in the mid-1970's. Since then, only two major plants have been built, both upstate, and none in the last decade. But increasing demand and deregulation of the power markets are expected to produce a boom in construction. No fewer than 21 proposals to build plants or expand existing ones are before the state.

On Friday night, the Army Corps of Engineers, whose approval is needed for projects in wetlands, issued the final permit required for construction of the plant, a $500 million, 1,080-megawatt power station in Athens, near the Hudson River. The owner is PG&E National Energy Group, a sister corporation to Pacific Gas & Electric, the giant California utility that recently filed for bankruptcy protection, but those problems are not expected to interfere with the New York project.

William F. Quinn, vice president for development of the company, said he hoped to have the gas-fired plant running by the summer of 2003. But that will do little to avert shortages in the area of the state where they are most likely - New York City and Long Island - because there are limited transmission lines for sending power into the metropolitan region from elsewhere.

Among the projects making their way through the approval process are proposals for plants or plant expansions in Queens and Brooklyn and Suffolk and Rockland Counties.

The approval of the Athens plant ends a long and sometimes bitter struggle in which each player - the power companies, the state regulators and the environmental groups - felt its way haltingly through a process that was new to all of them. PG&E filed its first paperwork in an effort to win state approval for the project in September 1997, but approvals from the state and the Army Corps took longer than expected. The state issued environmental permits last June, and the Pataki administration, eager to get new plants built, has since accelerated the process.

"This has been an awful lot longer than we had anticipated it would take, but we're happy to be here now, and we're excited about beginning the process of constructing the project," Mr. Quinn said. "We're not going to waste any time getting started."

Environmentalists and Hudson Valley groups lobbied successfully to impose the most stringent standards on the plant, and to mitigate its effect on views along the river.

From the beginning, PG&E proposed to use a relatively new natural gas technology called combined-cycle turbines, which produces a tiny fraction of the air pollution that comes from older plants.

The company also wanted to draw about five million gallons of water a day from the river for cooling. Although that is far below the hundreds of millions of gallons a day used by older plants, environmentalists protested that it was still too much. Fish are drawn in along with the water, and at some plants they die by the millions.

In the end, the Pataki administration required PG&E to use what is known as dry cooling, a more expensive method that has rarely been mandated, and never before in New York. As a result, the plant will take in just 185,000 gallons of water daily.

"We're pleased that our intervention and advocacy resulted in the state mandate for dry cooling at this plant," said Ned Sullivan, executive director of Scenic Hudson, one of the groups that pushed hard for that requirement.

--------

Biz School Grads Rediscover Energy

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-energy-jobs-.html?searchpv=reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Let's face it. Getting a job in the staid energy business hasn't exactly been considered the pinnacle of success for ambitious business school graduates.

Maybe it should be, since a national energy crisis makes conditions ripe for a resurgence of interest in the industry from both newly minted MBAs and experienced executives.

At the very least, power companies won't soon go out of business given record profits for many in the last year at a time when dot-coms and tech companies are struggling or failing.

``The industry is seen as a growth industry with a lot of happenings, and it's very newsy,'' said Randy Wheeless, a spokesman for Duke Energy Corp. (DUK.N), a traditional North Carolina utility which now trades power all over the country.

After all, with the advent of deregulation, more financially-oriented jobs are available. Also, students are more aware of energy issues including blackouts in California, which have featured prominently in the headlines.

And just last week, President Bush, himself a former oilman, unveiled a new national energy plan to combat the crisis.

That plan calls for the use of cleaner-burning coal and possibly nuclear power as well as more traditional fuels like natural gas and could open up brand-new avenues of employment in the business.

Duke's Wheeless noted that the utility has seen more interest in its openings and, for that reason, has stepped up its recruiting at college campuses.

That interest stems from factors like ``the growth of the industry, which moves at a very dynamic and aggressive pace,'' said James Peters, a spokesman for Mirant Corp. (MIR.N), which markets electricity and natural gas and owns power plants from North America to Asia.

``The hours are better than investment banking and you get the same kind of money,'' he added.

Indeed, the power industry has undergone a sea change. Because of deregulation, ``there are new management opportunities and new trading opportunities in the electricity and natural gas industries,'' explained Stephen Brown, director of energy economics at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Deregulation enabled utilities to engage in the profitable business of selling wholesale power across borders, opening the way for new opportunities that cater specifically to the strengths of people with financial backgrounds.

``The new merchant energy companies have built real dynamic cultures with a commercial orientation and a market focus,'' said Ron Lumbra, an executive director who specializes in the merchant energy field at recruitment firm Russell Reynolds.

``It's a business where there's a huge component in marketing, trading and structured transactions,'' he added.

The MBA curriculum, with its emphasis on finance and risk management, teaches skills that are transferable to the new needs of energy companies.

``With their skill set, they can go into a number of different areas, like strategic development, risk management, trading and anything on the commercial side of the business,'' noted Kim Pollard, a recruiter at Richard, Wayne and Roberts.

This new emphasis means that energy companies are beginning to look like high-tech companies. ``There's a real demand for talent,'' Lumbra said. ``And these companies can compete with any company in any industry.''

A prime example of a new energy company is Enron Corp. (ENE.N), which trades everything from electricity to broadband to weather derivatives. Other names are Dynegy Inc. (DYN.N); El Paso Corp. (EPG.N); and Duke Energy. Mirant, for instance, recruits students from Duke University, University of Chicago and Rice University, among others.

Exelon Corp. (EXE.N) also stepped up its recruiting efforts three years ago, according to Caryl Sabine, a consultant at Exelon Power Team, Exelon's wholesale trading and marketing organization.

During the recruiting season in September, Exelon will target business schools at Harvard, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, Cornell University and Carnegie Mellon University, among others.

New business school graduates aren't the only ones considering a career in the energy sector either.

Lumbra pointed out that at more senior levels there's also ''much more willingness to discuss a move to the energy business,'' from a cross-section of other industries, including professional services, technology companies, industrial companies and financial services firms.

That's partly because of the attention commanded by the energy crisis, which has included rolling blackouts in California where deregulation failed. With millions and even billions of dollars at stake in markets like this, companies are seeking seasoned executives.

``Energy is not so much a take-for-granted kind of service anymore, where you just flip a switch or pull up to the gas pump,'' Lumbra said.

--------

It Gets 78 Miles a Gallon, but U.S. Snubs Diesel

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS with KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/27/business/27DIES.html

FRANKFURT, May 26 - To judge by the mileage it can get, the Audi A2 sounds like just the kind of exotic hybrid-fuel car that President Bush would want to promote with his new energy plan.

The sporty new four-door compact has a top speed of 100 miles an hour. It can travel 78 miles on a single gallon of fuel and emits fewer "greenhouse" gases than almost any other vehicle on the market. Yet the A2 has at its core a technology that generates scorn in the United States: the diesel engine.

The A2 is part of a powerful movement in Western Europe, where gasoline prices are often three times what they are in the United States. Diesel engines burn as much as 30 percent less fuel than gasoline engines of comparable size, and they emit far less carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which have been implicated in global warming. After being disparaged for years because they were noisy, smelly, smoke-belching and sluggish, a new generation of much cleaner, more nimble diesel-powered cars is suddenly the height of fashion in Europe.

Diesel engines powered 32.3 percent, or nearly one-third, of all new cars sold in Europe last year, compared with 21.7 percent in 1997. Analysts predict the share will rise to at least 40 percent by 2005.

The contrast with the United States could not be more stark. Fewer than 1 percent of new American cars have diesel engines. And the gap is likely to widen, because American antipollution regulations severely restrict the sale of diesel engines, and American environmental groups are adamantly opposed to relaxing them. European environmentalists, while pressing for tougher standards, are far more accepting of the new diesel technology.

A report commissioned by Congress and being prepared by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences bluntly suggests that the United States may be missing a big chance.

According to a person familiar with the draft report, which is due in July and is being prepared with considerable secrecy, the panel will suggest that "the surest, fastest way to improve the fuel efficiency of the American fleet would be to allow diesels to be a greater part of the landscape." President Bush has said that he is waiting for the report before deciding what, if any, changes to make in American fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles.

But the panel is not expected to call for a change in the environmental rules. The person close to the panel said a shift toward diesel would require "gigantic" investment and "would probably be a foreign- dominated technology."

Harry Pearce, a vice chairman of General Motors until Friday, when he becomes chairman of its Hughes Electronics unit, said the company had no intention of investing in more diesel engines for the American market unless the air pollution rules change. "We're denying ourselves the largest incremental step we could take" to reduce American emissions of global-warming gases, he said.

In Germany, home of Mercedes and Porsche and unlimited speeds on the autobahn, the average new car has improved its fuel efficiency steadily since 1990 and now gets about 32 miles a gallon. The average diesel car gets about 40 miles a gallon. By contrast, the average efficiency of new vehicles in the United States has deteriorated steadily over the period as ever more sport utility vehicles have been sold, and was just 24.5 miles a gallon last year.

By all accounts, diesel technology has made a series of major advances in the last 10 years. The days are long gone when diesel engines spewed black smoke. The newest engines are almost as quiet and smooth as their gasoline rivals, and the telltale metallic knocking sounds have almost disappeared in some cars.

Performance has also improved. The newest generation of pump-injected and "common rail" diesels offer better torque and acceleration than comparable-size gasoline- powered cars.

"The performance is fantastic," said Paul Schröder, a German physical therapist who is trading his old Audi gasoline car for a diesel- powered A2. "My main goal was to save on fuel expenses. But I love to drive, and I wanted a car that would be fun. This car has great acceleration, and it is very agile. It really is a lot of fun."

Mr. Schröder calculates that he will cut his monthly fuel bill by about half, partly because diesel fuel is cheaper and partly because of the new car's extraordinary mileage.

Engines emit carbon dioxide and other gases implicated in global warming in direct proportion to the amount of diesel or gasoline they burn, so vehicles with more efficient diesel engines emit less of these gases. And today's diesel engines produce far fewer tiny soot particles than just seven years ago.

As a result, European environmentalists and government officials have been much more comfortable with diesels than their American counterparts. "A liter of diesel takes one farther and produces fewer greenhouse gases," said Albrecht Schmidt, a top expert on energy issues for Germany's Green Party. "The big problem with diesel is the small particulates, but we think that problem can be solved with new particulate filters."

American environmentalists remain highly critical. "Diesel is the quick and dirty way to increase fuel economy," said Daniel Becker, the director of energy and global warming policy at the Sierra Club. "As long as we have other technologies that are clean, I don't see the point in producing carcinogenic soot."

Differences in attitudes among environmentalists are reflected in the stringency of air pollution rules, with European regulators giving fairly lenient treatment to diesels while American regulators have virtually banned them.

Stringent air pollution rules for diesel engines were issued with virtually no warning by the California Air Resources Board in late 1998, and will take effect in the 2004 model year. The decision was made by the board itself, a group of political appointees, many of whom were about to leave office because their patron, Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, was retiring. The board's technical staff had recommended more lenient standards, but at its final meeting, with no staff analysis, the board adopted stricter rules with little discussion.

The rules were chosen without consideration for the ramifications for global warming; California regulators say that is an international issue outside their purview.

The Environmental Protection Agency traditionally copies California's air pollution rules and did so for the diesel rule in late 1999. The agency's decision, which also takes effect in the 2004 model year, came despite heavy federal subsidies by the Energy Department and the Transportation Department for the production of prototype vehicles with hybrid engines that could run on either diesel fuel or electricity.

General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChyrsler each completed diesel- electric hybrid cars in early 2000 that could get 80 miles to the gallon, but have largely abandoned these projects because of the new air pollution rules. They are now struggling to catch up with Toyota and Honda in the production of hybrid vehicles that use electric power to improve the overall fuel efficiency of vehicles with gasoline engines.

At the same time, compared with Europe, the United States has much dirtier diesel fuel - used by heavy trucks and in a slightly different form, as home heating oil - with far higher levels of sulphur. The American oil industry, much more influential than Europe's oil industry because the United States produces a lot of oil, has lobbied successfully to prevent rules requiring cleaner fuel to take effect until June 2006.

In France, more than half of all new cars sold are powered by diesel engines. "Diesels are trendy," said Thierry Dombreval, senior vice president for marketing at Renault. "The customers for diesels are younger and more affluent, and those are the people who are trendsetters."

BMW and Mercedes are selling diesels in nearly half of their most expensive cars. The waiting period for the diesel version of the Mercedes sport utility vehicle is 12 months, which is three months more than for the gasoline version.

Diesel currently sells at an average of $1.45 a gallon in the United States, compared with $1.70 for gasoline, but diesel prices sometimes rise above gasoline prices in winter when refineries produce heating oil instead of diesel. In most European countries, diesel is at least 20 percent cheaper than gasoline because of tax treatment.

A leading reason for Europe's boom in diesel-powered cars is their tax treatment. Most European countries impose much higher "ecology" taxes on gasoline than diesel fuel, mainly because governments want to avoid damaging commercial truckers.

In the United States, the image of diesel cars has never recovered from the damage done in the early 1980's when automakers, responding to sharp rises in oil prices, raced to introduce such models on a large scale without working out the technical glitches first. "We put some vehicles out there in the marketplace that, independent of the emissions and fuel economy, just didn't work very well," Mr. Pearce of G.M. said.

In Europe, both Ford and G.M., which have been producing cars there for decades, lost significant market share because they failed to recognize the coming popularity of diesels years ago. Today, both companies are racing to catch up.

"I believe it is just a matter of time before the United States comes around to diesel," said David W. Thursfield, chief executive of Ford of Europe. "The technology has moved ahead so much. Fifty miles to the gallon is normal, and you don't even know you are driving a diesel."

--------

Senator Plans to Examine Gas Prices

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Gas-Prices.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Democrat poised to take over as chairman of a Senate investigative panel said he plans to look into the effect of oil industry mergers on the increase in gasoline prices.

``The oil companies need to explain why gas prices have increased so dramatically given that there has been no comparable increase in the per-barrel cost of oil to them,'' said Michigan Sen. Carl Levin.

An oil industry representative said Sunday that the companies were not conspiring to raise prices, and cited lower output by oil-producing countries and too few U.S. refineries as reasons for the higher prices.

``To suggest people from all these companies got to gather in a hotel room to set a price or a range of prices, that just wouldn't happen. That is simply not how it works in the real world,'' said Mike Shanahan, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute.

``Prices go up and down because of supply and demand,'' he said.

Federal regulators, in recent reports, found no evidence of price-fixing.

The average price of gas has risen more than 20 cents in just six weeks to $1.69 for a gallon of regular unleaded. Prices are up 10 percent from last year and some analysts predict they could reach $2 this summer, possibly $3 in California and parts of the Midwest.

Levin has already asked the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to examine whether recent mergers have lessened competition and driven gas prices higher.

Mergers have created Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Texaco, Royal Dutch/Shell Group and BP Amoco PLC, and the pending combination of Tosco Corp. and Phillips Petroleum Co. would create the nation's fifth-largest gasoline retailer.

Levin also intends to pursue a separate review by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which he is expected to lead when Democrats take power in the Senate as a result of the decision by Vermont's James Jeffords to leave the GOP and become an independent.

Earlier this month, nearly 70 Democratic lawmakers signed a letter urging President Bush to demand relief from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and order a Federal Trade Commission inquiry into potential price gouging.

Democrats and environmentalists have accused Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, both former oilmen, of catering to the domestic energy industry.

In response to the request for an FTC probe, Cheney said, ``There's no reason to believe there's price gouging.'' The only reason to order up an FTC investigation now would be to give the appearance of having a solution, he said.

Bush staunchly opposes interfering in energy markets, and his spokesman has said there is ``no magic wand that (a politician) can wave over gas prices to lower them.''

The FTC earlier this month closed a three-year investigation after finding no evidence that major oil refiners violated antitrust laws in marketing West Coast gasoline.

An FTC report released in March that looked into the run-up of gasoline prices in the Midwest last summer said some energy producers withheld supplies of gasoline to maximize profits, but found no evidence that companies conspired to raise gas prices.

--------

Californians brace for a summer of blackouts

05/27/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001-05-27-power.htm

LOS ANGELES (AP) - While most people celebrate Memorial Day, Jan and Ralph Vazquez will celebrate their own independence day - energy independence.

Worried about a summer of rolling blackouts and fed up with rising utility bills, the couple installed a $33,000 solar system in their four-bedroom home in San Rafael a few weeks ago. It can store enough energy in batteries to power their refrigerator and other appliances for up to six hours if there is a blackout.

"I think there is a little bit of fear and concern about to what extent would we be subject to blackouts and how much energy is going to cost us," Jan Vazquez said. "The simple solution is to be independent, or as much so as possible."

The Vazquezes are among millions of Californians facing an uncertain summer, wondering how they will cope with what is expected to be several months of rolling blackouts.

The prospect of daily power outages as the temperature rises and air conditioning use peaks has left many people apprehensive, from parents of newborns who need warm bottles to people who require electric-powered medical devices in their homes to office workers worried about getting stuck in an elevator.

California already has endured six days of rolling blackouts this year, each lasting about an hour and hitting different parts of the state. Estimates vary about what lies ahead.

One industry-sponsored watchdog group, the North American Electric Reliability Council, predicted California would face an average of 20 hours a week of rolling blackouts.

Responding to complaints following the earlier outages, state power officials this month plan to begin issuing weather advisory-style warnings 24 hours before an expected blackout.

Chicago, faced with a deteriorated electrical system after years of neglect and severe weather, adopted a blackout plan in 1999 that is being studied as a model by California officials.

Today, for example, Chicago police officers carry portable stop signs to darkened intersections moments after a blackout hits.

"There's no just excuse for trapping people in elevators," said Bill Abolt, Chicago's commissioner of environment. "There's no excuse for shutting off power to an intersection with no notification to police and fire in advance."

Across the country, reduced hydroelectric production due to the Pacific Northwest drought, an aging transmission system, rising costs for the natural gas that fires many power plants and increasing demand for electricity is expected to produce shortages and higher prices in the Northwest, New England and other regions.

The stakes are high in California. It has the world's sixth largest economy and is home to bellwether high tech companies such as Intel and Cisco Systems.

For some retailers, the impact is minimal. Clerks can switch from an electric-powered cash register to battery-powered calculators. Some companies can fire portable generators to power their phone system with minimal disruption.

The California Manufacturing and Technology Association recently estimated a summer of blackouts could cost the state $21 billion and 136,000 jobs as manufacturers curtail production and retail stores suffer a slowdown.

The Bay Area Economic Forum has estimated that rolling blackouts could cost as much as $15 billion and 15,000 jobs.

A summer of rolling blackouts also will test the emotional mettle of Californians, who normally rally when faced with such natural disasters as earthquakes and wildfires.

"It's going to be an interesting natural experiment," said Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Davidson professor of management at Claremont Graduate University.

"When there is a natural calamity, people often respond really positively. This is different in the sense it is not a natural calamity and you can blame politicians and gougers for it. It could turn into resentment against those in power and those who should be supplying the power."

California's plight already has become comic fodder.

From David Letterman to radio talk shows, the state has been the butt of power-related jokes. On a recent episode of the game show "The Weakest Link," which is taped in Los Angeles, the acerbic host asked which player was having a "rolling mental blackout."

Jan Vazquez, however, suggests that California has the chance to go from punch line to role model.

"California has the opportunity to be a leader again," Vazquez said, urging more state investment in alternative energy rather than sinking billions more into buying power at inflated prices.

"If there were more homeowners like us and more businesses that were generating their own electrical power, I think we would avoid blackouts completely - maybe not by this summer, but by next summer," she said.

-------- environment

Explorer Says Arctic Ice Thinning Noticeably

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-environment-w.html

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The ice sheets covering the Arctic seas have thinned noticeably over the last seven years, most likely as a result of global warming, said a Norwegian explorer who has just skied alone across the top of the world.

Boerge Ousland, speaking after an 82-day trip in which he traveled 1,300 miles from the northern tip of Russia to the North Pole and then down to Canada, said on Sunday he had seen other evidence which hinted strongly at the effects of climate change.

The 38-year-old explorer, holder of four long-distance polar skiing records, measured the ice thickness as part of a study by the Norwegian Polar Institute. He made similar measurements on a trek from Russia to the North Pole in 1994.

``The ice toward the North Pole seems to be much thinner than normal and this made it much more broken so that the conditions were much more difficult than they had been in 1994 ... at around 87 degrees North it was up to a meter thinner,'' Ousland said.

``I think personally that things are happening withwarming ... that the ice is getting thinner and there is less ice,'' he told reporters during his first meeting with the media since reaching Ward Hunt Island in Canada's Arctic on Wednesday.

Officials with the expedition said the ice that Ousland had measured during the trip ranged from two feet to six feet in depth.

Many scientists believe that increasing emissions of greenhouse gases -- caused by burning fossil fuels -- are contributing significantly to global warming.

Earlier studies showed the Arctic sea ice had thinned over the last 30 years or so to six feet from 10 feet and had shrunk by around six percent since 1975.

Ousland said he had noticed other distinct changes in the Arctic since 1994, including a much greater number of polar bears closer to the North Pole.

POLAR BEARS PROLIFERATING

``I saw between 50 and 60 polar bear tracks on the Russian side. In 1994 I saw two tracks, so that's a big, big change,'' he said. One explanation could be that thinning ice meant the bears needed to travel further to hunt seals, he added.

At one point the explorer was almost ambushed by a female polar bear and her two cubs but managed to scare them off with a warning shot from his revolver.

Ousland said he had also been startled to see large pieces of driftwood from Siberia very close to the North Pole, another possible indicator that the ice was much thinner than usual.

``I saw big logs standing straight up, like poles, with roots and everything. I also saw sand from riverbeds on (pieces of) ice which probably came from the coast of Russia,'' he said.

In 1990, Ousland and a colleague were the first people to ski unaided to the North Pole and in 1994 he repeated the feat by himself. In 1996 he became the first person to ski solo to the South Pole and a year later he became the first to cross the Antarctic continent unaided and alone.

But the goal of his latest trip -- to become the first man to ski across the Arctic unaided -- died on the third day when his sledge broke and a new one had to be airlifted to him.

``This was a big, big mental stress and for me it was actually a victory to actually keep on going,'' he said.

Ousland lost 37 pounds during his trek despite a diet of 7,000 calories a day and is still in pain from ``pretty bad'' frostbite in both thighs. During his trek he averaged about 10 hours of skiing a day, dragging a sled which weighed 360 pounds at the outset.

Ousland said he had been shocked by the death of Japanese Polar explorer Hyoichi Kohno, who drowned after plunging through thin ice in the Canadian Arctic earlier this month.

``It was a big stress for me because I was thinking about all the times I have had close calls on thin ice and how thin the line is between life and death when you are going on solo expeditions out there,'' said Ousland, who at one point was just 1.2 miles from where Kohno died.

-------- health

U.N. Expert: Crucial Battle Against AIDS Is Prevention

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/27/world/27NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, May 25 - Peter Piot, the epidemiologist who has been coordinating an international campaign against AIDS since 1995, is spending less time worrying about the price of drugs and more about the shortage of condoms.

Dr. Piot said he feared that attention had shifted from the front lines of the fight, the thousands of communities where the most basic means of prevention are still beyond the reach of the poor and vulnerable.

"We feel strongly that the response to AIDS has to be a balanced one: prevention and treatment," he said. "In the current climate, people forget that. I'm really getting tired of the fact that a terribly complex problem of treatment and care for people having H.I.V. is reduced to the price of anti-retroviral drugs."

Such are fighting words to his critics. As the United Nations prepares for a special General Assembly session on AIDS on June 25 through 27, the first session ever held to discuss a disease, a coalition demanding that access to treatment be declared a basic right is planning to demonstrate in New York that week. The coalition, the Global Treatment Access Campaign, will demand a war chest of $16 billion to fight AIDS, a cancellation of third world debt and an end to American efforts to protect drug companies from patent challenges in poor countries.

Secretary General Kofi Annan has asked countries to create a global fund of $7 billion to $10 billion above the current money available for AIDS, which is now approaching $1 billion.

Dr. Piot, a Belgian and an expert on Africa who was among those who first identified the ebola virus and later saw some of the first effects of AIDS in Congo, said that before money on that scale could be spent in the poorest countries - if indeed it can be raised - more effective prevention, testing and delivery systems must be put in place.

A strategy for how to use the global fund has now been designed and will be presented to the Unaids board by the beginning of June, he said. The fund, to fight not only AIDS but also tuberculosis and malaria worldwide, will be collected and distributed through a collective venture involving United Nations agencies, the World Bank and the International monetary Fund, he said.

But all decisions about how the money should be spent will be left to experts within the recipient countries, and the headquarters office will deliberately be kept very small, with no more than 10 administrators, Dr. Piot said.

Under the plan to be presented to the Unaids board, he said, the World Bank, part of the United Nations system, will hold the money but not control it or attach conditions to its use.

Recently, Joseph Kabila, the president of Congo, a country struggling to emerge from civil war, went to the Unaids office in Geneva to ask for help in starting an AIDS program, Dr. Piot said. "The Caribbean, the second most-affected region, is now waking up," he added, and he has moved on to planning campaigns for the next epicenters, Eastern Europe and South Asia, particularly India. For some countries this means persuading governments to recognize vulnerable groups often kept in the shadows, among them gay men and sex workers.

An anti-establishment protester in his youth, Dr. Piot now argues for maintaining good relations with pharmaceutical companies. "We work with everybody who's part of the problem to find a solution," he said. "I think that very soon the issue of the price of anti-retroviral drugs will be off the table."

Then, Dr. Piot said, "We start with the real problem: building the infrastructure." Expensive health care systems are not necessarily the first or only priority. For AIDS you need more than health care, you need the school system, you need all the communications."

"The government sets policy," Dr. Piot continued, "makes sure there are resources and all that, but it's not government that's going to promote condoms in gay bars at night - nowhere in the world. To promote condoms you don't need doctors. You use commercial outlets, all these kiosks with women selling soap, beer, cigarettes - that's where people go for condoms, not to a clinic."

At the grass roots, where many will never have access to anti-retroviral drugs, condoms are also in short supply. "Not only male condoms but female condoms as well," Dr. Piot said, adding that very conservative views about women block the development and distribution of female condoms. "This seems to me - and maybe this is too strong of a statement - a really sexist approach, not thinking that women need something also that's under their control. Let's make sure that we increase the options for women to protect themselves - and increasing means from zero to one option."

-------- human rights

Political Crimes Bill Passes in Iran

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-Rights.html

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- A bill that bans closed-door and no-jury political trials passed a crucial test in parliament Sunday, when lawmakers placed it on the agenda for the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Despite attempts by hard-line legislators to block the ``political crimes'' bill, a majority in the reformist-dominated house voted in favor of it, said Rajab-Ali Mazrouei, a leading reformist legislator.

Details of the bill would be debated this week, he said. If it passes the 290-seat Majlis, or parliament, it will go to the hard-line Guardian Council, which must approve all bills before they become law.

Mazruoei said it was premature to predict if the council would ratify the legislation, which he said ``clearly defines political crimes to clear ambiguities on political offenses.''

The bill would protect many political activists and journalists who have been jailed following closed-door trials without juries in courts controlled by hard-liners.

Hard-line lawmaker Mousa Qorbani opposed the bill in the parliament's open session, which was broadcast live on state-run Tehran radio. ``This bill would allow activists to carry out what they want to do under the protection of the law,'' he said.

The hard-liners are locked in a power struggle with supporters of the pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami.

Khatami has complained he has been powerless to stop constitutional violations by his opponents, including imprisonment of activists without fair trials.

``Approval of the bill is a fulfillment of yet another promise we had made to the people,'' Mazrouei said.

In February 2000 elections, Iranian hard-liners lost control of the legislature for the first time since 1979. They still control powerful but unelected institutions, including the judiciary, military and television network.

In an apparent victory for Khatami, Iran's judiciary lifted a ban on a re-election rally for the president, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Sunday.

According to Khatami aide Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Tehran's judiciary administration told him Saturday that Monday's rally could not go ahead because it was at a state-owned stadium and the other candidates are barred from using government facilities for their campaigns, IRNA reported.

But hours later, Abtahi said, the ban was lifted after he clarified that his office was paying to rent the stadium.

-------- police

Pakistani Police Arrest Hundreds

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Pakistan-Arrests.html

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) -- Police arrested hundreds of people in southern Pakistan on Sunday in an attempt to prevent a strike called by a Sunni Muslim group to protest the slaying of its leader.

About 450 people were arrested in Sindh province, including about 250 from Karachi, the provincial capital and the country's commercial center, ahead of Monday's strike organized by Sunni Tehrik, police said.

But Abbas Qadri, a leader of Sunni Tehrik, told The Associated Press that at least 3,000 of its supporters were arrested.

Sunni Tehrik called the strike to protest the May 18 killing of its leader, Saleem Qadri, and five of his companions, who were shot by unidentified assailants when they were going toward a mosque.

Police suspects a rival Sunni Muslim group, Sipah-e-Sahaba, or Guardians of the Friends of the Prophets, for the killings. Sipah-e-Sahaba, which denies the charge, is one of Pakistan's most militant Sunni Muslim groups and has sharp differences with Saleem Qadri's nonviolent Sunni Tehrik.

Abbas Qadri said his group, with several thousand members throughout Pakistan, would go ahead with the strike despite the arrests. The Sunni Tehrik has urged people to stay home on Monday and keep their businesses, shops, offices and schools shut.

Hundreds of people have been killed throughout Pakistan in religious violence in recent years. Most killings are the result of rivalry between extremist Sunni Muslim and Shiite Muslim groups. Hard-line Sunni Muslim factions also target one another's supporters.

Sunni Muslims, a majority in Islamic Pakistan, are divided into several schools of thought, which are often at loggerheads over small religious issues such as dress or beard length.

Shiite Muslims, who comprise 15 percent of the population, are the main target of extremist Sunni Muslim organizations.

-------- racism

Hundreds of Police Rushed to Riot - Hit British Town

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-britain.html

OLDHAM, England (Reuters) - Hundreds of extra police were rushed onto the violence-scarred streets of Oldham on Sunday to try and prevent a second night of race riots sparked by white youths attacking an Asian family.

Saturday night's fighting, which injured 30 people and led to 25 arrests, thrust race relations, crime, immigrant numbers and asylum seekers all high onto the agenda for Britain's general election on June 7.

Minor outbreaks of violence in the manufacturing town in northwest England occurred throughout Sunday, a police spokeswoman said. ``There have been sporadic reports of youths gathering and some stone-throwing.''

In the most serious incident, a group of mainly Asian youths attacked a pub near the center of the run-down town, throwing bricks through the windows.

Police said the rioting, Britain's worst race incident since a white supremacist's nail bomb attacks in London two years ago, was sparked by a gang of white youths who threw bricks at a house belonging to a Bangladeshi family on Saturday.

As news of the attack spread, hundreds of Asian youths, many born in Britain after their Bangladeshi families moved to Britain as textile factory workers from the Indian sub-continent in the 1960s, descended on Oldham's town center.

Some 500 youths hurled bricks and petrol bombs at hundreds of police who were rushed several miles (km) from nearby Manchester, England's main northern city.

Cars were set on fire, at least five pubs were firebombed and a number of police cars were badly damaged.

``There were fires burning in the streets...and the air was full of smoke,'' a police officer told Reuters.

PETROL BOMBS THROWN

Manchester police Superintendent Eric Hewitt told reporters: ``They threw quite a lot of petrol bombs. I am very angry. We could have had someone killed.''

Home (Interior) Minister Jack Straw said Saturday's violence was ``initially set off by whites and later, more seriously, involved Asians.''

Paul Barrow, landlord of the Live and Let Live Pub, told Reuters he was ``shell-shocked'' by the violence, which reached its height after midnight as Asian youths roamed the streets.

``This is total devastation,'' he said of the burned curtains and smashed windows at his pub.

A Reuters photographer was attacked and his equipment smashed during the height of the rioting.

John Hamley, landlord of the Ordnance Arms pub, said parts of the town had been turned into no-go areas for whites. He said police had lost control of the town.

Oldham hit the headlines in Britain earlier this year when national newspapers printed pictures of the battered face of a 76-year-old white man who said he had been attacked by a gang of Asian youths. A 15-year-old Asian boy was later charged with racially-motivated assault.

The simmering racial tensions in Oldham have become so explosive that earlier this month Straw banned political marches in the town. On May 5, police arrested 16 people after the ultra-right wing National Front party went ahead with a march in defiance of the ban.

Ethnic minorities, mainly from the Caribbean, the Indian sub-continent, Africa and China, make up about five percent of Britain's 57 million population. Latest official statistics show Bangladeshis number about 300,000.

The opposition Conservatives, badly trailing Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party in opinion polls, have tried to make election issues out of crime and a growth in the number of refugees and immigrants coming to Britain.

The debate about whether Britain is a ``soft touch'' for immigrants has pitted Conservative demands for a crackdown against Labour's belief that genuine economic immigrants should not be penalized.

-------- spying

BODY OF SECRETS
Shadow Warriors 'Body of Secrets' by James Bamford

Reviewed by William D. Hartung
Sunday, May 27, 2001
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A77283-2001May25?language=printer

Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency From the Cold War Through The Dawn of a New CenturyBy James BamfordDoubleday. 613 pp. $29.95

James Bamford's sequel to The Puzzle Palace, his path-breaking 1982 exposé of the National Security Agency (NSA), has been well worth the wait. Crisply written and prodigiously researched, Body of Secrets draws on scores of interviews with current and former NSA personnel, together with mounds of previously unreleased government documents. It is the most detailed picture yet of the activities of the world's largest intelligence-gathering organization.

The NSA grew out of the signal intelligence arms of the Army, Navy and Air Force; during the Truman administration it was spun off as an independent entity that unified the separate efforts of the three branches of the military. Unlike its smaller sister agency, the CIA, which has a long history of engaging in covert operations to topple unfriendly governments and assassinate designated enemies, the NSA has never served as an action agency but rather eavesdrops on the communications of friends and foes alike in an effort to give U.S. policy makers a heads up on critical security developments. But as Body of Secrets makes clear, the NSA's monitoring function is far from passive or risk-free.

Consider two of this book's most telling set-pieces: the background to the Soviet downing of Francis Gary Powers's U-2 spy flight in 1960 and the ill-fated voyage of the Pueblo, a Navy/NSA surveillance ship that was captured off the coastal waters of North Korea in January 1968 and held, along with its crew, for 11 months. Both incidents raise serious questions about whether the benefits of gathering certain kinds of intelligence data are worth the risks.

Amid the public outcry that followed in the wake of Gary Powers's mission, Bamford reveals, President Dwight D. Eisenhower worked assiduously to cover up an even more damning secret: that as president, he had personally supervised and authorized a series of high-risk surveillance flights over Soviet airspace. One operation, known as Project Homerun, involved sending RB-47 bombers over the North Pole and deep into Soviet air space in search of radar and missile installations.

Because the planes flew in formation as if on a bombing mission, the operation ran a genuine risk that Soviet officials might interpret it as a nuclear attack and launch a retaliatory strike. Bamford argues that the project, which involved 156 eavesdropping and photo reconnaissance missions over a two-month period during 1956, may have been one of the most dangerous actions ever approved by a president.

In the case of the Pueblo, Bamford reveals that the officials in charge of choosing the ship's route first watered down, then ignored, an early warning from an NSA analyst that the mission could easily provoke a North Korean attack. Bamford then provides a dramatic account of the ship's capture, punctuated at key points with lines of poetry composed by seaman Stu Russell, who served on the Pueblo. Tennyson it's not, but the inclusion of Russell's imperfect turns of phrase adds a human touch to a story that could all too easily have veered off into techno-speak and military jargon.

The human factor also looms large in Bamford's presentation of the agency's strengths and weaknesses. His sketches of agency personnel, from high-level political operators like former NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman to the pilots, cryptographers and linguists who risked their lives to gather critical information under dangerous circumstances, provide some of the most engaging interludes in Body of Secrets. He describes, for example, how Navy Lt. Leonard LeSchack and Air Force Capt. James F. Smith parachuted onto a tiny, abandoned Soviet spy island known as North Pole 8 and then had to be plucked off holding on to hot air balloons that were hooked and lifted by a passing plane.

Probably the most controversial -- and certainly the most wrenching -- of Bamford's disclosures here is the blow-by-blow account of the Israeli attack on a U.S. surveillance ship, the USS Liberty, during the 1967 Middle East war. Drawing upon interviews with survivors of the attack and messages sent back and forth at the time by U.S. military and intelligence personnel, Bamford makes a strong circumstantial case that the Israeli aircraft and patrol boats that attacked the U.S. surveillance ship for several hours, killing 34 crew members and wounding 171, did so deliberately. Among the sources he cites is U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. John Morrison, who was deputy chief of the NSA at the time of the attack. Morrison states bluntly that nobody believes the explanation that Israeli forces attacked the ship by mistake, and asserts that "The only conjecture that we ever made that made any near sense was that the Israelis did not want us to intercept their communications at that time."

Bamford suggests that the Israelis undertook the attack in an attempt to cover up an Israeli massacre of Egyptian POWs that was under way at that moment: The Israelis, he argues, were out to destroy any evidence that the ship might have gathered to document the slaughter. Bamford's speculations on this inflammatory point are not as well-documented as his detailed account of the attack itself, but his extended discussion of the affair raises disturbing questions that demand further investigation.

Other revelations here serve as cautionary tales about the importance of subordinating military officials to civilian authority. Bamford unearths the details of an early 1960s covert plan called Operation Northwoods, a Joint Chiefs of Staff initiative that would actually have staged a Cuban attack on the United States in order to create the pretext for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. Thankfully, JFK's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, vetoed the operation -- but like the later NSA skullduggery in the Iran-Contra affair, Operation Northwoods shows how far covert intelligence operations can stray into unilateral war-making, accountable to neither Congress nor public opinion. And on a more mundane bureaucratic -- but no less critical -- scale, Bamford's analysis of decision-making in Vietnam in light of the conflicting assessments offered by NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies on such basic matters as the size and capabilities of Viet Cong forces offers a fresh perspective on this ongoing historical debate.

On a more urgent contemporary note, Bamford takes a sober look at Echelon, an integrated worldwide eavesdropping network dominated by the United States and the United Kingdom, which has sparked controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. Citing the case of Nasser Ahmed, an asylum-seeker from Egypt who was jailed for three years on secret charges stemming from an NSA or CIA intercept, Bamford concludes that, without appropriate oversight, Echelon could become a sort of cyber-secret police, untrammeled by courts or juries or the right to a defense.

Such discussions, by themselves, represent an important contribution to our understanding of the shadowy history of the American intelligence world. But more than that, they pose an important question, one that often lingers beneath the surface of the narrative of Body of Secrets: What lengths should a democratic society go to in gathering intelligence data? Bamford demonstrates that, in some instances, the risks to the security of U.S. personnel or to the values of a democratic society are greater than the benefits to be reaped from a particular operation. One hopes that the new cohort of policy makers in the Bush administration will hear and heed this lesson as they gear up to deal with the security challenges of the volatile post-Cold War world. •

William D. Hartung is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School and the author of "And Weapons for All."

-------- activists

Hong Kong Activists Remember Tiananmen Crackdown

New York Times
May 27, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-rights-.html

HONG KONG (Reuters) - More than 1,000 people marched through Hong Kong Sunday to mark the 12th anniversary of Beijing's bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square democracy movement.

Protesters urged China's communist authorities to release all jailed democracy campaigners and end one-party rule.

They also demanded Beijing reverse its official verdict that the Tiananmen Square protests were a counter-revolutionary rebellion.

China sent tanks into Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, to crush the student-led protests. Human rights activists say hundreds and perhaps thousands were killed.

Hong Kong is the only Chinese controlled territory where people can openly mark the crackdown.

The annual rally took on a new theme this year with activists calling on young people to carry on the fight for democracy.

The protesters marched behind a large yellow banner reading ''Educate our young people and pass on the democracy torch,'' and carried a mock coffin.

``We are very worried the younger generation do not really know what actually happened during June 4,'' said Lee Cheuk-yan, spokesman of the Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.

``There have been so many versions and so much propaganda on June 4. The younger generation may be confused. What the Alliance wants to do is to make sure our fight for democracy will pass on to the younger generation,'' he added.

Armstrong Siu, 17, who has attended the Hong Kong rally since 1989, said: ``It's our responsibility as Chinese -- we need to carry on and let people know about the truth.''

The demonstrators handed a petition to Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed leader Tung Chee-hwa.

A candlelit vigil will be held in Hong Kong on June 4, with activists expecting tens of thousands of people.

The former British colony reverted to Chinese rule in mid-1997, but Beijing has pledged to let the territory of 6.8 million keep a high degree of autonomy for 50 years.


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