------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Health tests for all exposed at Maralinga
Friends of the Earth UK Asks Court Inquiry into MOX Nuclear Plant
Beijing bought chips for missiles
Depleted uranium used in Maralinga and Christmas Island blasts
Deadly uranium details prompt study
Pakistan Ruler Urges Nuke Research
Japan villagers torn over presence of nuclear plant
Japanese Voters Reject Mixed Plutonium Uranium Nuclear Fuel
Japan Seeks Support for Nuclear Fuel
Key village votes against using recycled plutonium at plant
Japan nuclear-plant neighbors snub recycled-plutonium plan
Villagers vote against recycled plutonium
Russia Allows Nuke Dump Inspection
Russia Official: ABM Treaty Stays
Russia dismisses possibility of arms sales to U.S.
U.S. May Buy Russian Missiles
Bush set to buy Russian defense systems
Russia Allows Nuke Dump Inspection
Russia vows to lift veil of secrecy from Kursk sub
Russian Dismisses Arms Deal Rumors
U.S. Plans Offer to Russia to End ABM Treaty Dispute
Don't ditch ABM treaty
US energy chief-Three Mile shouldn't curb nuke power
California Power Parley

MILITARY
U.S. lauds Uganda promise
Powell Set to Outline Balkan Policy
Brazil Army Troops Patrol Streets
Bombing Adds Leverage to Bill Bolstering Colombia's Military
Colombia: Drug Runs Increased in May
Dutch Town May Soon Offer Marijuana Drive-Throughs
Canada Moves Toward Legalizing Pot
Mexicans, Russian mob new partners in crime
U.N. Arms Experts Training in Canada
Five senators want review of dress code

OTHER
Tentative Emissions Plan Is Expected to Be Released
Air Is Heavy With Pollution, and Resentment
Antibacterial Surface Coating
Deadly Shadow of AIDS Darkens Remote Chinese Village
EU OKs Rules Vs. Smuggling Humans
Turkey Agrees to IMF Condition
Jailed Agent Says He Voiced Suspicion About Spy Suspect
China: U.S. Can Take Spy Plane
U.S. can take spy plane out of China
Reconnaissance plane covers China coast

ACTIVISTS
Green Party Bill to challenge nuclear navies needs support
Bikers rally, regroup and remember


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- australia

Health tests for all exposed at Maralinga

By Greg Rule,
May 28, 2001
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0105/28/update/news12.html

The Federal Government will conduct a health study of Australian volunteers in the 1950s British nuclear tests after confirming today up to eight tonnes of deadly depleted uranium was blasted into the air during the trials.

Federal Veterans' Affairs Minister Bruce Scott said use of the deadly DU during the Maralinga nuclear tests was identified by a royal commission 14 years ago, but the then Labor government failed to act on the information.

"I can confirm that (DU) was used in part of the atomic tests at Maralinga," Mr Scott said. "That information was also available to the ... royal commission that was conducted while the Labor Party was in government."

DU is an extremely dense metal used in shells which can pierce the armour of a tank. On impact, it vaporises into a gas which scientists fear can be inhaled or ingested by people nearby.

The toxic radioactive metal has been blamed for higher rates of leukaemia among Italian peacekeepers in Kosovo, and was previously thought to have been first used in the Gulf War in 1991.

Mr Scott today said the government next month would release a nominal roll detailing all Australians involved in the 1950s British nuclear tests, with the numbers expected to be in the thousands.

As well as soldiers, the list would also include Aboriginal and other civilian populations in the testing area at the time.

The government would then undertake a health study of all participants, including the causes of death of those who had since died, he said.

"You've got to have the nominal roll of the people who were there so that then you can establish the cancer incidence rate or any other element that might come to light during the health study," he told reporters in Melbourne.

The study could include blood and urine testing of all participants, and those found affected would all be eligible for compensation under military or safety stipulations.

Mr Scott said federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley should have ordered the roll and the health study when he was a senior Labor minister.

"We have got to condemn the Labor Party for their lack of action in relation to royal commission findings ... " he said. "This should have happened 14 years ago."

The health study would follow the same path as similar surveys of Vietnam War veterans.

The news follows revelations that the British government planned to put hundreds of British and Australian troops as close as possible to nuclear explosions at Maralinga in 1959, and that two dozen soldiers tested protective clothing by crawling, marching or driving through a fallout zone three days after a nuclear test at Maralinga in 1956. (AAP)

----- britain

Friends of the Earth UK Asks Court Inquiry into MOX Nuclear Plant

May 28, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-28-01.html

LONDON, United Kingdom, The UK government may have to defend itself in court over how it is handling the controversial question of whether to allow British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) to open a new nuclear fuel fabrication plant at its Sellafield site in Cumbria.

On Thursday, Friends of the Earth (FoE) UK announced that it has requested a judicial inquiry over the issue. In a legal challenge supported by Greenpeace, FoE claims that the government has contravened European Union law in its ongoing assessment of the economic viability of the mixed oxide (MOX) plant at Sellafield.

British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. Sellafield facility (Photos courtesy BNFL)

Sellafield manufactures nuclear fuel rods, reprocesses spent nuclear fuel from nine countries and treats and stores radioactive wastes. The Sellafield MOX plant has been designed to fabricate this new fuel with plutonium which is recovered from used nuclear fuel when it is reprocessed.

Friends of the Earth says that the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health have acted unlawfully, by deliberately restricting the scope of the final public consultation exercise.

The Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions commissioned Arthur D. Little Consultants to undertake an independent evaluation of the economic case for the Sellafield MOX plant last month. This work ran parallel with the eight week public consultation exercise which ended May 23. Ministers have said they will not be subjecting the Little report to public scrutiny before they take their decision on the Sellafield plant. These reports are usually made public, FoE's legal advisor Peter Roderick told reporters.

The Sellafield MOX plant will mix plutonium dioxide and uranium dioxide to manufacture Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel for conventional nuclear power stations.

Around 10 percent of MOX fuel is plutonium, and there are fears that it could be used for making nuclear weapons.

The Friends of the Earth UK believes that the government is close to granting approval for the MOX plant to begin operations and that the scope of the final consultants' report has been manipulated to support such a decision.

Roundness measurement being performed on an experimental fuel pellet in a BNFL lab.

FoE says that the UK£462m (US$657 million) that was spent constructing the plant must be included in any economic assessment, but that the government has asked consultants to judge the plant's economic viability on its future operating costs alone.

The MOX plant was completed in 1996, but its opening was delayed after safety breaches were discovered at a smaller demonstration facility in September 1999. A UK government report in February 2000 faulted management for the falsification of data about the fabrication of MOX pellets sold to Japan, Germany and other European countries.

FoE says that despite BNFL's enthusiasm to start the new plant, "the order book remains almost empty, with contracts having been secured for less than 10 percent of capacity." British Energy, the UK's privatised nuclear generator, has refused to use MOX.

But on May 8, BNFL signed a contract for the supply of MOX fuel manufactured at the Sellafield MOX Plant with Framatome ANP for the Swedish utility OKG's Oskarshamn reactor site.

The contract brings "contracted/reserved business" lined up for the Sellafield plant to 40 percent of what it needs to justify the plant economically, the company says.

Mark Johnston, nuclear campaigner at Friends of the Earth said, "The growing stockpile of separated plutonium is a worldwide embarrassment for the nuclear industry. It only exists because of the continuing yet necessary reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. The MOX option for plutonium is both expensive and misguided."

"The fact that government is the sole owner of the company does not permit it to disregard the law in order to allow BNFL to start making MOX," Johnston said.

A government spokesperson said that FoE's request for a judicial review was "premature and misguided."

-------- china

Beijing bought chips for missiles

May 28, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.americasnewspaper.com/top.shtml

Federal authorities have uncovered a major Chinese technology transfer program that illegally purchased thousands of U.S. radiation-protected computer chips for use in Chinese missiles and satellites.

The military-related technology-buying program was revealed in court papers released in Orlando, Fla., in early May after a raid on a Chinese company involved in selling "radiation-hardened" integrated circuits to Chinese government missile and satellite manufacturers, including several that were sanctioned in the past by the U.S. government for their missile sales.

The company, Means Come Enterprises Inc., is under investigation for "illegally exporting radiation-hardened integrated circuits to [the People's Republic of China] without the required [Commerce Department] export licenses," according to documents obtained by The Washington Times.

Three illegal diversions of the missile microchips by Means Come are described in a 27-page affidavit produced by the Commerce Department's Office of Export Enforcement before a search of the company's Orlando offices.

Commerce Department, U.S. Customs Service and Postal Service agents raided the Orlando offices of Means Come on May 3, seizing computers and documents related to the microchip transfers.

Officials of the company, which has offices in Orlando, Beijing, Hong Kong and Montreal, could not be reached for comment. Jim Hoyos, a Commerce Department export control investigator involved in the case, also declined to comment. "It's an ongoing investigation," he said.

The illegal diversion of U.S.-made radiation-hardened computer chips to China was first reported in The Washington Times on Jan. 26.

The raid on the Orlando company took place the same day FBI agents arrested two Chinese nationals and a third man for stealing Lucent Technologies software codes and selling them to China.

According to Commerce export agent Roy A. Gilfix, who wrote the affidavit in support of a federal search warrant, Means Come sold China 2,316 embargoed integrated circuits in shipments in February, May and November 1998.The chips were made by Harris Semiconductor, a Melbourne, Fla., subsidiary of the Harris Corp.

According to the affidavit, the radiation-hardened chips are used in missiles and require export licenses before being sold abroad.

Means Come Enterprises made its first export license application in March 1997, saying it wanted to buy 7,200 radiation-protected chips for the Chinese Academy of Space Technology (CAST) for use in a satellite project, the affidavit states.

The license was turned down in June 1997 because the sale posed "an unacceptable risk" that the Chinese government-run academy would use the circuits "in missile proliferation activities," the affidavit said.

CAST and several other Chinese firms were sanctioned by the U.S. government in 1993 for selling M-11 missiles to Pakistan in violation of U.S. arms proliferation laws.

A month after the export license was rejected, Kao Ahwan, a Chinese national, and her husband, Kao Shuli, opened the Orlando office of Means Come and bought the 7,200 Harris computer chips from Atel Electronics Corp. in New York. Means Come paid $679,000 for the chips, which were sold by Atel for use only in the United States.

However, Means Come exported the circuits without a license in three shipments in 1998, the affidavit states. "Means Come Enterprises' customer, the Great Wall Industry Import and Export, is a state-owned corporation in China's defense aerospace industry," the document said. "It develops strategic and tactical ballistic missiles, space launch vehicles, surface-to-air missiles, cruise missiles, military reconnaissance and communication mission and civilian satellites."

Great Wall Industry also was sanctioned in the past for its sales of missiles to Pakistan, Iran and Iraq.

In October 1998, Means Come officials in Florida were questioned about the circuit exports and other weapons-related technology sales. One company executive, Francis Chan, was questioned by Commerce export control agents and told them the company recently sought to purchase "U.S.-origin nuclear electronics for export to the PRC."

The parts were to be transferred to the China National Aero-Technology Import & Export Corp., known as CATIC, the affidavit said, but the sale never took place after Mr. Chan learned it required a U.S. export license.

CATIC was indicted in 1999 for illegally diverting U.S. aircraft manufacturing machine tools to a military plant. On May 11, it agreed to pay $1.3 million in fines for using McDonnell Douglas aircraft machine tools meant for commercial purposes to make Silkworm anti-ship missiles.

The company also brought officials from China's state-run China Aerospace Corp. to the United States for inspections of technical equipment at its Orlando offices. The affidavit states that China Aerospace "specializes in various space products, such as satellites, missiles, launch vehicles and ground support systems."

Gary Milhollin, weapons proliferation specialist and director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said the chips have military applications and could be used by the Chinese military to "improve their ability to target U.S. cities with long-range missiles."

Mr. Milhollin said the Bush administration should reverse the Clinton administration policy of "looking the other way and refusing to put Chinese companies like the Chinese Academy of Space Technology, CATIC, and China Aerospace Corp. on a special government watch list."


-------- depleted uranium

Depleted uranium used in Maralinga and Christmas Island blasts

Australia Broadcasting News,
Mon, 28 May 2001
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-28may2001-40.htm

Tonnes of depleted uranium (DU), the toxic radioactive metal blamed for higher rates of leukaemia among Italian peacekeepers in Kosovo, were blasted into the air above Maralinga and Christmas Island during British nuclear tests in the 1950s, reports say.

Australian officials confirm that more than eight tonnes of DU, which was thought to have been first used in the Gulf War in 1991, was dispersed in test explosions at Maralinga, in the South Australian desert.

The British Ministry of Defence has also admitted DU was used in weapons tested at Christmas Island.

The admissions will add weight to calls for blood and urine tests for tens of thousands of servicemen from Australia, New Zealand and Britain who may have been exposed to radiation during the tests in the 1950s and 1960s.

Both Australia and Britain have already offered urine tests to soldiers exposed to DU in the Gulf and the Balkans Wars following scientific studies which found a slightly higher risk of lung cancer among veterans exposed to the element.

But so far no similar study has been proposed for the test veterans.

"It beggars belief," Sheila Gray, the secretary of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans Association, told Scottish newspaper The Sunday Herald.

"They gave us the impression that DU had never been used before the Gulf War and now it turns out it was used in the 1950s," Ms Gray said.

"It's yet another hazard our men had to face."

Depleted uranium is an extremely dense metal used in shells which can pierce the armour of a tank.

On impact, it vaporises into a gas which scientists fear can be inhaled or ingested by people nearby.

Maralinga

The newspaper quoted from an email sent to Australian test veteran Major Alan Batchelor by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.

In the email, agency head Geoff Williams says that more than eight tonnes of uranium was dispersed by explosions at Maralinga.

That consisted of 7.4 tonnes at Kuli, 47.3kg at Taranaki and the rest at a series of 'minor trials'.

"These materials, when vaporised in the fireball, would condense out as finely divided invisible oxides of these metals, potentially lethal or capable of causing cancer in the lung, liver, kidney or blood-forming bone marrow," Mr Batchelor said.

If DU had harmed soldiers in the Gulf, "this could have been worse for servicemen working in areas close to ground zeros [the sites of nuclear explosions], and with no follow-up action would have gone unnoticed", he said.

Christmas Island

The paper also quoted from a private letter from the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) to Bob Brown, a Scottish veteran of tests at Christmas Island, in which the Ministry admitted that quantities of depleted uranium were used in the weapons tested at the island.

"But they have kept it under wraps until now. I believe the MOD knew about the effects of the weapons, including DU, long before the Gulf War but they kept it quiet," Mr Brown said.

The Ministry says there is no comparison between the DU used during the Gulf and Balkan Wars and that used during the 1950s, with a spokeswoman saying the metal posed no significant threat to human health except in the most extreme cases.

But Malcolm Hooper, Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Sunderland, disagrees.

"You can't distribute small aerosol particles of DU and then deny there is a hazard," he said.

The news follows revelations that the British Government planned to put hundreds of British and Australian troops as close as possible to nuclear explosions at Maralinga in 1959, and that two dozen soldiers tested protective clothing by crawling, marching or driving through a fallout zone three days after a nuclear test at Maralinga in 1956.

----

Deadly uranium details prompt study

May 28, 2001 - Australia
http://www.excite.com.au/news/story/aap/20010528/18/domestic/maralinga-scott-fed.inp

The federal government will conduct a health study of Australian volunteers in the 1950s British nuclear tests after confirming up to eight tonnes of deadly depleted uranium (DU) was blasted into the air during the trials.

Federal Veterans' Affairs Minister Bruce Scott said use of the deadly DU during the Maralinga nuclear tests was identified by a royal commission 14 years ago, but the then Labor government failed to act on the information.

"I can confirm that (DU) was used in part of the atomic tests at Maralinga," Mr Scott said. "That information was also available to the ... royal commission that was conducted while the Labor Party was in government."

DU is an extremely dense metal used in shells which can pierce the armour of a tank. On impact, it vaporises into a gas which scientists fear can be inhaled or ingested by people nearby.

The toxic radioactive metal has been blamed for higher rates of leukaemia among Italian peacekeepers in Kosovo, and was previously thought to have been first used in the Gulf War in 1991.

Mr Scott today said the government would next month release a nominal roll detailing all Australians involved in the 1950s British nuclear tests, with the numbers expected to be in the thousands.

As well as soldiers, the list would also include Aboriginal and other civilian populations in the testing area at the time.

The government would then undertake a health study of all participants, including the causes of death of those who had since died, he said.

"You've got to have the nominal roll of the people who were there so that then you can establish the cancer incidence rate or any other element that might come to light during the health study," he told reporters in Melbourne.

The study could include blood and urine testing of all participants, and those found affected would all be eligible for compensation under military or safety stipulations.

-------- india / pakistan

Pakistan Ruler Urges Nuke Research

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear.html?searchpv=aponline

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Three years to the day after his nation first tested a nuclear bomb, Pakistan's military ruler on Monday urged nuclear scientists to expand their research, vowing to strengthen the nation's security.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Pakistan's successful nuclear 1998 tests -- which came on the heels of a test by neighboring rival India and sparked international alarm -- were ``momentous events in the history of our nation.''

He called on nuclear scientists to ``further broaden the base of scientific research so that their work in the future is more scientifically advanced, technologically innovative and economically cost attractive.''

While Musharraf was referring to peaceful uses of nuclear power as well as weapons, his comments were a pointed reminder of Pakistan's determination to develop its nuclear capabilities amid its volatile relations with India.

``Nothing at all will distract us from fortifying national security,'' he said.

The statement comes just days after a significant peace breakthrough between the rivals. After a two-year break in high-level contacts, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee last week invited Musharraf to visit India for talks over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. Musharraf has accepted the invitation.

While announcing the peace invitation, India at the same time said it was ending a six-month cease-fire in Kashmir -- a move that drew sharp criticism from Pakistan.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, Gen. Rashid Quereshi, Musharraf's chief spokesman, said the world need not fear a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

``Pakistan understands, as I'm sure does India, the destructive power of these weapons'' whose use would be ``unimaginable and unacceptable,'' he said.

It is not known how many or what type of nuclear weapons Pakistan possesses.

Most analysts believe neither country has deployed nuclear weapons or developed nuclear warheads for their missile systems so far. But both have tested medium- and long-range missiles capable of hitting deep within each other's territory.

Pakistan and India have gone to war three times since British rule of the Asian subcontinent ended in 1947. Their development of nuclear weapons raised fears among the international community that another war in the region could result in the use of nuclear weapons.

Both countries have been pressed by a worried world to halt their nuclear programs. Both say they want a minimum nuclear deterrent, but neither country has spelled out what that would mean and how many weapons it would involve.

-------- japan

Japan villagers torn over presence of nuclear plant

JAPAN: May 28, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10969&newsDate=28-May-2001

KARIWA VILLAGE, Japan - For villagers voting on Sunday in a referendum on the use of recycled nuclear fuel, the huge nuclear plant at the centre of the issue has divided opinion.

Since it was built in 1985, the plant has brought concerns about its safety, but it is seen by some as the rescuer of this small farming community.

"I have been protesting against nuclear power plants since the issue was raised to build the plant here," said Kazuyuki Takemoto, one of the leaders of the campaign against the recycled fuel known as MOX.

The 4,092 eligible voters of Kariwa, a farming village about 300 km (186 miles) north of Tokyo, are voting on whether Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), should be allowed to use MOX fuel in its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in the village.

"It is dangerous. There are always problems, and I am worried that we will be the next Tokaimura," said Takemoto.

The nation's worst nuclear accident occurred on September 1999 at a uranium processing facility run by JCO Co Ltd in Tokaimura, 140 km (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo, exposing plant workers, emergency personnel and hundreds of residents to radiation. Two workers later died.

Life in the rural village, along the Sea of Japan coast in Niigata prefecture, has changed since TEPCO built one of the world's biggest nuclear power plants.

"It used to be a typical farming village," Hiroo Shinada, Kariwa village chief, told Reuters.

But some people in Kariwa said the power plant had saved their village.

"We were able to build nice roads and schools for our children because of the special payments the village receives for having the plant," said Yukio Irisawa, a former village executive.

"I am very thankful for TEPCO," said one female restaurant owner who declined to be identified. "Our business has prospered because of the TEPCO workers."

The referendum, which is not legally binding, has become the centre of national focus for it could affect the country's nuclear policy.

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

But whatever the vote over MOX, the plant is certain to be here for many years. An official from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said last week the use of MOX would go ahead anyway, although the government's response to the vote is by no means clear.

Resource-poor Japan depends on nuclear energy for a third of its power needs.

----

Japanese Voters Reject Mixed Plutonium Uranium Nuclear Fuel

May 28, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2001/2001L-05-28-02.html

KARIWA, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, For the first time, Japan has held an official referendum on the use of mixed plutonium and uranium oxide fuel in the country's nuclear reactors, and Japanese voters turned down the proposal.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant (Photos courtesy Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, Nuclear Safety Research Center, University of Wisconsin - Madison)

Residents of Kariwa village in western Japan voted against the use of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel in the nearby Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 3 nuclear reactor. Operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, this is one of seven units that make up the world's largest nuclear power plant.

MOX fuel is made by mixing plutonium dioxide and uranium dioxide. The reuse of the plutonium extracted from conventional spent nuclear fuel as a component of MOX fuel has been at the center of the energy program in fossil fuel dependent Japan.

In total, 88.14 percent of Kariwa voters took part in the referendum, 3,605 voters cast their ballots out of 4,092 voters in the village.

Of this number, 1925 (53.4 percent) voted no to the use of MOX, and 1,533 (42.7 percent) voted yes. The rest, 131 people representing 3.7 percent, voted to suspend the use of MOX.

The result of the referendum, though not legally binding, means that it will be impossible for Tokyo Electric Power Company to proceed with plans to load plutonium MOX fuel currently sitting in its storage ponds on the site into the reactor.

The environmental group Greenpeace, which has campaigned against the use and transport of MOX fuel for years says that when MOX fuel is loaded into a nuclear reactor it "lowers the safety margins for the operator, increasing the chances of a nuclear accident, as well as making a future accident more severe in terms of health effects and environmental contamination."

Kazue Suzuki of Greenpeace Japan in Kariwa village, said, "Nuclear industry and government propaganda have been ignored by the citizens of Kariwa in voting against the use of plutonium MOX fuel. Japan's plans for using plutonium were going nowhere before today's result, tonight they are in ruins."

Control room of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant

"Rather than being the center of energy production in Japan," Suzuki said, "the plutonium program has drained billions of dollars from taxpayers. The opposition to the use of this dangerous material will now grow even stronger throughout Japan, with a real prospect of the program being terminated."

The result could set back Japanese plans for the use of thousands of kilograms of plutonium extracted from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from this and other Japanese nuclear reactors currently stored in Europe.

The Tokyo based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center is now calling on the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company to respect the opinion of local residents, and cancel the use of MOX fuel at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 3. "The government and the utilities should put an end to the dangerous and uneconomical MOX fuel program," the group says.

Japan's original plan was to extract plutonium by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, and use the plutonium as fuel for fast breeder reactors. But the development of fast breeder reactors came to a standstill following the sodium leak and fire at the Monju prototype fast breeder in 1995. Despite this failure and nuclear accidents in the late 1990s at Tokai, the center of Japan's domestic nuclear research and waste handling operations, the reprocessing of Japanese spent fuel in England and in France has continued.

Japan now has a great deal of excess plutonium. The Citizens' Nuclear Information Center estimates that as of the end of 1999, there were 27.6 tons of Japanese plutonium stored in England and France, and 5.3 tons stored domestically.

The MOX fuel program has been presented by the government as the sole option for consuming this plutonium.

The referendum result could also prove a setback to efforts by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) and the French state owned reprocessing company, Cogema, to secure commercial contracts for the production of MOX fuel from other countries including Japan.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa fuel is the third batch of MOX fuel to be shipped to Japan and then rejected for use. The 28 assemblies of MOX, containing around 220 kilograms of plutonium, arrived on the British Nuclear Fuels vessel Pacific Pintail in March after a 30,000 kilometer voyage protested by environmental groups and many countries en route.

In 1999, a shipment of MOX fuel from British Nuclear Fuels arrived in September under suspicion that BNFL workers had falsified quality control data. In February 2000, it was proved that fuel production standards had been violated by BNFL, and the eight assemblies of MOX fuel, intended for the Takahama-4 reactor operated by Kansai Electric, will now be returned to the UK at a cost of billions of yen.

The BNFL ship Pacific Teal enters Fukushima harbor with its cargo of MOX fuel, September 1999. Japanese security forces boat is seen at left, the red and white towers of the Fukushima power plant in the background. (Photo by Jorge Punzi courtesy Greenpeace)

A second cargo of MOX fuel, produced by a French Belgian consortium led by Cogema, also arrived in 1999 for use in the Tokyo Electric reactor, Fukushima-1-3. It came under suspicion of quality control violations and was the focus of a legal battle to prove falsification.

In March, the regional governor of Fukushima Prefecture decided to conduct a one year review of MOX fuel use, citing loss of public confidence as one reason for the review. The 32 assemblies of plutonium MOX fuel at issue, remain stored at the Fukushima-1-3, nearly two years after delivery.

Japan has 53 operating nuclear reactors, more than any country except the United States and France. They provide roughly 30 percent of the country's electricity. Three nuclear power plants are currently under construction.

----

Japan Seeks Support for Nuclear Fuel

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-japan-nuclea.html?searchpv=reuters

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's government, in an energy policy pinch after a small village rejected the use of recycled nuclear fuel in its massive power plant, said on Monday it would have to try harder to win public support for the plan.

``It is vital that the government and industry make even more strenuous efforts to win the people's understanding for nuclear energy,'' new Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told a parliamentary budget panel.

In a relatively close vote, 53.4 percent of the votes cast in the farming village of Kariwa in Niigata Prefecture went against the use of recycled fuel, known as MOX, in Tokyo Electric Power Co's (TEPCO) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, which provides 20 percent of Tokyo's electric power.

Those backing the plan accounted for 42.5 percent, while 3.6 percent were undecided. There were 16 invalid votes.

Turnout was high at over 88 percent of eligible voters.

TEPCO said on Monday it remained committed to the use of MOX -- a blend of uranium and plutonium recycled from spent nuclear fuel. But the vote, while non-binding, has created a dilemma for the government, which wants to make MOX use a cornerstone of its energy policy.

Anti-MOX campaigners argue the fuel is dangerous and does not make economic sense because it is more expensive than conventional nuclear fuel. And a series of nuclear power-related accidents has hurt public faith in the industry.

Koizumi, elected last month on a groundswell of grass-roots support within his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has shown himself keenly sensitive to public opinion -- not surprising since he needs to keep his record-high popularity to succeed in his battle for reforms over objections from the LDP Old Guard.

WAITING, WATCHING

Just last week, the popular prime minister surprised the media and the public when he overrode bureaucratic recommendations and decided not to appeal a landmark court case mandating compensation for former leprosy patients incarcerated for decades after it was no longer medically necessary.

Takeo Hiranuma, Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) told the same panel that the vote was ``unfortunate'' but that the government would wait to see how Kariya, its sister village Kashiwazaki, and Niigata Prefecture responded.

``From now on, both the government and the industry must make maximum efforts to achieve better understanding by the people, since that is the first priority,'' Hiranuma said.

A METI official said last week the use of MOX will go ahead in any event, but it is rare for the government to proceed in cases of clear opposition.

Kariwa village chief Hiroo Shinada, a MOX fuel supporter, was set to give a news conference later in the day after saying late on Sunday that he would take the result into serious consideration before making a final recommendation to TEPCO and the national government, which have the final say.

``I think the people made a severe and heavy judgement,'' he told a news conference on Sunday, adding he would take various factors into consideration in making a final decision.

TEPCO President Nobuya Minami told a news conference on Monday the company was still committed to using MOX, but added a final decision on whether to load it or conventional nuclear fuel at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant would be made by mid-June.

``As we have said many times in the past, the use of (MOX fuel) is important in terms of the nation's...energy policy...and we must move ahead with its implementation,'' Minami said.

PAST PROBLEMS

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

Japan's power industry had intended to begin commercial use of MOX fuel in 1999 but was forced to postpone the plans after a controversy surrounding stated-owned British Nuclear Fuels Ltd's (BNFL) falsification of data on MOX fuel shipped to Kansai Electric Power Co Inc in western Japan.

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

Public support for nuclear power took a hit after the nation's worst nuclear accident occurred in September 1999 at a uranium processing facility run by JCO Co Ltd in Tokaimura, 140 km (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo.

Plant workers, emergency personnel and hundreds of residents were exposed to radiation and two workers later died.

Since the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant was built in 1985, it has brought concerns about its safety but has been seen by some residents as the rescuer of the small farming community.

--------

Key village votes against using recycled plutonium at plant

Monday, May 28, 2001
Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/05282001/nation_w/101125.htm

TOKYO -- 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.

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.

----

Japan nuclear-plant neighbors snub recycled-plutonium plan

Seattle Times
Monday, May 28, 2001
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=wdig28&date=20010528

TOKYO - 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 yesterday against a proposal 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 result was expected to ratchet up pressure on the Japanese government and utility companies to rethink plans to introduce plutonium-based mixed oxide (MOX) in nuclear reactors.

Environmentalists are worried because MOX is much more volatile than conventional nuclear fuel.

----

Villagers vote against recycled plutonium

May 28, 2001,
San Jose Mercury News
World News in Brief
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/world/docs/fordig28.htm

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.

-------- russia

Russia Allows Nuke Dump Inspection

MAY 28,
By DOUG MELLGREN
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C9AR3G0

OSLO, Norway (AP) - Russia's Northern Fleet opened a secret nuclear waste dump in the Arctic to outside inspection for the first time Monday, after years of pressure from its smaller neighbor Norway.

A Norwegian delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide was allowed into the Andreeva Bay base, where tons of highly radioactive waste are stored roughly 30 miles from the Russian-Norwegian frontier.

``This really is an area we must do something about. Very large amounts of radioactive waste are stored here under very unfavorable conditions, and we have seen a facility marked by such decay that there is reason to take action as soon as possible,'' Eide said from Russia in an interview broadcast by the Norwegian state radio network NRK.

Andreeva Bay is considered one of the world's most radioactively dangerous places. There are more than 100 nuclear submarines at Russian's Northern Fleet bases on the Kola Peninsula, where northwestern Russia borders Norway.

Most are rusted hulks, often with nuclear fuel on board, according to Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group that specializes in the issue.

The waste at Andreeva includes spent nuclear fuel cores from atomic submarines. A 1996 report by Bellona said about 21,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies are stored here and many of the containers are leaking.

NATO-member Norway does not allow nuclear weapons or power on its own soil in peacetime and has been deeply concerned about the nuclear waste on the Kola. Eide said radiation detectors showed significantly elevated levels, without giving the exact readings.

Wealthy Norway, the world's second-largest oil exporter, for years held $2.2 million ready help clean up Andreeva Bay.

However, in six years of negotiations that led to Monday's visit, Norway has insisted on being allowed to inspect the bay, which was off-limits because it is near a top-secret submarine base.

Norwegian nuclear, defense and environmental experts were allowed to inspect the site with Eide.

----

Russia Official: ABM Treaty Stays

MAY 28, 18:53 EST
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7C9DDIO0

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Monday brusquely shrugged off a U.S. proposal to purchase Russian missiles in exchange for Moscow's consent to amending the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, saying the 1972 agreement must remain intact.

``If such proposals come - we have not yet received them - I am sure that they will not solve the ABM issue,'' Ivanov told a news conference, referring to the treaty's abbreviated name.

His was the first official Russian response to reports that the Bush administration hoped to buy Moscow's agreement to Washington's withdrawal from the treaty with joint exercises, promises of military aid and possible purchase of Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles to be integrated into a joint missile shield over Russia and Europe.

A senior administration official said the package is being prepared for President Bush's meetings in June and July with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was first reported in The New York Times on Monday.

Russia has already sold S-300s to many countries and could sell more, Ivanov said. But he added, ``I cannot link this issue with ABM plans.''

The U.S. offer appeared to echo Moscow's own proposal to the European NATO members to create a shared anti-missile defense in Europe.

That proposal, which Putin made in February, would envisage consultations, joint assessment of risks and the deployment of anti-missile defenses as a last resort. Russian military officials at the time mentioned the S-300 and the brand-new S-400 as possible components of such a system.

The ABM treaty prohibits a nationwide defense against ballistic missiles, and the U.S. administration has tried unsuccessfully to persuade Moscow to amend the treaty to allow Washington to develop a limited missile defense system.

----

Russia dismisses possibility of arms sales to U.S.

USA TODAY
05/28/2001
Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-05-28-arms.htm

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Monday brusquely shrugged off a U.S. proposal to purchase Russian missiles in exchange for Moscow's consent to amending the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, saying the 1972 agreement must remain intact.

"If such proposals come - we have not yet received them - I am sure that they will not solve the ABM issue," Ivanov told a news conference, referring to the treaty's abbreviated name.

His was the first official Russian response to reports that the Bush administration hoped to buy Moscow's agreement to Washington's withdrawal from the treaty with joint exercises, promises of military aid and possible purchase of Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles to be integrated into a joint missile shield over Russia and Europe.

A senior administration official said the package is being prepared for President Bush's meetings in June and July with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was first reported in The New York Times on Monday.

Russia has already sold S-300s to many countries and could sell more, Ivanov said. But he added, "I cannot link this issue with ABM plans."

The U.S. offer appeared to echo Moscow's own proposal to the European NATO members to create a shared anti-missile defense in Europe.

That proposal, which Putin made in February, would envisage consultations, joint assessment of risks and the deployment of anti-missile defenses as a last resort. Russian military officials at the time mentioned the S-300 and the brand-new S-400 as possible components of such a system.

The ABM treaty prohibits a nationwide defense against ballistic missiles, and the U.S. administration has tried unsuccessfully to persuade Moscow to amend the treaty to allow Washington to develop a limited missile defense system.

----

U.S. May Buy Russian Missiles

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nyregion/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hoping to ease objections to his missile defense ambitions, President Bush intends to offer a broad range of arms purchases, military aid and joint anti-missile exercises to Russia and perhaps other allies.

The package is being prepared for Bush's meetings in June and July with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and similar incentives will be extended to other allies skeptical of the administration's push to dispense with the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, said a senior administration official.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the proposals are likely to include an offer to buy Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missiles that could be used to defend Russia and Europe.

Many of the proposals have been sketched out to allies and mentioned publicly in broad terms by Bush and his aides, but the New York Times was the first to report Monday that S-300 missiles may be part of the package.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov quickly dismissed the talk of a U.S. package in exchange for scrapping the ABM.

``If such proposals come -- we have not yet received them -- I am sure that they will not solve the ABM issue,'' Ivanov told a news conference.

Bush is traveling June 11-17 to Madrid, Spain; Brussels Belgium for a NATO summit; Gothenburg, Sweden for an US-European Union summit; Warsaw, Poland, to outline his hopes for Europe and NATO; and Slovenia, where he will be face-to-face with Putin for the first time.

Advisers have cast the first meeting a get-acquainted session and predict that Bush won't delve deeply into his proposals for Russia until he meets Putin again in July as part of summit of industrialized nations.

The senior administration official stressed that Bush is making similar overtures to other allies, hoping to douse fears that building a missile defense system would trigger a new arms race.

Bush does not appear ready to share technologies with China, though officials said that could change over time.

Some of the proposals build on ideas considered during the Bush presidency and pushed unsuccessfully by President Clinton. Those proposals, outlined by administration officials in conjunction with a Bush speech on the topic in April, include offers to hold joint exercises to identify and shoot down attacking warheads, to provide money for Russia's decaying radar system and share early warning date.

Bush's sales job was complicated by the defection of Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont from the Republican Party. Democrats taking over key chairmanships are wary of the Bush administration plans for the ABM treaty, and question the feasibility of building anti-missile systems.

----

Bush set to buy Russian defense systems

May 28, 2001
From Major Garrett
CNN White House Correspondent
http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/05/28/bush.russia/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush intends to offer a mix of arms purchases and military aid to Russia and other European allies in exchange for reduced resistance to his plans for a missile-defense system.

The strategy will also seek to gather support for the shelving of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, officials said, a move needed to deploy such a missile-defense system.

Administration officials told CNN the White House is prepared to purchase from Russia "components, sub-components and systems" suitable for missile defense. The officials noted that Russia has invested heavily in air- and missile-defense systems and some of its equipment "might be of significant value in deploying a missile-defense system."

Among the subsystems the administration may be willing to purchase is the S-300 surface-to-air missile that could play a role in a missile-defense system.

Officials stressed the White House is discussing equipment purchases and future aid with Russia and European allies. Both will have to be persuaded, officials said, before Bush can move ahead with deployment of a missile defense system that can offer Russia and European nations protection from an accidentally launched nuclear missile or one fired by a "rogue nation."

"The talks are only [on] a very general level," one official said.

Other aspects of the talks include increased U.S. interest in beefing up Russia's "early detection" systems to alert them to accidental missile launches, and joint exercises to track and shoot down missiles.

In a report by The Associated Press, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov quickly dismissed the talk of a U.S. package in exchange for scrapping the ABM.

"If such proposals come -- we have not yet received them -- I am sure that they will not solve the ABM issue," Ivanov said in the AP report..

Additionally, the White House is discussing future reductions in U.S. nuclear stockpiles. The official would not discuss numbers but said the administration is discussing reductions consistent with Bush's goal of lowering U.S. stockpiles to the "lowest possible levels" while maintaining what he calls an acceptable defense.

One complication in these talks, the official said, is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's review of the U.S. defense budget and its systems.

Bush sent Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley to brief Europeans and the Russians on the U.S. approach to missile defense and the future of the ABM Treaty. Bush has recently emphasized his willingness to consult with Russia and European allies to build support for his proposals.

Officials said Bush hopes to make progress on these and other issues when the president holds his first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia June 16.

Administration calculations on the issue of missile defense have changed slightly with the loss of Republican control of the Senate. Democrats who will lead the Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees are likely to be more skeptical of a missile-defense system -- scrutinizing not only its costs but its impact on existing arms-control treaties.

----

Russia Allows Nuke Dump Inspection

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Norway-Russia-Nuclear.html

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Russia's Northern Fleet opened a secret nuclear waste dump in the Arctic to outside inspection for the first time Monday, after years of pressure from its smaller neighbor Norway.

A Norwegian delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide was allowed into the Andreeva Bay base, where tons of highly radioactive waste are stored roughly 30 miles from the Russian-Norwegian frontier.

``This really is an area we must do something about. Very large amounts of radioactive waste are stored here under very unfavorable conditions, and we have seen a facility marked by such decay that there is reason to take action as soon as possible,'' Eide said from Russia in an interview broadcast by the Norwegian state radio network NRK.

Andreeva Bay is considered one of the world's most radioactively dangerous places. There are more than 100 nuclear submarines at Russian's Northern Fleet bases on the Kola Peninsula, where northwestern Russia borders Norway.

Most are rusted hulks, often with nuclear fuel on board, according to Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group that specializes in the issue.

The waste at Andreeva includes spent nuclear fuel cores from atomic submarines. A 1996 report by Bellona said about 21,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies are stored here and many of the containers are leaking.

NATO-member Norway does not allow nuclear weapons or power on its own soil in peacetime and has been deeply concerned about the nuclear waste on the Kola. Eide said radiation detectors showed significantly elevated levels, without giving the exact readings.

Wealthy Norway, the world's second-largest oil exporter, for years held $2.2 million ready help clean up Andreeva Bay.

However, in six years of negotiations that led to Monday's visit, Norway has insisted on being allowed to inspect the bay, which was off-limits because it is near a top-secret submarine base.

Norwegian nuclear, defense and environmental experts were allowed to inspect the site with Eide.

----

Russia vows to lift veil of secrecy from Kursk sub

RUSSIA: May 28, 2001
Story by Daniel Mclaughlin
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10980&newsDate=28-May-2001

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kuroyedov also outlined the danger of the lifting operation.

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

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

WHAT DETONATED TORPEDOES?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

St Petersburg's Rubin bureau, which designed the highly advanced Kursk, will also help lift the vessel from more than 100 metres (330 feet) of Arctic water.

-------- treaties

Russian Dismisses Arms Deal Rumors

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-US-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Monday dismissed a reported U.S. offer to purchase arms from Russia in exchange for Moscow's agreement to scrap the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

``If such proposals come -- we have not yet received them -- I am sure that they will not solve the ABM issue,'' Ivanov told a news conference.

His was the first official Russian response to a New York Times report Monday that the Bush administration hoped to win Moscow's assent to Washington's withdrawal from the 1972 ABM treaty with purchases of Russian weapons, possibly including S-300 surface-to-air missiles, joint anti-missile exercises and military aid.

According to the report, the U.S. offer envisages that the Russian missiles could be integrated into a shared defensive shield over Russia and Europe. But Ivanov quickly dismissed the proposal, saying that the S-300 wasn't fit for the purpose and irrelevant to ABM discussions.

``The S-300 missile is a tactical air-defense, not anti-missile, weapon. Russia has sold these missiles to many countries. I cannot link this issue with ABM plans,'' Ivanov said.

The ABM treaty prohibits a nationwide defense against ballistic missiles, and the U.S. administration has tried unsuccessfully to persuade Moscow to amend the treaty to allow Washington to construct a limited missile defense system.

Ivanov said it was ``pleasant'' that the U.S. government had launched broad consultations on its planned system, which Washington has said would be aimed against potential nuclear nations such as Iran and North Korea.

``We have conducted discussions on this issue with the Clinton administration and we are prepared to continue them with the Bush administration,'' Ivanov said. ``But to have discussions, it is necessary to understand what the other side wants.''

He reiterated Russia's opposition to abandoning the ABM treaty as a blow to arms control efforts across the board, saying that 32 arms control agreements included references to it.

``You cannot take a brick out of a wall and hope it will stand,'' Ivanov said. ``It will come tumbling down, and it's impossible to forecast the consequences.''

The missile defense issue will top the agenda for President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin when they meet in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on June 16.

--------

U.S. Plans Offer to Russia to End ABM Treaty Dispute

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/28/world/28MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, May 27 - To win Russia's cooperation in scrapping the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the Bush administration is preparing a broad offer of arms purchases, military aid and joint antimissile exercises, according to senior Administration strategists.

Officials said the proposals are likely to include an offer to buy Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missiles that could be integrated into a defensive shield over Russia and Europe.

Some proposals have been sketched out to Russian officials, and the full plan is to be presented in conjunction with the first meeting between President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin, on June 16 in Slovenia.

Other proposals build on ideas considered during the first Bush administration and pushed, unsuccessfully, when Bill Clinton was president. Those include offers to hold joint exercises in future years to identify and shoot down attacking warheads, to provide money for Russia's decaying radar system and to share early- warning data.

The administration has not elaborated on its plans publicly.

But in an interview last week, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, explained the broader context of the administration's objective: "We want to convince the Russians that it is in their best interest to move beyond the ABM treaty and to develop a new relationship with us."

Mr. Bush finds himself in the position of needing President Putin's agreement to dispense with the ABM treaty - both to defuse strong European objections to the military plans and to satisfy Congress, where Senate committees overseeing military and foreign affairs are about to come under Democratic control.

The evolving strategy is in strong contrast to that of the administration's early weeks, when Mr. Bush and his national security aides said they were preparing to speed ahead alone to undo the treaty.

But Mr. Bush's plan faces many obstacles - in Moscow, here in Washington and in foreign capitals, especially Beijing. The offers to Russia, for example, may be insufficient for Mr. Putin or the military bureaucracy he must control, a bureaucracy the administration is trying to steer around.

Most details of the administration's proposals have not been presented to Moscow, though hints were floated in meetings earlier this month. One administration official said that there was "zero indication" of a response, but added that "we hope to have cooperative proposals - on missile defense, on nuclear reductions and on a broader relationship - by the middle of the summer."

Mr. Bush's task has been greatly complicated by the defection of Senator James M. Jeffords of Vermont from the Republican Party, and the subsequent loss of Republican control of the Senate. The Democratic senators likely to take over as chairmen of the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees are wary of Mr. Bush's plans, and have expressed a determined opposition to a unilateral withdrawal from the missile treaty.

So, one senior White House official acknowledged, "if we are going to make this work, the Russians have to agree to the plan."

Even a limited alliance with Moscow on missile defense would almost certainly raise fears among Chinese leaders that they were being frozen out and that the system was being designed to contain their modest nuclear force. Mr. Putin and President Jiang Zemin of China have themselves begun talking about cooperation to counter growing American military and economic power around the globe.

White House officials say that over time, they might also be willing to share some technology with Beijing.

The administration's ideas were first outlined to Russian officials earlier this month in Moscow by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser.

Ultimately, the administration's inducements may include nonmilitary matters. For example, the White House is already discussing economic aid or help in developing legal and commercial systems that would make Russia more attractive to foreign investors, many of whom fled after the economic crisis in 1998.

Some elements of the military offers - including joint exercises and improvement of Russia's early- warning radar - are not new, but the earlier reactions were mixed. For example, when Boris N. Yeltsin and the elder George Bush were presidents, in 1992, they considered joint antimissile exercises.

Mr. Clinton worked vigorously to strike a "grand bargain" with Russia in strategic nuclear affairs that envisioned a new security architecture that would have reduced nuclear warheads, possibly amended the ABM Treaty and deployed a limited missile defense.

The Clinton administration also offered to help Russia complete a large missile-tracking radar near Irkutsk, in Siberia, if Moscow agreed to renegotiate the ABM Treaty. And Russian and American officers conducted two joint missile-defense exercises - in Moscow 1996 and in Colorado Springs in 1998 - but they were little more than computer simulations.

A more ambitious "command post exercise" was briefly scheduled at Fort Bliss, Tex., last year. But a Pentagon official said late last week that that exercise had been delayed until 2002 at the earliest. In the exercise, the Russians and Americans are to practice tracing enemy missiles and coordinating and firing antimissile devices. "Think of it as exercising their missile defense with ours, to see whether they could be made inter-operable," a senior administration official said. "Our systems could be interconnected. It makes a lot of sense."

Mr. Bush, administration officials said, will use the June 16 meeting with Mr. Putin to get acquainted, and serious discussions are not expected to begin until the two leaders meet again the following month in Italy at the annual economic gathering of industrialized nations. By then the adminisration hopes to have a list of initiatives in hand. But one senior official warned that "the hardest thing to put on any list" would be joint research and development, "given their own proliferation practices.

"We wouldn't be confident that the technology would stop with the Russians," he added.

Mr. Bush hopes to play to Mr. Putin's political needs by arguing that Russia and the United States are equally vulnerable to small rogue states and terrorists.

Among the threats that worry Russia are the proliferation of missiles and the threat of biological, chemical and eventually nuclear weapons along its southern border. But Russia itself has a vigorous conventional arms-export program to earn foreign currency.

And a senior administration official conceded that before deep cooperation is possible, "we would have to have serious discussions with the Russians" about their behavior when it comes to proliferation.

The proposal to upgrade Russia's radars plays to the fact that early- warning systems are the vanguard and vanity of any military - and Russia's are in disrepair. Earlier this month, for example, a fire at one relay station temporarily blinded four Russian satellites.

To the American side, the most attractive Russian system is the S-300 surface-to-air missile, also called the SA-10. It is designed to intercept and destroy fast-moving bombers, cruise missiles and some less-advanced short- and medium- range missiles. Analysts liken the S-300 to the American Patriot missile, which was used during the Persian Gulf war.

But both the Patriot and the S-300 are of variable accuracy, and integrating the S-300 into a missile shield would do little to quiet critics who say the technology for a guaranteed shield is far away.

Russia has also been trying to upgrade the S-300 to the S-400, which would have a range of 75 to 250 miles and could be guided by a Russian- designed radar.

According to a report by the Federation of American Scientists, the ability of the S-400 is just within the limits defined by the ABM Treaty, which restricts the range of interceptor missiles fielded by both sides. If Mr. Bush can persuade Russia to scrap the treaty, those limits would be eliminated.

"The Russians have some very good technologies," said a senior Administration official. "There is no reason why our missile defense effort should not benefit from those, especially if we are going to do it cooperatively."

The more difficult diplomatic challenge may be dealing with China.

Already Chinese officials have viewed Mr. Bush's proposal for a missile shield as an effort to neutralize Beijing's comparatively small nuclear arsenal. They have been alarmed at suggestions that a mobile regional missile system, based on American ships, would be used to protect Taiwan. The Chinese have tried to join forces with Russia in arguing that such an American system would lead to an arms race.

The White House is clearly trying to win Russia over to its side, and how that struggle turns out could affect the balance of global military power for decades. So Mr. Bush is likely to cast any missile exercises with Russia as an effort to protect it and all of Europe against "rogue states," particularly Iran and Iraq.

North Korea, the other nation whose unpredictability is used to justify Mr. Bush's plan, has missiles that could easily strike the Russian Far East. But Russia's longest border is with China, and Beijing would undoubtedly view any cooperation between Moscow and Washington as a grave threat.

----

Don't ditch ABM treaty

Monday, May 28, 2001
Seattle Times Editorial
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=missed28&date=20010528

President Bush's vision of a national missile defense is hampered by a lack of working technology, money to build it, a definable enemy, treaty restrictions and the opposition of allies.

For all the technical and financial challenges, the apparent willingness of the Bush administration to unilaterally abandon the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty is most vexing at home and abroad.

If Bush would renegotiate the treaty with the Russians, instead of walking away from an agreement that has served the cause of peace for a generation, the global reception for a missile defense might change dramatically.

The ABM treaty restricts the kinds of research and development and testing and experimentation needed to find an alternative to ballistic-missile arsenals.

When the Nixon administration negotiated the 1972 treaty, the thought was that two nakedly exposed enemies would be hesitant to initiate a nuclear exchange when lethal retaliation was a certainty.

Each country was allowed one anti-missile defense system, but the idea of a broader shield was not allowed. Theater-missile defense systems that protected forward areas - Japan or Taiwan, for example - were allowed because they did not go to the heart of nuclear deterrence.

The U.S. has continued to spend billions on research for missile-defense systems that could be located on land or at sea, or, as the new administration is talking, in space.

President Clinton pushed for and then pulled back on a land-based system in Alaska - 100 missiles intended to knock down missiles from North Korea or China. Based on four missiles to take out one enemy missile, that would cover China's existing nuclear arsenal, a disquieting thought in Beijing.

The potential of a new arms race has to be addressed - not a proliferation of anti-missile defenses, but the construction of more nuclear weapons to overcome what a U.S. shield is rated to stop. China would be thinking about multiple warheads on its rockets, and India and Pakistan would not sit still.

The Bush administration is entitled to make its case, but the state of technology, expense and the nature of the threat make for a tough sell.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is talking about space-based systems that could top $300 billion. Where does that fit into the budget?

The extent of the threat has not been well defined. Russia of the Cold War era is gone. The likelihood of a rogue nation sending a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon in a suitcase, shipping container or car trunk seems more feasible than a missile launch.

The Bush administration needs to bring along our allies and former enemies as missile-defense research continues. A hopeful sign is the teams of U.S. diplomats in Europe and Asia talking about the president's announcement.

Nimble diplomacy and a strong military are a potent combination. Trying to go it alone in a dangerous world - a well-armed isolation - is no prescription for security.

The Bush administration has the time to negotiate, and should.

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

US energy chief-Three Mile shouldn't curb nuke power

USA: May 28, 2001
Story by Tom Doggett
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=10973&newsDate=28-May-2001

LUSBY, Md. - Today's nuclear power plants are safe and the accident at Three Mile Island more than twenty ago should no longer limit nuclear power use in the United States, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said last week.

Abraham made his remarks during a visit to the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in southern Maryland, where he promoted the Bush administration's national energy policy that calls for greater use of nuclear power to generate electricity.

"In my view we need to stop living in the past," Abraham told reporters following a tour of the power plant owned by Constellation Energy Group Inc . The plant provides power to about 500,000 homes in Maryland, and is the first American nuclear power plant granted a 20-year extension on its original 40-year operating licence.

"We need to stop thinking of this (nuclear) industry in terms exclusively dictated by Three Mile Island," he said.

In 1979 at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, a cooling system failed which led to the partial meltdown of a reactor's uranium core. That $1 billion accident effectively halted the U.S. nuclear industry in its tracks.

Abraham said new technologies have improved the safety of the nation's 103 nuclear power plants since the Three Mile Island accident.

"We need to look at nuclear energy as a source of electricity generation in today's context, not as if the clock stopped in 1979," Abraham said.

Nuclear energy now accounts for 20 percent of U.S. electricity generation.

In its new energy plan, the administration said additional reactors could be built on many of the nuclear power plant sites currently licensed.

"We need to recognize that the improvements in safety and technology in the last 20 plus years have brought us to the point where nuclear energy clearly can provide electricity...in a safe fashion for more Americans," Abraham said.

Abraham also said nuclear power is the cleanest form of electricity generation and that more use of nuclear power plants would help the environment by reducing emissions into the atmosphere.

However, environmental groups contend that nuclear power is not that clean because of radioactive waste which is piling up at reactors around the country.

The U.S. government will soon decide whether to store the country's nuclear waste at a central repository proposed at the base of Yucca Mountain near Las Vegas, Nevada.

The White House plan also called for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to quickly relicense nuclear power plants that have a good safety record and speed up the process of license approvals for new power plants.

-------- us nuc politics

California Power Parley
Energy Crisis Shadows Bush's Western Trip

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 28, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A85118-2001May27?language=printer

California Gov. Gray Davis (D) plans to use a private meeting with President Bush tomorrow to push for price limits on electricity, but Bush's staff says the president will refuse, posing a political risk for Republicans in the largest state.

After four months of telling California from 2,300 miles away that it needs to solve its own power crisis, Bush will see for himself with a three-day visit that begins tonight. The climax will come Tuesday, at a meeting with Davis that the White House set for 20 minutes.

Davis said during a telephone interview that the federal government "has been AWOL" for California's crisis and that he will urge Bush to find "some creative approach to providing temporary price relief."

"The last time I looked, California was still part of the United States of America," Davis said. "We have contributed disproportionately to the economic growth of this country. There's no reason why a president should not respond to a legitimate request from the chief executive of the largest state in the union."

The state attorney general's office is preparing litigation to be filed if Bush does not agree, a senior California official said.

A top White House official said Bush looks forward to meeting Davis but does not plan to offer new proposals, and has ruled out federally imposed limits on wholesale electricity prices. Karen P. Hughes, counselor to the president, told California reporters during a conference call Friday that would be "exactly the wrong policy to pursue."

"Price caps only make the problem worse because they do not reduce demand and they restrict supply," Hughes said. "That's why he's developed an energy policy that in the long run will reduce prices."

The trip could have long ramifications for Bush's presidency and the Republican Party. Rolling blackouts are expected to increase in California this summer and possibly spread to the Midwest and Northeast. Pollsters in California said voters there have not yet firmly decided whether Bush is part of the problem or part of the solution, but are likely to soon.

A poll released last week by the Public Policy Institute of California gave Bush a 57 percent overall job approval rating but found that 56 percent of respondents disapproved of his handling of the state's power crisis. Davis's overall approval was 46 percent, and 60 percent of respondents disagreed with his actions on electricity.

"This is a critical moment for Bush here in California," said Mark Baldassare, the poll's director. "Over the next few months, people are going to be reassessing blame. This is a time when the president can make friends and make a good impression, or he can appear to be distant and unconcerned."

Bush has visited 28 states, but not California since losing it to Vice President Al Gore by 12 percentage points. Some Republican leaders in the Golden State had begun to feel neglected, so just showing up accomplishes much of his mission. As his father put it so memorably at a 1992 town hall meeting in Exeter, N.H., it's a case of, "Message: I care."

The rest of Bush's job will be harder, because he will have to publicly balance the political temptation to take some step toward temporarily stabilizing electricity rates against a strong philosophical objection to doing so.

The meeting between Bush, 54, and Davis, 58, could be tense. Just on Friday, Vice President Cheney repeated the administration's long-held view that officials in California "knew a year ago they had problems" but "postponed taking action because all of the action was potentially unpleasant."

And Davis, while stating that he did not want to be "too political" in the interview, said: "California is getting soaked. The money is going directly from the pockets of ordinary Californians to the CEOs of major energy companies in Texas and other Southwest states. It's a massive transfer of wealth."

White House officials said they have granted numerous requests by Davis and noted that federal agencies have taken more than a dozen actions to remove obstacles to power generation in California and to minimize blackouts.

In February, Bush issued an executive order directing federal agencies to expedite permits relating to construction of new power plants in California. Early this month, he directed federal agencies in California and other areas with electricity shortages to reduce power use during peak periods. At the same time, he ordered the Defense Department to reduce its California power consumption through a combination of conservation and investments in energy efficiency.

Davis wants Bush to ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to limit wholesale electricity rates. The commission has imposed limited caps based on reserve levels, but Davis contends the order has so many loopholes it will benefit a minuscule number of consumers. Democratic legislative leaders in the state tried to add to the pressure on Bush with a lawsuit last week in federal appeals court.

Recognizing that featuring Bush in a hall of power horror stories probably is not wise, administration officials have declined Davis's invitation to meet "some of the business owners and everyday citizens who have been personally affected by this energy crisis." Instead, Bush will meet with a group of business people developing high-tech conservation methods.

Bush will spend tonight in Los Angeles. On Tuesday, he will visit the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton to highlight his order for military facilities to save power. He will speak to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, then will moderate an "Energy Efficiency Technology Roundtable," followed by the meeting with Davis.

On Wednesday, he will speak at Sequoia National Park, which has a maintenance backlog, to launch his national park improvement program. The National Parks Conservation Association, a private group that has condemned his national energy policy as a potential threat to the parks, will greet him with a report card on his park-protection record.

California, whose 33.9 million residents make up 12 percent of the nation, has been something of a no-fly zone for Republicans in the past few years. Davis, then lieutenant governor, won by 20 percentage points in 1998.

Many political analysts said Davis's predecessor, Gov. Pete Wilson, a two-term Republican who was barred by law from running again, did long-term damage to his party by championing a proposition restricting services to illegal immigrants and their children. The measure was supported by voters but voided by courts.

Bush defied conventional wisdom last year by visiting California frequently and pouring more than $1 million into television advertisements there, even though the state had long -- and correctly -- been seen as a lock for Gore.

Administration officials said they hope to improve the party's prospects in California by focusing on issues that are important to uncommitted voters, including education, tax cuts, trade and the "welcoming and inclusive tone" that the Republican National Committee is trying to set for the party.

State Sen. James L. Brulte, the chamber's Republican leader, said voters will recognize that "blaming a president who's been in office 124 days for problems that were not of his making may be good politics, but it doesn't solve the problems."

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge (R) said he believes the California energy situation bolsters Bush's argument that more fossil-fuel generation is needed. "Moonbeams just don't generate enough power," Ridge said. "Democrats have been trying to lay this energy crisis on both the federal government and President Bush. He's going to go in there and say, 'I know you didn't create it, but we've got to work together to solve it.' It's a plus-up for him."

Bush aides said they had contemplated a California trip in April, but that possibility was disrupted by China's detention of the crew of a surveillance plane. "We will be back in California as frequently as possible," a top administration official said. "We like playing on the other guy's turf."

-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

U.S. lauds Uganda promise

May 28, 2001
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010528-30474446.htm

KAMPALA, Uganda -- U.S. officials yesterday welcomed a promise by President Yoweri Museveni to remove most of Uganda´s forces from neighboring Congo, a major step toward resolution of what has been called Africa´s first world war.

Mr. Museveni, Secretary of State Colin Powell´s host on the fourth stop of an African tour, promised earlier to begin withdrawing the bulk of his country´s 8,000 troops from "the whole of northwestern Congo" in the next three weeks, helping to clear the way for the deployment of a U.N.-approved peacekeeping force.

"We obviously welcome any withdrawal," said an official traveling with Mr. Powell, who added the United States hopes Mr. Museveni will also pull out some 1,500 troops who are scheduled to remain at three sites in Congo near the Uganda border.

Both Uganda and Rwanda have sent troops into Congo in support of rebels seeking the overthrow of the government based in Kinshasa. Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia have sent forces in support of the government, threatening to turn the civil war into a continent-wide conflict.

Mr. Powell also promised 40,000 tons of food aid to help head off a famine in Sudan and dispatched a top aide to conduct talks in Nairobi, Kenya, with officials on both sides of the long-running civil war tearing at Sudan, another of Uganda´s neighbors.

He praised Uganda for its success in fighting AIDS and promised $50 million to help that country fight what he called the most deadly scourge facing the earth.

"Even though there´s a crisis in the Middle East, even though people are dying in conflicts around the world, there is no war causing more death and destruction on the face of the earth right now ... than the war we see in sub-Saharan Africa against HIV/AIDS," Mr. Powell said.

The secretary of state and his wife, Alma, had just heard a weeping, HIV-positive woman tell of the slow, horrible deaths of her husband and small boy to AIDS.

The food aid for Sudan will go to the north of the country, power base of the Islamist government that is considered by the State Department to be an important sponsor of terrorism. Despite obstruction from the government, limited food assistance has long been reaching the south, base of mainly Christian and animist black rebels who have been at war with the north for 17 years.

A new political initiative will accompany the famine relief. Mr. Powell said the new administrator of the Agency for International Development, Andrew Natsios, would travel to Nairobi today to meet with Sudan Peoples´ Liberation Army chief John Garang and with the Sudanese government´s ambassador to Kenya.

"I hope that as we move forward we can find a way to bring a cease-fire into effect and then move toward peaceful reconciliation of this long-standing conflict, which has caused so much distress in the region," Mr. Powell said in signaling a new U.S. effort to end the intractable war.

Mr. Powell said he would watch closely to see whether the Khartoum government carries out a pledge made last week to stop bombing the south. But as he has done throughout his five-day tour through four African states, Mr. Powell focused on AIDS, which has infected more than 25 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.

"I knew a lot of academic words such as pandemic and crisis, but until you see how it destroys a family and see a little girl who has the disease" it doesn´t hit home, Mr. Powell said yesterday at an AIDS center in Kampala´s Mulago neighborhood.

"I hope in some small way to be able to convey to President Bush the passion of what I have seen."

Agnes Nyamayarwe, 49, wept as she told Mr. Powell and his wife of her grief when she and her husband learned they both were infected with HIV.

"We had to watch [my husband] die because we could not afford the drugs" she said, as the Powells watched spellbound.

In 1993, one of Mrs. Nyamayarwe´s sons ran away over his shame at the family´s illness. "I have never seen him again," said the woman, weeping. Her youngest son later died of AIDS at age 6.

"It was difficult to see the young boy dying. Instead of giving my child life, I gave him HIV. I live with this guilt."

Mr. Powell, his wife and U.S. aid and political officials then held hands with Mrs. Nyamayarwe and other HIV-positive people as they sang, "Together we stand and fight until we reach the end."

Mr. Powell announced $50 million in aid over five years to help Ugandans fight AIDS and care for some of the 1.7 million orphans in Uganda.

He credited Mr. Museveni for cutting Uganda´s HIV/AIDS infection rate in half since 1992 by openly telling his people they needed to change their sexual behavior, and called on other African heads to state to follow his example.

Other leaders have been reluctant to confront the epidemic, however. Last week inSouthAfrica,which now has the world´s highest caseload of HIV/AIDS patients, the issue was not discussed in any detail during a meeting withPresident Thabo Mbeki.

-------- balkans

Powell Set to Outline Balkan Policy

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Powell.html?searchpv=aponline

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday he will try to convince NATO allies that the Bush administration stands united regarding peacekeeping levels in Europe.

The United States and its allies went into the Balkans together ``and we'll come out together,'' Powell told reporters, saying, ``There isn't a big split'' within the administration on the issue.

Powell said President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and he are all committed to not pulling U.S. troops out of Bosnia and Kosovo prematurely -- even if he and Rumsfeld have different perspectives.

The secretary of state arrived here late Monday after a four-nation tour of Africa. He is attending meetings of NATO ministers Tuesday and Wednesday.

Peacekeeping levels are likely to be discussed Tuesday. Powell said he expected a vote to further cut the overall force size there.

He is also planned to present the Bush administration's latest thinking on a national missile defense.

Despite comments by Bush during last year's presidential campaign on the desirability of pulling U.S. forces out of Balkans, and Rumsfeld's comments on reducing U.S. commitments, Powell said the administration is unified.

``I think I'll try to persuade them not to overreact'' to news articles suggesting a split between himself and Rumsfeld. ``I'll try to assure them there isn't a big split in the administration.''

He said Rumsfeld ``has been told by the president to try to get our force levels down around the world'' and the defense secretary's public comments only reflect that assignment.

``But Mr. Rumsfeld and I and the president have all said we are not going to bail out of our commitments (in Bosnia and Kosovo),'' Powell said.

Speaking with reporters aboard his aircraft on the nine-hour flight from Uganda to Hungary, Powell said he was pleased with his African tour, which also took him to South Africa, Kenya and Mali.

``We have made clear to Africa it will be a priority for us. I don't think there's any question about that,'' Powell said.

The trip offered two revelations for Powell: the dimensions of the human tragedy of HIV-AIDS and the frailty of African economies.

``I knew that HIV-AIDS was a catastrophe,'' he said. ``I didn't know how much. It's a destroyer of society.''

Despite an expected NATO vote to reduce peacekeeping levels in Bosnia, Powell said, ``I think it's going to be years'' before all troops can come home from both Bosnia and Kosovo.

``You can continue to reduce the troop level ... but it could be some time before those countries are freestanding on their own and able to handle their own business and their own affairs.'' He said he'll push for sending in more police units to take over the work of some military units.

The United States has roughly 3,350 troops in Bosnia, out of a total peacekeeping force there of 18,000. It also has 6,200 troops in Kosovo, part of a peacekeeping force of 37,500.

Macedonia's recent turmoil will likely be the principal focus of the NATO sessions, he said, predicting the meeting will produce a statement about the country's territorial integrity, condemning violence by ethnic Albanian rebel forces, ``and encouraging the government of Macedonia to move more aggressively on political reconciliation.''

He said he also expected lively discussions on U.S. proposals for a national missile defense, Europeans proposals for a European defense force outside of NATO, and the Bush administration's decision to withdraw from the Kyoto agreement on global warming.

``Kyoto is not directly on the agenda, but I have a hunch we'll be talking about it...,'' he said. ``It's still a heated issue in Europe, and I look forward to those conversations.''

-------- brazil

Brazil Army Troops Patrol Streets

MAY 28, 23:24 EST
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7C9HCU00

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) - Army troops began patrolling the streets of the capital of northern Tocantins state Monday as thousands of police maintained a week-old strike, officials said.

About 60 percent of the state's 3,200-member police force walked off the job in Palmas and four other cities, demanding a 47 percent wage hike and a shorter work week, said Belmiro Gregorio, a Tocantins government press spokesman.

``But the government will not negotiate any of their demands until they return to work,'' Gregorio told The Associated Press by telephone.

Nearly 700 policemen, many accompanied by wives and children, were inside the Palmas barracks and had seized weapons from its arsenal, he said.

``We will do what it takes to defend ourselves and our families,'' Auri-Wulange Ribeiro Jorge, a spokesman for the strikers, said by telephone.

Gregorio said the army troops in Palmas, a city of nearly 1 million located 1,100 miles north of Sao Paulo, were being aided by some 1,000 non-striking plainclothes policemen and about 800 plainclothes detectives.

-------- colombia

Bombing Adds Leverage to Bill Bolstering Colombia's Military

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/28/world/28COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, May 27 - A hotly debated anti-terrorism bill that would give Colombia's public security forces broad new powers is poised to gain ground after four people died last week in a bombing outside a Bogotá university.

To detractors - among them the United Nations, human rights groups and at least two United States congressmen - the legislation would undermine basic rights, insulate the military from outside scrutiny and possibly spawn new paramilitary groups. Passage of the bill, they argue, would signify that Colombia's leaders are more committed to waging war than supporting a peace process that has broad international backing.

To Colombia's military and its supporters, the legislation is seen as a necessary and logical step.

The attack on Friday was the third major bombing this month in one of Colombia's three most important cities. The attacks have killed 12 people and sparked fears that subversive groups have resorted to indiscriminate bombings in urban areas.

Debate over the proposal has already prompted angry words, with one key supporter, Senator Enrique Gómez, saying that by opposing the legislation, human rights groups and the United Nations are helping Colombia's leftist guerrillas.

In an interview, Mr. Gómez accused Anders Kompass, the Colombia director for the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, of "representing the guerrillas here, by the things that he says and what he has done."

The bill, first drafted by Senator Germán Vargas and approved by the Senate, would allow security forces to detain suspects up to seven days without charges, to press civilians into quasi-military service and to arrest people who have been singled out by fellow citizens as criminals or subversives.

The bill exempts members of security forces from being investigated if accusations of violations surface during operations against "criminal organizations." It places responsibility with the military, instead of government officials, for autopsies and investigations of rebels and criminals killed in combat.

And it stipulates that a military affairs ombudsman would investigate violations by security forces and take over investigations now carried out by other entities in the government's ombudsman's office.

Now being debated in the lower house, the legislation has surprised experts inside and outside the country because it comes at a time when President Andrés Pastrana's government has gone to great lengths to portray the military as seriously committed to breaking ties with right-wing paramilitary groups.

Colombia has received $1.1 billion from the United States in mostly military assistance after some members of the American Congress were assured that Colombia was making progress in human rights. The European Union recently pledged an additional $300 million in social spending after receiving similar assurances.

"To me, this is a radical departure from the direction we had hoped that the Colombian government would go in," said Representative Bill Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat who sits on the International Relations Committee. Mr. Delahunt and Representative Sam Farr of California wrote a letter to several leading members of the Colombian Congress, saying future aid could be jeopardized if the bill passed.

Military officials have bristled at the criticism, arguing that Colombia needs the legislation because current law has allowed a flurry of unproved charges against security forces and hamstrung military operations. "Colombia is a democratic state to the extreme," said Gen. Fernando Tapias, head of the armed forces, "and is combating a grave problem with peace legislation."

Mr. Kompass, whose office raised concerns in letters to Mr. Pastrana and the Congress, said that if the legislation passed, Colombia would be in violation of international rights agreements it had signed.

"We always hear this complaint from the military, that it cannot be more effective in combat against the guerrillas because its hands are tied," he said. "If this becomes law, it would place Colombia in a position that is contrary to the commitments in the area of rights."

However, the author of the bill, Senator Vargas, said his goal was not to curtail rights. "We are trying to have a framework to confront a situation that is not normal," he said. "We pretend to have a legislation as if we were operating in Switzerland, but we are in Colombia."

--------

Colombia: Drug Runs Increased in May

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Colombia-Drug-Flights.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Drug-smuggling flights have multiplied since the United States stopped sharing radar data over the accidental downing of a missionary plane in Peru, Colombia's air force commander said.

Washington suspended the sharing of such information with Peru and Colombia after a Peruvian warplane guided by a U.S. intelligence flight attacked the plane on April 20 over the Amazon, killing missionary Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old daughter.

Under the anti-drug program, U.S. AWACS surveillance planes fly over drug-producing regions. When a radar plane detects a suspicious flight, it radios for a smaller U.S. plane that can fly low and watch the target.

Colombian Air Force Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco told reporters last week that the number of drug flights had increased as a result of the suspension.

He said that during the first half of last week alone, three planes loaded with cocaine had been intercepted over Meta state, in central Colombia, and that one of the pilots had dumped his load into the jungle before being forced to land.

Velasco said that in the absence of radar intelligence from the U.S. planes, the Colombian air force is intensifying cooperation with the air forces of Brazil and Venezuela, where many of the drug planes take off.

-------- drug war

Dutch Town May Soon Offer Marijuana Drive-Throughs

Venlo Journal
New York Times
May 28, 2001
By SUZANNE DALEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/28/world/28VENL.html

VENLO, the Netherlands - Town officials here are adamant that their plan should not be referred to as "McDope."

But that may be a losing battle.

Under a proposal expected to be approved by the end of May, this modest town along the slow-moving Maas River, where barges regularly chug by, wants to open two drive- through shops where "drug tourists" can buy small amounts of marijuana and hashish without even getting out of their cars.

Although coffee shops selling small amounts of such soft drugs exist all over the Netherlands, no one has yet done a drive-through.

The idea has caused a sensation and flooded this town of about 65,000 people on the southern part of the country's eastern border with curious journalists. Already Venlo has five licensed coffee shops where customers can pick their favorite brands of marijuana and hashish from among heaping plastic Tupperware-type containers set out for display.

Recently at one of the shops, called Roots, the young man behind the counter declined to discuss his views on what he called the "McDrives."

"I have talked to six journalists already today," he said, inhaling deeply from an oversize marijuana cigarette. "I can't do it anymore."

Actually Venlo is not trying to increase its drug business. It is trying to get rid of it.

The problem, town officials say, is that about five million people live within an hour's drive of Venlo, most of them across the border in Germany, where sale of marijuana and hashish remain illegal. As people have grown more and more comfortable with the European Union's open borders, and virtually every physical sign of the border posts have disappeared, more and more Germans are coming to Venlo to buy drugs.

As early as 8 a.m., the cars with German license plates begin rolling down Urbanus Street disgorging customers who dash out to make quick purchases.

Venlo could live with it, officials said, if all stopped there. But drug customers, its seems, beget drug dealers, and not everyone is satisfied with just five grams of marijuana, the maximum sold in the licensed coffee shops.

Venlo officials say there are now more than 65 illegal places to buy drugs in town. And bunches of young men lounge around parts of town, haranguing passers-by with offers of all kinds of drugs.

"They approach the people quite aggressively," said Elke Haanraadts, the town planner in charge of the anti-drug project. "This is the problem. There is not a feeling of security."

The idea, said Ms. Haanraadts, is to put the drive-throughs outside town - even closer to the German border, which is just half a mile away. "They would just be selling near the big road," she said, "and they might not even have a place to sit down." The hope, of course, is that the dealers will also get out of town.

Will it work? Even Ms. Haanraadts is not sure.

"It is a kind of experiment," she said. "We will see."

A good deal of Dutch drug activity operates in a gray legal area.

Drug selling, even of soft drugs, is not technically legal. It is "tolerated" to the point that the city licenses the coffee shops. But at the same time, everyone turns a blind eye to how the shops get their stock, an activity that since it involves transactions of large amounts, is not legal or tolerated. All that can make it hard for a city to know what to do, Ms. Haanraadts said.

The drive-throughs are only a third of Venlo's anti-drug plan. The city has also been buying up sites used by drug dealers and finding new tenants.

And police efforts are being stepped up as well.

It is hard to find a Venlo citizen opposed to the proposal. Most of them grumble that the Germans are hypocrites: unloading a problem on the Dutch because they refuse to legalize what is common practice among their own citizens.

Putting the problem closer to the border is fine with them.

"Because it is not allowed over there, we have the problem," said Harry Heesakker, the owner of a sporting goods store surrounded by the drug trade.

Mr. Heesakker says the value of his property has been cut in half in the last three years. On either side of his store are empty shops, where the police have shut down drug operations.

The rest of the stores nearby almost all sell drug paraphernalia - their display windows filled with huge hand-blown glass water pipes, lighters and rolling papers. Some have chalkboards in front advertising varieties of hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Town officials and even merchants like Mr. Heesakker say the drug trade has not brought violence to the area. In fact, Mr. Heesakker says the dealers behave like fellow merchants - they are friendly toward him, gossipy and protective of the street. Still, they tend to keep regular customers away.

It is true that the whole area has a furtive feel to it. Even the customers going to the licensed coffee shops tend to hurry away with their heads down. No one wants to be identified.

In the late afternoon the pace of activity quickens for the drug dealers.

Most of the customers are young. But there are middle-aged couples too, a few with children. Some settled down inside the licensed shops to play pinball; others wandered to the river to light up. But most climb quickly back into their cars for their long rides home.

Many say that they could buy drugs in Germany, too, but that making the trip to Venlo is easier. "It's cheaper here, and the stuff is better quality," said one young man. "Yeah, you worry about getting stopped on the other side. But not that much, and this is no hassle here."

--------

Canada Moves Toward Legalizing Pot

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Going-to-Pot.html http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-05-28-weed.htm

TORONTO (AP) -- The Friendly Stranger used to be up a narrow stairway in a back room, a crowded little shop offering water pipes, T-shirts and other products of the cannabis -- or marijuana -- culture.

Now proprietor Robin Ellins has a prominent storefront on busy Queen Street and plenty of room to display everything from hempseed oil and chips to a full line of hemp clothing and elaborate smoking accessories.

The transformation from hidden emporium to thriving commercial venture is part of Canada's slow but clear shift toward decriminalizing marijuana.

Justice Minister Anne McLellan says the issue should be studied, and a new Parliament committee on drug matters will look at decriminalization. Conservative Party leader Joe Clark is urging the elimination of criminal penalties for possessing a small amount of pot.

``It's unjust to see someone, because of one decision one night in their youth, carry the stigma -- to be barred from studying medicine, law, architecture or other fields where a criminal record could present an obstacle,'' Clark said last week.

The government has proposed expanding medicinal use of marijuana, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal recently supported full decriminalization. Canada's Supreme Court will consider a case this year that contends criminal charges for the personal use of marijuana violate constitutional rights.

Making possession and use of small amounts of marijuana a civil offense -- akin to a traffic fine-- instead of a criminal violation would move Canadian policy closer to attitudes in The Netherlands and away from the United States, its neighbor and biggest trade partner.

That worries U.S. anti-drug activists like Robert Maginnis of the Family Research Council. ``It will have a residual effect in this country of depressing prices and making marijuana more available,'' he said.

He also knows a shift by Canada would boost the arguments of American advocates for easing U.S. drug laws. ``We find our allies are piling up on us and making it more difficult'' to fight drug use, Maginnis said.

Joseph A. Califano Jr., president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, is skeptical about that.

Califano, a former U.S. secretary of health and human services, said increasing medical evidence on the harm caused by marijuana makes it unlikely that a change in Canadian law will affect U.S. policy. ``I don't think it means much,'' he said.

Canada already has a legal industry for hemp -- cannabis cultivated with very low amounts of the chemical that produces the high sought by marijuana smokers -- while the U.S. federal government prohibits hemp production.

In April, Canadian Health Minister Allan Rock proposed expanding the medicinal use of marijuana beyond cancer sufferers now allowed to take the drug to people with AIDS and other terminal illnesses, severe arthritis, multiple sclerosis, spinal injuries and epilepsy. By contrast, the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld a federal ban on medical marijuana.

Some U.S. states allow hemp production and medical use of marijuana, despite the federal bans, noted Bill Zimmerman, executive director of the Campaign for New Drug Policies in California.

Arrest statistics show the disparity in the two nation's approaches.

Richard Garlick of the Canadian Center on Substance Abuse said about 25,000 people were arrested in Canada for simple possession of marijuana in 1999.

The U.S. figure for that year under the ``zero tolerance'' policy of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration was 24 times higher, exceeding 600,000, says the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in Washington. The U.S. population is about eight times that of Canada's.

``Thank God, I'm in Canada,'' said Ellins, a long-haired entrepreneur who gives his age as thirtysomething. ``I just can't believe what's going on down there. ... That's a war against people.''

Believing decriminalization was inevitable in socially liberal Canada, he moved his store to a larger, more public setting last year. It's named for the ``friendly stranger'' cited in 1930s anti-marijuana propaganda as the supplier of ``reefer madness.''

Police leave him alone, because the store avoids anything considered drug paraphernalia, he said.

``Before it was too compact and tucked away,'' Ellins said. ``There's definitely been an increase in business. We're more accessible. We're more in demand.''

--------

Mexicans, Russian mob new partners in crime

May 28, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010528-93413608.htm

The recent seizure of 20 tons of cocaine from two "fishing boats" manned by Russian and Ukrainian crewmen has raised concerns that Mexican drug smugglers are doing business with the Russian mafia.

U.S. intelligence sources believe drug cartels in Mexico, considered among the world´s most ruthless, have followed the lead of Colombian cocaine smugglers to form alliances with the Russian mob and other Eastern European crime organizations. Led by the Arellano-Felix cartel in Tijuana, the sources said those alliances have been firmly established and involve the shipment of both cocaine and heroin.

Colombian drug cartels discovered the Russian mafia as early as 1992. The Russians, who operated from New York, Florida and Puerto Rico, moved quickly to help the Colombians import drugs into Europe through Italy. The Russian mobsters, many of them former KGB agents, controlled numerous banks in Moscow and established others in Panama and the Caribbean to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit drug profits -- for themselves and the Colombians.

The partnership gave the Colombians a new market for their cocaine and heroin, nearly all of which previously had been destined for the United States, and opened up for Russian organized crime what one U.S. intelligence official described as a "a bank vault."

It also provided the Colombians with access to sophisticated weapons, intelligence-gathering equipment and other military hardware, including as many as a dozen airplanes now being used to ferry drugs out of the country. At one point, the Cali drug cartel in Colombia planned to buy a Russian submarine for drug smuggling, a scheme that was foiled by U.S. undercover agents.

The Mexican connection, according to the sources, has followed the same path: Russian weapons and other equipment for drugs, along with a split of the profits.

Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman, New York Republican and member of the House International Relations Committee, said new global cartels ultimately could be capable of "buying entire governments, commercial trade zones in emerging democracies and eventually undermine established Western markets and the stable world financial commercial trading system."

The rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish acronym FARC, has looked to the Russians for arms to equip its ever-growing army. The FARC is believed to have paid with cocaine for thousands of AK-47 assault rifles. U.S. intelligence sources have estimated that more than half of the 700 tons of cocaine produced in Colombia every year comes from areas under FARC control.

The Russian mafia, known as the "Red Mafiya," has been a top priority of both the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the FBI.

Last week, a fishing boat carrying more than 13 tons of cocaine was towed to San Diego after it was intercepted on the high seas in the country´s largest-ever maritime drug seizure. The 152-foot Belize-flagged ship Svesda Maru and its crew of 10 Russians and Ukrainians were taken into custody after U.S. Coast Guard officials discovered cocaine in a secret compartment beneath the ship´s holds.

In March, an indictment was filed against 10 crew members of the vessel Forever My Friends, also registered in Belize. That case also is pending in U.S. District Court in San Diego. Federal authorities said agents seized seven tons of cocaine hidden on that ship, manned by a crew of eight Russians and Ukrainians.

DEA Agent Errol Chavez, who heads the agency´s San Diego office, said smugglers on the Svesda Maru must have had the permission of the Arellano-Felix drug cartel in Tijuana to be transporting cocaine so close to its territory.

The Arellano-Felix cartel has maintained its position as Mexico´s leading drug smuggling organization through sheer force, and has survived for more than 15 years because of its access to weapons and its willingness to use them. U.S. drug agents believe the organization´s ties to the Russian mafia go a long way to ensuring its longevity.

Mexico is the largest transshipment point of South American cocaine bound for the United States. DEA officials believe 65 percent of the cocaine produced in South America reaches U.S. cities via the U.S.-Mexico border and that Colombian cartels rely on Mexican groups in Guadalajara, Juarez, Matamoros, Sinaloa and Tijuana to smuggle cocaine into this country.

The DEA has said that Mexican drug lords have established themselves as "transportation specialists" for the shipment of cocaine across the border. Many also are involved in smuggling heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines. The addition of the Russian mafia to that equation, U.S. intelligence sources said, increases the problem.

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

U.N. Arms Experts Training in Canada

MAY 28, 20:00 EST
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CANADA&STORYID=APIS7C9ED400

OTTAWA (AP)- Some 60 arms experts with the United Nations inspection mission in Iraq have begun five weeks of training in Canada, the government said Monday.

The chief weapons inspector with the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in Iraq, Hans Blix, was due to visit Ottawa to address the trainees, who come from 28 countries.

``Canada's hosting of this training exercise underscores this country's support for UNMOVIC and its mandate,'' the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said in a statement.

The U.N. agency's mandate is to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction and to set up a monitoring and verification system.

But Baghdad has yet to agree to let the team in. The last group of inspectors left the country in December 1998.

Iraq, which is under U.N. sanctions for its invasion of Kuwait, argues that there is no need for more inspections as all its weapons have been accounted for. But the United Nations says the sanctions will not be lifted until the inspectors certify that the weapons have been destroyed.

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

Five senators want review of dress code

05/28/2001
By Edward T. Pound,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-05-29-dresscode.htm

WASHINGTON - Five Republican senators have pressed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to review the military's strict dress code for women based in Saudi Arabia and expressed concern that the policy could violate the servicemembers' "rights and liberties as U.S. citizens."

The senators sought Rumsfeld's review in the wake of complaints from Lt. Col. Martha McSally, the senior female fighter pilot in the Air Force. McSally, based in Saudi Arabia, complained in an interview last month that the policy required women to wear a neck-to-toe robe known as an abaya and a scarf when off base. She said the policy discriminated against women.

The policy is being reviewed by the senior U.S. military commander in Saudi Arabia.

The senators, led by Bob Smith of New Hampshire, a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, want a top-level review by Rumsfeld.

The other signers are Jesse Helms of North Carolina, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; Don Nickles of Oklahoma, the assistant majority leader; Susan Collins of Maine, an Armed Services Committee member; and Larry Craig of Idaho, chairman of the Republican Policy Committee.

The Pentagon said Rumsfeld has not had a chance to review the request. Military officials have said that the dress policy was implemented out of respect for Islamic law and Saudi customs and to protect personnel from harassment by the mutawa, or religious police, and from potential terrorists.

The senators said that the military policy is stricter than the official guidance the Saudi government gives to foreigners. It is also tougher than the State Department policy.

The Saudis do not require non-Muslim women to wear an abaya, according to the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The Saudis urge foreigners to dress conservatively. State Department employees are not expected to wear an abaya when on official duty. When off-duty, women are to use their own judgment about wearing the garment.

"It appears to us that a discriminatory dress code could hinder the ability of our armed forces to recruit and retain qualified military personnel," the senators wrote. While the United States must respect foreign customs, "we also must address the issue of forcing people of faith to abide by the customs of a religion not of their choosing and thereby violating their rights and liberties as U.S. citizens."

In the mid-1990s, McSally, 35, flew her jet 100 hours over southern Iraq enforcing the no-fly zone. She now runs search and rescue for that operation, based near Riyadh.


-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Tentative Emissions Plan Is Expected to Be Released

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/28/nyregion/28EMIS.html

In October 1999, Gov. George E. Pataki announced that New York would impose the toughest emissions rules in the country on old power plants, a major source of both acid rain and smog. His aides said that the new regulations would be out in less than a year.

Nineteen months later, there are still no regulations, though officials say a preliminary version will probably become public this week. Factions within the administration have fought over whether to stick to the letter of the governor's promise, and indications are that in some areas it will fall short, though it will still be one of the most aggressive programs of its kind. Many of the same environmentalists who praised Mr. Pataki in 1999 now complain that he is not going far enough.

These struggles illustrate how the stakes have risen since 1999. The price of electricity has climbed sharply, and state officials see a possible power supply crisis on the horizon. Smog in New York, after decades of steady improvement, has worsened again. Studies have shown that some of the consequences of air pollution are worse than previously thought, like poisoning of mountain lakes and asthma among urban children. And Mr. Pataki, planning to run for a third term next year, has taken pains to distance himself on air quality issues from President Bush, a fellow Republican.

Power plants built before 1970 are subject to few emissions rules. A handful upstate that burn coal or oil account for a large share of the state's output of sulfur dioxide, the major cause of acid rain and a source of soot and mercury, an element that poisons lakes and streams.

Mr. Pataki had pledged in 1999 to make New York's power plants cut sulfur dioxide emissions to 50 percent below new federal standards. New York and other Northeast states had already agreed to steep reductions in power plant emissions of nitrogen oxides - the main contributor to smog, and a cause of acid rain - in the summer, and Mr. Pataki said that he would make those year-round requirements. The new rules, he said, would be phased in from 2003 to 2007.

Since then, power companies have lobbied hard to ease those standards, and have found a sympathetic ear at the Public Service Commission, the state agency that regulates them. That has created conflicts between the commission and the State Department of Environmental Conservation, where officials drafting the new regulations largely favored adhering to the proposal.

"We have made it very clear to the P.S.C. and the governor's office that this is a factor that could drive up the price of electricity and hurt reliability," said a top official at a company that owns power plants upstate.

Such warnings rang loudly at the commission, where there has been mounting concern about rising electric rates and a possible supply crisis in the coming years. Administration officials are aware that such problems could do political damage to the governor as he runs for re-election. "Let's just say that this is an agency that is very sensitive these days to questions about price and supply," said a top commission official.

John P. Cahill, a senior policy adviser to the governor who has played a central role in resolving such disputes and shaping the regulation, played down the importance of tensions between the agencies and expressed confidence that the pollution rules would not affect the price or availability of power. He attributed the delay in producing a regulation to the administration's being conscientious in hearing both the power producers and the environmentalists. "I think that they have been given unprecedented access," he said.

Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, the Democratic chairman of the Assembly's Environmental Conservation Committee, and a frequent critic of the administration, traced the delay to politics. "The heart and soul of their energy and environmental policies is to avoid blame for what might happen to electric power, to the price and to the reliability, between now and 2002," he said.

The power companies appear to have won some concessions, as shown by a draft version of the regulation that the administration has circulated, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by an environmental group, and that officials say will closely resemble the final product. Its most controversial feature would allow the companies to achieve a small portion of the required emissions reductions not at their New York plants, but at plants they own in neighboring states - a plan that does not conform precisely to the governor's pledge. Environmentalists say that although any reductions are good, the benefit to New York is greater if the reductions are achieved here. The draft plan also pushes the starting date of the sulfur controls back by a year, to 2004, and leaves unclear whether the rules would be fully in place by 2007, as Mr. Pataki originally said.

Mr. Cahill would not address specifics, but he defended the administration's modification of the initial plan. "We don't want to have a regulation out there that is not going to be effective in implementation," he said. "If some leeway on the time allows these plants to achieve that in a meaningful way, that's certainly something that the department needs to consider before it promulgates its reg."

Environmental groups are complaining about such concessions, and they say the governor should go beyond the 1999 plan, arguing that the landscape has changed, scientifically and politically.

"We don't think this regulation lives up to the governor's promises," said Peter Iwanowicz, of the American Lung Association of New York State. "But beyond that, our substantive understanding of the role of particulate pollution, of the extent of the problems caused by acid rain, mercury and greenhouse gases, has all grown in the last 19 months."

Since the governor made his proposal, the talk among environmentalists has shifted from controlling two power plant pollutants, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, to four, adding mercury and carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. President Bush contributed to that by saying, during last year's campaign, that he favored a national four-pollutant standard, a stance he has since dropped. In addition, Mr. Bush, unlike President Clinton, opposes the commitment to carbon dioxide reductions made at an international gathering in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997.

Massachusetts last month became the first state to impose a four-pollutant regulation on older power plants, leapfrogging past New York's proposed regulation, and Connecticut and New Hampshire are also moving in that direction. Mr. Pataki said last month that his administration was considering a four-pollutant plan, though officials say the final regulation will address just two. And the governor has criticized Mr. Bush's moves, saying that he thinks the federal government should adopt a four- pollutant standard.

Environmentalists concede that reducing nitrogen and sulfur emissions would also reduce mercury, even without a rule to that effect, and New York already complies with the Kyoto reductions on carbon dioxide. But they want to push for more, and some note that with the governor promoting his environmental credentials as part of his re-election platform, this may be the time. "As we see it," said Ashok Gupta, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, "the big question, on one of the big issues of the day, is, is Governor Pataki going to be a national leader or not?" To that, Mr. Cahill said, "Whether they're not getting everything that they want, I think they would all recognize that this is a very pivotal step dealing with the problems of acid rain and air emissions."

--------

Air Is Heavy With Pollution, and Resentment

Camden Journal:
New York Times
May 28, 2001
By STEVE STRUNSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/28/nyregion/28JOUR.html

CAMDEN, N.J. - Barbara Williams was in front of the Sacred Heart School in Camden's heavily industrial Waterfront South when she noticed something unusual about the air: it was breathable.

Ms. Williams, the principal at Sacred Heart and an asthma patient, said that most days the air was so filled with dust and other pollutants from trucks and smokestacks that many of the school's 260 students, most of whom are black and Hispanic, needed inhalers after recess. At times, she added, the stench from the nearby sewage treatment plant is so bad that students would rather not go outside to play.

One particularly bad air day, "they had been well behaved at lunch," Ms. Williams recalled. "And I said, 'Now you get to go outside.' And one child said: 'Ms. Williams, I thought you said we've been good. Why do we have to go outside?' "

Sandwiched between Route 676 and the Delaware River opposite Philadelphia, Waterfront South has 2,100 residents living in a neighborhood of less than a square mile crammed with a power plant, a trash incinerator, a sewage plant, a scrap yard, an auto wrecker and boarded-up factories.

"All them buildings stink, and them trucks going by, the smoke is bad," said Danny Vazquez, 18, a cook at a McDonald's a mile away from his house on Arlington Street, where backyards run up against the Welsbach/General Gas Mantle federal Superfund site - and the traces of radioactive thorium that have outlived the production of gas lanterns there.

Most of the whites who once made up Waterfront South and worked in places like the Howland Croft & Company factory, which closed long ago but whose cracking brick walls still boast in faded lettering of "Fine Worsted Yarns," are gone. Most of the residents now are members of minorities, many them poor and sick, who can find relatively few jobs in factories that are highly automated.

Some of the residents believe their neighborhood carries an unfair burden of industry, and their fight has made Waterfront South a battleground in the emerging legal field of environmental justice, which involves the recognition of poor minority communities as society's repositories for industry and its pollutants.

In February, public interest lawyers from San Francisco, Philadelphia and Camden filed a suit in Federal District Court in Camden on behalf of 10 residents to block the opening of a $50 million plant that will grind slag into a fine powder additive to cement.

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection insists the plant meets all air pollution standards, but the residents charged that by permitting the plant, the state violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination by agencies that receive federal funds. Until the matter is resolved, a judge stopped the plant's opening.

Legal experts say that if successful, the residents of Waterfront South could establish a precedent for private citizens in civil rights suits.

One of the plaintiffs, Bonnie Sanders, 54, said her granddaughter Najsia Taylor, 3, had developed asthma, and her foster child, Lashonda Midgett, 4, had begun coughing since they came to live with her last year. "I wake up every morning at 3 a.m. coughing and gagging," Ms. Sanders said. "We don't live a normal life around here like you would in Cherry Hill," she added, referring to Camden's wealthy suburban neighbor.

Michael Davis, the amiable manager of the cement additive plant, said that he appreciated residents' concerns about the health effects of breathing the dust. But the dust, he said, is the plant's product - not a mere byproduct - and it is in the company's economic interest to keep it from escaping into the air.

The plant would provide 15 jobs directly, plus work for truckers and longshoremen. Its owner, St. Lawrence Concrete Group of Montreal, would also pay an estimated $1.8 million annually in a 45-year lease with the South Jersey Port Corporation, the state agency that owns the 14- acre plant site. Some fear that if the plant is kept closed, other potential employers will stay away.

And that would be bad news to Pearl Panichella, one of the few whites remaining in Waterfront South. To Ms. Panichella, 62, an unemployed barmaid, there is too little industry left, not too much.

"A lot of factories closed down," she said. "Bars closed down, too - lost my job."

-------- health

Antibacterial Surface Coating

SCIENCE Notebook
Monday, May 28, 2001
Washington Post
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A85701-2001May27?language=printer

Scientists have developed a special coating that potentially could be applied to toys, computer keyboards, telephones and a wide array of other surfaces to kill disease-causing microorganisms on contact.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., and Tufts University in Medford, Mass., developed the new coating, a polymer called hexyl-PVP, and sprayed it onto glass slides in the laboratory to see how it worked.

The coating killed between 94 percent and 99 percent of Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas and E. coli bacteria on contact, the researchers reported in the May 22 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It apparently works by creating a reaction that disrupts the outer membrane of the microorganisms, the researchers said.

"Because such surface modifications can be performed readily with a number of other materials, this approach may prove generally useful in coating various consumer and medical products to make their surfaces antibacterial," they wrote. "A simple periodic washing would remove dead deposited cells and rejuvenate such surfaces."

----

Deadly Shadow of AIDS Darkens Remote Chinese Village
SILENT PLAGUE / A special report

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/28/world/28CHIN.html?pagewanted=all

DONGHU, China - The most striking things about people from this village are that their threadbare clothes seem way too big and that nearly all of them share a hollow, desperate look in their eyes.

Stooped and shuffling, frail before their time, farmers who should be in their peak productive years are unable to tend their wheat fields or to care for their children. In this picturesque central Chinese village of 4,500, every family is touched by gruesome maladies: fevers, chronic diarrhea, mouth sores, unbearable headaches, weight loss, racking coughs, boils that do not heal.

Dozens of relatively young people have died here in each of the last two years. In December, 14 people in their 30's and 40's died.

The culprit that has devastated not just the health but the very soul of this impoverished place is something that local officials here in Henan Province have generally insisted is not a problem: it is H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

While hints of this secret epidemic first seeped out from remote areas of China's countryside last year, the depth of the tragedy and the staggering toll it has taken on villages like Donghu are only now emerging, as desperate, dying farmers have started to speak out.

In Donghu, residents estimate that more than 80 percent of adults carry H.I.V., and more than 60 percent are already suffering debilitating symptoms. That would give this village, and the others like it, localized rates that are the highest in the world.

They add that local governments are in part responsible. Often encouraged by local officials, many farmers here in Henan contracted H.I.V. in the 1990's after selling blood at government-owned collection stations, under a procedure that could return pooled and infected blood to donors. From that point, the virus has continued to spread through other routes because those officials have blocked research and education campaigns about H.I.V., which they consider an embarrassment.

"Every family has someone who is ill, and many people have two or three," said Zhang Jianzhi, 51, who gathered with others who have the virus here. "I would guess more than 95 percent of people over the age of 14 or 15 sold their blood at least once," said Ms. Zhang, still stout but suffering from fevers and malaise. "And now we are all sick, with fever, diarrhea, boils."

As China begins to confront its AIDS problem, the emerging evidence of virtually blanket infections in villages like this one has become a huge wild card, whose proportions are undefined.

Officially, the Chinese government says there are only 22,517 people in a country of more than 1.2 billion who have been registered as H.I.V. positive - mostly drug addicts and prostitutes - although health officials estimate that 600,000 carry the virus.

But some Chinese doctors who have worked in the province said more than a million people had probably contracted the AIDS virus from selling blood here in Henan Province alone, where the problem is most severe. They add that while the sale of blood has died out in the most severely affected villages, it continues elsewhere to a lesser extent, both in Henan and other provinces.

Clearly, tiny Donghu is an extreme case, but it is not alone in its desperation. Donghu villagers said there were probably a number of seriously affected villages just in the same county, Xincai. In the last six months, reports from Chinese researchers and farmers have also revealed high levels of disease in villages in Henan's Weishi, Shangcai and Shenqiu counties.

"I do not know how many villages have a very grave problem, but I know that it's a lot more than just a handful," said a Chinese doctor who works in the province. "I've been a doctor for many decades, but I've never cried until I saw these villages. Even in villages where there was no blood selling, you now can find cases." Such transmission occurred through migration, marriage and sexual contact.

In Donghu, there are sick grandparents, sick parents and sick children - since a number of women who carry the virus have given birth and breast-fed infants in the last five years. There are no AIDS orphans yet, villagers say, but that will come soon, since several couples are already too ill to get out of bed, and in some families one parent has died and the other is ill.

Counting Off the Doomed

Dong Hezhou, 38, a sturdy man who never sold blood and is one of the few people his age not infected, has five former classmates who have died of AIDS since the beginning of last year. He uses his fingers as he ticks off the nicknames of others who are ill. "There's Erlu, Xiaoduo, Erduo, Xiajun, Xiaoqiang, Xuijing - five have it in his family - Hongqi, Zaohao - his whole family has it too," he said. "And those are only the ones in serious condition. The light ones might not even know they have it yet."

Despite the long-playing tragedy, villagers said they had not yet been visited by health officials from Beijing, or even from the provincial capital, Zhengzhou. In fact, they have not even seen officials from the county seat, Xincai - even though Donghu sits just at the edge of that dusty rural city, at a point where tiled buildings, tinny trucks and paved roads give way to mud-brick huts, oxen and dirt paths.

Doctors and nurses at Xincai's hospital dispense medicine to treat the symptoms of a disease they only poorly understand. "How is this spread?" a nurse there asked.

Patients here die painful deaths with minimal care. And with little understanding of the disease that has ravaged their village, they may well have spread H.I.V. not just to spouses and children but also beyond the province: China's main north-south truck route, whose roadside is sporadically dotted with women selling sex, bisects the most seriously affected part of Henan.

In the early 1990's, Chinese biological product companies - some with foreign partners - started relying on China's isolated, impoverished heartland as an ideal place to get cheap, clean plasma, the part of the blood that is used to make medicines like gamma globulin and clotting factors.

Health officials in the province often became enthusiastic middlemen, setting up blood-collection stations. Some profited personally from the trade, while others saw it as a harmless way to bring cash into a destitute region with few resources.

The poor villagers of Donghu - who received about $5 for donating each 400 cc's of blood, a little under a pint - regarded the small payments as pennies from heaven, a way to take part in China's economic miracle.

Henan is one of China's poorest provinces, and Xincai among Henan's most remote counties, a six-hour drive from the capital. Money from selling blood put roofs on mud- brick homes and paid school fees.

"There was no need to recruit people - it seemed like a good opportunity," said Gu Yulan, 46, who now suffers from fevers and mouth sores. "Often the line was so long, it was hard to get a number."

A Blood Pool of Death

Three blood-collection stations operated in Xincai, villagers say, run by locals but backed as business ventures by government sponsors. One was run for the county hospital; the second was set up by the provincial power supply office; and the third came under the umbrella of the Chinese Army, which has long had business ventures. The stations were convenient to Donghu.

Chen Xuiying, 40, gaunt with AIDS in a pale green sweater, clutches two plastic passbooks emblazoned with the seal of the army's blood station in Zhumadian City, which document her blood-selling history. Each visit has a date, a hemoglobin level, the amount of blood withdrawn and her payment. In some months, there are entries about every 10 days.

Because of the plasma collection methods routinely used at the time throughout China, even those who donated only a few times ran a high risk of becoming ill, experts said. Blood from dozens of sellers was pooled and put into a "huge centrifuge," the villagers said, where it was spun to separate the desired plasma. The remaining fraction, mainly red cells, was divided up and transfused back into the sellers, who felt the process to be healthful because it limited the blood loss.

That highly unsanitary process meant that once one blood seller in a village was infected with H.I.V. or hepatitis, the rest were quick to catch the disease, since the viruses from other people's bodies rode along with the unwanted red cells back into their veins. Since the sellers were not losing red cells with each donation, which would have resulted in severe anemia, the method also disastrously meant that farmers could sell frequently - raising their chance of infection.

The medicines made from the plasma were probably safe for patients, because the manufacturing process should have killed the virus, doctors said. But the poor villagers who served as human plasma factories unknowingly became infected with H.I.V. and hepatitis as well.

By the mid-1990's, they were experiencing terrifying maladies that the local hospital could not cure: colds that lingered month after month, diarrhea that would not go away. By the end of 1996, the villagers realized that there was a connection between selling blood and the strange disease - and the practice tailed off. "We could see that people who sold a lot were the first to get sick," said Ms. Zhang, the AIDS patient.

Finally, a Diagnosis

But they did not understand that AIDS was caused by a virus, or that it could spread through intercourse, from mother to newborn, through nursing and even through the use of unsterilized syringes at medical clinics. So a second wave of transmission continued. Although some information has slowly filtered into this isolated village, up to now there has been no health education program.

In fact, it was not until last year that villagers stumbled upon the explanation for their maladies, after a relatively prosperous farmer named Wang Xiaohu began a quest for a doctor who could diagnose his disease.

He traveled first to Zhumadian, the nearest big city, and then to the provincial capital, Zhengzhou, but left unhealed and without an explanation. Next he went to Xian, China's major western city, where he underwent surgery for a tumor.

Finally, in Beijing, he received a diagnosis - it was H.I.V. - and returned home, where he died last year. "Before, we didn't know anything about it, and the local hospital didn't know what it was," said Mr. Dong.

Mr. Wang's quest has given a name to the suffering, but it has provided few solutions.

In the last year, health officials in Beijing have begun to pay more attention to the country's AIDS problem, developing strategies to contain it and allocating more money for the purpose. In mid-May, the minister of health announced that the government would redouble efforts to enforce a ban on buying blood and to regulate the blood- collection industry.

But local governments have offered only spotty cooperation, sometimes going to great lengths to cover up AIDS problems and ignoring offers of help from the government and international health groups.

In Wenlou, another Henan village where AIDS is common, a March inspection visit by high-level officials from the Ministry of Health turned into a gruesome charade.

Although hundreds of villagers wanted to tell the health officials their problems, the police blocked them. Only one person managed to slip through, and he was later criticized by the township government, villagers said.

At the hospital, the Ministry of Health team was shown four or five selected patients, who were told to say they were satisfied and were receiving free treatment. "They didn't get a real picture of how bad things are," said Cheng Jianfei, 38, a former blood seller in dirty and ragged clothes whose thin face bears the scars of a type of severe herpes infection, common among people with H.I.V.

Wenlou, in a less remote part of the province than Donghu, attracted national attention last fall after its H.I.V. epidemic was the focus of an article in one of China's most adventurous newspapers, The Southern Weekend. The problem came to light after a Chinese infectious disease specialist did clandestine H.I.V. testing in the area.

Since early this year, farmers and village leaders from Wenlou have tried to petition the central government for help in treating the hundreds of farmers with AIDS, despite pressure from some local officials to remain silent, villagers said. "Blood selling was something the government encouraged us to do here, so we think they should bear some responsibility," said Mr. Cheng, recalling that about a decade ago, the local government passed out leaflets calling the practice "glorious" and saying it "wouldn't harm health."

Now, Mr. Cheng's wife and 8-year-old daughter are also infected with the virus. He worries about who will care for his teenage son, who is not infected, when he and his wife die.

Mr. Cheng said he is now spending the equivalent of $125 a month - more than his yearly income - to cover medicines, mostly for fever and diarrhea. He has borrowed money, but is now too poor even to provide food and clothing for his family; his son has dropped out of school.

After the publicity last fall, the provincial government gave a sizable donation to the county to subsidize treatment, but those funds "came and went without lasting effect," said another villager who is also named Cheng.

Too Late to Help Village

Both Chinese and foreign AIDS experts have expressed frustration with China's seeming inability to deal with H.I.V. that results from the sale of blood in the countryside, but they have recently seen a glimmer of hope. Henan has recently appointed some new high-level health officials, and for the first time, a representative from the province recently attended a United Nations- sponsored meeting on H.I.V., suggesting that it would accept assistance. The experts note too that China has become more open in recent years in dealing with H.I.V. in drug addicts and prostitutes.

But in the meantime, villagers in Donghu continue to become infected and die, often in ignorance of how the virus spreads. Li Jiu, 30, the proud mother of a 3-month-old son, suffers from fevers and diarrhea. "I've tested positive, but he seems healthy," she said.

Cheap and effective medicines can vastly reduce the risk that a pregnant women with H.I.V. will pass it to her baby - they are becoming more widely used in Africa - but none are available here. And mothers here commonly breast-feed their infants, even those who are infected, despite the risk of transmission.

The exact scope of the problem is unclear since a number of adults and almost all children have not been tested. Testing costs $10, twice as much as farmers were paid for their blood, and there is no treatment available anyway.

Feng Chuanyun died in February, at 44, leaving a wife and four children. Although he was hospitalized for a short time before his death with severe headaches and fever, he was sent home to die. "They said there was nothing they could do," said his wife, Mei Yuerong.

But Ms. Mei recently noticed that she herself is losing weight and that her lymph nodes are swelling up over her body - early signs of infection. She is still able to tend her fields, but sees her future when she looks at her fellow villagers.

Two of them, Li Xurong, 49, and her husband, are both painfully weak, barely managing - the wife with boils and mouth sores that make swallowing excruciating, the husband with headaches and high fevers.

Feng Xiaosi, a grandmother whose gray hair is pulled back in a bun, said her daughter and son-in-law were bedridden with the illness, unable to farm or care for their children. "There are lots of people like that who don't come out all day," she said, people "who are too dizzy, sick and weak to get out of bed."

-------- human rights

EU OKs Rules Vs. Smuggling Humans

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-EU-Refugees.html

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- European Union nations agreed Monday to tighten their rules for fighting international gangs that smuggle immigrants -- but failed to establish common penalties for those convicted of human trafficking.

The partial agreement at a meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers came as part of efforts to set up a joint immigration and asylum policy.

The 15 EU ministers agreed on a definition of what constitutes criminal human trafficking as opposed to humanitarian efforts to help refugees escape danger.

But differences persisted over how tough to be on convicted traffickers, with ministers disagreeing over a proposal for eight-year mandatory prison sentences.

``We have made good progress, but we have not got there yet,'' said Thomas Bodstroem, the Swedish justice minister who chaired the meeting.

Under the new definition, which still needs approval by the European Parliament, the 15 nations will adopt common standards in outlawing trafficking for financial gain, including smuggling that involves the sexual exploitation of immigrants, use of sweatshop labor and abuse of migrant children.

Victims will not have to report the crime to start an official investigation, a sticking point for many illegal migrants fearful of retribution from criminal gangs.

Ministers failed to reach agreement on a common system of ``temporary protection'' in the event of a large influx of refugees fleeing from crisis areas. The plan aims to guarantee refugees access to housing, health and education while their asylum cases are being considered.

Amnesty International and the United Nations' refugee agency fear the proposal would make it harder for refugee claimants to enter the 15-nation bloc and make it easier for EU nations to expel them.

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

Turkey Agrees to IMF Condition

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Turkey-Economy.html

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- The coalition government on Monday said it will gradually increase the amount of money it pays to wheat growers, a key element of a $8 billion International Monetary Fund loan.

Leaders of the nation's three-party coalition government decided on bimonthly raises after the Cabinet failed to set a price during its own three-hour meeting.

The coalition's nationalist wing, which gained support from rural supporters, has argued for a higher wheat price to ease the plight of crisis-hit farmers, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Economy Minister Kemal Dervis had defended a low wheat price in line with commitments to the IMF made in return for fresh loans to back a national economic recovery program.

Monday's debates over wheat prices signaled a serious rift within the coalition government over backing the economic recovery while trying to please supporters.

``On every issue, the IMF agreement is being pushed forward,'' Anatolia quoted nationalist leader and Deputy Prime Minister Devlet Bahceli as saying. ``It cannot go on like this.''

Turkish financial markets, which closed before the deal was reached, fell back Monday on news of the dispute, with Istanbul's benchmark stock market losing more than 6 percent to close at 11,231 points.

The Turkish lira slipped against the dollar.

The coalition partners have clashed over other parts of the IMF-backed program, including the privatization of Turk Telekom. The program aims to end a crisis that has seen Turkey's currency plunge some 40 percent against the dollar, while unemployment has soared.

President Ahmet Necdet Sezer approved a law Monday to strengthen a banking sector seen as the main cause of the crisis. The law, passed by parliament earlier this month, will speed up consolidation in the sector and apply tougher penalties for the abuse of bank funds.

The law is expected to take effect Tuesday.

-------- spying

Jailed Agent Says He Voiced Suspicion About Spy Suspect

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/28/national/28SPY.html

WASHINGTON, May 27 - An F.B.I. agent arrested in 1996 for spying for Moscow told investigators after his arrest that he knew of suspicious activity by his fellow agent Robert P. Hanssen that indicated he might also be spying, the former agent said in a recent prison interview.

The former agent, Earl Pitts, who pleaded guilty to espionage charges, said he told the F.B.I. in a lengthy interrogation in June 1997 that he suspected Mr. Hanssen because he had learned that Mr. Hanssen, a counterintelligence official, had tried in the early 1990's to gain unauthorized access to secret information in the computer of another counterintelligence official. Mr. Hanssen was arrested three months ago and charged with having spied for Russia for many years.

In the interview, Mr. Pitts acknowledged that he did not know Mr. Hanssen was a Russian spy. But he said the computer incident suggested to him that Mr. Hanssen was "trying to collect information covertly." So he mentioned it when an F.B.I. interrogator asked him whether he thought anyone else in the bureau was working for Moscow. Mr. Pitts, who is serving a 27-year sentence in the federal prison in Ashland, Ky., where he was interviewed last week, said he mentioned no other possible suspects.

An official of the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that Mr. Pitts named Mr. Hanssen in an interrogation in June 1997.

But F.B.I. officials said that they already knew about the computer penetration Mr. Pitts mentioned and that he never said outright that Mr. Hanssen was a spy or offered any other evidence to support his suspicion. The officials said Mr. Pitts had said his Russian handlers never told him about any other spies within the bureau.

"During his post-guilty-plea debriefing, Pitts did not identify anyone, either by name or position, as a spy," an F.B.I. spokesman, John Collingwood, said in a written statement. "Pitts said his Soviet handlers had not identified anyone to him as a spy. Pitts did describe as `unusual' a computer hacking incident involving Hanssen. Pitts did not identify Hanssen as a spy. When asked if he was aware of anything or anyone beyond this hacking incident already known to the F.B.I., Pitts said `no.' "

Mr. Collingwood added that after Mr. Pitts referred to Mr. Hanssen in his debriefing, "the matter was immediately referred to F.B.I. headquarters for appropriate handling." But Mr. Collingwood said that after bureau officials realized Mr. Pitts was referring to an incident of which they were already aware, no further action was taken to investigate the matter.

The disclosure that Mr. Pitts had raised suspicions about Mr. Hanssen provides the first evidence that the bureau had received a counterintelligence warning specifically raising Mr. Hanssen's name. Since Mr. Hanssen's arrest, the bureau has been accused of not doing enough to prevent what government prosecutors have called a very serious security breach.

Mr. Hanssen, a 25-year F.B.I. veteran and counterintelligence expert, was arrested on Feb. 18. In a 21-count indictment, the government charges that Mr. Hanssen spied for Moscow for more than 15 years. He is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in Alexandria, Va., on Friday.

Plato Cacheris, Mr. Hanssen's lawyer, could not be reached for comment last Friday.

Mr. Pitts raised his suspicions more than three years before Mr. Hanssen came under investigation in the spying case late last year.

In addition, F.B.I. officials have said that two years before Mr. Hanssen's arrest, a senior investigator concluded in a still classified report that Moscow might have a mole in the bureau's ranks. In early 1999, Louis J. Freeh, the director of the bureau, was briefed by an investigator, Thomas Kimmel, about those suspicions. But senior F.B.I. counterintelligence officials contended Mr. Kimmel was wrong.

Mr. Kimmel said he came to believe that there might be a spy in the bureau after he was placed in charge of conducting a damage assessment of the Pitts case. But Mr. Kimmel never raised suspicions about Mr. Hanssen, and he said in an interview last week that he did not realize Mr. Pitts had specifically named Mr. Hanssen. Mr. Kimmel, who is retired, said that he may have skipped over the portion of the transcripts of Mr. Pitts's debriefing sessions in which Mr. Pitts named Mr. Hanssen. Those interrogations were conducted by the F.B.I. before Mr. Kimmel's damage assessment review of the case began.

Pete O'Donnell, another former agent who worked with Mr. Kimmel on that review, said that he interviewed Mr. Pitts again in 1998 as part of the damage assessment, and that Mr. Pitts did not name Mr. Hanssen at that time.

The F.B.I. conducted approximately 70 hours of formal debriefings of Mr. Pitts between March and June 1997, an F.B.I. official said. Transcripts of those sessions are still classified, and the bureau rejected a request to release the portion of the transcript in which Mr. Pitts named Mr. Hanssen.

But F.B.I. officials say the transcript shows that Mr. Pitts mentioned Mr. Hanssen near the end of the debriefing process in June.

F.B.I. officials said Mr. Pitts was asked by a bureau debriefer whether he knew of anyone else working for the Russians in the F.B.I. in its New York office, where Mr. Pitts had previously worked. Mr. Pitts said no. He was then asked if he knew of anyone at bureau headquarters, where Mr. Pitts had also worked. He said no, but then added that he knew about an odd incident involving Mr. Hanssen, and then described what he knew about the computer case.

While Mr. Pitts did not offer any conclusive evidence about Mr. Hanssen, during his interrogation he also told the F.B.I. that his K.G.B. handler, Alexander Karpov, "seemed to have insider information" about the F.B.I.'s New York office, where Mr. Pitts was working when he volunteered to spy for Moscow in 1987.

Mr. Pitts said that he knew Mr. Hanssen slightly in New York in the mid-1980's, when Mr. Hanssen was a supervisor in counterintelligence there, but that he did not know he was spying for Moscow. Mr. Hanssen is accused of volunteering to spy for Russia in 1985, as he was transferring from Washington to New York.

Mr. Pitts transferred back to F.B.I. headquarters in 1989, and was eventually placed in an internal security unit that reviewed the security clearances of bureau employees.

In the prison interview, Mr. Pitts recalled that a female supervisor from the F.B.I.'s counterintelligence operations had come to his security office - he did not recall when - and complained that Mr. Hanssen had broken into her classified computer. He recalled that the supervisor had said an F.B.I. computer expert had traced the hacking effort to Mr. Hanssen's computer. He added that she was "livid" at Mr. Hanssen.

An F.B.I. official said that when Mr. Pitts raised the matter during his 1997 debriefing, the bureau concluded that he was referring to a 1992 incident in which Mr. Hanssen broke into the computer of Ray Mislock, a senior F.B.I. counterintelligence official. The F.B.I. official said that the incident involved the computer network in the bureau's counterintelligence office, and led several people in the office to believe that Mr. Hanssen had broken into their computers.

The F.B.I. official said that at the time of the incident Mr. Hanssen went to Mr. Mislock and told him he had broken into his computer. Mr. Hanssen had earlier raised the issue of F.B.I. computer security, and now said he was trying to prove that the network was not secure. He handed Mr. Mislock a document that Mr. Mislock had created on his own computer the day before. Mr. Mislock responded by shutting down the counterintelligence network until its security could be improved, an F.B.I. official said.

Mr. Mislock and other F.B.I. officials accepted Mr. Hanssen's explanation that he was concerned about the system's security. No action was taken against Mr. Hanssen over the incident, a bureau official said.

Mr. Pitts's lawyer, Nina Ginsberg, said that he wrote to her from prison soon after Mr. Hanssen's arrest to tell her that he had mentioned Mr. Hanssen during his interrogation.

She said she subsequently asked a Justice Department lawyer involved in Mr. Pitts's prosecution whether the fact that Mr. Pitts had provided information on Mr. Hanssen could be used to help reduce his sentence. She said that she never heard back from the Justice Department, and added that she now does not expect it to make any difference for Mr. Pitts.

--------

China: U.S. Can Take Spy Plane

New York Times
May 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Spy-Plane.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A crippled U.S. spy plane stranded in China will be coming home in pieces, possibly aboard a huge Russian-designed cargo aircraft, under a tentative agreement between U.S. and Chinese officials.

The two nations are still negotiating details of the return, officials cautioned Monday, but it appeared the impasse has been broken in the incident that soured U.S.-Chinese relations.

The United States has been demanding return of the lumbering EP-3 since it landed in China on April 1 following a collision with a Chinese jet fighter.

``People are talking about the AN-124'' to fly the spy plane out, a U.S. administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The transport plane is identified on military Internet sites as the world's largest cargo aircraft.

The EP-3's wings and tail section could be placed alongside the fuselage aboard one or two of the cargo planes. The pieces could be reassembled later in a plane that is roughly the size of a Boeing 737 passenger jet.

The AN-124, which first flew under the Soviet flag in 1982, is made both in the Ukraine and Russia and used commercially.

In China, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao was quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying the United States would be permitted ``in principle'' to send an Antonov-124 to pick up the plane.

Asked how long it would take to get the plane home, the U.S. official said: ``What we said was we wanted to get the plane back via the quickest possible means. This is one way to get it out in an expedited way. We don't have a timeline.''

The Navy plane has been at a Chinese air base on the southern island of Hainan since the collision above the South China Sea, a crash that cost the life of the Chinese pilot. After the crippled U.S. plane made what China called an unauthorized emergency landing, the crew of 24 was held for 11 days while each country blamed the other for the accident.

U.S. technicians who inspected the plane earlier this month said it could be made air worthy, and Washington officials pushed Beijing to let the aircraft be repaired and they flown out of China.

Zhu said last week that China would let the United States have the damaged plane back, but said flying it out would be ``impossible.''

U.S. officials said China originally refused to consider allowing a cargo plane to land at Lingshui air base, fearing the runway wouldn't be able to handle the massive aircraft's weight. That could have forced the plane to be chopped up and crated out, condemning the $80 million aircraft to the scrap heap.

The U.S. plane was eavesdropping on Chinese military communications from international air space when the collision happened.

The U.S. says the smaller Chinese jet hit the slower moving EP-3, and Washington has not apologized for the crash. Instead, Bush approved a letter saying America was ``very sorry'' for the Chinese pilot's death and for the U.S. plane's landing without China's permission.

--------

U.S. can take spy plane out of China

05/28/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-05-28-chinaplane.htm

BEIJING (AP) - China has agreed to let the United States take apart its stranded spy plane and bring it home aboard a commercial cargo aircraft, the Foreign Ministry said Monday night. The U.S. would be permitted "in principle" to send an Antonov-124 to pick up the EP-3 Aries II plane, ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said in a brief statement carried by the official Xinhua News Agency. Zhu did not say when the plane would be allowed to come. Consultations would continue on the details, he said. There was no immediate reaction from Washington on the Foreign Ministry statement.

The announcement marks a step forward in the painstaking negotiations to end the standoff over the spy plane, stuck at a Chinese air base on the southern island of Hainan since colliding with a Chinese fighter jet above the South China Sea on April 1. The Chinese plane and its pilot were lost and the EP-3 made what China called an unauthorized emergency landing at the air base. China held the plane's 24 crew members for 11 days before letting them fly home.

Zhu last week said China would let the U.S. have the damaged plane back, but said flying it out would be "impossible" - a likely attempt to make the removal process as expensive and inconvenient as possible.

U.S. technicians who inspected the plane earlier this month said it could be made air worthy and Washington officials say they have continued to push Beijing to be allowed to fly the plane out.

Using a cargo plane to take out the EP-3, which is about the size of a Boeing 737 passenger jet, could be the next best option.

The plane's wings and tail section could be placed alongside the fuselage aboard one or two giant civilian cargo aircraft, possibly hired from a Ukrainian airline. The pieces could later be reassembled and the plane returned to spy duty.

U.S. officials said China originally refused to consider allowing a cargo plane to land at Lingshui air base, fearing the runway wouldn't be able to handle the massive aircraft's weight. That could have forced the plane to be chopped up and crated out, condemning the $80 million aircraft to the scrap heap.

The incident put a damper on relations with the new administration of President Bush just as the sides were feeling each other out. With a host of other issues pressing on relations, both sides have said they wanted an early resolution of the matter.

The U.S. plane was eavesdropping on Chinese military communications from international air space when the collision happened. China blames the U.S. plane for causing the crash and has demanded the U.S. apologize. Beijing has also insisted that U.S. surveillance flights off its coast be stopped, something Washington has refused.

The U.S. says the smaller Chinese plane hit the lumbering EP-3 and Washington hasn't apologized. Instead, Bush approved a letter saying America was "very sorry" for the Chinese pilot's death and for the U.S. plane's landing without China's permission.

China's desire not to been seen as caving in to U.S. pressure may have dragged out negotiations on the plane's return.

--------

Reconnaissance plane covers China coast

May 28, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010528-10797208.htm

A U.S. reconnaissance plane has flown south along China´s coast for the first time since the April 1 aerial collision, while Chinese warplanes shadowed a reconnaissance flight off the northern coast but kept their distance.

"We did fly south a couple of days ago," one defense official said of the RC-135 flight. The RC-135 is a militarized Boeing 707 airliner backed with electronic eavesdropping equipment.

In a separate incident, a Chinese Y-8 reconnaissance aircraft repeatedly flew over a U.S. surveillance ship operating in international waters, said Pentagon officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The aerial shadowing off northern China occurred within the past two weeks. Chinese F-6 jet fighters, versions of the Russian MiG-19, monitored an EP-3E surveillance flight some 70 miles off China´s northern coast, Pentagon officials told The Washington Times.

One official said the incident technically is not being viewed as a Chinese "intercept" because of the distance. This official said the closest the Chinese jet came to the EP-3E was some 60 miles away, apparently to avoid a repeat of the April 1 collision.

"We call it a reaction," said one official. A second official said the recent encounter between the F-6 and the EP-3E involved a distance of 20 miles between the two aircraft. It is not known if the Chinese jet was armed.

In past encounters, Chinese F-8 jets were armed with short-range air-to-air missiles and cannon.

A spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii declined to comment. It was the first time Chinese jets had shadowed a EP-3E flight since the April 1 collision.

The surveillance aircraft was operating out of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, and its route was limited to coastal areas of China north of Taiwan, the officials said. Two F-6s followed the EP-3E as it made its electronic eavesdropping run.

The longer-distance aerial shadowing was in marked contrast to what officials termed "aggressive" and dangerous Chinese jet intercepts during the past several months, culminating with the April 1 collision near Hainan island.

During the April 1 incident, an F-8 jet flew within 20 feet of the EP-3E and during one maneuver hit the U.S. aircraft´s propeller with its tail. The pilot was killed after his F-8 broke apart. The U.S. aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing at Hainan island, where the 24 crew members were held for 12 days.

The damaged EP-3E is still on the ground and the United States and China are negotiating for its release. China is prohibiting the United States from repairing the aircraft and flying it off the South China Sea island. The Pentagon insists the least expensive and most practical way to get the plane back is to repair it and fly it to Guam.

Regarding the naval incident, officials said the U.S. ocean surveillance ship USS Bowditch was harassed by a Chinese Y-8 maritime patrol aircraft that buzzed the surveillance ship at least 10 times. The Y-8 is a four-engine propeller aircraft based on the design of the Russian An-12 aircraft.

"We had an escort in the area," one official said.

A U.S. Navy Aegis-equipped guided missile ship was escorting the Bowditch at the time of the harassment. The Bowditch was conducting electronic surveillance similar to the activities of the EP-3E and RC-135 intelligence-gathering flights. The Pentagon insists such monitoring is legal.

China´s military claims such naval surveillance is not permitted within 200 miles of China´s coast, an area Beijing is claiming as sovereign territory. The United States only accepts the internationally recognized 12-mile nautical limit. A Chinese research vessel that the Pentagon suspects is engaged in counter-surveillance of the Bowditch has been following Navy ships in waters near the Yellow Sea, the officials said.

The Bowditch´s encounter with the Y-8 aircraft is the second incident of Chinese harassment.

In late March, shortly before the April 1 collision of the EP-3E and F-8, the Bowditch was threatened by a Chinese warship in international waters and forced to move out of a 200-mile economic exclusion zone that China is claiming as its territory. During the April encounter, the Chinese warship pointed the fire-control radar of its guns on the Bowditch and ordered it to leave the area.

A Pentagon official said the U.S.-China standoff involving the Bowditch was "still going on" yesterday.

The Beijing government is demanding an end of all U.S. military surveillance of China since the April 1 collision.

The communist government has launched a major propaganda campaign against the military surveillance. The state-run news media denounced the surveillance activities as U.S. "hegemonism."

The United States has refused to end the surveillance of China, defending the flights and other monitoring as part of a broad regional security strategy to maintain security in the region and to support U.S. allies.

The Bush administration is expected to announce in the next several weeks its new military strategy, which will call for shifting the focus of U.S. defense and international security efforts from Europe to Asia, based on the rise of China.

China is building up both its conventional and strategic nuclear forces as part of a long-term modernization program. Under development by Beijing are two new road-mobile nuclear missiles, the DF-31 and DF-41, a new class of ballistic missile submarines equipped with a submarine-launched version of the DF-31 and a new class of attack submarines. Beijing´s conventional force developments include the acquisition of Russian guided-missile destroyers, four Kilo-class submarines, and advanced Su-27 and Su-30 fighter bombers.

China´s military also is said to be working secretly on advanced high-technology weapons, including information warfare capabilities.

-------- activists

Green Party Bill to challenge nuclear navies needs support

Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 13:41:35 +1200
From: "Alyn Ware" alynw@attglobal.net

Late last year the Green Party introduced a Bill (draft law) in the New Zealand Parliament to challenge the deployment of nuclear weapons and transit of nuclear fuel in the oceans by extending New Zealand's Nuclear Weapon Free Zone to include a prohibition on passage of nuclear weapons and materials through the 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone.

The government, a liberal coalition of the Labour and Alliance parties, has not come in behind the Bill, and unless they do so the Bill will fail (not become law). It is possible that the government, which is otherwise strongly anti-nuclear, is hesitant to support the Bill because it is already under enough pressure from its allies (US and Australia), and from conservative forces within New Zealand, not to continue with current defence changes which are reorienting New Zealand military forces from alliance warmaking towards UN peacekeeping.

You could help by supporting New Zealand's current defence reorientation and the Bill to strengthe its nuclear weapon free zone.

For more information and a sample letter to the New Zealand Prime Minister, contact alynw@attglobal.net

----

Bikers rally, regroup and remember

May 28, 2001
By Ellen Sorokin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20010528-75178417.htm

Veteran Bob Brazier of Ohio still remembers the days when he watched his fellow soldiers loading rows of wooden caskets -- some carrying the remains of his friends -- onto planes heading home during the Vietnam War.

Mr. Brazier was only 22 at the time, but he said he felt like he had already lived a lifetime during his two years in Vietnam in the late 1960s. The 59-year-old retired Air Force senior master sergeant saw 10 of his high school friends die in enemy fire and many more crippled.

"I either can´t remember or don´t want to remember what it was like," Mr. Brazier said yesterday as he stood along Constitution Avenue. "All I know is I saw a lot. Too much at times."

Yesterday, Mr. Brazier and thousands like him rolled into Washington on their motorcycles to pay tribute to the men and women who fought in American wars.

The event was part of the 14th annual Memorial Weekend Rolling Thunder Motorcycle POW/MIA Demonstration. The daylong rally is named for "Operation Rolling Thunder," one of the last bombing campaigns carried out in Vietnam.

The bikers, many of them men and women in their 40s and 50s, rode into town shortly after noon, kicking up smoke and a lot of cheer. People lined Constitution Avenue to welcome them, grabbing quick handshakes or posing for photographs with veterans who slowly rode past them on their Harleys.

For William Vega of New York, the rally was about showing support and saying thanks to the soldiers and veterans for their courage to fight for their country.

"They fought for us," Mr. Vega said as he waited for the bikers to drive by. "By fighting, they gave us our freedom that makes our lives easier today."

Greg Toth, a biker from Westminster, Md., agreed. "Coming here is my way of thanking the troops," he said as he sat next to his Harley along Constitution Avenue. "I feel that the government doesn´t show enough support for its military, so we do it."

For Lou Hernandez, a retired Marine from New York, it was a time to reflect on war experiences and reminisce with old friends.

"This is really about camaraderie," said Mr. Hernandez, who returned home from Vietnam as the only survivor of his platoon. "It´s about showing my support for my brothers and sisters who were over there. A lot of those guys never made it home."

Some veterans, including Mr. Brazier, turned out to remember the American soldiers who are missing in action in Southeast Asia. An estimated 2,025 American soldiers are still missing in action in Vietnam, and 8,000 are still missing in Korea, veterans said.

"We´ve got to show our support for them and let them know that we haven´t forgotten about them," Mr. Brazier said.

A rough-and-rugged brand of patriotism seemed to color much of the day´s events and comments. Most of the bikers´ leather jackets were accessorized with American flags. Some wore the flag as a bandanna, a necktie or a shirt. Others placed flags on the backs of their motorcycles, next to the black-and-white MIA banners.

Stickers and T-shirts reading "Missing but Not Forgotten" or "Proud to be an American" also were on display, along with badges carrying messages such as, "We ride for those who do not speak for themselves."

Some veterans wore beads signifying their hearts were still with soldiers missing in action. Some beads signified the colors of the Vietnamese flag.

Throughout the day, veterans lined up to pay tribute at the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial, placing gifts of bouquets, cards or cigars along the base of the wall to say thank you to the 58,000 Americans who lost their lives in Vietnam.

Bill Howe, a retired Marine from Mississippi, came to pay his respects to an old high school friend, Jim Jenson, who died in combat. "It always hits me straight in the heart when I come here," Mr. Howe said as he placed a cigar on the ground below Mr. Jenson´s name. "It can get pretty emotional."


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