------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Continuous Vigil Outside the White House Celebrated 20th Anniversary Today
Britain snatched babies' bodies for nuclear labs
Machinists Approve Boeing Contract
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it will comply
Missile shield needs friends
BUSH CUTS BUDGET FOR NUCLEAR CLEANUP
Activists Want Uranium Plant Closed
Savvy Cheney reinvents job
Rumsfeld Opening European Tour
Benefits and Risks of Nuclear Energy
Spent Nuclear Fuel

MILITARY
Canada Declines Extradition Request in Missile Parts Case
Colombian Gunmen Abduct Activist
New godfathers of Colombia's cocaine trade
The Erosion of Political Reform in Guatemala
Sharon's Hawks Plan for War
Swiss to Vote on Whether to Arm Their Troops
Bush's Plan for Military Faces Some Friendly Fire

OTHER
Bush Advisers on Energy Report Ties to Industry
Zimbabwe Doctors Flee as AIDS Crisis Widens
Has The Ultimate Cancer Cure Been Found In India?
Secret CIA Civilian Pilots Honored

ACTIVISTS
Continuous Vigil Outside the White House Celebrated 20th Anniversary Today
Students Discuss Tiananmen Massacre
Tiananmen Families Praise Review
South Korean radical students stage anti-US protests


-------- NUCLEAR

Continuous Vigil Outside the White House Celebrated 20th Anniversary Today
Vigilers vow another 20 years day and night "if necessary"

June 3, 2001 - Peace Park Press

About sixty people gathered over the course of Sunday afternoon to honor William Thomas, who founded the Peace Park Antinuclear Vigil on June 3, 1981. See http://prop1.org

Thomas was also one of the group of Washington, D.C. activists who brought a successful voter initiative to the District of Columbia in 1993, calling for the United States to agree with the other nuclear powers that it will abolish all nuclear weapons and used the billions of dollars saved each year instead to shut down and clean up the nuclear weapons industries, and convert other arms industries into more humane endeavors - for example, instead of building missiles and bombs, instead make solar panels, windmills, hydrogen fuel cells. See http://prop1.org/prop1/prop1.htm for details.

Among the people who attended the event in Lafayette Park were a group of South Korean peace activists, who broughts signs calling for peace and reunification of their country. People from Catholic Workers spoke about their difficulties being arrested at the Pentagon weekly Monday a.m. vigil for merely praying or holding a small sign. Project Abolitionists announced the June 10th rally and 11th to 15th "Stop Star Wars" lobbying effort. See http://www.projectabolition.org/

-------- britain

Britain snatched babies' bodies for nuclear labs

Eddie Goncalves, Sunday June 3, 2001, The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,500664,00.html

Britain's nuclear industry was involved in a top secret international operation to steal dead babies for up to three decades, according to newly declassified documents.

The shocking revelation comes in the wake of the controversy over the organ retention scandal at some of this country's leading hospitals.

The papers, released by the American Department of Energy, show that scientists from the UK Atomic Energy Authority removed children's bones and bodies to ship to the United States for classified nuclear experiments.

Among the hundreds of pages of documents released are letters exchanged between American and British government scientists in which they discuss levels of radiation in the ribs of stillborn babies and lists of dead children's bodies obtained from the Middlesex Hospital and spirited to American nuclear laboratories.

The human 'guinea pigs' are not named, but assigned codenames as part of tight security surrounding the experiments. Baby B-1102, for example, is listed as a boy who died aged eight months. Baby B-595 was a girl who was 13 months old when she died.

The report listing them - stamped 'top secret' - acknowledges the help of doctors at the Central Middlesex Hospital's Department of Morbid Anatomy and Histology.

Although the US government has released hundreds of documents about the operation, it has retained even more sensitive papers thought to detail some of the most embarrassing aspects of collusion between the British and American authorities. Asked to release a file entitled Classified Discussions at Harwell, the Oxfordshire headquarters of the British government's nuclear research activities, the US Department of Energy told The Observer: 'This document has been determined to be not declassifiable and has been removed from this folder.'

An investigation into the 'body snatching' programme - codenamed Project Sunshine - ordered by former President Bill Clinton, was scathing: 'Researchers employed deception in the solicitation of bones of deceased babies from intermediaries with access to human remains.'

Among the documents obtained by The Observer is the transcript of a secret meeting in Washington of Project Sunshine's keenest minds. They show that Willard Libby, a renowned scientist who later won the Nobel prize for his research into carbon dating techniques, instructed colleagues to skirt the law in their search for bodies.

'Human samples are of prime importance, and if anybody knows how to do a good job of body-snatching, they will really be serving their country,' Libby said. 'We hired an expensive law firm to look up the law on body-snatching. It is not very encouraging. It shows how very difficult it is going to be to do it legally.'

British scientists collaborated with the project from the outset in the early Fifties, the documents show. Correspondence between them and their American counterparts at the US Atomic Energy Commission includes a letter from the UK Atomic Energy Authority giving information about stillborn children whose bones had been experimented on in Britain.

Other reports compare bodies obtained in England - known as 'Area Five' by the project's controllers - and in San Francisco. One paper says parts from British babies and children up to the age of 10 years were 'readily available'.

At the same time as supplying the Americans, British scientists from Harwell and the Medical Research Council conducted their own research on dead children. Between 1955 and 1970, they collected around 6,000 bodies.

Jean Prichard, whose baby died in 1957, said her child's legs were removed by hospital doctors and taken to Harwell without permission.

To prevent her from finding out what had happened, she says she was forbidden to dress her daughter for her funeral. 'I asked if I could put her christening robe on her, but I wasn't allowed to, and that upset me terribly because she wasn't christened. No one asked me about doing things like that, taking bits and pieces from her.'

British governments have always denied any involvement in Project Sunshine, and the link - first suggested in a 1995 Channel 4 documentary - was not investigated for the American report.

However, new documents released by the US government and reports now in the UK Public Records Office at Kew, South-west London, show leading British scientists were involved in body-snatching for both nations.

They indicate that the British conducted tests on babies from Hong Kong, and acquired body parts from doctors in Cambridge, Newmarket, Norwich and Chelmsford, as well as the coroner for west London. A leading cancer research centre, the Royal Marsden Hospital, London, took part in the project, the documents say.

Records show that almost half the bodies were of newborn or very young babies. Laboratories at Cambridge University burnt the bones.

Nuclear scientists in Britain say their research ended in the Seventies.

In the Nineties, researchers from Aldermaston and Harwell obtained foetal and placental tissues from abortions carried out in Oxfordshire and Cumbria, although this time, they say, it was with the consent of the families.

-------- business

Machinists Approve Boeing Contract

By David Scott Associated Press Writer Sunday, June 3, 2001; 7:32 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010603/aponline193205_000.htm

ST. CHARLES, Mo. -- Boeing Co. machinists at the St. Louis military aircraft plant voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new contract Sunday, avoiding a strike that would have begun Monday morning.

Seventy-five percent of members of District 837 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers approved the three-year deal with Boeing. The vote was 1,913 for, 645 against.

"We haven't gotten this good a contract in a long time," said Ken Wakefield, a pipefitter with Boeing for 15 years.

Like many Boeing workers, sheet metal worker and riveter Chuck Smith would have liked a contract more generous toward retirees. "But the money was so good, that's what everybody was looking at," he said.

"We're absolutely delighted," said Boeing spokeswoman Barbara Anderson of the vote. "This contract sets the standard for competition and flexibility for the aerospace industry, and it's going to help us win new business."

Workers voted on a rain-soaked day just hours before their old contract was to expire. A strike would have been the union's second in five years.

IAM District 837 conducted a 99-day strike against McDonnell Douglas in 1996 before ratifying its current contract. Boeing, which builds the F-15 and F/A-18 at its St. Louis-based Military Aircraft and Missile Systems division, merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

Boeing and the union agreed on a new contract early Thursday morning after 17 hours of talks. The deal came after union leaders agreed to hold off from a strike authorized by its members and give negotiations another try.

The contract members approved Sunday gives workers a $1,200 signing bonus and wage increases of 3 percent in the first year of the deal, followed by annual increases of 4 percent.

Boeing had previously offered no signing bonus - workers in Seattle got a 10 percent bonus two years ago - and a first-year wage increase of 3 percent, followed by bonuses of 3 percent in each of the next two years.

Barbara Anderson, a spokeswoman for Boeing, said the contract specifically prevents the company from laying off workers because of increases in productivity gained from job families or subcontracting of work. Layoffs are also prohibited unless the company faces a "catastrophic change" in business, she said.

Union leaders working to persuade members to approve the contract cited the prospective $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter contract, to be awarded by the Pentagon in October, as reason to vote yes and avoid a strike.

-------- japan

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it will comply

World Briefs: Asia
Sunday, June 3, 2001 Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/06032001/nation_w/102630.htm

Japan: A nuclear power plant operator said Friday it will postpone a plan to use recycled plutonium at a reactor in northern Japan after local residents rejected the idea in a vote. The Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it will comply with local government leaders' request to delay the use of plutonium-based mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. Last Sunday's plebiscite in Kariwa, a village of 5,000 residents, was held in the wake of a series of accidents and cover-ups that have made many Japanese uneasy about nuclear power.

-------- missile defense

Missile shield needs friends

By Michael Cabbage Orlando Sentinel SPACE EDITOR Posted June 3, 2001
http://orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/orl-asec-missile060301.story?coll=orl-home-headlines

WASHINGTON -- A North Korean dictator gone mad delivers an ultimatum to the United States: Allow South Korea to be overrun by communist troops or Los Angeles will be nuked into a smoking crater.

Armed with a new national missile defense, a defiant Washington refuses.

As a nuclear missile zips toward the West Coast at speeds up to 15,000 mph, the defense swings into action.

A U.S. early-warning satellite 22,000 miles above Earth detects the launch and alerts a command center at Cheyenne Mountain, Colo. A radar at an Air Force base in California confirms the threat's speed and flight path. Another, more sophisticated, radar in Alaska's Aleutian Islands -- capable of counting dimples on a golf ball more than 2,000 miles away -- then locks on the missile and runs a detailed analysis.

A three-stage rocket blasts off from the Aleutians to intercept the intruder about 200 miles above the Pacific. As it closes in, the rocket deploys a kill vehicle equipped with two types of onboard eyes: heat-seeking infrared sensors that home in on the missile's plume and an optical sensor that can visually "see" the target. The kill vehicle slams into the missile, destroying it.

Dubbed "Son of Star Wars" by some, it's part of President Bush's vision for a national missile defense to shield all 50 states from nuclear attack.

It's also a vision many experts say is fatally flawed.

In the 20 years since Ronald Reagan became president, about $75 billion -- enough to build more than two dozen space shuttles -- has been lavished on various U.S. nuclear-defense schemes. Not one system is operational today. Long-term estimates for an air, space, sea and land system such as the one being considered by the White House run as high as a half-trillion dollars. That's four times the cost of the Apollo moon program when adjusted for inflation.

The latest rationale for spending more is the so-called rogue-nation threat: three or four developing nations that are years, perhaps decades, from having intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.

To pursue the plan, the White House wants to scrap a treaty that has helped keep the nuclear peace for almost three decades. That has angered countries with real nuclear arsenals, Russia and China, as well as U.S. allies in NATO and much of Congress.

The administration is forging ahead, however, despite critics at home who insist the technology simply isn't there. It all means the most important defense initiative of Bush's presidency appears unworkable for a variety of political, financial and technical reasons.

"National missile defense is like a mirage that never gets any closer," said John Pike, director of the GlobalSecurity.org policy research group and a longtime missile-defense opponent. "They've been about five years away for the last 25 years."

'A nonexistent problem'

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has refused to discuss specifics of the Bush strategy until final details are worked out this summer. However, Pentagon sources told the Orlando Sentinel that the plan includes moving ahead with a limited Army land-based system in Alaska and sea-based interceptors aboard Navy ships patrolling global hot spots.

In addition, the Air Force likely will speed up efforts to put missile-killing lasers aboard jets and in orbit. Those weapons would be capable of zapping ICBMs as well as short-range missiles pointed at U.S. troops abroad.

"There is a threat out there from rogue states that, because of proliferation in the post-Cold War world, are gaining access to ballistic weapons and weapons of mass destruction," Rumsfeld said. "We think the only responsible thing to do is to develop and deploy a capability to deal with that."

While Reagan's "Star Wars" proposal had the ambitious goal of neutralizing the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal, the Bush plan initially would spend billions to knock out, at most, only two dozen or so incoming warheads. The defense would be aimed at accidental launches -- so far, there has never been one -- and international troublemakers such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran.

North Korea appears closest to mounting a long-range threat after launching a two-stage Taepo Dong missile over Japan in 1998. A three-stage version reportedly is at least five years away. Even if successful, it's unlikely the booster could reach the U.S. mainland. A more likely scenario would have enemy nukes smuggled in via truck, shipping crate or barge.

Most of the rogue states don't appear close to having a nuclear threat either. All probably would use less lethal chemical or biological bombs long before fielding a nuclear weapon.

Although the Bush system would be helpless against a massive Russian strike, the Chinese are worried the defense might neutralize their 18 or so ICBMs. Beijing's likely response, analysts say, would be to increase its nuclear stockpile in an effort to overwhelm any U.S. shield with numbers.

"In attempting to solve a nonexistent problem . . . we are creating some very real problems like prompting the Chinese to build hundreds of missiles pointed at the U.S. instead of a couple of dozen," Pike said.

That fear of a new arms race is why America's NATO allies have been reluctant to support the Bush plan, despite U.S. offers to extend them protection. The organization's ministers rejected overtures from Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday during a meeting in Hungary.

At the heart of their objections is Bush's effort to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a pact NATO leaders characterized last year as "a cornerstone of strategic stability." The White House doesn't see it that way.

"No treaty that prevents us from addressing today's threats -- that prohibits us from pursuing promising technology to defend ourselves, our friends and our allies -- is in our interests or the interests of world peace," Bush said in a May 1 speech.

Nuclear stalemate

The ABM Treaty and resulting strategic stalemate has kept the nuclear peace for a quarter-century. A national missile defense such as the one being considered by the White House would be a clear violation.

To slow down the arms race of the 1960s, U.S. and Soviet leaders adopted a doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

The theory: Neither side would blow up the other if it had no defense against a catastrophic counterstrike. That policy became official when President Nixon and Soviet chief Leonid Brezhnev signed a pair of 1972 agreements to conclude the first round of the landmark Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

One of those agreements was the ABM Treaty, which forbade either country from developing a national missile defense. Moscow, like China, adamantly opposes any change to the status quo. So far, Russian leaders have ruled out tinkering with the ABM Treaty.

Political support for the treaty also remains strong in Washington, where national missile defense has been a longtime priority for conservatives. Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., perhaps the Senate's biggest missile-defense booster, admits Congress is sharply divided.

"It's not the same world that it was when that treaty was written," Smith argues. "But there are those who believe we should build that system and those who don't."

Those who don't -- mainly Democrats -- will assume control of the Senate this week, making Bush's uphill battle even steeper. One of the most outspoken critics of a vast missile defense is Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., who will become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden says he's open to limited defense systems that don't violate the treaty. But he promises hearings on the Bush plan.

"This is one of those notions that the more light that's shined upon it, the less rational it appears," Biden said. "The administration's rationale for moving forward now and abandoning the ABM Treaty is premised on faulty logic, faulty technology and undetermined costs."

Shooting at bullets

The concerns about faulty technology led President Clinton to put off a decision last year on proceeding with a limited land-based defense in Alaska. That system is expected to become the centerpiece of Bush's near-term plans.

Kill vehicles launched aboard rockets would stop incoming warheads in midflight by smashing into them. The idea has been compared to shooting down a bullet with a bullet.

Pentagon sources say 100 planned interceptors could be in place by 2008. Other experts aren't so sure. Two of the interceptor's past three flight tests have been failures. A test launch of the interceptor's new booster from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is tentatively scheduled for August.

Quality control and schedule slips have been chronic problems for prime contractor Boeing. An independent review in 1999 headed by retired Air Force Gen. Larry Welch accused Boeing and kill-vehicle contractor Raytheon of "over-optimism about the state of progress" and setting up less challenging tests to maximize the chance of success. The panel recommended postponing a final go-ahead on deployment until perhaps 2003 to avoid "a very high-risk schedule."

The panel's recommendation came even before the two recent test failures. Nevertheless, sources say the White House is poised to give the go-ahead this year. That could lead to a limited initial deployment -- fewer than 10 interceptors -- before the 2004 presidential election.

A growing list of critics, including former missile-defense engineers and Nobel laureates, say the system never will be reliable. They contend simple decoys can confuse the interceptors' sensors -- a charge military planners deny. Enemy missiles can deploy balloons, dummy warheads and clouds of radar-reflecting wire called chaff to hide incoming weapons.

Destroying the missile immediately after launch eliminates the threat before warheads or decoys ever get released.

However, a system being designed to do that, the Air Force's airborne laser, faces huge engineering challenges.

A modified 747 jet would patrol the skies 40,000 feet above trouble spots and shoot down missiles with five-second chemical laser bursts fired from a turret in the plane's nose. The idea is to drill a hole in the enemy missile and cause it to explode. Testing is scheduled to ramp up in 2003 with the goal of deploying a fleet of seven aircraft by 2008 or so.

Skeptics say a lot of problems must be ironed out first. The system must be small enough to fit inside the airplane. The laser has a range of less than 300 miles, limiting its coverage. And turbulence and distortion in the atmosphere lessen the laser's effectiveness.

"I don't know whether an airborne laser will ever be technically feasible," said Charles Peña, a Washington-based defense analyst. "There are operational issues too: How many have to be up there? Where do they have to be based?

"There are a whole lot of unanswered questions."

Space, sea options

Even tougher engineering questions surround ambitious plans for a space-based laser. Optimistic Air Force assessments say testing could begin by 2010, with deployment as soon as five years later. If the idea works, a constellation of orbiting lasers several hundred miles above Earth could, in theory, destroy missiles early in flight anywhere in the world. Some estimates put the space lasers' eventual cost at more than $200 billion.

In addition to land- and air-based systems, Navy officials are lobbying for a sea-based missile defense. The idea is expected to figure prominently in the Bush plan. It would use the Navy's existing fleet of Aegis ships -- designed to knock out short-range missile threats in combat zones -- to launch interceptors at ballistic missiles early in flight. Proponents say the new system could be deployed for as little as $15 billion.

Critics put the cost at triple that figure for several reasons: The ships' radar would have to be radically improved. Faster, more powerful missiles would have to be built. And the fleet might have to be retrofitted to launch the larger interceptors.

"With a ship-based system, you'd have to develop and deploy a new interceptor and a new radar," said Jacques Gansler, a former undersecretary of defense and the Pentagon's third-ranking civilian during Clinton's second term. "The added cost, complexity and time of introducing the ship-based systems didn't seem warranted."

There are other problems, too. It would be difficult for a sea-based system to intercept missiles launched from some landlocked countries. And hitting a missile during ascent would depend on being in the right place at the right time.

"From space, you're closing on the target," analyst Peña said, "as opposed to intercepting from the ground, where you're chasing the target."

Even if the technology pans out, it isn't necessarily enough. All the components must mesh together. They must work flawlessly every time. And potential adversaries must be convinced the United States believes in the missile defense enough to bet millions of American lives on its success. Given the idea's checkered past, that could be the toughest sell of all.

Skeptic Pike has a modest proposal to convince doubters such as himself: Hold a picnic on the National Mall in Washington. Invite the president and missile-defense supporters in Congress, the Pentagon and industry. Launch a nuclear warhead toward Washington with the picnic as ground zero. Knock it out with the new national missile defense.

That, Pike says, would even make a believer out of him.

"One thing's for sure," he added. "I won't be there."

Michael Cabbage can be reached at mcabbage@orlandosentinel.com or 321-639-0522.

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

BUSH CUTS BUDGET FOR NUCLEAR CLEANUP
President wants evaluation; critics decry delay

Sunday, June 3, 2001
By Jonathan Riskind Columbus Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief Illustration: Photo, Graphic , MAP
http://libpub.dispatch.com/cgi-bin/documentv1?DBLIST=cd01&DOCNUM=24747&TERMV=241:4:245:4:249:6:258:7:265:7:

WASHINGTON -- When southern Ohio economic-development czar Gregory Simonton gazes over the vast 3,700-acre site of the shuttered Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, he sees massive buildings that could be sold or leased to private businesses and vacant land ripe for construction.

But first the contaminated byproducts of the Cold War must be mopped up at the uranium-enrichment plant in Piketon, about 60 miles south of Columbus. Once a key part of the nation's atomic-bomb program, the plant last month stopped producing commercial material for nuclear fuel.

The total cost of cleaning up Piketon isn't cheap -- an estimated $749.1 million -- and that figure could go up, according to recently released U.S. Department of Energy figures.

But President Bush's proposed 2002 budget would cut money for nuclear cleanup sites nationwide to about $5.9 billion from about $6.3 billion this year. That has outraged Simonton and nuclear-cleanup advocates in Ohio and around the country who say more, not less, money is needed to make inroads into paying an estimated $300 billion Cold War contamination bill.

"The administration has recommended a step back . . . after a decade of real progress," said Robert Schaefer, a spokesman for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group based in Seattle and in the nation's capital.

The advocates are worried that after several years of building up the Ohio and national cleanup budget -- which still hasn't reached levels they consider adequate -- this marks the start of a backslide that could delay for years the decontamination and reuse of nuclear sites.

Energy Department officials acknowledge that cleaning up dozens of nuclear sites, large and small, will take hundreds of billions of dollars and decades of time. The locations range from Piketon to the Battelle Columbus nuclear research lab in West Jefferson, Ohio, to the Hanford nuclear reactor in Washington state and the plutonium-polluted Savannah River site in South Carolina.

But the administration wants to assess how much progress has been made and whether the job can be done more efficiently before deciding whether to increase spending, officials say.

"The entire (department) budget in environmental management is subject to an ongoing, comprehensive policy and project review initiated by Secretary (of Energy Spencer) Abraham," said Ken Morgan, a spokesman for the agency's Ohio office. The department "will continue to work with our regulators and the governor's office to ensure that cleanup activities continue and that the health and safety of our workers and the public is not compromised, period."

On Friday afternoon, the Bush administration announced that it was proposing adding $180 million nationwide to this year's cleanup budget as part of a $6.5 billion 2001 supplemental budget request it is sending to Congress.

Piketon fared relatively well in next year's budget, considering that some Ohio sites received deep cutbacks. Still, the approximately $76 million allocated for cleanup at Piketon was the same as current funding, not allowing an expansion of the cleanup now that the plant has ceased operations.

On the positive side, $125 million is proposed to keep the plant on standby, saving for at least 18 months many of the 1,700 jobs there. More standby money has been promised, but not committed, for as long as 31/2 more years.

Still, Simonton is concerned about whether enough money will be committed in future years not just for cleanup efforts but also to make good on previous federal promises to build a recycling plant to dispose of thousands of cylinders of depleted uranium stored on site. The full cost of getting rid of those cylinders, which could run into the billions, isn't included in the Piketon cleanup price tag.

"Everything's a holding pattern," Simonton said of attempts to plan the long-term redevelopment of the site and figure out how many cleanup and recycling jobs will be there in years to come.

"There's one promise now, and two years from now you could have a whole different set of circumstances. This year-to-year process is to say the least frustrating and also disheartening."

The picture is bleaker at other Ohio nuclear sites.

The Fernald site near Cincinnati, a former uranium-metal production facility, saw its funding held to about $290 million when it had been expected to reach $330 million next year to help meet a 2006 cleanup goal.

The Mound site in Miamisburg, which was a key producer of nuclear-weapons components, suffers a cut of at least $20 million in the Bush budget, to about $76 million, including about $5 million for security and other noncleanup needs.

Sharon Cowdrey, a member of a Miamisburg citizens' advisory group that oversees the Mound cleanup, said about $92 million a year is required to decontaminate the site by 2006, the target date. Cowdrey worries that the site, on top of a hill, could leak dangerous radioactive waste into the community's groundwater before too long if cleanup isn't completed.

"Everything on that hill has to migrate down," Cowdrey said. "There is no way the community wants to be strapped" with the cleanup taking longer than expected.

Included in Friday's announcement is $21 million more this year for Fernald and Mound, although it wasn't clear how much is intended for each site. And the attempt to add more money to this year's cleanup pot doesn't mean the administration is seeking to increase its 2002 request.

The concerns of local officials and people such as Simonton and Cowdrey is shared by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, which helps oversee federal cleanup efforts on some of the state's nuclear sites.

Graham Mitchell, chief of the OEPA's office of federal facilities oversight, said the Bush budget is "shortsighted" in not recognizing the risks and costs of delaying the closure of contaminated Cold War sites.

Contamination might migrate off some sites, Mitchell said, and the longer cleanup takes, the more it will cost taxpayers.

"We need to make sure the new administration understands that commitments have been made," he said. "There is the potential here to solve real environmental problems and get these sites off the federal government's books and actually save money in the long run."

The Energy Department is wise to review how nuclear-cleanup money is being spent, said Kate Probst, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a Washington-based think tank that conducts research on environmental issues.

Probst notes that about $50 billion already has been spent on cleanup since 1989. She worries that too much emphasis has been placed on cleanup as an economic-development initiative to replace jobs lost when the nuclear plants shut down -- and not enough on cleaning up the most important sites first and all sites efficiently.

"There could be more scrutiny of where all the money is going and are we getting the most out of it," Probst said. "It's a lot of money, and a lot of people out there think that money could be better spent. I can't say whether (this year's) cuts are good or bad, but doing things better is important."

Still, if lawmakers such as Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, have their way, the cleanup money will be substantially increased for 2002 even as that re-examination goes forward. The Piketon plant is in Strickland's district.

Members of Congress will try to increase cleanup funding in 2002 by as much as $1 billion, though that will butt heads with many other initiatives in a year when Bush is trying to hold down domestic spending.

It's important for the federal government to keep funding promises at places such as the Mound and Fernald sites and to step up efforts at the Piketon plant, DeWine said.

"It's a responsibility of the federal government," he said. "The federal government created the problem, and we need to live up to our responsibilities."

Joseph Gantos, manager for decontamination and decommissioning for Battelle Memorial Institute, agrees. Money for cleanup of Battelle's West Jefferson lab, a Cold War nuclear-research site, was slashed in the Bush budget to $10 million from $16.1 million.

If that figure holds and does not increase significantly in future years, the West Jefferson site wouldn't be completed until 2015, Gantos said. Battelle pledges to spend its own money, if necessary, to ensure contamination doesn't endanger the environment or surrounding community.

But since the work was done on behalf of national security, the federal government should make good on promises to restore the site for both environmental and economic-development reasons, Gantos said.

"We want our facilities back so we can put them back into business use," he said. "It would be good for the community to have another business thriving."

jriskind@dispatch.com

-------- utah

Activists Want Uranium Plant Closed

BY LISA CHURCH SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE, Sunday, June 3, 2001
http://www.sltrib.com/06032001/utah/102609.htm

MOAB -- Some environmental groups say the White Mesa uranium mill near Blanding should be closed before the state has another contaminated tailings site on its hands similar to the Atlas site north of Moab.

Representatives of the Utah Sierra Club Glen Canyon chapter and Living Rivers, both based in Moab, made their remarks during a public comment period to the state's Radiation Control Board, the oversight board for the Division of Radiation Control, during a meeting in Moab on Friday.

The White Mesa Mill, in San Juan County, is owned by International Uranium Corp. It uses an acid-leach process to extract uranium and other valuable metals from radioactive waste shipped to the site from around the country. The remaining materials are disposed of in the mill's tailings site. A $10 million bond is in place for reclamation, should the site close, but many environmentalists and area residents say that is not enough money to pay for cleaning up the site.

On Friday, the environmentalists described the waste disposal area as being similar to the 13 million tons of tailings produced by Atlas Corp., which processed uranium at a site near the banks of the Colorado River and has been a source of headaches for state and federal agencies since the company closed its plant in 1984 and filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 1998. After 10 years and millions of dollars in studies and stabilization work, the Atlas site will be turned over to the U.S. Department of Energy in September.

Environmentalists told Radiation Control Board members that the White Mesa Mill is a toxic waste dump, accepting materials that will produce little uranium or valuable metals. They said the mill also could pollute the underground aquifer that is the water source for the Ute Reservation, and said the aquifer would then carry the toxins into the San Juan River which joins the Colorado River at Lake Powell.

"This is a huge watershed that feeds the entire West," said John Weisheit, chairman of the Glen Canyon chapter of the Sierra Club. "I'm disappointed in the leadership of Utah. We don't want nuclear waste here."

Sierra Club member and longtime environmental activist Ken Sleight urged the board to close the White Mesa Mill, which earlier this year applied to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to transport and process radioactive lead waste from a site in California.

Owen Lammers, executive director of Living Rivers, told board members that International Uranium, which has operated the mill located on the Ute Reservation south of Blanding since 1997, is not financially stable. He cited figures from the company's 2000 annual report filed with the federal Securities Exchange Commission, which show that the company's assets have dropped from $32 million in 1998, to $6 million last year. "We have a situation where the company is declining. They're having trouble," Lammers said.

Urging the state to "investigate independently" how much reclamation of the White Mesa site will cost, Lammers cautioned board members to carefully review the financial disclosures in the company's annual report.

International Uranium president Ron Hochstein, who attended Friday's meeting, said the company is financially secure and stressed that White Mesa is a working mill, not a toxic dump.

He said the company's annual report shows lower assets because the value of mining properties the company owns has declined in recent years due to a drop in the price of uranium.

-------- us nuc politics

Savvy Cheney reinvents job
D.C. veteran wields unprecedented clout as vice president

By CRAIG GILBERT, June 3, 2001, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/news/nat/jun01/cheney03060201.asp

Washington - In the past 50 years the vice presidency has slowly turned into a serious job.

But there's simply no precedent for what Dick Cheney is doing with this booby prize of yore.

"We've just never seen anything comparable in American political history," says Marshall Wittman, an analyst at the Hudson Institute.

Four months into the Bush administration, it's widely agreed that Cheney is the most influential vice president ever. No one has had more real or perceived power.

"I think that without Cheney, the Bush presidency would not have been taken as seriously," says Paul Weyrich, a conservative activist.

Cheney ran the Bush transition. He has four offices, two on Capitol Hill. His staff is integrated with the president's in ways Washington hasn't seen before. He is the point man on energy and missile defense, two big Bush priorities. He's a potential tie-breaking vote in a closely divided Senate. Not much important happens without him.

But Cheney's stature can also be gauged by what hasn't happened.

When Vermont's Jim Jeffords' defection cost the GOP control of the Senate, the White House was accused of bungling.

Yet hardly anyone blamed Cheney, even though his knowledge of Congress was supposed to be one of his strengths in the job.

More striking is how little genuine turmoil Cheney's clout has caused in this city. It's the subject of late-night jokes on TV at the president's expense. It may or may not give Americans pause. Democrats say it diminishes Bush.

But a situation with limitless potential for intrigue hasn't produced much. In fact, it's hard to imagine another circumstance where a vice president could this seamlessly exercise such power.

It takes a president who likes to delegate.

It takes a vice president who is viewed as having skill and mettle but no higher ambitions.

It takes a No. 2 who is not a polarizing figure inside his own party, who's better known for problem-solving than ideology.

And it takes a vice president whose personality doesn't outshine the boss', whose style doesn't call attention to itself.

"For this kind of president, this is a perfect kind of vice president," says Lee Sigelman of George Washington University.

How they differ

If Cheney complements Bush, it clearly has a lot to do with their differences. And those differences can be striking up close.

Last month, Cheney gave an interview to a small group of reporters from newspapers around the country. President Bush has had similar gatherings.

In a Bush sit-down in February, the president walked into the Roosevelt Room of the White House and strolled around the table, shaking every hand, greeting each visitor by name.

The Cheney interview? He strode in and took his seat. "OK, fire away," he said. The gathering was altogether civil, but had that brisk, businesslike quality Cheney is famous for.

"He runs a great meeting," says his speechwriter, John McConnell.

The interview underscored a few other things that help define his vice presidency. One is Cheney's epic Washington career: staffer for Richard Nixon, chief of staff for Gerald Ford, Wyoming congressman in the Ronald Reagan years, member of the House GOP leadership, secretary of defense for George Bush the elder. At 60, he is the ultimate government hand in the party of small government.

"All of us depend upon him," says Bush cabinet secretary Tommy Thompson.

When a reporter asked Cheney why he didn't support price caps on power in California, Cheney brought up Nixon's ill-fated wage-and-price controls 30 years ago. The regulations were 14 pages long, he noted.

"I know, because I typed them," said Cheney, recalling an all-nighter he pulled at Nixon's Cost of Living Council.

Cheney's comfort with complex issues also came through in the interview, as the conversation turned to things like Canadian uranium and "dry cask storage" of spent nuclear fuel. House Republican Paul Ryan of Janesville says that when he asked a Cheney aide before a meeting on gas prices which of their policy wonks he should question about regional fuels, the staffer said, "Ask the vice president."

Says Ryan, "He is his own staffer."

Respect among Republicans

These political assets - command of policy, decades as a decision-maker - help give Cheney unusual standing inside his party.

"I don't know of anyone who has had such uniform respect within Republican circles in many a year," says Wittman.

But that appeal is also personal. With his Joe Friday manner, his corporate conservatism, his lack of theatrics, Cheney is a kind of "anti-Clinton" to some Republicans. A recent profile in The New Yorker dubbed him "The Quiet Man" - the title of a John Wayne movie.

He's "one of the calmest people I've ever been involved with," says former governor Thompson. Mary Matalin, a top aide, calls him a "manly man." His admirers' favorite plaudits are "serious" and "grown-up."

And that's how Cheney talks, too, dividing ideas not so much into ideological boxes as into serious and silly, mature and childish, substantive and symbolic. Asked about criticism that he's serving the oil interests, Cheney said curtly, "That's goofy."

There is the hint in his comments on energy of the parent explaining the real world to the child.

"There's a great American desire to have every problem solved yesterday," he said in last month's interview. Asked several times whether his energy plan offered any "short run" relief to consumers, Cheney smiled, fixing on the phrase "short run."

"You guys all have the same mentality," he told reporters. "Are you running for something next year?"

Thanks to his technician's personality, Cheney's political views aren't always front and center. There is a nuanced debate over just how conservative Cheney is. Weyrich, a longtime leader of the conservative movement, regards Cheney not as a "movement" guy, but a mainline, Western-state conservative, not hard right but "reliable." He is undeniably pro-business and pro-defense. Matalin says the thing that "drives a lot of his thinking is the free market."

Democrats dwell on his very conservative voting record in the House in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Former Wisconsin lawmaker Bob Kastenmeier, who served with Cheney on the intelligence committee, remembers him as "one of my least favorite people."

"He was a hard-liner on the floor," says Kastenmeier, a Democrat whose service touched on four decades.

But Cheney is well-regarded by many moderates in his party. His old ties to men of the middle like Ford and former House GOP leader Bob Michel give centrists "comfort," says Steve Gunderson, a consultant and ex-congressman from Wisconsin who keeps in close touch with the party's more liberal members.

"His style is just a major political asset, because he comes across as, should we say, much more moderate, much more open-minded than his political ideology and voting record certainly suggested," says Gunderson.

'Teflon gift'

Cheney's steady image and unusual stature may explain one thing about the fallout from the Jeffords announcement last month, which stunned the White House and delivered the Senate to Democrats.

Bush congressional lobbyists and strategist Karl Rove were singled out for second-guessing: Were they caught napping? Did they mishandle the Vermont moderate?

Hardly any Republicans or commentators asked those questions about Cheney. Yet the alleged breakdowns occurred in areas where Cheney is said to excel: knowledge of the Hill, rapport with party moderates.

"He has escaped unscathed. It is quite inexplicable," says Wittman.

Gunderson offers this observation about Cheney: "Because of his personality and style and his long history in this town, he almost has the same Teflon gift that Ronald Reagan had."

Among Democrats, there's respect for Cheney's experience and power. Their most frequent criticism is that he's a former oil exec advancing a corporate agenda. That's why the White House energy initiative is assailed as the "Bush-Cheney" plan, an attack that also assumes a co-presidency. Democratic Party officials argue that Cheney's power is the flip side of Bush's disengagement.

"Cheney is seen as somebody who makes all the decisions. They get that from Leno and Letterman," party spokesman Rick Hess says of voters. "It reflects on Bush."

Says Matalin: "The proof of Bush's confidence level and leadership capacity is that he has all these good people around him."

While Cheney's vice presidency is unique, it follows a 50-year trend, starting with Nixon in the 1950s, of burgeoning staff, duties, visibility and influence.

"But Bush seems to have crossed an important threshold, asking Cheney to be of help to him in the things Bush is most interested in," says Alvin Felzenberg, a fellow with the Heritage Foundation and expert on the office.

No personal ambitions

Other presidents, such as Reagan, have delegated. And other vice presidents - Al Gore, Walter Mondale, the older Bush, Nixon - have been Washington insiders with a feel for power and policy.

But what sets Cheney apart is this: Almost all his predecessors planned to run for president some day. Asked what makes it possible for a vice president to enjoy the influence Cheney does at this White House, Matalin says:

"The first thing that has to be true is that you have no personal political ambition."

The groundwork was laid last year when Bush picked Cheney to help him govern, rather than balance the ticket or win a big state.

It's as if America has been asking itself in this modern era whether there's a useful role for this awkward office, Felzenberg suggests. The returns appear to be in.

Says Wittman: "Moms and dads are going to be telling their children that some day, 'You can grow up to the vice president of the United States.' "

----

Rumsfeld Opening European Tour

By Robert Burns AP Military Writer Sunday, June 3, 2001; 12:46 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010603/aponline124611_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- Donald H. Rumsfeld is starting his first extended trip abroad as defense secretary with a firsthand look at the U.S.-British air patrols over northern Iraq.

The flights to enforce a "no-fly" zone over northern Iraq are made from Incirlik Air Base in south-central Turkey, where Rumsfeld planned to talk Monday with U.S. commanders and air crews.

The Bush administration is reviewing all aspects of U.S. policy toward Iraq, including the no-fly zone enforcement that began shortly after the Gulf War ended in 1991. U.S. military commanders have suggested cutting back on air patrols, which often are targeted by Iraqi air defense guns and missiles.

Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed that concern on Sunday, saying, "I'm sure they're trying to take out American pilots. There's no doubt about that, but they have not succeeded."

He added, "We intend to fly as necessary to perform the missions that we have to perform over there. And that kind of bluster ... we understand it's part of the game. And we're always reviewing how to operate in those no-fly zones to give our young pilots the margin of safety and the margin they need to do their missions and complete those mission successfully."

Rumsfeld was scheduled to meet Monday with Turkish government officials in the capital, Ankara. His schedule also included a stop in Kiev, Ukraine, to sign a joint protocol extending a formal cooperation agreement.

Later in the week, Rumsfeld plans to visit U.S. troops in Macedonia and Kosovo, stop in Greece for a meeting of southeast European defense ministers, attend NATO meetings in Belgium, and visit Finland for talks with defense ministers from Nordic and Baltic nations.

The NATO meetings are meant in part to set the stage for President Bush's visit to NATO headquarters the following week, when the Europeans' doubts about his missile defense plan are sure to be a hot topic.

"We are entered into a period of consultation and discussion with our European allies, our Asian allies and especially with the Russians," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"These will be tough discussions, and I hope we will make them more understanding of the threat that we see, and we hope we'll be able to convince them that we have technologies that can deal with this."

It will be Rumsfeld's first extended foreign trip since becoming Bush's Pentagon chief. He spent one day in Germany in February to attend a European security conference but has put off other travel in order to get senior Pentagon posts filled and focus on a plan to modernize the military.

--

On the Net:
Department of Defense: http://www.defenselink.mil/

-------- us nuc power

Benefits and Risks of Nuclear Energy

Sunday, June 3, 2001 Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/20010602/t000046275.html

Re "Storing Nuclear Waste Over the Long Haul," letters, May 27: Ted Russell Neff misrepresents the commercial nuclear waste disposal problem and the energy benefits of gasohol. The radioactive leaks at Hanford are the unfortunate legacy of a quick and dirty disposal project, using thin-walled, ordinary steel containers, in the early days of the Cold War when the highest priority was producing more plutonium for more bombs.

The Yucca Mountain project for the disposal of commercial nuclear waste has spent over $3.6 billion to ensure that the spent fuel will be completely isolated for hundreds of thousands of years. Tens of millions of dollars have been given each year to the state of Nevada and local communities to support their scrutiny and oversight of the program. All of this money comes from the nuclear waste disposal fund, supported entirely by a small tax on nuclear power ratepayers.

With respect to renewable energy sources, the U.S. Department of Energy has been spending nearly $400 million a year on research and development for over 20 years with little to show for it.

The ethanol additive that we are forced to pay for in our gasoline provides a nice benefit for corn farmers, but more energy is consumed in the distillation process than is provided in the product.

Peter Gottlieb Los Angeles

* The suggestion by Kevin Petersen that we should go ahead with nuclear power on blind faith that we will solve the waste storage problem puts the cart before the horse. There is no credible evidence that the problem is even solvable, let alone that we will have a solution any time soon. In the meantime, we have a storage problem with nightmarish potential.

Nuclear power at this point is ill-conceived and unnecessary. We can get all the energy needed without it, and we should put special emphasis on conservation and clean energy. Nuclear has been touted as clean, since it has no smoke-belching stacks, but the "tailpipe emissions" in the form of nuclear waste prevent nuclear power from being a truly green source. If people are so convinced that a solution is in the offing, let them develop the solution and then come back and ask for nuclear power.

David Holland Northridge

-------- us nuc waste

Spent Nuclear Fuel

June 3, 2001 http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/03/opinion/L03NUKE.html

To the Editor:

The otherwise sensible "Hard Questions on Nuclear Power" (editorial, May 29) states that reprocessing spent nuclear fuel "could greatly ease the storage problem" posed by such fuel. Reprocessing would actually make the waste problem worse because it would create several high- volume radioactive waste streams requiring storage, treatment and burial. The ill-fated experiment with commercial reprocessing at West Valley, N.Y., abandoned in 1972, vastly increased the amount of nuclear waste and has cost taxpayers more than $1.5 billion for cleanup.

Reprocessing also produces plutonium that can be used in weapons, which is much more costly to store and safeguard than the spent fuel from which it is separated. And since it is not technically feasible to recycle plutonium as fuel more than once, reprocessing does not eliminate the need for a repository for spent fuel; it simply defers it.

EDWIN S. LYMAN, Scientific Director, Nuclear Control Institute, Washington, May 29, 2001

-------- MILITARY


-------- arms sales

Canada Declines Extradition Request in Missile Parts Case

By ANTHONY DePALMA, New York Times, June 3, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/03/world/03CANA.html

A Canadian judge has rejected an extradition request for two men wanted in the United States for trying to buy American-made missile parts and ship them to Iran.

Justice Selwyn Romilly of the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the United States had failed to provide sufficient evidence that the men actually intended to buy the missile defense system parts in the United States and send them to Iran, in violation of a United States embargo.

The arrest of the men in 1998 underscored a significant United States security concern: the movement of American-made military parts through Canada and on to embargoed nations.

One of the men arrested, Reza Akrami, was a doctor and a colonel in the Iranian Army who acknowledged being a purchasing agent for Iran. He conceded that he had discussed buying used jets and military parts but said he never intended to go through with the deal. His associate, Mohsen Lessan, a real estate broker in Vancouver, told investigators that he and Mr. Akrami went to San Francisco and were entertained aboard the yacht of a man they believed to be a wealthy merchant but who was in fact an undercover United States agent.

Even though the exchange never took place, prosecutors in the United States contended that the negotiations between the men and the undercover agents constituted a conspiracy that violated a United States trade embargo of Iran that began in 1995.

Judge Romilly found, however, that while the possibility of a sale was discussed "there is no evidence that an agreement had been reached or ever would be reached."

-------- colombia

Colombian Gunmen Abduct Activist

JUNE 03, 21:07 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7CDDUE80

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Gunmen abducted an Indian rights activist on Sunday from a region of Colombia where leftist guerrillas recently executed at least 24 villagers, a senator said.

Kimi Pernia was taken from a road in the Cordoba state township of Tierralta by gunmen on motorcycles, said Sen. Francisco Rojas Birry, a prominent Indian rights activist in Colombia.

It wasn't immediately clear who was responsible. Pernia is leading a fight on behalf of the local indigenous population to prevent a hydroelectric plant from being built on their land.

Meanwhile, police in the region continued their search Sunday for the bodies of at least 24 villagers killed by guerrillas last week in a patch of remote hamlets.

National Police spokeswoman Jenny Alvarado said investigators were attempting to reach the hilly, coca-rich region in Cordoba state. She couldn't confirm reports from local police that 14 bodies had been recovered.

Local officials said gunmen from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, razed sections of several villages in Tierralta early last week, burning down homes and hacking to death at least 24 people with machetes. The region is 198 miles north of the capital Bogota.

Another 47 were reported missing following the attacks, according to El Tiempo newspaper.

The 16,000-strong FARC, Colombia's largest rebel army, is fighting a 37-year war against the government and a right-wing paramilitary army for power and control of lucrative drug-crop territory.

Last October, the rebel army appalled the nation with other grisly killings, torching homes and butchering 10 farmers in the southwestern village of Ortega for resisting a recruitment drive.

The rebel army and the government agreed on Saturday to exchange a group of sick rebels for captured police and soldiers in one of the most significant peace accords since negotiations began.

The talks are aimed at ending a war that kills some 3,000 people a year, most unarmed civilians.

-------- drug war

New godfathers of Colombia's cocaine trade

Jeremy McDermott in Caqueta
Scotland on Line, June 3, 2001
http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/world.cfm?id=SS01020521&feed=N

THE coca farmer looked on with concern as the drugs buyer tested the purity of the coca base. The guerrillas sat at a table behind looking neither concerned nor interested. They would be paid either way.

With the fall of the drug cartels of Medellin and Cali, once the most powerful crime syndicates in the world, the drugs trade went underground, and, according to the Colombian military and US intelligence services, several organisations stepped in to fill the vacuum, most particularly the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, an easy step for them as they control 40% of Colombia and much of the areas where coca, the raw material for cocaine, is grown.

The Colombian military's accusations that the FARC are a drug cartel were given further weight when Brazil's most powerful drug lord was captured in April. Luis Fernando Da Costa, alias Freddy Seashore, was arrested near the Brazilian border, with two FARC bodyguards.

In his interrogation Da Costa said he had been taking over 20 tonnes of cocaine every month from the FARC and paying them $10m per month, although sometimes the payments were made in arms. The military said they had documentary evidence of drugs for arms deals between the FARC and the Brazilian.

The Colombian and US media jumped on the revelations as proof that the FARC were the world's biggest drug cartel. But it was not as simple as that, nothing is in Colombia.

"We have always been open as far as our relationship to drugs trafficking is concerned," said Raul Reyes, the FARC's chief spokesman and negotiator with the government in the peace process, now in its third year. "We tax all businesses that operate in our areas. Drugs trafficking is one of those businesses, so we charge it taxes, nothing more."

The army also admit the FARC charge taxes and indeed have drawn up a list of charges that the guerrillas have on different stages of the drugs trade.

The FARC, which numbers over 17,000 fighters, is divided into over 60 fronts, at least 39 of which have links with drugs. The United States has provided billions of dollars to fund Colombia's anti-drugs drive but many believe it is simply a covert way of helping the security forces defeat the leftist rebels.

The only way to really find out how involved the FARC is in drugs trafficking was to wander through their territory and explore the three stages of cocaine production: the drug fields, the coca base markets and the production laboratories.

Jorge, 32, has 11 hectares of the hardy green coca bushes on his farm, hacked out of the jungle in the southern Caqueta province. He can produce 12 kilos of coca base every 60 days. He pays the FARC taxes for the drugs that he produces, about £15 for every kilo, which goes into funding the local school, the medical clinic and the road building programme.

"I don't have much to do with the guerrillas ," he said shrugging his shoulders, "the one good thing about them is that they set the price of coca at the market and the narcos [drug traffickers] have to pay the price or go elsewhere."

The market is every Saturday at the nearby village. The buyers come by boat from different parts of the country. They have to be registered with the guerrillas or else they cannot get into the area. The current price of coca base is 1.8m pesos (£500) per kilo. The dealers then pay the FARC a tax of 500,000 pesos (£160) to take the base away. They are issued with a receipt. If they are questioned by a FARC patrol and are found with drugs and no receipt, the consequences are dire. Few risk it.

There are also laboratories in FARC areas, but the ones visited by Scotland on Sunday were run by drug traffickers who paid the FARC a tax for operating in their area. They chose the guerrilla areas, even though it costs, because security forces seldom dare to venture in and they can go about their work unmolested.

A kilo of cocaine can be bought in Colombia from between £2,000 and £3,500, depending on where it is purchased. That same kilo of cocaine is worth over £40,000 in Edinburgh and almost £60,000 in Moscow.

So it is the drugs traffickers, those who actually ship the stuff, that make the real cash.

The FARC deny exporting cocaine. Even the DEA say they have no evidence that the FARC are responsible for smuggling shipments out of the country.

A FARC commander explained why the FARC did not export drugs. "There is our ideological belief that drugs trafficking is wrong. We believe drugs should be legalised," he said sipping tinto, a strong Colombian coffee. "But what do we have to gain by exporting? We have already made our money before the drugs leave the country. If a shipment is seized, we lose nothing."

There is no doubt that the FARC's growth and continuing expansion is financed by drugs. There is no doubt that drugs are the fuel that feeds the country's 37-year civil conflict. Both the FARC and their right-wing paramilitary enemies earn hundreds of millions from the drug trade every year.

But there is no evidence that the FARC is a drug cartel, since not only does it not export drugs, but it seems not to even have its own drugs fields or labs.

If a drug field is fumigated by the Colombian security forces, or a laboratory destroyed by the anti-narcotics police, the FARC have lost only taxes. But then again, the drug fields are always replanted and the laboratories rebuilt in a different place. For as long as drugs traffickers can make over £30,000 profit from every kilo of cocaine, the trade will continue to flourish. That means the FARC will probably continue to flourish as well.

-------- guatemala

The Erosion of Political Reform in Guatemala

By TINA ROSENBERG June 3, 2001 EDITORIAL OBSERVER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/03/opinion/03SUN3.html

In 1978, a series of earthquakes struck Guatemala, killing 40,000 people. Among those who went to help was Sister Barbara Ann Ford, a 40- year-old American nun from the Bronx-based Sisters of Charity. Sister Barbara, a registered nurse, spent most of the next 22 years in Quiche Province, the crucible of suffering during Guatemala's civil war and the site of 344 massacres of Mayan Indians. Sister Barbara braved death threats to help the villagers get clean water, midwife training and mental health treatment. When the peace accords ending the 36-year war were signed in 1996, she helped the Catholic Archdiocese collect testimonies about wartime killings and organized the exhumation of graves and counseling to help the survivors.

Last month, Sister Barbara was shot to death in Guatemala City by two men who stole her pickup truck, which was then abandoned a few blocks away. The crime may have been a carjacking, which is common in Guatemala. But even some government officials have said they suspect otherwise. Human rights workers believe her murder is part of a wave of intimidation and attacks on activists in Guatemala.

The intimidation is one disturbing sign that former and active-duty military officers and their allies are increasing their influence inside the government. President Alfonso Portillo has appointed several democrats committed to carrying out the changes outlined in Guatemala's peace accords. But these aides are a minority, and they are increasingly dominated by other appointees who belong to factions of the Guatemalan Republican Front. The party is led by former Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, who ruled the country during the war's worst atrocities - Guatemala's truth commission called them genocide - and now is president of the Congress. President Portillo may have good intentions, but he seems unable to stand up to the hard-liners.

The Portillo administration achieved a milestone in bringing two army officers to trial for the 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi. Bishop Gerardi was the principal author of the church's extensive report on wartime abuses, which blamed the government and military for the vast majority of the war's 200,000 dead. He was murdered just two days after the report's release.

The two officers are not accused of ordering the killing - those who did still escape justice. Recently, the house of the judge in the case was assaulted with hand grenades - one of a series of attacks on judges, prosecutors and witnesses in the case. This trial, moreover, is a lonely exception. Since just after Mr. Portillo's inauguration last year, the country's activists on behalf of Mayans and war victims have been attacked, their headquarters have been raided and some have been raped or murdered. No one has been arrested for these crimes.

When he came into office, President Portillo reduced the size of the army and fired some of the worst officers. But further changes have dragged out or been reversed. In part, this is because the wealthy are unwilling to pay taxes to finance needed reforms. While 45 percent of primary-school-age children have no access to school, Guatemala's tax burden is an absurdly low 8.7 percent of gross national product - in the United States the figure is 20 percent. Guatemala's intelligence services, the most sinister organizations of the war, are supposed to pass to civilian control but are still in the hands of military men with shadowy pasts and still operate without civilian oversight.

In 1993, then-President Jorge Serrano tried to seize dictatorial powers with the help of Guatemala's army. A week later he was deposed by a broad coalition backed by the United States and including business leaders who feared that the coup would endanger Guatemala's foreign trade. Undemocratic forces in Guatemala today are more subtle than Mr. Serrano, but they still pose a threat. The United States has backed the peace accords, but should now make clear to Guatemalans that only a government committed to abandoning the terror and discrimination of the past will be fully accepted into the community of nations.

-------- israel

Sharon's Hawks Plan for War
Israel's growing mood for full-scale hostilities in the aftermath of 17 deaths in a nightclub suicide bomb attack

by Peter Beaumont, Published on Sunday, June 3, 2001 in the Observer of London
http://commondreams.org/headlines01/0603-04.htm

Even before Friday's devastating suicide bombing of a nightclub queue in Tel Aviv - the worst such outrage against Jews in five years - the mood among hawks in the Cabinet of Ariel Sharon had been turning to thoughts of all-out war.

Four car bombs in the past week and a series of shootings of Israeli settlers had marked an upsurge in Palestinian violence in the worst month for Israeli fatalities in the Occupied Territories since November.

It was on the mind of Brigadier-General Yisrael Ziv when he called in the defence correspondents of Israel's press for a briefing at the Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv early last week.

Within the heavily guarded complex off one of Tel Aviv's main streets, Ziv - senior officer in charge of Israel's infantry and paratroop brigades - told the journalists that Israel was 'not so far removed' from full-scale war.

He was not, he assured them, making a prediction. It was simply his job to 'prepare for that eventuality'. It may have come sooner than even Ziv expected.

The bombing outside the Pacha nightclub killed 17 people, all but one of them recent Russian immigrants, and wounded scores of others. It could not have come at a worse time, in the middle of an urgent debate in Sharon's Cabinet over whether the time had come to reject international calls for restraint and prepare for a proper war.

Within 24 hours of Ziv's briefing - and still before Friday's bomb - Israel's Defence Minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, had announced that the Israel Defence Force's presence on the West Bank would be strengthened by special ambush units to protect the bypasses used by Jewish settlers.

To add to the febrile mood of crisis, Shin Bet - the Israeli security service - also weighed in, summoning correspondents for a briefing that purported to demonstrate how senior figures in Arafat's police were involved in the manufacture, arming and use of mortars being fired into Jewish areas.

Other senior army officers were briefing off the record too. Israel's two-week-old unilateral ceasefire, they said, was an 'operational halt' in an 'ongoing war', a chance for its soldiers to draw breath and prepare for the task ahead.

They added that they were waiting for the political green light from Sharon - who came to power in January promising to guarantee Israelis a new security - for a new offensive in the Territories if the Palestinians did not respond with their own cessation of violence.

What that offensive might entail has been spelled out in recent days by members of Sharon's security Cabinet, including the hardline Housing Minister Natan Sharansky. He said last week: 'We are in a war where we are not using our strength. I am not saying reconquer Gaza, but we need to fight with all the strength we have against the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian Authority.'

Former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu - Sharon's rival for leadership of the Right - has been hardly less equivocal. 'Israel,' he told the Jerusalem Post last week, 'should concentrate its might to eliminate terror infrastructure - to strike radio, television, media, transportation, gas, and weapons reserves, and the PA's economic infrastructure.

'We have not yet used 1 per cent of the power of the IDF. If Arafat continues the terror we will make sure that his terrorist regime will collapse. It is to this end that a unity gov ernment was formed, and it will receive tremendous backing for its actions.'

Yesterday the hardliners appeared to have won the day. After a seven-hour emergency Cabinet meeting - remarkable for being held on the Sabbath - leading Cabinet members indicated that Israel was about to end its policy of restraint.

And whatever group was ultimately behind the Pacha bombing, one thing is certain: it has played into the hands of those like Sharansky who only supported the Sharon ceasefire for the most cynical of reasons: that it would 'reveal to the world who was really responsible for the violence'.

The key question now is whether the international community can persuade Sharon to stay his hand and prevent more carnage.

The new Bush administration has already fumbled the issue of its engagement in the Middle East, notably failing to persuade Arafat to respond to the Israeli ceasefire with his own truce, despite the intervention of Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In Britain, Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Robin Cook - in common with other EU leaders - have called for restraint. There is little evidence of any meaningful intervention.

The immediate response of Arafat, under intense pressure from the Americans and also from the visiting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, was to condemn the bombing and commit Palestinians to do their utmost to implement a ceasefire in the conflict with Israel.

His offer was rejected by Israeli Cabinet Ministers, who said they would not take it seriously unless Arafat arrested Islamic militants.

While Sharon and others on the right blame Arafat for orchestrating the violence, the truth is that both sides may have now gone too far to turn back.

Analysts are dubious about the amount of control Arafat can actually exert over the suicide bombers of Islamic Jihad and Hamas, whose leaders he released from his prisons at the beginning of the intifada .

'When he released Islamic extremists from the Palestinian prisons,' said one Western diplomat, 'he opened a Pandora's box. He may find it impossible to close it.'

Palestinian attacks since the peace accord in 1993:

1 June 2001: Suicide bomber blows up himself and 16 Israelis outside a Tel Aviv nightclub.

30 July 1997: Two suicide bombers kill themselves and 15 others at a Jerusalem market.

4 September 1997: Explosion in west Jerusalem kills eight.

30 July 1997: Two suicide bombers kill themselves and 16 shoppers in Jerusalem market.

4 March 1996: Suicide bomber kills 14 people outside a Tel Aviv mall.

3 March 1996: Suicide bomb on a Jerusalem bus kills 18.

25 February 1996: Suicide bombings in a Jerusalem bus and Ashkelon soldiers' post kill 24 Israelis, two Americans and a Palestinian.

21 August 1995: Bomb on a Jerusalem bus kills five.

24 July 1995: Suicide bomber kills six passengers and himself on a bus outside Tel Aviv.

9 April 1995: Suicide bomber attacks convoy in Gaza, killing seven Israeli soldiers and a tourist.

22 January 1995: Two suicide bombers kill 21 in central Israel.

19 October 1994: Suicide bomber kills 23 on a Tel Aviv bus.

6 April 1994: Car bomb in Afula kills nine and wounds 44.

-------- switzerland

Swiss to Vote on Whether to Arm Their Troops

By ELIZABETH OLSON, New York Times, June 3, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/03/world/03SWIS.html

GENEVA, June 2 - Posters showing row after row of cemetery crosses and slogans like "Sacrifice our boys for foreign conflicts?" are proliferating across Switzerland in one of the bitterest voting campaigns in memory.

The debate is over whether Swiss soldiers can be armed while serving on peacekeeping missions abroad. That would affect, for instance, whether the 160 Swiss soldiers providing logistical support in Kosovo can carry rifles.

But the vote also goes to the core of Switzerland - its neutrality, independence and outreach to help people. The latest opinion polls indicate that the vote is close, with 20 percent of voters undecided. The government is mindful that in 1994, voters rejected a proposal to let troops take part in peacekeeping missions of the United Nations, to which Switzerland does not belong, though the United Nations' European headquarters are in Geneva.

Another vote on membership, however, is coming up next year and next week's vote is in some ways a test run. It pits the federal ministers in the capital, Bern, against traditionalists, whose best-known figure is Christoph Blocher, a Zurich industrialist. He leads the country's super- nationalist party which swept to a surprise electoral victory in Parliament two years ago.

The government makes no secret of wanting to edge Switzerland away from its isolationist, island-in-Europe status and, over time, integrate it with its neighbors in the European Union. Government officials put considerable money into an effort to burnish Switzerland's image after disclosures of its treatment of Holocaust victims, and they have supported several peace-related programs.

But to Mr. Blocher, a turn away from engagements abroad would assault traditions that have kept the country prosperous and at peace.

And no action is more disturbing to them than changing the Swiss military, which is a militia-style army similar to the national guard system in the United States. Most men, and some women, undergo training and remain ready to be called up. In that situation, Mr. Blocher argues, "You will see your sons and daughters return wounded or dead if we take part in foreign wars."

A change in the law is necessary, government officials say, because individual soldiers abroad are barred from carrying guns, and can't adequately defend themselves. The soldiers serving in Kosovo are protected by their German and Austrian counterparts.

Switzerland fielded unarmed troops called yellow berets in Sarajevo, beginning in 1996, under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The country has also sent military observers to several countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, including the tense border between North and South Korea.

Leading the government's campaign, Defense Minister Samuel Schmid insists that "joining NATO isn't foreseen." Such a step would require a separate vote in Switzerland's system of direct democracy, which allows its populace to decide almost every aspect of how the country is governed.

Mr. Schmid, whose security has been increased following threats - a highly unusual action here - has had some stinging exchanges on the campaign trail with Mr. Blocher, who accused him of trying to undo the country's neutrality and to turn its citizen army into a professional force.

This, according to the traditionalists, would pave the way for Switzerland to join NATO. Mr. Blocher is staunchly against the country joining any international organization, including the United Nations and the European Union.

"Switzerland hasn't been involved in wars for 200 years. Few countries like ours have had this luck," he said.

The amended law would not permit combat missions, Mr. Schmid insists, adding that a voter acceptance of stepped-up training exercises with other European armies would not contravene Swiss neutrality. Stabilizing Kosovo does "not signify that we will renounce our neutrality," he added. Swiss troops have provided logistical support in that area of the Balkans since July 1999.

Mr. Blocher, who is backed by a coalition of left-wing anti-army and peace groups, has urged that the $60 million earmarked for international military cooperation - if the law is amended - be redirected to efforts that would help people.

Mr. Blocher's group, Action for an Independent Switzerland, collected 66,000 signatures in a campaign called, "War Adventure, No - Humanitarian Presence, Yes."

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

Bush's Plan for Military Faces Some Friendly Fire

By JAMES DAO and THOM SHANKER, June 3, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/03/politics/03MILI.html

WASHINGTON, June 2 - Powerful political and economic forces are threatening President Bush's pledge to design a "new architecture for the defense of America and our allies." While some of these forces were unleashed by the administration itself, Mr. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld seem in some ways to have been caught off guard.

The president entered office with a broad and ambitious agenda for the military, vowing to pare back "uncertain" peacekeeping missions overseas, swiftly deploy a ballistic missile shield and transform the forces with futuristic weapons that would make them lighter, faster and more lethal.

Mr. Bush was expected to begin announcing some of those potentially radical changes at a graduation speech before the United States Naval Academy last week. But those plans were postponed, in what was widely viewed as a sign of Mr. Rumsfeld's difficulties in reshaping the national military strategy.

Paradoxically, Mr. Bush's signature achievement, a $1.35 trillion tax cut, is emerging as one of the largest potential obstacles to his military agenda. The fiscal plan has drastically reduced the amount of surplus dollars available to develop the kind of advanced weaponry the administration desires, not only for its missile shield but also for modernizing conventional forces.

Democrats in Congress contend that because of the tax cut, the federal surplus will disappear in 2003 for at least two years, leaving no money to expand Pentagon spending without cutting social programs, slashing military forces or dipping into the Medicare or Social Security surpluses. All those ideas would face fierce opposition in Congress.

On Friday, the administration asked Congress to augment the current $296 billion defense budget by $5.6 billion, largely to pay for increased health care and fuel costs. Mr. Rumsfeld is also expected in the coming month to request an increase of approximately $20 billion for the proposed 2002 budget to pay for everything from missile defense research to improved benefits.

Congressional officials say there will probably be money for Mr. Rumsfeld's 2002 request. But they say fiscal restraints will tighten significantly in 2003, when Mr. Rumsfeld hopes to begin enacting major, and potentially costly, changes to the military - most likely by procuring higher-tech weapons like unmanned aircraft or antimissile technology. The Pentagon controller, Dov Zakheim, said this week that developing a missile shield would require "considerably more money."

Representative John M. Spratt Jr., a South Carolina Democrat who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said, "By our calculations, there is not enough money to meet even minimal expectations of what Rumsfeld's requests will be."

"Without a compelling threat, an immediate threat," Mr. Spratt said, "I don't think cutting education or the environment is going to work."

Some Republicans have raised similar concerns. But the administration does not accept the Democrats' budget analysis. And some military officials have suggested that Mr. Rumsfeld could modernize without spending huge sums.

Mr. Bush's efforts to scale back American peacekeeping missions and to build a missile shield are also facing sharpened opposition. Overseas allies remain deeply skeptical. And having already lost momentum on missile defense, the Republicans have now lost their Senate majority.

Finally, Mr. Rumsfeld has come under sharp criticism from senior military officers and powerful members of Congress who, worried that he may try to cancel favored weapons programs, reduce forces or close military bases, have accused him of ignoring them in his deliberations on overhauling the Pentagon.

As a result, Mr. Rumsfeld has been on a public relations offensive in the last month, visiting Congress repeatedly to plead for patience, consulting the military's most senior officers, sitting for interviews with reporters and inviting independent defense policy analysts to breakfast.

Even as he was preparing for a trip next week to visit with NATO defense ministers in Europe, Mr. Rumsfeld met every day this week with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the secure Pentagon conference room known as the Tank to discuss a new defense strategy. All indications are that the strategy will focus more resources on Asia, missile defense and outer space.

While no final decisions were reached on a strategy, military officials said the intensity of the meetings showed Mr. Rumsfeld's desire to mend fences with senior military commanders, who have considerable influence on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Rumsfeld's efforts may have eased tensions with Congress and the military brass, but advocates of transforming the military say the secretary also has seemed intent on reducing expectations for major change - at least for now.

"On transformation, I think they think the best a politically savvy team can do is get a first down or two," said John Hillen, a military analyst who helped write Mr. Bush's campaign speech in which, as a candidate, he first advocated a "revolution in the technology of war."

"But they won't go for the goal line," Mr. Hillen said.

Mr. Rumsfeld, in a spate of interviews and public appearances over the last few weeks, has clearly signaled that any transformation will be slow and incremental.

"There's no question but that change is not easy for people," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "Any time anyone raises an issue about reviewing `what is,' it inevitably causes people who like `what is' and are comfortable with `what is' to be concerned about it. The reality is that no one is going to be making any dramatic changes in anything because that's just not how Washington works."

Mr. Bush took into office a vocabulary borrowed from those who advocated a revolution in military affairs, and after a campaign in which he accused President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore of squandering the military readiness that he said was planned and paid for by the preceding Republican administrations.

Mr. Rumsfeld immediately assembled a coterie of wise men and women to review the issues confronting the nation's military, both in how it conducts war and how it conducts business. Individual panels, known as the Rumsfeld Reviews, considered acquisition, financial management, morale and quality of life, space, transformation, conventional force structure, crisis management, nuclear force posture and international strategy.

In public, Mr. Rumsfeld said that having been away from the Pentagon for a quarter-century, he needed a refresher course. "When you come from business to this department, and you're not as current as you would want to be in every aspect of what's going on here, what you need to do is find out what you think is important," he said.

But some senior officers and some members of Congress whispered to the media that by résumé and reputation, Mr. Rumsfeld already must have known the answers to the questions he was asking. Thus, the view spread that each of the review panels would hand down the equivalent of stone tablets from some military Mount Sinai, whether as a specific new Pentagon policy or even a presidential directive.

Today, though, many who have spoken with the secretary say the quality of the reviews was mixed. Some were visionary; some recommended the status quo; some contradicted others.

One panel assigned to study "transformational" weapons systems recommended many programs that had been supported by the Clinton administration, including the V- 22 Osprey, the F-22 fighter jet, the Joint Strike Fighter and the Comanche helicopter. Another panel that explored major cuts to ground fighting forces shied from controversy.

"I think it's dawning on the Rumsfeld team that some good steps were already being taken toward transformation," said one senior military officer. "They believed what they said in the campaign, and they are finding it wasn't all true."

And Mr. Rumsfeld had every right to complain that his work has been slowed by the fact that only he and a tiny handful of senior policy assistants were confirmed by the Senate.

So even as the Rumsfeld review panels charted a new direction, he decided to steer the building with its standard rudder, an apparatus mandated by Congress: The Quadrennial Defense Review and the budget process.

"I think there was a widespread perception that there would be many more near-term announcements of dramatic change than what we're actually going to see," said Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs. He said the reviews were ordered up solely to "stimulate Secretary Rumsfeld's thinking," and the decision was then made "to fold them into the budget builds and the Quadrennial Defense Review."

-------- OTHER


-------- energy

Bush Advisers on Energy Report Ties to Industry

By JOSEPH KAHN, June 3, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/03/politics/03DISC.html

WASHINGTON, June 2 - At least three top White House advisers involved in drafting President Bush's energy strategy held stock in the Enron Corporation or earned fees from the large Texas-based energy trading company, which lobbied aggressively to shape the administration's approach to energy issues.

Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political strategist; Lawrence B. Lindsey, the top economic coordinator; and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, all said in financial disclosure statement released on Friday that they already had or intended to divest themselves of holdings in Enron, the nation's leading trader and marketer of electricity and natural gas, as well as holdings in other energy companies.

Mr. Lindsey received $50,000 last year from Enron for consulting. Mr. Rove's statement said he intended to sell stock holdings in Enron valued at $100,000 to $250,000, though the statement does not make clear if he has completed the sale. Mr. Libby sold his stake in the company.

The financial disclosures for senior White House aides show that many of Mr. Bush's top advisers are millionaires. Among the wealthiest are Mr. Rove, Mr. Lindsey, Mr. Libby and Andrew H. Card Jr., the chief of staff, who earned $479,138.77 as chief lobbyist for General Motors and reported assets of $810,000 to $2.1 million.

Mary Matalin, Mr. Cheney's senior counselor and a former political commentator, reported income of more than $1.5 million last year from speaking fees and television appearances. Her husband, James Carville, a Democratic commentator and political adviser, made $2.1 million last year on the speaking circuit, Ms. Matalin's financial disclosure shows.

Enron was one of the largest contributors to Mr. Bush's presidential campaign. Kenneth L. Lay, the chairman, has close ties to Mr. Bush, as he did to Mr. Bush's father, and he has had considerable access to the Bush White House.

The administration's energy strategy issued last month recommended opening protected lands to oil and gas drillers, building hundreds of power plants and easing some environmental controls, measures strongly favored by the industry. It suggested that the federal government exercise more power over electricity transmission networks, a longtime Enron goal.

Mr. Lay and other Enron officials interviewed several candidates to fill vacancies on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates Enron's main markets. Mr. Bush selected two people for the panel who were favored by Enron and some other energy companies.

White House officials have said that Enron's views were not crucial to their selections. "The energy task force had a singular goal to present a plan that best addressed America's energy needs," a White House spokeswoman said. "Any decisions made as part of that process were made with that one goal in mind." The spokeswoman said the White House counsel's office had worked with all officials to ensure they met the highest ethical standards.

Administration links to energy companies are wide ranging. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, had stock holdings of $250,000 to $500,000 in the Chevron Corporation and earned $60,000 as a director of the company in the last year. She resigned her position and sold her shares.

Clay Johnson, director of presidential personnel, reported holding a stake in El Paso Energy Partners valued at $100,000 to $250,000. El Paso is a Houston oil and natural gas company. As part of his White House duties, Mr. Johnson has been involved in selecting people to fill vacancies at the energy regulatory commission, which oversees the natural gas market.

There was no indication in his disclosure statement that Mr. Johnson intended to sell his stake in El Paso.

The stakes in Enron held by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby were part of diversified stock portfolios. Mr. Rove also reported investments in BP Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell, as well as several leading pharmaceutical, technology and financial companies. Mr. Libby, a lawyer, sold tens of thousands of dollars' worth of energy stocks. They included Texaco, Exxon Mobil and Chesapeake Energy as well as Enron.

Mr. Lindsey, the director of the National Economic Council, reported the most ties to major American and international companies. His Washington consulting firm, Economic Strategies Inc., advised 67 leading American, European and Japanese banks and businesses, including American Express and Citibank. Mr. Lindsey was paid an annual salary of $918,785. He also reported $50,000 in consulting fees from Crow Family Holdings, a Dallas real estate concern, and Moore Capital, a leading hedge fund, as well as Enron.

May 25, 2001 - Power Trader Tied to Bush Finds Washington All Ears
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/25/politics/25POWE.html

-------- health

Zimbabwe Doctors Flee as AIDS Crisis Widens

By HENRI E. CAUVIN, New York Times June 3, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/03/world/03ZIMB.html

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe - Like the rest of the country's hospitals, Mpilo Central is sick.

Mpilo, the biggest hospital here in Zimbabwe's second-biggest city, is losing its doctors, its nurses, its pharmacists and, slowly, its spirit.

Fleeing the deepening hardships in Zimbabwe and following the lure of opportunities unimaginable here, medical professionals are abandoning the country as never before. The health care system, as a result, is sinking into crisis, consuming the colleagues left behind.

Mpilo, for example, which handles many of the most difficult cases in the region, now has just one general surgeon instead of three to serve its 1,037 beds.

"I am on call every day," the surgeon, Dr. Julio Feliu, said one afternoon after completing seven scheduled operations before heading off to teach a medical school class.

Over the last few years, as many as 100 doctors and hundreds - if not thousands - of nurses are estimated to have emigrated from this nation of 11 million people. While losing medical professionals is neither new nor unique to Zimbabwe, the scope appears unprecedented. With one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics and with its economy in turmoil, the country could hardly be more vulnerable.

Indeed, business executives, teachers, engineers and others are leaving too, costing Zimbabwe much of the enormously successful investment it made in education after blacks won majority rule 21 years ago.

Their marketability is a testament to Zimbabwe's successes in improving education and nurturing a black professional class. But those achievements are in jeopardy as people flee.

Zimbabwe's economy, once one of Africa's most promising, is a wreck. A standoff over how white-owned farmland should be redistributed has roiled the country and harmed agriculture, the country's economic base. Exports and tourism are down, giving the country little of the foreign currency it needs for imports like fuel and drugs for its health care system.

Unhappy with the state's policies and priorities, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have cut Zimbabwe off, and President Robert Mugabe has refused to make concessions.

Inflation is at nearly 60 percent. Professionals like the doctors at Mpilo, who envisioned lives of at least modest prosperity for their families, instead find themselves struggling to cover their bills.

"It's money first and foremost," said Dr. Zulu Mahlangu, the acting medical superintendent of Mpilo, when asked what was luring away his staff.

Doctors in government service typically earn $550 to $1,100 a month and nurses $350 to $500, according to the Health Ministry and the nurses' union.

So when countries like Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States, all facing critical health care staffing shortages, have come calling, they have found legions of workers looking for something better.

"It was mostly junior doctors at first, but now even people who are in private practice, senior doctors, are leaving - it's a lot more now," said a specialist in his 40's who works for a government hospital. "They are worrying about the education of their kids, their security, the general economic climate."

Opened in 1957, Mpilo Central would, in another time, seem a decent place to work. Set on 28 acres a couple of miles northwest of the city's central business district, it appears spare, but well kept. It is not cutting edge, but neither is it a medical wasteland.

Such mundane charms apparently no longer suffice for many of Zimbabwe's medical professionals. Of the 600 posts for doctors in government hospitals, nearly 100 are vacant, as are 600 of the 5,000 positions for general nurses, said Davies G. Dhlakama, the Health Ministry's director of technical support.

Dr. Barton Matshe is one of three staff obstetricians at Mpilo - which delivers 11,000 babies a year. The other two are on loan from Cuba, and go home for several weeks each year.

By Dr. Matshe's reckoning, Mpilo should have at least six obstetricians; by the hospital's, it should have at least five. No one expects more anytime soon.

Dr. Matshe came to Bulawayo, eager to go where his skills are "really needed." Now, however, there are days when he questions his judgment.

A 37-year-old father of three, he was born in Shurugwi, 125 miles northeast of here. After studying at the University of Zimbabwe Medical School in the capital, Harare, he fulfilled his required government service at the city's public hospitals. Then, like many other young doctors, he left the country to train in his chosen specialty. He spent six years in Cape Town, South Africa, and Johannesburg and six months ago he started work here.

"Part of me thinks I made the right decision, but there are times that I think from a personal point of view and from a professional point of view," he said, "that it wasn't quite the right decision." The fees each term for his two children in primary schools come to more than his monthly salary.

Bulawayo, with 800,000 people, is the business hub of southern Zimbabwe. In many ways it is better off than the rural areas in its ability to attract doctors and nurses.

But then those small rural hospitals are not asked to take on the most challenging cases, as Mpilo is. "We hardly ever see any low-risk patients," Dr. Matshe said.

And Bulawayo finds itself a second choice for many specialists, who prefer to be in Harare. The capital has not been spared, however. Even medical professionals who remain in Zimbabwe are devoting more time to private practice, which offers the only, albeit diminishing, hope of earning a good living.

The sort of specialized treatment that was once available only in the capital is increasingly not offered any more. For example, children with rheumatic heart disease now have little chance of ever having the surgery they need. "It's disheartening when the children keep coming back and saying, `Why can't I be fixed,' and you have to say, `Because the government has no money for operations,' " said Andrew Bowman, a cardiologist and secretary of the Zimbabwe Medical Association. "It's very sad."

Parirenyatwa, the only hospital in the country with the facilities to perform open heart surgery, no longer offers this surgery. The equipment is still there, but there is no money for essential supplies, said one of the country's few cardiac surgeons.

What that has meant, the surgeon said, is that the few patients with medical insurance and enough money travel to South Africa for the surgery. "Those who cannot afford it," the surgeon said, "are dying - and there are a lot of them."

The day-to-day frustrations erode the faith of many doctors and nurses in what they are doing and give them another reason to leave, on top of the economic hardships.

The medical professionals who stay say they understand the thinking of the ones who don't. "It's very personal, and you can't interfere with that kind of decision," said Dr. Matshe, the obstetrician at Mpilo Central Hospital.

After all, the idea of leaving has occurred to almost all of them. "I suppose all of us have at some point or another thought about, but somebody has to hang around here," said Dr. Mahlangu, Mpilo's medical superintendent. "I was born here. I was brought up here. This is home."

--------

Has The Ultimate Cancer Cure Been Found In India?

The Hindustan Times
6-3-01
From: magnu96196@aol.com

HYDERABAAD - Indian cancer researchers have taken a giant step on the road to discovering the ultimate cancer cure by developing a drug that selectively targets the cancer cells without harming the healthy ones.

Researchers in Kolkata claim that patients in "very advanced stages" of cancer for whom all other treatments had failed have been brought back to "excellent" health with the help of a drug formulation they have developed after research spanning more than a decade.

"We have what we think magic bullet against cancer," says Manju Ray, a biochemist at the Indian Association of the Cultivation of Science (IACS) where the drug was developed under a project funded by the Department of Science and Technology and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

Most currently available anti-cancer drugs are toxic because they also damage the normal cells. Ray says the IACS formulation, containing "Methylglyoxal" as the lead ingredient, combats only the diseased cells, the cherished goal of cancer researchers worldwide. Methylglyoxal is a metabolite in the human body produced during glucose breakdown.

Others involved in the project are Swapna Ghosh of IACS, Manoj Kar and Subhankar Ray of the University College of Science, and Santajit Datta, a medical practitioner. Results of human trial conducted by them with the new drug have recently appeared in the Indian Journal of Physics.

While Americans are going ga-ga with their new anti-cancer drug "Glivec" - that was featured on the cover of May 28 issue of Time magazine - the low-profile, cash-strapped Kolkata researchers have been working quietly for over a decade shuning publicity until they obtained proof from human trials nine weeks ago.

According to their published paper, the Methylglyoxal-based forumulation had "a dramatic positive effect on the patients".

For instance, the condition of 11 out of the 19 patients treated - most of them in a very advanced stage when the treatment began -- are now stated to be in "excellent physical condition". Five are in stable condition and only three died during the course of the study.

Since the submission of the paper, the number of patients treated has crossed 40 mark with more than 70 per cent success, according to Manju Ray.

Most remarkable fact, according to the scientists was that Methylglyoxal was successful against different types of cancer unlike "Glivec" which targets only the chronic myeloid leukemia.

Those whose health returned to "excellent" condition after treatment with Methylglyoxal included patients in "a very advanced stages" of colon cancer, acute myeloid leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and cancers of ovary, breast, liver, lung, bone, gall bladder, pancreas and oral cavity.

The patients were inducted for the trial, from January to June 2000, after obtaining permission from the Drug Controller General of India, the scientists said. The drug was administered orally for about six months with gradual reduction of daily dosage from the initial 25 milligrams per kilogram of body weight.

Researchers said development of the drug was preceded by years of basic research involving human cancer cells in culture and animal experiments that showed that Methylglyoxal selectively killed the cancer cells without affecting normal cells by exploiting "a very significant" biochemical difference between the two.

Explaining the mechanism of action, the scientists said cancer cells required a large amount of energy providing substance called ATP (Adenosine-5-Triphosphate) for survival.

"Methylglyoxal inactivates the enzyme (Glyceraldehyde-3- Phosphate Dehydrogenase) needed for ATP production in cancer cells and thereby starves tem to death. Normal cells remain unaffected."

Manju ray said that chemists knew Methylglyoxal molecule for about four decades and its anti-cancer effects in animals had also been studied. "But surprisingly, no one bothered to initiate further research leading to human trials," she said.

The researchers said concern in some quarters about safety of Methylglyoxal were not borne out from the clinical trials, which showed that in combination with protective agent like Ascorbic Acid and vitamins, the drug Methylglyoxal had no major toxic effect. They said there was scope for further enhancing the drug's efficacy.

-------- spying

Secret CIA Civilian Pilots Honored

By ANGIE WAGNER Associated Press Writer JUNE 03, 01:56 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7CCT34G0

LAS VEGAS (AP) - For years, they operated in secret - civilian pilots who worked for the CIA on missions they couldn't even discuss with their families.

But on Saturday, 25 years after Air America dissolved, the government finally recognized them. The CIA presented a unit citation to the men Saturday evening.

``This is a family,'' said Leigh Coleman Hotujec, whose father was an Air America pilot when his plane crashed in Laos in 1972. ``It is a band of brothers that served overseas.''

Most people likely have never heard of Air America, unless they know the 1990 Mel Gibson movie by the same name.

Air America began after World War II in the 1940s when the Civil Air Transport commercial airline was started in China. Pilots hauled relief supplies and evacuated people throughout the country during China's civil war.

In 1950, the CIA bought the airline to use in secret missions to fight communism in Asia, and in 1959, CAT was renamed Air America. CAT and Air America flew supplies, food and personnel to anti-communist troops in Southeast Asia, including the CIA's ``secret war'' in Laos.

In 1975, Air America helicopter crews helped Americans and South Vietnamese evacuate during the fall of Saigon. The airline dissolved in 1976.

On Saturday, 850 former CAT and Air America pilots and their families gathered to swap stories and remember missions many Americans know nothing about. They also honored the 242 people who died or disappeared during the secret missions.

The missions were so secret, the men referred to the CIA as ``the customer,'' said Jim Alexander, an operations manager for Air America who lives in Dallas.

A plaque honoring the missing and the dead hangs in the McDermott Library on the University of Texas at Dallas. A smaller version of the plaque is also in the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.

But until Saturday, CAT and Air America workers had never been recognized by the CIA for their service, Hotujec said.

``They're quiet heroes,'' Hotujec said. ``They've not demanded or asked for this recognition. They just did their job.''

-------- activists

Continuous Vigil Outside the White House Celebrated 20th Anniversary Today
Vigilers vow another 20 years day and night "if necessary"

June 3, 2001 - Peace Park Press

About sixty people gathered over the course of Sunday afternoon to honor William Thomas, who founded the Peace Park Antinuclear Vigil on June 3, 1981. See http://prop1.org

Thomas was also one of the group of Washington, D.C. activists who brought a successful voter initiative to the District of Columbia in 1993, calling for the United States to agree with the other nuclear powers that it will abolish all nuclear weapons and used the billions of dollars saved each year instead to shut down and clean up the nuclear weapons industries, and convert other arms industries into more humane endeavors - for example, instead of building missiles and bombs, instead make solar panels, windmills, hydrogen fuel cells. See http://prop1.org/prop1/prop1.htm for details.

Among the people who attended the event in Lafayette Park were a group of South Korean peace activists, who broughts signs calling for peace and reunification of their country. People from Catholic Workers spoke about their difficulties being arrested at the Pentagon weekly Monday a.m. vigil for merely praying or holding a small sign. Project Abolitionists announced the June 10th rally and 11th to 15th "Stop Star Wars" lobbying effort. See http://www.projectabolition.org/

----

Students Discuss Tiananmen Massacre

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 8:22 a.m. ET, June 3, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Taiwan-Tiananmen.html

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Two former Chinese student activists on Sunday recalled their crushed pro-democracy protests in Beijing 12 years ago and urged Taiwan to keep pressuring China for democracy.

The dissidents attended a panel discussion with Taiwanese politicians on the eve of the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown on the student-led movement, when hundreds, and perhaps thousands, were killed as tanks rolled across Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

``It was at first an exciting moment, but we lost the battle to the aging leaders who lost their senses and who cherished power more than lives,'' said Zhang Poli, who now lives in exile in the United States.

The dissidents also urged Taiwan to shun the lure of the mainland's economic prospects.

``Many people have asked: Look how China's economy has developed, and why don't you forget about Tiananmen? But if we indeed forget about it, we may very well see another massacre,'' Zhang said.

Following the crackdown, Zhang escaped an arrest warrant by hiding on a remote mountainside for two years before fleeing to the United States.

Another former student leader, Wu'er Kaixi, bluntly asked Taiwanese not to ``kowtow'' to China as they rush to do business with the Chinese.

Many Taiwanese envy China's economic development and are disappointed at the protracted political wrangling on this island, said Wu'er, who is now a Taiwanese resident.

``Democracy naturally leads to debates and feuds, but here you won't have tanks rolling over people,'' he said.

Taiwan and China have been governed separately since a civil war in 1949. China considers Taiwan part of its territory, but Taiwan has said reunification will not be possible before China practices democracy.

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Tiananmen Families Praise Review

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN Associated Press Writer, JUNE 03, 10:21 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7CD4FJ00

BEIJING (AP) - Growing documentation could force China's government to review its excuse for the bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, a victims' group said Sunday.

In an open letter issued to mark the June 4 crackdown anniversary, the Tiananmen Mothers said growing evidence undermines the government's claim that the crackdown was justified to end ``counterrevolutionary turmoil.''

In a letter distributed by New York-based Human Rights in China, the group praised the recently published book, ``The Tiananmen Papers,'' as helping reveal the truth about the crackdown.

The book collects what are purported to be internal documents and records of leaders' meetings and phone calls that depict the leadership as divided over how to handle the protests.

The book, along with other collections of photographs, personal testimonials and lists of the dead and wounded, will ``inevitably put the perpetrators of this tragedy into the position of defendants,'' the letter said.

The letter was signed by 111 relatives of victims.

Hundreds of people were killed when army troops backed by tanks attacked unarmed protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3-4 to crush seven weeks of tumultuous protests. The exact number of those killed is not known, and the government has never given a full account of deaths or allowed an investigation.

Commemorations of the event are forbidden, and police routinely visit known dissidents and families of victims on the anniversary to warn them not to publicly mark the date.

Despite the intimidation, the Tiananmen Mothers filed a lawsuit two years ago seeking redress and an investigation of Li Peng, China's No. 2 leader, who was premier at the time. Li is blamed by many for encouraging the use of force.

Prosecutors have ignored the lawsuit. Police have threatened those who brought it, including former university professor Ding Zilin, whose 17-year-old son was killed in the crackdown.

Ding said officers who questioned her at her home last week asked her if she had a copy of the book.

But she said Sunday that no officers were stationed outside her front door on the eve of the anniversary for the first time since she went public with her campaign for the victims in 1994.

``With the publication of 'The Tiananmen Papers' the government has to know that it can't keep this matter covered up forever, that they have to get it out into the open,'' she said.

Interest and moral support from abroad have given the Tiananmen Mothers a greater sense of responsibility and determination, Ding said.

``We want to use love to cure the hate, but this can only be done on the basis of goodwill and justice,'' she said from her Beijing home.

Another member of the group said she gave a copy of the open letter to a local policeman, asking him to pass it on to his superiors.

``Our country's leaders say we should be direct and speak the truth and that is all I am doing,'' said Zhang Xianling, who lost her 19-year-old son. ``We want a reopening of the case and a full, transparent investigation.''

China's government has labeled ``The Tiananmen Papers'' a fabrication, but Chinese agents at home and abroad have reportedly questioned people about the documents in an attempt to trace their source.

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South Korean radical students stage anti-US protests

SEOUL, June 3 2001 (AFP) -
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010603/1/ri1j.html

Thousands of South Korean radical students staged anti-US protests Sunday, accusing the administration of President George W. Bush of heightening tension on the Korean peninsula.

In the biggest anti-American demonstration here since Bush took office in January, 7,000 students urged the United States to revise what they called a "hardline and hawkish" stance toward North Korea.

Scuffles erupted when riot police set up tight human barricades with plastic shields and blocked the students from marching to the US embassy.

The protestors chanted "Out with the United States which is heightening tension on the Korean peninsula." They also denounced US plans to build a missile defence system.

The demonstration was organized by Hanchongryon, a nationwide grouping of radical students, which has blamed the Bush administration for stalling an inter-Korean peace process.

Some 1,000 students staged a separate protest outside the main base of US forces in Seoul, demanding the withdrawal of 37,000 US troops stationed in South Korea.

Washington has yet to complete a review of its North Korea policy, but US officials have called for a strict verification of North Korean arms as a condition for the resumption of dialogue between the two sides.

The inter-Korean summit on June 15 last year prompted a wave of landmark events such as emotional reunions of relatives separated since the Korean War.

But the communist North, angered by a delay in talks with the United States, has suspended all contacts with the South.

Seoul wants Pyongyang to resume high-level talks to arrange a second summit between South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, who signed a watershed reconciliation accord last year in Pyongyang.

"We support Kim Jong-Il's visit to Seoul," Hanchongryon said in a statement.


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