------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Woman speaks out over Maralinga nuclear test claims
A-tests death squad claim
Consumers in Nuclear States Pay 25 Percent More for Electricity
US trims annual nuclear power plant license fee
GEORGIA: NATO'S EXPANDING UMBRELLA
Germany defends nuclear power phaseout deal
German EnBW says sends nuke waste to La Hague
Japan Minister to Meet Powell
Change from Within - Challenges to Missile Defense
A Beautiful Day to Be Irradiated
Beryllium report attacked in court
Settlement of whistle-blower lawsuit closer
Los Alamos Blaze Blamed on Policy
Iodine report usable in future health projects
Senate's New Sense of Hearing
Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty "relic of the past": Bush
Bush: Russia Is Not an Enemy
RADIOACTIVE WASTE CLEANUP DELAYS WILL BE COSTLY

MILITARY
41 Nations Using Child Soldiers
Mobile phones may foil stealth bombers
China secretly shipping Cuba arms
Macedonian government adopts peace plan
Group: Seniors' Drug Costs Rising
Palestinians agree to CIA chief's peace plan
UN Seeks to Settle Cyprus Dispute
Taliban, U.N. Clash Over Bakeries
Commander sees bright future for bombers, info ops
Pentagon rolling out vision of future fighting forces
Navy chief to stay out of shipbuilder merger
Bush, Goh confer on defense, free-trade

OTHER
NY power plan seen good for renewable energy firms
Umweltkontor plans renewable energy funds
Tiny Air Pollutants Linked to Heart Attacks
Lead Poisoning Threatening Condors

ACTIVISTS
The New Nuclear Danger
As Bush Woos Europe, Democrats Blast Missile Plans
NEWS CONFERENCE WITH PEACE ACTION
Turner blasts Bush on environment
Police Detain EU Activists
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE MOURNS DEATH OF FOUNDER
Ex-DOE Head Joins Anti-Nuke Trustees
Invitation to NGOs to attend the Second Conference
Report on June 10-12 Stop the New Arms Race events on the web


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- australia

Woman speaks out over Maralinga nuclear test claims

June 12, 2001
Australian Broadcasting
http://www.abc.net.au/news/state/wa/archive/metwa-12jun2001-9.htm

A Perth woman says she was at a meeting in which a former member of the British Air Force claimed people with disabilities were taken to Maralinga during nuclear tests in the 1950s.

The former director of the State Government's Disability Services, Robert Jackson, has revealed one of his employees made the allegation a decade ago.

Dr Jackson, a researcher at Perth's Edith Cowan University, is attempting to locate the former employee to substantiate the claims.

A women, who wishes to remain anonymous, says she was at a training session for people with disabilities when the allegations were made by Allen Robinson, who she understood was an engineer in the British Air Force, not a pilot as previously reported.

"Well his comments were that he was on the plane that took people out, took people who had disabilities out on to the site at Maralinga...it happened a long time ago so I can't remember the actual reaction of people, but it was...shock I guess, disbelief that people would be doing that," she said.

----

A-tests death squad claim

By Mark Mallabone,
The West Australian,
June 12, 2001
http://www.thewest.com.au/20010612/news/state/tw-news-state-home-sto12189.html

CANBERRA

SUSPICIONS have been revived that people with severe disabilities were used as human guinea pigs during British atomic tests at Maralinga in the 1950s.

The control group apparently was flown from Britain and died after being exposed to radioactive fallout as part of an experiment on the effects of radiation on humans.

The allegations were examined during the royal commission into British nuclear tests in Australia but dismissed as unsubstantiated in its final report, handed to Federal Parliament in December 1985.

However, Bob Jackson, director of Edith Cowan University's centre for disability research and development, said yesterday he had spoken to a former pilot whose account tended to support the allegations.

He was worried the royal commission had not heard the man's version of events.

Dr Jackson said he came across the story in the late 1980s when he was regional director of the WA Disability Services Commission, where the former pilot was an officer.

Dr Jackson was approached by the man after giving a presentation which included a 1984 report in The West Australian of claims of atomic testing on the disabled.

The man told him he had flown a planeload of disabled people from Britain to the Maralinga test site. "We didn't fly them out again," the man said.

Dr Jackson said he had no reason to disbelieve the man, whose name he could not remember. The allegations came after Dr Jackson relayed them to former servicemen fighting for compensation for radiation exposure at the British nuclear tests in South Australia and WA's Monte Bello islands.

-------- business

Consumers in Nuclear States Pay 25 Percent More for Electricity, Analysis Shows
Expensive Nuclear Power Calls Into Question Key Component of Cheney's Energy Plan

June 12, 2001
http://www.citizen.org/press/pr-cmep133.htm</A>

WASHINGTON, D.C. - States that use nuclear power to generate electricity have significantly higher electricity rates - on average 25 percent higher - than states that do not, a Public Citizen analysis shows.

In the District of Columbia and the 19 states without nuclear power plants, electricity cost an average of 5.52 cents per kilowatt/hour in 1999, the latest date for which data was available for all states. The average cost of electricity in the 31 states that use nuclear power was 6.88 cents per kilowatt/hour in 1999. The trend holds true despite recent fluctuations in deregulated electricity markets.

In fact, the higher a state's reliance on nuclear power, the higher electricity rates will be, Public Citizen concluded. This is because nuclear plants are more costly to build, operate and maintain.

The findings call into question the viability of a key component of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy plan. Cheney's May report called for the president to "support the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States as a major component of our national energy policy."

"The administration is living in a dream world if it thinks that nuclear energy will be a panacea to our current and future energy woes," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "Aside from the critical questions of safety and waste disposal, these plants are prohibitively expensive to build and maintain."

Capital costs represent between 60 and 75 percent of the cost of a nuclear plant, compared to 25 percent of the cost of a coal plant and 50 percent of the cost of a natural gas plant. When capital costs are included with operation, maintenance and fuel costs, nuclear power costs $2,080 per kilowatt/hour compared to $1,200 per kilowatt/hour for coal and $500 per kilowatt/hour for natural gas.

For the analysis, Public Citizen used data from the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration concerning electricity sales and revenues for the calendar year of 1999, the latest available. Since then, deregulation has increased prices in many areas.

One of the driving forces behind deregulation was the high cost of power in states with nuclear power plants, many of which had high cost overruns. Nuclear power plant construction projects in the late 1970s and 1980s experienced cost overruns of as much as 700 percent, which represented the majority of the debt incurred by major utilities.

In the 1990s, as state legislatures debated deregulation plans, utilities were able to convince state lawmakers to have consumers pay 100 percent of these nuclear-related debts, estimated to total $86 billion. In exchange, the utilities agreed to allow electricity rates charged to consumers to be frozen until these so-called "stranded costs" were paid off.

This bailout of the utilities' nuclear capital costs in part has allowed for the recent fall in electricity prices in the western United States. (The drop can also be attributed to reductions in consumer demand and increased federal policing of the markets.)

Increasing reliance on nuclear power involves not only building new plants but relicensing existing ones - a practice that raises a host of concerns about the safety of plants that are decades old.

"Nuclear power is not the energy of the future," Hauter said. "Increasing our reliance on it will only worsen conditions for consumers in years to come."

----

US trims annual nuclear power plant license fee

June 12, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11148&newsDate=12-Jun-2001

WASHINGTON - The cost of owning a U.S. nuclear power plant is getting about $62,000 cheaper.

That's how much the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will lower the annual fee it levies against utilities for each of their electricity-generating reactors run by nuclear power. The agency said the new lower fee would be $2.753 million per reactor.

The NRC is one of the few government agencies that is almost completely self-funded, which means its operating costs are covered by the fees the agency collects from the reactors it regulates and monitoring services it provides.

Because there are 103 nuclear reactors in the U.S., the agency should bring in $284 million, or about two-thirds of its current $453 million budget.

The rest of the agency's funding comes, in part, from license fees for research reactors at universities and for facilities that manufacture fuel for nuclear power plants.

The NRC also charges hospitals a fee for making sure equipment used in certain treatment programs, such as chemotherapy, is safe.

Nuclear power plants supply about 20 percent of the electricity in the United States.

The Bush administration's new national energy plan seeks to boost nuclear power use, calling for more reactors to be built on currently licensed sites.

-------- europe

GEORGIA: NATO'S EXPANDING UMBRELLA

New York Times
World Briefing,
Michael Wines (NYT)
June 12, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/12/world/12BRIE.html

NATO began a two-week exercise in the Black Sea with five East European and former Soviet nations, some of which are candidates for NATO membership. Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and Georgia sent soldiers to the training mission, which involves 4,000 troops from those nations and six NATO members, as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross. Bulgaria and Romania are candidates for the next round of NATO admissions.

-------- germany

Germany defends nuclear power phaseout deal

GERMANY: June 12, 2001
Story by Mark John
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11147&newsDate=12-Jun-2001

BERLIN - The German government defended a nuclear phase-out accord with industry yesterday, as doubts resurfaced that the hard-fought agreement would achieve its aim of switching off all the country's reactors.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and chiefs of Germany's four main power groups signed the accord in the Chancellery yesterday evening. The pact reached last year commits industry to closing down nuclear operations over a period of around 20 years.

Energy industry chiefs said over the weekend the policy - with a time frame spanning several parliaments and which is staunchly opposed by German conservatives - could be reversed at some point in future.

But Environment Minister Juergen Trittin said that in reality, the accord merely accelerated and formalized a long-term move away from nuclear fuel that had been taking place anyway.

"The construction of a nuclear plant has not been completed or requested in Germany for 20 years," Trittin, a member of Schroeder's ecologist Greens junior coalition partners, told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

"Why should firms invest in a technology that will only make returns after 15 years, while they can be making money out of a modern gas power plant within three, four or five years?"

SUPPORT FOR "GREENER" FUEL

Successive governments here have seen nuclear power as the key to supplying Germany's post-World War Two energy needs and, despite widespread popular skepticism and a virulent anti-nuclear movement, backed its expansion.

The country's 19 existing plants currently provide around a third of Germany's electricity needs.

Under the accord signed after months of tough negotiations last June, no further approvals will be given for nuclear power plants in Germany and the government has pledged to actively support new "greener" fuel forms to replace the lost energy.

Shipments of nuclear waste for reprocessing must end by 2005, meaning operators will have to store their waste on site until a suitable centralized storage site is found.

The accord sets an average upper limit of 32 years' operational time for each reactor before its closure.

But to the dismay of the anti-nuclear Greens, Schroeder insisted the country's four main utilities - E.ON AG, RWE AG, Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg and HEW AG - will be allowed to make trade-offs between their plants within that time limit.

Thus, by closing old reactors earlier than they strictly need to, operators can extend the operational life of their newer, more efficient plants. It could be as late as 2021 before the last reactor is finally taken from the power grid.

E.ON Chief Executive Ulrich Hartmann was quoted on Sunday as saying he did not think the accord, which is due to get parliament's blessing later this year, would mean Germany would forever be a nuclear-free nation.

"Not even Mr. Trittin talks about the irreversibility of this as far as I am aware," Hartmann told Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

"On the contrary, I am certain that nuclear energy will have an important role to play in the future. We shall nonetheless stick to the agreements with the government as long as it sticks to them," he added.

The energy industry's skepticism of the agreement is shared by ecology and anti-nuclear lobbying groups, which plan demonstrations around the signing ceremony.

"This is a placebo for the people," said Susanne Ochse of the German branch of Greenpeace. "The government is pretending the nuclear phase-out has been established for all time. But anyone who has seen this accord knows that is pure nonsense."

----

German EnBW says sends nuke waste to La Hague

GERMANY: June 12, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11157

FRANKFURT - German utility EnBW said yesterday it had sent two nuclear waste shipments from its Philippsburg Block Two reactor to the reprocessing site at La Hague in France.

"Two containers with spent fuel elements were sent this afternoon from the Philippsburg plant for waste processing in La Hague," EnBW said in a statement.

"This transport is a further step to complete the further operation of Block Two after its scheduled maintenance work this August," it added.

The transport from Philippsburg accompanies a similar shipment by RWE from its Biblis B reactor.

Aorund 24 fuel elements will be shipped for EnBW in TN-13/2 containers.

The firm said there would be at least one further shipment of waste this year to ensure the continued operation of the plant.

-------- missile defense

Japan Minister to Meet Powell

JUNE 12, 01:05 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7CIQ6680

TOKYO (AP) - Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka said Tuesday she plans to meet U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington next week to prepare for a Japan-U.S. summit meeting later this month.

Tanaka, speaking after the morning Cabinet meeting, hopes to meet with Powell on June 18, although saying the plan could change.

Tanaka has come under fire recently for allegedly expressing reservations about Washington's plans for a missile defense shield. Japanese media had speculated the controversy would force her to scrub plans to visit Washington before Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi meets President Bush at Camp David on June 30.

But Tanaka told a parliamentary committee Monday that she wanted to talk directly with Powell about the importance of the Japan-U.S. alliance and reconfirm Japan's view of the missile defense scheme, Kyodo News agency reported.

Tokyo's official position is that it ``understands'' Washington's plans.

Tanaka took office in April as one of the most popular appointees to Koizumi's reformist Cabinet.

----

Change from Within - Challenges to Missile Defense

From: Flyby News <noflyby@yahoo.com> [soon to be online at www.flybynews.com] Formerly Post Cassini Flyby News
June 12, 2001
http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby

When working to expose the dangers of the Cassini space probe's flyby of Earth, we learned of much inside support from individuals working at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other NASA-associated facilities. We received word that NASA was "embarrassed" by postings on the Internet. The NoFlyby website [ http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby/contents.htm ] detailed credible evidences and individuals showing how such a mission was outside a reasonable concern for the safety of life on Earth. Such is the power of the Internet: NASA will probably never again attempt such a high-speed high-risk flyby mission of Earth with dangerous amounts of Plutonium on board. However, the forces for Missile Defense, propose more dangerous space missions for control and domination of Earth. This is being challenged by most all nations, and by those inside the system, too.

The following is a statement from an individual working at Lockheed Martin, sent to Flyby News regarding the Star Wars direction:

"Many thoughts. Some folks LOVE the idea of puttin a laser weapon in space to zap anyone they don't like 'cause it doesn't seem to put any Americans at risk to wage war. I have stayed away from the war toys development side of Lockheed Martin because I could not do that kind of work in good conscience. I think W Bush is paying for his election by pushing star wars systems. I don't think we will have enough money, though, if his tax cut goes through as well. It takes a lot of money to put anything into space and keep it there. And it's not something they will be able to do secretly. We've spent billions of star wars systems and don't have anything to show for it except larger, blotted defense contractors (companies) hungry for more contracts. I hope this go-around gets squashed for lack of merit but the House is getting pretty close to even (Republicans vs Democrats) so anything is likely to squeak by these days."

Please call Congress this coming Monday and Tuesday regarding Missile Defense in support of Project Abolition's White House Protest of this June 10 [ http://www.projectabolition.org ]. United, we can make a difference. Certainly logic, common sense and humane concerns are on our side. Stand up and be counted for peace in space, which can result in peace on Earth.

For a Sixty Minutes transcript of a program showing:

a.. Critics Say The Missile Defense System Is Flawed
b.. Claim Contractors Fraudulently Covered Up Failures
c.. 60 Minutes II Observes Latest Missile Test, A Failure
See: http://cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,245328-412,00.shtml

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

-------- california

A Beautiful Day to Be Irradiated

John Mecklin,
S.F. Weekly
06/12/2001
http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2001-06-13/dogbites.html

See also: Fallout http://www.sfweekly.com/webextra/fallout/index.html

A Beautiful Day to Be Irradiated

It was a warm, sunny day with a light breeze, and the view from the high ground there alongside Innes Avenue had me squinting across the bay in pleasure. Way out in the pale blue water, shimmering silver reflections played around small whitecaps, creating a light dance that might have had me standing there for hours, just staring, if I'd been sure that, standing there for hours, I would not be inhaling radioactive dust particles.

As it was, I stayed just long enough to hear Saul Bloom, executive director of the environmental group Arc Ecology, an attorney representing the group, and several citizens with reason to be upset explain to a clutch of reporters the latest incident in a gathering scandal that has largely escaped the keen gaze of the city's mainstream press. Bloom, et al., were commenting on an incident that transpired in May, when contractors working on the Navy's cleanup of Hunters Point Shipyard dug into a layer of sandblast grit of the type known as "Black Beauty." Beauty, in this case, is certainly in the eye of the beholders; the grit subsequently was tested, and found to be radioactive at 30 times the background level to be expected at the site.

It's long been known that the Navy sandblasted ships used as targets in atomic bomb tests in the South Pacific at the Hunters Point Shipyard. In fact, in early May, SF Weekly published "Fallout," an investigative series by Lisa Davis that revealed serious mishandling of nuclear material, including contaminated sandblast waste, by a top-secret defense laboratory at Hunters Point.

It's been made abundantly clear that there is community and governmental concern about radioactivity at the shipyard. On May 21, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi released a letter that she and U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer signed, asking the Navy a series of pointed questions that seemed to come straight out of the pages of "Fallout."

But the Navy reacted to Black Beauty the way the Navy has been wont to react whenever bad things happen at Hunters Point. "Fallout" and the congressional letter notwithstanding, despite a late-May meeting with community members at which nuclear contamination of the shipyard was a primary topic, when the Black Beauty tested radioactive, Navy officials chose to say not one public thing -- for weeks.

During those weeks, however, whistle-blowers were providing Arc Ecology with evidence about the radioactive incident. So, with a peaceful, sunny view of the bay (and some trenches containing Black Beauty) as a backdrop, the environmental group announced last week that it intends to sue contractors working on the shipyard cleanup, alleging they failed to inform workers and the public about the nuclear find, as required by law. The prospective lawsuit got some (muted) notice in the mainstream press. Whether it got the Navy's attention is doubtful.

The shipyard landfill -- a landfill known to contain many dangerous contaminants, and suspected of containing nuclear waste -- caught fire last summer, sending smoke over a nearby neighborhood for weeks before the Navy thought to tell anyone. Last Thursday, the EPA said it would fine the Navy for its failure to report the fire the crushing total of $25,000 -- or, less than one-fiftieth of 1 percent of the $150 million the Navy has spent studying and cleaning the base since it closed in 1974. --John Mecklin

-------- colorado

Beryllium report attacked in court
Ex-Rocky Flats workers say firm's medical director misrepresented the cause of chronic disease in 1983

By Ann Imse,
Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
June 12, 2001
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0%2C1299%2CDRMN_15_642406%2C00.html

The medical director of the nation's only beryllium producer misrepresented in a scientific publication the cause of chronic beryllium disease suffered by 11 neighbors of a company factory, according to evidence presented in Jefferson County District Court on Monday.

Former Rocky Flats workers are suing Brush Wellman Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio, claiming it conspired with the government to hide the dangers of beryllium used in manufacturing nuclear weapons.

On Monday, their attorneys presented a scientific publication authored in 1983 by Dr. Otto Preuss, medical director of Brush Wellman. Preuss reported that all neighbors of the company factory in Lorain, Ohio, who became ill had been in contact with the beryllium-contaminated clothing of workers.

In fact, only one of the 11 sick neighbors had washed clothing, according to testimony from Merril Eisenbud, the industrial hygienist who conducted the study 50 years ago. Testimony from Eisenbud read to the jury said he calculated the neighbors had been exposed by air to only about 0.1 to 1 microgram per cubic meter of air, substantially less than the 2 micrograms still set as the maximum safe exposure today.

Eisenbud also testified that he and a colleague created the 2-microgram standard merely to help the designer of a new beryllium machine shop in 1949. Although they had given it weeks of thought, the two men settled on 2 micrograms instead of 5 micrograms during a taxi ride to the machine-shop site on Long Island.

"I never thought I'd be defending it 50 years later," said Eisenbud.

Asked if there was an "epidemiological basis" for the 2-microgram standard, Eisenbud, an engineer by training, answered, "No."

About 50 people are suing Brush Wellman. The hearing is focusing on four workers to decide whether Brush Wellman is liable before the court goes into the details of the other workers' exposure and illness.

Attorneys for Brush Wellman won admissions from Eisenbud that in the early 1980s, he did think the 2-microgram standard protected workers because the number of cases had dropped off dramatically.

But Eisenbud said he then reviewed the case registry and found too many victims in whom the exposure could have been less, including about a dozen secretaries.

Then the number of cases jumped again, perhaps due to more sophisticated diagnosis, he said.

Eisenbud also testified that Brush Wellman executives were very cooperative in researching the effect of beryllium exposure during his original studies in the 1940s.

Plaintiffs presented an internal Brush Wellman memo from 1981 stating that more industries would use beryllium if not for its toxicity.

The memo from R.A. Foos goes on to say the company had been fighting for three to five years to fend off a "gross, detrimental and unreasonable standard" for exposure. That proposal from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was 0.1 micrograms per cubic meter.

The workers' attorneys provided additional evidence that Defense and Energy department officials shut down that OSHA attempt.

They presented a Brush Wellman letter detailing a deal in which "DOE and DOD would exert their best efforts to have OSHA reconsider its proposed unrealistic beryllium standard." Brush Wellman agreed not to quit the business abruptly and leave Rocky Flats without a critical ingredient for nuclear weapons.

-------- kentucky

Settlement of whistle-blower lawsuit closer
Justice lawyers have been huddling with Lockheed-Martin officials about an out-of-court settlement.

By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com,
June 12, 2001
Paducah Sun
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2001/nn11261.htm

Attorneys for three workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the U.S. Department of Justice are discussing how much Lockheed-Martin would have to pay to settle a whistle-blower suit that accuses Lockheed of filing false reports that earned it millions of dollars in operating bonuses. Joe Egan, the Washington attorney who represents the employees, said a settlement figure is being discussed as Justice attorneys talk with Lockheed-Martin about an out-of-court settlement.

Most of the settlement would go back to the federal government, but up to 25 percent would go to those who filed the suit. Egan would not reveal a possible settlement figure, but said the potential cost for Lockheed is "in the hundreds of millions of dollars" if the case goes to court and the plaintiffs win.

Lockheed-Martin, formerly Martin Marietta, operated the plant from the early 1980s until the early 1990s under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, which owns the plant.

Lockheed also operated it for about four years for the United States Enrichment Corp., which now operates the plant under lease from DOE.

The suit claims Lockheed-Martin filed false and misleading reports about environmental conditions that earned the company multi-million-dollar performances bonuses paid by DOE.

The potential for an out-of-court settlement is one reason government attorneys filed a motion Monday asking U.S. District Court Judge Joseph McKinley Jr. for a 60-day extension of the government's time to decide whether to join the litigation as a plaintiff.

The deadline extension request was filed by Bill Campbell, assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Kentucky. Egan and Lockheed attorneys agreed to the extension, pushing it from Wednesday to Aug. 13, according to the motion.

The deadline has been extended five times since the suit was filed in June 1999.

A recommended course of action has been forwarded to Washington, but Campbell is not saying what it was.

Other sources have said Campbell and the investigators found sufficient evidence to warrant government intervention.

The motion requesting the extension also said DOE attorneys and top Justice officials need more time to review the findings and recommendations.

"We are consenting to a 60-day extension of time that the Justice Department has requested ... because they have advanced good rationale to us," Egan said. "In a case like this, it is better to proceed with the victimized government agency thoroughly appraised of what is going on."

Egan thinks something will be decided by August.

The suit was filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council; Thomas Cochran, nuclear program director for the the council, and three plant workers â€" Charles Deuschele, Garland Jenkins and Ronald Fowler.

Egan said the plaintiffs would receive 15 to 25 percent of any amount Lockheed-Martin pays back to the government, but said "no one is going to get rich" if there is a settlement.

"They (the plant workers) have agreed to give a large portion of any recovered money they may receive to the Natural Resources Defense Council," Egan said, adding that the environmental watchdog group would use its proceeds for "arms control initiatives." He said none of the money would be used to fund additional lawsuits against DOE.

The fact that negotiations are continuing with Lockheed-Martin is considered by some, including Egan, to be significant.

"We always try working with potential defendants to settle a case short of litigation," Campbell said. "In this case, we all have an interest in seeing if the litigation can be brought to a close sooner, rather than later."

He said attorneys for Lockheed-Martin "have expressed to me a continued desire to talk with us."

-------- new mexico

Los Alamos Blaze Blamed on Policy

JUNE 12, 22:08 EST
By RICHARD BENKE
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&PACKAGEID=fires

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - A new report on last year's wildfire that left more than 400 families homeless in Los Alamos recommends against disciplining any National Park Service workers, blaming the fire on inadequate agency policies, not employee mistakes.

The report from a federal board of inquiry, released Tuesday, recommended no disciplinary action be taken against former Bandelier National Monument Superintendent Roy Weaver or other employees involved with a planned burn that grew into the Cerro Grande Fire. The report also recommended more oversight of planned burns.

Weaver, who retired last year, has said for months he expected the board of inquiry to exonerate him and other Bandelier officials. He said prescribed burn plans had been reviewed at the Park Service's regional level until the oversight ended in the mid-1990s because of government ``downsizing.''

``They probably think it would be good to have somebody who is not directly involved in the fire review the plan,'' Weaver said Tuesday.

Earlier reports on the blaze, including one from the U.S. General Accounting Office, concluded Bandelier staff members seriously underestimated the fire danger in the dry Jemez Mountains last year before moving ahead with the prescribed burn.

The fire, which burned more than 42,000 acres in May 2000, started from the controlled burn set by the National Park Service on nearby Bandelier.

The fire was intended to burn underbrush on about 1,000 acres to reduce the threat of a catastrophic fire. Instead, winds swept the flames into the northern and western edges of Los Alamos, forcing the evacuation of the entire town and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Rita Hemsing, whose family lost their home of 23 years to the flames, called the report disappointing.

``It just seems like when you get devastated like this, you think somebody should be to blame,'' Hemsing said. ``Surely somebody has to be held accountable. ... What a cop-out to say, 'Oh, the policy.''

The report did criticize Mike Powell, who was directing the burn, for not lining up adequate firefighting capabilities before going home at 3 a.m. on May 5, 2000, just before the fire went out of control.

Wade said Powell's ``actions were the most questionable'' among Bandelier officials, but added: ``I think he was trying to follow the rules as best he understood them.''

A message left for Powell at Lava Beds National Monument in California, where he was assigned after leaving Bandelier last year, was not immediately returned.

The federal board said the Park Service's rating system for the prescribed fire was flawed because a fire management rating guide for prescribed burns posted on the Internet was incorrect when the Cerro Grande prescribed burn was set.

The inaccuracy went undetected and unreported, the report said.

Bandelier complied with Park Service policies, ``but due to circumstances unknown to them used an incorrect version of the complexity rating system,'' it said.

The board and other investigations ``found that direction provided by the agency was inadequate, and the agency's policies themselves had weaknesses,'' Karen Wade, Intermountain Region director of the Park Service in Denver, wrote in a memo endorsing the board's report. ``Therefore, the employees implementing those policies with that guidance cannot fairly be held responsible for the result.''

She agreed with the board's conclusion that neither Weaver nor four other employees involved in the controlled burn violated Park Service policies or regulations.

The report, like other investigations earlier, said the federal government needs to standardize the forms it uses to gauge the complexity of conditions before lighting controlled burns.

-------- tennessee

Iodine report usable in future health projects

June 12, 2001
Oak Ridger
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/061201/new_0612010073.html

It's been "determined" that a dose reconstruction report of iodine-131 releases in Oak Ridge is an important tool to use in planning future public health efforts locally.

That conclusion is included in a technical review of the report that was ordered by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which oversees the Oak Ridge Reservation Health Effects Subcommittee.

ATSDR officials said four "technical experts" participated in the review. They were Jon A. Broadway, who manages the environmental consulting program at Auburn University; Geoffrey G. Eichholz, a regents professor emeritus of nuclear engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology; Kenneth L. Mossman, a professor of health physics and director of the Office of Radiation Safety at Arizona State University; and Fritz A. Seiler, president of Sigma Five Consultants, a consulting firm in New Mexico.

The dose reconstruction report was released in early 2000 and was prepared by scientists working under contract with the Tennessee Department of Health. One thing the study investigated was the possible risks of thyroid cancer from the releases of I-131 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory between 1944 to 1956 at 41 representative locations, including Oak Ridge, Oliver Springs, Clinton, Kingston and Knoxville.

I-131 seeks out the thyroid gland almost exclusively, and those most at risk for exposure were people born between 1944 and 1954 who lived nearby and drank milk from backyard animals only, according to the report. Those at greatest risk are women born in 1952 living near Gallaher Bend, located east of ORNL, who drank goat milk.

At its meeting on Monday, the subcommittee heard several presentations pertaining to the I-131 report including one by Bob Peelle and Tom Widner, who talked about the research that went into preparing the document.

Also giving a presentation was Owen Hoffman, president of SENES Oak Ridge Inc., Center for Risk Analysis, an organization that analyzes health risks related to radiation exposure. Hoffman also participated in the dose reconstruction effort.

Hoffman used computer software, known as an interactive risk and dose calculator, to conduct several demonstrations assessing an individual's risk of thyroid disease from iodine-131 exposure, based on when the individual was born, where the person lived and how much and what type of milk the person drank.

The subcommittee consists of citizens primarily from the Oak Ridge area, including Knoxville and Roane County residents, who work with community members and advocacy groups to offer advice and recommendations to several federal agencies regarding health concerns in Oak Ridge. ATSDR, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for appointing subcommittee members.

-------- us nuc politics

Senate's New Sense of Hearing
Oil Probe Reflects Democrats' Committee Powers

By John Lancaster
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 12, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53394-2001Jun11?language=printer

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D) was back home in Michigan last month when something caught his eye: All across the state, gasoline prices had spiked sharply, often by more or less the same amount. Levin wanted to know why. Thanks to the Democratic makeover of the Senate, he may get a chance to find out.

As the new chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations, Levin enjoys powers he never had as the ranking minority member on the panel, including the right to unilaterally call hearings, subpoena documents and compel testimony by reluctant witnesses. Levin's staff says he is prepared to do all of those things in the course of a major new investigation into oil industry pricing methods and alleged anti-competitive practices.

Levin's investigation, announced just days after Vermont Sen. James M. Jeffords announced his defection from the Republican Party, could complicate President Bush's plans to ramp up energy production -- in some cases by easing environmental rules -- if it turns out that oil companies are withholding supplies to drive up prices.

More broadly, the subcommittee probe illustrates the newfound ability of Democrats in the Senate to shape the national agenda using the formidable power of committee chairmanships they have not occupied for the last six years. Until last week, that power belonged exclusively to Republicans. Democrats who wanted to spotlight issues by means of committee hearings and investigations had to do so in cooperation with Republican chairmen -- or content themselves with press releases and speeches on the Senate floor.

"We haven't had a forum to raise these issues in committee," said a Democratic staffer on the investigations subcommittee. "Conducting hearings is very important. When you back that up with the ability to subpoena documents, to make those hearings meaningful, you've got a powerful tool." Democrats are already making use of that tool. On Wednesday, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), the newly installed chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, will preside at a hearing on energy deregulation. It is sure to highlight Democratic charges that Bush has failed to respond adequately to rising energy costs.

Lest anyone miss the point, the committee will hear testimony next week by California Gov. Gray Davis (D), who has clashed publicly with Bush on the federal government's role in resolving California's power shortage.

The Democratic inquiries appear to have touched a nerve. "Within two days of having this 50-49 majority, they said, 'We're going to begin investigations,' " Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the former majority leader, said on "Fox News Sunday." "You know, this is the blame game, like in energy. Rather than trying to figure out we have a good, strong national energy policy for the future, they want to determine who caused this problem."

The Senate power shift will be especially evident on the Foreign Relations Committee, whose conservative chairman of the last six years, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), last week traded places with Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), its former ranking minority member. Yesterday, Biden announced he will hold his first hearing -- on Wednesday -- on U.S. policy in the Balkans. He chose that topic, said spokesman Norm Kurz, in part to challenge suggestions by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that U.S. troops in the Balkans had completed their mission and should come home.

For the most part, Jeffords's decision to become an independent and join the Democratic caucus, giving Democrats a one-vote majority, will not change the makeup of committee staffs. They were split 50-50 under the power-sharing arrangement that governed relations in the evenly divided Senate. Democrats and Republicans are negotiating a new arrangement that will grant Democrats a one-vote majority on each panel.

There is a tradition of bipartisanship on some committees, including the investigations panel, which was formed by then-Sen. Harry S. Truman (D-Mo.) to look into fraud by World War II defense contractors and now occupies a subterranean space in the Russell Senate Office Building. Its legacy includes high-profile inquiries into organized crime, union corruption, gambling and health insurance as well as the McCarthy hearings; Robert F. Kennedy once served as staff director.

According to his staff, Levin, the ranking Democrat on the panel since 1998, has had a reasonably productive working relationship with the chairwoman he unseated, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). The two presided over investigations into the sweepstakes industry and the laundering of drug money by U.S. banks. Collins said in a statement that she has no objections to Levin's investigation into gas prices and noted that she, too, has expressed concerns about oil company pricing practices.

In an interview, Levin acknowledged the frustrations inherent in the ranking member's job. "There have been occasions where I have requested hearings . . . and the requests were not granted," he said.

Levin also lacked subpoena power, which sharply limited his access to critical information. Before the Democratic takeover, for example, Levin had asked for information on oil industry pricing practices from the Federal Trade Commission, which earlier this year completed two investigations into the issue. According to staff members, however, the FTC refused to provide the data, saying it was confidential.

The FTC found no evidence of collusion or illegal activity by oil companies. But Levin and his staff were not satisfied. Following Jeffords's defection, he decided to press his inquiry -- prompted in part, he said, by complaints he heard during a trip home for Memorial Day. "When I went back home and there was a huge price spike, it was reinforcement of either the manipulation of prices or the lack of competition," he said. "Hundreds of gas stations all raised their prices by 25 cents within hours. It may be a coincidence, or it may not be, but I'd like to get to the bottom of it."

On June 7, Levin wrote FTC Chairman Timothy J. Muris to request information gathered in the course of its investigation, including transcripts of interviews with oil industry executives that have not been made public.

One key issue centers on the need for more refining capacity: The Bush administration contends that environmental regulations have hindered construction of new refineries, constricting energy supplies. Levin's staff posits another theory, denied by the industry, that oil companies may prefer the current situation because it allows them to keep their inventories low -- a factor that contributes to price shocks in times of heavy demand.

Gas prices are hardly Levin's only concern since the Senate changeover. He also is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he plans to closely examine the administration's plans for missile defense. But he is trying not to crow over his newly acquired power. "I really love this job and I loved it, frankly, either way," he said. "I would just say the responsibility is greater."

----

Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty "relic of the past": Bush

Wednesday June 13, 12:53 AM
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010612/1/vv1h.html

The Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty signed in 1972 between Washington and Moscow is a "relic of the past," US President George W. Bush said Tuesday during a visit to Madrid.

The statement was Bush's starkest dismissal to date of the international agreement that has curbed the proliferation of the United States' and Russia's nuclear arsenals.

The US leader made the comment in a joint media conference with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, during which he again tried to talk up his plans for a missile defence shield against countries Washington considers "rogue states".

----

Bush: Russia Is Not an Enemy

JUNE 12, 14:04 EST
By RON FOURNIER
AP White House Correspondent
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=ELECTION&PACKAGEID=bushforeign&STORYID=APIS7CJ5JAG0

MADRID, Spain (AP) - A day after the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, President Bush confronted passionate European opposition to capital punishment and asserted, ``The death penalty is the will of the people in the United States.''

A majority of Americans believe that it deters crime, Bush argued Tuesday as he opened his maiden European tour in Spain.

At a joint news conference with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, Bush immediately faced trans-Atlantic differences over the death penalty, global warming and Bush's plan to develop a missile defense shield.

``There's so much more that unites us than divides. I refuse to let any issue isolate America from Europe,'' Bush said.

Aznar noted that Spain has abolished the death penalty and that he personally is opposed to capital punishment.

``Democracies debate issues,'' Bush declared. ``Democracies represent the will of the people. The death penalty is the will of the people in the United States. There are some people who don't agree in the United States.''

Bush was largely on the defensive as European allies rejected his stand on global warming and opposed his plans for a missile defense system. ``I look forward to making my case,'' Bush said.

Bush and Aznar took reporters' questions after private meetings at the Spaniard's whitewashed ranch house south of Madrid.

Bush, who is scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin for the first time on Saturday in Slovenia, said he will offer the Russian president ``a strong normal relationship with America.''

``Russia is not the enemy of the United States,'' Bush said, defending his position to abrogate the two nations' Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to build a missile defense shield for the United States.

As it is, the treaty prevents America ``from exploring other opportunities,'' Bush said.

Bush had been behind closed doors with Aznar when the European Union served notice from Brussels, Belgium, that U.S. allies rejected Bush's new initiatives on climate change, calling them short on action.

They urged Bush to change his mind and back the Kyoto treaty on global warming.

Bush said the treaty was flawed, ``unrealistic'' and not based on sound science. He said his administration is committed to reducing greenhouse gases in the United States.

As to his critics in the European Union, whom Bush meets Thursday, he said: ``I come to the conference believing that every leader is sincere about his desire to clean the world and so are we. We have a different approach, but we have the same goals.''

Aznar noted that Spain has ratified the Kyoto treaty and said the two countries ``may have some differences'' on the issue.

``We can and we must discuss the instruments to achieve'' the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

Aznar opened the press conference on a light note, teasing Bush about his Spanish.

Bush, who had some trouble with the language during a taped interview that preceded his arrival here, is ``speaking better and better every day,'' Aznar joked.

The two leaders spoke side by side on a stone patio beneath towering pines at the prime minister's official residence, where a stray cat prowled at their feet.

Bush emphasized that the United States has great and enduring interests in Europe.

Pledging to help Spain combat its serious problem with terrorism, Bush returned to the theme that promises to echo throughout his five-day, five-nation trip.

``Part of the missile defense dialogue is about fighting terrorism,'' Bush said.

The president said the United States and its allies ``must not yield, must not waver in the face of terrorist activity.''

His voice growing louder and more animated, Bush argued again for exploring a missile defense shield, which many overseas allies fear will trigger a new arms race.

``I realize it's going to require a lot of consultation, but I'm willing to listen,'' Bush concluded.

-------- us nuc waste

AGS WARN FEDS: RADIOACTIVE WASTE CLEANUP DELAYS WILL BE COSTLY

BUSINESS WIRE
Press Release,
June 12, 2001
From: "Bob Schaeffer" bobschaeffer@earthlink.net

OLYMPIA, Wash The U.S. Department of Energy's proposed budget to clean up the nation's nuclear waste is inadequate and will unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars, Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire warned Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in a letter sent today.

``The federal government needs to fulfill its cleanup commitments just like anyone else,'' Gregoire said of the letter. ``Hanford is one of the worst waste sites in the nation and Energy should set an example for responsibly cleaning up its mess.''

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation holds 60 percent of the country's most highly radioactive waste in tanks that are decades past their expected lifespan. At least one million gallons of the waste have already leaked into the ground.

``Each day that we delay cleaning up contamination and decommissioning obsolete and dangerous contaminated facilities costs millions of dollars because it is just another day that DOE must continue to maintain the enormous `mortgage' cost of keeping its facilities and the nuclear materials in them in a safe, secure and stable condition,'' the letter from Gregoire and nine other attorneys general said.

Additionally, delays will likely result in expensive court battles as states take legal action to force DOE to comply with existing agreements on cleanup deadlines.

DOE is obligated to begin construction of a nuclear waste glassification plant at Hanford this summer and to begin the actual process of turning the liquid waste into more easily storable glass by the end of 2007. Gregoire has instructed attorneys in her office to begin preparation for legal action against DOE if it does not demonstrate the capacity to meet those deadlines.

``The Department not only has the responsibility to be a good steward of tax dollars, it also has the obligation to comply with the law,'' the AGs wrote. ``Happily, these interests coincide in this case, because keeping cleanups on track ... can save billions of dollars that would otherwise be wasted keeping the lights on in surplus, contaminated facilities.''

The DOE has requested a reduction of approximately $58 million in its 2002 budget for nuclear cleanup at Hanford compared with this year's figures. To meet its obligations at the Hanford site, the department would need an increase of several hundred million dollars next year.

Today's letter to the Energy Secretary was signed by the attorneys general of Washington, Colorado, California, Idaho, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Ohio and Oregon.

In the letter to Secretary Abraham, the AGs expressed skepticism that management reform or new technologies could make up for the substantial budget cuts he has requested.

The attorneys general also provided Abraham with recommendations on increasing efficiency at DOE cleanup sites and pledged to work with him to streamline management at the sites.

Contact: AG Public Affairs Cheryl Reid, 360/586-4802 or Senior Assistant Attorney General David Mears, 360/586-6743


-------- MILITARY

41 Nations Using Child Soldiers

JUNE 12, 13:10 EST
By SUSANNA LOOF
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=AFRICA&STORYID=APIS7CJ4PU00

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - While other 15-year-olds were in school or playing sports, Robinson Odokonyero was fighting with a rebel army in Uganda, attacking government soldiers and being forced to kill fellow rebels unable to walk fast enough.

Odokonyero, now a 22-year-old student, still has nightmares about his two years with the Lord's Resistance Army.

Killing, he says, ``was not our intention, but there was no way we could escape.''

A report released Tuesday on the use of child soldiers said 300,000 children are under arms in 41 countries worldwide. Some are as young as 7, though most are 15 to 18.

Besides being used as front-line fighters, children are used as minesweepers, spies, guards, porters and sex slaves, according to the report by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.

``Every child with an AK-47, however small they are, as long as they can hold up that weapon, is turned into an effective killer,'' coalition spokeswoman Judit Arenas told reporters Tuesday.

The coalition is a London-based group comprising organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and World Vision International.

Children like Odokonyero are attractive as soldiers because of ``their very qualities as children - they can be cheap, expendable and easier to condition into fearless killing and unthinking obedience,'' the report said.

Odokonyero, who escaped when he was 17, said by telephone from Kampala, Uganda, that being a child soldier ``leaves unforgettable scars on our psychology.''

The number of child soldiers has remained constant in recent years, but the number of countries where they are used has increased to 41 from about 30 three years ago, Arenas said.

The use of child soldiers has decreased in the Middle East and Latin America as conflicts there have ended. But African countries use more than 120,000 children, according to the report, the first global survey of its kind. Myanmar has the world's highest number of child soldiers, with 50,000.

When some children are used as soldiers, all children in that area are at risk, the report said. A Colombian army unit fatally shot six children, aged 6 to 10, last August, believing they were a guerrilla unit.

Olyet Ayo-Ogang, vice chairman of the Concerned Parents Association in Uganda, said villages stop functioning when children are abducted.

The remaining children can't focus in school because they're afraid of getting abducted. Adults become less productive as they worry about the missing children and blame themselves for not protecting them, said Ayo-Ogang, whose 17-year-old daughter Caroline was abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army in 1996 and remains missing.

``Poverty is now rampant in the community. People are suffering,'' he said by telephone from Kampala.

The U.N. General Assembly adopted a protocol in May 2000 calling on governments to prevent troops younger than 18 from taking part in combat. Eighty countries have signed it.

``We want the whole world to be a child soldier free zone,'' Arenas said.

In 87 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, minors are recruited into government armed forces, paramilitaries, civil militia and non-state armed groups, the report said.

``In Europe, the U.K. remains the only country to actually deploy children under the age of 18,'' Arenas said.

The United States had fewer than 100 17-year-olds in combat units in June 1999, the most recent figures available, the U.S. Defense Department told the coalition.

In Sierra Leone and Uganda, child soldiers had been forced to commit atrocities on their families, Arenas said.

Such soldiers are ``children who are being completely distraught, torn apart and who are doing bad things which they know are bad, that they don't want to do, but their alternative is death,'' Arenas said.

-------

Mobile phones may foil stealth bombers

By Robert Uhlig in London,
The Telegraph, London
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0106/12/world/world2.html

America's multi-billion-dollar stealth bombers could be rendered obsolete by a British invention that uses existing mobile telephone masts to detect and track aircraft that were previously invisible to radar.

US stealth fighters and bombers such as the F117, B1 and B2 played key roles in the Gulf and Kosovan wars as they are almost impossible to detect using conventional radar.

However, the ease with which the mobile telephone mast system - developed at a laboratory in Hampshire - can be used to detect the aircraft has greatly concerned the military.

Mr Peter Lloyd, the head of projects at Roke Manor Research, said: "I cannot comment in detail because it is a classified matter, but let's say the US military is very interested."

Stealth aircraft, each of which costs at least $A3.6 billion, are shaped to confuse radar. A special paint absorbs radio waves, reducing the radar signature to the equivalent of a gull in flight.

The Roke Manor scientists discovered that telephone calls sent between mobile phone masts detected the precise position of stealth aircraft with ease. "We use just the normal phone calls that are flying about in the ether," Mr Lloyd said. "The front of the stealth plane cannot be detected by conventional radar, but its bottom surface reflects very well."

Mobile telephone calls bouncing between base stations produce a screen of radiation. When the aircraft fly through this screen they disrupt the phase pattern of the signals. The Roke Manor system uses receivers, shaped like television aerials, to detect distortions in the signals.

A network of aerials large enough to cover a battlefield can be packed in a Land Rover.

Using a laptop connected to the receiver network, soldiers on the ground can calculate the position of stealth aircraft with an accuracy of 10 metres with the aid of the GPS satellite navigation system.

"It's remarkable that a stealth system that cost £60 billion [$158 billion] to develop is beaten by £100,000 mobile phone technology," Mr Lloyd said. "It's almost impossible to disable a mobile phone network without bombing an entire country, whereas radar installations are often knocked out of action with a single bomb or missile."

-------- arms sales

China secretly shipping Cuba arms

June 12, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010612-12097216.htm

China is shipping arms and explosives to Cuba in a sign of increased military cooperation between Beijing and Havana, The Washington Times has learned.

At least three arms shipments were traced from China to the Cuban port of Mariel over the past several months. All the arms were aboard vessels belonging to the state-owned China Ocean Shipping Co. (Cosco), according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said details of the arms shipments are sketchy but all involved a "known Chinese arms dealer" who arranged the transfers.

One of the cargoes was described as dual-use explosives and detonation cord. The explosives were said to be "military-grade" material.

The latest shipment took place in December. That arms delivery coincided with the visit to Cuba in late December by China´s military chief of staff, Gen. Fu Quanyou. Gen. Fu signed a military cooperation agreement with Havana aimed at modernizing Cuba´s outdated Russian weapons.

The arms shipments to Cuba could lead to the imposition of economic sanctions on China and Cosco, according to U.S. officials.

A 1996 amendment to the 1962 Foreign Assistance Act requires that economic sanctions be imposed on any nation or company that provides lethal military assistance to a nation designated as a state sponsor of terrorism. Cuba is on the State Department´s list of nine nations designated as supporters of global terrorism.

Sanctions would disrupt a major portion of the U.S.-Chinese shipping market controlled by Cosco, whose business lines include port terminals and warehousing, insurance, real estate and hotel management.

Cuba has been increasing its ties to China in recent months. In April, Chinese President Jiang Zemin traveled to Havana and signed agreements worth about $400 million in loans to Havana.

Other Chinese activities in Cuba include electronic eavesdropping on the United States and Chinese government radio broadcasting, according to U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports. China also recently agreed to modernize Cuba´s telecommunications network.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the arms shipments.

Spokesmen for Cosco could not be reached for comment.

Wei Jiafu, Cosco group president and chief executive officer, told reporters and editors of The Washington Times on June 2 that the shipping line has no connection to the Chinese military and is only interested in making money.

Mr. Wei insisted during the interview that the People´s Liberation Army had no influence on the company´s operations or global business strategy.

However, the shipper´s only shareholder is the Chinese government.

Mr. Wei and other Cosco officials were in the United States to meet port officials in Massachusetts, where they had reached an agreement with the Massachusetts Port Authority to begin a weekly shipping service between Shanghai and Boston beginning next year.

Cosco has been linked in the past by U.S. intelligence agencies to illegal smuggling and international arms trafficking.

James Mulvenon, a China analyst with the RAND Corp., said that the Chinese Communist Party´s military organ approved establishment of Cosco as an arm of the Chinese navy in 1985.

Mr. Mulvenon stated earlier this year, in his book "Soldiers of Fortune," that Cosco´s establishment "legitimized the use of navy ships for civilian shipping and thus provided a legal cover for the navy´s smuggling."

The Chinese navy was linked in 1985 to illegal smuggling in foreign cars, vans, TVs and VCRs out of Hainan island in the South China Sea, he wrote.

In 1998, U.S. intelligence agencies tracked a Cosco freighter from Shanghai to Karachi, Pakistan, with a load of weapons-related goods, including specialty metals and electronics used in the production of Chinese-designed Baktar Shikha anti-tank missiles.

The shipment was carried aboard a vessel owned by the company subsidiary Cosco Tianjin.

The arms transfers by Cosco ships contradict statements to Congress made in 1997 by National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger, who told senators there was no credible evidence linking Cosco to illegal activity, including arms smuggling.

Edward Timperlake, a former House committee investigator, said a Cosco executive was among a group of Chinese officials who were granted access to the White House and to Mr. Clinton´s weekly radio address in 1995 -- days after Democratic Party fund-raiser Johnny Chung made a large payment to the White House for the president´s re-election campaign.

The visit was checked by White House National Security Council aide Robert Suettinger, who wrote in a memorandum that giving White House photographs to the group of Chinese officials and Chung, who in 1998 pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign contributions, would not cause "any lasting damage to U.S. foreign policy."

Mr. Suettinger, who described Chung as a "hustler," also stated in a White House memo: "And to the degree it motivates him to continue contributing to the [Democratic National Committee], who am I to complain," Mr. Suettinger said.

"Cosco is the merchant marine arm of the PLA Navy," Mr. Timperlake said. "If the Chinese military ever mobilized troops for action against Taiwan, Cosco would be part of the operation."

Cosco ships would provide arms and logistics support for Chinese military operations, U.S. officials said.

Al Santoli, a national security aide to Rep. Dana Rorhabacher, said Cosco is well-known for worldwide support of Chinese weapons sales.

-------- balkans

Macedonian government adopts peace plan

Tuesday June 12, 10:47 PM
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010612/1/vtie.html

Macedonia's multi-ethnic government on Tuesday adopted a peace plan proposed by President Boris Trajkovski, which provides for an amnesty for the rebels and NATO support in disarming them, Defence Minister Vlado Buckovski said.

"The government today adopted the plan of President Trajkovski and decided to be involved in its implementation," Buckovski said.

He said a civil committee of cabinet ministers and defence experts would be set up to tackle the crisis, and that it would oversee a new anti-terrorist force of special police and elite troops.

-------- drug war

Group: Seniors' Drug Costs Rising

JUNE 12, 11:09 EST
By ANJETTA McQUEEN
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7CJ31400

WASHINGTON (AP) - The prices for medicines used by the elderly have been rising more rapidly than their other normal living costs, says a group that advocates federal aid for prescription drugs.

The average price of the top 50 medicines most often prescribed to the elderly rose 6.1 percent last year, Families USA says in a report.

The overall inflation rate was 3.4 percent in 2000.

``For seniors living on fixed incomes and often paying for drugs out of pocket, consistent price increases force them to make dangerous, even life-threatening, choices,'' the report said.

A group of drug makers criticized the report, saying it implies that all seniors pay the same prices for each drug.

``The retail prices of the same medicine can vary by more than 100 percent within the same city block,'' said Alan F. Holmer, president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

The study examined prices that drug makers suggested pharmacies charge at the counter.

This summer, Congress plans to debate how to help 40 million elderly and disabled Americans in the federal health insurance program pay for expensive, but beneficial, medicines. Only a third have such coverage, mainly through their own retirement plans or through the HMOs that participate in Medicare.

The 50 medicines in the report were ranked by number of prescriptions issued in the Pennsylvania Pharmaceutical Assistance Contract for the Elderly, which the group says is the largest U.S. outpatient prescription drug program for older Americans.

Families USA contends that seniors without prescription drug coverage often pay the suggested prices out of pocket, because they cannot take advantage of deep discounts that private insurers can negotiate.

-------- israel

Palestinians agree to CIA chief's peace plan

Wednesday June 13, 5:45 AM
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010612/1/vyfs.html http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=MIDEAST&STORYID=APIS7CJ9DV80

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and CIA chief George Tenet have struck an agreement on Tenet's plan for ending the deadly violence in the Middle East, a Palestinian official told AFP Wednesday.

Israel said Tuesday it accepted the Tenet plan, which is aimed at forging a joint Israeli-Palestinian truce. The two sides have already declared ceasefires independently.

That would allow implementation of a series of confidence-building measures proposed last month by the US-led Mitchell commission aimed at returning the two sides to the negotiating table.

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

UN Seeks to Settle Cyprus Dispute

June 12, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=MIDEAST&STORYID=APIS7CJDP1O0
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Cyprus.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. Security Council has given its full support to Secretary-General Kofi Annan's efforts to reach a comprehensive settlement of the 27-year-old dispute over Cyprus.

U.N.-sponsored talks for the reunification of Cyprus broke off late last year over the refusal of Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to return to the negotiating table unless his breakaway state is recognized.

A 2,500-member U.N. peacekeeping force patrols a buffer zone between the Turkish-occupied north and the Greek-dominated south. Turkey, which invaded the island in 1974, maintains 35,000 troops in the north and is the only nation to recognize the Turkish Cypriot state..

The peacekeeping mission expires Friday, but the Security Council president, Bangladesh's U.N. Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, expected it to be extended before then.

The Security Council was briefed Monday by Alvaro de Soto, the secretary-general's special adviser on Cyprus.

Council members ``welcomed and supported'' Annan's intention to continue with the process he initiated in November 1999, Chowdhury told reporters. At that time, both parties agreed to hold indirect talks aimed at preparing the ground for ``meaningful negotiations.''

The Security Council also reaffirmed all resolutions on Cyprus, especially one adopted in June 1999. It said a settlement ``must be based on a state of Cyprus with a single sovereignty and international personality and a single citizenship, with its independence and territorial integrity safeguarded, and comprising two politically equal communities.''

----

Taliban, U.N. Clash Over Bakeries

JUNE 12, 23:22 EST
By AMIR SHAH
Associated Press Writer

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia on Tuesday decried the imminent closure of United Nations bakeries, saying it will only hurt the ``innocent.''

The U.N. World Food Program says it will close 130 bakeries in the Afghan capital Kabul this Friday unless the Taliban allow women to help conduct a key hunger survey.

Both sides said Tuesday that no agreement had been reached. And World Food Program officials said they were pessimistic and expected the bakeries to close on Friday.

The bakeries' closure would deprive about 282,000 impoverished Kabul residents of subsidized bread.

The Taliban's Planning Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that the World Food Program was using ``various pretexts'' to ``put Afghanistan's innocent people under economic constraints and thus suspend U.N. assistance.''

The World Food Program says it must hire women to conduct a food survey in Kabul to assess poverty needs for a new list of eligible bread recipients.

Since men are strictly forbidden to view unrelated women in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, only women would be able to enter people's homes to assess their poverty.

Afghanistan is home to one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. At least 800,000 have fled their homes just in the past year because of drought and civil war, according to the United Nations.

The food program says the old eligibility list has been corrupted and that at least 40 percent of current recipients are not among the most vulnerable.

The bakeries are the single largest World Food Program project in Afghanistan, with an $8 million annual budget.

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

Commander sees bright future for bombers, info ops

by Tech. Sgt. Brian Orban
5th Bomb Wing Public Affairs
06/12/01
AFPN
http://www.af.mil/news/Jun2001/n20010612_0790.shtml

MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. Long-range bombers have "a very bright future" and will remain an important player in U.S. military operations well into the 21st century, said the commander who oversees the Air Force's bomber force.

During a recent visit, 8th Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Tom Keck said ongoing defense studies in Washington all point to a growing need for bombers like the B-52 Stratofortress to strike targets around the world in a matter of hours.

"The B-52 is supposed to be around until 2037, and we can do that by enhancing the electronics and the capabilities of the jet," he said. "Our (maintenance) members are working to continually enhance their (bombers') capabilities as we prepare to fight the wars of the future."

Meanwhile, the recent integration of the Air Intelligence Agency into 8th Air Force gives Air Combat Command the option of hitting enemy forces with computer-based information operations or air-launched firepower.

"In our new role, 8th Air Force can strike anywhere in the world in eight seconds with electrons or in 18 hours from the continental United States and put steel on target anywhere in the world," Keck said.

The AIA integration is an important force enhancer because it puts timely, critical intelligence information in the hands of fellow warfighters, including B-52 bomber crews here, he said.

"There's a lot of national intelligence that is used for very important decisions, and we're bringing that around into the tactical arena," Keck said. "We want to make it easier, in this information age, for our decision-makers and our trigger-pullers to grab data as they need it."

Blending information operations into the combat air forces arena is helping move the Air Force into a dominating power capable of "reaching out and touching" enemy forces across the air, space and cyberspace spectrum, he said.

"There are other steps to this integration, but the key right now is we're recognizing the warriors of AIA for what they are," Keck said. "They are extremely intelligent, smart, bright and energetic young airmen, noncommissioned officer's and officers brought in ... to support our other joint warfighting commands."

AIA realigned under 8th Air Force in February. Today, units like the 67th Information Operations Wing and 690th Information Operations Group at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and the 70th Intelligence Wing at Fort Meade, Md., fall under the numbered air force, based at Barksdale AFB, La. (Courtesy of Air Combat Command News Service)

----

Pentagon rolling out vision of future fighting forces
Joint command is key to changes

Chicago Tribune
By John Diamond Washington Bureau
June 12, 2001
http://chicagotribune.com/news/printedition/article/0,2669,SAV-0106120330,FF.html

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon plans Tuesday to roll out its vision for creating a modern military for the next half-century, sketching out lighter, more mobile forces using weapons such as the F-22 fighter and put together not by the individual services but by a joint commander.

Retired Air Force Gen. James McCarthy, head of a panel established by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, will unveil the findings of his review at a Pentagon news conference. Defense officials familiar with the "military transformation" review said it will not offer any radical prescriptions but will present at least one key change that could ruffle feathers among the senior uniformed military.

That proposal is the granting of key long-range planning power at the Pentagon to a new Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va.

New joint command panel

The joint command, created under the Clinton administration as a successor to the Atlantic Command post, is not beholden to any individual military service but serves the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. As a result, the review panel's recommendation could represent a significant power shift away from the military chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

The defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the review leaves intact key weapons systems now in development, including the F-22 fighter, the Joint Strike Fighter and the Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

These costly weapons fit into the review panel's vision of a military able to deliver precision-guided munitions as well as to engage distant targets much more quickly and decisively than today's military. A key issue for McCarthy's panel was how long it takes the military to get credible forces into the field.

In the case of the Persian Gulf war, it took nearly seven months for the Army to field a force to dislodge Iraq's army from Kuwait. During the Kosovo operation two years ago, an Army attack helicopter unit took weeks deploying to neighboring Macedonia in Eastern Europe.

Among McCarthy's recommendations, according to defense officials, will be developing elite, rapid-deployment units that can handle lower-intensity but fast-developing crises such as the Kosovo refugee migration in 1999 and the evacuation of U.S. forces from Somalia in 1994.

"We need greater capability to rapidly and decisively handle the type of regional conflicts we've seen, the Kosovos and Haitis," said one senior defense official who works on long-term planning issues. The goal, he said, is the ability to deploy forces "in weeks and days instead of weeks and months."

Better coordination

Another finding of the transformation panel is the need to develop forces that can better communicate across service lines so that, for example, fighter pilots can better coordinate their actions with ground forces.

The transformation planning is one part of a broader review ordered by Rumsfeld when President Bush chose him as his defense chief. The Rumsfeld review has engendered much speculation, worry and even anger in the uniformed military that has complained internally of being left out of the planning process.

One senior defense official grumbled Monday that the transformation review, assigned to a retired officer, McCarthy, was seen in the active-duty military as an exercise in second-guessing.

"I'm not sure there's any out-of-the-box thinking as far as we're concerned," the official said of the review. "We think we've been pretty forward-looking to begin with."

In his comments on defense affairs, Bush has placed great emphasis on research and development aimed at producing a much more responsive and less ponderous military force.

During the presidential campaign, Bush even spoke of "skipping a generation" of weapons and putting the money saved into longer-term development of arms and other defense technologies.

Most programs safe

More recently, it has become clear that Rumsfeld is not planning to cancel many major weapons systems, though one Army mobile artillery program is believed to be in jeopardy.

The significance of military transformation as envisioned by Bush and Rumsfeld may lie in who makes the key decisions. By giving long-term planning power to a single four-star joint forces commander, the administration would be moving weapon development away from the individual services and closer to the direct control of the secretary of defense.

The defense chief already has ultimate say over what weapons are built, but in the complex and slow-moving ways of Pentagon purchasing, it is often practically and politically impossible for a defense secretary to cancel a major weapons program by the time it is more than a few years along in development.

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Navy chief to stay out of shipbuilder merger

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 12, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010612-85999748.htm

Navy Secretary Gordon England has recused himself from participating in Bush administration deliberations on whether his former employer, General Dynamics, should be permitted to buy Newport News Shipbuilding Inc.

A Navy spokesman confirmed to The Washington Times that Mr. England, who was an executive vice president at GD before being tapped to lead the Navy, was not taking part in the Navy´s recommendation process.

Mr. England had run into one trouble spot during Senate confirmation hearings. Several senators, including Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, closely questioned the nominee on whether he would participate in decisions affecting General Dynamics, the Pentagon´s No. 5 contractor.

Mr. England was noncommittal at the hearing but later worked out an understanding with senators that paved the way for his full Senate confirmation.

"Yes, he has recused himself from any deliberations on Newport News," the Navy spokesman said yesterday.

In April, General Dynamics made a friendly $2.1 billion cash offer for Newport News, the only producer of large-deck aircraft carriers. If the Bush administration allows the deal to go through, GD would own the Navy´s only two nuclear shipyards, Newport News in Virginia and Electric Boat in Connecticut.

GD´s bid brought a competing offer of $2.1 billion in cash and stock from the Navy´s other major shipbuilder, Northrop Grumman Corp. The company this year bought two large shipyards, Engalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi and Avondale Industries in Louisiana.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, has asked the administration to disapprove the GD purchase, which would give the company ownership of four of the Navy´s six principal yards. He said he fears a much larger General Dynamics, with a monopoly on construction of all nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, will dominate the industry and choke off work for Engalls, Mississippi´s largest employer.

On June 8, Mr. Lott sent a second letter of protest to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The senator cited a recently updated Congressional Research Service analysis of a merger that GD first proposed in 1999, but which the Clinton administration turned down as anti-competitive.

The report says that the merger would concentrate 70 percent of annual shipbuilding revenues, more than 80 percent of ship design and engineering staff, and more than 95 percent of ship research and development funding in one company.

"It would be a mistake for the government to allow the concentration of all nuclear shipbuilding and about half of all non-nuclear Navy shipbuilding on one company," Mr. Lott wrote.

A GD spokesman yesterday took issue with the CRS findings, saying they do not fully reflect today´s shipbuilding environment. For example, he said, the industry subcontracts non-nuclear work to about 6,000 engineers outside either company. The spokesman said GD will be submitting what it considers more accurate numbers to the administration.

A three-tiered team made up of officials from the Navy, the office of the secretary of defense and the Justice Department now is scrutinizing the GD and Northrop Grumman offers. The test is whether the merger would harm national security by being anti-competitive. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz will make the Pentagon´s recommendation to Justice.

One industry source predicted the administration will approve both offers and then let the free market dictate who can close the deal. The source predicted the Justice Department will make a final decision by the end of July.

GD is promising the Pentagon that acquisition of Newport News will produce $2 billion in savings over 10 years by consolidating nuclear work. To members of Congress worried about home-state jobs, it has pledged not to close any of its yards such as Electric Boat, Bath Iron Works in Maine or National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. in California. It also says there will be no merger-related layoffs - a promise that shipbulding analysts say will be difficult to keep if $2 billion in savings are to be generated.

GD contends its offer does not violate federal anti-trust laws because there is no real competition today for nuclear-powered ships. Newport News is the only builder of large-deck carriers, and Electric Boat and Newport News are in a teaming arrangement to build the Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine.

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Bush, Goh confer on defense, free-trade

June 12, 2001
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010612-558523.htm

The United States and Singapore are to increase military and economic cooperation as nearby Indonesia threatens to fall apart, President Bush and Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong agreed yesterday at the White House.

Mr. Goh discussed with Mr. Bush and later with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell regular recent visits by U.S. aircraft carriers to Singapore, which has become a fueling and service base since the United States lost its bases in the Philippines 10 years ago.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Goh also discussed plans to create the first free-trade agreement between the United States and an Asian country.

However, negotiations on the pact remain incomplete and Mr. Goh is to spend the next three days meeting with U.S. trade and commerce officials to try to resolve differences.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice also took part in the morning meeting, where she, Mr. Bush and Mr. Goh reaffirmed "the importance and vitality of U.S.-Singapore relations," said a White House statement.

"The United States and Singapore have a robust defense partnership, which helps contribute to peace, stability and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region," the statement added.

The two leaders also pledged their support for Indonesia, which is beset by political crises, including several separatist movements and the impending impeachment of President Abdurrahman Wahid.

"All countries in the region are concerned that Indonesia might fall apart," said Lim Yuin Chien, first secretary of the Singapore Embassy.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Goh "further reaffirmed support for Indonesia´s territorial integrity," the White House statement said.

"The United States and Singapore share the hope that Indonesia will achieve a peaceful, constitutional and timely resolution to the current political crisis in a way that promotes national reconciliation and effective governance."

During a separate meeting with Mr. Powell, Mr. Goh discussed continued visits by U.S. aircraft carriers to Singapore´s port.

In March, the USS Kitty Hawk became the first U.S. aircraft carrier to dock at a newly constructed deep-water pier that Singapore built especially for the giant U.S. warships.

Since the loss of U.S. bases in the Philippines, Singapore has deepened its port to allow access by U.S. carriers, which provide security for Southeast Asia.

Mr. Goh and Mr. Powell "talked about a whole number of issues, both the bilateral ones, like the trade agreement, the fact that a U.S. aircraft carrier has recently made a major port call there, and talked about a lot of regional issues involving (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the situation in Indonesia," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

"The overall situation in Asia came up with regard to various countries, and the role of the United States. Singapore has welcomed and supported the United States´ role in the region for stability, and so they talked about that."

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

NY power plan seen good for renewable energy firms

USA: June 12, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11146&newsDate=12-Jun-2001

NEW YORK - U.S. solar and wind companies, which stand to be among the biggest winners in the national energy crisis, could be supplying 20 percent of the power to New York state buildings within the decade under a new mandate from Gov. George Pataki.

In an executive order unveiled on Sunday, the Republican governor mandated that state facilities purchase at least 10 percent of their power needs from renewable sources by 2005, and 20 percent of those needs by 2010.

Pataki, who said in a statement that the state is "setting an example for the rest of the nation," also announced the members of a task force created to develop policy recommendations for greenhouse gas emission and global warming.

The moves, seen by many as the most sweeping in the nation, come against the backdrop of an energy crisis which has already done much to raise the profile of companies that supply renewable power from the wind, sun or fuel cells.

"I think it's fantastic," said Jerry Leitman, president and chief executive of FuelCell Energy Inc. "State government support is what it takes to get a new energy technology grouping into the mainstream of our lives."

Already companies such as FuelCell Energy, Plug Power Inc. and Evergreen Solar Inc. , barely on the radar of many before the national energy crisis, have become hot names with investors.

Even though few renewable energy concerns are currently turning profits, shares of many companies in the sector have been big winners in the stock market in recent months, with some rising 30 percent or more.

"This is exactly the right thing to be doing," said Jaime Steve, the legislative director for the American Wind Energy Association. "It's government leading by example."

The order is aimed at avoiding the sorts of rolling blackouts that have struck California, where power supplies have been too limited and costly to keep pace with demand.

It also appears far more favorable to renewable energy companies than the energy plan proposed by President George W. Bush, which put little emphasis on green power and conservation.

And on a state-by-state bases, FuelCell's Leitman said, such measures are gaining popularity.

"It is spreading to other states. Not all 50, of course. But those in the West Coast, Northeast and East Coast, where you would expect some of the problem areas are."

----

Umweltkontor plans renewable energy funds

GERMANY: June 12, 2001
Story by Marijn van der Pas
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11149

FRANKFURT - Germany's Umweltkontor Renewable Energy AG is planning to set up several funds to provide cash for new renewable energy projects in Europe, the company's chief executive said yesterday.

"We want to improve our core competence of financial services because we are seeing financing bottlenecks for renewable energy projects," Chief Executive Heinrich Lohmann told Reuters in an interview.

Umweltkontor, which provides services for renewable energy power plants, will create a new holding company which buys stakes in non-listed companies that operate wind parks, water power plants and biomass energy generators, Lohmann said.

"We are developing an open fund in the form of a public stock corporation before the end of the year," he said.

Lohmann said the company called Blue Energy will be established through an initial private placement which will give the firm 10-20 million marks ($4.35-$8.70 million) in capital.

"As a second step we will do a capital increase of 50-150 million marks combined with an initial public offering, perhaps on the (small-cap) SMAX index or on the regulated market," he said.

"We have already secured projects with a volume of up to 50 megawatts, wind parks in Spain and Germany and a big biomass powerplant," Lohmann added. He said it was too early to give sales details. The chief executive also said Umweltkontor plans to establish a venture capital company called Blue Vision which will have 50-150 million marks in funding.

"In the middle of June, we will set up a closed venture capital fund in which our customers can buy a stake. This fund has a focus on renewable energy and energy information technology," Lohmann said.

CAPITAL INCREASE

In May, Umweltkontor reaped 39 million euros ($33.16 million) from a capital increase, which it will use to develop projects in its key target markets of Spain, Italy and Greece with up to 1,000 megawatts and a sales volume of about 1.2 billion euros by 2005.

Lohmann said he expected an earnings margin before interest and tax of seven to eight percent for the projects.

Umweltkontor, which has a market capitalisation of 432.8 million euros, plans to use part of proceeds to finance the acquisition of companies, but Lohmann said his group was not in specific talks at the moment.

Umweltkontor shares were down 2.43 percent at 54.15 euros at 1358 GMT, in line with the Neuer Markt Nemax 50 index, which fell 2.41 percent.

The company hit a year-low of 38.20 euros in January and a year-high of 71.69 euros in February.

In March, Umweltkontor raised its sales forecast for 2001 to 182 million euros from 149 million due to a favourable business climate. The company expects earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to come in at 14 million euros in 2001.

For next year it forecasts EBIT of 25 million euros and sales of 309 million. In 2000, the company generated sales of 92 million euros and EBIT of six million.

-------- environment

Tiny Air Pollutants Linked to Heart Attacks

By Cat Lazaroff
June 12, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2001/2001L-06-12-07.html

DALLAS, Texas, As few as two hours after being inhaled, tiny, invisible air pollutants can penetrate the lungs' natural defenses and may trigger a heart attack, says a new report. The study, which appears in today's "Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association," warns of particular problems for people who are already at risk for heart disease.

Smoke from diesel buses is a major source of fine particle air pollution in urban areas (Photo courtesy EPA)

Previous studies have shown that long term exposure to air particulates can initiate a chain of events that trigger a heart attack in individuals with cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular risk factors.

"Studies of hospital admissions and emergency department visits have linked exposure to particulate air pollution with increased risk of cardiovascular diseases," said study author Dr. Murray Mittleman, director of cardiovascular epidemiology at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. "But the current study is the first to examine short term transient effects of air pollution on the risk of heart attack."

Between January 1995 and May 1996, researchers interviewed 772 Boston area heart attack patients about four days after their heart attack to establish when their symptoms began. Participants were enrolled in the Determinants of Myocardial Infarction Onset Study, which is aimed at gathering information about factors associated with myocardial infarction, or heart attack.

Researchers compared the times heart attack symptoms began with daily air pollution measurements collected in Boston during the study period. They paid special attention to levels of the smaller pollutants.

"These tiny particles are known as PM2.5 because they measure less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter," explained coauthor Dr. Douglas Dockery, professor of environmental epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "They are so small that they can get past the normal defense mechanisms in the lungs and penetrate deeply into the air exchange regions, or alveoli."

Incinerators, like this one in Michigan, emit fine particle air pollution (Photo courtesy Lake Michigan Federation)

Air pollution measurements taken at the time patients said their heart attack symptoms began were compared to measurements taken during control periods. Control periods were selected 24 hours apart, starting three days before the date and time heart attack symptoms began.

The risk of heart attack was higher in patients who had been exposed to elevated PM2.5 in the two hours before the onset of their symptoms. The researchers also found that a higher heart attack risk was related to a higher average exposure over the full day before the onset of symptoms, indicating a delayed response to the particles.

The study concluded that there was a 48 percent higher risk of heart attack when PM2.5 concentrations increased by 25 micrograms per cubic meter of air in the two hours before symptoms began.

Fine particulate air pollution is produced primarily by automobile engines, power plants, refineries, smelters and other industries, Dockery said. Larger, more readily noticed particles of airborne dust and debris from farming, construction work and mining are far less likely to trigger heart attack, he added.

Stationary sources like this Michigan steel mill are also sources of particulate pollution (Photo courtesy EPA)

Some recent data suggest that exposure to high levels of PM2.5 may cause increased systemic inflammation, increased plasma viscosity (thicker blood) and an increase in certain proteins in the blood that can cause clots to form.

"It's too early to predict what types of medical intervention might be effective in preventing the serious cardiovascular consequences of fine particle exposure," Mittleman adds. "More research is needed to determine the exact mechanisms by which inhaling fine particles can set off heart attacks."

Many other major metropolitan areas have higher average levels of PM2.5 pollution than Boston, the researchers note, meaning that residents of those cities may face even greater risk of pollution related heart attacks than Bostonians.

"If the Boston exposure data can be generalized to other communities, we would expect proportionately higher effects in more heavily polluted cities," Dockery said. "But despite the widespread assumption that particulate air pollutants are primarily an urban problem, they can also affect large regions located downwind from the cities. Some of the highest PM2.5 concentrations are often found far from major urban areas, in places where we would expect the air to be cleaner."

Mittleman said one bit of encouraging news is that levels of the tiny pollutants have decreased somewhat in most urban areas over the past few years.

The Clean Air Act has brought about substantial reductions in air pollution since this photo of Los Angeles was taken in 1972 (Photo by Gene Daniels, courtesy EPA)

Fine particle pollution is largely a summer phenomenon, Dockery points out.

"Pollution monitors show seasonal variations where hot, hazy days have higher levels of fine particles on average," he said. Also, Dockery said it is much more difficult for individuals to take protective measures against PM2.5 than against gaseous pollutants like carbon monoxide, which can be removed from indoor air.

"Because of their size, these particles readily penetrate indoor spaces," noted Dockery, "but air conditioning helps somewhat, reducing indoor concentrations by 30 percent to 50 percent. The best advice is to avoid outdoor activity on hot, hazy days. If a person exercises outside, the increased respiratory activity also increases the dose of PM2.5."

Many urban areas have trouble meeting clean air standards, in part due to exhaust from trucks and buses (Photo courtesy EPA)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) current acceptable standard is 65 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic meter of air.

"Even at PM2.5 concentrations below that standard, our study shows that the risk of a heart attack is increased," said Mittleman. "Our findings suggest that people who have heart disease or an elevated risk of heart attack would be well served to avoid being outdoors for extensive periods of time when the air quality is poor. This is especially the case on the hot, hazy days of summer when the problem is much more prominent."

Mittleman said that more research is needed to determine how a person's exposure to high levels of fine particulate air pollution can lead to a heart attack. Understanding that triggering mechanism, he believes, could spur the development of new drugs that could protect individuals during peak exposure to air pollution, such as they would experience during rush hour traffic or outside on a hot summer day.

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Lead Poisoning Threatening Condors

JUNE 12, 06:14 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7CIUN3O0

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Biologists aiding in the reintroduction of California condors into the wild say four of the giant birds have died in the past year from lead poisoning.

The captive-bred condors are being threatened by lead from bullets, which scientists believe was the primary reason the birds were driven to the brink of extinction in the 1980s.

Along with the four dead condors, another 13 have received drug treatment to remove potentially lethal levels of lead.

Condor specialists believe the birds, which have been released in remote areas of Arizona and California, fed on carcasses of animals killed by gunfire.

``We always knew the lead was out there,'' said Patrick T. Redig, a University of Minnesota professor and a member of the scientific team overseeing the program. ``Now it's like, 'holy smokes. Here we go.' As soon as they get off the free lunch counter, they're into trouble.''

A recent tally counted 128 of the birds in captivity and 56 flying in the wild.

-------- activists

The New Nuclear Danger

by JONATHAN SCHELL,
The Nation,
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010625&s=schell

On June 12, 1982, 1 million people assembled in Central Park in New York City to protest the reckless nuclear policies of the Reagan Administration and to call for a nuclear freeze. They never assembled in such numbers again--in part because Reagan reversed course and opened nuclear arms talks with the Soviet Union, and in part because, after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, the cold war began to wind down. The day remains in memory as a reminder of how quickly public concern over nuclear annihilation can arise and how quickly it can evaporate. When the cold war finally did end, nuclear weapons pretty much dropped out of the conscious thoughts of most Americans. The weapons themselves, however, remain in existence--some 32,000 strong at last count. Now the policies of a new administration and the rise of fresh nuclear dangers have brought the issue back to awareness. On June 10 a coalition of groups that calls itself Project Abolition will hold an antinuclear demonstration in Lafayette Park across from the White House. It will be the first major effort of its kind in the capital since the end of the cold war. The precipitating event is the new arms race that is threatened by the Bush Administration's embrace of National Missile Defense (NMD) and the weaponization of space. A million people are not expected. But the protesters hope to make up in staying power what they lack in numbers. Their underlying cause is the abolition of all nuclear arms, and their vow is to stick with it for the duration.

It is no simple matter to take stock of the nuclear predicament in the year 2001. Under the Bush Administration, the nuclear policies of the United States--and of the world--are in a state of greater confusion than at any time since the weapons were invented. Chaos would not be too strong a word to use. In fact, the greatest current danger may lie not in one policy or another but precisely in this confusion, which leaves the world's nuclear actors without any reliable road map for the future. It is nevertheless essential to try to understand at least the broad outlines of the new shape of the predicament. This exercise is complex and riddled with paradox and contradiction, not to mention wishful thinking and sheer fantasy, yet it is unavoidable if either policy or protest is to make sense.

Nuclear danger today has two main sources. The first is the mountain of nuclear arms left over from the cold war. The second is the proliferation of nuclear weapons to new countries. The leftover cold war arsenals are still governed by the policy that prevailed during the cold war, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence, which holds (in its most enlightened version) that the rival great powers are safest when each has the unchallengeable power to annihilate its rival. This way, no one is supposed to try anything, because if anyone does, all will die. Today the United States has about 7,200 weapons poised to fire at Russia, and Russia has about 6,000 poised to fire at us, and the continued existence of each nation depends on the reliability of the other's forces, which is doubtful in the extreme in the case of Russia. Deterrence's provocative other name, of course, is mutual assured destruction, or MAD, a reference to the menace of complete annihilation on which the stability of the arrangement rests. MAD's confusing adjunct is arms control, whose aim has been to draw down the preposterous excess of offensive weapons through the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) while suppressing defenses by observance of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty of 1972, until this year called the "cornerstone of strategic stability" in NATO planning papers. Defenses had to be suppressed because if they ran free they would upset the laboriously negotiated offensive reductions.

MAD, however, is not a creature of the ABM treaty; it is an inescapable condition in a world of large nuclear arsenals, against which no defenses are available. The ABM treaty merely ratifies and codifies this underlying situation, the better to negotiate the reduction--though not the elimination--of offensive forces. Other things being equal, a world without an ABM treaty would not be a world without MAD; it would be a world with MAD but without arms control.

MAD was of course a product of the cold war. It was a desperate makeshift in a desperate situation. Today, however, the cold war has long been over. The extreme peculiarity--or downright absurdity--of continuing to rely on MAD is that the political antagonism that underlay and justified it ended ten years ago, when the Soviet Union disappeared. During the cold war, the two powers threatened each other with annihilation for a reason; now they do so without a reason. Russia and the United States have no quarrel that would justify the firing of a single conventional round, not to speak of mutual annihilation. The human beings resolved their quarrels, but the weapons, displaying their characteristic astonishing immunity to political influence, evidently did not get the news. Here is a state of affairs that seems ripe for radical surgery.

The second source of nuclear danger, proliferation, is most dramatically evident in South Asia, where India and Pakistan are engaged in the first nuclear face-off entirely unrelated to the cold war. It's difficult to predict where proliferation will occur next, but some of the main candidates are obvious: the Middle East, where Israel already possesses nuclear weapons and where Iraq and Iran are both known to be interested in acquiring them; and East Asia, where North Korea has well-developed nuclear and missile programs, and where Japan has just elected a prime minister who wishes to alter his nation's Constitution, which now forbids the development of offensive military forces, including nuclear weapons. If unchecked, proliferation has no logical or necessary stopping point. It points to a fully nuclearized world, in which any nation seriously threatened by another will feel itself fully entitled to build nuclear arms.

Unfortunately, the two basic elements of nuclear danger do not exist in separate worlds; they fatally interact in our one world. Most important, MAD is a standing invitation to proliferation, as the nuclearization of South Asia has already demonstrated. The simple, unavoidable truth is that possession fuels proliferation. If a country that feels threatened by the nuclear arms of another accepts MAD, as the nuclear powers teach them to do, they not only are likely to develop arms, they must do so. For a government to do otherwise would be to criminally abdicate its responsibility to defend its people. (Imagine the reactions in the United States, for example, if this country somehow did not possess nuclear arms but was suddenly threatened by a country that did possess them, and some third country lectured it on the virtues of remaining nuclear-weapon-free in the name of nonproliferation.)

Enter George W. Bush. His Administration has addressed the two major elements of nuclear danger in our world. In regard to the leftover cold war arsenals, he has proposed what on the face of it appears to be the most radical shift in policy since the inauguration of the MAD system. "The cold war logic that led to the creation of massive stockpiles on both sides," he has announced, in a refreshing acknowledgment of the new geopolitical reality, "is now outdated. Our mutual security need no longer depend on a nuclear balance of terror." The clear promise is of a fundamentally new policy, of a "new framework," in his words. In regard to proliferation, he has proposed to defend the United States with NMD (which was in fact embraced by President Clinton and both parties in the Senate before Bush took office). In sum, "it is time to leave the cold war behind, and defend against the new threats of the twenty-first century." The Bush policies have the merit of acknowledging, in a way that the seemingly insensate continuation of MAD into the post-cold war world did not, the basic new realities--on the one hand, the collapse of MAD's political underpinnings and, on the other hand, the increasing dangers of proliferation. MAD acknowledges neither. It anachronistically deals with Russia exactly as we did during the cold war (though with somewhat reduced overkill), and it fatally undercuts nonproliferation by teaching that nuclear arsenals are the key to a nation's security. It is, indeed, the impossibility, in a MAD world, of framing effective nonproliferation policies that set the stage for NMD. If diplomacy wedded to MAD cannot stop proliferation, isn't it time to try something else, namely defenses? In that respect, NMD is the product of MAD.

The Bush prescription, however, does not work merely because the policies it purported to replace have failed. The most notable problem with the Bush approach is that it has not provided--even in theory--policies that can make its promises a reality. Bush seeks to offer an exit from the balance of terror, but he provides no actual escape route. MAD, notwithstanding its deficiencies, is a tough old bird, and cannot be waved away with a phrase in a speech. The closest Bush has come to a concrete policy in this field has been to announce a unilateral reduction in offensive nuclear arsenals to "the lowest possible number"--a number, however, that he has not specified. But a low number of offensive warheads, however welcome in itself (press reports have suggested that the range might be between 1,500 and 2,500 warheads), gives no release from the balance of terror. It preserves it at lower levels of overkill. (Picture the United States or Russia after a thousand or so of its cities have been destroyed.) In other passages of his speeches, Bush has seemed to acknowledge that MAD will stay in effect. In a speech on May 1, he stated in a less noted passage, "Deterrence can no longer be based solely on the threat of nuclear retaliation." The word "solely" is decisive. It means that MAD will be continued. At best, it will be supplemented by something, not replaced by it. What will that something be? Bush immediately continued, "Defenses can strengthen deterrence by reducing the incentive for proliferation." But to add defenses to MAD is a far different proposition from substituting one for the other.

That brings us to the second problem with the Bush plan. It is the one that has led almost the entire world to reject national missile defenses. Russia fears that a resurgent United States, feeling protected by its shield, will bully it in the future, and China fears that its small nuclear arsenal will be negated. The initial goal of NMD is to protect against proliferators. But at the same time, it would upset arms control. Defenses do not enhance the existing MAD system; they undermine it. That is why the world is upset that the Bush Administration wants to jettison the ABM treaty. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, for example, has recently written, "With the ABM treaty as its root, a system of international accords on arms control and disarmament sprang up in the past decades. Inseparable from this process is the creation of global and regional regimes of nuclear nonproliferation. These agreements, comprising the modern architecture of international security, rest on the ABM treaty. If the foundation is destroyed, this interconnected system will collapse, nullifying thirty years of efforts by the world community." The United States' NATO allies have just made it clear that they agree.

In the nuclear sphere, defenses and offenses are oil and water. The addition of defenses destabilizes an offensive system and vice versa. MAD is an offensive framework, depending on mutual vulnerability to make everyone cautious. A defensive framework--a so-called defense-dominated world--is imaginable. Under it, offenses would be hugely reduced or eliminated by mutual agreement, and protection from residual danger would be provided by defenses. Only when defenses could clearly overwhelm any offense would a defensive system have been achieved. At that point, and only at that point, would MAD truly be a thing of the past. This was the vision put forward, at least rhetorically, by Ronald Reagan as his ultimate goal when he first proposed strategic defenses. Like MAD, defense domination qualifies as a true framework for nuclear danger. It is one that is in fact supported by many retired civilian and military officials, including the commander of the allied air forces in the Gulf War, Charles Horner, and Reagan's chief arms negotiator, Paul Nitze, both of whom have called for the elimination of nuclear weapons together with the creation of defenses. The only way, indeed, to make sense of antimissile defenses such as NMD is to wed them to a commitment by the nuclear powers to abolish nuclear weapons.

A further problem with NMD--certainly, the strangest one--is that so far it is a technical flop, having failed most of its tests. Aristotle said that the most important attribute of a thing is existence. NMD lacks this attribute. Or, to put it differently, it has the attribute of nonexistence. It's been interesting to watch how this attribute has manifested itself politically. The Bush Administration announced that it means to "deploy" NMD. Deploy what, though? The Administration backed away from the Clinton plan--a limited deployment of ground-based missiles that would shoot down incoming missiles--and began to suggest even less-tested alternatives, including airborne, sea-based and space-based systems. When Bush recently sent his envoys to governments around the world to "persuade" them of the virtues of his plan, the governments learned to their surprise that nothing of a concrete character was on the table. It was one thing for Ivanov to say that "in order to hold a discussion, you have to have some subject for it, a plan, a concrete understanding of what the other side wants. For now, there are no such plans." It was another when the American envoy Paul Wolfowitz had to confess the truth of the charge, saying, "It is much too early, I think, even for us to ask people to agree with us, because we have not come to firm conclusions yet ourselves." The lesson may be that when you're promising pie in the sky, you should at least have some pie.

Is it possible that the nonexistence of NMD will spare us its harmful consequences? Unfortunately, not necessarily--unless the United States either abandons the scheme or weds it to a commitment to abolish nuclear weapons. Governments make their decisions according to future expectations. The looming possibility of NMD can therefore bring many of the disadvantages of actual deployment--disruption of arms control, pressure to proliferate--without any of the advantages. NMD thus creates a political problem that it cannot technically solve. When one reflects that the more ambitious NMD programs cannot be fully deployed (if they can work at all) until 2020, it becomes obvious that this is no minor consideration.

There is, we must note, one other "framework" that is possible: the framework of American military dominance, nuclear and otherwise, of the world. As the conservative commentators William Kristol and Robert Kagan have stated, Republicans "will ask Americans to face this increasingly dangerous world without illusions. They will argue that American dominance can be sustained for many decades to come, not by arms control agreements, but by augmenting America's power, and, therefore, its ability to lead." If the United States does abandon all nuclear arms control (perhaps, breaking out downward, in a manner of speaking, with unilateral cuts, the better to go upward again at will) in a bid for global dominance, and if it seeks to develop not only ballistic missile defense but--what may be more serious and technically feasible--offensive, space-based weapons, then our future framework will be neither MAD nor any version of defense dominance. It will be a hellbent military competition with the other powers of the earth--not just one but many arms races, and not, in all likelihood, in the nuclear sphere alone. Some countries will likely resort to the ugly little sisters of the family of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons.

The great nuclear powers now rely on a system--MAD--that has lost political relevance to the world we live in. The Bush Administration has promised a new framework, in keeping with the needs of the time, but this collides both with itself and reality, political as well as technical. Absent a coherent global policy that actually does address the new shape of the nuclear predicament, events are likely to be driven in the vicious circle whose operations have already landed us in a world bristling with new nuclear dangers. Continued possession will fuel proliferation; proliferation will fuel hope for missile defense; missile defense (whether it can work or not) will disrupt arms control; and the disruption of arms control will, completing the circle, fuel proliferation. A second nuclear age has dawned, and it is running out of control. No new policies now on the horizon, in Washington or elsewhere, seem likely to turn things around anytime soon.

----

As Bush Woos Europe, Democrats Blast Missile Plans

Tuesday June 12 6:00 PM ET
By John Whitesides
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20010612/pl/arms_usa_congress_dc_2.html

WASHINGTON - As President Bush opened his first trip to Europe with missile defense high on the agenda, congressional Democrats on Tuesday renewed their opposition to deploying a national missile defense before it is proven ready.

At a rally outside the Capitol with an array of arms control groups, Democrats said Bush's missile defense proposals would destabilize the world and alienate allies.

``It would be billions of dollars down the drain,'' said Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, adding the system was ``worse than a waste of money'' because it could damage existing arms control accords and lead to a new arms race.

Bush, who began his visit to Europe on Tuesday in Spain, is trying to sell his missile defense plans to European allies who have expressed profound skepticism at his proposals.

At his first stop in Madrid, Bush said the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the former Soviet Union was a ``relic of the past'' and must be set aside to allow research on a system that would shoot down incoming missiles from states such as North Korea or Iran.

But congressional Democrats said a costly arms race would be the ultimate result. They questioned why the United States was rushing to deploy a defense system before testing had shown it to work.

``It would greatly destabilize the world,'' Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts said of the missile system. ''China would undoubtedly respond by increasing their missile capacity. So then will the Indians and so then will the Pakistanis.''

The Democratic rally concluded two days of meetings in Washington among arms control activists and citizens' groups who lobbied lawmakers to oppose Bush's missile defense plans and sponsored an e-mail campaign against the proposals.

Democrats have made it clear Bush will have a tough time getting his missile defense plans through Congress, and the task was made tougher by the recent switch of Senate power to Democrats.

The switch elevated Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Joseph Biden of Delaware, both skeptics of Bush's plans, to control of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, respectively.

Levin's panel will receive a closed-door briefing on Wednesday on the Pentagon's ongoing strategic review and its impact on missile defense plans, and Biden has promised exploratory hearings on missile defense proposals.

Rep. Tom Allen, a Maine Democrat, said the expected cost of $60 billion or more for a missile defense system would rob funds for other priorities.

He said he will introduce a bill soon to require the administration to seek monetary contributions for the cost of a missile system from those allies protected by it.

----

NEWS CONFERENCE WITH PEACE ACTION, PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, PEACE LINK, WOMEN'S ACTIONS FOR NEW DIRECTIONS AND THE GLOBAL SECURITY INSTITUTE

Federal News Service,
June 12, 2001, Tuesday
From: "paul kawika martin" <paulm@igc.org>

MODERATOR: TRACY MOAVERO, PROGRAM DIRECTOR FOR PEACE ACTION

WITH PARTICIPANTS: REPRESENTATIVE TOM ALLEN (D-ME); REPRESENTATIVE BOB FILNER (D-CA); REPRESENTATIVE BARNEY FRANK (D-MA); REPRESENTATIVE RUSH HOLT (D-NJ); REPRESENTATIVE JOHN TIERNEY (D-MA); REPRESENTATIVE JAN SCHAKOWSKY (D-IL); REPRESENTATIVE EARL BLUMENAUER (D-OR); DR. PETER WILK, FORMER PRESIDENT OF PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY; AND PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR FRANK VON HIPPEL, CHAIRMAN, FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS

TOPIC: NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
LOCATION: HOUSE TRIANGLE, US CAPITOL, WASHINGTON, DC

MS. MOAVERO: Good afternoon. I'm Tracy Moavero, policy director for the Peace Action Education Fund. On behalf of Peace Action, Physicians -- Oh, the mike's not on? Where do they go on? -- I'm Tracy Moavero with the Peace Action Education Fund. On behalf of Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Peace Link, Women's Actions for New Directions and the Global Security Institute, I welcome you here today.

This is part of a three-day campaign and events where people have come from across the country, 35 states, to say no to Star Wars missile defense, no to a new arms race. On Sunday, over 500 people gathered in front of the White House for a rally which made the message clear: we will not risk the danger of missile defense. For the last two days, those same people have made over 100 visits to members of Congress with the same message. We represent hundreds of thousands in our constituencies across the country.

We begin this morning or this afternoon -- I first welcome Professor Frank von Hippel, who is a former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology -- von Hippel is currently a professor public policy at Princeton University, where is policy research includes nuclear arms control and non-proliferation, energy and checks and balances and policymaking for technology. He is also a board member of the Federation of American Scientists, and he has written extensively on the technical basis for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament initiatives. (Applause.)

MR. VON HIPPEL: Thank you very much. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says that he's like the Wright Brothers -- maybe he won't get it right the first time, but let him try enough times and another different systems and maybe something will work.

But there are certain consequences to the law of physics that have to be respected by any missile defense concept. Just like various ideas of how to fly, like putting on wings and flapping your arms. It didn't work.

One of these consequences of the law of physics is that light objects travel as fast in space as heavy objects. So any country that has the technology to build a nuclear arms ballistic missile could add let's say 100 illuminized balloons with inflation mechanisms, and then put the warhead inside another illuminized balloon, and that simple ploy would increase the problem of the defense by a hundred fold.

Now, for more than 40 years science advisors have advised presidents that because of such countermeasures, such possible countermeasures, a commitment to missile defense would result in a black hole in the budget. But presidents, when they are under political pressure, don't always listen to their science advisors. President Johnson ignored his science advisor when he made his decision to deploy a missile defense system. President Nixon fired his science advisor. President Reagan didn't ask his science advisor before he made his decision. And President Bush, the current President Bush, has come up with the most elegant solution of all, which is not to have a science advisor.

Now, there are possibilities for getting around the decoy problem. One is boost-phased defense. If you shoot at a missile in the first few minutes, while it is still accelerating, you could destroy it before it could deploy these light-weight decoys, but you'd have to be within a few hundred miles, and that would not work against missiles coming from the interior of a big country like Russia or China. That's why the Reagan administration decided to go into space and had this grandiose scheme of having laser battle stations orbiting around the earth within the range of any possible launch point at all times. However, $100 billion would be just a downpayment on such a system, and on the arms race that would result.

More importantly -- more important than the money, however, is the fact which the U.S. government officially acknowledged last year, that deploying a U.S. missile defense would make it impossible to persuade Russia to take its missiles off hair trigger, which is the biggest threat to our survival today, the fact that Russia has its missiles on hair trigger.

Russia's military would fear that the U.S. might imagine that it could destroy most of Russia's missiles in a surprise attack and then be able to defend itself against the few surviving missiles with the missile defense system. So we would be doomed then to be on hair trigger indefinitely, and with a defense system that wouldn't work.

Of course you may have noticed I mentioned a long list of presidents before President Bush who have made this decision to deploy missile defenses. None of those missile defenses were actually deployed. You can ignore the laws of physics for a little while, but not indefinitely, and after a while all of these proposals develop credibility problems which help lead their demise.

Now, there's another way to get rid of nuclear weapons, and it's called disarmament. It has already eliminated over 10,000 Russian nuclear warheads. And it saves money -- it doesn't cost money. During the past few years, however, the progress on disarmament has ground to a halt because all of our efforts have been devoted to arguing with Russia, with China, with our European allies about missile defense. It's time to get back to the cooperative effort to relax the hair triggers and to drastically reduce the numbers of nuclear missiles. Real dangers require real solutions. Thank you. (Applause. Cheers.)

Next -- are you going to introduce Rush, or should I?

MS. MOAVERO: Go right ahead, go right ahead.

MR. VON HIPPEL: The next speaker will be Rush Holt. I am a constituent of Rush Holt's, Congressman from New Jersey, one of the two physicists in Congress and an expert on these issues. (Applause.)

REP. RUSH: Thank you, Frank. I am pleased to follow Frank von Hippel. There is no one in the United States whose ideas on arms control deserve more respect than those of Frank von Hippel. He has had a distinguished career looking at these matters, and we should take heed.

And we are here this morning as scientists and researchers and policymakers once again to express deep concern about the Bush administration's pursuit of a missile defense which would result in scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which is based on the idea of "build first, figure it out later."

And today the president is trying to sell his magical mystery shield to the Europeans, and they are not buying it, and we know why. The national missile defense, as proposed, as envisioned -- because it is only a vision at this point -- would not be effective. It would be costly to deploy, and it would be easily circumvented.

You don't need to read much history to be reminded of the Maginot Line, the so-called impenetrable wall that has become the symbol of misguided defense policy. The proposed missile shield would probably not work as designed, and wishing will not overcome physics. It could be confused with decoys, as Professor von Hippel has suggested. It could be bypassed with suitcase bombs, pickup trucks and fishing trawlers. It would be billions of dollars down the drain.

But it's not just a diversion of precious resources that could be used in other areas -- for health care, for smaller class sizes, for modern school facilities, for securing open space or taking care of America's veterans. It's not just a diversion from other activities that might really enhance international or national security, such as removing our missiles from hair trigger.

It is worse than a waste of money. Simple strategic analysis will tell us that a provocative yet permeable defense is destabilizing and will lead to reduced security. In fact, you might say the more technically effective the system turned out to be, the worst idea it would be. In fact, this is a defensive system, a military system in search of a cooperative enemy, an enemy that would not try to spoof it with decoys, an enemy that would not feel threatened by what would be going on -- what they would imagine would be going on behind the shield. Only a cooperative enemy would find this unthreatening. Well, indeed, if that is the kind of enemy we are building it for, then we don't need it.

The U.S. has not been able to develop a workable missile defense after 40 years of trying and many tens -- many tens -- of billions of dollars spent. No, the Bush administration missile defense is a bad idea whose time still has not come. Thank you. (Applause. Cheers.)

MR. WILK: Thank you, Congressman Holt, that was really great. I am Peter Wilk, past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. I am here today representing 20,000 physician members and supporters from across the country. As physicians we are deploy concerned about the public health threat posed by the 30,000 nuclear weapons still in existence around the world.

President Bush has made clear his intent to radically shift U.S. defense policy away from reliance on deterrence and international treaties toward preparing the U.S. to fight nuclear war. I suppose we can at least thank President Bush for putting the question so clearly before us: Do we favor wasting billions on a new version of Star Wars, on developing a new generation of nuclear war-fighting weapons and initiating Cold War II? Do we favor alienating our European allies and further provoking Russia to keep its nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert indefinitely? Or do we favor negotiating a bilateral agreement to take off hair trigger alerts to 5,000 nuclear weapons still on alert, poised to destroy all that we hold dear in this world?

It's hard to believe that 20 years after President Reagan first introduced this misguided scheme that we are again faced with these kinds of questions. Back then we in PSR devised a simple way to illustrate the folly of the misguided scheme; that is, the Star Wars umbrella. (Laughter.) Would you want to go out in a rainstorm with an umbrella like this? (Laughter.) At best this is the reality of a missile defense system, at best 95 percent effective -- and you can see how effective that would be, which means of course enough nuclear missiles would get through to destroy our country as we know it, killing millions of Americans.

I do feel fortunate to come from the state of Maine, where common sense generally prevails. Tom Allen, our Congressman, has led in a legislative effort to allow reductions of current loaded nuclear arsenals below START I levels, by introducing H.R. 2013, the Strategic Flexibility Act, for which we appreciate it. I am also especially proud of the wisdom and leadership he has shown in opposing the current reincarnation of Star Wars. And to that effect, to help make that point, we have collected 10,000 of these signed petitions from across the country, and have been distributing them yesterday and today to the appropriate members of Congress from those districts. The text reads in part: "I urge each of you to follow" -- and this is each congressman -- "to follow PSR's sound medical and policy prescriptions. Since there is no viability treatment for the effects of a nuclear attack, the only possible prevention is prevention. Please use your authority and power to stop nuclear danger immediately."

Thank you so much, Tom, for the special effort that you could come. (Applause.)

REP. ALLEN: Thank you, Peter. It's very good to be here today with some of the hundreds of people who have come to Washington from all over the country with a simple message for policymakers here: The president's fast-track missile defense plan will make the world less stable. Rushing deployment of national defense will provoke other nations to increase their offensive arms and undermine U.S. national security. Abandoning arms control agreements and gambling on unproven missile defense technologies is unsafe and unwise.

A national missile defense might be justified if proven to work reliably and consistently, and to improve our overall national security. But President Bush has offered no specifics. It's up to this Congress and the American public to demand answers to the questions that he has refused to address. One, can missile defense technology be proven to work reliably and consistently? Two, how much will it cost? Three, will a national missile defense improve our overall national security? Four, is NMD a proportional response to a credible threat?

I serve on the House Armed Services Committee, which evaluates a whole variety of measures and threats to our security. The U.S. intelligence community recently issued a report on global threats and challenges we may face by 2015. As this chart over here shows, these threats are many, and they are diverse. Rogue state missile threats are only one -- only one of the threats on the list.

By spending too much money on missile defense, we really are likely to underfund programs to fight more likely threats from weapons of mass destruction, such as delivery by truck or boat or suitcase, not to mention other challenges like global warming, terrorism, crime and disease.

The latest front in this ideological crusade is Secretary Rumsfeld's announcement of a plan to deploy five interceptors in Alaska by 2004, before testing is completed, before the technologies proven, before adequate radars are in place. And I believe that those who would characterize the Rumsfeld plan as a scarecrow defense have a real point.

This "build first, ask questions later" approach is principally aimed at the ABM Treaty. It is premised on the inaccurate and misleading notion that the ABM Treaty prevents development of missile defenses. This second chart lists all of the missile defense testing on a range of systems that can occur under current treaty parameters. We can proceed to test technologies and have plenty of time to discuss treaty modifications with the Russians. Fiscal sanity and reality dictate that we fly before we buy, not the other way around.

President Bush has previously stated that the U.S. missile defense system would protect allies as well as the U.S. I will soon introduce legislation to require the president to seek burden-sharing contributions from allied nations that are intended to receive the benefit of a missile defense system. It is only fair that if our allies want to play, they'll have to pay.

Again, I want to close by applauding all these citizens who have come from all across the country to speak against this ideologically driven, technologically unproven national missile defense system, and to speak and stand up for a national security policy that doesn't tear down our established arms control agreements but builds on them. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

MS. SHAER: Hello, my name is Susan Shaer, and I am executive director of Women's Action for New Directions, WAND, a national women's political organization, and a peace group.

Now, WAND changed its name about 10 years ago from Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament to Women's Action for New Direction, because we thought that the threat of annihilation was over. We knew the arms race with the Soviet Union was over. The Soviet Union was over. The trillions of dollars that we had spent on nuclear weapons was supposedly over. And we thought the country was going in a new direction. But we were wrong.

So, WAND is hear today representing all of those people you heard members of Congress mention who have been here for the last couple of days to go to the Hill to tell their members of Congress how they feel about missile defense. They oppose it. Our combined membership is well over 100,000 people, and we have come to tell our representatives in Congress that missile defense doesn't work, it costs too much, and it won't make us safer because it will start a new arms race. We have been telling them in person. We have also been telling them through an email address, dontblowit.org. And we have been delivering to senators packets like this that list all of the thousands -- over 40,000 email messages that have come in in the last few days saying that these people are opposed to missile defense.

We have over 6,000 signatures and 10,000 snail mail message, the old traditional way, that are coming in at the rate of over 1,000 a day. People all over the country are starting this movement, once again because we have to, and we'll be here every day and every week if we have to, hand delivering those messages to Congress.

I couldn't have said it better. I have lots of other words to add, but our members of Congress know what it's like every day to look at exotic weapons systems that are costing billions of dollars. As nuclear weapons have cost trillions of dollars, we not only do not have money for health care, housing, Social Security, Medicare, but we don't even have enough money for our military men and women and their housing needs. We are going to change that.

I would now like to introduce to you two of my favorite members of Congress, since they come from my state, Representative Barney Frank and Representative John Tierney from the great state of Massachusetts. (Applause.)

REP. FRANK: Well, we've decided not to do a duet, as you might have led to believe. (Laughter.)

There is one good thing in Secretary Rumsfeld's announcement that planned to rush this to an initial installation in 2004 long before anyone will have any confidence that it works, and long before you can justify such an installation on irrational grounds. It bespeaks his lack of confidence that the Bush administration will be reelected. The significance of 2004 is to try to put some facts on the ground before a new election. It's an example of how unwise this policy is. Indeed, I am inclined to think that much of it -- that a cheaper way to achieve this goal would be simply to give in and build another monument to Ronald Reagan -- we have a couple -- (laughter) -- because at its base this is Republican obeisance to the Reagan legacy. It has very little to do with anything else rational. It is one more way of paying tribute to Ronald Reagan. And while I have not previously been in favor of additional monuments, I would think other expenditures would be cheaper and less destabilizing.

Taken on its merits, this proposal deals with a threat that is at a very low level, and proposes to spend an enormous amount of money dealing with a very unlikely threat with a system that won't work. It has very little to commend it. What it will do if it is rushed into place, as Rumsfeld wants to do -- I guess they will unveil it at the Republican convention of 2004, will be greatly to destabilize the world. The Chinese will treat it as something aimed at them -- and indeed the administration has been wholly incoherent on the point about whether or not they should aim it at the Chinese. The president's announcement speech gave a clear impression that it was aimed at the Chinese. The Chinese will undoubtedly respond by increasing their missile capacity. So then will the Indians, who feel somewhat threatened by the Chinese missile capacity. And then so will the Pakistanis. So the only thing this is likely to accomplish is an increased incentive for nuclear proliferation. It will do it at enormous cost. And I will tell you when I go back to my district I am told that people are worried about not being able to pay for prescription drug, they are worried about drug-related crime in the public housing projects, they are worried about inadequate transportation, about unsafe bridges, about air pollution; they are worried about no being able adequately to house their families. Every single thing I have just mentioned is being starved of funding to pay for this very ill-considered idea.

So I hope people will continue their efforts to embolden members of Congress simply to vote no. (Applause. Cheers.)

----

Turner blasts Bush on environment

Tuesday, June 12, 2001
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/06/06122001/ap_turner_43970.asp

WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont. - The Bush Administration ignores clean technology and focuses on developing new oil and coal projects because the president wants to repay energy companies for helping finance his campaign, Ted Turner charged in a speech.

"That's who owns them," Turner told the annual meeting of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition on Saturday night. "It's time we started acting intelligently or we aren't even going to be here in 100 years."

He said the Bush Administration wastes too much time on "rogue nations" like North Korea, while refusing to comply with the Kyoto Accords, which call for reducing the output of greenhouse gases.

"We're now being called a rogue state" because of that action, Turner told about 400 cheering people. "We should be worrying about global warming and environmental degradation, not North Korea."

Turner, a board member of the GYC who has given billions of dollars to environmental causes, was the keynote speaker at the gathering.

"My giving has exceeded my income by 10 to one" over the past several years, the billionaire CNN founder said.

Turner, a father of five, also reiterated his belief that the world's human population could have adequate food, housing and medical care if couples voluntarily limited themselves to one child.

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Police Detain EU Activists

June 12, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 10:12 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-European-Summit-Protests.html

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Police on Tuesday dragged 40 activists from a protest camp near the site of an upcoming European Union summit that President Bush will attend, as Sweden braced for large-scale protests.

Swedish police also said they had detained five people suspected of planning sabotage, but declined to say what they were planning or who was to be the target.

``Of course we suspect that they were going to do something at the EU meetings,'' prosecutor Peter Larsson said. ``But we are at the start of the investigation.

The suspects were captured in a raid on an apartment in Goteborg, the city where the summit is being held. They face preliminary charges of planning to commit gross sabotage, said police spokesman Bengt Staaf. Authorities said they were from a Nordic country but not Sweden.

Also on Tuesday, police removed demonstrators with the anti-EU Goteborg Non-Violence Network from a camp they had set up near the planned summit venue. The protesters went limp as they were carried away but offered no other resistance.

``I'm very satisfied with the whole operation. We gave them good time to pick up their things and talked to them for quite a while before moving in,'' Chief Inspector Goeran Nordenstam said.

Police have been preparing for months for the arrival of Bush and the other leaders for three days of meetings starting Thursday in Goteborg. Between 10,000 and 25,000 protesters are expected to rally in the Swedish coastal city located 300 miles southwest of Stockholm.

Officials have erected fences around the site and closed some 200 shops, restaurants and an amusement park in the area. Special passes will be required for up to 3,000 people who live or work within the zone.

In Norway, about 10 Greenpeace activists on Tuesday boarded a U.S.-bound oil tanker as it loaded oil at a refinery to protest Bush's environmental policies. Bush's European trip began Tuesday in Spain.

The activists on the Greek-register tanker Cosmic said they were attempting to stop the tanker to protest the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto agreement to limit climate damaging gas emissions. They said they were willing to stay on the tanker indefinitely.

The Bush administration in March announced that it would pull out of negotiations to finalize the Kyoto treaty on global warming

``Bush needs to be shown that the rest of the world is serious on this issue. We are stopping oil exports to show Bush the costs of not joining the international community to address global warming,'' Greenpeace campaigner Truls Gulowsen said.

It was the second day in a row that Greenpeace activists boarded an oil tanker to protest U.S. policy. On Monday, activists boarded the Norwegian-owned tanker Anna Knutsen just off the port of La Havre, France.

In neighboring Denmark, police said that three men who were arrested last week in Copenhagen would remained jail pending the investigation into the discovery of dozens of gasoline bombs in a building used by left-wing youth.

Chief Superintendent Kurt Jensen declined to comment on media speculation that the gasoline bombs were intended to be used during demonstrations in Sweden.

Clashes between demonstrators and police have marred international gatherings since the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999. Most recently, protesters battled riot police during the Summit of the Americas in Canada, in April.

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ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE MOURNS DEATH OF FOUNDER

June 12, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2001/2001L-06-12-09.html

BROOKHAVEN, New York, Dennis Puleston, founder of the conservation group Environmental Defense, died Friday at his home in Brookhaven, Long Island, New York, at the age of 95.

"Through his books, lectures, paintings and his tireless dedication to conservation efforts, Dennis was an inspiration to all who knew him and worked with him," said Environmental Defense executive director Fred Krupp. "A few years ago he addressed the assembled Environmental Defense staff, now in the hundreds, and in his characteristically humble way thanked us all for what the group had grown to become. But it's we who owed him our thanks; none of us would be here were it not for Dennis and his friends."

Puleston was director of the technical information division at Brookhaven National Laboratory when he and a small group of concerned citizens brought a legal action in 1966 against DDT, the pesticide that had devastated the population of the osprey, Long Island's majestic fish hawk. A year later, Puleston and his colleagues incorporated the Environmental Defense Fund, later renamed Environmental Defense, and went on to win a nationwide ban on DDT in 1972.

After his retirement, Puleston remained an Honorary Trustee of Environmental Defense and embarked on a second career as a naturalist and lecturer, traveling on more than 180 voyages including many to Antarctica, which he visited 35 times.

In 1995 he was awarded a Doctorate of Humane Letters by the State University of New York at Stony Brook, which honored him as "a scientist, humanist, teacher and conservationist ... whose ceaseless efforts to conserve our environment have ensured the survival of this invaluable heritage for our children and grandchildren."

Environmental Defense, a national nonprofit organization based in New York, represents more than 300,000 members.

---------

Ex-DOE Head Joins Anti-Nuke Trustees

June 12, 2001
By Jennifer McKee
Albuquerque Journal Staff Writer
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/357628news06-12-01.htm

Bill Richardson, who has served as a New Mexico congressman, ambassador to the United Nations and U.S. Energy secretary, has been elected to the trustees of an environmental group that has repeatedly sued the Energy Department.

Richardson was unanimously elected to the board of trustees on Thursday of the National Resource Defense Council, a 31-year-old environmental and public health organization with 450,000 members nationwide.

The group opposes nuclear weapons and works to halt global warming, among other things.

As head of U.S. Energy Department, Richardson was charged with overseeing

the nation's weapons labs -- including Los Alamos National Laboratory -- which invented, perfected and maintains America's nuclear-weapons arsenal.

Since retiring with the end of the Clinton administration, Richardson has also joined the boards of two Texas-based oil companies.

Allan Metrick, communications director for the Defense Council, said those things were not strikes against Richardson.

"He brings the respect of many world leaders who are concerned about climate change and global warming," Metrick said. "His access to a large portion of the global community will be really beneficial to our organization."

Richardson joins 41 other trustees, among them actor Robert Redford, Chief Operating Officer of Warner Bros. Alan Horn, and George Woodwell, the man who first sounded an alarm over global warming.

Richardson is the first and only trustee to ever head a cabinet-level government agency, Metrick said.

"We thought he was an excellent administrator," he said of Richardson's stint as Energy secretary. "He brings to the board geographic diversity, ethnic diversity and a great intellect and drive."

Metrick said it would be "inappropriate" to disqualify Richardson from the board of the defense council because Richardson's former duties as top caretaker of several thousand nuclear bombs and warheads.

Trustees, who are not paid, meet four times a year to set the organization's policy, Metrick said. Trustees serve two-year terms and can only be re-elected by a vote of the entire organization.

They also must agree to the group's principles, said Christopher Paine, a senior analyst with NRDC who often works on projects in New Mexico, which includes pledging to support a variety of environmental and health concerns such as nuclear proliferation and global warming.

Paine and Greg Mello of the Santa Fe-based Los Alamos Study Group, which has been a watchdog of the Los Alamos lab for years, said Richardson's new role as a trustee bodes well for New Mexico, especially since Richardson seems to be headed for a race for governor.

"His decision to put his counter down on the side of the environment and go with that is great," Mello said. "If this means he's attaching more importance to the environment and recognizing how threatened it is, both in New Mexico and worldwide, I can only say it's a good thing."

Richardson was traveling Monday and could not be reached for comment. Karen Golembeski, Richardson's spokesperson, said Richardson joined "the superb international organization primarily for its work on global climate change."

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Invitation to NGOs to attend the Second Conference on Facilitating the Entry Into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)

Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001
From: Felicity Hill <flick@igc.org>

The second international conference aimed at speeding up entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) will be held from September 25-27, 2001 in New York.

Mexico's Foreign Minister, Mr. Jorge Castaneda is expected to chair this Conference, scheduled to take place in the opening week of the General Assembly. Almost all signatory states will attend and it is expected that many governments will send Foreign Ministers or Heads of State to show their support for this treaty.

All states, both signatories and non-signatories are invited to attend the Conference.

NGOS SHOULD REGISTER FOR ACCREDITATION TO THIS CONFERENCE BEFORE 31ST AUGUST, 2001

Draft rule 43 provides for the participation of non-governmental organizations. Any NGO wishing to attend needs to apply in writing, with a letter from the organisation and a brief (max. 2 pages) explanation of its work relevant to the conference, to the Secretariat of the Conference Ms. Sari Nurro, Department for Disarmament Affairs, UN Plaza, 10017, New York, USA, Fax:1 212 963 8892 Ph: 1 212 963 9678 Email: nurro@un.org). Permission will be granted by a decision of the Conference.

According to Rule 43, "NGOs will be able to attend open meetings, receive documents of the Conference upon request and to make available at their own cost written contributions on matters under consideration by the Conference."

Further details on registration arrangements will be communicated later by the DDA.

One five-minute statement representing NGO views on Entry Into Force of the CTBT can be made. This statement is being coordinated by Merav Datan, of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians for Social Responsibility, Tel: 1 646 865 1883, email: mdatan@ippnw.org

Background Information

The CTBT bans "all nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion" and establishes an extensive International Monitoring System and allows for short-notice on-site inspections.

The (CTBT) was negotiated in Geneva by the Conference on Disarmament and was adopted by the General Assembly as a resolution (A/RES/50/245) on 10 September 1996 and opened for signature in September 1996.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has been signed by 160 countries and ratified by 76.

Under the terms of the treaty, all forty-four countries with nuclear power plants must sign and ratify before it becomes legally binding, or "enters into force". Thirteen of the forty-four have not yet ratified, three have not even signed.1

Article 14 of the CTBT allows for a special conference on accelerating Entry Into Force if the treaty has not entered into force. 2 The conference does not have the power to amend the treaty.

In October of 1999 the first such Conference on Facilitating the Entry Into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty was held in Vienna. Ninety-two states unanimously adopted a Final Declaration at that meeting hearing over fifty statements examining measures consistent with international law to accelerate the Treaty's ratification.

Since the 1999 conference, the Treaty has been ratified by twenty-five additional states, six which are in the group of forty-four states essential for the Entry Into Force of the Treaty.

1. States that still have to ratify before the CTBT can enter into force: Algeria, China,Colombia, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Israel, Pakistan, United States of America, Vietnam. India, North Korea and Pakistan have not even signed the Treaty.

2. Article XIV: "If this Treaty has not entered into force three years after the date of the anniversary of its opening for signature, the Depositary shall convene a Conference of the States that have already deposited their instruments of ratification upon the request of a majority of those States. This process shall be repeated at subsequent anniversaries of the opening for signature of this Treaty, until its entry into force."

Why is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty important?

The CTBT has been seen as an essential step toward nuclear disarmament for over four decades. It bans all nuclear tests, anytime, anywhere and comprehensively. Without the CTBT, the United States, Russia, China, France the United Kingdom, India and Pakistan are not prohibited from conducting further underground test explosions. The effort to establish an international norm against nuclear testing must not be abandoned after the enormous effort on the part of governments and NGOs, especially when the ratifications of only thirteen states is required for Entry Into Force.

The Treaty is intended to stop the qualitative nuclear arms race. The CTBT does not prohibit research on nuclear weapons, including subcritical tests. But it is very difficult, if not impossible, to develop new nuclear weapons without nuclear test explosions. This explains why all Nuclear Weapons States have resisted such a treaty for over four decades. Now that an agreement on the test ban has been reached and Entry Into Force is within reach, the effort to establish an international norm against nuclear testing must be actively pursued. Should the CTBT not enter into force, all the enormous effort on the part of governments and NGOs would be lost.

The CTBT will prevent further horrendous health and environmental damage caused by nuclear test explosions once and for all.

The CTBT will establish a wide-ranging monitoring and verification system, including an International Monitoring System and an International Data Centre, which together with national technical means and ten of thousands of civilian monitoring stations, will detect and deter would-be testers, and therefore, will build confidence between all nations that nuclear testing has stopped.

What can be achieved at this Second Conference to Facilitate the Entry Into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty?

The second Article XIV Conference is expected to be an opportunity for:

announcing ratifications and signatures;

calling on those states that have not yet signed or ratified the CTBT to join the international consensus to end nuclear testing;

urging states with active nuclear weapon research programmes and test sites to take actions that would reinforce the CTBT and support its goals, such as refraining from activities at test sites that might be construed as CTBT violations, halting research, development and production of nuclear nuclear warheads based on modifications of existing designs, that give them new military capabilities;

examining ways and means of removing obstacles which delay Entry Into Force;

discussing and agreeing on specific measures to convince the last holdout states to support the test ban;

support for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation in Vienna that has made significant progress in setting up the International Monitoring System and International Data Center, so that the CTBT's verification system is ready by the time the treaty enters into force;

condemning any future testing; and,

calling upon governments, businesses and peoples to take decisive action in reaction to any future testing.

What can NGOs do?

sign the letter below and send it to your Minister of Foreign Affairs or equivalent, cc it to your Ambassador in New York (see http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/frames/Gov_Disarm_Contacts/Gov_Disarm_Dir_Frameset.html for a full listing)

make an appointment to speak with a representative at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or equivalent and encourage the Foreign Minister to attend the conference to publicly urge the CTBT hold out states to promptly ratify the Treaty;

attend the September 25-27, 2001 Conference on Entry Into Force in New York

monitor the September 25-17 Conference on Entry Into Force through the Reaching Critical Will website and react to what your government does or does not say

publicize your views and your government's policies on the CTBT to the press in your country.

For More Information on the 25-27 September 2001 Conference

The Department for Disarmament Affairs http://www.un.org/Depts/dda/WMD/ctbt/article_iv/index.html

The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization http://pws.ctbto.org/

The Acronym Institute: http://www.acronym.org

The Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers: http://www.crnd.org

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War: http://www.ippnw.org

Physicians for Social Responsibility: http://www.psr.org

WILPF/Reaching Critical Will: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org

VERTIC: http://www.vertic.org

Felicity Hill, Director, United Nations Office, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom 777 UN Plaza, New York, NY 10017, USA

Ph: 1 212 682 1265 - Fax: 1 212 286 8211 - email: flick@igc.org, wilpfun@igc.org - web: www.wilpf.int.ch www.reachingcriticalwill.org

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Report on June 10-12 Stop the New Arms Race events on the web

Dear Friends of Peace,

A report on Project Abolition's and the Nuclear Disarmament Partnership's June 10-12 "Stop the New Arms Race" events in Washington, DC is available at http://projectabolition.org/

The report includes photographs and a list of media coverage of the events. If you know of media coverage not listed, including local media generated by your group's participation in the events, please let us know right away. Please send an email with details of the coverage to <kmartin@projectabolition.org> and mail "hard" copies of newspaper articles to Project Abolition, 109 E. Clinton St., Suite 10, Goshen, IN 46528. Thanks again to all who participated and helped make the events a success.

In Peace,

Kevin Martin <kmartin@projectabolition.org>, Director, Project Abolition

-- June 10-12 Stop the New Arms Race events

Designed by Tim Nafziger 6.15.01 - mailto:timjn@goshen.edu

http://projectabolition.org/ Photo: http://projectabolition.org/photos/nmd1.jpg

More photographs of the June 10-12 events - http://projectabolition.org/mobilization/photos.html

Media coverage of the June 10-12 events -http://projectabolition.org/mobilization/media.html

Nearly 700 people from across the country travelled to the nation's capital June 10 to protest the Bush Administration's plan to deploy a Star Wars missile system and weapons in outer space, and to raise the call for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Under the slogan "Stop the New Arms Race", the members of Project Abolition and the Nuclear Disarmament Partnership, along with dozens of endorsing organizations, fired the first non-violent "shot across the bow" of the new Administration, putting them on notice we will not accept Star Wars, the weaponization of space, and a new generation of nuclear weapons.

On June 11 and 12, nearly 300 activists (more than tripling our early estimates of participants) from 35 states took our message to the halls of Congress, meeting with 115 representatives and senators after a training session orgnized by the Nuclear Disarmament Partnership. We were also joined by seven members of the House of Representatives at a noon-time press conference June 12.



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