------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Bush Tries to Sell NATO on Missile Defense Plan
UK 'tampered with evidence of nuclear tests'
UK BNFL hopes to restart Wylfa nuke this summer
Ireland challenges Britain over nuclear plant
G.E. Says European Approval of Honeywell Purchase Unlikely
Pakistan Foreign Minister's Visit First Since Freeze Over Bomb Tests
NATO Summit - Allies fail to share vision thing over rogue states
India's Punjab says 'no' to nuclear plant
U.S. Lawmaker Accuses Pentagon of Suppressing Adverse NMD Report
France and Germany Caution Bush on Missile Defense Plan
China, Russia Join Against U.S. Missile Defense
Bush sees warning to defense plan
Data-entry error blamed for cancer deaths
'We Should Not Expect a Breakthrough'
Superpowers' fail-safe fails to materialize
Minuteman Missile Returns to S.D.
EPA Adds to Superfund List
Today In Congress
U.S. - Russia Timeline
Prospects for Russia Accord Dim
Bush: 'set aside' ABM Treaty
Bush Faces Environmental Opposition in Sweden
Senate Finances List
Colleges with reactors learn in the nick of time
Warning on beryllium issued in '48
Environmental Advocates File Notice of Intent to Sue
Experts spotlight Nevada Test Site's contamination
Safety improvements needed at Y-12
Eisenhower's Warning:
US nuclear plants squeeze power as critics fret

MILITARY
U.S., China Officers Meet on Warship
Police fire tear gas at thousands of marchers
Kabila Tells Congo Army Stop Recruiting Children
Liberia Tries to Forget Homemade Film
Kuwait is examining weapons offers
China claims sale of 'logistics items,' not arms
Biden calls for Macedonia intervention
US cuts back anthrax vaccinations for military services
Compliance Protocol for the Biological and Toxin Weapons
U.S. Pilots Summoned in Colombian Bombing Probe
Castro Denounces Cyberattack Concerns
Efforts to Ease Drug Terms Stall in Albany
Deadline Looms for U.N. Iraq Plan
Syria Pulls Tanks From Lebanon, Christians Wary
Vieques bombing range will close by 2003
Vieques Cleanup May Take Decades
Navies That Fired on Vieques Absent
Treated Like Trash
Puerto Rico Bombing to End in 2003
Some Russians Are Alarmed at Tighter Grip Under Putin
Class's oral history project draws scrutiny of spy agency
U.N. to Stop Bread for Poor After Afghan Talks Fail
U.N. police allegedly involved in brothels
Defense Dept. Panel Seeks Changes to Keep Military Personnel
Navy officer sues over laser attack
The Secret Empire

OTHER
Germany Looks to Seaborne Wind Farms
Justice Dept. Set to Study Death Penalty in More Depth
China Executes 13 for Hotel Fire
Grasshoppers Turn Pink In Scotland
US finds no link in biotech corn, illness
Cord Blood Offers A Leukemia Treatment
The Soothing Influence of Heavy Metal Bismuth
China's Prison Laborers Pay Price for Market Reforms
The forgotten American hostage
Privacy Protection
House Leader Presses FBI Surveillance Worries
FBI Sniper Won't Be Prosecuted
Indonesian Protests Rage On
Armey to Press Opposition to Net Wiretaps

ACTIVISTS
Over 200 Bush Protesters Arrested
Bush Starts Tense Summit with EU Amid Protests
Bush Faces Environmental Opposition and Protesters in Sweden
Environmental Groups Claim to Have Vandalized Banks
Protesters, Police Clash at Summit
Save nuclear survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki


-------- NUCLEAR

Bush Tries to Sell NATO on Missile Defense Plan

By William Drozdiak and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 14, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63585-2001Jun13?language=printer

"The only one to pierce the security was a demonstrator ... on a motorized hang-glider with a sign reading 'Stop Star Wars.'"

BRUSSELS, June 13 -- President Bush told NATO allies today the time had come to banish the last vestiges of the Cold War by developing a security framework based on ballistic missile defenses, but European leaders insisted that any new strategy must include respect for existing arms control pacts.

With barbed wire barricades and a massive police presence keeping protesters far away from alliance headquarters, NATO leaders also reviewed the smoldering conflict in Macedonia, their state of military readiness and prospects for embracing new members from Eastern Europe next year.

For many Europeans, however, another important item on their agenda was to take the measure of the former Texas governor who has little experience in diplomacy and foreign affairs but is engaged in a zealous campaign to persuade NATO to adopt missile defense as the centerpiece of a new security strategy.

On the second stop of his five-country European tour, Bush said he was pleased by "the open and constructive reaction" of other allied leaders to his call for a radical reassessment of how the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should cope with emerging challenges, such as the possibility terrorists or small hostile countries would use weapons of mass destruction.

"I'm making good progress on this issue here in Europe," he said at a news conference. "There's some nervousness, and I understand that, but it's beginning to be allayed when they hear the logic behind the rationale."

In an impassioned appeal, Bush told alliance leaders that "the nuclear balance of terror" that kept the peace with the Soviet Union no longer made sense. He insisted the United States and its partners must prepare for threats spawned by the spread of weapons of mass destruction and break out of constraints imposed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which limits construction of missile defense systems.

While many European leaders agree that the changing strategic balance requires a fresh approach, they took issue with Bush's rejection of the ABM Treaty and his implicit distrust of arms control agreements. Regardless of whether Bush's anti-missile project proved technically feasible, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac said they would launch a new arms control initiative that would seek to use political means to curb the proliferation of missile technologies.

According to participants at the closed-door meeting, Chirac expressed the sharpest dismay with Bush's attitude on ABM, claiming that the treaty has served as an indispensable element in the global security structure for three decades and should not be lightly discarded.

"We need to preserve these strategic balances, of which the ABM Treaty is a pillar," Chirac said, according to excerpts of his remarks to the other leaders. "If we are to envision a new framework, one that takes account of the emergence of a multipolar world, then we must ensure that it contains binding provisions designed to guarantee international stability."

Schroeder said he concurred with Bush's call for new thinking, but like Chirac, he laid much greater emphasis on the need to contain new threats through diplomatic and economic means rather than new technologies.

"Germany is committed not least to strengthening the arms-control architecture, in particular the Missile Technology Control Regime, as well as creating the conditions for further steps toward nuclear disarmament on the basis of international agreements," Schroeder said. The control regime regulates the sale of missiles between countries.

While other leaders praised his vow to consult extensively with the allies, Bush's proclaimed determination to deploy missile defenses as soon as possible has stirred consternation among allies who suspect he is feigning interest in their views but will ultimately disregard them.

"If Bush has already decided to go ahead with breaking the ABM Treaty and building his project, then how are we supposed to believe that these consultations have any meaning?" asked a senior European diplomat.

Though 13 out of 19 NATO members remain cool on missile defense, U.S. officials traveling with Bush expressed optimism today that they were beginning to move the "center of gravity" in support of the American plan. They noted that Hungary, Italy, Poland and Spain have given public approval, while Britain is quietly sympathetic.

According to a senior administration official, President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic offered support to the plan in today's meeting, saying "the new world we are entering cannot be based on mutually assured destruction," the doctrine that says that peace is best secured in a world where each side knows an attack will bring retaliation. "An increasingly important role should be played by defense systems," he said.

[While Russia remains publicly critical of the proposed U.S. plan for nuclear missile defense, warning again today that it could start "a new arms race," top Kremlin officials appear to be leaving the door open for cooperation with Washington as long as the system remains limited and within a modified framework of the ABM Treaty.

A senior Kremlin official briefing foreign journalists in Moscow about the summit this Saturday between Bush and President Vladimir Putin said that Putin will "carefully listen" to Bush and talk about cooperation. "We want an open, honest conversation," he said. "We're not planning for conflict."

Other officials noted they have proposed to the U.S. side that they create two joint working groups to discuss missile defense and nonproliferation. "So far, we haven't received any answer," said a top diplomat.]

The NATO leaders also delved into the delicate matter of taking in new members and agreed that they should consider the issue when they meet next year in Prague. While Slovenia and Slovakia are the leading candidates, debate is mounting over whether the alliance should court further Russian outrage by also incorporating the three Baltic countries, which were part of the Soviet Union.

None of the leaders discussed their preferences today, but Bush emphasized there must be "no red lines or outside vetoes" in choosing the next NATO members. The United States and the Nordic countries are leading proponents of absorbing the Baltics, but Germany, France and other members worry about potential damage to relations with Russia.

Bush also expressed concern with the state of defense spending among the European allies, who have failed to live up to promises made after the 1999 Kosovo air war to improve their shortcomings in such areas as airborne reconnaissance, precision weaponry and modern communications systems. NATO Secretary General George Robertson scolded the Europeans for not fulfilling even half of their commitments and warned that they would not be able to cope on their own with the next military crisis on the continent.

"These were clear targets that were set, and they have resulted in clear failure," he said.

Robertson pointed to the Balkans as the alliance's most alarming flashpoint, where ethnic conflict in Macedonia threatens to spill out of control. NATO leaders agreed that they must do something to reverse the deteriorating situation, as ethnic Albanian rebels have moved close enough to the capital, Skopje, to strike the city with mortar shells.

"Our history of engagement in that part of the world has taught us that it is better to make preparations and to stabilize the situation rather than wait and let the situation deteriorate," said Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. While one of Macedonia's neighbors, Greece, has endorsed the idea of a NATO peacekeeping force, NATO officials said there was no discussion about sending allied troops on such a mission largely because many leaders feel their forces are already stretched too thin with duties in Kosovo and Bosnia. Robertson was scheduled to fly to Macedonia on Thursday for his third crisis mission there in the past three months.

Bush said "NATO must play a more visible and active role in helping the Macedonian government counter the insurgency there." But mindful of firm opposition at home, especially at the Pentagon, about further entanglements in the Balkans, he refused to make any promises about sending U.S. forces.

Regarding the status of troops in the Balkans, Bush reassured the allies that he supported Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in his promise that the United States would keep troops there as long as the European contingents remained. "We went in together and we will leave together, and I swear to you again today that I will keep that promise," Bush said.

On the streets today, hundreds of demonstrators tried unsuccessfully to disrupt the proceedings. The president appeared to be delayed a few minutes on his arrival in Brussels this morning as reports came that the environmental group Greenpeace was blocking the airport entrance; at one airport entrance, about a dozen Greenpeace demonstrators, wearing white jump suits, chained themselves together in front of a gate.

In Brussels, banners proclaimed: "George W. Bush: Outlaws not welcome," and "Save the Climate," a reference to the U.S. rejection of an international agreement to combat global warming.

Authorities responded to threats of unrest by blocking off streets with barricades, snarling traffic throughout central Brussels. Police and soldiers in blue also erected barbed-wire barricades around the fortress-like NATO facility on the outskirts of the Belgian capital. They stood watch, some in armored personnel carriers, to keep the protesters at bay.

The only one to pierce the security was a demonstrator who passed overhead on a motorized hang-glider with a sign reading "Stop Star Wars."

-------- australia

UK 'tampered with evidence of nuclear tests'

By Kathy Marks in Sydney,
UK Independent
14 June 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/story.jsp?story=77986

A document given by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to a royal commission into Britain's atomic tests in Australia in the 1950s was doctored to remove details of Australian servicemen exposed to high levels of radiation.

The royal commission ­ which reported in 1985 ­ was set up by the Australian government after pressure from test veterans who claimed that they suffer from accelerated rates of cancer and other radiation- induced illnesses.

British scientists monitored the exposure of some servicemen to radioactive fall-out after they witnessed nuclear blasts at two sites ­ Maralinga, in the South Australian desert, and Monte Bello, off the coast of Western Australia ­ and worked in contaminated areas.

The MoD submitted a 41-page document to the royal commission that was supposed to be a complete list of Australian personnel, with daily radiation dosages recorded against their names. The original classified document, which is held by the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, contains a list that runs to at least 75 pages.

The Independent has seen a portion of the original document. A comparison with the royal commission's version shows names have been deleted, including those of men who recorded high radiation dosages.

The maximum permissible dosage was 0.5 millirems per year of radiation absorbed by the body. Yet some of the servicemen removed from the list received as much as 5.2mrem in a single hit. Those names struck out include members of the Indoctrination Force, a group of officers who watched detonations at Maralinga from close quarters, and personnel who were at Monte Bello for the first test, Operation Hurricane, and who are known to have been exposed to high levels of radiation.

Britain exploded 12 atomic bombs on Australian territory between 1952 and 1958, with tests also done on Christmas Island in the South Pacific. Some 22,000 British and 16,000 Australian servicemen took part in the trials.

The dosages were based mainly on data from radiation detection badges, which were worn by the men and contained a small piece of negative film. Some people were also swept with Geiger counters after they returned from contaminated areas. Many of the men were informed, misleadingly, that their badges would change colour if they were exposed to a dangerous level of radiation.

The royal commission found that only 40 per cent of badges functioned properly. Sheila Gray, secretary of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans Association, whose late husband, Frank, suffered multiple health problems after being sent to Monte Bello in 1952, said the badges were not taken seriously. Mr Gray told her that after he watched one detonation from a ship, the Narvik, "they threw the badges into a bucket, and when the bucket was full, they tipped it into the sea".

In Canberra, meanwhile, there were calls yesterday for an investigation into allegations reported by The Independent this week that disabled people were flown from Britain to Maralinga and used in experiments on the effects of radiation.

Lyn Allison, a member of the opposition Democrats in the Senate, said: "If it is true that people with disabilities were brought to Australia ... then there are some very serious questions about how they came to be here." A Royal Air Force pilot who claims to have flown disabled people to Australia has been identified as Allen Robinson, who went on to work in disability services in Perth.

-------- britain

UK BNFL hopes to restart Wylfa nuke this summer

UK: June 14, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11191

LONDON - British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) said yesterday it hopes to restart its 980-megawatt Wylfa nuclear power station in Wales this summer.

Wylfa, BNFL's biggest nuclear power station, has been closed since April 20, 2000 after the discovery of faulty welds on steam pipes.

"Repairs are progressing well and we hope to restart the plant within the next couple of months," a BNFL spokesman told Reuters.

But he said the restart would depend on getting the go-ahead from Britain's nuclear regulator, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII).

Gaining clearance for the restart could prove a lengthy process, he said.

BNFL had to wait until March this year for the NII's permission to start repairing the plant.

BNFL had to submit detailed plans of its proposed repairs before starting the work.

------

Ireland challenges Britain over nuclear plant

UK: June 14, 2001
Story by Mike Collett-White
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11177

LONDON - Ireland said yesterday it was taking action against the British government over a controversial nuclear fuel manufacturing plant in northwest England which has yet to start operating.

Joe Jacob, Ireland's minister responsible for nuclear safety, said he would take Britain to an arbitration panel for withholding information he says is crucial to deciding whether the plant should start up or not.

The government is expected to decide shortly whether to give the go-ahead to the 482-million-pound ($660-million) mixed oxide (MOX) fuel plant at Sellafield. Although the plant was completed four years ago, approval has been held up by fears that there are not enough customers for the fuel.

Before it can be allowed to start operating, the plant, owned by state-run British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), has to pass a test required by European law proving that the benefits of a practice involving ionising radiation outweigh environmental damage.

Jacob said in a statement that the Irish action "relates to the withholding by the UK, on grounds of commercial confidentiality, information essential to assessing the justification of the full commissioning" of the plant.

Jacob, who has consistently opposed the facility, also said Ireland was preparing further legal action if Britain eventually gave the plant the thumbs-up.

The action makes use of the OSPAR convention for the protection of the marine environment in the northeast Atlantic, which both Ireland and Britain have signed.

The convention states that information on such projects may be withheld only for a limited number of specific reasons, which include commercial or industrial confidentiality.

It is this point that Ireland and Britain are likely to dispute before a three-strong arbitration panel, comprising one member appointed by each and one independent member.

The British government is already under fire from environmental groups who oppose the Sellafield plant.

Critics of MOX fuel, including the environmental lobby groups Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, say it is more expensive than uranium - the fuel most reactors burn - and requires modifications to most reactors before it can be used.

They say MOX has no real market and increases stockpiles of highly toxic plutonium. But BNFL argues that MOX is a good way of re-using a valuable commodity and says the order book for Sellafield has now reached break-even.

The Irish action also throws the spotlight on Britain's attitude to freedom of information amid accusations that the government too readily hides behind legal loopholes and its own official secrets legislation.

-------- business

G.E. Says European Approval of Honeywell Purchase Unlikely

June 14, 2001
By JACK LYNCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/14/business/14CND-ELEC.html

The General Electric Company said today that it was "not optimistic" that European regulators would approve its proposed $45 billion takeover of Honeywell International Inc., even though it offered to sell off businesses with $2.2 billion in revenue to satisfy antitrust concerns.

The company said its "final, detailed package" of proposed divestitures fell far short of the demands of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union. It said the commission wanted it to divest "billions more."

John F. Welch Jr., G.E.'s chairman and chief executive, said the company "wanted to complete the transaction, but we have always said there is a point at which we wouldn't do the deal."

"The commission's extraordinary demands are far beyond that point," he said in a company statement, adding, "The European regulators' demands exceeded anything I or our European advisers imagined, and differed sharply from antitrust counterparts in the U.S. and Canada," which have already cleared the deal subject to conditions.

Honeywell, meanwhile, indicated that it was prepared for the possibility that it might not be acquired by G.E. "We have a comprehensive contingency plan in place if we must move forward as an independent company," Michael R. Bonsignore, Honeywell's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

With the acquisition increasingly in doubt, shares of Honeywell fell $5.16, to close at $37.10, by this afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange. But G.E.'s shares gained $1.01, to $48.86.

G.E. and Honeywell faced a deadline at midnight Brussels time (6 p.m. Eastern time) to submit a proposal addressing the commission's concerns that the Honeywell deal would enable it to dominate the European market for jet engines and other aerospace products.

G.E. said it offered to divest several Honeywell aerospace divisions, including those making business and regional jet engines, air turbine starters, and some avionic and non-avionic products.

General Electric also offered to make changes to the way that GE Capital's aircraft-leasing arm, GE Capital Aviation Services, operates. It said it would set up GE Capital Aviation as a separate "ring-fenced" entity to deal with Honeywell "at arms length." The leasing arm has taken center stage in the negotiations ever since new complaints about it emerged at hearings involving G.E., Honeywell, their competitors and the European regulators at the end of May.

European regulators and G.E.'s rivals are worried that GE Capital Aviation, the largest aircraft-leasing company, will buy only Honeywell aerospace products, just as it chiefly buys G.E. jet engines. Between a quarter and a fifth of all commercial aircraft are leased by airlines.

Despite the midnight deadline, negotiating is expected to continue beyond it, with a European Commission deadline of July 12. Indeed, last-minute concessions to European regulators by Boeing salvaged its acquisition of McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

On Wednesday, Mr. Welch met twice with Mario Monti, the European competition commissioner, in an effort to win approval of the Honeywell deal.

The European Commission said today that it would continue to review General Electric's proposal. Mr. Monti said in a statement that the commission was prepared to consider "improved commitments" in G.E.'s proposal before the midnight deadline.

Once the deadline for concessions expires today, the commission must conduct a so-called market test of the regulatory steps it considers viable. A summary of these concessions will be sent to rivals and their lawyers, after which the commission will draft a preliminary conclusion to its investigation.

This will be sent to national competition regulators of European Union members. These national regulators will then be summoned to Brussels to meet with the commission's competitiveness team, and as long as a majority of them do not oppose the commission's position, the proposed decision will be scheduled for a final vote by the 20 European commissioners. They are likely to take that vote on July 4 or July 11.

-------- canada

Pakistan Foreign Minister's Visit First Since Freeze Over Bomb Tests

Thursday's Canada Briefs
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 14, 2001; 9:58 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010614/aponline215809_000.htm

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) - Abdul Sattar, Pakistan's foreign minister, flies to Ottawa on Friday for the first high-level Canada-Pakistan meeting since the nuclear test crisis of 1998.

Sattar is to meet Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley to discuss a range of topics, including the growth of democracy in the south Asian nation and steps to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.

When Pakistan detonated five nuclear devices in May 1998, following three tests by India, Canada froze relations with both countries, recalling its high commissioners. Non-humanitarian aid was suspended, along with ministerial contacts and trade delegations.

"These tests, following India's nuclear tests, have grave implications for world security, regional stability and the nonproliferation regime," Lloyd Axworthy, then-foreign affairs minister said in 1998. "We continue to urge Pakistan and India to renounce their nuclear weapons programs and to sign both the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty."

Ottawa lifted sanctions against India in March, but not against Pakistan, saying the military coup of 1999 in Pakistan had made the situation there worse.

Sattar's visit indicates there may be a softening.

"We look at this visit as an opportunity to reinforce Canada's commitment to a transition to democracy in Pakistan," a Foreign Affairs spokesman said.

"Canada is also concerned regarding nuclear nonproliferation issues in the region."

The spokesman wouldn't say this represents a thaw, but it might reflect an effort to encourage Pakistan's progress toward democracy after local elections there earlier this year.

-------- europe

NATO Summit - Allies fail to share vision thing over rogue states

THURSDAY JUNE 14 2001
ANALYSIS BY MICHAEL EVANS
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2001200322,00.html

PRESIDENT Bush may frighten Russia, China and many of America's Nato allies with his plans for a limited missile defence system. But, based on his performance in Brussels yesterday, he clearly believes his faith in the "Son of Star Wars" programme will be enough to win over doubters.

Although Nato leaders have now had a crash course on the potential threats posed by ballistic missiles in the hands of so-called rogue states, most have shown little sign of sharing that faith.

They have seen the same intelligence photographs provided by the CIA and the National Security Agency, outlining the missile programmes under way in North Korea, Iran and Iraq, but their response has been different to Washington's. As one American aide put it: "They've seen the same slides and they don't seem to agree with our assessment."

While some Nato allies appear to have more faith in diplomacy in countering such threats, Mr Bush believes in the power of military technology. It's a superpower thing.

Despite the continuing scepticism, the responses are beginning to change subtly. Italy, under its new leader, Silvio Berlusconi, is moving towards Washington's view. Tony Blair spoke yesterday of the need to look at all options for countering the perceived missile threat, including "defensive and offensive" weapons.

Nato officials deny that there is any US-versus-Europe battle over missile defence. But there are noticeable movements inside the alliance indicating two strands in the debate. The countries showing a more understanding approach to missile defence include Turkey, Spain, Italy, Poland and Hungary. Perhaps for reasons of geography, they can see how the missile threat could pose a real danger to their nations.

Mr Blair was careful not to endorse the concept of missile defence, and yet his words were not those of a leader who has made up his mind to fight the scrapping of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty at all costs. The Cold War agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union lies at the heart of the problem faced by Mr Bush in his discussions with allies. His opponents see it as central to the regime of arms control.

France and Germany, on the other hand, oppose any move to scrap the ABM Treaty and their stand could persuade other alliance members to oppose Mr Bush. Much will depend on President Putin, the Russian leader. If he gives any indication that the ABM Treaty could be modified or "set aside", as Mr Bush puts it, the thrust of the argument in favour of missile defence could change dramatically.

As far as the alliance is concerned, there still remains a significant gulf in perception between the US and the rest of Nato. Mr Bush is trying to impress on Nato that it should adopt a new global strategic concept based on different security layers of which missile defence would only be one element. Judging by many of the European responses, it has been difficult for Europe's leaders to grasp this new thinking.

-------- india / pakistan

India's Punjab says 'no' to nuclear plant

INDIA: June 14, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11192

CHANDIGARH, India - The northern Indian state of Punjab says it had no plans to build a nuclear power plant despite an acute energy shortage.

"No nuclear plant will be established in the state - the government is not even contemplating such a move," State Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal told representatives of 25 villages in the Patiala district south of the state capital Chandigarh.

His comments came soon after the Atomic Energy Commission conducted a preliminary survey of 12 potential sites in the state for a plant.

Badal's announcement followed protests in Patiala over reports of plans for a nuclear plant.

Punjab is facing an acute power shortage that is hurting both agricultural and industrial output. At present it draws power from the northern grid but due to overloading there are frequent power failures that plunge the state into darkness.

The neighbouring Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh has surplus power but no purchase proposal has been finalised yet.

-------- missile defense

U.S. Lawmaker Accuses Pentagon of Suppressing Adverse NMD Report

Thurs. Jun 14, 2001
By GAIL KAUFMAN and GOPAL RATNAM
Special to Space News
http://www.space.com/spacenews/spacepolicy/nmd_accusation_010613.html

WASHINGTON - A key U.S. lawmaker asserts in a June 12 letter to top congressional leaders that the Pentagon repeatedly has suppressed an internal report that "highlights severe deficiencies" revealed in tests of the U.S. National Missile Defense program.

Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., a House Government Reform Committee member has asked U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to explain why the Pentagon will not allow the public release of last August's National Missile Defense (NMD) Deployment Readiness Review written by Philip Coyle, former director of operational test and evaluation at the Pentagon.

Tierney asserts that Coyle's report has never been classified by the Department of Defense.

The Massachusetts legislator said in a separate June 12 letter to Rumsfeld that he wants by June 15 a "detailed justification of the Department's rationale for the continued suppression of the document." Space News obtained a copy of Tierney's letter.

After formally requesting six times that the Pentagon provide Congress a copy of Coyle's report on NMD, Tierney and members of congressional defense committees, received the 80-page report May 31. The cover letter of the report, signed by Stewart Aly, acting deputy general counsel, warns Congress that the Pentagon has not approved the release of the report and that it should be disclosed only to those who "have an official need to see it."

A congressional source told Space News that Tierney will release the report to the public early next week if Rumsfeld does not provide this information.

In a June 12 letter to Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the Government Reform subcommittee on national security, veterans affairs and international relations, Tierney quotes Coyle's report, which lays out the hazards of deploying an imperfect missile defense system.

For example, in simulated tests, Coyle describes a malfunction of the NMD's command and control system, during which it was confused by signals from different radars tracking the same incoming missile. The command and control system mistakenly identified the signal of a second tracking radar as that of a second incoming missile. During the simulated test, the command and control system then launched interceptors at the nonexistent missile, Tierney wrote in referring to Coyle's report.

Tierney noted that phantom tracks arise when radar coverage makes a transition from one radar to another.

"Efforts to manually override such launches, moreover, were unsuccessful," Tierney quoted the report as saying. "One can imagine the potential hazards that could arise in future deployment scenarios if the United States launches multiple interceptors against missiles that do not exist," Tierney said. "One immediate danger in these types of situations is that adversaries may interpret these launches as a hostile first strike and respond accordingly."

Tierney also told Shays that if the administration of President George W. Bush wants to implement a system by 2004, it only strengthens the need to hold more congressional hearings and for the General Accounting Office to conduct an investigation.

----

France and Germany Caution Bush on Missile Defense Plan

New York Times
June 14, 2001
By FRANK BRUNI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/14/world/14PREX.html?searchpv=nytToday

BRUSSELS, June 13 - Leaders of the Atlantic alliance clashed today over President Bush's challenge to three decades of conventional wisdom about European security, with the heads of France and Germany contradicting Mr. Bush's declaration that there was a "new receptivity" to his plan for a missile defense shield.

Although Mr. Bush said he had made "good progress here in Europe" on the plan, the reactions of those two key allies showed he is still confronting profound apprehensions about abandoning the 1972 Antiballistic Missile treaty between Washington and Moscow.

Mr. Bush would have to set the accord aside in order to proceed with building a missile defense system, a step that he signaled anew today he is wholly willing to take. Some European leaders fear this would lead to a new arms race.

The strongest expression of that opinion came from the French president, Jacques Chirac, who said after a NATO meeting here that a missile shield represented a "fantastic incentive to proliferate" weapons because terrorists or hostile states would build more arms in an attempt to trump the new defenses.

Earlier, during the meeting, Mr. Chirac told Mr. Bush and other NATO leaders that France was "ready to participate actively" in a discussion about the defenses necessary for a post-cold-war world, but that he felt keenly "the need to preserve strategic balances, of which the ABM treaty is a pillar."

The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, also indicated skepticism about the missile project. "We still see a host of issues that need to be clarified," he said, "and therefore we must and indeed will be continuing intensive discussions on this subject."

But Bush administration officials said that beyond those reactions - from two of the most influential members of NATO - was a new willingness at least to consider the idea, a change in tone and language that reflected a serious consideration of Mr. Bush's plan.

Administration officials cited a long list of allies whose leaders indicated an interest in the plan today, ranging from an open-minded curiosity to support.

Foremost on that list were former Soviet bloc countries like Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, but the list also included Italy, Britain, Turkey and Spain.

"If I could capture what we were hearing," said one senior administration official, "it was, `We very much appreciate the president's decisions to consult fully, we understand that there is a threat, we want to work with the United States.' "

Even so, the statements by Mr. Chirac and Mr. Schröder, along with an even tougher dissent by Prime Minister Wim Kok of the Netherlands, demonstrated that the administration, despite months of intensive pitches in Washington and abroad, still had plenty of persuading to do.

Mr. Bush in one sense left the NATO meeting as he had arrived, amid a swirl of unanswered questions and lingering suspicions about a vast military project that would change the entire architecture of American and European security in ways that are not yet clear.

Indeed, European officials said that the plan remained too vague for them to re-evaluate or pin down their positions and that, as they had expected, Mr. Bush did not fill in the blanks today.

He instead simply stated his general case, and they had come to hear it because they wanted to extend that courtesy to a new president whose personality, priorities and style they are still trying to assess. Several European officials said Mr. Bush was more impressive than they had expected, though they also said their expectations were low.

Mr. Bush was certainly delighted by the way they received him. At a news conference after the meeting, as he stood beside the secretary general, Lord Robertson, in a small theater, he was as lively, loquacious and confident as he ever gets in such formal settings, though a few of his locutions were typically odd.

"There's some nervousness, and I understand that," Mr. Bush said, describing the reaction among allies to his vision of a missile shield. "But it's beginning to be allayed when they hear the logic behind the rationale."

The NATO meeting today was one of two big opportunities this week for Mr. Bush, on his first overseas trip as president, to make a positive impression on European leaders and to try to quell their fears that the United States is pursuing an increasingly arrogant, self-centered foreign policy.

On Thursday, when he heads to Sweden for a summit meeting of the European Union, he will sit down again with European leaders, though the focus of their discussions is likely to turn toward environmental and social issues.

As he talked with NATO leaders today and then answered questions at the news conference, he was careful in many ways to project an awareness of European concerns about a missile defense shield, and a willingness to address them.

"I hope the notion of a unilateral approach died in some people's minds here today," Mr. Bush said at the news conference, referring to European worries that the United States was poised to go it alone on several issues of common concern. "Unilateralists don't come around the table to listen to others and to share opinion."

He said any new approach to security must "include greater nonproliferation and counterproliferation efforts." He vowed to "reach out to Russian leaders," indicating his recognition of the importance that some European leaders attach to the consent of Russia before a missile system is built.

But at the same time, Mr. Bush seemed to be serving notice that he planned to do what he wanted to do, and that his intention in talking to European allies was largely to bring them around to his point of view, not to alter his own. "I'm intent upon doing what I think is the right thing in order to make the world more peaceful," he said.

A senior administration official expressed confidence that the alliance would come along and said it would be unrealistic, this early in Mr. Bush's presidency, to expect "that allies would stand up and salute without thinking about it."

But according to another senior administration official, a few allies came close to doing that. This official, reading from notes taken during the NATO meeting, said President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland called Mr. Bush's plan a "visionary, courageous and logical idea."

The official said the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was also optimistic, and at a news conference of his own after the meeting, Mr. Berlusconi said the discussion featured "nuances of opinion, but not a real attitude of rejection."

"We agreed that it is necessary for a new, innovative approach in our policies towards these new threats," he said.

German officials said that despite their grave reservations about missile defense, they took at least some consolation from Mr. Bush's assurances today that he would not deploy a system that had not proved effective in tests.

That statement indicated an approach more restrained than the one that had been telegraphed recently by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Germans took it as a sign that there would still be a significant stretch of time before the disagreements between some European countries and the United States on the issue came to a head.

Mr. Bush and other American officials had a strong interest in portraying the meeting as a success and were clearly excited about it. They seemed to feel that the president had navigated an important rite of passage as successfully as they could have hoped he would.

But it was impossible to know for sure because the Europeans, disinclined to offend the new president, tried to hew to as tactful and diplomatic a tone as they could. That was one reason the statements by Mr. Chirac and Mr. Schröder were so striking.

Mr. Bush was still pumped up when, later this afternoon, he stopped with the first lady, Laura Bush, at Mary's Chocolatier to sample the wares.

"I was very pleased," he said, adding that he witnessed "a willingness for countries to think differently and to listen to different points of view."

But Mr. Bush's most difficult discussion about missiles may be the one he holds on Saturday in Slovenia with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. One of Mr. Putin's advisers, Igor S. Sergeyev, said today that Moscow's opposition to amending or abandoning the ABM treaty remained "categorical and unchanged."

----

China, Russia Join Against U.S. Missile Defense

New York Times
June 14, 2001
By REUTERS Filed at 8:45 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-s.html?searchpv=reuters

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese President Jiang Zemin and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin showed a united front on Thursday against U.S. plans to build a national missile defense (NMD) system.

But Jiang sounded a conciliatory note on sensitive China-U.S. ties, calling for a ``constructive'' relationship with Washington, according to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

Jiang and Putin met in Shanghai to kick off a six-nation summit aimed at combating Islamic militancy in Central Asia just days before Putin is due to meet President Bush in Slovenia.

The Shanghai Five -- China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan -- and the group's new member Uzbekistan are expected to join forces against Bush's missile defense plans as he heads into a summit with the European Union.

``President Putin reiterated Russia's principled position on that matter and China stated that it will continue to support Russia in its efforts to maintain the global equilibrium,'' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao told a news conference.

Jiang's meeting with Putin was the first of three planned for this year as Moscow and Beijing, former rivals for leadership of the Communist world, forge a new alliance based largely on fears of Islamic separatist unrest and on opposition to U.S. policies.

On NMD, Ivanov said: ``Our views on this fully coincide with China.''

But he added that Jiang and Putin had discussed the Russian leader's coming meeting with Bush.

``The Chinese side attaches great importance to its relations with the United States for international stability,'' he said. ``The Chinese leadership intends to pursue a constructive policy in its relations with Washington.''

CHINA TO STUDY PROPOSALS

Kremlin officials said on Wednesday Bush's NMD plan posed a threat to global security, backing up China's frequent warnings that the plan could trigger a new global arms race.

Moscow and Beijing also share common ground in seeking to offset growing U.S. influence in oil-rich Central Asia, where the Russian and British empires jostled for power in the Great Game of the 19th Century, analysts say.

The United States is already the largest foreign investor in Kazakhstan's oil and gas industries and Washington has provided millions of dollars in military aid to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The Shanghai Five, formed in 1996 to resolve lingering Sino-Soviet border disputes, admitted Uzbekistan as a new member on Thursday and agreed to change its name to the ''Shanghai Cooperation Organization,'' Zhu said.

The group would sign two agreements on Friday, one on the establishment of the new organization and one on boosting cross-border cooperation to combat ``extremists, separatists and terrorists,'' he said.

The chief concern of most member states is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has led armed incursions across the region over the last two years in an attempt to create an independent Islamic state.

Underlining its determination to crack down on the group, Uzbekistan jailed 73 people last week for up to 18 years for aiding IMU gunmen who killed 20 Uzbek soldiers in a raid on the south of the country last year.

FEARS OF UNREST

China fears such unrest will fuel a separatist movement in its northwestern region of Xinjiang, where Muslim radicals from the Uighur ethnic minority have carried out bomb attacks and murdered government officials.

Authorities have thrown a tight security net around Shanghai for the summit, only revealing the meeting's venue to reporters late on Wednesday.

Security is of paramount importance at the meeting, which is seen as a test of China's ability to hold a large international event as it campaigns to host the 2008 Olympics Games in Beijing.

Reporters were required to go through two security checks before every meeting and were whisked by bus to and from the venues through streets specially cordoned off for the summit.

The city government plans to shut down major roads, close schools and encourage businesses to take a day off on Friday to guarantee its guests a swift and safe passage.

----

Bush sees warning to defense plan
But some key NATO allies still skeptical

By Anne E. Kornblut,
Globe Staff,
6/14/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/165/nation/Bush_sees_warning_to_defense_plan-.shtml

BRUSSELS - President Bush, unfazed by a stiff undercurrent of criticism as he arrived for his first meeting with NATO allies, made an impassioned pitch for a US missile defense system yesterday and emerged saying he had found ''new receptivity'' toward one of his most controversial policies.

Indeed, White House officials said they considered the missile shield an easier sell than the president's stance on global warming, another contentious issue that has dominated his trip to Europe. At least six NATO nations - Spain, Italy, Poland, Canada, the Czech Republic, and Hungary - showed support for the missile program, US officials said.

But other major NATO leaders expressed renewed skepticism after their meeting with Bush. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who had a tense introduction to Bush at the White House earlier this year, repeated his commitment to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that Bush has declared all but dead. And French President Jacques Chirac called the missile shield proposal ''a fantastic incentive to proliferate.''

Despite the mixed public response to one of the pillars of administration policy, White House officials sounded encouraged by the overall tenor of the meeting, the president's first real diplomatic test on his five-day trip. And Bush himself appeared downright ebullient. In a press conference with NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson, the president gave an animated account of his earlier meeting with the Europeans, then bounced from foreign policy topic to foreign policy topic with aplomb.

Bush also offered his sharpest account to date of his thinking about deploying the proposed missile shield, which has failed a number of tests and has unresolved technical flaws. Asked whether he would launch the system before it is proven successful, Bush replied, ''Of course we're not going to deploy a system that doesn't work.

''What good will that do?'' Bush said. ''We'll only deploy a system that does work in order to keep the peace. But we must have the flexibility and opportunity to explore all options.''

That response was expected to come as a relief to many European leaders, who have said they are concerned about the possibility of starting a new arms race if the missile shield is begun before all the diplomatic disputes are resolved. If the United States waits until the technology has been shown to work, it could buy a substantial amount of time.

Bush's comments also contrasted with remarks earlier this year by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said the system ''need not be perfect'' to deter enemy attacks.

Today, the debate is expected to shift to the considerably more contentious issues of global warming and the environment, as Bush travels to Goteborg, a western seaside city in Sweden (a country no sitting US president has ever been to before, White House officials said). Many of the expected participants in the 15-member European Union meeting were at yesterday's Brussels meeting, and Bush hopes a second day with the heads of state will help deepen fledgling personal relationships that have, in some cases, been awkward.

Sensitive to the images of Bush that have dominated the European press - that of a foreign policy ignoramus, an American unilateralist, a cowboy who favors the death penalty - White House chief of staff Andrew Card yesterday said relationship building takes time but is part of the normal process undergone by any new president.

''Every new president is some kind of caricature in Europe until the first trip,'' Card said. Of European leaders, he said, ''They'll come to know him.''

Meanwhile, police in Sweden were bracing for protesters, who have dogged Bush for two days. In Brussels yesterday, police arrested a Greenpeace activist who parachuted near NATO headquarters with a banner that read ''Stop Star Wars,'' and an estimated 300-400 protesters lined the streets.

The debate over missile defense, while of great importance within Europe, is aimed primarily at Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Bush is scheduled to meet in Slovenia on Saturday.

Although Bush has indicated he will abrogate the joint US-Russia ABM treaty without Putin's agreement if necessary - and yesterday said he was ''intent upon doing what I think is the right thing'' - he hopes to persuade Putin to join in a new arrangement. White House officials have not specified whether that would take the form of a new treaty and have repeatedly said they do not have a detailed proposal in mind.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has straddled the line between endorsing and rejecting the missile defense proposal, yesterday welcomed the debate over the system without backing it outright. Still, his was among the most positive reactions to the message Bush brought to NATO.

''There are highly unstable states developing nuclear arsenals, and we have to look at all ways, including missile defense systems, of countering that threat,'' Blair said, according to Britain's domestic wire service.

Bush and his advisers indicated that they received more support behind closed doors than in public, and indeed, there was no immediate condemnation of him after the meeting. Even Chirac said France would ''participate actively'' in the debate.

''Some allies were strongly, vocally for missile defenses,'' a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''One ally spoke of ... a sort of moral imperative to develop defenses because, as he put it, this is, after all, a defensive alliance, and it is better to rely on defenses to protect ourselves.'' Asked whether Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain, and possibly the United Kingdom were among the supportive nations, the official said, ''I won't deny it.''

Comparing the state of the debate to the brouhaha over the 1997 Kyoto agreement on global warming, the official said: ''I think we've made more conceptual headway on strategic issues and missile defense than on Kyoto.''

As for his meetings with allies, Bush said, ''I'm making good progress on this issue here in Europe. There's some nervousness, and I understand that. But it's beginning to be allayed when they hear the logic behind the rationale.''

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 6/14/2001.

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Data-entry error blamed for cancer deaths

Nation & World :
Thursday, June 14, 2001
By Vanessa Gera
The Associated Press
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=radiation14&date=20010614

VIENNA - Scientists are warning hospitals that data entered incorrectly in a computer program used in radiation therapy for cancer patients has caused at least five deaths in Panama.

For 28 cancer patients, healthy tissue was inadvertently exposed to high levels of radiation, David Kyd, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, said yesterday. So far, five deaths have been linked to the radiation exposure, while two other deaths are from "ambiguous" causes, he said. One patient died from cancer. Agency experts expect two-thirds of the surviving patients to develop serious complications.

The software, made by St. Louis-based Multidata Systems International, is most commonly used in North America.

Robert Ayres, spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said it is looking into the problem, although "we don't think it's likely that this has occurred in the United States." Ayres said the commission sent notices about the Panama deaths June 1 and 6 to all users of cobalt-60 teletherapy machines - the type used on the affected patients - although he said the software could be used with other machines.

The affected patients, all being treated for pelvic cancer at Panama City's National Oncology Institute, received dangerous doses of radiation between August and February.

Doctors realized in December that an abnormally high number of patients had chronic diarrhea. When they could find no other explanation for the symptoms, they concluded something must be wrong with the treatment and stopped it in February.

After an investigation, the Panamanian government asked the international agency in mid-May to verify its findings.

Radiologists using the program assumed the computer software had a fail-safe mechanism that would prevent healthy tissue from being exposed to radiation, Kyd said.

But the five radiology experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency found health-care workers incorrectly entered the data, administering dangerous levels of radiation to healthy tissue.

Kyd said, "had the instruction manual been followed to the letter, this wouldn't have happened. But this wasn't done."

-------- russia

'We Should Not Expect a Breakthrough'
Q&A With Russian Scholar Vladimir Baranovsky

washingtonpost.com
Thursday, June 14, 2001; 4:18 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3034-2001Jun14?language=printer

Vladimir Baranovsky, deputy director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, answered questions on washingtonpost.com about the Saturday meeting between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Lublijana, Slovenia. Here are edited excerpts from the discussion. For the complete transcript, visit the Live Online archive.

How would you characterize the current state of U.S.-Russia relations on the eve of the first meeting between presidents Bush and Putin?

Vladimir Baranovsky: During the last several months, we have passed through [a] period that was certainly not the best in the history of relations between the two states. However, the very fact of having [a] Russian-American summit seems promising. We should not expect a breakthrough, but hopefully it will be possible to set [an] agenda for future development in the spirit of constructive interaction.

What issues would Russia like to see on the Bush-Putin agenda? What is the most important area of concern?

Dr. Baranovsky: I would offer two levels of the agenda. There are concrete issues deserving discussions and at least attempts to find some common language, such as Ballistic Missile Defense, Middle East, nuclear (non)proliferation and so on. And there is a more substantial and future oriented theme: how to organize the emerging international system by joining [the] effort[s] of all those who would like to prevent chaos and [a] destabilizing rivalry.

Are U.S. plans for a national missile defense shield ultimately destabilizing?

Dr. Baranovsky: From the technological point of view, an effective national missile defense is only a theory for the time being. Whereas destabilizing consequences might be very concrete, and not in [the] distant future. Destroying arms control, pushing Russia to look for countermeasures, creating incentives for intensive nuclear re-armament of China and so on -- the price seems rather high. What seems essential here is the need to look for common approaches, even when there is a temptation to carry out a radical breakthrough on the basis of the technological and financial resources that the [U.S.] possess.

Has Russia felt threatened by NATO since expansion of the alliance in 1999? How does Russia view future NATO enlargement?

Dr. Baranovsky: Russia [has] a negative attitude towards the enlargement of NATO. But I would not say that Russia has felt an increased threat from NATO. Russia's negativism is not so much about "threats" in [the] traditional sense of this word, but rather about [the] political implications of the process of enlargement. Russia believes that there could be other forms of organizing the post-cold war international relations in Europe rather than turning the continent into a NATO-centred system -- a system to which Russia does not have access. The next phase of NATO enlargement could be a source of new tensions unless Russia's direct relations with NATO are significantly promoted and upgraded.

Will recent espionage cases and concern over espionage cloud the Bush-Putin meeting? Are the two presidents likely to discuss these matters?

Dr. Baranovsky: Espionage cases do not seem to me [to be] deserving [a] very high place on the agenda of Bush-Putin summit. But there might be a political decision to close this "dossier" or at least to refrain from initiating other noisy scandals.

How have events in Russia such as the Kursk submarine incident and the war in Chechnya affected Russia's self-image and will they affect President Putin's standing in the meeting in Slovenia?

Dr. Baranovsky: The catastrophe of [the] Kursk submarine was a shocking event for Russian public consciousness. Chechnya is an extremely painful problem. Both have been and still are subjects of serious domestic debates, often with very controversial assessments and recommendations as well as with strong criticism concerning the performance of official authorities. On the international arena, domestic problems do not make the standing of any political leader stronger. But this should not affect the international agenda... that deserves serious attention... whatever domestic problems for any political leader might be.

How will Russian media cover Saturday's summit meeting?

Dr. Baranovsky: I believe there will be considerable attention on the part of mass media, but not excessive expectations. The very fact of the summit is broadly considered to be a positive sign.

----

Superpowers' fail-safe fails to materialize

By Peter Baker,
Boston Globe
6/14/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/165/nation/Superpowers_fail_safe_fails_to_materializeP.shtml

MOSCOW - To prevent false alarms about missile launches with catastrophic consequences, the United States and Russia decided to build a joint nuclear early warning center to share information. They liked the idea so much that they announced it twice.

Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin first unveiled the plan to ''avert nuclear war by mistake,'' as Clinton put it, in September 1998. When Clinton came back here in June 2000, the two countries pulled out the news release again. ''A milestone in enhancing strategic security,'' said Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin.

Yet now, as the presidents of Russia and the United States prepare for another summit, this ''milestone'' remains nothing more than an abandoned kindergarten building surrounded by overgrown shrubbery on the outskirts of Moscow. Planning for the early warning center has ground to a halt, stymied by conflicting priorities, geopolitics, and legal issues.

After Clinton and Yeltsin first agreed to the plan, the war in Kosovo the following spring soured Russia on the West and everything was put on hold for nearly a year. After relations thawed a bit, Clinton and Putin signed a memorandum of understanding last June to put it back on track.

But it became mired in details - Russians said their law required Americans to pay taxes on the equipment brought into the country and to assume liability for construction, while the US side did not want to set a precedent that would affect larger aid programs. More important, the project lost momentum in the lame-duck days of the Clinton administration and has remained frozen pending the Bush team's review of its Russia policy. The two sides have not met for months.

The three-year odyssey of the early warning center that wasn't offers a lesson in how good intentions can go awry when it comes to relations between the world's two major nuclear powers. The failure to establish the center underscores the limitations of international summitry and the difficulty of turning rhetoric into reality.

Presidents Bush and Putin will meet for the first time in Slovenia on Saturday with missile defense at the top of the agenda. But if the two countries cannot find a way to jointly build an $8 million center considered noncontroversial by both sides, collaboration on a hotly disputed $100 billion missile defense system promises to be far more problematic.

''This shows very clearly that if it's just a political ploy to make everybody look better, then nobody will move it forward,'' said Pavel Podvig, a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies in Moscow. ''We are no longer in that mode where anything cooperative is such a great idea that all the bureaucracies would just clear away.''

Perhaps more ominously, in the view of arms control specialists, the stalemate over the early warning center leaves unaddressed a problem with potentially disastrous ramifications: Russia's huge blind spots in detecting missile launches. A mistaken warning could cause Russian leaders to launch their own missiles and trigger an unintended nuclear conflagration.

As it was, the joint warning center was seen by experts such as Podvig as an inadequate response to a serious problem, one that would be useful mostly if it served as a first step to a more meaningful solution. Critics asked whether Russians would really trust American data showing that the United States was not attacking.

Theodore Postol, a national security specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that initially he considered the joint plan not serious enough, but at least ''a good thing'' in the context of a broader approach to the issue. Now, given the result, he has come to see it as a propaganda tool by the Americans.

''This has just been a smoke screen to look like they're doing something when they're not,'' Postol said. ''I really lay this at the feet of the Americans because they have the resources.''

The notion of shared early warning information arose shortly after the end of the Cold War. In February 1992, just weeks after the collapse of the Soviet Union, US and Russian officials began discussing the creation of a center where each side would have access to data from the other.

The danger of misunderstanding became vividly evident in 1995 when Russian military officials briefly mistook the launch of a Norwegian scientific rocket for a US intercontinental ballistic missile. Yeltsin was brought his black suitcase known as the ''nuclear football'' to make a decision about whether to retaliate, but the Russians came to conclude that they were not under attack.

The potential for trouble has only intensified since then with the deterioration of the Russian early warning system. Only two to four of the nine high-elliptical satellites that Russia had in orbit in 1995 are still functioning today, according to arms control experts, and at least seven hours a day Russia is blind to possible launches from US missile fields. Just last month, a fire at a ground control center cut off communications with several military satellites.

Russia built seven satellites to reestablish full coverage but has never launched them, apparently for lack of money.

The decision to build a Joint Data Exchange Center would create the first permanent US-Russian military facility, modeled on a temporary joint center established in Colorado to deal with the Year 2000 computer bug.

According to Pentagon briefing papers, the center would be staffed 24 hours a day by a detachment of 16 US officers joined by a similar number of Russians. US and Russian officers would sit back to back, each with computers linked to their respective early warning headquarters.

Officials picked a site for the facility, but today the building sits empty and unrenovated in a leafy residential neighborhood in Moscow. Instead of being in its operational test phase, as planned for this month on the way to a September opening, it serves mostly as a clandestine hangout for young beer drinkers.

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

Minuteman Missile Returns to S.D.

June 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Minuteman-Missile.html?searchpv=aponline

WALL, S.D. (AP) -- During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, President John F. Kennedy referred to it as his ``ace in the hole.''

With a turn of the key, the Minuteman missile became one of the most significant strategic weapons in U.S. history, capable of delivering its nuclear weapon to a Soviet target in 30 minutes or less.

For nearly three decades, the 44th Missile Wing, based at Ellsworth Air Force Base, was ground zero -- standing watch over a 150-missile deployment, covering 13,500 square miles of the upper Midwest.

But On July, 4, 1994, in compliance with a U.S.-Russian treaty, the 44th Missile Wing was inactivated, a victim of its own success. The war had been won.

On Thursday, a potent symbol of the Cold War era returns to this peaceful corner of the Prairies with the installation of a 56-foot Minuteman missile and disarmed warhead at the Delta 9 underground silo.

The hardware will be an integral feature of the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, telling the story of the Cold War and the nuclear weapons that never were used, said acting site manager Marianne Mills.

``It's kind of an international point of contemplation,'' she said.

The silo and a nearby underground control center will be transferred to the National Park Service later this year and the missile site will likely be ready for public viewing next spring.

The Delta 1 underground control center, which once controlled 10 missile silos, will take several more years to complete as will a visitors' center.

Politicians have lauded the project. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., has said the site would preserve the historic role of South Dakota residents and Ellsworth AFB in winning the Cold War.

But the prospect of a Cold War theme park has alarmed some residents and anti-nuclear groups.

When Mills spoke in North Dakota in 1999, protesters pelted her with origami peace cranes.

Marvin Kammerer, who ranches near the Ellsworth base, believes the site will be a waste of money, just as the missile system was.

The nuclear arms race prevented the United States and the Soviet Union from spending money on health care and other services needed by their citizens, he said.

``It was plumb goofy,'' Kammerer said of the arms race.

Kammerer, who protested in earlier years at the missile sites, said a missile display at the air base and a simple sign at the silo site would have sufficed.

The Minuteman I missiles became active in 1962, during a tense standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union when the world was on the brink of a nuclear holocaust.

The confrontation over Soviet missiles in Cuba led to a U.S. blockade of the island and the downing of an American spy plane.

At the height of the tensions, Kennedy told Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that the missile system was his ``ace in the hole.'' Cuban leader Fidel Castro backed down, sending the missiles back to Khrushchev.

The original missiles were replaced later by Minuteman II models, which flew at 15,000 mph, had a range of 6,300 miles and weighed about 73,000 pounds. The missiles were designed to survive a first attack by an enemy and then strike back, reaching its target within 30 minutes.

Some 150 were scattered across western South Dakota when former President George Bush signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. All Minuteman II missiles in other states also were removed in the 1990s, some replaced with newer missiles. A silo and one control center were saved for the historic site.

Air Force officers said the Minuteman II missiles were one of the nation's most efficient weapons for three decades, helping prevent nuclear war because the Soviet Union had no weapon that could destroy them.

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

-------- massachusetts

EPA Adds to Superfund List

June 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 5:28 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Superfund.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- One is a creek contaminated with PCBs in Darby Township, Pa., flowing into the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge where federal officials caution people against eating the fish.

Another is a 150-acre former hazardous waste storage site in Texas City, Texas, leaking chromium and lead into 600-mile Galveston Bay -- seventh-largest estuary in the nation and major commercial and recreation fishery.

Then there is the abandoned copper mine in Strafford, Vt., closed in 1958, but still pumping metals and sulfides into the Copperas Brook and West Branch of the Ompompanoosuc River.

They are among 10 new sites -- six in New England -- being added Thursday to the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list of most hazardous toxic waste sites in the nation.

The EPA, spending as much as $1.5 billion a year for Superfund cleanups, also proposes adding another 10 sites to the list. The public has 60 days to comment on those.

With these latest actions, being announced in the Federal Register, the EPA's Superfund program has 1,236 sites and 67 proposed for agency action. The combined 1,303 includes 166 federal facilities

The other new sites include four acres with recycled oil company drums at Cooper Drum Company in South Gate, Calif., and an intersection where groundwater is contaminated with perchloroethylene (PCE) in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

There are two New York sites, an inactive junkyard in Newburgh and 60 homes with PCE-contaminated wells along Shenandoah Road in East Fishkill.

In Sheridan, Ore., soil laced with hazardous chemicals from pressure-treated wood and preservatives has been found up to a half-mile away from a lumber plant.

There also are two plants in Massachusetts, where groundwater at a 46-acre plant in Concord once run by Nuclear Metals, Inc., contains uranium and thorium and a former 50-acre landfill known as the Sutton Brook Disposal Area in Tewksbury has buried drums and contaminated groundwater.

Only about 15 percent of the nation's Superfund sites have been cleaned and removed from the list since it was created two decades ago.

The Superfund program's aim is to try to force polluters to pay to clean up toxic sites they either created or made worse, but critics say Superfund often relies on litigation to recover cleanup costs. And that, say industry representatives, often means ensnaring innocent business owners.

Last month, the House passed a bill to protect small businesses from big polluters trying to make them share Superfund costs. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said the Bush administration supports the bill, since multiplying lawsuits have diverted resources from cleanup.

``The less litigation we have, the more likely we finish the job of cleaning up Superfund sites,'' Whitman said.

The EPA puts sites on the list based on its studies of the risks to human health and the environment from uncontrolled hazardous substances in ground and surface water, soil and air. States also have a say in deciding priorities.

In December, the Superfund program turned 20 years old. Congress passed the legislation in 1980 in the wake of the Love Canal toxic waste crisis. The Niagara Falls, N.Y., neighborhood had been built on and around a former chemical dump, and by the 1960s and '70s contaminated groundwater was leaching into back yards and school grounds.

Love Canal has since become a Superfund success, with the cleanup making habitable the outer rim of the contaminated area and more than 200 homes there have been built or renovated.

The EPA is proposing 10 new Superfund sites in Casmalia, Calif.; LaSalle, Ill.; Louisville, Miss.; Central Islip, N.Y.; Hazle Township and West Hazleton, Pa.; Richland Township, Pa.; Deer Park, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; Eureka, Utah; and Vershire, Vt.

-------- us nuc politics

Today In Congress

Washington Post
Thursday, June 14, 2001; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64247-2001Jun13?language=printer

HOUSE

Armed Services -- 10 a.m. Military research & dev. subc. Ballistic missile testing. 2118 RHOB.

Armed Services -- 1 p.m. Special oversight panel. Energy Dept. reorg. & terrorism. 2212 RHOB.

Science -- 10 a.m. Energy subc. President Bush's hydrogen & nuclear energy policy. 2318 RHOB.

[See http://prop1.org/prop1/letter.htm for links to Congress. et]

----

U.S. - Russia Timeline

June 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia-Timeline.html?searchpv=aponline

Some important U.S.-Russian summits and the agreements they produced:

Nov. 19-20, 1985, Geneva:

--President Reagan and President Mikhail Gorbachev meet to discuss the ABM and SALT II treaties. No substantive developments on arms control, but leaders agree to further discussions in 1986 and 1987.

Oct. 11-12, 1986, Reykjavik, Iceland:

--Reagan and Gorbachev focus on the ABM Treaty, but confusion over Reagan's stance on eliminating strategic weapons frustrates efforts to reach an agreement.

Dec. 7-10, 1987, Washington:

--Reagan and Gorbachev sign the INF Treaty, which bans intermediate-range nuclear force missiles.

--Since 1988, nearly 2,700 Russian and American nuclear missiles have been eliminated. U.S. and Russian inspectors did more than 1,000 inspections in that time. Inspections ended in May, but the treaty has unlimited duration.

Nov. 19-21, 1990, Paris:

--President Bush and Gorbachev sign the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, meant to limit the chance of war between NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.

--The treaty sets limits of 40,000 battle tanks, 60,000 armored combat vehicles, 40,000 pieces of artillery, 13,600 combat aircraft and 4,000 attack helicopters.

--The treaty was modified in 1999 to reduce those numbers by about half.

July 31, 1991, Moscow:

--Bush and Gorbachev sign START I, to reduce nuclear warheads on both sides to 6,000.

Jan. 2-3, 1993, Moscow:

--Bush and President Boris Yeltsin sign START II, reducing nuclear arsenals to between 3,000 and 3,500 warheads each.

March 21, 1997, Helsinki, Finland:

--President Clinton and Yeltsin agree to begin negotiations on START III after START II is ratified. START III would reduce the countries' nuclear arsenals to between 2,000 and 2,500 by the end of 2007.

June 3-5, 2000, Moscow:

--Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin sign a joint statement acknowledging that changes to the 1972 ABM Treaty might be necessary.

--They pledge to continue working on START III and the ABM Treaty.

----

Prospects for Russia Accord Dim

June 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 8:20 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush will propose to Russian President Vladimir Putin at their summit Saturday that relations between the two countries be overhauled to lower the profile of arms control negotiations, a U.S. official said.

Bush will resist a Russian overture to set up two working groups to deal with missile defenses and further reductions in U.S. and Russian offensive arsenals, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

While prospects for an arms control accord are almost nonexistent, the president intends to approach Putin for cooperation against terrorism, said the official. Chechnya and Afghanistan are terror concerns.

As part of the proposed overhaul, Bush wants to abandon a high-level panel that oversaw major U.S.-Russia issues during the Bill Clinton presidency. The Gore-Chernomyrdin commission is ``deader than a doornail,'' the official said in describing what Bush intends to tell Putin in Slovenia.

The joint commission, established in 1993, was run by then-Vice President Al Gore and Viktor Chernomyrdin, who was then Russia's prime minister.

It branched out gradually from concentrating on Russia's economic problems to oversee many major issues in the relationship.

The administration is calling the process Bush will propose ``decentralizing.''

Bush's approach is that issues involving the two countries should be managed by the departments in Washington and Moscow that handle them instead of by formal working groups or commissions that can involve massive delegations, two senior administration officials said.

Arms control, for instance, would be dealt with by a few experts from the two sides. Similarly, one official said, the Commerce Department would take the lead on business matters, the Treasury on financial issues, the officials said.

Over the years, summits have had varied results.

At Slovenia, a major arms control pact such as those that have headlined other U.S.-Russian summits is not expected. On the other hand, Bush's proposal for managing relations between the two countries could give the summit special weight.

Bush offered no prediction of great accomplishment.

``It's a very important time for me to visit with Mr. Putin and to assure him of a couple of things,'' Bush said in Sweden. ``One, Russia is not the enemy of the United States. Two, the Cold War is over, and the mentality that used to grip our two nations during the Cold War must end.

``Three, we look forward to working with Europe. Russia ought not to fear a Europe; Russia ought to welcome an expanded Europe on her border.''

In the walk-up to Bush's first meeting with Putin, U.S. advisers have suggested the time is not right for a major arms control accord, though some defense cooperation may emerge from the Slovenia meeting, such as shared work on early warning of accidental missile launches.

Initially, Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, suggested Bush approach Putin for a ``grand bargain,'' an administration official said. But hers was a minority view. The idea was to establish cooperation between the United States and Russia on missile defense by also offering sharp cutbacks in offensive weapons, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The United States has no expectations of an agreement on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Bush wants to discard the pact as an impediment to an anti-missile system, while Putin prizes it as a foundation for controlling nuclear weapons.

Introductory summits have tended to produce little other than an atmosphere for achievements in meetings that followed.

The 1985 meeting between President Reagan and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, who had come to power in Moscow eight months earlier, improved relations but accomplished little else.

Reagan's skepticism about past U.S.-Soviet arms control accords had a lot to do with it.

In 1986, in Reykjavik, Iceland, a seemingly overeager Reagan was said by the Russians to have proposed the elimination of all strategic weapons. U.S. officials said he had suggested phasing out all strategic ballistic missiles in 10 years -- itself an awesome proposition.

The talks were not conclusive. But a year later, in Washington, Reagan and Gorbachev signed a landmark agreement to eliminate an entire category of nuclear weapons -- those of intermediate range.

Arms control was sent on an upward curve, culminating in an agreement between President Bush and Gorbachev in Washington in 1990 on the essential provisions of the START I Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. They signed the treaty in Moscow the next year.

Spurgeon Keeny, president of the private Arms Control Association, says the United States is asking Russia for a ``blank check'' on missile defense and very little can come out of the Bush-Putin meeting.

At best, he said, Bush and Putin will have the kind of personal exchange that emphasizes the United States and Russia no longer are enemies and the two leaders can communicate in the future.

``The worst that can come out of it,'' Keeny said, ``is that they can get into substance. And if Bush tries to push withdrawal from the ABM treaty or expansion of NATO into the Baltics it's going to be a disaster.''

Ariel Cohen, specialist on Russia at the private Heritage Foundation, suggested Bush focus on further reductions of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals.

But Cohen urged Bush also to underscore the spread of Russian weapons of mass destruction and related technologies to China and ``rogue states'' such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

``We have to work hard to convince them this is a threat to them and to us,'' Cohen said of the Russians.

----

Bush: 'set aside' ABM Treaty

June 14, 2001
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010614-125481.htm

BRUSSELS -- President Bush yesterday told world leaders gathered at a NATO summit that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed at the height of the Cold War must be "set aside" in order for the United States to move ahead with development of a missile defense shield. The president strongly defended the shield, which has suffered several embarrassing test failures and fierce opposition from European leaders, and said his administration would not move ahead until the system was fully and reliably deployable.

"Before we can lay out a specific case ... itīs necessary to set aside the ABM Treaty so we can fully explore all options available to the United States and our allies and friends. The ABM Treaty prevents full exploration of opportunity," Mr. Bush said in a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General George Robertson.

"And for those who suggest my administration will deploy a system that doesnīt work are dead wrong. Of course, weīre not going to deploy a system that doesnīt work. What good will that do? Weīll only deploy a system that does work in order to keep the peace. But we must have the flexibility and opportunity to explore all options," the president said.

In other NATO developments, Mr. Bush:

• Assured U.S. allies that "we will move to reduce our offensive weapons to a level commensurate with keeping the peace."

• Supported expansion of the 19-member organization, despite Russiaīs opposition to adding countries near its borders.

• Pledged not to unilaterally withdraw troops from the Balkans, as he had said during last yearīs campaign.

• Endorsed further political efforts to seek an end to strife in Macedonia, torn by ethnic fighting since February and now held together by a fragile truce.

NATO leaders yesterday demanded tougher action to halt a slide toward civil war in Macedonia.

Much of the day was spent discussing events in the Balkans. French President Jacques Chirac said the alliance must prepare for the possibility of a third military intervention there.

Urging NATO leaders not to allow a new cycle of warfare and instability to break out in the region, Mr. Chirac said: "We must not preclude any form of action needed to thwart such developments."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed. "We are very concerned about the situation in Macedonia," he said.

"Our history of engagement in that part of the world has taught us that it is better to make preparations soon and stabilize the situation, rather than to wait and let the situation deteriorate," Mr. Blair said.

However, Mr. Bush and other NATO leaders stressed that diplomatic intervention -- not military action --was needed now to resolve the ethnic turmoil in Macedonia.

"We agreed that we must face down extremists in Macedonia and elsewhere who seek to use violence to redraw borders or subvert the democratic process," he said. "But the sentiment I heard here was that there is still a possibility for a political settlement, a good possibility, and that we must work to achieve that settlement."

Mr. Bush also reiterated his pledge not to pull more than 9,000 U.S. troops out of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, a reversal of his promise last year during the election campaign. Of the European troops still in the region, he said, "We came in together, and we will leave together."

Mr. Bush spent nearly four hours in closed-door meetings with NATO-member presidents and prime ministers. He made clear that he was seeking support not of a missile defense system, but merely exploration into the technology.

"Weīre asking our allies to think differently, and asking Russia to think differently, about the post-Cold War era. The ABM Treaty is a product of the Cold War era," Mr. Bush said in the press conference.

Russians and some Europeans say the ABM Treaty forbids construction, development and research into a shield, but many U.S. officials say that the United States is no longer bound by the pact, which it signed in 1972 with the now-defunct Soviet Union.

Some European leaders appear to be keeping an open mind. A senior Bush official, in fact, confirmed Italy, Hungary, Poland and Spain were ready to support a missile defense shield. The official described some leaders as "strongly, vocally for missile defense."

Still, important allies such as France and Germany have expressed concerns that a U.S. missile defense shield would spur another arms race and threaten their security.

The president, making his first appearance at a meeting of the 52-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said he was finding a new "receptivity" to the defense system, which would enable the United States to shoot down missiles fired by "rogue" states, such as Iraq or North Korea.

Mr. Bush, who has pledged to share the technology with U.S. allies, said he is succeeding in making his case.

"Iīm making good progress on this issue here in Europe. Thereīs some nervousness, and I understand that. But itīs beginning to be allayed when they hear the logic behind the rationale," he said. "I think people are coming our way."

Mr. Bush assured allies he would not act unilaterally.

"Unilateralists donīt come around the table to listen to others and to share opinion. Unilateralists donīt ask opinions of world leaders. I count on the advice of our friends and allies. Iīm willing to consult on issues.

"I hope the notion of a unilateral approach died in some peopleīs minds today here," the president said. *German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said dialogue was open, but there were "still important questions to be resolved."

"What the president asked for, and what the president got, was an open mind by the other allied countries to look at the risks and emerging threats that exist ... and to deep and continued consultation about American thinking on the matter," Mr. Robertson said.

While Mr. Bush will not act alone on the defensive shield, he said, he would do so on offensive weapons.

"Iīll also assure our allies and friends that we will move to reduce our offensive weapons to a level commensurate with keeping the peace, but one that is below where our levels are now," Mr. Bush said.

The president said he supports expansion of NATO when the full body meets in Prague next year. Russia opposes that plan, too, because the leading candidates are too close to its borders. Considered for new slots are the Baltic nations of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which had been part of the Soviet Union, as well as former Warsaw Pact members Romania and Bulgaria.

• This article is based in part on wire service reports.

----

Bush Faces Environmental Opposition in Sweden

June 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Bush-Europe.html?searchpv=aponline

GOTEBORG, Sweden -- Fresh from pitching his much-maligned missile defense plan, President Bush faced new opposition Thursday over a global warming treaty that he rejects as too flawed to be effective.

Bush arrived here Thursday to meet with 15 European Union leaders after talks with Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson, whose country now holds the EU presidency, at Gunnebo Slott, an 18th-century castle nine miles outside Goteborg that is ringed by formal gardens.

The trip is the third stop on Bush's five-nation European tour and the first visit to Sweden by a sitting U.S. president.

Persson joined Bush in his limousine for the ride from the airport. When a reporter asked what they discussed, Persson said, ``Life,'' while Bush quipped, ``How beautiful Sweden is.''

The two leaders took no other questions, but chatted quietly with each other as they sat side-by-side on straight-backed chairs in front of a wood-burning stove.

A primary topic of discussion is the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which commits industrialized countries to reducing, by 2012, greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent of 1990 levels.

A day before Bush arrived in Brussels to attend his first NATO meeting, EU environment ministers rejected Bush's latest initiatives to study climate change, calling them short on action. They urged Bush to change his mind, but the president said later the Kyoto pact is fatally flawed.

At least 12,000 protesters were expected at rallies throughout Goteborg, Sweden's second-largest city, against Bush, the EU and the growing strength of international business. Persson said Wednesday he planned to raise with Bush the climate treaty that the Europeans are not willing to give up on.

``We think that the Kyoto protocol is a necessary document, necessary process,'' Persson said. ``I am convinced that we will agree to disagree about substance tomorrow.''

Robert Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative, told reporters Wednesday in Brussels that he was ``somewhat optimistic'' that the trans-Atlantic disagreement over Kyoto eventually will be settled amicably.

``For all the to-ing and fro-ing, this is a critical aspect of restarting the dialogue, because Kyoto wasn't going to go anywhere in the United States or many other countries,'' Zoellick said.

The treaty was negotiated by the Clinton administration but never ratified by the Senate.

In Goteborg, Bush expected to exchange views with EU leaders on an array of subjects, including support for starting a new round of international trade liberalization negotiations, the prospects for peace in the Middle East and the security and human rights situation in North Korea.

Bush said he expected to discuss with EU leaders their plan to create a 60,000-strong military force to perform noncombat missions, such as peacekeeping, where NATO opts not to act.

``The United States would welcome a capable European force,'' so long as it is ``properly integrated'' with NATO and takes into account the views of non-EU members of NATO, such as Turkey, he said.

In Wednesday's NATO talks, Bush's counterparts offered mixed appraisals of his explanation for pursuing missile defense.

``The question of technical feasibility and the consequences for nonproliferation treaties remain,'' German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said. On the other hand, he said, ``We need to reconsider the instruments and structures that were developed in a bipolar world'' -- a reference to security arrangements of the Cold War, such as the ban on missile defenses.

French President Jacques Chirac said the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which Bush has called a relic of the past, ``is a pillar'' of European security.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair was Bush's biggest supporter. ``There are highly unstable states developing nuclear arsenals, and we have to look at all ways, including missile defense systems, of countering that threat,'' he told reporters.

Silvio Berlusconi, the new prime minister of Italy, said Bush was ``right to be happy with the results of this summit. All the participants accepted that the world has changed, the Cold War is over, the former Soviet Union has become another partner with whom we have relations.''

``I think there are nuances of opinion, but not a real attitude of rejection,'' Berlusconi said.

Bush is likely to find tougher going when he meets Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has said Bush's ambitions for missile defense threaten to unravel the whole network of international arms control.

----

Senate Finances List

The Associated Press
Thursday, June 14, 2001; 2:16 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010614/aponline181925_000.htm

Murkowski and his wife attended the World Energy and Mineral Forecast Market briefings in London and then toured a nuclear plant in Spain, with their expenses paid by British Petroleum, Edison Electric and Kennecott Corporation. The American Bankers Association paid for Murkowski and his wife to attend the group's annual meeting in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

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

Colleges with reactors learn in the nick of time

By THOMAS HARGROVE,
Scripps Howard News Service,
June 14, 2001
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200106/14+reactors061401_news.html+20010614

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has cited several universities in recent months for improperly handling campus nuclear reactors and the radioactive materials they produce.

A contractor hired to clean up a spill of americium-241 in a basement vault at Southeast Missouri State University was exposed to more than five times the safe level of radioactivity last June. Americium-241 is commonly used in smoke detectors

Texas A&M University faces disciplinary action for improperly shipping a package of radioactive capsules to the Virgin Islands in early December. Technicians in St. Croix found the radioactive materials outside the containment vessel when the package was opened.

University of Missouri officials have made staff changes at their research reactor facility after two so-called "unplanned radiation field events" occurred while servicing and refueling their 10,000-kilowatt plate-fuel reactor on April 12 and June 12 last year. The mistakes resulted in radiation leaks that could have been dangerous had anyone been standing near the reactor at the time.

"That was a real wake-up call for us," University of Missouri spokeswoman Mary Jo Banken said. "Since then, we have hired a chief operating officer with more than 25 years' experience, a new reactor manager with more than 20 years' experience and we undertook an extensive self-review."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversees 28 so-called "nonpower" atomic reactors currently operated by public and private universities in the United States. The reactors do not generate electricity and primarily are used to produce low-level radioactive isotopes for medical treatment and research.

Apparently no one has been injured in any of the recent incidents, but authorities consider each to be serious violations of nuclear safety procedures.

Most of the academic facilities are small, producing only one-thousandth the heat and radiation of commercial nuclear power reactors. But unlike the commercial plants, university reactors often are located in urban areas or have large student populations near them.

-------

Warning on beryllium issued in '48
Documents in trial show scientists said it should be handled same way as radioactive material

June 14, 2001
Rocky Mountain News,
By Ann Imse, News Staff Writer
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_651980,00.html

As early as 1948, scientists were recommending that beryllium "should be handled under the same conditions as radioactive material," according to documents introduced in court Wednesday. By 1960, scientists were saying the metal should be handled like plutonium, a highly carcinogenic material that also was used to build nuclear weapons at the Rocky Flats plant.

Yet today, the federal government still allows people to work in beryllium dust of up to 2 micrograms per cubic meter of air.

Former Rocky Flats workers are suing the nation's only remaining beryllium producer, Brush Wellman Inc. of Cleveland, in Jefferson County District Court.

They claim the company conspired with the federal government to hide the dangers of beryllium throughout the Cold War because it was needed to produce nuclear bombs. The workers have chronic beryllium disease, a wasting lung ailment.

Brush Wellman began its defense Wednesday, presenting evidence that Rocky Flats allowed exposures of more than 2 micrograms, which was against the company's advice. Brush Wellman contends that any responsibility for the workers' illness rests with Rocky Flats and its operators, Rockwell International and Dow Chemical.

Plaintiffs' attorney Allen Stewart presented notes from a 1948 beryllium conference where scientists recommended treating the metal like it was radioactive. Then he asked witness Mike Hattel, a Rocky Flats worker who is not a plaintiff, if knowing about that recommendation would have caused him to handle the beryllium he routinely unpacked differently.

"Probably the whole plant would have handled it differently," Hattel replied.

Then Stewart told Hattel about a 1960 government memorandum on beryllium suggesting that "equipment comparable to that used for handling plutonium would be necessary to meet the present standards" -- the 2-microgram limit.

The memo went on to state the government rejected that idea. "One, this would increase the cost of beryllium by ten times; and two, the plants would have to be shut down and rebuilt," the memo read.

"The extra cost would be undesirable," the memo stated, and shutting down factories "is unacceptable because of need for the metal."

Handling beryllium like plutonium meant building glove boxes, so the workers would never come into direct contact with the metal.

Brush Wellman attorney Sydney McDole later asked witness Jerry Harden, longtime president of the steelworkers union local at Rocky Flats, about the beryllium foundry. "How do you fit a foundry into a glove box?" she asked.

Harden admitted he'd never seen a glove box that large.

Brush Wellman drew testimony from Hattel that he routinely removed Brush Wellman's warning labels from the rough-cut beryllium pieces as they arrived at Rocky Flats. Hattel agreed that the labels read, "Danger -- Dust or Fumes Hazardous if Inhaled," plus fine print on the hazards of beryllium.

Hattel said he replaced them with Rocky Flats-produced labels that read, "Caution Beryllium." But he could not remember if the warnings went into further detail.

Throughout Wednesday, Brush Wellman attorneys ignored charges their client conspired to cover up the danger of extremely low doses of beryllium. Instead, they presented evidence that some warnings did get published -- and the workers should have known about them.

Cigarette manufacturers have used a similar defense.

"A huge issue in this case is whether they exercised reasonable diligence" in learning the hazards in their jobs and taking precautions to limit their exposure, said Brush Wellman attorney Jeff Joyce.

Company attorneys then presented the report of a 1984 government investigation into beryllium hazards at Rocky Flats, conducted after the first case of chronic beryllium disease was diagnosed there. The probe found the 2-microgram standard had been violated at the beryllium machine shop 1,500 times, industrial hygienist Mark Van Ert testified.

The 1984 investigation also concluded that some people might develop beryllium disease after exposure to less than 2 micrograms, defense attorneys pointed out. But they did not succeed in getting union representatives to say they had ever widely disseminated this information to the workers at Rocky Flats.

-------- idaho

Environmental Advocates File Notice of Intent to Sue Over INEEL Environmental Violations

News Release
June 14, 2001
From: "Chuck Broscious" roscious@tds.net
Contacts: David McCoy 208-542-1449, Chuck Broscious 208-835-6152

Attorney David McCoy and environmental advocate Chuck Broscious filed a Notice today threatening to sue the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (IDEQ) over the alleged illegal unpermitted operation of an evaporator system that processes high-level radioactive and toxic liquid waste at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

The threatened lawsuit calls attention to the failure to observe numerous state and federal environmental laws which require permits for the facility known as the Process Waste Equipment Evaporator (PEWE). The Notice alleges that the DOE and its regulators the IDEQ and EPA are allowing the operation of a deteriorating 50-year-old evaporator facility which is not designed to handle the type of toxic wastes it is processing. The regulator's failure to require environmental analyses and monitoring equipment for toxic and cancer-causing air emissions such as radioactive Iodine, Arsenic, Cadmium and Mercury is challenged as violating the Clean Air Act. The notice alleges that many facilities such as the Tank Farm and other high-level waste evaporators tied to the PEW evaporator legally must also have permits and are illegally operating without them.

Although the DOE has recently filed an application for a federal permit, the Notice states that the application is a sham because the evaporator system is miss-classified as a tank treatment system rather than a thermal treatment system. The Notice claims that the system cannot meet the federal standards for thermal treatment and that the miss-classification is at a lower standard than what is required to protect the public health and safety. The lawsuit Notice accuses the Idaho DEQ of deliberately miss-classifying the evaporators to keep the system operating. Internal DOE documents are cited which refer to the evaporators as thermal treatment systems.

Last year two Notices of lawsuits were filed challenging the Calciner and WERF nuclear waste incinerators at INEEL which also claimed operated without federal permits. The nuclear waste incinerators were shut down shortly after DOE, EPA and Idaho DEQ received the notices. Permit applications were pending for all of the incinerators at the time notices were filed. Chuck Broscious stated "After fifty years of operation, no major operating nuclear plant at INEEL has ever been permitted because none can meet current regulatory requirements. It is a sad commentary when the public is left with no other recourse but litigation to protect the air and water we and future generations need for survival."

Attorney McCoy states that, "The regulators know that the incinerators and evaporator systems at INEEL do not and cannot comply with state and federal law. DOE engages in regulatory manipulation by submittal of incomplete and sham applications to keep illegal operations running longer. The DOE admitted in 1996 these evaporator facilities were 'unpermittable'. McCoy further states that "The Idaho DEQ has gone along with the DOE farce long enough." Copies of the Notice are available at roscious@tds.net or dmccoy01@earthlink.net

-------- nevada

Experts spotlight Nevada Test Site's contamination
Nuclear weapons tests polluted groundwater

By KEITH ROGERS,
Thursday, June 14, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Jun-14-Thu-2001/news/16319120.html

Widespread contamination from 35 years of underground nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site poses a more imminent threat to state water supplies than radioactive waste planned for burial in Yucca Mountain, scientists studying the problem said Wednesday.

"The releases from nuclear tests in an uncontained environment, this is a problem that exists today," said state Environmental Protection Division federal facilities chief Paul Liebendorfer.

"This is real. We have to worry about it. It's in the groundwater," he said during a break in a meeting of a peer-review panel. The panel is to evaluate a strategy by federal scientists for predicting how far the test site's contamination will spread in 1,000 years.

In the meeting, Liebendorfer described the test site's problem as "probably the most contaminated groundwater conditions that exist anywhere, at least in the U.S."

In 1994, scientists estimated that 300 million curies, units of radioactivity, remained in the subsurface environment at the test site from 908 nuclear devices that were detonated between 1957 and 1992. Of that amount, roughly 130 million curies were in groundwater layers, mostly as tritium, an isotope that will decay to insignificant levels after 1,000 years.

Yucca Mountain, the ridge where the Energy Department wants to entomb 77,000 tons of radioactive waste -- primarily spent fuel from commercial power reactors -- sits on the test site's southwestern boundary, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

If a repository is built and the waste is put in a maze of tunnels with engineered barriers, the mountain will contain 120 million curies after 1,000 years, but the bulk of the materials will persist longer than those released from nuclear tests.

Earle Dixon, a hydrogeologist who is the technical adviser to the Nevada Test Site Community Advisory Board, said that because the radioactive remnants from weapons tests are not contained, the contamination problem is more imminent than what would be expected from nuclear waste stored in Yucca Mountain after 1,000 years, if the repository's design works.

"I think it poses possibly a more near-term risk to Nevada communities than Yucca Mountain," Dixon said.

"We released these (curies) into the environment years ago with no engineered barriers. We should be addressing the Nevada Test Site's problem first or simultaneously with Yucca Mountain," he said after the panel's morning session.

At the end of the meeting, Dennis Weber, a member of a 1999 panel that found flaws with computer models for forecasting where contamination would migrate at the test site, offered a solution.

"You need to characterize at least one of the plumes. You'll know a heck of a lot more than you know right now," said Weber, a physicist at Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Weber suggested the National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs the test site, invest in drilling monitoring wells near the test site's northwestern boundary in the direction that groundwater moves from Pahute Mesa. That is where the largest bombs were detonated closest to water-supply wells off the test site.

The half-dozen monitoring wells would be placed according to where computer models show contamination most likely would escape from the test site.

To be effective, he said, the models must be continually refined. Exploratory wells would have to be drilled for at least one contamination plume from a detonation cavity. The wells would allow the study of the plume's width and depth, direction, radioactive materials and their amounts, and the transportation of the materials.

As the models were refined based on the new data, monitoring wells could be placed to serve as an early-warning system.

"If you have an early-warning system, then you have time to do remediation," he said.

Kathleen Peterson, who leads the Community Advisory Board's Environmental Management Committee, said such a warning system is essential for communities near the test site.

"One of the things that is paramount and compelling is that we get enough data in the right areas to support our models," she said.

-------- tennessee

Safety improvements needed at Y-12

by Nancy Zuckerbrod,
Associated Press,
June 14, 2001
http://www.oakridger.com/

WASHINGTON -- A federal watchdog agency is urging the Energy Department to make important safety improvements at the Y-12 National Security Complex.

Inadequate attention has been paid to the storage of hazardous materials, maintenance needs and fire prevention at Y-12, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.

A department spokesman, responding to the report, said improvements are being made.

The independent group sent its report to energy officials May 29 and asked them to respond within 90 days. This is the third such warning the board has issued about the 811-acre site in three years.

The Y-12 plant makes components to upgrade and extend the life of nuclear weapons and stores highly enriched uranium used in warheads.

"We believe that attention should be given to the way some of these materials are stored," the board's vice chairman, A.J. Eggenberger, said in an interview Wednesday. "They're just not in the most ideal condition that they should be in."

The report said nuclear material and beryllium, a hazardous metal, is kept in a building with a leaky roof. And it said uranium is stored in trailers that don't appear to prevent the material from being released into the environment.

"In almost all cases, the board's staff found the trailer doors only partially closed, and observed rainwater flowing through the trailers and potentially carrying contaminants outside," the report stated.

Y-12 officials also are not entirely aware of what material they have on site or how to store it.

The report stated that three freezers are apparently being used to store material shipped to Oak Ridge more than 20 years ago and that workers don't know what is in them or whether temperature control is required. Also of concern is what kind of releases could take place once the freezers are opened, the report said.

Better analysis also needs to be taken to determine the risk of a fire or accident, the report states. It noted that at least one wooden facility holds unnecessary combustible materials.

Eggenberger says common sense suggests removing them. "In your house, you shouldn't have a bunch of boxes sitting around the kitchen, because they might catch fire," he said.

Energy Department spokesman Steven Wyatt said the contractor that operates Y-12 has started to modernize the facility, including efforts to shutter the building cited in the report for its leaky roof.

"The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board raises valid and previously recognized concerns with these issues," Wyatt said.

The Energy Department last year selected the contractor BWXT Y-12 to manage and operate the plant, replacing Lockheed Martin.

Wyatt said the Bush administration has requested $627 million for Y-12 management next year, a $14 million increase over this year's budget.

Local environmentalists praised the board's report.

"The Y-12 National Security Complex is in great disrepair, and the safety board has been one of the few entities that have taken seriously the facility status and the risks involved," said Ralph Hutchison, a coordinator for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance.

-------- us nuc politics

Eisenhower's Warning:
The Military-Industrial Complex Forty Years Later

William D. Hartung
WORLD POLICY JOURNAL -
June 14, 2001
http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/hartung01.html

Go to interactive discussion on this article
http://www.worldpolicy.org/discus/

Dwight Eisenhower's presidency is probably better remembered less for what he did than for what he said while heading for the exit. In a nationally televised address on January 17, 1961, only four days before John F. Kennedy's inaugural, Eisenhower warned of the dangers of "undue influence" exerted by the "military-industrial complex." He cautioned that maintaining a large, permanent military establishment was "new in the American experience," and suggested that an "engaged citizenry" offered the only effective defense against the "misplaced power" of the military-industrial lobby.

Press accounts at the time and the remembrances of those on the scene suggest that Eisenhower's surprising attack on the military lobby initially had only a modest ripple effect. The historian Douglas Brinkley points out that it was only years later, as the Vietnam War loomed large in the national consciousness, that activists in the antiwar movement seized on Eisenhower's remarks to support their own critiques of the national security state.1

Forty years on, it is surely fitting to look afresh at Eisenhower's warning, and to appraise the present and future of the military-industrial complex. At first glance, Dwight David Eisenhower seemed an unlikely candidate to launch a blistering critique of the military-industrial complex (a phrase coined by Eisenhower's speechwriters Ralph Williams and Malcolm Moos). As a four-star general and a hero of the Allied assault against Hitler, he certainly believed in maintaining a strong military. And although Eisenhower tried to hold the line on military spending, his administration still maintained an annual military budget ranging from $42 billion to $49 billion-three to four times higher than defense spending during the brief postwar demobilization. As the historian Blanche Wiesen Cook has remarked, it is not as if Ike was a raving peacenik: his doctrine of massive nuclear retaliation increased the risk of nuclear war, and his administration's support for coups d'état that helped install repressive regimes in Iran and Guatemala undermined the stability of the Persian Gulf and Central America, even as they tarnished America's reputation as a force for democracy.2

Yet in retrospect, it was precisely Eisenhower's martial posture that gave authority to his warning about the growing influence of the military-industrial establishment. As the late Washington columnist Lars Erik-Nelson noted in his last published essay, Eisenhower's speech was not just a rhetorical throwaway meant to steal the thunder of the incoming Kennedy administration: it was deeply felt, grounded in his own bitter experiences.3 In the 1956 elections, conservative Democrats, egged on by officials in the air force, accused Eisenhower of permitting a "bomber gap" by refusing to fund their new B-70 bomber. And in 1960, Richard Nixon, who served eight years as Eisenhower's vice president, was excoriated by his Democratic rival John F. Kennedy for allowing a supposedly dangerous "missile gap" to develop between U.S. and Soviet forces. The bomber gap proved a figment of the fevered imaginations of the weapons boosters, while the missile gap was real enough-though it was a gap that dramatically favored the United States, not the Soviet Union, as hard-line Democrats like Kennedy and Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson had maintained.

If an Eisenhower could not rein in the military lobby, small wonder that Bill Clinton, perceived as a draft-evading child of the 1960s, let the Joint Chiefs have their way. Clinton bequeathed his Republican successor a Pentagon budget not only higher in constant, 2001 dollars than it was when Eisenhower sounded his alarm, but also higher than the budget that Donald Rumsfeld presided over during his first stint as secretary of defense in the mid-1970s. The United States has no superpower adversary, as it did then, yet we spend more on our military forces than eight runner-up nations combined. As for the so-called rogue states, or "states of concern" as former secretary of state Madeleine Albright called them, the United States now spends 22 times as much as Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea, and Cuba combined. And the United States and its closest allies, including the NATO member-states, Japan, and South Korea, currently account for nearly two-thirds of global military spending, a much greater proportion than obtained during the Reagan buildup of the 1980s, when the United States and these same allies accounted for just over half of total expenditures.4

Given these realities, Clinton's Pentagon budget was as much testimony to the enduring power of the military-industrial complex as it was to the military capabilities of potential adversaries. It is too early to tell how President Bush's military priorities will fare in the maelstrom of Beltway politics. Like Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush may surprise us by being more skilled in the arts of political communication and less rigid in the implementation of major policy initiatives than seemed possible at first glance. Or, like William Jefferson Clinton, he may permit his national security policies to be distorted by pressures brought to bear by the military-industrial lobby. Informed speculation needs to begin with a review of what candidate Bush said during campaign 2000.

Ambitious Goals George W. Bush's only comprehensive defense policy speech, delivered at the Citadel on September 23, 1999, serves as a touchstone for his administration's early moves. He set three ambitious goals: 1) to "renew the bond of trust between the American President and the American military"; 2) to "defend the American people against missiles and terror"; and 3) to "begin creating the military of the next century."

Bush proposed restoring trust by increasing military pay and benefits and by clarifying the mission of U.S. forces to "deter...and win wars," not to undertake "vague, aimless, and endless deployments." The latter phrase signaled the new administration's reluctance to send U.S. forces on open-ended peace-keeping missions like the Clinton administration's deployments in Bosnia and Kosovo. Candidate Bush gave few specifics on his second promise but indicated that as president he would make substantial new investments in anti-terrorism efforts and "deploy anti-ballistic missile defenses, both theater and national," at the earliest possible date. And he promised "an immediate, comprehensive review of our military" designed to "challenge the status quo and to envision a new architecture of American defense for decades to come." Beyond marginal improvements, he urged the replacement of existing programs "with new technologies and strategies" aimed at creating forces that would be "agile, lethal, readily deployable and require a minimum of logistical support."

To achieve this leaner, meaner, more mobile military, Bush suggested it might be necessary to "skip a generation of technology" in certain systems. These were fighting words for the military, the arms industry, and their allies in Congress. Skipping a generation implies canceling one or more big-ticket systems, such as the Lockheed Martin F-22 fighter, the Boeing/Textron V-22 Osprey (half airplane, half helicopter), or the United Defense Crusader artillery system. That would mean sacrificing jobs and contracts now to husband resources for novel future systems-a perfectly reasonable management strategy, and arguably the only way to make room in the budget for Bush's ambitious missile defense system, plus tens of billions in research and development money for the next generation of weaponry. But it is also an extremely difficult feat in the face of opposition from the pampered "iron triangle": the military, the arms industry, and Congress.

The alternative to killing the Pentagon's sacred cows would be to seek a massive increase in military spending-in the range of $50 billion to $100 billion annually-that would cover costs of pork-barrel schemes already in the budget and simultaneously provide funding for missile defenses and new-wave weaponry.5 An increase on that scale, however, would conflict with Bush's commitment to a multi-year, $1.6 billion tax cut. For the moment at least, the Bush team has decided against such a defense-funding boost until it has more clearly defined its priorities.

In sum, Bush's military vision portends a substantial increase in missile defenses, new investments in smart maneuverable weapons and weapons platforms, and a major increase in military pay and benefits. These large expenditures would be offset by a reduction in U.S. overseas deployments and the cancellation of one or more costly Cold War weapons programs. Were Bush to "skip a generation" of big-ticket conventional weapons, he might be able to keep his campaign promises without breaking the bank. But if he gives in to pressure from Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, Lockheed Martin, and the Joint Chiefs, he would face a stark choice: either sacrifice his high-tech reform agenda or seek a politically controversial boost in the Pentagon budget. The guerrilla war between the administration and the military-industrial complex over what kind of buildup America should pursue is already under way, and the outcome will depend on whether the president can win key battles over spending against a Republican-controlled Congress.

Criticizing Congress In the penultimate draft of his final address, President Eisenhower warned of the "growing influence of the military-industrial-congressional complex" but decided to strike the word "congressional" because he thought it was "not fitting...for a President to criticize Congress."6 George W. Bush may not have the luxury of being so gracious. If he wants to win approval for his military build-up - rather than one that conforms to Trent Lott's wishes, or John Warner's, or Joe Lieberman's-he will have to play hardball.

As Sen. John McCain noted during Donald Rumsfeld's confirmation hearings, congressional "add-ons"-weapons systems and construction projects stuck into the budget even though the Pentagon has not requested them-have increased geometrically in the past two decades. When Rumsfeld held office under President Gerald Ford, Congress added $200-300 million a year in home-state "pork" to the defense budget. By the 1990s, McCain asserted, the add-ons had snowballed to some $7 billion annually.7

As an example, McCain spotlighted the Lockheed Martin C-130 transport plane, produced in Marietta, Georgia, and shepherded through Congress by heavy hitters from the South-including former Senate Armed Services Committee member Sam Nunn and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. From 1978 to 1998 (according to a report by the General Accounting Office), the air force requested a total of five C-130s, but Congress voted funds for 256 of the aircraft, surely a record in pork-barrel politics.8 McCain complained there were so many excess C-130s that we could afford to park one in "every schoolyard in America." Without missing a beat, or blushing, the next speaker at the same hearing, Democratic senator Max Cleland of Georgia, said he felt compelled to suggest that the excess C-130s were justified since America needed the capability to deploy our schoolyards anywhere in the world on short notice.

Senator Cleland isn't the only lawmaker who thinks bringing home the bacon is a suitable subject for political humor. When a former Georgia senator, Mack Mattingly, was running to regain his former seat in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Trent Lott joined him for a day of campaigning. The GOP Majority Leader said that if Georgia voters picked "good old Mack," he would keep the lucrative F-22 fighter project at Lockheed's Martin Marietta plant, but if they elected a Democrat, production might move to Lott's Mississippi. Given Lott's proclivity for shoveling defense dollars to his own state for everything from a $1.5 billion Marine helicopter carrier to a space-based laser project, it took a moment for Georgians to realize this was a joke. The irony of Lott's remark was heightened by the fact that Mattingly had just completed a stint as paid lobbyist for Lockheed Martin.9

In fall 1998, when Representatives Jerry Lewis, a California Republican, and Jack Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, put procurement funds for the F-22 on hold, on grounds of cost and performance, (at $200 million per plane, it is the most expensive fighter ever built), Lockheed Martin hired Mattingly to spearhead its successful lobbying campaign to rescue the project. Other legislators, including Democrat Buddy Darden, who used to represent the Georgia district where the C-130 is built, and former Mississippi Republican representative Sonny Montgomery, who chaired the committee that added C-130s to the Pentagon budget for distribution to National Guard units, have also worked as lobbyists for Lockheed Martin since leaving Congress.

A list of constituencies for redundant weapons systems would include the Litton Ingalls military shipyard in Trent Lott's home town of Pascagoula, Mississippi; the Newport News shipyard, launcher of submarines and aircraft carriers, in the home state of Virginia's John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; the McDonnell Douglas division of Boeing in St. Louis, maker of the F-18E and other combat planes favored by House Minority Leader Dick Gephart; and the Boeing plant in suburban Philadelphia, maker of the troubled V-22 Osprey, whose booster is Republican representative Curt Weldon. Connecticut's Democratic senators, Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman, have gone to bat for everything from General Dynamics' Electric Boat facility in Groton to the United Technologies/Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters that are part of the $1.3 billion U.S. military aid package for Colombia. In Washington State, Democratic representative Norm Dicks has campaigned doggedly to revive Boeing's B-2 bomber program. Add to this the assiduous labors of House Majority Whip Tom "The Hammer" DeLay and Republican senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson and others in the Texas delegation on behalf of Lockheed Martin's and Bell Textron's fighter plane and helicopter factories in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

All concerned were generously rewarded with campaign contributions. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and TRW together provided more than $11 million in soft money contributions during the year 2000 election cycle, and the giving continued through election day. At the GOP convention, Lockheed Martin kicked in $60,000 for the "Lott Hop," a dance fundraiser honoring Trent Lott, including performances by Bobby Vee and the Four Tops. TRW, which is under investigation for possible fraud in the national missile defense program, sponsored a luncheon at the Philadelphia Union League Club in honor of Sen. John Warner and Virginia representative Tom Davis, the chief fundraiser for House Republicans.

In Los Angeles, meanwhile, Raytheon pitched in with a fundraising party at the Santa Monica pier for "Blue Dog" Democrats, a conservative caucus whose members tend to be in favor of missile defense. Ironically, California Democrat Loretta Sanchez, herself a "Blue Dog," had been criticized by the Gore-Lieberman campaign for planning a fundraiser of her own in Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion. Sanchez moved the fundraiser to avoid losing her speaking slot at the Democratic Convention. Apparently, associating with Hugh Hefner was viewed as too Clintonesque, but raking in contributions from weapons manufacturers was acceptable.10

Friendly Fire Besides defending their version of the military buildup from "friendly fire" on Capitol Hill, President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld will have to do battle with the Joint Chiefs. The Joint Chiefs and their allies on the Hill were caught by surprise in early February when the White House indicated that there would be no big supplemental spending bill in the first part of 2001, and the projected Clinton/Gore budget of $310 billion would have to suffice for now. And Bush and Rumsfeld's decision to tap Andrew Marshall, an unconventional thinker who runs the Pentagon's Office of Net Military Assessment and has criticized Cold War weapons platforms ranging from aircraft carrier battle groups to the F-22 fighter, to oversee the defense policy review, suggests they may be willing to dispense with some of the old weapons in the pipeline.

The shrill complaints by conservatives in both parties that Bush was somehow disavowing his campaign pledge to build up the U.S. military masked their true concerns. What this means, however, is that if Bush and Rumsfeld are to achieve the military buildup they have in mind, which will emphasize an expansive missile defense, a new generation of more "usable" low-yield nuclear weapons, and a new generation of more maneuverable weapons platforms equipped with the latest sensor and communications technologies, they will have to do battle with key players within the military-industrial complex.

The Bush-Rumsfeld agenda, which amounts to a unilateralist drive for U.S. preeminence based on an ambitious missile defense scheme and a re-legitimation of the role of nuclear weapons as an instrument not only of deterrence, but of warfare, ought to be opposed.11 The good news for those who would do so is that there is no single agenda within the defense establishment. There are competing agendas-on Capitol Hill, among the services, and in the White House. As these power centers fight it out to determine the outlines of U.S. military spending, there should be room for input from the forgotten actors in this drama, the "alert and knowledgeable citizenry" that Eisenhower saw as our best hope for making sure that the military establishment serves the public interest, not the economic interest of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, or the parochial interests of powerful members of Congress.

Notes

1. Brinkley's remarks were made at a forum, "The Military-Industrial Complex Revisited: Is Eisenhower's Warning Still Relevant?" co-sponsored by the World Policy Institute, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, and The Nation Institute, held at New School University in New York City, January 17, 2001.

2. Figures from U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller), National Defense Budget Estimate for FY2000 (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, March 1999), table 7-1, p. 200; Blanche Wiesen Cook, Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981).

3. Lars Erik-Nelson, "Military-Industrial Man," New York Review of Books, December 21, 2000.

4. On Clinton and the Pentagon, see William D. Hartung, "Ready for What? The New Politics of Pentagon Spending," World Policy Journal, vol. 16 (spring 1999), pp. 19-24. On global military spending, see International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2000/2001 (London: IISS/Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 297-302.

5. Jim Mann, "Pentagon: A Game of Priorities," Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2001.

6. Lars Erik-Nelson, "Military-Industrial Man."

7. Jim Mann, "Pentagon."

8. Walter Pincus, "Cargo Plane with Strings Attached: Congress Funds and Stations C-130s Unwanted by Pentagon," Washington Post, July 23, 1998.

9. John Mintz, "After House Setback, Lockheed Scrambles to Save F-22," Washington Post, September 12, 1999.

10. On corporate donations and lobbying efforts during Campaign 2000, see William D. Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca, The Military Industrial Complex Revisited: How Weapons Makers Are Shaping U.S. Foreign and Military Policies, a joint report of Foreign Policy in Focus and the World Policy Institute, forthcoming.

11. On the dangers of the emerging Bush administration's policy, see William D. Hartung, "The Bush Nuclear Doctrine: From MAD to NUTS," a Foreign Policy in Focus Commentary, December 2000, at www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org.

-------- us nuc power

US nuclear plants squeeze power as critics fret

USA: June 14, 2001
Story by Leonard Anderson
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11174

SAN FRANCISCO - Blocked by public opinion from building new nuclear plants, operators have been squeezing more electricity out of existing nuclear plants in an effort to meet demand in California and other parts of the country.

But critics warn that the steps - which range from running a reactor for longer to building new cooling towers - are putting stress on the plants and could endanger the public.

Although no new nuclear power plant has been built for 20 years, the nation's nuclear fleet - which accounts for about a fifth of total power production - has added about 2,200 megawatts in the last decade, the equivalent of two large new plants or enough electricity for 2 million homes.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, a pro-nuclear trade group, expects at least 2,000 megawatts more in the next few years, an institute spokesman said.

But anti-nuclear groups say that coaxing more power out of the nuclear fleet puts more wear and tear on reactors, turbines, cooling systems and the tens of thousands of other pieces of equipment in a plant.

"The industry is running reactors longer and hotter while shortening refueling and maintenance schedules, and this means it is reducing safety margins," said Paul Gunter, a director with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.

"Age-related deterioration is inevitable in reactors and other equipment," Gunter said. "Power capacity is going up, but this is increasing the risk to public health and safety."

SAFETY AGENCY

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which oversees the nation's atomic plants, must approve power increases, which are known in the industry as "uprates," and permits can take a year or longer to process.

The NRC has 18 projects pending.

An NRC spokeswoman said the agency closely examines "safety barriers" protecting nuclear fuel, reactor coolant systems and "containment" buildings housing the reactor.

The power uprates come from a variety of methods.

Operators can make turbines spin generators faster by removing heavy moisture from steam passing over a turbine's blades. This can add 5 to 10 megawatts per generating unit, and over the next four years the company expects to add between 70 and 90 megawatts to the units' capability.

Another uprate involves building new cooling towers to improve plant efficiency on hot days. New towers at the Exelon Corp.'s Dresden nuclear plant in Illinois saved almost 300 megawatts.

Yet another improvement uses more precise measuring instruments so control room operators can run units closer to their peak capabilities.

Exelon Nuclear, a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corp., is the nation's largest nuclear operator, running 17 reactors in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states.

Through uprates, Exelon said it expects to add about nine million megawatt hours by 2003, the equivalent of building a new 1,200 megawatt plant at a fraction of the cost.

Exelon's uprates carry a construction cost of $300-$400 per kilowatt, well below the $500 to $700 per kilowatt for a new combined-cycle plant fueled by natural gas, and $1,000 to $1,250 per kilowatt for so-called clean coal technology.

SUNNIER NUCLEAR OUTLOOK UNDER BUSH

While the Bush administration has given new life to the nuclear industry - which was put in cold storage by the near meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979 - industry executives caution that it may be years before a new reactor is built.

Bush's new energy policy calls for more nuclear power and suggests many of the existing 65 plant sites, scattered throughout 31 states, have room to accommodate more reactors.

In addition to lingering fears about plant safety and "not-in-my-backyard" opposition to new plants, the problem of where to store highly radioactive nuclear waste remains a big obstacle.

California, for example, in 1976 outlawed construction of any new nuclear plants until there was a "demonstrated and approved" technology for a permanent dump site for used fuel rods.

"The outlook for nuclear power in California is pretty dismal," Robert Glynn, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based PG&E Corp., recently told the company's annual meeting of shareholders. PG&E's Pacific Gas & Electric subsidiary runs the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant on California's central coast, which is among the plants boosting production.

"I'm a huge believer that nuclear power should play a part in our energy needs," Michael Morrell, president and chief operating officer of Allegheny Energy Supply Co., a unit of Allegheny Energy Inc. , of Hagerstown, Md., said at a recent conference. "But I don't believe there will be a nuclear plant built in my lifetime," the 53 year old executive added.

-------- MILITARY


U.S., China Officers Meet on Warship

JUNE 14, 13:28 EST
By REGAN MORRIS
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7CKF8600

ABOARD THE USS INCHON (AP) - Despite strained ties between their nations, naval officers from the United States and China got together Thursday aboard the U.S. Navy warship USS Inchon to observe military exercises in the South China Sea.

Three officers from China, which recently rejected Washington's request to allow the Inchon to enter Hong Kong, flew to the ship from Singapore aboard U.S. military helicopters to watch U.S. divers and pilots scour the seas for fake mines.

Relations between China and the United States have been rocky since an April 1 collision between a U.S. Navy spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet. A recent U.S. offer to sell weapons to Taiwan infuriated Beijing.

U.S. and Chinese officers said they did not discuss tensions during their meetings aboard the Inchon.

``Maybe the topic is too sensitive at this time,'' Chinese military Cmdr. Xue Feng told The Associated Press. ``I'm sure the relationship will improve. This won't last very long.''

Capt. Charles ``Grunt'' Smith, commanding officer of the Inchon, said he was disappointed but not surprised that he would not be able to sail into Hong Kong.

``We got our sailing orders and our marching orders,'' Smith said. ``It's kind of sad we can't go there. I really would have liked them to experience the culture of Hong Kong.''

Washington last month requested permission for the Inchon to visit Hong Kong from June 28 to July 3. China rejected the request without explanation.

The mine hunt was part of an 11-day exercise in the waters of Singapore and neighboring Indonesia, an area with some of the world's busiest and most vital shipping lanes.

China did not send any ships to the exercise, Xue said.

Sailors from 16 countries are participating in the inaugural Western Pacific Mine Counter Measure Exercise and Diving Exercise. Officers said it was a rare experience to get so many navies together and that the exercise would boost cooperation in the Pacific.

``We traveled 12,000 miles for this exercise,'' Smith said. ``With so many nations together, nothing but good can come from that.''

-------- africa

Police fire tear gas at thousands of marchers

06/14/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/june01/2001-06-14-algeria-protests.htm

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - Riot police fired tear gas as hundreds of thousands of protesters tried to reach the presidential compound Thursday during a march sparked by nearly two months of bloody unrest. Two people were killed and hundreds were injured.

The two dead were both Algerian journalists, an Interior Ministry official said in a televised address. One of them was hit by a bus fleeing a burning depot while covering the riots for the Arab-language weekly El Chourouk. No information was immediately available about the second victim.

Hospital officials said 400 to 500 people were injured, six critically, in the "march for democracy" protest, which was called by representatives of Algeria's minority Berber population and supported by numerous opposition political parties.

The Berbers, who claim to be the original inhabitants of North Africa, have had tense relations with Algiers for decades as they press their demand for official recognition of the Berber language, Tamazight.

Protesters, some carrying knives and hatchets, threw stones and iron bars at facades of buildings, destroying them. They also bashed in the glass front of the Sofitel, the most luxurious hotel in Algiers, and destroyed dozens of cars.

Marchers carried signs denouncing the "hogra," a word used to refer to injustice and abuse of power, and denounced authorities as "assassins." The demonstrators were demanding justice and more freedom from the military-backed government after weeks of deadly riots.

Those riots are not directly related to the Islamic insurgency in this North African nation. More than 100,000 people have been killed since the start of the insurgency in 1992.

There was no official estimate of the number of marchers Thursday, but informal estimates reached about half a million.

Sporadic rioting continued along the main arteries of Algiers hours after the march ended, and streets were strewn with broken lampposts. Columns of smoke from fires and tear gas wafted into the sky.

The march came after at least 52 people were killed during 40 days of rioting in the mountainous Berber region of Kabyle that begins some 60 miles east of Algiers.

The recent riots were triggered by the April 18 death of a teen-ager in a Kabyle police station. Since then, there have been numerous demonstrations in Kabyle and in Algiers, with at least 200,000 people marching through the capital on May 31. The Berber protest quickly broadened to take in the masses of discontented citizens in this nation rich in natural gas but marked by corruption and soaring unemployment.

This week, rioting spread to the Aures region farther east. Newspapers said 24 people were injured Wednesday, some by police gunfire, in Ain Fekroun, 330 miles east of Algiers.

Organizers of Thursday's demonstration in Algiers defied government orders to keep the march between two main squares. Instead, protesters set off from the outskirts of the capital to march to the presidential offices.

An Algerian journalist reporting for LCI, Baya Gacemi, said she had heard gunfire but couldn't say where it was coming from. A police commander, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied gunshots were fired.

Ahead of the demonstration, authorities had closed down the 34th Algiers Fair, the march starting point. The fair draws hundreds of businesses from abroad.

Wednesday's violence in Ain Fekroun followed several days of rioting in the Aures town of Khenchella, where at least one person was killed and some 50 injured. The police chief of Khenchella and his deputy have been fired.

"Anger is Gaining Ground," the privately owned daily Le Matin said in a Wednesday headline. "Algeria: Revolt or Revolution?" asked the daily Liberte.

On Friday, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika referred to a "foreign plot" to explain the growing violence. Bouteflika has ordered an investigation into the deaths in Kabyle but his action has failed to soothe tempers.

----

Kabila Tells Congo Army Stop Recruiting Children

June 14, 2001
By REUTERS Filed at 11:24 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-congo-d.html

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Congolese President Joseph Kabila on Thursday ordered the country's armed forces to demobilize child soldiers and stop recruiting minors.

The U.N. children's agency UNICEF estimates there are between 8,000 and 12,000 child soldiers in the vast, mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo.

Thousands of underage boys -- called kadogos, or small ones -- joined the lightning military campaign that brought late President Laurent Kabila to power in May 1997. And the Congolese army recruited underage fighters who have been battling rebels supported by Rwanda and Uganda since 1998.

Joseph Kabila has revived peace efforts since replacing his father after he was assassinated in January.

He said the government's new policy was to stop recruiting children under 18 and no longer send them to the front line or allow their use ``for purely military tasks, such as the handling of weapons.''

Kabila, addressing a UNICEF seminar on child soldiers in the capital, ordered the new instructions to be sent to all military units and training centers.

He acknowledged the role played by child soldiers in Congo's successive wars and said it was the government's duty to facilitate their reintegration into society.

``I express my recognition and that of the nation to my dear compatriots, child soldiers who, for the love of their country, consented to enormous sacrifices...for the liberation of the country,'' he said.

``After their demobilization, the nation has the responsibility to assure them...an appropriate education, a return to family life and apprenticeships to ensure their best development.''

Martin Mogwanja, UNICEF director in Kinshasa, welcomed Kabila's announcement.

``His statement today allows the process of demobilization and the reintegration of child soldiers to get going. We now have the green light to move forward on this,'' he told Reuters.

He said a joint commission comprising military officials and civic groups was due to visit all units of the Congolese army in the coming weeks to identify child soldiers to be demobilized.

Kabila, who is supported by Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola in the civil war, appealed to all sides to stop recruiting children.

Since coming to power Kabila has raised hopes for peace in the Central African country by allowing the deployment of U.N. observers to monitor a 1999 cease-fire agreement.

-------- africa

Liberia Tries to Forget Homemade Film

JUNE 14, 01:01 EST
By TIM SULLIVAN
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=AFRICA&STORYID=APIS7CK4ACG1

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) - The production quality is terrible - a tangle of distorted voices, jerky angles, blurry images. But every once in a while a few words punch through the garble, and the video's sickening reality becomes clear.

``I will talk,'' pleads panic-stricken Liberian President Samuel K. Doe, half-naked and tied up on the floor of a nondescript office. ``I will tell you something ... Please, please let me go. I beg you.''

His captor, a militia leader named Prince Johnson, stares back drunkenly from behind a large desk, guarded by a dozen soldiers. The militia leader turns away from the just-ousted president, a barely literate man whose repressive regime savaged this West African country through the 1980s. A framed painting of Jesus watches over the scene.

Johnson looks bored. He waves his hand: ``I say cut off one ear.''

For years, this was the most-watched movie in this war-shattered nation - a Camcorded chronicle of bloodshed. Filmed in September 1990 by a friend of Johnson's, it is a horrific record of Doe's last hours, ending with an excruciatingly long close-up of his mutilated corpse.

Now, with Liberian trying put the war behind it, the video has become an uncomfortable memory. The tape has been pulled from stores, thrown away, purposefully forgotten. The government banned its sale. Many Liberians, desperate for reconciliation, won't even discuss it.

``I hate that movie,'' said Kekura Kamara, a struggling filmmaker who was, before the war, Liberia's biggest TV star. ``I don't want to hear about war, I don't want to see it.''

Many people already have seen it.

Through much of the 1990s, while Liberia was being devastated by one of the most vicious civil wars in West African history - a seven-year nightmare that killed 150,000 people and destroyed nearly every city and town - the video was a hit.

In a country increasingly callous to violence, the movie celebrated a dictator's downfall with a surreal blend of documentary and horror. Liberians crowded into Monrovia's tiny, generator-powered theaters to watch it. Johnson distributed hundreds of copies. The movie circulated quickly throughout West Africa.

``People would come in and ask for it all the time,'' said Tony Hane, who works in a Monrovia video shop. ``That movie gave a very bad name to the country.''

But things have changed in Liberia. The civil war ended five years ago with one final spasm as feuding warlords fought for supremacy. In 1997, the most powerful of those warlords, Charles Taylor, was elected president.

If Liberia is trying to escape its past, however, it's not getting far.

``The country remains divided,'' said James Verdier Jr., director of the Justice and Peace Commission, Liberia's foremost rights group. ``National reconciliation is a farce.''

Years after the war's end, members of Taylor's old militia dominate the government. The security forces, a thuggish collection of ex-fighters, harass ordinary civilians for money and frighten government critics into silence.

Diplomats say Taylor and his inner circle have grown rich while the country remains mired in 80 percent unemployment and widespread poverty. Few Liberians have seen a working electrical outlet or water faucet for 11 years.

For more than a year, the country has faced a rebellion along its border with Guinea. Paranoia runs high; officials warn of infiltrators and Taylor doesn't move without an army of soldiers around him.

A billboard, not far from Taylor's mansion, urges ``Total Reconciliation by 2024.''

Twenty-three years sounds likely to Verdier, who wonders if watching the movie could help Liberia.

``Let people see what happened,'' he said. ``They don't want to admit the atrocities they committed.''

Ask quietly in the right places and the tape can still be bought. But these days, it's seldom Liberians doing the purchasing.

``Most of them are foreigners - Lebanese, Americans. One guy came from Europe,'' said a video store clerk who occasionally sells the tape and asked his name not be used. ``They just want to see how he acts before he dies.''

That raises the obvious question. Why would anyone want to watch it? Why would a nation bathed in violence - yet still famed for its friendliness - revel in such a film?

It doesn't take war to breed such a hit. In 1980s America, a once-obscure video, ``Faces of Death,'' became a brief sensation among teen-agers, and suburban TVs filled with images of human autopsies, suicides and slaughterhouses. Americans worried over its popularity, its meaning. Few found acceptable answers.

Likewise, Liberians can't explain the hold the Doe movie had on their nation.

``Liberians are very good people. They're kind. They're intelligent,'' said Hane. ``How can people who are so friendly be so bloody? I don't know.''

-------- arms sales

Kuwait is examining weapons offers

Middle East Newsline,
June 14, 2001
http://menewsline.com/stories/2001/june/06_14_4.html

ABU DHABI [MENL] -- Kuwait is examining weapons offers from both Eastern and Western suppliers.

Officials said the offers include that of major platforms such as aircraft, tanks, air defense systems and unmanned air vehicles. They said an increasing number of contractors are lobbying for defense sales to the sheikdom.

In a one week period last month, they said, Kuwait has received offers from Britain, China and Russia. The officials would not elaborate but said the sheikdom would respond within the next few months.

"We will choose the appropriate offers before the end of the year, and most probably in the summer," Kuwait Defense Minister Jaber Mubarak Al Sabah said.

Mubarak said that Kuwait will decide by the end of the month whether to buy the Amoun air defense system from Egypt. He said budgetary considerations will be the key.

----

China claims sale of 'logistics items,' not arms

June 14, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010614-355782.htm

Chinaīs government yesterday denied selling weapons to Cuba, but the State Department said it was investigating arms and explosives transfers to the island.

Zhang Yuanyuan, a Chinese Embassy spokesman, said in an interview that Beijing has not shipped weapons to the communist island off the U.S. coast.

"China and Cuba have diplomatic relations, and the two countriesī militaries have relations," Mr. Zhang said. "For some years, China has supplied the Cuban military with logistics items -- never arms."

He declined to specify what type of equipment was transferred.

Asked if explosives were delivered, Mr. Zhang would not answer directly but said, "explosives could be used for civilian purposes, to clear some mine shaft."

State Department lawyers and arms officials, meanwhile, are reviewing intelligence reports about the military shipments delivered to Cuba on Chinaīs state-run shipping company over the past several months, said a senior department official.

If the deliveries are deemed "lethal" assistance, they could trigger a 1996 law requiring U.S. sanctions against China.

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said an earlier review showed that Chinese military goods sent to Cuba did not appear to fit the departmentīs definition of "lethal" assistance.

The new review is focusing on the delivery in December of a shipment of explosives with both military and commercial uses that could be considered lethal aid under U.S. law. It also is focusing on other arms transfers.

"People are looking to see what else there might be," one official said.

Under a 1996 law, any nation that provides lethal military assistance to a nation identified as a state sponsor of international terrorism must be slapped with U.S. economic sanctions. Cuba is among the nine states designated as terrorism sponsors.

U.S. intelligence officials told The Washington Times that a well-known Chinese arms dealer had arranged at least three shipments of weapons last year from China to the Cuban port of Mariel.

The last shipment in December included what U.S. officials called "dual-use" explosives and detonation cord that could be used for either military arms or commercial blasting.

All the shipments were made on freighters belonging to the state-owned China Ocean Shipping Co. (Cosco).

Cosco spokesman Aaron Forel said yesterday he would not comment on any military deliveries by the company to Cuba.

"I canīt really respond," he said. "Iīm only capable of talking about Cosco."

Cosco is a "commercial entity" whose activities "are purely commercial and always legal, in conformance with all international maritime and port regulations," Mr. Forel said. "We have never knowingly shipped any illegal cargo."

U.S. Customs Service officials intercepted a Cosco shipment of 2,000 Chinese AK-47 assault rifles that were being delivered to San Francisco in 1996. The shipping line also has been linked in the past by U.S. intelligence to arms and missile component deliveries to such countries as Pakistan and North Korea.

Despite the Chinese governmentīs denials, James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, told a House committee on Tuesday that the issue involves weapons deliveries.

He testified that he planned to "get more fully briefed on the arms to Cuba."

"Weīre very much concerned with this [Peopleīs Liberation Army] cooperation and movement of military equipment into Cuba," Mr. Kelly told the House International Relations Committee.

On Capitol Hill yesterday, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said he was "deeply concerned" about reports of Chinese arms transfers to the communist island.

"I think Congress should oversight it," Mr. McCain said, noting that reporting by The Times on similar issues "has credibility with many of us here on the Hill."

"Itīs one in a series [of violations]," Mr. McCain said. "We know that they have been providing optic capabilities to the Iraqis to improve their defense capabilities. We know of the port facility they have in Pakistan. So thereīs a series of actions taking place. So I think we not only ought to look at that specifically, but at Chinese actions overall."

China came under fire from the Bush administration earlier this year for providing military technology to Iraq, specifically a fiber-optic communications network with military applications.

Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and also a member of Armed Services panel, said Chinaīs previous behavior has raised his concerns over the Cuba connection.

"If this were just one isolated case, where China has sold arms to Cuba, that would be one thing. However, this is a behavioral pattern that has persisted since 1996 when they made the statements about the rockets in the Taiwan Straits, trying to influence the [Taiwanese] election."

Mr. Inhofe said Chinaīs belligerence toward the United States was highlighted by the reported remarks of Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian, who said last year that war with the United States over Taiwan was "inevitable."

"Theyīve been positioning themselves, and this is just one more position," Mr. Inhofe said. "On top of that, saying that war is inevitable, I just see this as a consistent behavior pattern that is continuing to be scary. I think we ought to have hearings on all of these things. Of course we have had some."

• Dave Boyer contributed to this report.

-------- balkans

Biden calls for Macedonia intervention

June 14, 2001
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010614-83107984.htm

The new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wasted little time yesterday in putting pressure on the Bush administration in one of the worldīs crisis spots.

Chairing his first hearing since his party took control of the Senate this month, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, called for the United States and NATO to take a more active role in containing ethnic violence in Macedonia.

"It is clear to me that the United States must increase its involvement," Mr. Biden said yesterday.

"Like it or not, the reality is that only the U.S. has the necessary military and political credibility to successfully manage and resolve crises in the Balkans," he said.

This monthīs shift in power in the Senate was perhaps most starkly illustrated in the changing of the guard in the Foreign Relations Committee, where the liberal Mr. Biden succeeds Sen. Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who set a consistently conservative agenda as committee chairman.

Mr. Bidenīs ascension poses new problems for President Bush, complicating the confirmation strategy for several diplomatic nominees and giving one of the Democratsī most articulate speakers a new soapbox to press his views on issues in which he disagrees with the administration, from the Balkans to North Korea to missile defense.

The Senate hearing on the developing crisis in the Balkans yesterday came as Mr. Bush and other NATO leaders meeting in Brussels announced they were not ready to commit to a military role in Macedonia, where the government is battling an increasingly powerful insurgency by ethnic Albanian rebels.

Mr. Biden, who made a failed run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and has been rumored to be considering another run in 2004, has managed to forge a cordial working relationship with Mr. Helms.

Despite coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum, the two were able to work together on a compromise U.N. reform package, the expansion of NATO and increased funding for the State Department during the Clinton administration. They have spoken repeatedly during committee hearings of their close personal relations as the Senateīs "odd couple."

"While I enjoyed the previous arrangement, the gavel is in capable and responsible hands," Mr. Helms said at the beginning of yesterdayīs hearing.

But Mr. Biden has also shown he is not afraid to challenge the new Bush administration on some of its most cherished foreign policy initiatives, notably Mr. Bushīs plans for a defense system against ballistic missile attacks.

In an address last month to the World Affairs Council at the National Press Club, Mr. Biden questioned a number of aspects of the plan, from its price tag and technological feasibility to the response of China, Russia and other nuclear powers. Before the administration announced the resumption of talks with North Korea last week, Mr. Biden publicly criticized Mr. Bushīs skeptical stance on South Korean President Kim Dae-jungīs rapprochement with Pyongyang.

While Mr. Biden has supported research and development for a potential missile defense system, he is clearly far more skeptical than was Mr. Helms of the usefulness of the system and of Mr. Bushīs diplomatic efforts to sell it abroad.

"Are we better off spending this much on national missile defense?" Mr. Biden asked. "Or should we spend at least some of it on modernizing our armed forces to meet more likely challenges, including terrorism?"

Committee watchers have speculated that Mr. Biden may have less trouble with the Republicans than with his fellow Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee. They include some of the chamberīs most liberal members, including Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California.

-------- biological weapons

US cuts back anthrax vaccinations for military services

By Reni Winter,
Knight Ridder,
6/14/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/165/nation/US_cuts_back_anthrax_vaccinations_for_military_services-.shtml

BILOXI, Miss. - The US Defense Department has limited its anthrax vaccination program for the third time, less than a month after a military jury convicted Air Force Captain John Buck of disobeying an order to take the vaccine.

Now, only special forces and researchers will be required to take the vaccine, which was originally planned for all troops. Under the new criteria, Buck, an emergency-room physician at Keesler Air Force Base, would not have been ordered to take the vaccine for deployment to the Middle East.

''They're now going to rely on the very thing I offered to do in the beginning, which is to take antibiotics,'' Buck said Tuesday after hearing of the latest reduction. ''And I offered to do that at my own expense.''

About 13,000 US service members are deployed to southwest Asia, an area that defense officials say is at high risk for biological warfare using anthrax.

Defense officials said they have enough antibiotics on hand to treat the troops if they are attacked with biological weapons containing anthrax.

There are three antibiotics that the Food and Drug Administration ''specifically acknowledges are effective against anthrax: penicillin, doxycycline, and ciprofloxacin,'' said Lieutenant Colonel John Grabenstein, deputy director of clinical operations at the Army's Office of the Surgeon General.

The degree of effectiveness of the antibiotics depends on how much time elapses between exposure and the administration of the antibiotics, Grabenstein said.

''Within 24 hours, they are more than 90 percent effective,'' he said. ''The more time that elapses, the less effective the antibiotics are. If symptoms develop, antibiotics are only 20 percent effective, and there is an 80 percent mortality rate.''

Effectiveness also depends on the dose of antibiotics, the amount of anthrax a person is exposed to, and overall health.

BioPort in Lansing, Mich., is the only anthrax vaccine manufacturing plant in the United States. The company stopped production at about the same time the Defense Department announced its intent to vaccinate all military personnel.

The military proceeded with the vaccination program, even though the FDA had issued a closing warning to BioPort for numerous violations. BioPort has not produced the vaccine since before the program started, and defense officials do not expect the FDA to approve the company's newly renovated anthrax production building until March 2002.

''We have not yet been able to reestablish the supply of certified, safe, and effective vaccine to continue the program on schedule,'' said Marine Major General Randall West, assistant to the deputy secretary of defense for chemical and biological protection.

Buck and thousands of other opponents of the anthrax vaccination program believe that it should be stopped completely until the vaccine is thoroughly tested and the production plant is approved by the FDA.

--------

Verbatim debate on the European Parliament resolution of 14 June 2001 on the Compliance Protocol for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)

Thanks to Sharon Riggles for these notes and to Felicity Hill for circulating them. Centre for European Security and Disarmament - ISSUE UPDATE

[Unofficial translation]
From: ASlater <aslater@gracelinks.org>,

MEP Bill NEWTON DUNN (Representing the Groupe du Parti Européen des Libéraux, Démocrates et Réformateurs)

Mr President, as everyone knows, the leaders of the EU and the American President are meeting on Göteborg today. Obviously some of the things they will air are their difference about e Kyoto Protocol on the environment and global warming and about the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which needs updating.

But there is another important matter which has received very little publicity and to which this debate is designed to draw attention. It is the six-year negotiations that are nearing completion to update the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention. The problem with the 1972 convention is that while it banned production of biological weapons it contained no means of verifying whether they were being produced on the quiet.

Despite six years of negotiations, it now appears that the new US Administration is backing off and is unwilling to support the terms that have been negotiated to date, including by it own predecessors. In the widespread opinion of this House, the presidential elections last November did not suggest that the American people wanted a wholesale change in government policy, but favoured a continuation of the previous policy. Nevertheless, there are now very alarming signals that the Americans may not support he work that has been done so far. If that is the case, and if there is not final agreement on containing biological and toxic weapons, what kind of message will it send out to what President Bush calls the 'rogue' states of the world?

We cannot get involved in the negotiations but the most important thing we can do - and I hope the House will agree - is to give strong support to the EU negotiating team and say to the Americans: 'come on, sign up, we need this agreement'.

MEP Bernd POSSELT (Representing the European Peoples' Party / Conservatives)

Mr President, the 20th century began with the horrible use of poisonous gas during WWI, that is, with chemical weapons. Then in WWII came the use of nuclear weapons, and the last quarter of the 20th Century - starting with the Vietnam War - was particularly marked by the development of biological weapons. It is clear that advances in the biotechnology field currently offer horrendous possibilities for killing. The human weakness of willingness to kill constantly increases and is difficult to reverse, while the international system of justice is not keeping pace. Many similar ethical concepts, which are a necessary foundation of the international justice system, are getting weaker rather than stronger. The end result being an eroded social system, with even more opportunities to kill.

This demonstrates what a massive responsibility we have, and it is therefore urgent that the international system of justice is strengthened and that there be a multilateral approach to this question. The USA has, of course, a great responsibility but so does the EU. And we must watch that we act appropriately in our role - and in this case justifiably and strongly protesting against the US - but we are not willing to nor capable of stepping in as a major player in the international power game.

We easily criticise the leading role of the US, but I think this role is too broad. However, that is not the fault of the US, it is the fault of the weakness of the political - and especially security policies - of the EU. I appeal to the Summit in Götheburg to finally set out EU priorities and to put security policy in the centre of the Summit, so that the EU finally can become an equal partner of the US. This problem would then be solved.

MEP Jan Marinus WIERSMA (Representing the Party of European Socialists)

Mr President, the visit of President Bush to Europe is inter alia dominated by his plans to build a National Missile Defense. They are being developed to defend the US against attacks by so-called rogue states. It would be an understatement to say that we are not very enthusiastic about these plans and prefer a multilateral approach to the threat the US refers to. Missile defense will, however, not be able to defend the US against biological weapons, which can be spread (or be proliferated) in a variety of ways.

It is both ironic and tragic that the US does not seem to want to contribute to the strengthening of the biolgiocal weapons convention. Biological weapons can be more easily developed and proliferated than nuclear weapons and these weapons can only be effectively fought through multilateral agreements and that should include a proper control mechanism to trace violators. This mechanism must be developed quickly. With an agreement on this issue, we can finally mark a success in the fight against this weapon of mass destruction. The political conclusion of an agreement should be that international alternatives to unilateral action in the security domain do exist.

MEP Patricia MCKENNA (Representing the Green Group)

Mr President, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction poses a major threat to the world. The misuse of biotechnology for hostile purposes must be addressed straight away. The use of biological and toxic weapons has to be tackled. It is disgraceful that there is not mechanism in place today to verify compliance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

A legally binding protocol to strengthen compliance with the BTWC is a matter of the utmost urgency. We would urge the States Parties to show maximum flexibility and readiness to compromise, so that a short deadline can be met and a protocol adopted before the Fifth Convention Review Conference in November/December of this year.

We would also like to see States create a stronger possible verification regime in order to curb the hostile misuse of biological technologies. This means maintaining at the very least the measure currently outlined in the chairman's draft text. We would recommend that the final version of the compliance protocol establish a modern and open verification regime capable of adjusting to changes in political climate and in technological capabilities.

David BYRNE (EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner)

Mr President, the Commission fully supports the resolutions tabled by the different groups in the European Parliament. It is indeed critical at present that effective progress be achieved by the international community in the field of non-proliferation and disarmament. As regards the specific case of the BTWC signed in 1972, the lack of a verification protocol has been a major flaw vis-ā-vis non-proliferation in the international community. The Ad Hoc Group was created to resolve this issue. After five years of difficult negotiations at the Disarmament Conference in Geneva, the time has now come to conclude such a protocol.

The EU praises the commitment of Ambassador Tóth, Chairman of the Ad Hoc Group, to achieve effective progress in time for adoption of the verification protocol during the BTWC Conference a the end of this year. The Commission hopes that all States Parties will accept the composite paper as a good starting point towards enabling the task of drafting and agreeing on the protocol to be finalised in time for the BTWC Conference.

MEP James PROVAN (Vice-President of the European Parliament, Chair of the Session)

The joint debate is closed.

-------- colombia

U.S. Pilots Summoned in Colombian Bombing Probe

New York Times
June 14, 2001
By REUTERS Filed at 12:52 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-colombi.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Authorities have subpoenaed three Americans to testify about the Colombian air force's bombing of a small town in 1998, which killed 17 civilians and injured more than 30 others, judicial sources said.

The Colombian air force pilots suspected of bombing the town have told a military court investigating the incident that three privately contracted U.S. pilots flying a surveillance aircraft for Florida-based AirScan International Inc. passed on coordinates for the attack, the judicial sources told Reuters Wednesday.

Five children were among the 17 civilians killed, and the number of people injured is believed to have been at least 30. Colombian authorities have been looking into the December 1998 incident since last November.

The air force originally blamed the country's largest rebel force, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), for the civilian deaths. It said the guerrillas had detonated a car bomb in the town of Santo Domingo de Tame, near the border with Venezuela.

But later investigation showed that the killings resulted from U.S.-made explosives, possibly cluster bombs, dropped from a Colombian air force helicopter.

The judicial sources told Reuters that the three American pilots were no longer believed to be in Colombia. The next step would be for Colombian authorities to contact the State Department for help in obtaining depositions from them, the sources said.

COMPANY MONITORED PIPELINE

AirScan International said it was responsible at the time for monitoring the Cano Limon oil pipeline in northeastern Colombia and reported rebel activity to ``the oil company.''

U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum Inc. operates the Cano Limon oil field, and state oil firm Ecopetrol runs the pipeline, which Marxist guerrillas fighting in Colombia's 37-year-old war have regularly bombed for years.

``If we saw something that needed to be reported, we reported it through the oil company, and what was reported from there was the oil company's business,'' a senior AirScan official, who declined to be named, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

He did not say if he was referring to Occidental or Ecopetrol.

He said the pilots, who no longer work for AirScan, flew a four-seat Cessna 337 Skymaster aircraft, equipped with radar and video recording equipment. AirScan ceased operations in Colombia in early 1999, transferring the monitoring job to the country's air force.

A U.S. Embassy source told Reuters that U.S. citizens were contracted to pilot the plane but said they were not in any way affiliated with the U.S. military.

``We understand that there were U.S. citizens that were contracted to pilot the plane for pipeline security. At no time has the U.S. government provided any military or contract support to petroleum companies in Colombia,'' the source said.

GENERAL GAVE DIFFERENT ACCOUNT

Colombian air force Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco said earlier on Wednesday that the Skymaster was the property of the Colombian Air Force and had been piloted by Colombians.

Occidental said that it had allowed AirScan to use an on-site landing strip but AirScan would have passed on any coordinates directly to the air force or Ecopetrol.

``This was in the hands of Ecopetrol and the air force. ... We had no contract relationship with AirScan in December 1998,'' an Occidental spokesman told Reuters.

Two years after the bombing, in December 2000, the United States began pouring more than $1 billion into President Andres Pastrana's Plan Colombia anti-cocaine offensive.

Critics say Plan Colombia could drag the United States into a Vietnam-style conflict. U.S. officials point out that the offensive does not target guerrillas and that they have no personnel directly involved in the fighting.

But American civilians hired by DynCorp, a major Pentagon contractor based in Reston, Virginia, were fired on by rebels earlier this year while being rescued by a State Department helicopter after a failed herbicide-spraying mission.

And Americans were involved in the accidental killing of a 35-year-old missionary and her 7-month-old daughter in April in Peru when a missionary plane was shot down after a Peruvian air force fighter acted on a tip from a CIA anti-drug surveillance plane.

Such surveillance flights in Peru and Colombia have since been suspended.

-------- cuba

Castro Denounces Cyberattack Concerns

JUNE 14, 15:36 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7CKH46G0

HAVANA (AP) - An irritated Fidel Castro on Thursday dismissed concerns about Cuban cyberterrorism against the United States as ``craziness,'' saying his country doesn't have the technology to launch such attacks even if it wanted to.

U.S. officials who believe that Cuba could and would attack the country's computer networks are ``orphans, and bereft of ideas,'' Castro said in a speech shown on state television. He called the United States ``an empire that only knows lies.''

``It is craziness ... it would be against our principles,'' Castro said at the inauguration of a new solar energy system for a school in the western province of Pinar del Rio.

Castro's comments were a response to testimony by Rear Adm. Thomas Wilson at a Senate hearing in February.

Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, at the time said Cuba has the potential to use ``information warfare or computer network attack,'' enabling the country ``to disrupt our access or flow of forces to the region.''

Some other U.S. officials have said privately that they believe Cuba's computer capability has been overstated, noting that the island still does not possess a modern telephone system.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who was at the hearing that Wilson addressed, has said he thinks the issue warrants further study.

``They are pulling his leg,'' Castro said of Wyden. He suggested that the senator come to the island and investigate for himself.

-------- drug war

Efforts to Ease Drug Terms Stall in Albany

June 14, 2001
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/14/nyregion/14DRUG.html

Efforts to reach a deal to relax New York's drug sentencing laws have stalled, leaving some proponents worried that no revisions will be made this summer.

In January, Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, threw his weight behind the idea of easing the laws, which mandate long prison sentences for drug felons, including many low-level street dealers and addicts. The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, soon did the same. And advocates on both sides of the issue predicted that a consensus would be reached during the 2001 legislative session.

But no substantive discussions have begun among the governor and the two men who control the State Legislature. Not even closed-door negotiations - where legislative compromises are usually reached - have gotten under way, according to aides to the lawmakers, as well as state officials and advocates who have a stake in the legislation.

All sides blame the state budget impasse - and the resulting tensions in Albany these days - for the lack of talks on drug laws.

Differences between Republicans and Democrats on the drug laws are extreme. Chief among them is what to do about the biggest chunk of serious drug felons in the system. Last year, these so-called Class B felons made up more than 28 percent of all those imprisoned on drug felonies.

The Assembly proposal would hand judges the discretion to decide whether to send these felons to prison or to treatment. The governor's proposal would require judges to get the prosecutors' permission. Under the current mandatory sentencing system, judges have virtually no authority over sentencing; they are bound by the weight of the drugs seized and the defendant's felony record. Only prosecutors can decide who can be sent to treatment instead of prison.

With barely a week left until the official close of the legislative session, neither side is ready to sound the death knell on drug law changes.

Still, among those who have spent years agitating for change, the optimism of early spring has dimmed.

"There's no forward motion," said John R. Dunne, who served in the State Senate as a Republican and now lobbies to loosen the mandatory sentencing laws. "Staking out a position is one thing. Following up and acting on it is what's needed for real leadership."

Mr. Dunne places that onus on the Democratic leadership of the Assembly. "It needs more than a nudge," he said. "It needs a very strong demonstration of real support."

For their part, the Assembly Democrats, whose 80-page bill was introduced just three weeks ago and has yet to come to the floor for a vote, remain upbeat.

On a measure as highly charged as this, they say, negotiations cannot begin until meaningful budget talks are under way, and budget talks at the moment are at a standstill.

"There are a number of pieces of legislation that must be done," Mr. Silver said in an interview yesterday, rattling off other unresolved measures, from energy to campaign finance reform. "I am as optimistic we will achieve something."

This is the first year that Mr. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat straddling the demands of his largely white Democratic colleagues from upstate and his black and Latino colleagues from New York City, has endorsed amending the laws. And he did so after the governor promised change.

"Why would someone expect this would be resolved fast?" asked Jeffrion L. Aubry, a Queens assemblyman and an early crusader for changing the Rockefeller-era drug laws. "All the players are out. They have positions. They're public on where they stand. In the history of Rockefeller, that's been the biggest part of the battle. That's how you begin negotiations."

Assembly Democrats predicted that discussions would begin soon between key aides to Mr. Silver, Mr. Pataki and the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, a Republican. A spokesman said that Mr. Bruno remained concerned about tinkering with the sentencing rules but favored allocating more money for drug treatment.

A spokesman for the governor, Michael McKeon, said yesterday that administration officials were open to negotiations, though not to some of the Assembly provisions. "We do have some concerns, significant concerns, with the bill, particularly its failure to provide a meaningful voice to district attorneys on diversion decisions," Mr. McKeon said. "Nevertheless, we remain willing and interested in working together in good faith. We're always hopeful."

A report released last week by the Legal Action Center, an advocacy group that favors loosening the drug laws, pointed to the stark contrast between the Republican and Democratic bills.

Judges would have sole authority to send 14 times as many drug felons to treatment under the Assembly bill as they would under the governor's, the report concluded. However, as the governor's aides pointed out, the report did not count in its figures those who could be diverted with the prosecutors' consent.

The other vital issue is money. The Assembly proposal includes $55 million for treatment slots in prison. The governor's proposal allocates no treatment dollars, figuring that treatment slots would be paid for through savings in the prison budget. A Senate proposal allocates $30 million for treatment slots controlled by prosecutors.

There are other differences. The Assembly proposes much lower sentences on each class of felony, for instance, while the governor's bill piles on stiff new penalties for marijuana sales - but there is likely to be far greater flexibility on these issues.

In any event, people on all sides of the drug war divide wondered aloud how and when any discussion of the differences might start.

"Everyone is so far apart in terms of their approach to the problem, it's going to take a great deal of effort to bring the parties together," said Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney. Prosecutors across the state are the most powerful backers of the present drug laws. Very few low-level dealers and addicts are sentenced to long prison terms, they contend, and many of those have past felonies. The prosecutors say they are best equipped to decide who should go into treatment, and they have spent the last several months cautioning lawmakers against making drastic changes.

"Do I think it's dead?" Mr. Brown mused aloud. "I don't see any real level of communication at the present time."

One criminal justice official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of influencing the direction of future talks, said that while he was fairly confident a couple of months ago that the drug laws would be amended this year, his confidence waned in the last few weeks. "I don't believe this is being seriously discussed," he said. "I don't see it going anywhere. It needs a spark."

-------- iraq

Deadline Looms for U.N. Iraq Plan

New York Times
June 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 7:15 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Iraq.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Yielding to demands from the major U.N. powers, the United States is trimming down lengthy, technical lists of military-related goods that it wants kept out of Iraqi hands, diplomats said Thursday.

But that may not be enough to push through a joint U.S.-British plan to overhaul Iraq sanctions by a looming July 3 deadline.

During Security Council consultations on Iraq Thursday, Russia and China -- key Iraq supporters with veto power -- said it would be difficult to complete the work necessary for the kind of changes the U.S.-British plan envisions, according to Western diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A meeting Saturday in Slovenia between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Bush may help speed up negotiations, Western diplomats hope.

``We're making progress,'' said acting U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham. ``There's a broad range of support for the concepts in the resolution. .... We're hoping we can come to an agreement that everyone can support by the end of the month.''

If their plan isn't approved July 3, it will be the second deadline blown by Washington and London in an effort to revamp a decade-old embargo and the way sanctions work.

The proposed resolution, first submitted on May 22, would allow the free flow of civilian goods to Iraq while tightening the arms embargo and plugging up smuggling routes. The two English-speaking allies were unable to muster the quick support needed to get the plan approved on June 3, when the U.N.'s oil-for-food plan in Iraq was up for renewal.

To buy them more time, the Security Council extended oil-for-food by 30 days while negotiators worked on a proposal that all could agree on.

Diplomats from the five permanent members of the Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- said progress was made at talks this week in Paris.

The meeting was proposed by France, worried that U.S.-drafted lists -- which include hundreds of items with military applications -- could become a stumbling block in the effort to ease the sanctions imposed after Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. France, Russia and China all complained that the lists were too long and technical.

As a result of those talks, the United States agreed to shorten the lists but diplomats cautioned that major elements will remain unchanged. The United States and Britain argue that the ``controlled-goods'' lists are key to preventing Saddam Hussein from rearming.

Also Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended transfering $510 million every six months to the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, saying Iraq's decrepit oil industry is in desperate need of spare parts and financial assistance.

-------- mideast

Syria Pulls Tanks From Lebanon, Christians Wary

June 14, 2001
By REUTERS Filed at 7:47 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-lebanon.html

CHTAURA, Lebanon (Reuters) - Syria moved tanks out of Lebanon early on Friday, pulling back some of its big military presence but leaving doubts about whether Damascus had substantively loosened its grip on its smaller neighbor.

Lebanon praised the surprise redeployment of some of Damascus's 35,000 troops -- which began on Thursday after months of bitter complaint from Lebanon's substantial Christian minority. It said it was proof of Syria's good intentions.

``This move...confirms the depth of Syrian-Lebanese relations,'' Information Minister Ghazi al-Aridi said in a statement from the cabinet in Beirut, thanking Syria for helping Lebanon ``consolidate its security and stability.''

Witnesses saw dozens of military transport trucks carrying tanks and other equipment make for the Syrian border on the road linking Beirut and Damascus, as Syrian military police directed traffic to speed them through a town near the frontier.

Syrian troops left positions in Beirut and surrounding areas on Thursday. But it remained to be seen what the full impact of the move would be on a Syrian military presence that stretches back to Lebanon's devastating 1975-1990 civil war.

Reuters correspondents saw Syrian soldiers moving their beds and tents away from five strategic positions in the area of Yarze, one of the Christian areas of Beirut near the Defense Ministry that the Lebanese army announced Syria would quit.

Two Syrian army trucks, carrying multiple rocket launchers, drove out of Beirut followed by buses packed with Syrian troops.

A Syrian soldier, seemingly cheered by the move, borrowed a mobile phone and called his wife to tell her he would be home in a few days. But other soldiers took a camera from a Reuters Television crew and destroyed the film before returning it.

Maronite Christian Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, who has spearheaded the campaign against Damascus's involvement in Lebanon, was quoted as expressing his relief at the pullback but that discontent over Syria's influence remained.

``There is a still a long way to go before there are balanced ties,'' Lebanese radio quoted him as saying.

THREAT OF SECTARIAN VIOLENCE

Controversy over Syria's presence in Lebanon has taken on a sectarian cast, raising fears of the splits along confessional lines that ripped Lebanon apart during its civil war.

Damascus poured its troops into that conflict in part to spare Lebanese Christian militias defeat at the hands of Muslim, Palestinian and leftist militias. Syria then turned on the Maronite Christians after they aligned themselves with Israel.

The 1989 Taif accord, which formally ended the civil war stripped the Maronites of much of their traditional political weight, but stipulated a Syrian pullout from Beirut and other cities by 1992, a sore point with Syria's Christian critics.

The controversy also included other, non-Christian voices such as Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a one-time ally of Damascus who has since denounced its extensive influence -- which has included vetting members of parliament and ministers.

In recent months, Lebanon's rifts over Syria's presence have shown through in big rallies by rival Christian and Muslim groups that threatened to degenerate into street fighting.

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has brokered discreet talks between Patriarch Sfeir and top Syrian officials, and maintains a dialogue with Sfeir, who has assumed the political leadership of Lebanon's one million Maronite since the end of the war.

Jumblatt told Reuters Syria's move would help smooth bilateral ties and help reconciliation within Lebanon: ``This appears to be a step toward strengthening the internal Lebanese dialogue and the Syrian-Lebanese relationship.''

CHRISTIAN BITTERNESS, SUSPICION STILL STRONG

Political sources said Syria had considered redeploying its troops last year but froze its plans after the start of the vocal Christian campaign. Syrian made it clear to Lebanese leaders that it would not make an exit under duress.

But analysts say it was hard for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his late father Hafez al-Assad last year, to ignore what has been called the ``Christian uprising.''

One of Damascus's staunchest foes slammed the pull-out as an empty gesture that did nothing to check Syrian power in Lebanon.

``This is a cosmetic move aimed at absorbing the anger against the Syrian presence,'' exiled Maronite rebel leader Michel Aoun told Lebanese television in an interview.

``The Lebanese should not be taken in by these appearances and reject this partial move,'' said Aoun, who waged a quixotic 1989 ``war of liberation'' to drive out Syrian forces.

Other Christian Lebanese, many of whom resent the influx of hundreds of thousands of Syrian labourers to Lebanon, said the real test of Damascus's intentions lay ahead.

``Does this change anything? I don't know,'' said Abdo al-Asmar, a barber in the mountain suburb of Baabda, where Syrian troops have a base near the presidential palace.

``The Syrians being here has been a given for a long time,'' he said. ``Maybe it will lead somewhere, but this is just a beginning.''

-------- puerto rico

Vieques bombing range will close by 2003

By Tamara Lytle and Ivan Roman,
Orlando Sentinel,
6/14/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/165/nation/Vieques_bombing_range_will_close_by_2003-.shtml

WASHINGTON - The White House, bowing to increasing public pressure and an unhappy Puerto Rican population, will halt bombing on the island of Vieques by 2003.

The Navy has fought hard to keep its training facility on the small island off mainland Puerto Rico, calling the exercises there essential to troop readiness.

But the Navy came away the political loser yesterday after a meeting between Karl Rove, a top aide to President Bush, Navy Secretary Gordon England, and Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz. The Navy is expected to announce today that it will leave Vieques by 2003 and use the time until then to look for an alternative training plan, said Representative Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey.

Menendez and other Puerto Ricans have fought to oust the Navy from Vieques ever since an errant bomb killed a civilian guard on the range in 1999. Menendez and Representative Luis Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, said the decision against the Navy yesterday was something of a hollow victory, since bombing will continue for another two years.

''Not one additional bomb or bullet should fall on Vieques,'' said Billy Weinberg, spokesman for Gutierrez.

But the Navy intends to continue training during the next two years and will keep to its schedule, which includes more bombing with inert bombs, beginning on Monday.

''We have not made any decision changing our current status on Vieques,'' said a Navy spokesman, who noted an announcement is expected today. ''We continue to explore our best ways to achieve our overarching objective, which is to effectively deploy naval forces. For the near term that must include the use of the facilities at Vieques.''

Meanwhile, the Navy's warplanes began a new round of exercises on the high seas yesterday as the military and protesters pushing to get them off Vieques sized each other up and braced for a new face-off on Monday.

Local police and the Navy say they are ready for the protesters.

''We have roving patrols and beefed-up security,'' said Lieutenant Corey Barker, a Navy spokesman. ''Anyone entering Navy land or destroying property will be arrested.''

Gutierrez is one of the protesters arrested last month. The arrests drew widespread attention because the protesters included the Rev. Al Sharpton, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and actor Edward James Olmos. When Sharpton and three other New York City politicians got stiff jail sentences, the headlines also increased public interest in the long-standing battle.

The Navy has owned three-fourths of the 52-square-mile island municipality since World War II. The Navy owns the eastern and western ends of the island - a total of about 26,000 acres - while more than 9,000 people occupy the central civilian zone.

Puerto Rico Governor Sila Calderon's office last night declined to comment on the Bush administration decision to halt bombing altogether, saying that the decision had not yet been made official.

The White House likely is concerned about the president's chances with the Puerto Rican vote in 2004, his brother's re-election campaign for governor of Florida, and the re-election chances of Republican New York Governor George Pataki, Menendez said.

Boston Globe on 6/14/2001.

-------

Vieques Cleanup May Take Decades

JUNE 14, 18:10 EST
By LILLIAM IRIZARRY
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7CKJCD00

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (AP) - Even if the U.S. Navy ends six decades of bombing practice on Vieques in 2003, environmentalists say it could take decades to remove unexploded ammunition and clean up the battered reefs.

Responding to President Bush's announcement Thursday that the Navy would stop exercises on Vieques in less than two years, critics said much work remains to prepare the Puerto Rican island of thick scrub bush and white sand beaches for a future without the military.

``The cleanup of Vieques is going to take decades,'' said anti-Navy activist Robert Rabin. ``It must begin immediately, and that's one of the demands that has not been met.''

The Navy has used the island to train troops for major conflicts from World War II to Kosovo, and it says the island's terrain and location uniquely allow for simultaneous mock assaults by air, sea and land.

In 1940 the Navy took over two-thirds of Vieques -- an island slightly larger than Manhattan - though its bombing range covers only 900 acres - less than 3 percent of the island.

Troops had used live bombs until two went astray during training for the Kosovo conflict in 1999, and killed civilian guard David Sanes on the bombing range, prompting protests to demand the military leave.

The island's most beautiful and longest beaches, once open to the public when maneuvers were not taking place, have been closed since protesters have faced off with sailors along Navy fences.

Environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said cleaning the island and its reefs will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and that ``the armed services' record for doing these cleanups has not been a good one.''

Kennedy was among more than 180 protesters arrested for trespassing during the last round of exercises in April and May amid widespread opposition that made it difficult for the exercises to proceed. Kennedy is scheduled to appear in court on July 6.

On Thursday, a federal appeals court upheld the convictions and sentences of the Rev. Al Sharpton, New York City Councilman Adolfo Carrion, state Assemblyman Jose Rivera and Bronx County Democratic Party chairman Roberto Ramirez. All were arrested during the demonstration.

``The Navy has an obligation to clean up the reefs,'' Kennedy said. ``They had the same obligation in Culebra, but anyone who dives there can see there are still bombs that were never disposed of.''

The Navy similarly left the nearby Puerto Rican island of Culebra in 1975, but signs still warn of unexploded ordnance there.

Kennedy sued the U.S. government last year in an effort to halt the Vieques exercises, citing environmental and human rights violations. The lawsuit is pending.

The firing range itself, Kennedy said, will likely never be suitable for nonmilitary use because of unexploded ordnance.

Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Katherine Goode said she could not comment on the possibility of a cleanup until additional decisions are made.

Activists say the large amount of wild lands on Vieques could make it a prime tourist spot if the Navy relinquishes the land.

Still, opponents say the bombing has poisoned the environment with heavy metals and other pollutants, and has harmed the health of islanders. At least 3,600 of the island's 9,100 residents have joined a lawsuit seeking compensation for illnesses they argue were caused by the exercises.

The Navy vehemently denies the exercises have caused any harm and says it maintains the island's environment in a healthy state.

A referendum on Nov. 6 was to have decided whether the Navy would stay or go by 2003. Bush's decision appeared to have nullified that vote.

``How many more years will we have to hold on while they bomb us?'' 80-year-old Vieques resident Angel Santos said Thursday. ``We want them to leave right away.''

-------

Navies That Fired on Vieques Absent

JUNE 14, 05:25 EST
By IAN JAMES
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=CSA&STORYID=APIS7CK85RO0

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - As U.S. Navy ships assembled in the Caribbean for what could be one of the last rounds of maneuvers off Vieques island, they were without the foreign navies that once helped bombard the Navy's prized Atlantic firing range.

In past years, exercises like the one that began Wednesday might have involved the Germans or other allied forces training their troops by firing on Vieques - sometimes for a fee.

But controversy over the exercises has ended foreign navies' training on the small, inhabited island.

``Sixty years have gone by with the Navy using the area, renting it out to foreign governments and damaging the environment,'' Puerto Rico's Gov. Sila Calderon told The Associated Press recently. ``The environment has suffered but most importantly, the health conditions are atrocious.''

Before long, U.S. training could end as well. The Pentagon was to announce Thursday that bombing exercises would end as early as 2003, a senior Bush administration official said on condition of anonymity.

The Navy says the exercises haven't caused harm and that it hasn't rented out the range but charged for the use of equipment and ``range refurbishment'' - repairing old planes and tanks that serve as targets and removing shrapnel and unexploded ordnance.

But the fee issue has engendered resentment in Puerto Rico, feeding opposition that has made it difficult for the Navy to continue the exercises.

Between 1996 and 1999, the Navy says it received $148,548 for use of the range. Countries that have trained on Vieques include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Britain, Greece, Italy, Canada, Spain, Norway and the Netherlands, Navy spokesman Lt. Corey Barker said Wednesday.

``There are no places in Europe or elsewhere where you find such a balanced variety of essential facilities,'' the commander-in-chief of the Royal Netherlands Navy, C. van Duyvendijk, said in a 1999 letter.

But allied navies have not been invited since 1999, when a civilian security guard was killed by two bombs dropped off-target on the range by a U.S. Marine jet.

``We don't want to subject the foreign navies to the controversy,'' Barker said. ``It's better for them not to train there at all.''

Before, navies practiced with live bombs and exercised an average 180 days a year. Now, only inert bombs are used and exercises are limited to 90 days a year, and foreign navies hold exercises in the ``outer range,'' a 486,000-square-mile area that begins miles from Vieques and extends far out to sea.

Germany, the last foreign force to use the bombing range - in March 1999, a month before the fatal accident - held exercises in the outer range this year.

``We had the aircraft with us but consciously renounced using Vieques to avoid this problem,'' said Gerhard Deisenroth, spokesman for the German fleet command.

----

IN AMERICA
Treated Like Trash

New York Times
June 14, 2001
By BOB HERBERT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/14/opinion/14HERB.html?searchpv=nytToday

Velda González may be 68 years old, the vice president of the Senate in Puerto Rico and a grandmother several times over. But none of that mattered to U.S. Navy officials who treated her like trash, which is the same way they've treated so many others who have been arrested for protesting the Navy's bombing exercises on the island of Vieques.

Ms. González was with a large group of protesters, including a U.S. congressman, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, who were arrested on Vieques in April and subjected to harsh, dangerous and at times sadistic treatment at the hands of Navy personnel. Details of the arrests made that weekend have been emerging through interviews and a hearing held in Washington last week by members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Ms. González and dozens of others were rounded up by security personnel on the afternoon of April 28 and charged with trespassing on Navy property. "As soon as they caught us," said Ms. González in a telephone interview on Tuesday, "we offered our hands and they handcuffed us."

The detainees were taken by truck to a fenced-in detention area. Several, still handcuffed, were forced to kneel for extended periods on the gravel and rock-strewn ground. They were taunted and told by their captors to "eat dirt."

One of those kneeling was Congressman Gutierrez. The military guards became enraged when he lifted one of his legs and extended it behind him while he tried awkwardly to clear some debris from the spot where he was kneeling.

The congressman and several witnesses, including Ms. González, said two of the guards grabbed Mr. Gutierrez by his shirt and trousers, lifted him in the air and tossed him several feet. When he landed face down they began kicking him.

"I was yelling, 'He's a congressman! He's a congressman!' " said Ms. González.

After being held overnight in the detention area, the detainees were taken by barge to the main island of Puerto Rico. Some of the prisoners were forced to kneel in the hot sun on the deck of the barge. Young women kneeling on the deck were harassed by officers who made obscene comments and gestures.

Ms. González said the prisoners were worried because they were still handcuffed and were not wearing life jackets. She said they were told that prisoners given life jackets would be required to have their hands cuffed behind their backs.

"That would force us to lean forward if we were in the water, even with a life jacket," said Ms. González. "We would drown if there was an accident. So we preferred to stay with our hands cuffed in the front."

The ordeal that caused Ms. González to weep was still to come.

The prisoners were subjected to body searches at a processing center. For some reason, when it was Ms. González's turn to be searched, she was taken outside, and the search was conducted in public. "They made the most indecent, disgusting, immoral search of me, out in the street, in front of a cyclone fence with 20 Navy men watching," she said.

It was more an exercise in humiliation than a real search. It was conducted by a woman who began by lifting Ms. González's blouse. The rest of the search consisted of the very public rubbing, squeezing and mauling - through her clothing - of the vice president of the Puerto Rican Senate.

Ms. González underwent radiation treatment for breast cancer a few years ago, which has left her breasts very tender. She began to cry on the telephone as she described the mortification and the physical pain she felt during the search.

"This was in front of everybody," said Ms. González. "I'm an old woman. I'm a grandmother of 11 grandchildren."

There were many other abuses detailed at the hearing in Washington, which was headed by Representative Robert Menendez of New Jersey. But the Navy seems unconcerned. A spokesman, Lt. Cory Barker, told me yesterday, "There are no formal investigations by the Navy at this point because we have not deemed that, in fact, we have had any cases of abuse or excessive force."

I asked him if the testimony of a U.S. congressman supported by eyewitnesses was enough to prompt the Navy to at least investigate further.

He said no.

----

Puerto Rico Bombing to End in 2003
Navy to Seek New Site For Training Exercises

By Mike Allen and Sue Anne Pressley
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 14, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62469-2001Jun13?language=printer

President Bush plans to stop Navy bombing exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in 2003, ending a 60-year practice that has produced angry protests and escalating resentment from residents who complain it is dangerous.

Navy Secretary Gordon R. England plans to announce today that training will end in two years and that an outside panel will be charged with finding another suitable location for the training, White House and Pentagon officials said. Locations in and outside the United States will be considered, officials said.

The decision would in effect remove the administration from a standoff with local residents that has become increasingly violent and fractious, and that Republican strategists feared was alienating Hispanic voters, a group that is being ardently courted by both parties.

The Navy contends that no other area would allow the same combination of air, sea and land exercises, and it has called the weapons range "the irreplaceable crown jewel of our training." Vieques activists reacted coolly to Bush's plan, calling the withdrawal too slow.

England met at the White House yesterday with Bush's senior adviser, Karl C. Rove, and with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. England's plan is to be announced as soon as today, officials said. New York Gov. George E. Pataki met Tuesday with Rove and recommended that the administration stop the bombing, a position that few Republicans have taken.

Senior military officers voiced concern yesterday that the White House was so worried about the potential political losses with Hispanic voters that it was willing to sacrifice the military benefits of training on Vieques. Suspicion about Bush's intentions began to mount more than a month ago when the White House blocked the Navy from taking steps intended to increase chances that the residents would vote in a November referendum to continue the training, the officers said.

Under the plan, the military will announce that it intends to end all training on the island by May 2003. Under an agreement between former president Bill Clinton and former Puerto Rico governor Pedro Rossello, that is the date that the military would have had to leave Vieques if it lost the November vote.

A non-binding referendum will also be held by Puerto Rico on July 29.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is to appoint a panel of retired military officers and civilians to recommend an alternate site.

A Pentagon official said the Navy would be unlikely to retain any facilities on Vieques, which is home to 9,300 residents, if training ended.

If the Navy continues to insist that Vieques is irreplacable, a political battle may develop with pro-defense legislators opposing the administration.

Ten thousand Navy personnel aboard destroyers, frigates, submarines and ammunition ships took to the high seas yesterday 75 miles south of the island to begin a series of exercises. Navy officials also notified residents that they will begin air and ground maneuvers on the island Monday that will involve about 60 planes dropping inert, or dummy, bombs on targets at Navy installations.

Puerto Rico Gov. Sila Calderon, who arrived on the island yesterday for a prayer ceremony with bombing opponents, said she would not comment immediately on the Bush plan because she had not been officially told.

Protesters said they would continue to try to obstruct Monday's ground training because they do not want to wait two more years for the Navy to leave. At the house rented by the Committee for the Rescue & Development of Vieques across the street from Camp Garcia, protest leaders said they were not satisfied by Bush's decision.

"We don't want the bombing stopped in 2003 -- we want it stopped now," said Robert Rabin, a leader of the group. "The demands of the community are immediate and permanent cessation of all military activity, the removal of all military artifacts and equipment, and the decontamination and return of all lands to the people of Vieques."

The Navy maintains that Vieques is ideal because it is outside the path of commercial airline flights, allowing military pilots to deliver live air-to-ground ordnance from the same altitudes they would in combat.

"In nearly 60 years of range operations, not one civilian living or working off the range has ever been killed or placed at risk," the Navy says on a Web site largely devoted to trying to reassure neighbors.

The Navy bought two-thirds of the island in 1941 for use as a staging area during World War II. The Navy has since sold much of the land, but has used the island ever since for ship-to-shore and air-to-ground gunnery practice and amphibious landings.

Since the death of a civilian guard in a bombing exercise two years ago, protests have increased with each new training session. The Navy began dropping dummy bombs, which contain no explosives, after the accident, but residents allege health and environmental problems from the use of live ordnance for decades.

More than 180 protesters, including Al Sharpton, actor Edward James Olmos and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., were arrested during the last exercises in late April and early May.

Protesters were massing yesterday at a house across the road from Camp Garcia. At least 100 state police officers lined the narrow country road that leads to the naval installation.

Ivan Ventura, 36, a fisherman, says his livelihood is threatened by the Navy exercises but said he was unimpressed with the 2003 plan.

"It should stop now," Ventura said. "How many things can happen between now and 2003?"

Pressley reported from Vieques. Staff writer Roberto Suro in Washington and special correspondent John Marino in San Juan contributed to this report.

-------- russia

Some Russians Are Alarmed at Tighter Grip Under Putin

New York Times
June 14, 2001
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/14/world/14RUSS.html?searchpv=nytToday

MOSCOW, June 13 - It is not an easy thing to quantify, much less to prove. But among intellectuals and advocates of a democratic Russia in the Western mode, a gnawing concern is arising that the relative freedom from state surveillance and restriction that citizens have relished in the last decade may be drawing to a close.

Supplanting it is a resurgent government obsession with internal security and threats from abroad - a phenomenon that they say has set off a limited but growing crackdown on supposed challenges to the state.

The evidence itself is scattered. It ranges from a string of arrests of Russian scholars, to the revival of old curbs on international scientific cooperation, to the seeming harassment of some political critics and dissidents, to a growing conviction among some intellectuals that their telephones are again being tapped and their e-mail read.

As much as any crackdown, what unsettles them is the failure of President Vladimir V. Putin, himself a product of the state security machine, to restrain or even speak out against it.

"It has not yet acquired the scope which would go deep under the skin of ordinary Russians. They have known much worse," Georgi Arbatov, the director emeritus of the government's Institute of U.S.A.-Canada Studies and a veteran analyst of East-West relations, said in an interview. "But there are some not very good signs.

"Having become the leader of this country, he has to explain that he does not want to return to some past practices. The sooner he dispels all these rumors, the better."

Never far from the surface of these concerns, of course, is the memory of Russia's seven decades as a rigid and ruthless police state. Virtually no one believes that a return to those days is either contemplated or even possible; whatever the flaws in Russia's justice system and its press, most Russians, though not all, enjoy basic civil liberties.

The Kremlin proposed judicial reforms this month that should underpin those liberties if carried out.

But Mr. Putin himself has rung alarm bells by suggesting that Russia requires what he calls a "managed democracy" headed by a strong central government. Over the Kremlin's insistence that it is irrevocably dedicated to basic freedoms, some liberals here call that a euphemism for authoritarian rule.

Top government posts have increasingly been filled by veterans of the military and intelligence, agencies that clung to a cold-war notion of security even in Russian democracy's most liberal days.

Many liberals question whether those and other officials, often steeped for decades in the Soviet bureaucracy before making quick changes in ideologies and jobs, have put the paranoia and xenophobia of Communist days behind them.

"They do just what they have been taught to do," said Sergei Kovalyov, a dissident who survived imprisonment in the infamous Perm-36 gulag in Siberia and is now in Parliament. "It's the only thing they can do. And that's why there is nothing surprising in the way they understand order in this country and what kind of order they are going to bring."

In the eyes of Mr. Kovalyov and other activists, a flurry of events in the last year are evocative of a dormant era when all outsiders were viewed as potential enemies - and challenging the established order could easily make one an outsider.

Some of those events, like the military's insistence that the nuclear submarine Kursk was probably sunk 10 months ago by a collision with a foreign sub spying on naval war games, amount to little more than words. Others have more serious consequences.

Only today the Federal Security Service's Omsk regional office announced that it had reprimanded Elizabeth Sweet, an American lecturer at the State University of Omsk, after counterintelligence officers learned that she had asked students to examine the economic health of local businesses. Most of the region's industry is military-related.

The security service said that such information could harm the image and competitiveness of businesses if published abroad, but it stopped short of expelling Ms. Sweet. It said, though, that the renewal of her teaching contract was now in doubt.

In Kaluga, 85 miles west of Moscow, Igor Sutyagin, a Russian military analyst at the Institute of U.S.A.- Canada Studies, Mr. Arbatov's old agency, is on trial for high treason, accused of passing state secrets.

International scientific organizations and Mr. Sutyagin's colleagues call the proceeding a sham, noting that he had no access to classified information. The charges appear based on his acceptance of a contract with a London consulting firm to write military analyses.

In Krasnoyarsk, in southern Siberia, a university scientist was charged with high treason in April for fulfilling a contract with a Chinese company to supply research on shielding satellites from radiation. His colleagues said the information was based on documents declassified 10 years ago.

In Vladivostok, a military court is beginning a second trial of Grigory Pasko, a military journalist accused of treason after helping Japanese television journalists report on the Russian naval fleet's dumping of nuclear waste at sea. Mr. Pasko was acquitted on the same charge in 1999; the Supreme Military Collegium ordered a retrial this year.

Civil rights advocates disclosed last week that the Russian Academy of Sciences had ordered scientists and their supervisors to restrict contacts with outsiders, report on trips abroad and submit potentially sensitive scientific papers for prepublication review, among other curbs.

The academy has not commented on the rules, some of which are said to apply only to classified scientific work and others to all scientists. Privately, civil liberties advocates here say similar restrictions have been put in place in other government agencies that have regular contact with foreigners.

Right or wrong, many intellectuals and activists now take it as a given that their telephone conversations and e-mail are monitored - something that, while surely not unthinkable, was hardly a major concern even two or three years ago.

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Class's oral history project draws scrutiny of spy agency

By Robyn Dixon,
Los Angeles Times,
6/14/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/165/nation/Class_s_oral_history_project_draws_scrutiny_of_spy_agency-.shtml

MOSCOW - An American lecturer was interrogated for two hours and given a warning by the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the KGB, after assigning Russian students to gather information on local companies.

Elizabeth Sweet, who is teaching economics and general studies at Omsk State University, was reported to the security service, known as the FSB, after her students carried out interviews at a factory.

The problem arose because many local enterprises are part of the secretive defense industry, said Sergei Subbotin, a spokesman for the Omsk branch of the FSB, according to the Itar-Tass news agency.

Subbotin said the FSB's investigation had shown Sweet had no ill intent when she gave the assignment.

The incident follows a series of spying cases against foreigners, Russian academics, and others, including former naval officers who exposed the military's appalling environmental record.

Sweet was working with the Civic Education Project, a private educational group that sends visiting lecturers to universities in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Irina Zorina, director of the program in Russia, said that Sweet's students were doing an oral history project in Omsk, asking people about their life stories. The incident occurred about 10 days ago in the city, about 1,300 miles east of Moscow.

But Viktor A. Kremenyuk, deputy director of the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow, said that Sweet could not have found a more inappropriate place for the assignment. ''The entire region is literally larded with defense enterprises,'' Kremenyuk said.

Zorina said Sweet did not tell her pupils to go to factories to do interviews; that was the students' idea. Their visit to one factory with links to the defense sector triggered a call to the FSB.

The agency warned Sweet that she risked destroying US-Russian relations because of her activities, Zorina said.

Sweet was ordered to surrender the students' reports and was pressured to sign a document. An interpreter who accompanied the FSB agent told her it was a summary of the interrogation, and Sweet signed it.

Sweet declined to comment about the incident to the Los Angeles Times.

Many older people still behave as if they lived in Soviet times, Zorina said. ''I can feel the old psychology returning. The category of conscientious citizens who never think twice before going to the secret services is reemerging.

''I think it's very serious from this point of view: We can only count on the young generation,'' she said. ''This is a very clear sign that people still have fear in their genes, so they create situations like this.''

But Zorina said Sweet's students found it hilarious, not frightening, that the FSB had seized their papers.

''The attitude of the younger generation is different, and this gives us hope,'' she said.

This story ran on page A13 of the Boston Globe on 6/14/2001.

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

U.N. to Stop Bread for Poor After Afghan Talks Fail

June 14, 2001
By REUTERS Filed at 11:39 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-afghan-.html

KABUL (Reuters) - The U.N. World Food Program said on Thursday it would stop supplying bread to the Afghan capital's poor on Friday because talks with the Taliban rulers on employing women for a survey had failed.

WFP director for Afghanistan Gerard Van Dijk said he was disappointed by the Taliban's rejection of a WFP proposal for employing local women to conduct the survey. Bakeries supplying subsidized bread to nearly 300,000 poor people would stop work after the last distribution on Friday.

``Negotiations have failed,'' he told Reuters. ``They did not accept our proposal. There is no other way out except closing the bakeries.''

Van Dijk said the WFP had proposed female staff of the Taliban's Public Health Ministry and a group of WFP-selected women conduct the survey to identify the real beneficiaries of the project.

But officials from Afghanistan purist Taliban movement, which controls most of Afghanistan, insisted that only women recommended by the Taliban be permitted to carry out the survey, he said.

Van Dijk said the bakeries could reopen any time after the Taliban accepts the WFP proposal. ``There is a way if there is a will. We will restart the program whenever they allow us to do the survey.''

He said U.N. agencies in Kabul had taken precautions in view of possible food riots after the bakeries are shut down.

PRECAUTIONS ABOUT PROTESTS

``We are taking a low profile, reducing our movement in the city in the face of the occurrence of possible problems.''

The WFP had said earlier it would halt its program to supply cheap bread to nearly 300,000 widows, invalids and other vulnerable people in Kabul if the Taliban refused to allow it to hire Afghan women.

Under Taliban directives, only women can enter homes to interview other women.

Van Dijk said earlier on Thursday that the Taliban proposal, and a suggestion that the WFP hire females who speak the local language from neighboring countries, were costly or impractical.

``Bringing people from other places requires more costs. Some options are practical and some are less practical. We hope to go to houses to find the needy people and for that we have to employ local women ourselves,'' he added.

The Taliban has refused to allow the WFP to hire local women on the grounds that female employment is banned.

Many aid groups see a contradiction in the ruling that the WFP cannot employ women for the survey, but can use the Taliban's own female staff for the purpose.

The hardline Islamic Taliban has said it will not reverse its decision and does not care if all U.N. aid to the devastated country is halted. It has appealed to Islamic countries to fill any gap that results and says the United Nations is using aid as a political weapon.

WFP beneficiaries say closure of the bakeries would force more people to resort to begging and increase hunger at a time the country faces its worst drought in 30 years.

``What will befall my five children if I lose the subsidized bread?'' a woman asked.

``Who will feed them? We have lived for years on bread and tea mostly and if the bread is taken away, maybe we will starve,'' the desperate woman, clutching her all-enveloping burqa, said outside a bakery.

``This subsidized bread is my only hope after Allah. I think neither the Taliban nor the WFP care about us. They all follow their own policies and we may perish in the middle,'' another woman said. ``Many needy people like us will be forced to beg.''

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U.N. police allegedly involved in brothels
Fellow officers say super visors often turn a blind eye to crimes.

By WILLIAM J. KOLE and AIDA CERKEZ-ROBINSON,
The Associated Press,
June 14, 2001
http://www.ocregister.com/nation_world/bosniacci.shtml

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina Kathryn Bolkovac left her job as a veteran police officer in Lincoln, Neb., to take on a very different kind of law enforcement - a U.N. police post cracking down on forced prostitution in Bosnia.

Investigating the plight of the women from Eastern Europe was grim enough. But then, Bolkovac says, she began amassing evidence that some fellow officers were customers at Bosnia's illegal brothels, and others were even more deeply involved.

Last year, Bolkovac was demoted, and in April she was fired. The official reason: She allegedly falsified a time sheet. Bolkovac's explanation: She filed a report alleging that officers forged documents for trafficked women, aided their illegal transport through border checkpoints into Bosnia, and tipped off sex club owners ahead of raids.

"I was shocked, appalled and disgusted by what I saw going on," she told The Associated Press. "The mission supervisors don't want to hear about it. They prefer to turn their heads."

In interviews with the AP, Bolkovac and other current and former members of the U.N. mission in Bosnia described how some international police monitors - sent to set an example for the local police and root out corruption - allegedly have been involved in criminal activities.

The United Nations concedes that two dozen officers with the 2,000-member U.N. International Police Task Force, including eight Americans, have been fired for offenses ranging from bribery to sexual impropriety. But it insists most officers carry out their duties properly.

"During my tenure, there have been no cover-ups, and I have implemented a zero-tolerance policy regarding sexual or other serious misconduct," Jacques Paul Klein, the head of the U.N. mission in Bosnia, said in a statement.

"Since 1996, nearly 10,000 police officers from 46 countries have served with the IPTF, including nearly 900 from the U.S. The vast majority have performed in a highly professional manner and to the great credit of their home countries and the United States," Klein said.

Charles Hunter, a State Department spokesman, acknowledged "occasional disciplinary problems" with the U.S. contingent. "When they have arisen, we have sought to respond quickly, fairly and appropriately," he said.

But David Lamb, a former Philadelphia transit police officer and for the past two years a U.N. human-rights investigator in central Bosnia, said he and others routinely forwarded evidence of wrongdoing to the mission's internal-affairs unit, only to be told "not to look too deep."

Near the end of his tenure in April, Lamb said, he was conducting an investigation based on information from six women who said they were forced into prostitution.

"They gave us a whole list of IPTF people involved," he said. "It was just incredible to see the resistance we got from mission headquarters."

Prostitution is illegal in Bosnia, but it thrives amid the presence of 21,000 NATO peacekeepers and thousands of international bureaucrats and aid workers.

Lamb cited one case involving a Romanian IPTF officer whose wife managed a brothel; together, he said, the couple helped recruit young women from Romania. Other officials said officers from the United States, Britain, India, Pakistan and Ukraine have been implicated in alleged criminal and sexual misconduct. Their names have not been released.

"The American contingent is certainly far from the worst," Lamb said. "The Americans, I think, basically hold that mission together."

The phenomenon alarms many in the ethnically divided country.

"I can't imagine peace without them," said Nezira Samardzic, 21, a university student in Sarajevo. "They're only human. I'm afraid that talk about only the bad side might prompt somebody to think the U.N. mission in Bosnia should be terminated."

The problem goes beyond Sarajevo. Bosnian police, aided by IPTF officers, raided three nightclubs last November in the northern Bosnian town of Prijedor. Inside were 33 females, including girls reportedly as young as 14, working as prostitutes.

The next day, club owner Milorad Milakovic claimed that the IPTF ordered the raid after he refused to pay officers $10,000. Milakovic said six IPTF officers, including two Americans, were frequent patrons. The six left the agency before the United Nations completed its investigation, which concluded their behavior was "inappropriate."

"It was one of the biggest cover-ups I have ever seen," said Madeleine Rees, head of the U.N. human-rights office in Sarajevo, which interviewed the 33 females. "The girls said these guys have been using them - they have been regularly having sex with them."

Many of the hundreds of women working in Bosnia's underground sex industry are lured from countries like Moldova, Romania and Ukraine by promises of jobs as waitresses or baby sitters, but are delivered to brothel owners who confiscate their passports.

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

Defense Dept. Panel Seeks Changes to Keep Military Personnel

New York Times
June 14, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/14/politics/14MILI.html

WASHINGTON, June 13 - An advisory panel to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that the military was losing too many of its most experienced and skilled people because of low pay, poor housing and rigid retirement rules, and it called for a sweeping overhaul of longstanding Pentagon personnel policies to stem the losses.

The panel, which based its recommendations on a study by the RAND Corporation, also determined that black and Hispanic people will become the majority ethnic groups in the armed services within two decades, and it urged the Pentagon to begin aggressively promoting minorities into senior officer positions.

The panel, led by a retired admiral, David Jeremiah, concluded that the Pentagon's policies on a variety of issues, including pensions, retirement and relocation had not kept pace with major political and demographic changes in recent decades.

"What you have is a system that is basically 50 years old and has been Band-Aided over the years to accommodate different stresses and strains on it," Admiral Jeremiah said in a Pentagon news conference. "It needs to be looked at in a totality, restructured, and new proposals brought forward to change the way we do business."

Admiral Jeremiah declined to provide an estimate on how much the panel's recommendations would cost. But he said that just making pay for midcareer officers competitive with equivalent private-sector jobs would cost billions of dollars. President Bush, who made military quality of life a major theme of his campaign last year, has already proposed adding $1.4 billion to the budget to improve military pay.

Although the panel's conclusions are advisory only, Mr. Rumsfeld has made it clear that he considers improvements in recruiting, retention and morale to be among his top priorities in the coming months. Mr. Rumsfeld's impending request to Congress to augment the 2002 Pentagon budget, for instance, is expected to be heavily weighted toward health care, building repairs, training and spare parts - the kinds of unglamorous programs that can affect morale.

Many military experts and officials say that with all of the political and fiscal obstacles that Mr. Rumsfeld will face in trying to overhaul the Pentagon's war-fighting doctrine - an effort that will probably involve contentious battles over weapons programs - he may find it easier, less costly and less controversial to focus on improving quality of life for the troops.

There is, for one thing, bipartisan support in Congress for rebuilding housing, raising pay and improving health services for the troops. And there is a potential political payoff for the Bush administration, because those in the service are widely thought to vote heavily Republican.

"It's looking more and more likely that one of their major legacies could be to make the military more family friendly," said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer for the Lexington Institute, a military policy group. "Part of the appeal of changing personnel policies is that it costs relatively little money and it benefits people who vote."

Among its 64 recommendations to Mr. Rumsfeld, the panel called for revising the Pentagon's longstanding requirement that officers retire if they fail to be promoted after a certain number of years, a policy known as "up or out."

"Here's a perfectly solid, well- serving officer who, because he's hit an age wicket, we say goodbye," Admiral Jeremiah said. "Why are we doing that?"

The RAND study also found that pay for midcareer military personnel tended to stagnate, falling significantly behind private-sector salaries for people with comparable education. Admiral Jeremiah said the panel recommended that future pay increases be targeted to people in that group, who typically have served between 10 and 20 years.

To improve housing, the panel recommended that the Pentagon move more aggressively to allow private companies to build off-base housing for troops, an idea that has strong support in the White House.

It also urged Congress to close unneeded military installations - always a contentious issue on Capitol Hill, where bases are equated with jobs - and to invest money in upgrading base facilities. To emphasize its point about decaying infrastructure, the panel cited the case of an F- 15 fighter jet that suffered $185,000 in damage to its landing gear after breaking through a decrepit sewer grate near the runway.

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Navy officer sues over laser attack

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
June 14, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010614-18643591.htm

A Navy intelligence officer who suffered eye injuries from a laser during an encounter with a Russian spy ship filed a lawsuit against the shipīs owner yesterday.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jack Daly announced the suit at a news conference. He charged the Vladivostok-based Far Eastern Shipping Co., or Fesco, with negligence because someone on a Fesco ship fired a laser device at him and a Canadian helicopter pilot as they were monitoring the shipīs passage through the Strait of Juan de Fuca on April 4, 1997.

"My numerous and various requests for due process under the law have been ignored, and efforts on my behalf by members ... have met with constant stonewalling by the Navy," Cmdr. Daly said. "Therefore I have no choice but to take matters into my own hands and thus have filed a lawsuit against" Fesco.

During the 1997 intelligence-gathering mission, Cmdr. Daly was hit by a laser fired from someone on the Fesco ship Kapitan Man as the ship was photographed from a Canadian helicopter. The Canadian pilot, Capt. Pat Barnes, also suffered eye damage that ended his flying career.

The suit was filed with the help of the conservative group Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch President Larry Klayman said the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Seattle where Fesco has offices, was timed to President Bushīs coming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Klayman said the president should demand in his meeting with Mr. Putin that Russia provide a full accounting of the 1997 laser attack and end its spying on nuclear submarines. The suit is seeking "millions of dollars" in damages from the Russian shipping company, he said.

"President Bush ought to raise this attack on our military by a Russian ship and the continued Russian spy vessels in our ports," he said, noting that Navy officials have prohibited Cmdr. Daly from speaking the word "laser."

A U.S. intelligence report disclosed by The Washington Times in November stated that recent information had proved long-held suspicions that Russian merchant ships like the Kapitan Man and other Fesco vessels, are engaged in "intelligence collection efforts against U.S. nuclear submarine bases."

Cmdr. Daly said four years later he still suffers "constant, unrelenting pain" as a result of the laser exposure.

The incident was kept secret by the Clinton administration to avoid disrupting U.S.-Russian relations, U.S. officials said. It was disclosed by The Times weeks later based on top-secret Pentagon documents.

"Though the Kapitan Man no longer plies the waters of Puget Sound [south of the Strait of Juan de Fuca], many ships like her, owned by Fesco, still do, and to this day continue their espionage activities," Cmdr. Daly said. Cmdr. Daly said that despite the continuing Russian spying on strategic submarines, the Office of Naval Intelligence has dismissed the threat from Fesco ships as "militarily insignificant," something he called "an intelligence failure."

Cmdr. Daly said he felt "betrayed" by the Clinton administration for not supporting him and for covering up what he termed "an act of war committed in U.S. waters."

"It is my fervent hope that President Bush will stand up for one of his citizens and military officers and not allow this betrayal to continue," he said.

The naval officer showed two copies of photographs he took of the ship showing a red light coming from the bridge.

Cmdr. Daly said special analysis of the photo revealed that someone altered the Pentagonīs official photograph released in 1997 as part of an investigation into the incident. That photograph was darkened, making the red light barely visible. By contrast, the original photograph taken by Cmdr. Daly of the ship showed the red light much more clearly. He said the unaltered photo showed unusual characteristics of the light that made it unlikely it was a running light, as the Navy asserted.

The Navy has denied it altered the photograph.

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The Secret Empire - Week I - Sacred cows in the cross hairs
Part 1 of a series: In every branch of the military, major changes in the wind
The M-1A1 Abrams battle tank. At 70 tons, it's hard to kill, but just as hard to get to the battlefield.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/550115.asp?0sp=n5b2
Strategic Map: http://www.msnbc.com/news/warroom_front.asp?0sp=n5b1

WASHINGTON - Call it the Cold War hangover. In every branch of the American military, the very weapons that made the U.S. the world's pre-eminent power of the last century are now under scrutiny. Certainly no foreign power currently threatens the Army's tanks, the Navy's aircraft carriers or the high-tech warplanes of the Air Force. Yet these powerful weapons may be undermined by new developments in technology and new threats abroad. For the man now running the Pentagon, opportunity and peril lace the choices ahead.

IN WHAT IS shaping up to be a major housecleaning, the new defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, appointed Andrew Marshall to head up a strategic review of U.S. military capabilities. Marshall, a Pentagon veteran with an iconoclastic reputation, is known to favor a clean break with many of the weapons that helped win the Cold War.

According to officials and outside experts interviewed by MSNBC.com, the review is expected to recommend changes that until now were considered radical: shifting future defense funds away from the giant aircraft carriers, tanks and warplanes that now dominate the force toward a new generation of lighter, smaller, stealthier weapons.

Army armed with better technology

The Rumsfeld review, expected to be made public next month, affirms the thinking of many military strategists who have been arguing for a decade for a fundamental change toward a leaner, nimbler military. Supporters of this view also see these lightly manned and ultimately more expendable weapons as the missing element in America's arsenal, and the tools best suited to fight the kinds of conflicts foreseen in the 21st century.

These new missions include: Regional wars and support for peacekeeping missions. Surviving highly capable missile systems in the hands of U.S. foes. Strikes against terrorist bases deep inside hostile territory. The need to be able to operate over the vast distances of the Asia-Pacific region.

PLAYING TO U.S. STRENGTHS

"Winning a conflict in Asia," according to Elliot Cohen, a strategic warfare expert, "will mean long-range warfare, with dispersed, mobile or concealed basing, and the kinds of forces that can sustain a long, perhaps only intermittently violent, clash in the air, at sea and in space." Andrew Krepinevich, a former Pentagon colleague of Marshall's who now heads the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, says the current U.S. lead in military power provides a unique opportunity to experiment with new ideas particularly well timed to the Rumsfeld report.

"As other countries grab onto technologies to make things difficult for us, we need to exploit our potential advantage - information and technology - which allows us to operate forces that are highly dispersed and highly integrated at the same time," Krepinevich says. "You no longer need to concentrate combat capability in one platform like a carrier or one air base."

In fact, many argue that concentrating so much power and so many American personnel on any platform or base invites catastrophe.

----

The Secret Empire - Week I - In the Navy, size does matter
Smaller, faster ships on the drawing board

By Michael Moran
MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/news/546846.asp?0sp=n5b3
Strategic Map: http://www.msnbc.com/news/warroom_front.asp?0sp=n5b1

NEWPORT, R.I. _ Consider the following scenario: It is August 2015 and the U.S. president receives reports that an American air base in the Mideast has been attacked. All evidence points to Iraq's Uday Hussein, son of the now deceased Saddam, as the mastermind. Unlike his father, Uday possesses a formidable arsenal of ballistic missiles and tactical nuclear weapons. What are the American president's options?

THE 2001 RESPONSE would probably involve America's giant aircraft carriers, floating cities that carry more air power than most air forces.

But in 2015, the idea of putting 5,000 American sailors in range of Iraq's latest missiles would be foolhardy. As formidable as they are, the Nimitz-class carriers simply can no longer venture close enough to shore to put Iraqi targets within range of their aircraft.

Nor can the president risk launching long-range missiles, fearing such a move could be mistaken by China or another nuclear rival as an attack on them. Finally, Stealth bombers that performed so well at the end of the last century have been compromised, too, their secrets leaked out in sloppy technology transfers.

THINKING SMALL

For a growing cadre of senior officers and military experts who appear to have Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's ear, the way to prevent this dilemma lies in "Streetfighters," a totally new class of smaller, faster, stealthier vessels that will expose a far smaller crew to the increasingly dangerous coastal waters of the nation's foes. These ships would be integrated in a single battlefield computer network, enabling commanders to move and strike with unprecedented precision.

In a series of exclusive interviews with MSNBC.com, Navy officials sketched out their vision of how a Streetfighter force might work and why, in the changing environment of the 21st century, the ships of the Cold War fleet may not suffice.

Among these vessels is a fast-moving missile attack ship built on a catamaran hull known as Sea Lance, along with a towed "arsenal barge" loaded with Tomahawk missiles. Sea Lance could operate with unmanned midget submarines and fast assault craft capable of moving 1,000 troops and their equipment in and out of battle zones at speeds of up to 50 knots.

The most dramatic proposal, and the one likely to prove most controversial for a service built around the big carriers, is a plan to build a new class of pocket aircraft carriers known as Corsairs. MSNBC.com has learned that the Navy envisions the Corsairs as a carrier of only 6,000 tons with a crew of about 20 sailors. It might carry only a half dozen Joint Strike Fighters, the aircraft now being developed for the Navy and Air Force. Ultimately, the Corsairs would field UCAVs - unmanned combat air vehicles.

Vessels like the Sea Lance or the Corsair might be built on the order of several hundred million dollars, compared with the $4 billion price tag of a Nimitz carrier. Not only would it allow the Navy to operate in coastal waters even as the missile power of its foes increase; it would also allow the United States to provide air cover for smaller deployments like the peacekeeping missions in Haiti or East Timor - missions typical of the post-Cold War era that currently tend to divert a giant Nimitz-class carrier.

"The key is some balance of large deck areas and much smaller Streetfighter/Corsairs," said William Turcotte, chairman of the National Security Decision Making Department at the Naval War College in Rhode Island. "You could, with numbers of Streetfighter derivatives, take additional risk, spread the opponent's targeting problem and bring complex, distributed and (computer) networked fire power."

As one civilian expert put it more frankly: "No one wants to say it outright, but Streetfighter is a synonym for expendable. That sounds harsh, but war is harsh."

SEA CHANGE?

Vice Adm. Art Cebrowski, president of the Naval War College, is Streetfighter's most passionate proponent. He views these ships as a means of bridging the gap between the great fleet of the Cold War, built to battle the Soviet Navy in deep water, and the new missions of the 21st century, which will often call for the Navy to strike at targets deep inland.

Last week, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld's review will recommend that the U.S. Navy stop building the big-deck Nimitz-class carriers that have been the focus of the fleet - and its budgets - for generations. Instead, the report will recommend that money be diverted to build smaller carriers that the Navy can afford to put at risk in the coastal waters of a foe bristling with missile forces of its own.

That approach echoes what Cebrowski has been saying for years. "In an age of missile proliferation, do you send a Nimitz into the Persian Gulf so its planes and missile ships are in range of their targets?" asked Cebrowski. "Not in 10 years, you don't."

The story on the Rumsfeld report ran through the fleet like an Exocet missile, sparking lively derision on Internet military bulletin boards and in chat rooms. Some in Congress, too, rose to defend the carriers - among them members of the Virginia delegation, home to the Navy's Atlantic Fleet headquarters and Newport News Shipbuilding, which has a contract to build CVN-77, the final Nimitz carrier.

Cebrowski and other supporters are quick to point out that the Corsairs are not meant to replace the large aircraft carriers.

"There still is no better way to show the flag, and certainly there is no better way to keep other world powers from thinking they can challenge the U.S. on the high seas," says Andrew Krepinevich, a former Pentagon official and an influential voice on these issues. "Of course, the Navy remains dominated by carrier officers. As with the Army and all the services, the old-timers will make an argument that says, 'If it isn't broke, don't fix it. We've got the world's best military, we won the Cold War, what's the issue?'"

CATAMARAN AHOY

One way or another, Cebrowski and his supporters intend to press the argument. Cebrowski has asked the Navy for approval to lease a huge catamaran for experiments with the fleet. The Australian Navy's HMAS Jervis Bay, a vessel that "stunned" the U.S. 7th Fleet last year during the East Timor peacekeeping operations.

One such ship, leased by the Australian Navy and put into service as the HMAS Jervis Bay, stunned U.S.

Seventh Fleet personnel during peacekeeping operations around East Timor in 1999. The craft is built by INCAT, an Australian manufacturer that makes fast cargo haulers for the Pacific trade and is capable of hauling 1,000 troops and their equipment at speeds nearing 45 knots. That is more than twice the speed of any such vessel in the U.S. Navy, and when it arrived in East Timor, it unloaded at a pace the new class of Navy assault ships can't match.

In a military cable obtained by MSNBC.com, an officer on board the USS Tarawa, an American assault ship involved in the maneuvers with the Jervis Bay last year, gushed about its potential as a fast assault ship and even a platform for aircraft. "Ship self-defense systems combined with the ship's small radar cross section would make the catamaran less vulnerable to air threat. ... The craft has an unparalleled potential as a force multiplier."

None of this is likely to displace the role of the Nimitz-class carrier in the short-term. Even if CVN-77 turned out to be the last of its kind, it would join nine others launched since 1975. Given the big ships' long service life of up to 50 years, the Nimitz-class will be part of the fleet well into the 21st century.

Still, the idea that these behemoths might not be at the center of naval strategy is hard for many in the Navy to accept. And that sets the stage for a battle that pits those who see the carriers as increasingly vulnerable to cheap enemy missiles against those who command them, pilots who fly off them and the politicians whose districts build and play host to them.

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The Secret Empire - Week II - America's global embrace
G.I. Joe as Big Brother, with eyes and ears everywhere

By Michael Moran,
MSNBC
The Secret Empire - Week II
http://www.msnbc.com/news/546845.asp?0sp=n5b4
Strategic Map: http://www.msnbc.com/news/warroom_front.asp?0sp=n5b1

April 6 - When a Chinese fighter jet collided with an American spy plane over the South China Sea on Sunday, it exposed more than the raw nerves of two wary giants. The drama of this aerial collision underscores an important and little-known post-Cold War reality: America's surveillance network has grown so vast and formidable that in some respects it is feared as much as U.S. weaponry itself.

THE EP-3 MISSIONS out of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan are an important piece of this worldwide network. The Kadena squadron has focused on China since 1993 and, in recent months, close encounters with Chinese air force interceptors had been increasing.

Like Air Force RC-135s and Predator drones in other regions, the EP-3s capture military and government communications along the Chinese coastline and help assess the sophistication of radar used by Chinese missile units, ships and warplanes. The EP-3E Aries II is only one small component of the U.S. intelligence effort directed at China.

"The methods by which the U.S. can eavesdrop on Chinese communications range to use of undersea platforms - like submarines - to a variety of antenna systems on the ground up to satellites up to 24,000 miles in space," says Jeffrey T. Richelson, an intelligence historian who has written extensively about U.S. eavesdropping capabilities. "Overall, it's a multibillion-dollar effort, and China is a major target."

NEW WORLD, NEW ORDERS

But China is hardly the sole target. The U.S. military now possesses a mammoth network of new satellites, eavesdropping stations, radar and listening posts around the world. The United States also has begun to build new capabilities in South America, South Asia and Africa.

Today, one could throw a dart at a map of the world and it would likely land within a few hundred miles of a quietly established U.S. intelligence-gathering operation. Aegis cruisers like the USS Cowpens give the Navy control of the battlefield information environment in the open ocean. Closer to shore, they are like floating spy posts, capable of tracking rival military activities deep inland.

Even discounting the satellites flying overhead, these bases, along with the aircraft, warships and submarines operating from them, have extended the eyes and ears of America into every corner of the globe in a way that not only unsettles America's foes, but often its allies as well. A few examples of these little-known facilities:

Ascension Island, a British territory in the South Atlantic that may be the remotest place on Earth, is home to a control station for U.S. global positioning satellites. Botswana, in southern Africa, serves as a base for an Air Force Technical Applications Center charged with monitoring seismic data for signs of nuclear tests or other large events. Similar stations can also be found in Ivory Coast, Paraguay, Thailand, Brazil, the Central African Republic and Argentina. Anti-drug radar sites are based in Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Bermuda, Peru, and, of course, Colombia.

Ethiopia is home to a small U.S. Army intelligence unit, and neighboring Eritrea - which fought a war against Ethiopia only a year ago - is reportedly the site of another American intelligence base.

China itself, astoundingly enough, hosts bases outfitted by the United States. Under the terms of an agreement signed during the Cold War, when China and the U.S. shared a common enemy in the Soviet Union, Washington established two listening posts on China's border with Russia. They are manned by Chinese personnel required to share intellligence with Washington.

And the list goes on. In Greenland, an Air Force Space Command base; in the Marshall Islands, Army missile ranges; in Pakistan and Peru, anti-drug intelligence posts. All this is in addition to core intelligence operations that grew up around high-profile American bases in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia.

OVERWHELMING ADVANTAGES

Not all of these new facilities are dedicated to gathering intelligence on foreign governments. Today, the United States is forced to deal with what former CIA Director James Woolsey has called "a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes," including terrorism and drug trafficking, weapons proliferation and even economic espionage.

A U.S. Air Force Predator drone at a Hungarian air base. The unmanned vehicles were used to spy on Yugoslav troops in Kosovo. (An earlier version of this photo incorrectly described it as an Army drone).

Regardless of their day-to-day missions, what these facilities have in common is the ability to collect signals intelligence, or SIGINT in the jargon of the trade. This not only allows America to eavesdrop on drug traffickers, foreign military forces or corporate board meetings, if it so chooses; SIGINT also is the essential technology for using precision weapons to target rival command bunkers, communications units and headquarters buildings.

"SIGINT let us listen to (Yugoslav) commanders and target them directly," said a U.S. Navy officer who served on an Aegis cruiser during the Kosovo war. "In some cases, we literally heard their last words before impact."

The tremendous advantage this gives American forces has become an obsession in Europe, which felt humiliated by the superior performance of U.S. warplanes in the Kosovo war. The insecurity it has caused among even America's closest NATO allies is part of what is driving Europe to develop its own, independent intelligence-gathering capabilities.

NEW CHALLENGES

What technology gives, however, it may eventually take away. For some time now, SIGINT experts have known of a crisis on the horizon in the form of fiber optic technology, the digital form of communications that might ultimately render many of America's far-flung listening posts far less effective.

"Whereas any signal transmitted through the air can be intercepted by a properly placed antenna, acquiring fiber optic signals would require tapping the cable, " wrote Richelson in an essay for Jane's Intelligence Review last year. "How effectively and efficiently that can be done is not clear."

The 1998 Indian nuclear weapons tests, a major embarrassment to the U.S. intelligence community, managed to proceed undetected in part because that nation's military and political planning took place over fiber optic lines.

The U.S. military is already adapting. In 1999, Congress authorized modifications to one of the new Seawolf-class attack submarines, the USS Jimmy Carter, to enable it to tap into underwater fiber optic cables. The cost of the conversion: some $600 million.

This may be money well spent. In recent years, China has been among the world's leading purchasers of fiber optics - a technology approved for export to Beijing back in the Reagan administration. In the long term, fiber optics may make the kind of eavesdropping conducted by lumbering aircraft like the EP-3 virtually useless.

On Friday, China announced a ban on "unauthorized" construction of fiber-optic networks domestically, showing its communist leadership is as concerned about the implications for its internal snooping as America is about foreign intelligence. For now, enough information is transmitted the old way to keep America's eyes and ears pricked up. Eventually, though, all these far-flung resources will have to find new ways to snoop on an increasingly sophisticated world.

----

The Secret Empire - Week III - Military role grows on home front
'Mission creep' becomes a domestic issue

By Robert Windrem
NBC NEWS
http://www.msnbc.com/news/546844.asp
Strategic Map: http://www.msnbc.com/news/warroom_front.asp?0sp=n5b1

PHILADELPHIA - As Republicans gathered here last August to nominate George W. Bush for president, a drama played out in secret locations across the city as thousands of American soldiers stood poised for a catastrophic event. Along with a host of civilian emergency specialists, these specialized troops braced for a biological, chemical or nuclear terror attack on the GOP and its nominees - the kind of attack that might force a declaration of martial law.

NO SPECIFIC or credible threat ever surfaced in Philadelphia or in any of the dozen other U.S. cities hosting similarly high-profile events in the past five years. But the Philadelphia plan sheds light on a new domestic role for the military. *Some argue that the role makes sense in light of the threat posed by modern terrorist groups. But a diverse coalition of civilian law enforcement agencies, civil rights advocates and libertarian groups worry about allowing the military to play so prominent a role on U.S. soil.

"There used to be a bright line separating the military from involvement in civilian affairs," says Steve Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the American Federation of Scientists. "The pernicious aspect of terrorism is that it threatens to erode what is a clear distinction. We are seeing them on all these 'fronts.'" 'There used to be a bright line separating the military from involvement in civilian affairs. The pernicious aspect of terrorism is that it threatens to erode what is a clear distinction.' - STEVE AFTERGOOD

Secrecy watchdog

The "bright line" Aftergood refers to is called the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, enacted to prevent the military from engaging in police activities in the United States without the consent of Congress or the president. In the mid-1990s, after the bombings of the World Trade Center and the federal building in Oklahoma City - as well as a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system - the law was amended to allow the attorney general to send armed troops into American cities in cases of catastrophic attacks.

This new role for the military prompted Rep. William Thornberry, a Texas Republican on the Armed Services Committee, to introduce a bill last month that would create an office called the National Homeland Security Agency to help civilian federal agencies do a job that the military is being drawn into by default. Thornberry, who is a rancher and fierce critic of government intrusion into the lives of its citizens, believes the country should be careful not to put the military in the position of acting as police in the United States. Thornberry may be facing a tough battle.

NEW MISSIONS

As the world's borders have become more porous, the definition of national security has expanded into many new areas: counter-terrorism, tracking drug traffickers and disaster preparedness. Secretary of State Colin Powell said recently he will add immigration to that list as well.

The military's move into domestic law enforcement territory began with drug interdiction along the U.S. border during the Reagan administration, and expanded significantly during the Clinton years.

Officials at several key civilian agencies - from the FBI to the Public Health Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency - say the military's growing role in preparing for a domestic terrorist attack is disconcerting.

"We used to be the main people involved in this," said a domestic preparedness official with the Public Health Service who spoke only on condition of anonymity. "Now, there are fewer of us and more of them."

REAL BREAKDOWN

Despite the Posse Comitatus Act and concerns about domestic mission creep, a doctrine known as "Garden Plot" exists in the Department of Defense that would allow the armed forces to step in to take control of civilian affairs following a catastrophic event if the president requested it. As with the military's posture abroad - the "Defense Condition" or "DEFCON" - there is a step-by-step system for military involvement at home as well. It's known as Civilian Disorder Condition, or "CIDCON."

This scenario is the last resort following the collapse of order at home. In this most dire of circumstances - possibly anarchy in the wake of a large-scale terrorist incident, for instance - the "Garden Plot" doctrine gives the president the power to invoke martial law under The Insurrection Act.

Here's how it would have worked last August in Philadelphia:

Two military "Joint Task Force" units were available for quick deployment. One, called Joint Task Force-Civil Support, is based at Fort Monroe in Virginia. It is trained to coordinate countermeasures for terrorist attacks and would generally be deployed without weapons.

The other unit, code-named "Task Force 250," is meant to go in fully equipped for battle. This unit, according to documents obtained by NBC News, is meant to restore civil order after major terrorist events. "Task Force 250" is more commonly known as the Army's 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

THE PHILADELPHIA PLAN

Even without a crisis, hundreds of servicemen were on hand in Philadelphia last summer, and more than 1,000 were on alert to move into the city if necessary.

Command centers and alternate command centers - in case the primary headquarters was destroyed - were established. Among those stationed the center:

More than 80 military bomb disposal teams, several Army biological advisory and assessment teams, four Department of Defense biological sampling vehicles and the Nuclear Emergency Search Team of the Department of Energy. The Navy even set up a facility for "use as a detainee processing center," the documents say, in case there were numerous arrests.

In addition, some 10 military bases and another Marine Corps biological and chemical response teams were on alert.

--

The Secret Empire - Week IV - The threat over the horizon
Military cites 1998 failure of satellite as an omen

By Jonathan Broder
SPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM,
June 14, 2001 (Previous stories in series below)
http://www.msnbc.com/news/561893.asp?0sp=n5b7
Strategic Map: http://www.msnbc.com/news/warroom_front.asp?0sp=n5b1

WASHINGTON - How damaging would a concerted attack on American satellite systems be? Pentagon officials cite the 1998 malfunction of the Galaxy IV satellite, which shut down 80 percent of pagers in the United States, as an example of the disruptions that could follow an attack. The episode was deemed an accident. China, however, made it known that future malfunctions might not be accidental.

"FOR COUNTRIES that could never win a war by using the methods of tanks and planes, attacking the U.S. space system may be an irresistible and most tempting choice," said a report in the state-run Xinhua News Agency days after the malfunction.

Along with pager systems, the Galaxy IV failure also disrupted cable and broadcast video feeds, credit card authorization networks and corporate communications systems for weeks.

As things currently stand, satellites the military relies on are no less vulnerable than Galaxy IV.

In January, a two-year study by a panel of generals and civilian defense experts, including Donald Rumsfeld, the man who would become secretary of defense, laid out a host of emerging threats to U.S. satellites:

Attacks on satellite ground stations: Such assaults could range from a physical attack on stations to computer hackers breaking into the networks that direct the satellites and receive their transmissions.

Denial and deception: With the means to counter military space systems increasingly available on the international market, countries can foil reconnaissance satellites by learning their orbital and sensor characteristics and then hiding or disguising targets when the satellites fly over.

Jamming: Many countries, including Russia, China, Iraq, North Korea, Iran and Cuba, possess electronic jamming capabilities to disrupt satellite operations. Pentagon officials say the chances of such capability falling into the hands of terrorist groups or individuals has increased with the miniaturization of jamming devices. Russia now markets a hand-held system the size of a cigarette packet that can jam Global Positioning Satellite transmissions for 50 miles. A slightly larger version can block transmissions for 160 miles. Both could be used not only against U.S. ground forces but also against aircraft.

Ground lasers: Directed at an orbiting satellite, these high-energy beams can be projected into space to dazzle or blind a satellite's sensors and cameras. Some U.S. military satellites are equipped with shutters to guard against laser attack, but many are defenseless, the report said.

Microsatellites and nanosatellites: With the miniaturization of space system technologies, these small satellites range between 200 and 20 pounds and even come in sizes as small as a compact disc player. Highly maneuverable and packed with super-sophisticated electronics, they can zoom up beside other satellites, inspect them with cameras and transmit images back to Earth.

--

The Secret Empire - Week IV - Forward, march ... into space
Pentagon has big plans for combat in the cosmos

By Jonathan Broder
MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/news/546843.asp?0sp=n5b6
Strategic Map: http://www.msnbc.com/news/warroom_front.asp?0sp=n5b1

WASHINGTON - In the foothills of the Colorado Rockies earlier this year, a group of Air Force officers gathered at a highly secure military base for five days of unprecedented war games. The scenario was familiar enough - the growing tension between the United States and a fictitious country that resembled China. But the battlefield was out of this world: a simulated war raging for the first time in space.

THE YEAR WAS 2017, and space was bristling with futuristic weapons. During the exercise at Schriever Air Force Base, the United States and its adversary deployed microsatellites - small, highly maneuverable spacecraft that shadowed the other side's satellites, then neutralized them by either blocking their view, jamming their signals or melting their circuitry with lasers. Also prowling the extraterrestrial battlefield were infrared early-warning satellites and space-based radar, offering tempting targets to ground stations and aircraft that harassed them with lasers and jamming signals.

In the 1980s, the prospect of war in space wasn't just a high-tech exercise. It was a national preoccupation during the Reagan administration, which pushed hard for its Cold War Strategic Defense Initiative. Now, the prospect of a celestial war is once again the focus of serious planning as the U.S. military braces for new forms of high-tech combat in the 21st century.

"Space is the ultimate high ground," Lt. Col. Donald Miles, spokesman for Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs, told MSNBC.com. "The high ground has always provided an advantage, whether it's a hill, a balloon an observation aircraft or air superiority. You take that to the next level, and we're talking about space superiority."

THE ULTIMATE FRONT

This high ground has captured the imagination of the new administration. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is more enthusiastic about space than any of his predecessors, is expected to make space-based military operations a priority in his forthcoming strategic review of U.S. military capabilities, Pentagon and Air Force officials say.

Under SDI, which was never deployed, Reagan hoped to dominate space and achieve security by using space-based weapons to shoot down ballistic missiles. With the Bush administration now pledging to pursue a ground-based national missile defense system of a more limited scale, Rumsfeld also hopes to guarantee dominance of space by eliminating threats to America's satellites.

In a January report to Congress, a commission chaired by Rumsfeld warned that the 600 satellites the U.S. military depends upon for photo reconnaissance, targeting, communications, weather forecasting, early warning and intelligence gathering are highly vulnerable to attack from adversaries. The report says the United States must anticipate what Pentagon officials call a "Space Pearl Harbor" - a crippling sneak attack against American satellites orbiting the planet.

These satellites have become our "eyes and ears around the world," says Brig. Gen. Michael Hamel, the head of Space Operations and Integration for the Air Force. "Space gives us an advantage," Hamel said in an interview, adding that without proper defenses, "it's also our Achilles heel."

To reduce the nation's vulnerability, the Rumsfeld commission urges leaders to develop "superior space capabilities," including the ability to "negate the hostile use of space against U.S. interests" by using "power projection in, from and through space." Translated into lay terms, that means the development and deployment of anti-satellite weapons.

BACKLASH EXPECTED

Rumsfeld is expected to urge President Bush to declare space a national security priority and to recommend sweeping changes in how space programs are overseen and funded.

"We know from history that every medium - air, land and sea - has seen conflict," the Rumsfeld commission argues. "Reality indicates that space will be no different." The report calls space warfare "a virtual certainty."

But critics warn that if President Bush and Rumsfeld seriously try to seize the high ground in space, the fallout will be severe. Some analysts fear a unilateral U.S. militarization of space would only lead to a new arms race and closer military cooperation between China and Russia, which would join forces to develop their own anti-satellite programs, rather than cede the high ground to Washington. This, in turn would hasten the demise of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and various non-proliferation accords, these analysts say.

"You get into a real hornet's nest when you start shooting at things in space," says Michael Krepon, president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington think tank that focuses on international security issues. Krepon and others say the deployment of space-based anti-satellite weapons is a double-edged sword when it comes to the missile defense shield.

"If you try to put other countries' satellites at risk, you know that sure as hell they're going to try to put yours at risk," Krepon said in an interview, noting that a national missile defense system can work only if the satellites that provide early warning of missile launches are free from threat. "In that event, you must achieve superiority. And that means you have to have to stay ahead of them every step of the way."

Paul Stares, an expert on space at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, adds that in any strategic scramble for space superiority, enemies probably would target not only U.S. military satellites but also America's constellation of commercial satellites - assets worth many hundreds of billions of dollars.

"It is currently not in the U.S. interest to develop an anti-satellite system," Stares says. "We have more to lose than gain from developing such a system. So you really have to wonder at the end of the day whether this is a path we really want to encourage others to go down." President Bush has not responded publicly to the January commission report on space weapons, but he has expressed an interest in "skipping a generation" of military technologies.

"Our goal is to move beyond marginal improvements to harness new technologies that support a new strategy," Bush said in February. This is the broadest hint so far that Bush already may agree with Rumsfeld's argument that the United States can dominate space by deploying superior defensive and offensive anti-satellite weapons that can nullify hostile countermeasures.

SPACE CADETS

Meanwhile, amid the growing concern about threats to American satellites, the Air Force has been preparing for extraterrestrial combat, establishing a new Space Operations Directorate, as well as a new Space Warfare School. In addition, two new units have been activated. The highly classified mission of the 76th Space Control Squadron at Paterson Air Force Base in Colorado is to test offensive and defensive weapons systems in space. The 527th Space Aggressor Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base plays the enemy in war exercises to highlight vulnerabilities in space operations.

For now, Rumsfeld sees the Air Force as the primary service responsible for space warfare, including the training of a new cadre of military space professionals. But down the line, the defense chief and his fellow space commissioners also envision the creation of a new and entirely separate branch of the military - the U.S. Space Force. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen. *But as Rumsfeld shapes the military for the new challenges ahead, it is already clear that he aims to seize the highest strategic ground of all and hold it.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Germany Looks to Seaborne Wind Farms

June 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 4:36 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Germany-Wind-Power.html?searchpv=aponline

BERLIN (AP) -- Eager to prove that abandoning nuclear power won't force Germany to fall back on dirtier energy sources, a senior official on Thursday renewed government backing for offshore wind farms to fill the gap.

Rainer Baake, the deputy environment minister, conceded that environmental concerns and questions of shipping safety still have to be addressed before the first such installation is built, probably in 2004.

``We're treading new ground here,'' Baake told a conference on the technology in Berlin.

Environment Minister Juergen Trittin said last week that up to three-fifths of today's nuclear power could be replaced by wind energy by 2030. But none of the offshore plants that would produce that energy have yet been built, and there also is no agreement on where to build them.

On Monday, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and leading energy companies formally signed an agreement to shut down Germany's 19 nuclear power plants, making it the largest industrial nation to willingly forgo the technology.

The pact limits nuclear plants, which provide nearly a third of Germany's electricity, to an average 32 years of operation. That would likely see the most modern plants close around 2021.

The opposition Christian Democrats argue that eliminating nuclear energy would force Germany to use dirtier power sources. That could make it more difficult to curb emissions as outlined by the landmark 1997 Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gases.

The Environment Ministry plans to build about 40 wind generators offshore in a small-scale pilot project before 2004. Sven Teske, a spokesman for the environmental group Greenpeace, criticized the government for not moving ahead faster.

Wind power last year accounted for 2 percent of Germany's electricity production, or 10 billion kilowatt hours. Baake and Trittin want to see that figure rise to 110 billion kilowatt hours over the next three decades.

-------- death penalty

Justice Dept. Set to Study Death Penalty in More Depth

New York Times
June 14, 2001
By RAYMOND BONNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/14/politics/14DEAT.html

WASHINGTON, June 13 - The Justice Department said today that it would undertake a comprehensive study of the federal death penalty to determine whether the system is racially or ethnically biased.

But at a hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson said the department did not support a moratorium on federal executions pending completion of the study, and indicated that the Bush administration would not delay the execution of Juan Raul Garza, scheduled for Tuesday.

The department's announcement of a thorough study followed by a week Attorney General John Ashcroft's conclusion, after a review of 950 cases, that there was no evidence of bias in how the federal death- penalty system is administered.

But that review did not address the goal of the research now being planned: to find some explanation for glaring racial and geographic statistical disparities in cases where federal prosecutors seek to put the defendant to death.

Mr. Ashcroft had been under pressure from the subcommittee chairman, Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, to order that more comprehensive research. Mr. Feingold said today that he was pleased with the department's plans for the study, but not with the intention to execute Mr. Garza, who, with the death of Timothy J. McVeigh, is to become only the second person executed by the federal government in 38 years.

"I believe that is a tragic mistake," the senator said.

Mr. Garza, convicted of three drug-related murders, won a delay in his execution from President Bill Clinton last year, after an initial analysis by the Justice Department found the large racial and geographic disparities in federal death-penalty cases. Today Mr. Feingold said, "The execution of Juan Garza should again be postponed, and indeed there should be a moratorium on all federal executions" until the new study is completed.

Such a study was initiated by the Clinton administration in its final days but had since appeared to be dead. Mr. Feingold, however, an opponent of capital punishment, used the Democrats' new power as the Senate majority to schedule today's hearing into the statistical incongruities.

A report issued last fall by Janet Reno, then the attorney general, showed that in 75 percent of cases where federal prosecutors had submitted their intention to seek a death sentence to the Justice Department for review, the defendant was a minority member, and in nearly half an African-American. Ms. Reno, whose finding was based on an analysis of over 600 cases, expressed alarm at the numbers, and said further data needed to be gathered.

Last week, after his 950-case review, Mr. Ashcroft issued a supplemental report, which confirmed the earlier finding. But the department added new dimensions for looking at the issue.

For instance, looking at the cases in which United States attorneys could have sought the death penalty rather than only cases in which they did, the department found that they had decided to do so in 81 percent of the cases when the defendant was white, 79 percent when black and 56 percent when Hispanic.

Mr. Ashcroft concluded that federal death sentences had been imposed without racial or ethnic bias, and Mr. Thompson similarly told the subcommittee today that statistical disparities in federal capital cases were not a result of such bias.

With the execution of Mr. McVeigh on Monday, there are now 19 men on federal death row. Fourteen are African-Americans, and 3 are Hispanics.

"How did we end up with 90 percent of the people on death row minorities?" Mr. Feingold asked.

But to the suggestion that bias was embodied in the system, Mr. Thompson suggested that this very system was helping to provide justice for minorities. Equipped with his own statistic, he said 63 percent of the victims of those on federal death row were African-Americans.

There were six witnesses besides Mr. Thompson today, on either side of the issue, presenting their own statistics and arguments.

David I. Bruck, a veteran death penalty defense lawyer from South Carolina who favors a moratorium, said that while the Justice Department claims that there is no discrimination, and while critics counter that the statistics leave no other possible conclusion, the fact is that "we just don't know." So further study is needed, he said.

"In the meantime," he said, "let's call a halt. Juan Garza isn't going anywhere."

The most vehement case for going ahead with the execution came from the subcommittee's ranking Republican member, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, who noted that there was no question about Mr. Garza's guilt.

Though he is a Mexican-American, "no one can seriously argue that Garza was the victim of a racist system," Mr. Hatch said. "All but one of Garza's victims were Hispanic, the judge hearing his case is Hispanic, and the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted him is Hispanic."

Mr. Feingold disagreed.

"We cannot in good conscience," he said, "put people to death until we are confident in the fairness of the system that leads to these decisions."

--------

China Executes 13 for Hotel Fire

JUNE 14, 02:08 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7CK59P00

BEIJING (AP) - Chinese authorities have executed 13 people for arson and gang activities, part of a crackdown on crime that diplomats say has already seen more than 1,000 people put to death in two months.

Eight people were executed by gunshot Wednesday after the high court in Lanzhou, capital of northwest China's Gansu province, upheld death sentences handed down last month, the Legal Daily and other state-run newspapers reported Thursday.

They were members of a gang that demanded protection money from businesses and committed armed robberies, burglaries and other crimes that terrorized residents and caused the deaths of at least six people, the reports said.

About 30 other people were prosecuted in connection with the case. Twenty-seven received life sentences or suspended death sentences, which are sometimes commuted to life imprisonment for good behavior.

In an unrelated case, five people were executed Tuesday, also by gunshot, after the high court of northeastern Liaoning province upheld death sentences for their involvement in a 1999 fire at a hotel in Shenyang, the provincial capital.

Yang Qing, manager of the Xihu Hotel, ran into financial difficulties and took out a property insurance policy worth $605,000 in June 1999, according to a report in Thursday's Beijing Morning Post.

On Aug. 29, 1999, two men hired by Yang and his accomplices set fire to the hotel. Nine people died, 15 were seriously injured and damages amounted to more than $58,000, the report said.

European Union diplomats, monitoring reports in state-run media, have tallied more than 1,000 executions and many more death sentences since China launched its ``Strike Hard'' crackdown on violent and gang-related crime in April.

Overseas human rights groups are concerned that judges ordered by the government to punish criminals quickly and severely are convicting people based on shaky evidence and rushed trials. Even Chinese leaders have voiced concerns that police may be pushing too hard for results, telling them not to rely on forced confessions.

-------- environment

Grasshoppers Turn Pink In Scotland
Environmental Pollution Suspected

By John Innes,
6-14-1
The Scotsman
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/scotland.cfm?id=80920

Environmentalists yesterday called for an urgent investigation of a possible pollution incident after the discovery of pink grasshoppers at a wildlife centre.

Ten fuchsia insects have been spotted by the keepers of the Jupiter Urban Wildlife Centre, which sits in the industrial heart of Grangemouth.

The discovery has alarmed scientists and conservationists who fear the grasshoppers, freak colouring is a sign of pollution which could damage human health.

Friends of the Earth called for an investigation to ensure the phenomena is not a sign of dangerous pollution levels .

Dr Richard Dixon, head of research for Friends of the Earth, said: "We need to take this as an early warning that there is a change in the environment.

"We must not ignore this and we need to study whether it is a legacy of contaminated land or if there is a current leak from the factories."

Helen Sadler, manager of the Jupiter centre, built ten years ago and funded by companies based at the industrial plant, said: "We don,t know what it is, but we are expecting thousands of visitors to see this phenomenon. It could be because we have red clover here, maybe they have mutated to blend in with it."

However, Dr Derek Cosens, an entomologist at Edinburgh University, said the only explanation was that the grasshoppers had been affected by something in their environment.

Dr Cosens, who has asked for specimens from the wildlife centre, said: "The colouring indicates that during its early stages the grasshopper has been affected by something in its local conditions. DNA mutates if there is something very solvent in the air and this could indicate that a chemical is floating in the atmosphere."

-------- genetics

US finds no link in biotech corn, illness

By Anthony Shadid,
Globe Staff,
6/14/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/165/nation/US_finds_no_link_in_biotech_corn_illness-.shtml

Tests carried out by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control have cast doubt on claims by dozens of people that they became sick after eating a genetically engineered corn not approved for human consumption.

The results, released yesterday, found no evidence that sensitivity to a protein known as Cry9c contained in StarLink corn caused allergic reactions, which reportedly ranged from itching to shock, the CDC said in the highly anticipated report.

Although not definitive, the government's findings were hailed by the biotechnology industry and could mark a first step in ending the controversy that erupted when StarLink was first discovered in a sample of Taco Bell taco shells last year. Its presence prompted more than 300 recalls of everything from chips to corn dogs, slowed grain exports, particularly to Asia, and threw part of the country's agricultural industry into chaos.

Aventis SA, the French pharmaceutical company that invented the variety and had earlier complained that the government's tests would not be conclusive, declined to comment on the results. But the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group in Washington, said the findings should be enough ''to put concerns to rest.''

''As a scientist, there are always questions I'd like to ask,'' said L. Val Giddings, the group's vice president for food and agriculture. ''But from a standpoint of what we need to know from a public health point of view, this should be case-closed.''

Critics of the biotech industry said they thought the study was far too limited. They contended that more people should have undergone tests and that the government's scientists should have employed better methods, including skin-prick tests.

''This test does not prove that StarLink corn is safe for human consumption,'' said Matt Rand, campaign manager for biotech at the National Environment Trust, a lobbying group that opposes bioengineered foods. ''They chose only to test a handful of people. This is not a representative sample of the population that was exposed to StarLink corn.''

The danger posed by StarLink, which the government had approved only for animal consumption, has been a matter of fierce debate.

More than 50 people had reported allergic reactions - diarrhea, vomiting, stomach aches, and shock - after eating products that contained the corn.

Critics also have cited a report by a panel of independent scientists in December to the Environmental Protection Agency. The report said that StarLink shows a ''medium likelihood'' of causing an allergic reaction in some people. That same report, however, said the low levels of the protein likely present in food probably would not make people sick.

CDC officials stopped short of calling yesterday's results the final word. Even the report acknowledged that the tests on blood samples, which did not detect antibodies identifying an allergy, could not rule out the possibility of a reaction.

''It was a first safe step,'' said Dr. Carol Rubin, an epidemiologist with the CDC's Center for Environmental Health.

The results were eagerly anticipated because the EPA is considering a request by Aventis to allow a trace amount of StarLink in foods for humans. The EPA said yesterday that while the results were important, it would make no decision on Aventis' request until after a July 17-18 meeting of its scientific advisory panel.

Anthony Shadid can be reached by e-mail at ashadid@globe.com.

-------- health

FINDINGS - Cord Blood Offers A Leukemia Treatment

Washington Post
Thursday, June 14, 2001; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64184-2001Jun13?language=printer

Blood from umbilical cords can build new immune systems for adults with leukemia, offering a potentially lifesaving treatment for the many patients who cannot find suitable bone marrow donors.

Currently, an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 Americans die each year while awaiting a bone marrow match.

Until now, stem cells drawn from umbilical cord blood have been reserved mostly for treating children. Because an umbilical cord contains only one-tenth as many stem cells as a marrow donation, experts believed there was too little tissue to reconstitute the immune defenses of an adult.

However, new research shows that because the umbilical cord cells proliferate so rapidly, they can indeed be used to treat adults.

In the first U.S. study of cord blood transplants in adults, researchers at University Hospitals of Cleveland and other sites gave 68 adults cord blood transplants from unrelated donors. While infections, bleeding and other complications killed many of the patients within months, nearly one-third survived in the long term, about the same as with bone marrow transplants, researchers reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine.

Stem cells, collected from bone marrow or circulating blood in adults or from cord blood, are immature cells that can develop into any type of blood cell: oxygen-carrying red blood cells, clotting platelets or infection-fighting white blood cells.

In patients with leukemia and other blood disorders, doctors destroy the cancer and the immune system with chemotherapy or radiation, then replace the patient's immune- and blood-forming system with a transplanted one.

Cord blood stem cells are collected by hospitals before placentas are discarded and so do not involve the controversy over use of stem cells from fetuses. Cord blood cells, stored frozen at public stem cell banks, offer other key advantages.

----

The Soothing Influence of Heavy Metal Bismuth

June 14, 2001
By REUTERS Filed at 2:17 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-minerals-medi.html?searchpv=reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - Heavy metal bismuth, which sits next to highly toxic lead in the periodic table of elements, is increasingly taking the sting out of some ulcers while its use in cancer and medical diagnostic equipment is on the rise.

Whereas lead can seriously harm health, bismuth has been calming stomach ulcers and disorders, as former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini and Pope John Paul, who both suffered from internal bleeding, could testify.

Now, bismuth medicines can combat the bacteria which specialists say cause peptic ulcers, and with bismuth-based alloys being used in X-ray screening and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, prospects for the metal are healthy.

``The use of bismuth will not grow wildly in the pharmaceutical sector in the future. But there is a place for it, and that place could be greater and more important,'' said Yves Palmieri, secretary-general of the Brussels-based Bismuth Institute.

Pharmaceuticals -- medicines and diagnostics -- account for around 10 percent of the 5,000 tons a year global bismuth market. Although rare, bismuth is a metal that has been used since antiquity and traces have been found in Roman coinage.

But it is only in the last two hundred years that usage has become widespread, with other alloying end uses including steel cutting tools and iron castings, while compounds are also utilized in electrochemistry, ceramics, plastics and pigments.

In the medical field, current research now suggests that bismuth compounds before treatment reduce the lethal toxicity of some cancer therapies, and may even combat AIDS, although rapid progress will not happen in these fields.

``Development is slow, because we are talking about human beings -- you cannot take chances where people are concerned and it takes a long time before everybody is convinced,'' Palmieri said.

BISMUTH BATTLES AGAINST THE ULCER GERM

Nevertheless, latest medical thinking on ulcers indicates that a bacteria which aggravates these stomach conditions can be tackled by bismuth medication.

``People tend to think that ulcers are induced by stress, which increases acidity and causes heartburn. That is not so with a peptic ulcer -- it is a bacteria,'' Palmieri said.

There is a germ called helicobacter pylori (HP), which makes the lining of the stomach more sensitive to acid. These germs grow in the ulcers in the lining of the stomach and prevent them from healing.

Even if the acid in the stomach is reduced, the ulcers generally will not heal as long as the HP germs are present and living in the lining of the stomach.

``As long as we have this bacteria we try to cover it up with antacids. The more antacid you take, the more acid it produces,'' Palmieri added.

Sufferers from HP bacteria not only included Khomeini and the present Pope, but also in all probability former U.S. President George Bush and Imelda Marcos, wife of the former Philippines president, the Helicobacter Foundation said.

Bismuth acts like an antacid, but it is not one. By taking bismuth-based medicines, such as Procter and Gamble's PeptoBismol, a coating is formed which protects the stomach lining against the acid.

``By using bismuth you are reducing the effects of the other medications on your stomach, as these antibiotics are extremely strong. With bismuth-based premedication you soften the blow, then the antibiotics take over,'' Palmieri said.

ALLOYS AND CRYSTALS HIT THE SCREENS

Outside the body, bismuth alloys and crystals are making steady inroads in oncology treatment and MRI scanner diagnosis.

Bismuth germanium oxide (BGO) crystals are at the heart of scanners, with their use kick-started several years ago when CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) built its gigantic multiple particle accelerator which has a circumference of some 27 km.

``The requirement was for 12 tons of BGO, and the Chinese were able to supply it from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Palmieri said.

Steady growth is assured, where bismuth is concerned in scanners, as any future crystal developments will still depend on this metal.

BGO crystals neutralize lethal gamma rays, as well as improve overall imaging, and there are no viable technological alternatives on the immediate horizon, nor is there any financial stimulus, as metal prices have a track record of stability.

``I do not see any reasonable substitute to BGO or eventually BSO (bismuth silico oxide), as it usually takes 10 to 15 years before people come up with a substitute,'' Palmieri said.

Bismuth alloys, which are used in the protective radiation shields in oncology centers, are likely to witness similar steady growth rates.

These are solid castings, sometimes cut into complicated shapes, that are placed on certain parts of the body that need shielding from radiation during cancer treatment.

Each shield will be different, depending on the patient, said Glyn Morgan, of alloy-producers Mining & Chemical Products Ltd.

The advantage of bismuth alloys is that they can be cast in polystyrene molds -- a cheaper process.

This is impossible with lead, which could also be used as a radiation shield, as its melting point is far too high and the polystyrene would melt during casting.

These are not just one-off applications for bismuth alloys, which is both an advantage and disadvantage where alloys are concerned.

``...the alloy is totally reusable. When it is used the block is recycled and then used for another patient,'' Morgan added.

Because of this, explosive growth is unlikely, unless more oncology centers are built.

``There are 50 or 60 oncology centers in the UK and Ireland, and until they build more it (alloy use) will more or less stay the same,'' he added.

-------- human rights

China's Prison Laborers Pay Price for Market Reforms

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 14, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64274-2001Jun13?language=printer

YUANJIANG, China -- A small, nameless island sits near where the Yuan and the Yangtze rivers meet in central China, and this dusty town is perched on its northern end. Not many visitors come here, other than hard-luck cases bound for the Hunan Special Electrical Machinery Factory, also known as the Hunan Province No. 1 Prison.

Hou Xuezhu has taken the rickety ferry to Yuanjiang dozens of times in the years since her husband was imprisoned here for starting a labor union during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. But she was more anxious than usual on the last trip, for her husband has declared war against his jailers.

"Though I am weak and ill, they are trying to force me to work. I refuse," Zhang Shanguang wrote in a letter smuggled out of the prison in April. "I don't know what they'll do next."

For much of the past decade, prison officials have subjected Zhang to what the Chinese call laogai, or "reform through labor." But in recent years, the capitalist-style economic policies that have lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty also have made it more difficult for inefficient prison factories to sell their shabby products. Rather than improve conditions for inmates in Hunan No. 1, this has plunged them into greater misery.

The prison depends on its factory for funding -- a factory struggling to stay in business by squeezing more from its inmate workers. In other words, both Zhang and the prison are fighting to survive.

According to a petition from Zhang, a copy of which was smuggled out of China, and interviews with several former inmates, meals at the Hunan No. 1 Prison are meager and getting smaller. Guards, who sometimes go months without pay, hang prisoners by their hands from basketball hoops and confine them in cells infested with mosquitoes. Disease is widespread. Medical care is limited. Prisoners collapse from exhaustion after working 16-hour shifts.

"I'm afraid of what I'll find out," Hou said softly, sitting in an empty cafe as she began a bumpy, two-day journey to visit her husband in his island prison 600 miles west of Shanghai. "He's complained about the prison before, but it's never been this bad."

"On November 8," Zhang wrote in the smuggled letter, "they began taking me to the workshop and hanging me from a pillar with my hands cuffed above my head and my feet barely touching the floor, every day for more than 10 hours. . . . On March 12, they caught me writing a petition [about prison conditions]. They started beating and kicking me again, and hitting my head with an electric baton."

Sentencing criminals to labor is not considered a human rights abuse in itself. Many countries, including the United States, run prison work programs. But China's forced labor system involves inmates who have never been convicted of crimes, as well as political and religious dissidents. In addition, critics say, conditions in the laogai system are often inhumane.

Even before taking power in 1949, the Communist Party built prison camps on the principle that inmates could be transformed into productive citizens through forced labor. But because China was struggling to rebuild its war-torn economy, another principle was also established: Prisons were supposed to be financially self-sufficient, relying on income from their factories and farms to fund operations.

For decades, these prison enterprises were an integral part of China's planned economy, with sales of their products all but guaranteed by the state. But after market reforms were introduced in the 1980s, prison businesses were expected to compete for customers and resources -- and they began losing large sums of money, according to academic journals published by Chinese researchers with ties to the Justice Ministry.

Prison enterprises were as inefficient as other state factories, plagued by corruption, weak management, outdated equipment and low-quality products. But they faced additional problems, including an indifferent workforce with low skills and high turnover. Many prisons were located far from transportation hubs, raw materials and potential customers.

As sales of prison-made goods dropped, so did prison budgets. Some facilities responded by cutting costs and forcing inmates to work longer hours. Others sought markets overseas, in Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States. A few maintained profitability by abandoning prison labor and hiring better-trained, better-motivated civilian workers.

"Simply not having to pay the inmate workers has not meant that prison enterprises automatically make a profit," said James D. Seymour, a Columbia University researcher and co-author of a book on China's labor reform system. "It's cheaper to pay civilians the low salaries that prevail in China than to maintain a secure prison and provide sustenance for prisoners."

Seymour said China's prisons claimed profits of $44 million in 1984, but were reporting annual losses of more than $18 million by 1994. That year, the government acknowledged its prisons could no longer support themselves and passed a law formally recognizing its responsibility to fund them. But the central government cannot afford to shoulder the entire cost of the sprawling laogai system -- a network of 1,250 to 5,000 facilities housing 2 million to 6 million inmates nationwide, according to various estimates.

A majority of Chinese prisons receive some state funds, but they continue to suffer "severe economic difficulties," according to a book published last year by Justice Ministry researchers. Many prisons are mired in debt, others are hobbled by corruption, and the government has yet to establish a system for funding them, the book says.

"The economic situation of some prisons is nearly at the verge of collapse," wrote Shi Dianguo, a professor at the Central Justice Officer Academy, noting that more than 70 percent of prison expenses are covered by the prisons themselves. "This makes it difficult to guarantee that prison operations don't suffer from the drive for economic results."

The Justice Ministry declined requests for interviews about the Chinese prison system or the Hunan No. 1 Prison. The prison also declined. But one official who answered the phone there denied that conditions were deteriorating and said government funds cover most prison expenses. He said the factory remains profitable, and inmates never work more than eight hours a day.

The inmates tell a different story. The prison has all but stopped production of the industrial generators and construction equipment that it made for decades, they said. "The guards say nobody wants to buy them now," said one inmate who was released last year. "It's junk. The quality is too low."

Instead, the former inmates said, prison authorities have signed contracts with private companies to manufacture an assortment of such labor-intensive products as wigs, medicine boxes, gloves and Christmas lights. And they are pressing prisoners to work longer hours.

In the early 1990s, prisoners were required to work eight hours a day. Now prison officials force inmates to work 12 to 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week, the former prisoners said. When production deadlines approach, inmates sometimes have to work even longer hours.

"On occasion, inmates work throughout the night without sleep. It's very common to see inmates spitting blood and fainting from exhaustion in the workshops," wrote Zhang in his petition, a copy of which was obtained by the New York-based group Human Rights in China. "After laboring for long hours under bright lights, some inmates sustained serious retinal injuries that have affected their vision. But the guards accuse them of faking it and force them to work until they go completely blind."

One inmate who was released recently said prison guards have a personal interest in pushing inmates to work harder because budget shortfalls mean they do not get paid, sometimes for months at a time.

"They set a quota for you, but if you meet the quota, then they raise it. You work harder to meet it, and then they raise it again," the former inmate said. "It's torture to meet these quotas, but it's torture if you don't meet them, too."

Several former inmates said prisoners who fail to meet quotas or otherwise upset the authorities are handcuffed to basketball hoops in the prison yards, or to high railings in the workshops, their feet barely touching the ground.

"We'd be working, and these people would be just hanging there next to us," said one inmate. "It was like a warning."

Another inmate said guards force prisoners to prop up heavy doors for days at a time, or torture them by binding their hands tightly with ropes. Guards also put troublesome inmates in six-foot-square solitary confinement cells infested with mosquitoes in the summer. But inmates can bribe guards for easier work assignments or for help obtaining reductions in sentences.

Of the 2,000 to 3,000 inmates in the Hunan No. 1 Prison, most were convicted of regular crimes. But former inmates said more than 100 political prisoners were held here in the early 1990s, many arrested after the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Less than half that number of dissidents are in the prison now, the inmates said.

Prisoners sleep 12 to 16 to a room, and guards depend on inmates to help run the prison. Meals are getting smaller. Many consist of dirty vegetables and seaweed soup. Meat used to be served twice a week, but now it appears only occasionally on prisoners' plates. Rice is stale and full of pebbles. The water is not boiled.

Tuberculosis and hepatitis are widespread, but medical care is limited and inmates often die from their illnesses. "Unless someone is clearly dying, inmates hardly ever get proper medical attention," Zhang wrote.

Last year, one of Zhang's friends, a political prisoner named Li Wangyang, was released early on medical grounds. Arrested in 1989 in good health, Li could not walk without help when he left the prison and he suffered from heart, thyroid, eye, hearing and lung ailments.

In February, he went on a hunger strike to demand the government pay for his medical care. But on May 6, police removed him from a hospital bed and arrested him again. His sister was arrested, too.

It is unclear how many inmates signed Zhang's petition before the guards discovered it. But Liu Qing, president of Human Rights in China, said a group of inmates, both regular criminals and political prisoners, spent months passing it around before they were caught.

Zhang, 46, was at the center of the clandestine petition campaign. The former teacher, who organized a labor union in Hunan in 1989, was released from prison in 1996 but arrested again two years later for starting a group to help laid-off workers. His wife had urged him not to do it, telling him to think of their children. But police showed up one morning and took him away before the children woke up.

"I was angry at him at first. But there's no point now," Hou said. "I'm just sad -- and worried."

----

The forgotten American hostage

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • June 14, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010614-77297714.htm

Two months after the return of the crew of the U.S. Navy surveillance plane, one American still remains hostage to the Chinese government at an unidentified location around Beijing. Jesse Jackson hasnīt seen the PR advantage in trying to negotiate his freedom, and the administration has remained silent about its commitment to try to free him.

No, he is not a U.S. serviceman, but Li Shaomin served the United States for years before he was detained by the Chinese government in February while crossing the border from Hong Kong to China. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, the home state of Mr. Li, introduced a resolution in the House on Friday which would call on the Chinese government to unconditionally release Mr. Li and other detained scholars unjustly targeted for their work on Chinese-Taiwan relations. This is a good place to start to try to win the release of the Chinese-American professor, but the Chinese government is not likely to bend without a strong message from the Bush administration pushing for Mr. Liīs release. "Acquiescence by silence only means that they get a long prison sentence, because this repression is one of the most dangerous ones weīve seen in the last 10 years," Mr. Smith said in an interview.

A Princeton grad and post-doctorate fellow at Harvard University, Mr. Li worked for AT&T in Berkeley Heights, N.J. He has called the United States home since he moved from Beijing in 1982. Though he did not become a naturalized citizen until 1995, he has raised his daughter here, and his family considers New Jersey home.

"Itīs the ultimate freedom to become a U.S. citizen," his wife, Liu Yingli told this page in an interview. "We always knew and wished we could be in the free world." So Mrs. Li followed her husband to the United States from Beijing in 1985. Though Mr. Li is a Chinese-born American scholar, his work does not exactly fit the profile of what one would expect from someone "spying" for Taiwan, which is what the Chinese government has charged him with. He is a demographer, studying population growth and market trends. He got a job as a professor of marketing at the City University of Hong Kong in 1996, and his wife has been teaching there since 1998.

Mr. Liīs one mistake was to agree to meet a friend for dinner the night of Feb. 25. "He left Sunday night and he never came back," his wife said, trying to control her emotions. For the first week, she tried to keep it from their 9-year-old daughter, telling the girl that he was on business. But at one point, Diana had to know the truth, and she, too, is now trying to lobby President Bush on his behalf.

Mr. Li regularly visited Shenzhen, a city just 30 minutes from Hong Kong, and was detained by Chinese authorities as he arrived in the train station. The U.S. consular office has been allowed four visits to see him at specified meeting places near Beijing, but Mr. Li has not been allowed to see his lawyer or his family since his detention. Even more disturbing, he was held without being charged for almost three months.

Despite the fact that this violates Chinese law and Chinese-U.S. agreements, the Bush administration has done nothing. The New Jersey congressional delegation has written Mr. Bush, asking for him to raise the issue at the highest diplomatic level. Last Friday, the office of Rep. Bill Pascrell finally received an acknowledgement signed by autopen that the letter had been received.

When U.S. servicemen were involved in the Navy spy plane incident, the U.S. government negotiated their release in 12 days. The administration is now practicing a double standard by its silence. Mr. Li, a U.S. citizen, deserves U.S. government protection. Having silenced the budding Chinese democracy movement, Beijing is now turning its attention to American scholars with any connection to Taiwan as a way of sending an ominous message. Itīs a message the White House needs to hear loud and clear.

-------- police

Privacy Protection

New York Times
June 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/14/opinion/14THU3.html

The Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at the entrance to the house." So declared the Supreme Court on Monday in an important 5-to-4 ruling. The ruling reaffirmed the basic right of privacy that Americans are constitutionally entitled to enjoy in their own homes in an era when high-tech devices make it possible for police to snoop without any physical intrusion.

The case concerns the use of a thermal imaging device by federal officers in Oregon who suspected that marijuana was being cultivated in a private home, using special, intense lighting. The government argued, and four dissenting justices agreed, that no warrant was needed because the infrared scan merely measured "waste heat" emitted from the exterior of the home, and that the images obtained were too murky to reveal "intimate" private information or disclose much about "private activities" in "private areas" of the house.

But Justice Antonin Scalia had no trouble rejecting such flimsy excuses for evading the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. Writing for a five-member majority that covered the court's ideological spectrum, he said in part: "In the home . . . all details are intimate details, because the entire area is held safe from prying government eyes," adding that homeowners should not be "at the mercy of advanced technology."

The decision serves notice that police need to obtain a warrant before using any device not in general public use to gain details about a person's private home that could not otherwise be discovered without physical intrusion - a legal approach that might be read to bar warrantless use of the Internet wire technology known as Carnivore, as Representative Dick Armey noted yesterday.

In setting a sound legal standard, Justice Scalia and his colleagues have given basic privacy rights important protections against the misuse of high technology.

-------

House Leader Presses FBI Surveillance Worries

By Jim Wolf,
June 14, 2001
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010614/tc/tech_carnivore_dc_1.html

WASHINGTON - House Majority leader Dick Armey may seek U.S. Justice Department budget cuts to curb the use of the FBI e-mail surveillance tool formerly known as Carnivore, a spokesman said on Thursday.

``If necessary he would consider using Congress's power of the purse to pull the plug on Carnivore,'' said the aide, Richard Diamond.

At issue is specialized software used by the FBI for court-authorized tracking of a criminal suspect's online communications with the cooperation of an Internet service provider.

Unlike other court-ordered electronic surveillance tools, Carnivore, as it is still widely known, gives law enforcers access to the communications of all the service provider's customers, critics have charged.

In a letter earlier in the day, Armey, a Texas Republican, urged Attorney General John Ashcroft to rethink the program, which he inherited from the Clinton administration.

``I respectfully ask that you consider the serious constitutional questions Carnivore has raised and respond with how you intend to address them,'' Armey wrote.

He cited a decision on Monday by the Supreme Court restricting drug-hunting police officers' use of thermal-imaging technology to peer inside a suspect's home unless they first obtain a warrant.

The court's 5-4 ruling was a setback for the Justice Department, which had argued the use of a thermal imager to scan a home's heat patterns was not covered by Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure.

As a result, Armey said it was reasonable to ask whether Carnivore ``similarly undermines the minimum expectation that individuals have that their personal communications will not be examined by law enforcement devices unless a specific court warrant has been issued.''

Chris Watney, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said Ashcroft was ``very concerned about this issue and is reviewing it.'' She said he would respond directly to Armey.

Ashcroft, like Armey, is widely regarded as a strong advocate of privacy rights. He has been studying a Justice Department task force's report on possible changes to the system which the FBI has renamed DCS-1000, a name spokesman Paul Bresson said did not signify anything in particular.

Watney said she had no indication when Ashcroft would decide what, if anything, to do about the system. The in-house task force was assembled by Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno (news - web sites), under pressure from Armey and other lawmakers.

----

FBI Sniper Won't Be Prosecuted

New York Times
June 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 9:04 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Ruby-Ridge.html

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- An Idaho prosecutor said Thursday he won't pursue a manslaughter charge against the FBI sniper who shot and killed the wife of white separatist Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge.

Last week, a sharply divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled FBI sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi could face trial for the death of Vicki Weaver in the 1992 standoff in north Idaho.

But Boundary County Prosecutor Brett Benson announced Thursday he will dismiss the involuntary manslaughter charge filed by his predecessor. He said it was unlikely the state could prove the case and too much time had passed.

``The Ruby Ridge incident was a tragedy that deeply affected and divided many of the citizens of this county and country,'' Benson said in a news release from his office in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. ``It is our hope that this decision will begin the healing process that is so long overdue.''

The Ruby Ridge case was seen as a test of whether federal agents are immune from state prosecution. The federal government declined to prosecute Horiuchi, but last week's 6-5 ruling by the appeals court cleared the way for Idaho prosecutors to pursue charges against him.

Benson said he would file a motion in federal court in Boise, Idaho, on Friday to dismiss the charge brought by Denise Woodbury, who lost to Benson in last year's election

Horiuchi's attorney, Adam Hoffinger, was out of the country and not available for comment Thursday.

No one answered the telephone at Randy Weaver's Iowa home on Thursday.

Special Prosecutor Stephen Yagman, who was appointed by Woodbury to handle the case, criticized the decision and said he hoped a different prosecutor might refile the charge or bring a more severe charge.

``I could not disagree more with this decision than I do,'' Yagman said. ``It sounds to me like the system has suffered a temporary corruption.''

Benson did not return a telephone message seeking comment.

The standoff at Ruby Ridge in north Idaho prompted a nationwide debate on the use of force by federal agencies. It began after government agents tried to arrest Randy Weaver for failing to appear in court on charges of selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns.

The Weaver's cabin had been under surveillance for several months when the violence began with the deaths of Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan, Weaver's 14-year-old son, Samuel, and the family dog.

During the 11-day standoff, Horiuchi shot and killed Weaver's wife and wounded family friend Kevin Harris. Witnesses said the sharpshooter fired as Vicki Weaver held open the cabin door, her 10-month-old baby in her arms.

Horiuchi has said he didn't see Vicki Weaver when he fired at Harris, who was armed and was ducking inside the cabin. He also said he fired to protect a government helicopter overhead.

Charges against Horiuchi had been dismissed twice by federal courts, on the grounds that a federal agent on duty was immune from criminal prosecution.

The appeals court last week sent the case back to the federal court in Boise to determine if the sharpshooter had acted in a reasonable manner, and thus merited immunity. If a federal judge had ruled that Horiuchi acted unlawfully, then the case could have gone before a jury.

Those in dissent said the majority was using hindsight in ``dissecting the mistakes'' of Horiuchi. They called the majority's opinion a ``grave disservice'' to FBI agents and argued that Horiuchi, who is still an FBI agent, should be immune from prosecution.

The standoff ended after Harris and Weaver surrendered. Both men were acquitted of murder, conspiracy and other federal charges. Weaver was convicted of failing to appear for trial on the firearms charge.

The Justice Department last summer settled the last civil suit stemming from the standoff. The government admitted no wrongdoing, but paid Harris $380,000 to drop his $10 million civil damage suit.

In 1995, the government paid Weaver and his three surviving children $3.1 million for the killings of Weaver's wife and son.

-------

Indonesian Protests Rage On

JUNE 14, 06:39 EST
By DANIEL COONEY
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7CK98J00

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Police fired tear gas and warning shots at thousands of protesting workers in three cities on Thursday, while the embattled government delayed fuel price hikes for fears of more unrest ahead of the impeachment of President Abdurrahman Wahid.

It was the second straight day of violent protests against new labor laws.

Police shot and wounded at least three people at Sidoarjo, close to East Java's provincial capital, Surabaya. About 3,000 demonstrators blocked roads and attacked officers in Bandung, in West Java province. Warning shots broke up a big protest in Waru, another factory town near Surabaya.

Violence also flared in Aceh province, on the northern tip of Sumatra Island. At least 10 people were killed in fighting between rebels and government forces, bringing the death toll there for the year so far to 595, including 52 in the past week.

The mix of labor protests and separatist and communal fighting as well political instability has raised tensions across the world's fourthmost populous nation.

In an apparent precaution against further trouble, the government announced that it had delayed a politically sensitive 30 percent hike in state-subsidized prices for gasoline and other fuels.

The rises, demanded by the International Monetary Fund as part of a tough economic reform package, were to have gone ahead on Friday.

The rises would have hit millions of poor Indonesians who have been struggling to make ends meet since Asia's 1997 financial crisis.

It seems unlikely, though, that the delay will take the heat off Wahid who is to face impeachment proceedings over graft allegations on Aug. 1.

Politically isolated, Wahid has tried many avenues to save his presidency, including an unsuccessful offer to share power with his main rival and likely successor.

Despite his precarious position, Wahid's aides announced Thursday that he would visit Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines later this month.

The visit is to start June 24, just five weeks before the national assembly convenes to decide Wahid's fate.

Relations with Australia and New Zealand have been strained since 1999. Both countries took leading roles in an international peacekeeping force in East Timor after the territory voted to break away from Indonesian rule.

-------- spying

Armey to Press Opposition to Net Wiretaps

New York Times
June 14, 2001
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/14/technology/14CARN.html

Whatever happened to Carnivore? That's the question that Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the House majority leader, has posed in a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The letter, which Mr. Armey's office will make public today, asks the Justice Department and the F.B.I to reconsider the use of the Internet wiretapping technology formerly known as Carnivore. It cited a decision on Monday by the United States Supreme Court restricting the use of thermal-imaging technology to peer inside a suspect's house, and suggested that Carnivore "similarly undermines the minimum expectation" of privacy that the court said was violated in the recent case, Kyllo v. United States.

"I respectfully ask that you consider the serious constitutional questions Carnivore has raised and respond with how you intend to address them," Mr. Armey wrote.

The Internet wiretap technology is a modified version of a common piece of software known as a packet sniffer that is used by Internet service providers to maintain their networks. It has raised fears among privacy advocates because the system initially taps substantial portions of traffic coming through an Internet service provider's networks in search of data from the target of the investigation.

Opponents of the system say law enforcement officials should be required to get the same kind of court order to use Carnivore as is required for full telephone wiretaps; the F.B.I. argues that it should be able to use the system under the relatively loose rules governing technologies that gather phone numbers dialed by suspects and the numbers of people calling them.

The F.B.I. officially renamed the system DCS-1000 in February, but news reports and politicians continue to refer to it as Carnivore.

"My first reaction when I saw the decision was it was about time somebody put a limit on this bag of magic tricks," Mr. Armey said in an interview. He added that if he was not satisfied with Mr. Ashcroft's response, he would seek a change in the Justice Department budget that would limit funds for the system.

An executive of EarthLink, an Internet service provider that resisted F.B.I. efforts last year to use Carnivore on its network, applauded the Armey letter. "Much as I don't necessarily align myself with Dick Armey, I agree with him," said Claudia B. Caplan, vice president for brand marketing.

Another critic of Carnivore, Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said the technology went beyond what the law allowed. "The use of Carnivore should be suspended until the federal wiretap statutes can be amended to protect the privacy rights of Americans," he said.

But Clifford S. Fishman of the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America, a wiretap expert, said the Kyllo case might not be an apt comparison with Carnivore, because the Kyllo case hinged on whether any court oversight was required. "I don't see the decision as totally trashing what the government is seeking" with Carnivore, he said.

A Justice Department spokeswoman, Chris J. Watney, said, "The attorney general is looking at the Carnivore matter, is very concerned about it and will respond to Dick Armey directly" about his letter.

-------- activists

Over 200 Bush Protesters Arrested

June 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 8:36 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-EU-Summit-Protests.html

GOTEBORG, Sweden (AP) -- Police arrested more than 200 people Thursday night in a clash with more than a thousand protesters, gathering to demand changes in President Bush's policies on global warming and missile defenses.

Authorities called in reinforcements from other Swedish cities because more rallies are planned Friday and Saturday as Bush meets with leaders of European nations.

More than a thousand protesters faced off with police after authorities cordoned off Hvitfeldtska high school where hundreds of activists had gathered. Police claimed that some of those inside planned violence during demonstrations against Bush and the European Union.

Police refused to allow up to 400 activists to leave the building to take part in a rally earlier Thursday, when an estimated 10,000 people marched through this port city to protest Bush's policies.

It was the largest anti-Bush rally since the president began his five-nation European tour Tuesday in Madrid, Spain.

After the rally, some protesters returned to the three-story brick school where their colleagues were being held. Police intervened when protesters approached the building and began pounding on metal containers set up by authorities as barricades.

Police pushed back the crowd and arrested 207 people who resisted, police spokesman Jan Strannegoerd said. Five policemen were slightly injured and one activist suffered a broken arm.

The clash took place as Bush --who arrived Thursday from Brussels, Belgium -- was dining with leaders of the 15 EU governments.

The protesters -- environmentalists and anti-globalization and anti-EU activists -- are gathering in Goteborg, 300 miles southwest of the capital, Stockholm, for the summit Friday and Saturday.

About 1,000 police have been deployed to provide security. Police spokesman Lennart Ronnebro refused to say how many extra police would be sent. He noted that most of the rallies have been peaceful, including the anti-Bush march and a gathering of more than 7,000 Iranian exiles.

``Of course, we are extremely disappointed with the violence, but to be honest all the real demonstrations have gone as we hoped,'' Ronnebro said.

Ronnebro said police have estimated that about 25,000 demonstrators, including Danes, Finns, Italians and Irish, were in the city, many housed in schools around the city like the Hvitfeldtska high school.

Police said they decided to surround and search the school after the Web sites of unspecified groups raised suspicions that they were planning violence during the demonstrations.

Ronnebro said they offered the activists a chance to leave in the morning if they agreed to be searched, but up to 400 refused.

Bush leaves Friday for Warsaw, Poland, the fourth stop on his European tour. His final stop will be in Slovenia for a summit Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During the largest rally Thursday, protesters carried banners denouncing Bush's decision to reject the 1997 Kyoto agreement to combat global warming and his plans to build a missile defense system.

----

Bush Starts Tense Summit with EU Amid Protests

June 14, 2001
By REUTERS Filed at 7:39 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-eu-summ.html

GOTHENBURG, Sweden (Reuters) - President Bush began his first summit with the European Union on Thursday, vowing to work for a prosperous, united Europe but at odds over his rejection of a global warming treaty.

Thousands of protesters were gathering in Sweden's second largest city amid massive security measures to demonstrate their hostility to a man dubbed the ``Toxic Texan'' for his refusal to accept the Kyoto treaty on climate change.

After flying in from Brussels, Bush drove straight to talks with Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, holder of the EU's rotating presidency, and European Commission President Romano Prodi, at an 18th century manor house near Sweden's second city.

``Mine is an administration deeply committed to a prosperous Europe, a whole Europe and a free Europe and we look forward to a constructive relationship,'' Bush said as the meeting began.

Prodi stressed that the Europeans wanted to strike up a good personal relationship with the Republican president despite a string of policy differences.

``This is the first time (we meet) so the most important thing is chemistry, how we work together. We have to work together for years, so it is important how you feel the first time,'' the EU's chief executive said.

The EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, wrote in The Financial Times that trade friction, and U.S. reluctance to join multilateral efforts such as the International Criminal Court, a treaty banning land mines or the Kyoto protocol had created ''divisions and misgivings in recent months.''

But Solana, who missed the Gothenburg talks due to an urgent crisis management trip to Macedonia, said: ``The much-touted 'rift' in transatlantic relations is more rhetorical than real.''

MASSIVE POLICE OPERATION

One of the biggest police operations in Swedish history was under way to keep protestors away from the summit site in the city center.

Fearing a re-run of anarchist violence that has dogged international gatherings since the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization conference, police sealed off a large perimeter around the summit center with a two-meter-high double fence and barricaded approach roads with freight containers.

They were expecting between 10,000 and 25,000 protesters from anti-EU, anti-U.S. and anti-globalization groups. Some activists have threatened to storm the conference center.

In a sign Bush can expect some forthright talk during his 24-hour stay, Persson said on the eve of his arrival that a strong Europe was needed to balance U.S. global hegemony.

``It's (EU) one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to U.S. world domination,'' Persson told protest leaders at a so-called ``confrontation dialogue.''

That comment by Sweden's center-left premier, who holds the rotating EU presidency until the end of June, contrasted with the optimism of U.S. officials after Bush met NATO allies in Brussels on Wednesday on his first presidential trip to Europe.

NATO SUPPORT?

U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they came away from the 19-nation NATO meeting surprised by what they felt was growing support from some allies for Bush's plans to deploy an anti-missile shield.

Hungary, Poland, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Turkey and to a certain extent Britain recognized a growing missile threat without endorsing a missile defense, said the officials.

However, France and Germany were still skeptical and the toughest criticism came from Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok, who said unilateral abrogation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia would be wrong.

Bush needs to build support for scrapping the ABM treaty, the bedrock of nuclear stability between the United States and Russia for three decades, to deploy a system of interceptors aimed at stopping incoming missiles from countries such as North Korea and Iran. The Cold War-era treaty bans such a system.

Persson met leaders of environmental and anti-globalization movements on Wednesday night in an effort to defuse violence by showing a receptiveness to dialogue.

Despite quoting communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in keeping with the left-wing tone of the dialogue, Persson and three other ministers were met with jeers and foot-stamping rather than any sense of comradeship.

Bush was to give a joint news conference later with Persson and Prodi before having dinner with all 15 EU leaders.

Swedish news agency TT said U.S. and EU officials had failed in overnight talks to resolve differences over global warming, trade disputes or the Middle East that were holding up a joint communique due to be issued after the talks.

U.S. officials were unwilling to commit themselves until the president arrived, the agency said.

----

Bush Faces Environmental Opposition and Protesters in Sweden

June 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/14WIRE-PREX.html?searchpv=aponline

GOTEBORG, Sweden (AP) -- President Bush on Thursday parted ways with much of Europe over climate change, maintaining his opposition to a global warming treaty but pledging to seek ``new channels of cooperation'' on the issue.

Bush said he was optimistic about improving relations with Europe as he joined leaders of the 15-nation European Union at Gunnebo Slott, an 18th-century castle that sits atop a wooded hill nine miles outside Goteborg.

But after their meeting, Bush said he remains opposed to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which commits industrialized countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2012. No industrial country has yet ratified the treaty, although most leaders have voiced support for it; An effort to salvage it fell apart last November in a disagreement between the United States and Europe over trading pollution credits.

``We agreed to create new channels of cooperation on this topic,'' Bush said. ``We don't agree on the Kyoto treaty, but we do agree that climate change is a serious issue and we must work together.''

He said he objects to the Kyoto pact because it exempts developing nations. ``The goals weren't realistic. But that doesn't mean we can't work together,'' Bush said.

Persson said the EU would stick with the treaty, while the United States would ``go on with their policy.'' Prodi said he was pleased that, despite its opposition, the United States would take part next month in a global warming conference in Bonn, Germany.

``So the dialogue goes on, even if there are big differences,'' Prodi said, adding that ratification is under way in some European countries and will begin soon in others. ``There is no one message of refusal or delay over ratification,'' he said.

Otherwise, the leaders discussed trade, security and human rights issues on the Korean Peninsula and the AIDS threat in Africa.

Later, Bush was dining with the leaders of all 15 EU nations, many of whom he saw at Wednesday's NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium.

While the leaders met, mounted riot police sealed off a nearby high school serving as headquarters for several anti-globalization groups. Officers moved in after protesters blocked a patrol car on school grounds Wednesday night, raising suspicions that some of them were plotting violence, said Detective Supt. Sven Alhbin.

At least 12,000 protesters were expected at rallies throughout Goteborg, Sweden's second-largest city, against Bush, the EU and the growing strength of international business. Organizers insisted the demonstrations would be peaceful, but local merchants anticipated trouble. Several downtown businesses, including at least one McDonald's restaurant, had boarded-up storefronts.

The canal-side hotel where Bush and his delegation were staying was cordoned off with eight-foot-high metal screens hours before he arrived. Swedish police stood guard at checkpoints ringing the hotel grounds.

Goteborg is the third stop on Bush's five-nation European tour. Bush's visit here is the first to Sweden by a sitting U.S. president.

Persson joined Bush in his limousine for the ride from the airport. Upon their arrival at the cream-colored castle, a reporter asked what they discussed. Persson said, ``Life,'' while Bush quipped, ``How beautiful Sweden is.''

The two leaders took no other questions, but chatted quietly with each other as they sat side-by-side on straight-backed chairs in front of a wood-burning stove.

Awaiting Bush in Goteborg was a touch of home: a brown leather ``Texas armchair'' donated to the White House by a Swedish business group, which described it as ``traditional American cowboy design.''

The gift is intended to symbolize industrial collaboration between U.S. and Goteborg-based companies. It was on display in the lobby of a Goteborg hotel used by reporters traveling with Bush.

A day before Bush arrived in Brussels to attend his first NATO meeting, EU environment ministers rejected Bush's latest initiatives to study climate change, calling them short on action. They urged Bush to change his mind, but the president said later the Kyoto pact is fatally flawed.

Robert Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative, told reporters Wednesday in Brussels that he was ``somewhat optimistic'' that the trans-Atlantic disagreement over Kyoto eventually will be settled amicably.

``For all the to-ing and fro-ing, this is a critical aspect of restarting the dialogue, because Kyoto wasn't going to go anywhere in the United States or many other countries,'' Zoellick said.

----

Environmental Groups Claim to Have Vandalized Banks

New York Times
June 14, 2001
By AL BAKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/14/nyregion/14ELF.html

GARDEN CITY, N.Y., June 13 - One bank branch on Long Island had 13 of its windows smashed. Two others had their outdoor A.T.M.'s smeared with glue. And at least three of the banks that were damaged overnight Tuesday were painted with graffiti protesting animal testing: "BNY Kills Puppies," "Stop the Torture" and "Investors in Murder."

Today, federal and local authorities were investigating the vandalism at five branches of the Bank of New York in Suffolk County, saying they believed it was the work of two loosely knit groups of radical environmentalists opposed to animal testing, urban sprawl, deforestation and other things they deem harmful to the environment.

The Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the vandalism in a joint news release, the latest act in their nationwide campaign of destruction that has reached from Oregon to Indiana to Long Island.

"Every indication is that A.L.F. and E.L.F. were responsible," said Joseph A. Valiquette, a spokesman for the F.B.I.'s office in New York. The Suffolk police said the vandalism was carried out late Tuesday and early today in Melville, Greenlawn, Kings Park, Commack and North Babylon. "The Joint Terrorist Task Force is investigating these incidents, as they have all the past incidents," Mr. Valiquette added.

Last winter, the Earth Liberation Front said it set fire to houses under construction on old farmland in Mount Sinai, damaged a bulldozer at a construction site in Ridge, and broke windows and scrawled "Meat is Murder" at a McDonald's corporate office in Hauppauge. In April, the Animal Liberation Front took responsibility for stealing nearly 250 ducklings from a research laboratory in Eastport.

The latest local wave of vandalism was to protest the banks' investment in, and business dealings with, Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British firm, according to a two-page letter distributed by an Animal Liberation Front spokesman from Courtenay, British Columbia. Huntingdon uses animals in tests for pesticides, chemical products and pharmaceuticals, the letter said.

A Huntingdon Life Sciences Web site says that the number of animals involved in research is often used by animal rights protesters as an indicator of suffering. But, it said: "The total number does not reflect the condition of an individual animal. The number of animals used in research is not excessive by comparison with the food industry or the numbers of destroyed pets."

Robert T. Grieves, a spokesman for the Bank of New York, would not comment on the damage to the banks' Suffolk branches nor would he speak about the bank's business with Huntingdon Life Sciences "We don't comment on client relationships or clients," Mr. Grieves said.

But Mr. Grieves denounced the vandalism.

"Acts of vandalism, which carry an implicit threat to the safety of people in the area, cannot be tolerated," he said.

---------

Protesters, Police Clash at Summit

JUNE 14, 18:05 EST
By KIM GAMEL
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS7CKJA500

GOTEBORG, Sweden (AP) - More than a thousand protesters clashed with police Thursday, angered that authorities had barred hundreds of activists from joining demonstrations against President Bush and European leaders. More than 200 were arrested.

Police had blockaded around 400 activists inside a school, claiming that some of them were planning violence during the demonstrations. When police refused to let them out for an evening rally, the protesters approached the facility.

They pounded on metal containers police had set up around the school. Police pushed back the crowd and arrested more than 200 activists who resisted, police spokesman Jan Strannegoerd said. Five policemen were slightly injured, he said.

It was one of a series of demonstrations - mostly peaceful - in the Swedish port city of Goteborg, where at least 9,000 protesters have converged and more were expected for rallies against globalization and Bush's environmental policy, among other things, during the three days of meetings.

It was the largest gathering of protesters so far during Bush's tour of Europe, which began Tuesday in Madrid, Spain - though the Goteborg protesters included both those against Bush and those against a European Union summit Friday and Saturday.

Thursday afternoon, several thousand people marched through the streets of the city, 300 miles southwest of Stockholm, protesting Bush's policies on the environment, capital punishment and other issues.

``I don't like Bush because he only thinks about himself. The United States is like an empire,'' Aron Sik, 16, said as he carried a banner reading ``Yankees go home. Bush go home.''

Others denounced Bush's plans for a missile defense system.

``People don't like Bush and his plans for a Star Wars. We want him to stop,'' said Kristofer Broenemi, 18-year-old from Umeaa, member of a leftist group.

Hvitfeldtska high school, where police sealed off the 400 activists, about a half-mile from the summit venue, was one of several facilities organized by city officials to house the mass of protesters.

In the afternoon, a group of youths wearing black masks appeared in a park outside the school and started hurling bottles and cobblestones at police blockading the school. Mounted riot police quickly dispersed them, and eight youths were arrested.

Police gave few details on their refusal to let out the activists, saying only that they become suspicious after reviewing the Web sites of some groups and decided to search the building. They said earlier they would let out activists one by one as they were searched.

Groups staged other scattered protests throughout the day, among those groups were Iranian exiles and environmentalists.

In advance of the Bush visit, police had held extensive discussions with leaders of more than 80 protest groups in an attempt to keep the rallies peaceful. Some activists said they felt betrayed by the standoff at the high school.

``Our deal with the police was to keep horses, dogs and riot police away from the streets,'' said Helena Tagesson, of the French-based anti-globalization group ATTAC. ``They did not stick to the promise and of course I'm mad.''

---------

Save nuclear survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

From: "yuu" <yuu@hiroshima-cdas.or.jp>,
Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2001

Dear All,

Please send e-mail or fax messages to the Japanese government ministers in support of the ruling by the Osaka District Court on the responsibility of the government for the health-care of Hibakusha living outside Japan.

As you may already know, Judge Jun Miura of the Osaka District Court ruled that the Osaka prefectural government's failure to pay medical allowances to atomic bomb victims currently residing abroad was against the fundamental goals of the Atomic Victims Relief Law. We need your support to stop the government from appealing this case to a higher court. Please send your oppinions to the following people before the 15th of June, the deadline for appealing.

The official Webster of the Kantei (Official Residence) of the Prime Minister of Japan. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi http://www.kantei.go.jp/ (the home page have a English site) http://www.iijnet.or.jp/cao/kantei/foreign/comment.html (subscribe into the home page) Fax (International) -81-3-3581-3883

Ministry of Health and Welfare(Chikara SAKAGUCHI) Fax (International)-81-3-3595-2020 e-mail: www-admin@mhlw.go.jp

Ministry of Justice(Moriyama Mayumi) fax:(International)-81-3-5511-7210 e-mail: webmaster@moj.go.jp



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