------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
417,000 people exposed to atomic tests
Preparing to Break Out of the Nuclear Weapons Testing Moratorium?
Nuclear-energy foes say waste shipments could endanger area
Exposed: Professors shed light on radioactive living
Deadline Approaches for U.S. Diplomats

MILITARY
Extradition Causes Rift In Belgrade Cabinet Members Quit in Protest
Opinion Is Divided in Serbia Over Handover of Milosevic
War Crimes Tribunal Expands Milosevic Indictment
U.N. Prosecutors Ready for Milosevic
Plan to Modify U.N. Sanctions Against Iraq Bogs Down, Powell Says
N. Ireland Government Loses Leader
Annan wins second U.N. term
Kauai missile tests return
Osprey leader faked data
American Military Personnel Suspected in Okinawa Rape
Bush Pushes Defense Spending Bill
The giants of the Navy face growing risks

OTHER
Brazil Police Chief Found Guilty in Prison Massacre
Deadline Approaches for U.S. Diplomats
Chavez irked by seizure of spy chief

ACTIVISTS
Vieques Protesters Released From Jail
Austrian Police Ready for Protests


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- britain

417,000 people exposed to atomic tests

By COLIN JAMES
30jun01
http://theadvertiser.com.au/common/story_page/0%2C4511%2C2230115^911%2C00.html

THE Federal Government has released a preliminary list of more than 17,000 military and civilian personnel who served at the British atomic tests in the 1950s.

The register - first recommended by a royal commission in 1985 - will be used to conduct national studies into how many of the men have died since the tests, especially how many suffered from cancer.

The mortality and cancer studies are expected to confirm long-standing claims by veterans that thousands of army, navy, air force personnel and civilians died as a result of being exposed to radiation.

The veterans plan to use the register in their campaign to win compensation for mental and physical illnesses they believe were caused by their involvement with the nuclear explosions.

Their claims have been strengthened in recent months by the release of secret documents detailing how hundreds of servicemen were deliberately exposed to radiation as human guinea pigs.

The Advertiser has obtained new evidence that, in addition to servicemen, civilians were ordered to watch four explosions at Maralinga during the 1956 test series codenamed Operation Buffalo.

The Advertiser has also obtained documents which confirm earlier reports that inadequate attempts were made by the British and Australian governments to remove desert Aborigines from the vicinity of the tests.

The Veterans Affairs Department said it had been unable to compile a list of Aborigines who may have been involved with the 12 explosions at Emu Field, Maralinga and the Montebello Islands, off Western Australia, between 1952 and 1957.

Instead, the 257-page list posted on to its website yesterday contained the names of 1658 army, 3235 navy, 3223 air force and 8907 civilian personnel who were part of the five-year program. The list was compiled from extensive searches of Defence Department records, personnel files of private contractors, the 1985 royal commission report, security cards issued for Maralinga and lists previously prepared by veterans groups or government departments.

However, the Veterans Affairs Department warned the roll was likely to contain errors because "of the length of time that has elapsed and the difficulty in locating and verifying authentic records".

Veterans Affairs Minister Bruce Scott last night said a consultative forum would meet next month to determine how the health studies would be conducted, with a senior researcher expected to be announced in August.

"This is a major task and when complete will provide information about the nature and extent of any health problems suffered by veterans of the atomic tests," he told the SA RSL state congress in Adelaide.

The Atomic Participants Nominal Roll can be inspected on www.dva.gov.au while veterans or civilians with corrections or additions can call 1800 445 006.

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

Is the Bush Administration Preparing to Break Out of the Nuclear Weapons Testing Moratorium?

by Steve Erickson and Preston J. Truman,
Saturday, June 30, 2001
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0630-03.htm

Recent statements and actions by top players within the Administration and its shadow cabinet of unreconstructed Cold Warriors may just be trial balloons to test the waters to see if anyone will object to a resumption of testing and abbrogation of treaties subscribed to by the U.S. If these are only trial balloons, they must be pierced now before they take flight, and the Utah congressional delegation has a moral responsibility to wield the pins. In the last week of June, the Bush team ordered nuclear weapons scientists to study a range of options to "reduce lead times" to resume nuclear bomb explosions at the Nevada Test Site. The weapons laboratories argue that testing is needed to assure that the stockpile is reliable, and some fear that the long lead times to prepare tests give political opponents opportunities to prevent renewed testing. A February 1 report commissioned by Congress bemoaned the deteriorating state of nuclear weapons testing and production facilities, leading the Administration to consider a six-year, $2 billion initiative to up-grade the weapons programs.

Frank Gaffney, a former defense official and prominent conservative analyst and advisor, stated in May that "we're going to have to resume on a limited basis underground testing of our nuclear arms". In a March 12 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms called on the Administration to repudiate the signed but unratified Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The New York Times reported May 9th that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seems more inclined to deploy missile defenses and develop nuclear forces than negotiating with Russia or China. "Before taking office Mr. Rumsfeld argued that the U.S. should not ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty because it might need to develop new nuclear weapons," the Times reported. So far, President Bush has refused to place the treaty before the Senate. "'This is a paradigm shift,' said a senior Pentagon official. 'We are probably not going to be hampered by arms control agreements.'" (NYT 5/9/01)

In April and May, the U.S. accused the Chinese of preparing for a nuclear weapons test (Washington Times 4/9/01, 5/11/01), and similar accusations have been leveled at the Russians (NYT 3/4/01). In the meantime, the Bush Administration is putting on the diplomatic pressure to dismantle the ABM Treaty to pave the way for ballistic missile defense. Secretary Rumsfeld has stated that there may be a dozen different components to BMD, including the stationing of weapons in space. Not only would this constitute a unilateral abbrogation of the Outer Space Treaty, it would likely involve a resumption of nuclear testing to complete development of Nuclear Directed Energy Weapons (NDEW) projects the national weapons labs have experimented with for two decades. Other darlings of the weapons labs, new "low yield" warheads and the earth penetrating "bunker busting" nuclear warhead, are in favor with the hawks in ascendance within this Administration. These too will require nuclear tests to perfect.

Taken together, these developments lead to an inescapable suspicion - that the U.S. is preparing to unilaterally jettison a less than perfect arms control regime fostered by every President since Eisenhower that has kept Armaggedon at bay. These policy maneuverings threaten a costly and dangerous new arms race and are alarming to our allies as well as our adversaries. Most alarming to the constituents of Utah's congressional delegation is the prospect of more nuclear tests upwind, especially those who have suffered painful losses and grievous wrongs from being unwitting "active participants in the nation's nuclear weapons program".

Despite the commendable efforts of Utah's congressmen to achieve a greater measure of justice for the downwinders, uranium miners, atomic veterans, and defense workers exposed to radiation in the name of national security, allowing testing to begin again promises new generations of victims even as the those sick and dying from the last round hold their government- issued IOU's. We know now that 58% of the more than 900 underground nuclear tests conducted over 33 years leaked radiation, many of those exposing citizens far from the Nevada Test Site borders to harmful doses. Resuming the bomb blasts after a nine year hiatus further increases the risk of Baneberry-like catastrophic leaks, as it will take the bomb testers time to re-learn the techniques for containing the blasts underground. More nuclear tests means more leaks, more victims, and less security.

The people will not tolerate being bombed again! No political spin, no tortured logic, no fear mongering that the Russians or the Chinese or the North Koreans will be here in the morning, no assurance that "THERE IS NO DANGER" will suffice this time. The assurances we need are that our elected representatives will do everything in their power to prevent a resumption of nuclear testing. Utahns must demand this now!

Steve Erickson <slceric@concentric.net> is the director of the Citizens Education Project. Preston J. Truman <hermit@downwinders.org> is the Director of Downwinders, Inc.

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

-------- pennsylvania

Nuclear-energy foes say waste shipments could endanger area

By Akweli Parker
Philadelphia INQUIRER STAFF WRITER,
Saturday, June 30, 2001
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/06/30/business/NUKEMOVE30.htm?template=aprint.htm

Pennsylvania's distinction as the Keystone State is a dubious one when applied to the state's pivotal role in hauling deadly nuclear waste, according to some nuclear-energy opponents.

Because of Pennsylvania's location, nearly one-fifth of the nation's highly radioactive, spent uranium from nuclear power plants could some day traverse rail lines and highways in the state, according to representatives of consumer and environmental groups who spoke at a news conference yesterday.

Public Citizen - the consumer group founded by Ralph Nader - along with the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group, the Pennsylvania Environmental Network and Citizen Alert of Nevada are trying to call attention to a plan that would ship tons of radioactive waste through New Jersey and Pennsylvania on the way to a proposed dump in Nevada.

"If there are any accidents . . . Pennsylvania is likely to be where they occur" because of its rugged terrain, said Mike Ewall of the Pennsylvania Environmental Network.

The debate over nuclear waste is heating up because the federal Department of Energy is preparing to recommend a permanent tomb for spent fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Right now, nearly 40,000 metric tons of waste is piling up in underwater pools and on concrete storage pads at nuclear power plants - enough to fill a football field five yards deep, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry advocacy group in Washington.

For years, the nuclear industry has been pressuring the government to find a home for the waste, as nuclear-plant operators such as Exelon Corp. are running out of room for it.

The Department of Energy could recommend the Yucca Mountain site to President Bush later this year, but Nevada opposes the proposal and will likely use a veto granted by 1982's Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

"I think you could take that to the bank," said Joe Strolin, administrator for the planning division of Nevada's Nuclear Waste Project Office.

If that happens, Congress will have the final say. Despite the President's bullish stance on nuclear energy, Strolin said it was "not a done deal" that Congress would approve the site.

"Members of Congress are going to have to confront the fact they will be authorizing tens of thousands of shipments of this material through their states for several decades," he said.

In Pennsylvania, likely rail and highway routes would carry the waste through highly populated areas, including the Philadelphia region.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has tested the casks that would hold the waste, and found them safe.

But "they do not require full-scale physical testing, and that's one of our concerns," Lisa Gue, a policy analyst with Public Citizen, said.

For example, tests of the casks' resistance to fire were conducted in 1,475-degree flames, "whereas diesel fuel burns at 1,850," she said.

Supporters of nuclear energy say the technology used to prevent breaches works.

"This is not a technical issue, it's a political issue," said Jack Skolds, chief operating officer of Exelon's nuclear division. Chicago-based Exelon, the nation's largest operator of commercial nuclear reactors, was formed by the merger of Peco Energy Co. and Unicom Corp. last year.

Exelon's nuclear plants include Limerick, northwest of Philadelphia, and Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg.

Nuclear waste traverses U.S. highways regularly, "and we have never had a significant incident occur," Skolds said. Between 1979 and 1997, nuclear operators made about 70 shipments of spent fuel each year, according to federal statistics listed by Nevada officials.

If Yucca becomes a depository, the number of shipments would increase to between 600 and 2,500 per year, the Energy Department estimates.

Unshielded exposure to the spent fuel would result in lethal poisoning within minutes. But Skolds said failure of a cask was highly unlikely. "Even if there is an accident, people will not have to be evacuated," he said.

"We need to make sure we know what we're doing and take adequate precautions . . . [but] I would not want to, because it's nuclear waste, say we can't put it on the highways."

Public Citizen is hosting a workshop at 10:30 a.m. today at the Philadelphia City Institute branch of the Free Library, 1905 Locust St.

-------- utah

Exposed: Professors shed light on radioactive living

06/30/01
HJ News, Bridgerland, Utah,
by Matthew Flitton
From: Preston Truman <hermit@downwinders.org>

Professors Susan Dawson and Gary Madsen have conducted numerous studies on the psychological and social effects on radiation exposure. Imagine working in a uranium mill where the dust is so thick visibility is reduced to a few yards at times. The only protection your lungs receive is the bandanna you have tied on your face.

Consider living in a world where your husband's work clothes are caked with radioactive dust. There's so much that the yellow sludge needs to be scooped out of the washing machine after the laundry is finished. Outside, the same yellow dust blows from uncovered tailings piles that your children play on close to your home. It has to be cleaned from the clothesline before drying the laundry. The cinderblock walls around you are made from uranium tailings.

Now, imagine that no one ever told you it was harmful. You accept the ubiquitous dust, the sludge from your laundry goes into your garden as fertilizer, you sleep on a mattress made from old canvas sacks once used to filter yellowcake.

You have visualized the working and living conditions of many uranium millers and miners during the 1This cinderblock home (center) was made from uranium tailings. 950s and '60s, as compiled by Utah State University professors Susan Dawson and Gary Madsen.

These professors have dedicated their careers to understanding the extent of such exposure and helping victims receive compensation for illnesses caused by radiation exposure. They have interviewed people from numerous ethnic groups from Northern Utah to New Mexico.

This husband-wife team has spoken before federal bodies on seven different occasions, including testifying before Clinton's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, on the subject of illnesses resulting from working with uranium during the Cold War.

U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch said the USU professors have been a valuable resource in considering the effects of radiation on uranium millers and miners.

"Doctors Dawson and Madsen's work was most helpful in providing Congress the latest data necessary to convince others in Congress that we were justified in expanding the program, as we did with the RECA 2000 amendments, to include the millers and other above-ground individuals," he said.

When the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was passed in 1990, it provided compensation to uranium miners for radiation exposure. Millers were included in the compensation when the act was amended in 2000. Diseases covered by the act include nonmalignant respiratory illnesses, leukemia multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkins lymphomas and primary cancer of the thyroid, female breast, esophagus stomach, pharynx, small intestine, pancreas, bile ducts, gall bladder or liver.

Dawson's concern with the subject began long before she moved to Utah. The Iowa native has long found the subject of nuclear exposure a fascinating one.

"At one point I wanted to go to the Marshall Islands for my dissertation to work with the people who had been exposed there," Dawson said.

Dawson said when she was offered a position at USU it was a "natural fit."

"Originally, I thought, 'I'll be working with the downwinders,'" Dawson said.

Her plans changed after learning about the plight of uranium miners down in the Four Corners area through a fellow faculty member. Dawson went down and began interviewing people to learn about their working conditions.

Dawson said she became interested in helping the families when she saw the absolute poverty they were in. Many people had difficulty getting medical expenses paid. Regular insurance wouldn't pay for treatments because individuals had applied for workers' compensation. Workers' compensation wasn't paying because there were disputes about whether the miners' illnesses resulted from exposure.

"I interviewed Navajo families who sold their jewelry, their Navajo jewelry, pawned things, just to pay the funeral expenses for their deceased loved ones," Dawson said.

Dawson extended her study to mill workers after being approached by a group of millers who thanked her after a testimony. They said she was the only person who had mentioned the exposure millers received.

Madsen, a Utah native, joined Dawson as both a professor of social work and as a kindred spirit.

Another concern of the pair is how exposure extended outside of the work area. Many of the Navajos had homes located next to the mills and mines they worked in and took free materials home, where they exposed whole families to radiation.

Madsen said the Navajo reservation had some 1,300 uranium mines. Utah had six uranium mills, four of which were located on reservations. Opportunities for contamination abounded.

"When we were there (on the reservation) last year, we talked to a person who worked at UMTRA (Uranium Mine Tailing Reclamation Act). He said they've reclaimed about 75 percent of them," Madsen said.

One of those mills used canvas bags to filter some of the dust for protection. When they were saturated with uranium, the mill offered to allow workers to take the bags home.

"What a number of people did is they took these bags home and sewed them together and used them as mattress pads," Dawson said.

Some miners would bring chunks of uranium ore home with them, where the family would set the "pretty rocks" in the window sill.

"One woman told me how she baked it in her oven to see what would happen, what it would look like if she baked it," Dawson said.

A Utah woman told Dawson how her washing machine would have toxic sludge on the bottom after washing her husband's clothes. When Dawson asked the woman what she did with the uranium, she was told, "I put it in my garden."

But even if nothing had been brought back from the mill, many homes built by government on the reservation were radioactive because they were made from cinderblocks containing uranium tailings. After the danger was known, new homes were built, but the radioactive abodes remained, and many of them were habitated.

Other radioactive structures were built. Grand Junction, Colo., had sidewalks and schools made out of radioactive rock.

"The Climax Uranium Company asked contractors, who said it would be really good to use as fill," said Bill Chenoweth, a Grand Junction resident and activist.

A trucker used to store piles of uranium in his backyard. Because there were no protective tarps over the loads, clouds of yellow dust rose from the trucks as they took the cargo through Moab on the way to mills.

One person interviewed reported seeing government officials in "moon suits" monitoring her yard.

"In addition, two respondents explained that they saw officials placing monitoring devices on their homes and surrounding land, but the respondents were never informed about the meaning and result of the monitoring," Dawson and Madsen wrote in one study.

Why was such a dangerous product allowed to infest the lives of so many people?

"I think government workers weren't warned (of the dangers of uranium). Company officials weren't warned of some of them, but some people clearly did know, and that's been very well documented," Madsen said.

Dawson said many she interviewed felt they were serving their country by working in the uranium industry and were betrayed.

"We heard that word, in particular, betrayed, over and over and I think that's what led to their (the victims') activism," she said.

While Madsen and Dawson originally thought they would be through with the project in a few years, they became more involved as they found more exposure problems. Next month, the professors are off to Paris to present a paper on uranium education projects on the reservation to the 17th World Conference on Health Promotion and Health Education. Their paper summarizes projects on the Navajo nation to educate people on what radiation is, how people were exposed, and what recourse is available to them.

"It's a fascinating area that just grabs you and it just seems to keep unfolding," Madsen said.

-------- us nuc politics

Deadline Approaches for U.S. Diplomats

The Associated Press
Saturday, June 30, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010630/aponline053946_000.htm

MOSCOW -- The deadline for 46 U.S. diplomats ordered to leave Russia in response to Washington's expulsion of Russian diplomats was to expire at midnight Saturday.

Four other American diplomats left Russia in April after being declared persona non grata for "activities incompatible with their diplomatic status," an expression usually referring to spying.

Washington announced in late March that four Russian diplomats were told to leave the country in connection with the arrest of veteran FBI agent Robert Hanssen on charges of spying for Russia, and 46 other Russians were given until July 1 to leave the United States.

Russia responded in kind, ordering four American diplomats to leave within 10 days of the expulsion order and 46 others to leave by the end of June.

All the U.S. diplomats involved have already left or will leave Russia before Saturday's deadline, the Interfax news agency reported, citing unidentified U.S. diplomatic sources.

There was no one available at the U.S. Embassy to comment on whether all the diplomats had left by Saturday. The Russian Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the tit-for-tat expulsions.

The expulsion of the American and Russian diplomats put a further strain on relations between the two countries that have worsened over the past few years after the burst of optimism and cooperation that followed the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

In addition to differences over U.S. plans for a national missile defense and Russia's war in Chechnya, U.S. officials say they have tried to get Russia to reduce the number of spies in the United States after a buildup that began in 1997.

-------- MILITARY

-------- balkans

Extradition Causes Rift In Belgrade Cabinet Members Quit in Protest

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 30, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A359-2001Jun29?language=printer

BELGRADE, June 29 -- Yugoslavia's prime minister and five other top federal officials quit today to protest former president Slobodan Milosevic's abrupt extradition to face U.N. war crimes charges. The resignations forced the dissolution of the cabinet and threatened to alter the direction and pace of political reforms in the post-Milosevic era.

But Western governments signaled their enthusiastic approval of the Thursday night transfer of Milosevic, quickly pledging more than $1.28 billion in reconstruction aid during a meeting in Brussels today. That was slightly more than Yugoslavia had requested.

All over Yugoslavia today, the gloves came off as the public and political leaders began to digest the rapid-fire sequence of the extradition, carried out by the government of Serbia, Yugoslavia's largest republic, in defiance of a federal court order putting the extradition on hold.

Thousands of Milosevic supporters rallied for a second night to protest, parading in front of parliament with pictures of the man who had ruled the country's communist party and government for more than a decade before being ousted from office by a lost election and popular uprising last October. Demonstrators beat several journalists.

Yugoslav Prime Minister Zoran Zizic, explaining his decision to quit, called the extradition a "humiliation" and an assault on Yugoslav dignity. Critics saw the transfer as a surrender to Western governments' demand for Milosevic in return for aid.

The resignation of Zizic, a member of a party based in Montenegro, Yugoslavia's other republic, severs an important tie between the country's two political units. Montenegro has flirted with declaring independence, a move Western officials oppose as likely to foster other secessionist movements in the Balkans.

At the same time, the tumult has widened divisions in the 18-party Democratic Opposition of Serbia coalition that forced Milosevic from power and took control of the government. Today, factions were sniping at each other, raising doubts as to how long the diverse group can stay together.

Officials said it is unclear whether a new coalition will emerge from political negotiations or whether the government will have to call new federal elections this year.

Serbian officials said the extradition plan was approved at a closed meeting of Serbian government leaders that lasted 15 minutes and that its backers took various measures to counter possible interference by security forces loyal to Milosevic -- including delaying an official announcement until the helicopter carrying the former president had left Yugoslav airspace.

Whatever the price in domestic political accord, the extradition appeared to reap immediate financial gains. Donor countries and organizations meeting in Brussels just hours after Milosevic reached The Hague pledged $1.28 billion in aid to the country. That exceeded the $1.25 billion that the European Commission and World Bank had said was needed this year to begin repairing an economy devastated by isolation, misrule and NATO's 1999 bombing campaign.

The Bush administration, which had threatened to boycott the meeting if it felt that insufficient progress was being made on the extradition, pledged $181.6 million to the effort.

Milosevic's transfer in particular heightened old tensions between the two key figures of Yugoslavia's new political order, President Vojislav Kostunica and Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.

Kostunica, a popular nationalist, often favors caution and strict adherence to law. Thursday he quickly condemned the extradition as illegal and complained he hadn't been told about it. In private, he has characterized Djindjic as an aggressive opportunist.

Djindjic is an energetic, strongly pro-Western politician with fairly low popularity ratings. He engineered the extradition and contends that there was no choice but to send Milosevic out promptly. He has said that Kostunica was informed in general terms of the plan. A senior member of Djindjic's coalition complained recently that Kostunica "doesn't understand the world and is afraid of it."

Today, the two men's camps resumed the battle, accusing each other of underhanded tactics in the hours leading up to Milosevic's departure.

Officials close to Djindjic accused Kostunica's side of planting false media reports in recent days about multiple arrests of Serbs indicted for war crimes in order to stoke nationalist tensions that would undermine Djindjic.

Djindjic's allies privately accused officials in Kostunica's political party of trying to persuade the nation's Constitutional Court, which met in special session, to rule against extradition. They acknowledged that they made their own efforts to manipulate the decision, going so far as to urge one of the justices to go on vacation at the seashore in Montenegro and thereby rob the court of its quorum.

Milosevic was arrested in April and imprisoned in a Belgrade jail, charged with corruption and abuse of power under Yugoslav law. According to sources in Belgrade, he had recently had difficulty confronting the reality of his situation, veering between depression and defiance.

At one point he despondently told a visiting court official that "no one can help me" and at another used profanity to describe Yugoslav officials who would "turn him in" to the tribunal. "I don't care" what they do, Milosevic is said to have boasted to visitors three days ago. "In two years, they will all be here," a reference to his prison.

These words today evoked laughter among some officials of the Serbian government who helped plan and carry out the extradition. They exulted in what one called the Serbian state security force's "elegant" implementation of a secret plan.

In recent weeks, Kostunica, a constitutional lawyer, had come around to the need to extradite Milosevic but insisted that a law be passed authorizing it. When parliament declined to do so, the cabinet last weekend passed a decree. Milosevic's lawyer appealed the decree to the Constitutional Court.

With the court, packed with Milosevic-era appointees, poised to rule against the decree and Western pressures growing to authorize at least one extradition before today's donor conference, Djindjic called a meeting Wednesday night of the leaders of all 18 parties in last year's uprising to decide what to do.

Serbian Vice President Momcilo Perisic said the group considered three main options, including ratifying the decree in the Serbian parliament. But they decided that further delay would give Milosevic's supporters and other opponents of extradition time to rally public opinion.

No official from Kostunica's party attended the meeting, and the participants decided to extradite Milosevic even if the Constitutional Court tried to block the decree.

The next day, Djindjic and 14 other Serbian ministers convened a meeting at 4 p.m. in the main Serbian government building. Djindjic spoke briefly, urging adoption of a decree authorizing extraditions to The Hague, which he draped in legalisms. The decree never mentioned Milosevic by name.

A representative of Kostunica's party objected to the decree. But he was outvoted 14 to 1, according to accounts of the meeting.

State security agents were dispatched to pick up Milosevic at the prison at 6 p.m. Initially, he rebuked them; but then he insisted on collecting and bringing with him all the possessions in his cell, several officials said. He was driven to a secret location in downtown Belgrade, where a police helicopter waited. Before boarding, Milosevic was forced to listen while a tribunal official read its 1999 indictment of him, a document that had been delivered to Milosevic in prison but was never opened by him. The helicopter then took off.

----

Opinion Is Divided in Serbia Over Handover of Milosevic

New York Times
June 30, 2001
By IAN FISHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/30/world/30SERB.html

BELGRADE, Serbia, June 29 - The image of Slobodan Milosevic being flown to jail inspired pity in Natasa Popovic, a young woman who works at a newsstand in Mr. Milosevic's hometown, Pozarevac. She also said she believed that it was Serbs who should judge Mr. Milosevic for any war crimes, not an international tribunal in the Netherlands.

But emotions about Mr. Milosevic are complicated. In the end, what she said she felt most on seeing him go was "some kind of relief."

"I hope things are going to get better now," Ms. Popovic said today. "If he didn't go, then I am afraid we would have had more sanctions and more of the bad life."

One day after Mr. Milosevic was sent to face trial on charges that his troops had committed atrocities against Albanians in Kosovo, the indictment against the former Yugoslav president was expanded when the names of hundreds of additional victims in Kosovo were added.

The Yugoslav prime minister and his cabinet resigned today over the transfer of Mr. Milosevic, calling the handling of the case an affront to the country's dignity.

Despite the instability of their government, which might face elections, many Serbs are happy that their former leader is gone. It is a small price, they say, to shed a decade of international isolation and a reputation as Europe's bogyman.

Many oppose his handover to the international court on all grounds. Saying he is a scapegoat for all the atrocities in the Balkan wars, several thousand supporters protested in front of Parliament here tonight, though the crowd was not as large or as angry as those at other demonstrations.

"All Serbs know that to judge Milosevic is to judge all of Serbia," Vojislav Seselj, head of the Serbian Radical Party, told the crowd as it waved Serbian flags.

But a sampling of Serbs interviewed today seemed to fall somewhere in between, with the scale tipping toward relief. If the transfer has divided Serbs as whole, it is clear that many Serbs are divided among themselves.

"I worry that it wasn't done completely by the law," said Slobodan Tomic, 23, an agriculture student at the University of Belgrade. "But still I am for it."

He and another student, Milan Gocobija, 24, were hanging posters in downtown Belgrade against government corruption - as hired help, not as true believers - as the protests were starting not far away.

"The emotions will pass," Mr. Gocobija said. "People will understand what happened, and we will have the whole picture of what happened. Enough with the story of Milosevic."

"We need good jobs," he added. "We need some opportunity in life to earn a little money. To travel."

Mr. Milosevic's handover hits sensitive spots for Serbs.

One is the extent to which all Serbs are judged as guilty for what their leaders - particularly Mr. Milosevic - are accused of having done in three wars in the former Yugoslavia.

A second is a question of sovereignty. Does the international community have the right to try their president, no matter what he might have done, outside Serbia?

There is also the deepening issue of poverty. Estimates are that one million residents, 12 percent, live below the poverty line.

That has some people here worried that Mr. Milosevic was essentially sold for the promise of $1 billion in international assistance.

"There is a lot of truth in that," said Milodrag Peric, 75, who was sitting on a park bench earlier today in Pozarevac. "They are going to give us some money. But it is nothing."

Mr. Peric strongly opposed the handover. Even so, he said, he believes that the former leader is probably guilty of war crimes.

That sense of ambivalence was evident around Pozarevac, 50 miles southeast of here. The town did well under his rule, if occasionally in odd ways.

One business was opened by Mr. Milosevic's son, Marko, an amusement park, Bambiland.

But, people in Pozarevac said, his son and cronies lorded over the town like a mafia, crushing dissent, at times brutally.

Momcilo Vekovic, a member of a group, Resistance, which is outspoken against Mr. Milosevic, was beaten up last year by the son's bodyguards as the group stepped up its protests. Mr. Vekovic, who has a deep scar on his forehead from the beating, was arrested, jailed for two months and charged with attempted murder.

"We are only asking why he wasn't extradited earlier," he said.

Mr. Vekovic said, as did several Serbian politicians, that Mr. Milosevic's trial would go a long way toward healing the divisions in Serbia, as well as rehabilitating the name of Serbs in the eyes of the world.

"The world will know that this is not the fault of all Serbs but of our leaders," he said in a cafe in downtown Pozarevac not long after two busloads of Mr. Milosevic's supporters had left to attend the Belgrade protest against the handover. "The leaders of the parties, some of them, have blood on their hands."

He said one problem was that in a nation where the news media was until recently tightly controlled, Serbs did not know what was occurring in Kosovo, and that will come spilling out at the trial.

A man in the cafe, drinking coffee and smoking alone, agreed. He gave only his first name, Aca, and age, 23. He said he served for two years in the Yugoslav Army in Kosovo. He said bluntly, if with few details, that the soldiers did commit atrocities.

"Going to the woods," Aca said, "you could see a lot of bodies. A lot of the soldiers drank too much. I couldn't sleep for three months because of the things I saw.

"A lot of people don't know what happened there. In a way, I'm afraid to talk about it. I want to try to forget."

--------

War Crimes Tribunal Expands Milosevic Indictment

New York Times
June 30, 2001
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/30/world/30HAGU.html

THE HAGUE, June 29 - The international war crimes tribunal issued an expanded indictment today against Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, charging him with additional atrocities and naming more victims of the 1999 conflict in Kosovo.

Announcing the decision, Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, said that Mr. Milosevic was handed the new version of his indictment this afternoon in his cell, where he has been in the tribunal's custody since he arrived here early today.

The handover of Mr. Milosevic - the first former head of state to be surrendered to a United Nations tribunal - "marks an important day for international criminal justice," Mrs. Del Ponte said. But she immediately pressed for the arrest of the 38 indicted war crimes suspects who are still at large. They include four senior associates of Mr. Milosevic as well as the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his top military officer, Ratko Mladic.

"Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were first indicted almost six years ago," Mrs. Del Ponte said. That they have not been arrested, she said, "is scandalous."

Mrs. Del Ponte confirmed that an additional indictment of Mr. Milosevic, who was first charged in May 1999, is being prepared for alleged crimes during the earlier conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia. Because the charges may include genocide, the investigation has been longer and more complex, an official familiar with the inquiry said. But because Belgrade has now promised to cooperate, the indictment may be ready as early as October, the official said.

"We are today only at the start of the case against Slobodan Milosevic, not at the end," Mrs. Del Ponte said.

Yugoslav officials were swiftly rewarded for their delivery of the former president. At a conference in Brussels today, Western donors promised $1.28 billion in help to rebuild Yugoslavia. The United States pledged $181 million for 2001, and the European Union said it would add $450 million to its present aid program. Other help will come from Japan, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Yugoslavia's deputy prime minister, Miroljub Labus, sounding elated, said his country's isolation had now ended. The donors' conference showed that "we are fully back in the international community, politically, financially, diplomatically," he told reporters.

A spokesman at the war crimes tribunal, located on the wooded outskirts of The Hague, said Mr. Milosevic's first day in his cell, about a mile away, had been uneventful.

His mandatory medical examination by the tribunal's physician showed no serious problems, said the spokesman, Jim Landale.

Dutch television showed striking images of Mr. Milosevic today, his white hair and slight stoop clearly visible as he was marched through the prison yard held on each side by a guard. His hands were behind him, apparently handcuffed. The videotape, showing Mr. Milosevic just moments after he was brought by helicopter into the prison yard, was shot secretly from a private apartment in the Dutch section of the jail, a local reporter said.

Mr. Milosevic is expected to make his first appearance in court at 10 a.m. on Tuesday to hear the charges against him, including the forced deportation of 740,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in 1999 and the murder and disappearance of hundreds of Albanians. He may enter a plea of guilty or not guilty at that time, or exercise his right to wait for 30 days.

The trial might not start for several months, but it could begin even if his co-defendants have not been arrested, lawyers at the tribunal said. The four others accused in the 54-page indictment who are still at large are Milan Milutinovic, the current Serbian president and a close associate of Mr. Milosevic; Dragoljub Ojdanic, former chief of the Yugoslav armed forces; and Nikola Sainovic and Vlajko Stojilkovic, former senior officials.

These men from Mr. Milosevic's inner circle are being sought not only to account for their own deeds but also to provide evidence crucial for the trial of their former boss, lawyers familiar with the investigation said.

The operation to bring Mr. Milosevic into international custody apparently involved at least half a dozen nations. After Yugoslav authorities delivered him to an American base at Tuzla, Bosnia, on Thursday afternoon, a British military plane took him from there to Eindhoven, the Netherlands. There the Dutch police took over and flew him by helicopter to the penitentiary at Scheveningen, a small sea-side town next to The Hague.

Today, Mrs. Del Ponte thanked Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Chanceller Gerhard Schröder of Germany and President Jacques Chirac of France, with whom she said she had been "in personal touch in recent days." The prosecutor and her aides declined to elaborate on what the role of these leaders might have been.

Mr. Milosevic's handover concludes a week of intense activity in the former insurance building on the outskirts of the The Hague where some 1,200 people work at the tribunal's headquarters.

Administrators, security and information staff held frantic meetings to prepare for the onslaught of the world's attention. Spokesmen declined to say when exactly the tribunal was informed of the imminent arrival of its most famous suspect.

Early this week, when the hand- over of Mr. Milosevic began to seem imminent, a member of the prosecutor's office traveled to Belgrade to be on standby.

"We had to be ready," an official said. "We suspected that the moment was near, but until the end we were not sure how it would play out on the ground."

Mr. Milosevic arrives during the busiest period the tribunal has known since it was created by the United Nations Security Council in 1993. Four trials are going on at the moment, involving 10 accused. Another five cases are under appeal. Not counting Mr. Milosevic, another three new trials, involving seven accused are due to start in September.

--------

U.N. Prosecutors Ready for Milosevic

New York Times
June 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Against-All-Odds.html

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- Federal prosecutor Mark Harmon had wrapped up the Exxon Valdez case for the Justice Department's environmental crimes unit. Los Angeles lawyer Alan Tieger was done with the Rodney King trial. Clint Williamson was pulled out of a federal drug case in New Orleans.

Those cases would look like child's play compared to their next task: building evidence to convict Slobodan Milosevic.

The American prosecutors, part of a team of international investigators, have been sifting through Balkan mass graves since 1994 in search of bones and bullets and going after lower-level culprits while the fighting flared and skeptics scoffed.

Now they have their most-wanted man.

Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, was extradited Thursday by Belgrade and languishes at the U.N. war crimes tribunal's detention center in The Hague, Netherlands, awaiting his day in court.

Although a full-fledged trial may still be up to a year away, Milosevic's arraignment Tuesday will be monumental -- the first time a head of state stands before an international war crimes panel since Japanese Prime Minister Tojo was sent to the gallows after World War II.

Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said Friday that investigators were ``only at the start of the case against Slobodan Milosevic.'' But virtually every investigation at the tribunal has been a preparation for his trial.

``Right from the beginning our intention was to concentrate on the highest leaders,'' Deputy Chief Prosecutor Graham Blewitt said in an interview last year in his office. ``They were the root cause behind the conflict.''

The other two top suspects, Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and military chief Ratko Mladic, remain at large.

Set up in 1993 as refugees fled Bosnian war zones with tales of horror, the tribunal's real investigative work began the following year, when Blewitt, a former Australian Nazi hunter, arrived and began recruiting top lawyers from around the world -- among them, the three Americans.

From the outset, prosecutors faced obstacles everywhere they turned.

``In a domestic crime, you walk down to a crime scene and tape it off and you have unfettered access to the crime scene as long as you want,'' Harmon said.

``In these cases the crime scenes are thousands of miles away and the forces that control the scene are hostile to you. They'd soon enough make a statistic of you as well.''

Initially, Balkan governments refused to hand over anyone. Western governments were reluctant to risk deaths among their peacekeepers in the region during attempted arrests.

Despite a wealth of evidence handed over by human rights organizations and hundreds of witnesses eager to testify, there was still no direct link -- no signed military order -- implicating the leaders.

Instead, prosecutors lobbied international leaders for support while pursuing cases one at a time.

Tieger was put on the investigation of Serb-run internment camps, while Williamson looked into atrocities in Croatia's 1991 war of independence. Harmon collected evidence on siege of Sarajevo and shelling of residential areas.

In 1995, Germany handed over a Bosnian Serb bartender identified by refugees as their former tormentor. But Dusan Tadic was just a low-level torturer and the proceedings only enhanced the impression of impunity for the leaders.

Then Williamson coordinated a cross-border sting operation in 1997 that lured a Bosnian Serb suspect into U.N. hands and proved arrests could be made without major loss of life.

NATO peacekeepers began arresting suspects while U.S. and European leaders made postwar aid to former Yugoslav republics dependent on cooperation with the tribunal.

Now, 39 suspects are in custody, including former Bosnian Serb president Bljana Plavsic and Karadzic ally Momcilo Krajisnik. Twenty Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats have been convicted and sentenced to up to 45 years in prison.

So many detainees await trials that the United Nations this month appointed dozens of extra part-time judges to help out.

Every day, up to three trials are held simultaneously before robed judges in each of the tribunal's no-frills courtrooms, protected from the public seating by bulletproof walls of glass.

Witnesses recount the horrors of watching their families gunned down before their eyes. Survivors of executions recall playing dead under heaps of bloody corpses. Women and girls testify about gang-rapes at knifepoint by beer-guzzling men.

Milosevic's trial will no doubt be marked by such wrenching testimony.

But as the prime target of an institution that has cost the international community more than half a billion dollars, his trial is likely to go much further.

He will essentially be held responsible for the bloodshed that stained the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The chief prosecutor said Friday that the final indictment, initially limited to events in Kosovo, will include atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Hints of what Milosevic can expect have appeared in the trials of two commanders on different sides of the battle lines.

Bosnian Croat Gen. Tihomir Blaskic was given the longest sentence last year, though he denied knowledge of atrocities by his soldiers. Judges ruled partly on the basis of his failure to take disciplinary action against the perpetrators.

In the trial of Bosnian Serb Gen. Radislav Krstic, prosecutors led by Harmon presented a mammoth case to demonstrate his connection to the slaughter of thousands of Muslims at the U.N. protected enclave of Srebrenica.

``In a period of five days a community was destroyed in eastern Bosnia,'' Harmon told the court last week in his closing argument.

``What was once a vibrant community is no more. What remains are only the memories.''

-------- iraq

Plan to Modify U.N. Sanctions Against Iraq Bogs Down, Powell Says

New York Times
June 30, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/30/world/30DIPL.html

PARIS, June 29 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell won support from France and China today for a plan to loosen restrictions on trade in civilian goods with Iraq, but he said that continued resistance from Russia made it unlikely that the proposal could be adopted at the United Nations by a deadline next week.

Secretary Powell said Moscow had refused to "engage" on the issue and continued to insist that its commercial interests would be harmed.

The proposal, supported by Britain and the United States, would revise the "oil for food" program under which Iraq may sell oil to buy civilian goods, allowing far freer trade in most civilian goods. But the Security Council would also compile and enforce a list of imports it would insist on inspecting to preclude the import of arms or items that could be used for military purposes. The Bush administration has also promised to devise methods to cut off the smuggling of Iraqi oil.

Sanctions were imposed on Iraq after it occupied Kuwait in 1990, and these would remain in force until Baghdad allows arms inspectors to return. The United Nations would also continue to administer Iraqi oil profits.

The United States and Britain first proposed the changes in May to counter President Saddam Hussein's accusations that sanctions were to blame for the suffering of ordinary Iraqis.

But objections from Russia, as well as France and China, led to an extension of the current system for a month, to July 3.

As Secretary Powell landed here, a State Department spokesman said that China and France had agreed to the list of items that would have to come under review, leaving only Russia among the five permanent members of the Security Council still resisting.

The official said Secretary Powell, who ended his trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories this morning, had spoken to the French foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, and the Chinese foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, in a last-minute effort to win passage in the Security Council.

If the United States proposal fails by the deadline on Tuesday, it would represent a major setback for Secretary Powell, who took over at the State Department intent on convincing the Bush administration that his approach was the correct one to keep Mr. Hussein under control.

More hawkish officials at the Pentagon have argued that even if the modified sanctions passed at the United Nations they would have little effect in curbing Mr. Hussein and that the better route was to try to dislodge him from power. Secretary Powell, who arrived here this evening from Amman, Jordan, said he discussed the sanctions revisions with King Abdullah during lunch with him today. Jordan initially gave Secretary Powell its support in his quest to modify the oil-for-food regime, but two weeks ago the Jordanian government publicly said that the changes would cause a $1 billion loss in annual revenue, a financial burden too heavy to carry. Jordan is a major route for the smuggling of Iraqi oil.

"The Russians have strong commercial interests they feel are not protected," by the American proposal, Secretary Powell told reporters as he flew here to meet Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz of Saudi Arabia. The secretary said the Russians also had a "different view" on whether Iraq had complied with inspections of their weapons of mass destruction. Asked if the Russians were using this occasion to deliberately embarrass the Bush administration, Secretary Powell said, "I don't think it is necessarily a flex your muscles, mano a mano thing with the United States." But he said Washington had not directly dealt with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, on the issue.

Moscow, Secretary Powell said, was "always looking for a solution that Iraqis would agree to." The Iraqis have demanded that all sanctions be lifted. Further, Secretary Powell said, Russia had a "good understanding" of the extent of Iraq's program of weapons of mass destruction but the United States tended to be "more vigilant."

Russia and China have argued for a much leaner list than the United States has wanted. France and Russian have also wanted to open the way for some foreign investment, particularly in Iraq's oil sector.

As Secretary Powell and his State Department diplomats worked the Iraqi issue at the United Nations, they were severely hampered by the spill-over effect of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict. Arab governments have become increasingly nervous about public outrage in their streets over the perception that the United States is backing Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. Aside from the possible political costs in Washington, Secretary Powell could also face a further breakdown in the sanctions regime in Iraq if the United Nations' effort fails. Putting the best face on it today, the secretary of state said, "I think what we have succeeded in doing is bringing a political consensus together over the last five months from what was political disarray at the beginning of the year."

Iraq had demanded that all sanctions be lifted without conditions. And according to moderate Arab diplomats, Mr. Hussein has run an effective campaign in the last month persuading Arab countries not to go along with the American proposal. One of the intentions of Secretary Powell's early initiatives on Iraq was to curb the criticism in the Arab world that the United States was trying to intentionally impoverish the Iraqi people. But that American appeal got buried as the Palestinian uprising gathered steam early this year and highlighted the plight of Palestinians.

-------- ireland

N. Ireland Government Loses Leader

By Shawn Pogatchnik
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, June 30, 2001; 7:24 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010630/aponline192418_000.htm

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Protestant leader David Trimble quit Sunday as head of the joint Catholic-Protestant government in Northern Ireland, deepening a crisis in the country's peace process as hard-liners from both sides clashed on the streets of Belfast.

Trimble departed for a holiday in France hours before his formal midnight resignation as the Protestant first minister of the power-sharing administration, the cornerstone of the province's 1998 peace pact.

His much-anticipated July 1 departure from office - specified in a May resignation letter, due to be publicly announced Monday when Northern Ireland's legislature meets - means the four parties still governing the province together have just six weeks to strike a new deal or watch their coalition collapse.

Negotiations resuming this week are designed in part to achieve a start to Irish Republican Army disarmament, a long-elusive goal of the 1998 pact. Trimble said if the IRA begins scrapping weapons, he would offer to be re-elected government leader before Aug. 12, the deadline for either his position to be filled or the whole administration to be dissolved.

"I would expect to be standing as first minister again. This is not my swan song. Any obituary is premature," said Trimble, who shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to guide Protestants toward compromise.

But Gerry Adams, leader of the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party, emphasized Saturday that the IRA would not respond favorably to what he called Trimble's "kamikaze politics."

Adams, whose party is a junior member of the four-party coalition, said it was "obvious he isn't going to get (weapons) decommissioning the way he is going for it."

The senior Ulster Unionist remaining in the government, Trade and Enterprise Minister Reg Empey, confirmed he would take on Trimble's ministerial duties for the next six weeks as part of an effort to keep the government running.

But Empey also insisted that, if the IRA didn't move, the whole effort would collapse by mid-August. He said the Ulster Unionists had already twice formed governments alongside Sinn Fein in hopes that IRA disarmament would follow, and wouldn't be prepared to try a third time.

The political crisis comes at a moment when sectarian passions traditionally run at their highest in Northern Ireland. For the next two weeks, Protestants from the Orange Order brotherhood are staging hundreds of marches across Northern Ireland, including a few dozen that pass through or near hostile Catholic areas.

On Saturday, riot police backed by British soldiers prevented Catholic protesters from getting near an Orange parade along part of the so-called "peace line" of brick and steel walls that separate Catholic and Protestant parts of west Belfast.

The parade by a half-dozen Orange lodges and accompanying bands was allowed through a swinging corrugated-iron gate into the no-man's land of Springfield Road and on to a nearby isolated Orange hall.

Catholic protesters trying to block the Orangemen's route were themselves blocked by about 100 officers in helmets, shields and flame-retardant suits. Police had two huge truck-mounted water cannons and attack dogs in reserve, but these weren't used.

The Orangemen offered only sullen stares in the direction of the Catholic protesters, most of whom were out of eyesight several hundred yards (meters) away but tried to get the Orangemen's attention by blowing whistles and playing IRA tunes on a loudspeaker.

But as the parade headed up the road away from the protesters, other Protestants hiding behind part of the "peace line" walls beside the Catholics blindly threw over rocks and bottles.

The Catholics responded with their own missiles. A Protestant woman suffered a cut to her face when struck by a bottle on her front porch.

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

Annan wins second U.N. term

June 30, 2001
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010630-13926511.htm

NEW YORK - The General Assembly yesterday unanimously extended Kofi Annan's tenure as U.N. secretary-general in one of the least contentious elections in the organization's history.

Mr. Annan, a soft-spoken Ghanaian diplomat who has spent his entire career with the international body, received unprecedented support from around the world, including early endorsements from each of the key Security Council members.

The 63-year-old diplomat, accompanied by wife Nane and daughter Ama, received a standing ovation after the vote.

Mr. Annan won warm praise from the U.S. government, the European Union, and governments around the world. Under the U.N. Charter, the council nominates the secretary-general, who is then approved by the full voting membership of the General Assembly.

His second five-year term will begin on Jan. 1.

In Mr. Annan, "we have the personification of the international community, a global citizen who gives voice to all the people of our United Nations," said James Cunningham, acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Mr. Annan's re-election is a stark contrast to his first campaign, a pre-Christmas cliffhanger in 1996. He was selected after his predecessor, Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali, had a second term effectively vetoed by the Clinton administration.

Steven Dimoff, vice president of the Washington office of the United Nations Association of the U.S.A., a group that seeks to improve the international body's relations here, credited Mr. Annan with winning over traditional U.N. critics, such as Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican.

"He's tried to respond to them. He's taken them seriously and tried to explain the U.N. position, or that of other governments," said Mr. Dimoff. "He's the un-Boutros."

"He does passably well on reform, budget and AIDS issues, and less well on the Middle East," said one Republican Senate staffer, who praised Mr. Annan as "about as good as we can do" in the U.N. post.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, was more effusive, telling the Reuters news agency yesterday that Mr. Annan "is the best thing that has happened to the United Nations since I have been in the Senate."

Diplomats said yesterday that Mr. Annan's easy, decisive win offers him a clear mandate to continue his priority projects, including development assistance for the world's poorest nations, fighting AIDS and beefing up the U.N.'s peacekeeping work.

Mr. Annan is the son of a Ghanaian businessman and tribal chief. In his long U.N. career, he has consistently championed African issues.

He was educated in the United States, graduating from Macalaster College in St. Paul, Minn., and getting a master's degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He has learned the 38-floor secretariat and far-flung U.N. duty stations from the inside: over nearly four decades, he has worked in departments dealing with personnel, staff security, budgeting, refugee affairs and peacekeeping.

Bangladesh's ambassador, Anwarul Karim Chowdhury, said Mr. Annan, the organization's seventh secretary-general, "has excelled in his office, delivering under trying circumstances."

These include inheriting a nearly bankrupt organization owed more than $1 billion by the United States, and rebuilding confidence in a peacekeeping department shamed by failures in Somalia and Bosnia, and embarrassments in East Timor and Sierra Leone.

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

Kauai missile tests return
A new target could be the waters off the island

By Anthony Sommer, tsommer@starbulletin.com
Honolulu Star Bulletin,
Saturday, June 30, 2001
http://starbulletin.com/2001/06/30/news/story1.html

BARKING SANDS, Kauai >> STARS, a long dormant missile program that pitted the military against environmentalists and native Hawaiians on Kauai in the early 1990s, is back.

And the military has done a good job of hushing it up, says one of the program's harshest critics, University of Hawaii physics professor Michael Jones. There has been no public announcement regarding a revived STARS program.

After years of controversy, only four Strategic Targets -- STARS -- missiles ever were fired, the last in 1996. But, with renewed interest in developing missiles that can shoot down other missiles, a rebirth and major expansion of STARS has been proposed as a component of the testing programs.

An environmental assessment was published April 11 for public comment, which closes Friday.

ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

The environmental assessment is available online at www.huntsville.edaw.com/northpacific. It must be downloaded in order to be read and is a lengthy document.

Only five copies were sent to Hawaii. Three went to public libraries and never have been read by anyone, according to librarians. One went to the National Marine Fisheries Service, and one went to the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai where the public affairs officer said she has not seen it. Jones requested and received a sixth copy only last week.

Most important, notes Jones, no copies went to the Hawaii Office of Environmental Quality Control, which publishes a monthly newsletter listing all environmental assessments and environmental impact statements statewide that are open for public comment.

By way of contrast, the new incarnation of STARS will include missile launches from Kodiak Island, Alaska, as well as from Kauai. Last November, the military conducted a public informational meeting on Kodiak Island. When the environmental assessment was published in April, copies went to 81 addressees, including the governor of Alaska, both U.S. senators from the state and the mayor of Kodiak.

STARS is one of several programs that provide targets for the anti-missile missiles.

Among those being tested are the National Missile Defense system, which has had a spotty record in test flights so far in attempts to knock down Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from California to Kwajalein Atoll.

The Navy has two anti-missile missiles under development. The first of these is being tested at the Pacific Missile Range on Kauai. The Army has two others in the works, a beefed-up version of the Patriot and a new rocket called the Theater High Altitude Air Defense missile.

All of the new defense missiles are designed for "kinetic kills": hitting a bullet with another bullet.

To test them the military needs target missiles to shoot at, and that is where STARS comes in. The STARS missile consists of a surplus Polaris missile -- the first generation of long-range missiles to be fired from submarines -- mated to a new Orbus third stage that can make the rocket mimic a wide variety of hostile rockets. It has a maximum range of 3,400 miles.

Even though Polaris is a Navy missile and the Pacific Missile Range on Kauai is a Navy base, the STARS program belongs to the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala. It is fired by technicians working for Sandia National Laboratory. And they all come under the Ballistic Missile Defense Office, a joint service program.

Currently, STARS has authority only to fire target missiles from Kauai to the Army's missile test site on Kwajalein. The authority expires in 2003.

The proposal would add the Kodiak Launch Center, a privately owned rocket test site in Alaska. Four launches a year would be allowed at each site "for the foreseeable future."

The new STARS also adds four new "launch corridors" comprising the "North Pacific Targets" program. STARS missiles would be fired from the Pacific Missile Range on Kauai to an impact area in the ocean west of Seattle. They also would be launched from Kodiak to Kwajalein, to the ocean off of Kauai and to an impact area off the west coast of Mexico.

Thomas Craven, the program manager for the new STARS environmental assessment, was not available for comment. A message on his voice mail said he would not be back in his office until after Friday, when the public comment period ends.

A public affairs officer at Huntsville said he was not aware of the STARS program.

But everyone who was on Kauai a decade ago and involved in the conflict over STARS remembers. It has left scars that have not entirely healed.

"It was an ugly thing. I don't think anyone involved wants to go through it again," said Sue Dixon, former managing editor of the Kauai Times and outspoken critic of STARS.

"There were a lot of angry public hearings. I got shoved to the ground at one of them," Dixon said. "It was dramatic, emotional and changed everything in the relationship between the Navy and the public on Kauai."

Dixon added that if STARS is being reborn and changed so that missiles will be fired toward Kauai instead of only away from it, it ought to be the subject of public debate.

Retired Navy Capt. Bob Mullins looks at it somewhat differently.

Mullins was base commander at the Pacific Missile Range during much of the dispute. He currently is Kauai manager of Textron, a major defense contractor that is providing the optical tracking equipment for the missile base.

"The only impact on Kauai is that missiles will be coming down hundreds of miles west of Kauai. So what? It's way the hell out at sea," Mullins said.

----

Osprey leader faked data

June 30, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010630-91196.htm

The Pentagon has concluded that the commander of the Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey squadron falsified maintenance records but that the deception played no role in two fatal crashes of the tilt-rotor aircraft, Defense Department officials said yesterday.

The Pentagon's inspector general also concluded that a small number of Marine officers at Marine Corps Air Station at New River, N.C., knew of the falsification and took no action to correct or report it, the officials said.

Navy Capt. Timothy Taylor, a Pentagon spokesman, said the conclusions have been provided to Marine Corps headquarters and the full investigation report will be given to the Marines in early July.

In an anonymous letter to the office of the secretary of the Navy on Jan. 12, a person who said he was an Osprey mechanic at New River wrote that aircraft unable to fly had been reported "as being up, as in full mission capable."

"This type of deception has been going on for over two years," the tipster said.

The squadron's commander, Lt. Col. Odin Fred Leberman, was relieved of duty the day the accusations became public.

The Osprey uses revolutionary technology to take off like a helicopter, rotate its propellers to a horizontal position and cruise like an airplane. Despite the crashes last year, the Marines say they are confident the technology works, and an independent panel that reviewed the program this spring agreed.

Col. Leberman has not commented publicly on the accusations against him and the Marine Corps has not said what possible charges could be brought. Capt. Taylor, the Pentagon spokesman, said the Marines would wait until they receive the full report July 9 before taking any action.

The reported falsifications occurred after the crashes and therefore "clearly was not a factor in either mishap."

The Marines said from the start of the investigation that they believed the doctoring of records had no bearing on either of the crashes. The first, in April 2000 in Arizona, killed 19 Marines and was blamed on pilot error. The second, last December in North Carolina, killed four and was attributed to a combination of factors,including a hydraulics failure.

All Ospreys have been grounded since the second crash.

----

American Military Personnel Suspected in Okinawa Rape

New York Times
June 30, 2001
By CALVIN SIMS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/30/world/30OKIN.html

TOKYO, June 29 - The police on Okinawa said today that a Japanese woman was raped in a parking lot and that the victim and a witness had identified the attackers as foreigners who were most likely United States service members.

Although the details of the case remained uncertain, the incident, which occurred just hours before Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi departed for his first state visit to the United States, could have a major effect on his talks with President Bush. Aides to Mr. Koizumi said he planned to raise the issue of the American troops on Okinawa.

Tonight, the police said they had questioned at least five United States military personnel who might have been at a parking lot at an entertainment complex in Chatan, the site of the rape.

A police investigator said in a telephone interview from Okinawa that no arrests had been made but that the investigation would continue.

The victim, who is in her 20's, was raped by at least one man after she had bade farewell to her dinner companions and headed to her car in the lot, the detective said. Local news media quoted the police as having said the woman had been raped by a drunken man while four other men surrounded him, acting as lookouts.

According to the police, the victim and a witness said the men sped away in a car that had a license plate with a "Y" number, a designation used by United States military and civilian personnel and their dependents. The police said they had the number and were seeking the owner.

Chatan, a town in central Okinawa 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, is between two major United States military bases and is an entertainment district for soldiers.

Mr. Koizumi told reporters today that he had received information on the case but that the details were not confirmed.

United States military officials on Okinawa said they were cooperating with the Okinawa police but declined to comment further.

Resentment against the American military presence on Okinawa reached a peak in 1995 with the rape of a 12-year-old by three United States service members. The attack caused an uproar on Okinawa, one of the most important American military outposts in the Pacific, and generated a nationwide debate over whether Japan should revise the terms under which 48,000 American troops are based in Japan.

Okinawans question the need for a foreign army to be stationed in Japan, especially in the aftermath of the cold war. They have long held that they are being treated unfairly because 75 percent of the American military installations in Japan are based on their small island. There are 26,000 American troops on Okinawa.

In the final stages of World War II, the Okinawa Prefecture, which encompasses Japan's southernmost islands, was the scene of intense fighting between United States and Japanese forces. After the war the island was put under United States control, until it reverted to Japan in 1972.

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Bush Pushes Defense Spending Bill

New York Times
June 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Defense-Spending.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States needs a $32.6 billion increase in defense spending to improve training, readiness and quality of life for U.S. troops following a period of neglect, President Bush said Saturday.

``For too many years, our strength has dwindled,'' he said.

In his weekly radio address, Bush said the increase he is seeking for the Defense Department is sorely needed.

The president said the soldiers of today are sorely underpaid for upholding the same principles as those who gave or risked their lives more than 200 years ago in Revolutionary War battles.

``We owe them the same appreciation that we feel for the soldiers of Bunker Hill, Valley Forge and Yorktown,'' Bush said. ``We owe them fair salaries, first-class health benefits and decent housing.''

Bush's proposal has met skepticism on Capitol Hill, where many lawmakers say it lacks support for grand-scale modernization efforts the president has promised, and that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld blindsided them with some of his proposed cuts -- in B-1B bombers flown by Air National Guard units, in MX nuclear missiles and in military bases.

Bush did not provide details on his priorities Saturday, beyond ``better pay, better housing and better health care for our armed forces.'' The rest, he said, must await completion of Rumsfeld's top-to-bottom review of the armed forces.

``It's time for fresh thinking and rapid change in our national defense, to prepare for challenges that are changing just as quickly,'' Bush said. ``My budget priorities reflect the pride I feel in the outstanding people who serve and protect us all.''

The administration has proposed a $328.9 billion Pentagon budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. It represents a $32.6 billion increase over this year's budget and is $18.4 billion more than Bush had proposed in February.

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The giants of the Navy face growing risks
As defense secretary rethinks shape of military, some say aircraft carriers will become increasingly vulnerable.

By Robert P. Hey
Special to The Christian Science Monitor,
THURSDAY, JUNE 28, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/06/28/p1s2.htm

WASHINGTON - They were the workhorses of World War II in the Pacific, with fighter planes roaring off their pitching decks to pummel Japanese ships and soldiers.

Ever since, aircraft carriers have been a worldwide mainstay of American military might, moving into position whenever American forces, or those loyal to the United States, have been threatened.

But now, serious questions are being raised about their vulnerability in the 21st century. Has the age of the carriers ended? Or are they now invulnerable to destruction?

The question about this one class of ships is a pivotal one for White House and Pentagon officials as they craft a long-term vision for America's armed forces. They want to maintain US superiority in the skies, but tight budgets will likely mean tough choices.

The gray giants remain an important platform for projecting US power to the far reaches of the globe.

But even by Washington standards, carriers don't come cheap. A new, improved flat-top would run about $6 billion.

Moreover, in an era of smart bombs and unmanned surveillance planes, an aircraft carrier in combat puts roughly 3,000 US men and women at risk.

Although they are vulnerable to detection and attack, carriers at present "are also the most difficult warships to detect and attack," says longtime defense consultant Norman Polmar, the author of a coming book on the ships. For now, potential enemies lack sophisticated systems to track or seriously attack them.

"The real debate isn't whether vulnerability will occur. It's when it will occur," says Loren Thompson, the main author of a study on carrier vulnerability, yet to be released, by the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va.

It's important that defense planners do their best to figure out the "when" of vulnerability as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tries to identify what the future shape of the military should be. Among other things, he's trying to decide whether more big carriers should be built, or smaller ones instead. Or whether some other types of weapons should be phased in soon to replace some existing carriers.

For many, it may seem hard to think of today's gargantuan carriers as vulnerable. Each is as long as three football fields, as high as a 20-floor building, and carries a crew of 3,000. Most weigh 100,000 tons, much of it armor.

Several US carriers were sunk in the early years of World War II, but they had far less armor and defensive protection. Today's carriers "are so huge, and so sophisticated, that the entire Japanese fleet couldn't have sunk one," Mr. Thompson says.

Despite their bulk, they're relatively fast, churning through waters for months at their top speed of about 34 miles an hour, on a single supply of nuclear fuel. Being fast makes them hard for any current potential adversary to find, size notwithstanding, or to zero in on with attacking missiles.

Having lots of armor makes them hard to damage seriously . Various defensive systems, including a new communications system, are able to ward off attacks today by ballistic missiles, submarines, and mines, many experts say, and the Navy is working to thwart cruise-missile attacks. "People exaggerate [carriers'] vulnerability and overestimate an enemy's capabilities," Thompson says. Potential foes who have missiles or nuclear weapons currently lack the sophisticated satellite tracking systems to hit a fast-moving target.

With future advances in protective weapons, today's carriers may be even less vulnerable in 10 or 20 years, Thompson adds.

But how vulnerable a carrier is in the years ahead may depend on where it sails. For instance, China is trying to develop systems that could be used to track and attack ships. Trying to sail an aircraft carrier off China's coast in 15 years, if that nation were an adversary, "could be difficult," says Robert Martinage, a specialist in future weapons at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Still, carriers will remain useful off the coasts of militarily weaker nations.

Still, some experts urge new concepts for replacing a few of today's carriers in 10 or more years. Mr. Martinage suggests developing smaller carriers that fire missiles rather than launching planes. And he recommends converting some submarines to fire a greater number of more-sophisticated missiles.

In the future, carriers will also likely face new threats. Already, cruise missiles are harder to see, and faster. Subs are quieter, can cruise undersea longer, and carry more lethal weapons.

"The big question," says Martinage, is "how fast are those ... going to mature, versus countermeasures we're working on?"

For now, carrier proponents point to the 1969 accident aboard the USS Enterprise, in which nine of its 500-pound bombs detonated. The force equalled half a dozen Russian cruise missiles, yet "the Enterprise could have resumed strike operations within hours," says the Lexington Institute's forthcoming study.

For further information:

The Future of Aircraft Carriers Naval Sea Systems Command - http://www.navsea.navy.mil/Carriers-ReaganSite/future.htm

Is the "Day of the Aircraft Carrier" Over?, http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/docs/98-217.htm

Aircraft Carriers FAS - http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/cv.htm


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Brazil Police Chief Found Guilty in Prison Massacre

New York Times
June 30, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-brazil-.html

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - A former police commander was found guilty and sentenced to 632 years on Saturday for the deaths of 102 inmates in Brazil's worst ever prison massacre, a decision hailed by activists as a turning point to end impunity for a notoriously violent police force.

A jury held Col. Ubiratan Guimaraes responsible for the shock troops that stormed the Casa de Detencao in Sao Paulo's Carandiru prison complex with machine guns and rifles during a riot on Oct. 2, 1992.

He received six years for each of the 102 deaths and a total of twenty for five attempted murders. The prosecution did not seek a conviction for the deaths of nine other inmates who were stabbed.

Guimaraes, 58, will only spend up to 30 years in jail under Brazilian law. Defense lawyer Vicente Cascione said he appealed the court's decision and Guimaraes will remain free in the meantime.

Judge Maria Cristina Cotrofe read the sentence from the seven jurors past midnight for a crowd that applauded the outcome of the 10-day trial.

``This is a historic decision in that it sends a very clear signal to police that those in command are responsible for the action of their subordinates,'' said Tim Cahill, researcher for Amnesty International in London.

After the sentencing Guimaraes hugged his lawyer and left the courtroom with tears in his eyes. His wife, son and friends cried.

``Without a doubt this was a very positive step toward ending impunity, a very big move forward for democracy,'' said Sao Paulo state lawmaker Renato Simoes.

It was the first conviction in the Carandiru massacre -- as it came to be known. Another 85 officers will be tried in the same case.

ROWS OF CORPSES SHOCKED THE WORLD

According to witnesses and a forensic expert at the trial, many of the inmates were shot execution-style as they hid behind their bed mattresses for protection. Many were found naked, a sign of surrender, according to human rights watchers.

But Guimaraes alleged his troops had entered into a fire-fight with prisoners and shot back in self-defense, although no police were hurt in the operation and few guns were found at the massive prison complex.

He irked prosecutors and families of victims on the first day of the trial by saying that the 2,200 men rioting would have died had his team had the intention to kill.

The photographs of bloodied, naked corpses lined up in the prison hallways made front pages and drew criticism from around the world.

The dramatic outcome of the riot also put the spotlight on the squalid and overcrowded conditions in Brazil's prison system, a source of embarrassment for the government even today.

But the massacre also served to temper the use of force by authorities in quashing Brazil's ubiquitous prison riots.

In February, seven prisoners were killed by police and 13 were killed by fellow inmates in Brazil's biggest prison riot ever involving 29,000 inmates in 27 jails. The Casa de Detencao was the cornerstone of the mass riot.

In the wake of the conviction, Amnesty called on the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso to convert police troops into a force that respects human rights.

``The Brazilian population will no longer accept policing that is violent and repressive,'' said Cahill.

The Casa de Detencao, Latin America's largest prison with more than 7,000 inmates, is just blocks from downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil's wealthiest and largest city. Authorities want to close the crumbling complex by next year.

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Deadline Approaches for U.S. Diplomats

New York Times
June 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-US.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- The deadline for 46 U.S. diplomats ordered to leave Russia in response to Washington's expulsion of Russian diplomats was to expire at midnight Saturday.

Four other American diplomats left Russia in April after being declared persona non grata for ``activities incompatible with their diplomatic status,'' an expression usually referring to spying.

Washington announced in late March that four Russian diplomats were told to leave the country in connection with the arrest of veteran FBI agent Robert Hanssen on charges of spying for Russia, and 46 other Russians were given until July 1 to leave the United States.

Russia responded in kind, ordering four American diplomats to leave within 10 days of the expulsion order and 46 others to leave by the end of June.

All the U.S. diplomats involved have already left or will leave Russia before Saturday's deadline, the Interfax news agency reported, citing unidentified U.S. diplomatic sources.

There was no one available at the U.S. Embassy to comment on whether all the diplomats had left by Saturday. The Russian Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the tit-for-tat expulsions.

The expulsion of the American and Russian diplomats put a further strain on relations between the two countries that have worsened over the past few years after the burst of optimism and cooperation that followed the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.

In addition to differences over U.S. plans for a national missile defense and Russia's war in Chechnya, U.S. officials say they have tried to get Russia to reduce the number of spies in the United States after a buildup that began in 1997.

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Chavez irked by seizure of spy chief

June 30, 2001
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010630-62138760.htm

Peru and Venezuela have escalated a nasty diplomatic dispute over last Saturday's capture in a Caracas, Venezuela, suburb of former Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos, recalling their ambassadors and accusing each other of bad faith in the cloak-and-dagger episode.

The United States has been dragged into the dispute because the FBI, working with Peruvian government officials without the knowledge of Venezuela, provided critical intelligence that helped locate Mr. Montesinos, who had been the target of an international manhunt since fleeing Lima eight months ago.

After first maintaining the seizure of the Peruvian spy chief was a triumph for his country's intelligence service, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been increasingly critical of Lima as details emerged of how U.S. and Peruvian officials worked around his government to seize Mr. Montesinos.

"We are outraged," Mr. Chavez said late Thursday evening in announcing the recall of his country's ambassador to Lima in protest.

"Venezuela is a sovereign country, and no police organization can come here and mount an operation behind the back of our government," said Mr. Chavez, whose closeness to Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his autocratic rule at home have put him frequently at odds with Washington.

Peru responded in kind yesterday, recalling its ambassador to Caracas.

"We were victims of real verbal aggression," said Prime Minister Javier Perez de Cuellar.

Considered the continent's most-wanted fugitive, Mr. Montesinos faces a long list of criminal charges back home from his years as intelligence chief to exiled former President Alberto Fujimori, now living in Japan. The charges could include drug trafficking, bribing and blackmailing politicians, and murder of government opponents.

Peruvian Interior Minister Ketin Vidal told a Lima press conference Thursday that two previous operations involving Venezuelan security forces to seize Mr. Montesinos had failed and last weekend's third attempt -- based on a tip given by a Miami bank to the FBI -- bypassed Venezuela's government.

A last-minute hitch in the planned capture occurred late Saturday evening when Mr. Montesinos' bodyguards unexpectedly delivered their charge to Venezuelan security forces instead of to the Peruvian Embassy in Caracas.

Mr. Montesinos has reportedly developed close alliances with some members of the Venezuelan military, dating back to the days when they were granted asylum in Peru after a failed 1992 coup spearheaded by Mr. Chavez.

After being presented with Mr. Montesinos, Mr. Chavez's government quickly agreed to extradite him to Peru, where he sits in a jail cell waiting to be charged.

William R. Broomfield, deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, tried in a briefing with reporters yesterday to find a balance between the two battling South American capitals.

Venezuelan officials, he said, "had done the right thing" in extraditing Mr. Montesinos once he had been delivered into their hands.

But he said the Bush administration had agreed with Peru's plans to capture the spy chief last weekend without first alerting Mr. Chavez's government.

"We did not challenge or disagree with the assessment of the Peruvian government that the most reliable method to deliver [Mr. Montesinos] into their custody was to deliver him directly to the Embassy of Peru in Caracas," Mr. Broomfield said.

The dispute presents a early challenge for Peru's president-elect, Alejandro Toledo, who now faces tense relations with a key regional partner when he takes office July 28.

Mr. Toledo, traveling in Spain yesterday, said he had been told by Mr. Chavez when he visited Lima recently that Venezuela did not know where Mr. Montesinos was.

"I don't understand how Venezuela would let us get to this level," Mr. Toledo said.

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Vieques Protesters Released From Jail

Associated Press
Saturday, June 30, 2001; Page A02
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2001-2001Jun29?language=printer

NEW YORK, June 29 -- Three politicians who were jailed 37 days for protesting Navy bombing exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques celebrated their release today and vowed to continue the fight.

"I am not asking the Navy to leave Vieques today," Bronx Borough Democratic Party Chairman Roberto Ramirez said after his release. "What I am asking is for the Navy to stop the bombing in Vieques today."

Ramirez, state Assemblyman Jose Rivera and City Councilman Adolfo Carrion Jr. walked out of the Metropolitan Detention Center, flashing a victory sign.

They were sentenced to 40 days in jail for trespassing but were released early for good behavior. A fourth protester, the Rev. Al Sharpton, was jailed for 90 days because of a prior civil disobedience arrest.

Looking tired and thinner after a nearly month-long liquids-only fast, Ramirez said, "Until Reverend Sharpton comes home . . . until the United States Navy stops the bombing in Vieques, we will not be free."

President Bush announced two weeks ago that bombing exercises on Vieques will end by May 2003; protests have continued on the Puerto Rican island to advocate the bombing stop immediately.

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Austrian Police Ready for Protests

New York Times
June 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Austria-Economic-Summit.html

SALZBURG, Austria (AP) -- Police clad in slate-gray jumpsuits cordoned off sections of Salzburg's old section Saturday, braced for potentially violent protests at an upcoming summit of top European business and political leaders.

Fearing a repeat of the street fighting that left 70 people injured at the European Union summit in Goteborg, Sweden, officials said they were taking extra precautions to safeguard the European Economic Summit, which opens Sunday and runs through Tuesday.

Local media reports estimate that an additional 5,000 police have been trucked in from around the country, but Austrian police spokesman Rudolf Gollia declined to comment.

The beef-up also comes in the wake of an anti-globalization rally last weekend in Barcelona, Spain, in which 32 protesters were injured and 22 arrested.

That protest was organized to coincide with an annual meeting of the World Bank. But despite the bank canceling the meeting to avoid a violent conflict, a protest march went ahead anyway.

More than 600 participants from 44 different countries are to attend the summit, including 15 heads of state or prime ministers. They will discuss subjects such as EU enlargement and Russia's relationship with the rest of Europe.

Ahead of the conference, things were calm.

Police and protesters estimated that hundreds of activists were already in Salzburg, and more were expected before the main demonstration Sunday afternoon.

Protesters staged two peaceful rallies Friday, and many relaxed Saturday evening outside the local communist party headquarters, pounding drums in an informal circle.

Nearly 500 more were attending an all-day counter-conference organized by ATTAC, an international organization that calls for more democracy in the globalization process.

ATTAC spokesman Christian Felber said he didn't expect violence from most of the protesters but admitted a small group of hard-core activists could stir things up.

``We are for protest, but not violence,'' Felber said. ``I think the police here are really overdoing it. They are being very provocative. There are certainly a couple of hundred who come here to make trouble.''

Giant banners reading, ``Stop Child Labor,'' ``Capitalism Destroys,'' and ``Enforce Workers Rights,'' were already strung up across the street from one of the convention's main hotels.

Just down the street, teams of police dragged barriers into place to limit traffic through Salzburg's medieval downtown, an alpine tourist mecca renowned as birthplace of Austria's foremost composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Austria, which normally allows passport-free travel to citizens of any European Union country participating in the so-called Schengen agreement, temporarily reintroduced controls last week as a way of filtering out potential troublemakers.



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