------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
A new book on Depleted Uranium(DU)
Growing distrust over an island of gravel
Giving Europe's Leaders Something to Think About
U.S.-Russia Arms Talks Enter Intense Phase -Powell
REAGAN'S "STAR WARS" PROPOSAL IS MORE ILLUSIONARY THAN MOVIE
Who's real threat to world peace?
NUCLEAR SPENDING TRANSFER
Feds Halt Radioactive Shipments
NUCLEAR WASTE ROUTES
Feds Halt Radioactive Shipments
Helms, Bush clash over foreign policy

MILITARY
Major African troublespots
Ghana leader to strengthen democracy
Court Indicts Ex-President Of Argentina
Rebel chief worked for UN-funded force in Kosovo
Foot patrols seizing rebels' supplies
New world order beset by old world's flaws
THE ILLEGITIMATE HAGUE TRIBUNAL
Tribunal Rejects Prosecution Appeal
How electronic eavesdropping keeps a small part of Cyprus forever British
Trouble under the sun - but this time, the Army takes a real beating
Both Sides in Macedonia Approve NATO Truce Plan
Bosnian Serbs Are 'Ready' to Seize Men for Tribunal
Fighting Flares After Balkan Truce
Ex-envoy to Colombia says legalise drugs
This war is unwinnable
Stalemate Over Iraq
Iraq Accepts U.N. Oil Sales Extension - U.N. Envoy
Annan: Israel Must End Assasinations
The NATO Tripwire
NASA considers nuclear boosters for space rockets
Military Study Mulled Deterrence of 'Fear'
Pentagon reveals next superweapon: the stinkbomb
Padre Island impact study ordered
U.S. to Turn Sergeant Over to Japan
Biotech Advances May Alter Army Soon
Panel queries Army's plans for women

OTHER
Forest Officials Address Unusual Uses of Land
Japan Playing for Time on Kyoto Climate Pact
Study: Stem Cell Cloning Flawed
Bush and Portillo Discuss Human Rights
Debt relief no help to Honduran poor
200 Killed in Congo 'Witchhunt'
U.S. Helping Asia Combat Sea Piracy
Bush nominates Mueller to head FBI
Exclusive Interview with Former KGB Agent
Inside the KGB

ACTIVISTS
The battle for California's Big Sur
Star Wars base invaded again
Greenpeace Ends Occupation of US Spy Base
Sect Clings to the Web in the Face of Beijing's Ban
Lawsuit filed to halt Trident upgrade


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- depleted uranium

A new book on Depleted Uranium(DU) by a Hiroshima-based Journalist.

Thursday, July 05, 2001
From: "Mitsuo Okamoto" <okamoto@shudo-u.ac.jp>

Dear Abolitionists,

A new book on Depleted Uranium and its hazards is just published here in Hiroshima (available only in English as it is a translation of the series of Japanese newspaper articles). The details of the book ["Discounted Casualties - The Human Cost of Depleted Uranium"] are available at the following URL:

http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/booksale_e.html

The author, Mr. Akira Tashiro, is an aclaimed journalist of The Chugoku Shimbun, a Hiroshima-based daily, which is one of the largest local newspapers in Japan. He has won several awards for his superb publications on nuclear issues. With lots of pictures, the book is illustrative and easy to read. Those of you who are familiar with its only predecessor, as far as I know, namely Metal of Dishonor : How Depleted Uranium Penetrates Steel, Radiates People and Contaminates the Environment, published in 1997, will find the new book filling up the lacuna left by it. In my opinion, Mr. Tashiro well deserves the Pulitzer Prize for this seminal book.

Sincerely,
Mitsuo Okamoto

--

"Discounted Casualties - The Human Cost of Depleted Uranium" Introduction

http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/booksale_e.html

Some scientists claim depleted uranium is harmless. Some claim it's deadly. Others call for more research. Meanwhile, Akira Tashiro takes us into the homes, families, and hearts of people suffering and fighting the effects of DU. As a journalist from Hiroshima, Tashiro knows that conclusively proving radiation effects is next to impossible. That's not because there are no effects. It's because radiation produces so many different effects. It's impossible to get a complete picture of radiation damage by counting cases of leukemia or breast cancer. Low levels of radiation can get you in so many ways; no one problem rises high enough above the horizon to draw attention. Scientists have yet to go into communities and look for higher incidences of "everything." What happens is, people get sick, then start to look around and wonder why so many of their friends, relatives, or fellow veterans are also sick.

The personal experiences you will encounter in this book are more convincing than science. They leave little room for doubt that DU is a cruel, frightening menace that needs to be treated like the chemically toxic radioactive waste it is, not turned into bullets and scattered around the world.

During the Gulf War, the multinational force combat-tested a formidable new weapon--depleted uranium (DU) penetrators. These projectiles performed admirably, burning their way through enemy tanks on contact. But at what cost?

Hiroshima-based reporter Akira Tashiro traveled through the US, UK, Iraq, and Yugoslavia pursuing this question. Here is the ominous picture that emerged:

See contents:

Part I On the Wrong Side of a Superpower

US Gulf War veterans watch their bodies deteriorate as the Veteran's Administration holds fast to its claim that DU munitions pose no threat to human health.

Part II The Threat in our Backyards

Evidence is mounting that radioactive uranium has contaminated air, soil, and water near the plants that produce DU munitions, harming the health of workers and nearby residents.

Part III Contaminated Earth

People living near facilities where DU weapons are test-fired or discarded face environmental contamination, mounting cancer rates, and an official "stone wall."

Part IV Heavy Burden for an Ally

British Gulf War veterans are also struggling for government recognition that they are suffering due to DU exposure.

Part V The Scars of War

Economic sanctions against Iraq pit physicians against overwhelming odds in their struggle with the post-war upsurge in cancers, stillbirths, and congenital deformities.

Part VI Finishing the Story

Contamination spreads from areas where DU penetrators leach toxic uranium with a half-life of 4.5 billion years into the ground. Grassroots groups are working steadfastly for a cleanup and a ban.

--

DU Munititions - Serious Radiation Exposure

Akira Tashiro, senior staff writer
http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/index_e.html

During the Gulf War in 1991, US and UK forces used a new weapon against Iraq. This new weapon, the depleted uranium (DU) projectile, is radioactive. Unlike atomic or hydrogen bombs, it involves no nuclear fusion or fission, but nine years after the end of the war, adverse health effects from DU exposure continue to manifest among military personnel and civilians in Iraq where the fighting took place, and among US and British veterans and their families. As I traveled through the US, UK, and Iraq to cover this story, I was confronted at every turn by the sad and frightening spectre of "discounted casualties,"- people exposed to depleted uranium and other toxic substances, and now tormented by leukemia and a whole array of chronic disorders.

What is DU? - http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/special/index2.html

Impact of DU munitions - http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/special/index3.html

Other Factors - http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/special/index3.html#others

The Persian Gulf War - http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/special/index3.html#gulfwar

---

Growing distrust over an island of gravel

[Story and photos by Akira Tashiro]
http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/okinawa_e/index.html http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/abom/uran/okinawa_e/index2.html

During the shell firing exercises carried out at the Torishima US Millitary Firing Range in Okinawa Prefecture in December 1995 and January 1996, the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) Harriers owned by the US Marine Base at Iwakuni fired 1,520 rounds of DU, a radioactive weapon. This fact was revealed a little over a year later, in February 1997. The demands of Okinawa citizens that the US military retrieve the rounds were ignored. In May 2000, the US Air Force Command in Okinawa announced that they were storing DU shells in the Kadena munition storage area. A few days later, 473 rounds of used DU shell cartridges were discovered in the storehouse of a local company that purchases scrap from the US military. Thus, DU shells that should have been removed from Okinawa are still stored on the island, and negligence has resulted in the sale of used cartridges to the private sector as "steel scrap." When I visited Okinawa just prior to the G8 Summit, even as the local residents welcomed the event, their distrust of the US military was mounting.

1,520 rounds fired on the Torishima Firing Range Only 16% of penetrators collected

Supposed to have been removed But still in storage in Okinawa

Cartridges sold as "steel scrap"

Okinawa's Kumejima Island on the East China Sea is about 100 kilometers (63 miles) west of Naha City. About 25 kilometers (16 miles) north of Kumejima Island lies the Torishima Firing Range. The property is only 3.9 hectares (9.6 acres). Except for the craggy rocks on the east tip, the Ryuku limestone hillside and rocky beach on the island's south side have turned to gravel. Shells litter the slope.

Scars from a half century of exercises

On the north side are large scooped-out areas that appear to be craters created by large bombs. Bombs have scorched the east end as well. In contrast to verdant Kumejima Island visible beyond the waves, denuded Torishima, battered by bombing practice for more than half a century, looks so ravaged it seems to cry in pain.

On December 5 and 7, US Marine Harrier bombers fired 600 rounds of 25mm DU shells on Torishima Island. They fired 320 rounds of DU on January 24. Two bombers participated in the exercises on all three dates.

By the end of April 1997, the US military in Japan had retrieved 233 of the DU penetrators (weight: 148 grams), the cores from the fired shells. Only 247, or 16% of the total number of penetrators, have been retrieved so far.

Science and Technology Agency: "No effect"

The DU penetrators that struck the north slope of the island and the rocky outcropping on the east tip burned in the impact, becoming minute oxidized particles that likely dispersed in the air. They may have migrated on wintry north winds to Kumejima Island or elsewhere. Most of the retrieved penetrators were taken from the gravel on the south side, but many may still be deeply embedded in the earth.

Were all the DU rounds fired in a single flight, or over multiple flights? The answer to this question is important. The size of the island suggests that many penetrators may be submerged in the sea, as stated by the US military.

The US military in Japan claims that it has already removed contaminated soil from Torishima Island. Because a radius of three nautical miles (5.5 kilometers) around the island is off limits, the US claims that no threat whatsoever is posed to the environment or to human bodies. The Science and Technology Agency's Nuclear Safety Bureau concludes that "no DU contamination" has so far been detected in any studies of the soil, atmosphere, surrounding seawater, or fish habitat of Torishima or Kumejima islands.

Basking in the sea spray, I returned to Kumejima Island and Nakazato Village, which has administrative control over Torishima Island. The island's children struck booming taiko drums and performed the traditional dance Eisa in the square in front of Umigame (Sea Turtle) Hall to celebrate its opening. In his address, Village Headman Kyuzo Takazato (64) exhorted the families in attendance to "protect the bountiful nature and culture of Kumejima Island and preserve its environment for the sake of the Sea Turtle.

After the ceremony, we moved to the village office, where Headman Takazato expressed grave concerns about DU munitions.

Abundant fisheries also sacrificed

"The US military and Japan's Science and Technology Agency try to reassure us, but we island residents can't feel easy about it. Last May 17, I and the headman of Gushikawa Village together went through the prefectural government to ask the national government and the US military to provide physical exams for the 10,000 people living on the island, and to continue recovering the penetrators. Immediately afterwards came the news that the US Air Force is storing DU shells in the Kadena Ammunition Storage Area, and that DU cartridges like those used on Torishima Island were found. They tell us to trust them, but how can we?"

Off shore from Torishima Island, the fishing is reportedly excellent for tuna, bonito, squid and other important species. Tetsuya Tanahara (48) of the Kumejima Island Fishing Cooperative (331 members) joined our conversation and told me that on weekends, when there are no exercises, quite a few leisure boats can be seen motoring out from Naha to Torishima Island. However, though it has not been declared off-limits, all cooperative members have been warned not to fish on the north side of Kumejima Island.

"When you get caught in their drills, you never know what will fall on you. For safety's sake, we have to sacrifice that area, no matter how good the fishing is." Regret lined Tanahara's sunburned face.

No response to the fears

The residents of Kumejima Island want the US military and the national government to remove exploded and unexploded DU shells from Torishima Island and return it to its former clean state. "Tourism, farming, and fishing make good use of nature's beauty and abundance. There's nothing good about a firing range, either from the industrial or the health viewpoint," insists Gushikawa Village Headman Seiroku Uchima (59), whom I met later.

For six or seven years, a scrap company in Nishihara-machi, located in the middle of Okinawa's main island, has been storing piles of DU shell (25 mm) cartridges purchased from US military. DU shells (30 mm) are still being stored in the Kadena Ammunition Storage Area. Amazed by these reports, officials of the prefectural government, which serves as liaison between the island, the national government, and the US military, are growing distrustful. They fear for the health of the residents, as do the residents themselves.

They are pressing the US military in Okinawa to investigate when and where the discovered DU cartridges were used. "How were these dangerous cartridges allowed to be sold to the private sector, where civilians would be exposed to them?" Why are DU shells still stored in Okinawa, after the Marine Corps announced that they had all been removed?"

No response is forthcoming from the US military in Okinawa nor from its headquarters in Japan.

-------- europe

Giving Europe's Leaders Something to Think About

By Henry Kissinger
Los Angeles Times
Thursday, July 5, 2001; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20130-2001Jul4?language=printer

I cannot recall when a president left on a foreign trip amid such a cacophony of low expectations as that which preceded President Bush's European tour. Yet its result is likely to mark a turning point in the Allied debate on such key issues as missile defense, the environment and America's relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The level of expectations for the trip was defined by a White House briefer as an effort to disabuse Europe's leaders of the image of the president as "a shallow, arrogant, gun-toting . . . Texan buffoon." Paradoxically, these alleged European perceptions enabled the new president to emphasize his distinctive qualities. Since no one expected the traditional diplomatic style, Bush was free to indulge his instinct of getting directly to the point. This, in turn, brought out the truth that, on the core disputes of the Atlantic disagreements -- missile defense and the environment -- Europe and America were divided not by the personality of the new president but by differences in political philosophy.

The new president's intellectual convictions were shaped by the conservative side of the American political spectrum, and he was elected by espousing its principles. In foreign policy, this translated into a firm commitment to the nation's security -- of which missile defense has emerged as a central focus -- the nurturing of established links with traditional allies and a definition of the national interest that stops short of universal interventionism while utterly rejecting isolationism. This has been interpreted by some as a move toward the center; hence the internal pressures from the party's right wing, insisting on the verities of the campaigning period.

By contrast, the majority of European governments the president encountered on his European trip are center-left. As these European governments have also moved, albeit from the opposite pole, toward the center and market-oriented policies in domestic affairs, they are under pressure from their left wings to maintain familiar leftist principles, at least in foreign policy. These include opposition to any modification in the established nuclear equations (except to reduce them), suspicion of American military expenditures and purposes, the erosion of European security budgets and emphasis on the so-called "soft" issues, such as the environment.

The formative political experience of the European leaders was in the anti-Vietnam protests of the 1970s and the anti-missile demonstrations of the 1980s; that of the American administration, in the Reagan-era rejection of those attitudes. Clashing perceptions were therefore inevitable.

As it turned out, the caricature of the American president in the European media and by some European leaders facilitated a positive outcome of the presidential trip. For, with the president holding fast to his fundamental views on missile defense but inviting consultation on their application, the European leaders were obliged either to initiate a philosophical challenge -- risking the entire relationship -- or to accept the principle while retaining the option of modifying its application. President Bush faced a comparable challenge with respect to European attitudes toward the environment and made a comparable adaptation. The outcome was to preserve the option of what each side considered essential while setting the stage for consultation to define its implementation.

On missile defense, European leaders face contradictory domestic pressures: to oppose it as either unworkable or as working so well as to destroy the strategic balance, and in any event as being too expensive. They now realize that the Bush administration, while prepared to consult in great detail, will not equate consultation with a veto. No president can take the responsibility, in a world of proliferating nuclear and missile technology, for leaving the American people vulnerable to attacks for which a demonstrated and growing capacity exists -- not when he has available an emerging technology that shows promise in protecting against at least the lower end of these dangers. Thus the real choice of Allied leaders was between a national American missile defense and one that includes Allied territories. Future consultation will have to focus on such issues as appropriate technology, levels compatible with stability and the form for expressing any agreement reached.

Similarly, there are no advocates in the Bush administration or in Congress for ratifying the Kyoto protocol -- even among those who thought the Bush administration's rejection of it was too peremptory and undertaken with too little regard for the sensitivities of our allies. The president's posture in Europe conveyed an American willingness to consider some joint responses to the issue of global warming. But it could not be based on the Kyoto protocol, which the U.S. Senate has indicated by a vote of 95 to nothing it would never ratify and which only one European government has ratified.

Finally, the successful meeting between Putin and Bush, which made clear that Russia is receptive to a substantive dialogue, including on the subject of missile defense, has helped transform the atmosphere.

All this should turn the transatlantic debate toward concrete issues rather than preconceptions driven by domestic politics. Still, the new atmosphere leaves a range of issues to be resolved. For example, against what specific danger is the proposed missile defense to be directed? In my view, the emphasis on so-called rogue states is a mistake. It confuses the issue by an abstract exercise of dividing the world between countries defined as evil and other nuclear countries, including Russia, somehow defined as irrelevant to the nuclear threat. Such an exercise would involve us in a never-never land of kaleidoscopic changes in definition. A serious defense system must seek to provide protection against attacks from any direction; the meaningful subject of the debate should be the scope of the threat against which protection is sought rather than its origin.

As for the dangers of triggering an arms race, no foreseeable missile defense can afford protection against an all-out Russian attack. Thus, of all the nuclear weapons states, Russia is the least affected by a missile defense system -- even if its capacity for lower-level blackmail will be reduced. Missile defense is unlikely to spur an arms race with Russia -- though it may alter the composition of Russia's missile forces.

The country most affected by an American missile defense program is China. Even a modest American anti-missile program will have an immediate impact on the small Chinese strike force. Though I reject the proposition that China is an inevitable strategic adversary, an increase in the Chinese strategic program is to be expected -- probably in any event. Once a dialogue with China develops, its limits might become an important subject. As for the so-called rogue states, they are already at the limit of their capabilities independent of an American or Allied missile defense.

The issue of preventing an arms race can be addressed most immediately by the significant reduction of strategic offensive arsenals. Some administration sources have spoken of a reduction to 1,000-1,500 warheads -- a cut of more than 50 percent from START II levels. A significant reduction can be undertaken unilaterally if necessary and is largely independent of the level of missile defense, since none foreseeable could defeat an attack of such magnitude. Once a decision has been reached on technology, the level of protection and against what scale of attack, attention must be paid to the international framework for implementation; whether as unilateral American decisions, agreements with NATO allies or agreements, bilateral or multilateral, with other nuclear powers. Unilateral American decisions should be a last resort; the most powerful nuclear country should not adopt unilateralism until the possibilities of agreement have been fully explored. And our NATO allies should be given every opportunity to participate in a common program.

It is clearly impossible to create the technology for the necessary missile defense under the existing ABM treaty. Whether the treaty can be amended to make it compatible with the requirements of missile defense deserves consideration, though care must be taken lest amendment talks become a means to postpone deployment into the indefinite future or create by implication a Russian veto over the ultimate deployment.

Within these limits, the building of missile defense should proceed side by side with explorations of what international agreement can embody a new global strategic design. But this should be freed to the greatest extent possible from the nit-picking detail that blighted previous arms control negotiations. The preconditions for such a dialogue were created in the Bush-Putin meeting.

A comparable pragmatism governed Bush's approach to the environment. But having made the point that the Kyoto protocol as it stands is unacceptable, room must be left for common action on global warming by the states that most contribute to dangerous emissions. The issue has become politicized, especially in Europe, where it is being used to play up to the green constituencies. Science, not emotions, should guide the appropriate response. Why not form two study groups with short deadlines: an American group, to relate environmental concerns to economic growth; and an Atlantic group, to decide what programs are able to achieve a genuine amelioration that can in fact be implemented?

The dialogue between presidents Bush and Putin has done much to remove from the Allied agenda the contention over how to deal with Russia. Until the meeting in Slovenia, too many European leaders saw their roles as mediators and facilitators of a Russo-American dialogue. The encounter of the two presidents has made evident that such a role is unnecessary -- even if some exuberant American statements concluding the conference and afterward overshot the mark. Instead, the NATO allies need to ask themselves whether to conduct their relationship with Russia competitively or as a common project.

This is all the more important because the fundamental challenge of Putin's Russia will not be missile defense but rather how to encourage the emerging Russia into the global and European system and how to discourage it from returning to the historic Russian policy of absorbing neighbors or turning them into satellites. In this process, the future genuine independence of such countries as Georgia, Azerbaijan and, above all, Ukraine is crucial. Russia must be brought to understand that its actions to date in these countries give rise to serious concern.

A good start toward a new approach to all these issues was made by the president's trip -- especially in his seminal speech in Warsaw, which raised the challenge of the expansion of NATO including the Baltic states. The agenda is clear; giving it meaning is the next task.

The writer, a former secretary of state, is president of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm.

-------- missile defense

U.S.-Russia Arms Talks Enter Intense Phase -Powell

By Elaine Monaghan
Thursday July 5
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010705/pl/russia_usa_powell_dc_1.html

WASHINGTON - Talks between the United States and Russia on Washington's moves toward a missile defense and reducing both sides' nuclear arsenals are about to accelerate, Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said on Thursday.

``We are looking forward to a broad series of discussions with the Russians ... on offensive weapons, defensive technologies, on the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty, on proliferation, nonproliferation and counter-proliferation activities,'' Powell said in an interview with Reuters.

``I think in the very near future, within the next few weeks, you will start to see these conversations pick up speed,'' he added.

The United States is trying to convince Russia and China that its plans for a missile defense system are not aimed at Moscow and Beijing.

Those countries fear that the system, which Washington says is to defend it against attack from what it calls ``rogue'' states or accidental firings, is actually intended to neutralize the Russian and Chinese arsenals.

Building the new system would at the least require Russian acceptance of amendments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and the Bush administration has made clear it might ditch the Soviet-era pact.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) has said that Russia could respond to any U.S. bid to abandon the ABM treaty by adding multiple warheads to its nuclear missiles.

Recent comments by Russian political and military figures -- including Putin, and a leading hawk, Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov -- suggested they might be ready to consider amending the treaty, although Powell was skeptical about this.

``I don't know if I'd call it a softening -- and even after the general spoke within hours his remarks were being put in context,'' he said.

``Their position as I understand it is they continue to believe the ABM treaty is the centerpiece of the strategic framework that has existed for the last 30 years,'' he added.

``We believe that whether it was or it wasn't, it should not be seen as the basis of the strategic framework as we move forward.''

Powell said the Russians were open to discussing the issue and that they wanted to hear more about the U.S. plan, still in development, for a missile defense.

He said he would discuss the range of arms issues with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov when the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations plus Russia (G8) meet in Rome on July 18-19.

The issue could also come up later this month at the G8 summit, which will be attended by President Bush (news - web sites) and Putin, he added.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) were also in contact with their counterparts on this issue, Powell said.

``So we're entering this period of intense dialogue with the Russians on all these issues,'' he added.

----

REAGAN'S "STAR WARS" PROPOSAL IS MORE ILLUSIONARY THAN MOVIE

National Center for Policy Analysis
July 5, 2001
http://www.ncpa.org/bothside/krt/krt061799b.html

WASHINGTON, D.C. - You have to hand it to the proponents of building a national missile defense system.

Nothing stops these guys. We have spent over $120 billion since 1962 trying to find a way to intercept long-range missiles. Our best scientists have failed repeatedly to build a system that works. In 1975, we actually fielded a system of 100 nuclear-tipped interceptors - only to have then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shut it down five months later because it was militarily ineffective. But the proponents are not discouraged.

Many of the most fervent advocates are veterans of the original "Star Wars" program begun by President Ronald Reagan. They spent nearly $50 billion between 1983 and 1993 without producing any deployable systems or major technological breakthroughs. Repeated failure hasn't stopped them from arguing that if they just had a few tens of billions more they could surely do it this time.

Their optimism is not tarnish by hard, cold facts. The Department of Defense has now tried 17 times since 1983 to actually hit a long-range ballistic missile warhead target with an interceptor. Fourteen times the interceptors missed.

After six straight failures, a THAAD interceptor earlier this month hit a short-range, Scud-like target that flew at about one-tenth the range of an ICBM. This brings the statistics up a bit to 3 out of 17, and marks only the second time this decade that we have performed this feat.

No one would fly a plane with that kind of test record, but this random success will undoubtedly be used "prove" all naysayers wrong and justify huge increases in the program's budget.

Intercepting missiles, however, is a tremendously difficult technological challenge, and we are still at step one.

In fact, hitting a missile in a carefully controlled test is the easy part. Next, we have to demonstrate that we can do it reliably and repeatedly. Then, we must show that we can do it when the enemy isn't as cooperative as our specially-designed targets, for example, when the enemy warhead is hidden in a cloud of decoys or jamming the interceptor's sensors. This will require years of rigorous, realistic tests before we know if we have something that will really work.

Why bother with all these tests the proponents ask? If we can put a man on the moon, they say, surely American technology can shoot down enemy missiles.

Let's get on with it! That is exactly why an expert panel led by General Larry Welch warned last year that the missile defense programs were in a "rush to failure."

In particular, the Welch panel said, the national missile defense program was "highly unlikely" to succeed, lacked coherence and a realistic plan, and should be fundamentally restructured.

These warnings have been ignored. The budgets have been increased, the schedules accelerated. These guys are optimists, and it is costing us: at $5 billion annually, missile defense is the most expensive single program in our defense budget.

Faith in America does not mean a blind belief in technological solutions. We cannot intercept a bomb once it is dropped or an artillery shell once it is fired, and we are, at best, a decade away from knowing if we can reliably intercept long-range missiles after they are launched.

Beware the techno-optimists; they may turn out to have a lot more in common with infomercial hucksters than true American pioneers.

Joseph Cirincione is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. He served for nine years on the professional staff of the U.S. House of Representatives investigating missile defense programs. Readers may write him 1779 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036

Contact Us mailto:ncpa@ncpa.org

--------

Who's real threat to world peace?

LIU WEITAO
China Daily News
07/05/2001
http://www.chinadaily.net/cndy/2001-07-05/18297.html

The Pentagon last week unveiled the US 2002 defence budget, which required an increase of US$32.6 billion on the year 2001, the biggest growth since the military build-up of the mid-1980s under President Ronald Reagan.

If approved, US military expenditure would rise to US$328.9 billion, a record high in post-Cold War years. The figure would equal the combined spending of seven other major powers - Russia, Japan, France, Germany, Britain, China and India.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself explained that such an increase is the result of Washington's overextended battle line in recent years, which has caused a capital shortage in many aspects.

Nowadays, the military presence of the United States is almost everywhere - in the Persian Gulf, in the Balkans and in East Asia.

The United States, the sole superpower left, is more active than ever in flexing its military muscle - pushing NATO's eastward expansion, building the New US-Japan Defence Co-operation Guidelines and advocating the National Missile Defence programme and the Theatre Missile Defence system.

The United States is doing all of this for just one purpose - to ensure a unipolar world dominated by itself.

And that is only part of the story.

Besides reinforcing its military presence in the world, Washington has never relaxed its efforts to brainwash other countries.

Uncle Sam repeatedly portrays itself as the heavyweight champion of human rights, trying to sell its values, democracy and social system to other countries.

When meeting resistance, it either adopts an iron fist - using military threats or intervention or supporting political opposition forces - or uses softer means like financial aid to realize its purposes.

Such tactics are clearly demonstrated in the Iraqi and Yugoslav cases.

Uncle Sam also has other handy gimmicks like the "congagement" (containment and engagement) strategy, an uncontrolled arms race, labelling others as "rogue countries," or the "X threat" theory, etc.

In today's world, hotspots have emerged one after another. War, conflict and confrontation still plague millions of people. The arms race is getting worse and behind it is the shadow of Uncle Sam.

So who is the real threat to world peace? Who is creating so much fear and instability? The answer is quite clear.

-------- us nuc politics

NUCLEAR SPENDING TRANSFE

For the Record -
Thursday, July 5, 2001; Page GZ17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18766-2001Jul4?language=printer

For: 91 / Against: 331

The House refused to transfer $122.5 million from the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to debt reduction and programs to reduce the global spread of nuclear weapons. The vote occurred during debate on HR 2311 appropriating $23.7 billion for energy and water programs in fiscal 2002.

The NIF is a $5 billion giant laser, now under development, designed to enable the United States to maintain its aging nuclear stockpile without conducting live tests. Critics call it a boondoggle destined to fail. The amendment sought to shift $66 million to programs such as helping Russia dispose of its nuclear arsenal and about $56 million to reducing the national debt.

A yes vote was to transfer funds from the NIF for other uses.

MARYLAND

Yes No NV
Bartlett (R) NO
Cardin (D) NO
Cummings (D) YES
Ehrlich (R) Not Voting
Gilchrest (R) NO
Hoyer (D) NO
Morella (R) NO
Wynn (D) NO

VIRGINIA

Yes No NV
J. Davis (R) NO
T. Davis (R) NO
Moran (D) YES
Wolf (R) NO
Cantor (R) NO

-------- us nuc waste

Feds Halt Radioactive Shipments

The Associated Press
Thursday, July 5, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010705/aponline211030_000.htm

LOS ANGELES -- Large shipments of radioactive medical materials were halted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission over concerns their packaging could break open in an accident.

A device used to beam radiation into blood was shipped last summer from JL Shepherd & Associates of San Fernando to New York and then on to the United Kingdom. French officials then refused to accept it and complained to the commission that the packaging did not conform with U.S. regulations.

The device contains cobalt-60, a highly radioactive material. While no one had been exposed to radiation, it could cause serious injuries or death outside of its protective packaging.

NRC inspectors ordered the shipments stopped after they found the company had changed its packaging without government approval. The company declined to comment on the action.

The company now has 20 days to answer the order. It may also request a formal hearing.

-------

NUCLEAR WASTE ROUTES

For the Record -
Thursday, July 5, 2001; Page GZ17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18766-2001Jul4?language=printer

For: 102 / Against: 3 21

The House refused to provide $500,000 to expedite publication of Department of Energy trucking routes for the possible shipment of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants throughout the United States to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The department is moving toward what many lawmakers believe will be final approval of the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas as a permanent underground repository for more than 70,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. The vote occurred during debate on HR 2311 (above).

A yes vote backed DOE publication of nuclear waste shipment routes to Nevada.

MARYLAND

Yes No NV
Bartlett (R) NO
Cardin (D) NO
Cummings (D) NO
Ehrlich (R) NO
Gilchrest (R) NO
Hoyer (D) NO
Morella (R) NO
Wynn (D) NO

VIRGINIA

Yes No NV
J. Davis (R) NO
T. Davis (R) NO
Moran (D) NO
Wolf (R) NO
Cantor (R) NO

----

Feds Halt Radioactive Shipments

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Radioactive-Shipments.html

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Large shipments of radioactive medical materials were halted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission over concerns their packaging could break open in an accident.

A device used to beam radiation into blood was shipped last summer from JL Shepherd & Associates of San Fernando to New York and then on to the United Kingdom. French officials then refused to accept it and complained to the commission that the packaging did not conform with U.S. regulations.

The device contains cobalt-60, a highly radioactive material. While no one had been exposed to radiation, it could cause serious injuries or death outside of its protective packaging.

NRC inspectors ordered the shipments stopped after they found the company had changed its packaging without government approval. The company declined to comment on the action.

The company now has 20 days to answer the order. It may also request a formal hearing.

-------- us nuc politics

Helms, Bush clash over foreign policy

July 5, 2001
By Dave Boyer
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010705-84967520.htm

Conservative Sen. Jesse Helms, who began the year praising the Lord for the arrival of President Bush, has crossed swords with the administration lately on foreign policy.

Mr. Helms, North Carolina Republican, has scolded Mr. Bush for getting too friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin and is blocking the nominations of three of the top five officials at the Treasury Department in a dispute with the White House over trade policy.

While Mr. Helms says he is still a strong supporter of the administration, his actions are a departure for the man who told a conservative conference in February, "Thank the Lord, we have a new president, on whom we can rely to work with us -- not against us -- in advancing America's interests in the world."

At a recent Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Mr. Helms rebuked the president for calling Mr. Putin, a former Soviet KGB chief, "trustworthy," "a remarkable leader," and a man with whom Americans "share common values." Mr. Helms said Mr. Bush was "prematurely personalizing" his relationship with the Russian leader.

"We must not forget that under Mr. Putin's leadership, the press has once again felt the jackboot of repression; arms control treaty obligations remain unfulfilled and violated; dangerous weapons technologies have been transferred to rogue states; Georgia's and Ukraine's security has been threatened; and, a brutal, indiscriminate military campaign in Chechnya continues unabated," Mr. Helms said. "For these reasons, Mr. Putin is far from deserving the powerful political prestige and influence that comes from an excessively personal endorsement by the president of the United States."

A Senate Republican aide insisted the media are reading too much into Mr. Helms' recent tussles with the White House. "He really does like the president and wants to be helpful," the aide said. "He's not looking to pick fights at all. With Putin, he's just being true to his nature."

A spokesman for Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill said the department and the White House "are working hard to address Senator Helms' concerns" on the trade issue so that the nominees can be voted upon by the Senate.

"We are very anxious to have our nominees confirmed and are in discussions to satisfy all parties," said Treasury spokesman Rob Nichols.

Mr. Helms is concerned that the administration's implementation of a Caribbean trade pact approved last year is costing North Carolina thousands of textile jobs. His objection is preventing Treasury from getting in place the deputies who will oversee management of the public debt and security at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

An administration source said Mr. Helms wanted the White House to come up with a "regulatory fix" for the trade issue but talks are now focused on devising new legislation to address his concerns. The source said the discussions are complicated by the prospects of getting Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Montana Democrat, and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, California Republican, to agree to an eventual solution.

-------- MILITARY

-------- africa

Major African troublespots

Thursday July 5, 11:36 PM
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010705/1/18udd.html

PARIS, July 5 - The Organisation of African Unity prepares for its 37th and final annual summit against a continuing backdrop of strife which plagues the continent.

Of the 53 countries in the OAU, at least 20 are currently beset by armed conflicts of one form or another.

Here is a digest of the main troublespots:

ALGERIA

Muslim fundamentalists have waged a campaign of terror since elections were cancelled in 1992. More than 100,000 people, mainly civilians, have died since the troubles began, many of them in massacres blamed by security services on Islamic extremists.

Ethnic Berber resentment of the Arabic-language government has this year separately escalated into bloody unrest.

ANGOLA

Civil war between the Angolan government and rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola has raged almost non-stop since 1975. The death toll is estimated at well over a million, while hundreds of thousands are displaced or starving.

BURUNDI

Burundi is in the grip of a bitter civil war which has left more than 200,000 dead since 1993 as the Tutsi-run government and army crack down on Hutu rebels.

CAMEROON - NIGERIA

Border conflict over the Bakassi peninsula.

CHAD

Rebel forces have battled government troops in the northern Tibesti region since October 1998.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

The biggest and most complex African war began with a rebel insurgency against the Kinshasa regime in August 1998. The conflict involves the armies of Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia backing government forces, while rebel factions are supported by Rwanda and Uganda.

The assassination of president Laurent Kabila and the investiture of his son, Joseph, as his successor in January this year has revived prospects for peace.

The issue will be high on the Lusaka agenda.

ERITREA - ETHIOPIA

A peace agreement between the two countries was signed in December, bringing an end to a two-year war between them, which began over a border dispute and has left tens of thousands dead and more than a million homeless. Some 4,000 UN peace-keeping troops patrol the border.

GUINEA

Regular rebel insurgency across borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia since last September, with hundreds dead and a mass migration of people.

IVORY COAST

In the grip of an unprecedented political and economic crisis since the coup d'etat in December 1999, the first in the country's history, followed by riots and bloody confrontations in October and December last year.

LIBERIA

President Charles Taylor's regime faces what it calls armed "dissidents" in the north and is at odds with its neighbours in Guinea and Sierra Leone, which accuse it of destabilisation. The UN Security Council this year slapped stringent sanctions on Liberia, blaming Taylor for arms for diamonds deals with Sierra Leone's rebels.

NIGERIA

The introduction of the Islamic sharia code in some states in north of the country from 1999 has proved a flashpoint for violence, leaving more than 2,000 people dead. Africa's most populous nation is prey to bloody clashes of a religious, communal or ethnic nature.

RWANDA - UGANDA

Both back rebel movements in the DRC, while Rwanda is still recovering from the genocide of a civil war between Hutu and Tutsi factions which left between 500,000 and 800,000 dead in 1994.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, meanwhile, is fighting rebel factions in the north and west of the country.

Troops of the two east African countries clashed last year at Kisangani, inside the DRC.

SENEGAL

Separatists in the southern region of Casamance have been conducting an open rebellion for 18 years. Two peace pacts were signed with Dakar in May, but splits in rebel ranks and ambushes on civilians have claimed dozens of lives this year.

SIERRA LEONE

The country was devastated by civil war from 1991, with massacres and other atrocities blamed mainly on the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Sierra Leone now hosts the biggest UN peacekeeping operation in the world, but the RUF has yet to be dislodged from diamond-rich land it holds in the east.

SOMALIA

Rival militias have been in conflict since 1991, carved up among rival clan warlords. Last year, interim institutions were set up by Somali politicians and civic leaders, but their transitional government formed in August is not recognised by most warlords, who consider it yet another faction and are trying up a rival administration.

SUDAN

The country has been in the grip of a civil war since 1983 pitting the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south, mostly Christian and animist, against the Arab Muslim north. War and famine have claimed more than a million lives.

WESTERN SAHARA

Morocco and the Polisario Front dispute sovereignty of the former Spanish colony and have been at war since 1975, though a ceasefire has been in force since 1991. The UN has this year abandoned a plan for a self-determination referendum in the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic created by Polisario (and a member of the OAU, if unrecognised by the United Nations).

----

Ghana leader to strengthen democracy

July 5, 2001
By Gus Constantine
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010705-6417268.htm

Ghana's John Agyekum Kufuor, Africa's newest democratically elected leader, basked last week in the glow of U.S. approval of his ballot victory over the man picked by his predecessor, Jerry Rawlings, who ruled for most of the past 22 years.

The approval was not surprising. After all, President Kufuor played the music America most wanted to hear: "Our government will emphasize liberal democratic values, a free press, free markets and cooperation with peacekeepers in our part of the continent," the 63-year-old leader told The Washington Times in an hourlong interview.

"This is the first time since independence that the people of Ghana have had the chance through the ballot box to change governments," he noted.

The visit was Mr. Kufuor's first trip to Washington since his December election triumph over John Atta Mills, Mr. Rawlings' vice president. He came to Washington after attending the U.N.-sponsored AIDS conference in New York.

In Washington, the new Ghanaian leader met with President Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others in the administration, as well as with congressional leaders. In New York, he met with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who also was attending the AIDS conference.

The round of meetings was accompanied by immediate rewards as the International Monetary Fund announced that it would free about $66 million in poverty-reduction funds for Ghana and that it "welcomes the new government's commitment toward serious debt management."

Calamities beset country

Ghana these days needs all the financial help it can get. The country has been ravaged by floods and starved for capital and is suffering from an erosion in the price of its principal export, cocoa.

To emphasize the seriousness of his commitment to democratic values and to solicit investments to rescue Ghana's economy, Mr. Kufuor brought with him key members of his administration, including Foreign Minister Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, Finance Minister Yaw Osafo-Maafo, several promoters of business opportunities and his national security chief.

All attended the Times interview.

"Democracy cannot survive in a climate of abject poverty," said Mr. Osafo-Maafo, emphasizing the role U.S. financial support could play.

Mr. Kufuor promised to continue his nation's work in regional peacekeeping, but added that "training for the men who must serve in these missions is essential."

Despite the peaceful transfer of power at the Jan. 7 inauguration, Ghana is a democracy on a tightrope.

Mr. Kufuor has suggested there will be a full accounting of his predecessor's 22-year rule, and Mr. Rawlings' followers have hinted back that a search for retribution could provoke another coup.

Mr. Rawlings had been one of Africa's longest-ruling, most successful leaders, but at the same time one of the most polarizing individuals. He was praised for relinquishing power after his 1979 coup, but seized it back two years later. He won an uncontested election in 1991 and a second term in 1996, outpolling Mr. Kufuor in a free and fair election, then kept his promise to retire last year.

Along the road, Mr. Rawlings abandoned his earlier commitment to socialism, accepted IMF-dictated fiscal austerity, liberalized foreign-investment rules and lent a hand with West African peacekeeping. In recognition of these accomplishments, President Clinton included the capital of Accra on his itinerary in 1998 when he undertook a visit to Africa's emerging democracies.

Ethnic tensions persist

Mr. Rawlings was accused repeatedly of corruption, political killings and lesser misdeeds.

A large part of the opposition to Mr. Rawlings, who has maternal links with the Ewe people of the eastern Volta region, comes from the Ashanti, who inhabit southern Ghana, centered on the city of Kumasi, and who in pre-colonial days were an imperial power in their region.

The Ashanti have never forgiven Mr. Rawlings for executing several of their leaders during his days as military strongman.

Mr. Kufuor, himself an Ashanti, brushes aside suggestions that his government may be in danger from the opposition. In an interview with the Associated Press, he called such suggestions "a very fast passing phase." But he is believed to be under great pressure from his supporters to call Mr. Rawlings to account.

The solution, he suggested, may be to create a commission to examine the accusations against his predecessor.

Whether Mr. Kufuor can find the will to resist the pressures while serving with both justice and compassion will be key to whether the transfer of power in Ghana will be peaceful or troubled.

In other parts of Africa, founding fathers and long-reigning government leaders have relinquished power at the ballot box only to find political doors slammed behind them.

Mr. Rawlings has turned to a post-presidential career in the service of the World Health Organization, battling to eradicate malaria in Africa. The career change brings to mind the efforts of former President Jimmy Carter to combat some of Africa's most-dreaded diseases.

Nkrumah was revered

Ghana in 1957 became the first West African nation to regain its independence after colonialism was imposed over virtually the entire continent in the late 19th century.

Its first leader, Kwame Nkrumah, was a visionary, whom Ghanaians called "Osagyefo" -- "Redeemer." His dream was to create a United States of Africa, an ideal still cherished in some African circles.

He and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser founded the Organization of African Unity.

Mr. Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup, triggering a series of military putsches over 11 years, with two civilian governments sandwiched in between. This made Ghana the stereotypical African country in the eyes of many observers beyond the continent, who said Africa was victimized politically by two evils -- soldiers who could not rule, alternating with civilians who could not rule honestly.

This cycle was ended in 1979 with another military overthrow of government, this one by Mr. Rawlings, then a flight lieutenant.

Mr. Kufuor, during this period, concentrated on the legal profession after studying in London, plus a stint at Oxford. He went from private law practice to a parliamentary career, then became the center of a political movement in opposition to military rule.

He was imprisoned by one of the coup leaders in 1972 and again after Mr. Rawlings' second coup in 1981.

In 1996, he tried and failed to unseat the soldier-turned-civilian. But last year, the quest for a democracy and free enterprise bore fruit as Mr. Kufuor led his New Patriotic Party to victory.

-------- arms sales

Court Indicts Ex-President Of Argentina
Menem Accused of Leading Conspiracy to Sell Weapons

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 5, 2001; Page A08
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19678-2001Jul4?language=printer

BUENOS AIRES, July 4 -- Former president Carlos Menem, whose 10-year administration was dogged by allegations of corruption, was indicted today on charges he headed a conspiracy to sell $100 million worth of weapons and explosives to Croatia and Ecuador while he was in office in the 1990s.

Federal Judge Jorge Urso also froze up to $3 million of Menem's assets while an investigation continues into the extent of the former president's alleged personal gain from the deal. Urso placed Menem under house arrest June 7 in connection with the arms probe because of fears he might flee the country.

Urso also indicted three of Menem's former ministers, including former army chief of staff Martin Balza and former defense minister Antonio Erman Gonzalez, both of whom had previously been detained. But the scandal widened with the indictment of Menem's respected former foreign minister Guido di Tella, who remained free pending the outcome of his trial, judicial authorities said.

Menem, who made Argentina Washington's closest ally in Latin America as he implemented broad free market reforms, is accused of heading a conspiracy to sell 6,500 tons of Argentine-made weapons. They were officially bound for Venezuela and Panama, but were diverted to Croatia and Ecuador in the early and mid-1990s. The sales to Croatia violated a U.N. arms embargo, while the sales to Ecuador violated official Argentine policy. Argentina was one of the guarantors of a peace agreement after Ecuador and Peru waged a brief border war in 1995.

Menem's arrest is part of a trend in Latin America in which judicial authorities are going after allegedly corrupt politicians and former dictators. In Peru, authorities are investigating corruption charges against former president Alberto Fujimori. In Chile, retired Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who ruled that country for 17 years, was indicted in January. In Paraguay, a federal judge is seeking the extradition of former dictator Alfredo Stroessner from Brazil to put him on trial.

Menem and his supporters have denounced his arrest as a witch hunt and insisted he is innocent. Today, one of his attorneys said Menem would appeal the judge's orders. Oscar Roger said that Menem's indictment would only aggravate Argentina's political and economic crises. "Menem still represents a key piece of Argentine politics," he said.

Although Menem remains president of the opposition Peronist party, his support has dwindled. The party has split between a faction led by powerful provincial governors that opposes Menem and a smaller faction of his supporters.

Menem's arrest has been widely applauded by Argentines. Many blame him for the massive corruption that occurred when he opened the country's economy, and remember his taste for fast sports cars and French champagne as the national poverty rate soared during his two terms in office from 1989 to 1999.

Public outrage was sparked this week when Menem, who is spending his house arrest at a friend's mansion in a Buenos Aires suburb, hosted a lavish 71st birthday party Monday with his new wife, a 36-year-old former Miss Universe from Chile. Today, Urso restricted the number of guests Menem can receive.

-------- balkans

Rebel chief worked for UN-funded force in Kosovo
The leader of the Macedonian rebels was originally paid by the UN

Chris Stephen, in Pristina
THE IRISH TIMES,
Thursday, July 05, 2001
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2001/0705/wor12.htm

MACEDONIA: The co-ordination of the international community in the Balkans has been thrown into confusion by revelations that the leader of Macedonia's rebel army was a leading figure in Kosovo's UN- funded civil defence force.

Before launching war in Macedonia, Commander Gezim Ostremi was paid by the UN to help set up the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), being appointed its chief-of-staff.

Now President Bush has banned Commander Ostremi from entry to the US, and accused five key members of the KPC of aiding the rebels.

Yet the United Nations says it will take no action against these five men, all still serving officers, because Washington has yet to pass on details of what the men are supposed to have done.

This row comes just as the US and the EU are groping for a joint response to the escalating violence in Macedonia, which yesterday saw rebels fighting government forces in several places in the northern mountains.

Yet while one part of NATO tries to stop the guerrillas crossing the border from neighbouring Kosovo, in Kosovo itself other parts of NATO and the UN are busy paying and training them.

The KPC, formed at the end of the Kosovo war as part of a deal between the former guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the UN. In return for the guerrillas disbanding, they would be allowed to reform, a new force, funded and trained by the UN but organised for civil defence.

In fact, the KPC's role is a polite fiction. Because Kosovo is still officially part of Yugoslavia, it can have no army. Yet Kosovo's Albanian majority are keen to have an embryonic army to protect them should NATO ever withdraw. The result is an awkward compromise.

The KPC is an army without weapons which trains for war, but pledges publicly that its job is limited to fight forest fires and natural disasters.

Now this delicate balance has been thrown out of gear by evidence that it is feeding men into battle in Macedonia.

The lack of close supervision meant it was weeks before the UN realised Commander Ostremi had left to command the rebels in Macedonia - with some assuming he had gone on holiday.

NATO provides the 5,000strong KPC with training in a wide range of military skills, including transport, communications, map-reading and medicine, though there is a ban on firearms training. The UN pays its $7 million per year wage bill.

Inside Kosovo, the KPC has been a success: Its units, who wear military uniforms, have military ranks and carry out military drills, are well disciplined. Fears that they would carry out revenge attacks against their former Serb enemies have proved groundless.

Washington's blacklist includes not just Commander Ostremi, but his replacement as chief-of-staff at the KPC, Commander Daut Haradinaj.

Also on the list are the commander and deputy commander of the KPC's elite force, the Rapid Reaction Corps, plus the leaders of two of its six regional divisions, Commandrer Sami Lushtaku and Commander Mustafa Rrustem.

In a statement last Friday President Bush said the US would restrict entry of these men for seeking to "undermine peace and stability in the region" as well as those "responsible for wartime atrocities". He did not specify who is blamed for which offence, but said the move aimed to cut fund-raising in the US for such groups.

Commander Rrustem yesterday said he was mystified by the American decision to ban him. "I have no information about this. We read about it in the newspapers, we are not accused of anything."

He denied having involvement in the war in Macedonia. "Maybe some people want to go and help them [the Macedonians]. There are links from ancient time. But for us what is important is the KPC."

Commander Rrustem, known as "Remi" earned fame during the Kosovo war as one of the most successful guerrilla commanders. He has since become a favourite with NATO commanders, whose glowing commendations line the walls of his office.

Certainly if the Americans have reservations about him they have yet to show it: on Tuesday two separate US army teams came to his base to train his men.

But the fact remains that there is little the UN can do to stop KPC members dashing off to fight in Macedonia, with NATO units unable to adequately police the mountainous border between the two countries.

A KPC spokesman, Mr Shemsi Syla, said Commander Ostremi is no longer a member, but denied he had been sacked. "Our regulations say that you are no longer a member of the KPC if you fail to report for work. Ostremi has not reported for work for some time."

---

Foot patrols seizing rebels' supplies

July 5, 2001
By Colleen Barry
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010705-91553956.htm

CAMP BONDSTEEL, Yugoslavia - Two years into their mission in Kosovo, U.S. forces have made a significant strategic shift, launching foot patrols in the mountains to cut supply lines to ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia - and preserve the fragile peace in Kosovo.

While U.S. troops have mounted foot patrols throughout their deployment, the key difference is that U.S. forces since last month have been operating under specific orders to increase surveillance and interdictions along the rugged mountain border.

"There is no way to shut the border completely and there are many places [Albanian rebels] can get supplies from other than the Kosovo border," Col. Anthony Tata, deputy commander of the U.S. forces in Kosovo, said in an interview Tuesday outlining the new operation. "But it is obvious based on the quantity of equipment we have received that we have had an impact."

Since sending out the first patrols on June 7, U.S. forces based in Kosovo have intercepted and seized a convoy of five rebel SUVs and four mule trains - all laden with arms, food, clothing and medical supplies, and all making their way to reinforce rebel lines in neighboring Macedonia.

They also have secured at least five caches of weapons hidden under brush, and detained 124 rebels.

So far, the rebels have not fought back, Col. Tata said. One soldier, however, lost a foot last week when he stepped on a land mine.

NATO command in Pristina ordered the mission shift in June following a NATO-brokered peace that calmed fighting between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serbian troops in the Presovo valley in neighboring Serbia, which borders the U.S. sector in Kosovo.

That success freed resources to launch the intensified patrols under the command of American Brig. Gen. William C. David at the same moment that the rebel Albanian insurgency in Macedonia intensified, Col. Tata said.

The rebels are battling in northern Macedonia, near the Kosovo border, in what they say is a campaign for greater rights for that country's ethnic Albanian minority. The Macedonian government says the rebels are separatists trying to carve out an ethnic Albanian region.

"Gen. David's intent here is important. He wants to show resolve in assisting [Macedonia] by disrupting logistical and recruiting operations in our sector that are supported by the National Liberation Army," as the Macedonian rebel force is known, Col. Tata said.

The U.S. mission to maintain security in Kosovo remains the primary goal, he said, adding: "The movement and the smuggling is disruptive to the safe and secure environment in Kosovo."

One particularly productive night in the Sar mountains, four U.S. infantry soldiers seized rebel Albanian SUVs maneuvering a muddy, mountaintop goat track toward the Macedonian border, blocking the lead vehicle in a ravine.

The impressive take on June 8 was a blow to the rebels' resupply efforts. It included rifles, machine guns, ammunition drums and mortar components, as well as uniforms, boots, bottled water, cans of food, bags of flour, medical supplies and 50,000 German marks - worth about $25,000 - which Col. Tata believes was the rebel payroll.

"This was a dangerous mission. Every rebel in these vehicles had a loaded weapon and there were 11 that they saw," Col. Tata said. The four soldiers captured six rebels without resistance, and the others fled.

Helicopters moved in immediately to secure the area and prevent the rebels from regrouping and trying to retake the supplies. Ground forces followed, helping with the detainees and removing seized equipment.

That was the first success. A day earlier, patrols found four cases of mortar ammunition hidden beneath a deadfall. Rather than securing the arms, they placed the cache under surveillance. On June 9, U.S. soldiers captured four rebels returning for the weapons.

Battalion commanders then turned their focus to mule trains spotted in the mountains near the border - intercepting four in one weekend. The seizure included 10 rocket-propelled grenades, 16 cases of 12.7 ammunition, 23 cases of explosives, 103 82mm mortar rounds and 23 boxes of fuses, along with cans of chicken, bags of bread and brand-new boots.

The interdictions so far have focused on a radius of several miles where reconnaissance teams identified a heavily traveled network of foot paths.

"They have been operating in this area for a long time," Col. Tata said. "They have a very good information network. Everybody seems to be connected. The shepherd will report to the woodcutter that the U.S. forces are here. So you have to be somewhat crafty about how you develop your patrol plans."

---

New world order beset by old world's flaws

SIMON JENKINS,
UK Times
WEDNESDAY JULY 04 2001
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-2001230410,00.html

Slobodan Milosevic's defence yesterday before the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague was blunt. "That's your problem" he told the judge, Richard May, when asked if he would like to hear the indictments. The court was illegal and the accusations false. To Mr Milosevic this was a show trial to cover Nato's own crimes against the Serb people.

The Hague trial is hailed as a triumph for the new world order. The architect of appalling acts against a civilian population now finds himself before a public court. He may be no more than an overblown mobster, but he must account for himself. This is not the smoke of battle, the clamour of the mob or even the rough justice of the world media. This is a court of law. Those whose deeds have outraged world opinion are to be weighed in the scales.

I may be sceptical of modern hip-shooting Western interventionism, but I cannot defend Mr Milosevic against the charges laid before him. If America - and this is America's doing - means to police the world, I prefer it to use bribes and judges than bombs and missiles. No, Mr Milosevic is the problem and a court is the proper theatre for a solution.

Yet as I watched Mr Milosevic's performance, I felt a terrible doubt. Western policy towards the Balkans has so often been counterproductive, could this trial merely arouse Slav opinion in favour of the accused, as the bombing of Iraq has for President Saddam Hussein? Rather than let Mr Milosevic rot in a local jail, the West has put him on a public platform. It has invited him to sneer "That's your problem" at the pomp, the politesse and the legal courtesies of those who so humiliated his country. Terrible deeds will be laid at his door, but he too will tell tales of devious Western diplomacy and horrific Nato bombing.

In reality, what Mr Milosevic thinks of the Hague court does not matter. What matters is what the outside world thinks, and especially that part of the world to which The Hague is supposed to send a message. Russia's Vladimir Putin asked on Monday whether the trial would really bring "democracy, stability and predictability closer in the Balkans". His answer was "I doubt it". International justice, like its domestic counterpart, must be rooted in a general legitimacy and consent. This is not because otherwise it is not justice, but because otherwise it will not work. It will carry no conviction and serve as no deterrent.

As it is, I doubt if the Albanian gangsters currently cleansing Kosovo of its Serbs and Gypsies regard themselves as remotely at risk from any war crimes tribunal. The reason is that they know Nato is on their side, indeed is watching as it happens. The West never demanded the extradition to The Hague of Franjo Tudjman of Croatia, though his anti-Serb deeds in Krajina, committed with American support, were no less "crimes against humanity" than those of Mr Milosevic at the same time in Bosnia. Nato did not regard crimes against Serbs as crimes.

Any visitor to Belgrade (or Moscow) will attest that those whose respect the Hague tribunal most needs to win, those fighting tribal secession round the world, regard it as biased. It is seen as the agent of Nato, a force whose kill-rate in former Yugoslavia could yet exceed that attributable to Mr Milosevic. The truth is that outsiders who intervene on one side in a civil war can hardly claim to be even-handed arbiters of its horror. Either way, if one side's case is to be heard, so should the other. Mr Milosevic may be king villain, but Nato troops have made no effort to arrest his henchmen, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, in the Bosnia they claim to have "pacified" at vast expense. Attempts to arrest Croatian war criminals have been half-hearted. How much more plausible would this trial be if it were even-handed? As always in the Balkans, the longer one is stuck in the morass the more stuck one becomes. Nato's early interventions had the best of intentions, but the longer it stays the less impartial it appears. Nato's Secretary-General, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, was a loud and naive cheerleader for Albanian expansionism. His chickens are coming to roost in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where he wants British troops to "disarm" his former friends. If our troops cannot disarm Bosnians, Kosovans or the IRA, they are unlikely to disarm the Albanians of northern Macedonia.

International jurisprudence would indeed win respect if it could convincingly embrace both wars of aggression and wars of civil suppression. Jaw, jaw, even among lawyers, is better than war, war. But the Hague tribunal bears more similarity to a post-victory show trial than to any impartial court of justice. To find its villain, the Americans had to offer blood money to the Serb leader, Zoran Djindjic, money that is sure to end up with Mr Milosevic's black-suited mafiosi now gathering in Belgrade's Marriott Hotel. These people did well from sanctions. They mean to do well from "aid".

The Hague court hopes to act as a template for a permanent international "order". This is unlikely. The Americans support such ad hoc trials, where they can control the terms of reference through their UN veto, but they are refusing to recognise the proposed International Criminal Court. They do not want their presidents or generals, pilots or spies, subject to the same treatment as Mr Milosevic. They do not want them seized in international airports or dragged before international courts. There must be no question of such courts even hearing, let alone dispensing, justice to America's possible embarrassment.

This concept of sovereign immunity will be precisely Mr Milosevic's defence. Even Geoffrey Robertson, QC, gung-ho "bomber for humanity", finds American hypocrisy over the Hague court hard to stomach. In his new book, Crimes against Humanity, he criticises a superpower that bombs those it dislikes yet will ratify neither the International Criminal Court nor the Landmines Convention. The US remains, says Robertson, "a truculent opponent of the demand for universal human rights".

Whether or not this is a new world order, it is certainly an order for the rich and powerful. Every Serb I have met, indeed every Slav, believes that the pilots (British or American) who cluster-bombed Nis marketplace with such butchery in 1999 should be prosecuted for a war crime. The Palestinians feel the same of the Israeli commander during the 1982 Beirut massacre, now Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Argentinians feel likewise of those who ordered the sinking of the Belgrano.

It is one thing to protest that the circumstance of war alters cases, quite another to refuse to answer the charge. There cannot be one international law for the victors and another for the vanquished. Yet challenge Nato over its Kosovo bombing and Tony Blair and Lord Robertson cry in unison with Mr Milosevic: "That's your problem."

Mr Milosevic is already history. He was never toppled by Nato bombs. He was voted out of power by his own people, a decision they bravely enforced on the streets. Many Serbs longed to try Mr Milosevic in their own courts, to help them to purge their own past and strengthen their shaky political and judicial institutions. The West let this process happen in Argentina, South Africa and more recently Chile. Why not in Yugoslavia, which so desperately needs strengthening? Defenders of the Hague trial argue that progress towards world justice will always be by hesitant and sometimes devious steps. Justice must pick off its bullies when it can. The sight of Mr Milosevic standing between guards in a courtroom must make some dictators shake.

Like Mr Putin, I doubt it. The cardinal fact of international justice is that it still depends which side you are on. America bombed Sudan with total impunity. The Hague court is so partial as to seem merely old-style imperialism. Those old men and women in funny gowns can hardly seem a threat to the tyrants cum freedom-fighters of Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Liberia, Burma and Cambodia. They have been turning a deaf ear to Western justice for centuries. When even America does not want an international court, nor do they.

This does not make what is happening in The Hague insignificant or wrong. But if this is the new world order, it needs to look less like the old one. simon.jenkins@thetimes.co.uk

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THE ILLEGITIMATE HAGUE TRIBUNAL

Edith Villastrigo,
July 5, 2001
National Legislative Director,
Women Strike For Peace,
1111 University Blvd. W. 1005,
Silver Spring, Maryland 20901 USA

The arrest, detention and delivery of President Slobodan Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was done under U.S. threat to withhold promised economic aid unless Milosevic was brought to The Hague. "It was less about justice than about money." (NY Times 6/29/01)

Americans frequently confuse the Hague Tribunal, set up largely by the United States in 1993, with the old established (1907), well-respected International Court of Justice, or World Court, at The Hague.

In fact, the Tribunal bears no resemblance to anything in any judicial or legal system. As a rule, courts presume a person innocent until proven guilty. Normally courts do not act simultaneously as investigators, accusers, prosecutors and judges, which is exactly what the Hague Tribunal does, and more. It conducts a media campaign to force an early appearance of guilt of the accused.

Raymond K. Kent, Emeritus Professor of History, UCA at Berkeley, stated: "The International Penal Tribunal was set up, organized and funded not as an unbiased world court of justice, but as a political instrument directed against a single party in the conflict: the Serbs. Like the media, the Tribunal ignored the Croatian attack on Serbs in Western Slovenia which initiated the rounds of ethnic cleansing." ("Contextualizing Hate -- the Hague Tribunal, the Clinton Administration and the Serbs." Dec. 1996)

According to Prof. Kent, it was Madeleine Albright (then Ambassador to the U.N.) who "found the startup funds in the amount of $6 million, personally hired the first legal team of 25 jurists and made no secret of her wishes that the Tribunal should go after the Serbs." The Hague Tribunal sets a dangerous precedent. Because it was created by a subcommittee of the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. holds veto control over what future tribunals are set up in which country, on what charges and with what judges.

President Bush in a recent statement declared that "an indictment by the Tribunal can be seen as an endorsement of NATO's campaign." So those who perpetuated the war become the prosecutors of the victims of the war! The sole authority in international judicial matters, according to the provisions of the U.N. Charter, rest with the older and well-known U.N. body, the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

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Tribunal Rejects Prosecution Appeal

By ANTHONY DEUTSCH
The Associated Press
http://www.serbianna.com/news/07_05/01.shtml

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - An appeals chamber of the U.N. war crimes tribunal upheld a 40-year sentence Thursday for a Bosnian Serb who pleaded guilty to murdering Muslims, but rejected a prosecution request to reverse his acquittal for genocide.

The decision in the case of Goran Jelisic, who had been in charge of a detention camp in northern Bosnia, was the latest setback in the prosecution's attempt to win its first conviction of genocide charges in the Balkan wars.

But in a ruling that could be important in future cases, the court said the lower court had ``erred in law and fact'' when it found inadequate evidence of genocide against the Muslims in Brcko, the Bosnian town near the Croatian border.

Jelisic, who called himself the ``Serb Adolf'' after Adolf Hitler, pleaded guilty to 31 counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the rules or customs of war in Brcko in the summer of 1992.

He was convicted of 12 murders, although he had boasted to his prisoners of killing at least 83 and that he enjoyed killing people before drinking his morning coffee.

In its 1999 decision, the trial court denounced Jelisic as ``repugnant, bestial and sadistic.'' It said his ``cold-blooded commission of murders and mistreatment of people attest to a profound contempt for mankind and the right to life.''

The appeals court rejected the defense motion to review the 40-year sentence and reconsider mitigating circumstances of the former farm mechanic who was just 23 when the crimes were committed.

Jelisic sat nervously, fidgeting with his hands, as Judge Mohamed Shahabuddeen read the complex 75-page judgment.

On the genocide issue, the appeals court was critical of the trial chamber, implying that it had been incompetent when it found no support for the genocide conviction.

The trial court had said the evidence did not prove Jelisic's intent to kill ``in whole or in part'' a large number of Muslims, even within his limited area of control.

But the appeals chamber unanimously disagreed. It said the record ``provided the basis for a reasonable chamber to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the respondent had the intent to destroy the Muslim group in Brcko.''

It said Jelisic's personal intention to kill Muslims - because they were Muslims - was enough to prove genocide, even if there was no master plan to wipe out them out as a group.

At the same time, a majority of the judges said that referring to case for retrial was impractical, given the limited resources and manpower of the tribunal.

``In the circumstances ... it is not appropriate to order that the case be remitted and declines to reverse the acquittal,'' the court ruled.

Although the court did not specify further, much of the tribunal's attention and resources in the next few years will be devoted to the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who was transferred to The Hague last week and arraigned on Tuesday for alleged crimes in Kosovo in 1999.

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How electronic eavesdropping keeps a small part of Cyprus forever British

By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent,
UK Independent
05 July 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=81881

Why are the British in Cyprus? Long after two world wars and a Cold War and a miserable adventure in Suez, still we do not seem to be able to shake ourselves off the island and our dreamy, largely empty sovereign military bases.

Almost half a century ago, we had 40,000 troops on the island. Today, just 4,500 are left to man its desolate air base at Akrotiri and, along with tens of thousands of British, German and Swedish tourists, drink the island's execrable wine. So why are we there?

In Ottoman times, the Turkish fleet would fire a salute each time it passed the Teke Mosque on the edge of the Larnaca salt lake in honour of the Prophet's aunt, Um Haram, who was buried beneath the delicate brown dome. From the Crusades, Cyprus had always inspired military and political hopes.

Long before the British turned it into a colony after the First World War, Theodore Herzl had suggested to the British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain that the island ­ rented from Turkey under an 1878 agreement ­ could become a provisional Jewish homeland before Palestine became available. For the British, however, it was always a strategic imperial asset.

They offered the island to Greece in the 1914-18 war in a vain attempt to bring the pro-German king on to the Allied side. In the Second World War, as 30,000 Cypriots volunteered for the Allied cause ­ believing this would earn them independence after the war ­ the Italians bombed Nicosia airport.

But when the Cold War began, the Foreign Office decided that British "defence interests" meant the island could never expect its freedom. It was this that started Eoka's uprising for independence.

In 1956, even as British sentries manned road-blocks across the island, RAF bombers were taking off from Cyprus to bomb Suez. Egyptian guerrillas were flown into Larnaca for interrogation and ­ according to at least one survivor ­ to be tortured.

Even after a cruel war of independence, the British clung on to their three bases. Anachronism though they were, they came to be seen as R-and-R operations, the garrisons more interested in drinking ­ and sometimes fighting ­ in the beach resort of Ayia Napa. In the worst case of its kind, in September 1994, a young Danish tour guide called Louise Jensen was dragged from her boyfriend by three members of the Royal Green Jackets, raped and murdered. Allan Ford, Justin Fowler and Geoff Pernell were convicted less than two years later amid much bitterness among the Cypriots. Had the girl been a Cypriot, it was said, the three would have been lynched.

If Cyprus was a low-grade staging post during the 1991 Gulf War, however, the real reason for the British presence today has nothing to do with colonial power. The domed listening station on the top of Mount Troodos and the Dhekelia and Akrotiri listening bases ­ their electronic eavesdropping apparatus can penetrate as far as Siberia and Iran ­ are the cause of "our" continued miniature rule on the island.

In this context, it is not surprising that the British are determined to construct their new antenna: "security" comes first; even if it's not Cypriot security.

---

Trouble under the sun - but this time, the Army takes a real beating
Dozens of soldiers and police were hurt when an RAF base in Cyprus was attacked by demonstrators angry over the arrest of an MP

By Kim Sengupta and Tabitha Morgan in Nicosia
05 July 2001
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=81883

At first light, with the whiff of tear gas still lingering, they began clearing the broken glass and burnt-out cars at RAF Akrotiri, and patching up the walking wounded at the nearby Episkopi base.

In London, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, declared the mayhem was "completely unacceptable". He was not, of course, the first minister of the Crown to be concerned about serious trouble in Cyprus. The Mediterranean island has for a long time become synonymous with violence ­ brawls, stabbings, rape and murder ­ involving British forces.

The forces say they have cleaned up their act. And, indeed, Tuesday night's eruption was a bit more than servicemen behaving badly. The detention of a Cypriot MP and his rescue attempt by 1,000 enraged Cypriots, injuring 43 soldiers and policemen and causing £300,000 of damage, is a sign of an increasingly strident antipathy to the British presence.

The MP, Marios Matsakis, has been a vociferous critic of foreign military bases on his island 40 years after independence. He and his supporters have, in the past, protested about soldiers using as target practice a monument to a local man killed by a grenade. This time Mr Matsakis climbed a new 300ft communications mast at Akrotiri to plant a Cypriot flag. He and many of his constituents claim the mast presents a cancer risk.

Mr Matsakis's arrest was followed by five hours of rioting. Gangs of youths, many of them drunk, some of them masked, charged into the RAF compound, showering the security forces, in riot gear, with paving stones, bricks and fire-bombs.

Twenty-two vehicles were set alight. Some of them were military Range Rovers, but Cypriot vehicles, too, were torched and a number of tourist cars attacked. Four terrified holidaymakers had to be rescued by military policemen.

The police countered with water cannon and tear gas as helicopters pinpointed the ringleaders with spotlights.

"Our policemen received a real beating," said Brigadier David Ratcliffe, administrator of the British sovereign bases on the island, surveying the destruction yesterday. Indeed, the ferocity of Tuesday's rioting shocked many Cypriots as well.

Mr Matsakis, however, was relishing the role of the modest hero who has taken on the big battalions and won. He was also keen to predict calamities. "These satanic antennae will kill children," he announced. "I have done my duty and have no regrets."

The official position of the Greek Cypriot government is to support the British line that the cancer fears are unfounded. However, the Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides could see which way his countrymen's opinion was blowing, and criticised London for starting construction before "consultation with the Cypriot government had been completed".

An exasperated Mr Straw insisted: "The Cypriot government has been fully consulted. A huge amount of effort has gone in to consult the local people and to satisfy them that these transmissions are safe."

Tuesday night's violence only abated after Mr Matsakis, who had claimed parliamentary privilege while in custody, was released to the crowd. His actions were not prompted by anti-British bias, he stressed. After all he had spent eight years in the Territorial Army while living in England.

But he was eager to point out that he has first-hand experience of the brutality which has periodically exploded from British servicemen on the island. Six years ago, as a forensic pathologist, he helped investigate the murder of Louise Jensen, a Danish tour guide killed by three riflemen from the Royal Green Jackets.

The murder became a highly emotive symbol of how badly things had gone wrong in the British forces. Ms Jensen was on her way home riding pillion on her Cypriot boyfriend's motorcycle, when they were both knocked down. The boyfriend was beaten up and she was bludgeoned with a spade after drunken attempts to rape her.

The three soldiers were tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. But the case focused attention on the culture of binge drinking and casual violence among the personnel serving in the island.

There have been a series of other incidents. Two English tourists, Barry Ford and Shane Bell, were viciously assaulted by soldiers from the King's Regiment; a group of Royal Marines were fined for running around drunk and naked; three soldiers from the Royal Signals were fined for indecent exposure. Each episode received extensive media coverage in Cyprus, fuelling resentment at the British. Mr Matsakis and his supporters claim the protest was, at least partly, a result of that resentment.

Cyprus is Britain's most important base overseas and a prized posting compared to Sierra Leone, Kosovo or Northern Ireland. There is no living rough or malaria, no hostile RUF, KLA or IRA. Apart from periodic exercises, work is mostly restricted to mornings with afternoons and nights free.

Many of the soldiers take advantage of the opportunities offered to go swimming, sailing, and scuba-diving. But for others the drinking would begin at midday and extend past midnight in the bars of Ayia Napa. The resort is well known for drinking, casual sex, and fights between squaddies and locals.

The Ministry of Defence clamped down after the bad publicity, and service personnel were ordered to stay away from the centre of Ayia Napa and its bars. The latest violence, say the Army, has been orchestrated by unscrupulous politicians.

Captain Rupert Greenwood, of the Queens Royal Hussars, said yesterday: "What happened was appalling. There may have been problems at Ayia Napa in the past, but that is certainly not the case now. What we have is some people preying on fears of the locals over this mast. It is cynical, destructive and totally unjustified."

-----

Both Sides in Macedonia Approve NATO Truce Plan

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-balkans.html

SKOPJE (Reuters) - Macedonian forces and Albanian guerrillas signed up to an indefinite NATO-brokered cease-fire on Thursday in a surprise bid to foster progress in deadlocked peace talks and pave the way for rebel disarmament.

The separate truce agreements, the first such concrete deal in an Albanian rebellion that has brought Macedonia to the brink of civil war in less than five months, take effect from midnight (6 p.m. EDT), a government source said.

Diplomats cautioned that the truce was merely the first step on a rocky road to peace and stressed that Macedonian government hard-liners had only agreed to halt their daily artillery bombardment and helicopter attacks on the rebels on that basis.

``If the hawks didn't believe this was the necessary catalyst to get things moving, they wouldn't have signed up,'' a diplomatic source said. ``And if it doesn't prove to be that catalyst, then this cease-fire will just unravel like so many others.''

A Macedonian Defense Ministry official said the truce was part of a plan to secure a political deal by July 15, allowing NATO troops to enter Macedonia on a weapons collecting mission if the rebel National Liberation Army (NLA) agrees to disarm.

NATO WADES IN

The alliance, whose special envoy Pieter Feith secured the NLA cease-fire first with European Union help, has become a major player in the search for a deal despite its public insistence it would only get involved on the ground after a lasting truce.

``This is an agreement between the NLA and NATO and the Macedonians and NATO. The two sides did not talk,'' a diplomatic source said, adding there were strong signals from the NLA it was prepared to disarm, but only after a political deal.

Western envoys in Skopje warned, however, that the arrival of NATO troops remained a distant prospect and that considerable doubts existed about the chance of buying off all the guerrillas with the political reforms they say their rebellion seeks.

``This is really just a confidence-building measure. There's a long way to go in this horse race,'' one diplomat said.

Albanian politicians, whom the Macedonians have blamed for stalling peace talks with radical demands for constitutional change, welcomed the truce as a victory for Western involvement.

``A cease-fire creates a better climate for political dialogue under international mediation,'' said Azizi Pollozhani, the vice-president of the Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity.

But the foreign participation Albanians want, a key rebel demand, is a non-starter with the Macedonians. They fear a formal Western role in the shape of a peace conference touted by several EU countries could play into Albanian hands.

U.S. envoy James Pardew and the EU's Francois Leotard have moved to Skopje in the past week to nurse the peace talks back to life, but they were not involved in the cease-fire, diplomats said.

``The dialogue, encouraged and supported by the international community, should continue over the next few days,'' Leotard told reporters.

DEADLOCK REMAINS

At stake is the official status of Albanians in Macedonia, who argue they are discriminated against and want to be defined as one of the tiny Balkan state's founding ethnic groups, which Macedonians worry could be used as a springboard for separatism.

President Boris Trajkovski said on Wednesday politicians had agreed to base the search for a deal on proposals by a French constitutional expert, which excludes the most radical Albanian demands, but Albanian leaders have denied they are backing down.

The military situation is equally precarious. Macedonia's army greeted a rebel advance to the outskirts of the main Albanian city of Tetovo with heavy shelling on Wednesday and the guerrillas control an arc of territory in the northern hills.

An army spokesman said there had been fighting overnight in the Kumanovo area about 16 miles northeast of the capital.

A shaky truce called in June collapsed along with stalled talks when the army launched an all-out assault on Aracinovo, a village from which rebels were later evacuated with NATO help.

NATO and the EU, which welcomed the cease-fire as creating a positive atmosphere for talks, urged both sides to respect it.

``We call upon all parties...to act with utmost discipline and restraint in avoiding incidents that could lead to a return to violence,'' said a statement signed by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and NATO Secretary-General George Robertson.

Diplomats say the fact that this is the first signed truce, backed by the Macedonian army, gives some grounds for optimism.

``Ask me tomorrow if it's holding and I'll tell you then how seriously we can take it,'' one envoy cautioned.

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Bosnian Serbs Are 'Ready' to Seize Men for Tribunal

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/05/world/05HAGU.html

THE HAGUE, July 4 - The Bosnian Serb government, which has until now refused all cooperation with the international war crimes tribunal here, said today that it was willing to arrest indicted suspects, though some legal hurdles have to be surmounted.

Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic of the Bosnian Serb republic, who arrived today for a visit to the tribunal, said his government was "ready for extradition" of suspects on the tribunal's wanted list.

Mr. Ivanic's surprising announcement appeared to be closing the net around the two most wanted Bosnian Serbs, Dr. Radovan Karadzic, the wartime political leader, and his senior military official, Gen. Ratko Mladic. Beside Slobodan Milosevic, those two men have long been the most notorious suspects sought by the tribunal, which has indicted them on charges of genocide and other crimes in the Bosnian war.

Their arrests are not imminent, not only because the legal framework is not in place for their capture, but also because their whereabouts are unknown, Mr. Ivanic said.

The Bosnian delegation arrived a day after Mr. Milosevic's first appearance in court, where he scoffed at the judges who will eventually decide his fate.

Tribunal officials insisted that the official visit of the Bosnian Serbs, which begins on Thursday, has been the subject of long negotiations and that the date was fixed more than two months ago.

But Mr. Ivanic said today, "The fact that Mr. Milosevic is here is a completely new situation."

Earlier in the day, a spokeswoman for the tribunal's prosecutor said the Bosnian Serb republic was the "last safe haven" in the Balkans for indicted war crimes fugitives.

"More than 20 indicted fugitives are living there," she said. "And the authorities know where some of them are."

At a brief news conference after his arrival, Mr. Ivanic said his government presented a draft law on Tuesday that set in motion the process to turn over indicted suspects. He described legal steps that sounded similar to those that preceded the handover of Mr. Milosevic to The Hague.

In the last week, Bosnian press reports have said that Mr. Ivanic had been in touch several times with Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic of Serbia, the official who arranged Mr. Milosevic's handover.

Mr. Ivanic said that after the draft law had been accepted, it would require approval from the Supreme Court to go into effect. "Then I think, practically, there is no alternative but to do the job," he said. "That means to arrest the people."

With Mr. Milosevic, who is behind bars awaiting trial before the tribunal here, the focus of the chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has clearly shifted to others who have long been wanted in connection with a variety of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

After her meetings with the Bosnian Serbs, Mrs. Del Ponte is to travel Friday to Zagreb, Croatia, where she is to see Prime Minister Ivica Racan to try to speed up arrests of indicted suspects there.

The Croatian news media today reported that part of the agenda would be to determine the fate of several top Croatian officials whose indictments may still be secret. Mrs. Del Ponte's office declined to specify the purpose of her trip.

Croatia, which has been under strong political and economic pressure from the West, has pledged to improve its rather slow cooperation. Zagreb has handed over some suspects. But it has not arrested any of the top military or political officials whom the tribunal wants to try on war crimes reportedly committed in the 1990's wars that broke up Yugoslavia.

The reports from Croatia suggest that the prosecutor will demand the arrests of three Croatian generals. Two are suspected of being responsible for killing hundreds of Serbian civilians in a military operation in 1995.

According to Mrs. Del Ponte's office, 38 suspects who have been indicted on war crimes charges remain at large. Of those, 25 have been publicly indicted. They include Croats, Serbs and Bosnian Serbs. An additional 13 indictments exist, but remain sealed; the names of those charged are not known.

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Fighting Flares After Balkan Truce

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Macedonia.html

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) -- Macedonian leaders and ethnic Albanian rebels agreed Thursday to cease-fire, clearing the way for NATO to disarm the rebels and take steps to ensure an insurgency does not engulf this Balkan nation in war. But fighting flared after the truce began.

The deal, brokered by NATO and European Union officials, was aimed at easing tensions that have hampered a political agreement on ethnic Albanian demands for better protection of their rights.

``It is a major step forward,'' said Nikola Dimitrov, national security adviser to President Boris Trajkovski. ``Of course it is not the end of the crisis, but it will create the conditions for political dialogue, and of course it is one of the conditions for disarmament to be realized.''

``We think and we hope this will bring peace to the Macedonian citizens,'' he said.

The breakthrough comes amid intensified diplomacy by EU envoy Francois Leotard and his U.S. counterpart, James Pardew, and just a day after Trajkovski announced progress in political dialogue among the major Macedonian Slav and ethnic Albanian political parties. The dialogue had stalled after rioting early last week.

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher welcomed the cease-fire.

``We believe it's a very important and necessary step toward resolving the crisis in Macedonia. We urge the parties to fully honor the agreements that they negotiated with NATO and the European Union,'' he said.

The midnight cease-fire deadline approached amid heavy fighting around Tetovo, a mostly Albanian city 20 miles west of the capital. Just hours after the deal was announced, the rebels rained shells and opened gunfire on police positions near the sports stadium in the city, striking houses. Eleven civilians were injured, five seriously, with gunshot and shrapnel wounds, hospital director Raim Thaci said.

The government responded with maximum force, using tanks, warplanes and helicopter gunships to target rebel checkpoints around the neighboring villages of Poroj and Dzepciste, as well as suspected rebel positions in neighboring hills.

Each side accused the other of using the last hours before the cease-fire to try to improve its positions. The rebels claimed to control a road from a northern Tetovo neighborhood, near the stadium and Macedonian army barracks, north to a crossing with Kosovo, where they have established four check points.

Still, Commander Sokoli, an insurgent spokesman, said he believed his soldiers would respect the midnight deadline.

Fighting around Tetovo ceased by midnight, but state radio reported lower-level clashes at Radusa, 15 miles west of Skopje the capital, past the deadline. It also said the rebels attacked police stations at Terce village, near the Kosovo border and Lesok, northwest of Tetovo, after midnight. There was no immediate comment by either the government or the rebels on the reports.

NATO wants to ensure the cease-fire is holding before sending troops to begin the difficult task of disarming the rebels, who have moved relatively freely through the mountainous northern region bordering the southern Yugoslav province of Kosovo. The so-called National Liberation Army drew heavily on forces from the now-disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, which fought its own insurgency to throw off Serbian rule. The province is now under international administration.

NATO's role ``has to be in what we call a benign and consensual environment,'' said NATO spokesman Paul Barnard in Skopje. ``We are not here to enforce the disarmament.''

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, speaking for U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, told reporters that NATO has not yet decided the time is right to begin the disarming effort, nor has the alliance assembled a force for that mission.

Still, he said the United States welcomed the cease-fire. ``We're very, very pleased to see that, it's a very important step,'' he said. ``It just goes to what both the United States and many other nations have been saying, that indeed you need to have a political solution to this, not a military one.''

The final composition of the new NATO force has not been determined, but Barnard said British troops would lead the operation, working with Greek, Italian and French forces to collect the weapons, which are to be removed from the country and destroyed. U.S. troops would handle logistics, he said, without elaborating on whether that would be their only role or explaining what logistics entails.

Macedonian Defense Minister Vlado Buckovski said some 3,000 NATO troops from 15 nations would be deployed by mid-month and that the actual disarmament would begin two weeks later after collection sites are identified. The operation is expected to be completed in four to six weeks.

Macedonia's chief of general staff, Pande Petrevski, signed a cease-fire document with NATO on Thursday in Skopje, and Ali Ahmeti, the rebel NLA's political leader, signed a separate deal with NATO Wednesday evening in the southern Kosovo city of Prizren.

The cease-fires were signed separately because Macedonian leaders have refused to negotiate with the rebels, whom they consider terrorists with separatist aspirations.

The rebels indicated, however, that they would not disarm until a political agreement providing equality for Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority is reached.

-------- drug war

Ex-envoy to Colombia says legalise drugs

Owen Bowcott,
Wednesday July 4, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,516579,00.html

Britain's former ambassador to Colombia, who has witnessed at close quarters the spiralling cost of the war against cocaine and been at the heart of international initiatives to counter trafficking, yesterday called for legalisation of drugs.

Sir Keith Morris, who served in Bogota from 1990-94, argues in a Guardian article that the drugs war "is unwinnable, costly and counter-productive". He urges an end to prohibition and the establishment of a controlled, legal framework in which drug sales would be taxed for the common good.

The founder chairman of the British and Colombian chamber of commerce, he maintains contacts with Latin America, where governments have for years urged the west to help their drug-distorted economies by reducing the demand for illicit drugs.

He has also been privy to senior UK government thinking. While in Bogota he hosted visits from then home secretaries Kenneth Clarke and Michael Howard, and the then prime minister John Major.

Sir Keith's comments coincide with signs of a possible softening in official policy on drugs and a flurry of debate on the issue since the election. Last Sunday, Mo Mowlam, the former cabinet office minister who visited Colombia several times as the minister heading the war against drugs, urged decriminalisation of cannabis.

"This government believes in 'what works': drugs prohibition does not work," Sir Keith, 66 and now retired, said yesterday. "I'm encouraged that the government has started to relax the regime for cannabis.

"Now the principle of prohibition has in practice been abandoned, I hope the government will start a serious examination of the best way of controlling drug use within a legal framework. It will not be easy. Hard drugs users may have to register with GPs and get their drugs on prescription.

"Some soft drugs might be sold under a regime like that used for alcohol and tobacco and, as Mo Mowlam has proposed for cannabis, they would be tested for purity and taxed.

"The revenue would go to medical research and greatly improve education and treatment. There will be costs, probably, initially at least, greater use and addiction and problems quite unforeseen. But the benefits to life, health and liberty of drug users and the life, health and property of the whole population would be immense."

Sir Keith admits advocating legalisation has been personally difficult "because it means saying to those with whom I worked and to the relatives of those who died that this was an unnecessary war".

By coincidence, the police in Brixton, south London, chose this week to announce they will simply warn those caught in possession of small quantities of cannabis. In effect, they have turned their attention to more serious crimes.

In her column in the Sunday Mirror, Ms Mowlam wrote: "From my time [of being] concerned [with] the government's drug policy I have come to the conclusion that we must decriminalise cannabis. The trade needs to be legalised so it can be sensibly regulated.

"We could then have a tested product, which would be safer; outlets where other more dangerous drugs were not also available and it could be taxed." Any income, she suggested, would pay for improved treatment of addicts.

Since Ms Mowlam retired from parliament at the election, responsibility for government drug strategies has passed from the cabinet office to the Home Office.

Arguments for legalisation have more commonly come from the libertarian wing of the Conservative party. Last year, for example, the former Tory treasury minister, Philip Oppenheim, similarly warned "criminalising drugs hands massive profits to organised crime". Drugs are dangerous, he conceded, but "legalisation looks like the lesser evil".

---

This war is unwinnable

Keith Morris,
Wednesday July 4, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,516493,00.html

As ambassador to Colombia , I watched the endless Anglo-US campaigns against drug traffickers and I know they will never work

November 1992, European Drugs Week: Panorama opened with seven minutes of Kenneth Clarke, the then home secretary, jumping out of helicopters to look at coca growing in the jungle and opium poppy being sprayed in the High Andes. Behind him there hovered, to the embarrassment of my children, a white-haired ambassador with a stick.

Thus started what the Colombians came to call "narcotourism". The chatter of the Colombian anti-narcotics police helicopters, with their machine guns at the ready and columns of smoke from burning mountains of cocaine, were used to show that the war on drugs was no metaphor.

When I accompanied Clarke that day, I believed there was a point to that war. In the years since, I have come to realise that the war is unwinnable, costly and counter-productive.

I was appointed ambassador to Colombia in 1990 knowing I had much to learn about the drugs trade. The Colombia I returned to 20 years after my first posting there had changed greatly, mostly for the better, with steady growth and substantial spending on education and health. Along with the end of the cold war, this should have helped bring about a negotiated end to the low intensity communist insurgency that had plagued the country from the mid-60s.

But instead of peace, Colombia saw a dramatic increase in violence and corruption as prohibition made cocaine a profitable commodity. Slumbering Marxist guerrillas prospered on the money the drug traffickers paid them to protect the cocaine laboratories. The traffickers also hired assassins to kill and intimidate, and paramilitaries to defend their ranches from the very guerrillas to whom they were paying protection money.

Under US pressure, the Colombians extradited drug traffickers to the US. In retaliation Pablo Escobar, then the world's seventh-richest man according to Forbes, launched a campaign of narcoterrorism. In one year, from August 1989, his assassins killed three presidential candidates, blew up an airliner with more than 100 passengers, set off dozens of car bombs and killed 200 policemen in Medellin alone.

So as I arrived in Colombia, the war on drugs seemed like self-defence. The US, the UK and other Europeans had just started to give help in training and equipment to the Colombians to counter the direct threat to the state that Escobar represented. It was meant to be part of a deal: as well as helping tackle supply we - the consumer countries - would crack down on the supply of precursor chemicals, check money laundering and reduce demand at home. At the time, we really believed that the war was winnable.

Some progress was made. The Colombian police responded well to help and advice. Escobar gave himself up when the threat of extradition was dropped. He escaped a year later but his organisation was demolished and in December 1993 he was killed. But the Americans immediately started briefing that Escobar had long been a sideshow and that the real problem was the Cali cartel. After so much effort and many lives lost, the trade was still as great as ever. I began to wonder about the chances of success and also about the obsessive attitudes of our leading ally.

My concerns were justified. US policy on Colombia came to be dominated by drugs. Two days after President Samper was elected in 1994, he was accused of having accepted $5m from the Cali cartel to finance his campaign. US agencies had allegedly been involved in taping conversations. The American line when I left Colombia in late 1994 was that Samper would be judged on his performance against the traffickers. The Cali cartel was dismembered by mid-1995, but when members of Samper's own campaign, who were under investigation, implicated him in the drugs scandal, the US administration imposed sanctions, undermining confidence in what had been South America's most stable economy.

Morale in Colombia's overstretched armed forces was undermined as they saw their president attacked by their great ally. The only beneficiaries were the Marxist guerrillas and their rightwing mirror image, the paramilitaries. Ironically, it is only recently that the US has started to take the threat of communism in Colombia seriously again, and has taken steps to strengthen the army. But it isn't ideology that fuels Colombia's violence: it is the money from the illegal drugs trade.

Colombia has now been involved in anti-narcotics efforts under US pressure for 30 years: against marijuana in the 70s, cocaine in the 80s and 90s, and heroin in the 90s. And for the past 12 years there has been intense international cooperation. But as General Serrano, the highly respected former commander of the Colombian police told me in March, in spite of all that the flow of drugs has increased. The cost: tens of thousands dead, more than a million displaced people, political and economic stability undermined and the country's image ruined.

The attack on the supply side of the drugs trade was always bound to fail if the other elements - precursor chemicals, money laundering and demand - were not tackled too. But there seems to be no shortage of chemicals reaching the traffickers; there have been no striking results on stopping money flows; and demand has grown, with the habit now spreading to the producer countries too. There has been a cultural change which has led to the recreational use of drugs being seen by the younger generation as normal. It is now part of a global consumer society that demands instant gratification. Laws cannot change that. All they can do is create a $500bn criminal industry with devastating effects worldwide. It must be time to start discussing how drugs could be controlled more effectively within a legal framework.

Decriminalisation, which is often mentioned, would be an unsatisfactory halfway house, because it would leave the trade in criminal hands, giving no help at all to the producer countries, and would not guarantee consumers a safe product or free them from the pressure of pushers. It has been difficult for me to advocate legalisation because it means saying to those with whom I worked, and to the relatives of those who died, that this was an unnecessary war. But the imperative must be to try to stop the damage.

Some politicians have religious objections to any attempt at legalisation. Others still believe that if we persevere the war can be won; and there are many who will tell you in private that we are getting nowhere but believe that the electorate and certainly Washington would never buy radical change. I am not so sure. The younger generation views things differently and what is politically impossible today can become politically imperative tomorrow. I hope this government will at least agree to a serious debate on the subject. It deserves it.

Sir Keith Morris was ambassador to Colombia from 1990-94, and will be live online this afternoon at 3pm.

-------- iraq

Stalemate Over Iraq

New York Times
July 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/05/opinion/05THU2.html?searchpv=nytToday

Faced with intractable Russian opposition, Washington has sensibly postponed its efforts to reconfigure sanctions against Iraq till a later date and accepted an extension of existing arrangements for five more months. That gives the Bush administration time to work out a satisfactory compromise with Moscow. Iraq policy should be high on the list of subjects President Bush discusses when he meets again with President Vladimir Putin of Russia later this month.

For many weeks, America and Britain have sought support for a new United Nations Security Council resolution that would ease restrictions on Baghdad's imports of consumer goods while tightening enforcement of the ban on Iraqi imports of weapons and their components. Those changes are important, and not just as an answer to humanitarian complaints about unnecessary economic privations imposed on Iraqi civilians. Iraq has become increasingly successful at selling smuggled oil through Turkey and Jordan. That has allowed Saddam Hussein to evade the U.N. financial controls that are supposed to prevent him from using oil revenues to purchase arms.

With no U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq for the past two and a half years, there is a growing danger that Iraq is secretly rebuilding its biological, chemical and nuclear arms programs. The new Security Council resolution, proposed by London and backed by Washington, would make that harder. It would tighten border controls against illegal arms imports and, by broadening the range of goods available to Iraqi civilians, make it politically easier for neighboring countries to crack down on Iraqi oil smuggling. For those reasons, Mr. Hussein strongly opposes the new resolution. Instead he demands early steps to terminate sanctions and remove international financial controls. Russia is siding with Iraq, as it frequently has in the past.

Just a month ago Moscow cast a preliminary U.N. vote in favor of the concepts being promoted by Washington and London. But then it fell into line with Baghdad. France and China, two other countries that have sometimes leaned toward Iraq in the Security Council, this time seemed ready to support the British and American approach, as did every other Council member except Russia.

Moscow has now isolated itself almost completely. It alone is responsible for delaying early relief to Iraqi civilians. That is not a very promising way for Russia to advance Mr. Putin's goal of rebuilding Moscow's diplomatic influence in the Arab world and at the U.N. Mr. Hussein suffered an embarrassment of his own Tuesday when it became known that at least one senior Iraqi diplomat at the U.N. was seeking asylum in the United States.

As Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin wisely recognized when they met last month, constructive relations between Russia and America can serve both countries. Of the many issues now dividing the two, sanctions on Iraq should be one of the easier ones to resolve. Thwarting Saddam Hussein's efforts to build unconventional weapons would enhance the security of both the United States and Russia.

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Iraq Accepts U.N. Oil Sales Extension - U.N. Envoy

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-energy-.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Iraq accepted a United Nations resolution extending its oil-for-food program by five months and will resume exports as soon as logistics fall into place, the country's U.N. envoy said on Thursday.

Iraqi envoy Mohammed Aldouri told Reuters he would sign a memorandum of understanding at 12:30 p.m. EDT on Thursday.

``We accept. We will continue as usual,'' Aldouri said. ''(Exports) will start as soon as all the logistics are in place,'' Aldouri said. Iraq has yet to submit a July pricing plan, which diplomats say is needed to resume shipments.

The U.N. on Tuesday agreed to a five-month extension of Iraq's oil-for-food sales after the United States and Britain dropped efforts to overhaul sanctions. Iraq had stopped oil exports since June 4 in protest of the revamp plan.

-------- israel

Annan: Israel Must End Assasinations

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Annan-Israel.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed to Israel on Thursday to immediately halt the ``targeted assassinations'' of Palestinian militants.

In a strongly worded statement issued by his spokesman, Annan said the policy violates international law and ``contradicts the spirit, if not the letter, of the cease-fire agreement'' brokered by CIA director George Tenet on June 13.

Brushing aside U.S. criticism, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his closest advisers said Tuesday that Israel would stick to its policy of tracking down and killing suspected Palestinian militants in a bid to prevent Palestinian attacks that have persisted despite the truce.

A senior Palestinian official, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, called the Israeli policy ``the biggest violation'' yet of the faltering Mideast cease-fire.

``The secretary-general is deeply disturbed by the reported decision of the government of Israel to continue the practice of what have become known as `targeted assassinations,''' Annan's statement said. ``This policy is contrary not only to international law, in particular human rights law, but also to general principles of law.''

If Israel's practice of ``targeted assassinations'' isn't halted, Annan said, ``it is bound to further aggravate the crisis of confidence between the parties and make an already extremely fragile situation even more precarious.''

When asked about the policy of ``liquidating'' Palestinian militants, Sharon responded the term isn't used, and doesn't appear in any government decisions.

``There it says 'implementing the right of self-defense.' Sharon told reporters on Thursday. ``That means if a terrorist is leaving on a mission to carry out a terror attack, and you prevent his arrival. You intercept him on the way.''

The secretary-general, who has played an increasingly important role in trying to promote a restoration of the Mideast peace process, reiterated that ``there is no alternative to a political settlement of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.''

-------- nato

The NATO Tripwire

Thursday, July 5, 2001; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20129-2001Jul4?language=printer

The June 19 editorial "Mr. Putin's Soul" indicated, without explanation, that expanding NATO is a good policy.

Expansion would be good for President Bush in some very narrow political ways. It would help him get ethnic votes in the United States, and it would attract more Eastern European support for his missile defense program, which traditional NATO allies abhor. Otherwise, it is a provocative policy that probably will lead to dangerously heightened tensions that the alliance should serve to avoid. The Baltics are serious candidates for membership. But what will be Moscow's reaction to having its former territory militarily allied against it? We cannot count on Russia to be complacent and distracted forever.

Proponents of expansion talk about regional "stability," but it would be negligible compared with the grave geopolitical risk.

JOE DOWNEY
Paris

-------- space

NASA considers nuclear boosters for space rockets

05 July, 2001,
by Ian Sample,
New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns9999972

NASA is thinking about using nuclear boosters to lift rockets into orbit at a fraction of the cost of today's all-chemical launchers.

The agency hopes the public will be less resistant to nuclear-assisted rockets now that the Bush administration is considering a return to nuclear power. But anti-nuclear protesters claim nuclear launchers would make accidents much more damaging and accuse NASA of "playing Russian roulette".

NASA is keen to move away from conventional chemical rockets to lighter, more powerful propulsion systems. "We've taken chemical rockets pretty close to as far as we can," says Robert Adams of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

"Nuclear systems give you a chance to reduce your mass and so your overall costs to orbit," Adams says. Nuclear propulsion could allow single-stage rockets to reach orbit - cutting the need for expendable boosters and allowing what he calls "airline-like" access to space.

High flyer

Adams will describe conceptual plans for a "nuclear-enhanced air-breathing rocket" at a meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Salt Lake City, Utah, next week. A uranium dioxide fission reactor will heat hydrogen from an on-board tank to 2500 °C. The hot hydrogen will then be mixed with air from outside the rocket and combusted at almost 4000 °C.

After lift-off, a chemical rocket would first be used to accelerate the rocket to Mach 2, before the nuclear engine was triggered. "You wouldn't fire this reactor up until we got about 30,000 feet off the ground," he says.

Adams's calculations show that a nuclear-assisted rocket could produce far more thrust than conventional rockets. It would also be lighter and be able to lift a bigger fraction of its starting mass into orbit - perhaps as much as 45 per cent. "With existing systems, it's more like 10 per cent," he says.

Whether the rockets will ever be safe enough to carry astronauts is not yet clear. "We'd have to do a lot more calculations on the radiation side of things," says Adams.

Plutonium power

Nuclear generators have been used before to provide electricity on board spacecraft such as the Cassini probe which is on its way to Saturn. But these generators don't use fission reactions, they simply use the heat generated by a lump of radioactive plutonium to produce electricity.

Even so, Cassini and other plutonium-carrying probes have drawn criticism from anti-nuclear protesters fearful of nuclear fallout if the rocket exploded on the launch pad or during its ascent.

But a change in public attitude towards nuclear power would take the heat off NASA, says George Schmidt, deputy manager of the Propulsion Research Center at Marshall.

"It really requires an education of the public," he says. "If there's an enhancement of understanding about what nuclear is about, we can benefit from that."

"A matter of time"

But the worries won't disappear, says George Maise, an aeronautical engineer who works on nuclear-assisted rockets for Plus Ultra Technologies in Stony Brook, New York.

"There are some legitimate safety and environmental issues if the spacecraft were to crash during launch," he says. Triggering the reactor in the atmosphere could also be a problem. "The idea of deliberately releasing fission products into the atmosphere, even in negligible amounts, is going to be a very hard sell."

Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, which organised protests against Cassini, isn't reassured. "It's just a matter of time before there's an accident," he says.

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

Military Study Mulled Deterrence of 'Fear'

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 5, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13669-2001Jul3?language=printer

President Bush's new concept of deterrence in the post-Cold War world, which embraces the U.S. deploying offensive and defensive forces, stands in sharp contrast to deterrence strategy outlined in a newly released but once classified study done by the U.S. Strategic Command in 1996.

The way to deter post-Cold War aggressors from threatening the use of weapons of mass destruction, according to the paper, is by the United States having "a capability to create a fear of national extinction . . . without having to inflict massive civilian casualties." That fear, the paper goes on, should be "extinction of either the adversary's leaders themselves or their national independence, or both."

"The essential sense of fear is the working force of deterrence," the paper says.

In contrast, Bush, in his National Defense University speech May 1, said that "deterrence can no longer be based solely on the threat of nuclear retaliation. Defenses can strengthen deterrence by reducing the incentive for proliferation."

Last Tuesday in Madrid, Bush described as "tired" and "stale" the idea that "we keep the peace by blowing each other up." Instead, Bush has said he wants to meet the blackmail threat of a nuclear missile pointed at U.S. cities by Iraq, North Korea or other rogue nations by having "the capacity to shoot that missile down."

Implicit but not spelled out in the new Bush approach is U.S. retention of a nuclear force capable of applying severe destruction to any country that dared to undertake a nuclear attack against the United States, its troops abroad or its allies.

But missing from the Bush approach is how those forces would be used if an aggressor dared attack.

Titled "Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence," the Strategic Command authors argue that such views must be spelled out in advance if deterrence is to be successful.

"We must understand in advance, to the degree possible, what an adversary values," the paper says, adding that "what a nation's leadership values is complex, since, to a considerable extent, it is rooted in a nation's culture."

In addition, it also says that the United States "must communicate, specifically, what we want to deter without saying what is permitted." It also adds, "We must communicate in the strongest ways possible the unbreakable link between our vital interests and the potential harm that will be directly attributable to any who damages, or even credibly threatens to damage, that which we hold of value."

To that end, the Strategic Command paper says the United States should not say "whether the reaction would either be responsive or preemptive" and as a result the country should never adopt declaratory policies such as "no first use" of nuclear weapons.

The personal characteristics of the U.S. leader, the paper says, play a part in the deterrence equation, as do those of potential opponents. Deterrence "needs to change as leaders on either side change," the authors write. For example, it says, "the personal characteristics of U.S. leaders will be variables that affect how, or whether, an adversary's leaders are apt to believe the stated deterrent threat."

It notes that in January 1991, President George Bush warned Saddam Hussein that the United States would not tolerate the use of chemical or biological weapons. Bush wrote the Iraqi leader that "you and your country will pay a terrible price if you order unconscionable acts of this sort." A United Nations special commission on Iraq, which inspected that country after the Persian Gulf War, found copies of the Bush letter all over and thus, the paper concludes, it must have been effective.

A 1994 Western European Union Assembly report on the future role of nuclear weapons found that during the Gulf War "the presence in the Persian Gulf of [U.S.] aircraft carriers with nuclear weapons aboard may well have deterred Iraq from using weapons of mass destruction."

The Strategic Command paper takes issue with the idea that "new multilateral threats" from Saddam Hussein or North Korea's Kim Jong Il are "undeterrable because the new regional actors are not likely to be rational."

"Deterrence of the Soviets never depended on having 'rational' leaders," the report says, noting that Joseph Stalin was heading the country when it began building up nuclear arms "and Stalin was hardly more rational than they."

"Fear," the authors say, "is not the possession of the rational mind alone." But they go on to say that deterrence "must create fear in the mind of the adversary -- fear that he will not achieve his objectives, fear that his losses and pain will far outweigh any potential gains, fear that he will be punished."

The Strategic Command paper relates the story of how the Soviets responded in Lebanon when three of Moscow's officials and their driver were kidnapped and killed. "Two days later," the paper reported, "the Soviets had delivered to the leader of the revolutionary activity a package containing a single testicle -- that of his eldest son -- with a message that said in no uncertain terms, 'Never bother our people again.' "

Noting that it illustrated "the type of creative thinking that must go into deciding what to hold at risk in framing deterrent targeting," the report also says that American society's unwillingness to ever condone such actions "makes it more difficult for us to deter acts of terrorism."

----

Pentagon reveals next superweapon: the stinkbomb

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles,
Thursday July 5, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,517048,00.html

It is, as 10-year-old boys have known for decades, one of the most powerful weapons known to humanity. Now the world's most sophisticated and well-funded centre of defence and armaments has finally made the same discovery.

The Pentagon is developing a stinkbomb powerful enough to drive away hostile crowds in a move towards what will almost certainly be classified as "stench warfare".

No longer will demonstrators be able to say that they smell a rat when they spot the police or army gathering to halt their progress - they will be smelling something altogether more subtle.

The new stinkbomb will be part of the police and army's arsenal for dealing with the increasing number of violent protests against globalisation that have been taking place wherever world leaders and financial institutions gather around the globe, from Seattle in 1999 to Gothenburg last month.

"It would give us an offensive capability against large and unruly groups of people, if they are unwilling to move or are openly hostile," a Pentagon spokesman told the New Scientist magazine, which this week published details of the invention. "And it would minimise the risk to our people and to the antagonists."

The researchers who have been working on the project said there was a close link between a particular kind of smell and fear, and that a particular odour can activate tissue deep within the brain.

The aim would be to use such a smell to send a panic through the ranks of demonstrators.

Pam Dalton, a cognitive psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia who is leading the search for a more sensitive stinkbomb, has tested smells on volunteers of different ethnic origins to try to find a formula that affects everyone.

She is reported to have found two odours that appear to transcend culture; a mixture of the two could form the basis of the new weapon.

This could also be seen as the authorities getting their own back for the use of odour warfare by protesters. A favourite ploy has been to lob lion dung taken from zoos and safari parks at police horses, who panic at the lions' scent and throw their riders.

----

Padre Island impact study ordered

Thursday, July 05, 2001
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/07/07052001/ap_padre_44207.asp

AUSTIN, Texas - A Texas official has ordered an environmental impact study of proposals to let the Navy use Padre Island as a bombing range in place of Puerto Rico's Vieques Island.

"Bombing Texas beaches just doesn't make sense," said state Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander. "I think some may think there's economic benefits. I don't."

Using 220,000 acres of sparsely populated Kenedy County for practice bombing is one plan being considered as an alternative to the training now done on Vieques. President Bush has said bombing on Vieques will end by May 2003, but demonstrators want exercises stopped immediately.

The Navy has said it's too early to comment on the Texas plan, but Kenedy County commissioners have already voted unanimously against the idea.

County officials cited the possibility of environmental damage, noise, stray bombs, and disruption of oil and gas operations, from which the county derives most of its tax revenue.

Environmentalists also call the area a critical habitat for migratory birds and several endangered species, including the Kemp's Ridley sea turtle.

Supporters pitch the plan as a possible economic boon, including protection for area military installations that community leaders want to protect from closure by the federal government.

"It's easy to say, 'not in my backyard,'" said Gary Bushell, a consultant for the Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce. "That will cost American lives."

----

U.S. to Turn Sergeant Over to Japan

By Bob Burns
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 5, 2001; 8:29 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010705/aponline202937_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has agreed to Japan's demands that it turn over an Air Force sergeant suspected of raping a Japanese woman in Okinawa, a U.S. official said Thursday.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan Howard Baker was to inform Japanese authorities of the decision on Friday. The actual transfer of the sergeant to Japanese custody was to take place a short time later, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. agreement to turn over the suspect, identified by Japanese authorities as Air Force Sgt. Timothy Woodland, had been delayed several days as U.S. officials sought assurances that he would have legal representation and an interpreter while in custody.

----

Biotech Advances May Alter Army Soon

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Army-of-the-Future.html

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) -- Trudging through a thick, muggy jungle, the soldier remains cool, her body temperature precisely controlled by her uniform.

Incapable of seeing more than 10 feet ahead, she is guided through an earpiece in her helmet by someone at base camp who can trace her because a biomarker was in a nutrition bar she ate earlier.

Breaking the jungle silence, an alarm in her wristwatch goes off, detecting the presence of a toxic chemical agent. The visor on her helmet drops down, and the uniform that monitors her vital signs administers the drugs necessary to keep her safe and enable her to complete her mission.

It's science fiction so far. But a study performed for the Army says advancements in biotechnology may soon turn such fiction into fact.

The study was conducted by 16 leading academic and industry scientists from across the country. The study predicts how biotechnology will develop over the next 25 years and highlights areas that might benefit the Army.

The ideas in the study range from genetically engineered foods that don't spoil and provide added nutrition to uniforms that can detect and treat wounds, preventing blood loss and infection.

James Valdes, a scientific adviser at the Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command in Maryland, said over the past five years the Army has started forming more partnerships with industry and academic labs to keep abreast of developments in biotechnology.

``Big companies don't want to make the kind of stuff we need because the profit margins aren't there,'' Valdes said. ``So we have to sort of very selectively go after the research areas that are uniquely applicable to the Department of Defense.''

Such areas include: creating lightweight materials to reduce the load of the current soldier's roughly 90-pound rucksack; coating helmets with substances that absorb solar energy to power in-field computers; and developing systems that make fuel using plants or even food wrappers and used cloth.

Foods that are digested easier could also be developed, and even laced with compounds called biomarkers that would allow a soldier to be tracked by satellite, according to the report. The biomarkers could also be used to spot American troops and avoid ``friendly fire'' accidents.

Rashid Bashir, a Purdue University researcher not involved in the study, is developing one-centimeter-square sensor chips that could someday help soldiers detect chemical hazards on the battlefield. The sensors, which could fit in a wristwatch, are basically micro-laboratories that analyze particles in the air.

Bashir said his work shows that the technology described in the study is not far-fetched.

``I think most of these things are in the five- to 10-year time frame,'' Bashir said. ``Many are in the idea stages, but others have already proven their feasibility.''

--------

Panel queries Army's plans for women

July 5, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010705-80846946.htm

A group of 27 House Armed Services Committee members has asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld whether the Army is angling to allow female soldiers to serve closer to combat.

The congressmen's letter to Mr. Rumsfeld came after the Army submitted documents to the Pentagon's Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) that indicated it was reviewing current regulations.

An Army spokesman, however, told The Washington Times that the service is not seeking to change the rule against women in direct ground combat.

DACOWITS, an all-civilian panel made up predominantly of women, persistently has urged the Pentagon to open up new opportunities for women that would take them closer to battle. Women currently are barred from units that fit the definition of the Pentagon's 1994 direct ground combat rule.

"As members of the House Armed Services Committee, it has come to our attention that the Army has proposed changes in the definition of rules regarding direct ground combat," said the lawmakers' June 28 letter to Mr. Rumsfeld. The letter asks the defense secretary to conduct a thorough review of Army policies concerning the assignments of female soldiers. Mr. Rumsfeld has a military background. He served in the Navy from 1954 until 1957 as a naval aviator.

The letter was spearheaded by Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland Republican, and signed by 24 Republicans, including five subcommittee chairmen, and three Democrats.

Some lawmakers fear the Army is moving women, inch by inch, toward the front lines. The Army has introduced a pilot program to train male and female officers together in a basic leadership course at Fort Benning, Ga., home of Army infantry training, a combat role currently off limits to women. The Army also has graduated the first female soldier from sniper school.

The congressmen's suspicions were heightened when the Army submitted documents to DACOWITS this spring that a review of regulations concerning female soldiers "is currently being staffed."

But an Army spokesman at the Pentagon issued a statement to The Times this week that said "the Army follows established Department of Defense policy in regard to the 'ground combat rule' and is not seeking a change."

"The draft update to the Army regulations mentioned in your query merely consolidates previously existing guidance on this subject into a single source document for use by the Army in the field," the Army statement said. "This is simply a periodic update to Army regulations to reflect this standing policy. The Army is not seeking any change to the 1994 [Department of Defense] policy."

Elaine Donnelly, a former DACOWITS member who opposes women in combat, remains suspicious.

"DACOWITS is trying to manipulate the Army. If you change the definition of land combat, that will in very short order open up all the land combat positions to women," said Mrs. Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness. "And the majority of women soldiers are not in favor of this."

The public debate on women in combat largely faded in 1994, after the Pentagon wrote a definition of what constituted ground combat and barred women from serving in units that met that criteria. The Pentagon did lift prohibitions against women serving on combat aircraft and ships. The policy exempted submarines because of tight living quarters, and special operations helicopters because of their crews' likelihood of confronting the enemy on the ground.

Since 1994, DACOWITS has continued to press the services to open more roles to women. It also has asked for briefings to explain how the direct ground combat rule is used to designate a unit all-male, or "P1" as the military calls it.

The committee has urged the Pentagon to open two fields that remained closed to women even after the 1994 liberalization: multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) batteries, a long-range artillery system, and special operations helicopters. Artillery is off limits to female soldiers, as are infantry, armor and combat engineer units.

The Pentagon defines direct ground combat as "engaging an enemy on the ground with individual or crew served weapons, while being exposed to hostile fire and to a high probability of direct physical contact with the hostile force's personnel. Direct ground combat takes place well forward on the battlefield while locating and closing with the enemy to defeat them by fire, maneuver, or shock effect."

Asked to justify the rule, the Pentagon told DACOWITS that "there is public reluctance for women to be in positions involving direct (hand-to-hand) ground combat," according to committee documents. "Most women would not meet the physical qualifications for some rigorous career fields (Rangers, SEALS, Special Forces) or the physical requirements for close-in, hand-to-hand combat in other career fields."

DACOWITS also has asked U.S. Special Operations Command to defend the policy of barring women from its combat helicopters in light of the fact that other combat choppers, such as the Apache, are open to women.##

"There is insufficient evidence that [special operations forces] rotary wing aviation crews 'collocate' with units involved in [direct ground combat]," the 33-member committee wrote in recommending to the defense secretary that the jobs be open to women. "Generally, SOF aviators have the potential to be exposed to contact with the enemy on the ground only when the mission fails."

But Gen. Charles R. Holland, who heads Special Operations Command based at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa Bay, Fla., pointedly defended the ban in a letter to senior Pentagon officials who oversee personnel policies.

"[The command] does not concur with the conclusions of DACOWITS ... with respect to the assignment of women to crew positions in SOF rotary wing aviation," Gen. Holland said. "SOF rotary wing aviation crews are doctrinally required to collocate with ground combat units during many SOF mission profiles. ... Direct action has always been a primary mission of SOF, and contrary to the DACOWITS assertion, involves direct ground combat."

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Forest Officials Address Unusual Uses of Land

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/05/national/05FORE.html

STANLEY, Idaho, July 3 - By statute, and by roadside proclamation, the national forests, that vast empire of public lands that stretch across one-twelfth of the United States, are lands of "many uses," including logging, ranching, hunting, skiing and camping.

But time has stretched that definition to the limit. By virtue of their openness to one and all, the forests are more and more the home to the unusual, the criminal and the bizarre, with mushroom-gathering profiteers and methamphetamine makers among others competing with logging companies and recreationists for a share of the woods.

One group that falls into the category of an unusual yet also longtime user of the forests is the Rainbow Family, a nonorganized organization that for the last three decades has held an annual Fourth of July gathering in a national forest, to the ever rising frustration of the Forest Service, which oversees the lands.

This year thousands of hippies from around the country descended on Boise National Forest, 100 miles northeast of Boise, to celebrate peace, love and marijuana, not necessarily in that order.

"This is kind of our declaration of independence," Chaz Choate, 25, adorned with a nose-ring and of no fixed address, said this morning in an alpine meadow, 50 miles from the nearest town.

The participants claim a right to "peaceably assemble" and act as they please on public land. But the Forest Service, which has established a task force to police what the agency regards as an illegal event, is increasingly determined to enforce the law, even in the middle of nowhere. It typically spends a half- million dollars trying to make sure that the so-called Rainbow Gathering does not get out of hand.

"People have lots of different reasons for going to the woods," said Bill Wasley, the agency's law enforcement chief, whose 600 officers are spread out, on average at one every 600 square miles of national forest land, coast to coast.

These law officers face growing challenges, including narcotics smuggling across international borders and the theft of forest products, including timber and mushrooms, as well as the run-of-the-mill incidents of public drunkenness and campground brawls, said Heidi Valetkevich, a spokeswoman.

Mr. Wasley said he was fairly certain that the national forests had become the largest domestic source of marijuana cultivation and an ever more popular hiding place for methamphetamine production.

In the last year, the forest service has seen its crime statistics skyrocket, particularly in terms of seizures of marijuana (more than 700,000 plants in 2000) and of methamphetamine labs and dumps (nearly 500 sites discovered).

So sprawling are the Forest Service lands that the writer James Conaway, in a 1987 book by this name, described them as part of "The Kingdom in the Country," populated by an odd collection of wranglers, shepherds, bureaucrats and other inhabitants of "the land nobody owns." They account for 40 percent of Idaho alone; across the country they span 192 million acres and are visited every year by an estimated 292 million people.

But as an annual preoccupation, Forest Service law enforcement officials say nothing exceeds the challenge posed by the Rainbow group and the thousands of people who turn up every year in one state or another, without permission and all but unannounced, in the hope of finding in the forest a place where the rules do not apply.

Already this year, 19 people have been arrested, 23 served with warrants, and more than 500 issued citations, many for drug-related offenses, some for nudity, but many more for simply showing up, and thus taking part in a gathering that the Forest Service has declared violates its rule that no more than 75 people can congregate on forest lands without a permit. The agency has stopped short, however, of demanding that the visitors leave.

This year for the first time, the group has submitted several requests for a permit, but these have been turned down, with Forest Service officials saying the gathering could harm streams used as spawning grounds for endangered salmon.

The conflict over the request appears to have put a damper on turnout, which had soared to 23,000 by the time the gathering peaked last year, at a national forest in Montana but seems likely this year not to exceed 15,000.

The gathering has brought considerable hostility from nearby communities, who see the congregants as interlopers on land that is not equipped to handle so many visitors.

"With all these free spirits up there, saying `peace and love, brother,' it makes it really hard," said Jim Little, a livestock owner who has had to postpone plans to turn out 375 pairs of cows and calves, under a Forest Service grazing permit, into the very meadow that the visitors have transformed into a parking lot.

Environmentalists would say that the cows would do as much damage to the ecosystem as a hippie gathering. But Idaho's Republican politicians, who want the lands more open to multiple uses like grazing and logging, draw the line at the Rainbow Gathering.

Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho, has pressed the Forest Service to deny the group a permit, and the Republican governor, Dirk Kempthorne, has declared an emergency, allowing the National Guard to be deployed, if necessary, to assist in the operation.

The Forest Service has said that the gathering is being held in a particularly unfortunate site.

"This is possibly one of the most sensitive watersheds in the state of Idaho," said Sharon Sweeney, a spokeswoman for the Forest Service task force, known as a National Incident Command Team, which this year has set up its operations in the tiny town of Lowman, 70 miles from Boise. "I guess they just didn't do their homework."

Forest Service officers have marked areas off-limits, in hopes of keeping people and their pets out of the streams that mark the end of the salmon's journey hundreds of miles from the Pacific to their spawning grounds.

But this morning, at the end of a dirt road 20 miles from the nearest paved highway, people who had traveled far to escape real-world problems were aghast to find their journey ending at a Forest Service roadblock, where the lucky were escaping not with tickets but bright orange fliers warning that they could be arrested.

"It bothers me that our tax money is being spent on stuff like this," said Larry Fein, an itinerant psychiatric nurse who worked most recently in Carbondale, Ill., has attended 13 national Rainbow gatherings since 1987, and was advising those who received citations to consult the group's legal team.

"I like getting out in the woods," Mr. Fein said, his long, braided hair flopping against his tie-dyed shirt. "And I feel very strongly that what we're doing here, on public land, is our religious and constitutional right."

--------

Japan Playing for Time on Kyoto Climate Pact

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-environ.html

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan looks set to play for time when a European Union delegation arrives next week to try to persuade Tokyo to ratify the Kyoto global warming pact even if Washington refuses to go along.

Japan's position is vital to rescuing the treaty to cut greenhouse gases now that the United States -- the world's top carbon dioxide producer -- has dubbed the pact ``fatally flawed'' and withdrawn out of economic concerns.

With Japan caught between Brussels and Washington, but with its overarching priority on good ties with the United States, few expect it to take a bold stance now.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi -- who said after a summit with President Bush on Saturday that he would keep trying to lure Washington back -- said this week that Tokyo need not finalize its position on the 1997 treaty in time for a key conference to be held in Bonn from July 16.

``Many people appear to believe that the conference is the final deadline,'' Koizumi was quoted as saying in Paris.

``I believe that is not necessarily the case.''

On Thursday, Japanese Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi echoed that view, telling a business lobby that a comprehensive accord on rules of the Kyoto Protocol must be reached by October to keep the global pact alive, Kyodo news agency reported.

Predicting that a breakthrough was unlikely in Bonn, Kawaguchi suggested that the deadline for agreement on Kyoto pact rules should be late October when a United Nations conference on climate change is to start in Marrakech, Morocco.

Tokyo is expected to propose a revision of the treaty to persuade Washington to rejoin. Japanese officials have said Tokyo had some ideas but have not given details.

``A scenario in which Japan idly waits is not acceptable to the international community,'' Kawaguchi was quoted as saying.

DON'T KILL KYOTO

The EU delegation, which is visiting Australia first, will make an impassioned pitch for Japan to ratify Kyoto even if its key ally, the United States, stays away.

``We expect to make a strong case for Japan to ratify the Kyoto Protocol even if the United States does not ratify,'' an EU spokesman here told Reuters. ``Japan's role is absolutely crucial.''

To take effect, the pact must be ratified by 55 states representing 55 percent of all man-made output of carbon dioxide.

If Japan, Russia, the European Union (EU) and a number of Eastern European nations join hands, they would make up the needed 55 percent even without Washington. The EU nations produce some 24.4 percent, Russia 17.4 and Japan 8.5 percent.

``If Japan decides not to ratify, they will actually kill the Kyoto Protocol,'' the EU spokesman said.

Nor will the European Union be sympathetic to Tokyo's effort to delay while it proposes revisions in hopes of wooing Washington.

``We see this as delaying tactics,'' the EU spokesman said.

``We don't want to close the door on the process to bring the Americans back, but we believe such a process should go in parallel with implementing the Kyoto Protocol.''

The pact commits advanced nations to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions -- which scientists believe trap heat in the earth's atmosphere and contribute to global warming -- by an average 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

Among the changes Tokyo might propose, media said, is a change in the base year to 2000 and a cut in the U.S. target for cutting its emissions from the seven percent it pledged.

-------- genetics

Study: Stem Cell Cloning Flawed

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Stem-Cells-Cloning.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Researchers have found serious abnormalities in cloned mice, a finding that strengthens the belief of many scientists that the technique used to clone Dolly the sheep should not be used on humans.

The findings are based on the use of embryonic stem cells in cloning and come as the Bush administration considers whether to allow federal funds for non-cloning stem cell research. The research appears Friday in the journal Science.

``This study confirms the suspicions of many of us that cloning of humans would be really dangerous,'' said Rudolf Jaenisch, senior author of the study and a researcher at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

David Humpherys, first author of the study, said that many of the mice cloned in the experiment appeared to be normal, including having normal genes, but there was evidence that during embryonic and fetal development the genes did not work properly.

``It is quite likely that just the animals that are most nearly normal make it to birth (in cloning), but our study shows that doesn't mean they are completely normal,'' said Humpherys. ``There may be changes in gene expression that could affect them later in life.''

In cloned humans, Jaenisch said the gene expression flaws could affect personality, intelligence and other human attributes.

Humpherys said there was no evidence that the genes in the cloned animals were altered, but that the way in which the genes made proteins was flawed and unstable. In effect, the researchers found that even though the biological blueprint was intact in the cloned animals, the way that the blueprint was read and interpreted was flawed. This could result in abnormal tissues and organs, they said.

Humpherys and Jaenisch said that a number of scientists doing cloning experiments with mice, pigs, sheep and cattle have reported that even apparently normal animals develop disorders later in life. Jaenisch said that extreme obesity has developed in many cloned animals, including Dolly, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.

Dr. David A. Prentice, an Indiana State University professor of life sciences, said the MIT-Whitehead study shows the hazards of the current cloning technology.

``Development is a finely orchestrated ballet of cells forming tissues and organs at the right place and time,'' said Prentice. ``It takes only one going awry at the wrong time and place to have a seriously flawed individual.''

In the study, the researchers made the mouse clones using embryonic stem cells, the primordial cells known to be able to form virtually any tissue in the body. The DNA from the cells was removed and inserted into a mouse egg that had been stripped of its DNA. The resulting embryos were then implanted in mother mice and allowed to grow to birth.

The researchers monitored the expression, or action, of genes that play a role in embryo and fetal development. They found that the genes, even from nearly identical stem cells, worked differently. In fact, said Humpherys, stem cells are unstable in gene expression even in the laboratory dish.

This instability raises the possibility that using stem cells to treat health disorders may not work as well as some scientists have suggested, said Dr. Joann A. Boughman, vice president of the American Society of Human Genetics.

``When we grow (embryonic stem) cells for a curative situation, we will need to precisely control the process,'' she said. ``This paper shows that we've got a very long way to go to fully understand this whole process.''

Some researchers have suggested that embryonic stem cells could be cloned from a patient and used to grow cells that could be used to restore that patient's ailing heart or liver or other organs.

Jaenisch said that it is unlikely that genetic instability would block the curative use of embryonic stem cells. He said in developing cells for therapeutic use, researchers would harvest and inject into patients only those cells that are normal.

During cloning, he said, no such selection is possible because an embryo must use the DNA provided and cannot select only that which is perfect.

Regulations that would permit federal funding of embryonic stem cell research has been delayed by President Bush who ordered a review of the whole issue. Some in Congress oppose embryonic stem cell research because obtaining the cells involves the death of a human embryo. Many scientists, however, believe that embryonic stem cell research could relieve suffering for millions of patients with a variety of disorders.

--------

Bush and Portillo Discuss Human Rights

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Guatemala.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The president of Guatemala said Thursday he doesn't plan to intervene in human rights cases while his country is in the process of fixing its ``many scars'' in such matters.

President Alfonso Portillo met with President Bush at the White House as part of his first official visit to Washington. Afterward, Portillo told reporters he and Bush discussed labor, immigration and trade issues, and Bush expressed support for the ``holistic fiscal reform'' under way in Guatemala.

They also talked about human rights and changes in the Guatemalan judiciary, Portillo said. The State Department has found that those guilty of human rights abuses often take advantage of the country's judicial inefficiencies by loading the courts down with motions and trial delays. Also, witnesses, victims, prosecutors and judges have been threatened, and judges in politically charged cases have suffered gun and grenade assaults on their houses.

Portillo said he told Bush he is not in a position to intercede in human rights cases, out of concern that he would appear to be meddling.

``There have been many scars in our country, but we are in a healing process,'' Portillo said. ``What is most important is the executive is not standing in the middle to hinder the judicial process.''

A 1996 peace accord ended the civil war in Guatemala, but the country's democracy is fragile. Portillo said Thursday that poverty is the largest threat to democratic governance in Guatemala.

More than 80 percent of the country's population lives in poverty, 59 percent in severe poverty and persistent rumors have shaken the country twice since last fall that Portillo was about to be toppled.

Portillo planned to meet Thursday afternoon with American human rights groups at the Guatemalan Embassy.

The New York-based Sisters of Charity hoped to talk with Portillo about the killing of nun Barbara Ann Ford, who helped traumatized people in the country's war-ravaged northern region. In addition, Scott Lee, the brother of slain journalist Larry Lee, is in town to bring attention to the unsolved 1999 case, but he did not expect to attend Thursday's meeting.

``Obviously finding out who is responsible is not going to change the outcome, not going to change the fact that Larry is gone,'' Scott Lee said. ``But there is just a void right now, not knowing the reason somebody felt they had to do this. That's why we're pursuing this.''

Lee said his brother was the first of six unsolved killings of Americans in Guatemala since December 1999.

A three-judge panel convicted three former military officers and a priest in the 1998 killing of Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi. They were the highest-level convictions of members of a military widely blamed for the death, torture, disappearance and harassment of hundreds of thousands during and since the country's 1960-1996 civil war.

The 75-year-old bishop Gerardi was bludgeoned to death at his seminary two days after presenting a report that blamed the military for most of the deaths in the war.

-------- human rights

Debt relief no help to Honduran poor

July 5, 2001
By Traci Carl
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010705-85205035.htm

SAN JUAN, Honduras - Very little government aid ever makes it up the washed-out dirt road to this mountain village, and people here have learned not to expect much.

Politicians sometimes arrive, striding from shack to shack with promises of a better school or a large delivery of food. But nothing usually comes of it. Even the rocky soil, which barely yields corn and beans, is more giving.

For two years, anti-globalization protesters have harried the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, demanding they cut debts owed by poor countries like Honduras, to try to help poor communities like San Juan.

The world bodies have responded by forgiving $20 billion in debt from 23 nations - two-thirds of what they owe - in return for promises to fight poverty. Nine more countries are targeted, and total relief could jump to $30 billion.

But even anti-debt groups are skeptical the billions of dollars in debt aid, including Honduras' $556 million, will ever benefit the poor.

"The money that's supposed to arrive, won't. I don't believe it's real," said Mauricio Diaz of the Social Forum for External Debt and Development in Honduras, an anti-poverty group that fought to cut Honduras' debt.

To qualify for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative - known as HIPIC - countries must show they can't afford interest payments and come up with a plan for reducing poverty. But there are few, if any, safeguards against misuse of funds - a huge temptation in poor nations with histories of corruption.

IMF and U.S. officials say donor countries will continue to check a country's progress as they review whether to lend more money or grant more aid. The United States and six other wealthy nations are covering a third of the program's cost.

"We are supportive of the HIPIC program," said Tony Fratto, a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department, which has forgiven $3.7 billion in debts, all taxpayer funded. "It is still in the early stages, and we would like to see how it works."

Debt-relief groups are skeptical that countries that don't help the poor will be punished.

"Elites in poor countries do deals with elites in rich countries, and you get a lot of poor agreements as a result," said Ann Pettifor of Jubilee Plus, a London-based group. "There's no incentive not to lend recklessly."

U.S. and IMF officials argue the debt program is more accountable than past ones, which weren't explicitly linked to poverty relief.

"In many cases, people hoped that the money would be spent well," said Masood Ahmed, the IMF official in charge of the debt-relief initiative. "I think it was difficult to tell because there wasn't the same effort in trying to track the debt relief."

Miss Pettifor has seen isolated success stories. Uganda, which received $660 million in debt relief, has doubled primary school enrollment, while Mozambique has vaccinated 500,000 children with its $254 million in debt savings.

But Honduras' glossy 117-page poverty reduction program book doesn't mention specific targets for spending. Instead, it talks generally about poverty in Honduras, identifies regions that could get aid and says local leaders will decide where help will go.

Miriam Velasquez, a Honduras government spokeswoman, said the participation of nonprofit groups, as well as commissions set up to monitor progress, will help reduce corruption and fraud. But Mr. Diaz said his and other nonprofit groups weren't included in drawing up Honduras' plan.

San Juan could use the help. The village of 120 families, about 150 miles northeast of Tegucigalpa, the nation's capital, has a high rate of tuberculosis. Dozens of children are infected with a virus, transmitted by an insect, that could cause death if left untreated.

But the people of this pine-covered mountain have grown to rely on nonprofit organizations.

American volunteers have taught residents how to build cinderblock and tin-roofed homes to replace adobe and thatched roof structures where the deadly insect resides.

The volunteers do arts and crafts with the children in the makeshift, one-room school overlooking the village, and help the kindergarten teacher try to find out why he hasn't been paid by the government in months.

When aid does arrive, it is usually during an election year - in return for the town's votes. But residents don't want handouts. They'd rather have agricultural training to help feed their families year round. The scrubby, high-altitude soil barely grows enough corn and beans for everyone.

"We don't want little political propaganda presents," said Carlos Gonzalez, as residents joined with volunteers to dig up dirt to make cinderblocks for building homes. "They don't benefit the future."

----

200 Killed in Congo 'Witchhunt'

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Congo-Witchhunt.html

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) -- Villagers have hacked to death about 200 suspected witches in rebel-held northeastern Congo since June 15, blaming them for diseases that have gone untreated since Congo's war broke out three years ago, a senior Ugandan army official said Thursday.

Ugandan troops, which had withdrawn this year from the district near the border, were sent back to the area to stop the killings and make arrests, Brig. Henry Tumukunde said.

``Villagers were saying that some people had bewitched others, and they started lynching them. By the time we discovered this, 60 people had already been killed by early last week. About 200 people lost their lives,'' Tumukunde said.

Tumukunde refused to say how many people had been injured or arrested. It wasn't clear whether the witches were mainly men or women.

The killings began three weeks ago in Aru, 50 miles south of Sudan, but spread deep inside northeastern Congo, a country the size of Western Europe. The region of rolling savannas was once a rich agricultural area where wheat was grown and cattle raised, but a series of rebellions have left communities destroyed since the 1960s.

The war that began three years ago has only made matters worse.

``The war forced people to move to other areas, and the internally displaced were the targets of local villagers, who accused them of witchcraft,'' Tumukunde said.

He said diseases endemic to the region were being blamed on witchcraft, noting that drugs to treat the diseases have not been available during the duration of the war.

In much of the rebel-held 60 percent of the country, routes that would carry trade and aid back and forth are cut off. With no immunization programs or other health programs, measles and other diseases are killing people in large numbers. Plague has even made inroads. In the worst-hit areas, people are dying from a combination of disease and starvation.

Some charities have estimated an indirect wartime death toll of about 2 million out of a population of 50 million in the former Belgian colony.

In a report released jointly Thursday by UNICEF and the World Health Organization, experts said after a recent 12-day visit to Congo that ``every facet of society -- whether human rights or economy, education or water and sanitation, housing or social care -- has collapsed.''

The 10-person mission blamed ``decades of state and external looting of national resources'' and war for pushing ``Congolese households over the brink.''

In Congo's countryside, there is hardly any running water or electricity. In the most devastated areas, people are desperate just for soap and salt.

Although Uganda had withdrawn troops this year from the Aru district, it still employs troops elsewhere in Congo.

Uganda and Rwanda joined forces in August 1998 in support of a rebellion seeking to oust President Laurent Kabila, whom they had backed in a previous, successful revolt that overthrew longtime President Mobutu Sese Seko of what was then Zaire in May 1997.

The senior Kabila's assassination in January and his son's ascension to the presidency appear to have cleared the hurdles blocking the implementation of a 1999 peace agreement signed by the Congolese government, the rebels and Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, who are all involved in the conflict.

Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia have poured in thousands of troops and materiel in support of the Congolese government.

-------- police / prisoners

U.S. Helping Asia Combat Sea Piracy

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Asia-US-Piracy.html

SINGAPORE (AP) -- A U.S. Coast Guard team is training Southeast Asian maritime forces methods to combat piracy as the problem continues to dramatically increase in the region.

Drawing on its experience battling drug smugglers and illegal immigrant traffickers, the Coast Guard is teaching skills ranging from boarding and searching suspected pirate ships to hand-to-hand combat.

``The United States sees it as an increasing problem,'' Coast Guard anti-piracy team leader Lt. Michael Smith said Thursday. ``We are trying to assume a larger role in combating it.''

A record 469 piracy incidents were reported worldwide in 2000, up 56 percent from 1999 and more than four times the number reported in 1991. More than two-thirds of the attacks were in Southeast Asia.

The incidents were also getting more violent. Seventy-two ship crew members were killed in pirate attacks in 2000, compared to three a year earlier.

Some pirates in Southeast Asia rob ship crews of cash and jewelry and escape in speedboats. Others make off with entire ships and their cargos, brutalizing crews and setting them adrift in lifeboats. Some take crews hostage and demand ransoms.

The highest concentration of pirate attacks is in the Malacca Straits, a vital shipping lane off Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. More than 50,000 ships a year use the straits, which link the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Fighting piracy is nothing new to the U.S. Navy, which was formed in the 19th century to battle marauders who pillaged merchant ships off North Africa's notorious Barbary Coast, said Lt. Cmdr. Pamela Warnken, a U.S. Navy spokeswoman in Singapore.

``Here it is 200 years later and we're in the same situation in the Straits of Malacca,'' Warnken said.

Asia accounts for $500 billion worth of two-way trade with the United States, according to U.S. military statistics.

The U.S. anti-piracy team, based in Alameda, Calif., is currently working with Singapore's navy and Coast Guard. It recently held similar training sessions with navies and coast guards in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. More sessions are planned in Malaysia and Brunei.

--------

Bush nominates Mueller to head FBI

July 5, 2001
By Sandra Sobieraj
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001751249.htm

President Bush nominated Justice Department veteran Robert Mueller today to head the FBI and try to help the agency rebound from a string of recent embarrassments that ranged from bungled documents to the unveiling of a spy.

"He assumes great responsibilities, he was chosen with great care, and he has my confidence," the president said.

Mr. Bush announced his selection in a Rose Garden ceremony. If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Mueller will fill a 10-year term as the sixth director of the nation's top law enforcement agency. With his wife Ann at his side, Mr. Mueller pledged to "enforce our nation's laws fairly and with respect to the rights of all Americans."

Attorney General John Ashcroft interrupted his Independence Day vacation in Missouri to attend.

A U.S. attorney in San Francisco, Mr. Mueller was long considered the front-runner - and Mr. Ashcroft's favorite - to replace retired FBI Director Louis Freeh at the helm of an agency troubled in recent years.

Mr. Bush saluted Mr. Mueller as a man of "fidelity, bravery and integrity."

"The FBI must remain independent of politics and uncompromising in its mission," Mr. Bush said. "... Bob Mueller's experience and character convinced me that he's ready to shoulder these responsibilities."

Among the FBI's problems were a maverick independent streak, its snake-bitten relationship with the Clinton administration and a series of mishaps, including the botched investigation of former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, and the mishandling of evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing trial that forced the postponement of Timothy McVeigh's execution.

In February, the FBI discovered that one of its own, veteran FBI agent Robert Hanssen, had been spying for the Russians for more than 15 years.

Mr. Mueller's nomination had been expected since last month, when Bush abruptly asked aides to take one last look at the field of possible candidates.

The White House is seeking to rein in the independent-minded FBI and the president, aides said, wanted a director who defers to the Justice Department.

Mr. Mueller remained the strongest candidate to fit this bill. The former acting deputy attorney general won the support of Attorney General John Ashcroft by aiding in the transition from the Clinton administration.

-------- spying

Exclusive Interview with Former KGB Agent -- Part 1

July 5, 2001
George Knapp, Reporter,
KLAS TV, Las Vegas
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=389674&nav=168Y22gA

Imagine Russian spies sabotaging Hoover Dam or poisoning Southern Nevada's water supply. It might sound like something out of a James Bond movie, but it was all part of a Moscow plot to throw Southern Nevada into a panic.

The information comes from a man who was Russia's top spy for many years, a general in the KGB. His name is Oleg Kalugin.

During the darkest days of the cold war, when the missiles of the superpowers were poised for launch, when the world teetered on the edge of the abyss, it was the job of Russian spies to find less destructive ways for communism to prevail. "The eventual aim of destroying western societies, not thru nuclear confrontation, but through subversion. We had hundreds of pies," said General Oleg Kalugin.

Major General Oleg Kalugin knows about subversion. As the long-time chief of foreign counterintelligence for the dreaded KGB, he supervised a world-wide web of intrigue, espionage, and dirty tricks. Kalugin first came to the U.S. in the late 1950s as a foreign exchange student, then later as a correspondent for Radio Moscow, and finally as a full-fledged intelligence agent working in Washington.

He was the embodiment of what Americans feared as the commie menace. "I volunteered to be a KGB member to contribute to the victory of communism. I was a dedicated communist, said Kalugin, who now lives in the U.S. and does contract work for the federal government. He recently spoke to Las Vegas Department of Energy employees about the continuing spy threat from his former country. Although his primary job was to recruit spies and gather intelligence, he was taught intricate details of the KGB's top secret plans to disrupt and sabotage the U.S. in the event that hostilities seemed imminent. "We had contingency plans with the ultimate goal of blowing up power grids or poisoning water supplies. Before you fire a missile at Russia, your power supplies would be blown up, your water poisoned. It would create a major panic."

Kalugin was only in Nevada once while working for the KGB. He says there is no doubt Nevada would have been a prime target during the cold war, and that this state was the subject of intense espionage activity. "Nevada was one of the crucial states for the country, the Dam, testing sites, Department of Energy facilities at that time, absolutely a priority."

Hoover dam would have been a prime target for sabotage, he says, as well as the power lines coming out of the dam. The Las Vegas water supply would have been poisoned, Nellis would have been disrupted, D.O.E. facilities, including the test site, would have been targeted.

He declined to answer whether Area 51 would have made the list. Certainly, Las Vegas during the cold war teemed with russian spooks. "Some of the areas specially protected by the U.S. government at the time, soviet intelligence, military intelligence was actively involved in exploring the local areas."

During his spy career, Kalugin says he was routinely followed by the FBI, which made it all the more necessary to recruit others to do some of his leg work. Las Vegas, with all of its temptations, was a perfect place to find people who might do Russia's bidding, and it still is, one reason the D.O.E. brought Kalugin in to speak to its employees. "I would get to know vulnerabilities, weaknesses, the buttons you could push. If I could see you pulling on those slots, dice, drinking, various problems you have, it would be a super location for people to target," said Doug Newson with the D.O.E.

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Exclusive Interview with Former KGB Agent -- Part 2

What would it take for you to betray your country?

George Knapp --
I-Team Reporter
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=392920&nav=168Y22gA

(July 5) -- What would it take for you to betray your country? A former high-ranking Russian spy says, in many cases,not much.

Oleg Kalugin, the one-time head of counterintelligence for the Russian KGB, told Eyewitness News that it was no problem to find Americans who were willing to sell out. And, he adds, Las Vegas is a great place to recruit spies.

Political liberals aren't going to like what Kalugin has to say. Kalugin supervised hundreds of spies while working for the KGB, and he spent much of his time trying to recruit Americans to help the Russians, including some famous names. Persons with left-leaning politics were always targeted first, he said, and Nevada is a great place for targeting future recruits.

Nikita Kruschev's vow that "we will bury you" was no idle boast. The Russians believed they would triumph, if not through force of arms, then through any means necessary.

"We thought we could achieve this through education and also the spread of the gospel of communism, that we shall triumph because the ideas we propagated were simply invincible," Kalugin said.

Kalugin's enthusiasm for the Communist Manifesto propelled him at a young age to the pinnacle of Soviet power. He became a major general in the KGB, chief of foreign counterintelligence, and master of a sinister cabal of spies and saboteurs.

"I specialized in active measures, disinformation, deception and recruitment," he said.

But how do you find people who might be willing to sell out their country? Kalugin says it was easy, especially during the turbulent '60s and '70s, when so many young people were disillusioned with the government.

"If you impress a person with your own convictions and he is soft, a liberal or left wing, you may get him involved," Kalugin said. "Espionage will come later on; you first establish a bond of friendship."

Remember the suspicion among conservatives during the Vietnam conflict that the anti-war movement was aligned with communists? Kalugin says it was true, that the KGB thoroughly infiltrated peace groups, funded peace organizations, even published peacenik magazines.

"We found dozens who hated the U.S. and would do any damage to the U.S. in protest of the slaughter of Vietnamese," Kalugin said.

Celebrities, even Nobel laureates, signed up as unwitting partners of KGB-sponsored organizations. Many in Hollywood promoted the KGB agenda, knowingly or not. "People in the arts for propaganda, not for espionage," Kalugin said.

Jane Fonda was a perfect example. She was a leftist and a pacifist.

"We would always use names to corroborate Russian propaganda," Kalugin said. "This great woman is now on our side. Whether she was didn't matter."

The civil rights movement provided more fertile ground. Although the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover operated under the assumption that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist, Kalugin says it wasn't true, but he says KGB did back some of King's jealous rivals in the movement.

"Some of our assets in civil rights wanted to tarnish King's reputation so they could take over themselves," he said.

The environmental movement was also targeted for KGB infiltration, he says, with the simple message that the best way to preserve nature was to work against the system that would exploit it for profits.

And the anti-nuclear protesters who've been a fixture at the Nevada Test Site for 20 years or more? "These people would be targeted," Kalugin said. "All those who protested government action."

Kalugin says he recruited dozens of big-time journalists as well as members of Congress. Among his most valuable spies was John Walker, who sold vital Navy secrets to the Russians for 18 years.

Kalugin knows details about FBI agent Robert Hansen's case but would not reveal them just yet. And he shed light on an enduring debate, saying there is no question that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were, in fact, Russian spies.

But it wasn't only leftists who became KGB assets. Kalugin says the rule was -- and is -- to look for people on the extremes.

"The worst anti-American element in recent history is Timothy McVeigh," Kalugin said. "Because of his hatred of the U.S. government, 168 lives were lost. Is he alone? No."

To clarify, the general was not saying that McVeigh had ever worked with the Russians, but was using him as an example of someone on the fringes who might have been targeted for recruitment.

Kalugin says the new regime in Russia is not to be trusted, and that Americans must be on their guard.

---

Exclusive Interview with Former KGB Agent -- Part 3

Americans shouldn't get too comfortable with the new Russia

George Knapp --
I-Team Reporter
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=392952&nav=168Y22gA

(July 6) -- One of the top Soviet spies of the Cold War says Americans shouldn't get too comfortable with the new Russia. As Oleg Kalugin reminds us, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a former KGB agent.

Putin's former KGB boss was in Las Vegas recently to lecture Department of Energy workers about the dangers of modern espionage. He offered a scary assessment of the new Russia: "I'm amazed at anti-Americanism, how strong it is in Russia."

The grim assessment by former KGB Major Gen. Kalugin is at odds with the friendly face placed on U.S.-Russian relations by politicians. It was Kalugin's job to direct an army of KGB spies stationed all over the world.

Nevada was always a prime target of espionage, he says, and the KGB had intense subversion plans for this area, including the sabotage of Hoover Dam and the poisoning of the water supply. While subversion is no longer on the front burner for the Russians, the general says, the new Russian president seems to long for the good old days.

"Mr. Putin's heart and soul belong to the soviet system," Kalugin said. "He admires Stalin."

And Kalugin should know: Russian president Vladimir Putin worked under Kalugin at the KGB.

Putin openly admires and even publicly toasts mass murderer Josef Stalin, according to Kalugin. "Can you imagine in Germany today a political leader drinking to Adolf Hitler?" he asked.

Putin, he says, still has a spy's attitude about how to best deal with adversaries. "Vodka, blackmail, and a threat to kill," Kalugin said. Isn't that nice for the president of a big country to say?"

Even though the KGB no longer exists, its successor still spreads fear -- not only internationally, but at home in Russia. When this reporter visited Russia twice in the '90s, most average citizens told us they simply assume they are always being watched. With Putin in charge, that paranoia is reinforced.

In the U.S. and elsewhere, Russia's already huge spy network now operates with powerful new allies: mobsters.

"Russian criminal elements are now omnipotent," Kalugin said. "They are everywhere. Russian security services may use criminals to settle scores with those they find inconvenient."

Local lawmen confirm there is already a strong Russian mob presence here, and Kalugin warns that as long as Southern Nevada is home to important defense installations, spies will always be here.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there are some very interested in ferreting out information related to defense," he said. "Nevada is one of the crucial states."

Kalugin quit the KGB because the agency was spying on its own people. Today he counsels the U.S. government and its contractors on espionage issues.

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Inside the KGB
An interview with retired KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin

CNN
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experience/spies/interviews/kalugin/

In 1958 Oleg Kalugin traveled to the United States as a Fulbright exchange student -- and KGB spy. During his 32 years in the KGB, Kalugin played a major role in the John Walker spy ring and rose to become chief of KGB foreign counterintelligence and a major general. Because he pushed for reforms in the KGB, Kalugin was forced into retirement in 1990. After the fall of the Soviet Union he was briefly a people's deputy in the Russian Parliament. The COLD WAR production team interviewed him in January 1998.

On joining the KGB:

I had a background: my father was a KGB officer for many years, though he never approved of my choice. As a young man, I was very determined to join the service. I thought it was a great honor to serve in the Soviet security and intelligence organization. I was a highly motivated, inspired man, by the ideals and faith which I had in my system, and I was profoundly affected by the ideology of communism.

On spying in the United States:

I had three assignments in the United States: one as a student of Columbia University. I went to the School of Journalism. I was not supposed to spy; it was a reconnaissance trip: I was supposed to make as many friends as possible, to prepare fertile grounds for my future work, to familiarize myself with the United States and its ways of life. ...

I came to the United States again in 1960. ... I was appointed correspondent of Radio Moscow, the sole correspondent covering the United States as well as the United Nations in New York. For four years I performed my duties as a correspondent, which was a cover, and I also tried to collect information, to recruit Americans. I concentrated on the young, aspiring people, because I was very young myself and this was part of my assignment.

And finally I came again in 1965 to Washington, D.C., as deputy chief for political intelligence. I later acted as chief of station, briefly; and had I not been exposed by Jack Anderson, one of the prominent U.S. journalists at the time, I would have probably been appointed chief of station and stayed in the United States longer.

Those were perhaps the most productive years, from 1965 to 1970. My cover was press secretary, public relations officer. Great job, I must say. I cultivated dozens of journalists, European, American; I would brief them, at times disinform them -- but very subtly, not to let myself down and not to compromise my credibility.

Finally, I ran, as a chief of political intelligence, several major spy rings. One was John Walker, who came to the Soviet Embassy in the fall of 1967 and continued to spy for the next 18 years. But I also ran a few other spies in Western embassies, in the journalistic community, in the academic community, in the military. So I would say my five years in Washington really made me one of the best officers by KGB standards. And this is why, despite my early age, I mean fairly young, I was recalled to Moscow and appointed deputy chief of foreign counterintelligence. And within three years I became chief of foreign counterintelligence, a major outfit within the KGB; and I got my general's rank in 1974, when I was barely 40 years old. And in fact, all my career was extremely successful, and I had no complaints of any sorts; though my philosophical views ... let's say my mindset and my political views have been undergoing [an] evolution.

On the KGB's goals:

The chief mission of the intelligence, as defined by the Soviet leadership, was to forewarn the Soviet leadership of impending military crises. ... As you know, the Soviet leadership was paranoid about a potential Western attack against the U.S.S.R., and for that reason the intelligence [agencies were] given all they wanted [in order] to provide the leadership with advance warning about forthcoming events.

On the other hand -- and this is the other side of the Soviet intelligence, very important: perhaps I would describe it as the heart and soul of the Soviet intelligence -- was subversion. Not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs. To make America more vulnerable to the anger and distrust of other peoples.

In that sense, the Soviet intelligence [was] really unparalleled. ... The [KGB] programs -- which would run all sorts of congresses, peace congresses, youth congresses, festivals, women's movements, trade union movements, campaigns against U.S. missiles in Europe, campaigns against neutron weapons, allegations that AIDS ... was invented by the CIA ... all sorts of forgeries and faked material -- [were] targeted at politicians, the academic community, at [the] public at large. ...

It was really a worldwide campaign, often not only sponsored and funded, but conducted and manipulated by the KGB. And this was again part and parcel of this campaign to weaken [the] military, economic and psychological climate in the West.

On the ruthlessness of the KGB:

Well, it was ruthless. It was ruthless in Stalin's times, and the measure of its ruthlessness -- well, it's of a historic proportion. I think if we compare Hitler to Stalin, and the Gestapo to the KGB, the KGB was far more ruthless -- not because they killed far more people, but because they were indiscriminate in the selection of victims. The Nazis concentrated on Jews; the Soviet KGB under Stalin's directions was an internationalist organization: it would kill anyone who would stand in the way of Stalin and his leadership.

After Stalin's death, the KGB underwent serious reforms, but not serious enough to declare it a legitimate organization abiding by the laws of the state. In fact, it was a tool in the hands of the totalitarian state, in the hands of the Soviet leadership. And it was used at their will. I mean, the Soviet system was a lawless system, and the KGB was a tool of lawlessness.

On KGB assassination plots:

The Soviet KGB would not be involved in indiscriminate killings. I'm talking about the external arm of the KGB intelligence -- the domestic secret police and its ruthlessness, well, it's on the record. As to the assassinations outside the U.S.S.R., they were very selective. Let me just describe the criteria used to put someone on a death list.

First of all, political opponents of Joseph Stalin, in Stalin's time, [were targeted]. Trotsky was one of the victims. [Second], Ukrainian nationalists and Russian emigres who fought valiantly against the Soviet regime, they were also sentenced to death in absentia. [Ukrainian nationalist leader Stefan] Bandera was assassinated in Europe after World War II. The third category [of assassination targets] would be former military officers [who defected], [particularly] KGB secret police and intelligence. All of them were sentenced to death in absentia.

By the time I took over the foreign counterintelligence branch of the KGB, it was our job to locate these people and provide information for the execution. The execution would be carried out by someone else, normally [undercover agents]. We were not involved in physical executions, but we would do the search job. In fact, in my time, we [targeted] perhaps three dozens of former military intelligence officers including, simply military men, like Nikolai Shadrin, former commander of the Soviet cruiser in the Baltic who had defected to Sweden with his mistress. He was also sentenced to death because he was a military man, he sort of [broke] his oath to serve the state. ...

There were some other people of a higher rank -- government figures. But they were exclusively pinpointed by the Soviet leadership. One of them, for instance, was the shah of Iran. There were two attempts on his life -- both failed -- by the KGB. A recent example is the prime minister of Afghanistan, who was murdered by the assault troops -- I mean KGB groups -- in his own palace in Kabul in 1979. ...

Sometimes there is a lot of exaggeration about the Soviet capabilities. ... When people talk about the pope, for instance, this is out of the question. No major figures in the Western world, or in the Eastern world for that matter, except those I mentioned, were [targeted]. [It] would be unthinkable, inconceivable. ... [Despite] all the deliberations and rumors and gossip, this was not true.

On the assassination of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov:

Markov was a rather special case. In the first place, it was not a Soviet affair: it was Bulgarian. And the Bulgarians, in the person of the party secretary, [Todor] Zhivkov, requested the Soviet KGB to help them to get rid of Georgi Markov, who was a prominent journalist, highly critical of the Bulgarian regime. Soviet KGB Chairman Andropov was very reluctant to play along with Zhivkov, and in fact he refused point-blank to go ahead with the plans. It was [Vladimir] Kryuchkov, the chief of the intelligence, who persuaded Andropov to change his mind. ...

The Bulgarian secret police was a branch of the KGB. Perhaps I would never say that of East Germany or Poles, or even Czechs, [but] the Bulgarians were simply the 16th republic, whatever they say. They even wanted at one point to become the 16th republic, but [the] Soviet leadership was wise enough to decline. ...

[Andropov] agreed finally and said, "OK, but no personal involvement. Provide the Bulgarians with equipment [and] advice on how to use the equipment." And that's how it happened. The Bulgarians were given a choice of weapons, and finally they picked up this umbrella as a cover to shoot the man with a poisoned pellet. Well, it was not supposed to be uncovered, because the pellet would dissolve in his body within 24 hours, if I recall correctly. But somehow it was found, the entry was found, and this made a major scandal. The Soviets never admitted this crime. I was the first to publicly disclose the facts.

On the importance of good intelligence:

Well, let me tell you this: intelligence played little, if any, role in winning the Cold War. Economic power, technological progress, political imperatives -- they were decisive forces in the Cold War outcome. On the other hand, the intelligence played a tremendous role in keeping the world from the brink, from turning the Cold War into a hot war.

Let me give you [an] example. Oleg Penkovsky, a CIA spy, former Soviet military officer, provided the CIA and the United States government with impeccable information which allowed President Kennedy to take decisive measures in the Cuban crisis and to stop installation of Soviet missiles on Cuban territory. Had not the United States government known the extent of Soviet military power, the number of missiles they had in their possession at the time, the intentions or plans they had at the time, [there] would probably [have been a] war between the United States and Russia. I was, at the time, very intimately knowledgeable about the developments, and I was really on the brink of a nervous breakdown as things were closing to a major confrontation.

On the John Walker spy ring:

I was John Walker's supervisor. When he came into the Soviet Embassy, he produced immediately very convincing proof of his great value. We understood that we [had] a great catch.

[As] his supervisor, I handled all the information he would provide us with. At the time, he would drop these big brown bags filled with top secret, classified information, and it took some time [for] us to convince him that this was not right, that he should use miniature cameras and other gadgets. ...

John Walker's importance was not only because he provided classified information from the U.S. Defense Department ... but he provided us with codes which allowed the Soviets to decrypt all traffic between the U.S. naval headquarters and their navies across the world. It was particularly important because the United States Navy is the most formidable force in the United States defense establishment. The U.S. nuclear submarines, armed with nuclear missiles, perhaps is the most dangerous of all weapons, because they would be capable of coming close to the Soviet shores and firing their missiles, which would reach Moscow and major industrial centers within minutes. To keep an eye, to monitor all the traffic, to know well in advance what kind of military planning was in process, what kind of commands the naval people would get, what movements the submarines would make, and how close they would come to the Soviet shores, was of absolutely strategic importance.

On George Blake, Soviet mole in British intelligence:

George Blake's conversion to communism I think was in many ways motivated by his profound belief in Christian values. You may be surprised, but the communist ideology, in its original form, borrowed a lot from early Christianity: the brotherhood of people, the brotherhood of nations, equality and universal love, and many other things. ... I think [when he was interned] in the North Korean prisoners' camp, where the Soviet officers were actively looking for potential spies, he found a good interlocutor, the man who understood his convictions, and who enhanced them by providing a model of the U.S.S.R. as a Christian country, in a sense, whose goals are very close to that of Christianity. Paradise on Earth in our lifetime -- isn't it appealing?

And indeed, you know, George Blake had that innocent mind in a sense. He's still a very naive man. ... He is a traitor to the Western world, he is a traitor to the British, and in fact it's true, and he didn't know it, and he didn't want to know that many people he betrayed were executed. I think we even discussed this subject at one point, and he wouldn't believe it -- he would say, "Well, I was told that this would not happen." It did happen; he was not told.

On getting to know Kim Philby, another Soviet mole inside British intelligence, when Philby lived in Moscow:

When I came to Philby's apartment the first time, in 1971, when I befriended him and became his supervisor, when I opened up opportunities to him, denied before: traveling around the country, not only in the U.S.S.R. but in Eastern Europe, and ultimately to Cuba; when we allowed him to meet our young, aspiring intelligence officer(s) and to become an instructor, a teacher; when he would be received with rousing ovations by the Soviet hockey players or football teams; my idea was to give the man a chance to become what he always wanted to. He lived in seclusion; he became an alcoholic; he had been losing faith in the Soviet system. And to me it was a matter of honor to resurrect him to life and make him a man ... what he was: a very intelligent man, a very warm man, by the way; a very smart man.

Unfortunately, some of my superiors felt that he should never be left out of control, and for years after I was put in charge, his telephone conversations were picked up -- I mean tapped -- his mail was opened. The reason was clear: to protect him from potential dangers from the outside world. Soviet intelligence always thought that some day British intelligence will try to assassinate him, so to keep an eye and ear on his dealings with his friends in the U.K., or with foreign correspondents who we selectively admitted to his apartment. We thought that we were protecting him.

But in my time, the suspicion that he had been a planted British agent was entirely destroyed. I said, "If we deal with a man who devoted his life to the Soviet cause, we have to be honest with him, we must relieve him of all these suspicions," and I think I succeeded in that. You know, after all, he was rewarded. I was the one who insisted on awarding him the Order of Lenin, the highest government decoration at the time. And finally we persuaded Andropov to persuade the Politburo to give him that great award.

Though we parted in 1980, and I left for Leningrad ... we still maintained friendly contacts. I would call him [at] home, we would exchange letters, and I had a few letters from him while I was in Leningrad. He complained to me, sort of ambiguously, about his new supervisors, and I think in one letter he used the words: "This is like in the old Roman Empire: no one knows what's going on in the court: gossip, rumors, innuendo -- nothing is clear." He was obviously disappointed by lack of attention, lack of personal attention. And when he died, I felt as if I lost a friend. And it's probably hard to explain. ... The man, Philby, betrayed his country for the cause. I served my country for the cause. By the time of his death, I think he was highly disappointed, not in the cause itself, but in the way the Soviet system functioned. I think he felt betrayed. I felt betrayed, too. By the time of his death, I felt betrayed. And his death was a very sad event for me, not because I was his supervisor, but a man who was of the same mindset but who already died.

On how the Prague Spring affected his views:

In 1968, when I was acting chief of station in Washington, and I had access to classified information, top secret, from the CIA, Department of State and National Security Agency, I learned well in advance from Moscow that Russian tanks [were] going to roll into Prague and finish the so-called Prague Spring. And the Russian propaganda at the time claimed that Czechoslovakia was about to be conquered, occupied by Western powers, by NATO subversives, anti-communists. And I had at my disposal all [this] information which did not corroborate these allegations.

I thought it would be wrong for me as an intelligence officer to simply swallow the stuff I hear, having all the information available. I sat down and wrote a cable, two or three pages: I illustrated my points by excerpts from the [U.S.] documents, saying that the CIA was not involved to the degree described in the Soviet media, [that] the Western services, the American services, were not guilty of what was going [on] in Prague, [that] it was a domestic affair. ...

Only later I learned from my colleagues in Moscow that Andropov, after reading my message, said, "Do not show anyone, destroy immediately." That was the answer. To me, Czechoslovakia was a continuation of Khrushchev's thaw: socialism with a human face. Whilst the Prague Spring was crushed by the Soviet invasion, it was clear to me that there will be no thaw in Russia, at least not in any immediate future. And this started a chain of events which led me finally to the realization that I was on the wrong path.

On Soviet technical intelligence:

Soviet technical intelligence was far inferior to Soviet human intelligence. ... We were always behind the West, and in fact our technical collection was not as highly valued by the Soviet leadership -- though some of the intercepts we had here in Washington, for instance, surprisingly received high marks in the Kremlin.

I recall, in the late 1960s, we managed to intercept a conversation of Henry Kissinger, then assistant of national security affairs to the president, and his fiancee. They talked on the phone, and Henry asked her how he looked on television the previous night, and she said, "Oh, you looked great." But he was insistent: "But tell me more, tell me more." He was ... you know, he wanted more. He was in the mood [for] great praise from his fiancee. And we sent this to Moscow, just simply as an example of our successful technical program. I found out later that this piece of information -- which is a trifle really, peanuts, nothing -- was relayed to the Politburo and was highly, highly evaluated by the Soviet leadership. And [for] one reason: they thought that through this small episode, they had access to the most intimate inner workings of the American system, which was of course untrue. But Andropov, who was a great manipulator, obviously managed to project this piece of information in a way that convinced the Politburo that we have excellent technical facilities and could intercept even such intimate conversations of major Western political leaders. ...

In terms of its practical use, all the gadgetry, all the miniature devices, listening, photographic, otherwise, would be used to look for compromising material against someone, to listen [for] the conversation which implicated them in something which [could] later be used against him, or in favor of the KGB. In that sense, the Soviet technology was unparalleled. ... It [had] a narrow use: primarily to monitor and keep under control people -- not to report on major developments, military, social or otherwise. Human intelligence provided the bulk of information required by the government. ...

I recall it was the British Prime Minister Lloyd George who said in the 1920s that the best way to soften the bullishness of the Bolshevik system is through commerce. Indeed, trade was one of the major weapons. ... When you see Western technology, which is so winsome in the eyes of the Russians, compared to awkward, ugly, inefficient [Soviet technology] ... it impresses you. Not [only] from the technological standpoint; it also makes you think that there is something in that system which produces better stuff, better stuff and better technology. ...

The Soviet technological and scientific intelligence [groups were] well-funded. [They had] really no limits -- they [c]ould buy anything, from a hydrogen bomb to a top missile or whatever, bomber. ... And they ultimately saw that all their efforts and money were wasted.

For instance, when we stole IBMs in our blueprints, or some other electronic areas which the West made great strides in and we were behind, it would take years to implement the results of our intelligence efforts. By that time, in five or seven years, the West would go forward, and we would have to steal again and again, and we'd fall behind more and more.

On Soviet fears about "Star Wars":

The Soviet leadership particularly became more paranoid than ever when their leadership became too old. This aging of the Soviet system coincided with the aging of the Soviet leaders. They all lived in the world of Nazi Germany's attack on Russia in June 1941, and they thought the United States and the West were preparing grounds to invade Russia again. This time, perhaps, with nuclear weapons.

In 1981 or 1982 ... we received a cable from Andropov, who was the KGB chairman, and as I read it I had a funny feeling. Andropov said, and I quote: "At no time after World War II were we closer to another military confrontation with the West than today." I think it was 1982. And I thought ... I was an avid listener of the BBC programs, I read a lot of Western stuff; I was well exposed, let's put it this way, to all sorts of information, and I could not find a single reason why, what happened? I thought, "Maybe I'm just out of touch." And I was out of the intelligence at the time -- I was in the domestic branch of the KGB -- [and] I thought, "Maybe they have something very important which makes them think that way."

Well, it turned out that the Soviet aging leadership was so scared by President Reagan's blueprint for a safer world through a Star Wars program. The Soviet leadership understood that they would simply be incapable of keeping up the arms race with the United States. The Soviet system was exhausted, on the brink of collapse, and this is what Gorbachev understood a few years later. But at the time, when the United States launched this program, or at least publicly declared their intent to build up this major anti-missile defense, [and] later when President Reagan called the Soviets the "Evil Empire," it looked [to aging Soviet leaders] as if the Americans were preparing fertile grounds to attack the Soviets. You know, just working with the people, public opinion.

On the KGB in general:

KGB was ... an omnipotent organization compared to any counterpart in the West or East. I think they were the greatest. In terms of their size: half a million; in terms of ruthlessness: I mean, millions of people executed; and in terms of their sophistication, because it was one of the oldest security and intelligence services, perhaps the only service as experienced [as] the British one. ...

The Soviet secret police was not supposed to be petty; it was omnipotent, it was funded well, it had the best-educated people, it had access to almost everything, and yet it failed in the long run -- which shows that the cause they were fighting for was not the right one.


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[Are they trying to get us mad enough that they have an excuse to stop the insanity, or do these military folks really mean to finish destroying the beautiful places of Earth? et]

The battle for California's Big Sur
Greens, monks, and movie stars join forces against a proposed naval bombing range

Duncan Campbell
Thursday July 5, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,516891,00.html

One of the most beautiful wilderness areas in the United States is at the heart of a battle between contemplative monks and the "top guns" of the US Navy, environmentalists and the government.

The conflict is seen as a trial of strength between two very different but powerful American cultures.

Called by the Spanish "the big country to the south [of San Francisco]", Big Sur is a sublime area of spectacular Californian coastline and mountains.

Plans to use the nearby Fort Hunter Liggett estate as a navy bombing range has provoked an opposition movement reminiscent of that which dogged the navy's training ground on Vieques, Puerto Rico.

It has also highlighted the increasing tension between those who want to preserve the shrinking wilderness areas and those who want them for development or military training.

William Randolph Hearst, the American newspaper tycoon who was the basis for Orson Welles's character Citizen Kane, sold the 160,000 acres (65,000 hectares) of Fort Hunter Liggett, in Monterey county, to the government in 1940. It has been used as training ground for army reserves and the national guard ever since.

12 bombing runs a day

The navy, seeking a practice area nearer its Lemoore air station, 30 miles west of Visalia, decided at the end of last year that the site would be ideal for bombing runs. This would involve about 12 bombing sorties a day, or around 3,000 a year.

If approved it will be called after a former local resident, General Jimmy Doolittle, who led the US bombing raid on Tokyo in 1942 and who is played in the film Pearl Harbor by Alec Baldwin.

"We want to drive a stake into the ground with this issue," said Jack Elwanger, director of the Pelican Network, which has been coordinating the opposition campaign.

"In this area is the most quintessential slice of pre-civilisation California - it's like a living museum and these guys want to drop bombs on it."

Big Sur's majestic backdrop of mountains and dunes against the roaring ocean has attracted writers and artists such as Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Native Americans regard it as a sacred area, and it has an almost spiritual significance for environmentalists and followers of New Age philosophies.

Local monks from a contemplative Benedictine order at the New Camaldoni Hermitage have also voiced their displeasure. "

Already the low-flying supersonic jets, F-16s and F-18s, are intruding and invading the contemplative silence of the hermitage," the prior, Raniero Hoffman, said in his statement of objections.

The actor Robert Redford has also joined the fray.

"I have had a many-decades-long relationship with this area," he said in a letter to the navy. "I know it well. And I can't imagine, under any circumstances, that bringing supersonic fighter jets to manoeuvre in this area wouldn't absolutely and irrevocably alter it."

The opposition in Congress is led by the Democrat Sam Farr, who represents the seaside city of Carmel. He would like to see the area become a national park. He said that people went to the area to see the condors - recently released there - not the fighter planes.

"Essentially what you have is a conflict of uses," he told the Guardian yesterday. "On the one hand you want to keep it for people to enjoy nature with all its sounds and silence, and along comes the navy - and the F-18 is about as noisy as you can get."

Mr Farr said that the conflict was perhaps best illustrated when the navy held an open meeting at a school in nearby King City after news of its plans leaked out.

"You had the navy there in their dress whites and the monks in their white robes - I don't think that the navy had ever seen anything like it." Irreparably damaged The environmental harm, some say, would be incalculable. "The natural serenity of the area will be irreparably damaged," Jack Elwanger said. "These jet pilots are the hot dogs, the top guns. They think they're doing sorties in Korea - they see it and they can't resist it."

The Salinan Nation of Native Americans has also joined the protests, arguing that it is a sacred area with which they have links that stretch back 10,000 years. Joe Freeman, president of the Salinan Nation Cultural Preservation Association, said bombing would be "completely inappropriate".

Local businesses, too, particularly those reliant on the booming ecotourism trade, are opposed to the plans, as are California's Democrat senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.

It is also claimed that rare species might be affected, including bald eagles, elk and the elephant seals currently lying in all their splendour on the beach at Piedras Blancas, observed by passing tourists.

But some of the warnings of the effects of the bombing have been exaggerated, according to Paul Miller, editor of the local paper, the Carmel Pine Cone.

"You have plenty of Americans who just wish they didn't have to have a military," he said yesterday.

Some people opposed the bombing just because of the "spiritual" aura attached to Big Sur, he said. "They just don't like the idea. The only important issue I have been able to identify is the noise."

The navy has commissioned an environmental impact report and has reserved comment until it is completed later this summer.

"We think the public will back this proposal once they become fully informed about it," a spokesman said.

Whatever the assessment's findings, the navy is likely to experience continuing opposition."

"What's at stake is the solitude of wilderness values," Jonathan Libby of the Ventana Wilderness Alliance said. "Big Sur is a sacred place."

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Star Wars base invaded again

John Vidal and Richard Norton-Taylor,
Guardian
Thursday July 5, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4216316,00.html

Security at the Menwith Hill communications base near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, is to be tightened as Greenpeace activists yesterday again invaded to protest against the US missile defence programme, known as Star Wars.

"The view of the secretary of state, Geoff Hoon, is that if we need to put more resources into security at Menwith Hill then we will consider that."

Mr Hoon is known to have been furious after more than 120 Greenpeace activists had effectively strolled into the base early on Tuesday morning to demand that Britain reject US President George Bush's proposed missile plan which would depend on the Yorkshire base to act as its eyes and ears.

Yesterday 20 protesters climbed back over the razor wire and two climbed a 50ft radio tower. Last night two professional climbers with enough water to stay several days were prepared to stay "indefinitely". No attempts were made by the British military police or specialist police climbers to bring them down.

The protester who spent Tuesday night up a mast gave himself up voluntarily for lack of water yesterday morning.

"We were more leisurely today," said a Greenpeace spokes woman. "We waited until 7am until they were awake. I think we have exposed the UK's role in Star Wars.

"Security on the site is important but the global security situation is more fundamental. We fear Star Wars will provoke a new arms race."

Tony Blair yesterday told the Commons that he "didn't agree that the Americans are wrong to identify weapons of mass destruction as a genuine threat". He was responding to a question by former international aid minister Chris Mullin.

"British interests would be better served if we were to give the Americans the truth - that it won't work and that the real threats to our security are climate change, the Aids pandemic and impoverishment caused by the grossly unfair workings of the global market," said Mr Mullin.

---

Greenpeace Ends Occupation of US Spy Base

STAR WARS PRESS CENTRE Latest News,
5 July, 2001:
http://www.stopstarwars.org/html/press.html

The two remaining Greenpeace activists occupying a radio mast inside the US spy base at Menwith Hills in the UK have ended their protest.

Over 100 Greenpeace volunteers invaded the base on Tuesday morning at 6am and have occupied various parts of the site for the past two days.

The early warning base would become an essential part of George Bush's Star Wars programme, along with a nearby radar facility at Fylingdales and another base in Thule in Greenland.

"The amount of support we have had for this action over the last 40 hours shows the level of global concern about the proposed Star Wars plan," said Greenpeace International disarmament campaigner William Peden. " People around the world realise that Star Wars will bring with it, not protection or defence, but a new nuclear arms race, and the clear message over the past two days to all governments is that Star Wars should be stopped," Peden added.

Activists from America, Denmark, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Germany took part in the action. The last of the group voluntarily came down from the radio mast because their supplies were exhausted. This is the end of this particular action, but by no means the end of Greenpeace's campaign against the Star Wars programme.

The Menwith Hill base is rented from the British government by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and is home to over 1,000 American NSA personnel. It is primarily a listening base, which intercepts international phone , fax and email communications. However it also houses two 'golf ball' radomes that are described as.the "eyes and ears" the planned Star Wars system ). Two SBIRS (Space Based Infrared System) Radomes have been constructed in the Menwith Hill complex. If the UK government give the go ahead they will be used as a ground relay station to transmit information on missile location and trajectory back to the US to assist with targetting for ground, sea, air and space based interceptors.

View the action pics here

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Sect Clings to the Web in the Face of Beijing's Ban

New York Times
July 5, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/05/world/05FALU.html?pagewanted=all

BEIJING - Tapping away at one of his computers in a cramped two- room apartment in western Beijing, Lloyd Zhao is engaged in an extraordinarily dangerous endeavor - searching through the night for holes in the electronic wall that the government has built to keep Chinese from seeing Web sites of Falun Gong, the outlawed spiritual movement.

Periodically, firewall programs that Mr. Zhao has installed on his computer detect a signal from another computer in China that is trying to identify him. The string of numbers from the snooping computer that appear on Mr. Zhao's screen can invariably be traced to a branch of the Public Security Bureau.

"They look for anyone who tries to reach Falun Gong Web sites overseas," says the shaggy-haired Mr. Zhao, 33, a fervent Falun Gong follower and an advanced computer technician. When the surveillance becomes too intense, he switches Internet accounts, operating systems, even hard-disk drives and telephone lines to mask his online identity.

He says the threat of detection will not dissuade him from his self-appointed mission to keep open the lines of communication between the discipline's United States-based founder, Li Hongzhi, and followers here, where a government campaign to eradicate the movement has entered what Beijing hopes is the endgame.

Since China set out to crush Falun Gong nearly two years ago, as many as 200 people have died, possibly thousands have been beaten or tortured, and millions have been cowed into renouncing their faith in Mr. Li's apocalyptic cosmology.

[On Wednesday, Chinese officials confirmed a human rights report of a mass suicide by Falun Gong followers in a labor camp, but Falun Gong adherents continued to insist that the inmates were tortured to death.]

But Mr. Zhao and hundreds like him continue to elude China's internal security forces, using temporary cell phone numbers, encryption programs and obscure Internet services based overseas to keep the remaining network of followers connected.

That makes Mr. Zhao one of the "most dangerous" of Falun Gong's remaining proponents, according to He Zuoxiu, a physicist and a Communist Party member who has played an integral role in having the movement banned. Mr. He says Falun Gong is an evil cult that, unchallenged, could threaten China's tenuous stability, should it galvanize the millions of people disenfranchised by the transition from a centrally planned to a market-driven economy.

Sitting in his apartment a few miles from Mr. Zhao's apartment, Mr. He said people like Mr. Zhao should be hunted down and locked up until they have recanted their beliefs.

The two men, separated not only by age but also by spiritual beliefs - Mr. He, 74, is an avowed atheist, and Mr. Zhao believes in multiple gods - are on opposite sides of a confrontation that has drawn considerable attention in the West, in part because it represents the most sustained challenge to Communist Party authority in more than a decade.

On one side is a group that believes that it is engaged in a battle with evil beings for control of the universe. On the other is a government that promotes atheism and feels so threatened by a relative handful of people that it has marshaled the full force of its police power to bend them to its will.

"The number of followers is getting smaller, and the crackdown is growing fiercer, but it's going to end with our victory soon," Mr. Zhao said at one of many recent interviews, almost always at restaurants or bars or shopping malls around the city, for which his lanky frame, clad in black, would suddenly emerge from the crowd at the appointed hour.

Mr. Zhao said he had decided to speak out because Master Li says followers should step forward to "validate" Falun Gong. Mr. Zhao said he believed that the authorities would find it difficult to identify him, because Zhao is a common surname in China. He asked that this article use his anglicized first name, which he uses with foreigners but which does not appear on any of his identity papers.

One meeting was in a private room on the second floor of a Thai-Indian restaurant where Mr. Zhao and two visitors were obliged to order too much food to buy some isolation. Yet he still chose his words carefully, stopping in midsentence whenever a waitress passed by outside or entered the room. No matter where he is, his eyes have a habit of looking out their corners as if he were listening for footfalls from behind.

He turns vague when asked how the end will come.

Under attack, Falun Gong has evolved from a well-regulated movement with a structure not unlike that of the Communist Party into a nonhierarchical mass movement whose structure mirrors that of the Internet, on which it depends.

There are no longer any national Falun Gong posts in China, only local volunteer "tutors" and "facilitators" like Mr. Zhao who look to Master Li for guidance. Although Mr. Zhao is an important node in that network, he is the first to concede that he and his friends are dispensable.

If they are caught, he said, other devotees will take their place. The Communist Party can punch large holes in the Falun Gong movement. But until the government "re-educates" or imprisons every last true believer, he explained, the network will endure.

Still, the destruction of the group's internal hierarchy has fragmented its members into loosely connected groups, some following charismatic tutors or even fake scriptures that are circulating in China.

Interpretations of Mr. Li's messages now vary widely among followers. One manifestation of the less cohesive dogma may have been the self-immolation of followers this year on Tiananmen Square, an act that senior followers in the United States say went against Mr. Li's teachings.

Inspiration: After Bar Binges, a Spiritual Quest

Mr. Zhao got his start on computers in the early 1980's. By the time he reached his 20's, he was among the first computer geeks in China, going days without sleep while he hacked away at his keyboard. His expertise later landed him a string of high-tech jobs. One was at a company that installed pinhole video cameras and other surveillance equipment in hotel rooms.

For years, he softened the edges of his spiritually arid life among computers with binges in Beijing's bars. With beer, cigarettes and sleep deprivation, his health deteriorated to the point that he began losing his teeth. He speaks today with a self- consciously stiff upper lip that hides a gap where his eyeteeth once were.

Many Falun Gong followers live in an industrial urban jumble of half- finished concrete shells, smokestacks and high-tension power lines where traditional religion has been replaced by official atheism.

Mr. Li, a former clerk in a government grain bureau, was among dozens of self-styled "masters" who stepped in to fill that void in the early 90's with spiritual disciplines based on the practice of traditional Chinese breathing exercises that seek to channel qi, the body's vital energy, to improve health or obtain supernatural powers.

He wrapped his exercises in a complex cosmology that mixed traditional religious tenets with popular notions of extraterrestrials and U.F.O.'s to create a vivid belief system that struck a chord with many Chinese who were searching for moral and spiritual guidance.

In 1996, a friend sent Mr. Zhao an e-mail message that directed him to a Falun Gong Web site in the United States. He logged onto the site and spent the night reading an online edition of Zhuan Falun, Mr. Li's main text, which followers regard as their bible. Mr. Zhao bought a copy the next day. Three days later, he said, he stopped smoking and drinking and was immersed in the world that Mr. Li presents.

At its core, Mr. Li's message is a simple one - be a better person and you will be saved. He cast his followers in the pivotal role of a cosmic morality play, the aspect that most attracted Mr. Zhao.

"Master Li has said that there is not much time left, and so all followers should grasp this chance to reached the highest spiritual level that they can before the day comes," Mr. Zhao said at another meeting, this time beneath the soaring escalators of a new shopping mall here. "My aspirations are different now. I'm pursuing the improvement of my inner self."

At the peak of the movement two years ago, thousands of Falun Gong "tutors" guided followers in exercise and study sessions in parks and plazas at dawn each day. The tutors were, in turn, grouped into "stations" and met regularly to discuss the development of the movement and the planning of periodic mass events.

Station "chiefs" communicated with the Falun Dafa Research Society in Beijing, which took orders from Mr. Li. Falun Dafa, or Great Law of the Dharma Wheel, is the formal name for Falun Gong, or Dharma Wheel Practice.

Mr. He, the physicist, was among the first prominent Chinese to speak out against the growing organization. According to Mr. He, one of his students became mentally unstable after practicing the discipline in the mid-90's, and the physicist faulted Falun Gong for the student's trouble in a televised interview in 1998.

In a magazine article a year later, Mr. He warned again of the movement's danger to youth. That article inspired a 10,000-strong Falun Gong demonstration outside the leadership compound here in April 1999, the event that precipitated the government's eradication campaign.

Falun Gong's formal structure in China broke down after the crackdown, as members of the hierarchy were rounded up, with the most active sentenced to lengthy jail terms. Those tutors not under detention are now under close surveillance by the neighborhood committees that are the lowest rung of the Communist Party's national surveillance system.

Nonetheless, many Falun Gong followers continue to meet daily, though it is impossible to tell how many remain active. Mr. Li says there are 70 million practitioners in China and 100 million followers worldwide, though he has never offered evidence to support that. Closer scrutiny suggests the movement in China never numbered more than several million, and China's anti- Falun Gong campaign has most certainly scared off many.

The government has had more than a year to measure the breadth and depth of what is left, and it apparently believes that it has identified the remaining core, 40,000 people, according to Mr. He. By dealing harshly with the most militant, a manageable number in the scope of the vast internal security apparatus, Beijing hopes to neutralize the rest.

"The detention centers are all full up!" Mr. He exclaimed, sitting in his study in black long johns and a gray hand-knit sweater one afternoon.

He said that at the beginning of the year the government switched from its strategy of sending followers arrested in the capital back to their home provinces and began collecting the detainees at centers here. As many as 6,000 of the most active followers are in detention, to be held until they have recanted their beliefs or are sent to reform-through-labor camps in the countryside, Mr. He said.

Mr. He has become one of Falun Gong's prime enemies, described in the group's literature as a demon in league with evil beings, including President Jiang Zemin, who are fighting Falun Gong for control of the universe. Mr. He smiles at the reference, his eyeglasses and thin gray hair askew, but he insists that such talk is far from harmless. He said it recalled the language of the Taiping, the mid-19th century spiritual movement that turned into full-scale armed rebellion, which took over a huge swath of the country, cost millions of lives and threatened to bring down the last imperial government before it was suppressed.

That assessment paints Mr. Zhao as a threat to China's social order, a role Mr. He knows well. "I did underground work," he said, recalling his early days as a Communist Party member before the party took power in 1949. "We went to demonstrate, but the core in the movement wouldn't go to the streets. Falun Gong is the same."

Practice: As Pressure Grows, a Movement Adapts

In Mr. Zhao's crowded apartment, a diptych that shows the Falun Gong founder both seated and standing sits atop a white enameled bookshelf beside Mr. Zhao's bed. The apartment's only other decoration is a round pillow with a large yellow swastika, a Buddhist symbol of good will, surrounded by smaller swastikas and yin-yang symbols, associated with Taoism, the other ancient philosophical strain that has contributed to Master Li's teachings. This is where Mr. Zhao sits to perform his exercises each day.

The pillow's emblem represents the Falun, or Dharma Wheel, and is described by Mr. Li as a miniature of the cosmos that he says he installs telekinetically in the abdomens of all his followers, where it rotates in alternating directions, throwing off bad karma and gathering qi. Many Falun Gong adherents say they can feel the wheel turning in their bellies.

The rest of Mr. Zhao's Falun Gong paraphernalia - books, tapes and photographs of Mr. Li - are stored elsewhere in case his apartment is raided. Mr. Zhao and others like him download and disseminate inspirational Falun Gong videos, Falun Gong propaganda fliers and even Mr. Li's books formatted for desktop printers, all with the intent of keeping the movement in China alive.

Mr. Zhao has distributed hundreds of compact disks containing a complete Falun Gong kit, including links to secure Internet servers overseas and dozens of Falun Gong Web sites, as well as photographs of U.F.O.'s and videos of the corpses of some of the followers reportedly tortured to death by the police.

"When Master Li issues a new message, 99 percent of the followers in Beijing will have it within three days," Mr. Zhao said.

China recently issued a new legal interpretation of the antisubversion laws that allows it to hand down lengthy prison terms to followers like Mr. Zhao who distribute leaflets or disseminate Mr. Li's messages, which have grown increasingly apocalyptic.

"It is in fact time to let go of your last attachments," Mr. Li wrote to followers in August, adding that believers should "let go of all worldly attachments (including the attachment to the human body)."

On Jan. 1, Mr. Li told his disciples: "The present performance of the evil shows that they are already utterly inhuman and completely without righteous thoughts. So such evil's persecution of the Fa can no longer be tolerated."

That set off a debate among Falun Gong followers in China about what Mr. Li's message meant. Senior followers in the United States were quick to issue an appeal that followers keep calm. A week later, a similarly cautionary note was posted on the Web site by followers in China, who wrote that "certain disciples had some extreme interpretations" of the message.

Mr. Li never clarified his remarks, and three weeks after he made them, five followers ignited themselves on Tiananmen Square.

The Chinese government seized on the self-immolations as proof of its contentions that Falun Gong is dangerous. Some Falun Gong followers insisted that Mr. Li prohibits the taking of life, even one's own, and that the five could therefore not have been Falun Gong followers.

But contrary to the Falun Gong public relations campaign, which is organized in the United States, Mr. Zhao said he believed that at least some of the people who set themselves on fire were indeed followers. "What they did was wrong," he said. "But it was very brave."

Mr. Zhao said his job was to keep Mr. Li's message pure and to prevent additional followers from going astray. With a few keystrokes in the darkness, he circumvents the government's electronic barriers and up pops Mr. Li's image on the screen, along with a message that reads, "Removing the evil beings that manipulate people to damage humankind is also protecting humankind."

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Lawsuit filed to halt Trident upgrade

By Seattle Times staff,
Thursday, July 05, 2001
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=trident05m&date=20010705

A suit seeking to stop the deployment of an advanced Trident nuclear-missile system at the Naval Submarine Base at Bangor has been filed in federal court in Tacoma by environmental organizations and area residents.

The filing asks that an injunction be issued under the federal Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act to stop the Trident II D-5 missile-upgrade program.

The complaint traces a 13-year history of efforts to upgrade the Trident missile system. That upgrade did not materialize for various reasons, the suit argues, but other plans recently have been announced to install new arming, fusing and firing systems.

The changes will involve shipping about 1,600 nuclear warheads in and out of the submarine base by trucks on public highways, the complaint argues.

No response to the complaint has been filed.

Plaintiffs include the Ground Zero Center for Non-Violent Action, the Waste Action Project, and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.


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