------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Today in History - July 6
Home Video: Crisis Control?
Northrop Extends a Hostile Bid
URENCO Response to Commerce Department Determination
China nuke experiment
EU's Palacio says phasing out N-power irresponsible
German nuke waste shipment next week
Iran to Do Atom Smasher Experiment
Pentagon Sets Missile Defense Test
Russia Initiates Arms, ABM Talks
Ukraine Nuclear Reactor Stopped
Underground Test Speedup Barred
Problem at nuclear reactor
Exelon cancels alert at Illinois nuclear unit
RESOURCE CENTER HELPS STRICKEN NUCLEAR WORKERS
Russian envoy hears nuke concerns
$7.8 MILLION AGREEMENT PROTECTS FISH FROM NUCLEAR PLANT
Global Eye - Return Engagement
Bush Chats on Phone With Putin

MILITARY
UN Support of Arms Control Sought
A Hobbled Army Casts a Cloud in Macedonia
Two Croats indicted for war crimes
WWI Chemicals Removed From Spring Valley Yard
Iran to Do Atom Smasher Experiment
Israeli tanks shell Gaza strip
NATO troops likely to deploy to Macedonia
Turbulence feared in Aegean skies
SENTENCING STATEMENT OF ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.
Hawaii Flight of Experimental NASA Plane Delayed
UN Support of Arms Control Sought
The accidental strategy
LBJ's medal for valour 'was sham'
Island Fever

OTHER
State's Death Penalty Law Passes Test
China Kills 1, 781 in 'Execution Frenzy' - Amnesty
Austrialia remains opposed to Kyoto Protocol
PRESSURE TREATED WOOD TO CARRY ARSENIC WARNINGS
Mexico Debates Sea Turtle Safety
U.S. Scientists to Measure Earth's Tiny Motions
Bush Wants to Cut Global Warming Aid
U.N. May Delay Climate Treaty's Target Date
Bush asks China to release academics
Some Children Have Trauma Symptoms Long After War
Death Spotlights Youth Boot Camps
Md. Executive Orders Police Review
Hanssen damage
Pinochet judge seeks to grill Kissinger
Panel finds CIA soft on China
Ex-F.B.I. Agent Pleads Guilty to Spying
Highlights of the FBI Spy Case
Bush Calls Jiang, Voicing Concerns Over Detentions
U.S. Rejects China's $1M Plane Tab

ACTIVISTS
Who We Are; An Editorial and Political Credo
Ind. Building Protesters Arrested
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Sentenced to Jail for Vieques Protest
No time to waste:
PRICE-ANDERSON ALERT!


-------- NUCLEAR

Today in History - July 6

The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010705/aponline200125_000.htm

In 1989, the U.S. Army destroyed its last Pershing 1-A missiles at an ammunition plant in Karnack, Texas, under terms of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Ten years ago: President Bush sent a personal message to Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, urging a stronger effort to conclude arms control talks.

----

Home Video: Crisis Control? Click Here

New York Times
July 6, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/06/arts/06VIDA.html?searchpv=nytToday

With two-hour documentaries about making movies and other extras - deleted scenes, filmmaker interviews and the like - piling up on DVD, a new tactic has emerged: chop up the extra material into short pieces and spread it throughout the film.

Next week New Line will introduce the concept on its disc of "13 Days," Roger Donaldson's film about the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. One may watch the 147-minute movie uninterrupted, of course. But click on an option called Infinifilm, and as the film proceeds a little menu appears at the bottom of the screen every few minutes or so. Each menu offers a couple of short snippets, from about 20 seconds to more than two minutes, of information related to the movie.

For example, no sooner has the film opened with a missile flight and hydrogen bomb burst than a menu appears offering two bits of extra material. "Learn about U.S. nuclear firepower in the 60's," reads the first item, followed by a tidbit of newsreel on the subject. The second item lists Mr. Donaldson's credits. Stop the film to watch either or both, or ignore the menu, which disappears after a few seconds, and continue watching the film.

Most of the snippets come from a documentary and other features that can be watched whole later in true DVD fashion. Menu tidbits begin "learn about" or "hear about." An expert from the Brookings Institute comments on the real-life situation and the design director of "13 Days" describes how the film recreated the White House. All this before the opening credits have ended.

"Thirteen Days" rolls along unless otherwise instructed and resumes after each snippet. As the film progresses there are dozens of little items: scraps of analysis by academics and former Central Intelligence Agency experts; comments on the Soviet perspective by Sergei Khrushchev, son of Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev; an explanation of the Berlin crisis in 1961 and how that related to the Cuban situation; definitions of period terms like "domino theory" and "bomber gap"; and 30- second biographies of leading figures like Gen. Curtis LeMay and Adlai Stevenson, American ambassador to the United Nations during the crisis and a leading figure in the film.

The menus slacken during the heavy action. Again, though, we have the old question of linearity: what movie watcher wants all this stuff popping up all the time? And why does Hollywood keep trying to turn movies into interactive experiences? In this case, the process may be disruptive, but it's also constructive. Many of today's viewers have never heard of the Berlin crisis or much else surrounding events in the early 60's.

Matt Lasorsa, New Line's senior vice president for marketing, pointed out that viewers can choose only those items that interest them or not take part in Infinifilm at all and catch the extra features all of a piece later, as they would on a regular DVD. Whatever the approach, though, make sure to watch the movie by itself first.

-------- business

Northrop Extends a Hostile Bid

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/06/business/06GRUM.html?searchpv=nytToday

LOS ANGELES, July 5 - The Northrop Grumman Corporation said today that it would extend for two weeks its $2.1 billion hostile bid for Newport News Shipbuilding.

The deadline was extended from today to July 19. About 2.8 million shares of Newport News common stock had been tendered.

Northrop, which is based in Los Angeles, first made the surprise bid in May, saying it would match the $67.50-a-share offer also being tendered by the military contractor General Dynamics, which is based in Falls Church, Va.

The Newport News shipyard, in Virginia, designs and builds nuclear- powered aircraft carriers and submarines for the Navy and services ships in the Navy fleet.

Northrop Grumman is the primary competitor to General Dynamics for Navy shipbuilding contracts.

If approved by regulators and the Defense Department, a merger of General Dynamics and Newport News would combine the Navy's only two nuclear shipyards, leaving the company the only maker of submarines and aircraft carriers.

The Newport News board voted last month to support the General Dynamics offer but took no position on Northrop.

Analysts have equated the board's silence to a rejection.

Northrop is also facing other hurdles.

The company received a letter from the Justice Department last month seeking additional information about its proposed acquisition. It did not indicate the type of information that was being sought. Northrop has said it will comply.

Shares of Northrop fell 7 cents today, to $80.10, while Newport News dropped 18 cents, to $61.05.

General Dynamics rose 40 cents, to $76.70.

----

URENCO Response to Commerce Department Determination

To: National and Business desk, Trade and Energy reporters
Contact: Maurice Lenders, 44-1628-486941
July 6
U.S. Newswire
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0706-118.html

The following was released today by URENCO:

MARLOW, England, U.S. Department of Commerce Preliminary Anti-Dumping Duty Determination for Imports of Customers' Uranium Enrichment from Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

The US Department of Commerce on July 5 preliminarily determined that imports of LEU would be subject to an anti-dumping duty of 0 percent for Germany, 0 percent for The Netherlands and 3.35 percent for the United Kingdom. In its December 2000 petition, USEC had claimed anti-dumping duties at rates between 15 percent and 21 percent.

Urenco will now review the detailed calculations which led to this preliminary determination and will continue to defend itself vigorously. The final determination is expected towards the end of this year.

Reacting to this preliminary determination, Klaus Messer, chief executive of Urenco, stated "We have always sought to compete fairly in all world markets, including the U.S. We are pleased that the Commerce Department confirmed this with regard to imports from Germany and The Netherlands. We expect that the Department will reach a similar conclusion with respect to the United Kingdom after it reviews our detailed submissions and holds its hearing."

Messer also reiterated that "Urenco's position in this investigation continues to be actively supported by the governments of Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, as well as by the European Commission. They share our view that these cases should never have been accepted by the Department of Commerce. Urenco provides services, not goods, and the international trade laws do not apply to services."

For earlier press releases and briefing notes on this issue, visit Urenco's Web site at www.urenco.com. For further comment contact: Maurice Lenders at 44-1628-486941

-------- china

China nuke experiment

July 6, 2001
Inside the Ring,
by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough;
Notes from the Pentagon.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010706-529134.htm

U.S. intelligence officials said China conducted some type of nuclear weapons-related experiment recently. The test was carried out at the remote Lop Nur nuclear testing facility in western Xinjiang province.

Another test is expected soon, we are told.

Intelligence agencies remain in the dark about what kind of test took place because the blast gave off no seismic readings. Also, U.S. "sniffer" aircraft capable of detecting venting of radioactive material from the site came up empty. The key indicator of the test was an increase in vehicle activity.

Officials said the test may have been a "subcritical" nuclear test a blast that simulates a nuclear explosion but falls short of reaching an actual nuclear chain reaction. China is developing a small nuclear warhead that U.S. intelligence agencies believe is based on stolen U.S. warhead design information.

Preparations for the test were first reported May 11 by The Washington Times.

Intelligence officials said China recently purchased special nuclear containment vessels from Russia that were used by Moscow to mask its underground nuclear tests.

-------- europe

EU's Palacio says phasing out N-power irresponsible

BELGIUM: July 6, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11455

BRUSSELS - EU Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio offered her strongest support for nuclear power to date yesterday by saying that countries phasing it out were irresponsible.

"It is not responsible... to promote the abandonment of nuclear without explaining to public opinion that, beyond its risks - notably to do with the handling of waste - nuclear presents many advantages in terms of price stability, indigenous supply and CO2 emissions," de Palacio said according to the text of a speech to the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales in Paris.

De Palacio has never hidden her support for nuclear power, which produces 35 percent of the EU's electricity without producing carbon dioxide - the main greenhouse gas targeted by the 1997 Kyoto deal on climate change.

Her latest comments are a clear criticism of the policies of a number of EU countries - including Germany, Belgium and Sweden - which have opted to get rid of nuclear power stations largely on environmental grounds.

Although the EU Commission has no direct role in determining countries' energy sources, it is currently involved in a major debate on the future of energy supply for the 15-country bloc and is drafting a range of policies aimed at tackling climate change.

On Wednesday, the European Parliament passed legislation aiming to double the proportion of renewable power in the EU's energy mix as part of the EU's efforts to reduce greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

-------- germany

German nuke waste shipment next week - Greenpeace

GERMANY: July 6, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11459

HAMBURG, Germany - Environmental group Greenpeace said yesterday it expected shipments of nuclear waste from north German nuclear power stations to be sent to waste processing plants in France next week.

"There will probably be a transport in the early hours of Tuesday morning with altogether five nuclear waste containers from the Stade and Brunsbuettel power plants to the French waste processing storage site in La Hague," a spokeswoman for Greenpeace said.

A spokeswoman for the Lower Saxony government said the operator of the Stade plant, Hamburg utiltity HEW , wanted to transport three containers with spent fuel elements.

She could not say when the shipment would be made but a spokeman in the Schleswig Holstein energy ministry, which is responsible for Brunsbuettel, said the shipment might take place on Tuesday.

After a break of several years, nuclear waste transport from Germany to France resumed last April.

Further shipments were made to the waste processing plant at Sellafield in north-west England.

The transport was possible again when at the end of March Germany broke a four year long interruption on the return of nuclear waste from La Hague to the temporary storage site in Gorleben, Germany.

-------- iran

Iran to Do Atom Smasher Experiment

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Atom-Smasher-Iran.html?searchpv=aponline

GENEVA (AP) -- The Iranian government has signed an agreement that will allow its scientists to participate in experiments using the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, being built at Europe's particle physics laboratory.

Four Iranian researchers will join 1,800 other scientists working in the 17-mile circular tunnel laboratory under the Swiss-French border, known by its French acronym CERN, the facility said Thursday.

Iranian industry will contribute equipment worth $378,000 for the construction of a massive experiment, which will include a particle detector to study high energy collisions between protons in the Large Hadron Collider, according to a CERN statement.

The experiment is aimed at understanding why subatomic particles have mass and other questions about the makeup of matter and the universe.

``The answers to these questions will have a profound impact on our understanding of the universe, its origins and its future,'' CERN said in the statement.

The United States and Israel have expressed concern that Iran, which has a nuclear weapon program, is seeking to produce weapons of mass destruction.

The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said information obtained by a scientist working at CERN could not be used to make a nuclear weapons.

CERN has nothing to do with ``nuclear weapons design or fissile explosions,'' said IAEA spokesman David Kyd. ``There's no congruence between the two areas of study.''

CERN has 20 European member countries and also receives support from other nations, including the United States, which is giving $530 million toward the construction of the collider.

This is believed to be the first time the Iranian government has signed an agreement to support the laboratory, said Roger Cashmore, director of research.

A number of individual Iranian scientists have worked on earlier experiments at CERN, however, ``because we're an open laboratory,'' Cashmore said.

CERN has 7,000 researchers from more than 500 institutions in 80 countries.

``Pure science has always brought together scientists united by a common desire to learn more about their universe,'' the CERN statement said.

-------- missile defense

Pentagon Sets Missile Defense Test

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- After months of delay, the Pentagon said Friday it will attempt to shoot down a missile outside the Earth's atmosphere on July 14, the first missile defense test of its kind since a failed intercept one year ago.

A modified Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile carrying a mock warhead and a single decoy will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., and about 20 minutes later an interceptor missile carrying a prototype ``kill vehicle'' will launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific.

If all goes as planned the ``kill vehicle'' -- a computer-guided device with its own sensors -- will crash into the ICBM about 10 minutes later about 140 miles above the Pacific Ocean, disintegrating the target by the force of impact.

The decoy aboard the ICBM is meant to challenge the interceptor's sensors, which are designed to distinguish between warheads and decoys. Critics of missile defense say this is one of the hardest engineering challenges for the interceptor -- to defeat simple measures to fool the sensors.

Also involved in the test will be a satellite-based missile warning system, a ground-based early warning radar, a prototype X-band radar on Kwajalein Atoll and a battle management system at Colorado Springs, Colo.

The July 14 test will not have as much at stake, politically, as last July's effort, which was the second consecutive failure. Based in part on that record, President Clinton announced last Sept. 1 that anti-missile technologies were not sufficiently advanced in testing to commit to deploying a missile defense.

President Bush, however, took office in January promising to pursue a more ambitious anti-missile program, and his proposed 2002 defense budget provides $8.3 billion for missile defense research and testing -- a nearly 40 percent increase over this year.

The previous intercept tests have cost about $100 million each. The Pentagon announced no price tag for the next one.

The failure last July was attributed to the warhead-busting ``kill vehicle'' not separating from the booster rocket. Because it did not separate, it never activated the sensors it uses to hunt down its target. The interceptor passed harmlessly by the target.

The reason for the failure was so unexpected that the three-star Air Force general in charge of the project told reporters minutes afterward that it was ``not even on my list'' of potential malfunctions.

A Jan. 19, 2000 intercept also failed. The Pentagon blamed moisture inside the kill vehicle, which prevented it from using heat-seeking devices to ``see'' its target. The first intercept test, on Oct. 3, 1999, succeeded in striking the target.

-------- russia

Russia Initiates Arms, ABM Talks

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Arms-Reduction.html?searchpv=aponline

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010706/aponline081057_000.htm

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia has invited the four other leading nuclear powers to start a permanent consultation process that would encourage deeper nuclear arms cuts and help preserve the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a senior Foreign Ministry official said Friday.

The move appears to be another attempt by Moscow to prevent the United States from deploying a missile defense, this time by rallying international opposition to Washington's plan.

The Foreign Ministry's chief spokesman, Alexander Yakovenko, said in a statement released Friday that the proposed consultation process involving Russia, the United States, Britain, France and China -- all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- must focus on ways to ensure strategic stability.

The consultations should address Russia's proposal for Moscow and Washington to cut their nuclear arsenals to 1,500 nuclear warheads each, he said.

``After such Russian and U.S. reductions, the aggregate number of nuclear warheads possessed by the five nuclear powers would not exceed 4,000 after the year 2008,'' Yakovenko said. The five countries currently have 14,000 nuclear warheads, he said.

Russia now has about 6,000 warheads while the United States nuclear arsenal consists of roughly 7,200 warheads.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously proposed reductions to 1,500 warheads or fewer, but only within the framework of existing START arms control treaties and the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

Both Moscow and Washington under the 1992 START II treaty -- still not fully ratified -- agreed to reduce stockpiles to 3,500 or less. The two sides are committed to working out a START III treaty with even lower ceilings.

Yakovenko stressed that the consultations must also focus on the ``preservation and strengthening of the ABM treaty.''

President Bush wants changes in the treaty to permit a national system that could shoot down incoming missiles from states such as North Korea or Iran. Russia strongly opposes the shield, saying it would spark a new arms race.

``The consequences of the dismantling of this treaty would be extremely negative for strategic stability, become an insurmountable obstacle for further reductions of strategic offensive weapons and possibly stimulate proliferation of nuclear weapons,'' Yakovenko said.

-------- ukraine

Ukraine Nuclear Reactor Stopped

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Ukraine-Nuclear.html?searchpv=aponline

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A nuclear reactor at Ukraine's Yuzhna atomic power plant was halted Friday after malfunction in its steam generator system, the state nuclear Energoatom company said in a statement.

No radiation leaks were reported, Energoatom said. The company did not say when the reactor would be restarted.

Ukraine relies on nuclear energy for about 40 percent of its electricity, but the country's aging reactors are often shut down due to minor malfunctions or for repairs. Seven of a total of 13 reactors are currently working, the report said.

In December, Ukraine permanently closed down the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986 when its reactor No. 4 exploded, spewing radiation over much of Europe.

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

Underground Test Speedup Barred
Congress Waiting For Rumsfeld to Finish Defense Study

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post
Friday, July 6, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25097-2001Jul5?language=printer

The House has moved to block plans by the Energy Department to shorten from three years to 18 months the time it needs to be able to resume underground nuclear weapons tests.

Gen. John A. Gordon, director of the department's National Nuclear Security Administration, made clear to the House Armed Services Committee last month that there were no immediate plans to resume nuclear testing. But he said he requested funds to accelerate preparations of testing facilities because he was "not comfortable" with a three-year turnaround time.

The prohibition, which was contained in the Energy Department's fiscal 2002 appropriations bill that the House passed June 28, goes to the Senate for consideration.

One reason lawmakers gave for blocking Gordon's test initiative was their desire to first hear the results of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's study of strategic nuclear deterrence in the post-Cold War era. That study, among several initiated by the defense secretary to redo defense policies, was originally to be completed by now but has taken more time than Rumsfeld expected.

The deterrence study is a key part of President Bush's plan to introduce missile defense and at the same time reduce the size of the U.S. strategic nuclear force, unilaterally if necessary.

"I had no idea when I started this process at the president's request several months ago," Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee on June 21, "that I would still be with it." He said the president "is anxious for me to complete this . . . but I simply am not going to finish it until I finish it."

President Bush, who during the 2000 campaign said he opposed Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, has more recently said he will maintain for the present the U.S. moratorium on underground nuclear tests that was initiated in 1992 by his father, President George Bush, and continued by President Bill Clinton. However, Bush said he has not ruled out testing in the future, echoing his father's 1992 position that testing might be needed to maintain the reliability of the nation's nuclear stockpile.

Asked about the Energy Department testing proposal last month, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said only, "The president is going to continue the moratorium."

Rumsfeld visited the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha twice in June on nuclear deterrence, and on five other Saturdays discussed the issue with the chairman or vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, civilian advisers and National Security Council staff members.

The House Appropriations Committee report on funding the Energy Department's nuclear weapons complex in fiscal 2002 said specifically that nuclear-test readiness could not be changed before Rumsfeld completes his review of nuclear deterrence, the president requests such a step and Congress approves it.

Meanwhile, pressures are building on the nuclear complex to move ahead with a variety of programs designed to maintain the safety and the reliability of the stockpile, no matter what size it becomes.

An advisory committee of nuclear scientists, headed by John Foster, former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a former Pentagon official, recommended shortening the time it takes to prepare for testing to less than a year. Foster also wants to add training for new designers who could produce "robust, alternative warheads that will provide a hedge if problems occur in the future . . . within the current stockpile."

One result of the Foster recommendation may have been Gordon's request for funds and the initiation of "an internal review on how we could improve our test readiness posture." A second plan presented by Gordon to Congress was one to "reinvigorate" advanced nuclear warhead concept design activities.

"Again," Gordon told the House committee, "this is not a proposal to develop new weapons in the absence of requirements. But I am now not exercising design capabilities, and because of that, I believe this capacity and capability is atrophying rapidly."

A House Appropriations Committee spokesman said no funds could be used for advanced warhead concept design until authorized by Congress. However, the Pentagon, at the direction of Congress last year, is working on a study to develop "a deep penetrator [low-yield nuclear warhead] that could hold at risk a rogue state's deeply buried weapons or Saddam Hussein's bunker without torching Baghdad," according to one former senior Pentagon official who is still involved in military and intelligence research.

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

-------- illinois

Problem at nuclear reactor

July 6, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/nuke06.html

MORRIS--A reactor at the Dresden Nuclear Generating Station near Morris was shut down Thursday because of a buildup of temperatures and pressure inside the reactor containment building.

Exelon, the electricity giant created by last year's merger of Philadelphia-based Peco Energy and Chicago-based Commonwealth Edison's parent Unicom, manually shut down reactor Unit 3 at 10:19 a.m.

All safety devices were working and no radioactivity was released, said Jan Strasma, spokeswoman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Strasma said the public was never in any danger.

NRC resident inspectors were at the plant at the time and an investigation was being conducted into what went wrong in Unit 3, Strasma said.

Unit 2 continued to operate at 100 percent power, Exelon said. Unit 1 has been closed for 23 years.

Dresden is in Grundy County, 14 miles southwest of Joliet and seven miles northeast of Morris.

----

Exelon cancels alert at Illinois nuclear unit

Friday, July 06, 2001
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/07/07062001/reu_exelon_44213.asp

NEW YORK - Exelon Nuclear said Thursday that it canceled a safety alert at an Illinois nuclear power plant that was shut several hours earlier due to high pressure in the building housing the nuclear reactor.

The alert at the 800-megawatt Dresden 3 unit in Morris, Ill., was lifted at 4:02 p.m. CDT, just less than six hours after the unit was shut down following what Exelon called "increased pressure in the reactor's containment building."

The company said in a statement that the plant's reactor cooling systems and radiation levels inside the containment building were normal.

"There was no release of radioactivity associated with the event," the company said.

Plant operator Exelon Nuclear, a unit of Exelon Corp., said it was putting the reactor into "cold shutdown" while they investigated what triggered the sudden rise in pressure. Cold shutdown means the temperature of the water in the reactor system is below the boiling point, halting the flow of steam used to spin the plant's electric turbines.

The alert was the second-lowest on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's four-level safety scale. An alert signals the actual or potential for "substantial degradation of the safety of a nuclear plant," according to the safety code used at the nation's nuclear power stations.

"There is no danger to the public and no special actions by the public are needed," the company said in a statement.

The adjoining 800-MW Dresden 2 nuclear unit continued to operate at 100 percent of capacity, the company said.

The cause of the pressure problem was being investigated, Exelon Nuclear said. The company did not indicate how long it expected Dresden 3 to be out of service. The Dresden 3 unit had just returned to full power early Thursday after being shut over the weekend for maintenance, the NRC said in its daily plant status report.

-------- kentucky

RESOURCE CENTER HELPS STRICKEN NUCLEAR WORKERS

July 6, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-06-09.html

PADUCAH, Kentucky, The Departments of Energy and Labor have opened the first Resource Center to provide compensation to individuals who developed illnesses as a result of their employment in nuclear weapons production.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao visited Paducah, Kentucky, to open the Resource Center at a dedication ceremony on Tuesday.

"I join Secretary Chao in supporting the workers who played a very important role in this country's defense mission," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. "The Resource Centers are a visible sign of our commitment to put words into action, and help our workers get the medical benefits they need."

Under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act passed last year, the Labor Department has responsibility to administer compensation and medical benefits to current and former contractor employees with specific types of illnesses caused by their work. The Energy Department, which jointly funds the Resource Center, will help workers file state workers' compensation claims at or near Energy Department sites.

The Paducah Resource Center is the first of 10 such centers opening around the country. Other Resource Centers will be opening in Las Vegas, Nevada; Richland, Washington; Rocky Flats, Colorado; Espanola, New Mexico; Idaho Falls, Idaho; North Augusta, South Carolina; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Anchorage, Alaska; and Portsmouth, Ohio.

Personal assistance to help file workers' claim forms can also be received at the following Labor Department District Offices: Seattle, Washington; Denver, Colorado; Cleveland, Ohio; and Jacksonville, Florida.

-------- nevada

Russian envoy hears nuke concerns

July 06, 2001 at 10:26:26 PDT
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-other/2001/jul/06/512048543.html

Russian Ambassador Yuri Ushakov listened as Nevada scientists explained how they plan to remove radioactive material that remains from nuclear testing in Southern Nevada.

Ushakov, who is scheduled today to visit the Nevada Test Site, where more than 1,000 nuclear warheads exploded above and below ground 1951 through 1992, portrayed the similarities between the remote site 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas with one in Semipalatinsk, Russia.

Nevada Sen. Harry Reid met with the ambassador after the opening of a resource center for Nevada Test Site Workers in Las Vegas, where those exposed to radiation, dust and beryllium can apply for up to $150,000 in benefits.

The ambassador acknowledged Russia's nuclear workers are also suffering, and an environmental cleanup would be a massive undertaking.

In 1998 scientists from the United States and the former Soviet Union also exchanged visits to test sites and viewed parallel underground nuclear weapons tests.

Since then, the Test Site has opened its gates to environmental research, and subcritical tests -- where weapons materials undergo experiments without sustaining a chain reaction. The government is also welcoming university scientists to areas that were once top-secret.

Despite the fact that Russia signed a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that the U.S. Senate rejected on Oct. 13, 1999, Ushakov said the existence of roughly 12,000 nuclear weapons still poses a major problem for the United States and Russia, the heart of the former Soviet Union.

"We have to do everything we can to make our nuclear arsenals safer," Ushakov told Reid, as well as scientists from UNLV, the University of Nevada, Reno and the Desert Research Institute.

The most important task for both nations in the 21st century is to cooperate, Ushakov said.

Reid said that the Russian Parliament did a better job seeking nuclear disarmament than U.S. lawmakers.

"I was terribly embarrassed," the senator said of the 1999 Senate vote. "The Russians approved it and we didn't. They set an example and we should follow. In my opinion, there is not nearly enough being done."

-------- new jersey

$7.8 MILLION AGREEMENT PROTECTS FISH FROM NUCLEAR PLANT

July 6, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-06-09.html

WILMINGTON, Delaware, The Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSEG) has agreed to pay $7.8 million to protect fisheries and aquatic habitat in the Delaware Bay from damage related to the utility's three nuclear power plants in New Jersey.

The settlement with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) requires PSEG to provide funding to continue and expand fishery protection and habitat restoration programs initially established in a 1995 settlement agreement related to PSEG's 1994 New Jersey water discharge permit renewal.

The Salem Nuclear Power Plant in New Jersey (Photo courtesy Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

PSEG agreed to provide $5.7 million in funding to DNREC for aquatic habitat restoration that includes land acquisition and water management, a landowner habitat technical assistance program; a control program for phragmites, an invasive plant; construction of additional artificial reefs in the Delaware Bay; and biological monitoring of fish species subject to entrainment or impingement at the Salem plant.

An additional $2.3 million will fund monitoring and maintenance of existing fish ladders and construction of two additional ladders in Delaware, as well as phragmites control at the Cedar Swamp Marsh and The Rocks Marsh in southern New Castle County.

"This agreement extends the commitment PSEG made to Delaware in 1995 to fund programs that address fish and habitat losses and represents a renewed pledge to study the best available sound, light and air technologies that may result in innovative engineering modifications to the Salem plant's intake and a resultant reduction in fish mortality rates," said DNREC secretary Nicholas DiPasquale. "Protection of our fisheries and their habitat has been the fundamental and driving focus of this agreement."

The settlement was negotiated after DNREC raised environmental issues over PSEG's March 4, 1999 renewal application for a New Jersey Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit to use water from the Delaware River to operate the cooling system at the Salem plant.

-------- us nuc politics

Global Eye - Return Engagement

By Chris Floyd
Friday, Jul. 6, 2001.
Moscow Times
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/07/06/107.html

Liar. Oathbreaker. Conspirator. Criminal. Cheerleader for brutal murderers. Subverter of the U.S. Constitution.

Yes, it must be another White House appointment by George W. Bush! Last week, the eminent statesman once more fulfilled his promise "to restore honor and integrity to government" by naming Elliott Abrams to a prestigious post on the White House National Security Council. For sheer hoots-pa (as they say down in Austin), it's probably Dubya's most dazzling appointment yet. Abrams, as you'll recall, worked closely with Oliver North, the superpatriot who ran the illegal "Iran-Contra" operation back in the Reagan-Bush glory days, employing drug traffickers, gun runners, money launderers and international terrorists to circumvent a law banning U.S. military aid to the right-wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua. As assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, Abrams was a key figure in the Reagan-Bush team's panicky efforts to cover up the scandal. He brazenly lied under oath to Congressional panels investigating the affair, concealing his knowledge of North's activities, his own involvement in shaking down an Arab oil sheik for millions of dollars in secret cash, and his familiarity with key conspirator Felix Rodriguez, who had been fed into the operation by a top aide of the then-vice president: one George Bush. In 1991, facing multiple felony charges, Abrams copped a plea to two counts of deceiving the U.S. Congress in his sworn testimony. He was rescued from ignominy, however, by a last-minute pardon in late 1992 from the then lame-duck president: one George Bush. It was one of several such Iran-Contra indulgences granted by Bush, who was facing further investigation himself after prosecutors uncovered a crucial diary he had kept hidden from them for six years. Bush was due to testify in the upcoming trial of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, but then Cap got a pardon, too! The trial was quashed and the Iran-Contra investigation was cut off at the knees. Convenient, nicht war? From this legacy of unethical public deception, Abrams went on to become the director of - are you ready? - The Ethics and Public Policy Center. Now, Bush the Younger has rewarded him for his loyal service by appointing him the NSC's director of "democracy and human rights." This, too, is pretty rich, considering Abrams' past record as an apologist for some of Latin America's most brutal authoritarian regimes. His reputation as perhaps the fiercest partisan of the Reagan-Bush era (political opponents were not just foes or rivals; they were "vipers" with "blood on their hands") also puts a slight crimp in Dubya's pretty talk about "bipartisanship" and his pledge to "change the tone" in Washington. Maybe he meant he was going to change the toner in Washington. You know, just spruce up the Oval Office a bit, put some paper in the copier, refill the stapler, that kind of thing. God knows he couldn't have been talking about some kind of moral stand, now could he?

End Game

But let's not be cynical. The United States celebrated its 225th birthday this week, and we should all stand and salute this milestone of democracy. True, it's a democracy controlled by a man who was not actually elected by the people. And yes, this situation actually runs counter to the bedrock American principle enshrined in the Declaration of Independence: that no state can be legitimate without the consent of the governed. And OK, the same Supreme Court that usurped the lawful election process and installed this unelected, unconsented ruler in office has also systematically stripped away many of the basic freedoms once enjoyed by the common people, while augmenting the power and privilege of massive corporations to operate with brutal impunity. And yeah, all right, you can now be jailed in America for driving without a seatbelt, or get a life sentence for committing three petty crimes, or be barred from voting because your skin is too dark or get executed with an IQ of 40 or below. But hey, at least it's a free country, right? You can stand up and say whatever you please, right? Well, American journalist Gregory Palast might disagree. Palast has unearthed some of the most damaging stories on the Bush family Cosa Nostra, including Jeb's state-ordered "voter purge" in Florida that barred thousands of likely Democratic voters from casting their ballots. He also reported on Big Daddy's dirty deals with a Canadian conglomerate, Barrick Gold Mining, which snapped up $10 billion worth of mining rights on U.S. federal lands for a mere $10,000 back when Daddy ruled the roost. Needless to say, Bush pšre later went on Barrick's payroll as a corporate flack, helping broker big international deals for the company. Needless to say, Barrick supplemented Pop's pay by kicking in large donations to Junior's campaign. With the American media being the staunch and fearless guardians of the people that they are, Palast was forced to publish his stories overseas, mostly for The Observer in London. But as Michael Corleone could tell you, the Cosa Nostra has a long reach. And now Barrick has made an aggressive move to punish The Observer for publishing Palast's Bush-bashing stories - and to force Palast to remove the offensive articles from his own U.S.-based website. Barrick is suing The Observer under Britain's low-bar libel laws. One claim is that Palast libeled Barrick honcho Peter Munk by saying he got his start in the gold business with funding from Saudi arms dealer (and Iran-Contra player) Adnan Khashoggi. And the source of this filthy canard? Er, Peter Munk, who offered this info to his own biographer. The rest of the case is just as strong. Barrick, its coffers stuffed with Bush-abetted gold, is more than a match for The Observer, which is funded by an independent trust. Even without bringing the case to trial, they can pile up huge legal costs until the trust is bled dry - and Palast's stories are removed forever from the land of the free. Guess the Revolution is finally over, huh?

----

Bush Chats on Phone With Putin

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Putin.html?searchpv=aponline

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine (AP) -- President Bush interrupted his birthday celebrations Friday to talk on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin about Iraq, U.S. missile defense plans and other thorny issues.

Strong U.S.-Russian relations are ``good for the world,'' Bush said.

The president, celebrating his 55th birthday, said the 10-minute telephone call from Putin was one of a series of conversations they'll have this summer. The leaders met for the first time in June and will see each other again at an economic summit in Genoa, Italy, this month.

``I look forward to continuing what has been a very good relationship,'' Bush said after a round of golf with his father, the former president.

Bush told Putin that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans will travel to Russia after the European trip, according to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

They will begin talks aimed at improving Russia's economy, Fleischer said. The mission was first announced after the Bush-Putin meeting in June.

``It's important that I have a good relationship with Mr. Putin, because it's good for ... our nations, and it's also good for the world for us to develop a good relationship, so we can work together to make the world more secure,'' Bush said.

The leaders discussed Iraq, Macedonia, trade and economic activity.

A day earlier, Iraq said it would resume oil exports after accepting the terms of a new United Nations Security Council resolution. Facing a veto by Russia -- Iraq's key ally on the Security Council -- Britain and the United States dropped their sanctions proposal on Tuesday and instead supported an extension of the oil-for-food program.

Bush told Putin that Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov ``have additional work to do with regards to the sanctions policy,'' Fleischer said.

In Macedonia, clashes between ethnic Albanian rebels and government forces threaten a fragile NATO-brokered cease-fire. Bush and Putin reaffirmed the importance of their two nations working together to help avoid bloodshed in the region, Fleischer said.

He said the leaders discussed Bush's missile defense plans, which are opposed by Putin, and pledged to continue consultations on the prickly issue.

Slouched in a golf cart, his feet propped up near the steering wheel, Bush characterized his call to Putin as an effort to continue their discussions on world affairs.

``We share common interests,'' he said. ``He's deeply concerned about extremism and what extremism can mean to Russia. And, as you know, I am, too. He recognizes there are new threats in the 21st century. The United States is not a threat.''

Bush returns to Washington on Sunday. Aides said he will urge Congress throughout the week to embrace his agenda on education, patients' rights and federal funding for religious groups that provide community services.

The Senate has approved a Democrat-backed patients' rights bill, but Bush hopes to have his way in the House. If not, he'll be forced to choose between issuing a veto on a popular political issue or signing a bill he has said would lead to a dramatic increase in lawsuits.

Fleischer did not mention campaign finance reform in his list of Bush priorities, perhaps because lawmakers who back new fund-raising limits have gained the upper hand against the White House.

-------- MILITARY

-------- arms sales

UN Support of Arms Control Sought

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Arms-Conference.html?searchpv=aponline

LONDON (AP) -- Nighti Aparo lives in a country awash with guns.

Both her father and brother were slain by Ugandan rebels and she and all four of her sisters were abducted at gunpoint. Her case, cited by the international aid agency Oxfam, is one among millions.

``Half a million people are killed every year by small arms, not to mention the people who are injured, displaced or left destitute,'' says Oxfam's Sam Barratt.

The guns that killed Aparo's brother and father, he says, probably came from Sudan -- part of an illicit international arms trade worth $1 billion annually.

On Monday, the United Nations opens a two-week special session in New York in an effort to control this international black market, which has contributed to millions of deaths worldwide. Campaigners hope member states will reach agreement on ways to trace weapons and on export regulations.

Officially titled The U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons In All Its Aspects, the meeting is expected to draw more than 200 lobbying groups.

According to the United Nations, small arms are designed to be used, carried and maintained by one person -- such as pistols, assault rifles and sub machine guns. Light weapons, operated by crews, include grenade launchers, shoulder-fired anti-tank guns and portable missile launchers.

The United Nations reports there are more than 500 million small arms and light weapons in circulation around the world. Between 40 and 60 percent are illicit.

The Omega Foundation, based in Britain, says the number of countries producing small arms doubled between 1960 and 1999, while the number of manufacturers has increased nearly six times.

However, global production appears to be declining, according to the Small Arms Survey of Geneva. It says global production of small arms averaged 6.3 million weapons per year from 1980 to 1998, but in 2000 output dropped to 4.3 million. Three-fourths of last year's production was in the United States, largely for the domestic market, the Small Arms Survey says.

The United Nations says it cannot simply ban small arms, as it did anti-personnel land mines and chemical weapons, as the ``international community regards them as necessary for a state's legitimate right of self defense.''

Instead the conference aims to draw up a program of action to stop the arms from spreading illegally into conflict areas.

The United Nations says the small arms issue has been ``at the forefront'' of its agenda since the mid-1990s when ``peacekeepers and humanitarian workers found themselves grappling with extraordinary amounts of weapons moving freely between combatants, ex-combatants and civilians.''

U.N. studies in 1997 and 1999 have looked at the issues of tracing weapons, destruction of arms and control of manufacturing.

In his foreword to that study, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the easy availability of small arms leads to more deaths in conflicts, and ``a high proportion of the casualties are civilian.''

``This has led to millions of deaths and injuries, the displacement of populations, and suffering and insecurity around the world,'' he said.

Sarah Meek of the conflict prevention organization International Alert says a critical goal for the conference is to ensure weapons are marked so that arms movements can be traced.

``Unless you know how the arms are moving around and where they are being smuggled onto the black market you will never really be able to stop the trade,'' said Meek.

Another issue the United Nations must tackle is export regulations, says Oxfam.

``States must set binding new international standards for responsible arms transfers, preventing the export of weapons where there is a risk that they will be used to commit serious violations of human rights,'' said Barratt.

Member states must also look at the ``end-use'' of weapons, he said, and make sure legal shipments of arms are not passed on -- as in the case of guns leaking from Sudan into Uganda.

-------- balkans

A Hobbled Army Casts a Cloud in Macedonia

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/06/world/06NATO.html

OPAJE, Macedonia, Friday, July 6 - When the firing began on Wednesday night, the police officers in this ruin of a town received another object lesson in why Macedonia does not have a military solution in its struggle with ethnic Albanian rebels.

Creeping through the darkness, the insurgents moved within 200 yards of the police outpost, a battered wood lean-to protected by a pile of empty ammunition boxes, and opened fire.

Using a machine gun of World War II design, the police fired back without effect. They had just one pair of night vision goggles. So as usual, the way they knew that the rebels were close was when the bullets and mortars started coming in.

"Everyone who has been out here understands that there are no winners in this situation," said a 45-year- old officer who identified himself only as Mile.

Confronted with a resilient and increasingly confident foe, Macedonia's forces have a two-track approach, and neither has been effective.

To take the fight to their foe and regain territory, the Macedonians have used Soviet-era artillery and helicopters. But those strikes have endangered civilians as much as the enemy, and they seem to have primarily succeeded in generating more popular support for the rebels among ethnic Albanians in Macedonia.

To keep the rebels out of the villages that the government does control, Macedonia has depended on its poorly equipped police forces like the contingent in this area northeast of Skopje that is heavy with rebels. The primary police strategy appears to be to stay clear of villages where the fighting is too hot and to hunker down in nearby settlements, awaiting the next rebel attack.

What the nation lacks is a sufficient number of well-trained infantry troops able to take towns without leveling much of them, troops that do not cede the initiative to the rebels.

Although Western experts have been vocal about what the military is doing wrong, few efforts are under way to help the Macedonians to do it right.

The cease-fire, which started at midnight on Thursday, may finally put an end to the war. But if it fails, this nation may once again be plunged into a nasty conflict in which neither side seems able to win a decisive military victory but which may inflame ethnic tensions to the point of civil war.

For a conflict that threatens to plunge the Balkans into new convulsions, this is a fight with surprisingly few antagonists. The rebels, the National Liberation Army, number between 1,000 and 1,500. Operating in loosely coordinated groups, they are fighting on two broad fronts, a string of ethnic Albanian villages to the northeast of Skopje and the Tetovo region in the west.

Many fighters polished their skills in the Kosovo conflict, and many are from Albania, as well as Kosovo. Those troops enter despite NATO efforts to seal that border. The Macedonian government has sought to portray the guerrillas as foreign invaders. But many are ethnic Albanians who were born in Macedonia.

On paper, the Macedonian Army numbers 16,000, with several thousand additional police officers. Military experts say the two forces have no more than 2,500 well-trained fighters between them, far too few to fight effectively on both fronts at the same time.

The chronic weakness of the forces is, in part, a fluke of history. When Yugoslavia broke up and Macedonia declared its independence, Belgrade removed its military forces and all its weapons with them. Macedonia did not have to transform a military like other East European nations. It had to build one from scratch.

It did so using generals who were schooled in old Warsaw Pact tactics. To help the fledgling government, Western nations contributed weapons. But much of the equipment was surplus that was old and costly to maintain. The military was, for example, provided more than 20 types of wheeled vehicles, with many of them 30 years old.

As Macedonia became interested in applying for NATO membership and working with the alliance, member nations made an effort to streamline the nation's armed forces. The goal was to help Macedonia develop the ability to conduct peacekeeping and carry out joint exercises with NATO.

The member nations never anticipated that Macedonia would need to fight a counterinsurgency.

Seeking to build up its military power, Macedonia has turned to East European nations. Bulgaria has donated 95 T-55 tanks.

As the insurgency spread, Macedonia went on a small buying spree in Ukraine, acquiring a small fleet of Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships, Mi-8 Hip transport helicopters equipped with rocket launchers, Su-25 Frogfoot attack planes and BM-21 truck- mounted rocket launchers. Western officials suspect that Ukrainians are flying some of the aircraft.

Whoever is flying the aircraft, they are not always used with the greatest proficiency. Two days ago, one helicopter mistakenly fired rockets near a Polish and Ukrainian patrol on the Kosovo side of the border. NATO has been trying to stop the Albanian guerrillas from ferrying arms across the border. But the pilot apparently mistook the antismuggling patrol for smugglers.

The arms purchases from Ukraine have drawn protests from Western governments, worried that they are the wrong weapons for the fight and that the blunderbuss tactics used by the Macedonian military will put civilians in danger.

Although NATO has been clear about how Macedonia should not fight the rebels, few efforts are under way to help the Macedonians hold down casualties and mount a more effective and discriminating counterinsurgency effort.

Western experts agree that Macedonian troops need night-vision equipment, flak jackets, mine detection equipment, illumination rounds fired by artillery and communications equipment. Just 5 of the 21 special forces teams have the 12.7- millimeter sniper rifle, the type that the Albanian rebels are using.

A NATO Cooperation and Coordination Center has been established in Skopje to assess arms requests and exchange information. But NATO nations have sent little of the necessary equipment.

Training is another weakness. An American official said Macedonia's generals were so wedded to their Warsaw Pact doctrine that they were not open to Western advice on tactics and training. The commander of the military is Gen. Pande Petrovski, a former Yugoslav Army general who was recalled from retirement.

Other Western officials say the problem is that the Macedonians are so unprepared they simply do not know what training to request.

Macedonian officers are also preoccupied by the war. An American- financed consulting business, Military Professional Services Inc., made up of retired American officers, quietly suspended its program here because of the paucity of training and because the Macedonians had spread rumors that the consultants were somehow linked to the Albanian rebels.

Another factor is cultural. The Macedonians are not willing to take the scale of casualties that might be needed to turn the tide. The Macedonians have lost about 30 soldiers and police officers since January, and every death has been a political event.

"We are not fighting so hard," an official acknowledged. "We are shelling from a distance."

The fight around Tetovo was the main news today, with the police here involved in their own drama. They are deployed a few miles away from villages controlled by the rebels.

During the day, gunfire can be heard in the rebel-controlled village of Nikustak as the insurgents go about their training. At night, it is the rebels who have the initiative. They light fires and advance quietly through the smoke.

With virtually no night-vision ability, the police shoot only after being fired on. If the fighting becomes intense, they call for help from the army, which shoots artillery or blasts away with its tanks.

The evening raids seem to have worn down the police, and many officers were relieved when the cease- fire was announced.

"They have been attacking us every day," said Nenad, 26, a reservist and rookie police officer. "They have not been giving us any peace."

--------

Two Croats indicted for war crimes

07/06/2001
USA Today
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/07/06/croat-warcrimes.htm

ZAGREB, Croatia - The chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal disclosed for the first time Friday that two Croat citizens have been indicted by the court on suspicion of war crimes.

Neither prosecutor Carla Del Ponte nor Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan gave the names of those charged in the sealed indictments.

While reaffirming Croatia's commitment to cooperating with the international court in The Hague, Netherlands, Racan stopped short of clearly saying the two Croats would be extradited.

Veterans of the 1991 Serbo-Croat war - which followed Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia - have declared their opposition to any extradition of Croatians.

U.N. tribunal prosecutors have been investigating the slayings of hundreds of Serbs following Zagreb's 1995 offensive to recapture lands seized by Serb rebels during the 1991 six-month war.

-------- chemical weapons

WWI Chemicals Removed From Spring Valley Yard
Army Unearths Mustard Gas, Variant

By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 6, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24460-2001Jul5?language=printer

Seven bottles containing dangerous World War I chemical agents have been excavated from a home in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest Washington, Army officials said yesterday.

Two of the bottles removed from the yard of the property on Glenbrook Road contained mustard, a chemical gas that killed thousands of soldiers on the battlefields of Europe during World War I. Five of the bottles contained lewisite, a more deadly variant of mustard that was developed by scientists researching chemical gases in Washington during the war.

The Army began excavating soil from the property on Glenbrook Road after extremely high levels of arsenic were found in the soil. The excavation is part of a large-scale cleanup of the residue of World War I chemical weapons testing based at nearby American University.

Army officials said the public should not be overly alarmed at the finding. "Anytime there's any chemical agent it's a concern, but the samples are diluted and the quantities are small," said Michael Rogers, an Army Corps of Engineers official who serves as the Spring Valley project manager.

A toxicologist who is working in Spring Valley said the results confirm the seriousness of the potential contamination threat and support the need for soil testing across the neighborhood and on the AU campus, an undertaking recently begun by the Corps of Engineers.

"Obviously, there has been a threat," said Paul Chrostowski, who is assisting American University in handling contamination issues. "That's why a comprehensive evaluation needs to be done."

The chemicals are in both liquid and solid form, and some of the bottles probably also contain chemical vapors, officials said.

The chemical agents in the bottles still retain a toxicity that would represent a serious health hazard to anyone whose skin was exposed to them or who breathed their vapors, Chrostowski said.

"It's a fortunate thing they weren't dug up by some landowner," Chrostowski said. "The health effects would have been pretty instantaneous."

Eleven bottles were dug up last week, but the Army did not receive results on what was contained in all of them until yesterday. Four of the bottles contained no chemical agent. All the bottles have been taken to the Army's Edgewood chemical weapons facility in Maryland for further study.

The Corps of Engineers has also found six 75mm mortar rounds at the site, but the agency does not have results back yet as to whether they contain chemical agents, Rogers said. Another round uncovered at the site in late May did not contain any chemical agents.

The bottles were uncovered in a pit being dug at a depth of about eight feet by Corps of Engineers workers in protective gear. The air space over the pit had been isolated with a filter tent to prevent any contaminated air from escaping.

The Army resumed digging yesterday and soon found a 12th bottle containing a small amount of liquid. The bottle is going to Edgewood for further evaluation, officials said.

The property where the bottles were found, 4801 Glenbrook Rd., is empty. The former owners exercised a buy-back clause with the developer last year after the high levels of arsenic were found. The house is next door to the Korean ambassador's residence, which has also been the site of a major excavation.

Meanwhile, new test results show a number of chemicals in the soil at AU's child-care center, which was relocated to a new site on campus this year after high levels of arsenic were found in the soil. But officials say a preliminary analysis does not show any major health threats from the other contaminants detected.

The tests were performed by the Army at the request of parents who wanted to find out whether their children were exposed to any other contaminants.

The tests have found some aeromatic hydrocarbons at levels exceeding Environmental Protection Agency guidelines, according to Chrostowski. "We're checking to see if they would pose a threat to someone who was at" the center," he said.

"There're relatively low-level, but there's enough of a concern to trigger more evaluation," he added.

The Corps of Engineers began preparations this week to remove the contaminated soil at the day-care center.

-------- iran

Iran to Do Atom Smasher Experiment

By Alexander G. Higgins
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 6, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010706/aponline160226_000.htm

GENEVA -- The Iranian government has signed an agreement that will allow its scientists to participate in experiments using the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, being built at Europe's particle physics laboratory.

Four Iranian researchers will join 1,800 other scientists working in the 17-mile circular tunnel laboratory under the Swiss-French border, known by its French acronym CERN, the facility said Thursday.

Iranian industry will contribute equipment worth $378,000 for the construction of a major experiment, which will include a particle detector to study high energy collisions between protons in the Large Hadron Collider, according to a CERN statement.

The experiment is aimed at understanding why subatomic particles have mass and other questions about the makeup of matter and the universe.

"The answers to these questions will have a profound impact on our understanding of the universe, its origins and its future," CERN said in the statement.

The United States and Israel have expressed concern that Iran, which has a nuclear weapon program, is seeking to produce weapons of mass destruction.

The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said information obtained by a scientist working at CERN could not be used to make a nuclear weapons.

CERN has nothing to do with "nuclear weapons design or fissile explosions," said IAEA spokesman David Kyd. "There's no congruence between the two areas of study."

CERN has 20 European member countries and also receives support from other nations, including the United States, which is giving $530 million in equipment toward the construction of the collider.

This is believed to be the first time the Iranian government has signed an agreement to support the laboratory, said Roger Cashmore, director of research.

A number of individual Iranian scientists have worked on earlier experiments at CERN, however, "because we're an open laboratory," Cashmore said.

CERN has 7,000 researchers from more than 500 institutions in 80 countries.

"Pure science has always brought together scientists united by a common desire to learn more about their universe," the CERN statement said.

-------- israel

Israeli tanks shell Gaza strip

Friday July 6, 5:34 AM
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010705/1/18uoq.html

GAZA CITY, Israeli tanks shelled the town of Khan Younes in the Gaza Strip late Thursday, but there were no reports of injuries, Palestinian security officials said.

The Israeli army launched the attack from positions around the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim using tank and machine gun fire, causing heavy damage.

The incidents followed earlier clashes between armed Palestinians and Israeli soldiers.

-------- nato

NATO troops likely to deploy to Macedonia

July 6, 2001
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010706-26550397.htm

The United States and its NATO allies yesterday edged closer to yet another Balkan military deployment after pushing through a cease-fire deal between the government of Macedonia and armed ethnic Albanian separatists.

NATO leaders hailed the cease-fire agreement but stressed that any deployment to the troubled country depended on an agreement still to be negotiated between the minority Albanians and the country's majority Slavic Macedonian parties.

A deployment, which could come later this month, would involve about 3,000 troops with a primary mission to disarm the rebels.

The U.S. contribution would be limited to fewer than 500 troops providing logistical and support services, and would be drawn from forces already stationed in the region.

Both Macedonian and NATO officials said the nationwide cease-fire in the nearly 5-month-old conflict greatly improves the prospects of a political deal.

German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping told reporters in Berlin yesterday there was a "realistic perspective" that the NATO contingent could enter Macedonia soon after July 15, but that a hard and fast political peace deal must be in place.

The Bush administration welcomed the Macedonian deal but cautioned that the NATO mission wasn't certain.

"Obviously, having a formal cease-fire is a major step forward in the process of calming the country," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday.

But he added: "Until there is that disarmament process agreed to between the parties, the NATO [deployment] wouldn't kick in."

Underscoring the fragile nature of the peace effort, Macedonian government artillery and helicopter gunships yesterday continued to pound rebel-held positions near Tetovo, the country's second-largest city, just hours before the cease-fire officially took effect.

Under a plan approved last month by NATO's 19 member-countries, a brigade of 3,000 troops would be deployed at designated stations to collect arms from the shadowy "National Liberation Army" (NLA), a guerrilla force that has fought a tenacious campaign against Macedonian security forces since beginning surprise attacks along the country's northern border with Kosovo in February. British troops would lead the operation, along with major contributions from Italy, France and other European powers.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley told reporters yesterday that no final decision had been made on the extent of U.S. participation in the force.

The mission, dubbed "Operation Essential Harvest," is supposed to last four to six weeks, but analysts caution that past Balkans missions in Bosnia and Kosovo have evolved into virtually open-ended commitments for the United States and NATO.

"People are right to be skeptical," said Daniel Serwer, director of the Balkans Project at the U.S. Institute of Peace and a specialist on the region in the Clinton administration.

"There is a history of troops going in and staying longer than anyone expected, but that also may not be the worst thing in the world if it prevents a civil war there," he said.

Mr. Serwer said a second danger is that the NATO mission could clear the way for a de facto ethnic separation of the country, where ethnic Albanians make up between a quarter and a third of the population.

The rebel group has pushed hard for an international settlement of the conflict, calculating that it would give it virtually equal status with the Macedonian government in any power-sharing accord. Rebel leaders stressed the Western role as broker yesterday in agreeing to the open-ended, nationwide cease-fire.

"This cease-fire is different from the ones before and more important because it was brokered by the European Union, the United States and NATO leaders," NLA commander Genzim Ostreni told the Associated Press.

--------

Turbulence feared in Aegean skies
Greek former top brass sound alarm over Nato proposal to cede to Turkeypartial air operation control rights within Athens FIR

BY GEORGE GILSON,
ATHENS NEWS,
July 6, 2001
http://www.athensnews.gr/athweb/nathens.print_unique?e=C&f=12917&m=A07&aa=1&eidos=S

FORMER top military officials in Greece are up in arms over reports that Nato is seriously considering ceding to Turkey air operations control of part of the international airspace over the Aegean, which falls within the Athens Flight Information Region (FIR).

The proposal, by the American commander of Allied Forces Southern Europe (Airsouth) Lieutenant-General Ronald E. Keys, who assumed his post in May 2000, would overturn a plan by his predecessor Michael Short to assign the air-policing area of the Aegean - including the entire Athens FIR - to the Nato sub-command in Larissa, central Greece, according to a recent report in the Athens daily To Vima.

The report indicated that the Keys proposal - which the Greek defence ministry is reportedly now studying - came in response to strong Turkish protests over the original plan to assign operational control of the entire Athens FIR to Greece.

Former joint chiefs of staff chairmen Nikos Kouris (who served as Pasok's deputy defence minister in 1984-89) and Ioannis Veryvakis, in exclusive interviews with the Athens News, warned that Turkish operational control of part of the Athens FIR could eventually lead to a redrawing of the boundaries of the Athens and Istanbul FIRs. Both said that it poses a serious threat to Greece's internationally guaranteed national interests, offering Ankara a strategic advantage in pursuing its longstanding claims in the Aegean that would have taken a war to achieve otherwise.

Kouris views the serious consideration of Turkish demands to control Aegean airspace during Nato war games as a direct threat to Greek national interests that advances "the Turks' steadfast aim to alter the status quo in the Aegean as it existed in the past regarding operational control, especially in the air".

But he also stressed that Ankara's goal was largely achieved in 1998 - when Greece and all other Nato members approved the alliance's new structure.

That provided for the abolition of air commands in Larissa and Izmir, Turkey, and their replacement by Coordinated Air Operations Centres (CAOC) in Greece (Larissa) and Turkey (Eski Sehir) that both fall under the jurisdiction of an American officer at Airsouth in Naples. "Now the practical side of that arrangement is becoming clearly apparent.

The American airforce officer in Naples has the authority to assign missions and geographic areas according to his judgment. He can cede either all or part of the Aegean to either Greece or Turkey on a case-by-case basis," said Kouris.

It is precisely the prospect of Airsouth assigning Aegean air operations control to Turkey that now alarms Athens.

Kouris warned that ceding to Ankara air operations control of the international space within the Athens FIR could well lead to demands that Athens and Istanbul redraw the borders of their FIRs at Greece's expense.

"Whoever has the air defence responsibility for a region must also have information on civil aviation traffic, and until now that function has been performed by the Athens FIR. Hence, an issue will arise in the future of restructuring the responsibilities and borders of the Athens and Istanbul FIRs over the Aegean.

As the new structure of Nato evolves, sooner or later this issue will be put on the table," he said.

Kouris laid the blame for emerging problems on the Simitis administration's signing of the 1997 Greek-Turkish Madrid declaration, which recognised that Ankara also has "vital interests" in the Aegean that are of great significance for Turkey's security and national sovereignty.

"The Turks can thus maintain that Greek recognition of their vital interests in the Aegean justifies partial operational control of the Aegean. Our position is exceptionally difficult," he said. "It was a firm policy of the George Rallis and Andreas Papandreou governments not to accept a Nato command in Greece if its scope of responsibility were not predetermined to include the entire Aegean.

It was unimaginable to cede to another country - even periodically - control of the air and sea routes linking the Greek mainland with the island complex of the eastern Aegean."

Citing the guarantees of international law and treaties, Veryvakis paints a less bleak picture of the threat to Greek sovereign rights, but he admits that Turkish air control over even part of the Aegean "would directly harm Greek sovereign rights 100 percent". "Nato's new structure changes nothing from the point of view of international law. A sovereign state cannot cede in any manner land, sea and air rights guaranteed by treaties that followed wars.

Nato is a military organisation and not an international organ for the arbitration of disputes when the Turks demand something," he said. "Somehow, I am choked with disgust. One airforce man comes and another goes and one wonders if they have a grasp of public and international law or about the existence of agreements between states," Veryvakis said of Keys' proposal.

"This case tends towards taking away rights from Greece. If this goes on for some years with certain exercises, then we'd better forget there were once treaties. Right now Turkey is achieving with small, artful moves what it would have required a major war to accomplish."

-------- puerto rico

SENTENCING STATEMENT OF ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.
re the bombardment of Vieques

TO FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT JUDGE HECTOR M. LAFFITTE
JULY 6, 2001

http://www.truthout.com/0419.RFK.Jr.2Judge.htm

Your Honor, as you know, the issue of Vieques has mobilized Puerto Ricans of many viewpoints. Last year during a trip to the island, I had the pleasure of meeting independent party leader Ruben Berrios, who wants to sever Puerto Rico's relationship with the United States and sees the bombardment of Vieques as an emblem of the misuse of United States colonial power. And only recently I was arrested and incarcerated with Senator Norma Burgos, vice-president of the statehood party, who wishes to strengthen Puerto Rico's bonds with the United States and views the Navy's operations on Vieques as an obstacle to that objective.

I have, I think, a more national perspective. I come from a naval family. My father and uncles were in the Navy and held this service in the highest regard. In my household my parents taught us the naval ballads and fight songs and successfully schooled us to love the Navy. I love my country. I believe we need a strong national defense and that we need to prepare our troops for battle with adequate training at the best sites to practice live ordnance maneuvers. I am an attorney and a law professor and I love the law and the idea that America's justice system is a global paradigm. But I also believe that those individuals who most love an institution should be the first to criticize it when it does wrong.

I first became involved in Vieques because of the environmental issues raised by the Navy's activities. Military maneuvers on the island include what I consider to be clear and undeniable violations of the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. When I visited the island I found that these violations were causing serious environmental problems. Vieques' incomparable mangrove estuaries were being filled and destroyed. One of its two world-class bioluminescent bays was already extinguished. Naval bombardment had pulverized its unique tropical rainforests, contaminated its aquifers and threatened to eliminate thirteen listed, threatened and endangered plant and animal species.

Even more disturbing were the impacts on Vieques' nine thousand three hundred human residents. A series of scientific studies -- despite the Navy's public relations campaign to discredit them, these studies mainly employ rigorous scientific protocols and standards -- suggest that Vieques has the highest cancer, infant mortality and overall mortality rates of any municipality in Puerto Rico, and that island residents carry dangerous concentrations in their flesh and organs of cadmium, lead arsenic, uranium and other toxic substances associated with the detonation of naval ordnance. Food plants grown in the residential areas of Vieques are also contaminated, as are the fishing areas upon which Vieques residents rely for food and commerce. The federal government has just confirmed that Vieques' groundwater is widely contaminated with dangerous toxics. A recent study indicates that Vieques' residents of both sexes and all ages may suffer from a potentially lethal heart ailment caused by the naval maneuvers.

But perhaps the most toxic residues of the Navy's history on Vieques are the impacts on our democracy. The people I met in Vieques -- who are now my clients -- are United States citizens, but the Navy's abusive exercise of power on the island has left them demoralized, alienated and feeling that they are neither part of a democracy nor the beneficiaries of the United States system of justice. I found a population largely convinced that naval power could trump every law and political institution and could control every judge and every judgment that was relevant to their daily lives.

There is a long history of naval abuse and I will not burden the Court with an inventory today, but I will mention one example that is fresh in the minds of most of my clients in Vieques. In 1983 under pressure from a series of federal environmental law suits brought by the Commonwealth, the Navy signed a settlement agreement in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding which was intended to allow the Navy to continue its maneuvers while mitigating the extreme economic, social, cultural and environmental cost that these maneuvers were imposing on the island's population. In the 1983 MOU, the Navy agreed to make substantial investments in Vieques' disastrous health care, make "best efforts" to create jobs so as to achieve full employment on Vieques, provide decent housing to Vieques' residents and take concrete measures to study and safeguard the island's endangered species and other natural resources. The Navy has altogether ignored this agreement. Indeed the Navy has openly and notoriously violated every single commitment, promise and provision of that agreement without any legal consequence and with absolute impunity. It is no wonder that the island's residents are disillusioned with American justice. It is no wonder that they smirked when I spoke to them of the protections and guarantees of the due process on one of my first trips to Vieques. I showed them the laws and how the Navy was violating the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and I assured them that in the federal courts we could force the Navy to comply with those laws. I told them that no entity is above those laws, not even the Navy.

In October of last year I filed a motion for a preliminary injunction. For eight months this Court sat on those papers and refused to make a decision, allowing the Navy to bomb the island and break the laws again and again. This Court ignored my repeated motions that it adjudicate this case. I had a great sense of frustration that, eight months and two naval bombardments after filing this motion, I could still not get my clients their day in court. That frustration led me finally to engage in civil disobedience. I had promised my clients that our system could work for them. When I could not make the system work to protect my client's rights, I felt my only option was to suffer with them.

I engaged in civil disobedience for a single purpose: to prevent a criminal act by the United States Navy which this Court has refused to redress. I know that you will empathize with those feelings your Honor when I recall the conviction with which you explained to Senator Fernando Martin during the early days of the civil disobedience the special obligation by those of us who enjoy the benefits of democracy. You instructed him that we must first exhaust all legal and political remedies before civil disobedience can be justified. I know, that at the time you issued this reprimand, you believed those remedies existed for the people of Vieques. And yet, events have confirmed that these men and women often have no place at the table where the destiny of their community is being determined. They have no elected representative in Congress. Every elected public official in Puerto Rico opposes the Navy's use of Vieques. They have exhausted their political remedies. They have also exhausted their civil remedies to no avail. Using all my powers as an attorney I could not even get them access to a courtroom.

It was only with great hesitation, trepidation and sadness that I engaged in this civil disobedience. I am an officer of the court; I am a law professor and a lawyer who loves the law. And I do not believe that an attorney should lightly engage in civil disobedience. Here, however, I believe we exhausted all legal remedies in an effort to halt an illegal activity. In this case a critical public trust resource, the airs, waters, endangered species and groundwaters of Vieques were being destroyed without an opportunity for due process or political relief. In such circumstances I believe that those of us who live in a democracy and love our laws and our country have not only a right, but an obligation to engage in civil disobedience.

Since I have followed my conscience in this instance, I will gladly accept the sentence of the court and I will serve my time with peace of mind.

-------- space

Hawaii Flight of Experimental NASA Plane Delayed

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-space-plane-d.html?searchpv=reuters

LIHUE, Kauai (Reuters) - An initial test flight of an experimental NASA plane that is expected to set altitude records and pave the way for a new generation of low-cost satellites was postponed on Friday due to unfavorable winds.

The so-called ``check flight'' for NASA's $15 million Helios aircraft was postponed until Saturday from the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai, when the remote-controlled craft is expected to reach altitudes of at least 70,000 feet.

Engineers with Aerovironment Inc., which has contracted with NASA to develop the plane, had been concerned by brisk winds gusting up to 75 miles per hour at altitudes up to 50,000 feet.

NASA project managers decided early Friday to delay the flight after winds had not diminished sufficiently to ensure the safety of the aircraft during both its ascent and descent.

During its check-out flight the Helios is expected to spend most of its time over the Pacific Ocean, to minimize the impact of any crash landings on populated areas. Emergency landing sites also have been prepared on the privately owned island of Niihau, just west of Kauai.

Although no records likely will be broken during the check-out flight, the Helios is believed capable of reaching altitudes of 100,000 feet or 20,000 feet higher than the record for a propeller drive airplane set by its project predecessor, Pathfinder Plus, in 1998.

Because Helios will travel close to the Earth, rather than in space orbit like a satellite, it can be brought down easily for routine maintenance and payload changes. It also can remain in one spot over the Earth for an extended period of time.

NASA believes these capabilities will allow the Helios to function as an enhanced ``poor man's satellite,'' providing telecommunications and digital TV services in remote regions.

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

UN Support of Arms Control Sought

By Ed Johnson
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 6, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010706/aponline120257_000.htm

LONDON -- Nighti Aparo lives in a country awash with guns.

Both her father and brother were slain by Ugandan rebels and she and all four of her sisters were abducted at gunpoint. Her case, cited by the international aid agency Oxfam, is one among millions.

"Half a million people are killed every year by small arms, not to mention the people who are injured, displaced or left destitute," says Oxfam's Sam Barratt.

The guns that killed Aparo's brother and father, he says, probably came from Sudan - part of an illicit international arms trade worth $1 billion annually.

On Monday, the United Nations opens a two-week special session in New York in an effort to control this international black market, which has contributed to millions of deaths worldwide. Campaigners hope member states will reach agreement on ways to trace weapons and on export regulations.

Officially titled The U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons In All Its Aspects, the meeting is expected to draw more than 200 lobbying groups.

According to the United Nations, small arms are designed to be used, carried and maintained by one person - such as pistols, assault rifles and sub machine guns. Light weapons, operated by crews, include grenade launchers, shoulder-fired anti-tank guns and portable missile launchers.

The United Nations reports there are more than 500 million small arms and light weapons in circulation around the world. Between 40 and 60 percent are illicit.

The Omega Foundation, based in Britain, says the number of countries producing small arms doubled between 1960 and 1999, while the number of manufacturers has increased nearly six times.

However, global production appears to be declining, according to the Small Arms Survey of Geneva. It says global production of small arms averaged 6.3 million weapons per year from 1980 to 1998, but in 2000 output dropped to 4.3 million. Three-fourths of last year's production was in the United States, largely for the domestic market, the Small Arms Survey says.

The United Nations says it cannot simply ban small arms, as it did anti-personnel land mines and chemical weapons, as the "international community regards them as necessary for a state's legitimate right of self defense."

Instead the conference aims to draw up a program of action to stop the arms from spreading illegally into conflict areas.

The United Nations says the small arms issue has been "at the forefront" of its agenda since the mid-1990s when "peacekeepers and humanitarian workers found themselves grappling with extraordinary amounts of weapons moving freely between combatants, ex-combatants and civilians."

U.N. studies in 1997 and 1999 have looked at the issues of tracing weapons, destruction of arms and control of manufacturing.

In his foreword to that study, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the easy availability of small arms leads to more deaths in conflicts, and "a high proportion of the casualties are civilian."

"This has led to millions of deaths and injuries, the displacement of populations, and suffering and insecurity around the world," he said.

Sarah Meek of the conflict prevention organization International Alert says a critical goal for the conference is to ensure weapons are marked so that arms movements can be traced.

"Unless you know how the arms are moving around and where they are being smuggled onto the black market you will never really be able to stop the trade," said Meek.

Another issue the United Nations must tackle is export regulations, says Oxfam.

"States must set binding new international standards for responsible arms transfers, preventing the export of weapons where there is a risk that they will be used to commit serious violations of human rights," said Barratt.

Member states must also look at the "end-use" of weapons, he said, and make sure legal shipments of arms are not passed on - as in the case of guns leaking from Sudan into Uganda.

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

The accidental strategy

July 6, 2001
Philip Gold
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20010706-31826073.htm

Ayear ago, the so-called "Two War Strategy" preparing to fight two more or less simultaneous major theater wars had about as many adherents as the Bill Clinton chapter of Americans for Constitutional Chastity. A few weeks ago, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested that it might be time to put this nonsense out of our misery. Then nonsense morphed into gospel especially among conservatives whose attitude toward defense seems more and more to be: "Just Spend It."

There are (at least) four reasons why the Two War Strategy is bad strategy, bad planning, and a waste of billions more urgently needed elsewhere.

First, the strategy arose as no strategy at all. In 1990, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff (JCS), wanted a post-Cold War force adequate to hedge against a renascent Soviet or Russian threat. Planning for one regional war yielded a force too small; planning for three would never get funded. Two was just right or, more aptly, all the budget would bear.

Second, no two wars are created equal. The traditional premise has been that "war" meant ground war, and ground war meant divisions piled on divisions. Since 1992, the Two War Strategy has mostly posited replays of the Korean and Persian Gulf Wars. But one can imagine conflicts in which ground forces play a marginal role: a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, for example, or an Iranian strike at Saudi Arabia across the Gulf.

Further, even in those wars where ground forces are vital, their role is changing. Ground forces didn't win Desert Storm; they finished it. For five years now, the Army and Air Force have skirmished over whether halting an enemy advance by massive air power in the early days of a war is preferable to concentrating on a ground counteroffensive months later. Obviously, each service favors the arguments most conducive to its own interests. But when ground forces may not even be able to get ashore in some future conflict the "anti-access" threat the question of ground force utility is real.

Third, if the United States does get involved in a major war somewhere, a second major war is only one possible subsequent headache. Why not two or three more? Why not also a global explosion of score-settling, from the Balkans and the Middle East to South Asia? Why not all of the above?

Finally and no one, to my knowledge, has ever mentioned this would the American people tolerate two major wars, especially if they grow long and bloody and endanger the homeland? Would they tolerate forces victorious on one front sent instantly to another? It's possible to believe that the American people would never tolerate one or two major defeats, and that a strike at the homeland might steel us to teach somebody a lesson the world will never forget. But in truth, no one knows.

So what to do? The answer may well be to shift from a spurious strategy to what's sometimes called a "capabilities-based force." Worry less about arbitrary constructs and more about what we need. We'll need a conventional combat force of stunning lethality, one that may look nothing like today's ponderous divisions. We need to maintain aerospace supremacy; we do what we want, they do nothing. We're going to need a serious peace-enforcing capability for areas of vital interest imagine, for example, that the only way to prevent an Arab-Israeli war from going nuclear is to get between those people. We need homeland defense.

And most of all, we need to craft a new form of deterrence. Once, deterrence meant threatening to blow a country up. In this age of cyberwar and precision strikes, deterrence can also mean shutting a country down.

All this will cost. Nobody's talking about cutting the defense budget. So why are so many thoughtful conservatives so committed to spending money the old-fashioned way? Put differently, why do they oppose transforming the military into a 21st century force that can meet 21st century perils?

Hard to tell. Perhaps because transformation also means giving things up, and that can make people nervous. Perhaps because it's easier to criticize than to create. Most of all, perhaps it's because the Two War Strategy offers a simple creed, a clear definition of virtue, and a comforting belief that we can fight the wars we want to fight, the way we want to fight them.

Not so.

Philip Gold is director of defense and aerospace studies at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute.

----

LBJ's medal for valour 'was sham'

Julian Borger Washington
Guardian
Friday July 6, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4217043,00.html

For most of his political life, Lyndon B Johnson wore a second world war military decoration for valour under fire despite never having seen combat, an investigation broadcast on CNN yesterday revealed.

LBJ was awarded the Silver Star, the third-highest US combat medal, for a 1942 fact-finding mission over the Pacific while he was a Texas congressman and an acting lieutenant commander in the navy.

The citation, issued in the name of General Douglas MacArthur, said the plane, a B-26 bomber, was "intercepted by eight hostile fighters" and that Johnson "evidenced coolness".

In fact, according to surviving members of the crew, the plane developed mechanical problems before reaching its target and never came under fire. No other crew member received a medal for the mission.

The biographer of LBJ, Robert Dallek, said the medal was the outcome of a deal with Gen MacArthur, under which Johnson was honoured in return for a pledge "that he would lobby the president, FDR, to provide greater resources for the southwest Pacific theatre".

----

Island Fever
Yet another rape charge spotlights Okinawa as Washington and Tokyo's biggest headache

BY TIM LARIMER
Friday, July 6, 2001
TIME VOL.158 NO.1
http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,166085,00.html

Okinawa City, When night falls outside the sprawling Kadena Air Force Base in the center of Okinawa, the streets turn into a bacchanalian fest of hard drinking, loud music and raucous, sweaty dancing. American servicemen are on the prowl for liquor and a good time. The local girls, Okinawans and Japanese, come out too, looking for some fun with the buff, dollar-rich and female-deprived American boys. Tattooed guys in muscle shirts and cargo pants rub against women in midriff-baring Tshirts and tight jeans, and as the crowd spills from bars onto sidewalks, the night shifts into hormonal overdrive. "Hey, we're 19-year-old guys, we're away from home, we're pumped up and we're horny," says a young Marine from California. "Of course it's all about sex." It's a wild, noisy, volatile mix, where the details of what happens next often get lost in the haze of the next day's hangover.

Not always. Last week, just 36 hours before Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was to meet at Camp David with U.S. President George W. Bush for the first time, Okinawa suffered the type of ugly incident that happens with depressing regularity-becoming, once again, one of the most tricky points in the complex relationship between the U.S. and Japan. Early Friday morning, a woman in her twenties told police that a foreigner raped her in a parking lot of a shopping mall not far from the Kadena base. Police later said they had identified a U.S. Air Force technical sergeant as a suspect. The details of the alleged crime were sketchy, and unsubstantiated media reports were confusing, contradictory and downright inflammatory. First the incident was reported as a gang rape. Then there were reports that several Americans stood by while the rape occurred. None of that was true. But police questioned several airmen over the weekend. No charges had been filed by late Saturday, and the technical sergeant was not being detained. "We have escorted him in for questioning, and if he is indicted, he will be turned over to Okinawa police custody," said Marine Captain Cliff Gilmore, public affairs officer for the U.S. Okinawa military command. "The kind of behavior alleged is entirely unacceptable," Lieut. General Earl Hailston, the Okinawa commander, said in a statement.

While the police and the U.S. military tried to sort out the criminal investigation, the two countries' diplomats had to deal with the fallout. With some 26,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines on the 2,300-sq-km tropical prefecture, Okinawa is the cornerstone of the U.S. defense strategy in Asia. But ever since the Americans turned the island into a military fortress after World War II, it has been an uneasy alliance. The Okinawans, already estranged from the Japanese mainlanders who colonized their island and then brutalized them during the war, have long resented being used as a pawn in a military defense chess game. Crimes like last week's alleged rape only inflame the passions. In 1995, after three servicemen raped a 12-year-old girl, 85,000 Okinawans staged a peaceful but angry protest. Over the years, a series of outrageous sex crimes have made the U.S. servicemen seem totally out of control. "How long do we have to wait until this ends?" asks Suzuyo Takazato, a member of the legislature of Naha, Okinawa's largest city. "Why can't the U.S. take these men, and these bases, and their training, and do it somewhere else?"

The answer to Takazato's plea is that the issue is a lot larger than Okinawa, as unsatisfying or patronizing as that may sound to the Okinawans. Japan's nominally pacifist postwar constitution paved the way for the U.S. to establish a military beachhead in the land of its World War II enemy. Okinawa, by virtue of geography, suits American purposes because it is near the Korean peninsula and the rest of Asia. It suits Tokyo's in two ways: the U.S. presence reduces Japan's need for fielding its own army, and it segregates a substantial portion of the American military machine from the mainland. Koizumi said in a recent speech in Okinawa that he wanted to "lighten the burden" on the island, and former President Bill Clinton last summer suggested the U.S. would reduce the size of America's "footprint" on Okinawa. But the new Administration in Washington maintains that Asia is its main security focus-and that Okinawa is integral. "The presence of American forces on Okinawa," says a State Department official in Washington, "is vital for the security of the region."

Yet the relationship between the two countries is undergoing a transition, and a new defense arrangement was, in fact, at the top of the agenda of the weekend Bush-Koizumi summit. The big unanswered question: How to make room for a more assertive Japan? Last year, Japan's parliament approved measures to begin rethinking its constitution, including war-renouncing Article 9. On paper, the move is a baby step toward change. Yet in the context of Japan-where the merest suggestion of re-arming has traditionally been severely rebuked-the legislative step was dramatic. Once legal barriers to a full-fledged military are removed, Japan could quickly and easily become one of the world's most muscle-bound nations-because its forces, despite the "defensive" tag, are already some of the richest and best-equipped in the world.

The U.S. quietly encourages the idea of a military build-up because that would enable the U.S. to shift some of its hardware and staff elsewhere. The rest of Asia, particularly China, would react differently. Koizumi has already perturbed neighbors by revealing a conservative nationalist streak. He has said he'll visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, a war memorial where veterans, including some convicted war criminals, are entombed. He has also refused to stop the publication of textbooks that whitewash Japan's aggression in World War II.

In Okinawa, geopolitics seem abstract, but life in the shadow of the American military does produce strange anomalies. On Saturday and Sunday, following the furor over Friday's alleged rape, the Kadena base opened its gates to visitors for an "American Fest" with carnival rides, a haunted house and a menu of hotdogs, hamburgers and barbecued ribs. One of the visitors, 27-year-old Kaori Teruya, stepped inside a huge transport plane, the reports of the rape attack not far from her mind. "My girlfriends and I are always bothered by these American servicemen," Teruya said. "I am scared." The disturbing question is: How can Okinawans like Teruya feel so unsafe living alongside U.S. servicemen-whose duty is to protect them and their country?

With reporting by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen/Tokyo and Barry Hillenbrand/ Washington

Write to TIME at mail@web.timeasia.com

A Disturbing Pattern: Violent incidents have made U.S. soldiers truly "ugly Americans."

http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,166086,00.html

The Sashimi Report: Ask a Stupid Question...:
Marines might not have "smart" answers about this incident, but we must listen http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/column/0,9754,166095,00.html

-------- OTHER

-------- death penalty

State's Death Penalty Law Passes Test

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/06/nyregion/06DEAT.html

ALBANY, July 5 - Wrestling with a constitutional flaw in the state's death penalty law, the Court of Appeals today upheld the guilty plea of a confessed killer and ruled that a plea bargain did not violate his rights.

Defense lawyers and prosecutors said the decision would bolster the various means they have used to avoid a defect in New York's law that complicates plea bargains in capital cases and opens them up to constitutional challenges.

Unlike defendants in most states with capital punishment, people in New York who plead guilty to murder charges automatically avoid the death penalty, which can be imposed only after a trial. The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that a similar law violated the Constitution because it "needlessly encourages" people to forgo their rights to a trial and against self-incrimination. In practice, few defendants in other states plead guilty to capital murder charges unless they receive a prison term instead of death.

In 1998, the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, struck down the part of the death penalty law that dealt with pleas because defendants could claim they were coerced into plea bargains while the threat of execution was still hanging over them. The court interpreted the law to mean that a defendant could not enter a guilty plea once a prosecutor had filed a notice that the death penalty was sought or until the prosecutor withdrew the notice.

The ruling left prosecutors and defense lawyers in a quandary about how to strike plea bargains and prompted Gov. George E. Pataki to call for changes to the law. In practice, defense lawyers and prosecutors have devised ways to skirt the issue. Some prosecutors, for instance, have withdrawn the death penalty notice just after the defendant has confessed in court but before the judge has accepted the plea.

But today the court upheld a guilty plea entered by a Schoharie County man, Daniel Edwards, who confessed in court in 1998 that he had been hired to kill the former husband of his brother's girlfriend. By upholding Mr. Edwards's conviction, lawyers said, the court sent the message that the constitutional problems with New York's law do not automatically invalidate all guilty pleas in capital cases.

"The decision upholds hundreds of guilty pleas that otherwise might have been challenged," said Darren Dopp, a spokesman for Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer. "The issue here is, is that situation coercive or not? What the court has stood up to say is, it need not be coercive."

Still, the 6-to-1 decision did not spell out a specific procedure for ensuring that guilty pleas stand up on appeal. Mr. Edwards confessed and pleaded guilty in court, and the prosecutor withdrew the death penalty request before the judge accepted the plea.

Writing for the majority, Judge Howard A. Levine did not say whether that process was right or wrong. The judges simply ruled that Mr. Edwards had voluntarily waived his constitutional rights when he pleaded guilty. They dismissed the argument that he was coerced solely by a fear of death.

Mr. Edwards's lawyer, Joseph F. Cawley Jr., said he had not decided if he would appeal to the United States Supreme Court. "They are saying the plea that was taken is valid," he said, "but they don't come out and specifically say that the steps that were taken in obtaining that plea is the way you can do it to satisfy the constitutional requirements."

But other death penalty lawyers said the court had given some credence to the way the Schoharie County district attorney, James Sacket, handled the case.

"People v. Edwards means that prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges will continue to use their common sense when it comes to settling capital cases," said Kevin Doyle, the New York State capital defender.

Ronald J. Tabak, a New York lawyer who specializes in capital cases, said the 1998 Court of Appeals decision "was an imperfect remedy, and it was predicted by many that this would make it impossible for anybody to enter into plea arrangements."

"This decision would appear to point the way on how to do that in the future," Mr. Tabak said.

Most capital defendants have pleaded guilty since the death penalty was reinstated in New York State in 1995. Of the 43 defendants who have faced the death penalty since then, only six have gone to trial and ended up on death row.

Mr. Edwards shot and killed Francisco Arroyo Jr. as he slept in his bed in a Middleburgh apartment in May 1997, according to his confession. He had been hired by Mr. Arroyo's estranged wife, Donna, who was dating his half-brother, Cary Wayne McKinley. Mrs. Arroyo had allegedly promised both men the money from the victim's life insurance.

With possible death sentences hanging over them, Mrs. Arroyo and Mr. Edwards both pleaded guilty and received sentences of 25 years to life in prison. Mr. McKinley was acquitted.

The Court of Appeals handed down the 1998 decision on pleas in capital cases after Mr. Edwards had pleaded guilty but before he was sentenced. He appealed to the county judge to withdraw his guilty plea but was rebuffed. The Appellate Division reversed that decision, but the Court of Appeals reinstated his conviction today.

The flaw in New York's law is unique. In regard to sentencing, the statutes in the other 36 states that have the death penalty do not distinguish between people convicted at trial and people who plead guilty, death penalty experts say.

As a practical matter, however, few defendants plead guilty to murder unless they receive a promise of a reduced sentence, said Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., which defends death row inmates.

"You don't plead guilty unless you get something for that," Mr. Stevenson said.

--------

China Kills 1, 781 in 'Execution Frenzy' - Amnesty

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-a.html

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has executed at least 1,781 people since it launched a nationwide campaign against crime in April, the human rights group Amnesty International said in a statement on Friday.

Those executed were among at least 2,960 people condemned in the ``Strike Hard'' campaign, which started as a drive against organized crime but has expanded to target crimes ranging from embezzlement to pimping and ethnic separatist activity, it said.

``The campaign is nothing short of an execution frenzy -- a huge waste of human life,'' the London-based group said.

Many of the condemned prisoners were brought to public sentencing rallies in front of huge crowds or paraded through the streets on the way to the firing squad, it said.

The tally, based on state media reports, ``is only the barest minimum figure because we know that cases are only selectively reported and what national statistics there are a still a state secret,'' said Catherine Baber of Amnesty's Hong Kong office.

Information on executions tends to be especially hard to obtain in regions such as Buddhist Tibet and Muslim Xinjiang, minority areas where Chinese policies come under intense international scrutiny, rights activists say.

Amnesty, a leading opponent of capital punishment, said police and prosecutors were given orders to achieve ``quick approval, quick arrest, quick trial and quick results'' and lawyers were told to work with the police and prosecution.

``Curtailed procedures plus great pressure on police and judicial authorities mean that the potential for miscarriages of justice, arbitrary sentencing and the execution of innocent people is immense,'' it said.

WORLD'S LEADING EXECUTIONER

Provincial official media have reported almost daily batches of executions since the drive began with a campaign against organized crime late last year and accelerated in April, claiming convicted killers, robbers and corrupt officials.

There was a huge spike of executions of drug traffickers for International Anti-Drugs Day on June 26, accounting for most of the death sentences and executions in June, Baber said.

The ``Strike Hard'' campaign, which began in April and will run for two years, has seen the death penalty used to punish ethnic separatism and ``illegal religious activities'' in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, Amnesty said.

It said China was by far the planet's busiest executioner in 1999 with an official tally of 1,263 people put to death -- more than the rest of the world combined. But the group said that was only a fraction of the actual total.

Diplomats said the torrid pace of executions put the 2001 tally on track to match the 4,367 people executed under the previous nationwide Strike Hard campaign, in 1996.

China insists it is not ready to do away with capital punishment and rejects outside pressure to stop executing criminals.

Calls within China for the abolition of capital punishment are rare among a public concerned about increasing crime spawned by widening income disparities with two decades of market economic reforms putting millions out of work.

-------- environment

Austrialia remains opposed to Kyoto Protocol

USA Today 07/06/2001
The Associated Press.
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/07/06/australian-kyoto.htm

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Australia remains firm in its decision not to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the government said Friday, despite attempts by visiting European Union delegates to persuade it otherwise.

Environment Minister Robert Hill said the government is committed to an effective international process in curbing greenhouse gases and one that is fair to all parties.

However, Australia continues to back the U.S. position on the treaty, Hill said.

"Our position is that, in terms of all of us wanting to get an effectual international outcome, to settle rules without the U.S being party is, in effect, to shut the door," Hill said.

The Kyoto Protocol aims to combat a slow but steady rise in the planet's temperature by getting industrialized nations to cut carbon dioxide emissions by an average 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012.

Australia initially committed to ratifying the 1997 accord, but backed away after President Bush rejected it. Washington said the protocol is unfair to American companies and should include major developing countries such as China and India.

To take effect, the protocol must be ratified by at least 55 nations accounting for just over half the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

An EU delegation met with Hill on Friday to try to persuade Australia to change its position and support the treaty before a key international meeting in Germany on July 16.

Australia is responsible for nearly 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions while accounting for 1% of global economic activity.

The United States produces 25% of global greenhouse emissions.

----

PRESSURE TREATED WOOD TO CARRY ARSENIC WARNINGS

July 6, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-06-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, Consumers can now expect to find improved safety handling information when using wood pressure treated with chromated copper arsenicals (CCA), a wood preservative that contains arsenic.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has completed its review of a plan developed by the American Wood Preservers Institute (AWPI) to strengthen information available to consumers for CCA treated wood, which is used for many outdoor applications including decks, fences, posts, picnic tables, docks and playground equipment. The expanded consumer information program began this week, and by fall will include labeling on all pieces of CCA treated lumber, in store displays and additional information available to the public.

"Now consumers will understand that this treated wood contains arsenic," said Stephen Johnson, EPA assistant administrator for the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances. "I am pleased that the public discussions about CCA treated wood resulted in a commitment by the industry to include end tag labeling, in store bin stickers and signs, and a new toll free hotline and web site."

CCA, a chemical containing arsenic, is used to treat wood to protect it against decay and insect damage. The EPA learned that the previous consumer awareness program was not adequately informing the public about the risks of CCA treated wood, and in May, the agency asked the wood preservative industry and the public to propose ways to enhance the existing consumer awareness program.

The EPA will hold a public meeting of the Scientific Advisory Panel in October to invite scientific peer review on the agency's hazard assessment and methodologies for calculating children's potential exposure in playgrounds where equipment is made from CCA treated wood. The children's assessment is one aspect of the agency's comprehensive reassessment of CCA, which will be released for public review in 2002.

----

Mexico Debates Sea Turtle Safety

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mexico-Sea-Turtles.html

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Environmentalists lined up against developers Friday in a battle to prevent hotel construction on a beach that serves as a sea turtle nesting ground.

The debate over the proposed luxury hotel at Xcacel beach, 60 miles south of Cancun, came as developers lashed out at officials who are now trying to enforce long-ignored environmental regulations on Mexico's Caribbean coast.

Environmental officials have promised to take individual comments at Friday's public hearing into account when deciding whether to approve the hotel project.

Ana Luisa Aguilar, an activist from the Luun Kanab community group who attended the meeting, suggested the government offer the hotel developers appropriate land for their project -- somewhere else.

``Xcacel is a protected area. Sea turtles are an endangered species,'' Aguilar said. ``They should be offered a chance to build on some other piece of land.''

Activists claim that the development at the beach -- one of the few that still provides public access to Mexico's Caribbean -- could disrupt the turtles by confusing them with noise and lights.

Representatives of Sol-Melia, the Spanish firm that wants to build the hotel at Xcacel, did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

But they helped sponsor a full-page ad in Mexican newspapers this week, which was signed by a dozen hotel groups, and accuses environmentalists of ``making a lucrative business out of indiscriminately attacking any kind of investment project in the region.''

Earlier this year, Environment Secretary Victor Lichtinger angered hotel developers by lowering the amount of hotel building that will be allowed in the 70-mile corridor from Cancun south to Tulum.

Lichtinger also closed a number of beach developments along Mexico's Pacific coast because they violated environmental norms or lacked permits.

Guerrero Gov. Rene Juarez this week accused Lichtinger's office of ``killing off investment'' in Acapulco, one of Mexico's most environmentally damaged resorts.

--------

U.S. Scientists to Measure Earth's Tiny Motions

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-science-quake.html

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Scientists on Friday unveiled a $20 million system expected to revolutionize the study of earthquakes by measuring the earth's movements down to the millimeter.

The Southern California Integrated Global Positioning System Network (SCIGN), a joint project by universities and federal agencies including the U.S. Geological Survey and National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), uses satellites originally designed for military navigation to measure the constant movements of the jigsaw puzzle-like plates that make up the Earth's crust.

The resulting measurements, which are accurate down to a millimeter, will enable better prediction of the timing of quakes, provide clues as to how they might be related and identify faults not currently linked to seismic activity, scientists said.

The system will also contribute to earthquake hazard assessments in Southern California, the world's most seismically active area, scientists said at a press conference in suburban Los Angeles.

``California is now wired like no place else in the U.S.,'' said John Filson of the USGS. ``Never before has a network like SCIGN been built. It is unique in the world, and other countries are learning from SCIGN as they attempt to understand and cope with their earthquake risks.''

The system, a network of 250 satellite receivers placed alongside freeways, dams, and on private property, will complement existing technology already in place to measure seismic shaking. Such measurement, Filson said, can be compared to taking the ``pulse of the earth,'' by monitoring the location and magnitude of earthquakes.

'READ THE EARTH'S BLOOD PRESSURE'

The new program, he said, will ``read the Earth's blood pressure'' by measuring the tiny, inevitable, and steady buildup of strain produced by movements of the North American and Pacific plates upon which Los Angeles is built.

``What we're measuring is all that goes into the build-up of an earthquake,'' said Mark Benthien, a spokesman for the Southern California Earthquake Center, the parent organization of SCIGN.

USGS's Filson added: ``Ultimately we are confidentwill help lower the risk to society in Southern California of the earthquake threat.''

The project began 10 years ago and significantly expanded after the 6.7 magnitude 1994 Northridge quake that rocked Southern California, killing 57 people and causing more than $20 billion in damage.

The entire project was finished on July 2, officials said. The technology is expected to provide continuous information for at least 50 years.

Scientists said they eventually hope to expand the monitoring to cover North America from Alaska to the southern tip of Mexico.

The program is also being used by officials from the California Department of Transportation to monitor the freeways, by the California Spacial Reference Center to survey property boundaries and infrastructure locations, and by water officials in Los Angeles to keep track of ground movements around thousands of miles of pipeline, officials said.

--------

Bush Wants to Cut Global Warming Aid

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Warming.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, after faulting the Kyoto climate treaty for excluding developing nations from its requirements, wants to cut U.S. aid for helping Third World countries combat global warming.

While asking Congress for nearly $4 billion to address climate change, roughly the same as last year, Bush proposes reducing assistance to other countries by $41 million from last year's $165 million. He calls for shifting more responsibility to private industry.

The figures are contained in a June 29 report, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, that Bush sent to House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., the Senate president pro tem. The White House had no comment Friday.

The 52-page report provides the first public look at an inventory of Bush spending on climate change. The issue, along with Bush's related energy policies, has become increasingly prominent with Bush's reversal of a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide pollution and his rejection of the 1997 Kyoto accord that has been broadly supported but not ratified by any U.S. allies in Europe.

Much of Bush's climate change budget amounts to shifting about $400 million toward areas such as burning coal more cleanly, insulating homes to use less energy and giving tax credits for electricity produced from wind and less-polluting agricultural waste.

Europeans have been unhappy with Bush's condemnation of the Kyoto agreement, which commits industrialized countries to reduce emissions such as carbon dioxide that are believed to trap heat in the atmosphere, warming it like a greenhouse.

Just before heading to Europe, Bush told reporters on June 11 the U.S. should help reduce heat-trapping pollution from Third World countries. ``We want to work cooperatively with these countries in their efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions and maintain economic growth,'' he said.

However, his budget would reduce money for programs intended to assist countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Africa and Ukraine increase their industrial development with only minimal contributions to global warming.

In his report, Bush says several U.S.-backed projects are ready to be privatized. Those include projects creating more efficient lighting in Mexico and wind power in India, using agricultural waste as fuel for electric power and heat in Brazil and expanded coal-bed methane recovery in China.

``Some programs were reduced to eliminate unrequested earmarks or certain projects approaching commercialization that are more properly funded by the private sector,'' Bush's report says. ``Other higher priority programs were increased.''

Critics say the report hurts Bush's credibility.

``The president has said he wants to be a leader on global warming and instead he's not only undermined the Kyoto agreement but slashed the programs he's telling the public are important to him. That's not leadership -- that's a sham,'' said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust.

Bush also proposes:

--$1.1 billion in energy tax credits over 10 years for solar and renewable energy sources to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

--Federal environmental regulators in 2002 ``will demonstrate technology for an 85-mile-per-gallon, mid-size family sedan that has low emissions and is safe, practical and affordable.''

--Cutting NASA's climate change research by $90 million, or almost 8 percent from last year's $1.2 billion.

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and 35 other Democrats had told White House budget director Mitch Daniels he must turn over any budget and planning documents related to the Bush administration's policies on global warming. The documents were required to be submitted to Congress as part of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act.

The report notably excludes any price tags for the new initiatives Bush announced last month to study the rise in the Earth's temperature, fund research for technology to cut heat-trapping emissions and bolster coordination among research institutions throughout the world.

--------

U.N. May Delay Climate Treaty's Target Date

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/06/world/06CLIM.html

The chairman of a United Nations conference negotiating a climate treaty said on Thursday that he was willing to delay the target date that countries would have to start cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases. His offer of such a compromise was widely seen as a bid to gain Japan's support for the treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol.

The proposal came during a speech to the Dutch Parliament by the chairman, Jan Pronk, who heads the negotiations and is the Dutch environmental minister.

He outlined a way to soften the treaty's rules that might make it easier for a country like Japan, facing a recession, to participate.

The current language of the treaty would require 38 industrialized countries to reduce their annual emissions, averaged between 2008 and 2012, to more than 5 percent below where they stood in 1990.

"I can imagine that it would be possible to postpone the date of 2008 by two years, to 2010," Mr. Pronk said, according to The Associated Press and European wire services.

Until now, European officials have uniformly resisted any change in the timetable or targets of the proposal.

Nonetheless, many experts on the treaty predicted that Mr. Pronk's move was too little, too late - with the only chance of American support evaporating after European negotiators rejected proposals from the Clinton administration last November.

The treaty was negotiated in Kyoto in 1997 and signed by the Clinton administration and 167 other governments, but countries remain deeply divided over its fine print and no large industrialized country has ratified it.

The treaty has been rejected by President Bush as "fatally flawed" because it excuses developing nations from obligatory emissions cuts and could, according to the Bush administration, harm the economy.

But it could still take effect if countries responsible for more than half of the industrialized world's 1990 emissions of warming gases support it.

The European Union has said it would push to ratify the treaty without the United States. But without the support of Japan, a large source of emissions, it would be nearly impossible to reach the threshold for enactment.

-------- human rights

Bush asks China to release academics

July 6, 2001
By Anna Lea Flatow
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010706-19218647.htm

President Bush asked Chinese President Jiang Zemin yesterday to release two U.S. academics -- a researcher at American University in Washington and an American business professor in Hong Kong -- put on trial for espionage.

The State Department confirmed that both cases, which the United States considers groundless, had gone to trial.

The announcement came hours after Mr. Bush raised both cases in a telephone conversation with Mr. Jiang.

"The president talked to Jiang Zemin this morning and raised this issue, and I hope that this matter too will be resolved quickly," said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

Separately, a State Department spokesman said the Bush administration was "deeply disturbed by reports that China has further intensified its harsh repression of the Falun Gong," a meditation sect that has become increasingly popular in China.

In February, China arrested American University scholar Gao Zhan, a permanent U.S. resident who was slated to be sworn in as an American citizen, and subsequently charged her with espionage.

Mrs. Gao's husband, Xue Donghua, said yesterday that he was neither optimistic nor pessimistic over the latest development.

"The good news is that President Bush talked to the Chinese president and asked him to release my wife. The bad news is that the State Department confirmed that there is a trial going on against her," Mr. Xue said by telephone.

"I just try to keep my hopes up," he said.

Also on trial in Beijing is Li Shaomin, an American citizen who teaches business at a Hong Kong university.

Mrs. Gao, whose research included women's issues in both Taiwan and China, was held incommunicado for months and later charged with espionage.

Mr. Li was charged with spying for Taiwan.

"In the case of detainees, we've consistently urged the Chinese government to resolve these cases as soon as possible, and we will continue to urge them to do that," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.

"We have encouraged China to treat these people fairly. ... We have also urged that they be reunited with their families," he said.

But Mr. Boucher added it was "an open question" as to whether either would get a fair trial, "particularly given what we know about the Chinese legal system."

Both detentions became a major issue during the April standoff over China's downing of an American surveillance plane and the detention of its crew.

At the time, Mrs. Gao had been detained for nearly two months but formal spying charges were not announced until shortly after the plane was forced down on Hainan island on April 1.

Their detentions and the arrests of several other U.S. citizens in China prompted the State Department to warn academics against traveling to China to conduct research.

However, the trials of Mrs. Gao and Mr. Li, coming as China pursues its bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, has prompted optimism that the two could be reunited with their families shortly.

Mr. Powell, in an interview with Reuters news agency, said he had not had a transcript of Mr. Bush's conversation but added that it was "unlikely" that Mr. Jiang had given assurances.

But he expressed measured optimism that the trials would lead to the release of both scholars.

"I hope that they will conclude their proceedings ... in a way that hopefully will create a path that will allow these folks to return to the United States to rejoin their families," he said.

Chinese news reports have suggested the trials could be over by Monday, setting the stage for the scholars' release.

As for the Falun Gong, Mr. Boucher said the reported deaths of at least 15 Falun Gong practitioners in the Wanjia labor camp in the city of Harbin in China's Heilongjiang province last month was "particularly troublesome."

"There are conflicting accounts of what actually occurred in the ... labor camp, but the reports of violence and torture against these Chinese Falun Gong practitioners at the hands of Chinese authorities are chilling," he said.

Falun Gong said Wednesday at least 15 of its female followers were tortured to death at the camp on or around June 20.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said yesterday that three Falun Gong supporters had died and eight had been saved in a mass suicide attempt at the labor camp.

----

Some Children Have Trauma Symptoms Long After War

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/health/health-trauma.html?searchpv=reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Many of the children whose homes were destroyed by SCUD missile attacks during the Gulf War continued to have trauma symptoms five years later, a new study finds. And the psychological state of their mothers tends to influence the number and severity of their symptoms, the researchers say.

A mother's psychological response to a traumatic event may influence her child's long-term reaction, lead study author Dr. Nathaniel Laor, director of the Tel Aviv University's Trauma Center in Israel, told Reuters Health.

To investigate, Laor and his colleagues performed a five-year follow-up study of 81 8- to 10-year-old children, some of whom were displaced from their homes for up to six months due to damage from the attacks. Previous studies were performed at six and 30 months after the attacks.

In general, the children exhibited significantly less symptoms at the five-year follow-up than they had shown previously, but they also had more avoidant symptoms, such as withdrawal or defensive behavior, the authors report in the July issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Although 36% of the children had posttraumatic stress symptoms similar to their symptoms at the 30-month follow-up, the symptoms of 34% worsened, while 30% improved.

Displaced children exhibited more symptoms such as aggression, delinquency or hyperactivity, as well as more stress and avoidance symptoms than did their peers, the report indicates.

Children who had mothers with poor psychological functioning tended to have the most symptoms, while children whose mothers functioned well psychologically had the fewest symptoms, the authors report. Also, children whose symptoms got worse over time tended to have mothers with poor psychological function.

Younger children--as young as 3 at the time of the attack--were more affected by the mothers' symptoms than the older children, and the effect was evident both in the child's later symptoms and in the mother-child relationship, according to Laor.

Study findings also show that when poor family functioning is combined with family displacement it causes stress in children that ``not only jeopardizes their capacity to recover from the initial trauma but may also result in an increase in symptoms,'' Laor and his team write.

In an effort to combat the problem, the authors call for family-focused interventions that involve traumatized children, and also suggest that ``authorities should consider the psychological effects of displacement and shorten its duration as much as possible.

``To minimize traumatic reactions in children exposed to future disasters, societies need to allocate resources to anticipate different scenarios...and intervene as soon as possible after the traumatic impact,'' Laor said. In addition, ''outreach efforts are necessary to educate about and offer psychological aid to children and their parents.''

SOURCE: American Journal of Psychiatry 2001;18:250-254.

-------- police / prisoners

Death Spotlights Youth Boot Camps

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Youth-Boot-Camps.html

PHOENIX (AP) -- The death of a 14-year-old boy this week at an Arizona desert boot camp for delinquents is just the latest episode in the troubled history of these grueling programs.

Boot camps use military discipline to try to turn rebellious youngsters' lives around. But over the past decade, as the popularity of such camps has grown, so have abuse allegations, lawsuits and deaths.

Many such camps are state-run, and the youngsters are sent there by the courts under close supervision. But there are an untold number of other such camps around the country -- like the one in Arizona -- that are privately run, and are for unruly teen-agers sent there by their parents.

And these private boot camps are often subject to little or no regulation.

``It's a situation that lends itself to abusive conditions,'' said R. Dean Wright, a professor of sociology at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. ``Any time you have someone use lock and key, the person who has the lock and key has the power to abuse, and they often do.''

Anthony Haynes died Sunday while attending a five-week boot camp 40 miles west of Phoenix operated by the America's Buffalo Soldiers Re-enactors Association, where the regimen includes forced marches, wearing black uniforms in triple digit temperatures, in-your-face discipline and a daily diet limited to an apple, a carrot and a bowl of beans.

The youngsters were supervised by 17- and 18-year-olds, and there were no medical personnel on hand, Sheriff Joe Arpaio said.

Unidentified former drill instructors at the camp told The Arizona Republic that youths were kicked and forced to swallow mud. At least one person who attended the camp said that a counselor stomped on his chest and poured mud down his throat.

On the day Haynes died, the mercury climbed as high as 114 degrees. The teen-ager's mother, Melanie Hudson, who had sent the boy to the camp after he slashed her tires and was caught shoplifting, said she was told her son had vomited mud before he died.

Authorities removed about 50 youngsters from the camp Monday and returned them to their parents.

The sheriff's department is investigating the boy's death and the abuse allegations. Authorities were awaiting autopsy results Friday.

The organization that runs the camp referred calls to a lawyer who did not return messages.

``There obviously should be some sort of oversight,'' Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said Friday. ``I mean, we even regulate day-care centers. There should be some type of oversight, and perhaps this case will be the one that prompts some action in the Legislature.''

In South Dakota in July 1999, 14-year-old Gina Score died after a forced run at a girls boot camp operated by the state. Two staff members were acquitted on child abuse charges in the death and other alleged problems, including making girls run in shackles until their ankles bled.

In 1998, 16-year-old Nicholaus Contreraz died at the privately run Arizona Boys Ranch boot camp. Charges of murder, manslaughter or child abuse against six staff members at the camp were dropped by prosecutors.

There have been at least three other deaths at boot camps in the past decade and numerous abuse allegations across the country.

The first juvenile boot camp opened in Orleans Parish, La., in 1985 and led the way for others modeled on prison boot camps for adults.

Many parents praise the camps and the positive changes they say they have seen in their children.

A 1998 study by the Koch Crime Institute, a nonprofit research center, found that juvenile boot camps around the United States are no better than traditional methods at deterring crime. The recidivism rates for graduates of juvenile boot camps was between 64 percent and 75 percent, compared with 63 percent to 71 percent for traditional programs for juveniles.

Wright said parents often send their children to the camps unaware of the potential for abuse. In Arizona, for instance, the law regulating juvenile facilities specifically excludes private camps that do not run year-round. The camp where Haynes died ran for five weeks.

``Many parents are just simply exasperated,'' Wright said. ``So many parents feel they have no control over their child and they want something that's going to work.''

Haynes' father, Gettis Haynes Jr., said he wishes he had known more about the camp before sending his son there.

``I'd advise anyone who would send their kid to a boot camp to investigate it as deep as they can before they ever do anything like we've done,'' he said.

--------

Md. Executive Orders Police Review

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Police-Probe.html

LANHAM, Md. (AP) -- A county executive ordered his police department Friday to intensify its review of excessive force cases after a newspaper reported that officers have killed an unusually high number of suspects.

Prince George's County executive Wayne Curry said the review would focus on officers who have abused their authority. He said calls for police chief John S. Farrell to resign were ``single-shot, knee-jerk quick fixes for this issue.''

``I will not punish the whole department, its leadership or its rank and file for the actions of a few,'' he said.

The Washington Post reported this week that county police killed more people per officer over a decade than any of the 50 largest forces in the nation. The paper found that county officers shot 122 people, killing 47, between 1990 and 2000. Almost half of the 122 people were unarmed.

No officer involved in any of the shootings was fired or demoted, the paper said.

Redmon Barnes of the citizen's group People's Coalition for Police Accountability said Farrell should step down.

``I don't think he has any choice but to resign,'' Barnes said. Farrell did not return calls for comment.

The U.S. Justice Department began investigating allegations of brutality by officers in the department last year. A task force appointed by Curry made several suggestions earlier this year -- including consolidating several citizens' police review boards -- but many have not been implemented.

Curry on Friday ordered the department to reopen internal investigations of alleged excessive force when new evidence is found. He also ordered that a team of police investigators be formed to probe any future police shootings or deaths of suspects in custody.

Curry also called for expanding the force's early warning system to flag problem officers.

Police say shootings have declined since 1996, largely because of better training and greater use of nonlethal techniques to subdue suspects. Cameras have also been installed to monitor squad cars.

Barnes said Curry should propose a civilian panel with the power to investigate police misconduct.

``I can't see where this document makes any progress. If he works with the community and people who are concerned and have doubt, that is the way to go,'' he said.

-------- spying

Hanssen damage

July 6, 2001
Inside the Ring,
by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough;
Notes from the Pentagon.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010706-529134.htm

FBI Special Agent Robert P. Hanssen, who is expected to plead guilty today to espionage charges, compromised scores of the FBI's most secret operations, according to intelligence sources.

The veteran counterspy was "read into" more than 100 of the FBI's Special Access Programs -- secret intelligence operations involving double agents and other counterintelligence activities. Based on a "worst case" analysis, intelligence officials say all the programs are considered compromised.

The loss represents what one official called a "devastating" intelligence failure that could take decades for the FBI to fix.

Once the plea agreement with Mr. Hanssen is concluded, debriefings will begin, possibly as soon as next week. Counterintelligence officers from numerous spy agencies want a crack at Mr. Hanssen to find out exactly what was compromised.

The counterspies are especially eager to find out from Mr. Hanssen about his spying activities during the late 1990s, when Russian intelligence files indicate the FBI agent had little contact with his handlers in Moscow.

----

Pinochet judge seeks to grill Kissinger

World Scene
July 6, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010706-82242712.htm

SANTIAGO, Chile -- The judge who indicted Gen. Augusto Pinochet wants to question former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about the assassination of an American filmmaker in Chile during the former dictator's rule, a court official said yesterday.

Judge Juan Guzman has prepared more than 50 questions to be posed to Mr. Kissinger about the killing of Charles Horman shortly after the 1973 coup led by Pinochet, Supreme Court clerk Carlos Meneses said.

Judge Guzman also prepared questions for Nathaniel Davis, the U.S. ambassador to Chile at the time, he said.

No details about the questionnaire were immediately available, but it is believed to refer to knowledge that the U.S. officials may have had about the case.

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Panel finds CIA soft on China

July 6, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010706-82706.htm

A commission of outside experts has concluded that CIA reporting on China is biased and slanted toward a benign view of the emerging communist power.

Numerous classified intelligence reports on China, including those on Chinese military and security issues, were reviewed by a 12-member commission and found to be flawed, according to U.S. government officials and outside experts close to the panel.

The commission concluded in a final report that China-related CIA intelligence reports and programs suffered from an "institutional predisposition" to play down or misinterpret national security problems posed by Beijing's communist regime.

The commission also said CIA analysts had "overreached" in making many incorrect or misleading assessments about China's military and political activities.

The conclusions of the commission are contained in a classified report. The commission was headed by retired Army Gen. John Tilelli, a former commander of U.S. forces in Korea.

"There were numerous instances where [CIA analysts] just missed it," said one official who has read the report.

The commission included several academics such as Harvard University professor Stephen Rosen, Princeton University professor Aaron Friedberg and University of Pennsylvania professor Arthur Waldron, as well as former Ambassador to China James Lilley. Peter Rodman, a current nominee for assistant defense secretary also took part, as did retired Army Col. Larry Wortzel, a former attache in China who is currently with the Heritage Foundation.

The panel met three times with CIA Director George J. Tenet. CIA sources said Mr. Tenet tried unsuccessfully to persuade the commission to soften its findings, arguing that its findings would fuel critics of the agency.

One of those critics is Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican and the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who took the lead in pushing for the CIA to form the "competitive analysis" commission.

Mr. Shelby said in an interview that the CIA has "not viewed China in a realistic way."

"They have tried to look the other way when China, in my opinion, may be moving toward a belligerent stand, if not attitude," Mr. Shelby said. "They are always looking the other way to put their spin on the U.S.-Chinese relationship, that everything is going well in the long run.

"It's just not very real. China is, has been and I believe will be a big competitor of ours, economically, militarily, politically, in every respect. They could be our biggest adversary. They are certainly not our strategic partner as Clinton and Gore would lead you to believe."

A Pentagon report issued in December by the Office of Net Assessment, headed by long-time defense strategist Andrew Marshall, also criticized U.S. intelligence shortfalls on China. The report said the Pentagon could not predict the outcome of a conflict between China and Taiwan because of major "intelligence gaps."

CIA China analysts and senior officials, including Mr. Tenet, declined to be interviewed. A CIA spokesman denied that its analysts were biased and said they "call them as they see them."

One China specialist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the most serious problem of the China analysts at the CIA is their failure to recognize the growing danger of a Sino-U.S. war.

"War is a come-as-you-are party, and the Chinese are thinking about that very seriously," the specialist said. "The problem is you can't find those guys at CIA thinking about it."

Official statements about the possibility of military conflict between Washington and Beijing have been dismissed by senior CIA analysts as hollow rhetoric, the specialist said.

While most of the analyses reviewed by the panel are classified, some of the CIA China division's work is public. Based on published materials and interviews with officials who have seen its classified studies, the following problems were identified to The Washington Times:

- The CIA provided poor analytical support to the White House during the recent Hainan island incident. Agency analysts failed to properly predict Beijing's reactions in the aftermath of a collision between a U.S. EP-3E surveillance plane and a Chinese F-8 fighter jet over the South China Sea, in which 24 American service members were held hostage on Hainan island.

- The CIA's top analyst on Chinese foreign policy, Paul Heer, reported in the journal Foreign Affairs last year that the idea there are divisions within the Chinese leadership between hard-liners and centrists is a "false dichotomy" that is "misguided and even dangerous."

His view reflects classified CIA analysis that came under fire from the Tilelli commission and is contrary to the widespread views within other U.S. intelligence agencies that major internal divisions do exist within Beijing's communist regime. Mr. Heer believes "competing schools of thought coexist" within institutions and leaders.

- The CIA has failed to conduct a thorough analysis of Chinese military inroads into Latin America, despite Beijing's recent agreement with Havana to begin upgrading military equipment to Cuba, visits by senior Chinese military leaders to the region and other activities in the hemisphere. The agency's reporting is said to lag behind those of the U.S. Southern Command, the Pentagon's Miami-based command responsible for Latin America.

- In response to congressional pressure for better intelligence analysis on China, the CIA intelligence directorate hired some 30 new analysts. However, those hired were required to pass a litmus test to assure they held views in tune with senior analysts who have a benign view of China.

- Sensitive intelligence reports from the CIA Directorate of Operations and the FBI were suppressed within the CIA intelligence directorate.

One U.S. intelligence official close to the CIA said the problem is that senior analysts have not done enough to foster a diversity of views on Chinese security issues.

"Their basic working assumption is that China must become a strategic partner," this official said of the senior analysts. "Analysts are promoted who hold those views."

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Ex-F.B.I. Agent Pleads Guilty to Spying

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/06/national/06CND-SPY.html

WASHINGTON, July 6 - Robert P. Hanssen admitted today that while he was an agent for the F.B.I. he was also a spy for the Russians, giving them a treasure trove of information on American weapons systems, defense plans and other secrets.

"Guilty," Mr. Hanssen said in Federal District Court in suburban Alexandria, Va. He pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy to commit espionage; six other counts were dismissed as part of an agreement with the government.

Asked whether he understood the charges and the plea he was entering, the defendant told the judge, "Yes, I've gone over it in detail, sir."

The agreement calls for Mr. Hanssen to receive a life sentence rather than the death penalty prosecutors might have sought. "Under this plea agreement, Hanssen will spend the rest of his life in federal prison with no possibility of parole," Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson said. "Hanssen betrayed the trust of his country on the highest level imaginable, and today's plea ensures that he will be held fully accountable for his actions."

The defendant was not officially sentenced today, and may not be for several months, until after he tells investigators in detail what he gave Moscow and how he did it.

"How he did what he did is important for the government to know," Mr. Hanssen's lawyer, Plato Cacheris, said outside the courthouse.

The guilty plea had been expected for some time, but the proceedings before Judge Claude Hilton today still produced some mild surprises.

Mr. Cacheris told the judge his client had actually begun spying in 1979 (not 1985, as investigators thought early on) and had taken several respites from his cloak-and-dagger activities, including one that lasted from 1992 to 1999.

Mr. Cacheris said, too, that one reason for his client's guilty plea was that he "very much wanted to make amends." Most accounts of the case have depicted Mr. Hanssen as a man driven by greed. Investigators believe he received some $600,000 in cash and diamonds from the Russians and, had he not been caught, might have gotten $800,000 more that has been waiting for him in a Moscow bank.

The defense lawyer said Mr. Hanssen has more to tell the government during the many hours of debriefings and polygraph tests that lie ahead. "They're going to learn things they did not know," Mr. Cacheris said.

"We expect him to be candid and truthful with us," United States Attorney Kenneth Melson said. Government lawyers have said they were initially reluctant to make a deal with Mr. Hanssen, given the seriousness of the charges, but did so because it is vital to learn the full scope of his betrayal.

Mr. Hanssen, 57, a 25-year veteran of the F.B.I. and a counterintelligence expert, was arrested on Feb. 18 in a Virginia park not far from his home in Vienna after leaving a package of classified documents that investigators later said were meant for his Russian handlers.

As part of the deal, Mr. Hanssen's wife, Bonnie, will keep the home, and she will get part of her husband's retirement pay. The Hanssens have six children.

Mr. Hanssen, whose uniform not so long ago was the charcoal suit and white shirt of an F.B.I. man, wore green coveralls and a shirt with the word "prisoner" stamped on the back today. He is expected to wear that garb, or something similar, for the rest of his life.

Mr. Cacheris said he hoped his client would be sent to a federal prison in Allenwood, Pa., because it would be relatively convenient for his family to visit him there. "His family very much stands with him," the lawyer said.

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Highlights of the FBI Spy Case

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-FBI-How-it-Happened.html?searchpv=aponline

Highlights of the case against Robert Hanssen, from federal documents filed Friday in U.S. District Court as he pleaded guilty to spying for Moscow.

1979 -- Three years after joining the FBI, Hanssen begins spy activities, according to his attorneys. The spying spans two years.

1985 -- Hanssen makes contact with Moscow, with a letter to the KGB seeking $100,000 in exchange for documents from ``the most sensitive and highly compartmented projects of the U.S. intelligence community.'' He also warns in the letter that America is courting three Russian agents. Two of those agents later are executed.

1985-1991 -- Hanssen exchanges multiple packages with the KGB, at prearranged drop sites mainly in Virginia parks. The KGB leaves trash bags filled with cash, sometimes in bundles of $30,000 and $40,000, and some diamonds. Hanssen uses the aliases Ramon Garcia and ``B.'' Among documents he turns over are a 10-year evaluation of the FBI double agent program and details of an investigation into Felix Bloch, a foreign service agent suspected of spying for Moscow in 1989. Bloch is never arrested.

1986 -- Hanssen arranges to communicate through the newspaper. ``If you wish to continue our discussions, please have someone run an advertisement in The Washington Times'' saying: ``Dodge Diplomat, 1971, needs engine work, $1,000,'' he writes.

July 1991 -- Hanssen says he has five years until retirement: ``Maybe I will hang in there for that long.'' He reveals details of nuclear missile weapons and an FBI-CIA operation. His contact compliments him in response on ``your superb sense of humor and your sharp-as-a-razor mind.''

Fall 1991 -- Contacts assure Hanssen that despite the fall of the Soviet Union his safety will not be compromised.

1992-1998 -- Hanssen's lawyers say he halted his spying.

1999 -- Communication resumes. ``We express our sincere joy on the occasion of resumption of contact with you,'' Hanssen's contacts write, signing the letter ``your friends.''

March 2000 -- Hanssen provides information about an FBI foreign counterintelligence operation and complains about his Russian handlers. ``I have come about as close as I ever want to come to sacrificing myself to help you and I get silence. I hate silence. ... One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane. I'd answer neither. I'd say, insanely loyal.''

June 2000 -- Hanssen talks of his country, while providing advice and more secrets to the Russians, ``The U.S. can be errantly likened to a powerfully built but retarded child, potentially dangerous, but young, immature and easily manipulated. But don't be fooled by that appearance. It is also one which can turn ingenius (sic) very quickly, like an idiot savant, once convinced of a goal.''

July 2000 -- His contact thanks him for his efforts and assures him that few people in Russia are aware of ``you, your information and our relationship.''

November 2000 -- Hanssen writes that changes in U.S. law make spying a capital offense but that ``I know far better than most what minefields are laid and the risks.''

February 2001 -- Hanssen writes a farewell letter saying he thinks his spying has been detected. ``It is time to seclude myself from active service,'' he writes. ``Something has aroused the sleeping tiger.'' He says if he does not hear back ``I will be in contact next year, same time, same place.'' He is arrested Feb. 18 after leaving a package of documents and a computer disk with the letter in a Virginia park.

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Bush Calls Jiang, Voicing Concerns Over Detentions

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/06/world/06PREX.html

WASHINGTON, July 5 - President Bush and President Jiang Zemin of China talked to each other today for the first time, and Mr. Bush brought up the recent arrests of American citizens and green-card holders by Chinese security forces, administration officials said.

But Mr. Bush's overall message in the telephone call, a senior official said, was that "we now have to build a better relationship" between the two nations. It was unclear how tightly he linked the future of that relationship to the release of the arrested scholars, journalists and businessmen, but one official said Mr. Bush had made clear that they should be "treated fairly and returned promptly."

The State Department said later today that it had been notified by the Chinese authorities that trials had begun for two of the detainees charged with spying for Taiwan.

Mr. Bush made the call this morning as the Navy EP-3E spy plane that collided with a Chinese fighter last spring was en route to an air base in Georgia. The timing was not coincidental: Mr. Bush's top aides, led by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, wanted to use the plane's return as the start of a new diplomatic opening, officials said.

But the cases of the detainees have begun to threaten that effort. Mr. Bush is under growing pressure in Congress to resolve the incidents quickly, aides said. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell plans to visit Beijing this month, and Mr. Bush is scheduled to go to China in October, when Asian and Pacific leaders will gather in Shanghai for their annual summit meeting. Mr. Bush also plans to make a state visit to Beijing, another topic of the 20-minute phone conversation, officials said.

"I wouldn't necessarily call it a warm call, but it was a good first encounter," an administration official said. The official added that Mr. Bush had not raised the names of individuals now being held.

Mr. Jiang offered a noncommittal response on the detainees. He repeated China's oft-stated public position that the cases would be "expedited" and dealt with under Chinese law.

The two detainees whose trials have reportedly begun are Li Shaomin, a naturalized American and business professor in Hong Kong who was arrested in February and charged in May, and Gao Zhan, a United States permanent resident and sociology researcher at American University here, who was detained in February at the Beijing airport.

Speaking by telephone from his home in Virginia tonight, Ms. Gao's husband, Xue Donhua, called news of the telephone exchange "pretty exciting," adding, "Even though Mr. Bush didn't mention names, the Chinese know who he means."

There has been speculation here and in Beijing that several detainees would be tried and deported from China as early as next week, before the International Olympic Committee announces on July 13 its decision on Beijing's bid to play host to the 2008 Olympic Games. The United States has said it will remain neutral on Beijing's bid.

Already, Mr. Bush is under growing pressure to win the release of the detainees, and to show that his approach of promoting a deeper trade relationship with China - a policy carried over from the Clinton and first Bush administrations - will in fact moderate China's behavior. Last week, the House of Representatives approved a nonbinding resolution calling on Mr. Bush to place the scholars' fates at the top of his priorities in dealing with China.

The House action came as Mr. Bush's Republican Party is increasingly divided on how to deal with China. Many conservative Republicans - and some members of his own administration - do not accept the argument that trade has a moderating effect on China's political behavior. They point out that since President Bill Clinton adopted that policy in 1994, the human rights situation in China has deteriorated, at least by the measures of the annual State Department report on the country's treatment of dissidents.

"We welcome the president's personal intervention," said Mike Jendrzejczyk, who follows Asian affairs for Human Rights Watch. "Clearly that's what was needed to get progress." But he warned that the administration "should keep up the pressure" on this and other human rights issues before Mr. Bush's visit.

Also being detained now is Wu Jianmin, an American citizen and freelance journalist accused of spying for Taiwan. Qin Guangguang, a green card-holder, is charged with leaking state secrets. Liu Yaping, a permanent resident of the United States, was arrested in Inner Mongolia, and another permanent resident, Teng Chunyan, is a New York-based member of Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that the Chinese authorities are trying to suppress.

While it was Mr. Bush who placed the telephone call today, the Chinese had signaled in recent weeks that they wanted Mr. Jiang and Mr. Bush to talk, according to China experts inside and outside the administration. Mr. Bush had a convenient excuse today: Mr. Jiang had sent him a congratulatory message on Wednesday for Independence Day, and attached a formal invitation for the state visit in October.

Mr. Bush's aides chose to interpret that message as an olive branch, and an invitation for personal dialogue. But they were not sure why the Chinese are acting now.

One official speculated that perhaps Chinese leaders were motivated by Mr. Bush's meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia last month and his declaration that Mr. Putin was a man he could trust. Another wondered whether Mr. Jiang wanted to demonstrate at home that he his relations with Washington were well in hand, after the rough start caused by the spy plane incident.

"The fact is, we don't know" China's motives for seeking a closer dialogue, a State Department official involved in planning the strategy said. "But we had to start talking sometime."

A few business executives with connections in China have been reinforcing the message Mr. Bush delivered today, with an added twist. They have pointed out that the heads of their business units and many of their technology experts in Asia are of Chinese extraction - and that they are increasingly fearful of entering Chinese territory.

"We have been making the point that sooner or later, this is going to hurt what the Chinese want most: investment and technology," the chief executive of a leading Silicon Valley company with operations in China said, asking not to be identified. "The problem is that the people we talk to are already convinced of that. And the state security apparatus doesn't look at investment numbers."

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U.S. Rejects China's $1M Plane Tab

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-China.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States has no intention of paying a $1 million bill China has submitted for the three months a Navy reconnaissance plane spent on Chinese soil, a State Department official said Friday.

The plane made an emergency landing on the Chinese island of Hainan on April 1 after colliding with a Chinese military aircraft. It was disassembled and returned to U.S. custody this week.

A State Department official, asking not to be identified, said the expenses were exaggerated.

This came a day after Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said the administration was prepared to reimburse China for reasonable costs.

The costs were related mostly to support provided by the Chinese government and local businesses while a Lockheed Martin recovery crew was on Hainan.

The disassembled plane was flown to Dobbins Air Reserve Base on Thursday.

Zhang Yuan Yuan, the spokesman at the Chinese Embassy, said he had no idea where the $1 million figure came from. He said the two sides will hold talks to decide on an appropriate compensation figure.

In response, a senior State Department official said the figure was based on a fax sent by Chinese officials to the U.S. embassy in Beijing. The fax was several pages and contained an itemized list of the charges, he said.

The downing of the plane caused acrimony between the two countries initially but both have seemed eager in recent days for a more productive relationship.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage noted Friday that China has been more accommodating lately partly because it is interested in successful trips to China by Secretary of State Colin Powell later this month and by President Bush in October.

Referring to Bush's planned visit to Shanghai to attend an Asia-Pacific summit, Armitage told reporters that the Chinese ``don't want to do anything to disrupt the atmosphere.''

As an example of Chinese cooperation, he noted that Beijing has moved closer to the administration's position on a new system of ``smart sanctions'' for Iraq that would allow greater flows of civilian goods while tightening up military-related imports and smuggling.

Earlier, China had been aligning itself with Russia's opposition to the administration plan.

The Washington Post reported Friday that China softened its position after the United States dropped its objections to more than $80 million in frozen Chinese business deals with Iraq.

``I don't think the Chinese are swayed by $80 million,'' Armitage said, suggesting that China has higher priorities on its agenda.

Armitage said the State Department was mistaken when it reported Thursday that trials had begun in China for an American citizen and a U.S. permanent resident on charges they spied for Taiwan.

The American citizen is Li Shaomin, who was formally charged in May. He is a business professor at City University of Hong Kong who was taken into custody on Feb. 25 after walking across the border into China to visit a friend.

The permanent U.S. resident is Gao Zhan, an American University professor who was detained on Feb. 11.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher attributed the mistake to a mistranslation of what a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

He said Li's trial will begin on July 14. He had no information on when Gao will be tried.

There has been official speculation that the trials will produce early convictions followed by deportations.

Armitage said the detentions of Li and Gao along with a number of other U.S. passport holders appear to be hurting China internationally.

He said the administration is hopeful that China wants to resolve these cases ``quickly and favorably.''

-------- activists

[This is an outstanding daily news resource -- they prowl sites most people never see. Heartily recommend your bookmarking http://www.antiwar.com. et]

Who We Are; An Editorial and Political Credo

From the founders [of Antiwar.com]:
http://www.antiwar.com/who.html

At the end of 1995, when the editors registered the domain name Antiwar.com, we did it with the certainty that we would soon put it to good use. Unfortunately, we were not disappointed.

Our first project was to document the extensive U.S. intervention in Bosnia's civil war, because we were convinced that this would be the launching pad for a wider and more extensive military campaign. There was a flurry of interest in the site, at first, but the project soon slipped into near-inactivity. As the situation on the ground in Bosnia stabilized, at least temporarily, Republican opposition to the most significant political and military intervention since the Vietnam war quieted down or was neutralized by the GOP leadership.

The focus of the site shifted to Iraq when President Clinton continued the aggression begun by his predecessor, and interest in the site skyrocketed. But the daily bombing of Iraq was soon relegated to the back pages of the nation's newspapers; absent US casualties, or the introduction of ground forces, the plight of the Iraqi people - who were not only bombed by "Allied" planes but are still being cruelly starved by draconian sanctions - was soon forgotten. As public interest in the issue dropped, so did the number of hits on this site. This state of affairs did not last very long, however, nor did we expect it to: President Clinton launched more military expeditions to the far-flung corners of the globe than any single chief executive in modern history: Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, and the Sudan - and these are just the overt interventions. Since the foreign policy decisions that affect us all are largely conducted in secret - by unelected officials, corporate executives, foreign lobbyists, and our unelected elites - the real extent of our interventions around the world is unknown. What we do know, however, is more than enough to justify our fear that the promise of peace held out at the end of the Cold War has been betrayed and tragically reversed.

"Operation Allied Force" took most of the nation, including the chattering classes, completely by surprise. The last time anybody heard about the American presence in the Balkans, everything was supposedly going along swimmingly, and the military occupation of Bosnia was held up as a model for future interventions in the textbook of American globalism. "It's the economy, stupid" became the battle-cry of a whole generation of political consultants. Foreign policy was consigned to the back-burners of American politics, a side-issue that was only trotted out to make a candidate look properly "presidential," or congressional, and in any case was inevitably turned over to the alleged "experts."

As American bombers and Cruise missiles descended on Serbian schools, hospitals, monasteries, homes, and other civilian sites, and the War Party agitated ceaselessly for the introduction of ground troops, it became the moral duty of every citizen of the United States to become an "expert" on the Balkan crisis. Since the United States has taken on the burdens of empire, while still retaining (for the moment) the forms of our old Republic, what Americans think about the actions of their government abroad has become literally a matter of life and death for the peoples of the world.

The pressing need for "citizen experts" is the reason we set up Antiwar.com, and the site evolved very quickly into an online magazine and research tool designed to keep the American people informed about the overseas plans of their rulers.

The battle in the sky over Yugoslavia had its equivalent here in the battle for American public opinion. We played a key role in that fight. As the quick victory envisioned by the NATO-crats continued to elude them, the tide of public opinion began to turn. Our goal was not only to inform but also to mobilize informed citizens in concerted action to stop the war. The war at home was an information war: an attempt by the government to both limit and shape the information that Americans had. It was, above all, a propaganda war, one in which the American government and its allies in the media were bombing and strafing their own people with hi-tech lies.

Antiwar.com is already fighting the next information war: we have set up a permanent organization dedicated to the proposition that they are not going to be allowed to get away with it, unopposed and unchallenged. The War Party is well-organized, well-financed, and very focused. They know what they want: a renewal of the Cold War, increased military spending, and a globalist mission that would project American power from Serbia to the Korean peninsula and all points in between. And they know how to get it: mobilizing special interest groups and key corporate allies in a propaganda war designed to win the hearts if not the minds of the American people. The antiwar forces, on the other hand, are not so well-positioned: everyone is for peace, in theory at least, but there is no one set of Americans especially disposed to work for it, outside of small religious groups such as the Quakers and the Catholic Worker movement. Lacking a centrally-coordinated leadership, without financial resources of any significance, and incredibly diverse, the organized opposition to the first Balkan war was unfocused and of limited effectiveness. Antiwar.com is determined that next time around it is going to be far different. As a glance at our main page will confirm, we may not have that long to wait.

This site is devoted to the cause of noninterventionism, and we have many regular readers who are pacifists, leftists, "greens," and independents, as well as many on the Right who agree with our opposition to imperialism. But our own politics are libertarian: our opposition to war is rooted in the concept that war is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne put it. With every war, America has made a "great leap" into statism. In 1952, Garet Garrett, one of the last of the Old Right "isolationists," said it well: "Between government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other or one will destroy the other." This is the perception that informs our activism, and inspires our dedication. Noninterventionism abroad is a corollary to noninterventionism at home.

The editors were active in the Libertarian Party during the 1970s; in 1983, we founded the Libertarian Republican Organizing Committee, to work as a libertarian caucus within the GOP. Today, we are seeking to challenge the traditional politics of "Left" and "Right." At present, none of the existing parties or activist groups offers an effective vehicle for principled libertarian politics. Yet, even in the absence of a party of liberty, we cannot abstain from the struggle. Since opposition to war is at the heart of our philosophy, and single-issue politics is the only avenue open to us, Antiwar.com embodies the politics of the possible.

Our dedication to libertarian principles, inspired in large part by the works and example of the late Murray N. Rothbard, is reflected on this site, and we make no bones about it. While openly acknowledging that we have an agenda, the editors take seriously our purely journalistic mission, which is to get past the media filters and make the truth about America's foreign policy as widely known as possible. Citing a wide variety of sources without fear or favor, and presenting our own views in the regular columns of various contributors, we clearly differentiate between fact and opinion, and let our readers know which is which.

Forged in the experience of the first Balkan war, Antiwar.com has become the Internet newspaper of record for a growing international movement, the central locus of opposition to a new imperialism that masks its ambitions in the rhetoric of "human rights" and "humanitarianism." The totalitarian liberals and social democrats of the West have unilaterally and arrogantly abolished national sovereignty and openly seek to overthrow all who would oppose their bid for global hegemony. They have made enemies of the patriots of all countries, and it is time for those enemies to unite - or perish alone.

Antiwar.com is dedicated to building an international opposition to the globalist and interventionist forces that would enslave us all in a New World Order on which the sun never sets. But we can't do it without you. Tell your friends about Antiwar.com, spread the word and also help us do our job by bringing items to our attention. We are always looking for material, and we welcome your suggestions, whether of links or in the form of original articles submitted to the editors.

Antiwar.com is a ward of the nonprofit Center for Libertarian Studies.

----

Ind. Building Protesters Arrested

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Tree-Sitters.html

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) -- Developers began to clear land for an apartment complex Friday as police arrested environmentalists who had climbed into trees in March to protest the project.

The 50-acre wooded site is being cleared for a 208-unit, low-income apartment complex. Tree-climbing environmentalists had occupied the land since March 22, arguing the wooded site dotted with sinkholes is not suited to high-density residential development.

Early Friday, bulldozers and heavy equipment cleared a roadway and knocked down trees, and more than 60 police officers removed the protesters. Authorities used a hydraulic lift to pluck three people from trees. Each was later charged with trespassing.

The crude plywood platforms that had been installed in the trees were dismantled with chain saws, sending wood, propane tanks, tarps and toilet paper tumbling to the ground.

One protester eluded police by climbing to the upper branches of a 90-foot red oak.

``They picked the wrong person to try to scare down,'' the man, who called himself Moss, shouted from the treetop. ``I'm sick of seeing trees bulldozed.''

Police set up a line around the site and ordered the protesters to leave the property. As of Friday evening, nine people who did not comply had been arrested. Nearly all were charged with trespassing.

There were no reports of injuries, to the relief of property owner Bill Brown. ``I'm just hopeful that no one is hurt and they do leave peacefully,'' he said.

City Councilman Jeff Ellington said he was confident the developers would preserve the area as much as possible.

``We have some of the strictest building codes in the world,'' he said. ``As far as saving green space, we're one of the front-runners in the nation.''

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Sentenced to Jail for Vieques Protest

New York Times
July 6, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Vieques-Bombing.html

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Saying they set a bad example, a federal judge sentenced Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and several others to prison Friday for trespassing during a protest to thwart U.S. Navy bombing exercises on Vieques island.

Chief U.S. District Judge Hector Lafitte ignored arguments that the protesters acts of civil disobedience were for a greater good -- to end contamination of the environment and protect the health of islanders.

Lafitte said they had the political and legal means to fight for what they believed was right legally.

Kennedy is the latest of several well-known protesters to be convicted of trespassing during Vieques protests. Others include the Rev. Al Sharpton and Jacqueline Jackson, the wife of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Mrs. Jackson served a 10-day sentence last month, while Sharpton is still serving a 90-day sentence.

``You should be a lawmaker not a lawbreaker,'' Lafitte told Norma Burgos, a senator in Puerto Rico's legislature, initially sentencing her to 40 days. When Burgos said the Navy should be tried instead of protesters, the judge added 20 days to her sentence.

Lafitte also sentenced New York labor leader Dennis Rivera and four other protesters to 30 days each on trespassing convictions.

Kennedy, the son of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy, and the others were believed taken to San Juan's federal Metropolitan Detention Center.

Kennedy's detention means he probably will miss the birth of his sixth child, expected next week, according to his staff at the Waterkeeper Alliance environmental group based in White Plains, N.Y.

The judge decided not to imprison Myrta Sanes, sister of the Navy security guard whose 1999 death by stray bombs on the Navy's firing range sparked all the protests. ``You've suffered enough,'' Lafitte told Sanes, sentencing her to six months' probation.

Lafitte denounced the protest movement that has grown since David Sanes' death, noting that 711 defendants had been through federal courts for protest actions on Vieques.

``It is an obvious concerted activity, it is a movement. There are masked individuals cutting holes in the fence of Navy lands. This is almost chaos! This is almost anarchy!'' Lafitte said.

Several people gathered outside the courthouse Friday to speak in support of the other protesters, including Jesse Jackson and Democratic Reps. John Conyers of Michigan and Nydia Velazquez of New York.

Kennedy's lawyer, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, had planned to use the trial to argue for a political solution to end six decades of bombardments on Vieques. But Lafitte made it clear he was opposed, saying: ``I'm not going to allow political views, philosophical views, none of that.''

Still, Cuomo made his point, saying ``The defendants see the bombing of Vieques as an egregious failure of the legislative and executive branches to protect our democracy.''

The Navy denies that its exercises harm the environment or health, and says local studies that show otherwise are biased and unscientific.

Navy officers testified Friday that Kennedy and Rivera's incursion -- from a fishing boat onto the beachside firing range -- stopped ship-to-shore shelling for 2 1/2 hours while security officers searched for the intruders.

``As soon as the vessel, the boat, entered the danger zone, I had to cease fire,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Russell Gottfried.

Kennedy said he is glad that since he was arrested, President Bush has announced that the Navy will stop bombing exercises on Vieques by May 2003.

But, he said, ``That position begs the question, why are we going to continue bombing?''

---------

No time to waste:
Anti-nuclear activists are ready to spread message nationwide

July 06, 2001
By Benjamin Grove <grove@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2001/jul/06/512050024.html

SALEM, N.J. -- Anti-nuclear activist Kevin Kamps draws curious looks, a few honks and smiles, and the occasional middle finger as he hauls a 1,000-pound mock nuclear waste cask emblazoned with the words "Mobile Chernobyl" across U.S. highways.

Kamps rolls the rig to a stop at power plants and protests, town councils and community colleges -- anywhere he can get an audience. His message: In 10 years the federal government plans to ship deadly radioactive nuclear waste through the nation's back yards to Nevada.

Kamps was on a New York-to-Wisconsin trip last month when he stopped to speak at a meeting of the township committee in Lower Alloways Creek, N.J., home to three nuclear reactors. Standing in front of the town panel, Kamps outlined the risks of the plan to ship highly radioactive waste from the nearby Salem and Hope Creek reactors nearly 2,500 miles to Yucca Mountain.

When Kamps mentioned Nevada's opposition to the plan, one committee member rolled her eyes.

"That made me think of the Pledge of Allegiance we said earlier at the meeting, 'One nation, under God, indivisible,' " Kamps said later. "It seems like nuclear waste is very divisive. It's kind of like: Indivisible, except when it comes to nuclear waste. Then it's New Jersey versus Nevada."

Welcome to an increasingly hostile front -- America's roadways in faraway cities and states -- in the battle waged by Nevada leaders and environmental groups to stop any plans to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.

Politicians, led by Gov. Kenny Guinn, teamed with a newly mobilized army of high-finance casino executives and low-budget environmentalists such as Kamps, are now mounting what they say will be an unprecedented public relations offensive to convince "transportation route" states that the Yucca plan is dangerous for everyone -- not just Nevada.

"This is going to be a political and marketing campaign unlike any the DOE has ever seen," said Stephen Cloobeck, a Las Vegas executive who is organizing an anti-Yucca campaign among business leaders.

Road warriors

Nevada has always had a hard time winning sympathy from officials in other states when it comes to the Yucca Mountain. Congress launched the plan in 1987, designating the desert site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas as the best place to bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste. The Energy Department has spent about $7 billion studying the site and is preparing to make a recommendation to President Bush later this year.

Leaders in distant states, including their representatives in Congress, are eager to get rid of the highly radioactive spent-uranium fuel rods now piling up at their plants.

But one argument sometimes gets their attention: If Yucca opens as scheduled by 2010, highly radioactive nuclear waste will have to be transported to Nevada across 43 states -- roughly 40,000 shipments over 38 years, according to one DOE scenario.

"For many people, this is the first time they are hearing that they live on the transportation routes," Kamps said, as he drove along U.S. Highway 9 in New Jersey. "We're doing the federal agencies' job for them."

In Las Vegas Cloobeck this year launched the Save Nevada coalition, which he said includes "CEOs from every major company in this town." Cloobeck, Diamond Resorts International president, intends to use the political muscle of the gambling industry to hammer several messages nationwide: Nuclear waste shipments are dangerous, threaten property values and stick taxpayers with accident liability.

Save Nevada's first strike could be prominent advertisements in national newspapers this fall, Cloobeck said. High-powered casino executives are ready "at a moment's notice" to launch a lobbying campaign in Congress, governors' mansions and city halls nationwide, he said.

"The Hill is going to get absolutely barraged," Cloobeck said.

Guinn also plans to be a high-profile spokesman for the dangers of waste shipments. This year the Nevada Legislature gave Guinn money for the first time to fight Yucca, and he plans to use about $1 million on a waste-transportation public relations campaign, Bob Loux, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects director, said. The governor, working with Cloobeck, plans to raise more in private funds, Loux said.

Guinn already is bending the ear of other governors, spokesman Jack Finn said.

"The word is getting out," Finn said.

The transportation issue promises to heat up in Congress, too, as lawmakers continue to mull the Yucca plan.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., last month introduced legislation to pressure the DOE to finalize and publicize the routes. Berkley's amendment failed, despite her plea on the House floor, "This is a right-to-know issue, and the DOE's feet should be held to the fire."

But Nevada lawmakers battle influential nuclear-power lobbyists, Berkley said.

"If you have a nuclear reactor in your district, you are under a lot of pressure from the nuclear industry," Berkley said in an interview. "If you don't, you come to the realization that nuclear waste will be traveling through your major city, and all of a sudden you have a change of heart."

Since the nation began building power plants, roughly 3,000 shipments of high-level nuclear waste, mostly from defense projects and research reactors, have traveled U.S. highways and rails.

As of 1996, 72 "incidents" were reported, mostly minor contamination of casks and trucks, according to the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. Eight traffic "accidents" have been reported, a DOE spokesman said. None resulted in radiation-related injury, according to the DOE.

If Yucca were completed, accident risks would skyrocket with the number of shipments, Kamps argued.

Accident-proof

But a host of nuclear experts say shipping nuclear waste is safe, mostly because the casks are virtually accident-proof.

"People need to look at the scientific facts instead of the conjecture that is put on the table for purely political purposes," said Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the industry's top lobby group, the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Edlow International Co., which potentially stands to profit from Yucca Mountain transportation contracts, has safely handled hundreds of high-level shipments since 1963, President Jack Edlow said.

Shipping spent nuclear fuel is a careful science, Edlow said. Shipments roll on specially designed trailers pulled by cabs with two drivers to keep the shipment moving at all times. Routes are carefully planned to avoid bad weather and populated areas, and sometimes armed off-duty police or for-hire security companies escort the drivers through urban areas. He added that dispatchers track the trucks with global-positioning systems.

"The public should know that this has been going on safely on a monthly basis for 40 years," Edlow said. "We are just as concerned about our families as anyone else. We want the shipments to arrive safely."

High-tech steel casks, lined with radiation shields, usually lead, nearly guarantee radiation would not leak in an accident, said nuclear engineer Dale Klein, now an administrator at the University of Texas and a waste-transportation expert. He served on a congressional commission that examined waste-transportation issues in the late 1980s.

"These casks are so robust that the only risk that ends up resulting from a (nuclear waste) shipment is that you have another truck on the highway," Klein said.

Although critics strongly disagree, pro-Yucca officials say tests conducted at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico proved the casks could survive high-impact crashes, fire, falls, puncture risks and water submersion.

Trucks hauling nuclear waste are safer than any other truck on the highway, said Bob Jefferson, a nuclear engineer who oversaw some of the high-profile fire and impact tests conducted at Sandia in the 1970s and 1980s.

"You can drive a gas tanker truck in this country that you could poke a hole in with a pick," Jefferson said. 'But the (nuclear waste truck) is the safest thing on the highway. They've paid more attention to its packaging, its driver and its rig than anything else. It has good brakes, good tires and good drivers."

Yucca foes often fault several widely publicized Sandia tests, including ones in which casks were burned and struck by trains.

But the purpose of the tests was not to prove that the casks were safe, Jefferson said. It was to prove that scientists had the ability to correctly calculate what would happen in an accident.

"In each case, the results were precisely what we predicted," Jefferson, now retired in New Mexico, said. That kind of assurance allows scientists to envision countless accident scenarios and test them without full-scale tests, he said.

Nuclear waste casks are "the most rigorous containers that exist in the world," said Robert Jones, a nuclear and mechanical engineer who designed casks for General Electric for 13 years and is now an industry consultant in Los Gatos, Calif.

Jones objects to the slogan that Kamps has splashed on his mock nuclear waste cask.

"The phrase 'Mobile Chernobyl' kind of just rolls off one's tongue, but it's a catch phrase that couldn't be more wrong," said Jones, a nuclear consultant and an expert in complex cask constructions. "With this 'Sky is falling' mentality, our feeling is: Come on out and take a look. We are extremely open to scrutiny."

Kamps' crusade

Kamps, 32, has seen Chernobyl. He met his wife, Gabriela, 27, on a monthslong anti-nuke march from Belgium to Moscow. In the states, they later spent two years running a small program that brought Chernobyl children to America for medical care.

"We met thousands of people whose lives were changed forever by Chernobyl," Kamps said. "When we use the slogan 'Mobile Chernobyl,' it's not done lightly."

Kamps runs a low-budget operation.

Gabriela, a photography student, travels with him when she can. They munch tortilla chips and eat out of a cooler stocked with fruit, juice and soy milk. The couple gratefully accepts meals and a bed from local activists, or they camp out rather than stay in hotels.

After a rainy, mostly sleepless night last month, they stuffed a soggy tent and water-logged anti-nuke literature into the rented Ford Expedition that hauls the cask and its 2,000-pound trailer, plus the 8-by-18 cask.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington-based anti-nuclear activist group, pays for Kamps' trips and part of his salary from a $90,000 grant from Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects. (The grant money comes to the agency from the state -- not Congress, Loux said.) NIRS stretches the money thin on numerous projects and trips, director Michael Mariotte said.

Kamps stopped at both nuclear power plants in New Jersey during his trip through the state. He met with a tough audience -- many people living around nuclear plants rely on plant jobs.

At one protest on a busy road near the Oyster Creek plant, which drew four local reporters but few others, local activist Edith Gbur was pelted with an egg from a passing car.

"People do not want the waste in their back yard, but they think it's OK to ship it somewhere else," Gbur said.

On the other side of the state in Lower Alloways Creek, near the Hope Creek and Salem I and II reactors, local activist Norm Cohen also finds that people know little about Yucca Mountain and the possibility of hauling waste to the desert.

"They might think about it a little if you talk to them, and generally their view is: Get the crap out of here," said Cohen, local leader of an anti-plant campaign called Unplug Salem. "Our view is shut the plant down. Don't produce the stuff anymore."

That's a tough sell in this area. Public Service Electric and Gas Co.'s three reactors create 2,250 jobs and forked over $37.6 million in taxes in 1998 to local governments, plus $1.3 million in donations to regional charities.

Many locals simply don't think about the nearby nuclear plants at all, Lower Alloways Creek, N.J., Township committee member Ellen Pompper said.

"We've lived a long time with that plant," Pompper said. "Most of the time we hardly notice it is running. We feel very safe about that (plant)."

Plant officials have not yet established a procedure for one day removing spent nuclear fuel from the plant and loading in casks for long-distance shipping, Skip Sindoni, PSEG spokesman, said.

"We respect his right to have an opinion," Sindoni said of Kamps' general criticism of nuclear power and the dangers of storing and shipping waste. "We remain confident in the industry's ability to handle waste safely."

After the meeting in Lower Alloways Creek, Kamps plopped down behind the wheel of his rental Ford. It was about 9 p.m. and time to seek out the night's crash pad: a Quaker church basement.

Kamps plans more trips this summer. First he must return to Michigan this week to face charges for trespassing at a nuclear plant -- his third offense there. Kamps faces a few days in jail, but said he'll milk that for publicity.

The Michigan native and a friend built the 8-by-18 cask in 1998 out of scrap metal from a General Motors plant. Kamps hands out literature anywhere, including tollbooths and gasoline stations. He tries out a little nuclear waste humor at one station, asking the attendant to "fill it up" with plutonium. The attendant looks confused.

Kamps still loves to watch people's reactions.

"It's funny," he said, glancing in the rearview mirror at a passing car as he drove another stretch of Jersey roadway. "First they look at the cask. Then they look at us -- Who are these people?"

---------

PRICE-ANDERSON ALERT!

Fri, 06 Jul 2001
From: michael mariotte <nirsnet@nirs.org>

We have learned that the House Commerce Committee wants to finish work on a major energy bill and send it to the House floor by July 17th. The plan is that all House committees with jurisdiction over energy issues will finish their work by that date, so that the full House can try to pass an energy bill before their August recess.

The major nuclear component of this bill is reauthorization of the Price-Anderson Act, which limits utility industry liability in the event of a nuclear accident.

We are urging you, if you live in a district with a House Commerce Committee member (list below), to contact your member immediately and tell them NO REAUTHORIZATION OF PRICE-ANDERSON!

Please activate phone trees, contact your friends who may live in such a district, reach out to neighbors and colleagues. It is ESSENTIAL that we stop the Price-Anderson steamroller, and the only way to do that is to make it as controversial as possible-starting right now.

The Capitol Hill telephone exchange is 202-224-3121; please call your Congressmember today. Even if you don't live in a district with a Commerce Committee member, it's worth calling, because members talk to each other, and if we can demonstrate the breadth of public opposition to Price-Anderson renewal, we are a long way toward winning.

Background The Price-Anderson Act, last renewed in 1987, limits nuclear industry liability in the event of an accident. Currently, the limit is about $8 Billion (the exact amount depends upon how many nuclear reactors are operating).

Essentially, the nuclear industry as a whole purchases $200 million worth of private insurance. When that money is taken up, then each reactor is levied $10 million per year for about 7 years. If accident damages exceed that amount, taxpayers will be asked to make up the difference. Compare that to the 1982 Sandia National Laboratories study (CRAC-2), which projected economic damages of up to $300 Billion (in 1982 dollars) resulting from an accident at the Indian Point, NY reactor site. The 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe already has cost Russia, Ukraine and Belarus some $300 Billion, and the costs-from interdicted land, from radioactive waste disposal, from ongoing health effects-mount daily.

Moreover, no other hazardous industry has such a subsidized insurance scheme. Not chlorine, not any other toxic or chemical manufacturer-only the nuclear power industry. Current estimates of this taxpayer subsidy are about $3 Billion per year, based on the estimated costs if each utility purchased its own insurance (if it even could, which is unlikely).

It is important to note that if Price-Anderson is not renewed, its provisions will continue to hold for existing reactors. It is only to subsidize the construction of new reactors that Price-Anderson renewal even is being considered. Some Congressmembers may be sympathetic to the argument that while in the 1950s, when nuclear power's risks were unclear and the technology was new, Price-Anderson served a purpose. 50 years later, with a supposedly "mature" and "well-operated" nuclear industry, Price-Anderson serves only as an unnecessary government subsidy and favors one electrical generation method (nuclear power) over others (such as gas, solar, wind, etc.)

If Price-Anderson were to be renewed, there are a number of amendments that should be offered, which the fast-track House Commerce Committee schedule won't make time for.

For example, last year the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommended that the amount levied per reactor be increased from $10 to $20 million per year. This year, the NRC says it made that recommendation only because it thought many reactors would not try to seek license renewal, and that therefore there would be fewer reactors around to cover the costs. Sure..... In fact, the NRC is just trying to make it easier to build new reactors.

Also, reactors that use MOX (or plutonium-based) fuel, are more likely to have an accident and are more likely to have an accident of greater consequence that conventional atomic power plants. They should either not be covered by Price-Anderson at all, or their payments should be much higher. This issue has not been addressed by the House Commerce Committee.

Radioactive waste transportation is another area where Price-Anderson coverage is insufficient. Coverage, if Price-Anderson is to be renewed, should reflect potential damages-which could range into the billions of dollars.

Meanwhile, some parts of the nuclear industry are also seeking amendments. For example, the Exelon Corporation wants Price-Anderson coverage to be based on each reactor site, rather than how many reactors are on the site. That's because Exelon envisions building 110 Megawatt pebble-bed reactors, seven or more per site, and they want Price-Anderson to consider those seven reactors as one-even though smaller reactors, such as Michigan's Big Rock Point-long were liable for full Price Anderson coverage.

Tell your members of Congress that Price-Anderson is too controversial to be included in any kind of omnibus energy legislation. Tell them that how they handle this issue, and nuclear power issues generally, will determine how you vote next election. Tell them to stop renewal of Price-Anderson now!

Again, call your member(s) of Congress today! 202-224-3121. You won't regret it!

Please contact NIRS, nirsnet@nirs.org, 202-328-0002, for any information you may need.

Thanks,

Michael Mariotte NIRS
House Energy and Commerce Committee

Republicans
W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, Louisiana, Chairman
Michael Bilirakis, Florida
Joe Barton, Texas
Fred Upton, Michigan
Cliff Stearns, Florida
Paul E. Gillmor, Ohio
James C. Greenwood, Pennsylvania
Christopher Cox, California
Nathan Deal, Georgia
Steve Largent, Oklahoma
Richard Burr, North Carolina Vice Chairman
Ed Whitfield, Kentucky
Greg Ganske, Iowa
Charlie Norwood, Georgia
Barbara Cubin, Wyoming
John Shimkus, Illinois
Heather Wilson, New Mexico
John B. Shadegg, Arizona
Charles "Chip" Pickering, Mississippi
Vito Fossella, New York
Roy Blunt, Missouri
Thomas Davis, Virginia
Ed Bryant, Tennessee
Robert Ehrlich, Maryland
Steve Buyer, Indiana
George Radanovich, California
Charles F. Bass, New Hampshire
Joseph Pitts, Pennsylvania
Mary Bono, California
Greg Walden, Oregon
Lee Terry, Nebraska

Democrats
John D. Dingell, Michigan Ranking Member
Henry A. Waxman, California
Edward J. Markey, Mass.
Ralph M. Hall, Texas
Rick Boucher, Virginia
Edolphus Towns, New York
Frank Pallone Jr., New Jersey
Sherrod Brown, Ohio
Bart Gordon, Tennessee
Peter Deutsch, Florida
Bobby L. Rush, Illinois
Anna G. Eshoo, California
Bart Stupak, Michigan
Eliot L. Engel, New York
Tom Sawyer, Ohio
Albert R. Wynn, Maryland
Gene Green, Texas
Karen McCarthy, Missouri
Ted Strickland, Ohio
Diana DeGette, Colorado
Tom Barrett, Wisconsin
Bill Luther, Minnesota
Lois Capps, California
Mike Doyle, Pennsylvania
Chris John, Louisiana
Jane Harman, California



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