------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Eugene Cronkite, Dies at 86; Found Cancer's Links to Radiation
Cameras helping retrieve dropped nuclear fuel - BNFL
Imminent Action on the Nuclear Front
U.S., FRANCE COOPERATE ON NUCLEAR POWER RESEARCH
Pakistani Chief: Kashmir Is Key
State Notifies US of Missile Plans
Nukes: A Lesson From Russia
Britain Declines Support to Scrap ABM
Ukrainian Nuclear Reactor Faulty
Air Force: No Search for Lost Nuke
Funding Gap For Defense Is Predicted
The Politics of Spent Fuel
International nuclear waste information exchange planned
MILITARY
"ENTENTE" APPEARS IN MIDDLE EAST
Big Explosion at Arms Depot Rocks Afghan Capital
Arms Makers to Adopt Regulations
South Asian Nations Awash in Weapons
German Businessman in Ariz. Held
Yugoslavia President Fears Breakup
China's military buildup worries U.S.
Beijing Stages War Games, Mostly for Taiwan
Iraq Resumes Oil Exports
Iraq Group Claims Hit on Baghdad
Shuttle Ready for Mission to Space Station
Small-weapons pact meets U.S. demands
'The vast majority of arms transfers are not problematic'
Doctor: Rebels Torture U.N. Workers
Pentagon: No mercy for the B-1B
Navy plans for Texas bombings unpopular
Military leaders favor closing bases
Army to Create Brigades in 4 States
F-22 Tests Get More Expensive
OTHER
Moveable power plants to turn fat into electricity
INTERIOR DEPARTMENT PROMOTES ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ON PUBLIC LANDS
Support Builds for EPA Proposal
House GOP Starts Work on Energy Bill
JEFFORDS ASSUMES CHAIR OF SENATE ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE
Criticism and Support for Rules on Clean Air
Scientists Create Scores of Embryos to Harvest Stem Cells
Gains Expected From Genetic Research
Rights Leaders Urge Powell to Attend U.N. Racism Conference
Report to rate war on human bondage
Seoul Defends Itself Against I.M.F. Criticism
IMF Considers $1.6B Loan for Turkey
WTO bid will require overhaul of economy
Attorney general tightens supervision of FBI
Miami's 'Teflon cop' fired for planting gun on suspect
Court Starts Retrial of Russian
U.S. Professor to Be Tried in Beijing on Spying Charge
Ashcroft: U.S. Terrorism a Priority
-------- NUCLEAR
Eugene Cronkite, Dies at 86; Found Cancer's Links to Radiation
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/11/obituaries/11CRON.html?searchpv=nytToday
Dr. Eugene P. Cronkite, an expert in radiation biology who was among the first to recognize and report on links between cancer and exposure to sublethal levels of radiation, died on June 23 at his home in Setauket, N.Y. He was 86.
In addition, Dr. Cronkite developed a center for the treatment of acute radiation injury at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
After finishing medical school, he served in the Navy as a Medical Corps lieutenant in World War II and directed the Naval Medical Research Institute in Maryland.
In 1954, he left the Navy to direct a project that studied the effects of fallout from nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific on inhabitants of the Marshall Islands. The work he did there described the likelihood of survival under varying degrees of radiation exposure and its effects on the nervous system and brain.
In addition to being one of the first to report on the cancer-inducing effects of radiation exposure, he studied its effects on bone marrow cells and developed a method of treating leukemia.
The procedure, extra-corporeal radiation, used a tube inserted into the patient's arm to direct blood out of the body and behind a lead shield, where it was irradiated. With the patient's heart serving as the pump, the blood was then directed back into the body.
The treatment destroyed diseased cells without killing too many healthy cells and was first conducted by Dr. Cronkite in 1965 at Brookhaven. It helped some patients and was considered an important advance at the time. It was replaced by newer forms of radiation treatment and chemotherapy.
In the 1970's, while chairman of the medical department at Brookhaven, Dr. Cronkite helped develop a way of growing human blood and blood- forming cells from the bone marrow, outside the body. This process made it possible to grow cells from leukemia patients and use them to test the effectiveness of drugs.
Dr. Cronkite was a founder and president of the International Society for Experimental Hematology in 1977. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. He also was editor of The Journal of Hematology for 15 years. Born in Los Angeles, he did his undergraduate studies and received his M.D. at Stanford University.
Dr. Cronkite's wife of 60 years, Elizabeth, died in 1999. He is survived by a daughter, Christina Cronkite of Hayward, Wis.
-------- britain
Cameras helping retrieve dropped nuclear fuel - BNFL
UK: July 11, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11505
LONDON - British Nuclear Fuels is using remote-controlled cameras in a bid to retrieve a batch of radioactive fuel rods which were dropped last week at its Chapelcross nuclear power station, the state-owned company said yesterday.
"We are putting remote-controlled cameras into the shielding machine where the rods were dropped", a spokeswoman for BNFL told Reuters.
The BNFL spokeswoman said the cameras would help BNFL work out how to retrieve the rods, which where being taken out of the reactor during routine refuelling when the incident happened.
The Chapelcross plant, in Scotland, is a first-generation Magnox plant around 40 years old and BNFL has already said it will be closed between 2008 and 2010, although market conditions and technical issues could result in an earlier closure.
The spokeswoman said it was too early to say exactly how the fuel rods were dropped.
"All we know is that the grab arm (which was carrying the basket of spent fuel) came unlatched", she said, adding the rods had fallen within a protective shield and did not present a radiation danger.
Although refuelling at the reactor was halted, Chapelcross's three other reactors continue to operate normally.
BNFL said it will not consider refuelling at its other reactors until the Chapelcross incident has been fully investigated.
Britain's nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, said it was carrying out an investigation, but yesterday refused to speculate when the inquiry might be concluded.
-------- canada
Imminent Action on the Nuclear Front
From: Gordon Edwards
Wed, 11 Jul 2001 00:43:07 -0400
PLEASE ACT ON THIS! (See below)
With no legitimate mandate to do so, from the Canadian population, from Canada's parliament or even from his own party, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is committing Canada internationally to the spread of nuclear power. This month, $50 million of taxpayer's money will be given to Russia to help build MOX (i.e. plutonium fuel) manufacturing. Thus Canada is helping to create the infrastructure for plutonium recycling in Russia. Several hundred million more may be given to AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Limited) to develop a new export-model CANDU reactor. Sales of nuclear reactors are being touted inter- nationally, by Jean Chrétien and his ministers, as Canada's contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Canadian citizens are kept in the dark and out of the loop as usual on nuclear power policy matters; there is no mechanism for public debate or public accountability on these initiatives of the PM.
Why should the abolition network care about this? In most instances, the nuclear weapons connection has provided a large part of the rationale for developing civilian nuclear energy -- this was certainly the case in US, UK, France, Russia, India, and Pakistan; it was also the case in Taiwan, Argentina, Korea, and Sweden, all of which had their own clandestine nuclear weapons development programs in the early years of nuclear power development. It should be remembered that India exploded its first atomic bomb using plutonium produced in a nuclear reactor that was a gift from Canada. Also, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Argentina, Korea, Romania, and China have been Canada's nuclear clients -- all of them highly interested in nuclear weapons capabilities at one time or another. In the case of Canada, we would never have got into nuclear power were it not for Canada's role in the WWII Atomic Bomb Project.
Having a nuclear power capability makes one a potential nuclear weapons threshold state, because of the plutonium that is accumulated in the spent nuclear fuel. Selling nuclear reactors overseas creates permanent repositories of plutonium that will pose an implicit nuclear weapons threat for the next quarter of a million years -- long after ALL current political regimes, treaties and agreements, are forgotten..
I believe Canadians and others have a responsibility to oppose the spread of plutonium-producing machines around the world.
Please read the text below and act accordingly.
Gordon Edwards, President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. http://ccnr.org
--
Tell Mr. Chretien to save the climate, not the nuclear industry !
Tue, 3 Jul 2001 21:33:02 -0400
Mr. Jean Chrétien, Prime Minister of Canada
The Kyoto Protocol on global warming has a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The CDM was created to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a cheaper cost through projects in developing countries. It would give credits to the developed country that would have paid for the reductions. As its name says, it was aiming at helping developing countries to develop in an environmentally sound manner through, for example, technology transfer.
The nuclear industry and its [rare] friends have seen this as an opportunity to save their dirty business which, quite frankly, desperately awaits a savior.
They've found one in the person of super-hero Mr. Clean Development Mechanism, Mr. Jean Chrétien, who keeps preaching around the world so that Canada can get credits under the CDM when it sells a nuclear reactor. The logic (sic) behind his struggle is that nuclear power doesn't produce greenhouse gases and, therefore, should be eligible for credits. He adds, that it should be left to the country that buys the reactor to choose if the technology is good for them or not, abdicating any ethical or environmental responsibility for the impacts of such technologies that can (and have been used to) make bombs.
Please take some time to read the two-page document
In English: http://www.cnp.ca/issues/nuclear-not-solution.pdf En français: http://www.cnp.ca/ccen/questions/changements-climatiques.pdf
that was produced by the (Canadian) Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout on how nuclear power is not a solution to climate change and then write an e-mail to Mr. Clean Development Mechanism to tell him what you think of the inclusion of nuclear power in the CDM. (Of course, be very polite). Crucial negotiations for the future of the Kyoto Protocol will take place in Bonn (Germany) from July 16th to 27th so please take action ASAP !
Mr. Chrétien's e-mail is pm@pm.gc.ca
Please send a copy (in the Cc: line) to savetheclimatenotAECL@yahoo.ca (Save the climate not Atomic Energy Canada Limited)
For more info, check
CNP's website at http://www.cnp.ca
Canadian Nuclear Association (they have some quite laughable arguments) http://www.cna.ca/icchange.html
Atomic Energy Canada Limited http://www.aecl.ca
Thanks a lot,
René Coignaud savetheclimatenotAECL@yahoo.ca
-- Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility c.p. 236, Station Snowdon, Montreal QC, H3X 3T4 Canada internet: http://ccnr.org e-mail: mailto:ccnr@web.net phone/fax: (514) 489 5118
-------- france
U.S., FRANCE COOPERATE ON NUCLEAR POWER RESEARCH
July 11, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-11-09.html
WASHINGTON, DC, The U.S. and France have signed an agreement to fund joint research in advanced nuclear reactors and fuel cycle development.
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Pascal Colombani, chair of the Commissariat a L'Energie Atomique (CEA) of France signed the bilateral agreement Monday. The Department of Energy (DOE) and CEA are expected to award merit selected research grants later this summer to joint U.S.-French research teams.
The joint research projects will support the recommendation in the Bush Administration's National Energy Policy to pursue research that will develop next generation nuclear reactor technologies.
"Advanced nuclear energy systems provide a clean air alternative for the world's future energy supply," said Abraham. "This agreement demonstrates the strong commitment of France and the U.S. to dedicate our expertise and resources to the joint development of nuclear systems that are safe, economical and proliferation-resistant. It is our hope that this research will accelerate deployment of Generation IV nuclear energy systems by 2030 or earlier."
The agreement is part of DOE's International Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (I-NERI), launched this year by the department's Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology. I-NERI will foster international collaborative research and development of nuclear technology, focusing on the development of Generation IV advanced nuclear system technologies.
The joint research awarded through this agreement will enable the U.S. and France to move forward with research that can benefit a range of new reactor and fuel cycle designs. With France, the DOE is now developing a Generation IV Technology Roadmap that, when complete next year, will serve as the research and development plan for advanced reactor and fuel cycle system development.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistani Chief: Kashmir Is Key
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-India-Musharraf.html?searchpv=aponline
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's president said he doesn't expect improved ties with India until the rival nuclear nations resolve a long-standing dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.
``Kashmir is the core issue,'' Gen. Pervez Musharraf told the state-run Pakistan television in an interview Wednesday.
Reaching an agreement on Kashmir is also crucial for the area's future, the president said.
``It is poverty stricken and economically deprived region and it is because of tension between India and Pakistan,'' he said. ``Solve the Kashmir dispute and this tension will end and there will be economic development of this region.''
The remarks came ahead of Musharraf's scheduled July 14-16 visit to India to meet with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The trip comes after a two-year deadlock, generating hopes of the easing of tensions between the nations.
The nuclear tests conducted by both countries in May 1998 also gives impetus to their talks.
Musharraf said people in both India and Pakistan want peace, and that the leaders will try to resolve the dispute over Kashmir, the cause of their two of the three wars since the British rule ended in 1947.
``I will talk to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with frankness and sincerity and will highlight the centrality of the Kashmir issue,'' Musharraf said.
Pakistan and India each hold part of Kashmir, and each claim the entire region as its own.
Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority state of India, and Islamic militants there have been waging a bloody secessionist war since 1989 to end Indian rule.
Islamabad has suggested a referendum to determine whether Kashmiris want to unite with Islamic Pakistan or stay with Hindu-dominated India. India rejects the idea.
Musharraf said it would be ``premature'' to expect a breakthrough on the issue in one meeting. ``But as the process of dialogue would proceed, the talks could go ahead for the solution of the Kashmir issue,'' he said.
Despite the planned talks, friction continued between the two countries on Wednesday as India urged the release of prisoners of war it said are being held by Pakistan, while Pakistan continued to insist it had no prisoners to release.
Vajpayee's ruling coalition also announced it would boycott a tea party hosted for Musharraf at the Pakistan High Commission, protesting an invitation sent to Kashmir's main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference.
-------- missile defense
State Notifies US of Missile Plans
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department has notified all U.S. diplomatic posts abroad that stepped up tests for an anti-missile shield will come into conflict with a 1972 treaty with Moscow ``in months, not years.''
On Saturday, the Pentagon has scheduled its first flight test in a year of interceptors designed to shoot down long-range missiles. The attempt last July failed.
``The world has changed fundamentally and the rationale for Cold War arrangements no longer exists,'' says the 14-page memorandum sent to U.S. embassies and consulates July 3.
It is intended to provide American diplomats with talking points to help persuade other governments to support President Bush's aspirations for an anti-missile shield.
Deployment of an interim ground-based system in Alaska could be completed as early as 2004, the memorandum said.
The tests, the memorandum said, ``will come into conflict with the ABM treaty in months, not years.''
Bush has called the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, which forbids deployment of a U.S. shield against long-range missiles in any state except North Dakota, a relic of the Cold War.
Russian President Vladimir Putin opposes setting aside the treaty and has warned it could touch off a new nuclear arms race.
Many U.S. allies are skeptical or noncommittal
On Wednesday, the new British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, agreed with Bush's assessment that there is a growing nuclear danger in the world. But he signaled on a visit to Washington that his government intends to withhold judgment on an anti-missile shield while the Bush administration weighs its options on an anti-missile program.
Putin, meanwhile, proposed on July 6 that the five long-established nuclear power states -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- begin negotiations aimed at eliminating 10,000 warheads in the next seven years.
Putin is expected to bring up the proposal with Bush at the Economic summit meeting in Genoa, Italy, later this month.
The Russian leader is not likely to get very far.
A senior U.S. official told The Associated Press Wednesday Putin's proposal is not going to win over the administration.
The unclassified memorandum to U.S. diplomatic posts, obtained by the AP, said the most urgent threat stems not from thousands of Russian missiles but from a small number of missiles in the hands of rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction.
``Those states also possess a large number of short and medium-range missiles that pose a significant threat to deployed U.S. forces and friends and U.S. allies abroad,'' it said.
As a result, the memorandum continued, ``the United States needs release from the constraints of the ABM treaty to pursue the most promising technologies and basing modes to field limited, but effective missile defenses.''
At the same time, the memorandum acknowledges that the 1972 treaty prohibits a U.S. nationwide defense and sharing anti-missile defenses with allies.
As a result, it said, the administration will pursue a program to be able to deploy such defenses to protect the United States, its forces, friends and allies.
Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, confirmed that ``we have given to our embassies basic arguments on the need for a new strategic framework, for moving beyond the strategies of the Cold War.''
He said the memorandum would help the embassies make a case for these ideas.
-------- russia
Nukes: A Lesson From Russia
By Bruce G. Blair
Wednesday, July 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44053-2001Jul10?language=printer
Although the United States spends nearly $1 billion every year to help Russia protect its vast storehouse of nuclear weapons materials from theft or sale on the black market, few Americans know how this aid helps strengthen America's own nuclear safeguards.
Russian experts at the Kurchatov Institute, the renowned nuclear research center in Moscow, recently found what appears to be a critical deficiency in the internal U.S. system for keeping track of all bomb-grade nuclear materials held by the Energy Department -- enough material for tens of thousands of nuclear bombs.
Kurchatov scientists discovered a fatal flaw in the Microsoft software donated to them by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. This same software has been the backbone of America's nuclear materials control system for years. The Russians found that over time, as the computer program is used, some files become invisible and inaccessible to the nuclear accountants using the system, even though the data still exist in netherworld of the database. Any insider who understood the software could exploit this flaw by tracking the "disappeared" files and then physically diverting, for a profit, the materials themselves.
After investigating the problem for many months, the Russians came to believe that it posed a grave danger and suspended further use of the software in Russia's accounting system. By their calculations, an enormous amount of Russia's nuclear material -- the equivalent of many thousands of nuclear bombs -- would disappear from their accounting records if Russia were to use the flawed U.S. software program for 10 years.
Then, in early 2000, they did something they didn't have to do: They warned the United States, believing that an analogous risk must exist in the U.S. system. Although neither Los Alamos nor the U.S. Department of Energy has publicly acknowledged the possibility that innumerable files on American nuclear materials might have disappeared, the Russian warning caused shock waves at the highest levels of the Energy Department.
Unlike the Russians, who did not throw away their manual records of their nuclear stockpile -- the infamous shoe box and hand-receipt system that U.S. assistance was intended to supersede -- the United States has long since discarded its old written records. To reconstruct a reliably accurate accounting record, the Energy Department may need to inspect all of America's nuclear materials -- a huge task that could cost more than $1 billion and still might not detect the diversion of some material, should it have occurred.
The importance of the goodwill and trust that had grown up between American and Russian nuclear experts over years of working together in this area is clear. When the Russian scientists first discovered the computer flaw, the initial reaction in some high-level Moscow circles was to suspect an American Trojan horse, a bug planted deliberately to undermine Russian security. After complaints by their Russian counterparts, scientists at Los Alamos suggested that the Russian scientists instead use a later version of the same program. Kurchatov then discovered the upgraded program not only contained the same bug (though much less virulent) but also had a critical security flaw that would allow easy access to the sensitive nuclear database by hackers or unauthorized personnel.
But trust overrode suspicion. The Russians concluded that the glitches were innocent errors, not devious traps. Thus, they feared the U.S. database, unbeknown to Americans, was not only prone to lose track of nuclear materials but was also accessible to unauthorized users. Russia reported both problems to Los Alamos, which subsequently verified the defects, as did Microsoft. Though a fix remains elusive, Kurchatov scientists also have shared a partial repair they developed.
This Russian feedback may be causing American embarrassment -- U.S. officials apparently have tried to muzzle the Russians and censor their scientific papers on the fiasco -- but it surely represents a high return on the American investment in Russian nuclear security. The lesson is that nuclear cooperation is a two-way street, is paying off and deserves continuing support.
The writer, a former Minuteman missile launch officer, is president of the Center for Defense Information.
-------- treaties
Britain Declines Support to Scrap ABM
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-US-Britain.html?searchpv=aponline
WASHINGTON (AP) -- America's closest ally, Britain, declined Wednesday to support setting aside a landmark arms-control agreement to make way for a U.S. missile defense.
But on a quick visit here, the new British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, agreed with President Bush that the world has changed and that new nuclear threats have arisen since the Antiballistic Missile Treaty was signed in 1972 by the United States and the Soviet Union.
Bush calls the treaty a relic of the Cold War and has sought in the first six months of his presidency to rally U.S. allies behind his ambitions for an anti-missile shield.
Russia has rejected his arguments, and U.S. allies are hesitant, as typified by Straw's exchange with reporters over breakfast Tuesday at the British Embassy.
``We agree with that analysis,'' Straw said of Bush's argument that the United States and Russia no longer have control over nuclear issues. ``We are looking for a prescription to deal with that change.''
Straw was meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser.
After the session with Rice, Straw told reporters: ``Among the issues which I discussed was Iraq, Middle East peace process, relationships with Russia, including questions of nuclear missile defenses, and issues of climate change. And on each of those subjects, we were coming at common problems and looking at common solutions.''
Bush's anti-missile aspirations and the views of the allies and Russia are bound to come up at the economic summit meeting in Genoa, Italy, later this month.
Among leaders who will attend are Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has unsuccessfully sought to engage the administration in missile-reduction negotiations, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
``The world has changed in 30 years,'' Straw said. ``It is no longer a bipolar world, and there has been development of weapons of mass destruction by third countries.''
But he disagreed with Putin that setting aside the 1972 treaty, which prohibits a national defense against missiles, would begin a dangerous process of reversing decades of arms-control agreements.
``I don't think these things are unraveling,'' Straw said.
Other items on the minister's agenda include the crisis in Northern Ireland over hopes for shared rule between Protestants and Catholics; the cease-fire in Macedonia and potential use of NATO troops as peacekeepers; and the stalemate and violence in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians.
-------- ukraine
Ukrainian Nuclear Reactor Faulty
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ukraine-Nuclear.html?searchpv=aponline
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A reactor at Ukraine's Yuzhna nuclear power plant came to a near-halt after a malfunction in its circulation pumps, officials said Wednesday.
Two pumps at the No. 2 reactor broke down Tuesday, forcing workers to reduce the reactor's output by 90 percent until Wednesday morning, said the state nuclear company Energoatom.
The reactor is currently working at 81 percent capacity, Energoatom said. No radiation leaks were reported in the incident, the second at the plant in less than a week.
On Friday, one of Yuzhna's three reactors was halted due to a malfunction in its steam generator.
Ukraine relies on nuclear power for about 40 percent of its electricity, but the country's aging reactors are often shut down due to minor malfunctions or for repairs. In December, Ukraine permanently closed down the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Air Force: No Search for Lost Nuke
By Russ Bynum
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, July 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010711/aponline234605_000.htm
SAVANNAH, Ga. -- A 7,600-pound nuclear bomb dumped off the Georgia coast 43 years ago should be left undisturbed beneath the ocean floor, the Air Force concluded in a report Wednesday.
"It is in the best interest of the public and the environment to leave the bomb in its resting place and remain categorized as irretrievably lost," the Air Force report said.
The report says the bomb does not have a key plutonium capsule that could cause a nuclear explosion. But the bomb's metal casing does contain some radioactive uranium and the explosive power of 400 pounds of TNT.
Derek Duke, an ex-military pilot whose questions about the bomb prompted Rep. Jack Kingston to push for the report, said he believes the weapon may still pose a threat.
Duke said an April 1966 letter to the chairman of Congress' Joint Committee on Atomic Energy from the Department of Defense classified the bomb as a "complete weapon."
The Air Force concluded months ago that the letter was erroneous. It cites a transfer receipt on the bomb from Feb. 4, 1958, that lists it as a "simulated" weapon - meaning the nuclear capsule had been removed.
A B-47 bomber on a training flight was forced to jettison the bomb when it collided with another plane in February 1958. The weapon landed off Tybee Island, near Savannah, in Wassaw Sound.
Kingston, a Republican, said he was confident in the report's findings.
"I'm happy to hear that the people living, working and playing on Tybee Island are safe," he said.
Tybee Island Mayor Walter Parker, whose beach community has 4,000 residents and thousands of summer visitors, said the Air Force should look for the bomb.
"There's been so many conflicting documents that have come to light, I don't know how they can say there's not a problem," Parker said. "They should at least locate it and determine whether it's safe or not."
The report estimates the bomb is 8 to 40 feet deep and is buried beneath 5 to 15 feet of mud and sand, safely clear of boats.
"The public is not going to come into contact with this bomb," said Maj. Cheryl Law, an Air Force spokeswoman.
The uranium in the bomb poses a low risk of contamination, the report concluded, and the explosives have no risk of detonating unless the bomb is disturbed. However, an attempt to remove the bomb would mean a "serious explosion hazard" for recovery workers, the report said.
The report said there would also be a risk of breaching an aquifer that is a major source of drinking water for the region. The Air Force said searching for the bomb would take up to five years and cost up to $11.4 million.
-------- us nuc politics
Funding Gap For Defense Is Predicted
Rumsfeld Plan Faulted On Cost and Priorities
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42050-2001Jul10?language=printer
The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said yesterday he doubts there is enough money to pay for the Bush administration's proposed $328.9 billion defense budget for fiscal 2002 without running a deficit, dipping into the Social Security trust fund or cutting important domestic programs.
"None of those are acceptable alternatives," Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told top officials from the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines, describing a looming budget battle that came sharply into focus during a hearing on Capitol Hill.
While Levin and Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), the committee's ranking Republican, predicted that the administration would have difficulty winning approval of its full request, committee members from both parties also complained that Bush's spending plan still would underfund the military.
Crafted by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Pentagon budget request for fiscal 2002, which begins Oct. 1, is $32.6 billion higher than current spending and amounts to a 7 percent increase in real terms, after inflation.
But even with the largest proposed increase in defense spending since the mid-1980s, the request is weighted heavily toward increases in military pay, health care and housing -- and would actually cut spending on weapons procurement, basic research, Army flying hours and tank training.
Rumsfeld, meanwhile, is on record as saying that the fiscal 2003 budget probably will have to grow to $347 billion just to keep pace with inflation, without any new spending.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) said the administration's $1.3 trillion tax cut "puts us in a bind in meeting . . . the needs of the military."
"We're not giving you enough," Lieberman said. "And we have to find a way to do that."
Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) agreed that the budget proposal "grossly underfunds" the military. But he homed in on another Bush administration initiative, ballistic missile defense, as the culprit. The request calls for increasing spending on missile defense by 57 percent, to $8.3 billion.
Spending on new ships, planes and precision-guided munitions, Cleland said, is being deferred "so that we can accelerate the range of missile defense programs that have not yet been proven to work and that raise significant issues regarding our international commitments under the [1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty] and other treaties."
The administration's missile defense request includes initial funding for a test facility in Alaska, where as many as 10 interceptor missiles would be based. Though intended for testing, those interceptors could be used as a rudimentary missile defense system by 2004 if threats warranted, Rumsfeld and other officials have said.
Rumsfeld told Congress June 28 that the interceptor technology "has been tested and, in some instances, proven very effective."
Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday that a site in Alaska would greatly enhance existing test facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands by allowing dummy warheads and interceptors to be launched along a more realistic path.
Some arms control advocates have denounced the plan as a deceptive means of constructing an initial missile defense system in the guise of a test facility. The ABM Treaty allows some missile defense testing but prohibits deployment of long-range missile defenses designed to protect the entire nation.
Quigley denied that the administration was trying "to be somehow sneaky or less than forthcoming here." He said the proposed facility at Fort Greely, near Fairbanks, is genuinely intended as a test site and remains, at present, very much in the planning stages.
During yesterday's budget hearing, Levin made it clear that he believes Rumsfeld's only way out of the budget bind is to eliminate waste, close unneeded bases and phase out some weapons systems.
But with the budget surplus quickly evaporating and Rumsfeld's costly transformation plan still awaited, other committee members objected to the few major cuts the Pentagon so far has proposed.
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said he would fight an Air Force plan to reduce the number of B-1 bombers from 93 to 60 and plow $165 million of savings into upgrading the remaining aircraft. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) raised doubts about savings from future base closings, saying he is "having a terrible time finding any of the money that we saved" in two earlier rounds.
Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
-------- us nuc waste
The Politics of Spent Fuel
Wednesday, July 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44056-2001Jul10?language=printer
The statement that "no government agency or business has ever recycled nuclear waste for commercial use on U.S. soil" [news story, July 2] is inaccurate. Commercial plants were built in Illinois, South Carolina and New York, and one -- in West Valley, N.Y., 35 miles south of Buffalo -- received a license and operated.
The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 encouraged private industry to reprocess used commercial nuclear fuel. This policy remained in effect until 1977, when President Jimmy Carter rescinded it in an executive order.
In 1963, Nuclear Fuel Services (NFS) began construction of a plutonium uranium extraction process plant at West Valley. The commercial viability of this venture came from fees NFS charged the reactor owners to reprocess the fuel. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) retained ownership of the enriched uranium reactor fuel and leased it to the power companies. But all of the plutonium bred in their reactors became the property of the power companies. The act provided for a "plutonium credit" in that the AEC then would purchase the plutonium from the power companies, thus offsetting the cost of the operation.
Although the AEC had encouraged NFS to focus on commercial fuel reprocessing, too few commercial reactors were operating to supply its needs. As a result, 60 percent of the fuel West Valley processed came from the AEC's "N Reactor" at Hanford, Wash., under an AEC guarantee to NFS.
In 1972, NFS shut down operations to increase reprocessing capacity and to comply with new regulatory requirements. It encountered difficulties in retrofitting the facility and by 1976 announced that it would cease reprocessing operations and transfer management and storage of approximately 600,000 gallons of high-level radioactive liquids and sludges to West Valley's landlord, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
By 1980 the West Valley Demonstration Project Act directed the Department of Energy to solidify the high-level radioactive waste at West Valley and remove it to an approved federal repository. It also directed the department to decontaminate and decommission the West Valley tanks and facilities and dispose of all wastes. Cleanup continues to this day.
KENNETH J. CLARK
Manassas
--------
International nuclear waste information exchange planned
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN,
July 11, 2001
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-other/2001/jul/11/512067041.html
Researchers in the United States and around the world have agreed to participate in an information exchange that could one day change the way countries manage high-level nuclear waste.
A U.S. Department of Energy scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has approached Eastern European, Eastern Asian and U.S. experts to examine everything from studying Yucca Mountain to transforming radioactive wastes into something less harmful to storing and managing the wastes. Every possible solution is on the research table, Cheng-Kong Chou, associate director of energy and environment at Livermore, said Tuesday.
Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan reached a preliminary agreement last week with the national laboratory to exchange information about nuclear waste management, Chou said.
One of the best aspects of Livermore's plan to share information is funding, Chou said, noting that instead of seeking U.S. funds, other nations are willing to share in the costs.
U.S. government scientists are studying the only current solution -- disposal of 77,000 tons of commercial spent fuel and military wastes -- at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Since there has been so much work done studying Yucca Mountain, it is logical to tap into DOE's expertise vested with the scientists working there, Chou said.
However, other nations are looking at various rock formations, very unlike Yucca Mountain's volcanic ash layers, Chou said.
Japan, for example, is studying granite sites. Granite was once considered in the late 1970s and 1980s in the United States, Chou noted, because it is extremely stable. A granite formation under New Hampshire and Maine has been undisturbed for 600 million years.
A central bank of nuclear waste information could be started at the University of California, Chou said, but other universities also could be invited to participate, including UNLV.
"Eventually, if this is going someday, we hope that UNLV will join us in research," Chou said.
Although there has been no formal discussions with university officials, Donald Baepler, founder of UNLV's Harry Reid Environmental Research Center, said he had heard of the project.
"This is very preliminary," Baepler said. "In my experience, these projects take forever and often get talked to death."
But if the international nuclear waste brain trust gels, Baepler said the university would be interested in participating.
The Harry Reid Center has already received $3 million this year for studying advanced technology that would render highly radioactive wastes less dangerous.
The DOE and scientists around the world are participating in the advanced accelerator project.
-------- MILITARY
"ENTENTE" APPEARS IN MIDDLE EAST
Pravda.RU
2001-07-11
SERGEI BORISOV
http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/2001/07/11/9810.html
While the world is focusing its attention on the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Middle East is seeing a kind of a military entente being formed at full speed. The burgeoning triple alliance includes the USA, Turkey, and Israel. The Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post has published an article by Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at the Bar-Ilan University. The author writes of the Anatolian Eagle air exercise, the first of its kind, which lasted for two weeks and was aimed at creating a realistic training environment. Dozens of American, Israeli, and Turkish pilots engaged in mock aerial battles over central Turkey as part of a burgeoning trilateral relationship, which has come to be one of the most formidable ties in the region, much to the annoyance of the Arab countries and Iran.
The war games included combat maneuvers and ground-attack sorties with live ammunition. The militaries of the three countries upgraded their military cooperation by adding an important air element to past trilateral naval search and rescue exercises.
This trilateral demonstration of airpower follows the visit of the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, to Turkey in early June, which marked another breakthrough in the triangular relationship. The higher priority awarded to ballistic missile defence by the current US administration seemed to have led to an understanding on trilateral cooperation regarding the incorporation of the Israeli Arrow anti-ballistic missile in the deployment of an anti-missile system in Turkey.
Ankara has been pressing Washington since 1988 for formal missile defence cooperation with Israel based on the Arrow system. In the author's view, the closer American-Israeli-Turkish military cooperation will have a positive effect on the peace process, which amounts to a reluctant acceptance of Israel as a regional player by most Arab states. As Prof. Inbar puts it, this cooperation "reinforces the notion that Israel is militarily strong and cannot easily be removed from the map." Besides, the new "entente" is aimed at deterring so called "rogue states" by which the USA and its allies mean, in particular, Iraq, Syria and Iran.
The cooperation between the US and its two most loyal allies in the Middle East also is also meant to create a limited deterrence for Hashemite Jordan, allowing it a somewhat freer hand in dealing with domestic challenges from Palestinian nationalists or Islamic radicals, having less to worry about foreign military involvement. Damascus, Baghdad and Teheran now face a stronger Jordan - one equipped with an American-Israeli-Turkish umbrella, according to Prof. Inbar.
Turkey has continued to maintain good relations despite the prolonged Palestinian armed confrontation with Israel that started in September 2000. Moreover, Ankara even capitalized on the crisis to increase its diplomatic involvement in the region, by making efforts to facilitate a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel welcomes the more active Turkish approach as it feels that its interests and dilemmas are well understood in Ankara.
-------- afghanistan
Big Explosion at Arms Depot Rocks Afghan Capital
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-afghan-.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A big explosion at an arms depot rocked the outskirts of the Afghan capital Kabul overnight, residents said on Wednesday.
They said the blast occurred at an arsenal in a camp believed to be used by Chechen and Pakistani Islamic militants at the Taj Beg Palace on the city's southern outskirts.
``I was woken up suddenly by the explosion which sounded massive,'' a resident told Reuters.
There was no immediate word from the ruling Taliban movement about the cause of the blast or about casualties.
Some residents suspected the explosion was caused by a missile but there was no confirmation of that.
``Before the blast, I heard a whistling sound of a rocket for a few seconds,'' a witness living about 500 yards from the old palace in the Darulaman area told Reuters.
``After the bang, the sky was illuminated by the flames rising from the ground and then small explosions for a few minutes.''
Witnesses said Taliban fighters sealed off roads leading to the palace.
One Taliban commander detained two local reporters working for international news agencies when they went to the site to investigate, a witness said.
There have been a series of explosions in Kabul and other Taliban-held areas since the hard-line Islamic movement swept to power in 1996.
The Taliban have blamed the blasts on the northern-based opposition alliance. The opposition has denied the accusation.
-------- arms sales
Arms Makers to Adopt Regulations
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-UN-Arms-Marking.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Key arms makers in the United States and Europe are willing to accept a voluntary program to mark and trace small arms to help curb illegal trafficking, according to documents seen by The Associated Press and confirmed by industry officials.
Diplomats involved in the initiative say it would help authorities stem the flow of legally purchased light weapons to black markets supplying conflicts around the world.
The agreement would come into effect regardless of the outcome of a U.N. conference that is debating a draft plan to control illegal small arms trafficking. Included in the draft is a provision calling for ``negotiation of a legally binding instrument to identify and trace the lines of supply of small arms and light weapons.''
The United States already requires a marking and tracing system, but it opposes this provision because it doesn't want to make a commitment before knowing all the details of an agreement, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton told AP on Wednesday.
``After further negotiation, I wouldn't exclude the possibility of a treaty-like commitment dealing with the flow of illegal weapons into conflict-prone areas,'' he said.
The industry plan represents an effort by manufacturers to create a marking and tracing identification system with a degree of self-regulation.
Putting a unique identification on every small weapon manufactured would enable authorities that seize illegal arms to find their origin and determine where they were first sold. Then, the authorities could start tracing how the arms became part of the illegal weapons trade and plug leakage points.
According to documents seen by AP, leading arms manufacturers from the United States, Italy, Austria and France met in Paris on June 26 with representatives from Canada, France, Nigeria, the United States, Britain and Colombia and outlined their agreement.
The four-page agreement was signed by C. Edward Rowe, a senior executive at U.S. arms producer Sturm, Ruger and Co. -- representing the arms manufacturers -- and former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, co-chair of the Eminent Persons Group, a 23-member independent commission that seeks to control the spread of small arms.
Paul Jannuzzo, a vice president of Austria's Glock GmbH, confirmed the details of the agreement.
``It's something we're willing to abide by,'' he told AP. ``If you want to cut off illicit trade you have to find its source.''
The agreement calls for manufacturers to institute standards for the marking and tracing of small arms, and to support and assist other efforts to prevent the transfer of small arms that would be used to violate human rights, international treaties, U.N. embargoes, genocide and other illegal acts, according to the documents.
``Voluntary industry self-regulation will, in greatly enhancing transparency and accountability, help curtail the potential for leakage (and) diversion from licit to illicit trafficking,'' Rowe wrote to Rocard after key manufacturers met in Kansas City in May to work out the agreement.
Under the agreement, each country can decide on the exact system, but it must be an indelible marking at the point of manufacture, revealing the year of manufacture, the manufacturer and serial number. The records will be kept by the producers and be available to authorities through Interpol, according to the documents.
Details were completed at the Paris meeting attended by senior executives from Sturm, Ruger; Glock, whose pistol is the best seller with U.S. police forces; Berretta Armaments Italy, which makes the second U.S. police favorite; and French armsmaker Verney-Carron.
Rocard, a member of the European Parliament, told U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan about the agreement July 5, and they are expected to meet at U.N. headquarters later this month, according to a source close to the negotiation, speaking on condition of anonymity. The source and the documents seen by AP did not say exactly how many arms manufacturers -- American or otherwise -- were participating in the initiative.
Rowe, who chairs the manufacturers advisory group of the World Forum on the Future of Sports Shooting Activities, an international gun lobbying group, wrote to Rocard that if the manufacturers' initiative ``were to take place under the auspices of the secretary-general, this would greatly enhance its effectiveness,'' according to the documents.
Diplomats said the Paris accord is expected to be circulated to delegates at the U.N. conference on the illegal trade in small arms, which began Monday and ends July 20.
``Marking and tracing is one way of stemming the illicit trade in small arms,'' said Peter Batchelor, project director for a Small Arms Survey published Tuesday. ``But it won't be possible to do this without enhanced police, law enforcement and customs efforts and information sharing by governments,'' he added.
Britain's U.N. ambassador, Jeremy Greenstock, said his government favors a universal requirement to mark guns, as called for in the draft under debate at the conference. He said he is aware of the manufacturers' initiative.
``We want actually a system of international legal instruments to do this, but that's not popular with ... a minority of members of the U.N.,'' he said. ``We would be very willing, if that doesn't go forward, to move to a voluntary position, but we haven't reached that point yet.''
With the consensus of all 189 U.N. member states needed to adopt the plan of action, it appeared unlikely that the language in the draft would survive. But diplomats said they are hopeful of finding wording that will lead to further negotiations sooner rather than later.
--------
South Asian Nations Awash in Weapons
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Arms-Trafficking.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- South Asia is awash in small arms -- many bought by the United States for Afghanistan's mujahedeen during the 1980s -- and large quantities are in the hands of insurgents throughout the subcontinent, arms experts say.
Small arms ``are the weapons of choice'' in many of the small regional insurgencies in Pakistan, Kashmir, Sri Lanka or rebel movements in northeastern India, said Faruq Faisel, spokesman for the South Asia Partnership that analyzes regional security.
``The weapons are cheap and easy to operate even by children as young as 10,'' he said at a panel Tuesday, the second day of a two-week U.N. conference where more than 180 nations are trying to reach agreement on a plan to curb the illegal trafficking in small arms and light weapons.
Much of the proliferation of small weapons throughout India and even as far south as Sri Lanka is the legacy of Afghanistan's war with the former Soviet Union during the 1980s, security analysts said.
From 1979-89, the United States channeled at least $2 billion in weapons aid to Afghan mujahedeen who fought successfully to oust the Soviet army, according to the Small Arms Survey 2001 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies released Tuesday.
The arms were sent via Pakistan, a major transit point, and many were siphoned off, according to the report.
But because of the widespread availability, Pakistan has become a major source of small arms in South Asia, both from the black market and arms supplied covertly to insurgent groups throughout South Asia, regional arms analysts said.
``Weapons from that time, and from that corner of South Asia, can be traced to gun markets in India and can even be found as far away as Sri Lanka,'' said Joost Hiltermann, executive director of Human Rights Watch's arms division.
Precise figures for weapons trafficking and illegally owned guns have been difficult to confirm, analysts said.
In Pakistan, a vast array of military rifles are available -- from U.S. M-16s and Israeli Uzis to Russian Kalashnikovs -- along with an array of other small arms manufactured in Russia, China and Eastern Europe.
Moinuddin Haider, Pakistan's interior minister, emphasized in his speech to the conference Tuesday that in ``segments of our society possessing and carrying arms has been a proud cultural legacy.''
But he said Pakistan is determined to get rid of the illegal small arms and light weapons.
``Pakistan became a victim of this proliferation to the extent that even our places of worship and business became a target of this menace,'' Haider said. ``It threatened our political stability, social cohesion and economic growth.''
--------
German Businessman in Ariz. Held
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Arms-Embargo-Arrest.html
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- A German businessman accused of breaking a U.S. arms embargo against Iran was being held without bond after waiving extradition to New York.
Gunter Kohlke, 64, was indicted last month on 11 charges alleging he used his international businesses to ship parts for military helicopters and weapons to Iran from 1997 to 1999. The charges include conspiracy to violate an arms embargo, violating the embargo and violating export laws.
Tucson attorney Alfred Donau III, who represented Kohlke during a hearing Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Tucson, said the parts Kohlke is accused of dealing are not strictly for military use.
``The 'munitions' he's said to have shipped are ball bearings and a gear shaft,'' Donau said. ``They are multiple-use parts. The multiple-use nature makes this indictment utter nonsense.''
The U.S. attorney's office alleged the ball bearings were for Vulcan 20mm military aircraft cannons.
Donau said most of the parts remain in New York awaiting determination by federal agents as to whether their export would violate laws. He said Switzerland had determined that materials shipped from Switzerland to Iran in 1997 did not violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
U.S. authorities began investigating Kohlke 2 1/2 years ago after a Tucson business called U.S. Customs.
-------- balkans
Yugoslavia President Fears Breakup
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Yugoslavia-Politics.html
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Yugoslavia's final breakup -- which could come amid a government crisis and a renewed independence drive in one of its two republics -- could jeopardize stability across the region, President Vojislav Kostunica warned.
In an interview in Wednesday's edition of the state-run Politika daily, Kostunica said the Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro should be reshuffled to give more authority to its two republics while keeping only a few joint institutions.
``We are on the way to finding a good solution for both Serbia and Montenegro, their citizens and peace and stability in the region,'' Kostunica said.
But he warned: ``Any redrawing of the borders in the region, especially as Macedonia faces immense challenges, would be an exception and an invitation for new radical moves ... in this very sensitive region.''
Kostunica's comments come two weeks after the government of Serbia, the dominant republic, handed over former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal, ignoring a federal court ruling and triggering a collapse of the federal government.
The federal prime minister, who is a Montenegrin, and other ministers from the republic resigned in protest of the Serbian government move, calling it illegal. Heightening tensions, Kostunica also criticized the extradition.
The crisis has raised fears that Yugoslavia could split amid widening rifts between its two republics. Some politicians have suggested that Serbia and Montenegro should negotiate a peaceful end to their joint state and go their separate ways.
On Tuesday, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic -- who leads the pro-independence camp in his republic -- said an independence referendum will be a top priority for him and that a vote could be held next March.
Kostunica, however, said he was optimistic that the joint state will be preserved. He called for a new federal constitution, followed by elections on all levels in both Yugoslavia and Serbia.
``There are several important functions that are naturally in the hands of a joint state: foreign affairs, defense, monetary policies, human rights, communications, traffic,'' Kostunica explained. ``Everything else should be in the hands of the republics.''
The United States and its allies have supported Kostunica's proposal for Yugoslavia's reforms, appealing to Djukanovic to refrain from breaking away.
On Wednesday, a former Bosnian Serb president awaiting trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal formally requested temporary release until her trial starts, court officials said.
Biljana Plavsic, 71, surrendered to the U.N. court in January to face charges of alleged atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Her attorney, Robert Pavich, filed the motion for release on Wednesday, court spokesman Jim Landale said.
The trial isn't expected to begin until next year. Plavsic pleaded innocent to charges including genocide. Judges were widely expected to approve the request in view of her voluntary surrender.
Plavsic, a former ally of Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadic, was an important member of the Bosnian Serb power structure during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. The conflict began when Bosnian Serbs took up arms after the former Yugoslav republic declared independence from Belgrade.
Plavsic would be the fourth suspect to be temporarily released pending trial.
-------- china
China's military buildup worries U.S.
July 11, 2001
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010711-298345.htm
The United States does not view China as a military threat at present but is concerned about the steady buildup of its army and its ballistic missile forces, a senior U.S. official said yesterday.
"Is there a threat of war between the United States and China?" said the official. "No. Not now. But right now doesn't mean forever.
"China is modernizing its ballistic missiles, short- and long-range," the official told reporters, and "the development of the People's Liberation Army and its enhancement" is worrying to the United States.
The official was asked about reports from recent visitors to China that military leaders there do not believe the United States would risk American blood to defend Taiwan in the event of an attack from the mainland. China has long said it would attack if Taiwan were to declare independence.
"This administration has been extremely clear that we would take our responsibility under the Taiwan Relations Act seriously but not support an independent Taiwan," the official said.
The Taiwan Relations Act obliges the United States to sell Taiwan sufficient weapons for its own defense.
The official was briefing diplomatic reporters as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell prepares to visit Beijing later this month. The Asia visit will include stopovers in Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Australia.
Mr. Powell will discuss with China human rights, trade, security and other issues. He will also make preparations for Mr. Bush's visit to China in October for a summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group in Shanghai and state visit to Beijing.
The U.S. official said that the United States hoped to get past recent problems in the U.S.-Chinese relationship, such as China's 12-day detention of the crew of a U.S. surveillance plane that collided with a Chinese fighter and the arrests of Chinese-American academics.
He said of the jailed academics, "We don't know with any precision what the charges are" against them and noted that American University scholar Gao Zhan "has yet to see a lawyer" to help in her defense.
"It's awfully political," said the U.S. official, and "it's an obstacle to full and effective relations" between the United States and China.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin said before leaving Beijing on a trip to Russia yesterday that U.S.-Chinese relations were improving, despite China's opposition to the Bush administration's missile defense plan.
"I am optimistic about the future of Chinese-U.S. relations," Mr. Jiang said in an interview carried jointly by Russia's ITAR-TASS news agency and ORT television from the Chinese capital.
"China-U.S. relations lived through a difficult period recently," he said. "That situation was bad for China and the U.S., which we would like to avoid.
"Despite some differences, China and the U.S. have important common interests," he said.
However, he repeated China's objections to canceling the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and U.S. plans to construct a missile defense system.
"People fear that this will start another round of the arms race, including in outer space," Mr. Jiang said.
The U.S. official said that North Korea has not yet responded to an American invitation to resume talks on missiles, conventional forces and the Agreed Framework that ended its nuclear weapons programs.
He noted that the freeze on U.S.-North Korean talks since the Bush administration came into office is paralleled by a "hiatus" in talks between North and South Korea.
He urged the North's leader, Kim Jong-il, to respond to a visit last year by the South's President Kim Dae-jung by paying a visit to Seoul.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
----
Beijing Stages War Games, Mostly for Taiwan
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/11/international/11CHIN.html
SHANGHAI, July 10 - China's latest and largest war games have been described in unusual detail by an official Chinese magazine, apparently to reinforce the exercises' message to the 23 million people on Taiwan that they should not be complacent about peace.
The articles in this month's issue of International Outlook magazine, published by the Shanghai Institute for International Affairs and associated with Wang Daohan, the Chinese official who oversees relations with Taiwan, depict various arms of China's military working together on an integrated battle plan in large-scale exercises for the first time.
"What is notable is the size, duration and efforts to combine elements of navy, air force, army and artillery units," said Bates Gill, a Chinese military expert at the Brookings Institution, though he expressed some doubt that the exercises were as integrated as the magazine claimed.
Until now, major exercises had been carried out concurrently but not under a joint command.
The games, described as the largest since China fired missiles off Taiwan's coast before its first presidential elections in 1996, have taken place over the last few weeks on and around Dongshan island, off China's southeastern coast. They simulated an assault on one of Taiwan's outlying islands, an act that many analysts regard as China's most likely first step in any hostilities with Taiwan. The exercises also included a simulated engagement with an American aircraft carrier battle group, which China regards as the greatest challenge to such an action.
Western analysts do not expect an actual invasion any time soon; in fact, many believe China still lacks the ability to carry one off. But they say the article is meant to signal the military's progress to audiences at home and abroad.
Since 1949, when Chiang Kai- shek's defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan, China's Communist government has considered the island a breakaway territory that must eventually be reunified with the mainland. And they have refused to renounce the use of military force to achieve this.
The magazine quoted an unnamed senior military officer as saying that the war games were meant to "plainly tell the Taiwan public that the stable outlook between the two sides of the strait, which Chen Shui-bian" - Taiwan's president - "has proclaimed, simply does not exist."
It said that Mr. Chen, who took office last year, has taken credit for apparently easing tensions with the mainland, but that this was actually the result of Beijing's wait-and-see attitude toward his administration.
The magazine said the games involved "virtually all of China's most advanced weaponry," including nuclear-powered submarines and M-9 ballistic missiles, which are concentrated on the coast facing Taiwan.
The games were overseen by China's top general, Zhang Wannian, and drew together units from the Nanjing Military Region, the Guangzhou Military Region, the East China Sea Fleet, the South China Sea Fleet, the air force and the Second Artillery Corps. Lt. Gen. Liang Guanglie of the Nanjing Military Region acted as commander in chief.
The games took place in three stages, beginning with "information warfare" intended to paralyze enemy communications and command systems electronically. The magazine said that, for the first time, a new electronic warfare unit was deployed over the strait, in coordination with surveillance satellites.
The second stage involved a joint navy, infantry and air force landing on Dongshan island that included simulated missile attacks, aerial bombardments, nighttime parachute landings, rapid sea-based troop landings and commando attacks on ports and airports. The magazine said the exercise employed a Russian antiaircraft missile system similar to the American Patriot-1 system.
The third stage simulated a "counterattack against an enemy fleet attempting to intervene in the war," and apparently included at least one of China's two new Sovremenny- class guided-missile destroyers recently bought from Russia for confronting American aircraft carrier battle groups. This stage of the exercise also employed SU-27 fighter aircraft and Kilo-class submarines, also recently bought from Russia.
Mr. Gill said the three stages conform to what most American military analysts would expect of such a Chinese invasion.
-------- iraq
Iraq Resumes Oil Exports
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Oil.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq has resumed oil exports, officials said Wednesday, ending an almost five-week stoppage to protest U.S.-British attempts to overhaul U.N. sanctions imposed on the Arab nation.
Iraq began pumping crude Tuesday night to terminals for export -- the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean and the Iraq port of Basra on the Persian Gulf, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Naji Sabri told The Associated Press Television News.
Oil Ministry officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the first oil shipment was expected to be loaded onto a tanker at Ceyhan late Wednesday or early Thursday.
Baghdad halted its exports to protest a British proposal backed by the United States to impose ``smart sanctions'' by allowing an unlimited flow of goods into Iraq while tightening an arms embargo.
Facing a Russian veto on the Security Council, Britain abandoned the proposal for now, and the world body instead extended the so-called oil-for-food program. That program allows Iraq to sell oil provided the money is used to buy food and other humanitarian goods.
Iraq demanded the full lifting of sanctions in place since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The sanctions can be lifted only after Iraq dismantles its weapons of mass destruction and the capability to produce them.
Iraq insists it has fulfilled the conditions for lifting the sanctions, but has refused to let U.N. weapons inspectors back into the country since December 1998.
--------
Iraq Group Claims Hit on Baghdad
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Opposition-Claim.html
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- An Iraqi dissident group says its guerrillas bombarded President Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palace and other government buildings with rockets early Wednesday. The claim could not be independently verified.
The official Iraqi News Agency said three missiles or rockets fell, one hitting a house and the others landing in a street that is not near any of Saddam's palaces. The agency quoted an unnamed Iraqi government official as blaming ``criminal killers from the agents of the Iranian regime.''
In a statement issued in Beirut, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq said its forces fired 16 Katyusha rockets at Baghdad targets.
Four rockets struck the presidential palace in Karradah and four hit the radio and television building in the Salhiya neighborhood, the council said in its fax to The Associated Press. Four more rockets struck the general intelligence headquarters in Mansour district and another four hit the residential compound for Cabinet ministers in Qadissiya.
The attack was in retaliation for the ``fascist practices carried out by the regime in Baghdad, its terrorizing of the Iraqi people and its repeated aggression against the religious authorities,'' the statement said.
Iran and Iraq host rebels fighting each other's government. The neighbors fought a war in 1980-88 that left a million dead and wounded.
-------- space
Shuttle Ready for Mission to Space Station
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/science/science-space-shuttle.html
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The space shuttle Atlantis was poised on its launch pad on Wednesday for a mission to deliver an airlock that will serve as a door for spacewalking astronauts and signal completion of the first assembly phase of the International Space Station.
Liftoff is scheduled for 5:04 a.m. on Thursday. Bad weather and a security threat could delay the trip. NASA said the threat had forced it to close an emergency landing strip normally available to the shuttle in Morocco. That leaves two other emergency landing strips, in Spain and Senegal. If they are closed by bad weather, the shuttle cannot launch. NASA would not disclose the nature of the threat.
The Atlantis crew led by commander Steven Lindsey is to add a $164 million airlock, the first that can work with both U.S. and Russian spacewalking suits.
The chamber will allow astronauts to enter and exit, adjusting for the unequal pressure between the station and the vacuum of space. Without it, they would have to let all the air out of the space station before they could open the hatch.
The airlock comes with its own air supply, so station crews will be able to venture outside their home without wasting their own precious supply of oxygen and nitrogen. Before now, astronauts have worked outside the station only when a shuttle, with its own airlock, was docked there.
Lindsey, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, is joined on the flight crew by pilot Charles Hobaugh, a U.S. Marine Corps major making his first flight, and Janet Kavandi, the flight engineer and robot-arm operator making her third flight.
Rounding out the crew are a pair of spacewalkers, Michael Gernhardt, taking his fourth trip into space, and James Reilly, on his second trip.
SIGNIFICANT ANNIVERSARY
The mission to the space station would mark a significant anniversary in the short history of the orbiting outpost, coming a year to the day after Russia launched its long-delayed service module. The module added life-support and living quarters, making the station habitable after almost a year and a half in orbit.
The $95 billion station has grown to record proportions for a spacecraft. Once little more than orbiting storage space, it now has the volume of a three-bedroom house and generates enough electricity through solar power to light a neighborhood.
Rotating crews of three astronauts have taken up residence, with the third expeditionary crew ready to fly in August.
``Looking back, it's been an incredible and really outstanding year for us,'' said Tommy Holloway, NASA's space station program manager. ``The operation has gone extremely well.''
The station's senior partners, the United States and Russia, have undergone an unexpected role reversal in the past year.
The Russian Aerospace Agency, once seemingly wedded to the words ``cash-strapped,'' has been launching regular missions ferrying supplies and replacement parts. The agency even broke new ground launching American millionaire Dennis Tito, the first space tourist, on a weeklong sojourn to the station.
NASA, which carried the greater burden in financing, building and assembling the station, is the one that now seems mired in money woes.
Congress put a cap of $25 billion on assembly costs for the station, a figure that does not include the cost of launching shuttles and operating the station. At last count, NASA was between $4 billion and $5 billion over the cap.
Prodded by the White House, NASA has slashed space station plans, including plans to expand crews to seven astronauts and add a second habitation module and a crew return vehicle, and cut much of the once-promised science and commercial development.
Even longtime space station supporters are starting to cast stones at the project.
``That was just a plain, bad mistake,'' Charles Vick, director of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, said of the budget cuts.
``We look to NASA to push the basic sciences and basic technologies. It does make a major contribution in keeping us ahead technologically. When they cut the science, they're cutting their own feet out from under them.''
Holloway acknowledged the station needed more crew, saying, ''The International Space Station's fundamental backbone requires more than three people.'' He said, however, that final decisions on the habitation module and crew return vehicle -- a new spacecraft designed for the emergency evacuation of seven astronauts -- did not have to be made until 2003.
NASA will forge ahead with the second assembly phase of the station, adding science stations to the U.S. laboratory module and completing infrastructure for research modules from Europe and Japan.
-------- u.n.
Small-weapons pact meets U.S. demands
July 11, 2001
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010711-86377960.htm
NEW YORK -- Delegates to a U.N. conference on small arms fell in line behind U.S. demands yesterday, saying they would rather have a weak agreement that the United States could support than risk confrontation with the world's largest arms producer.
"It is important that the conference be inclusive, and that we remember this problem is a long-term process," said Raimund Kunz, who heads the Swiss delegation.
"What is important is that the action plan is implemented," he said, acknowledging that every country, including his own, has legitimate interests to protect.
Delegates from 120 nations will spend the next 10 days negotiating a program to curb the flow of revolvers, submachine guns, anti-tank missiles and other small weapons into conflict zones around the world.
But coming up with a single document that is strong enough to do the job, but painless enough to win universal support, will be difficult.
The European Union, Japan, Mozambique and other nations have been advocating strong controls that would restrict the manufacture, civilian possession and international transfer of weapons.
Major arms manufacturers, including the United States, Russia and China, have been advocating strong export controls, but will brook no interference in domestic laws.
On Monday, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told the U.N. conference that the United States will not sign any document that includes any curbs on civilian gun ownership or restrictions on sales to known insurgent groups.
Many diplomats yesterday indicated that a weaker document with broad consensus was more valuable than one ignored by pivotal countries, such as the United States.
"I think a consensus is possible, compromises are being made by everyone," said Jayantha Dhanapala, the undersecretary- general of disarmament affairs, whose department organized the conference.
He said that when the declaration is finished, it is sure to include commitments to marking and tracing weapons, some restrictions on the activities of brokers, and a system of sharing information on arms exports.
"That in itself is a major step forward," Mr. Dhanapala said.
This is the first time governments have tried to set out goals and actions to limit the spread of illicit guns, an estimated $1 billion-a-year trade that contributes to destabilization and destruction around the world.
Unlike a small-arms treaty negotiated last year in Vienna, Austria, this program of action is neither binding nor enforceable.
Organizers have stressed they do not seek to take from civilians firearms legally acquired under national law. However, the conference has generated strong opposition from American gun enthusiasts concerned about their Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Mr. Bolton outlined the limits of what Washington can accept in language that was unusually direct for the United Nations.
Delegates and advocacy groups attending the conference were aware of the U.S. "red lines," as they are known in diplomatic jargon, but many said they were jarred to hear them so plainly enumerated.
"What a cowboy," said an Asian envoy.
Mr. Bolton shrugged off the criticism. "I think clarity is a good thing," he told reporters after his Monday remarks.
---
'The vast majority of arms transfers are not problematic'
Address by John R. Bolton,
Undersecretary of Arms Control and International Security,
to U.N. Conference on Small Arms
From U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs
Wednesday, July 11, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45969-2001Jul11?language=printer
Excellencies and distinguished colleagues, it is my honor and privilege to present United States views at this United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects.
The abstract goals and objectives of this Conference are laudable. Attacking the global illicit trade in small arms and light weapons (SA/LW) is an important initiative which the international community should, indeed must, address because of its wide ranging effects. The illicit trade in SA/LW can be used to exacerbate conflict, threaten civilian populations in regions of conflict, endanger the work of peacekeeping forces and humanitarian aid workers, and greatly complicate the hard work of economically and politically rebuilding war-torn societies. Alleviating these problems is in all of our interest.
Small arms and light weapons, in our understanding, are the strictly military arms -- automatic rifles, machine guns, shoulder-fired missile and rocket systems, light mortars -- that are contributing to continued violence and suffering in regions of conflict around the world. We separate these military arms from firearms such as hunting rifles and pistols, which are commonly owned and used by citizens in many countries. As U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said, "just as the First and Fourth Amendments secure individual rights of speech and security respectively, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms." The United States believes that the responsible use of firearms is a legitimate aspect of national life. Like many countries, the United States has a cultural tradition of hunting and sport shooting. We, therefore, do not begin with the presumption that all small arms and light weapons are the same or that they are all problematic. It is the illicit trade in military small arms and light weapons that we are gathered here to address and that should properly concern us.
The United States goes to great lengths to ensure that small arms and light weapons transferred under our jurisdiction are done so with the utmost responsibility. The transfer of all military articles of U.S. origin are subject to extremely rigorous procedures under the U.S. Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations. All U.S. exports of defense articles and services, including small arms and light weapons, must be approved by the Department of State. Assurances must be given by the importing country that arms will be used in a manner consistent with our criteria for arms exports: they must not contribute to regional instability, arms races, terrorism, proliferation, or violations of human rights. Arms of U.S. origin can not be retransferred without approval by the United States. To ensure that arms are delivered to legitimate end-users, our government rigorously monitors arms transfers, investigating suspicious activity and acting quickly to curtail exports to those recipients who do not meet our strict criteria for responsible use. In the past five years, the United States has conducted thousands of end-use checks, interdicted thousands of illicit arms shipments at U.S. ports of exit, and cut-off exports entirely to five countries due to their failure to properly manage U.S. origin defense articles.
All commercial exporters of arms in the United States must be registered as brokers and submit each transaction for government licensing approval. Our brokering law is comprehensive, extending over citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, and also U.S. citizens operating abroad.
Believing that it is in our interest to stem the illicit trade in military arms, the United States has avidly promoted and supported such international activities as the Wassenaar Arrangement and the UN Register of Conventional Arms. Bilaterally, we offer our financial and technical assistance all over the world to mitigate the illicit trade in SA/LW. We have worked with countries to develop national legislation to regulate exports and imports of arms, and to better enforce their laws. We have provided training, technical assistance, and funds to improve border security and curb arms smuggling in many areas of the world where this problem is rampant. And in the past year, we have instituted a program to assist countries in conflict- prone regions to secure or destroy excess and illicit stocks of small arms and light weapons.
We are proud of our record, and would hope that the Program of Action would encourage all nations to adopt similar practices. Our practical experience with these problems reflects our view of how best to prevent the illicit trade in SA/LW. Our focus is on addressing the problem where it is most acute and the risks are highest: regions of conflict and instability. We strongly support measures in the draft Program of Action calling for effective export and import controls, restraint in trade to regions of conflict, observance and enforcement of UNSC embargoes, strict regulation of arms brokers, transparency in exports, and improving security of arms stockpiles and destruction of excess. These measures, taken together, form the core of a regime that, if accepted by all countries, would greatly mitigate the problems we all have gathered here to address.
There are, however, aspects of the draft Program of Action that we cannot support. Some activities inscribed in the Program are beyond the scope of what is appropriate for international action and should remain issues for national lawmakers in member states. Other proposals divert our attention from practical, effective measures to attack the problem of the illicit trade in SA/LW where it is most needed. This diffusion of focus is, indeed, the Program's chief defect, mixing together as it does legitimate areas for international cooperation and action and areas that are properly left to decisions made through the exercise of popular sovereignty by participating governments:
-- We do not support measures that would constrain legal trade and legal manufacturing of small arms and light weapons. The vast majority of arms transfers in the world are routine and not problematic. Each member state of the United Nations has the right to manufacture and export arms for purposes of national defense. Diversions of the legal arms trade that become "illicit" are best dealt with through effective export controls. To label all manufacturing and trade as "part of the problem" is inaccurate and counterproductive. Accordingly, we would ask that language in Section II, paragraph 4 be changed to establish the principle of legitimacy of the legal trade, manufacturing and possession of small arms and light weapons, and acknowledge countries that already have in place adequate laws, regulations and procedures over the manufacture, stockpiling, transfer and possession of small arms and light weapons.
-- We do not support the promotion of international advocacy activity by international or non-governmental organizations, particularly when those political or policy views advocated are not consistent with the views of all member states. What individual governments do in this regard is for them to decide, but we do not regard the international governmental support of particular political viewpoints to be consistent with democratic principles. Accordingly, the provisions of the draft Program that contemplate such activity should be modified or eliminated.
-- We do not support measures that prohibit civilian possession of small arms. This is outside the mandate for this Conference set forth in UNGA Resolution 54/54V. We agree with the recommendation of the 1999 UN Panel of Governmental Experts that laws and procedures governing the possession of small arms by civilians are properly left to individual member states. The United States will not join consensus on a final document that contains measures abrogating the Constitutional right to bear arms. We request that Section II, para 20, which refers to restrictions on the civilian possession of arms to be eliminated from the Program of Action, and that other provisions which purport to require national regulation of the lawful possession of firearms such as Section II, paras 7 and 10 be modified to confine their reach to illicit international activities.
-- We do not support measures limiting trade in SA/LW solely to governments. This proposal, we believe, is both conceptually and practically flawed. It is so broad that in the absence of a clear definition of small arms and light weapons, it could be construed as outlawing legitimate international trade in all firearms. Violent non-state groups at whom this proposal is presumably aimed are unlikely to obtain arms through authorized channels. Many of them continue to receive arms despite being subject to legally-binding UNSC embargoes. Perhaps most important, this proposal would preclude assistance to an oppressed non-state group defending itself from a genocidal government. Distinctions between governments and non-governments are irrelevant in determining responsible and irresponsible end-users of arms.
-- The United States also will not support a mandatory Review Conference, as outlined in Section IV, which serves only to institutionalize and bureaucratize this process. We would prefer that meetings to review progress on the implementation of the Program of Action be decided by member states as needed, responding not to an arbitrary timetable, but specific problems faced in addressing the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons. Neither will we, at this time, commit to begin negotiations and reach agreement on any legally binding instruments, the feasibility and necessity of which may be in question and in need of review over time.
Through its national practices, laws, and assistance programs, through its diplomatic engagement in all regions of the world, the United States has demonstrated its commitment to countering the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons. During the next two weeks, we will work cooperatively with all member states to develop a final document which is legitimate, practical, effective, and which can be accepted by all nations. As we work toward this goal over the next two weeks, we must keep in mind those suffering in the regions of the world where help is most desperately needed and for whom the success of this Conference is most crucial.
----
Doctor: Rebels Torture U.N. Workers
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Congo-Torture.html
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- Rebels in northern Congo captured and tortured five health workers taking part in a U.N.-sponsored polio vaccination campaign, health officials said Wednesday.
The five -- all Congo citizens -- were taken into custody Monday by Rwandan-backed rebels in Equateur province, a program administrator there, Dr. Jean la Grace Kongonde, said in a message to the United Nations.
Rebel fighters detained the health workers in a village near the town of Ikela, tortured them, and moved them to another village nearby the same day, Kongonde wrote.
The doctor appealed for help from the U.N. military mission in Congo. U.N. mission help ``is essential,'' he wrote.
The five workers' whereabouts Wednesday were unknown.
U.N. officials in Congo's capital, Kinshasa, said they were trying to learn more.
The ``rebel group says that the team of vaccinators did not have authorization to be in that region,'' said Lt. Col. Urs Casparis, a U.N. military spokesman.
Thousands of health workers fanned out across Congo, Republic of Congo, Angola and Gabon this month for a massive polio immunization campaign sponsored by the United Nations and World Health Organization.
Vaccine teams also were blocked over the weekend at Congo's border with Angola, Congo Health Minister Mashako Mamba said.
Angolan rebels in the area refused to let the health workers through, Mamba said.
Organizers had appealed to combatants in Congo and Angola to let the health workers through with vaccine for 15 million children.
The United Nations and WHO have called the vaccine program in Central Africa essential to the goal of eradicating polio worldwide.
Six nations are at war in Congo, with rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda combatting a government-allied force representing Congo, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia.
On April 26, six Red Cross workers were killed in an ambush of their car in territory belonging to Uganda-backed rebels. It was the deadliest single attack on the Red Cross in five years.
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Pentagon: No mercy for the B-1B
By LIBBY QUAID
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, July 11, 2001
http://www.texnews.com/1998/2001/local/bone0711.html
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon apparently will grant no reprieve from its plan to reduce the nation's B-1B bomber fleet, contrary to what Kansas lawmakers say the Air Force told them.
Air Force Secretary James Roche told Sen. Pat Roberts during a Tuesday meeting that there would be no delay in plans to mothball one-third of the B-1 fleet, a move that would retire the supersonic planes at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kan.
The secretary contradicted Monday's announcement by Roberts, Sen. Sam Brownback and Rep. Todd Tiahrt that the Air Force would wait at least 16 months to pare the fleet. Roberts, Brownback and Tiahrt insisted there was no mistaking what they heard. The plan to pare the B-1 fleet includes taking eight of the 40 B-1s at Dyess Air Force Base.
Abilene city leaders have diligently followed the daily B-1 saga since the cuts were announced two weeks ago.
"Our primary concern is to work with the Air Force while they go through this and protect Dyess' interests," said Frank Puckett, chairman of Abilene's Military Affairs Committee.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wants to retire 33 of the 93 planes in the fleet, including the 18 flown by Air National Guard units in Georgia and Kansas. The proposal would consolidate the fleet at a South Dakota base and at Dyess. Under Rumsfeld's plan, the savings from the downsizing would be reinvested in B-1 upgrades.
Abilene officials are unsure whether the 32 B-1s that would be assigned to Dyess would receive full funding for crews, parts and flights. Of the 40 bombers at the base, 30 have full funding.
Congress and President Bush still must approve the plan.
Still unchanged is the Kansas lawmakers' intention to try to keep the bombers permanently at McConnell. The Senate was expected to vote this week on an amendment by Roberts and others to a defense spending measure that stalls any reduction during the current fiscal year.
Tiahrt spokesman Chuck Knapp said an official told the congressman before and during Monday's meeting that "this would then extend implementation possibly until 2003, which would give you 16 to 18 months."
"Somebody has been dishonest," Knapp charged, "or they've changed their mind in a span of less than 24 hours."
The official was Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Joseph H. Wehrle, who along with other Pentagon officials met Monday at the base with lawmakers and community leaders.
An Air Force spokesman did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Tuesday.
Wehrle met with Dyess and Abilene leaders Friday.
Roberts blamed the reversal on miscommunication.
"We have one Air Force general saying one thing and the secretary of the Air Force saying another," Roberts said. "This is all the more reason the proposed move of the B-1s from McConnell must be halted while it is studied by Congress."
The Air Force secretary said the Pentagon intends to move in fiscal 2002, which begins Oct. 1. But the secretary said the Air Force wants to use all of 2002 to restructure the B-1 bomber fleet.
"I think it was just a misunderstanding on fiscal as opposed to calendar year, but it's a fairly major distinction," said Roberts' chief of staff, Leroy Towns.
As for the promise that the Kansas Air National Guard would get another airplane if the bomber is cut, Towns said, "that's a feeble assurance."
"They have not talked any specifics," Towns said.
Reporter-News military writer Sidney Schuhmann contributed to this report.
----
Navy plans for Texas bombings unpopular
July 11, 2001
By Hugh Aynesworth
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010711-46787975.htm
SARITA, Texas -- Folks are abuzz in this remote town some 60 miles south of Corpus Christi at the prospect that the U.S. Navy might lease 220,000 acres just east of here for a bombing test facility.
Some are pleased, figuring the Navy's presence would mean millions in revenues and a much more viable economy for the whole area. But a majority appear to be up in arms at the possibility of a south Texas area replacing Puerto Rico's Vieques island, which the Navy has promised to vacate in May 2003.
Those taking a dim view include Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, GOP Gov. Rick Perry, Republican state comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander, operators of the famed Kenedy Ranch and several environmental groups. "Never seen these people all on the same side before," said Dan Brewster, a rancher from near Hebbronville, south of here.
Another unusual alliance is between the Sierra Club and commercial fishermen in the area, both of whom fear military maneuvers would devastate shrimp stocks.
When the proposal first was mentioned a few weeks ago, many in this area spoke strongly in favor of the Navy venture, including Democratic Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz. Then Mrs. Hutchison said that if the locals did not want the facility, she probably would not back it. Mr. Perry said he was "deeply troubled" by the project, and Mrs. Rylander announced plans to sponsor an economic study.
The area is one of the most sparsely populated areas in Texas, and its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico obviously impressed the Navy. This town, the Kenedy County seat, has only a few square blocks and fewer than 30 residents. Only 414 live in the entire county. Riviera, about 10 miles to the north in Kleberg County, has 1,064 persons.
One Navy proposal calls for three surface approach corridors over Padre Island National Seashore, one of the world's longest undeveloped barrier islands. Troops would board amphibious vehicles that would take them from ships in the Gulf of Mexico across Padre Island and onto the mainland training area as shipboard weapons lobbed shells ahead of them.
Jock Whitworth, superintendent of the Padre Island national park, said the Navy had not officially contacted him about the project. Mr. Whitworth said he felt that land vehicles moving over the island would affect not only the natural vegetation and any habitats of endangered species and other wildlife but also would affect the "natural sound levels" of the seashore and birds, "which national parks are here to preserve."
On Friday, the foundation that controls the vast Kenedy Ranch just east of Sarita came out strongly against the Navy plan and sent letters to President Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney and other leading politicians. "It has become quite apparent," said foundation vice president E.B. Groner, "that the local community is overwhelmingly opposed to the suggested proposal."
The foundation and the John G. Kenedy Jr. Charitable Trust together own more than 400,000 acres in this area of Texas. About 40,000 acres of the proposed 220,000-acre site the Navy covets would be sliced out of those lands.
"We felt this was an area of concern, being so close to Sarita," said Kenedy County Judge J.A. Garcia Jr., who helped conduct a special meeting Friday. "I think the foundation was sensitive to the residents of Sarita and also the county. I didn't hear from anyone who was for it."
Some original proponents have either changed their stances or become mute on the issue. "As soon as commissioners' court said what they did that body voted strongly against it last week also as far as I was concerned it was dead," said Corpus Christi Mayor Loyd Neal.
"It isn't that we dislike the military," said county commissioner Tobin Armstrong, 77, a World War II veteran and husband of former U.S. Ambassador Anne Armstrong. "We're all patriots. We love this country."
Navy officials, however, seem undaunted by the citizenry's semirevolt. "We are still interested in South Texas as a potential range. We have not pulled it from consideration," said Lt. Cmdr. Joe Navratil, a spokesman for Adm. Robert J. Natter and the Atlantic Fleet, which oversees the Puerto Rican test facility. Mr. Navratil added, in a telephone interview with the San Antonio Express-News last week, that "if it is determined that south Texas should be pursued, we are very confident that we can accommodate the economic, environmental and community priorities and concerns." He also said this was only one of several sites still being considered.
Dan Meaney, treasurer of the Kenedy foundation board, said there had been many offers in the past to sell off part of the vast ranch and he wondered what might happen to the charitable foundation if the government condemned it and took it.
Another ranch, the San Pedro, one of the county's largest employers, is also on the proposed bombing site. With rich ore deposits and its cattle-raising potential, the lands are worth hundreds of millions.
Within shouting distance of the proposed bombing facility is the Lebh Shomea House of Prayer -- a remote 1,100-acre homestead where those connected with the Oblate Order go to meditate for weeks or months at a time. Father Francis Kelly Nemeck, who has headed Lebh Shomea for decades, says such use of this land "saddens me so very much. It flies in the face of silence, and solitude and communing with God and nature."
Environmentalists plan a three-day beachfront protest against the Navy plan Aug. 17 to 19 on Padre Island.
----
Military leaders favor closing bases
July 11, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010711-21258376.htm
Leaders of the military branches yesterday heartily endorsed President Bush's proposal to close more bases worldwide, including bases in U.S. communities where a defense facility means jobs and economic health.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the president already had endorsed what would be the fifth round of base closings since 1988 in submitting the fiscal 2002 defense budget to Congress on June 27.
The chiefs' endorsement yesterday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee virtually assures that Congress this year will create a new, bipartisan commission to recommend a politically distasteful list of bases to be closed.
Under four previous commissions, three in the post-Cold War era, the law was written so Congress could only accept or reject the panels' picks. In all four cases, Congress swallowed the medicine and let the Pentagon close scores of bases and smaller facilities, putting constituents out of work.
The Pentagon projects billions of dollars in long-term savings, money that is badly needed to replace aging aircraft and equipment worn out in a busy decade of peacekeeping and regional wars.
"The Air Force is overbased for the force structure we have today," testified Gen. Michael Ryan, the branch's chief of staff, answering a pointed question from committee Chairman Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat.
"We think that we can save significant amounts of money in the out years with a base closure," Gen. Ryan said, estimating the Air Force has saved $5 billion from previous shutdowns. "So we emphatically support base closure."
Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations, said his service already has consolidated operations at its big bases. But he said some support facilities could be closed.
"I've always believed that one of the fundamental principles we should follow is that we shouldn't pay a nickel for a structure we don't need," he told the committee.
Added Gen. Eric Shinseki, Army chief of staff, "The Army has excess capacity that we've carried, and we believe that a [commission] would help adjust that."
The Clinton administration repeatedly asked a Republican-run Congress to approve a new base commission in the late 1990s. But Republican lawmakers refused, still angry over the Clinton White House's attempts to meddle in a commission process that is supposed to be free of politics.
After White House aides unsuccessfully lobbied the 1995 commission to change its list of 79 closures, it in effect subverted the final product by funneling work to two depots that were supposed to close in voter-rich Texas and California.
Mr. Clinton took the unusual step of attacking the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, whose members the White House appointed and whose chairman was a former Democratic senator.
"There has been a calculated, deliberate attempt to turn this into a political thing and to obscure the real economic impact of their recommendations in San Antonio and California, which were made solely so they could put back a lot of other things," an angry Mr. Clinton said before grudgingly accepting the closure list.
Republican defense staffers on Capitol Hill say that before Congress approves another closure round, they will want assurances that a new commission will be immune from such political attacks and meddling.
In presenting a $328.9 billion Pentagon budget to Congress on June 27, Mr. Rumsfeld said the administration wants a 25 percent reduction overall in the number of facilities, producing $3.5 billion in savings annually.
One base that may be a prime candidate for abandonment is the Navy facility at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico. Mr. Bush has decided the Navy must leave its coveted training ground on Puerto Rico's Vieques island. If Congress does not block Mr. Bush's decision, the Navy may have little reason to keep open Roosevelt Roads.
"We absolutely need Roosevelt Roads if we're in Vieques," Adm. Clark testified yesterday. "And if we're not in Vieques, it raises the question about how we put the whole structure together to train, organize, develop and deploy a task force. My posture is if I don't need structure to get the task done, well, then my recommendation would be to not be supporting that kind of investment."
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Army to Create Brigades in 4 States
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Army-Brigades.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army is creating quick-strike combat brigades in four more states as part of the Pentagon's post-Cold War strategy of making the service nimble enough to ship thousands of troops anywhere in the world in a matter of days.
Current brigades in Hawaii, Alaska, Pennsylvania, and at Fort Polk, La., will be transformed into so-called Interim Brigade Combat Teams, according to Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. One quick-strike combat was set up a year ago in Washington state to test the concept.
The new locations are to be announced Thursday by Army Secretary Thomas E. White and Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki.
``Where the brigades are going to be stationed will support our emerging national strategy,'' said Army spokesman Maj. Tom Collins, adding that the focus is on the Pacific.
Pentagon officials have said they need to shift more attention to that part of the world. And citing the potential for conflict between Taiwan and mainland China, a recent Pentagon sponsored-study suggested the United States expand its military presence on the Pacific island of Guam and consider asking Japan for use of its southernmost Ryukyu islands as a staging base.
Formation of the first Interim Brigade Combat Team started in late 1999 and the unit for more than a year has been training at Fort Lewis, Wash., developing tactics, techniques and procedures for future brigades. Formation of a second is under way in Washington, and Thursday's announcement of plans to form four more between now and 2003 would bring the number to six, Collins said.
The brigades are part of an Army transformation that its chief architect, Shinseki, believes will finally break the Cold War mold and shape what is the world's most powerful land force into a more nimble and responsive force.
The brigade in Fort Lewis has been experimenting with ways of maneuvering on the battlefield without today's huge tanks, using the Canadian version of a light armored vehicle. It has contracted for its own similar vehicles and expects to receive them in 2003.
The new fighting units consists of some 3,500 troops each. They are called ``interim'' because they are only a stepping stone to Shinseki's ultimate objective of converting the Army into a force capable of moving a combat-ready brigade anywhere in the world within four days and a force three times that size within five days.
Pennsylvania's brigade will be made up of three battalions of the 56th Brigade of the 28th Infantry Division of the Army National Guard. There are 20 companies from throughout the state that are part of the brigade.
The Fort Lewis brigade is expected to be ready for deployment in the spring of 2003. It is be trained and equipped for the full spectrum of military operations, from peacekeeping to combat.
It costs about $1 billion to form one of the units, Collins said.
Details on the brigades in other states were not immediately available.
Associated Press writer Carolyn Skorneck contributed to this report.
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F-22 Tests Get More Expensive
Air Force Wants Congress to Remove Cost Cap on Fighter
By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 11, 2001; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42735-2001Jul10?language=printer
The Air Force wants Congress to remove a cost cap on the F-22 fighter-plane program because the price of developing the technologically advanced jet keeps rising, and testing is falling further behind schedule.
Holding the Lockheed Martin Corp. program to a limit on development costs -- imposed by Congress in 1997 -- could lead to cutting corners in testing, Air Force acquisitions chief Darleen Druyun told the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on airland forces yesterday.
The cap, around $18.9 billion, was raised by $307 million this year to cover a four-month delay in testing caused when Lockheed Martin delivered several aircraft late. Druyun said yesterday that testing is another four months behind schedule; instead of being completed in December 2002, it will run at least until April 2003.
The Pentagon's acting chief weapons tester, Lee H. Frame, told the subcommittee that the delay could even last until the end of 2003. He, too, urged the panel to eliminate the cost cap so there will be no temptation for Lockheed Martin to scrimp on testing.
Flight testing with experimental versions of the plane will protect future pilots' lives and prevent the manufacture of flawed aircraft, Frame said.
The radar-evading F-22 Raptor, the Air Force's top new weapons priority, is a twin-engine superjet designed to replace the F-15.
There is a separate cap on the cost of building the 339 planes the Air Force wants to buy, and that price -- $37.6 billion -- also is going up. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), the subcommittee chairman, said an independent Pentagon review board has projected an overrun of $9 billion.
Druyun said the Air Force estimates the potential overrun at $2 billion and said the difference arises because the review board did not give full credence to attempts to reduce costs.
She blamed much of the cost increase on the program's hundreds of suppliers and subcontractors. They are discouraged by uncertainties such as the threat of cuts from the strategic military review being conducted by the Bush administration, Druyun said.
"Subcontractors are losing faith in this program. . . . They will not make any [cost-cutting] investments in this program" because they don't believe they will benefit, Druyun said.
She added that new Air Force Secretary James Roche has ordered the department to take a fresh look at costs and find ways to make more accurate projections, she said.
A spokesman for Lockheed Martin said yesterday that the company is working with the Air Force on the cost issue and noted that the planes being tested at Edwards Air Force Base in California are exceeding technical expectations.
Lieberman took pains to point out that he supports the F-22 program and seemed to agree with the notion that the cost cap should not be allowed to interfere with full testing of the technology. But he did ask if Roche's study would consider one sure way to hold down costs: buying fewer planes.
It won't, Druyun said.
-------- OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Moveable power plants to turn fat into electricity
NETHERLANDS: July 11, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=11511
AMSTERDAM - Roaming power plants the size of large trucks may soon be drawing up at rubbish dumps and market gardens to turn fat and muck into energy, if Dutch independent oil group Petroplus' plans succeed.
Petroplus said yesterday its majority-owned unit Qlear had developed a small and moveable biomass power unit which will be able to process materials such as frying fat. The systems have the size of a transport container and can produce about 6,000 megawatt hours (MWh) per year, sufficient to supply electricity to more than 2,000 households.
Qlear's Chief Executive Paul West told Reuters that his firm would target energy companies, food firms, destruction companies and market gardeners in particular to sell the new product.
The systems can be installed within a week and can process more than 1,500 tonnes of frying fat, animal fat or vegetable oil per year. They also produce hot water.
The units will be sold at prices ranging from 500,000 to 800,000 euros ($427,700-$684,300). West said a buyer could recover his investment and the fuel costs within three years, also because of Dutch tax benefits on using bio-energy. He declined to give a sales forecast for the new product. Petroplus said the "Qlear Processing System" could make a contribution to Dutch and international efforts to cut greenhouse effects and diminish the amounts of waste materials.
Qlear, which is 52 percent owned by Petroplus but operates at arm's length, specialises in durable energy and water purification projects. Its Vapour Processing System, which converts polluting vapours into electricity, is already used by clients in the Benelux countries, Britain and Germany.
--------
INTERIOR DEPARTMENT PROMOTES ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ON PUBLIC LANDS
July 11, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-11-09.html
WASHINGTON, DC, The Department of the Interior will host a summit this fall aimed at expanding renewable energy production on public lands.
"To further the priorities of Congress and the President, I'll bring state and local officials together with industry leaders and other citizens for a renewable energy summit this fall," said Interior Secretary Gale Norton. "The historic summit will focus on maximizing wind, solar and geothermal energy production on public lands."
Norton announced the summit this morning at a press conference on Capitol Hill.
"Enhancing production of renewable energy is important for energy stability and a healthy environment. For example, with low emission levels and availability in public lands in the West, geothermal energy provides an excellent opportunity to reduce our dependency on foreign oil," said Norton, noting that 47 percent of U.S. geothermal energy is produced on public lands.
"With cooperation and partnerships, our geothermal production can increase," added Norton. "The Department will begin to work immediately with renewable energy leaders and government officials to finalize a date and a place to hold this important summit."
Norton also announced the Bush Administration's support for HR 2436, the Energy Security Act, introduced by Representative James Hansen, the Utah Republican who chairs the House Resource Committee.
"President Bush's energy policy will keep our economy moving forward with good jobs and protect our environment," said Norton.
Environmental groups oppose the Energy Security Act, which calls for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and other environmentally sensitive public lands that are now off limits to oil and gas development.
The bill would also allow the oil and gas industry to seek federal reimbursement for application costs associated with drilling on public lands, as well as for the costs of mandatory environmental compliance for oil, gas and geothermal development.
"Americans want affordable energy and a clean environment, both of which can be achieved through a balanced national energy plan," said Alyssondra Campaigne, legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "But the Hansen bill is a payback to the energy industry, which shoveled millions into Republican campaign coffers last year. Our energy policy should not focus on padding industry profits at the expense of environmental protection."
-------- energy
Support Builds for EPA Proposal
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-EPA-Cabinet.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday endorsed the idea of creating a permanent position in the Cabinet for a secretary of environmental protection.
A bill introduced by Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., would rename the Environmental Protection Agency and elevate its administrator.
Bush would sign the legislation if it were to pass because the Cabinet status would lend ``justifiable recognition'' to the agency's importance, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
Under the proposal, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman would become secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection. She would not have to be confirmed again by the Senate.
``It will enhance her stature. It will underscore the importance of what she's about and will give her equal status with the Cabinet officers she has to deal with everyday,'' Fleischer said.
Boehlert said the United States is the only industrialized nation whose top official on those issues lacks formal standing as a minister or Cabinet member.
Boehlert and other lawmakers, including Democrats and senators, have tried for more than a dozen years to have the EPA put into the Cabinet. The measure typically has failed, Boehlert said, because colleagues used it to attach controversial provisions and pet projects.
In 1994, for example, the House voted not to consider the bill unless members could put provisions on it that would limit the agency's authority. The bill languished.
Bush's father, former President Bush, supported the idea in 1990 when he said changing the EPA to an Environment Department with Cabinet status would ``help influence the world's environmental policies.''
Federal law envisions 14 Cabinet secretaries. In addition, each president may designate any number of other agencies or offices as ``Cabinet-level,'' which Bush has done with the EPA.
--------
House GOP Starts Work on Energy Bill
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Congress-Energy.html?searchpv=aponline
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Republicans began crafting a scaled-back energy package Wednesday, hoping to pass the bill by August, even as some GOP members complained they had lost momentum because the White House was focusing on other issues.
With four committees considering various energy proposals, Republicans said they plan to assemble an energy bill by next week that likely will require automakers to boost the fuel economy of popular sport utility vehicles and allow drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge.
Both issues are highly controversial. Senate Democrats have vowed to block any Arctic refuge drilling.
Lawmakers already have signaled a distaste for some of the Bush administration's energy production proposals. The House voted last month to ban -- at least through 2002 -- any new oil and gas drilling on pristine federal acreage in the West and to prohibit the administration from selling new oil leases in the otherwise off-limits eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The Senate was expected Wednesday to vote on whether to follow the House lead in prohibiting new energy development in large areas of the West put under protection by former President Clinton as federal monuments.
President Bush's high-profile release of his energy blueprint May 17 assumed swift action on Capitol Hill. However, the momentum for broad, comprehensive energy legislation has dissipated in recent weeks, partly because gasoline and natural gas prices have eased and California's power problems have to some extent been brought under control.
The energy bills in the House focus mostly on modest measures on which there is bipartisan agreement. Proposals on power plant and transmission line siting, streamlining environmental regulations for refineries and power plants, and broad electricity industry restructuring have been put off for later.
Much ballyhooed Bush proposals to expand oil and gas development on public lands also have been largely shelved for the time being in the wake of the House votes, except for the issue of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
A provision to allow drilling in the refuge is expected this week to emerge from the House Resources Committee, but even its sponsors question whether there are enough votes to keep it in the bill.
It will be ``obviously the most controversial part of the bill,'' said Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., who supports refuge development. ``We will have a good debate on it.''
Some Republicans, including Tauzin, said the White House should be doing more to keep energy issues a top priority as the energy ``crisis'' atmosphere of a few weeks ago begins to disappear.
``The administration has said from day one it wanted to get the budget done first, wanted to get tax cuts second, and wanted education done third, and wanted patients rights ... I happen to think that energy deserves a higher ranking,'' said Tauzin, who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee crafting one of the principal energy bills.
Still, he vowed to win passage of the scaled back package before Congress begins a monthlong recess in August.
The legislation before Tauzin's committee includes measures to spur use of clean coal technologies at power plants and ease problems for refineries as they make seasonal changes in gasoline blends. It extends licensing periods for nuclear power plants. It also includes a string of conservation measures from requiring the government to use more efficient air conditioners to new efficiency standards for televisions, ceiling fans and vending machines.
As introduced Wednesday, however, the bill makes no mention of increasing the motor vehicle fuel economy standards, or CAFE, which environmentalists have argued should be tightened significantly to save energy.
``Substantial increases in CAFE standards would be the single most effective action we could take to control gas prices, avoid drilling in sensitive wilderness areas and enhance energy security,'' argues Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., predicting a likely floor fight over the issue.
Tauzin said compromise language to increase the CAFE requirements will be added to the bill. But Waxman said the GOP proposals will in all likelihood not go far enough.
Federal CAFE standards, which mandate fuel economy requirements for vehicle fleets, have not been increased since their introduction in 1975. Under the current rules, passengers cars must meet a fleet average of at least 27.5 miles per gallon and small trucks, SUVs and minivans 20.7 mpg.
-------- environment
JEFFORDS ASSUMES CHAIR OF SENATE ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE
July 11, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-11-09.html
WASHINGTON, DC, Senator Jim Jeffords, whose departure from the Republican Party handed power to Senate Democrats last month, has been officially named as the new chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Jeffords told the "Associated Press" that his first priority as the committee's head will be to address global warming pollution.
"There's a real perception among all the people of this world that we need to do something about the pollution or else this world is going to change rapidly," Jeffords said. "The urgency is pretty evident now."
The Senator, now registered as an Independent but voting with the Democratic caucus, plans to hold hearings next month on his proposed legislation to clean up U.S. energy supplies. Jeffords' Clean Energy Act would create incentives for coal fired power plants to switch to alternative energy sources and mandate tight new emissions standards for carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
The proposal runs counter to the energy policies of the Bush Administration. During his campaign last year, President George W. Bush pledged action to cut emissions of four air pollutants from power plants, including carbon dioxide.
But after he took office, Bush said he would not seek mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, the administration's long term, national energy plan calls for increased use of coal and other fossil fuels in power plants, and reduces funding for alternative energy sources and energy efficiency.
Bush has also told America's European allies that the U.S. will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement calling for reductions in emissions of all greenhouse gases.
During a meeting Tuesday between Senator Jeffords and British Ambassador Christopher Meyer, Jeffords promised to try to influence President Bush to continue negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol.
"I assured him I was going to do my best to make sure we were able to work with the European Community in handling these problems," Jeffords told the "Associated Press."
----
Criticism and Support for Rules on Clean Air
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/11/national/11ENER.html
CINCINNATI, July 10 - Energy companies complained today that they could barely replace a turbine blade or boiler pipe without inciting regulatory scrutiny so onerous that it threatened their ability to light homes and fuel automobiles.
Environmentalists argued that federal regulators had only recently begun enforcing a decades-old law designed to limit harmful air pollutants from old power plants and that any relaxation would cause thousands of premature deaths.
Those clashing views were expressed repeatedly today as opposing groups sought to influence the Bush administration's review of whether clean air rules unnecessarily impede energy production. President Bush ordered the review by the Environmental Protection Agency in May. It was among the most sensitive initiatives in his energy strategy because it affects one of the broadest and most complex environmental enforcement actions in years.
At issue are environmental rules known as New Source Review, part of the Clean Air Act of 1977. The regulations require that power plants, refineries and other sites that generate air pollution receive permits - and potentially agree to install pollution controls - before undertaking major renovations. The Clinton administration sued several major utilities, accusing them of skirting the rules.
"The way the E.P.A. is interpreting these rules is creating havoc with electrical generation around the country," said Paul King, an executive of the Cinergy Corporation, an Ohio utility that has been under legal pressure from federal regulators to clean up coal-fired power plants. "We could be producing more electricity, but the current mishmash of regulations ties our hands."
Mr. King and a half-dozen other industry representatives testified here at the first of four public hearings. Many said the Clinton administration had reinterpreted the rules in a confusing and arbitrary way that inhibited even routine maintenance and upgrades, some of which they say would reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and other airborne pollutants.
"The perverse result of the E.P.A.'s reinterpretation of this rule is that our environment is being damaged because people are not improving their units," said Marc Racicot, the former governor of Montana who was a spokesman for the Bush campaign during the Florida recount.
Mr. Racicot represented a coalition of electric utilities that want to redefine and limit New Source Review. He said that the enforcement initiative could result in the loss of 6,000 to 12,000 megawatts of generating capacity at a time when parts of the country face electricity shortages. One megawatt can power 1,000 homes on an average day.
That view has received a sympathetic hearing from the Bush administration, which has expressed concern that some environmental rules and "not in my backyard" attitudes make it hard for the industry to meet demand for electricity and gasoline. Industry officials say they are hopeful that the 90-day review will end with a regulatory overhaul.
But environmental groups have begun a national campaign to protect what they call a vital tool to control emissions from old coal-fired power plants, which are heavy polluters. Supporters of the Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement campaign outnumbered opponents at today's hearing.
"I am outraged that the agency is considering a proposal to weaken enforcement," said Glen Brand, who represented the Midwest chapter of the Sierra Club. "The only problem with these rules is that they are not adequately enforced."
Several people cited statistics released today by the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group, which said that the 51 power plants subject to New Source Review enforcement contribute to the premature deaths of 5,500 to 9,000 people each year, many from respiratory diseases. Those mostly coal-fired plants also cause as many as 170,000 asthma attacks annually, most of them avoidable if plants installed the latest pollution controls, the study concluded.
The environmental agency will hold public meetings on its review in Sacramento on Thursday; in Boston on July 17 and in Baton Rouge, La., on July 20.
-------- genetics
Scientists Create Scores of Embryos to Harvest Stem Cells
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/11/health/genetics/11CELL.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, July 10 - Breaking a taboo against creating human embryos expressly for medical experiments, scientists at a Virginia fertility clinic have mixed donated eggs and sperm to derive embryonic stem cells, the primordial cells at the crux of a national debate over federal research funding.
The experiment was conducted at the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, Va., a privately financed clinic that pioneered in vitro fertilization in this country.
It is not a major scientific advance, experts say, because stem cells have already been isolated from frozen embryos that were no longer wanted by the couples who created them to have children.
But the work will undoubtedly have political ramifications because it comes as President Bush is weighing whether taxpayers should finance research on embryonic stem cells. That delicate question pits patient advocates, who say the cells hold promise for treating disease, against abortion opponents, who object because the embryos, which they regard as nascent human life, are destroyed.
Dr. William E. Gibbons, who oversaw the work at the Jones Institute, said the procedure offered several advantages over using frozen embryos. Donors were informed of the research goal before the embryos were created - "the purest way to obtain the highest quality of informed consent," he said - and received psychological and medical evaluations. In addition, younger egg donors could be used, possibly yielding more robust embryos.
He also said several ethics panels had approved the work, but declined to name the ethicists involved.
"We're not trying to make people mad," he said, noting that the next step was for the scientists to use the cells to study treatments. He added, "We opened the door up" to ethical scrutiny.
Abortion opponents denounced the experiment today; one called the work "ghoulish." The research also drew criticism from some medical ethicists and leading stem cell researchers who worried that it would hurt their cause.
"I am a bit perplexed by this," said Dr. John Gearhart, who researches stem cells at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "You will hear none of the scientists who are involved in this work talk about making embryos to destroy them in any way. We don't think it's necessary."
Experts in academia and industry said the experiment might be the first time in the United States that a human embryo had been created solely for research. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, which represents the fertility clinics, has said creating embryos would be morally justifiable in certain cases.
"It is not inappropriate," said Dr. Michael Soules, an infertility expert at the University of Washington who is the society's president. But he added: "Their timing could not have been worse."
Stem cells, extracted from microscopic embryos, have the ability to grow into any cell or tissue in the human body. Scientists say they may someday be used to repair or replaced damaged tissue or organs. But Congress has imposed a ban on federal financing for research involving human embryos.
The issue before Mr. Bush is whether to make an exception to that ban so that taxpayers could finance studies on cells derived from frozen embryos that would otherwise be discarded. The experiment by the Jones Institute, which is affiliated with the Eastern Virginia Medical School, would fall outside such an exception, because no federal money was involved.
The experiment is reported in this month's issue of Fertility & Sterility, a journal published by the reproductive medicine society. It was led by Dr. Gary Hodgen, an infertility researcher who is perhaps best known for using in vitro fertilization to screen embryos for genetic disease.
For the stem cell experiment, Dr. Hodgen and his colleagues selected 12 women who had already volunteered as egg donors and two men who had volunteered as sperm donors. The women, who were given hormone injections to increase their egg production, were paid the institute's customary fees for egg donation, $1,500 apiece. The men were paid the customary sperm-donor fee of $50.
The donors have been kept anonymous. Dr. Gibbons said all were told that their gametes would be used for research, and not to conceive a child. The experiment resulted in three new variants, or lines, of stem cells. But Dr. Gibbons said the researchers did not know if the cells would be of any greater therapeutic benefit than those already in existence.
"We haven't asked that scientific question," he said.
The scientists retrieved 162 eggs from the donors; when those eggs were fertilized in the laboratory with the sperm, 110 embryos resulted. Of these, 50 grew for six days to become blastocysts - clusters of 100 to 300 cells that, if they could be seen with the naked eye, would look only like a particle of dust. The researchers successfully extracted stem cells from 18 blastocysts. Ultimately, the three new stem cell lines were created.
The Jones Institute began its experiment in 1997, a year before Dr. James A. Thomson, a developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin, made headlines by becoming the first person to isolate embryonic stem cells.
Dr. Thomson said today that while it was theoretically possible that newly created embryos would yield superior stem cells, he believes that "the promise of embryonic stem cell research can be achieved without having to create embryos."
There are thousands of human embryos in frozen storage at infertility clinics around the country. In a 1999 report on the ethics of stem cell research, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission said that while an embryo should not be accorded the rights of a full person, it did deserve "respect as a form of human life." John Robertson, a professor at the University of Texas law school who heads the reproductive society's ethics committee, said he was impressed with the care the institute took in thinking about whether to go forward with the work.
But Patricia A. King, a bioethicist at Georgetown University, said that in her view, the Jones Institute gave too much consideration to the rights of the gamete donors, without enough regard for the embryo.
"I know the argument that you get better embryos," she said. While she favors the right to abortion, she added, "I think the early embryo is not nothing. I don't think of it as just tissue. And I think in terms of keeping a consensus about controversial research, it is important that science proceed in a way that does the least damage ethically."
In 1994, Ms. King sat on a panel that examined embryo research for the National Institutes of Health. The panel concluded, over Ms. King's objections, that creating embryos for certain experiments might be justifiable. President Clinton immediately distanced himself from the report, and the recommendations led to the current Congressional ban.
Despite the debate over federally financed stem cell research, even some ardent opponents of abortion say they favor the studies as long as the embryos used would otherwise be discarded. Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, holds this view, as does Connie Mack, the former Republican senator from Florida. This is the justification that Dr. Thomson, of Wisconsin, provides for his own work.
But abortion opponents said the new research demonstrated flaws in that line of thinking.
Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the secretariat for pro-life activities at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the work was unconscionable, and "crosses a very important line in terms of treating life merely as an instrument for others."
And Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee who called the experiment ghoulish, said: "Those who have advocated destructive embryonic stem cell research have been assuring people and assuring President Bush that they only want to kill the so-called leftover embryos. This report shows how phony those assurances are."
Experts say that, in the future, there may be reason to create human embryos to derive stem cells - not for research, but for treatment, so that a person suffering from a disease could be treated with cells that are an exact genetic match. Such embryos would be created using cloning technology, an issue that is itself hugely controversial. Congress is considering a ban on such work.
How, and whether, the Jones Institute experiment will affect Mr. Bush's decision and the cloning debate remains to be seen. Some believe it may create a backlash against the work. But a coalition of patients and scientists in favor of embryonic stem cell research say it simply illustrates the need for the government to be involved.
"This research demonstrates the urgent need for federal oversight," said Lawrence Soler of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, a patient advocacy group that is leading the coalition. The diabetes group today began a series of television and newspaper ads to promote the benefits of stem cell research. But, Mr. Soler added, "Federal oversight will only come hand in hand with federal funding."
--------
Gains Expected From Genetic Research
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Genome-Future.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Humankind stands on the verge of a new era of breakthroughs in treating disease thanks to the sequencing of the human genome, scientists told lawmakers Wednesday.
``The promise of this research is great for alleviating human suffering,'' said Dr. Francis Collins, director of genome research at the National Institutes of Health.
``If research continues to proceed vigorously, we can expect medicine to be transformed dramatically in the coming decades,'' Collins told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services.
Scientists have identified the chemical sequence of most of the human genome, the set of instructions in every cell that organizes the body. Now they are working on learning what each of those chemical instructions does and what happens when it is copied incorrectly.
While Collins and other researchers painted the future in glowing terms, they were joined by 13-year-old Joe Kindregan of Springfield, Va., who has a rare but progressive disease and hopes their work will pay off soon.
Actor Ben Affleck, who met and befriended the youngster, joined the panel to urge added federal funds for genetic research in general and, in particular, the deadly disease ataxia-telangiectasia that the Virginia boy and about 600 youngsters in the country have.
In researching diseases, ``it's important to remember that there is a human cost. ... They're real people undergoing real suffering,'' Affleck said.
The youngster's situation is emblematic of hundreds of thousands of people with disorders that do not make the headlines, Collins said. He recalled being part of a team that discovered the faulty gene that causes the disease.
Now scientists need to find out why that gene causes the problems it does when it is not working properly, he said, adding that there may be more people studying the disease than suffering from it.
The disease causes a loss of muscle control, predisposes youngsters to cancer and damages their immune systems.
Overall, the panel of scientists had good news. Collins, for one, foresees family doctors testing for a variety of genetic abnormalities and prescribing treatments to prevent development of disease.
For example, he reported, scientists have identified the gene causing a rare blood disease called hereditary hemochromatosis, which causes dangerous levels of iron to accumulate in the blood.
``Once people are identified by genetic testing they can easily be treated by periodically removing some of the blood,'' Collins said in prepared testimony. It's a combination of one of science's newest diagnostic tools with one of its oldest treatments, bloodletting.
Philip Needleman, chief scientist at the drug company Pharmacia, told the subcommittee that genetic research ``isn't something far off in the future. It happens now.''
Researchers are studying the causes of Alzheimer's disease, he said, and are on the trail of treatments for colon cancer.
Stephen Rich of Wake Forest University said multiple genes interact with the environment in the development of Type 1 diabetes. If doctors can screen people to find those at risk, they can develop ways to prevent the onset of disease.
-------- human rights
Rights Leaders Urge Powell to Attend U.N. Racism Conference
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/11/international/11RACE.html
UNITED NATIONS, July 10 - A group of American civil rights leaders is pressing Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to go to a United Nations conference on racism and discrimination this summer to make a strong showing for the United States at a time when the Bush administration has been withdrawing from some international activities.
In a letter sent to Secretary Powell on Monday, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a broad coalition of 180 civil rights and human rights groups, asks him to aid "the global effort to eradicate the vestiges of racism, root and branch."
The letter urges him to lead a strong delegation to the conference in Durban, South Africa, which starts on Aug. 31, and to give the conference more generous support than the $250,000 budgeted by the Clinton administration before it left office.
The executive director of the leadership conference, Wade J. Henderson, said in an interview that there were several reasons to view the conference and a high-level American delegation as important.
"We're asking the secretary to lead the delegation, because we feel that his presence itself is a signal to the rest of the world the importance that the United States places on this conference," Mr. Henderson said, "and that there is a global agenda."
Some voices in the administration and private groups in the United States have questioned whether the United States should attend, contending that the agenda is unbalanced and incendiary.
Secretary Powell said on June 20 in a Senate hearing that issues like viewing Zionism as racism and compensation for slavery could derail the conference.
State Department officials said no decisions on participating had been made, although the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, has met twice with Secretary Powell on the issue.
Some United Nations officials fear that the United States may not attend at all or may send a low-level delegation. Private American rights groups will be out in force, however, at a parallel unofficial conference, also in Durban.
"Powell's presence could help to influence the U.S. delegation to participate with a more open mind," Mr. Henderson said. For civil rights leaders, he added, "this is an important opportunity to try to use the U.N.'s stage as a way of reflecting back on what the United States both said and did in policies related to race. We want to use the international forum as a way to address our domestic agenda."
The planning for the meeting, formally the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, has already caused disagreements within and among various countries, including within the American government, human rights groups and United Nations officials said.
Nations have repeatedly failed to produce an agreement on what the conference aims should be.
In preparing an agenda and a declaration for the conference, some countries have sought language that others see as thinly veiled references to Israel that echo the anti-Zionist language of some United Nations documents of the 1970's.
Wording that was ultimately approved by planners is still provocative to some countries. One provision states, "Theories of superiority of certain races and cultures over others promoted and practiced during the colonial era continue to be propounded in one form or another even today." That rankles in some Western capitals.
In Africa and among some African-American organizations, there is pressure to concentrate the conference on seeking repayment for colonialism and reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Secretary General Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian, has cautioned against making the conference a rehash of history rather than an examination of current problems.
In Lusaka, Zambia, on Monday, he told a meeting of African leaders, "While Africa and Africans have suffered terribly in the past few centuries from slavery and colonialism and people of African descent still suffer discrimination in many societies, we cannot hide the fact that today some of our own societies are also disfigured by ethnic hatred and violence."
He said the conference should produce "a document that looks unflinchingly at every society in the world" and "builds on the past but does not become a captive of it."
Mr. Henderson and Karen K. Narasaki, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, part of the leadership conference, said in interviews the broad scope of their coalition - encompassing groups that represent women, minority groups and gay and disabled people, among others - gave them standing at the conference with an equally broad array of foreign human rights groups.
For example, the coalition has a close relationship with organizations of untouchables, known as Dalits, in India, who fear they could be barred from traveling to Durban by the Indian government, which contends that the scope of the conference does not cover their interests.
The Dalit leader, Martin Macwan, a recipient of two American human rights awards, works closely with the leadership conference, Mr. Henderson said. "The rubric of `related intolerance,' it seems to us, incorporates them," he added.
Ms. Narasaki said the diversity of her consortium and the larger leadership conference also reflected a successful marriage between civil rights and human rights interests.
"We know the Department of Justice, and the human rights agencies know the State Department, where we have a lot less experience," she said. "Because of the breadth of our coalition, we have expertise on every issue."
--------
Report to rate war on human bondage
July 11, 2001
By Bruce I. Konviser
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010711-11862106.htm
PARIS - The U.S. State Department will soon release its first review of how effectively the countries of the world are combating trafficking in human beings, Rep. Christopher H. Smith said yesterday.
The report, which is nearly six weeks late, will be one of the first tangible byproducts of a new law sponsored by Mr. Smith, New Jersey Republican, aimed at dramatically changing the world's attitude toward trafficking of people.
Mr. Smith was in France this week, taking his case to legislators from the 55-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
During public hearings and in closed-door meetings, Mr. Smith aggressively lobbied to bolster law-enforcement efforts to catch and harshly punish traffickers.
"Go back and look at your laws," he told the delegates. "We'll continue to look at our laws. We need to close the net to rein in traffickers and put them out of business."
He also urged his fellow legislators to set up treatment centers for trafficked women, who usually are exploited for purposes of prostitution, saying they need to be treated as the victims they are, rather than criminals.
U.S. legislation signed by President Clinton in October authorizes $95 million over two years for bolstering law-enforcement efforts and setting up assistance centers.
The OSCE concluded its 10th annual Parliamentary Assembly yesterday - having overwhelmingly endorsed Mr. Smith's resolution on "combating trafficking in human beings."
Mr. Smith, one of the leading voices in Congress on human rights, also met with French legislators Monday to express outrage over a new law cracking down on religious sects.
"This law is the harbinger of a wave of intolerance," Mr. Smith was quoted as saying. "It seriously undermines religious freedom."
The French legislation, which was passed on May 30 with a strong consensus in parliament, significantly increases the judicial arsenal against religious sects.
It was a direct response to sects such as the Order of the Solar Temple, a group that lost 58 members in mass suicides in Switzerland and Canada between 1994 and 1997.
It seeks to protect those who might be seduced by sects by creating, for example, an offense called "abuse of a state of ignorance or situation of weakness." That offense is punishable by three years in prison as well as a fine.
The law also allows courts to disband sects seen to have committed abuses.
It was fiercely opposed by the Church of Scientology, which has long had a contentious relationship with the French government. France keeps the group on a list of more than 170 monitored for so-called "cult" activities. Scientology is seeking recognition as a legitimate religion in Europe.
Mr. Smith, speaking Monday to reporters at the National Assembly, repeatedly criticized the law's "vagueness" and "intolerance."
He said he had a strained meeting with the law's authors, Deputy Catherine Picard and Sen. Nicolas About, who essentially told him it was a French internal affair.
"In a mature democracy that prides itself on human rights, this is disappointing and discouraging," he said, citing fears that the French law could serve as an example for other countries like Russia and China.
•This article is based in part on wire service reports.
-------- imf / world bank
Seoul Defends Itself Against I.M.F. Criticism
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By DON KIRK http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/11/business/worldbusiness/11KORE.html
SEOUL, South Korea, July 10 - The official charged with overseeing Korea's financial industry defended the government's record today against criticism that it unwisely pressured Korean banks to extend credit to troubled companies.
Lee Keun Young, chairman of the Financial Supervisory Commission, responded angrily to criticism from Stanley Fischer, the International Monetary Fund's second-highest official, of the government's role in approving huge loans.
Mr. Lee said the I.M.F. official demonstrated a "misunderstanding of the situation" when he said in a visit here Monday that the government should get out of the financial sector and "stop guaranteeing things front, right and center."
Even though the government owns a majority stake in most banks, said Mr. Lee, "there is a clear distinction between management and ownership" and "decisions are based on the banks' own interests."
Mr. Lee's remarks put the government in the position of confronting the I.M.F., which has itself been a target of criticism since it pieced together a rescue package of $58.5 billion at the height of the Asian economic crisis in December 1997.
The issue of credit to floundering companies is important here because the economy is coping with falling exports and a declining stock market exacerbated by difficulties in the United States and Japan, Korea's largest trading partners.
In Tokyo today, Mr. Fischer, the fund's first deputy managing director, called for "a more expansionary monetary policy that would lower the value of the yen," making it easier for Japanese companies to export, bringing money into Japan and improving the economy of the region by increasing imports.
In Korea, Mr. Fischer saw "a conflict between the government as owner and the government as supervisor" of the banks. That remark appeared as a rebuke of Mr. Lee, who also serves as governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, set up in 1999 to oversee a banking system mired in nonperforming loans.
Mr. Lee, talking to journalists, said that loans to debt-ridden Hyundai companies, including Hynix Semiconductor and Hyundai Engineering and Construction, were based on "decisions by relevant banks."
He also defended the failure to sell SeoulBank, which the government took over in the economic crisis. Although the I.M.F. had set the sale of SeoulBank as a condition of its 1997 rescue plan, he said, "there is lack of interest with investors." Mr. Lee said he had granted a three-month extension to SeoulBank while it pursued what may be its final opportunity in current negotiations with Deutsche Bank (news/quote).
The government would also "look for ways to sell the government stake" in other banks through a "gradual process."
--------
IMF Considers $1.6B Loan for Turkey
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-IMF-Turkey.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The International Monetary Fund's board will consider a $1.6 billion loan installment for Turkey on Thursday after the government took steps to meet conditions for obtaining the funds.
Horst Koehler, the IMF's managing director, announced the session Tuesday.
The board meeting, which had been set for July 3, was postponed because the government had not fulfilled IMF requirements to reform the banking system and name nonpolitical appointees to the board of Turk Telekom, the state-owned monopoly that is slated for privatization.
The World Bank, the IMF's sister institution, followed suit, postponing a $1.7 billion loan to Turkey.
On Tuesday Turkey's banking regulatory board announced it was seizing control of five private banks for insolvency and failing to comply with new banking regulations.
Troubles in the banking sector were widely seen as the main cause of a financial crisis in February that led to massive layoffs and a plunge of more than 50 percent in Turkey's currency.
Turkey had promised to reform and sell off or liquidate the banks in return for an IMF loan package worth $15.7 billion to help the country out of the crisis.
Turk Telekom increased its board of directors from seven to nine Tuesday to meet the IMF demand and later named two directors with private sector experience to those positions.
--------
WTO bid will require overhaul of economy
July 11, 2001
By Colin Barraclough
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010711-5628127.htm
LONDON -- Iran, bastion of Islamic militancy and fierce opponent of the United States as the "Great Satan" dominating global trade flows, is poised to throw in its hand with the devil.
On July 18, the Islamic clerics who rule Iran will learn at an international summit in Qatar whether they have made progress on their application to join the World Trade Organization.
Membership in the trade body would have a huge impact on Iran's economy and its relations with its neighbors, most of which have already applied to join the WTO.
But diplomats say Iran will have to surmount a number of hurdles before its application is accepted.
Iran's centrally-planned economy lumbers under the weight of a cumbersome state sector protected by high import tariffs. The government subsidizes fuel and food, controls prices, and retains a complex multitiered exchange rate, all of which could run afoul of WTO free-trade rules.
Most such protections would have to go, but the regime's revolutionary rhetoric makes it reluctant to accede to international institutions.
Even if the WTO accepts Iran as a candidate for membership, it will likely take years before the reformist government of President Mohammad Khatami could overcome entrenched domestic business interests -- and their clerical patrons -- to achieve full membership.
China first applied to the WTO's predecessor 14 years ago and is just now nearing full membership.
To cap it all, the United States has long opposed Iran's membership, and the U.S. government has a big say in who's on the invitation list.
Washington accuses Iran of sponsoring terrorism and maintains trade sanctions against the country.
Since the Islamic republic quietly submitted an application for WTO membership in 1996, U.S. objections have limited Iran to observer status at the trade body's sessions. The WTO General Council has not even been able to discuss Iran's application for membership.
Earlier this year, however, a group of developing countries led by Egypt agreed to sponsor Iran's application, ensuring that it won a preliminary hearing in May. To no one's surprise, the United States again opposed the bid, but Egypt's persistence has ensured the issue will be back on the WTO agenda July 18.
This time, the United States may be willing to listen.
President Bush is planning a major review of U.S. sanctions policy and has hinted that he would like to see American oil firms more heavily engaged throughout the Middle East.
In May, his ambassador to the WTO, Rita Hayes, said the Bush team was reviewing its position on Iran's application.
Even if Iran's candidacy is accepted, WTO rules allow the United States to declare that it doesn't consider the agreement to apply to U.S.-Iranian trade, a reservation the United States already employs against Fidel Castro's Cuba.
Diplomats say that Iran's attempt to join the international trade group is not as outlandish as it seems. In May, its parliament passed a long-awaited foreign investment law and ratified a bill to enforce international arbitration awards, both basic requirements for WTO membership.
Iran has also modified its regulation of copyright and trademark law to meet international standards.
WTO supporters in Tehran are opposed by a coalition of leftists who favor a state-run economy, conservative merchants and hard-line isolationists, as well as by managers in Iran's state-owned enterprises who fear foreign competition.
In May, Mahdi Tabatabei, a member of Iran's parliamentary budget committee, issued an outspoken attack on the country's membership bid.
"Since Iran can neither quantitatively nor qualitatively compete with other industrial countries in the production sector, it cannot afford to join the WTO," he said.
Behind the economic thinking lies a deeper, political fear. Iran's reformist leaders, like China's, see the WTO bid as a lever to accelerate domestic reforms and, more important, break the continued hold of unelected clerics and officials on Iranian policy-making.
In particular, they are keen to loosen the grip on the economy of the "bazaaris," Iran's traditional import-export merchants who exert considerable influence on the conservative clergy, and the "bonyad," the vast Islamic charities whose aggressive business practices have extinguished competition in almost every sector of Iran's economy.
-------- police / prisoners
Attorney general tightens supervision of FBI
07/11/2001
USA Today
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/july01/2001-07-11-fbi.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General John Ashcroft, following up on promises of change after the FBI evidence problem in the Timothy McVeigh case, has given a Justice Department office responsibility for investigating problems in the bureau.
In a statement Wednesday, Ashcroft said responsibility for investigating problems at both the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration will be handled by Justice's inspector general.
The change gives the inspector's office the same authority to investigate misconduct allegations against employees of the FBI and DEA that it has had with respect to all other components of the Justice Department. The inspector general's office is the agency's internal watchdog and looks into alleged waste, fraud and abuse.
Previously, the FBI's and DEA's offices of professional responsibility had primary jurisdiction over allegations of misconduct against FBI and DEA employees.
Under that system, the inspector general could exercise jurisdiction over such allegations only if the attorney general or deputy attorney general issued such an order in individual cases.
The FBI failed to produce to lawyers for McVeigh some 4,000 pages of documents in connection with the April 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
The explosion killed 168, including 19 children. McVeigh was convicted of the crime and was executed June 11 at a federal prison facility in Terre Haute, Ind.
McVeigh initially had been scheduled to die by injection on May 16, but Ashcroft postponed the execution at the time to allow McVeigh's attorneys time to examine the previously withheld evidence.
----
Miami's 'Teflon cop' fired for planting gun on suspect
By José Dante Parra Herrera
Miami Bureau, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
July 11 2001
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/miami/sfl-dteflon11jul11.story?coll=sfla%2Dnews%2Dmiami
MIAMI· If there ever was a Teflon cop, Miami Police Officer Jesus "Jesse" Agüero was it.
He has been criminally indicted twice, and twice he has been acquitted. His personnel records show dozens of citizen complaints, yet he managed to work his way to elite units in the department. He was even fired once for allegedly sexually assaulting a prostitute, but the city's Civil Service Board reinstated him.
On Tuesday, Agüero was fired for the second time.
This time, prosecutors and the top brass at the department hope it is for good. Agüero, a 16-year veteran, was accused of planting a gun on a homeless man in Coconut Grove in 1997 after one of his colleagues shot the man in the leg. The man was unarmed. Agüero was accused of stealing the gun from a suspect his unit arrested during a drug raid months earlier.
"This is not a message for the good officers in the department who are the vast majority, but for those few bad officers, whoever they are, that this [behavior] will not be tolerated," said Miami Police Chief Raul Martinez.
Agüero, 38, could not be reached for comment, but his lawyer, Harry Solomon, pointed out that a Miami-Dade County jury acquitted his client this year on charges that he planted the gun. Two other officers involved won on a mistrial, but Agüero is expected back in court in October on charges that he stole the gun.
In addition to that court date, a federal grand jury is investigating the Coconut Grove case, dubbed the "Grove Throw Down," along with at least five other shootings in which officers are suspected of planting guns or manipulating evidence to justify shootings.
Agüero is at the center of another of those shootings, which happened on the Interstate 395 extension connecting Interstate 95 with Miami Beach in 1995. In that case, Agüero and other officers shot two robbery suspects in the back. He told investigators one of the suspects was facing him and pointing a gun at him. Agüero fired 22 times. But the Miami-Dade medical examiner ruled the suspect was shot in the back, and at least one of the guns found on the suspects wouldn't fire.
"I've talked with a lot of guys in different ranks, and they feel it is time to let him go," said Capt. Miguel Exposito, who investigated Agüero in the prostitute case.
With that case in 1988, Agüero's troubles began gaining notoriety in the department. He allegedly picked up the prostitute on Biscayne Boulevard and forced her perform sexual acts on him. The prostitute identified Agüero and Internal Affairs investigators found napkins containing seminal fluid that later matched Agüero's DNA. Because of that case, then-Police Chief Calvin Ross fired Agüero in 1992. But the following year the city's Civil Service Board gave Agüero his job back, and he was assigned to the elite Crime Suppression Team.
As that case was winding through the system, in late 1988 several Miami police officers beat to death suspected drug dealer Leonardo Mercado in the Wynwood neighborhood. Agüero allegedly became involved in the cover-up to justify the death. At one point, Agüero wrote the name of a homicide investigator in the Mercado case on a cardboard piece and used it as a target in the firing range, records show.
A federal grand jury eventually indicted several officers, including Agüero, who was charged with obstruction of justice, intimidating witnesses and giving false statements. In 1994, a federal jury acquitted him.
But that did not end his troubles. The case that got him fired Tuesday took place two years later as a team of officers was coming back from a drug sting in Coconut Grove.
Officers Oscar Ronda and Rolando Jacobo were driving along Grand Avenue when they saw a homeless man standing over another man and pointing something at him. Ronda jumped out of the car and pulled his gun, screaming at Daniel Hoban, the homeless man, to drop it. Ronda suddenly fired, hitting Hoban on the leg, court records show.
When Hoban's supposed victim realized what happened, he screamed: "You shot my friend."
Hoban had a Walkman, not a gun, in his hands.
The next few frantic moments have become fodder for the media as panicking officers asked for "the sock," police slang for a throw-down gun. The officer who allegedly came through was Agüero, who drove the gun to the scene from the department. Other officers formed a human shield around him so investigators a few yards away would not see as Agüero placed the gun on the ground, and Jacobo kicked it under a car, Jacobo said.
Another officer was charged with getting rid of the Walkman.
But Hoban and the victim claimed he did not have a gun. Fire-rescue personnel also said they did not see a gun, only headphones hanging around his neck. Other witnesses also claimed they never saw a gun, and the case began unraveling.
Jacobo was eventually convicted on perjury charges and sentenced to one year. While in jail, he decided to testify against Agüero. Despite that, Agüero was acquitted this year in state court.
Martinez said the standard of guilt is higher in criminal court than in an administrative process. He said there was more than enough evidence to fire Agüero, and a panel of officers who reviewed the case agreed.
Trudy Novicki, chief assistant state attorney for special prosecutions, said while Martinez's decision does not help her in the upcoming trial against Agüero, she is very pleased with the decision.
"It's great news," she said. "He was a real blemish on the department."
But Solomon, Agüero's lawyer, thinks the firing is almost tantamount to double jeopardy.
"The man was acquitted by a jury of his peers," Solomon said. "I don't know why we have a judicial system if we don't abide by its findings."
José Dante Parra Herrera can be reached at jparra@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5005.
-------- spying
Court Starts Retrial of Russian
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Treason-Trial.html?searchpv=aponline
MOSCOW (AP) -- The espionage retrial of military journalist Grigory Pasko opened Wednesday in Russia's Pacific port of Vladivostok, with a list of 31 new witnesses, a defense lawyer said.
Pasko is accused of divulging state secrets on the combat-readiness of Russia's Pacific Fleet to Japanese media. But his supporters say the case is retaliation for his sharply critical environmental reporting, which included a story on the Navy's dumping of radioactive waste into the Sea of Japan.
Judge Dmitry Kuvshinnikov summoned 28 Russian witnesses and three Japanese reporters who are now outside Russia, lawyer Anatoly Pyshkin said. The reporters worked for Japan's state-run NHK television and the Asahi newspaper, for which Pasko wrote as a free-lancer, according to Pyshkin.
The court, closed to the public because of the secrecy charges, is expected to start hearing witness testimony July 23.
The judge also ordered experts to establish the authenticity of Pasko's voice in phone conversations recorded by security agents and to determine whether the classified documents in the case were indeed secret.
Pasko is one of several Russian whistle-blowers and researchers recently accused of espionage for passing allegedly classified information to foreigners. Arms control researcher Igor Sutyagin is currently on trial in the central Russian city of Kaluga on charges of spying for the United States.
In Pasko's first treason trial in 1999, he was sentenced on lighter charges of abuse of office and was freed immediately under a general amnesty. Seeking a full acquittal, Pasko appealed the verdict -- but so did prosecutors, insisting that he was a spy.
The Supreme Court in Moscow sent the case back last year for trial by a different judge.
Pasko, who quit his previous job as a reporter for the Pacific Fleet newspaper Boyevaya Vakhta, or Military Watch, faces between 12 and 20 years in prison if convicted.
--------
U.S. Professor to Be Tried in Beijing on Spying Charge
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/11/international/11TRIA.html
SHANGHAI, July 10 - The Chinese government confirmed today that an American business professor accused of spying for Taiwan would go on trial in Beijing on Saturday.
The trial will not be open to the public, but an American diplomat and interpreter will be allowed to observe, said a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Zhang Qiyue.
The professor, Li Shaomin, was arrested in February after traveling to the mainland from Hong Kong, where he taught at City University of Hong Kong. He is one of at least six Chinese-born scholars with ties to the United States who have been arrested for spying over the past year. China has said that Mr. Li confessed to being a spy.
Mr. Li, a naturalized American citizen who has a Ph.D. from Princeton, is expected to be found guilty at the trial because such charges rarely advance to the point of court proceedings unless the government is sure of the verdict. But it is also likely that he will be expelled from the country after his conviction because of the attention his case has received in the United States.
Relations between the United States and China are just recovering from their worst crisis in years, which began with the April 1 collision between an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter over the South China Sea. In a telephone conversation with China's president, Jiang Zemin, last week, President Bush asked that Mr. Li and several American residents being held in China be sent home.
The arrests of the scholars are part of a larger, recent pattern of increasing intolerance - some say paranoia - by China toward dissent or any public discourse that challenges the wisdom of the Communist Party.
Many of the country's most outspoken editors have lost their jobs, and several publications have been shut down in the last year. Scholars at the Academy of Social Sciences say they are under increased surveillance by the country's security forces. And Western journalists are also under increased surveillance. Last month, one of China's harshest critics of corruption, He Qinglian, fled to the United States saying she feared imminent arrest.
It is not clear why the government is on heightened alert, although in a recently published speech Mr. Jiang accused Western countries of using "ideological infiltration" to break up the Soviet Union and warned that they were trying the same thing in China.
-------- terrorism
Ashcroft: U.S. Terrorism a Priority
New York Times
July 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Ashcroft-Terrorism.html?searchpv=aponline
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General John Ashcroft said the Justice Department is working to forge new tools to combat terrorism on domestic soil -- a threat he calls the agency's top priority.
Ashcroft said he is also paying special attention to security preparations at potential targets, like the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
``We must be vigilant about the prevention of attacks utilizing weapons of mass destruction,'' Ashcroft said at a conference on domestic terrorism held by the National Governors Association on Wednesday. ``We must be prepared to mitigate the damage to human life and property should our worst fears come true.''
To deal with bomb threats, Ashcroft said the National Institute of Justice is preparing response guidelines and terrorism response equipment.
He said the institute is funding development and assessment of protective gear for bomb technicians, incorporating material that is resistant to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear agents.
Ashcroft also said that, in the case off an attack like the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, federal agencies must be ready to work with local emergency officials.
``We all know that the first people on the scene in such a crisis are state and local emergency responders,'' Ashcroft said. ``The FBI must work with state and local officials, in consultation with the governor, to best utilize the vast array of federal, state and local resources on hand.''
Ashcroft touted the FBI's ability to subvert terrorist attacks.
Between 1980 and 1999, the FBI recorded 327 incidents of terrorism, he said. ``During that same period, 130 planned acts of terrorism were prevented by U.S. law enforcement.''
The Justice Department is no longer the lead agency in dealing with emergency response to successful terrorist attacks. President Bush created umbrella office on terrorism to coordinate the government's response in May.
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