------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Bush and Putin Agree to Tie U.S. Missile Shield Plans to A-Arms Cuts
Joint Statement on Nuclear Arms
Lost: Uranium, Plutonium, Tractors, cranes, buildings
Chernobyl exposé scientist is jailed.
French Arrest Men With Uranium
US to Ditch Korea's Weapons Integration
Air Force Turns 747 Into Holster For Giant Laser To Drill Missiles
Bush, Putin Discuss Missile Defense
Missile Defense Issues
A World Seeking Security Is Told There's Just One Shield
Global fallout possible from missile defense activation
Divers Begin Cutting Hull of Kursk
U.S. - Russia Arms Glance
Report: Staff Cuts Lead to Lab Woes
Audit Blames Budget Cuts Under Clinton for Lab Errors
Hanford projects continue to fuel dramatic boom in home construction
House Defeats Motion to Help Downwinders
U.S. Differences With G - 8 Members

MILITARY
High-tech warfare
Nations Agree to Limit Sales of Illicit Arms
Macedonia: Albanians Broke Cease - Fire
Don't Reject the Germ Treaty Protocol
Albanian police get the hump over hemp crop scheme
Bush to Raise 'Private Army' in Drugs War
Army moles hunt Israeli troops linked to terror
Russia's Eventual Place in NATO
Puerto Rico Tests Vieques Meat

OTHER
How Coal Got Its Glow Back
In Baltimore, Toxic Scare Abates
Negotiators Aim to Rescue Climate Pact
Helping Those Who Flee for Their Lives
Immigration Improvements
Figures About Recent Global Summits
Liberia Frees Political Prisoners
Overmatched by Technology

ACTIVISTS
3 jailed for Pentagon protests
Police attack against the Indymedia and GSF centre RIGHT NOW
Second Day of Protest Rocks Genoa
'Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg'
Captive Parents
Flagging Interest
Let's Get Some Gumption and Get the Vote
THE PROTESTERS
Protests Mark Falun Gong Anniversary


-------- NUCLEAR

Bush and Putin Agree to Tie U.S. Missile Shield Plans to A-Arms Cuts

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/international/22WIRE-PREXY.html?searchpv=nytToday

GENOA, Italy -- President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed Sunday to tie U.S. plans for building a missile defense shield to talks on reducing both nations' nuclear stockpiles.

The leaders expressed a shared desire to discuss both offensive and defensive options as a package.

"The two go hand in hand," Bush said at a news conference after their meeting on the sidelines of a global economic summit. He also said he wants a new accord to replace the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Bush described himself and his Russian counterpart as "young leaders who are interested in forging a more peaceful world."

Putin, speaking through an interpreter, said the announcement on linking offensive and defense weapons was "unexpected," and cautioned that neither country is ready to discuss details.

"We're not ready at this time to talk about threshold limits or the numbers themselves. But a joint striving exists," Putin said.

Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, will travel to Moscow from Kosovo on Tuesday to begin discussing what the Bush administration has described as a new security framework.

"We expect to move quickly," she told reporters. "We clearly want an aggressive schedule to see how quickly we may be able to sketch out an agreement."

Bush's stepped-up moves to build a missile defense shield -- which U.S. officials have said could violate the ABM treaty within months -- have divided U.S. allies in Europe and infuriated Russia.

Putin had said the United States did not adequately explain why it wants to scuttle the ABM treaty, which was meant to curtail the arms race through built-in vulnerability to nuclear attack.

Soon after he became president, Bush directed the Pentagon to consider further cuts in nuclear stockpiles, and has suggested he would be willing to go ahead with reductions without comparable cuts by Russia.

Moscow fears a U.S. missile defense system would prompt an arms race it could not afford, as well as disrupt international stability. Putin has sought to rally European opposition to the U.S. plan.

The United States has about 7,000 strategic nuclear weapons. Under the START II agreement with Russia, that number will fall to between 3,000 and 3,500. In 1997, President Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin agreed in principle that a follow-on treaty should drop the numbers to 2,000 to 2,500. Putin has suggested 1,500 warheads each would be adequate.

Putin said Bush shares with him a desire to "have large cuts in offensive arms, and together we are going to move forward in this direction."

Putin has said that if the United State dumps the ABM, Russia will tear up all other arms control agreements. He also has suggested that Moscow could respond to U.S. moves by fitting multiple warheads to its single warhead missiles.

Asked about that threat on Sunday, Putin said that if the new talks go well, "We might not ever need to look at that option, but it's one of our options."

Bush expressed hope that the United States and Russia would reach agreement. "We have agreed to find common ground if possible," Bush said. "I believe we'll come up with an accord. We'll work hard toward one."

In a joint statement, Bush and Putin said "major changes in the world" compelled them to link offensive and defensive measures. They said they had already found "strong and tangible" areas of agreement.

The two leaders also discussed the Kyoto global warming pact, which Bush opposes. Bush declined to answer whether the United States will present its new plan for reducing global warming at a fall international conference, saying only that U.S. officials were trying to develop an alternative strategy as quickly as possible.

Bush and Putin met inside the 16th century Palazzo Doria Spinola following their participation in the annual summit of the world's leading industrialized nations.

Sunday's meeting was their second session. The first came during an ice-breaking summit last month in Slovenia.

They are to meet again at Bush's Texas ranch this fall, and during a conference on the Asia-Pacific region in Shanghai, China.

---------

Joint Statement on Nuclear Arms

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Summit-Missile-Statement.html?searchpv=aponline

The text of a joint statement from President Bush and President Vladimir Putin on nuclear arms, issued Sunday at a summit of industrial nations:

We agreed that major changes in the world require concrete discussions of both offensive and defensive systems. We already have some strong and tangible points of agreement. We will shortly begin intensive consultations on the interrelated subjects of offensive and defensive systems.

-------- accidents and safety

Lost: [Uranium, Plutonium,) Tractors, cranes, buildings, even bodies
Others not immune to FBI-tis.

By Marc Schogol and Robert Zausner,
Sunday, July 22, 2001,
Philadelphia Inquirer
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/07/22/front_page/MISPLACE22.htm

How do you lose construction cranes? Or houses? Or four tons of uranium and plutonium? Or dead bodies?... In the public and private sector, said Tom Orlowski, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, "things like that happen all the time." ... In 1977, the federal government admitted that it had no idea what had happened to more than four tons of "closely guarded" uranium and plutonium used to make atomic weapons.

Also supposedly closely guarded was the 81 pounds of heroin New York City police recovered in the famous 1962 "French Connection" case. But 10 years later, authorities disclosed that 261 pounds of heroin - including the French Connection haul - and 137 pounds of cocaine had been stolen by officers from the police property clerk's office....

-------- europe

Chernobyl exposé scientist is jailed.
Lukashenko: dodging truth

July 22 2001,
Peter Conradi,
Sunday Times (UK)
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/07/22/stifgneeu03001.html

EASTERN EUROPE

A LEADING Belarussian scientist who tried to highlight the disastrous effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster on the health of the country's children has been sentenced to eight years in a labour camp.

The jailing of Yuri Bandazhevsky, the former dean of the medical institute in the southern city of Gomel, appears to be part of a long-running campaign by President Alexander Lukashenko to play down the consequences of the world's worst nuclear accident.

Lukashenko presides over arguably Europe's most repressive regime. Reviled in the West, he was accused by two top former officials last week of helping to set up a death squad blamed for the disappearance of four opposition politicians in the past two years.

Bandazhevsky was convicted by a military court, ostensibly of taking bribes in exchange for college admission. He denied the corruption charge but, under Belarussian law, has no right of appeal. His family fears for his health as jail food is virtually inedible and he is receiving no medical attention for a stomach ulcer.

Amnesty International and other human rights groups monitoring the case said his conviction was linked to work aimed at establishing the full extent of damage caused by Chernobyl.

Human rights campaigners say the catalyst for Bandazhevsky's arrest was a study of children close to Gomel, 80 miles northeast of the Chernobyl plant. It found that 80% of children who had been exposed to the highest levels of radiation had irregular heart rhythms and other cardiac disorders which, in many cases, proved fatal.

"He has been breaking new ground," said Solange Fernex, a former French MEP and head of a group campaigning against the conviction. "Nobody has been able to carry out the number of autopsies he has done to show the effect of radiation on people's organs."

Belarus was especially badly hit by the Chernobyl accident. As much as 23% of the land was contaminated by the radioactive cloud, and some 500,000 children and nearly 2m adults are believed to live in the worst affected areas.

Lukashenko, who took to the streets of Minsk earlier this month on inline skates for Belarus's independence day, ahead of a re-election battle in September, has urged the international community to help with the clean-up. At home, however, he has refused to acknowledge the extent of the damage caused.

Vasily Nesterenko, the director of the Belarussian institute for radiation security, said Bandazhevsky had been arrested soon after sending Lukashenko a letter complaining about the handling of the clean-up. "He was jailed because the health ministry does not like his findings," Nesterenko said.

-------- france

French Arrest Men With Uranium

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-France-Nuclear-Smuggling.html

PARIS (AP) -- Police arrested three men in Paris following the discovery of a tiny quantity of enriched uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons, according to a news report Sunday.

Police told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper that they had been tracking Serge Salfati, who had recently been released from prison after serving time for fraud. He led them last week to a van that French nuclear authorities determined was emanating radioactivity.

Inside, police found five grams of enriched uranium-235 encased in a glass bulb stored in a lead container, Le Journal reported.

Salfati, who is French, was taken into custody with Yves Ekwella and Raymond Lobe, both from Cameroon. Police said the men were holding the uranium as a sample for a potential buyer.

A spokesman at Paris police headquarters, reached by telephone, said no one was available to comment on the report during the weekend.

Police have opened an inquiry, and a judge has been assigned to the case. France's internal security agency is closely following the affair, the report said.

France's Atomic Energy Commission is studying the sample to find out where it originated. About 22 pounds of the radioactive substance -- about 2,000 times what was found -- would be needed to build a nuclear bomb, according to an engineer with the agency who was quoted in the article.

-------- korea

US to Ditch Korea's Weapons Integration If It Buys Non-US Aircraft in F-X Plan

Korea Times
July 22, 2001
By Kim Kwang-tae Staff Reporter
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/times/200107/t2001072217000240110.htm

The United States recently said that it would not help integrate U.S. weapons and cryptographic systems should Korea buy non-U.S. aircraft in its $3.3 billion next-generation fighter program, code-named F-X.

This could make it harder for Seoul to choose aircraft other than the U.S.- made F-15 jets for the F-X program, since integration is indispensable to enabling fighters to distinguish friends from foes and communicate with each other.

In a reply dated May 25 to a ROK Air Force inquiry via the Korean Embassy in Washington, Edward W. Ross, director for Middle East Asia and North Africa at the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), said, ``At this time, we can't respond positively to your request for Letters of Offer and Acceptance (LOAs) for the integration of various U.S. weapon systems on the Eurofighter-Typhoon, Rafale, or Su-35 fighter aircraft.''

The three fighters are competing with the F-15 for the Korean deal. LOAs are a document that the U.S. government issues for the sale of sensitive weapons to third countries.

The Korea Times was allowed to review the letter. A senior ROK Air Force official admitted that such an inquiry was actually made.

ROK military officials said that without the U.S. help in integration, ROK Air Force fighters couldn't distinguish friend from foe or communicate, and would, in the worst case, end up fighting each other.

``All other products except for F-15s need integration work for cryptographic systems and weapons since the existing ROK Air Force fleet is so integrated and needs to fly with U.S. fighters in the Korean theater,'' one official said.

Ross said in the letter that before he can approve any LOA for munitions, integration, or support packages for the Rafale or Eurofighter Typhoon, it would be necessary to address the full range of technology transfers and releasability on a weapon-by-weapon, platform-to-platform basis.

``This would be a lengthy process and in the end it is not possible to foresee which, if any, weapons might be approved,'' the DSCA director said.

Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. deputy secretary of defense, answered negatively to an inquiry by Rep. J. D. Hayworth of Arizona on the potential integration of the U.S.-made AIM-120 advanced medium air-to-air missiles (AMRAAM) with the French Rafale for potential sale in Korea.

``We have no plans to authorize the AMRAAM to be offered with, or integrated on, the French Rafale, or any other competitor, to meet South Korean fighter aircraft requirements,'' Wolfowitz said recently in a reply to the U.S. congressman.

This could be translated into added pressure on Korea to buy F-15s that will come fully integrated, industry experts said.

Meanwhile, Franscico Verge, representative of Eurofighter International in Seoul, said Eurofighter is fully integrated with U.S. weapons and cryptographic equipment. ``Years ago, at the development stage, we received U.S. clearance for integration,'' Verge said.

``We positively think that the issue concerning the cryptographic equipment will be worked out,'' said the official, adding that it is an issue that needs to be addressed by the buyer _ the ROK Air Force, not Eurofighter International.

Dassault, the French maker of the Rafale, also said it would be able to integrate U.S. systems with its fighter should Korea choose Rafale.

``We can smoothly integrate all technical aspects of American armament with the Rafale,'' said Yves Robins, vice president of Dassault's international relations defense.

Robins, however, stressed that Korea and the U.S. have to hold negotiations on the issue of integrating AMRAAM with the Rafale if Korea selects the French aircraft and wants integration with the U.S.-made missile.

``That's a bilateral problem between Korea and the U.S.,'' the vice president said. An AMRAAM is a key air-to-air missile for ROK and U.S.fighters.

-------- missile defense

Air Force Turns 747 Into Holster For Giant Laser To Drill Missiles

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 22, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27248-2001Jul20?language=printer

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - Within just two years, the Air Force plans to shoot down a Scud-type missile with a giant laser fired from a modified Boeing 747, a test intended to demonstrate the feasibility of missile defense in the "boost" phase shortly after launch.

Air Force Col. James Forrest, briefing reporters at a missile defense conference last week, said a 747 carrying a prototype laser is scheduled to begin test flights in February. In 2003, the laser is slated to attempt its first shoot-down, aiming from a distance of 200 miles at a missile breaking through the clouds at an altitude of about 40,000 feet, he said.

The $11.3 billion airborne laser program is an example of the futuristic weaponry that the Bush administration is counting on as it speeds up plans to develop missile defenses, despite opposition from Russia, China and European allies who fear a new arms race.

On one hand, the program faces rising costs, a highly optimistic timetable, international resistance and technical problems that remain to be tackled, much less overcome. On the other, it holds out a kind of military holy grail: the ability to knock down a missile while it is still over the territory of the enemy that launched it.

The administration's new missile defense plan calls for an experiment involving a space-based laser as early as 2008. Another futuristic test of a space-based "kill vehicle" could take place as early as 2005.

The airborne laser, fired from a ball turret in the 747's nose, is supposed to track and shoot at four short-range missiles almost simultaneously, since its beam moves at the speed of light.

"It's fast, it's precise, it's lethal," Forrest said.

The administration considers the airborne laser part of a "layered" approach to missile defense, which also would include interceptor rockets fired from silos in Alaska and ships at sea. If an enemy missile got through one layer, it could be stopped by the next.

The administration has also deemed the laser to be one of the promising systems, still under testing, that could be deployed in an emergency within four or five years to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles fired by so-called rogue states.

But Forrest said all the laser work has focused on intercepting only short-range missiles. "We haven't looked into the ICBMs," Forrest said. "That's beyond what our tasking is."

Other laser experts at the three-day conference here sponsored by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command said there did not appear to be insurmountable technological issues in using the laser to attack long-range missiles, assuming the airplane can get to within about 200 miles of the launch site.

Missile defense planners like the idea of intercepting a missile during boost, when infrared sensors easily can detect its superhot plume, it has not yet released decoy warheads, and it is under high stress, making it easier to destroy.

The modified 747 actually carries three lasers. The first calculates the length of a missile from nose to plume. A second finds the "sweet spot" of the fuel tank. And the third, a high-energy "chemical oxygen iodine" laser with a beam equivalent of 100,000 100-watt light bulbs, burns a hole in the rocket's hull.

"If we can blow the fuel tank up, we can kill the missile," Forrest said.

A report sent to Congress by the Pentagon's director of testing, however, has called the airborne laser a high-risk project facing significant technical challenges. "When compared to other major acquisition programs that are less complex, the 24-month full-scale development program is alarmingly short," the report said.

The report also questioned whether the laser could cope with countermeasures that adversaries might use to protect their missiles, such as hardening the rocket body. And it raised the issue of "atmospheric distortion," air turbulence that refracts and weakens a laser beam.

Because clouds would scatter a beam, defense analysts say the Boeing 747 would have to stay at about 40,000 feet and wait for missiles to break through cloud cover before shooting at them. In the meantime, the U.S. airplane could be vulnerable to antiaircraft fire or enemy jets.

Forrest, an F-15 pilot, expressed confidence that Air Force fighters could protect the modified 747. He also said the laser would have "deformable mirrors" designed to adjust the beam to compensate for choppy air.

Retrofitting the jumbo jet to house the giant laser, he noted, is the largest aircraft modification project Boeing has undertaken. Each of the laser's 14 modules is the size of a sport-utility vehicle.

Development of the laser prototype began in 1996 when Boeing, Lockheed Martin and TRW were awarded contracts for a $1.1 billion pilot project. The current cost estimate of $11.3 billion includes the eventual purchase of seven modified 747s.

Congress appropriated $234 million for the airborne laser this fiscal year, $85 million more than then-President Bill Clinton requested. Even so, the Air Force decided late last year that it needed an additional $98 million, prompting the three contractors to lend the government $60 million to keep the project moving.

Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, told Congress last week that the administration was requesting $410 million for airborne missile defense in fiscal 2002, which begins Oct. 1. Total missile defense spending for the year is pegged at $8.3 billion.

--------

Bush, Putin Discuss Missile Defense

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bush-Putin.html?searchpv=aponline

GENOA, Italy (AP) -- President Bush took his arguments for a national missile defense system before a resistant Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday during their second one-on-one meeting.

Bush and Putin met inside the 16th century Palazzo Doria Spinola following their participation in the annual summit of the world's leading industrialized nations. Clad in nearly identical dark blue business suits and slate-blue ties, Bush draped his left arm around Putin's back in a friendly gesture.

But beneath the chummy imagery lay sharp differences. The United States wants to proceed with plans to build a missile defense shield as soon as 2004, even though doing so would likely violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

The move divided the United States' allies in Europe and infuriated Russia. Putin said the United States has not adequately explained why the United States wants to scuttle the treaty.

``If the ABM treaty doesn't suit the U.S., then for what reason? There's no concrete answer,'' Putin said Saturday.

The leaders at the Group of Eight summit, in their final communique, made no mention of Bush's missile defense proposal.

Sunday's meeting was the second session for Bush and Putin. Their first meeting came during an ice-breaking summit last month in Slovenia.

Before the meeting, Putin expressed a desire to focus on economic ties, and the Bush administration also said it wants to emphasize investment and business cooperation with Russia rather than the large aid packages at the center of U.S.-Russian policy in the 1990s.

Moscow fears a U.S. missile defense system would prompt an arms race it could not afford, as well as disrupt international stability. Putin has sought to rally European opposition to the U.S. plan.

Beginning an expanded session that included aides, Bush and Putin bantered quietly about Bush's plans to leave Genoa for Rome and then Kosovo.

The two leaders sat at a table set before a bank of six alternating Russian and American flags. Bush teased photographers who sprawled on the red carpet to get a better angle on their handshake.

``President Putin asked me to get a picture of you all lying on the floor, and to have you autograph it for us,'' Bush said.

Putin and Bush are set to meet again at Bush's Texas ranch this fall, and during a conference on the Asia-Pacific region in Shanghai, China.

--------

Missile Defense Issues

New York Times
July 22, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/opinion/L22MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

To the Editor:
Boost-phase missile defenses have more flaws than those you discuss in a July 17 editorial.

Our interceptors would need to be based near enemy missile launching sites. Thus, defense against North Korea would likely require basing in the Sea of Japan, a vulnerable position. Interceptors could also be launched from Russia, but this would require Russian control over the system.

Boost-phase systems destroy the booster rocket, not the warhead, which can still detonate wherever it falls. The warhead will likely land on a third party. Will Russia agree to be host to a defense that will divert a warhead to Russian soil? Will France cheerfully accept the role of warhead sponge? Not likely.

Boost-phase defenses don't change the ultimate reality. Nonproliferation, arms reduction and better intelligence collection are the only solutions.

MICHAEL LEVI Washington, July 18, 2001

The writer is deputy director, Strategic Security Project, Federation of American Scientists.

To the Editor:
Re "Russia and China Sign 'Friendship' Pact" (front page, July 17):

Developing a limited missile defense system will not affect the strategic balance in the short term. But what the Russians fear is a rapid upgrade of the American system such that it could negate the Russian deterrent. Why must the Bush administration rush to do away with the Antiballistic Missile Treaty?

While most Americans support the deployment of a missile defense system, it is debatable whether such support would exist if more Americans were aware that $75 billion has already been spent to no result and that the administration plans to spend an additional $200 billion over the next 10 years. With a slush fund that large, we might be better off using the money to pay off the North Koreans, the Iranians and the Iraqis.

DAVID SIMON New York, July 19, 2001

--------

A World Seeking Security Is Told There's Just One Shield

New York Times
July 22, 2001
AMERICAN WAY
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/weekinreview/22WINE.html?searchpv=nytToday

MOSCOW-GEOPOLITICS needn't be mind- bending. Think of a centuries-long floating poker game in which the lead keeps changing hands, from Greece to Rome, Spain to Britain, France to Prussia. These days, one player not only holds the chips and a stack of i.o.u.'s; he has most of his rivals' clothes, too.

Now imagine that he wants to change the rules - a necessity, he insists, to keep things fair for everyone. What do you do?

If you are Russia, a nation clearly stripped to its geopolitical skivvies, you play your China card. Which is what President Vladimir V. Putin did last week, signing a friendship treaty with Beijing that mandates increased trade, peaceful borders and - pointedly - arm-in-arm opposition to any attempt to rig the Great Game.

In fact, Russia, China and, perhaps, a few European allies are starting to wonder if the United States wants to do just that.

Americans like to think of themselves as people who spurn empire - benevolent rulers who bestride the globe not by force but, darn it all, by popular demand. There is some truth in that: to an amazing extent, what is good for America has been good for the world.

Europe and Japan could hardly have been so prosperous and democratic without America, and both still turn to Washington for direction and security. Had not George W. Bush's father rallied the world in 1990, Iraq might today have a stranglehold on its oil. Russians owe their liberty to American resolve. And Bill Clinton even invited the Kosovo war's chief critic, Russia, into the force patrolling Kosovo after NATO won.

The question now is whether that happy confluence of American and global interests - the linchpin, in some ways, of its status as earth's first hyperpower - can continue. And at the core of that question, ironically enough, is the emerging foreign policy of President Bush - a policy reflected in his encounters with foreign leaders at the industrialized-nation summit these last few days, and in the reportedly successful test of a missile defense component a week ago.

It is still early. But the global consensus- building of Mr. Bush's predecessors so far has been muscled aside by a more barehanded pursuit of American interests. The new White House has all but scrapped the granddaddy of arms-control agreements, the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, as it pursues a missile defense, and it has revoked approval of the Kyoto pact to slow global warming. Mr. Bush is endorsing plans to push NATO membership to the Russian border over Moscow's objections.

The Pentagon is mulling a grand strategy shift that would curtail its global military presence - a comfort to European and Asian allies. Today's wars, the theory goes, can be waged from afar with missiles and bombers.

Most of these moves involve tossing out longstanding rules - about the balance of nuclear terror, the sanctity of treaties and so forth. The resulting outcry has become so pronounced that Mr. Bush was prompted last week to publicly deny Democratic charges that he is an isolationist.

In fact, the administration is not isolationist. Unilateralist, perhaps. That term traces a thread of conservative thought that argues that the United States must seize its moment of dominance not just to secure its vital interests, but to make democracy and capitalism the permanent global order.

Whatever the logic of that philosophy, it is unquestionably making old friends feel queasy and new ones impotent.

The Russians are a case in point: Under Mr. Putin, the focus of Kremlin foreign policy has shifted from alliance with America toward a strategic relationship with China and an all-out courting of Europe. And Europeans have reason to feel uneasy: Germany in particular has invested a lot in trying to bring Russia into the Western economic fold, and none of them can want to return to the old days of having to choose between Washington's and Moscow's views of nuclear and alliance policies.

At the summit in Genoa, the European leaders could see the resentment aroused by globalization - which is, for many of their constituents, just a shorthand for a new world order dominated by Americans. They know the resentment resonates in their own politics. Mr. Putin, who once worked for the K.G.B. in Europe, knows it too.

So it may be useful to listen when Aleksandr Dugin, a decidedly nationalist intellectual who has founded a fashionable new Russian party and has the ears of both the Kremlin and the the Communists, says: "We see American intentions from a completely different angle than you. We see the United States as trying to organize a new colonial process, a new world domination and the one form of world government dominated by American interests."

Moscow's new friendship treaty with China, the first since the 1950's, is one means of reply. On paper, the pact amounts to little more than a blueprint for trade relations and a symbolic declaration that the two nations do not want their voice in world affairs drowned out by America. Mr. Putin himself marked its limits days after signing it, telling reporters that while Moscow and Beijing may both strenuously oppose scrapping the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, there will be no joint reaction should that occur.

But American experts say the agreement should not be discounted.

"For American foreign policy," said Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign-policy expert at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, it is "what high blood pressure is to a heart attack: It's a warning sign. And it says that if you persist in these habits, there's going to be trouble." Indeed, Russia has already frustrated American efforts in the United Nations to construct a new set of sanctions against Iraq. In addition, Mr. Mandelbaum says, "The Europeans care a lot about what the Russians think, because they share a continent with them, and they share some of the same reservations."

In the minds of skeptics, East and West alike, here are the makings of a rent in the international security structure that the West fought a 50-year cold war to build. In poker terms, the new world order only works if Russia and China, long ostracized, can be persuaded to play by the rules and hold a real stake in the game. That means giving Russia a geopolitical anchor - economic and perhaps even political ties to Europe, most experts think - instead of allowing it to revert to its historic role as a suspicious loner bent on surrounding itself with a buffer zone of satellite states.

THE skeptics say American unilateralism does just the opposite at a crucial moment. America and Russia "no longer view one another as enemies," says Alexei Arbatov, a military expert for the Russian parliament, but they are not yet allies, and building a consensus - with, say, a military treaty between Russia and NATO - could lead to a genuine alliance. But "the reverse is also true," he said. "Early rejection of treaties and accords may escalate a lack of security, breed mutual suspicions, and return the states to the phase of détente and hostility."

There is another side to this debate, of course, and it goes: However much the Russians, Chinese and Europeans may dislike American unilateralism, they will tolerate it. The cost of tugging too hard on Superman's cape is simply too steep. It is no secret, for example, why the alliance between China and Russia is mostly words and not action: the $120 billion a year in Chinese- American trade is 12 to 15 times the total between America and Moscow.

Moreover, even some Russians argue that the Bush administration's no-nonsense approach to power has its benefits. Boris N. Yeltsin's first foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, says the Clinton White House maintained the fiction that Russia was an equal partner too long. Mr. Yeltsin, he said, never got over the shock of realizing too late that "Friend Bill" truly would expand NATO into the old Warsaw Pact.

"Let's take measures before things get out of hand, before there is humiliation," he said. "Just clearly tell the people that yes, we are going for this missile-defense research, we are going with NATO expansion. I think Putin is young and clever and strong enough to handle straight talk."

And if not? Sergei Rogov, the director of Moscow's U.S.A. and Canada Studies Institute, posits what he calls the "sad scenario" in 2002. First, he says, comes an open American breach of the ABM Treaty, followed by a decision to grant NATO membership to the Baltic states. The last straw is a drop in oil prices, robbing Russia of its ability to pay its huge Western debt.

Mr. Rogov said at a seminar last month that he doubted all three would happen, but if they did, Russia's option would be clear: "I remember," he said, "that in my remote childhood, we used to sing `Russian and Chinese are Brothers for Centuries.' "

----

Global fallout possible from missile defense activation

By STEPHEN YOUNG,
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
July 22, 2001
http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/jul01/young22072101.asp

Both supporters and opponents of U.S. plans to build a national missile defense system often focus their debate on the tremendous technical hurdles that would need to be overcome before such a system could be operational.

What frequently gets overlooked, unfortunately, are some of the unintended consequences caused by such a system.

Would it, for example, become the basis for a new arms race? Would other nations see our "defensive" system as an offensive weapon? Would our allies feel themselves less secure? What would the international community think?

Here, at a glance, are the likely reactions by some major international players:

RUSSIA:

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia's vast nuclear arsenal has fallen into decline. While arms-control treaties have led to the verifiable reduction of U.S. and Russian deployed arsenals by half, the unilateral deployment of a U.S. missile defenses could destroy that process.

Russia's current economic woes may prevent it from increasing its arsenal but it could be expected to take any or all of the following steps:

Withdraw from the START process that is verifying reductions in its nuclear arsenal. Maintain a greater percentage of its large nuclear arsenal on hair-trigger alert, ready to fire within minutes, thereby increasing the risk of an accidental or mistaken launch.

Equip the 10 to 20 new missiles it is building each year with multiple warheads.

Assist North Korea, Iran or other countries with missile, nuclear or other threatening technologies. This could include technology to defeat or completely evade missile defenses.

Enhance its military cooperation with China. Find asymmetrical responses to national missile defense, such as re-deploying short-range and tactical nuclear weapons to threaten Europe.

CHINA:

China's small arsenal of 20 long-range, single-warhead missiles has not grown for some time. However, it has a missile development program that could vastly increase the size and capabilities of its arsenal. According to reports by the U.S. intelligence community, in response to U.S. missile defenses China could:

Increase the size of its arsenal by tenfold.

Deploy more accurate missiles on mobile launchers or submarines, possibly with multiple warheads. China has had these capabilities for a decade, but has not used them.

Use decoys and other countermeasures that could thwart U.S. defenses.

Provide such countermeasure technology to North Korea or other countries.

Develop anti-satellite weapons to attack vulnerable U.S. communications and defense assets in space.

Pursue asymmetrical responses to national missile defense, such as providing missile technology and raw materials to countries like Pakistan, Iran and Libya.

EUROPE AND NATO:

Almost all of the America's allies in Europe have voiced strong criticism or significant concern about its national missile defense plans. In January 2001, French President Jacques Chirac said that missile defense "cannot fail to relaunch the arms race in the world."

The implications for Europe should the U.S. proceed with national missile defense include:

The potential for increased threats from medium- and short-range nuclear missiles from Russia, especially if Moscow withdraws from the U.S.-Russian treaty banning intermediate-range missiles.

A split between the "protected" United States and "undefended" Europe on involvement in regional crises.

Further strained relations between the large U.S. military and its NATO allies. The U.S. defense budget is already larger than the combined defense budgets of all other NATO countries.

Heightened global tensions, because the United States, believing it is protected, becomes more confrontational in international crises.

NORTH KOREA:

North Korea has never tested a missile capable of reaching the United States with a nuclear warhead. Under an agreement with the Clinton administration, North Korea's skeletal missile development program has not conducted a flight test since 1998. The Bush administration could pursue similar negotiations that could end the program entirely, along with North Korea's profitable short-range missile exports business.

However, if instead the United States builds a missile defense, North Korea could:

Resume its missile flight test program.

Develop and deploy countermeasures that could defeat U.S. missile defenses, and seek assistance from China or Russia in doing so.

Focus on delivering weapons of mass destruction by ship, plane, or cruise missile - methods that are both more reliable and provide no "return address" the way a long-range missile does.

Increase its exports of medium- and short-range missiles to countries that could threaten U.S. troops and allies overseas.

THE NON-PROLIFERATION REGIME:

A U.S. missile defenses system could destroy not only the bilateral arms-control agreements between the United States and Russia, but also harm the international nuclear non-proliferation regime around the globe.

Under that regime, that vast majority of the world's nations have committed to neither develop nor deploy nuclear weapons. In return, countries with nuclear weapons pledged to reduce and eliminate their arsenals. But national missile defense could disrupt the current delicate balance between nations with the following possible results:

If China increases its nuclear arsenal, India could use that potential threat as a rationale to expand its own growing nuclear weapons and missile program.

Pakistan might then feel the need to enlarge its own nuclear program, accelerating the ongoing regional arms race.

If North Korea becomes more threatening, Japan could feel pressure to develop nuclear weapons.

Countries like Egypt and Indonesia, which renounced nuclear weapons in return for a commitment by the United States and other nuclear powers to give up their arsenals, could seek to build their own atomic bombs.

As the non-proliferation regime erodes, countries may begin secret weapons programs to hedge against the possibility that their neighbors will build nuclear weapons.

Stephen Young is a senior analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists. This article was distributed by Global Beat Syndicate.

-------- russia

Divers Begin Cutting Hull of Kursk

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Submarine.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- Divers on Sunday began cutting an opening in the hull of the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk, preparation for raising the vessel in September, Russian news media said.

Divers working from the Norwegian support ship Mayo cut into the hull's fifth compartment from the front, the Interfax news agency and television reports said. Later, they will attach cables to lift the submarine.

The Kursk sank in 357 feet of water on Aug. 12 during a training exercise in the Barents Sea off northern Russia, killing all 118 crew members.

The international operation for salvaging the submarine began this week, as engineers used a remote-controlled submersible to measure radiation levels.

The divers have marked places where holes will be cut for steel cables to be attached. Twenty-six hydraulic lifts anchored to a giant pontoon will lift the submarine, and the pontoon will then be towed to the northern port city of Murmansk.

The submarine's first compartment was mangled in the explosion that sank the Kursk, and authorities fear it could contain unexploded torpedoes. It is to be cut off and left at the bottom of the Barents Sea when the submarine is raised.

-------- treaties

U.S. - Russia Arms Glance

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Russia-Arms-Glance.html?searchpv=aponline

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

July 22, 2001, Geneva:

President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agree to link talks on U.S. missile defense to reducing nuclear stockpiles.

June 3-5, 2000, Moscow:

President Clinton and Putin sign a joint statement acknowledging that changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that limits missile defense might be necessary. They pledge to work more on the treaty and on START III, which would reduce the nations' nuclear arsenals to between 2,000 and 2,500 by the end of 2007.

March 21, 1997, Helsinki, Finland:

Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin agree to begin talks on START III after START II is ratified. START II would reduce nuclear arsenals to between 3,000 and 3,500, about half the current level.

Jan. 2-3, 1993, Moscow:

President George H.W. Bush and Yeltsin sign START II.

July 31, 1991, Moscow:

Bush and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev sign START I, to reduce nuclear warheads to 6,000.

Nov. 19-21, 1990, Paris:

--Bush and Gorbachev sign the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, meant to limit the chance of war between NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The treaty sets limits of 40,000 battle tanks, 60,000 armored combat vehicles, 40,000 pieces of artillery, 13,600 combat aircraft and 4,000 attack helicopters. The treaty was modified in 1999 to reduce those numbers by about half.

Dec. 7-10, 1987, Washington:

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

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

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

Nov. 19-20, 1985, Geneva:

Reagan and Gorbachev discuss the ABM and SALT II treaties. No substantive progress, but agree to further discussions in 1986 and 1987.

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

Report: Staff Cuts Lead to Lab Woes

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-Energy-Report.html?searchpv=aponline
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/07/22/energy.report.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Staff shortages resulting from Energy Department budget cuts in the Clinton administration have contributed to problems at nuclear weapons laboratories, the agency's internal watchdog reports.

Budget cuts from 1995 to 1998 reduced staff by about one-quarter, leading to a critical shortage from which the department has yet to recover, Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman said in his recent report.

Among the problems cited:

--A two-year shutdown in California of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's plutonium facility, attributed partly to high turnover.

--A 6,000-gallon mineral oil leak at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that destroyed more than $1 million worth of laser equipment. No federal workers were present at the time.

--At some of the department-run labs, emergency management, laser safety, and the safety of high explosives and nuclear weapons are the responsibility of a single person.

The report recommended that department officials develop a strategy to recruit and retain scientific and technical personnel and restructure the work force to prevent future problems. As of January 2001, the department faced a shortage of 577 scientific and technical specialists.

A department spokeswoman had no immediate comment Sunday.

--------

Audit Blames Budget Cuts Under Clinton for Lab Errors

New York Times
July 22, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/politics/22SPAC.html?searchpv=nytToday&pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, July 21 - Cuts in the Energy Department's budget and staff in the Clinton administration contributed to accidents and management errors at several national laboratories, according to an audit by the agency's inspector general, Gregory H. Friedman.

The audit found that staff reductions beginning in 1995 resulted in critical shortages of scientific and technically skilled specialists at the agency. Despite an effort to reverse the trend starting in 1998, the department is still experiencing attrition, the new report said.

As a result, projects managed by contractors under the supervision of the department's field offices have suffered "a number of avoidable incidents," the audit found.

In January, for example, a 6,000- gallon oil spill at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico destroyed $1 million worth of laser equipment, the audit said.

A laboratory spokesman explained that the oil, which had been stored in a first floor lab, leaked after a rubber gasket failed. The damage might have been avoided if supervisors had inspected the gasket or had made sure that the equipment had not been positioned in the basement directly below the oil tank, he acknowledged.

And at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Livermore, Calif., a halt in plutonium research and development from 1997 to 1999 was partially attributed to a shortage of Energy Department personnel, the audit said.

The audit identified 39 Energy Department installations where a total of 577 specialists are needed to oversee the laboratories' work. There are openings for physicists, engineers, safety specialists, hygienists and computer engineers.

Offices in Chicago and Oakland, Calif., are short of experts in computer security, increasing the agency's vulnerability to intrusion and espionage, the audit said.

"Left unaddressed, these problems will grow," said Jeanne Lopatto, an agency spokeswoman. Ms. Lopatto said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham met this week with department heads and other senior officials to discuss how to rebuild the department.

The Energy Department has 9,900 employees, including 4,600 scientific and technical employees, the audit said.

At current rates of attrition, it will be short 1,800 specialists by 2005. Its contractors employ 100,000 workers for government projects.

-------- washington

Hanford projects continue to fuel dramatic boom in home construction

Sun, Jul 22, 2001
By Wendy Culverwell,
Tri-City Herald
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/0722.html

On any given weekday, Bechtel National Inc. adds four to six people, many of them engineers, to its payroll.

Since last fall, the company's work force in Richland has grown from essentially zero to 1,150, and the hiring frenzy won't stop any time soon as Bechtel gears up to build a vastly complex facility to transform Hanford's radioactive tank wastes into glass.

By year's end, said spokesman John Britten, Bechtel will employ 1,500 to work on the $4 billion vitrification project. By 2004, jobs will peak at 4,300.

All of which begs the question: Where is everyone going to live? With apartments nearly full, finding a place to live is proving to be a challenge for Bechtel's new, well-paid employees.

"We're hearing that people are having difficulty," Britten acknowledged.

The answer to the question is apparent to even the most casual observer -- new homes are being built at a record pace, a phenomenon fueled in part by the vitrification project. Low interest rates and high apartment occupancy rates are contributing.

In the first half of 2001, Tri-City building departments issued 680 permits for new single-family homes, a mind-boggling increase of more than 28 percent over the same period a year earlier.

That makes this a bright spot in an otherwise dreary picture for the state's home builders, who have watched demand sink almost everywhere else as the economy cools and jobs disappear.

"Looking at data statewide, there are only two areas that are showing any vitality -- Seattle and the Tri-Cities," said Dean Schau, regional labor economist for the state Employment Security Department.

Richland, home to Bechtel and Hanford, led the area in new home construction, as it did last quarter.

In the first half of 2001, the city issued 205 permits for new homes, an increase of about 85 percent. The average home value was nearly $200,000, a modest 1 percent increase in home value from a year ago.

Rick Simon, planning director for the city, said the crush of permit applications prompted him to seek extra money to hire temporary staff members to help out. The department aims to issue permits within 12 days of receiving the application.

"There have been times this year during busy times when we have not met that," he said. The extra workers helped restore the timeline.

Simon said virtually all new construction is taking place in south Richland, in new neighborhoods such as Birchfield Meadows, the Vineyard and Brookshire Estates.

Moe Frix, director of the Richland Chamber of Commerce, attributes the building boom to the vitrification project, low mortgage interest rates and a pent-up desire among established homeowners to 'super size' their living quarters.

"We're coming into our own," she said.

Frix said the boom hit home for her when she tried to leave her dog at her regular kennel and couldn't -- the staff said it was full of dogs waiting for their owners' homes to be built. She found a dogsitter instead.

Pasco boasted a hefty 38 percent increase in new home construction. The city issued 166 permits in the first six months of the year. As in Richland, construction is in one area of town, the Desert Plateau neighborhoods of Parkside Village and Island Estates.

"Pasco's just such a great place where everyone wants to live," theorized Dave McDonald, a Pasco city planner. On a more serious note, he said the city put utilities and infrastructure in that area to handle the new residents.

"The facilities are there to accommodate the growth," he said.

The Pasco Chamber of Commerce isn't complaining either.

"It is wonderful to see that kind of growth," said Teresa Lavender, director of the Pasco Chamber of Commerce.

She agreed with the general assessment that the vitrification plant, low interest rates and a tight rental market are behind the boom.

Fred Nogales, marketing manager for Aho Construction, said his company expects to build 200 homes in the Island Estates and Parkside Village neighborhoods this year. The Vancouver, Wash.-based company specializes in developing affordable neighborhoods aimed at first-time home buyers. Prices range from $87,000 to $130,000. Nogales said Bechtel employees are a big part of the new community.

He said younger buyers are coming in, too.

"I think a lot of these younger kids are a lot more savvy these days," he said.

West Richland, the fastest-growing community in the Tri-Cities in the 1990s, saw its new home rate bump up by only 6.6 percent between the first six months of 2000 and the same period this year. As of June 30, the city had issued 64 permits for single-family homes.

While the growth wasn't large, West Richland was notable for the soaring value of new construction. The average new home in West Richland is worth nearly $190,000, up from less than $150,000 just a year ago.

Kennewick issued the same number of permits this year as last -- 155. Much of the development is in new neighborhoods, though Rick White, the planning director, said the city is seeing a notable amount of in-fill. That is, people are building homes on vacant lots in existing neighborhoods.

Planners like in-fill because it makes more efficient use of existing utilities and streets.

"Lots that have been looked over in favor of ones that are easier to develop -- they're being developed now," he said.

-------- us nuc politics

House Defeats Motion to Help Downwinders

By Lee Davidson,
July 22, 2001,
Deseret News Washington correspondent
http://www.mothersalert.org/downwinders2.html

WASHINGTON - House Republicans have defeated a move that could have helped cement refunding of a now-depleted compensation fund for downwind cancer victims of atomic bomb testing.

On a 219-205 vote, they dumped a Democratic motion last week to instruct negotiators in a House-Senate conference on the Supplemental Appropriations Bill. It called for accepting three Senate-passed provisions, including one to add $84 million to the empty compensation fund.

Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, voted for that unsuccessful motion with almost all Democrats. Reps. Jim Hansen and Chris Cannon, R-Utah, voted against it with almost all Republicans. "Motions to instruct conferees are always gimmicks. In every case, they are non-binding on conferees anyway. They have no legal standing," said Bill Johnson, Hansen's legislative director.

He said majority parties view such motions as hurting their overall power to negotiate a final bill - and leaders view members as disloyal if they support such motions. "They want to be able to play all their cards in negotiations," he said.

Hansen and Cannon were quick to stress that they favor refunding the empty compensation fund, even if they voted against the Democratic procedural motion. Cannon is also the House sponsor of a bill to make annual replenishing of the fund automatic.

But Democratic leaders said the House should have passed the motion to show relief is coming soon to downwinders who qualify for compensation and who have been receiving mere IOUs since the fund ran out of money last year.

"There is no reason to use these items as leverage. People who are eligible for these funds need to know they will receive them," said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee and author of the motion. "Those people were fried by their own government. . . . These are people who are dying because of the action of their own government."

Most qualifying downwinders lived in Utah, which was downwind from the atomic tests conducted in Nevada.

Matheson challenged House members to tell a fallout victim that the government is spending $30 million to tell everyone "they're going to get a tax rebate, but we don't have enough money to compensate you while you are sick and dying.' "

Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, R-Utah, successfully sought adding the $84 million for that fund in the Senate. They say it is enough to pay off outstanding IOUs, and to cover expected new claim approvals through fiscal 2001, which ends Sept. 30.

Problems with the compensation fund came last year when the former Clinton administration mistakenly requested too little money to cover expected claims.

Backlogs became worse when Congress last year approved expanding the list of eligible cancers, and increased the amount of compensation offered.

----

U.S. Differences With G - 8 Members

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Summit-US-Differences.html?searchpv=aponline

Issues on which the United States and its allies have differed:

Arms trafficking

The United States had opposed a U.N. proposal to halt the illegal trafficking of small arms, mainly arguing it would interfere with the civilian right to own guns and limit legal weapons trade. Among those pushing for tougher controls on small arms exports were European Union, Canada, Norway and several African nations. All of them wanted to take into account an importing country's human rights record and whether the weapons would be used to fuel wars.

The first U.N. conference on the issue concluded Saturday with a watered-down plan, one crafted to Washington's liking, that omitted limits on weapon sales and restrictions on civilian gun ownership.

Germ warfare

President Bush is expected to reject proposed rules for enforcing a 1972 germ weapons treaty that prohibits the development, production and possession of biological weapons. While his administration supports the effort, it believes the controls to ensure compliance under the current protocol aren't tough enough. Bush also fears the proposed guidelines could hurt U.S. business interests.

Global warming

To the frustration of his allies, particularly France and Germany, Bush remained firm in his opposition to the Kyoto treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The president believes the accord would harm the U.S. economy by forcing American industries to cut back severely on their emissions of gases that may contribute to the gradual warming of the earth's atmosphere.

In their final statement Sunday, the Group of Eight leaders papered over their differences on the issue.

Missile defense

Bush's plan to proceed with a missile defense system has drawn many critics. It especially has infuriated Russia, which believes such a program would shatter existing arms control treaties and possibly trigger another arms race.

During their private meeting Sunday, Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to tie the U.S. missile defense program to talks on reducing nuclear stockpiles from both nations. They also expressed hope to discuss both offensive and defensive options as a package.

-------- MILITARY

-------- asia

High-tech warfare

July 22, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010722-949860.htm

TAIPEI, Taiwan - China's military is moving ahead with development of information warfare capabilities and appears to have orchestrated recent computer attacks on Taiwan, the top electronic warfare general here said.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Abe C. Lin, director of the Defense Ministry information and electronic warfare directorate, said in an interview with The Washington Times that the People's Republic of China is developing a variety of information warfare and electronic combat weapons in preparation for a conflict with the Republic of China - also known as Taiwan.

The weapons include:

•Electromagnetic pulse missile warheads that can disrupt the electronics of weapons systems by creating an electronic shock similar to that caused by a nuclear blast.

•Computer viruses that can be unleashed against both military and civilian computer networks, such as banking and stock market systems, to cause social unrest and create chaos.

•"Trojan horse" computer programs, planted in networks, that appear as useful programs but covertly unleash destructive software.

•Spies planted within the military and government who could sabotage computer networks in wartime.

Taiwan's military has not experienced any destructive "insider"-based attacks on its networks. However, there have been incidents involving soldiers who misused their access to networks without causing damage, Gen. Lin said.

A second senior defense official here said China also is developing microwave electronic weapons to disrupt military electronics.

"The first wave of a Chinese military attack on Taiwan would be a major information warfare strike," this official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Gen. Lin said China's government has denied it had any role in numerous coordinated computer attacks from the mainland in recent months.

However, the attacks were all carried out using a similar methodology, even though they originated from several different Chinese provinces. The similarities have fueled suspicions that the Beijing government was behind the computer strikes.

On May 20, for example, there were major computer intrusions coinciding with the one-year anniversary of Taiwanese leader Chen Shui-bian's inauguration, he said.

A large number of mainland hacker attacks also took place after the April 1 collision between a Chinese F-8 fighter jet and a U.S. EP-3E surveillance aircraft.

The May 20 attack was unique. "We have already experienced a lot of Trojan horses," Gen. Lin said. "But it was the first time they sent a Trojan horse into one of our main Web sites as a leaping-off point to attack somebody else. It was a good lesson for us."

The unidentified Chinese who planted the Trojan horse were successful in exploiting weaknesses in a computer operating system, he said.

China's military announced in 1999 that it planned to develop a large-scale information warfare component that would be equal in stature to its army, navy and air force.

Gen. Lin said Taiwan is working on its own information warfare attack capabilities. But he declined to discuss any details.

Gen. Lin said Taiwan's military uses an isolated network for its communications and information transfers but also uses the public Internet as a backup system.

The military network is rarely attacked but is monitored round-the-clock, he said.

Taiwan's public computer networks, however, are vulnerable to disruption, and it is these systems - used for both government and private communications - that the military is in charge of protecting, he said.

"This part is the main focus of mainland China," Gen. Lin said. "They try a variety of ways to attack, and so far we can see very clearly when and how they are trying to attack."

He also said that Taiwan is preparing to counter Chinese military information and electronic warfare operations, adding that Beijing harbors aggressive tendencies toward the United States as well.

"One element of [China's] combat readiness is to prevent U.S. troops from entering the Taiwan Strait and the boundary area," Gen. Lin said in an interview in a ministry conference room.

"So they are developing different types of electronic warfare weapons to destroy the information grid, not only in Taiwanese weapons platforms, but in U.S. weapons platforms as well, just in case the United States tries to deploy their weapons in this area," he said.

China's military forces, which are now conducting large-scale war games on Dongshan Island, north of Taiwan, reportedly practiced a first-phase military strike using information and electronic warfare attacks.

-------- arms sales

Nations Agree to Limit Sales of Illicit Arms

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/international/22ARMS.html

UNITED NATIONS -- More than 170 nations reached consensus Saturday on a watered-down plan to combat illegal small arms trafficking after giving in to U.S. demands to drop a call for governments to limit weapon sales and restrict civilian gun ownership.

The compromise left many African and European delegates as well as human rights groups and antigun campaigners angry at the United States.

Conference president Camilo Reyes of Colombia announced the agreement as dawn broke, ending a marathon two-week U.N. conference that went into overtime Saturday. Exhausted delegates left for a few hours of sleep and were expected to return at noon to formally approve the deal.

"I am happy to tell you that we have a document that reached consensus," Reyes said. "It has been an extremely difficult process. ... We could have obtained a better document, but I think that we have a good start."

"First and foremost," said U.N. Undersecretary-General for Disarmament Jayantha Dhanapala, the consensus means "that collectively everybody recognizes that there is a problem -- that they all commit themselves to establish a framework of law in their own country to combat the problem."

The program of action, which is not legally binding, calls on governments to ensure that manufacturers put unique identifying marks on every small arm and light weapon and keep records so illegally trafficked weapons can be traced. It also calls for laws to ensure government control over the transfer of small arms, including legislation to regulate small arms brokers.

Governments are also urged to make the illegal manufacture, possession, stockpiling and trade of small arms a criminal offense. It calls for surplus stocks to be destroyed, public awareness campaigns on the consequences of the trade, and international support for disarming combatants after conflicts.

The conference was the first U.N. meeting on small arms, which were the weapons of choice in 46 of the 49 conflicts fought during the 1990s -- conflicts in which 4 million people died, 90 percent of them civilians.

According to U.N. estimates, between 40 percent and 60 percent of the more than 500 million small arms and light weapons in the world are illegal. The trade in these illicit pistols, assault rifles, machine-guns and other light weapons is valued at about $1 billion annually.

The United States, whose constitution guarantees an individual's right to own guns, made clear from the outset it would oppose any U.N. plan that even hinted at interference with that right.

In the final make-or-break negotiations, the United States said it could not support consensus unless a call to governments "to seriously consider legal restrictions on unrestricted trade in and ownership of small arms and light weapons" was dropped.

The United States also said it would reject any measure that would bar governments from supplying small arms to "non-state actors," such as rebel groups.

This issue proved even more contentious in the final hours, with the United States standing alone in confronting a united Africa.

The continent, torn by conflict, demanded that language calling for small arms to be transferred only to governments -- or government-approved entities -- remain in the final document.

"If you send arms to non-state actors, you are sending them to rebels who are trying to overthrow governments," said Nigerian delegate Sola Ogunbanwu.

But under intense pressure, Africa dropped its demand in order to get consensus among all countries for the plan. The United States prevailed, but many African and European delegates who backed them were visibly angry.

"The U.S. should be ashamed of themselves," said South African delegate Jean Du Preez. "We are very disappointed."

Mexico's chief delegate Luis Alfonso de Alba called the U.S. action "regrettable." He paid tribute to the African nations, saying the conference would not have reached a consensus "if it wouldn't have been for the will, the principles, the compromise of the African group."

Human rights groups and antigun campaigners were also angry at the Americans.

"It's unbelievably selfish that the most powerful nation in the world that produces more than half of all the small arms in the world is prepared to jeopardize the safety of millions of people in other countries purely for the sake of pandering to its own domestic lobbying interests," said Rebecca Peters of the Open Society Institute.

The organization was one of 320 from 70 countries that are part of The International Action Network on Small Arms, which is working to combat illicit trafficking.

Chief U.S. negotiator Lincoln Bloomfield, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, refused to answer questions on the agreement. But he said it "sets the basis for cooperative action to address the very serious problems caused by flows of illicit small arms and light weapons in areas of instability."

The United States made one concession early Saturday: It dropped its opposition to a follow-up conference and agreed to holding one by 2006, diplomats said.

This was a critical victory for an overwhelming majority of delegations, who did not want the conference to be a one-time wonder and considered a follow-up conference key to further global action.

-------- balkans

Macedonia: Albanians Broke Cease - Fire

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Macedonia.html?searchpv=aponline

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) -- Ethnic Albanian insurgents launched an infantry attack on government forces in the Tetovo area Sunday, violating a cease-fire that has largely held for two weeks, the Defense Ministry said.

Spokesman Marjan Djurovski said the rebels opened fire on Macedonian army positions from the villages of Sipkovica and Gajre, and that government troops responded. Two Macedonian soldiers were wounded in the two-hour exchange.

``The Macedonian forces were under direct fire and they returned fire with infantry weapons according to the latest orders from the general staff,'' which told troops to respond if under attack, Djurovski said.

It was not immediately clear if the cease-fire violation would have a negative impact on tentative plans to resume peace talks Monday between representatives of majority Macedonians and ethnic Albanian politicians.

The Macedonian government said it had informed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European Monitoring Mission of the cease-fire violation.

It also said it had received field reports that ``Albanian terrorists'' were moving toward Tetovo's soccer stadium on the outskirts of the city and Macedonian forces stationed there.

The talks aimed at averting full-scale war in Macedonia have been stalled since Thursday after Macedonia's ruling party rejected a Western-backed peace proposal prompting the ethnic Albanians to walk out in protest.

New hope for the talks came Friday. After a day of closed-door lobbying by Western envoys, ethnic Albanian officials signaled their willingness to return to the negotiating table.

The Defense Ministry said there was sporadic shooting late Saturday and early Sunday in the Kumanovo region, some 20 miles northeast of Skopje. There was no word of injuries.

It also reported an incident over the weekend in another border area known as a smuggling route.

One soldier was lightly wounded when an army patrol encountered a group of ``uniformed men'' in the Rostuse area, 40 miles southwest of Skopje, close to the Albanian border, the statement said. It said a firefight lasted about three hours and that the ``terrorist group was dispersed.''

The high tensions were illustrated by two minor incidents Saturday.

The Defense Ministry claimed that a helicopter with KFOR markings -- the acronym of the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force -- landed inside Macedonia and unloaded two crates before returning to Kosovo, prompting the military to seek an explanation from KFOR.

However, U.S. Army Maj. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for KFOR in Macedonia, said: ``Helicopters were involved in establishing mobile radio relay stations and they landed in Kosovo territory. They did not land in Macedonia.''

Also Saturday, the Macedonian government protested and demanded an explanation from KFOR after a British helicopter fired several flares above a residential area of Skopje where the president and the prime minister live.

The explanation was that automatic systems aboard the helicopter reacted to an increase in radiation in the zone, releasing the flares as a precaution to protect the aircraft from a possible infrared-guided rocket attack.

Ethnic Albanian militants launched their insurgency against government forces in February in a campaign to demand more rights.

Majority Macedonians say the ethnic Albanians, who make up nearly one-third of Macedonia's population of 2 million, already enjoy enough protection under the constitution and that their struggle is aimed at carving up the country.

-------- biological weapons

Don't Reject the Germ Treaty Protocol

By Seth Brugger
Sunday, July 22, 2001; Page B07
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29273-2001Jul20?language=printer

Since entering office, the Bush administration has trumpeted the dangers of germ weapons. But despite its rhetoric, the Bush team, with its distaste for arms control, has reportedly decided to reject an accord that would strengthen U.S. capabilities to stop the development and spread of these destructive weapons.

For decades, Washington has relied on export controls, diplomacy, military deterrence, bio-defense programs and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention to thwart germ weapons proliferation. But this web of protections has a hole: The convention, which outlaws biological arms, contains no measures to check whether states are breaching its terms.

Today, violations of the agreement are on record, and the administration asserts that at least 13 countries are pursuing germ weapons. Clearly, the United States needs stronger tools to combat the spread of biological arms.

For six years Washington has participated in Geneva-based negotiations to develop a "protocol" that would make cheating on the convention more difficult. The protocol would allow inspections, which could be conducted at any suspect facility by a newly created international body, and would provide a channel for the United States to pursue compliance concerns with problem states. It also envisions regular, benign "visits" to monitor bio-defense and industry facilities declared by states.

These measures would provide Washington with more diplomatic options than it has now. For instance, merely threatening to start the investigation process is a means to apply political pressure to help resolve a compliance concern. The protocol would also give the United States access to additional information that could contribute to U.S. intelligence assessments.

But instead of embracing the chance to supplement U.S. capabilities, the Bush team, according to arms control experts, will oppose the protocol at the next round of negotiations, which begin tomorrow. An interagency team has reportedly recommended that the White House reject the protocol, claiming the accord would not likely detect cheating. In testimony before a House subcommittee July 10, the State Department presented other problems with the protocol: It could harm U.S. bio-defense efforts, leave U.S. industry vulnerable to espionage and undermine U.S. export controls.

The Bush administration is correct on its first point: The protocol could not help states detect cheating with a high degree of certainty. But it was never meant to perform such a feat. Rather, the protocol aims to deter states from developing biological weapons and to complicate countries' efforts in this area by making cheating harder to hide. Judging the protocol using a criterion that it was never designed to meet is hardly sound reasoning.

Administration claims that the protocol would endanger U.S. bio-defense programs and industry are also dubious. The latest draft of the protocol goes a long way toward meeting U.S. government and industry demands in this area. In addition, it provides more protections for U.S. industry and defense efforts than a treaty banning chemical weapons, which the United States has already joined and which covers some of the same facilities as the protocol.

Furthermore, while some delegations in Geneva have tried to use the negotiations to dismantle Western export controls so they could gain more access to biotechnology, the draft protocol leaves U.S. and international export controls untouched.

The administration's stated complaints are based on technicalities that Washington could either live with or try to work out in Geneva. But the U.S. negotiating team has not yet publicly raised its concerns there, and top administration officials have not spoken out in support of Washington's position, as President George H. W. Bush did during the chemical weapons treaty negotiations. The lack of concerted U.S. effort so far suggests that the Bush team is opposed to the protocol on ideological grounds and does not really want to find a solution to its problems.

But instead of rejecting the protocal, the administration should actively engage others and push to complete an accord that satisfies its concerns during this week's negotiating session. The session will be the last round of talks before a November conference that has served as a target for completing the protocol, and U.S. support is key to concluding the negotiations successfully. The White House must understand that if it goes ahead and rejects the protocol, it will be throwing away an opportunity to improve the United States' ability to combat biological weapons proliferation and that another chance such as this will not likely come anytime soon.

The writer is managing editor of Arms Control Today, published by the Arms Control Association.

-------- drug war

Albanian police get the hump over hemp crop scheme

Independent (UK)
By Justin Huggler
22 July 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=84710

A British charity's efforts to help desperately poor farmers in Albania have gone horribly wrong, with the farmers ending up under arrest in prison and hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of crops donated by the charity destroyed by Albanian police.

The farmers were supposed to grow industrial hemp plants given by the charity Partnership for Growth, and use the hemp to weave rugs for sale in the UK. Instead, 500 police turned up in the village of Dedaj, accused the farmers of growing cannabis, arrested four and destroyed the crops. The mayor, Martin Pllumbi, is now believed to be in hiding.

"It's all a misunderstanding," says Mike Tyler, a trustee of the charity. It seems the confusion is over the industrial hemp plant, which is closely related to the cannabis plant but contains only minuscule amounts of the drug. Hemp is used in the manufacture of 30,000 different products, from rope to car dashboards.

But growing it in northern Albania is fraught with problems. Much of the north is effectively controlled by bandits. Western visitors are frequently robbed of all they have, and there are stories of foreigners left virtually naked.

The charity may have inadvertently blundered into a turf war. Dedaj is in an area that is a stronghold of the main opposition party, and it is rumoured that the government is punishing the farmers for voting against it.

This is not the first time Western efforts to provide aid have backfired in the Balkans. The UN aid effort in Bosnia from 1992-1995 was dogged by claims of aid going astray or even being sold instead of distributed free. Another case was a television network, the Open Broadcast Network (OBN), which a consortium of Western donors including Britain set up in 1996 with the aim of undercutting nationalist media beholden to ethnic warlords. It sucked up $20m in aid from the EU and US but within a year was deep in financial trouble.

The station paid its staff six times the average for journalists in Bosnia and EU accountants discovered the system of invoices was hopelessly awry. The EU was horrified and ended all funding to the station last autumn.

--------

Bush to Raise 'Private Army' in Drugs War
Back-door military escalation in Andes

Sunday, July 22, 2001
Observer of London
by Peter Beaumont
http://commondreams.org/headlines01/0722-01.htm

President Bush is planning to escalate the US war against drugs from South America with new legislation that its critics say will allow him to deploy a 'private army' of former US servicemen across the region.

The disclosure comes amid mounting evidence that the controversial $1.3 billion Plan Colombia, a military support program initiated by the Clinton administration to sever the supply of Colombian cocaine, has had a negligible impact on supplies to US cities.

Experts say coca production has been switched to neighboring Bolivia, Venezuela and Peru.

The claim that Bush is seeking permission to deploy his own private army - unanswerable to congressional oversight - comes as Congress prepares to vote on proposals to inject cash into Plan Colombia by lifting a cap on the number of privatized military personnel allowed to be deployed there.

The cap, which was introduced following fears that the US could be dragged into a new Vietnam war, limited the total to 500, in a purely training role.

Congress also insisted that no more than 300 non-military personnel, largely working for private companies such as Dyncorp as coca- spraying pilots, could be in Colombia at any one time.

However, a new $676 million program - the Andean Counterdrug Initiative - would allow the Bush administration to deploy as many former servicemen as it wanted.

Questions about American counter-narcotics efforts in the Andean region have risen sharply since April, when Peruvian jets shot down a US missionary aircraft over the Amazon river, believing it was laden with drugs. The Peruvian fighter was guided in for the attack by a radar plane operated by a CIA contractor.

Bush's personal involvement in lifting the cap was made clear by an official who told the Miami Herald on Friday that 'the President requested this'.

There are 171 American civilian contractors in Colombia now, involved in activities ranging from aerial fumigation and military training to administering judicial reform programs and helping internal refugees.

Concern has also been raised by a provision in the Andean Counterdrug Initiative legislation exempting State Department contractors from a section of the Foreign Assistance Act that specifically bans them from buying weapons and ammunition with federal funds.

The new legislation would allow the companies to purchase weapons and ammunition for use in the Andean region for 'defensive purposes', a definition, say critics, open to widespread abuse.

Underlying the concern over the escalation of Plan Colombia is a suspicion that the entire nature of the war on drugs there is threatening to take a dangerous turn in favor of overt military assistance for the Colombian military against left-wing guerrilla groups who, some US analysts claim, benefit most from cocaine production.

That suspicion has been fueled by a report commissioned by the US Air Force from the Rand Corporation think-tank, which says 'drugs and insurgency are intertwined in complicated and changing ways, but the former cannot be addressed without the latter'.

It concludes that efforts to reduce the drug supply in Colombia have been ineffective because America has focused more on 'counter-narcotics' than 'counter-insurgency' aid.

'We are worried that this new legislation would give the President sole control over a private army in the Andean region without any accountability to Congress,' Nadeam Elshami, a staffer with Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, told The Observer last week.

Schakowsky has tabled an amendment seeking to keep the cap on civilian military contractors in the new legislation.

'It's a backdoor way of escalating our involvement in the Andean region and providing additional money to private military contractors who have not been effective.'

-------- israel

Army moles hunt Israeli troops linked to terror

July 22 2001
MIDDLE EAST
Sunday Times(UK)
Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/07/22/stifgnmid02001.html

MOLES have been placed within the Israeli defence forces in an attempt to unearth army officers and soldiers collaborating with Jewish terrorists.

An extremist anti-Arab movement is suspected of being behind last week's shooting of three members of a West Bank family, including a three-month-old girl. In the recriminations that followed, Avraham Dichter, head of Shin Bet - Israel's equivalent of MI5 - admitted to Israel's parliament that such extremist cells exist.

Suspicions about the link with the military intensified when a large quantity of army explosives was discovered in the car of an extremist settler's wife in Hebron. "We suspect that huge quantities of arms were smuggled by officers sympathetic to the Jewish underground," said a security source close to the investigation.

Postmortems on the three members of the al-Tmeizi family shot last week, have shown they were killed with 5.56mm bullets, used by the Israeli army. Diya al-Tmeizi, the baby killed, was born to her parents following fertility treatment after 12 years of childlessness. Her mother was injured.

Shin Bet's surveillance of suspected military collaborators is extremely sensitive, since many recruits have been drawn from within the religious West Bank settler families. "Most are first-rate, obedient and trustworthy," said the intelligence source. "But we know there are some bad weeds among them."

The group linked with the murders is the shadowy Committee for Road Safety, a cell connected to the anti-Arab movement, Kach. The committee was formed 20 years ago by Rabbi Meir Kahane, the guru of Jewish zealots.

Kahane was killed in America and his son and daughter-in-law were murdered by Arabs. Police sources believe friends of Kahane's murdered son may have been the plotters of last week's attack.

The security services' surveillance is also intended to locate collaborators who provide the Jewish cells with information about the army's movements.

Israeli intelligence officers fear that collaborator networks could target politicians, a security priority for Shin Bet since its failure to prevent the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, the former prime minister, in 1995.

This weekend Israeli security was preparing for a possible Palestinian retaliation. Jibril Rajoub, the head of security for the Palestinian Authority, said that he had a full list of Jewish zealots, which he would submit to the Israeli security services.

-------- nato

Russia's Eventual Place in NATO

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/opinion/22GART.html?searchpv=nytToday

STANFORD, Calif. - President George W. Bush has been bold in his design for a Europe whole and free. Now he needs to be bolder still. On his first trip to Europe, last month, he made an impressive speech in Warsaw in which he argued that the European Union and NATO, those key institutions of Europe and the West, should grow decisively eastward. How far eastward, of course, remains the question.

When Mr. Bush meets Vladimir Putin today, he should express clearly that his vision includes a future in which a democratic Russia is eventually embraced as part of NATO.

In Warsaw, Mr. Bush stepped in that direction. He said the question of membership in NATO for eligible and willing democracies should no longer be "whether" but only "when."

"No more Yaltas," he declared, implying that Russia should have no veto over NATO membership for the Baltic states. Most intriguingly, he said that the new Europe must also be "open to" Russia. Subsequently, he went on to establish a good personal rapport with President Putin.

Since then, however, Russia has reiterated its strong objections to the Bush administration's missile defense proposals, as well as to NATO enlargement, and has signed a friendship treaty with China - nicely characterized by one Russian commentator as "an act of friendship against America."

In response, two very different constituencies may be urging Mr. Bush to dilute the brave commitment of the Warsaw speech. Some Western Europeans want him to compromise on NATO enlargement, especially with regard to the Baltic states, in order to ease Russia's anxiety. Some American enthusiasts for missile defense may also suggest a retreat in order to increase the chances of Russia agreeing to some version of missile defense.

He should resist these siren calls. Instead, he should come out and say, with full conviction, that a democratic Russia definitely belongs in Europe and in the West, and that it follows that the key institution of the current geopolitical West, NATO, should in principle also be open to Russia's inclusion.

Taking this step, of course, will require more daring than any Western leader has shown - even those to whom I would instinctively look for such imaginative foresight.

The Czech president, Vaclav Havel, who will host the summit on NATO enlargement in Prague next year, argued eloquently in a speech this past May that the Baltic states belong in the Western alliance and that "if NATO moves closer to Russia's borders, it brings closer stability, security, democracy and an advanced political culture, which is obviously in Russia's essential interest."

That is absolutely right. Indeed, the first President Bush presented the same argument to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 when proposing the enlargement of NATO to include East Germany.

Yet even Mr. Havel has not pushed this thinking far enough to suggest Russia's eventual participation in NATO. So long as we do not allow for this possibility, young, pro-Western Russians may understandably feel that NATO enlargement is directed against Russia.

Obviously, a NATO that included a democratic Russia would be a very different NATO. But an alliance that incorporates all the current applicant states, from Estonia to Bulgaria, in addition to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, will already be a very different alliance. It will be an alliance of collective security, a guarantor of peace between and within its member states as well as against diverse and unpredictable external threats, rather than against the single common enemy of the cold war. (Though some may think that China has the potential to be the new common enemy of Russia, Europe and the West, we would be very ill- advised to risk making that a self- fulfilling prophecy.)

Just as obviously, Russia today is nowhere near to meeting the standards of stable democracy, the rule of law and civilian control over the military that might qualify it for NATO membership. Its current president and its army have an appalling record in Chechnya. Especially given the new character of the alliance, which pays close attention to how its new members treat their own minorities and immediate neighbors, those standards for membership should not be lowered in any way, as they have been for Turkey. Moreover, Russia's political elites, unlike those in other Eastern European states, are not certain they want to join anyway. So the prospect of Russian entry into NATO is many years distant. But this does not alter the force of the long-term message.

In the meantime, we should be very clear to whom this message is addressed. It should be addressed not just to Mr. Putin and the present government, but to all the new Russias: to the bright young Russians I meet at the European Affairs Society in Oxford or at the coffeehouse in Stanford, to the emerging middle class, and to the next generation of political leaders, whose thoughts about whether Russia belongs in the West will be greatly influenced by whether the West itself believes Russia should be part of it.

The same long-term message to a democratic Russia should come from the European Union. It's not for the American president to speak for the E.U. But I believe European leaders should themselves express a willingness to keep the door open.

I can hear already the cries of "dangerous lunatic!" arising from the foreign policy establishment. But one heard the same cries 10 years ago, immediately after the end of the cold war, when one argued that Eastern Europe should be brought into the E.U. and NATO. And 20 years ago, when one argued that the West should actively support the peaceful emancipation of Eastern Europe from Soviet domination. The idea of Russia in NATO, too, may eventually become conventional wisdom. Mr. Bush will show vision, and have a positive impact on the Russia to come, by advancing that possibility now.

Timothy Garton Ash, a fellow of St. Anthony's College, Oxford, and the Hoover Institution, is the author, most recently, of "History of the Present: Sketches and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990's."

-------- puerto rico

Puerto Rico Tests Vieques Meat

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Vieques-Meat.html

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Puerto Rico has barred the sale of meat from livestock grazing near a U.S. Navy bombing range on Vieques island while the meat is tested for toxic substances.

``If these substances are present, we're not going to certify (the meat) as fit for human consumption,'' agriculture official, Eduardo Siberio, said in a television interview Friday.

Officials did not say how much meat is produced on the 51-square-mile island just east of the main island of Puerto Rico. The department expects results from the meat testing in two to four weeks.

The Navy controls about two-thirds of Vieques and uses it for military training. It has carried out bombing exercises for six decades, although it stopped using live ammunition after errant bombs killed a civilian guard on the range in 1999.

Navy opponents have alleged the bombing poses a health threat, which the Navy strongly denies.

President Bush has said the Navy will leave the island of 9,100 people in 2003, but opponents want it to leave now. The next round of Navy training will begin next month.

-------- OTHER

-------- energy

How Coal Got Its Glow Back

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By JEFF GOODELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/magazine/22COAL.html?searchpv=nytToday&pagewanted=all

Twenty-five miles south of Charleston, W. Va., the Appalachians look as they must have a thousand years ago, rapturously folded against each other and densely covered with trees. Down a gently sloping mountainside, a conveyor belt angles toward four coal-storage bins that resemble farm silos. I exit onto a roughly-paved road and arrive at a small white guardhouse near a wooden sign: "Hobet 21."

It doesn't look like much. But in fact Hobet 21 covers some 12,000 acres, almost all of it hidden from easy public view by foliage and mountain ridges. Hobet 21 is owned by Arch Coal, America's second-largest coal company, with mines throughout Appalachia and the West. Arch will dig up 100 million tons of coal this year, with six million coming from Hobet 21. Almost half the coal Arch digs in Appalachia will be obtained by a controversial method known as "mountaintop removal." Instead of digging the coal out of the mountains in subterranean shafts, as miners used to do, workers today -- with the help of enormous machines called draglines that scoop 100 tons of earth and rock at a time -- simply remove the mountains from the coal. It's hell on the owls and frogs and human beings who live in the vicinity, but it's remarkably efficient.

At the guardhouse, I'm greeted by Larry Emerson, director of "environmental performance" for Arch. A tall, rangy West Virginia native dressed in jeans and a baseball hat, he is deliberate in his good cheer. "Welcome to our world," Emerson says, pumping my hand firmly. "I hear you want to see where electricity comes from."

I follow Emerson's Dodge 4 by 4 up the hill. Looking at the coal-handling machinery -- the silos where coal is washed of impurities, the loading deck where it is funneled into rail cars -- I feel as if I'm passing through a theme-park exhibit about How Life Used to Be in America. All that's missing are pickaxes and mules. I'm also amazed by the tall piles of glistening rock; coal has a reputation as a filthy fuel, but in its raw state, it is shiny and pitch-black lovely.

After a short drive, we suddenly come to a huge barren area -- a man-made plateau. In the center of this wide-open field, near some rusty trailers, is the mining office. It feels strangely exposed up here. West Virginia is all hollows and shadows and twisting roads. This is a different planet.

We park near the office, and Emerson, who has supervised the planting of trees on reclaimed mine land, hands me some P.R. material touting Arch's environmental accomplishments. As we chat, a siren goes off in the distance. A moment later, there's a boom. The earth trembles; a rabbit dashes across the parking lot and dives under a bush. A plume of smoke rises on the horizon.

"They're blasting," Emerson explains matter-of-factly.

Yes, they are -- blasting, booming and raking in the dough. Big Coal simply can't believe its luck. For decades, the industry seemed to be dying. First, the use of coal for industrial applications, like steel making, was phased out. In the late 70's, utility companies began switching from coal to natural gas, which was plentiful, more efficient and less of an environmental nightmare. During the 80's and 90's, coal prices flattened. Profits, if there were any, were measured in pennies per ton.

Then, unexpectedly, what one analyst has called "the Perfect Storm" hit the energy industry. Rolling blackouts in California demonstrated that electricity is not something that's created by wall outlets; the price of natural gas shot up to $10 from $2.50 per million B.T.U.; and finally, George W. Bush of Texas, the state that consumes more coal than any other in the country, together with Dick Cheney, who hails from the largest coal-producing state in the country, won the White House. Two months after taking office, in an about-face that outraged environmentalists, President Bush "clarified" his campaign pledge to begin regulating carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants, effectively killing the international Kyoto treaty on global warming. Considering that American coal-powered plants pump 2.3 billion tons of CO2 into the air each year -- twice as much as the amount emitted by cars -- Bush's turnaround was a godsend. Then in May, the administration announced an "energy plan" that openly championed coal, positioning it as America's favored source of electricity generation for decades to come.

To anyone who believes that technological progress moves in a straight line, this has been a weird turn of events. It's as if a wormhole opened in the cosmos and we slid back to the 1890's. Isn't this the dawn of the 21st century? Why are we burning rocks to charge our cell phones?

Even before the boom, coal-fired power plants still produced more than 50 percent of the electricity in America. And Big Coal may soon have an even bigger share: 22 new coal-powered plants have been proposed just in the last few months. The price of coal has more than doubled since February, while the stock prices of industry leaders like Arch and its rival, Peabody Energy, have shot up like dot-coms of yore.

Flush with cash, Big Coal is now working to wipe some of the soot off its image. The National Mining Association now refers to coal, which is formed from ancient plant matter, as "buried sunshine." One industry-financed advertisement features a kid standing on a pitcher's mound in a lighted stadium, alongside the slogan "Electricity from coal: Essential, affordable, increasingly clean." It's a deft phrase, considering that in 1999 American coal-fired utilities filled the air with 18 million tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, down from 21 million tons in 1990. (These chemicals are the major cause of acid rain.)

Part of the new spin on coal is that it's the engine behind the New Economy. Industry executives never tire of suggesting that, without coal, there would be no semiconductors, no Internet. The first time I talked to Bill Raney, the powerful president of the West Virginia Coal Association, he said, apropos of nothing, "Did you know that it takes more energy to charge up a Palm hand-held than it does to power a refrigerator for a month?" It turns out Raney's claim is a bit exaggerated; a Palm is roughly 1,500 times less power hungry than a refrigerator. But Big Coal loves such hyperbole. The West Virginia Coal Association's Web site boldly claims that "the process of ordering a book from Amazon.com uses about a half of a pound of coal" and that computers and the Internet suck up 13 percent of the electricity in America. In fact, the best studies suggest that such activities consume only 3 percent of the nation's electricity.

To Big Coal's critics, none of these exaggerations are surprising. "The coal industry has been telling lies for years," says Carolyn Johnson, staff director of the Citizens Coal Council, a Denver-based environmental group. The notion that coal is "increasingly clean" galls David Hawkins, director of the National Resources Defense Council's Climate Center. "When we tried to pass acid-rain legislation, the industry fought us every step of the way for 10 years," Hawkins says. "Now, because laws have forced sulfur-dioxide emissions to go down, they're crowing about it as if it were their accomplishment." To some, the sins of the coal industry go even deeper. "Coal is not only wrecking my state," cries Larry Gibson, a local activist whose ancestral home has been surrounded by mountaintop-mining operations. "It is wrecking the planet! How much longer are we going to let them get away with this?"

That's a question many people are asking, especially in the halls of Congress. A series of political battles is shaping up that will outwardly be about power-plant pollution and greenhouse gases but in fact will amount to a kind of character test for the coal industry. The captains of Big Coal want us to believe that they have turned over a new leaf, that the old days of black lung and billowing smokestacks and the wanton destruction of nature are over. They know that it's wise to adopt a public pose of reform. But now that the Bush administration has placed them at the head of America's energy table, Big Coal's top players are lobbying behind the scenes for a loosening of regulations. The stakes in this largely ignored battle are enormous -- not only for the coal industry, but also for anyone who cares about clean air and cheap electricity.

"This is an important moment for us," says Jack Gerard, president of the National Mining Association, the industry's main lobbying group. "We have to seize this opportunity and prove to the world that we are a new industry -- hopeful, open, technologically sophisticated and environmentally sensitive."

It's going to be a big job.

The National Mining Association Building squats on a prime piece of real estate in Washington. The Mayflower Hotel, site of many power breakfasts and illicit rendezvous, is right across the street. The building itself, a square, solid box of black stone, was modeled on the headquarters of the National Rifle Association and looks as if it could withstand nuclear attack. Inside, it's freeze-framed from the 1970's, with harsh linoleum and steel doors. Jack Gerard's office on the top floor has a few power-politician touches, like a high-backed leather chair and a conference room off to one side. A watercolor of a mining operation -- imagine coal barges painted by a shopping-mall Monet -- hangs beside his desk. On the windowsill sits a toy bulldozer and excavator. There is an industrial frankness to it all; it's prespin America.

Gerard, 42, is friendly and warm, dressed in a crisply pressed white shirt and expensive loafers. He has salt-and-pepper hair, a manly handshake and a manner that's insistently familiar. "Excuse me, things have been a little chaotic around here," he says, dashing out to hand some papers to his assistant and double-check his afternoon schedule. A former high-powered political consultant and legislative director for Senator James McClure, Republican of Idaho, Gerard has been at this job for only about eight months, and you get the feeling that this new coal-fired life is even hotter than he expected. Earlier today, he had lunch with the owner of a Western coal company who is thinking about the feasibility of building a new coal-fired power plant in Wyoming and shipping the electricity to California; this afternoon, he says he has been "keeping tabs" on what's going on over in the House of Representatives, where the Commerce Committee is beginning to mark up an energy bill.

But Gerard, despite all the nagging details of his day, really has his eye on the big picture for the coal industry. And increasingly, that big picture is focused on a tiny section of the Clean Air Act called New Source Review, which prohibits power-plant operators from expanding old plants without also installing state-of-the-art pollution-control devices. Later this summer, the Bush administration may recommend the dismantling of New Source Review -- and Big Coal is doing everything it can to make that happen.

While it sounds arcane, the conflict over New Source Review is in fact a profound challenge to Big Coal. If the regulations are upheld and enforced, satisfying their stringent environmental requirements could cost the industry billions of dollars. More important, executives worry that if the environmentalists win this battle, it could ultimately lead to a whole lot less coal being burned in the United States. And less coal burned means less coal mined, which is why Jack Gerard is concerned. "This is a big issue for us," he says frankly.

The roots of this conflict go back more than 25 years. When the Clean Air Act, which restricted pollution from smokestacks, was amended in 1977, utilities fought for and won an exemption for their aging power plants. The reasoning was that it would be too costly to upgrade older plants to meet the Clean Air Act's strict requirements and that the plants would be retired soon anyway. It didn't quite work that way. Many old belchers are still running full tilt. In the mid-90's, regulators suspected that many power-plant operators were evading the spirit, if not the letter, of the law by installing new parts that prolonged the lives of the old power plants while at the same time avoiding pollution upgrades. In 1999 and 2000, the Department of Justice, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, filed suit against a total of 51 power plants, charging them with violating the Clean Air Act. A number of states, mostly in the Northeast, and various environmental groups piled on with lawsuits of their own. Currently, American Electric Power, one of the largest utilities in the country, is being sued not only by the E.P.A., but also by eight states and 17 environmental groups.

"The effect of all this litigation," Gerard tells me, "was to chill the industry. No one wanted to upgrade or maintain their power plants because they were afraid of getting sued."

Meanwhile, Big Coal's aging power plants have cranked up the juice. Electricity from old, heavily-polluting coal-fired power plants rose 15.8 percent between 1992 and 1998, an increase big enough to power California for a year. In a single year, 1998, these old machines dumped 755,000 tons of nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere -- the same amount of smog-forming pollution emitted by 36 million cars. (Overall, the industry has increased its CO2 output by 20 percent since 1990.)

Although the details are complex, the larger issue at stake in the battle over New Source Review is straightforward: how long should these old power plants be allowed to continue spewing pollution with impunity? As some observers see it, the industry wants to delay reform indefinitely.

"These utilities have a deliberate strategy in place," one industry consultant explains. "They're just going to keep running the plants as hard as they can while fighting the lawsuits in court. They know that eventually they will lose, but the longer they can drag it out, the more money they can make."

Last summer, Big Coal got a break from an unexpected front: California, a state that has long been anticoal. After the state's rolling blackouts hit, suddenly everyone was talking about power plants -- not how filthy they are but why there aren't more of them. Although California's troubles were in fact caused more by half-baked deregulation than any shortage of generating capacity (one recent study points out that the many blackouts occurred when demand was only 75 percent of available supply), it's much easier to cry for more power than it is to unravel the complex tangle of California energy politics. The White House's trumpeting of the energy crisis helped to feed the myth that America desperately needs additional sources of energy, clean or no.

To take advantage of this fortuitous turn of events, the National Coal Council, a federal advisory committee that critics claim is stacked with coal-industry representatives, cranked out a "white paper" about how to squeeze even more electricity out of those old power plants. Among the conclusions the report reached was that the E.P.A. lawsuits had a "direct and chilling effect" on the operation of the industry's coal-fired power plants.

The Coal Council's paper was delivered to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who passed it to Vice-President Dick Cheney's energy task force. In May, when the White House unveiled its National Energy Policy, it was clear that Big Coal's message had been heard. In the plan, President Bush directed the E.P.A. and the Department of Energy to conduct a 90-day "review" of the impact of Clean Air Act regulations on utility-generation capacity. The report is due Aug. 17.

More important, Bush asked the Department of Justice to "review" all those pending E.P.A. lawsuits against coal-fired power plants. (A report is expected this fall.) To environmentalists, it was a disturbing example of politics interfering with law enforcement, as well as a blatant attack on the Clean Air Act. To Big Coal, it was sweet relief.

Gerard himself is definitely on the sweet-relief side. "I think the solution here is fairly simple," he tells me, leaning forward in his chair. "We need to go back to a pre-Clinton-administration interpretation of the law." As Gerard explains it, the Clinton administration in the mid-90's began wielding New Source Review as an ax against the coal industry. But Clinton wasn't actually the first to do so. The initial crackdown on these power-plant modifications came in 1988, under the Reagan administration.

The question now is what changes, if any, the E.P.A. will recommend in the regulations on Aug. 17. Will the agency suggest that today's energy "crisis" can be resolved only by giving Big Coal some major concessions?

Possibly. But Big Coal's dreams of turning back the clock to the "pre-Clinton" era were dealt a blow by the recent defection of Senator Jim Jeffords from the Republican Party. Jeffords's decision to become an independent not only threw the Senate to the Democrats but also gave him the chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. This powerful position allows Jeffords, an ardent supporter of clean-air regulation, to effectively block any legislation that makes life easier for dirty-power-plant operators.

One measure of how much Jeffords's move has shifted the dynamic is that a mere two weeks after his announcement, eight power companies involved in New Source Review litigation announced that they had formed a lobbying group, the National Electric Reliability Coordinating Council. The group hired Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a high-profile lobbyist, to help apply pressure in all the right places -- in particular, one assumes, the office of Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

As governor of New Jersey, Whitman was outspoken in her support of lawsuits to limit power-plant pollution; to move away from that position now won't be easy for her. "This review is not a back-door attempt to weaken Clean Air legislation," she says. "It's a serious attempt to clarify a very complex regulation." Whitman also points out that, while the review process is going on, the Department of Justice has not stopped enforcing the law. "We just reached a $20 million settlement with a major refinery, so we're moving ahead."

Although New Source Review is obviously a regulatory and political battle, it's also, in some dimension, a moral battle. Many clean-air advocates believe that the utilities have been getting away with this, and other flagrant abuses of the law, for too long. "If the administration rolls over on this, it will be a shortsighted, callous move and another example of the president's caving in to his friends in the energy industry," says Armand Cohen, executive director of the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based group. "We're ready to kick up a firestorm."

So can Big Coal be made to behave? Gerard, for his part, has been meeting privately with environmental leaders, trying to convince them that the industry is not the Big Bad Wolf. But he tells me that a little gratitude for what Big Coal has accomplished is in order. "What we're doing is good for the country," says Gerard. "Without coal, America wouldn't be what it is today."

Getting clearance to visit Hobet 21 required considerable negotiation. I knew it was Arch's showoff mine, the place where they hold open houses for the local community. But when I called Deck Slone, a spokesman for Arch, to ask for a tour, he politely declined, saying, "We're just too busy right now." Eventually Slone relented and set up a visit -- but only to the reclaimed area, not the active mining site.

My visit to see reclaimed land is led by Larry Emerson, the "environmental performance" official, and John McDaniel, an engineer. McDaniel is tall and lanky and spookily resembles Abe Lincoln, with high cheekbones and a sly smile. McDaniel is a third-generation miner and proud of it.

After a few minutes of chat at Hobet 21's bare-bones mining office, McDaniel, Emerson and I pile into McDaniel's truck. McDaniel pops a Black Sabbath disc out of the CD player so we can roll in pastoral silence across the open grassy fields. Parts of the land here are scrubby, like a reclaimed dump; older sections are more lush. We turn down a small dirt road, past small stands of black alder and Virginia pine, into a grove of young black locust trees. (Mining companies like locust trees because they suck up nitrogen, one of the problem gases released by coal-fueled power plants.) The grass here is waist high; wildflowers are blooming. A meadowlark sings from above. It's so pleasant, and so well constructed, that I half expect an animatronic deer to poke its head out of the woods.

"This was all reclaimed about seven years ago," Emerson explains. "As you can see, the wildlife is beginning to return. In some cases, the habitat is actually improved for many species." Emerson tells me that his wife is a horticulturist and that he lives on four acres of land with a pond stocked with catfish. "I won't tell you that we're improving on what God created," Emerson says. "But by opening more land, we're creating the building blocks for a growing ecosystem. We're also making this hilly terrain more suitable for commercial development."

We park on a high point overlooking a pond, and I'm getting comfortable with the view, starting to enjoy it. That's when I'm jarred by the sight, just over the ridge, of several 240-ton dump trucks grinding over the raw, dusty hills. Goodbye, eco-paradise.

"Everyone thinks we just blow these mountains up," McDaniel says, pulling on a cigarette and leaning against the hood of his Blazer. "But that's not really the way it works at all. It's really quite an elaborate process." Later, back in the mining office, McDaniel will show me intricate diagrams of the mining operation -- the way mountains are dismantled not in one blast but methodically, layer by layer. "What I like about this work," says McDaniel, "is the orchestration of all the different parts, from the permits to the rock trucks. When it all goes right, it's almost like music." And if a few mountains are lost along the way? "There are lots of mountains around here," McDaniel responds, sweeping his hand grandly across the horizon.

Of course, many nature lovers feel a bit more protective toward those peaks. Mountaintop-removal mining presents a thorny problem for a publicly held company like Arch. Stockholders demand growth and profit, but at what cost? Unlike subtler forms of environmental destruction, the results of mountaintop-removal mining are there for the whole world to see. Unless, of course, you don't let them into your mine.

"We certainly feel that the effects of mountaintop mining are sometimes exaggerated," says Steven Leer, president and C.E.O. of Arch. In fact, Leer says, only about one-half of 1 percent of West Virginia has been mountaintop-mined. (Mountaintop-removal mining is also practiced in Kentucky and other Appalachian states, but to a lesser degree.) Local environmentalists like Cindy Rank of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy says that the one-half of 1 percent figure may be true if you look at the entire state. But almost all of the mining goes on in the hilly southern counties, where Rank estimates that close to one-fifth of the land has been blasted away.

Whatever the actual scale of these operations may be, there's no question that the environmental damage wrought on the region has been enormous. Some 470 miles of West Virginia's streams have been filled in by mountaintop mining. Thousands of families have been displaced; streams and rivers have been polluted by acid runoff. Wherever there is mining, coal companies build lakes to hold the water used to wash the coal -- the water in these lakes, called slurry ponds, is a gross, metallic mix of coal dust, mercury, sulfur, arsenic and other chemicals. In 1972, in Buffalo Creek, Ky., a poorly built dam at a slurry pond broke, sending a wall of water over the town below, killing 125 people. Last October, at a mine in Inez, Ky., operated by Massey Energy, another dam broke, dumping 250 million gallons of coal slurry into rivers and streams and killing wildlife as far as 60 miles away. Two weeks ago, unusually high runoff from mountaintop-removal mines contributed to the flooding that devastated West Virginia.

Joan Mulhern, a lawyer with the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund in Washington, argues that mountaintop-removal mining is "a blatant violation of the Clean Water Act." In 1999, United States District Judge Charles H. Haden 2nd, a Republican, agreed. Responding to a lawsuit brought by environmentalists and local residents to halt a 3,100-acre expansion of Arch's Dal-Tex mine, Judge Haden's ruling essentially stopped the state from issuing new mountaintop-removal mining permits and shut down Dal-Tex. It was a stunning blow for Arch: the company laid off or transferred nearly 400 people and took a $365 million write-down. Within weeks of the ruling, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, long a vigorous supporter of Big Coal, tried to overturn the ruling with legislation -- only to be opposed by the Clinton administration. In April, however, the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court reversed Haden's decision. It is a complex ruling, but essentially the court decided that the Clean Water Act is superseded in West Virginia by state laws that permit the destruction of streams during mining operations. Arch is now applying for the permits to reopen Dal-Tex, while activists are pushing for the case to be reheard by the Appeals Court.

Whatever the legality of mountaintop-removal mining, the idea that Arch can somehow keep its operations out of the public eye is naive. The day before I visited Hobet 21, I arranged an aerial tour of the mines with Susan Lapis, a local pilot. On a sultry summer morning, we took off from the Charleston airport in her Cessna 182, climbing through the gray-yellow haze that often makes the air around Charleston look like L.A. on a bad day.

At about 3,000 feet, the mountains looked like a soft, undulating green carpet below. About 15 minutes outside of the city, rips in that carpet suddenly appeared -- wide-open bald spots where raw earth was exposed. I could see the deep cuts in the earth and the thick horizontal seams of raw coal. As we headed farther into Big Coal country, the rips and bald spots in the land became larger and more frequent. Some mountains looked as if they had been sliced off with a machete. Others were so deeply mined they looked like miniature Grand Canyons.

We flew south for more than an hour, passing dozens of mines, some active, some inactive, all naked and raw. Sandwiched between the bright pink flesh of exposed mountains were enormous slurry ponds of metallic green and gold. Whenever I looked out at the horizon, there were more mines in the distance. Eventually, we circled down to 500 feet above Hobet 21. It was enormous and busy. Giant dump trucks filled with rock scurried around, while huge scooping machines ripped out tons of earth. In Silicon Valley, it is commonplace to talk about technology empowering individuals. Here was empowerment on a colossal scale -- one man with the right machine could destroy a mountain.

When Bill Raney, the head of the West Virginia Coal Association, walks into a bar in Charleston on a recent evening, the whole place lights up: "Hey, Bill!" Raney is slim and folksy, with a thick drawl that clashes with his well-tailored blue suit. He has a kind word or a joke for everyone in the room. When the waitress arrives with his Coors Light, she stares at him and says, "You look familiar." Raney winks and drawls, "A face this ugly is kinda hard to forget, ain't it?"

The day before, a front-page story had appeared in The Wall Street Journal detailing how Raney, along with a local coal baron, James H. Harless, had helped engineer President Bush's electoral victory in West Virginia last November. The five electoral votes of this longtime Democratic state gave Bush the slim edge he needed to win the presidency. The piece chronicled the grass-roots organizing Raney did on Bush's behalf, as well as noting that, nationwide, Big Coal donated $3.8 million for the 2000 election, tripling its 1996 contributions. Almost all of that money went to Republicans.

Over his beer, Raney says he was "embarrassed" by the story and chuckles at the idea that he was the kingmaker in the election. "I just fought for what I believe in, like I always do," he says. Still, when Raney talks about last year's election, there's a mix of triumph and relief in his eyes. "We really worked hard on that," Raney says, speaking for his association, which includes 78 mining-related companies in West Virginia. "We had a lot at stake."

Indeed they did. In West Virginia, the immediate fear was that a Gore administration would find a way to crack down on mountaintop-removal mining. But more broadly, it was the looming threat of carbon-dioxide regulations that fired up Big Coal to support Bush. Gore, after all, had written an entire book about the danger of global warming. And there's nothing that freezes the heart of a coal-company executive like frank talk about greenhouse gases. Cars and coal-fired power plants are the two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide and other gases that are warming the climate. But when the carbon whip comes down, everyone knows whom they'll go after first. "We're walking around with a big bull's-eye on our foreheads," jokes James Rogers, C.E.O. of Cinergy, a Midwestern coal-burning utility.

Twenty miles west of Charleston is the John Amos power plant. Squatting on the banks of the Kanawha River, this plant run by American Electric Power consumes up to 26,000 tons of coal a day and generates enough electricity to light two million homes. Inside the plant, a huge iron-encased turbine spins in a huge, echoing room as big as a church. Ninety-six pipes feed pulverized coal dust into a burner at tremendous pressure, where it heats the water that produces steam that spins the turbine that produces the electricity.

Flowing from the tops of the plant's three enormous cooling towers is what appears to be a cloud of pollution. It is not. It's just water vapor; the E.P.A. strictly regulates visible emissions. But though all but imperceptible, plenty of pollution spews daily from the plant's three slender 900-foot smokestacks. The largest polluter in West Virginia, John Amos in 1999 dumped 98,000 tons of sulfur dioxide; 47,500 tons of nitrogen oxides; and 838 pounds of mercury, just a tiny amount of which in a lake make the fish unfit for human consumption.

But the real whopper is the amount of carbon dioxide: 16 million tons of it. This is the Achilles' heel of Big Coal. With respect to the pollutants that cause smog and acid rain, modern coal-powered plants can compare favorably with gas-powered plants. But even the newest, most efficient conventional coal plant emits three times as much carbon dioxide as a natural gas plant. And old, less efficient coal plants burn considerably more CO2.

For a utility executive, building a new power plant means thinking 60 years down the road -- the life expectancy of a new plant. It's also a billion-dollar investment that could be rendered obsolete virtually overnight by a global crackdown on carbon dioxide. As Manoj Guha, a technology manager at American Electric, puts it, "You'd have to be crazy to build a conventional coal-fired power plant right now."

There are ways to deal with carbon dioxide from power plants. The easiest remedy is creating "carbon sinks" -- that is, the planting of thousands of trees, which suck up carbon dioxide. And although it's great P.R. for the power companies (there are so many parrot and jungle scenes in American Electric's corporate literature that you'd think the company was headquartered on the banks of the Amazon, not in Ohio), carbon sinks have a limited usefulness. In 1999, the United States released about 5.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide from all sources; you'd need a forest the size of Jupiter to absorb all that.

Another option is more high-tech. Instead of burning coal, a chemical process can be used that transforms it into a gas, which can then be burned. Removing much of the carbon dioxide during this process is a fairly simple job. The downside of gasification, as this process is called, is that it is relatively untested for power generation; there are only two such plants up and running in the U.S. Of greater concern to Big Coal, however, is the fact that they're rather more expensive to build than conventional coal plants.

And it still leaves you with the problem of what to do with the carbon dioxide once you remove it from the coal. On July 13, the Bush administration took a small step forward by announcing several partnerships with private industry to develop new technologies for "carbon sequestration" -- capturing and storing emissions underground or at the bottom of the ocean.

For years, executives in the power industry had a "hear no evil, see no evil" response to any mention of carbon dioxide. Recently, that has started to change. Progressive leaders in the industry, like Jim Rogers at Cinergy, were tiring of what he calls "environmental policy through litigation." Last year, Rogers and others began back-room talks with various leaders in the environmental movement to see if a long-range regulatory agreement could be hammered out. In exchange for some kind of broad relief from the current death-by-a-thousand-blows style of environmental regulation, Rogers and others were willing to cross the Rubicon and acknowledge that carbon-dioxide emissions need to drop significantly.

But the powerful hard-line faction of Big Coal, which is led by the Southern Company, the country's biggest utility, and Peabody Energy, the world's biggest coal-mining company, would rather go back to rubbing sticks together than embrace pollution controls. The hard-liners want to keep pumping the plants as they have done for decades; to them, caving in on carbon dioxide is unthinkable.

"These guys aren't dumb," says Dale Simbeck, an executive at SFA Pacific, an energy consulting firm. "In a carbon-constrained world, coal is a clear loser." Of course, even hard-liners publicly pledge their commitment to various clean-coal technologies. But they always insist that such changes can only be made decades down the road, Simbeck says. "The auto industry uses the same strategy," he explains. "It's always heralding some magnificent breakthrough just over the horizon, while it fights like hell to keep doing business as usual in the here and now."

No one embodies this no-compromise philosophy better than Irl Engelhardt, chairman and C.E.O. of Peabody Energy, which is headquartered in St. Louis. Engelhardt, 54, keeps a low public profile. (He refused to be interviewed for this story.) He is a brilliant financial strategist, having successfully guided Peabody through a heavily leveraged buyout a few years ago. Last year, he set his sights on taking Peabody public. This meant, among other things, that as the 2000 election took shape, Engelhardt had a huge stake in ensuring that the future of Big Coal looked rosy. And nothing clouds that picture faster than talk about global climate change.

Although Peabody's corporate literature is full of talk about the company's environmental sensitivity, behind closed doors, Engelhardt himself is decidedly less progressive. In March, during a meeting on Capitol Hill with Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a strong advocate of tougher regulations on power-plant emissions, Engelhardt told the senator, according to several attendees: "Climate change is just an environmentalist's P.R. tool. There's no science to back that up." (Through a spokesman, Engelhardt said he "believes that current climate-change science is uncertain.") Of particular concern to Engelhardt was the Kyoto treaty, which would have capped carbon dioxide emissions at pre-1990 levels. During a speech last July at the Edison Electric Institute, the utility industry's lobbying association, Engelhardt used classic Big Coal scare tactics, telling the group that adhering to the Kyoto treaty would require the country to build 68 new nuclear power plants by 2020 and boost wind power by 22 times today's output. And the coal industry, Engelhardt implied, would be out of business.

To shape the debate, Engelhardt was not afraid to put his money where his mouth was. Peabody donated $250,000 to the Republican National Committee during 1999-2000, and Engelhardt himself gave $100,000 to the Bush-Cheney inaugural fund. During the same cycle, Steve Chancellor, the head of Black Beauty Coal, an affiliate that is 82 percent owned by Peabody, gave $344,750 to Republicans. If you add it all up, Peabody, Engelhardt and Engelhardt's business associates donated close to $700,000 to President Bush and his party last year.

Not surprisingly, Bush named Engelhardt to the transition advisory team for the E.P.A.; for a while, his name was in the running for secretary of energy, a position that eventually went to former Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan. Another Peabody executive, John Wootten, served on the transition advisory team for energy. In mid-March, when Bush abandoned his support of carbon-dioxide regulations, many saw Engelhardt's fingerprints all over the decision: "I think you could say Engelhardt got what he paid for," says the C.E.O. of a major power company.

But that doesn't mean that Big Coal has won the battle. "The pressures to do something about CO2 emissions are just enormous," says Kris Krause, a senior executive at Wisconsin Energy. And they are about to get bigger. Senator Jeffords has made clear to staff members that he will make power-plant emissions legislation his No. 1 priority this fall. There is a rising sense that, whatever the complexities of the science of climate change may be, America can no longer afford to stick its head in the sand. Even Senator Byrd and Senator John McCain, neither of whom is any great friend of the environmental movement, have suggested that it is time to start thinking about a carbon-capped future. It will be a long, hard fight.

By all accounts, the White House was caught off-guard by the uproar that followed the president's reversal on carbon dioxide. (The morning of the announcement, one senior administration official crowed to Rusty Matthews, an energy lobbyist, that it would be "a one-day story.") But contrary to what you might guess from the White House's flat-footedness on this, there are senior staff members in the administration who take climate change seriously and believe we cannot wait another four years to do something about it. However, these same staff members are trapped in a box. Any movement by Bush toward a carbon-capped world will anger Big Coal supporters in states like Ohio, West Virginia and Illinois, all of which were crucial to his election victory; any movement away from carbon caps will further underscore the growing public perception that the president is out of touch on environmental issues and could cause trouble for Republicans in next year's midterm elections.

So could New Source Review. Christie Whitman has been adamant that this be seen as an open process and points out that, in addition to four public hearings around the country, her staff has consulted with more than 96 organizations. But all this public exposure has only heightened awareness of the issue, turning it into a litmus test of the administration's environmental commitment and continuing the debate over whether Bush is in the energy industry's pocket.

However it plays out, there has already been one clear winner in the fossil-fuel sweepstakes: Irl Engelhardt and Peabody Energy. In mid-February, while Bush's energy task force was still formulating its policy, Peabody Energy filed with the S.E.C. for an initial public stock offering. On May 22, just five days after the energy plan was released, Peabody went public. Tech stocks were tanking, but Peabody defied gravity, opening at $28 and shooting up to close at the end of the day at $36. Engelhardt's personal stake of more than 633,000 shares was worth more than $23 million.

After leaving Hobet 21, hoping to get a look at the operation from a different perspective, I take a drive into the mountains that surround the mine. I was told that there is a spot between the towns of Big Muddy and Ugly where you can get a close look at the pit. I drive an hour or so, passing disassembled 4 by 4's up on jacks, rusting mobile homes and small but beautifully tended gardens flowering in rare patches of sunlight. At one point, hopelessly lost, I stop to talk to a pimply kid on a muddy Honda ATV parked beside the road. I ask him if he knows where I can get a look at Arch's big mine. Without saying a word, he nods, starts his ATV and heads up the road. I follow. He turns onto a dirt road, and we come to a small clearing -- there, a thousand yards or so in the distance, is the open pit. There are trails down the hill, and I can hear the buzz of other ATV's along with the grinding of the dragline and the high-pitched whine of dump trucks struggling up a grade.

"You ride down there?" I ask the boy, whose name was Robby.

"Yeah. It's killer."

"They don't chase you off?"

"Nah. They know we're just havin' fun."

I nod. "Anyone in your family work there?"

"I wish," he says. "Good money. These guys, they all have new boats."

I thank Robby for showing me the spot; he slips on his helmet and rides off down the hill. A few minutes later, I see him on a far hill in the mine, not far from where Emerson and McDaniel and I stood earlier, tearing up and down the hillside with several friends. Add kids with ATV's to the list of creatures who thrive in reclaimed mine habitat.

Earlier, McDaniel scoffed at me when I asked if coal companies deliberately site mines in places that are hidden from public view -- we mine where the coal is," he said. Still, there is something secretive about all this and about energy production in general. We'd all like to imagine that the wired world just spins on its own, that electricity comes out of the wall, that none of this aging and immense and complex machinery -- the dump trucks and railroad cars and power plants -- really exists. And because we have such great faith in technology, we want to believe that coal can somehow be made perfectly clean, that nuclear power can be made completely safe, that wind farms can stop mutilating birds, that gas can be extracted from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in, as the White House often puts it, "an environmentally sound manner." But producing energy is simply not a zero-sum game -- at least, not yet. There is always risk and loss; there are always unintended consequences. Indeed, this is why mountaintop-removal mining is so controversial. Greenhouse gases are tough to see, but you can't miss a carved-up mountain: it makes explicit the trade-off we make to keep our wired world humming. It is the energy equivalent of witnessing the slaughter of the cow that goes into our hamburger.

Despite its many troubling aspects, coal is likely to remain a big part of the energy mix in America for a long time to come. Hydrogen-powered fuel cells are fun to dream about, but in the real world, coal's plentiful reserves, as well as the entrenched infrastructure -- mines, railroads, power plants -- mean we aren't going to get off this black rock anytime soon. The question is, how much damage must be done to the mountains, to the air, to the water, to our lungs, to the planet? Big Coal can either join Big Tobacco on the periphery of American life, an isolated empire of denial and abuse, or it can start listening to its own polished rhetoric about its cleaning up its act. Granted, embracing pollution controls or mining coal in ecologically sensitive ways is not cheap. But it all depends on how you calculate the price.

For now, the boom continues. I stand on the hilltop for a few more minutes and watch the dragline. The big scooper tears into the earth, lifts 100 tons of dirt away and dumps it in another pile, with no more apparent effort than it takes my 3-year-old son to shovel sand on the beach. The dragline works with an incessant rhythm -- digging, lifting, dumping, digging, lifting, dumping -- and it is going on here at Hobet 21, and at mines all over the country, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As McDaniel explained to me a few hours earlier, "It costs too much to stop."

Jeff Goodell is the author of "Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family." He last wrote for the magazine about the execution of Timothy McVeigh.

-------- environment

In Baltimore, Toxic Scare Abates

By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Molly Ball
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 22, 2001; Page C01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32184-2001Jul21?language=printer

BALTIMORE, July 21 -- A cracked and blackened acid tanker, the last and most vexing of the toxic train cars that derailed here Wednesday, was gingerly dragged out of the Howard Street tunnel today, ending a chemical scare that throttled this city at the height of the summer tourist season.

Acid specialists, in white protective gear reminiscent of spacesuits, swaddled the hobbled tanker in bright blue tarps, taking special care to cover the broken welding seam that let 8,000 to 10,000 gallons of hydrochloric acid splash onto the ground in the century-old tunnel.

Passing cars honked and motorists waved as the men worked on the tanker, which was pulled from the tunnel by a yellow diesel locomotive owned by CSX, the company whose 60-car train had smoldered and burned in the tunnel since Wednesday afternoon.

The acid tanker, known as Car 53, had been the subject of firefighters' darkest fears and the focus of their most urgent efforts in a narrow tunnel that soot-covered workers described as a hellish zone of smoke and flame, just 60 feet below downtown and only a few steps from Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

As the tanker was dragged away to a rail yard, much of downtown Baltimore returned to normal with tourists crowding the Inner Harbor and the Orioles and Anaheim Angels suiting up for their game.

CSX locomotives also towed three more boxcars out of the north side of the tunnel today, leaving six cars inside. The first of those is to be pulled out of the south end of the tunnel late tonight; the other five are to follow every four hours, according to a CSX spokesman.

Inspectors also have begun evaluating the condition of the tunnel, which handles much of the East Coast's rail freight. Federal officials will probe the cause of derailment.

Firefighters had labored continuously since Wednesday to keep the fire away from the acid spill and prevent suffocating vapor clouds, which are created when hydrochloric acid -- dangerous and corrosive in its raw form -- comes in contact with intense heat.

"The degree of concern has dropped," said a relieved Hector Torres, spokesman for the Baltimore Fire Department.

Most of the spilled hydrochloric acid, used to make a variety of household products, was diluted by the torrents of water released into the tunnel by firefighters and by streams pouring from a broken water main in downtown Baltimore that investigators suspect burst because of the derailment.

The heavily diluted acid flowed out of the tunnel through threedrains, including one into the city's Inner Harbor tourist district. But monitoring in the harbor has showed normal acid levels there for all but two hours on Thursday.

Oblivious to the firefighting work below, throngs of tourists and locals were drawn to the harbor by clear, sunny skies. "I thought for sure that we weren't going to be as busy as usual, but it's super busy," said Pat Bacon, a volunteer at the visitors center.

The surest sign that all was well could be seen at Camden Yards, where players returned for the first time since Wednesday afternoon, when fans gathering for the Orioles game had been herded away as a nasty cloud of black smoke formed over the south end of the tunnel.

Coincidentally, today's game had long been scheduled as firefighter appreciation day, with part of the proceeds going to the city's fire department.

Yet, even as the first pitch was thrown, reminders of the accident were everywhere.

Police barricades still lined many of the avenues that cross Howard Street, a key thoroughfare that lies above the length of the 1.5-mile tunnel.

A gaping hole where the water main broke still lay exposed at the corner of Howard and Lombard streets, in front of the Holiday Inn where K.C. and the Sunshine Band and other guests had to pick their way through trucks and sweating fire crews to cross the street.

Beneath the water main, engineers gently probed the old tunnel's walls and ceiling to check whether they are still sound, though engineers have not been able to inspect much of the expanse. "We're encouraged by what we see at this point," said Robert Gould, a CSX spokesman.

Indeed, as firefighters battled the smoky blazes on the last remaining boxcars, Gould already had begun to talk of a grander future.

He said the company is likely to press forward with plans to persuade federal authorities to let it raise the tunnel's roof to accommodate double-stacked containers.

Federal transportation officials have yet to embark on their examination of the tunnel, and it is still unclear what caused the derailment. The train's engineer and conductor, who uncoupled their locomotives and escaped the tunnel unhurt after the derailment, have been interviewed and have submitted to alcohol and drug tests. Results of the tests are expected within two weeks.

Fire department officials speculated that the flames were kicked up when a tanker carrying tripropylene -- a toxic compound used in detergents and plastics -- derailed and dumped its load. That tanker was pulled out of the south end of the tunnel early this morning. At the north end of the tunnel, which opens behind the Maryland Institute, College of Art, crews worked through the night pulling out 42 boxcars in groups of five to nine.

Hours after the acid tanker was removed, a trio of onlookers stood on an overpass above the south end of the tunnel that once had been crowded with television satellite trucks. Janet Wilson, who lives on nearby Federal Hill, admitted to being a bit embarrassed about hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the smoking cars.

A few blocks away, at the Inner Harbor, tourists hurried to lick ice cream from soggy cones before it melted. And in the water, framed by plastic containment booms set there to collect debris, a pair of mallard ducks turned lazy circles in the 90-degree heat.

----

Negotiators Aim to Rescue Climate Pact

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Climate-Talks.html?searchpv=aponline

BONN, Germany (AP) -- Negotiators from 178 countries bargained Sunday over a draft accord to combat global warming that aims to break years of deadlock and bring the 1997 Kyoto Protocol into force without U.S. participation.

After meeting for much of the night, delegates headed into marathon talks Sunday to try to complete rules for the accord that pledges industrialized countries to cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.

Three days of intense negotiating by government ministers in Bonn narrowed differences and yielded a compromise proposal late Saturday, which also contained concessions meant to leave the pact open for the United States to join in later.

The European Union, the first delegation to react, said it had problems with the proposal, but would go along with it if all other countries accepted it unchanged.

``If everyone can accept all of it, we will not stand in their way,'' EU spokesman Tony Carritt said after delivering their message to conference chairman Jan Pronk.

But delegations from Canada and Japan, both fence-sitters at the talks, were still deliberating Sunday whether to accept.

Negotiators were under pressure to clinch the deal while leaders of seven top industrial nations and Russia met in Italy at the Group of Eight summit. There, the leaders of Japan and Canada faced strong pressure from their European colleagues to agree to an accord.

A possible deal-breaker was nuclear energy, which the draft accord asks countries to ``refrain'' from using to meet clean-air targets -- a position resisted particularly by Canada.

The complex balancing of interests aims at getting countries to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Environmentalists viewed the deal on the table as ratifiable -- and said they hoped it would be brought into force in 2002, 10 years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

The pact, rejected by President Bush in March as harmful to the American economy, pledges developed countries to cut emissions of gases trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere -- notably carbon dioxide from cars, power stations and smokestacks.

The United States is the biggest emitter, accounting for a quarter of all greenhouse gases.

Environmental groups observing the Bonn talks said that while the rules could be tighter they welcomed the proposal as a landmark first step.

``What we need from the G8 is a signal back to the negotiators that this is a package they can live with,'' said Alden Meyer, an environmentalist with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

``The deal does provide the basis for ratification of the protocol,'' said Bill Hare of Greenpeace. ``It's a good deal. They've gotten much more than they deserve.''

Earlier, conference chair Pronk urged negotiators to consider the proposed compromise carefully and be ready to approve it later Sunday.

``That's the intention: To agree,'' he said.

Pronk's latest proposal covered four crucial areas: financing, emission credits for forest and farmland that soak up carbon dioxide, ways to offset pollution reduction targets with clean-air projects, and sanctions for failing to meet those targets.

The treaty, which aims to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 5.2 percent of 1990 levels by 2012, must be ratified by 55 nations responsible for 55 percent of emissions worldwide to come into force.

Even though the Bush administration rejected the pact, several issues appeared to be going Washington's way.

They included forest management, with proposed caps largely in line with an approach that was acceptable to the United States in the past. Also, none of the funding under the deal would be mandatory -- meeting a key U.S. concern.

While the United States has indicated it won't join the treaty, and therefore would not be bound by its rules, it is concerned about precedents being set under Kyoto that could be carried over to other international agreements. At the same time, other countries want a pact the United States might join later.

-------- human rights

Helping Those Who Flee for Their Lives

By Theodore E. McCarrick
Sunday, July 22, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29275-2001Jul20?language=printer

It's unfortunate, but there was little to celebrate last week as the world marked the 50th anniversary of the U.N. treaty protecting refugees. The state of the world's refugees is anything but golden.

There are more than 14 million refugees in the world today, an increase of 6 million in the past 20 years. Most languish in tented camps around the globe, with little hope for return to their homes and no prospect for a new future in another country. Approximately 80 percent are women and children.

Over the past 50 years, the United States has played a world leadership role in refugee protection and assistance, granting asylum to and resettling millions of people in the United States. U.S. leadership in this critical area of humanitarian concern has been vital in ensuring that other nations, including many of our allies, do their part to assist these victims of war and persecution.

In recent years, however, there have been disturbing signs that the United States is abdicating that leadership role at a time of increasing need. Since 1992 the number of refugees the United States has accepted for resettlement has decreased by nearly 45 percent, from 132,172 in fiscal year 1993 to 72,515 in 2000. Admission levels are expected to fall this fiscal year as well. Over the same period, the U.S. contribution to refugees overseas has remained steady but has not kept up with the rising refugee numbers.

Current U.S. law does not help. Thanks to a 1996 law, an asylum-seeker -- a refugee fleeing persecution or torture who appears on U.S. shores seeking protection -- must be able to immediately articulate his or her fear of return to U.S. authorities. Otherwise, the refugee is subject to immediate deportation without any recourse to the legal system. This so-called "expedited removal" procedure ignores the fact that most asylum-seekers are traumatized, have difficulty communicating the basis of their fear and cannot obtain valid travel documents from the government persecuting them.

Take the example of Ditron, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo. In early 1998 he fled the genocide perpetrated by the Milosevic regime and managed to get to Newark International Airport, where he attempted to seek asylum. Because he could not communicate his fear of persecution adequately, his statements were ignored and he was put on a plane home to Kosovo. Somehow, he managed to escape the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and returned to the United States again. His application for asylum is pending. Expedited removal has resulted in the deportation of more than 80,000 people per year, some back into the hands of their persecutors.

Can our elected leaders do something to reverse these policies? In the short term, the administration and Congress must redefine U.S. refugee policy and reverse the decline in support for refugees around the world by increasing admissions numbers and overseas assistance. This additional commitment would save lives and help stabilize areas of conflict by keeping civilian populations out of harm's way.

Despite Ditron's story, the United States ultimately did play an appropriate and praiseworthy role in protecting and saving the lives of refugees from Kosovo by providing assistance in the refugee camps in Macedonia and permitting as many as 20,000 Kosovars to come to the United States. Yet at the same time, similar refugee crises spawned by conflict in Africa -- a continent generally considered not as vital to U.S. strategic interests as Europe -- go largely unnoticed.

Those who come to our shores and request asylum should be given a chance to make their case before a qualified asylum officer and immigration judge. The Refugee Protection Act to be considered by Congress would reform the U.S. asylum system appropriately and should be enacted.

Over the long term, our nation and the international community must seek solutions to the root causes of population movements. Without continued initiatives toward conflict resolution and sustainable development in regions of instability, refugees and asylum-seekers inevitably will become a permanent part of the global landscape.

The United States needs to move away from a policy that considers strategic interests first and humanitarian principles second. We should reexamine policies toward the persecuted and restore our country as a safe haven for those who flee for their lives. By so doing, we will serve our national interest and act as an example to other nations. Most important, we will save lives.

The writer is archbishop of Washington and a consultant to the Committee on Migration of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

---

Immigration Improvements

Sunday, July 22, 2001; Page B06
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29255-2001Jul20?language=printer

THE SUPREME Court, at the end of its term last month, handed down two important immigration decisions, which together emphasize that federal courts will enforce minimum standards of fairness for those the government is seeking to deport. Congress in 1996 passed dreadful new rules stripping the courts of jurisdiction to review the deportations of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes and making deportation of such criminals mandatory in many cases. This law has caused people who spent virtually their entire lives in this country to be sent abroad to lands whose languages they don't even speak. Had the court failed to act, it would have conceded virtually unlimited power over deportees to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Instead, it ruled that the courts retained the power to hear claims by criminal aliens that their deportations would violate the law or the Constitution. And it also held that criminal aliens whose countries of origin refused to take them back could not be detained indefinitely.

The court, however, has only begun the work of repairing the damage Congress has done. Even after the decisions, illegal immigrants who committed even petty crimes are still required to be deported if they pleaded guilty after 1996 or, for technical reasons, if they didn't plead guilty but faced a jury instead. The presumption that criminal aliens should lose their ability to remain in this country is reasonable enough, but the absence of any discretion on the part of the INS to waive deportation is wrong. Some of the crimes that trigger mandatory deportation are relatively minor compared with the compelling humanitarian reasons to let someone remain here. Where an illegal immigrant is capable of making a persuasive case that he or she should be allowed to stay, the law should not prevent the government from permitting it.

No less wrongheaded is the requirement that criminal aliens be detained while deportation proceedings against them are conducted. Many should be locked up, to be sure. But many others are neither flight risks nor dangerous, and their detention is both costly and unnecessary. Congress should restore the discretion to release such people.

Finally, Congress needs to undo some of the other provisions that strip the courts of jurisdiction to hear claims by illegal immigrants against the INS. These laws serve to shield the INS from oversight by the courts; given the agency's record, they hardly seem reasonable.

The court's decisions last month ensure that a bare minimum of judicial review remains and that illegal immigrants cannot be held forever without being indicted. They do not, however, fix the problem that Congress created with its reckless changes to the law. Congress itself still needs to do that.

-------- imf / world bank

Figures About Recent Global Summits

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Summits-Numbers-Box.html

Facts, figures about recent global summits:

Genoa, Italy: Summit of wealthy industrial nations, July 2001

--One protester killed.

--About 500 people injured.

--Nearly 180 arrested.

--About 20,000 police officers, paramilitary police and soldiers deployed.

--Cost: about $145 million, including $25 million for security and $120 million for refurbishing the city.

Goteborg, Sweden: European Union summit, June 2001

--Riot damage estimated at $4 million.

--More than 400 detained by police.

--More than 40 hospitalized.

Quebec: Americas trade summit, April 2001

--Security costs exceeded $40 million.

--About 400 arrested.

--More than 6,000 police officers deployed.

Prague, Czech Republic: International Monetary Fund-World Bank

summit, September 2000

--Cost: $25 million.

--Riot damage estimated at $250,000.

--About 11,000 police officers deployed.

--Nearly 900 arrested.

--About 150 injured.

Seattle: World Trade Organization summit, November-December 1999

--Riot damage estimated at $3 million.

--Overtime pay for police and firefighters: $555,000.

--More than 500 arrested.

--More than 90 hospitalized.

-------- police / prisoners

Liberia Frees Political Prisoners

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Liberia-Pardons.html

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) -- President Charles Taylor has freed his former political adviser and two other jailed political prisoners, saying he wanted to foster reconciliation in war-wrecked Liberia.

The three were among 13 people convicted of treason and imprisoned after bloody 1998 street fighting between Taylor's forces and followers of one-time militia leader Roosevelt Johnson.

Taylor's KISS FM radio station quoted the president as saying Saturday he had granted the three clemency ``in an effort to promote peace and reconciliation.''

Taylor and Johnson led opposing factions during Liberia's seven-year civil war, which Taylor launched in 1989 to overthrow then-President Samuel Doe. Doe was tortured and executed in the blood bath that followed.

Like Doe, Johnson and the three men freed this weekend are members of the ethnic Krahn people.

Johnson was evacuated to Nigeria amid the 1998 battles, ending a standoff in which he and followers had sought protection at the U.S. Embassy.

Taylor did not say why he was freeing these three men in particular. He announced the release Friday in the city of Zwedru in Grand Geteh county, the three men's home region.

The president called it a step toward ``bringing Liberians together to ensure the peace they are yearning for.'' Celebrations followed Saturday in Grand Geteh.

Taylor, elected president in 1997, is looking ahead to a 2003 race for another term. The weekend move was seen by some Liberians as a bid to secure political support.

-------- police / prisoners

Overmatched by Technology

By David Callahan
Sunday, July 22, 2001; Page B03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29209-2001Jul20?language=printer

Last week, a small group of activists staged a protest in Tampa against a new video surveillance system: Cameras using face-recognition technology watch over a downtown nightlife district and match the faces picked up with a database of mug shots. City officials claim the system makes Tampa safer. The protesters argued that the city has no right to record or analyze such so-called biometric data without the subjects' permission.

Who's right in this debate? That's a good question, and one that currently has no clear-cut answer.A century ago, when U.S. law enforcement agencies first introduced fingerprinting, few voices of dissent challenged the idea of trusting government with foolproof records for identifying Americans. But today's technologies for analyzing human traits are considerably more ominous. The image of a detective dusting for fingerprints seems quaintly innocent in an era when sophisticated computer databases contain reams of information about our physical selves. What's more, such databases are being assembled not just by government agencies but also by private businesses. And this is happening amid scant democratic deliberation over how to balance the conflicting interests of society.

Recent years have seen rapid advances in technologies that measure human characteristics such as facial shape, retinas, hand geometry, voice signature and, of course, our DNA. Such advances are occurring at the same time that faster computer chips and expanding bandwidth allow digitized data to be more quickly analyzed and more widely shared. Even fingerprinting is being revolutionized.

Law enforcement officials see these advances as a boon, arguing that the benefits to society outweigh the potential dangers -- arguments not easily dismissed. For example, not only has DNA testing allowed numerous wrongly convicted people to go free, but new DNA databases could result in much higher arrest and conviction rates, which could in turn deter would-be criminals. If DNA records were on file for every American, nearly all rapists could be reliably identified, arrested and incarcerated. On the other hand, these same records could be used to identify genes associated with certain physical and mental health conditions that the sufferers might well want to keep private.

Do most of us want to live in a society where the police can access our genetic code? Probably not, especially not if scientific breakthroughs allow these records to show how intelligent we are, or whether we're prone to alcoholism or violence. Do most of us like living in a society where rapists go unpunished? Definitely not.

Modern face-recognition technology conjures images of George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984," in which everyone is watched constantly by cameras. That future is closer than most Americans may think. By processing the data stream of images from the video surveillance networks with face-recognition technology, those entities in control of major networks -- say, 7-Eleven Inc., or public transit agencies -- will have access to vast amounts of information about the whereabouts of millions of Americans.

Do Americans like the idea of wanted criminals being apprehended more easily? Yes. Do most Americans want this security enough to allow public and private entities to track everyone's movements? That's more equivocal. Some of us probably do, while others do not.

The lack of democratic deliberation about biometrics and DNA stockpilingis as unsettling as the technologies themselves. Despite occasional congressional hearings and public protests, federal and state legislative attention is wanting. Law enforcement agencies operate in a poorly regulated environment, building DNA databases or installing video surveillance systems without public notification, consultation or debate. Few laws govern how private businesses collect, use and transfer physical information about employees or customers. Biometric technology is a fast-growing industry, and private corporations are pushing their products aggressively. A new trade group, the International Biometrics Industry Association, has set up shop in Washington to lobby on behalf of its members in federal and state policymaking arenas. This summer, for example, the IBIA sought to stop recent legislation in California imposing restrictions on face-recognition technology.

It is one of the disquieting truths of modern life that technology advances far more quickly than public policy. The advantage is with industry because high-tech innovation moves fast, driven by impatient scientists and entrepreneurs, while public policy advances with painful slowness through the creaky machinery of legislation.

Earlier in this century there was much debate over whether democracy could survive totalitarianism and communism. It did. These days one wonders whether democracy can keep up with technology. It can, especially if political leaders have the courage to regulate powerful market forces, and rein in overzealous law enforcement officials. Technologies that take the full measure of human beings offer a good place to begin showing this courage. Here's a look at four of the technologies that allow both private businesses and law enforcement agencies to capture and stockpile vast new amounts of information about our physical beings and our movements.

Out of This Whorl: Fingerprinting

In an age of science fiction-like biometric technologies, the oldest such tool -- fingerprinting -- is not only more widely used than ever before but also is causing unprecedented controversy.

In 1998, President Clinton signed the National Child Protection Act, which legalized using fingerprint-based criminal history checks for any organization working with children, the elderly or people with disabilities. This national law supplements a growing number of state laws that mandate fingerprinting for a wide variety of purposes. Six states now require fingerprinting to get a driver's license. Maine passed a law in 1997 mandating the fingerprinting of all school employees. Virginia passed legislation in 2000 that allows businesses and other organizations that serve children, the elderly and the disabled to use the resources of the Virginia State Police to do fingerprint investigations of employees or potential volunteers. New York City requires the fingerprinting of welfare recipients.

New technology makes fingerprints easier to collect, as well as to analyze and share widely. Forget the old ink pads. Today, electronic fingerprints can be taken with a scanning machine. Also, mathematical algorithms have allowed the characteristics of fingerprints to be broken down into tiny and unique data files, which can be rapidly processed by computers looking for matches.

Civil libertarians and others have vigorously fought the growing use of fingerprinting in normal government and business transactions. "Bit by bit what's happening is we're turning our society into a police state," said Sally Sutton, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, in fighting the Maine school employee law. "Freedom means we should be free from government scrutiny until convicted."

Some parents in Maine, however, have argued that freedom comes from knowing that their children are not being taught by convicted child molesters who lied during their background checks.

-- D.C.

Putting the 'I' in Iris: Biometric Identity Authentication

The time: two years from now. The place: your ATM.

You stand in front of the machine. You do not insert a cash card, you do not enter a PIN. Still, the ATM knows you and allows you to withdraw money. How is this possible? "Biometric identity authentication," using a scan of your eye's retina or iris.

New technologies for measuring and recording human traits are gaining a major following among a diverse array of businesses. In addition to eye scans and face recognition, several technologies are on the market, including those that analyze the dimensions of your hand and the timbre of your voice. Many employers are already using hand geometry devices to replace the old punch-in card, thus making it impossible for workers to punch in pals playing hooky. Corporations with high-security needs use biometric ID systems to regulate access to certain areas, with the logic that security cards can fall into the wrong hands while an individual's retina cannot (except in a James Bond movie). That future ATM could mean nobody would ever be able misuse your cash card again.

Many Americans may not care if their retinal characteristics or voice signature are stored in a data bank that can be sold to the highest bidder. Others will, but have little say in the matter under current law. And that should be of concern to us all. In the words of House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey, who recently called for hearings on face-recognition technology, "Do we really want a society where one cannot walk down the street without Big Brother tracking our every move?"

-- D.C.

Whose Genes Are Those, Anyway?: DNA Databases

Many law enforcement officials have what they see as a utopian vision: Every time they find a shred of genetic evidence associated with a crime, they can enter that evidence into a centralized computer system and soon have the name of a sure-fire suspect -- along with critical evidence needed to send the perpetrator to prison. That vision remains out of reach, for the simple reason that civil libertarians and others consider it a Brave New World nightmare scenario in which the most private information about us is possessed by the state.

Still, key elements of the law enforcement vision have recently fallen into place. The FBI has created a national DNA database by unifying various databases run by the states. Currently, this database is relatively small, mainly containing the DNA files for criminals convicted of sex crimes and other violent offenses. But efforts are under way to exponentially increase the size of the state databases that are the main feeders to the FBI database.

Virginia is on the front line of this quest. Virginia's DNA database program was begun in 1989 and has expanded rapidly since then. Initially, the program only collected DNA samples from violent offenders. The Virginia legislature expanded the program in 1990 to include all felonies and, in 1996, the state added juveniles ages 14 and older who were charged with serious crimes. Now, some state law enforcement officials are talking about expanding the database to cover everyone arrested in Virginia, including those never charged with any crime. Similar proposals are being pushed in New York and elsewhere.

-- D.C.

You Can't Hide Your Lyin' Eyes: Face Recognition

New biometric video surveillance systems in Tampa made their debut during the Super Bowl earlier this year, when the cameras scanned the crowd of 100,000 for individuals with outstanding arrest warrants. This system was subsequently installed in downtown Tampa. U.S. national security agencies have far bigger plans for face-recognition technology, with an eye toward thwarting terrorism. The Pentagon has a $50 million initiative, "Human ID at a Distance," and face recognition is a big part of the effort.

Face-recognition technology is based on the fact that every face is uniquely shaped. New computer programs can instantly identify key points on a face as seen by a video camera, make split-second measurements of how the points are geometrically combined, and then digitize these measurements through mathematical formulas. These formulas allow unique "faceprints" to be reduced to a tiny data file of less than 100 kilobytes that can be compared in seconds with thousands or even millions of faceprints stored in data banks. Face-recognition software systems are inexpensive; the system in Tampa, which was installed free of charge in an effort to sell the idea to other municipalities, would cost less than $30,000 to put into place.

While many Americans may feel safer in a world where video surveillance systems help nab criminals on the run, deter crime and thwart terrorism, the privacy implications are enormous. Face-recognition technology is already being marketed to private businesses to help provide "customized service." That means many people with no criminal record could soon find their faceprints included in vast private data banks that are vulnerable to misuse, simply as a result of using a credit card at one of those businesses. As data banks of faceprints expand, a growing number of private entities will be able to track the movements of ever more Americans. Under current laws, there is little to stop this information from being sold to market research companies, private detectives representing possibly vindictive ex-spouses or anybody else who can pay the right price -- regardless of their motives.

-- D.C.

David Callahan is director of research at Demos, a research and advocacy organization in New York City that works on issues of democracy and economic opportunity.


-------- activists

3 jailed for Pentagon protests

Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001
From: "Jonah House" <disarmnow@erols.com>
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news1/stories/010722/5038624.html

On Friday, July 20, Erin Leitner-Sieber and Scott Kenji Warren were convicted of throwing an object at a building in the Federal District Court in Alexandria VA. A second destruction of government property charge had been dropped and the identical charges against four others who participated in the Good Friday action at the River Entrance of the Pentagon had been dismissed. Three of those four - Agnes Bauerlein, Wendy Leitner-Sieber, and George Veasey - testified as wintesses; all five acknowledged being present and pouring blood on the pillars of the Pentagon. Erin and Kenji, acting pro-se, tried to explain the purpose of their action (opposing the murderous policies of the Pentagon) and the peaceful, loving manner of their action. Despite repeated objections by the prosecution, some of these statements were expressed. Kenji focussed on the loving concern of his action; Erin noted the deceit common to the proceedings of the trial and to the general processes of the Pentagon.

Contending that the defendants had not "learned their lesson" from prior convictions, the prosecutor urged sentences longer than Kenji's one month custody in a halfway house and Erin's four month jail term for a 1995 plowshares action. Magistrate Theresa Buchanan agreed, sentencing Kenji to 3 months and Erin to 6 months in prison; she acknowledged that the sentences were unlikely to deter them from similar action in the future.

The sentence is a particular hardship for Wendy and Erin who are expecting the birth of their first hcild about a month after Erin is released.

The defendants were supported by about 40 persons from many places in the US - from octagenerial Spike Zwickey to 9 children ages 8 and younger.

Currently Kenji and Erin are in Alexandria City Jail; they are likely be moved soon. Letters of support can be sent to the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, 503 Rock Creek Church Rd NW, Washington DC 20010 for Kenji and Martha House Catholic Worker, 459 E. Walnut Lane, Philadelphia PA 19144 for Erin.

At the same time, Ally Styan, 19, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania faced the charge of "obstructing an entrance to the Pentagon." She was arrested during the protest at the Pentagon during the Spring Days of Resistance against the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) April 2. Ally had poored her own blood at the turnstiles at the Metro entrance to the Pentagon to protest the bloodshed caused through out Latin America because of the SOA and the Pentagon. After passionately and eloquently defending herself, Ally was found guilty and sentenced to three days in prison and one year unsupervised probation by Judge Theresa Buchanan.

Ally explained to the court that she had taken action in defense of and in solidarity with the people in Latin America that are being killed daily because of the policies manufactured at the Pentagon and the training provided at the SOA/WHISC. The judge allowed her to speak honestly about why she poored blood at the Pentagon, before finding her guilty and sentencing her to three days in jail and one year of probation. (The prosecution had asked for five.) The entire courtroom burst into song, clapping and cheering as Ally was escorted out of the courtroom.

Ally is a full-time staff person at the School of the Americas Watch office in Washington, D.C. She will again go to trial on October 2, 2001 in Philadelphia for the protest she did there during the Republican National Convention last summer.

--------

Police attack against the Indymedia and GSF centre RIGHT NOW

From sergio.o@gmx.net,
Date Sun, 22 Jul 2001
INFOS NEWS SERVICE http://www.ainfos.ca/
http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos07102.html

PLEASE SPREAD WIDELY

The police has brutally entered the Indymedia and GSF building a moment ago. They are presumebly trying to destroy all the evidence of police brutality in the last days which is gathered in the videos and photographies of Indymedia activists. They are holding a group of us donwstairs in the internet room and apparecntly they are fighting with Indymedia people upstairs, who were trying to protect their floor. They have teargassed the area and it is difficult to breath inside.

Please prepare to make actions at Italian embassies tomorrow. We just finished plannig a solidarity action in this city for tomorrow at 12:00 but it is not clear whether it will be possible, we might end up all arrested.

This city is becoming a symbol of state brutality and cruelty

----

Second Day of Protest Rocks Genoa
At Demonstrators' Camp, Some Find Unity of Spirit

By Sarah Delaney
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, July 22, 2001; Page A01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32101-2001Jul21?language=printer

GENOA, Italy, July 21 -- At 7:30 a.m. today at the Piazzale Kennedy, there was still a multicolored sea of occupied sleeping bags, along with hundreds of empty water and beer bottles and soft drink cans.

Sergio Bontempelli wasn't the first to wake up; there already were quite a few others getting ready for the demonstration, the big one against the Group of Eight summit that everyone had come for.

He didn't have anywhere to wash, and there were only about 20 portable toilets for the 3,000 people, mostly young, who had been sleeping, eating and planning in the piazza by the sea for the last three days in anticipation of the march against the summit. Lines were beginning to form before the few concession stands selling cappuccino, sandwiches and beer.

The slender Bontempelli, who with black wire-rimmed glasses looks brainy and younger than his 29 years, agreed to show a reporter around the impromptu campground and talk about the wake-up message he and many others want to send to the eight government leaders meeting here, and about the solidarity the message has engendered.

From the free water and fruit donated by Manu Chao, the Spanish musician-hero of the anti-globalization movement who played in the piazza Wednesday night, to the booth giving away bedding, the demonstrators who came to Piazzale Kennedy found a unity of spirit.

"Here there is always someone who will give you water, give you something to eat, a cigarette, share whatever they have," Bontempelli, a student and humanitarian aid worker, said. "I've felt so many things over these last few days: anger, fear, sadness. But I've never felt lonely."

He and other protesters descended on this northern city to reinforce a message they have delivered to previous gatherings of world leaders, corporate chieftains and international bankers over the past 18 months: The costs of globalization are too high, enriching big business while depriving the poor and despoiling the environment.

The vast majority of demonstrators were peaceful, with serious criticisms about the way wealthy Western countries have conducted the process of globalization. "We don't like to be called anti-global. We're just the opposite. We're pro-global: globalization of human rights, of opportunity, of freemovement for everyone," Bontempelli said.

Bontempelli came, he said, "because I believe there's a whole different way of living and thinking about other people in the world, and that it can't all be decided by eight men."

This morning, people wandered about in scruffy clothes, without the tension of Friday when the movement suffered its first fatality: a 23-year-old demonstrator killed when a police officer opened fire as the police were surrounded by protesters. The Interior Ministry has opened an investigation into the shooting of Carlo Giuliani, 23, of Genoa, who police said had a record and had been detained in previous demonstrations.

Today's march began noisily and peacefully, but turned ugly when violent protesters mixed among the crowd, throwing empty bottles and rocks when they were close to the police line. Police, who were present at nearly every corner, responded with tear gas, forcing the march to detour from its planned route. About 228 people were injured.

Like many other pacifist demonstrators, Bontempelli said the sometimes brutal battles between tear gas-lobbing police and rock- and molotov cocktail-throwing extremists were the fault of both.

Bontempelli is a philosophy student at the University of Pisa and also works in an organization called Africa Together, which tends to the needs of immigrants in Italy. Most people in "the movement" are involved in similar organizations, some dealing with the environment, some with human rights, some with the homeless, Bontempelli said.

The movement, he noted, is driven by the Internet. "We use the Net for everything, to send out e-mails if we need information, to find out about events or demonstrations. Instructions about what to bring to Genoa, how to act in a demonstration, what to do if someone gets arrested, all gets passed over the Internet."

It allows different groups to keep in touch with, help and contribute to each other's causes in a fluid sort of way, he said.

"What is the movement?" he asked. "It can't be defined, it can't be labeled, and that's the really great thing about it."

Bontempelli grew up in a home in Pisa where politics was an important part of life. His parents were high-school teachers and involved in far-left parties in the 1970s and '80s. He grew up going to party meetings and participating in demonstrations and marches. At a certain point, he said, he grew fed up with the political talk and the way it was practiced almost like a religion.

"I wanted to do something more concrete, not be pigeonholed into a certain way of thinking like with a political party. Now I can really make a contribution to help people, and even though it's a lay organization, I work daily with Caritas [a Roman Catholic charitable organization]. There are no borders, there is no ideology to follow. Before, you were labeled a Communist, or a radical, or some other party name. That's gone in this movement; it's a whole new way of thinking."

In Genoa, several hundred groups gathered under the aegis of the Genoa Social Forum, which called for today's demonstration, a legal march from one part of the city to the next.

Authorities designated a "red zone," the area around the summit site, dividing it from the rest of the city with high iron grates and massive police presence at every entrance. The group and many of its members decided to try to break into the red zone on Friday to manifest their anger at being shut out of Genoa and at having their right to demonstrate hampered. Plans to force the gates by only pushing and without using weapons, were foiled by a show of police force at the entrances.

Bontempelli explained how the pacifist groups exchange information, with training on how to behave in a demonstration. They are instructed to put up both hands at any encounter with the police, keep their ground and keep each other in line.

"You can imagine what kind of determination it takes to keep the people calm when the police are nearby. Just one person throwing a bottle can set off an inferno."

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'Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg'
by Tom Wells

The Insider
Reviewed by David Greenberg
Sunday, July 22, 2001
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23888-2001Jul19?language=printer

WILD MANThe Life and Times of Daniel EllsbergBy Tom WellsPalgrave. 692 pp. $32.50

In 1969 Daniel Ellsberg, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, a defense-industry think tank, smuggled from his office safe a top-secret government study detailing American involvement in Vietnam. By night, in the office of an ad agency atop a Hollywood flower shop, Ellsberg and a few confidants duplicated the so-called Pentagon Papers, a page at a time on a first-generation Xerox machine. Ellsberg leaked the samizdat to antiwar leaders and reporters, including the New York Times's Neil Sheehan. In June 1971, the Times astounded the nation by publishing a lengthy series about the papers and the official deception over Vietnam that they documented.

Reactions came swiftly. Peace activists rejoiced. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger went ballistic; administration officials sued (unsuccessfully) to stop publication, sought to prosecute Ellsberg (again unsuccessfully) and broke into his psychoanalyst's office, seeking dirt -- descending thereby their own slippery slope. Ellsberg for his part won instant celebrity. The Beatles lined up to get his autograph.

The Pentagon Papers' importance notwithstanding, one wouldn't think the life of a man whose fame rests on a single dissident act could sustain a 700-page biography. But Tom Wells's Wild Man succeeds terrifically. A first-rate historian of the antiwar movement, Wells understands Vietnam's hold on America: If World War II is depicted, from Pearl Harbor to the pop histories of Stephen Ambrose and Tom Brokaw, as unambiguously righteous and heroic, Vietnam's reputation remains that of a moral quagmire -- lacking clear heroes, villains or answers.

Like such interpreters of the conflict as Maya Lin, Tim O'Brien and Stanley Kubrick, Wells sides politically with the antiwar cause but seldom lets his sympathies harden into simplicities. Rather, in this extensively researched and engagingly written account, Ellsberg comes across as -- all at once -- a brilliant military analyst, a devoted (often fanatical) convert to the peace effort, a victim of Nixon's skulduggery, and an obnoxious and sometimes dishonest egomaniac.

Wells realizes that for all the scorn that's been heaped on psychohistory, a biographical subject's psyche must still be probed. He probes Ellsberg's mind circumspectly, without overreaching and with fruitful results.

Ellsberg, he demonstrates, bore the lifelong imprint of his highly neurotic Christian Scientist parents. His oppressive mother, convinced her son was destined for greatness as a pianist, forced him to practice constantly, even hiding his copy of Little Women in the clothes hamper (or so he claimed) so he wouldn't waste time reading. Wells, steering clear of both jargon and woolly speculation, suggests that as a result Ellsberg developed into a textbook narcissist -- gripped by a hunger for approbation and an inflated sense of his own importance. These characterological threads resurface as we follow him to Harvard in the '50s, through his indulgence in sex, drugs and the counterculture in the '60s, and through his trial and its aftermath in the '70s.

Even more successful than his account of Ellsberg's life is the way Wells uses his subject's career to explore the murky moral universe of Vietnam War politics. He rarely presents Ellsberg's actions as plain rational decisions with easily discerned ethical implications. Instead, he discovers mixed motives and grayness everywhere. Ellsberg's heroic exposure of the government's lies is portrayed as of a piece with his betrayal of his RAND colleagues who had won him access to the Pentagon Papers by vouching for his trustworthiness. Similarly, his reasons for leaking the papers, as Wells sees them, include both a sincere wish to end the war and a self-serving desire to attain fame and glory by age 40. Keeping Ellsberg's flattering and unflattering traits in tension, Wells forecloses any easy judgments by the reader.

Indeed, Wells missteps only when he hastily issues his own verdicts. He upbraids Ellsberg, for example, for enlisting his 13-year-old son, Robert, in copying the papers, calling the decision "foolish and irrational." Such a declaration discounts both Ellsberg's credible explanation that he wanted his son to feel "connected" to his conscientious action and Robert's statement that he felt "kind of proud and privileged to have had a sort of small part in something that I feel was important." Wells also dwells too much on (and writes too judgmentally about) Ellsberg's sex life, citing innumerable instances in which he talked about, pursued or engaged in various practices, none of them terribly shocking. Wells plausibly sees this fixation as another element of Ellsberg's narcissism, but he returns to the subject more than enough to clinch his case.

On the whole, however, Wells is a fair and perceptive chronicler of the life of this sometimes inspirational, sometimes maddening, always fascinating figure. More important, he is an exceptional historian of the inspirational, maddening and fascinating political drama of which Daniel Ellsberg was a small but significant part. •

David Greenberg is writing a history of Richard Nixon's image in American culture. He teaches at Columbia University and writes for Slate.

-----

Captive Parents

By Mary McGrory
Sunday, July 22, 2001; Page B01
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29236-2001Jul20?language=printer

Of the two middle-aged couples who have been wandering through Washington looking for help for their absent daughters, the parents of Lori Berenson, a political prisoner in Peru, are marginally better off.

Says Mark Berenson, her father, "At least we know where Lori is."

The parents of Chandra Levy have no idea, just ever-growing dread about her whereabouts. They still suspect that their congressman, Gary Condit -- who finds it difficult to admit anything -- is holding back information that could help.

Lori Berenson is in jail in Lima, where she has begun serving a 20-year sentence. She was found guilty by a civilian court of helping a guerrilla group plan a thwarted raid on the Peruvian congress. This sentence represents progress of a sort. In January 1996, a military court of hooded judges sentenced her to life in prison. That court found her guilty of being a leader of Peru's largest terrorist organization, the MRTA. She spent the next five years in a primitive mountain jail, sleeping on a concrete slab. Now she has a bunk bed in a city jail, which also is an advance.

Thanks to her parents, Mark and Rhoda Berenson, both retired college professors who gave up their careers to pry her out of prison, Lori has many friends on Capitol Hill. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) is their leader. She made the long trek to visit her constituent and has gathered 141 signatures on a petition to Peru's acting president, Valentin Paniagua, asking him for a humanitarian pardon for Lori.

The Berensons hope that Paniagua will see the wisdom of winding up the case, which is an issue in Peru, before the newly elected president, Alejandro Toledo, is sworn in on July 28. Toledo is a Stanford graduate, a reportedly enlightened reformer. But if Paniagua pardoned Lori, it would relieve Toledo of any threat of "soft on terrorism" charges.

The Berensons, who are articulate, civil and totally dedicated, work Capitol Hill like the savvy lobbyists they have become. One conspicuous convert to their cause is Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.). Scarborough considers himself a hard-right, tax-cutting conservative, but he has a soft spot on human rights. He worked with the late Joe Moakley in the long effort to shut down the School of the Americas, which still exists under another name. He heard about Lori Berenson on an NPR broadcast. He went to Peru and spent a day at her second trial. He watched the prosecutors and the judges working together, heard the evidence and decided that she had done nothing that would have convicted her in a U.S. court. Even a repentant terrorist, who was to have been the strongest witness, said Berenson was not a member of MRTA and gave no help at all. Scarborough thought the court had to conclude she was not a terrorist leader.

After his day at the trial, Scarborough went to visit Lori at the Santa Monica women's prison. He was impressed with her idealism and her eloquence.

She is, it seems clear, a bleeding heart whose crime was to be naive. Like Chandra Levy, she fell into bad company. In Lima in 1995, as a freelance writer for an obscure radical publication, she made friends with a Peruvian man who, she says, she did not know was a terrorist. As a practical but not romantic move, they rented a house together where -- unknown to her, she maintains -- he worked on his plot and gathered guns.

She was yanked off a city bus and flung into a cell with a dying woman who had been wounded in some guerrilla action. Exhausted and terrified at her military trial, she boiled over at the end about injustice in Peru. Her videotaped outburst is still a TV staple that persuades Peruvians that she is a dangerous terrorist -- and makes her release dicey for incoming president Toledo.

Nonetheless, when President Bush met Toledo at the White House on June 26, Bush urged him to consider a humanitarian pardon.

From the first, Lori Berenson has refused to admit and repent of the charges made against her. "She has such integrity," says Rep. Maloney. "She will not admit to committing a crime she did not commit." Secretary of State Colin Powell, who also met with Toledo, told him that the Berenson case would be a number one priority, an expression that thrilled the parents.

Rhoda and Mark Berenson -- both, like their daughter, unblushing, unreconstructed liberals -- have sent a steady stream of rabbis, priests and left-wingers such as Noam Chomsky and Ramsey Clark to visit their daughter. They have made 300 visits to congressional offices to plead her cause. They did not hesitate to give up their jobs -- she taught physics at Nassau County Community College and he taught statistics at Baruch College in New York. Joe Scarborough was much moved by their devotion.

As for the Berensons, they could not believe Scarborough when they met him in Lima.

"Are you really a Republican?" Mark Berenson asked him.

----

Flagging Interest

By Michael Kinsley
Sunday, July 22, 2001; Page B07
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29276-2001Jul20?language=printer

One of the nicest things not to have happened in recent years is a constitutional amendment against flag burning. How we have avoided this embarrassment is a mystery verging on a miracle. Raw flag idolatry was the centerpiece of George Bush the Elder's 1988 presidential campaign (the one he won).

When the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, in 1989 that state laws against desecrating the American flag were unconstitutional, Congress immediately passed a federal law designed to pry away a justice or two by meeting their objections. Yet in 1990 the court threw out that law by another 5 to 4 majority. Since then, legislatures of 49 of the 50 states have passed resolutions asking Congress to rectify this dangerous situation by sending them a constitutional amendment.

Four times, starting in 1995 and most recently last Tuesday, the House has approved such an amendment by far more than the necessary two-thirds vote. The Senate has voted twice. Both times the amendment won a majority but just barely missed two-thirds.

So, even though the citizenry -- when asked -- overwhelmingly wants flag-burning to be illegal, even though the spectrum of opinion on this issue among the people's elected representatives ranges (with only a few exceptions) all the way from passionate approval to fear of opposition, and even though recent law school graduates weren't even born the last time the Supreme Court was thought to be a reliable safety net for civil liberties, somehow or other and against all odds the U.S. Constitution still protects your right to burn an American flag.

And the peril to that right seems to be receding. An American Civil Liberties Union press release about Tuesday's House vote crowed, without detectable irony, that this was the first time that "under 300" members of Congress supported an anti-flag-burning amendment. (The vote was 298 to 125.) The Washington Post gave the news one sentence in a news roundup column. The New York Times ran an article inside the paper with a dismissive headline labeling it a "ritual vote."

Apparently the House now counts on the Senate to save it from itself on flag burning the way the Senate depends on the House to stop campaign finance reform. In fact, the House leadership was so busy stopping campaign finance reform that the flag vote got bumped from its traditional prestige slot before the Fourth of July. First things first.

How many innocent flags paid the ultimate price while members of Congress concentrated on making the world safe for soft money? That itself is a comment on all the flag-fetish one-upsmanship that accompanies this debate, in which even (or, rather, especially) opponents of a constitutional amendment must carry on about how they love and worship any piece of cloth imprinted with this design. Devotion to the flag (or something) reduced the amendment's chief co-sponsor, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California, to semi-coherence in a floor speech he posts on his Web site: "It is not hard to make this decision when one knows what their values are, and one cannot rule by 'but.' People say, well, I deplore the burning of the American flag, but. It is not hard to make the decision when one knows their values and what they are by deed heart; mind."

Well, how about this, Rep. Cunningham: I don't especially deplore the burning of an American flag. (Burning of "the" flag is impossible, as there is no one flag.) Or at least I deplore it no more than I would the burning of a copy of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution or a model of the Lincoln Memorial. The flag is the least American of our patriotic icons. Its design says nothing distinctive about us except that we were 13 colonies and are now 50 states.

Flag worship is the emptiest form of patriotism. It has no direct connection to the values that really make America exceptional. If Congress feels the need for a patriotic gesture, a better one would be to replace the national anthem. The current choice is not just empty flag worship but bellicose, impossible to sing and based on a melody not written by an American.

It is a cliche of this debate, but true nevertheless, that by attempting to forbid a form of criticism of the government, supporters of the flag-burning amendment are themselves symbolically -- and it's all about symbols after all -- desecrating the American flag.

A constitutional amendment by definition cannot violate the Constitution. But there's no reasonably denying that this one is a frontal attack on the spirit of the First Amendment. It's not about limiting free expression for some unrelated purpose (like preventing a protest march from blocking the streets). It's not about what might be necessary in a temporary emergency (shouting fire in that crowded theater). It's not about limits on expression in areas far removed from the Constitution's basic concern (such as regulations on commercial advertising). It's about amending the Bill of Rights for the first time ever in order to outlaw a form of criticism of the government.

I will, of course, defend to the death the right of members of Congress to call for any constitutional amendment, however fatuous and unnecessary. Especially as long as they continue to avoid actually enacting it.

Michael Kinsley, editor of Slate (www.slate.com), writes a weekly column for The Post.

----

Let's Get Some Gumption and Get the Vote

Sunday, July 22, 2001; Page B08
http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29229-2001Jul20?language=printer

The District's political leaders are failing the people they have been elected to serve. I'm not talking about garbage collection, or parking tickets or redistricting. I'm talking about the raw injustice that continues to deprive 572,000 Americans of full representation in Congress.

Oh, yes, we have symbolic protests, such as handing out leaflets on the Mall. And we engage in ingenious gambits of provocation, such as the D.C. license plate. But our representatives have no evident strategy to get D.C. residents the vote in Congress.

Look at the mayor. He seems to think his role is to make sure that the "systems" and the "infrastructure" are improved and maintained. Tony Williams, the dutiful and obliging colonial administrator, is more than happy to oblige a new president by accompanying him to a D.C. school for a photo op.

I understand that the District's mayor has to have good working relations with the president, but Williams goes overboard. If Williams is not going to take on the president for his patently undemocratic statements, at least he could lobby the District's friends in the Senate.

But he doesn't. Williams has not gone to see Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who supports a bill that provides full congressional representation for the District. The mayor's passivity regarding Mary Landrieu is even more baffling. The new chair of the Senate's D.C. Appropriations subcommittee didn't wait to receive Williams in her office; she went to see him at his. She said the mayor didn't ask her to co-sponsor this critical bill -- he never even brought it up.

But the major responsibility for the bill's passage and composition lies with D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. And the legislation being offered by her in the House and by Joseph Lieberman and Russ Feingold in the Senate doesn't have a chance of passage. That's because it says if full congressional representation is not granted to D.C. residents, then they should be exempted from federal taxes. That won't fly, and the provision turns the bill from serious legislation into rhetorical statement.

Norton should know better. The financial component of the bill also ensures that it will go before the Senate Finance Committee, That powerful committee is chaired by Montana's Max Baucus, who would be unenthusiastic about diluting his state's already limited power by adding two members to the Senate.

On May 10 Lieberman and Feingold sent out a "dear colleague" letter requesting co-sponsors for the voting-rights bill. So far only Hillary Clinton and Jon Corzine have signed on. In the House, the bill has only seven co-sponsors.

For the bill to go anywhere, the federal tax provision must be removed. Then Del. Norton realistically could recruit allies. She could start with all members of Congress, past and present, who voted for the 1978 D.C. Voting Rights Amendment -- Robert Dole, for example. She could contact business leaders such as Joe Allbritton of Riggs Bank and John Derrick of Pepco. In the legal community, she could enlist Vincent Cohen, John Payton, James Hudson and Max Berry. And where are the representatives of the national civil rights community, including the national chair of the NAACP who lives in Washington, Julian Bond?

The D.C. Council need not be powerless in this struggle either, except by choice. Its members have plenty of contacts on the Hill, and they need to lobby them.

For far too long the fundamental right for congressional representation has been denied D.C. citizens. For far too long the tone of those who represented the disenfranchised has been timid. That must change. If the District's elected representatives don't have the courage, energy and creativity for this fight, then the people should push them out of the way and go after what is rightfully theirs.

- Mark L. Plotkin is the political commentator for radio station WAMU-88.5. -

---------

THE PROTESTERS
With Eye on Unequal World Wealth, Young Europeans Converge on Genoa

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/22/international/22PROT.html

GENOA, Italy, July 21 - Atle Mikkola Kjosen, 25, and his companion, Siv Helen Hesjedal, 22, could well have been headed for the beach on this cloudless and sun-drenched day along the Mediterranean.

Tanned and blond, with attentive blue eyes, the two Norwegians looked as though they had spent most of their lives on the Italian Riviera. Their black T-shirts, shorts and clunky hiking shoes hardly set them apart from the young Euro set.

But they consider themselves revolutionaries who want to rid the world of capitalism because it unfairly divides the rich from the poor. They oppose corporate power, the European Union and just about anything that they believe creates a ruling elite.

So they came to Genoa this past week, as they had traveled to European summit meetings in Sweden last month and France last year to show their strength and exchange ideas with other protesters. They were among a group of about 1,000 people who had arrived here from Britain to join tens of thousands of others protesting the meeting of world leaders.

While it is impossible to sum up the goals of the groups on the streets here, Mr. Kjosen and Ms. Hesjedal reflect a prevalent theme: narrowing the gap between rich and poor, which they see as steadily widening.

To many here, the levers of power around the world are controlled by political leaders who meet in cloistered summits, by free trade organizations that care little about poor or developing countries and by corporations whose principle goal is to fatten the bottom line.

"They have to do something to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor," said a 47-year-old woman who only identified herself as Marina, an employee of the local electricity utility.

Gradually, their voices are being heard. When told that the leaders had met for the first time with representatives of developing countries, she replied, "I doubt they would have done so had it not been for the pressure from the street."

University students in Britain, they wore black clothing and red buttons with slogans like "Stop G-8" that made them resemble the dozens of radical protesters, one of whom was shot and killed by an Italian policeman on Friday.

But their group, like a vast majority of those who have marched here in recent days, is determinedly pacifist and nonviolent. It is part of an ad hoc coalition of political, religious or environmental groups that gather to protest the world order of multinational corporations and political power.

With the Internet, cell phones and modern information technology, Mr. Kjosen said, "there are new ways of organizing. You don't need a central organization."

Mr. Kjosen is from a town near Oslo, and Ms. Hesjedal is from Bergen. They are majoring in development studies at the University of East Anglia in Britain, and came to Genoa with other anti-globalization activists affiliated with the Socialist Workers Party in Britain, a staunchly anti-capitalist group.

They travel regularly to anti-globalization protests. They were in Prague to protest the meeting of the International Monetary Fund last year and they demonstrated at European Union meetings in Nice last year and in Goteborg last month. In Goteborg, protests turned violent. This week, they traveled to Genoa by train with British environmentalists, members of a third world advocacy group called Globalization Resistance and Jubilee 2000, an organization that advocates debt forgiveness for poorer nations.

While they oppose violence, they say that some of the violent protesters, who form what the dedicated demonstrators call the Black Bloc, for their dark clothing, want to force capitalism to show its real and ugly face by provoking it with violence; others simply come along for the fun of banging heads. When not demonstrating against globalization, they fight at soccer stadiums.

"We don't really care about globalization," Mr. Kjosen said, in the fluent if carefully chosen cadences of someone who has learned English at school. "Globalization is just a manifestation of capitalism."

"Globalization is fashionable at the moment, just the way the environment or health care were in recent years," he went on. "But we are targeting the system and globalization is one chapter."

Both he and Ms. Hesjedal wore black armbands to mourn the death of Carlo Giuliani, 23, an Italian protester who was fatally shot by an Italian policeman on Friday. They stood in front of a bank a block from the site of the shooting, in front of an A.T.M. that had been smashed and splashed with red paint by rioters.

The Socialist Workers Party, they said, not only opposes the summit of leaders here this weekend but is also militantly against the European Union's increased grip on the global economy, which they believe will only serve a ruling class. To them, the Maastricht Treaty, by which Western European countries agreed to a single currency and to greater political integration, is a blueprint for European capital - banks and corporations - to assert its widening influence.

Demonstrations like those in Genoa, Ms. Hesjedal said, are intendedin part "to show our strength. We want to get more people on the streets."

"It's also educational," she added. "You learn from others, and it encourages you.

"We're revolutionaries; we want to get rid of capitalism," she went on, leaning on a poster that read, in Italian, "Let's Build an Alternative to Capitalism."

But she continued: "Of course if people want capitalism, we cannot force them to accept change. Society after the revolution has to be what people want it to be."

Therefore, neither is attracted by the failed Soviet experiment. "We don't want a vanguard policy, like the Bolsheviks," Mr. Kjosen said.

Their pacifist beliefs lead to disputes among fellow revolutionaries, particularly with those who argue that provocation and civil disobedience should be part of the revolutionary's tool kit.

Neither Mr. Kjosen nor Ms. Hesjedal come from particularly revolutionary backgrounds. Mr. Kjosen's father is an organic chemistry professor in his native Norway. His parents are divorced, he said, and his mother left him with a sensitivity to people's social needs.

Ms. Hesjedal comes from a middle-class background, though she described her parents as products of the anti-authoritarian wave that swept Europe in the 1960's and 70's. "My parents are sometimes afraid because of my activities," she said. "But they support me fully."

--------

Protests Mark Falun Gong Anniversary

New York Times
July 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-Sect-Arrest.html

BEIJING (AP) -- Chinese police quickly quashed small scattered protests on Sunday, the second anniversary of the banning of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

Eight people were seen being bundled into police vans Sunday morning on Beijing's Tiananmen Square -- far fewer than during many previous protests on key dates associated with Falun Gong.

One woman who held a white banner and shouted slogans when police pushed her aboard a van was bundled to the rear of the vehicle. There, an officer hit her repeatedly, rocking her head back with each blow.

Officers threw another woman to the ground before hustling her and three others away. Police yelled ``Disperse! Disperse!'' at a crowd that formed around the van to watch.

Falun Gong protests have dwindled in intensity in the face of the government's relentless crackdown on the group.

Thousands of practitioners are in jails or labor camps. Many more have been pressured into renouncing the group. Others have been forced underground. Some officials claim the government is close to eradicating the movement it regards as a cult.

Last July 22, police detained about 100 protesters, including one group of about 25 people, on Tiananmen Square.

While still heavy, security on the vast plaza was not as intense Sunday as it sometimes has been in the past. Officers played cards and read newspapers in the backs of some police vans stationed on the margins of the square, which was crowded with Chinese and foreign tourists.

Falun Gong attracted millions of followers in the 1990s with a blend of slow-motion exercises and ideas drawn from Buddhism, Taoism and the group's exiled leader, Li Hongzhi. Followers say practice promotes health, moral living and even supernatural powers.

The government banned Falun Gong on July 22, 1999 as a threat to Communist Party rule and Chinese society. It has accused Falun Gong of cheating followers and causing 1,600 deaths, mostly of practitioners who it said refused medical treatment according to what it claims are the group's teachings.


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