------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Nirex admits culture of secrecy
Helms outlines China's broken promises
Authorities arrest three suspects after finding enriched uranium
German Minister Expresses Grief
India-Pakistan Tensions
Missile defence optimism fades
Italian Leader Backs Bush on Shield
US, Russia discuss missile accord
Why Bush, Putin struck a deal
Bush, Putin hope to cut nuclear arms
No Breakthrough in Missile Talks
Bush and Putin Tie Antimissile Talks to Big Arms Cuts
Bush and Putin agree on fresh arms talks
The Russian Arsenal
Microsoft, U.S. dispute nuke software threat
Officials Aim To Raise Part of Kursk
ROCKY FLATS CONTRACTOR FINED
Nuclear waste and railway accidents
Not In Our Backyard
Reading Putin's Mind

MILITARY
China Steps Up Repatriation Of North Korean Refugees
Turkey Agrees to Buy $1 Billion in Weapons
Macedonia Warns Rebels to Retreat or Face Assault
Fighting grips Macedonia city
Conn. National Guard soldiers headed to Bosnia
Europe Backs U.N. Germ Warfare Pact, Eyes on U.S.
U.S. Behind Germ Weapons Treaty
Testimony on biological weapons
Colombia Coke Bottler Rejects Paramilitary Charges
Congress challenges cost of 'unwinnable' drugs war
Israelis supplying weapons caches to Palestinians
UN, EU Ask Israel to Take Observers
Genocide or Veracicide Will NATO's Lying Ever Stop?
Navy Offers Grants to Help Vieques
Okinawa: Curfew to halt crimes by U.S. troops
Bush's 'strategy first' vow scrapped
Sunken Fishing Vessel Video Shown

OTHER
Soybean oil may soon fuel jet planes
Support Grows for Corn-Based Fuel Despite Critics
Plans to Harness Fusion May Be Coming Together
Energy of Stars (nonthermonuclear approach)
NO DISCHARGE ZONE COULD PROTECT FLORIDA KEYS SANCTUARY
MONSANTO PLANT SPILLED TONS OF MERCURY
BACTERIA EAT MOST OCEAN METHANE
Negotiators Reach Deal on Climate Treaty
EPA ISSUES NEW RULES FOR PESTICIDE PRODUCING PLANTS
Pope Urges Bush to Reject Embryo Research
Washington Not Alone in Cell Debate
Fundamentals About Stem Cells
Alzheimer's drug passes first hurdle
Turkish Army Forces The Evacuation Of Kurdish Villages
Gov't Scrutinizes Wen Ho Lee Book

ACTIVISTS
THE FALLOUT
Bush criticizes G-8 protesters


-------- NUCLEAR

-------- britain

Nirex admits culture of secrecy
Special report: Britain's nuclear industry

Kevin Maguire
Guardian
Monday July 23, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4226226,00.html

Managers of the nuclear industry's waste disposal agency have admitted suppressing scientific information and misrepresenting research findings.

A highly critical internal report concedes that a culture of secrecy operated within Nirex which bred public hostility. Incomplete data were released and the state-run body admits the case for a deep waste store at Sellafield "was not as good as implied by public statements made by Nirex."

The agency decided to investigate itself after widespread public criticism and the unexpected refusal by the last Tory government to approve a new waste store. The findings triggered calls last night for Nirex to be made independent of the rest of the nuclear industry.

The Labour MP for West Bromwich East, Tom Watson, got the report into the public domain after tabling a parliamentary question.

Mr Watson said: "What the old school of Nirex management got up to was a scandal. They operated in a culture of secrecy that was unacceptable and openness is the only way forward. Nirex needs to be made independent of the rest of the nuclear industry as a matter of urgency."

The agency, responsible for storing waste generated by Britain's nuclear reactors, had been accused of fiddling figures to show it was safer than it really was.

The report concludes that that allegation, and another allegation that directors had been misled, were unfounded. But it substantiates claims from Friends of the Earth that pressure was put on the government's pollution inspectorate not to release information.

Mark Johnston, Friends of the Earth's nuclear spokes-man, said: "They have had an appalling history. They will struggle to lift themselves above their zero credibility. The last 10 years of Nirex underlines the need for an independent radioactive waste agency."

Nirex hopes to draw a line in the sand with the report and, by being more open, improve public confidence.

Nirex's corporate communications head, David Wild, said yesterday: "As we look ahead to the future, the waste exists, there's a massive legacy. As a society we have to ask how to deal with it and transparency must be central to that"

The report was overseen by Lynda Warren, professor of environmental law at the University of Wales, who was critical of the agency's excessive secrecy. "The main result was the creation of an 'us and them' culture in which Nirex was not trusted by those outside the organisation and individual members of staff were not trusted internally," she said.

-------- china

Helms outlines China's broken promises

July 23, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010723-1574758.htm

China has failed to live up to promises made to the United States to curb exports of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missile delivery systems, according to a senior U.S. senator.

"During the past 20 years, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has made 15 formal nonproliferation pledges -- seven related to the proliferation of nuclear technology, six regarding the transfer of missile technology and two commitments undertaken at the time the PRC joined the Biological Weapons Convention in 1997," Sen. Jesse Helms stated in releasing a 20-year timeline highlighting Chinese government proliferation activities that contradict promises to curb such sales.

"None of these pledges has been honored," he said.

Mr. Helms, North Carolina Republican and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said China has "repeatedly and massively" violated its arms sales promises and has become "an increasingly aggressive proliferator."

"At the same time, successive U.S. administrations have been reluctant to use nonproliferation sanctions aggressively," he said. "In fact, there has been a constant willingness to waive sanctions in exchange for commitments, rather than results."

Mr. Helms said in a "dear colleague" letter to senators that he hopes to see a re-evaluation of U.S.-China relations as a result of China's poor weapons-proliferation record.

The senator said China is seeking to launch U.S. satellites for profit and he urged the Bush administration not to loosen U.S. export restrictions on satellite sales to China.

Blocking satellite sales to China "would make clear that the United States will not tolerate continued proliferation of nuclear and missile technology," he said.

Mr. Helms said the chart showing a timeline of Chinese promises and violations of those promises through arms sales shows "U.S. national security clearly is being jeopardized by continued Chinese proliferation."

"It's time for China to behave responsibly, or risk jeopardizing commercial relations with the United States," he said.

The chart, based on unclassified and declassified government documents, shows Chinese weapons sales from 1981 to 2001. They include nuclear weapons goods sold to Pakistan and Iran as well as ballistic missile transfers to Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Chinese government promises have included numerous "pledges" and agreements not to sell nuclear or missile goods to states seeking weapons of mass destruction.

Four senior Republican senators, including Mr. Helms, wrote a letter to President Bush earlier this month urging him not to waive sanctions imposed on China for the 1989 massacre of student protesters in Tiananmen Square.

The senators, including Sens. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, said China's sales of missiles and related technology are a key reason for the urgent need to develop missile defenses.

China has transferred missiles and equipment to Pakistan, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya during the past two decades despite six different promises to curb such transfers, the senators said.

In November, Beijing promised again not to assist any nation in developing strategic nuclear missiles. However, there are continued U.S. intelligence reports of Chinese missile-related sales in violation of the promise, U.S. officials said.

The four senators stated that Congress' intent in slapping sanctions on China in 1989 was aimed at pressuring Beijing to improve its record of human rights abuses.

"Regrettably, the PRC continues to engage in a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights," they said.

The Bush administration has been under pressure from American satellite manufacturers to lift sanctions on China to permit the export of satellites to be launched on Chinese rockets.

A series of Chinese rocket launch failures involved U.S. satellites in the late 1990s. That led to the transfer of U.S. strategic missile technology, information that has helped improve Chinese missiles, according to U.S. officials.

The senator's report on Chinese proliferation coincides with the upcoming visit to China by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

Mr. Powell, who left yesterday for a five-nation visit to Asia, told reporters Friday that he would discuss Chinese arms proliferation and human rights problems in his meetings with senior officials in Beijing.

Noting China has "liberalized" in the past 30 years, Mr. Powell said the Chinese "still do not practice human rights to the standards that we think are appropriate, and they undertake proliferation activities that are troublesome to us."

"And we'll discuss all of these issues," he said. "But at the same time, it is a nation that need not be seen as an enemy."

Mr. Powell did not mention that the administration has shifted its stance toward Beijing by regarding China as a "strategic competitor" in contrast to Clinton administration efforts to make China a strategic partner.

He disputed a reporter's characterization that his failure to mention China as a "competitor" is a softening of the administration's position.

-------- france

FRANCE
Authorities arrest three suspects after finding enriched uranium

Monday, July 23, 2001
http://www.sltrib.com/07232001/nation_w/116043.htm

PARIS -- 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.

-------- germany

German Minister Expresses Grief

By Burt Herman
Associated Press Writer
Monday, July 23, 2001; 12:03 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010723/aponline120331_000.htm

BERLIN -- German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a former demonstrator who fought police decades ago, expressed grief Monday over the death of a protester at the G-8 summit but asked what anti-globalization activists really want.

Fischer called the death a tragedy and told reporters attention must be given to how future summits can be organized to prevent confrontations.

But when asked whether he was against globalization, Fischer replied: "What is globalization? I have to know what I should be against."

"Is it bad that Europe's borders are disappearing?" Fischer said, also asking rhetorically whether the activists wanted to return Third World nations to protectionism.

Fischer said that nonviolent protesters had legitimate aims of helping the world's poor and safeguarding the environment, but said the agreement Monday on global warming at a summit in Bonn showed globalization can have benefits when nations work together.

Still Fischer, Germany's most popular politician despite his past as a left-wing militant, acknowledged he would likely have been against globalization in his younger days.

In comments on the agreement between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin on talks linking missile defense to nuclear arms cuts, Fischer said Germany would wait to see how details work out before changing its opposition to the U.S. plans.

Fischer stressed Germany felt the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which bans a national defense shield, was successful in calming Cold War tensions and shouldn't be thrown away hastily.

"We think ABM has worked and if there is a change it should be a better solution," he said. "Any change should be seen in the light of how to avoid a regional and global arms race."

-------- india / pakistan

India-Pakistan Tensions

New York Times
July 23, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/opinion/L23INDI.html?searchpv=nytToday

To the Editor:

"The Subcontinent Summit Meeting" (editorial, July 18) accurately presents the recent talks between India and Pakistan as a small but significant step toward resolving the 54-year conflict between the two countries. Those who deem the meeting a failure are ignorant of the deep- seated enmity between the two parties. They have fought three major wars against each other, and both possess nuclear weapons.

These reasons alone should compel Washington to drop its laissez- faire approach. President Bush should appoint a permanent envoy to the region whose main task would be to broker a lasting agreement. He should recognize that the "invisible hand" in India and Pakistan could press a button that would activate a nuclear holocaust.

Even Adam Smith would call for intervention in this case. ARIF RAFIQ Director, MuslimPolitician.com Greenvale, N.Y., July 18, 2001

-------- missile defense

Missile defence optimism fades

Monday, 23 July, 2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1453000/1453181.stm

President Bush has insisted that US plans for a missile defence system will eventually go ahead regardless of Russian objections - pouring cold water on reports of a softening of US position on the issue.

Mr Bush and Russia's President Putin agreed on Sunday to link the issue of missile defence with talks on strategic arms reduction - sparking hopes of a breakthrough in the missile defence row.

But Mr Putin has also moved to dampen enthusiasm over the Genoa meeting. He said it had made "considerable progress" but was not a breakthrough.

The US wants to renegotiate the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty - which imposes strict limits on the development of missile defence systems - so it can press ahead with its new project.

Russia is strongly opposed, and has warned of a new arms race if the treaty is breached.

In comments in Italy on Monday, Mr Bush made clear that the US position on missile defence had not shifted - and that the project would eventually go ahead, with or without Russian backing.

"I can understand why Putin wants time and I'm going to give him some time," Mr Bush told a news conference.

"I have told President Putin that time matters that I want to reach an accord sooner rather later, that I'm interested in getting something done with him."

But Mr Bush warned: "Time is of the essence... if we can't reach agreement we're going to implement. Make no mistake about it, I think it's important to move beyond the ABM treaty."

The two presidents agreed, at a meeting in Slovenia in June, to start an "extensive dialogue" touching on matters including a "new security framework".

Mr Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, will travel to Moscow on Tuesday to begin discussions on strategic issues.

The question of further cuts in strategic arms has been on the US-Russian talks agenda since 1997 - though more recently President Bush had suggested that the US would make unilateral reductions.

Russian reaction

Russian analysts were divided on Monday about the significance of the Genoa agreement.

The daily Vedomosti said it showed that Russia was prepared to agree with US missile defence in exchange for cuts the US nuclear arsenal.

However, defence specialist Pavel Felgenhauer told the BBC that Mr Putin had agreed only to "consultations" not "negotiations".

"Russia does not want to negotiate a deal and is not ready for a compromise," he said.

"The Kremlin is manoeuvring itself into a position where no matter what the US does it will be seen by many in the world as doing the wrong thing."

Amending ABM

Mr Putin has often warned that if the US breaches the ABM Treaty, Russia will tear up all other arms-control agreements, and he said on Sunday that that remained an option.

"We confirmed our adherence to the ABM treaty as the cornerstone of strategic stability," he said on Monday.

Russian officials have given a number of hints in recent weeks that they are prepared to negotiate changes to the treaty.

Mr Putin's adviser on strategic issues, former Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev, was reported to have hinted last week that negotiations on a new ABM treaty could begin soon.

The Russian army's head of international co-operation, Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov - a renowned hawk - said last month that Moscow was open to possible amendments.

In 1997, then US President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed in principle that a follow-up to the Start 2 treaty should drop the numbers to 2,000 or 2,500. Mr Putin has suggested 1,500 warheads each would be adequate.

----

Italian Leader Backs Bush on Shield

By Nicole Winfield
Associated Press Writer
Monday, July 23, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010723/aponline203105_000.htm

ROME -- Italy's premier gave strong backing to President Bush's plan for a missile defense shield Monday and chided other European governments for not realizing it is necessary.

At a joint press conference, Silvio Berlusconi urged Russia to come on board with the U.S. plans, saying he agreed strongly that the new military threats facing the United States, Europe and even Russia required new responses.

"We will always be next to the United States in order to take part in this discussion, going well beyond the attitudes of certain European states which still today have not in my opinion understood how the world has changed and how we should start worrying about the future," Berlusconi said.

His comments, his strongest yet to date in support of the U.S. plans, clearly pleased Bush, who has met with resistance from America's other European allies, Russia and China about plans to develop a missile defense shield.

Development of the program would require scrapping or amending the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, considered the cornerstone of arms control agreements.

Russia has opposed the plan, fearing it would lead to a new arms race. But on Sunday after the conclusion of the G-8 summit in Genoa, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bush announced a surprise agreement for new arms control talks that would link discussion of missile defenses to talks on shrinking nuclear stockpiles.

"We look to a progressive journey of the Russian Federation," Berlusconi said.

Berlusconi also took the opportunity to stress the role the United States played in World War II.

"Thanks to your country, to your great democracy, to the young lives that the Americans sacrificed in Italian territory over 50 years ago, Italy ended a very dark moment where totalitarianism had got rid of freedom," Berlusconi said.

----

US, Russia discuss missile accord

By Ewen MacAskill in Genoa
Monday, July 23, 2001
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2001/0723/wor6.htm

US President George Bush and his Russian counterpart, Mr Vladimir Putin, moved yesterday towards a surprise compromise over Washington's plan to build a new missile defence shield and scrap the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty.

The two agreed to tie the national missile defence system (NMD) to a reduction in their stockpiles of offensive strategic missiles.

Mr Putin has expressed hostility towards NMD and warned that unilateral abandonment by the US of the ABM treaty, which helped to maintain peace during the cold war, could begin another arms race.

Mr Bush, who met Mr Putin in Genoa after the G8 summit, has said repeatedly the missile shield is intended for protection not against Russia but against "rogue" states such as North Korea and Iraq.

Mr Putin said Mr Bush's offer to tie NMD to offensive weapons was unexpected and he was not ready at this stage to talk about how much stockpiles might be reduced. "But a joint striving exists," he said.

Mr Putin has suggested in the past that 1,500 strategic missiles each, or even fewer, would be enough for each side. The US has 7,000 at present.

Most European countries, particularly France, have openly criticised Mr Bush for pushing ahead with the missile programme. But the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, anxious not to offend Mr Bush, said the best approach was to wait and see whether the missile plan proved practical and whether Mr Bush and Mr Putin could reach a compromise on the ABM treaty.

The US-Russian statement said: "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."

Mr Bush suggested meeting Mr Putin's objections to the scrapping of the ABM treaty by negotiating a new treaty.

He described himself and Mr Putin as "young leaders who are interested in forging a more peaceful world".

After they first met in Slovenia last month, Mr Putin criticised Mr Bush over the missile plan. Mr Putin threatened if the US abandoned the ABM treaty, Russia would consider other nuclear weapons treaties to be void too. - (Guardian Service)

----

Why Bush, Putin struck a deal
By linking missile defense to cutting offensive warheads, each side gains.

By Robert P. Hey
The Christian Science Monitor
MONDAY, JULY 23, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2001/07/23/p1s1.htm WASHINGTON

Both the United States and Russia can claim diplomatic success from their surprise agreement yesterday to hold talks linking two key strategic issues: a missile-defense shield and a reduction in strategic nuclear weapons.

Washington can point to Russian President Vladimir Putin's new willingness to consider the possibility of a missile-defense shield, after weeks in which he had threatened to restart the arms race if the US annulled a 1972 treaty by developing such a system.

Moscow can point to America's willingness to talk about further reducing the number of offensive nuclear warheads. The US now has about 6,000 nuclear warheads, and its military leaders are believed to want at least 2,000. Russia would like to reduce its stockpile, now about 6,000 also, to about 1,000. Achieving such a reduction, some US analysts say, is the principal reason for Mr. Putin's recent threats.

Announcing discussions, of course, is a lot easier than holding them and reaching agreement on such thorny issues on which the two nations already have taken strong stands.

But if agreement were to be reached, the result would be an economic boost for both nations - especially Russia.

"Putin is being very pragmatic," says Alexander Zhilin, a retired Army colonel and military analyst at the independent Institute of Applied Sciences in Moscow. "Putin has to bring something home to soothe the generals, placate public opinion, and ease the crisis of Russian security. Sharp reductions in the US strategic arsenal would be undeniably good for Russian security and would be seen as a political victory for Putin."

President Bush, meanwhile, can hope the agreement will reduce skepticism among Western allies, who worry that the push for missile defense is antagonizing old rivals such as Russia and China. Speaking with Mr. Putin in Genoa, Mr. Bush said that talks on both offensive and defensive weapons "go hand in hand in order to set up a strategic framework for peace."

Condoleezza Rice, Bush's top foreign affairs adviser, will go to Moscow soon to work out what Bush called "a specific timetable" for discussions between top officials of the two nations.

For the United States, the discussions also ease concerns that Russia and China might turn their newly signed friendship pact into a firm military alliance.

If the US and Russia fail to reach agreement, presumably the Bush administration would then go ahead with its plans to build a defense against a long-range attack by nuclear missiles.

The Bush administration hopes to have a system in place by late in this decade. But for years, experts say, the missile shield would be effective only against rogue nations that have just a handful of missiles, and possibly against China, with dozens of missiles.

Possible escalation?

Still, if Russia decided to live up to the Putin threats, it could attempt to reescalate the strategic arms race. But its capacity to do so, experts say, is severely limited by two factors: shortage of funds, and the physical deterioration of its many older missiles.

Even if Russia developed new warheads at top speed, "by 2008... [it] will have fewer than 1,500 deliverable warheads in its strategic arsenal," says independent Russian expert Alexander Goltz.

But by extending the life of old missiles it would rather scrap, and by taking more funds from a starving civilian economy, Russia might be able to get its nuclear arsenal up to 2,500 or 3,000 warheads, some experts say.

Still, there's no way, they agree, that Russia could rev up its long-distance nuclear forces back to their peak strength of 1989, when the Soviet Union had 11,000 operational nuclear warheads able to be used against the US. "The threat to resume the arms race is largely a hollow warning," says American University professor William Kincade, a specialist in US-Russia relations. "They're far from being in a position to carry out the kind of threats" Putin has made.

China also has objected to the US missile-defense plan. But it probably isn't able to greatly increase its long-range nuclear strike force either, even with help from Russia, most experts say.

While not capable of a full-scale arms race, both nations are capable of reacting to a US abrogation of the 1972 ABM treaty, experts say. They could have substantially more nuclear warheads at the end of this decade than they're now planning, should they choose. Such steps, however, "would definitely cause economic dislocation" to both, says Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Russia has enough long-range missiles - and China would be able to develop enough - to overwhelm the limited missile-defense system now on the drawing boards. A more extensive US system could come later.

Meanwhile, Russia or China could substantially increase the spread of nuclear weapons around the world by ending their current limited cooperation in preventing proliferation, actions that would complicate America's task of defending itself.

For now, neither nation is thought to be moving aggressively now to increase warhead totals or spread nuclear technologies. But both nations are highly secretive about their military activities, so it is impossible to say for sure.

Struggling economies

Both nations, for one thing, have other priorities for their scarce funds. "The Russian economy now is down at the level of the Netherlands,' " says Duke University Prof. Jerry Hough, author of a new book on Russia's economy. "It's about to drop some more" if the price of oil - a major Russian export - skids further, as expected.

Many of Russia's current 6,000 long-range warheads sit on old missiles, which are soon due for expensive upgrading. That's because, over time, they deteriorate and become unreliable. Corrosive fuel eats into fuel tanks, for example, and guidance devices require replacement. Not only does Russia lack money to repair its missiles, but most missile-production factories have long since shut down.

Thus, regardless of whether the US violates terms of the 1972 pact, Russia is going to reduce its warhead numbers dramatically.

With Russia itself aiming for a total of about 1,000, Putin would like to leverage the US into agreeing to a like number, in return for which he'll approve scrapping the 1972 treaty.

But that wouldn't be an easy sell in America, since it would cut in half the total of 2,000 that many US experts want.

In its current financial straits, Russia may even press for the US to hire Russian firms to do some segments of the missile-defense system.

"Russia's got the capability," Mr. Hough says, "and their high-tech industry is really hurting."

As one measure of the difficulty Russia would have revving up missile production, it is now making only one new missile, the Topol M, and at the rate of just 10 a year. Putin has threatened to respond to abrogation of the '72 treaty by putting three warheads on each Topol M, and by not taking multiple warheads off some older missiles. Both actions would violate existing START nuclear weapons-control treaties.

China's strategic nuclear forces are getting stronger, while Russia's are getting weaker. But China is starting from a very small base - it is believed to have only about 20 long-range nuclear warheads.

In recent years, China has been trying to update this small fleet as fast as it can, by adding more modern and mobile missiles, but that isn't very fast. In the next five to 10 years, no matter what the US does about the 1972 treaty, China is expected to continue strategic nuclear modernization, replacing old missiles with newer ones.

But China has two limitations: the economy and its manufacturing capabilities, both of which are weak. China lacks the funds to make large numbers of strategic nuclear arms purchases abroad, experts say, or to pump sizeable funds into its nuclear program at home.

Domestically, it has the scientists, but not the manufacturing capabilities.

• Fred Weir in Moscow contributed to this report.

----

Bush, Putin hope to cut nuclear arms

BY ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press,
July 23, 2001
http://www.journalstar.com/nation?story_id=5368&date=20010723&past=

WASHINGTON - By agreeing to discuss deeper cuts in offensive nuclear missiles in tandem with talks on missile defense, President Bush hopes to win Russian acceptance of his anti-missile ambitions without getting drawn into a tangle of protracted arms negotiations.

The challenge for the Bush administration will be to limit the depth of detail in these talks. Its philosophy is that since the United States and Russia are not adversaries, as they were before the fall of the Soviet Union, they need not constrain each other with strict arms controls.

It's not clear the Russians see it the same way.

"What we are not interested in doing is replicating the old arms control process where it takes 15 years to come to an agreement," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, said Sunday after Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in Genoa, Italy, that Rice would go to Moscow this week to work out a timetable for talks.

At his Genoa news conference with Bush, Putin told reporters that neither side is ready to get into specifics, but he cited a mutual aim of "cutting back significantly" on numbers of nuclear weapons.

Putin did not say he was willing, in exchange, to accept Bush's plan to develop and deploy a network of defenses against long-range ballistic missiles. Putin has said such defenses could upset the strategic balance and trigger an arms race. His emphasis has been on offensive reductions.

"The offensive arms and issue of defensive arms will be discussed as a set," said Putin, who put the focus on potential nuclear cuts by both nations. "We're going to be talking about the mutual striving towards cutting back significantly offensive arms."

Bush and his national security aides have described as their goal a U.S.-Russian understanding or agreement that keeps both countries on a path toward smaller offensive nuclear arsenals while allowing the testing and deployment of robust missile defenses.

The key, in Bush's view, is working out this deal without slipping into lengthy negotiations. Timing is important to him because the Pentagon is only months away from conducting missile defense activities that would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty unless it is replaced with some other deal.

Bush administration officials have said they would withdraw from the treaty before they violated it.

"If we get to the point where we need to go beyond the treaty and we haven't been able to negotiate something (with Russia), obviously there's a provision you can withdraw in six months, and that's what you'd have to do," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said recently.

A Russian defense analyst, Pavel Felgenhauer, said Sunday it was unlikely the Genoa deal represented a softening of Russian opposition to missile defense.

"There will be consultations, not negotiations," he predicted. "People in the Kremlin believe that any negotiations with the United States on missile defense would be a betrayal of national interests."

In contrast to their differences over missile defense, Bush and Putin share a desire to further reduce their offensive nuclear arsenals. Bush has said the United States will do this on its own, even without a formal agreement with Russia. At the same time, he emphasized in Genoa that issues of offense and defense should be part of a broader strategic understanding with Moscow.

"What we're talking about doing is changing a mindset of the world," Bush said. "We're basically saying the Cold War is forever over, and the vestiges of the Cold War that locked us both into a hostile situation are over."

But there remain doubts in Washington over how far Bush should go in cutting U.S. nuclear weapons.

Commenting on the Bush-Putin agreement, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., told "Fox News Sunday" that some in the U.S. military are concerned at going too far with nuclear reductions.

Lieberman said Adm. Richard Mies, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, recently told a Senate panel that the United States should not go below 2,500 to 3,500 warheads. Putin has proposed that both Russia and the United States reduce their arsenals to 1,500 each.

The United States now has 7,000-plus warheads in active service and Russia has about 6,500.

Robert Burns covers national security and military issues for The Associated Press.

----

No Breakthrough in Missile Talks

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin denied Monday that the Genoa summit brought a breakthrough in the tense dispute over the United States' plans to build a missile defense system, but said there had been progress on which negotiators could capitalize.

Putin's statement came a day after he and President Bush unexpectedly announced in the Italian city that Russia and the United States would link talks on missile defense with talks on cutting strategic nuclear weapons.

Russia has vehemently opposed the proposed U.S. nationwide missile-defense system. That system would violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Russia says is the keystone of world strategic stability.

The Genoa announcement fueled speculation the Kremlin was giving way in the face of Bush's single-minded determination to push forward the system, and Putin on Monday appeared to try to stifle that perception.

``Of course there was no principal breakthrough. We confirmed our adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,'' Putin told a meeting of top Cabinet officials.

It was ``not quite precise that ... (Russia) made concessions on the 1972 ABM treaty,'' echoed presidential adviser Andrei Illarionov.

But some Russian media saw it differently. ``Russia gave up. The 1972 treaty has ceased to exist,'' the newspaper Kommersant said.

Bush, meanwhile, repeated his contention that the treaty is an outdated Cold War relic.

``Make no mistake about it, I think it's important to move beyond the ABM treaty,'' he said Monday.

Putin, while denying a breakthrough, said ``at the same time, there is significant forward movement.'' Noting that U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was to come to Moscow this week to kick off talks on the newly linked issues, he said the negotiations should ``play their own positive role in resolving these difficult issues.''

The ABM treaty prohibits Russia and the United States from having nationwide missile-defense systems, on the premise that neither nation would launch a nuclear attack if it could not defend itself against retaliation.

Moscow says scrapping the treaty would undermine stability and spark a new arms race -- which would be a severe burden on economically struggling Russia. The United States counters that it needs a national missile defense to protect against possible attacks by small radical countries that may be developing nuclear weapons.

Despite Putin's warning that Russia would tear up existing arms control agreements if the United States dumps the ABM treaty and his suggestion that Moscow could respond by putting multiple warheads on existing single-warhead nuclear missiles, Russia's insistent objections have gained little ground.

Earlier this year, Russia presented NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson with a proposal for a smaller mobile defense system for Europe, apparently as a counter to the U.S. plan. But the White House read that proposal as Russian recognition that missile attacks from ``rogue nations'' are a potential danger.

Russian officials, apparently seeing themselves backed into a corner, then denied that Moscow recognized such a threat.

----

Bush and Putin Tie Antimissile Talks to Big Arms Cuts

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/international/23SUMM.html?searchpv=nytToday&pagewanted=all

GENOA, Italy, July 22 - President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia agreed today to link discussions of American plans to deploy a missile defense system with the prospect of large cuts in both nuclear arsenals. If an accord was reached quickly, it might take the place of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty.

Mr. Putin's willingness to enter into simultaneous talks on both offensive and defensive weapons, which American officials said was a surprise, was greeted enthusiastically by Mr. Bush. He had proposed both the offensive and defensive changes during his presidential campaign.

"I believe that we will come up with an accord," Mr. Bush, looking almost ebullient, said at a news conference this afternoon, after the two leaders met for two hours in a 15th- century palace and after the Group of 8 summit meeting closed.

When Mr. Putin was asked what would happen if the United States went ahead with tests that violated the ABM treaty, his answer seemed starkly different from the stand he took last month in Moscow, when he had warned that any violation could touch off a renewed arms race.

"If, as we understood from each other today, we are ready to look at the issue of offensive and defensive systems together as a set, we might not ever need to look at that option," Mr. Putin said.

For all the smiles and warm embraces today between Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin, who met for the first time last month in Slovenia, all that was agreed upon today was to start a series of intensive "consultations." Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser and a Russia expert, said tonight that the consultations - which she carefully did not refer to as negotiations - would take place on "an aggressive schedule," which she would work out on a visit to Moscow this week.

But in the past, Ms. Rice has expressed considerable skepticism about the arms control process that dragged on through the cold war, and she has made clear in recent days that she is not looking to replace the ABM treaty with another formal treaty, subject to Senate approval. "What we are not interested in doing is replicating the old arms control process where it takes 15 years to come to an agreement," she said tonight.

Speaking to a small group of reporters, she also sounded more cautious than did her boss. Whether the talks succeed or fail, she said, at some point Mr. Bush will "need to move forward at an appropriate time" on missile defense tests that violate the ABM treaty's restrictions. The deputy secretary of defense, Paul D. Wolfowitz, told Congress recently that such time should be measured in months, not years.

For Mr. Putin, the politics of the talks are complex, and one of the outstanding questions is whether he is really willing to give up the ABM treaty or whether he is simply testing Mr. Bush's bottom line. But he does stand to gain from a cut in offensive weapons.

The United States now has about 7,000 strategic weapons; under Start II, the treaty to reduce strategic arms, the figure is supposed to fall to between 3,000 and 3,500. In 1997, Presidents Clinton and Boris N. Yeltsin agreed in principle that those numbers could fall to 2,500 or below. Mr. Putin talks of 1,500; Mr. Bush has never specified a number.

In a brief statement, the two presidents did not state their intentions for the ABM treaty, nor did they address how or in what order the two issues would be taken up.

The upbeat meeting with Mr. Putin today redeemed for Mr. Bush a summit meeting in this ancient port city that, until late today, had the makings of a fiasco.

The three-day session was so overshadowed by violent anti-globalization demonstrations in the streets, which left one protester dead and more than 100 badly wounded, that Canada announced that next year's meeting of the seven largest industrial nations and Russia would be held in a small resort, Kananaskis, an hour from Calgary, Alberta. Canada's prime minister, Jean Chrétien, clearly hopes that the site will prove remote enough to discourage demonstrators, who poured into Genoa by bus, rail and plane.

And to restore the summit meetings to the kind of intimate gathering they were conceived as a quarter century ago, he insisted that each nation would be limited to 30 to 35 members at the central site. Mr. Bush's Secret Service detail is sometimes that size; here in Genoa, he was accompanied by somewhere between 800 and 1,000 staff members.

Mr. Bush insisted today that the summit meeting was "a success," and he stressed the discussions that took place with leaders of a handful of developing nations as evidence that the group was refocusing its attention on helping the world's poorest. But other leaders seemed relieved to be leaving town, and used considerable restraint in describing the meeting's accomplishments.

"Everyone feels the G-8 has to continue," insisted Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who now faces what could be a politically damaging inquiry into abuses here by the Italian police, including a raid on Saturday night on the headquarters of one of the main protest groups. The police went in swinging clubs, and today there were signs of blood in the building.

A communiqué issued by the eight leaders - from the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany, Italy, France, Canada and Russia - made no progress on their most contentious issue: global warming. The European nations, Japan and Russia succeeded in isolating Mr. Bush in his opposition to the treaty, and after hours of negotiation the communiqué demonstrated that Mr. Bush had not budged from his insistence that the emissions restrictions that are part of the Kyoto Protocol would prove costly to the United States.

"We all firmly agree on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," the communiqué said. "While there is currently disagreement on the Kyoto Protocol and its ratification, we are committed to working intensively together to meet our common objective."

Mr. Bush pointed instead to an agreement to set up a $1.3 billion United Nations fund to help people with AIDS and other communicable diseases, but that was negotiated before anyone arrived in Genoa.

He also called for restarting the global trade talks that collapsed in Seattle in 1999, saying free trade is the way out of poverty. But at least in public, he never explicated the argument with much detail.

While the annual meetings are rarely a hotbed of decisiveness, veterans of many such sessions said this one would be remembered more for the violence than for the accords.

But Mr. Bush clearly hopes that it will be remembered, eventually, for something else: as the meeting that took the bite out of the opposition to his missile defense plan, and to the broader strategic rethinking behind it. And within hours of the announcement with Mr. Putin, it seemed to be having some of that effect.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a critic of Mr. Bush's plans to break out of the ABM treaty, said on CNN today, "This is very good news to me." The president's decision to open talks with the Russians, he added, "implies at least to me" that Mr. Bush "will not break out of the ABM treaty in the meantime."

He concluded, "You don't walk away from a treaty without a new system being in place."

Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader, said he wanted to look at the development more closely, but added on NBC's "Meet the Press," that it was good for both sides "to try to find ways to put forth constructive dialogue and ultimately come to some agreement here."

Daryl G. Kimball, directer of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, said, "This acknowledges the reality of the U.S.-Russian strategic dialogue for years, that the United States' interest in missile defenses has stymied the achievement of reductions in offensive arsenals."

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democratic vice presidential candidate last year, called it "another indication of what those of us who support the development of a missile defense have been saying, which is that it's a new world."

The talks with Mr. Putin have also taken some pressure off Mr. Bush here in Europe. The Europeans had used Mr. Bush's determination to go ahead with missile defense as a symbol of American unilateralism, and warned that he risked alienating the Russians. But as a senior British official said when Mr. Bush was in London on Wednesday, "if the Russians aren't complaining, we're certainly going to give the president some room."

Several months ago, Mr. Bush's top aides said they were prepared to offer Mr. Putin several incentives to abandon the ABM treaty and cooperate on a missile shield meant to repel such things as terrorist attacks, blackmail threats by rogue states, and accidental missile launchings.

Mr. Putin traveled through Europe earlier this year drumming up opposition to an American missile defense system, claiming that it would prompt an arms race Russia could not afford but that it would pursue, if necessary. But then, after the Slovenia meeting, he took another tack, telling reporters that he believed that the missile defense system, if deployed, would not effectively counter Russia's huge nuclear arsenal for at least 25 years.

"He's right," a senior Bush adviser said here. "Actually, it's probably longer than that." If so, Mr. Putin may conclude that the coming talks are the only way of determining if the United States is truly willing to cut its nuclear arsenal dramatically.

And there is a more subtle advantage for Mr. Putin: By haggling as an equal with Mr. Bush, he may help restore Russia's sense that it remains a major power in the world, despite its economic decline, its territorial shrinkage and its declining diplomatic influence.

If an agreement is reached, the biggest effects may be on China, which will not be a party to the new talks. While Russia would retain a nuclear force able to overwhelm the kind of defense system that Mr. Bush has described, China's small nuclear force could well be countered.

Only last week Mr. Putin and President Jiang Zemin of China signed a friendship treaty, but it is unclear how Mr. Putin plans to juggle the superpowers on his east and west flanks.

-------- russia

Bush and Putin agree on fresh arms talks but many questions remain

July 23, 2001
Canadian Press
http://cbc.ca/cp/world/010723/w072326.html

Despite a surprise agreement for new arms control talks, U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin still must bridge their deep divide over U.S. missile defence plans and decades of mistrust over nuclear negotiations.

In a welcome step toward mending the troubled U.S.-Russian relationship, the leaders announced Sunday after their second-ever meeting that they would link talks on shrinking nuclear stockpiles to ones on defensive weapons. Questions lingered, however, about how they would take shape, and differences between the two sides remained acute.

Separately, both Bush and Putin have urged further cuts in their countries' huge nuclear arsenals. Sunday was the first time they agreed to tandem talks on offensive and defensive weapons.

"The two go hand-in-hand in order to set up a new strategic framework for peace," an upbeat Bush said at their joint press conference in Genoa. "I believe that we will come up with an accord."

The announcement followed a 90-minute meeting that Bush called "open and optimistic." Putin was more reserved.

"We're not ready at this time to talk about threshold limits or the numbers themselves. But a joint striving exists," the Russian president said. "The main thing for us is to maintain a system of balance."

A key question is whether the announcement means Putin is softening his opposition to Bush's missile shield dreams. Another is how he will respond if an agreement is not reached before the United States begins anti-missile tests barred under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty - tests the Pentagon says are just months away.

Despite his repeated calls for cutting nuclear stockpiles that Russian cannot afford, Putin has warned that Russia would tear up existing arms control agreements if the United States dumps the ABM treaty. He has also suggested Moscow could respond by putting multiple warheads on existing single-warhead nuclear missiles.

On Sunday, Putin played down that threat, saying that if the upcoming talks go well, "we might not ever need to look at that option."

Bush appears to be trying to win Russian acceptance of the missile defence plan without getting drawn into the Cold War-style tangle of arms negotiations.

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, presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin agreed in principle that a follow-on treaty should drop the numbers to between 2,000 and 2,500. Putin has suggested that 1,500 warheads each - or even fewer - would be adequate.

Russian military analysts say Putin wants to avoid full-scale negotiations. They increasingly predict that the Kremlin will never formally accept the U.S. missile defence plans but will limit its response to diplomatic protests.

U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will travel to Moscow this week to begin developing a framework for discussions.

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

July 22, 2001, Genoa, Italy:

Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin agree to link talks on U.S. missile defence to reducing nuclear stockpiles.

June 3-5, 2000, Moscow:

Presidents Bill Clinton and Putin sign a joint statement acknowledging that changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that limits missile defence might be necessary. They pledge to work more on the treaty and on START III, which would reduce their 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:

Presidents George Bush and Yeltsin sign START II.

July 31, 1991, Moscow:

Bush and Soviet leader 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 armoured 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 Ronald 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.

--------

The Russian Arsenal

New York Times
July 23, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/opinion/L23RUSS.html?searchpv=nytToday

To the Editor:

Your July 18 editorial "Triangular Diplomacy" implies that Russia is no longer a military superpower. In fact, the Russian Federation has more than 7,000 intercontinental ballistic missiles. With them, Russia can destroy the United States, and itself, several times over.

Unfortunately, because both Russia and the United States maintain their nuclear arsenals on ready alert, a mistake can cause a pre- emptive strike, followed by another retaliatory pre-emptive strike (about 2,000 missiles on each side), thus accidentally destroying Russia and the world. We have come close once or twice.

Taking these weapons off ready alert would be easy and verifiable, and both the United States and Russia could still strut in their glory as superpowers. PEDRO A. SANJUAN Norwalk, Conn., July 18, 2001 The writer is a former public affairs director of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

--------

Microsoft, U.S. dispute nuke software threat

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By WYLIE WONG, CNET NEWS.COM
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_0-1003-200-6641795.html?searchpv=cnet

Microsoft (news/quote) and the U.S. Department of Energy are disputing claims that bugs in Microsoft's database software threatened nuclear security in the United States and Russia.

Earlier this month, Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, a nonprofit military research organization based in Washington, D.C., wrote that Russian nuclear scientists last year found a bug in Microsoft's SQL Server database software that threatened the security not only of Russian nuclear weapons materials, but also of U.S. nuclear materials.

Microsoft executives and Energy Department representatives scoff at the charge, saying Blair is making too much of a trivial matter. They say that the two bugs were never a threat, that no data was ever lost and that the issues Russia had with the software have been resolved. U.S. nuclear data was never at risk, they say.

"Bugs exist, and they get fixed," said Nancy Ambrosiano, a spokeswoman for the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

At issue was software that the laboratory gave Russian researchers to help them protect their country's nuclear materials. Blair, in a column published in the Washington Post (news/quote), said the Russians found a bug that caused some files to become invisible, though they remained in the database. The fear was that insiders could trace the invisible files and divert nuclear materials for dangerous ends, Blair wrote. Russian scientists alerted Los Alamos lab to the problem for fear that American nuclear materials were at risk, he wrote.

The problem was found in SQL Server version 6.5. Russian scientists subsequently upgraded to SQL Server 7.0, a newer release of the database software, to help solve the problem. The scientists discovered that the same bug existed in the newer version, although in a less serious form, along with a new security flaw that could give unauthorized people easy access to information stored in the database, Blair told CNET News.com in an interview Friday.

"There was a dropped item for every 1,000 transactions" in SQL Server version 6.5, said Blair, who has uploaded on his organization's Web site e-mail messages from Russian scientists detailing the problems. "With (version) 7.0, (the problem) was reduced in order of magnitude, but it was still a serious problem with dropped files."

Not so, say Microsoft executives and Los Alamos representatives.

They say the bug that caused data to become invisible did exist, but was limited to one Russian facility that customized accounting software the lab had donated. The bug surfaced only in the customized accounting software running on SQL Server and did not appear at other customer sites, said Steve Murchie, Microsoft's group product manager for SQL Server.

Microsoft offered to create a bug fix last year, but the Russian scientists didn't want it, said Murchie.

"We heard this customer application was running some complex (software) code against 6.5 and was returning different results under different circumstances," he said. "We looked at it and offered to create a fix. No data was ever lost."

To solve the problem, the lab suggested that the Russian scientists upgrade to SQL Server 7.0, according to Los Alamos' Ambrosiano. The Russian scientists moved to 7.0 and found a new bug that they said could allow unauthorized users to gain access to information.

Murchie said the bug was a minor problem in Microsoft's instructions for using the software and has been resolved. "It was not a product flaw. Only under circumstances (where) the site (had) no password could anybody get to it," said Murchie. "If normal policies were in place, there's no impact."

Murchie also takes issue with Blair's assertion that someone could have diverted the nuclear information while it was "invisible." Regardless of the software or the system, a knowledgeable insider could attempt to steal or alter information, but the blame would belong to a breakdown in the management of computing systems, not the software, Microsoft contends.

"The fact of the matter is any insider with access to an application can corrupt software and divert anything for their own nefarious purpose," he said.

Lab officials said Russian's customized software was never used in the United States and that the United States was never vulnerable to the same problem.

"To our knowledge, there has been no Russian nuclear information lost or any diversion of Russian nuclear material due to the flaw," lab representatives said in a statement. "U.S. nuclear material accountability systems are rigorously tested and have demonstrated capability for tracking all accountable nuclear materials."

Microsoft, which competes against Oracle and IBM (news/quote) in the database software market, currently sells a new version of its database called SQL Server 2000.

--------

Officials Aim To Raise Part of Kursk

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Kursk.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- The cause of the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk can be known only if a key part of the vessel is raised that for now is to remain at the bottom, a top official of the operation to lift the sub said Monday.

The submarine's first compartment was severely damaged in the August 12, 2000, explosion that sank the submarine in the Barents Sea, killing all 118 people aboard.

The recovery operation is to cut that compartment away from the rest of the submarine and leave it at the bottom when the rest of the hulk is brought up in September. Officials have said they would consider raising the compartment next year.

``Only real fragments (from the first compartment) can show the cause of the submarine's sinking,'' Vyacheslav Zakharov, head of the Moscow office of the Dutch company Mammoet which is leading the operation, was quoted as saying by the news agency ITAR-Tass.

Russian officials have said the disaster was triggered by a practice torpedo. But it is unclear whether the torpedo exploded because of an internal malfunction or whether it was triggered by a collision with another vessel.

The collision theory has been frequently advanced by Russian officials, while most outside experts speculate it was a malfunctioning torpedo.

Russian television stations showed a videotape Monday of the submarine's remains. It showed portions of the huge vessel's thick hull torn apart like shredded cardboard.

Despite the heavy damage, Zakharov said there was no danger of explosion of the submarine's nuclear reactor.

``It is known absolutely, precisely, that the reactor is shut down at the present time ... One may not say that it could enter an active regime,'' he was quoted as saying.

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

-------- colorado

ROCKY FLATS CONTRACTOR FINED FOR NUCLEAR SAFETY VIOLATIONS

July 23, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-23-09.html

DENVER, Colorado, The Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a $385,000 civil penalty to Kaiser Hill Company, LC, operator of the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology site in Denver, for violations of rules and procedures designed to assure nuclear safety.

The penalty was issued by the DOE's Office of Price-Anderson Enforcement in coordination with the DOE Rocky Flats Field Office. While none of the violations presented a serious threat to worker health or safety, the events could serve as precursors to more serious incidents.

The DOE investigation at Rocky Flats focused on four areas:

1.Repeated failures to assure the quality of materials procured for nuclear related work, a problem that has recurred over the past two years. The DOE cites an incident in which Kaiser-Hill bought 500 lids for 55 gallon drums that were to be used in nuclear waste interim storage, without following quality assurance procedures. All 500 drum lids had to be rejected due to damage and defects.

2.Criticality Safety and Work Controls. A number of deficiencies were associated with a series of recent events involving resizing plutonium pieces into smaller pieces for packaging, loading of containers, and storage of waste containers after the nuclear material content was measured. While none of the events itself posed a serious threat to worker health or safety, DOE believes that the repeated nature of the problems demonstrates that these are fundamental concerns requiring serious management attention.

3.Building 771 Radiation Safety Program. Several procedural violations regarding radiation safety were identified in both Kaiser-Hill and DOE investigations of worker exposures to plutonium in a building that is being decontaminated and decommissioned. None received exposures high enough to be considered a health risk.

The contractor's investigation of an October 2000 event identified additional concerns related to compliance with radiological procedures, adequacy of work controls, and effectiveness of management oversight.

4.Failure to correct identified problems. Kaiser-Hill was cited for failing to take effective corrective actions for previously identified problems in the areas of procurement, criticality safety and authorization basis implementation.

The Department of Energy determined that had effective corrective actions been taken, the majority of the deficiencies cited in this action could have been avoided.

-------- maryland

Nuclear waste and railway accidents

From: "Scott D. Portzline" <sportzline@home.com>

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD HOUSE PAGE H4380
July 23, 2001

RAILROAD DISASTERS

(Mr. GIBBONS asked and was given permission to address the House for one minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GIBBONS. Madam Speaker, last weekend downtown Baltimore was shut down due to the derailment of a freight train carrying hazardous chemicals.

Madam Speaker, just imagine what could have happened if that train was carrying high-level, highly radioactive nuclear waste, the world's most toxic, deadliest material known to man. Thousands of people would have been exposed to not only heavy smoke and soot but to invisible radiation that can kill them as well as any livestock or other crops within the area. This scenario is not science fiction. The CBS news show "60 Minutes" detailed that train accidents due to track failure are happening at a rate of nearly one every 24 hours. That is a train accident once every day.

The Department of Energy wants to ship nuclear waste on our railways, past our schools, past our hospitals, through our neighborhoods and communities, and past schools and farms. Madam Speaker, our responsibility is to protect.the American public, not endanger them. We cannot allow the DOE to threaten the lives of our constituents.

Source: Government Printing Office

-------- nevada

Not In Our Backyard
Nevadans, battling a nuclear-waste dump in their state, now have a powerful ally in Senator Harry Reid

BY DOUGLAS WALLER,
With reporting by D. Brian Burghart/Yucca Mountain,
July 23, 2001,
Time.com
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101010716/hazardous.html

The view from the top of Yucca Mountain in Nevada sweeps down past hillsides tangled with creosote bush to the rocky, sun-baked desert floor, with Las Vegas about 90 miles to the southeast. The proximity to that city is a problem for Nevadans-and perhaps for the future of nuclear power in this country-because the Federal Government wants to bury inside Yucca Mountain the most toxic garbage that humankind has produced: 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste generated by America's 103 nuclear power plants. A thousand feet below the mountain's peak, a tunneling machine called the "Yucca Mucker" has bored a 25-ft.-wide shaft into its center; inside that shaft, technicians in hard hats are running tests to see whether Yucca can begin receiving high-level nuclear waste, perhaps by 2010. For the past 14 years, Yucca has been the Department of Energy's only site for a permanent repository in which to store nuclear waste for at least the next 10,000 years. Some $3.5 billion has already been poured into the project, which could eventually cost $60 billion. There is no Plan B.

That makes Nevadans angry and afraid. They are worried that radioactivity from the underground storage facility could eventually leak, contaminating nearby groundwater. They have protested with lawsuits, letter-writing campaigns and public demonstrations near the site in Nevada where nuclear devices were once exploded. Yet they have been powerless to block the project. Nevada has long been the Federal Government's atomic playground (928 nuclear bombs were detonated at the Nevada Test Site from 1951 to 1992), and the state's politicians haven't had any clout in Washington.

Now one of them does. Last May, Nevada's Democratic Senator Harry Reid succeeded in persuading Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords to bolt the Republican Party. Jeffords' switch gave Democrats control of the Senate-and promoted Reid from minority to majority whip, a perch he is currently trying to use to block the Bush Administration from putting the nuclear dump in his state. "This is wrong what they're trying to do," insists Reid. Last May, majority leader Tom Daschle flew to Las Vegas to speak at a fund raiser for Reid. "As long as we're in the majority," Daschle vowed, "[the Yucca Mountain project] is dead."

Can they make good on the threat? Federal bureaucrats doubt it. "It doesn't matter what Harry Reid says," says Jerry King, the project manager of the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain feasibility study. "We are going ahead full speed." By the end of this year, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will probably recommend to President Bush that nuclear waste be buried at the repository. Bush's energy plan calls for construction of new nuclear power plants (the technology now supplies about 20% of the nation's electricity), but that won't happen unless the industry finds a place to store the spent fuel rods now being held in temporary facilities at plants across the country. The state of Nevada can veto Bush's decision, but the veto can be overridden if both houses of Congress pass resolutions approving the site. And that's where Reid has a chance.

As leaders of the majority, Daschle and Reid are in a position to prevent the Senate from passing its approval resolution. They can't prevent the resolution from coming to a vote, but they can mobilize Democrats and can expect help from such G.O.P. dissenters as John Ensign, Nevada's other Senator, who has warned the White House that it will lose his vote on the energy plan if nuclear waste goes to Yucca. Bush is paying attention-he doesn't have Republican votes to spare.

In a delicious irony, Reid-who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee's energy and water development subcommittee-now controls Yucca's purse strings. That means Yucca will be examined with a microscope to "make sure they can justify every penny," Reid says. He plans to shift money into studies of alternatives to the Yucca repository, such as storing the nuclear waste in concrete "dry casks" at the power plants where the waste is generated.

But Reid faces an uphill battle. "Nobody wants the waste," explains Alaska Senator Frank Murkowski, the senior Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The 31 states that have nuclear power plants are not about to stand with Nevada-who wants radioactive garbage piling up in their backyard? Even some Nevada politicians realize that. "I can read the writing on the wall," says Nevada state senator Bill O'Donnell. "We're going to get the waste." O'Donnell believes Reid should negotiate with the Administration now so that Nevada would get something from the deal, such as a railroad through less-populated areas to transport the waste, or a goodwill grant of federal land, which makes up 87% of the state.

With polls showing as many as 80% of Nevadans opposed to the project, however, bargaining would be political suicide. Before he makes any deal to take nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Reid says, he'll be "on top of the Capitol doing a full body dive." That's a performance the nuclear industry would pay admission to see.

-------- us nuc politics

Reading Putin's Mind

New York Times
July 23, 2001
ESSAY
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/opinion/23SAFI.html?searchpv=nytToday

I understand how a position can be taken for the purpose of giving it up as a concession.

That is why my friend George, whose mental reasoning is very deep, very profound (I must keep saying that), last year said he would unilaterally reduce the American nuclear stockpile.

My simple-minded strategists wondered - if the U.S. was going to cut its missiles from 7,000 to less than half that, why do it without demanding Russia give up something in return? Why take a peaceful action so belligerently?

I knew why. Bush's advisers, who are smarter than mine, wanted to show that it did not matter to them what Russia wanted. They know we cannot afford to maintain our huge missile force. Yeltsin pleaded with Clinton to agree to a lower level of 1,500 missiles in each nation.

Clinton wanted to make that deal, but his military wouldn't let him go under 2,500. Then along comes Bush to announce publicly he won't negotiate on reductions at all - that he'll reduce the stockpile to whatever number his military says is all America needs to destroy Russia.

Very shrewd. Bush says he will not negotiate on reducing offensive missiles and links that to his refusal to negotiate on the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. All most consistent; America, with its world primacy, will act unilaterally in its national defense interest against terrorists like Saddam, and he suggests that Russia's reaction to ending ABM restrictions does not count.

But what everybody misses is that by doubly insulting us - on Start treaty reductions as well as on the ABM treaty - Bush made possible a grand compromise. While conceding our role in negotiating limits on offensive missiles, he enables me to let him build a limited missile defense.

At our first meeting, he held to his linkage - the U.S. will decide on both its stockpile reductions and its antimissile development. I reacted sharply by supporting Saddam in the U.N. and by threatening to add five or more nuclear warheads to all our missiles. (Russia cannot afford to redecorate my dacha, but I supposedly have billions to spend on tens of thousands of new warheads.)

At our second meeting, a counter- linkage presents itself "unexpectedly." I agree to renegotiate the old antimissile treaty, which Bush would otherwise abrogate, so I lose nothing. In return Bush will negotiate with Russia the reduction of our mutual missile forces, which we both will do anyway, so he loses nothing.

Rather than going it alone on both, as he originally set forth, we are going it together on both. Weapons of offense and defense will now be discussed as a set. As my profound friend George said yesterday, "the two go hand in hand."

My face is saved. The American president nods his head as I proclaim that we, one on one, have discussed "the world architecture of the 21st century." Europe is grateful to Russia for forcing the unilateralist American into at least bilateralism.

We'll both get what we need. In a few years, he will be able to shoot down Saddam's missiles (my scientists were more amazed than the Americans at that successful recent antimissile test), and I'll make much out of squeezing down Start's ceiling to 2,000 missiles.

And then comes what the Americans call a "sweetener" - the promise of economic aid and new investment flows. Bush can publicly fret about brutality in Chechnya and my takeover of the Russian media, but I'll still praise his mental profundity when his compatriots call him incompetent.

Do you suppose this sentimental hegemonist grasps my plan to reassert Russian power? I will adopt China's model: Centralize political control by cracking down on dissent and crushing democratic tendencies. At the same time, develop a controlled capitalism to generate profits that the state can tax to build military strength.

My gamble is in allying Russia with China against the U.S. and Japan. Selling our latest arms to Beijing could create a superpower with 10 times our population on Russia's eastern border. I will run that risk.

That will make a forthcoming meeting with my new friend George all the more piquant. In Shanghai, I will introduce him to my best new friend, Jiang Zemin.

-------- MILITARY

-------- asia

China Steps Up Repatriation Of North Korean Refugees

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 23, 2001; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35163-2001Jul22?language=printer

BEIJING, July 22 - China has launched a campaign of forced repatriation of North Korean refugees, according to an international humanitarian organization, which expressed "grave concern" about what will happen to the refugees when they return home.

The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders said in a report to be released Monday that posters had appeared along the border between China and North Korea exhorting Chinese to turn in North Korean refugees and warning of steep fines for harboring a refugee. The report, citing refugees' accounts, said those sent back to North Korea faced reprisals ranging "from interrogation, reeducation and imprisonment to capital punishment."

The report said the repatriation campaign reached its climax after a North Korean family of seven sought refuge at the U.N. refugee agency's Beijing office last month. Under intense international pressure, China allowed the family to leave the country, and they ultimately went to South Korea. China made the decision right before its successful bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, prompting speculation that the decision was made to mute criticism of its human rights record.

It is not known how many people have been repatriated since the campaign began in May, but the group estimated that it is in the thousands.

"Refugees and aid workers report an increase in the number of arrests and forced repatriation since the beginning of the campaign," the report said. "A resident living in one of the border cities reports that 50 people are being repatriated here every other day, compared to 20 per week in the past."

Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled to China, mostly in search of food. A famine caused mostly by bad agricultural and economic policies has ravaged North Korean since 1994, causing an estimated 1 million to 2 million to die out of a population of 22 million. Last year, China forcibly repatriated another North Korean family, even after U.N. refugee officials had determined that they would face persecution if they were sent home. U.N. refugee officials accused Beijing of violating the U.N. covenant protecting U.N.-designated refugees from forced repatriation, which China has signed.

Doctors Without Borders pulled out of North Korea in early 2000 when it was denied access to some of North Korea's poorest people. Several Western aid agencies have said the North Korean government refuses to allow food aid to be distributed to the neediest people, but channels it instead to families tied to the ruling Korean Workers' Party, the military and workers considered necessary to maintain Kim Jong Il's government.

Some aid agencies said Western governments have been reluctant to criticize this practice because their main concern is that North Korea maintain its moratorium on missile tests. North Korea fired a two-stage rocket over Japanese airspace in 1998, prompting widespread concern that it had a program to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles. North Korea was also believed to be working on a design for a nuclear warhead.

Citing comments by witnesses and interviews in the region, the Doctors Without Borders report said that signs posted this month in the border town of Longjing warned people that they would be severely punished for helping North Korean refugees. Police have set up checkpoints to document the identities of people in minibuses and taxis, have entered factories and other workplaces to inspect identity papers, and conducted house-to-house checks to verify residence permits, the report said.

"North Koreans are living in constant fear of being caught in the net of a systematic search, arrest and repatriation policy," it said. "The Chinese population is being mobilized, with the offer of rewards, to report on the presence of North Koreans," it added, saying that fines for helping refugees ranged from $500 to $4,000.

Beijing says North Koreans who flee to China are "economic migrants," not refugees. China signed a treaty with North Korea to return refugees, but the treaty has been implemented only sporadically.

The rise in forced repatriations comes during a nationwide anti-crime campaign, called Strike Hard. In some regions, the campaign has taken on drug traffickers, in others, ethnic separatists. In the border regions, mostly in Jilin province, the campaign has focused on arresting and repatriating North Korean refugees.

Recent interviews with refugees in the border region reflected the tightening security situation. Two refugees, one 19 and the other 20, said they were finding it more difficult to live in China now that the government was cracking down.

Interviewed near Changbai Mountain along the Korean border, they said they had been caught in China previously and returned to North Korea, where they were incarcerated in a camp for several months before being released in June. One reported seeing people die there from exhaustion and overwork. Both men said they had not received U.N. rations while in North Korea.

"Why does American and South Korean food only go to Pyongyang and never into my mouth?" asked the 19-year-old over his first real meal in weeks.

The 20-year-old said he had recently converted to Christianity. "I pray for my mother, and I pray for North Korea to quickly unify with South Korea, so that Christians can be safe in North Korea and people will be better off there" he said.

Researcher Gloria Hsu contributed to this report.

-------- arms sales

Turkey Agrees to Buy $1 Billion in Weapons

JoongAng Ilbo
by Kim Min-seok
July 21, 2001
http://english.joins.com/Article.asp?aid=20010721001005&sid=400

The Ministry of Defense announced Friday that it will export to Turkey weapons parts worth 1 billion dollars, including parts for self-propelled artillery pieces similar to the Korean K-9 model.

This would be the largest weapons export sale ever by the Korean defense industry.

Samsung Techwin and the Turkish embassy signed a contract Friday for the first tranche, parts for about 20 self-propelled 155 millimeter guns.

On May 4, the defense ministry and the Turkish Army signed a memorandum of understanding that included the provision of parts for about 300 such pieces to Turkey.

Samsung Techwin competed with Germany's PZH-2000 for the order. Both had similar capacities, Samsung said, but the Korean products were 40 percent less expensive.

Turkey reportedly became interested in the Korean products after the defense ministry sent Kim Dong-shin, then army chief of staff, to Turkey with funds collected from Korean soldiers after an earthquake hit Turkey in August.

According to the ministry, Turkey designed the body and main structure of its artillery along the lines of the Korean K-9 model, and will use the parts supplied from Korea in the final assembly.

The K-9 artillery was independently developed by 14 Korean companies, including Samsung Techwin and a research institute of the defense ministry. The consortium invested 86.4 billion won ($66.4 million) in the project over a ten year period ending in 1999. The K-9 can fire 155-millimeter shells 40-kilometers, and has a high-technology automatic firing and loading systems.

The Korean military began deploying the artillery last year.

Ministry officials said that the sales could open the way for further exports of this weapons system.

Industry analysts said the sales could also help revive the domestic defense industry, which has been recently running at 50 percent capacity.

-------- balkans

Macedonia Warns Rebels to Retreat or Face Assault

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-balkans.html

SKOPJE, Macedonia (Reuters) - Macedonian Defense Minister Vlado Buckovski warned ethnic Albanian rebels in the flashpoint town of Tetovo on Monday to withdraw from territory they have occupied during an 18-day truce or face an all-out assault.

Government forces fought a fierce all-day battle with the guerrillas for control of the suburbs of the predominantly Albanian town on Monday, ripping apart a cease-fire brokered by NATO as the rebels appeared to extend their grip on territory.

``If the terrorists do not retreat to their positions of July 5, there's no alternative but an offensive by the Macedonian security forces to restore the previous situation,'' Buckovski told reporters in the capital, 25 miles to the west.

``We are asking NATO to use their influence and authority over the terrorists to get them back because if they don't they know what follows,'' he warned before meeting representatives of the alliance, which mediated a truce to facilitate peace talks.

``There are two alternatives. One is to find the strength to continue with the cease-fire and the dialogue and the other is to take your hands off everything that leads to a peaceful solution and go for a military one.''

--------

Fighting grips Macedonia city

BBC News
Monday, 23 July, 2001,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1451000/1451153.stm

Smoke has been billowing over Tetovo Macedonian government forces and ethnic Albanian rebels have stepped up their fighting in the country's second city of Tetovo, in the most serious breach so far to an 18-day-old ceasefire.

A 12-year-old girl was killed and at least 24 civilians and soldiers injured as the two sides exchanged automatic weapon and mortar fire for a second day.

In a separate incident, a Macedonian soldier was killed on the Albanian border in an attack blamed on the rebels.

Western diplomats said the fighting seriously undermined hopes of getting the two sides to resume peace talks, stalled since last week.

'No military solution'

The flare up came a day before President George Bush was due to visit US troops in the province of Kosovo, across Macedonia's northern border.

US State Department spokesman Philip Reeker called for both sides to respect the ceasefire.

"There is no military solution to the problems of Macedonia," he said.

The clashes began in Tetovo on Sunday, although Monday's fighting was more serious.

The two sides fought for control of an area around the town's sports stadium. Rebel fighters also launched mortars at a barracks.

Macedonian Government forces responded by pounding villages in the mountains above the town, seen as a refuge for fighters from the rebel National Liberation Army.

"Today we have real war in Tetovo," a 38-year-old resident told Reuters news agency.

As the fighting continued, scores of cars were seen fleeing in the direction of Skopje, the capital.

Stalled talks

The fighting came as US and European envoys met with President Boris Trajkovski, in the hope of luring Macedonian and Albanian leaders back into making progress in stalled negotiations.

Talks broke down over a draft peace proposal. It suggested retaining Macedonian as the primary official language and keeping central state control over the police, but proposed Albanian as a second official language in some areas - a key demand for rebel leaders.

The language issue was the main sticking point, with many Macedonians opposed to any suggestion that Albanian become an "official" language.

Tetovo is regarded as the unofficial capital of Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority.

In March the city and its surrounding villages were the scene of a month of fighting between the rebels and government forces.

The Albanian rebels say they are fighting to end discrimination.

The Macedonian authorities argue the rebels are trying to seize territory in order to secede from the country.

--------

Conn. National Guard soldiers headed to Bosnia

Boston Globe
By Associated Press,
7/21/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/202/region/Conn_National_Guard_soldiers_h:.shtml

MERIDEN, Conn. (AP) About 1,000 Army National Guard soldiers based in Connecticut will be sent to the Balkans in August, the largest deployment of state national guardsmen since the Korean War.

Alpha Company, a maintenance unit from Southington, is among the Connecticut units that have been ordered on active duty in Operation Joint Forge.

Low recruitment in other military branches has put increasing pressure on the National Guard to provide troops.

''The National Guard is being relied upon more for things like this,'' said Maj. John Whitford, a state National Guard spokesman.

Since the military was scaled back following the collapse of communism in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, U.S. Reserve units and the Guard have played a larger role in American military operations than before.

With a rise in peacekeeping operations during the 1990's, Army leaders last year decided to rely more on the 564,000 members of its Guard and Reserve to ease the burden on its active force of 479,000.

Alpha Company is part of the 143rd Forward Support Battalion of Waterbury and Southington. The unit is also made up of Bravo Company, a Waterbury medical unit.

The 102nd Infantry of Manchester also will be deployed.

''It's going to be quite the adventure,'' said Lt. David Pickle, executive officer for Company B of the 102nd.

The troops have been training for security, base defense, patrolling and other tasks.

Connecticut is one of 18 states participating in the National Guard operation, which is part of a NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Whitford said he wasn't sure of the exact date of departure. Guardsmen will serve no more than 270 days of active duty, the maximum allowed by the law.

-------- biological weapons

Europe Backs U.N. Germ Warfare Pact, Eyes on U.S.

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-un-warf.html

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (Reuters) - European states Monday threw their weight behind a compromise plan to toughen a 30-year ban on weapons of germ warfare amid fears the United States was preparing to block any deal.

U.S. officials said in Washington over the weekend the Bush administration had ``problems'' with a proposed protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention aimed at making it enforceable.

The plan, the result of years of painstaking international bargaining on a set of legally binding rules, was due to be further refined during a month of negotiations in Geneva before a full Convention meeting set for November.

Addressing the opening session of the so-called Ad Hoc negotiating group Monday, the EU's representative said the plan offered the chance to reinforce the convention.

Although the proposals put forward by group chairman Ambassador Tibor Toth of Hungary did not meet all EU demands, they were a ``base on which political decisions can be taken,'' Belgian foreign ministry official Marc Baptist said.

Belgium holds the rotating presidency of the European Union and the bloc's statement was formally supported by 13 central and eastern European states.

More than 140 countries, including the United States, have ratified the treaty banning biological weapons. But there is currently no way of checking that members obey the rules.

Russia admitted in the 1990s that the former Soviet Union had built up a biological weapons program and, according to the United States, a number of other countries including Iraq and North Korea have also developed biological capability.

The draft plan would oblige signatory countries to declare any industrial facilities that could be used for the manufacture of biological weapons.

It would also allow a monitoring body -- yet to be established -- to make pre-announced visits to verify work conformed to that declared. Lightning checks could also be carried out where there was suspicion of treaty violation.

MANY OBJECTIONS

The negotiations on a protocol have dragged out over nearly a decade. But according to a decision taken at the last full meeting of the some 140 signatories to the convention in 1996, the Ad Hoc group is supposed to come up with an acceptable draft by the next gathering set for Nov. 19-Dec. 7 in Geneva.

Most states have expressed reservations about the plan, including developing countries that argue it should encourage greater exchange of technology.

However none has rejected the whole 210-page document.

But according to a report in The Washington Post Saturday, the Bush administration was planning to announce in Geneva that it rejected the whole scheme.

In language reminiscent of Washington's spurning of the Kyoto treaty on global warming, a senior official told the paper that the protocol was ``unworkable and unacceptable.''

Although the paper gave few details on the reasons for the harder U.S. stance, Washington is known to be worried about protecting the industrial secrets of its highly advanced biotech sector. It also fears the new rules will not stop cheats.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told Reuters: ``We have problems with the protocol but we fully support the Biological Weapons Convention ... the issue is the protocol.''

The U.S. representative at the talks, Ambassador Donald Mahley, was due to spell out Washington's official position on Wednesday in a speech to the negotiating body.

``It is all very much up in the air but there is widespread concern about what the United States may say,'' said one European diplomat.

--------

U.S. Behind Germ Weapons Treaty

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/news/AP-US-Germ-Weapons.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration said Monday that it supports a decades-old biological weapons treaty even as it splits with key allies by opposing a draft agreement on ways to enforce it.

``We are party to the Biological Weapons Convention from 1972,'' State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Monday. ``We think this is very important. We strongly support that convention.

``But as we've said for some time now, more work needs to be done on steps taken to strengthen that, to respond to the threats that are out there,'' he said.

The administration is already facing criticism from European nations for rejecting initiatives on climate change and small arms trade.

But Reeker rejected the notion that the germ weapons issue was another example of the United States walking away from multilateral agreements.

``We haven't walked away from anything,'' he said, contending the country remains involved in numerous multilateral organizations and agreements and has the right to voice concerns when it feels proposals will not work to attain the treaties' goals.

``The United States has an unparalleled record of, first, supporting multilateral nonproliferation objectives and efforts,'' he said, citing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention in addition to the germ weapons convention.

The administration joins China, Libya, Cuba, Iran and Pakistan in opposing the proposed enforcement language. Traditional partners in Europe and Latin America support the language.

Reeker noted that discussions continue on how to enforce the treaty, with negotiations slated for this week in Geneva.

American envoy Donald A. Mahley was expected to tell negotiators the Bush administration supported the convention but feared the enforcement rules would be burdensome to some universities and industries and might expose American businesses to commercial theft.

The treaty, ratified by 143 nations, prohibits the development, production and possession of biological weapons. Negotiators hope to develop enforcement rules by November.

The Clinton administration had supported the protocol.

-------- chemical weapons

Testimony on biological weapons by Sam Nunn to House Government Reform Committee Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations

July 23, 2001
http://www.house.gov/reform/ns/107th_testimony/sam_nunn.htm

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the threat of biological weapons. Two years ago, Mr. Chairman, presiding over a hearing of this same committee on this same subject, you asked: "Are we prepared?" The answer then was no. Your efforts and the efforts of others since then are forcing us to find a better answer - and I thank you for your persistent emphasis of this issue.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee: I was honored to play the part of the President in the exercise "Dark Winter" described by Secretary Hamre. You often don't know what you don't know until you've been tested. And it's a lucky thing for the United States that - as the emergency broadcast network used to say: "this is just a test." It is not a real emergency. But, Mr. Chairman, our lack of preparation is a real emergency.

During my 24 years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I've seen scenarios and satellite photos and Pentagon plans for most any category of threat you can imagine. But a biological weapons attack on the United States fits no existing category of security threats. Psychologist Abraham Maslow once wrote: "When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail." This is not a nail; it's different from other security threats; and to fight it, we need more tools than the ones we've been using.

Our exercise involved a release of smallpox. Experts today believe that a single case of smallpox anywhere in the world would constitute a global medical emergency. As Members of this committee know, a wave of smallpox was touched off in Yugoslavia in 1972 by a single infected individual. The epidemic was stopped in its fourth wave by quarantines, aggressive police and military measures, and 18 million emergency vaccinations to protect a population of 21 million that was already highly vaccinated.

Mr. Chairman, we have effectively only 12 million doses of vaccine in America to protect a population of 275 million that is not highly vaccinated and is therefore highly vulnerable. The Yugoslavia crisis mushroomed from one case; our situation began with 20 confirmed cases in Oklahoma City, 30 suspected cases spread out in Oklahoma, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, and countless more cases of individuals who were infected but didn't know it. We did not know the time, place or size of the release, so we had no way of judging the magnitude of the crisis. All we knew was that we had a big problem and a small range of responses. One certainty was that it would get worse before it would get better. As you know, Mr. Chairman, effective smallpox containment requires isolating those who are sick and vaccinating those who have been exposed. Isolation is difficult when you're not sure who has it; vaccination cannot stop the spread if you don't have enough of it.

Many participants in the exercise would have been much more in their element if we had been dealing with a conventional terrorist bomb attack. The effects of a bomb are bounded in time and place. After the explosion, you know if you're injured; you know the extent of the damage. You can begin rebuilding. Smallpox, on the other hand, is a silent, ongoing, invisible attack. It is highly contagious, and spreads in a flash -- each smallpox victim can infect twenty others. Because it incubates for two weeks - it comes in waves.

The most insidious effect of a biological weapons attack is that it can turn Americans against Americans. Once smallpox is released, it is not the terrorists anymore who are the threat; your neighbors and family members can become the threat, and can even become the enemy, without strong and effective leadership at every level of government including health officials. The scene could match the horror of the Biblical description in Zechariah (8:10): "Neither was there any peace to him that went out or came in because of the affliction: for I set all men every one against his neighbour."

At the same time, a biological weapons attack cuts across categories and mocks old strategies. For more than two thousand years the first rule of war has been to know your enemy. In military language, this means that when you face a battlefield scenario, you draw up an order of battle -- you estimate the number of tanks and planes and troops of the enemy, their intelligence capabilities, other resources. But in this case, the order of battle is our own people, traveling, engaging in commerce, and spreading the disease. And there are few reliable numbers - you don't know who initially released it, how much more they have, or where they are. And the usual responses to an attack are impossible: "Engage the enemy; open fire; stop their advance; bring out the wounded." You can hardly know who is wounded.

For the participants, this exercise was filled with many such unhappy discoveries and unpleasant insights. Number one: We have a fragmented and under-funded public health system - at the local, state, and federal level -- that does not allow us to effectively detect and track disease outbreaks in real time. Two: Since the disease has not been seen in the United States since 1949, very few health care professionals recognize the smallpox virus, so initial cases could be sent back home infectious, even after appearing at doctor's offices and emergency rooms. Three: lab facilities needed to diagnose the disease are inadequate and out of date. Four: there is insufficient partnership of communication across federal agencies and among local, state, and federal governments. Five: the only way to deal with smallpox is with isolation and vaccination, but we don't have enough vaccines, and we don't have enough room, resources, or information for effective isolation. Six: A biological weapons attack will be a local event with national implications, and that guarantees tension between local, state and national interest. In our exercise, the Governor of Oklahoma asked for vaccine for every one of his citizens - as he had to in the interests of his state. The President said no, as he had to in the interests of the nation. Naturally, this will demand a high degree of coordination, because of the diverging interests, and because key players and partners are answerable to different leaders. Seven: hospitals run at capacity all the time: a surge in patients from smallpox, combined with the inevitable infections of hospital personnel, and the flight of some fearful health care professionals, would create a catastrophic overload. Eight: there will be a dearth of information on this kind of event. My staff and cabinet could not tell me ten percent of what I wanted to know: "How many cases are there right now? How many more are coming? When and where did the first infections take place? Who released it? What's the worst case scenario?"

And there are many tradeoffs. One of the biggest: We have 12 million vaccines; that's enough for one out of every 23 Americans. Who do we decide to vaccinate?

Other tradeoffs are: Do you take power from the Governors and federalize the National Guard? Do you seize hotels to convert them to hospitals? Do you close borders and block all travel? What level of force do you use to keep someone sick with smallpox in isolation? Do you keep people known or thought to be exposed quarantined in their homes? Do you guarantee 2.5 million doses of vaccine to the military; or do you first cover all health care providers? Do you take strong measures that may protect health, but could undermine public support or destroy the economy?

And finally: How do you talk to the public in a way that is candid, yet prevents panic - knowing that panic itself can be a weapon of mass destruction?"

My staff had two responses: "We don't know," and "You're late for your press conference." I told people in the exercise: "I would never go before the press with this little information, and Governor Keating - who knows about dealing with disaster, said: "You have no choice." And I went, even though I did not have answers for the questions I knew I would face: "How bad is it?" "What's the plan?" And "Why, after all this time, isn't there enough smallpox vaccine?"

Naturally, there are some skeptics anytime you describe a dire threat to the United States. I want to tell the Committee: I am convinced the threat of a biological weapons attack on the United States is very real. As Secretary Rumsfeld said in his confirmation hearings: "I would rank bioterrorism quite high in terms of threats ... It does not take a genius to create agents that are enormously powerful, and they can be done in mobile facilities, in small facilities." An experiment some years ago, showed that a scientist whose specialty was in another field was able to weaponize anthrax on his first attempt for less than $250,000.

Hundreds of labs and repositories around the world sell biological agents for legitimate research - and the same substances used in legitimate research can be turned into weapons research. In addition, the massive biological weapons program of the former Soviet Union remains a threat, to the extent that materials and know-how could flow to hostile forces. At its peak, the program employed 70,000 scientists and technicians, and made twenty tons of smallpox. One Russian official was quoted some years ago in the New Yorker saying: "There were plenty of opportunities for staff members to walk away with an ampule."

According to a very prominent press report, former Soviet biological weapons scientists have been aggressively - and in some cases successfully - recruited by Iran. And Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, who headed the United Nations special commission that investigated Iraq's arsenal after the Gulf War, and who we are lucky to have on the Board of Directors of NTI, had testified before Congress that in 1991 Iraq had 300 biological bombs.

So the ability of people to acquire or create biological weapons should be clear beyond any doubt. And no one should doubt how lethal biological weapons can be. In 1979, a small amount of anthrax escaped from a Soviet biological weapons lab in Sverdlovsk. Seventy-seven cases were identified. Sixty-six died, and new cases were appearing as late as 47 days after the leak, long beyond what was believed to be the incubation period for anthrax. Anthrax is not contagious. The 66 who died all had direct exposure. If the agent had been smallpox instead of anthrax, it could have been catastrophic.

I have no interest in setting off panic; it is important that no one overstate this threat - nothing is gained by scare stories. But it is not necessary to overstate the threat to make the point that it is real, it is dangerous, and if it came today it would catch us unprepared.

Michael Osterholm and John Schwartz, in their book Living Terrors, told about the experience of one doctor who knew his state was one of the best-trained areas of the country for a biological weapons attack. One day he conducted some unscientific research. He discovered that the total city stockpile for dealing with an anthrax attack would not cover even 600 patients. He found that a doctor trained in biological weapons failed to diagnose anthrax when the classic symptoms were described; a doctor in the radiology department failed to recognize inhalation anthrax when shown an X-ray; and a voice mail message describing a bioterrorism concern went unreturned by the state health department for three days.

In fairness, we are making progress. The Clinton Administration deserves credit for recognizing that a biological weapons attack is different from warfare or other terrorist threats and targeting funds to address it. That initiative includes strengthening the public health infrastructure, creating a pharmaceutical stockpile for civilian use, a contract to produce new small pox vaccine, research to develop new and improved diagnostics, drugs and vaccines, helping to train first responders (police and fire departments as well as public health and medical professionals) across the United States, and investing in new technologies to help with biological agent detection.

Under the Bush Administration, these efforts are continuing and in some cases, funding is increasing. It is also heartening that last week, Secretary Thompson named a senior advisor on bioterrorism who has directed the program on bioterrorism at the Centers for Disease Control. These are positive steps. Still, we have to do more - and quickly.

Number one: We need to focus more attention, concern and resources on the specific threat of bioterrorism - understanding that it is different in kind from other threats we face. We have to recognize that we have reached a new realm in the dialectic of new weapons and new defenses. In the evolution of warfare, arrows were countered by shields; swords with armor; guns with tanks; and now biological weapons must be countered with medicines, vaccines and surveillance systems.

Two: This means that we need to recognize the central role of public health and medicine in this effort, and engage them as true partners. We must act on the understanding that public health is an important pillar in our national security framework. In the event of a biological weapons attack - millions of lives will depend on how quickly doctors diagnose the illness, report their findings, and bring forth a fast and effective response at the local and federal level. This means, clearly, that public health and medical professionals must be part of the national security team. This is now no longer a matter just for DoD, NSC, CIA and DoE; it must include FDA, HHS, NIH, and CDC.

This may seem obvious enough. But several years ago, when Administration officials were meeting to discuss supplemental funding legislation for defense against biological weapons - the presiding official from the Office of Management and Budget greeted the officials from the NSC, and FBI and CIA and DoD, then saw the Assistant Secretary from Health and Human Services at the table, did a double-take and said: "What are you doing here?" Health officials should not need to be given directions to the White House Situation Room.

Three: We need to engage all levels of government and a broad set of agencies in our efforts to understand and prepare for the threat of bioterrorism. It is critical that we understand our differing roles, responsibilities, capabilities, and authorities, and plan on how we will work together before a crisis. As our NTI bio-defense expert Margaret Hamburg has said: "People should not be exchanging business cards on the first day of a crisis."

Four: We will manage this crisis successfully only with a clear strategy for working with the media - not as antagonists, but as key partners for communicating life-saving information and managing public apprehension and panic.

Five: The national pharmaceutical stockpile should be built to capacity as soon as possible - and then dispersed to different sites. We don't want to fall victim to a twin attack that releases a bio-agent and simultaneously blows up all our drugs and vaccines.

Six: We need to develop plans for a surge of patients in the nation's hospitals. We've already seen the degree to which hospitals are strained during routine outbreaks of the flu. Most hospitals are operating at, or above, capacity right now.

Seven: Officials at the highest level of the federal government - and at state and local levels - need to participate in exercises like Dark Winter. It is the best possible way to prepare. Theatre professionals on Broadway rehearse for months before the real thing. This is one case where life had better imitate art - for the sake of life itself.

Eight: We need to increase the core capacities of our public health system to detect, track and contain epidemics, by providing resources for effective surveillance systems, diagnostic laboratory facilities, and communication links to other elements of the response effort.

Nine: We need to increase funding for biomedical research to develop new vaccines, new therapeutic drugs, and new rapid diagnostic tests for the most threatening bioweapon agents.

Ten: We need to increase our efforts to prevent the proliferation of biological weapons, in part by providing peaceful research options to scientists in the former Soviet Union, who represent the single greatest concentration of expertise in biological warfare in world.

Eleven: We need to encourage the scientific community to confront the sinister potential of modern biological research, and help them devise systems to prevent dangerous materials and information from falling into the wrong hands.

Twelve: We need to reexamine and modernize the legal framework for epidemic control measures and civil liberties - the laws that would apply if we were to find ourselves managing the crisis that would come with a biological weapons attack. These laws vary from state to state and many are antiquated. We need to make sure that they are up-to-date, consistent with our current social values and priorities, and we need to reacquaint high-level officials in all areas of response with the specific authorities these laws provide and how to implement them.

Mr. Chairman: we know how difficult it is to find funding for new initiatives, and public health is often left behind. We need to think about supporting public health activities in the same way we think about our national defense. Congress and the public should understand that funds for disease surveillance, building the pharmaceutical stockpile, and improving the capacity of our health care system will benefit the United States not only in responding to a biological weapons attack, but also by improving our responses to other disease outbreaks. It is rare indeed to have a chance to defend the nation against its adversaries and improve the public health system with the same steps; it is a chance we should take.

Mr. Chairman: helping prepare the United States to deter and defend against a biological weapons attack is a central part of our mission at NTI - the organization founded by Ted Turner, and guided by a distinguished board that Ted and I co-chair. We are dedicated to reducing the global threat from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons by increasing public awareness, encouraging dialogue, catalyzing action, and promoting new thinking about these dangers in this country and abroad.

Specifically, NTI is seeking ways to reduce the threat from biological weapons. We are exploring ways to increase education, awareness and communication among public health experts, medical professionals, and scientists, as well as among policy makers and elected officials - to make sure more and more people understand the nature and scope of the biological weapons threat. We are considering ways to improve infectious disease surveillance around the globe - including rapid detention, investigation, and a fast and effective response. This is a fundamental defense against any infectious disease threat, whether it occurs naturally or is caused deliberately. We are also hoping to support the scientific community in their efforts to limit inappropriate access to dangerous pathogens and establish standards that will help prevent the development and the spread of biological agents as weapons. Finally: we are looking for ways to facilitate the conversion of Russian bio-weapons facilities and know-how to peaceful purposes, secure biomaterials for legitimate use, and improve security for dangerous pathogens.

Mr. Chairman: Enemies don't attack you where you're strong; they target you where you're weak. Enemies of the United States are not eager to engage us militarily; they saw what happened in Desert Storm. They will attack us where they believe we are vulnerable. Today, we are vulnerable to a biological weapons attack. And it is crucial that we prepare with all possible speed, because if an attack comes, and succeeds, there will be others. Preparing is deterring.

Whether the enemy achieves its objectives in the first attack depends to a large extent on how the American people respond. Panic is as great a danger as disease. Some will respond like saints - doing whatever they can, in a spirit of cheerful patriotism, to meet the needs of family and community. Others will respond with panic, perhaps even using guns and violence to get vaccines. Between those two, there will be a broad middle. How they respond will depend largely on what they hear from the President and see from their government.

According to some historical accounts, what pulled America back from financial panic in March of 1933 were three things President Roosevelt did immediately on taking office: he ordered the banks to close temporarily, he proposed emergency banking legislation, and he explained his plan to the public in the first of his regular national radio broadcasts.

If he had not talked reassuringly to the American people, his plan might not have worked. But if he had talked, but had no plan, his talk would not have been reassuring. In the event of a biological weapons attack, no President, no matter how great his natural gifts, will be able to reassure the public and prevent panic unless we are better prepared than we are right now. If we are well prepared - with the ability to detect the disease quickly, report it swiftly, and isolate and vaccinate all those who came in contact with it - then the President of the United States will address the American people with courage and confidence, and the people will respond in kind. How the President is able to address the public on that day will depend in large part on how we all address this issue today. Thank you.

-------- colombia

Colombia Coke Bottler Rejects Paramilitary Charges

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-colombi.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co.'s main bottler in Colombia on Monday rejected accusations in a U.S. lawsuit that it used illegal paramilitary gangs to terrorize trade unionists.

Panamco Colombia SA said it had still to be formally notified of the lawsuit presented in a Florida court on Friday but that its lawyers were considering whether the charges were defamatory.

The lawsuit was filed by the United Steelworkers of America and the International Rights Fund on behalf of Colombia's National Food Industry Workers' Union -- known as Sinaltrainal -- and the estate of a worker allegedly killed by paramilitaries. It alleged that unionists at bottling plants had been systematically intimidated, kidnapped and killed.

``We have rejected and continue to emphatically and totally reject any suggestions, which we can only describe as the product of ill-will, that link this company to outlawed groups or to practices which are forbidden and punished by Colombian law,'' Panamco's Legal and Public Affairs Manager Juan Carlos Dominguez told Reuters.

Panamco was one of several defendants named in the lawsuit, along with Coca-Cola itself. It has Coca-Cola bottling rights in 95 percent of Colombia and its main shareholder, Panamerican Beverages, is partly owned by the U.S. soft drinks giant.

The killing of a worker referred to in the lawsuit took place within the Bebidas y Alimentos de Uraba bottling plant in Carepa, which does not belong to Panamco. The plant manager said he had only recently been employed by the company and did not know anything about either its ownership or the murder.

UNION OFFICIAL DENOUNCES CAMPAIGN OF TERROR

Sinaltrainal official Gonzalo Quijano said that union members were harassed and threatened in Panamco plants.

In one incident, late last year, armed men briefly abducted a worker employed by Panamco in Cucuta.

``They told him to stop making trouble for Coca-Cola or they'd kill him. And they gave him names of people from the union who also had to stop making trouble for Coca-Cola,'' Quijano told Reuters.

``Who is it that benefits directly from all these threats and murders and all this terror targeting the union? Coca-Cola,'' he said.

The lawsuit alleged that the defendants ``hired, contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union leaders of the union representing workers at defendants' facilities.''

Paramilitary groups, sworn foes of leftist guerrillas fighting a 37-year-old war, often target troublesome unionists for assassination.

Financed by cattlemen, wealthy businessmen, and increasingly by drug deals, the paramilitaries have filled a security vacuum left here by the government's failure to defeat the guerrillas on the battlefield.

About 40,000 people have been killed in the last decade of fighting here. The paramilitaries have killed hundreds of civilians this year alone, according to the government.

The government of President Andres Pastrana says it is cracking down on the paramilitaries and trying to end their connections with sectors of the armed forces and police.

-------- drug war

Congress challenges cost of 'unwinnable' drugs war

MONDAY JULY 23 2001
FROM DAVID ADAMS IN MIAMI
Sunday Times(UK)
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2001252073,00.html

THE Bush Administration's controversial strategy to end the production of cocaine and heroin in Latin America is under fresh attack from members on both sides of the US Congress, anxious about a deepening involvement in a war some deem unwinnable.

Tomorrow the Administration is expected to be challenged over the mounting cost of its Colombia policy when Congress debates the latest $676 million (£473 million) regional counter-narcotics aid package. That comes on top of the $1.3 billion Congress approved last year to launch "Plan Colombia".

Several amendments, to be heard tomorrow, will attempt to slash the anti-drugs budget as well as strictly limiting the use of funds. Critics are especially alarmed by a new provision to suspend the legal cap of 300 on the number of civilian contractors Washington can deploy in Colombia. Some see this as a subtle attempt to increase the US presence there by using non-military personnel, with overtones of a Vietnam-style build-up.

Critics say civilian contractors are less accountable to Congress than US troops or government employees.

Sanho Tree, a director at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, said: "They are using private contractors because there isn't the political support at home for sending our own troops. You could have unlimited numbers of people being sent down there and nobody would know."

Administration officials say there is a practical and far less devious explanation for lifting the cap. They point out that contractors perform various tasks, including implementing US-funded programmes for alternative development and human rights.

Officials say that as Plan Colombia money flows in with the delivery of US-supplied Black Hawk helicopters later this year, the cap could hamper their efforts. American contractors will be needed to provide maintenance on the aircraft.

Despite concern about the viability of the drugs war, Congress is likely to back the Administration. Michael Shifter, of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, said: "There's no momentum to disengage. There is a commitment but I think there is a lack of confidence that this is going to be successful."

-------- israel

Israelis supplying weapons caches to Palestinians

July 23, 2001
The Telegraph, London;
Agence France-Presse; The Boston Globe
By Inigo Gilmore in Bethlehem
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0107/23/world/world6.html

Disaffected soldiers in the Israeli army are selling their weapons to Palestinians, who are stockpiling them in anticipation of an imminent Israeli military incursion into the West Bank.

The revelation came as the Israeli Army announced it had opened bureaus in nine big cities around the world in case war broke out and it needed to call up Israelis living abroad for military service.

Military plans, recently leaked to the press, reveal the army would invade the Palestinian-controlled areas if the current ceasefire collapsed and use all its force on a month-long campaign to smash the Palestinian Authority. The operation would cost the lives of thousands of Palestinians and up to 300 Israeli soldiers, the plans estimate.

A senior member of the Fatah faction of the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, said Israeli arms dealers delivered a cache of weapons last Wednesday. They included 50 M16 assault rifles, dozens of handguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition. He said the arms were bought in Israel and smuggled into Palestine.

"Thanks to the Israelis, it is going to be very dangerous for their soldiers if they step foot in Bethlehem."

Hundreds more weapons were expected to be delivered in the next few days, he said.

An Israeli military official said he was aware of weapons dealing but could not confirm the scale of trading.

"As in any army, there are black sheep who get involved in such criminal activities for money. Weapons can be coming through to the Palestinian areas this way, but as for numbers I cannot say.''

Indicating Israel was gearing up for the possibility of a wider conflict in the Middle East, Lieutenant-Colonel Olivier Rafowicz said the army had set up bureaus in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Bangkok.

"The recruitment offices shouldn't be taken as a signal that war is coming," Colonel Rafowicz said. "This conflict has been going on for a long time, and there's always a chance for deterioration, so this is part of the readiness. But we're not defining this as marking a change or something in the current situation.''

The announcement coincided with fresh US willingness to send observers to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to monitor the violence, and with a warning by world powers attending the Group of Eight summit that the bloodshed was a "grave danger".

But with Israel opposed to the deployment of third-party troops, and with violence intensifying, prospects of a renewed push for a ceasefire appear slim.

The Palestinian Authority supports plans to send troops to the area to monitor the violence.

"The Palestinian leadership favourably welcomes the decision by the G8 summit and calls for its rapid implementation and for a mechanism to assure the smooth operation of the observer mission," the authority said.

It was "necessary to send observers as soon as possible to stop the spilling of Palestinian blood ... stop Israeli colonisation and save the peace process", it said.

--------

UN, EU Ask Israel to Take Observers

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Mideast.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Despite Israeli reservations, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday that the international community needs to move ahead with plans for observers to help stem 10 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Last week, foreign ministers from the world's major industrial powers agreed on the need to deploy third-party monitors to help end the fighting that has left more than 660 people dead.

Annan said it was an ``important development,'' that the group ``unanimously recognized that a third-party presence, a third-party monitoring mechanism was necessary.''

``I think that now that they have come up with that recommendation we need to work at it and try and see when and how we implement it,'' he told reporters at U.N. headquarters.

Israel has rejected the idea of an international observer force which it believes would favor the Palestinian position. But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he might accept a CIA team to monitor a cease-fire if terms are negotiated with Israel first.

``There won't be international observers, there won't be an international force,'' he said in Israel.

Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, also called on Israel Monday to accept the observers.

Solana said his organization was urging on both Israel and the Palestinians to implement a peace plan called for by a commission headed by former U.S. Senate majority leader George Mitchell.

Solana, who was speaking in Beirut, Lebanon, during a regional tour aimed at halting the Palestinian-Israeli violence, said the deployment of monitors would help implement the Mitchell plan.

The Mitchell plan calls for an end to violence in the region, a crackdown on Palestinian militants by the Palestinian Authority and a freeze on building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

-------- nato

Genocide or Veracicide Will NATO's Lying Ever Stop?

by Stephen Gowans
July 23, 2001
http://www.swans.com/library/art7/gowans02.html

Now that Slobodan Milosevic has been dragged to The Hague to face charges of deportation, persecution, and murder, we might ask, "Should he be there at all?"

Certainly, the prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte thinks so, as does NATO and its leaders. And so too do editorialists, and journalists and probably, in the West, about 99 percent of the population. In fact, people who profess to know a lot more about these things than the rest of us are pretty convinced the case against Milosevic is airtight. One columnist says the trial against the former Yugoslav president is pro-forma. (2) The evidence is so overwhelming, a guilty verdict is certain.

So, you might, in the face of this monolithic opinion, be surprised to discover that the evidence isn't overwhelming, at all. In fact, it's pretty underwhelming. Indeed, it turns out that a lot of what's called evidence, is simply war propaganda, tall-tales, exaggeration, and outright lies created by NATO to justify its 78-day aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia.

Writer Michael Parenti observes, "Many [people] recognize that politicians lie, that they are capable of saying one thing then doing another." (3) But when it comes to foreign policy, says Parenti, "many of us retreat from that judgment. Suddenly we find it hard to believe that [our] leaders would lie to us about their intentions in the world."

Guess what? The people who lie to us about the economy, and corruption, and joblessness, who make promises in election campaigns they have no intention of keeping, and don't, who lied to us about Vietnam, and Cambodia and Laos and dozens of other places, are lying to us about Milosevic, too. That shouldn't be shocking. As the 60's songwriter Phil Ochs once asked, "We've done it before, so why all the shock?."(4) Yes, over and over and over again.

Milosevic was indicted for war crimes on May 22, 1999, during the height of NATO's air war against Yugoslavia, on the basis of information furnished by NATO to then prosecutor Louise Arbour, who, like me, is a Canadian.

Canadians, sad to say, have played a grim role in the whole affair, out of all proportion to the country's size. Canadian politicians boast that Canada's pilots flew 10 percent of the sorties against Yugoslavia, the third greatest number, after the UK and the US. They don't mention the obvious implication: Canada killed 10 percent of the people. And Canadians have been involved in absolving NATO. The man who wrote the report declaring NATO innocent of war crimes was a Canadian.

But on the other side, Canadians like Michael Mandel and Christopher Black have been involved in questioning NATO, and defending Milosevic.

The information NATO supplied to Arbour led to an indictment on charges of massacres involving the deaths of 391 civilians. (5) All of the massacres but one had happened after the bombing had begun, even though NATO said it had to bomb Yugoslavia to stop a genocide. And there was no evidence that the one pre-bombing incident, the Racak massacre, was a massacre at all, said the Finnish pathologists who investigated the incident on behalf of the European Union. (6) Instead, said the pathologists, American official William Walker bent over backwards to portray the incident -- a fire fight between the KLA and security forces -- as a massacre of dozens of unarmed civilians.

That NATO might lie deliberately to defend its actions in Yugoslavia was ruled out of bounds by the Tribunal, not surprising since the US championed the creation of the Tribunal, and NATO countries supply the staff and evidence. The appointment of Louise Arbour, the prosecutor who indicted Milosevic, was approved by Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State during the bombing, and the person who, earlier on, had worked to establish the Tribunal. Known as "the mother" of the Tribunal by its staff, (7) she was central to the decision to bomb Yugoslavia and central to the appointment of its prosecutor.

So thoroughly is the Tribunal a NATO creation that when Canadian lawyer Michael Mandel and later Amnesty International tried to get the Tribunal to investigate war crimes connected to NATO's bombing of civilian targets, the Tribunal appointed lawyer William Fenrick directly from his post as director of law for operations and training in the Canadian Department of Defense, to undertake the investigation. Fenrick's report, which astonishingly relied almost entirely on NATO documents, absolved NATO entirely. The report explained that it had been assumed "that the NATO and NATO countries' press statements are generally reliable and that explanations have been honestly given."(8) NATO said it didn't commit war crimes, and Fenrick, an ex-NATO lawyer, accepted his former employer at its word. End of story.

Genocide, or veracicide?

While Louise Arbour's May 22, 1999 indictment of Milosevic doesn't include genocide charges, many people thought once forensic pathologists launched their investigation after the bombing, plenty of evidence of genocide would turn up. Mass graves were everywhere, NATO warned.

In April of that year, the US State Department declared that 500,000 ethnic Albanians had been murdered by Milosevic's forces, a number that, as time wore on, would be ground down to a minute fraction of its original size. On April 18, the US Ambassador for War Crimes, David Scheffer, said there were possibly 100,000 dead. On April 19, State Department spokesman, James Rubin, echoed Scheffer's 100,000 figure. A month later, Defense Secretary William Cohen said, "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing...They may have been murdered."(9)

German Defense Minister Rudolph Scharping pointed to "satellite images showing mass graves," and "refugees literally [walking] along mountains of corpses."(10)

By the end of the war, however, with forensic pathologists poised to enter the field, the number suddenly dropped to 10,000 dead, 1/50th of the original estimate. British Foreign Office Minister Geoff Hoon claimed some 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed in more than 100 massacres. (11)

Twenty teams of investigators from 15 countries rushed to the alleged killing ground, 500 investigators in all.

Dr. Peter Markesteyn, a Winnipeg forensic pathologist, among the first war crimes investigators to arrive in Kosovo, recalls, "We were told there were 100,000 bodies everywhere. We performed 1,800 autopsies -- that's it." (12)

A team of Spanish investigators was warned they should prepare themselves to perform over 2,000 autopsies. They found 187 bodies, more than half victims of NATO bombs that fell on a prison at Istok. (13)

The Trepca mines were reported to be the site of a huge mass grave, housing the remains of at least 700 ethnic Albanian Kosovars. Not a single corpse was found. (14)

French investigators expected to find 150 bodies at Izbica. They found none. (15)

Emilio Perez Puhola, who led a Spanish team of forensic pathologists, found no mass graves. He called stories of mass graves the "machinery of war propaganda." (16)

By October, 2,108 corpses have been disinterred, most found in individual graves. Investigators offered no information on the identity of the corpses, Serb, Albanian, civilian, KLA, or how they were killed: by the KLA, by security forces, or by NATO bombs. (17)

Reinhard Munz, a German doctor who worked at the Stenkovac refugee camp in Macedonia, reports that "men of fighting age were the majority in our camp," contradicting NATO statements that columns of refugees were chillingly absent of men of fighting age, all of them presumably murdered or incarcerated by Milosevic's security forces. (18)

Today, the Tribunal's amended indictment against Milosevic covers 11 alleged massacres, not the hundred or more Geoff Hoon warned of. And rather than being charged with the murder of 10,000, the indictment speaks of under a thousand dead or missing. (19)

Significantly, all of the massacres in the indictment, but the controversial January 15th, 1999 Racak massacre of 45, which pathologists say wasn't a massacre, happened after NATO launched its aerial bombardment. Which means NATO violated international law and its own charter, to launch an attack to stop a genocide it had not a shred of evidence was going on.

This wasn't a genocide, the systematic extermination of a people. It was veracicide, the systematic extermination of the truth. And NATO was the perpetrator.

The Pristina concentration camp that never was

"Allegedly, Albanians are held in a stadium in Pristina" (the province's capital), said Rudolph Scharping. (20) James Rubin, backing up Scharping's warning, declared that 100,000 had been detained. But German surveillance aircraft showed no sign of anyone being detained. And an Agence France-Presse reporter who visited the stadium, found it empty, with no signs of recent occupation. (21)

Call it war propaganda, or call it a lie. It's the same thing.

Operation Horseshoe, or Operation Horse Shit?

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he received intelligence showing Yugoslav authorities had planned a systematic cleansing of Kosovo, called Operation Horseshoe. (22) Eight months later, Der Speigel reported that Fischer's intelligence came from Bulgarian authorities eager to join NATO. Trying to ingratiate themselves with Germany, whose sponsorship they eagerly sought, Bulgarian authorities provided Germany with claims they knew the German government would readily accept. (23) But if the story was believed by Fischer, it wasn't believed by his own Foreign Office:

"Even in Kosovo, an explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable...The action of the security forces [were] not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined group, but against the military opponents and its actual or alleged supporters...There is no sufficient actual proof of a secret program, or an unspoken consensus on the Serbian side to liquidate the Albanian people, to drive it out or otherwise to persecute it in the extreme manner presently described." (24)

Far from being a diabolical plot to drive ethnic Albanians ought of Kosovo, Operation Horseshoe was really Operation Horse Shit, a lie intended to buttress public support for bombing Yugoslavia.

Organized campaign of rape, or rape of the truth?

Rudolph Scharping repeatedly mentioned women reporting instances of systematic rape by security forces to OSCE observers. OSCE observers did indeed find evidence of rapes, but the number was in the dozens -- not many dozens they said -- and the OSCE concluded there was no organized policy of rape. (25)

Jamie Shea, NATO spokesman, took chutzpah in lying to new heights, by declaring that 100,000 babies were born to Albanian women in refugee camps as a result of rapes by Yugoslav security forces. (26) Apparently, Shea was counting on nobody knowing that the gestation period is nine months. The timing means the rapes would have had to have been committed before the security forces had even begun their counterinsurgency operations.

Our bombs didn't hit that column of refugees

On April 14, a refugee convoy of tractors was attacked from the air, killing more than 70. NATO denied responsibility, pointing to accounts of survivors who said the column was attacked by the Yugoslav air force. After a few days of trying to pin the blame on the Serbs, NATO admitted that the convoy was indeed destroyed by a NATO pilot. It was a horrible mistake, NATO said, as it said repeatedly throughout the 78-day air war about other incidents in which civilians were shown to an early grave or a life of disability by NATO bombs. Two years later, a Canadian newspaper ran a cartoon, showing Milosevic standing on a pile of skulls, shrugging his shoulders, and saying, "Mistakes were made." It's understood that attributing a multitude of deaths to "mistakes" is no excuse, and that shrugging off deaths as mistakes is monstrous.

If only trains didn't travel so fast

On April 12, a passenger train crossing a bridge at Grdelica was destroyed by a rocket fired by a NATO pilot. Twelve people died, and several more were wounded. At a news conference, General Wesley Clark, the NATO Supreme Commander in Europe, presented the cockpit video from the plane, instructing reporters to, "Look carefully at the target, concentrate on it, and you can see, if you focus like a pilot, that suddenly this train appeared." (27)

Months later, it was revealed that the tape was run at five times its normal speed. (28) Another example of why it's best not to regard NATO statements as being "generally reliable" and its explanations "honestly given."

The hospital was a military target

If you follow NATO's "generally reliable" and "honestly given" statements, there are practically no targets that are not legitimate military targets. And since practically everything counts as a legitimate military target, the distinction between civilian and military targets is nonsense. An automobile factory is a legitimate military target because it can be used to manufacture military vehicles. Roads and bridges are legitimate military targets because they can be used by military vehicles for transportation. Telecommunication systems are legitimate military targets because they can be used for military communications. Presumably, agriculture is a legitimate target, because soldiers have to eat.

NATO's bombing of the Radio-Television building in Belgrade is a Serb war crime

On April 23, the Serb Radio-Television building was destroyed by NATO missiles. Sixteen journalists were killed, and many more were wounded. Antennas, transmitter stations and satellite broadcasting facilities were also destroyed. NATO leaders said Milosevic's propaganda machinery had to be destroyed (presumably because it was interfering with the smooth, unhindered functioning of NATO's propaganda machinery.) The targets were clearly without military significance, prompting Amnesty International to urge Carla Del Ponte to indict NATO leaders for war crimes. (29) Del Ponte, aware that sometimes the best defense is a good offense, boldly replied that she might indict Milosevic. (30) He had advanced knowledge of the attack, failed to have the building cleared, and cynically used the deaths for propaganda purposes, Del Ponte alleged. It seems Del Ponte knows a thing or two about propaganda herself.

We don't, of course, know whether Milosevic was warned or not. We do know that NATO's statements are hardly to be considered reliable or honestly given. But even if Milosevic had been warned, Del Ponte's threat to indict the former president would effectively rewrite the definition of a war crime, from, "it's illegal to attack a target without military significance," to, "it's perfectly all right as long as you make your intentions known in advance," or perhaps, more to the point, "it's perfectly all right to engage in as many war crimes as you'd like if you control the Tribunal that prosecutes war crimes afterwards."

Next time, let's get better maps...or a better lie

On May 7, 1999, three NATO rockets hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three journalists, and wounding several others. NATO said it was a horrible mistake. But there was evidence that the Chinese were using the Embassy to pass on intelligence to the Yugoslav government.(31)

NATO came up with a plausible story to pass the attack off as an error. Outdated maps had been used, they announced. The real target was a government building. Those planning the strike got mixed up.

While error as an explanation seemed reasonable, there was one problem. If the blame lay with outdated maps, the implication was that the old maps would have to show the ostensible target, the Federal Directory for Supply and Procurement, being in the same place the Chinese Embassy was when it was bombed. But there had never previously been any buildings where the Chinese building had been. Only a park. (32)

I don't like dictators much, but I think the whole world should be run by lies

Tony Blair, who was endorsed by roughly one-quarter of the eligible electorate in the last election, and therefore could hardly be said to rule with the blessing of the great majority of Britons, has a penchant for branding Milosevic a dictator. A typical Blair denunciation goes like this:

"We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe, from death, barbarism and ethnic cleansing by a brutal dictatorship." (33)

When 99 percent of the population has little understanding of whether Milosevic was elected or not, and few resources and little inclination to check, sanctimoniously uttering whoppers like this, and getting away with it, is easy.

The background on Milosevic in the Tribunal indictment sets the record straight:

"Slobodan MILOSEVIC was elected President of the Presidency of Serbia on 8 May 1989 and re-elected on 5 December that same year. After the adoption of the new Constitution of Serbia on 28 September 1990, Slobodan MILOSEVIC was elected to the newly established office of President of Serbia in multi-party elections held on 9 and 26 December 1990; he was re-elected on 20 December 1992.

After serving two terms as President of Serbia, Slobodan MILOSEVIC was elected President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 15 July 1997 and he began his official duties on 23 July 1997." (34)

With the word "elected" popping up repeatedly, it's easy to see how Blair might have been mistaken. He couldn't have been lying. Perish the thought.

Why can't we find the bodies? Well, um, because, um....they were hidden! Yeah, that's the ticket, they were hidden!

It's difficult to make the charge of genocide stick, when you can't produce the corpses. And it's doubly difficult to justify a decision to devastate a country's economic and civilian infrastructure, pollute its air and water, kill hundreds if, not thousands, permanently disable thousands more, without having a shred of evidence that a genocide was going on.

So what do you do? Come up with a story for why you can't find the bodies.

Not long after Milosevic's arrest on April 1 by Serb authorities, a story began to circulate about a truck, with Kosovo markings, being pulled from the Danube. Inside were corpses. Immediately it was said that here at last was the evidence teams of pathologists had been scouring Kosovo for, without success. The corpses couldn't be found because Milosevic hid them. There was a disturbing convenience in the story arising just when support for Milosevic, or at least distaste for his arrest, was beginning to grow.

Notice the circularity. A genocide was committed. The claim is to be treated as a given, unassailable, and beyond question. If evidence can't be produced, it must be that the evidence was concealed.

On July 8, soon after Milosevic had been dragged to The Hague, and tens of thousands had rallied in the streets in opposition, at a point when questions were being raised about the Tribunal and the blackmail used to force Milosevic into UN detention, The Sunday Times ran a story claiming that Tribunal investigators had uncovered a plan formulated by the former president, called Operation Asanacija. (35) Asanacija would wipe Kosovo clean of evidence of atrocities, by exhuming corpses from mass graves and having them moved to Belgrade. Asanacija, The Sunday Times noted, is "a Serbian word with a chilling connotation that implies the sanitisation of an area."

As theater, the article was commendable. As propaganda it was admirably executed. As truth...well, there were some problems.

Reading newspapers articles is, in many ways, like watching a magic act. If you begin by believing the magician's statements are "generally reliable" and "honestly given," as Fenrick believed about NATO's statements, you'll have no trouble accepting the illusion as an instance of magic, not deception. The magician will be able to act in ways he wouldn't have to were he truly magical, without provoking a lot of questions.

But if you're skeptical, telltale signs that something's amiss, arise. Why did the magician have to draw a veil over the hat? Why did he insist that he, himself, had to put the cards back in the deck? Why did he turn his back at a critical point in the presentation?

There are telltale signs in the story conveyed in the Times, not only in the story itself, but in the way The Sunday Times tells it, that there's a deception going on. The essence of the story is this: According to The Sunday Times, "By the end of March 1999, Milosevic knew that NATO spy satellites had already pinpointed at least seven mass graves in Kosovo. He was determined to outwit any war crimes investigation that might follow at the end of the conflict."

So, The Sunday Times goes on, at a March 30 meeting, Milosevic gave the order that, "All civilians killed in Kosovo have to be moved to places where they will not be discovered."

"The first mass grave was opened in a field north of Belgrade," The Sunday Times continues. "The grave sites were all on land used by the [Yugoslav army]", but one.

"The first mass grave opened...by forensic experts has yielded 36 bodies comprising 14 women, 13 men...eight children and a foetus." Incredibly, "old Yugoslav identity documents" were found with the corpses.

At this point, anyone with a smidgen of skepticism might start asking questions. If the objective of Operation Asanacija was to wipe clean evidence of mass murder, why would bodies be reburied with their identity papers? That hardly makes sense. Indeed, why would they be reburied at all? Wouldn't it have been easier -- and a whole lot more effective -- to cremate the bodies, especially if you knew NATO satellites had already pinpointed your previous attempts at hiding bodies in mass graves? Wouldn't Milosevic be worried that the new graves would be pinpointed too?

And why weren't the new mass graves, in and around Belgrade, on land used by the Yugoslav army, pinpointed by NATO's spy satellites? Are we to believe that NATO satellites can pinpoint mass graves in one place, but not another, in Kosovo, but not around Belgrade on Yugoslav army land? Surely, of all the places NATO was surveilling, land used by the Yugoslav army would be near the top of the list.

The Sunday Times role in this should be mentioned. The story's many propagandistic devises make one wonder who wrote it: NATO, or journalists willingly complicit in spreading disinformation and propaganda helpful to NATO's purposes. A few points make the case.

The story is accompanied by a photograph of a man wearing bandages on his hands and face. The caption reads, "Albanians were doused in fuel and set on fire," but there is no reference to Albanians being doused in fuel and set on fire in the text. The context would lead one to believe that ethnic Albanian corpses were set on fire -- cremated -- to destroy evidence of Serb atrocities, but were that true there would be no corpses to exhume from mass graves. So what you end up with is a suggestion that Serbs covered up their atrocities by burning corpses, without having to deal with the inevitable outcome of the cover-up -- no corpses to produce as evidence. Here, both A and not A are presented together, or heads I win, tails you lose.

On the other hand, the caption can be interpreted without reference to the text, but to the photograph instead, which shows not a corpse, but an injured -- and living -- man. What the photograph and caption mean if construed this way is that Serbs committed the atrocity of immolating the living. But again, there's no reference to the atrocity in the text. It hangs, as an innuendo.

A second photograph shows a long line of grim faced men bearing dozens of coffins, above the caption, "Mass graves were dug up and the bodies moved to Serbia to conceal atrocities." The men appear to be in a trench, possibly a mass grave. Presumably, these are coffins bearing the victims of Serb atrocities in Kosovo. But this is almost certainly a file photo of a funeral, a point attested to by the fact that the coffins are flag draped. Would Serbs, trying to quickly conceal evidence of mass slaughter, exhume mass graves, place the bodies in coffins, and then drape the coffins in flags? No. The Sunday Times used a file photo to illustrate the story, much as "an artist's rendition" or "reenactment" might be used to illustrate other stories. Except artist's renditions are labeled as such. In The Sunday Times, artist's renditions become photographs passed off as the real thing, to make it appear as if there's documentary evidence of the allegations made in the article.

More propaganda. Writing as if preparing press releases for NATO, The Sunday Times packs three NATO fallacies into a single background sentence, "The slaughter of 45 ethnic Albanians [at Racak]...set in motion the Rambouillet peace talks, whose failure triggered NATO's intervention." Even the most willfully blind journalist would mention that the Racak incident is at least "controversial," acknowledging the findings of a Finnish forensic pathology team that investigated the incident on behalf of the European Union. There was no evidence of a massacre, the pathologists concluded.

As to Rambouillet being a peace plan, the Nazi press doubtlessly characterized all of Hitler's ultimata as peace plans too, for they were. Everyone wants peace. The question always is, on whose terms? At Rambouillet, NATO made clear it would be on its terms. Do what we say, and nobody gets hurt, they told Milosevic. He didn't. So NATO, true to its word, ensured people got hurt -- a lot of them.

Still more: That The Sunday Times article is fiction may account for why it reads like a suspense novel. In a novel, the author describes scenes as if he's there -- a fly on the wall. The same with the The Sunday Times article. Details the authors couldn't possibly have, are weaved in and out of the story.

"Around a new mahogany table in the palace, [Milosevic] scowled at his inner circle. His country's only white-goods factory had been blown up that day, radar stations had toppled and critical fuel stocks had been engulfed in flames. In Kosovo, army and police bases lay in ruins.

"He gazed at his three most trusted acolytes...Then he calmly gave his order. 'All civilians killed in Kosovo have to be moved to places where they will not be discovered.'"

This is truly amazing. Were The Sunday Times reporters right there in the room with Milosevic, taking notes on the color of the table at which he sat, the expression on his face, and even recording verbatim what he said? Of course, not. Because like a novel, the story is all made up. And like a suspense novel, the characters are made into caricatures, heroes and villains. Notice that it is said that Milosevic "calmly gave the order," to exhume the bodies, emphasizing the cold-bloodedness of the character he plays in these fictional accounts.

The Operation Asanacija story, according to The Sunday Times, comes from Tribunal investigators, another reason to doubt it. Even if the story had been recounted by an impartial source, there are enough problems with it to call it into question, but it comes ultimately from bodies under the control of NATO, an organization whose record as a reliable informant leaves much to be desired. Moreover, once you consider that NATO, and its Tribunal, have a motive to present fallacious evidence to cover up its failure to substantiate the pretext of the need to stop a genocide -- the pretext it used to launch its air attack in violation of international law -- the story collapses under the weight of the multifarious reasons to doubt it.

The litany of lies and improbable stories grows ever larger, as each is exposed for what it is. In any normal court, the testimony of a witness who has lied repeatedly, who has a motive for spinning tall tales, would be dismissed, not even tolerated. But this Tribunal is far from an ordinary court, for the liar controls the prosecution and the judges, and the intention is not to uncover the truth. It's to exterminate it.

Notes

2. Richard Gwyn, International law should not be victors' justice, Toronto Star, July 4, 2001.

3. Michael Parenti, Against Empire (City Light Books, San Francisco, 1995), p.71.

4. Phil Ochs, Cops of the World.

5. ICTY. Indictment against Milosevic et al. http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-ii990524e.htm

6. Racak 'massacre' exposed as fraud, Workers World, Feb. 15, 2001, http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/yugo0215.html

7. Christopher Black, An Impartial Trial? Really? http://www.swans.com/library/art5/zig036.html

8. Michael Mandel, Milosevic has a point, The Globe and Mail, July 6, 2009.

9. Washington Post, May 17, 1999.

10. Rudolph Scharping, Wir duerfen nicht wegsehen. Der Kosovo-Krieg und Europa {We cannot look away. The Kosovo War and Europe] (Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, 1999), p.141.

11. New York Times, Nov. 11, 1999.

12. David Roberts, War-crime units exhumed bodies of about 4,000 civilian victims, The Globe and Mail, January 29, 2001.

13. El Pais, September 23, 1999.

14. New York Times, October 13, 1999.

15. New York Times, July 18, 1999.

16. The Sunday Times. October 31, 1999.

17. The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 1999.

18. Die Welt, June 18, 1999

19. ICTY. Case No. IT-99-37-I. http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-ai010629e.htm

20. Scharping, p.128.

21. William Norman Grigg, "why Kosovo?" in The Kosovo Dossier, 72.

22. Scharping, pp. 102, 107.

23. Thomas Deichmann, Scharping's Lies Won't Last, http://www.iacenter.org/deichmann.htm, and Lewis Dolinsky, San Francisco Chronicle, April 7 2000.

24. Intelligence report from the German Foreign Office, to the Administrative Court of Trier, January 12, 1999 (reprinted in Progressive Review no. 361, June, 1999).

25. Thomas Deichmann

26. Cited in Michael Parenti, To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, (Verso, London, 2000) p. 138.

27. Thomas Deichmann

28. NATO used speeded-up film to excuse civilian deaths in Kosovo: newspaper, AFP, January 6, 2001.

29. Steven Erlanger, Amnesty slams NATO bombing as violation of international law, New York Times Service, in The Globe and Mail, June 8, 2000.

30. Alan Freeman, Milosevic blamed in deaths of 16 at TV station, The Globe and Mail, January 27, 2001.

31. John Sweeney and Jens Holsoe, NATO bombed Chinese deliberately, The Guardian The observer, October 17, 1999, Chinese embassy bombed for helping Serbs: report, The Globe and Mail, October 19, 1999.

32. Jared Israel, Lies, damn lies and maps: How NATO and the media misrepresented the Chinese embassy bombing, CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/maps.html.

33. Cited in Where Are Kosovo's Killing Fields? stratfor.com, Global Intelligence Update 18/10/1999, http://www.stratfor.com/

34. ICTY. Case No. IT-99-37-I. http://www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/mil-ai010629e.htm

35. Bob Graham and Tom Walker, Milosevic ordered hiding of bodies, The Sunday Times, July 8, 2001.

Stephen Gowans is a writer and political activist who lives in Ottawa, Canada. He writes a regular column for Canadian Content and is also a frequent contributor to the Media Monitors Network.

-------- puerto rico

Navy Offers Grants to Help Vieques

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Navy-Vieques.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Navy is moving ahead with financial grants and programs for the people of Vieques island, even as it plans to bow to protesters there and withdraw from its decades-old training ground.

In the last few days, the Navy has announced two programs aimed at softening the harm residents say has been done by land, air and sea exercises the military holds on the Puerto Rican island.

One pays full-time fishermen $100 for each day a Navy exercise prevents them from working and part-time fishermen $50 -- and is retroactive to last October. Some $340,000 was given Friday to 77 fishermen in the first payments made under that program, the Navy announced Monday.

In the second program, grants of up to $25,000 will be given to help develop businesses to provide jobs for local residents.

``I think this is a wonderful opportunity for the people of Vieques,'' Rear Adm. Kevin P. Green, head of South Command naval forces, said in a statement released Monday on the grants.

The new programs are part of $40 million promised but never paid under an agreement reached in 2000 by then-President Clinton and then-Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro Rosello.

Part of the reason they are starting to so late is that the Pentagon held up the money because it didn't know where it stood after Rosello left office and new Gov. Sila Calderon took the side of Navy opponents on the island. It also has taken a while to get the programs approved and set up -- and at least one is delayed because Vieques officials have refused to give construction permits needed, said a Pentagon source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Under the Clinton agreement, the United States was to fund $40 million in development programs, then voters among Vieques 9,400 residents were to decide in November referendum whether the Navy should leave.

A vote against the Navy would mean its withdrawal from the island by May 2003. A vote allowing the Navy to resume full-scale training with live ammunition would mean an extra $50 million for housing and infrastructure improvements on Vieques.

Assuming it would lose the vote, the Bush administration announced last month that it wanted to cancel the referendum and start planning immediately for withdrawal in 2003.

But the Navy has not yet sent to Congress a draft of the legislation needed to cancel the referendum, so it is still mandated for the fall.

One Pentagon source said Monday they are going forward with the agreement because they are operating on the assumption that the referendum could still be held -- and possibly won.

Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr Dawn Cutler denied that.

``We are not trying to buy their votes,'' she said. ``We made a commitment to do this ... to be good neighbors.''

Under the Clinton agreement, Washington has spent some $3 million already on a land transfer and health studies, she said. The $5 million programs for fishermen and business development will bring to $8 million the value of programs begun under the agreement.

Other programs planned under the $40 million commitment include $12 million for construction and refurbishing at a ferry pier and $1.8 million for a mother-child health care program, Cutler said.

Critics have said Navy bombing, amphibious assaults, flights and other exercises have damaged people's health, destroyed the environment and stunted the island's only two industries by closing its best beaches to tourists and forcing fishermen to stay home during maneuvers that were conducted 180 days of the year.

In addition to the vote agreed to by Washington and San Juan, the new Puerto Rican government has scheduled a nonbinding referendum for Sunday to gauge if and when Vieques residents want the Navy to leave.

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

Okinawa: Curfew to halt crimes by U.S. troops

USA Today
07/23/2001 - Updated 03:55 PM ET
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/07/23/curfew.htm

TOKYO (AP) - Okinawa's mayor lodged a new protest with the U.S. military, calling Monday for the United States to reinstate tough new curfews on its troops stationed in Japan as a way to curb crime.

Resentment has been rising among local residents toward U.S. soldiers, who have been involved in a series of crimes on the island. A 24-year-old U.S. airman was arrested last week on accusations of raping a Japanese woman in Okinawa.

At a meeting with Brig. Gen. Gary North, commander of Kaneda Air Base, Okinawa Mayor Masakazu Nakasone urged a midnight curfew, according to Kiyoshi Akamine, an Okinawa city government official.

"The U.S. military has been claiming that they are making disciplinary actions, but crimes are still being committed," he quoted Nakasone as saying.

North responded that the crimes were committed by only a few and he had no intention of imposing a blanket curfew, Akamine said.

In January, the U.S. military lifted a five-month late-night drinking ban on all of its troops in Okinawa. The ban and a curfew were ordered last August after a U.S. Marine entered an apartment in Okinawa, crawled into the bed of a 14-year-old girl and fondled her. He admitted to the charges and was found guilty.

Meanwhile, lawyers for U.S. Air Force serviceman Timothy Woodland asked the Naha district court to allow American lawyer Annette Eddie-Callagain to join the defense team.

Woodland was charged last week with rape for an alleged attack on a woman outside a bar in Okinawa.

Eddie-Callagain said defense lawyers would ask the court on Tuesday to release Woodland on bail.

Under Japanese law, lawyers of foreign firms are banned from receiving payment for their work. Eddie-Callagain said she would help defend Woodland free of charge.

Okinawa is about 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo and is home to half the 47,000 American troops stationed in Japan.

--------

Bush's 'strategy first' vow scrapped

July 23, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010723-9210382.htm

What began as a pledge to break with the past and reshape the military to fit a specific strategy has regressed to the Pentagon's usual practice of sizing the military based on available tax dollars, say officials involved in the strategy review.

The "strategy first, budget number second" was the pledge from President Bush as he ordered Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to conduct a sweeping review of the 1.36 million armed forces and reorganize it for 21st-century threats.

But as the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) approaches a final report by Congress' Sept. 30 deadline, it is clear the armed forces' size is being forged more by money than by strategy.

"It's another budget drill, not a strategy," said a Navy officer involved in the process. "It's not a strategy review."

An example of this is the argument put forth by Mr. Rumsfeld's aides that the current two-war requirement of the past 10 years needs to be ditched because the Defense Department does not have the resources to maintain a force large enough to do the job.

Mr. Rumsfeld said as much earlier this month when he appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He justified dumping the ability to fight two major regional conflicts nearly simultaneously by saying: "When one examines that today, several things stand out. First, because we've underfunded and overused our forces, we find that to meet acceptable levels of risk, we're short a division. We're short of airlift. We have been underfunding aging infrastructure and facilities. We are short high-demand and low-density assets. The aircraft fleet is aging."

Pentagon officials said in interviews that Mr. Rumsfeld's statement means that if the Bush administration is to find the money to replace exhausted weapons and equipment it must alter the two-war strategy so it can cut force levels and create savings.

This cold splash of reality hit the Joint Chiefs of Staff last month, when the White House Office of Management and Budget approved an $18 billion add-on to the pending fiscal 2002 defense budget. The number is about half of what the chiefs and Mr. Rumsfeld wanted to cure immediate combat readiness problems before embarking on weapons modernization in 2003. The problem is that the economic slowdown and the $1.35 trillion tax cut have shrunk projected revenues and left a smaller piece of the budgetary pie for the admirals and generals.

The in-progress QDR seems to conflict with Mr. Bush's pledge in February in a speech to the troops. "We must put strategy first, then spending," he said. "Our defense vision will drive our defense budget; not the other way around."

In the Pentagon, some believe that pledge has been broken.

Asked if the QDR has become just another "budget drill," a senior military officer answered, "Absolutely, and it's exactly the opposite of what we were promised. We were promised that they would develop the strategy from which would derive military requirement. But as we tell them how much different options would cost, we keep getting 'that's too much' from the White House, and direction to lower the requirement. We're going to see an old-fashioned Mexican standoff if this keeps up."

Hints of a standoff surfaced last week when Mr. Rumsfeld conducted a hastily scheduled news conference to explain why he rejected the work of one of eight Quadrennial Defense Review panels. The defense secretary had issued guidance, or "terms of reference" to change the two-war requirement. But instead of the guidance leading to plans for a smaller force, it prompted the QDR panel on forces to propose a larger, more expensive one.

"When you get briefed and it adds up in a way that doesn't seem to fit what the guidance was, then logically you say, 'Wait a minute, we've got to go back and take another look at this,'" Mr. Rumsfeld said. "And that's basically what's going on."

A senior Pentagon official said the panel came back with a range of options increasing the military anywhere from 15 percent to 300 percent. In theory, this meant the Navy, for example, could have 14 carrier battle groups or more than 30. Most importantly, none of the panel's options called for a smaller force.

Since then, the panel has received additional oral guidance from Mr. Rumsfeld's staff. "[Mr. Rumsfeld] thought things were going along well when panel members had been telling him for months that things were not going well," said the official involved in the QDR. "When they got the answer, they said, 'you weren't being very innovative. What about new technologies? '"

Asked if Mr. Rumsfeld is looking for a QDR that calls for a smaller force, the official said, "I think that's what they wanted. I think that's where they thought they were going. But if you really want to be a superpower, it's expensive and it takes a lot of folks to do that and I don't know of any magic technologies."

Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledges he wanted more dollars from the White House for 2002. But he defends the $18 billion spending increase in two ways. He says the resulting $329 billion 2002 budget represents the largest one-year defense increase since President Reagan's military buildup of the 1980s. The defense secretary also argues that the force was so underfunded and overused in the 1990s that one budget cycle cannot repair all the damage.

"There is no way on the face of the earth we're going to dig out of the hole we're in, in one year," Mr. Rumsfeld told a House panel last week. "It will take a series of years."

--------

Sunken Fishing Vessel Video Shown

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Arctic-Rose.html

SEATTLE (AP) -- The Coast Guard on Monday showed family members the first murky underwater video of the Arctic Rose, a fishing vessel that sank in the Bering Sea and killed all 15 aboard.

The footage opened with a July 18 memorial service at sea above the site where the wreckage had been located. There were then 12 minutes of images captured by a deep sea camera, showing the fishing vessel sitting upright 428 feet below the surface.

``It was pretty emotional,'' said David W. Rundall, of Seattle, whose son was the skipper.

In an interview with KIRO-TV he said, ``It doesn't seem like that could happen, that a boat could go straight to the bottom and be sitting on a keel, perfectly straight.''

The body of David E. Rundall, 34, was the only one recovered after the boat sank April 2.

``They were kind of stunned,'' said Capt. Ron Morris, chairman of the Coast Guard board investigating the sinking. ``They were grateful they were given the opportunity to see this first.''

The underwater investigation ended temporarily when the cable controlling the camera became snarled in lines floating from the sunken craft. Investigators were unable to take video pictures of the hull, stern, propeller or rudder. They said they hope to try a second time with a new camera.

The Arctic Rose sank suddenly, with no distress signal.

It was the worst fishing disaster in Alaska waters since 1982, when the Japanese trawler Akebono Maru capsized 50 miles north of Adak, killing 32 people.

The Artic Rose sank about 775 miles southwest of Anchorage.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Soybean oil may soon fuel jet planes

Monday, July 16, 2001
By Environmental News Network
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/07/07162001/soybeanjets_44315.asp

Cleaner jet fuel is on the way. Soy bean oil has been successfully used to power cars, buses and boats, and now researchers at the federal government's Agricultural Research Service have found a way to blend the bean based oil with jet fuel.

The payoff will be cleaner air and larger profits for U.S. soybean growers when this oil, known as biodiesel, is functioning in the engines of jet aircraft.

Biodiesel performs like petroleum diesel fuel. It is safer to handle, and offers greater lubrication for engines and produces lower emissions. It is biodegradable and compatible with current engine and fuel distribution systems.

But one serious technical problem has so far prevented biodiesel use in jet aircraft - the behavior of the bean oil at low temperatures. Using biodiesel fuel blends that haven't been winterized could limit a jet's ability to fly at high altitudes, where cold temperatures can cause crystal formation, blocking fuel filters and plugging fuel lines.

Lately, chemical engineer Robert Dunn has been working out solutions to the problem in his lab in Peoria, Illinois at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Oil Chemical Research Unit, in the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research.

Dunn added small amounts of methyl soyate, esters from fatty acids of soybean oil, to noncommercial jet fuel (JP-8). He developed a three-step winterization process for biodiesel fuel that involves mixing in additives, chilling the fuel and filtering out solids.

In previous tests, Dunn produced biodiesel fuels capable of starting diesel engines at temperatures as low as five degrees Fahrenheit, making them comparable to petroleum-based diesel fuels.

Dunn is still working to expand the lower limits of temperature so that winterized, blended biodiesel fuels can function safely in military aircraft.

Dunn's research was motivated by recent amendments to the Clean Air Act which call for a reduction in harmful emissions from commercial and military aircraft, says USDA spokesperson Linda McGraw.

In 1999, the Federal Aviation Administration certified a fuel for piston driven aircraft containing biodiesel. It is about 85 percent ethanol and contains a high-octane petroleum product and agriculturally derived biodiesel for lubrication. Because of its high percentage of agricultural components, the fuel is known as AGE85.

Ted Aulich, research manager at the National Alternative Fuels Laboratory where AGE85 was developed, says the ethanol used in the new fuel is produced mainly from corn and other grains. The biodiesel component can also come from soy beans, sunflowers, canola and cotton seed. In addition, waste products such as fryer oils and cooking grease, as well as beef tallow and pork lard, can be used.

The U.S. currently imports 50 percent of its oil at a cost of $60 billion annually, says McGraw, making the wider use of domestically produced biodiesel attractive.

----

Support Grows for Corn-Based Fuel Despite Critics

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ with DAVID BARBOZA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/business/23ETHA.html

WASHINGTON, July 22 - Supporters of ethanol, a fuel made from corn, are gaining in their push to make it a major part of the nation's energy policy, despite persistent doubts about its economic and environmental benefits.

The Senate's new Democratic leaders and the Bush administration are promoting a growing number of measures to bolster ethanol demand significantly, including a nationwide mandate to blend ethanol with gasoline. Supporters say that using ethanol, a renewable fuel, helps struggling farmers, combats greenhouse gas emissions and reduces the nation's reliance on imported oil.

Just last month, the Bush administration, heavily lobbied by lawmakers, governors and agricultural trade groups, required California to use ethanol as a fuel additive to comply with the Clear Air Act. The order is expected to increase the nation's ethanol production by about 25 percent by 2003.

Administration officials say their decision was a matter of air quality and current law, not politics, explaining that ethanol allows gasoline to burn more cleanly. New York may also have to rely on ethanol as an additive to its gasoline.

Hoping to build on Mr. Bush's decision, farm state lawmakers, including Senator Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, who is the new Senate majority leader, have drafted several bills, among them one that would create up to 10 times as much ethanol demand over the next 15 years as there is now.

The backing of a powerful group of senators, which also includes Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who heads the Agriculture Committee, gives such measures their best chance in years. The legislation also has the advantage of coming up while Congress is focusing on energy policy and a major new farm bill.

But ethanol, which has been heavily subsidized for years, also has its detractors. The ethanol program, as some experts describe it, essentially takes money that would have gone to the Federal Highway Trust Fund, through gasoline taxes, and shifts it to American agriculture.

"It is a program to help farmers at the expense of another sector of the economy," Keith Collins, the chief economist at the Department of Agriculture, said.

The demand for ethanol raises corn prices, according to many studies, and backers of the subsidies say that farmers benefit substantially. The National Corn Growers Association estimates that ethanol production raises the price of corn by about 30 cents a bushel. The need for other agricultural subsidies, the association says, is therefore reduced.

But there is mounting evidence questioning the environmental benefits of using ethanol and the advantages to farmers. Critics say that most of the benefits go to large, corporate ethanol distillers.

In some cases, ethanol programs have backfired. One of the smaller programs, meant to raise fuel efficiency by encouraging automakers to produce cars capable of using ethanol, has relied on incentives that allow them to sell more gas-guzzlers. A federal panel, in a draft report, has recommended that the program be eliminated.

Some studies suggest that ethanol, a form of alcohol, offers no significant environmental benefits. In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences reported that when ethanol is blended with gasoline, it does not significantly reduce pollution and may even increase the pollutants that cause smog.

Still, many small farmers are convinced that soaring demand for ethanol will help lift depressed corn prices. Lawmakers from farm states say the tax incentives that are encouraging the boom in ethanol production, a figure that approaches $1 billion a year, could help prop up a flagging farm economy.

"We have an obligation to help agriculture get on its feet," said Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, which is a major producer of corn and ethanol. "There have always been enough tax benefits to go around for virtually everybody. That's the way the system works to promote the economy."

In the wake of the California decision, farmers and big agricultural companies are scrambling to build new ethanol plants in the Midwest and Plains states.

But, according to many economists and agricultural experts, the bulk of the profits generated from ethanol go to agriculture processors like the Archer Daniels Midland Company (news/quote), which is turning greater volumes of low-priced corn into a high-priced fuel.

A.D.M., Cargill Inc. and other processors benefit from federal tax incentives, worth 53 cents for each gallon of ethanol, that encourage gasoline refiners to create a blend containing about 10 percent ethanol. Because of that subsidy, which has cost about $10 billion since the program began in 1979, ethanol consumption is expected to approach two billion gallons this year.

A.D.M., the nation's largest producer of ethanol, with about 50 percent of the market, has seen its earnings from ethanol surge over the last year as gasoline and ethanol prices have jumped. Over the last two decades, ethanol has yielded the company profits of about $1 billion, according to Prudential Securities.

If prices remain stable, Wall Street analysts say, the company could earn $200 million on about $1 billion in ethanol sales in the fiscal year that began last month. A.D.M. is a major campaign contributor to both parties.

Larry H. Cunningham, an A.D.M. spokesman, said that ethanol's advantages are broad. "There are several parties that have benefited - the corn farmer, the processor, the refiner and the consumer," he said. Unlike M.T.B.E., another additive to make fuel cleaner that is formally known as methyl tertiary butyl ether, ethanol poses no threat of water contamination, he added.

The benefits to small farmers are difficult to gauge. Because corn prices are so depressed, farmers have gained the most from the government support program that guarantees them $1.89 a bushel. Only if corn prices went higher would added demand from ethanol make a difference to them, but the price of corn has not reached $1.89 since 1998.

As a result, some farmer cooperatives are building ethanol plants in the hopes of reaping greater rewards by acting as processors, not simply corn growers. "We want to move further up the value chain to make more money," said David Kolsrud, a corn farmer who invested in an ethanol plant in Luverne, Minn. "This is a hedge against low corn prices."

-------- energy

Plans to Harness Fusion May Be Coming Together

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 23, 2001; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27348-2001Jul20?language=printer

It is the ultimate energy source -- abundant heat, low price, an almost infinite supply of raw materials, no dangerous leftovers and no pollution. But finding an economic way to harness nuclear fusion has proved for decades to be one of the most vexing problems in applied physics.

This month, however, scientists at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego may have taken a significant step forward by nearly doubling the usual attainable pressure of hot gaseous fuel inside a doughnut-shaped "Tokamak" reactor, a critical step in being able to reach conditions necessary to trigger and sustain a fusion reaction.

Serious questions remain, especially how to maintain the pressure for longer than a two-second pulse, but "a factor of two improvement in your threshold pressure is a big deal," said Robert S. Granetz, principal research scientist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, "even for a short time."

Fusion -- the energy source of the sun -- requires heat and pressure intense enough to force positively charged nuclei from a mixture of hydrogen isotopes to overcome their natural inclination to repel each other and instead fuse to become helium, releasing energy in the process.

In the sun, immense gravitational force solves the problem, but on Earth the only way controlled fusion has ever reached practical application is by using a nuclear fission explosion to crush the isotopes together in a "fusion," or "hydrogen," bomb.

Making fusion serve mankind's energy needs has inspired research into everything from cold fusion (trying to achieve the result chemically rather than through temperature and pressure) to inertial confinement (a miniature thermonuclear explosion achieved by heating and compressing a tiny pellet of fuel with intense laser beams).

The Tokamak "magnetic confinement" method used in San Diego features a doughnut-shaped chamber, surrounded by a powerful magnetic field and filled with the hydrogen isotope deuterium. A reactor could also use tritium, a less stable and radioactive hydrogen isotope.

In San Diego, the deuterium in the Tokamak is heated until the atoms break apart to become a fast-moving "plasma" of free, negatively charged electrons and positively charged nuclei, or ions, composed of protons and neutrons. Tokamak is a Russian acronym for "toroidal (doughnut-shaped) magnetic chamber with a current."

The goal is to make the plasma hot enough -- more than 100 million degrees Celsius -- under pressure intense enough so that the deuterium nuclei will fuse to create a helium nucleus and release a spare, high-energy neutron.

In a working reactor, the neutron, having no charge, would escape the magnetic field, pass through the reactor wall and be absorbed by a "blanket" of liquid lithium, producing additional heat that can be used to drive a turbine generator.

For any of this to be practical, however, the reaction must be sustained long enough to allow heat from the newly created helium nuclei inside the chamber to maintain the temperature required for fusion to continue on its own. This is called "ignition condition."

"That's the Holy Grail of our program, and we've been trying to do it for decades," said Columbia University physicist Michael Mauel, a member of the research team. "We have exceeded the temperature, but the real problem we have is to keep the pressure and the heat inside the doughnut long enough."

Mauel and Columbia colleague Gerald Navratil joined colleagues from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and San Diego's General Atomics Corp. to work on the problem at the DIII-D Tokamak, a doughnut with an outside diameter of 15 feet. The project is funded by the Energy Department and run by General Atomics.

Physicists have observed for the past decade that it appears easier to keep pressure up in a Tokamak if the plasma spins around the chamber, like spinning sugar to make cotton candy. The spin mechanism is a high-energy beam of deuterium atoms fired into the chamber on a tangent, driving the plasma in a circle the way a mill race drives a water wheel.

The heat generated by the electric current can lift the temperature to between 10 million and 20 million degrees Celsius, "but you have to get to 50 or 100 million degrees, so you need auxiliary heating," MIT's Granetz said. This comes from the deuterium. The beam penetrates the magnetic field, collides with the plasma, ionizes and raises the temperature as it becomes part of the plasma itself.

Pressure rises along with the temperature, giving the plasma a tendency to become unstable. The magnetic field is designed to confine the plasma within the chamber -- close to the metal, but without touching.

"The difficulty is that whenever we raised the pressure to this high level, the rotation would slow down," Navratil said. Once that happened, he continued, the plasma lost stability and threw a loop, or "kink," into the side of the chamber, which cooled the plasma, stopping the fusion process almost instantly.

Getting beyond this "free-boundary pressure" was vitally important in moving the plasma toward ignition. The San Diego team determined that the slowdown -- which triggered the kinks -- appeared to be caused when small distortions in the Tokamak's magnetic field were amplified at high pressure. These disruptions acted to brake the spin.

The solution, Navratil said, was to install sensors on the edge of the chamber to detect the distortions as they occurred and to signal magnetic coils to provide a "correction," smoothing the magnetic field.

It worked. Using this method, Navratil said the team raised the pressure to double the free-boundary level, about two atmospheres in the San Diego Tokamak, a key step in reaching -- and holding -- fusion conditions.

Navratil said an operating fusion reactor would work a little below ignition condition, so technicians could control the pace of the reaction by adding extra heat, either with radio frequency waves or a small beam of hydrogen isotopes -- either deuterium or tritium.

As the lithium absorbed the excess neutrons, it would give off radioactive tritium atoms, but these would be recycled as fuel back into the plasma. Deuterium and lithium would be the only raw materials needed, and both substances are widely available.

And there are no emissions, no pollution, no spent radioactive fuel rods left over, and the power potential is immense: "For every megawatt you put in" to drive the reactor, Navratil said, "the system could generate 100 megawatts."

---

Energy of Stars (nonthermonuclear approach)

From: "Gary Vesperman" <gvesperman@hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001
By Alexander M. Ilyanok

ABSTRACT

The article describes a new model of the sun having a hollow core as introduced in [1]. The model helps to explain a number of experimental facts of kinetics, energetics, and sun spectroscopy based on classic physics. The origin of the sun's energy is not the thermonuclear process taking place in its core, but the coherent, anisotropic gravitational compression of the atomic hydrogen in the solar shell at the temperature of 6289 K.

A. INTRODUCTION

The adequate models describing the origin of energy from stars, including the energy of the sun were created at each stage of formation of new concepts in physics. For example, in the 19th century H. Helmholtz considered gravitational compression to be the main power source of the solar energy [2] that computed the time of full illumination of the sun in millions of years:

(1) where W0 and L0 are the gravitational energy and the total radiation power of the sun, M0 and R0 are the sun's mass and the sun's radius, and G is the gravitational constant. However, further palaeontological investigations showed, that the life on the Earth was not interrupted during the last 3 billion years and, consequently, the luminosity of the sun was relatively uniform. This scientific fact led to the first crisis in the physics of the source of solar energy. In the 20th century many scientists, including A.Eddington, (1926) [2], attempted to overcome this crisis. Eddington found that as a rough approximation, luminosity L of main stars depends on a star mass M in the proportion: L ~ Mg,

(2) where g = 3,0 to 3,5. Under such proportion the heating power of stars is determined only by the convective heat exchange. Thus, the mechanism of energy emitted by stars corresponds to the type of energy emitted on cooling or the emission of energy under gravitational compression.

Attempting to eliminate the deficiencies of the Helmholtz's theory, A. Eddington [2] introduced a new power source in the form of uniform substance annihilation (according to Einstein's mass-energy equivalence equation) in the entire star volume. However, further development of the theory and experiments in nuclear physics showed that the process of matter annihilation is not possible in the sun under the present physical conditions. This discovery led to the second crisis in physics of the source of star energy.

After due consideration the majority of physicists abandoned the idea of the thermonuclear mechanism of energy release in stars. Soon H. Bethe, etc. (1938-1939) [2,3] pointed out the most important thermonuclear reactions of the proton-proton cycle, the carbon-nitrogen cycle and the carbon cycle, which can occur at pressure of about 1016 Pa and temperatures about 108 K. Such pressures and temperatures may be achieved only in the center of stars. However, this model shown to be inconsistent with the observed dependence (2) of luminosity of stars on their mass. To overcome this inconsistency a number of theories were created.

Up the beginning of the 1970s the universal confidence in the thermonuclear mechanism of solar energy generation was challenged by the fact, that the directly-measured flow of solar neutrinos produced by thermonuclear processes appeared to be in 3-4 times less then theoretically predicted. This discovery led to the third crisis in physics of the solar energy emission. It was called a problem of solar neutrinos. Repeated experimental attempts made during the next 30 years, in order to find the theoretically-forecast quantity of solar neutrinos and extracting them from the general space background have been appeared unsuccessful untill now. Thus, the crisis in physics of the solar energy emission became chronic.

B. THE NEW SOLAR MODEL

One may try to overcome the crisis by total rejection of the standard physical models of the sun and stars by proposing a model considering the newly-obtained data on physics of the sun and stars [1].

New observations and the facts on the physics of the sun questioned the conventional theories of the sun's structure. Thus, in 1975 three independent groups of scientists in the USSR [3] and in the USA [4] almost simultaneously discovered the sun's photosphere pulsations with 160.01 min. period and 6 km amplitude. From the point of view of the theory of adiabatic pulsation of gaseous balls this result meant that the density of the sun does not increase to the center (as it was presumed) but decreases to the center of the sun. This decrease of dencity is accompanied by a negligible temperature increase towards the center [2] untill Tc £ 6.5 106 K. At such temperatures, the proton-proton reaction produces 104 times less energy than that actually observed on the sun.

In 1960 Leghton found that the whole surface of the quiet sun (the photosphere and the beginning of the chromosphere) was covered by regions that were vibrating in the vertical with the period of about 5 min [5]. These vibrations represent sinusoidal wave trajectories for 4-5 cycles having the average duration of 23 min. In subsequent investigations it was supposed that a number of regions of the surface of the sun having the size of about a supergranulation cell vibrated coherently. The horizontal scales of the amplitude coherence are in 5-10 thousands of km, while the phase coherence is preserved up to sizes of 30,000 km.

No connections between the 160 and 5-minute oscillations were detected. This discovery created additional problems of interpreting the 160-minute helioseismic vibrations. These problems stimulate searching for non-standard models of the sun's structure, which can explain the excising experimental data.

An interesting experiment was achieved by the cosmonauts B.Volynov and V. Zholobov. The cosmonauts investigated behaviour of gas bubbles in a liquid in the null-gravity [6]. A 3-cm diameter spherical retort was filled with water and then intensively shaken. As a result many small bubbles were generated. After about 100 hours, one spherical hollow located in the center of the retort was formed. Thus, in the ensemble of gas-filled bubbles, chaotically distributed in water under the conditions of null gravity, there takes place a process of agglomeration of bubbles, in which one large bubble forms. For a star the function of the spherical retort may be fulfilled by the gravitational forces. Therefore, the model with a rarefied central part (hollow) inside a star can appear to be acceptable for the sun.

The assumption of a hollow core for the sun complies with some hypotheses available in the literature. For example, the work [7] comprises an interesting assumption following from the symmetry principles. It follows therefrom that in relation to the sun's planetary system, there should also be certain "mirror" planets inside the sun.

The mass distribution inside the sun could be determined by measuring the moment of inertia thereof. Direct experiments measuring the sun's moment of inertia and the mass distribution of the sun can be carried out in a similar way to determining the mass distribution inside the planets, which have satellites. Usually such calculations follow from the motion of perihelion and nodes of planet satellites relative to the orbit of the planet itself. Whereas the period of the sun's orbit around the centre of the Galaxy is more than 220 million years, one needs at least a million years to conduct direct experiments on rotation of perihelions and nodes of planets relatively to the sun's orbit. Therefore, we cannot use this direct method for determining the mass distribution inside the sun. Slow motion of the absydes line of tight star-shaped pairs appears to be the only argument in favor of greater concentration of substance towards the centre of stars [2]. However, the more detailed motion convergence for the absydes line of the plurality of binary stars demonstrates full absence of correlation between the speed of this motion and the ratio of a star radius to the orbit semiaxis length. This correlation should be required if the absydes motion relates to deformation of gravitating bodies.

The direct method to determine mass distribution inside the sun is calculation on compressibility due to rotation. The general solution of a problem of axial rotation for the sun at an arbitrary form of substance state equation cannot be calculated analytically. At quite small deformations this problem can be solved approximately by expansion deformations caused by rotation on series in the form of convergent functional series. The small-deflection theory allows one to find a rational substantiation of the geometry of gravitational equilibrium figures and to relate them with the internal structure of rotating celestial bodies.

One of the approximate methods for solving the problem of relative equilibrium of celestial bodies is the Lyapunov's method [8]. The problem of small deformations, as defined by Lyapunov, is limited to finding equilibrium figures that are close to some pre-specified form of a geometric surface. The most interest should be given to the fact that Laypunov solved the Klero's problem concerning determination of an shape gravitational equilibrium figure for a slowly rotating non-uniform planet.

Let us consider the sun as an ideal liquid. If the angular velocity is very small, the deformation is low, and the equilibrium figure of the sun is close to spherical that condition may be described by the equation of Klero's spheroid: r = a[1 - ssin2j],

(3) where j is the heliocentric latitude of the surface point, s is compressibility of the equilibrium figure determined as:

(4) where à and b are large and a small semiaxes of a figure. Using the adiabatic model let us imagine the sun to be a slowly rotating ball made from compressible fluid (Figure 1. Alternative Models of the sun). In this case let us model compressibility of the fluid in the form of two components: the solar shell consisting of the fluid with r1 density and the core consisting of a fluid with r2 density. For a slowly rotating body, being at hydrostatic equilibrium and symmetrical around the rotation axis and around the equatorial plane, the gravitational potential V may be expanded in a series [9]. In this case, compression of the equilibrium figure of the sun is determined only by even terms of the series, starting from n*4. To estimate only the first term of the series, we shall use well-known results [8]. From this work it follows that the compressibility s of equilibrium figure is defined in the framework the Clairaut's problem using Lyapunov's method [8] is defined by following relation:

(5) where R is the radius of a nonperturbed star; r1 is the radius of the hollow; w is the frequency of rotation. By doing integration (5) at uniform distribution of r(r) = constant density we get

(6) If r1 = 0, i.e. the mass is uniformly distributed throughout the sun's volume, then

(7) which corresponds to the Newtonian classic solution. If the mass is concentrated in the center of the sun then it follows from (5) that

(8) Neither model corresponds to the experimentally-measured value of compressibility of the sun, which is 5.21×10-5 [10]. By using the experimental value of the compressibility of the sun, it is found that r1/R0 =0.763.

This result shows that in the first approximation the single solution for compression of the Sun is redistribution of the main mass of the sun to the shell thereof. Taking into account a lot of even terms of the series analogously to [9], one obtains the asymptotic limited thickness of the sun's shell from r1/R = 0.962, i.e. the thickness of the sun shell makes DR0 = R0/26.6 = 2.61845 x.107 meters. It is possible to achieve similar results using the quantum-mechanical model of the hollow sun. Further, let us consider that the hollow of the sun is filled with gaseous hydrogen in the form of a low-temperature plasma having the pressure commensurable with the pressure on the visible surface of the sun, which is about 0.1 of physical atmosphere [10].

As far as it is supposed that the sun is a sphere with a hollow inside, then the helioseismic wave with a 160.01 min period can be considered as a vibration of the sun shell. If we suppose that propagation of surface waves on the sun takes place along the external side of the sun shell and the velocity of movement thereof do not exceed the first cosmic velocity on the sun surface v1 = 437 km/s [10], then the time of propagation of this wave along the Solar shell will be as follows:

(9) if R=R0(1-1/26.6) the difference with the experimental value is only 0.26%. If we consider that waves with the speed vn = v1/(2n+1) also propagate across the shell of the sun, then for the second mode n=2 one obtains the time of propagation of a wave between the internal and external surfaces of the shell (Figure 2. Waves on the Shell on the Sun): t2 =5DR0/v1 = 5.00 min.

(10) The direc t fact confirming presence of a thin shell of a thickness of is the existence of long-lived (about 20 hours) supergranulation cells with the characteristic sizes of 2×104 to 4×104 km. These cells are similar to synergetic Benard cells arising in any flat horizontal layer of thick liquids when heated from the bottom. The ordered behaviour of such cells takes place due to space correlations at the interaction thereof. In this case, the size of cells is commensurable with the thickness of a layer of a viscous liquid and is determined from the following characteristic overall dimensions of the vessel: the ratio of the depth D and the diameter L of a vessel should be 10 < L/D < 30. For the sun, the ratio is L/D = R0/*R0= 26.6. Moreover, the lifetime of such cells is about one day, which coincides with the time of existence of supergranulation cells [11]. It is amazingly but a fact, that the coherent anisotropic processes going in a vessel with mercury or oil are similar to the processes going in a solar shell, though the scales of these processes are vastly different. The work [11] illustrates the origin of coherent anisotropic processes arising in a fluid metal spherical shell at rapid cooling under decrease of internal pressure. The regular structures obtained on the surface of a metal shell appear very much similar to the supergranulation cells on the sun, being one more proof of the legitimacy of this chosen model of the sun.

In addition, the general magnetic field similar to that of the Earth was not found on the sun. This fact also indicates the absence of a dense core in the sun. However, there are a great number of local magnetic fields connected with supergranulation cells and sunspots. This discovery indicates the presence of vortex currents in supergranulation cells [10].

Let us show that the presence of a hollow core in the sun follows also from conservation laws of kinetic energy of rotation of the sun and the kinetic energy of planets headway. The paradox of failure of conservation laws of full angular momentum and full kinetic energy of the solar system has been discussed for more than one century.

From the days of Newton the problem of a mechanism of the initial source of the planets motion has remained unresolved. Finally, in 1960 L. Egyed found a solution using Dirac's old hypothesis on varying of the gravitational constant in time. Egyed stated that initially the sun was a giant star, which at compression periodically dropped its mass in the form of planets starting from Pluto by transfering to planets the initial momentum [12].

On analogy to the Egyed's theory, suppose, that the sun in its initial moment was one of the giant stars. Also suppose that the giant star has a hollow core. In this case there is no gravity potential on the internal shell surface of the sun because of the form of the gravitational potential dependence 1/R. Therefore, any perturbation on the internal equatorial surface of the sun's shell can produce a soliton - a drop of a substance, which will be a planet. During the compression of the sun's shell this ejected planet conserves its angular momentum and remains on the initial orbit, which is corresponding to orbit of the relevant internal planet of the solar system. In this case the gravity potential of the sun in relation to the planet increase in 4p times. This fact follows at transition from the Poisson's equation inside the gravitating shell to the Laplace's equation outside the shell. The kinetic energy Wk of the sun as a rotated sphere with the mass M0 basically concentrated in the shell, is: Wk = (M0v32)/3 = 2.64´1036 J

(11) where v3 is the equatorial speed on the surface of the sun. The kinetic energy of motion of all planets of the Solar system will be [10]

(12) where Mn are masses of planets, vn are orbital speeds of planets. Equating (11) and (12) one obtains the following expression for the conservation law of kinetic energy in the Solar system in view of the increasing in 4p times the gravity potential at transition through the Solar shell:

(13) The calculation error according to this formula comes to 5.4%. That small error is one more evidence of the high probability of the hollow sun model. The law of conservation of energy of the solar system (13) shows that our solar system could not collide with other stars after the moment of its birth and the solar system contains no other large planets in addition to the eight known planets excluding small planets. Let us note two very important arguments confirming the hypothesis on the presence of a hollow in the sun. The first is the increase of brightness of the edge of the sun when observing thereof in a centimetre radio-frequency band. The second is the increase in the red shift of photon-radiation towards the edge of the sun [13]. These facts show that the mass of the sun is basically concentrated on the surface thereof. This mass concentration causes the irregular gravitational red shift of optical photons and the increase of concentration of microwave frequency sources.

In addition our model explain the origin of scintillations on the sun in the form of protuberances. Whereas there is no gravitational field inside the spherically symmetric hollow, it is probable that small planets are being formed there in. They can move inside the hollow colliding with the shell walls. At each impact the kinetic energy transfers into the energy of excitation of the sun's shell, which is exhibited in the form of the solar activity and local thermonuclear synthesis of heavy elements.

However here a new problem arises: What is the power source of the sun?

C. Power Source of the Sun.

Let us suppose that under the influence of gravitational forces the hollow sun is in a state of elastic compression. Then this system can be described by a second-order differential equation by analogy with the considered mechanics elastic hollow spheres that are under external uniform pressure. Such models are well known and the methods of solution are presented in [14]. If supposed that the role of uniform external pressure plays gravitational interaction between the particles of the sun shell, then the differential equation has the solution in the form of a uniform motion of a body, rotating about the axis and the waves in the shell. All these motions are proper to the sun. In the last case the potential energy of the elastic gravitational contraction transforms into the kinetic energy of undamped motion of waves along the shell.

Let us suppose that the undamped wave goes along an inner side of the sun with the v1 first cosmic velocity on the surface of the sun. This wave causes motion of electrons and protons relative to each other. Therefore, the kinetic energy of an electron moving relative to a proton will be equivalent to a certain temperature:

Te = (me v12)/2k = 6289.27 K

(14) where m e is the mass of a free electron, k is the Boltzmann constant.

Whereas the temperature along the disc of the sun (without the corona) is nonuniform decreasing to the edges due to the increase of interaction with the corona, let us take the experimental data on the temperature of the sun referred to the centre of the disk. The experimental value of temperature in the centre of the sun's disc according to the spectrum with smoothed nonuniformities makes up 6270K [10]. Thus, the difference between the experimental and theoretical values equals 0.31 %. This divergence seems to be connected with the final heat conduction of the sun's shell as the calculated temperature correspond to the inner side of the sun's shell. Calculation of an average density of the solar shell in accordance with our assumptions gives 12.97 g/cm3, which corresponds to the density of mercury at the temperature 533 K, though exceeding by 9.21 times the average volume density of the sun that is equal to 1.409 g/cm3 and exceeding by 417 times the density of liquid hydrogen in the double critical point 0.0311 g/cm3. Such density is 12 times lower than the supposed density in the centre of the sun, which equals 160 g/cm3. At such density the probability of a thermonuclear synthesis in the shell of the sun is close to zero. The direct experimental confirmation of the existence of the solar shell of such density is the fact is the coincidence of its density with the density of the external core of the Earth. According to propagation of seismic waves it is stated that there is an external and an internal core in the Earth. The external core begins at the distance of 1217.1 km from the centre of the Earth, the density thereof making according to the reference data 13.012 g/cm3 [10,15]. (Figure 3. Section of the Sun and the Earth)

Difference between the densities of the sun shell and the Earth makes 0.3 %. It is very important that at these depths the calculated temperature makes 6200? - 6300? that coincides with the temperature of the sun shell (14). In addition during the whole external core of the Earth of 1217.1-3485.7 km there are totally no acoustic transverse waves, but there exist only longitudinal waves, that are characteristic only for fluid and gaseous mediums. Seismic and acoustic research of the internal core gives rather inconsistent results in finding the density because of reflection of waves on the interface of the internal and external cores. Cross-sectional acoustic waves are absent here as well. Apparently these measurements show that the internal core of the Earth is a hollow filled with gaseous hydrogen at very high pressures (the calculated pressure in the center of the Earth 3.63×10 11 Pa [10]), enclosed by a s hell (the external core) of hydrogenous plasma in a condition similar to the solar shell and covered by a mantle (see figure 3). Thus, we come to a rather interesting conclusion that the Earth is an extincting hydrogenous star. In the process of burnout of hydrogen there are synthesized heavy nucleuses by cold nuclear fusion, i.e. transmutation at the temperature of 6289? with the subsequent cooling in the mantle and crystallization in the crust.

The exotic state of the solar matter, which generally is a low temperature hydrogen plasma (6293 K) containing H2, H, H+, H-, e- at the excess of atomic hydrogen, requires to change the point of view on G to be not a constant value, but the value depending on a phase state (temperature) of a substance. There is nothing surprising in this conclusion as from the days of Kavendish [2] all experiments on G measurement were carried out with condensed substances in usual conditions. The experiments on G measuring for gases, neutrons, positive protons and electrons were conducted as for fundamental particles [16], but not for the condensed substance. That is, no direct experiments on G measurement of the sun's substance had ever been carried out. This should be made in the future. Therefore, at present we have no right to separate GM product at studying the sun.

Developing Dirac's idea consider that the gravitational constant, to a considerable extent, depends not on the time but on the phase condition of a substance. Suppose that in the original state the sun represented a sphere consisting (similar to Jupiter) of liquid hydrogen with the following critical parameters: the density of 0.031 g/cm3 and the critical temperature of 32.98 K. When heating hydrogen the value of G along the shell increased by 417 times due to high-temperature coherent interactions of atomic hydrogen, but in the transverse direction it kept its value.

The Helmholtz equation (1) will be correct if we accept G0 = 417G for the sun. Therefore, the duration that the Sun light emitts increases by 417 times, and the life time thereof is equal to 13.76 billion years, which agrees with estimation of the period of existence of the Metagalaxy.

However, these data do not agree with the lifetime of the sun estimated in accordance to the birth time of the Earth to approximately 4.5 billion years. The age of the Earth is determined fair enough according to the ratio of isotopes in meteorites and in the Earth crust. But it is impossible to make a mere interpolation of the data obtained on the Earth to the stars without taking into account the difference in their phase state and temperature.

D. The Conclusions.

Thus, using the model of the sun with a hollow inside it is possible to explain the following:

1. Observed value of compressibility of the sun (6).

2. The law of conservation of rotational energy in the solar system.

3. Connection with the sun beginning with the birth of planets;

4. The origin of the motion of planets of the solar system;

5. Existence of helioseismic waves with the period of 160 min and 5 min observed on the surface of the sun (9), 10).

6. Nature of formation of supergranulation cells.

7. Absence of a general magnetic field.

8. Solar flares.

9. Deficiency of solar neutrinos as the result of absence of thermonuclear synthesising.

10. The temperature of the sun (14).

11. Gravitational red shift on the edges of the sun.

12. Increase of the brightness of microwave frequency radiation at the edges of the sun.

13. The density of the sun's substance is equal to density of the Earth core.

14. The temperature of the external core of the Earth is equal to the temperature of the sun.

15. The cubical dependence of luminosity of the sun on its mass (2).

The obtained results show a high reliability of the offered model of the existence of a hollow inside the sun. Thus, the third crisis in physics of power engineering of the sun, probably, may be overcome with the help of the offered model of the hollow sun. This model leads to the important practical conclusion: there is no global thermonuclear synthesis in the centre of the sun. The source of energy is a special state of the solar substance in the form of a gravitational molecular state of the plasma, i.e. the hyperthermal gravitational potential energy of compression is converted into the kinetic energy of rotation and the energy of light emission of the sun. Therefore the nature of the energy on the sun comprises no neutron components.

Taking into consideration the processes mentioned above it is necessary to revise the programs of extracting power at the Earth that are based on the thermonuclear synthesis as the neutron-source, and, therefore, as source of the environmental pollution. It is reasonable to proceed to searching ways of obtain domestic energy by transmutation of elements.

Gratitude

This work was made in the Laboratory of Atomic and Molecular Engineering at the Institute of Modern Knowledge in Minsk, Belarus due to the help and support of the Rector of the said Institute Professor Alexander M. Shirokov, to whom I am sincerely grateful. The author is also grateful to the employees of the Laboratory of Atomic and Molecular Engineering, and namely to my colleagues S. Vinogradov, T. Timoshchenko,

L. Dumka for numerous creative discussions and constructive help. Separately the author wants to thank I. Timoshchenko for fruitful collaboration and help in calculation at writing this article.

References:

1. Ilyanok A, Timoshchenko I. The Hollow Sun. Lodged article, 1999 (US Copyright Office).

2. ???????? ?.?. ???? ????? ???????????. ?.: ?????, 1988. ?.225. (Russian)

3. ???????? ?.?. ????????? ???????? ?????? ??????. ?.: ?????, 1988. ?.126. (Russian)

4. Dittmer P.H.// Stanford Univ. IPR Rep. 1977. ?686.

5. Leghton R.B. IAU Symp. 12, 1960. P.321.

6. ??????? ?.?. ??????. ??????????? "?????". ???.46. ?.: ?????, 1985. ?.126. (Russian)

7. ????????? ?.?, ?????? ?.?. ????? ???? ? ???????? ???????. ??????????? "?????", ???.67. ?.: ?????, 1988.

8. ???? ?.?. ?????? ?????????? ???????? ???. ?.: ?????. 1950. ?.144. (Russian)

9. ?????? ?.?., ??????????? ?.?. ??????????? ???????? ??????????????? ?????????? ??????????????? ??????????? ???????? ???. ??????????????? ???????. ?.31. 1997. ?3. ?.278-284. (Russian)

10. Allen C.W. Astrophysical quantities. The Athlone Press. 1973.

11. Haken H. Advanced Synergetics Instability Hierarchies of Self-Organizing Systems and Devices. Springer-Verlag. Berlin Heidelberg. New-York. Tokyo. 1983.

12. Egued L. Dirac's Cosmology and the Origin of the Solar System. Nature.186. 1960. P.621-628.

13. The Solar Output ?nd Its Variation. Edited by Oran R. White: Colorado Associated University Press Boulder. 1977.

14. Love A.E. Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity. Cambridge, at the University Press. 1927. Fourth edition.

In additional On your discretion

References:

1. Ilyanok A, Timoshchenko I. The Hollow Sun. Lodged article, 1999. (US Copyright Office).

2. Martynov D.J. A Course of General Astrophysics. Moscow:1988. p.225

3. Severny A.V. Problems of the Physics of the Sun. 1988, p.126

4. Dittmer P.H.// Stanford Univ. IPR Rep.- 1977. - N686

5. Leghton R.B. IAU Symp. 12, 321, 1960.

6. Geguzin J.E. Bubbles. "Quant" Library. Series.46. p.126

7. Zeldovich J.B, Khlopov M.J. Tragedy of Ideas in the Course of Nature Cognition. "Quant" Library. Series 67. 1988.

8. Krat V.A. Equilibrium Figures of Celestial Bodies. GITTL. ?. 1950, p.144

9. Elkin A.V., Holshevnikov K.V. Determining the External Gravitational Potential of Hydrostatically Equilibrium Celestial Bodies. Astronomic Herald. 1997. v.31. ?3. p.278-284.

10. Allen C.W. Astrophysical Quantities. The Athlone Press 1973.

11. Haken H. Advanced Synergetics Instability Hierarchies of Self-Organizing Systems and Devices. Springer-Verlag. Berlin Heidelberg. New-York. Tokyo. 1983.

12. Egyed L. Dirac's Cosmology and the Origin of the Solar System. Nature.186. P.621-628. (1960)

13. The Solar Output and Its Variation. Edited by Oran R. White/ Colorado Associated University Press Boulder. 1977.

14. Love A.E. Treatise on the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity. Cambridge, at the University Press. 1927. Fourth edition.

15. Physical Magnitudes: Reference book. F.P. Babichev et al. Edited by Grigoriev et al., ?., Energoatomizdat. 1991.

16. Experimental Tests of the Gravitation Theory. Edited by Braginsky V.B., Denisov V.I. - ?.: Moscow State University. 1988. 254 p.

-------- environment

[Duh. I'm astounded it's taken them so long to figure it out. et]

NO DISCHARGE ZONE COULD PROTECT FLORIDA KEYS SANCTUARY

July 23, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-23-09.html

ATLANTA, Georgia, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed to designate waters of the State of Florida within the boundaries of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary as a no discharge zone.

A no discharge zone designation would prohibit the discharge of sewage, whether treated or not, from a vessel into state waters of the marine sanctuary. The action was taken in response to requests from Monroe County, Florida Board of County Commissioners and the Governor of Florida.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is pursuing the designation of a no discharge zone for all federal waters within the sanctuary.

"We seek to better protect and preserve the unique natural resources of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, consistent with the wishes of the county, state, and our federal partners," said EPA Administrator Christie Whitman. "These marine environments support rich biological communities possessing extensive conservation, recreational, commercial, ecological, educational and aesthetic values."

The marine ecosystem of the sanctuary is dependent upon clear water with low nutrients, and could be damaged by sewage discharges.

The Florida Keys contain unique environments including seagrass meadows, mangrove islands and extensive living coral reefs. These marine environments are the maritime equivalent of tropical rain forests - they support high levels of biological diversity, are fragile, and susceptible to damage from human activities.

The third largest coral barrier reef in the world lies just off the Atlantic side of the Keys and is a popular recreation attraction. The economy of the Florida Keys is based in large part on tourism and fisheries that are tied to the ecological resources and quality of the waters surrounding the Florida Keys.

"I am very pleased that EPA is moving forward in this important initiative," said Florida Governor Jeb Bush. "This designation will prohibit the discharge of sewage from any vessel into the state waters of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. We look forward to a continued partnership with the federal government and the local community to ensure that this unique tropical marine ecosystem and coral reef is available for generations to come."

----

MONSANTO PLANT SPILLED TONS OF MERCURY

July 23, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-23-09.html

ANNISTON, Alabama, Some 40 or 50 tons of liquid mercury were dumped into a storm sewer by a Monsanto Corporation chemical plant in the 1950s and 1960s, an investigation by the "Anniston Star" shows.

The newspaper reports today that officials are still not sure how much mercury was released, or what areas of Alabama may have been contaminated.

Monsanto's caustic soda and chlorine plant used lead and mercury to produce polychlorinated biphenyls, (PCBs) in the decades before PCBs were banned in the U.S. Some spilled mercury was discarded down the company's storm sewer and could not be recovered, the "Star" reports.

"In 1999, Monsanto's spin-off Anniston company, Solutia, gave state regulators a brief description of the site's use of mercury," wrote reporter Elizabeth Bluemink. "But, company records show that the information Solutia supplied about the potential for mercury discharges was incomplete and inaccurate."

Officials at Solutia told the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) that Monsanto had "likely" not released any mercury to the environment. ADEM now plans a complete investigation of all mercury releases from the plant.

As early as 1967, the newspaper learned, Dr. Denzel Ferguson, a Mississippi State University biologist, warned Monsanto that its discharges of mercury and other pollutants were killing fish in nearby Snow Creek and Choccolocco Creek.

Ferguson sent a report to Monsanto, "Investigations of Certain Pesticide-Wildlife Relationships in the Choccolocco Creek Drainage," citing high acidity and mercury as the cause of the fish fatalities.

The "Anniston Star" story is available at: http://www.annistonstar.com/news/news_20010720_1304.html

----

BACTERIA EAT MOST OCEAN METHANE

July 23, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-23-09.html

MOSS LANDING, California, Methane consuming bacteria are responsible for consuming most of the methane in the world's oceans, new research shows.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) microbiologists report in today's issue of the journal "Science" on new techniques that combine the identification of microorganisms with their biogeochemical activity. In the study, the researchers used the new approach to identify marine microbes that consume methane, an important greenhouse gas.

"The method is providing a new window into the microbial world," said Ed DeLong, leader of the research group. "Now it's possible to determine both the identity and function of naturally occurring microbes, at the level of single cells. We don't even have to grow them in the laboratory to do it."

"Until recently no one knew which microbes were involved in the oxidation of methane in anoxic marine sediments," added Victoria Orphan, first author of the Science paper. "By combining molecular and stable isotope techniques, we found a way to link specific microbes to this important ocean process."

In collaboration with Christopher House of Pennsylvania State University and researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of California, Los Angeles, the MBARI group used a remotely operated vehicle to collect marine sediments from deep sea methane seeps in the Eel River Basin off California.

Molecular probes were used to identify archaea and sulfate reducing bacteria in the sediments. The researchers showed that two kinds of microbes form a partnership to extract energy from methane in the absence of oxygen.

The methane oxidizing archaea transfer carbon compounds to their sulfate reducing bacterial partners. Since almost 80 percent of the methane in marine sediments is removed by these methane consuming microbes, the discovery provides new insight into a critical process.

Orphan and her colleagues are excited by the implications of this research, as these techniques can be used to identify environmentally important microorganisms and characterize their metabolic activities in nature.

----

Negotiators Reach Deal on Climate Treaty

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/international/23CND-CLIMATE.html?searchpv=nytToday

BONN, Germany, July 23 -- The world's nations, minus the United States, accepted treaty rules that for the first time would require industrialized countries to cut emissions of waste gases linked to global warming.

The agreement, reached after four pressurized days of formal talks here, paves the way for ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, which was conceived in 1995, negotiated in Japan two years later, signed by nearly 100 countries, including the United States, and rejected earlier this year by President Bush.

This morning, largely galvanized by the European Union, 178 countries consented to detailed language that moved the proposed treaty along the path from a sketchy plan for reducing the human impact on the atmosphere toward a binding environmental contract.

The development came after years of fighting over the treaty rules between blocs of countries, lobbyists, and environmentalists.

Officials from the European Union exulted over the compromise. Olivier Deleuze, the energy and sustainability secretary of Belgium, said there were easily 10 things in the final texts that he could criticize. "But," he said, "I prefer an imperfect agreement that is living than a perfect agreement that doesn't exist."

The difficulties far exceeded those surrounding other environmental treaties, experts said, because the treaty, by controlling carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, would limit something released by almost every act of modern daily living.

"This is as hard as it gets," said one member of the British delegation. "It involves everything: our energy, our mobility, our use of the land."

Compromises were reached on a set of issues that caused the last negotiating session, in The Hague last November, to end in an impasse between the Clinton administration and Europe.

"The rescue operation succeeded," said Margot Wallstrom, the environmental commissioner of the European Union. "This issue will be around for generations to come, but this is an incredibly important first step."

The biggest sticking point was how much bite to give the enforcement mechanisms for penalizing countries that fail to meet their targets. Japan held out for a fairly painless system. Europe wanted a system that would require countries that miss targets in the first commitment period, from 2008 to 2012, to add to the tonnage of carbon dioxide they eliminated in the next period, with the equivalent of penalties plus interest. Europe got its way.

The talks also clarified the design of the first global system for buying and selling credits earned by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Such a system tends to focus investment in pollution cleanups where the job can be done most effectively and cheaply.

Representatives of a bloc of more than 130 developing countries said they were pleased with the deal -- particularly with new commitments of more than $450 million a year from the industrialized countries to help them adapt to climate change and adopt technologies to avoid making the problem worse as their economies grow.

And the negotiators settled on what kinds of forest and farmland projects -- and how many -- could be used to soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and stash away the carbon in wood and soil.

On this point, some environmental groups gently criticized Europe for allowing forested countries like Canada and Japan to gain large credits toward their emissions targets essentially by "watching trees grow," as one campaigner put it.

But the overwhelming sentiment of American, Japanese, and European environmental groups was that this was a historic agreement.

"It allows us to begin the long journey of confronting global warming, the most serious environmental threat of the 21st century," said Alden Meyer, a lobbyist for the Union of Concerned Scientists who has been involved in climate treaty talks for more than a decade.

As the talks ground on over the weekend and today, attempts by Japan and Saudi Arabia, among others, to seek new concessions or delays faltered.

Consensus emerged after a final push by Jan Pronk, the chairman of the talks, who essentially locked himself in a room with a cluster of negotiators.

By dawn dozens of delegates sprawled unconscious on every spare cushion and couch in the meeting rooms of the Maritim Hotel.

In the end, the diverse array of countries at the table, some grudgingly, overcame differences under strong pressure to avoid an embarrassing deadlock over the rules that could have been the undoing of the treaty itself.

The deal was sealed just before 11 a.m. with an auctioneer-fast crack of Mr. Pronk's gavel. With that stroke, he found some measure of retribution after presiding over the failed talks in the Hague.

The writing of the rules caps a six-year struggle between a group of industries and countries that claimed mandatory emissions caps would harm economies and environmental groups and other countries that saw required limits as the only way to stave off potentially disruptive climate shifts.

At the meeting, there were unusual intertwinings of interests, with companies that build nuclear power plants eager to jump into the climate fight because the technology produces electricity without greenhouse gases. Japan, Canada, China, and other countries supported getting credit toward emissions goals by substituting nuclear for conventional power.

But the European Union, despite its wide use of nuclear power, insisted there be no nuclear option in the global warming agreement.

Some industry lobbyists said they doubted the system for trading carbon credits could be set up in a way that avoided cheating or inaccuracy.

But other executives making the rounds in Bonn came from companies that had already established carbon trading systems in anticipation of eventual required limits.

Indeed, among the business officials at the meeting was Kedin Kilgore, who works for Natsource, a large American energy trading firm. His job title, he said, was "greenhouse gas broker."

To some of the participants and observers in the wearying talks here, the achievement was a bit soured given that the United States, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet, chose not to be a party to the proposed treaty.

But others noted that, between them, the three dozen industrialized countries that supported the treaty language accounted for far more emissions than the United States.

Environmental campaigners said Europe had proved it can lead despite its sometimes fragmented appearance.

"There's really a new force on the world stage," said Philip Clapp, the president of the National Environmental Trust, a lobbying group based in Washington. "If the United States will not lead, Europe can and will."

Many of the negotiators from other countries held out hope that, eventually, the United States would rejoin the pact.

Chances of that happening in the short run are slim. During the plenary session celebrating the accord, Paula Dobrianksy, the Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, congratulated the parties to the protocol but reiterated a common theme of the Bush administration -- that it was "not sound policy."

Even before the Kyoto treaty was negotiated, the Senate warned in a 95 to 0 vote that it would not consent to any treaty that excused developing countries from obligatory cuts and could harm the economy by limiting gases released by burning fuels.

Mr. Bush embraces the same view, although he repeated his pledge to come up with an alternative and his commitment to stabilizing greenhouse gases, during the summit in Genoa.

In one of many floor statements made after the rules were adopted, Japan's environment minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, in a clear reference to the United States, said it was important to try to build a bridge between the Kyoto process and countries waiting on the sidelines.

"In order to achieve the objectives of the Kyoto Protocol, we need to have the widest possible participation of countries," she said.. "We should try to encourage all our friends to join us in our common effort to address global warming."

After the formal session ended this afternoon, hundreds of officials began to prepare for a weeklong meeting to draft the fine print.

Many countries said that the completion of the rules meant they could take the pact home to start the ratification effort.

Formal adoption of the agreement is scheduled to take place in Marrakech at the end of October.

-------- genetics

EPA ISSUES NEW RULES FOR PESTICIDE PRODUCING PLANTS

July 23, 2001
ENS AmeriScan
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2001/2001L-07-23-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued three new rules designed to "clarify and strengthen" the agency's rules governing genetically engineered crops that produce their own pesticides.

The rules address issues about so called "plant incorporated protectants." Plant incorporated protectants (PIPs) are materials that enable a plant to protect itself from pests, such as insects, viruses and fungi, because the plant produces its own pesticide.

Under the rules announced Thursday, PIPs derived from biotechnology will be regulated by the EPA under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) to ensure protection of human health and the environment.

"Developing this framework means that EPA's current system of rigorous scientific evaluation for plant incorporated protectants will continue," said EPA Administrator Christie Whitman. "There has been an open and transparent process of scientific consultation and public comment leading to the finalization of these rules."

Under the rules, genetically engineered PIPs will have to meet federal safety standards as rigorous as those used for traditional pesticide registrations. If the agency determines that individual PIPs pose little or no health or environmental risk, they will be exempted from certain regulatory requirements.

For example, PIPs developed through conventional breeding will be exempt from the new requirements. However, manufacturers must still report any adverse effects they discover.

The rules also exempt the DNA that creates the plant pesticide from food "tolerance" requirements - meaning there will be no federal limits on how much of the engineered DNA can remain in finished food products. This exemption does not apply to the actual pesticide produced, which will continue to be fully evaluated by the EPA to ensure that it is safe for human health and the environment.

For example, if the EPA were to approve genetically engineered StarLink corn for human consumption, the agency would limit the amount of the insect toxin produced by the corn, known as Bt, that can remain in foods made from the corn. But the EPA would not place limits on the amount of the Cry9 protein, which causes StarLink to produce the Bt toxin, that the foods could contain.

The EPA is inviting public comments over the next 30 days on three additional exemptions from today's rules, which were first proposed in 1994 but are not part of this rulemaking.

The proposed exemptions are:

PIPs derived through genetic engineering from plants that are able to reproduce naturally; PIPs that act by affecting the plant, such as causing the plant to have thicker wax cuticles; and PIPs based on viral coat proteins - substances that encapsulate and protect the genetic material of certain plant viruses.

The rules were approved in January by former EPA Administrator Carol Browner, but were then withdrawn to provide allow the incoming Bush administration to review them. They finalize several regulatory steps first proposed by the EPA in 1994, and followed by the agency since that time.

More information is available at: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/biopesticides

----

Pope Urges Bush to Reject Embryo Research

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bush-Pope.html

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (AP) -- Pope John Paul II urged President Bush on Monday to reject research on human embryos as Bush weighs government funding for the burgeoning science. Respectful but noncommittal, the president said, ``I'll take that point of view into consideration.''

Bush said after his first face-to-face meeting with the pontiff that stem cell research offers the prospect of huge medical advances but is fraught with ``serious moral implications.''

The frail 81-year-old Roman Catholic leader welcomed Bush to his summer retreat in the foothills southeast of Rome to add his voice to the debate over one of the most momentous issues of Bush's young presidency.

The president must soon decide whether to permit federal funds for medical research on stem cells pulled from human embryos.

``A free and virtuous society, which America aspires to be, must reject practices that devalue and violate human life at any stage from conception to natural death,'' the pope said with Bush sitting at his side.

The pontiff was stooped, his head tilted to one side, as he read from a script.

``Experience is already showing how a tragic coarsening of consciences accompanies the assault on innocent human life in the world,'' John Paul said. He pointed to euthanasia, infanticide and ``proposals for the creation for research purposes of human embryos destined to destruction in the process.''

His admonition raised the political stakes for Bush, who aides say is likely to announce his decision next month.

Allowing the funding could alienate some of America's 44 million Catholics, who make up an important political bloc. If Bush cuts or restricts the funding, he risks being accused of bowing to the pope and other religious and conservative leaders.

Praising the pontiff as a spiritual and political leader, Bush promised to take his views into consideration as he tries to ``balance value and respect for life with the promise of science, and the hope of saving life.''

The pope's decision to lobby Bush may have been an unwelcome surprise. White House officials had said in advance that they didn't think the issue would come up, and Bush said the pope did not bring it up during the private meeting before their public remarks.

Embryonic stem cells are the basic building blocks for body tissue. To extract these cells for research requires killing the embryo -- an action consistently rejected by the Catholic Church and other abortion opponents as the taking of human life.

Bush visited the pope the Apostolic Palace at Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of popes since the 17th century. He brought along first lady Laura Bush and their daughter Barbara, 19. The Bush women, both Methodists, followed an old Catholic tradition and covered their hair with black lace mantillas.

While the pope clearly condemned the future destruction of embryos to draw stem cells, he did not detail his views about the wide array of avenues for stem cell research. Bush, for example, is considering potential compromises involving research on stem cells derived from fertility clinic surpluses that would otherwise be discarded.

The Vatican seemed to close the door on that, too.

Spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the pope opposes any stem cell research using embryos. Other sources of stem cells -- such as umbilical cord blood and adult stem cells -- are less controversial and are not condemned by the pope.

Scientists believe research using stem cells might unlock cures for diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes, as well as spinal cord injuries. The pope himself suffers from symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

Bush and John Paul met one-on-one for about 30 minutes, with no translators or aides.

Later, at a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Bush called stem cell research ``a very difficult issue'' and said he would not be rushed to a decision.

Expecting political fallout no matter what Bush does, the White House is planning a high-profile announcement to explain his decision and shape public opinion.

Bush also met with the Vatican's top diplomat who asked that the United States use its influence with China to help establish contacts with the Holy See. Bush promised to ask Beijing to do so.

Bush ends his weeklong European trip Tuesday with a visit with U.S. troops in Kosovo.

--------

Washington Not Alone in Cell Debate

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/politics/23CELL.html

WASHINGTON, July 22 - As President Bush and Congress struggle with the question of regulating embryonic stem cell research, one fact is being overlooked: nearly two dozen states already have laws that govern research on embryos and fetuses, and at least nine ban any experimenting with human embryos.

Some of the laws date back decades, having been enacted in response to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Just one state, South Dakota, explicitly forbids stem cell studies; last year, at the urging of abortion opponents, South Dakota made it a misdemeanor to experiment with cells or tissues obtained from human embryos.

Nonetheless, legal experts say the existing statutes could impede university scientists and biotechnology companies, not only because of the bans but also because some states prohibit payment for embryonic tissue. Broadly construed, these experts say, such a provision could prevent scientists from buying the cells - even if President Bush approves federal financing for research with them - and prevent companies from selling stem cell- based therapies.

"There are some hidden land mines working in this area," said Lori B. Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law who has analyzed state restrictions on embryo research for the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. She added, "I think the states will become a fertile battleground for the larger social question of should embryo research be permissible."

As past controversies surrounding abortion, fetal tissue experiments and cloning suggest, state lawmakers often step into the ethical debates posed by medicine and science. So no matter what President Bush and Congress decide, the questions about embryonic stem cell research may ultimately be settled piecemeal, in the states. And state laws may lead to challenges in courts.

"If you look at the history of abortion, it seesaws between federal and state legislation and federal and state courts," said R. Alta Charo, a professor of bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. "In the end, we may end up with different rules in different places."

Already, legislators in Professor Charo's home state are debating a ban on future studies involving stem cells derived from human embryos. And Wisconsin is the birthplace of embryonic stem cell science. In 1998, a University of Wisconsin researcher, Dr. James A. Thomson, became the first to isolate the cells, which hold promise for treating disease.

"I can't stop what happens elsewhere," said the measure's author, State Representative Sheryl K. Albers, a Republican. "If nothing is changed on the national level, something does need to change in Wisconsin."

Since Dr. Thomson's discovery, embryonic stem cells have generated great excitement in science, and great angst in Washington. These primordial cells, which may grow into any cell or tissue in the body, are extracted from the inner mass of an embryo when that embryo is just a tiny cluster of 100 to 300 cells, small enough to fit on the tip of a sewing needle. Scientists regard embryonic stem cells as the building blocks of a new era of regenerative medicine, in which the body will someday be used to heal itself.

But the research draws intense criticism from religious conservatives and abortion opponents because the embryos, which they regard as nascent human life, are destroyed. Currently, embryonic stem cell experiments must be conducted entirely with private money, because Congress has imposed a ban on federal financing for the studies.

The issue before President Bush is whether to make an exception so that taxpayer money could be used to study cells derived from embryos frozen at fertility clinics; scientists would not, however, be permitted to work directly on embryos.

Congress may also weigh in. Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who is a strong supporter of the research, has introduced legislation to allow government-financed scientists to derive stem cells from embryos.

But the discussion in Washington centers on federal financing, so it will have no effect on the private sector. This month, scientists at a private Virginia fertility clinic announced that they had created embryos expressly to extract stem cells. And a Massachusetts biotechnology company, Advanced Cell Technology, is trying to use cloning technology to make embryos - 100- to 300-cell copies of existing people - that would yield stem cells with an exact tissue match for patients.

The Food and Drug Administration has little jurisdiction over such experiments; it typically oversees research only when a therapy is being tested in people. So the matter is left to the states. Virginia does not have laws governing embryo research. A Massachusetts law, enacted in 1974, prohibits using "any live human fetus" in experiments.

"We have looked at it about 40 times," said Mike West, the chief executive of Advanced Cell Technology. "We believe the law applies to fetuses," not embryos.

But Professor Andrews, of Chicago-Kent College of Law, says that over the years, the Massachusetts law has often been interpreted to define an embryo as a fetus, and it has had a "chilling effect" on scientists. When in vitro fertilization was first being performed in Massachusetts, she said, fertility specialists sought opinions from district attorneys on the legality of their work.

"I think some of these laws will be challenged in the wake of desires to do embryo research," she said. "It is an issue, because we have not yet come to a societal consensus on the moral or legal status of the embryo."

Should legal challenges occur, it would not be the first time the promise of science has collided with state law. In the early 1990's, when research on tissue from aborted fetuses began to look promising for treating Parkinson's disease, doctors and patients began bringing lawsuits. Research bans in Illinois, Louisiana, Utah and, most recently, Arizona were overturned; courts found them unconstitutional, saying the laws were vague.

Proponents of stem cell research say they are ready to take up their cause in the states, if necessary. "I think we have to be prepared to take this fight to state Capitols around the country," said Daniel Perry, executive director of the Alliance for Aging Research, a patients' group. But such battles are often difficult, Mr. Perry said, because the issues and science are complex.

"Let's face it, this is not highway legislation," he said.

South Dakota is one example. Last year, Jay Duenwald, a farmer from Hoven who is also a Republican state representative, decided to introduce legislation to ban embryonic stem cell research. Mr. Duenwald likened the work to Nazi experiments, saying in an interview, "If you can destroy some section of society at will, where does it stop?"

Mr. Duenwald, an abortion opponent, called the National Right to Life Committee in Washington for help. Together, they drafted a bill that overwhelmingly passed in the South Dakota Legislature. It prohibits experiments on cells and tissues derived from human embryos, thus making embryonic stem cell research a crime in South Dakota, punishable by as much as a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

But Mr. Duenwald's legislative co- sponsor, Jim Lawler, a retired Democratic state senator from Aberdeen, said he did not see the bill that way. Mr. Lawler explained that while he has trouble with "taking one life to save another," he would not be opposed to studies using frozen embryos that would otherwise be discarded if the researchers' aim was to treat disease, like diabetes.

"We just didn't want to do negative stuff," he said, "like cloning people."

Some experts, including Professor Andrews, say the public would be better served with one national policy. If laws vary from state to state, Ms. Andrews said, a kind of "biotechnological tourism" might occur, with companies and scientists moving from one state to the other in search of permissive laws.

But Glenn McGee, an assistant professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks otherwise.

Last year, Professor McGee gave his undergraduates an assignment to draft legislation addressing stem cell research. The students then pitched their bills to legislators in their home states; to earn an A, they were required to have their proposals debated by a state legislature. About a half-dozen made it that far.

"This kind of localized political action is what is missing from the stem cell debate," Mr. McGee said. "If a group of 19-year-olds working under a philosopher can move 20 or 30 states into a position of reflecting on stem cells, why in the world would we need federal action?"

--------

Fundamentals About Stem Cells

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Stem-Cell-Glance.html

Embryonic stem cell research could lead to dramatic new treatments for many of the chronic diseases, experts say. But many people oppose the research because extracting the cells kills a human embryo.

A National Institutes of Health proposal calls for federal funding of studies with embryonic stem cells that have been extracted by privately funded researchers. President Bush delayed such funding while the policy is reviewed. The Pope urged Bush not to allow such research.

A few facts about stem cells:

--Stem cells form inside an embryo a few days after fertilization. These cells are capable of developing into all of the organs of the body, but not into a complete individual.

--By properly nurturing embryonic stem cells, experts believe they can grow new cells to restore ailing organs in chronically-ill patients. For instance, new insulin-producing cells could be grown to perhaps cure diabetes.

--Mature tissue can make a type of cells called somatic stem cells. Many who oppose embryonic stem cell research support somatic stem cell research.

--Experts believe somatic stem cells are not as flexible or long-lived as embryonic stem cells. There is uncertainty about which type of stem will ultimately be the most useful. Many scientists believe that research should proceed on both types of stem cells.

-------- health

Alzheimer's drug passes first hurdle

07/23/2001
By John Riley, USATODAY.com
http://usatoday.com/news/health/2001-07-23-alz.htm

An experimental vaccine for Alzheimer's disease appears to have passed the first hurdle in testing - that it is safe for humans and triggers an immune response in the body, the firms developing the vaccine announced Monday.

Scientists at Elan Corporation and Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories said they will next test the vaccine to gauge its effectiveness in treating Alzheimer's, a progressive brain disease that often leads to memory loss, dementia and death.

The scientists hope the vaccine will prove effective in eliminating beta amyloid plaque in the brain. It is generally believed that buildup of the plaque is the cause of Alzheimers.

"We are extremely excited," said Ivan Lieberburg, chief scientific and medical officer at Elan: "This is the furthest along of any amyloid therapy for Alzheimer's disease. If we see anything in our human patients similar to what we've seen in our mice studies, this could revolutionize Alzheimers therapy."

Lieberburg said there were no adverse reactions to the vaccine beyond a sore arm at the injection site in some patients.

The Alzheimer's Association said in a statement that the vaccine represents a chance to learn. "With a potential plaque-clearing drug, scientists now have the opportunity to test this theory and take a major step forward unlocking the mystery behind this disease."

The Alzheimer's Association said Elan's announcement is an exciting development but should not preclude other avenues of research to find a way of preventing or curing the devastating disease.

"I think it's very exciting to see this product moving forward because it is going to be a test of one of the fundamental theories of Alzheimer's disease," said William Thies, vice president of medical and scientific affairs at the Alzheimer's Association. "While we don't know whether the product is going to work, we're going to find out an awful lot of valuable information no matter what the outcome of the trial is."

The next phase of testing will include 375 Alzheimer's patients at centers in the USA and Europe. The trials are expected to last about two years.

-------- human rights

Turkish Army Forces The Evacuation Of Kurdish Villages

KurdishMedia.com
By Tina Bird
Monday July 23, 2001
http://www.middleeastwire.com/turkey/stories/20010722_meno.shtml

London - The forced evacuation of villages by Turkish military forces has intensified in north Kurdistan.

In the Beytussebap region of Sirnak Turkish military forces ordered the evacuation of 4 villages following a mine explosion that left three Turkish soldiers dead.

Local villagers were blamed for the mine accident, which occurred during an operation against the People's Defence Forces (HPG) last week. A meeting was held by military officials at the Beytussebap District Gendarmerie Command on July 17, who ordered four villages to be raided.

Villagers in Germav (Ilicak), Bezal (Ortali), Tivor (Dagalti) and Cemepire (Yasat) were warned to make preparations to vacate their villages. Following the raids, in which a number of villagers were detained, the weapons of village guards (state-paid militiamen) from the four villages belonging to the Gevdan clan were confiscated.

On July 18 soldiers from the Van Central Gendarmerie Regiment Command raided twenty houses in two villages near the Erek Mountains in the Van province of north Kurdistan.

Turkish military forces told villagers in Sulav and Kele that they had until August 1st to vacate their villages. Accompanied by about 200 soldiers a commander, known as First Lieutenant Orkan, was reported to have said, "We don't want citizens like you. Do you want to go to Greece? To Iraq? To Iran? To Syria? Go wherever you want. Just so long as you leave this country" Six leading members from both villages, Haci Adil Uyar, Hecer Acar, Mehmet Acar, Rahmi Guler, Mehmet Babat and Esat Acar were reported to have been ordered to the Gendarmerie Regiment Command on July 15 where they were warned to leave their villages.

The order to evacuate the villages by the Gendarmerie followed allegations that PKK guerrillas had visited the two villages.

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Gov't Scrutinizes Wen Ho Lee Book

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Wen-Ho-Lee-Book.html?searchpv=aponline

ALBUQUERQUE (AP) -- The autobiography of Wen Ho Lee, who spent nine months in solitary detention after illegally downloading nuclear data at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is being reviewed by the government.

Lee's book, ``My Country Versus Me,'' co-written by Helen Zia, ``answers every question that anyone would ever have for him,'' said Will Schwalbe, editor in chief of Hyperion Books and editor of the Lee book.

``It is being reviewed by the government now,'' Schwalbe said in a telephone interview Monday from New York.

Government censors have had the book less than two weeks, he said.

``I'm certainly hopeful that they will pass it quickly and without requesting any changes,'' the editor said, adding that Lee's legal team reviewed the manuscript before it was submitted.

The story flashes back to Lee's childhood in Taiwan, where he was born in 1939. He emigrated to the United States as a young man is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He and his wife, Sylvia, have lived in Los Alamos since 1978. They have two grown children, Alberta and Chung.

After months of investigation and much public speculation, Lee was arrested and charged in December 1999 with 59 counts of mishandling nuclear data.

``In all of this, the voice that has been absent has been Wen Ho Lee's,'' Schwalbe said. ``In this book he really does give readers a complete account of what happened, and it's very, very disturbing as well.''

``Rights we take for granted (were) instantly taken away,'' he said. Lee pleaded guilty to one count of downloading data to a computer tape and was released after being sentenced to the nine months he already had served.

The government dropped the other 58 counts against him, and Lee agreed to undergo interrogation under oath over a 60-day period and to hold himself available for followup questions for a year.

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THE FALLOUT
G-8 and Main Protest Groups Agree on Stopping Violence

New York Times
July 23, 2001
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/23/international/23GENO.html

GENOA, Italy, July 22 - As both sides left Genoa, the leaders of the major industrialized nations who met here and the mainstream protest leaders began reflecting today on how to carry out their goals while avoiding the fatal violence that marred this year's meeting.

About all they agreed upon was: never again.

"It's a real time for reflection, and I think no one knows the answers," said Lucy Matthew, the spokeswoman Drop the Debt, a group that promotes debt relief for poorer nations.

The leaders of the Group of 8 nations took the first step toward change, announcing that next year's summit meeting will be in a remote Canadian resort and that they hope to limit the number of those taking part to 350, down from 2,000.

For the leaders of the tens of thousands of demonstrators who came to protest here, as they had at similar gatherings in the last two years in Seattle and Canada, Sweden and France, the process of reflection promised to be far more wrenching. For those who came determined to demonstrate peacefully, the question was how to isolate the radical anarchists who sullied their message by provoking fighting that wounded dozens of demonstrators and the killing of one protester by the police.

A few protest leaders accused the police in Italy and elsewhere in Europe of wittingly or unwittingly sabotaging the peaceful demonstration by failing to isolate and arrest the easily identifiable anarchists. But for most others, the issue was whether nonviolent organizations had gone far enough to distance themselves from the others.

"It's a sad weekend," Ms. Matthew said as she prepared to leave Genoa. She said leaders of her organization met on Friday after a 23- year-old Italian protester, Carlo Giuliani, was killed, and decided to withdraw their followers from the demonstration on Saturday. "It was purely a safety issue for us," she said.

Organizers had expected more than 100,000 to march on Saturday in the largest protest of the three days of meetings. After the violence on Friday, only about 50,000 joined the Saturday march, which also produced attacks on the police, who responded with tear gas and beatings.

Carlo Angeli, a 21-year-old anthropology student from Siena, Italy, said about 40 Siena members of Italy's hard-line Communist faction, which opposed violence, were supposed to come to Genoa, but only he and a companion came after news spread of the violence on Friday.

Like many demonstrators, Mr. Angeli said he had come to Genoa to protest globalization's effects in countries like Italy. "It destroys communities," he said.

A 33-year-old leader of an environmental group from the Italian island of Sardinia, who identified himself only by a nom de guerre, Dr. Drer, sounded the same theme. He said he had come to protest the destruction of age-old villages and the industrialization of agriculture on the island.

"They have replaced wine and rice with other fruits," he complained. "People are being forced out of villages and into residential settlements that are neither villages nor towns. They are not communities."

Some demonstrators lamented the destruction of carefully assembled coalitions as a result of the violence.

Maria Teresa Gennari, an office worker in her 30's, said she had traveled to Genoa with 20 other women - the youngest 20, the oldest 60 - from a feminist organization in Rome, Women in General.

"We are a movement that includes nuns, grandmothers, radical feminists, and it was the first time we found common ground," she said. "This coalition they blew to pieces."

Ms. Gennari echoed other marchers in accusing the police of helping to discredit the protests by failing to stop the radical anarchists.

For many, what was supposed to have been an exercise in idealism turned into a nightmare. Ms. Gennari said she and her companions had visited the headquarters in a local school of the Genoa Social Forum, a group committed to nonviolence that had helped organize the marches. Early on Sunday, the police raided the school, contending that they were searching for weapons.

Leaders of the organization accused the police of indiscriminately beating its leaders and marchers who used the school as a dormitory. Ms. Gennari said she had seen the spots of blood on the walls and floors that were left by the beatings.

Other leaders professed helplessness in the face of the anarchists who travel from one demonstration to the next for violent protest.

"We have no contact with them, and in some instances we don't know who they are," Ms. Matthew said. "People are really starting to think how do we deal with these guys."

To diminish the chance of violence at next year's meeting, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada, the host, announced that it would be held in a Rocky Mountain resort town, Kananaskis, about 50 miles from Calgary, Alberta, with high security. He added, only half jokingly, "But there is less around it to destroy."

"We are the democratically elected people, and it is important for us to meet," he said. "So if the anarchists want to destroy democracy, we will not let them succeed."

To many protesters, the levers of power in the world are controlled by political leaders who hold closed meetings, by free trade organizations that care little about poor or developing countries and by banks and corporations whose principal goal is to enrich their shareholders.

Some leaders stressed that countering such misconceptions would involve increased consultations with private groups, known as nongovernmental organizations, many of which are behind the regular protests.

President Jacques Chirac of France called for "regular, natural and permanent consultations" with those groups, "to discuss and take the necessary steps to assure progress."

Other leaders rejected widening the consultative process, fearing a dilution of the personal contacts between the leaders.

"It's a question primarily of the leaders' discussing with each other; that's a very important element," said Alfred Tacke, an aide to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany. "The protesters will always be there."

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Bush criticizes G-8 protesters

July 23, 2001
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010723-3203298.htm

ROME - President Bush denounced protesters as "dead wrong" for violently disrupting the Italian summit of industrialized nations that concluded yesterday. The summit ended with agreements by the nations to battle AIDS and poverty but disagreements over the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

Leveling his harshest criticism to date against anti-capitalist demonstrators who attacked police, looted stores and burned banks, Mr. Bush displayed little sympathy for a protester with a criminal record who was shot to death on Friday as he tried to hurl a fire extinguisher at a policeman. The 20-year-old officer now faces a murder charge.

"People are allowed to protest, but for those who claim they're speaking on behalf of the poor, for those who claim that shutting down trade will benefit the poor, they're dead wrong," the president said. "I'm not one of these types of politicians that'll keep changing their principles based upon ... you know, people protesting."

Strolling through the ruins of the ancient Forum in Rome just after arriving from the summit site in Genoa, Mr. Bush said: "I don't like the violent protests and neither do a lot of other people."

Those people include police, who staged an early morning raid at the headquarters of protest organizers yesterday, seizing weapons and scuffling with several demonstrators. But by late yesterday, the streets were largely emptied of the communists, socialists, anarchists and homosexual activists who had turned out in force for the three-day summit.

Aside from the bloodshed, Mr. Bush pronounced the meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations a rousing success.

"I believe that which we discussed today and in the last couple of days will make the world a heck of a lot more prosperous and peaceful place," Mr. Bush said during a press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin just before leaving Genoa.

"The philosophy of free trade and starting a new round of free-trade discussions makes eminent sense, not only for those who happen to be prosperous today, but for those who aren't," he added. "And all the demonstrators and all the folks have to do is ask the leaders who came from the developing nations."

Mr. Bush and the leaders of Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia issued a joint communique that said they "deplore the violence, loss of life and mindless vandalism."

It added: "We will defend the right of peaceful protesters to have their voices heard. But as democratic leaders, we cannot accept that a violent minority should be allowed to disrupt our discussions on the critical issues affecting the world. Our work will go on."

The communique also pledged billions of dollars in assistance to developing nations to fight AIDS, poverty, hunger, debt and corruption. But the statement also revealed a rift over the Kyoto treaty, which Mr. Bush alone opposes among the Group of Eight leaders.

"We all firmly agree on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," the leaders said. "While there is currently disagreement on the Kyoto Protocol and its ratification, we are committed to working intensively together to meet our common objective."

Mr. Bush is scheduled to meet with Pope John Paul II today at the Vatican. He is expected to sound out the pope on whether scientists should be allowed to kill human embryos and harvest their stem cells for research into potential cures for diseases. Mr. Bush, a self-described pro-life president who insists life begins at conception, is torn over whether to allow federal funding for stem cell research.

Tomorrow, the president will travel to Kosovo to meet with U.S. peacekeeping forces before returning to Washington from his weeklong tour of Europe.


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