NEWS AND VIEWS
Summaries of and links to online news reports and commentaries.
Reaction to Korean threat confusing http://times.st-pete.fl.us:80/News2/50197/NATIONAL/Reaction_to_Korean_th.html JACK R. PAYTON St. Petersburg Times, published May 1, 1997 "WASHINGTON - If you can give a convincing answer to the following question, please apply immediately for a cushy job explaining the Clinton administration's foreign policy: Why is it that Japan, whose major cities are within easy range of North Korea's latest ballistic missiles, seems much less intimidated by the Communist nation than the United States, which isn't within missile range?" Arms-Control Fetish http://washingtonpost.com:80/wp-srv/WPlate/1997-05/01/045L-050197-idx.html George F. Will, May 1 1997; Page A23 The Washington Post "One price Clinton paid for Lott's collaboration was to agree -- this is no more than constitutional propriety -- to submit for Senate ratification the "demarcation" provisions negotiated with the Russians that amend, by extending the scope of, the ABM treaty. They improvidently limit possible future theater (less than strategic range) missile defenses and reflect the administration's apparent desire to inflict on missile defenses a death of a thousand cuts. This subject, which is more important than the CWC, will test Lott's seriousness." Scuds rising again http://www2.phillynews.com:80/daily_news/97/May/01/national/SCUD01.htm PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS Thursday, May 1, 1997 Associated Press HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- In mock engagements recalling deadly battles of the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon is using a secretly obtained cache of 29 Russian-made Scuds to give Army Patriot missile crews target practice.... The command purchased 29 of the missiles and four mobile launchers. Army uses Russian Scuds to test Patriot missile crews http://www.boston.com:80/globe/nat/cgi-bin/retrieve.cgi?%2Fglobe%2Fbgc%2F121 %2Fnat%2F022 Boston Globe By Associated Press, 05/01/97 "HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - In mock engagements recalling deadly battles of the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon is using a secretly obtained cache of 29 Russian-made Scuds to give Army Patriot missile crews target practice." Germ warfare, we're ready Marines practice for an emergency http://www2.phillynews.com:80/daily_news/97/May/01/national/MARI01.htm PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS , May 1, 1997 Associated Press WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Marine turned a green and blossoming acre near the Capitol into a terrorist hot zone yesterday, complete with the twitching ``victims'' of a simulated nerve gas attack. The Marines then rushed in troopers in spacesuit-style protective gear, hurried the fallen to a pair of decontamination tents and, in an added touch of realism, sheared off their street clothes and hosed them down. Space station's fate in the hands of Gore and Russians http://www.flatoday.com:80/space/today/042897a.htm Larry Wheeler FLORIDA TODAY April 28, 1997 "Just back from a trip to Moscow where he met with government and space industry officials, Sagdeev said he believes the U.S.-Russian space station partnership was infected at birth.... Typically, Russian business contracts include a chapter that specifies fines or penalties for failure to perform.... The space station partnership documents signed by Gore and Chernomyrdin contained no such penalty language, Sagdeev said. "That created the illusion that this is just optional," said Sagdeev" Iraqi sanctions retained intact after U.N. review http://www.merc.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2721058-b36 "The Security Council Thursday retained intact the sanctions imposed on Iraq after its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The sanctions have remained unchanged since they were first enacted, except for a special arrangement last December allowing Baghdad to sell $2 billion of oil to buy food and medicine for its people. The main condition for easing of sanctions is a clean bill of health from the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) in charge of scrapping Iraq's missile capability." Australian named U.N.'s Iraq disarmament chief http://www.merc.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2720489-ae7 By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS(Reuter) - Australia's U.N. ambassador, Richard Butler, was appointed Thursday as executive chairman of the U.N. commission in charge of Iraqi disarmament... He will replace Rolf Ekeus of Sweden, Lawsuit to Block Costly Nuclear Weapons Program Price tag $40 billion for 10 years http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/chronicle/article.cgi?file=MN36336.DTL&dire ctory=/chronicle/archive/1997/05/01 David Perlman May 1, 1997 · Page A11 San Francisco Chronicle "A coalition of anti-nuclear activists announced yesterday that it will file a federal lawsuit today seeking to halt ... the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ... as well as other exotic and costly devices now planned for the weapons lab at Los Alamos and the Sandia Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M.... Led by lawyers for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington and the Western States Legal Foundation in Oakland, the suit charges that the Department of Energy has not conducted a proper environmental impact assessment of its long- planned and controversial Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship Program."
