Also see, the IC website. The comment section of IC, is usually overrun with reactionaries and even fascists like a charcter named, "Helmet Coal, " so even the score a little bit!
Michael Pugliese
----- Original Message This week in the policy and politics e-zine IntellectualCapital.com: Missile Defense Systems http://www.intellectualcapital.com
----- From: Sid Shniad <shniad at SFU.CA> To: <SOCIALIST-REGISTER at YORKU.CA> Sent: Friday, June 02, 2000 10:34 AM Subject: U.S. Missile Shield May Spark New Arms Race,Chancellor Tells Clinton - L.A. Times
> The Los Angeles Times Friday, June 2,
2000
>
> U.S. Missile Shield May Spark New Arms Race, Chancellor Tells Clinton
>
> Germany: Plan is seen as a threat to Russia. Leaders
> also discuss child custody and slave labor disputes.
>
> By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer
>
> BERLIN--German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder warned
> President Clinton on Thursday that Europeans fear that plans for a
> U.S. missile defense system could set off a new arms race and
> provoke fresh instability in Russia.
>
> During 90 minutes of official talks and then at a private dinner at
> an eastern Berlin restaurant, the two leaders verbally dueled over
> the dangers and protections they foresee if the U.S. launches its
> reinvention of the 1980s "Star Wars" missile-interception system.
> "We have to be very careful that any such project does not
> re-trigger the process of a renewed arms race," Schroeder told
> journalists after the talks, which had been expected to last only 20
> minutes.
>
> Clinton confirmed that he and Schroeder spent virtually the
> entire meeting discussing Russia and the missile defense program,
> but he made no reply to Schroeder's clear message that the two fail
> to see eye to eye on how to ensure peace and prosperity for their
> erstwhile Cold War adversary.
>
> But National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger
> declined to describe the exchange as a sharp disagreement.
> "It was a very intelligent discussion of a very complicated issue
> by two very smart men, as a result of which both learned
> something," Berger said of the talks, which also were dogged by
> differences about international child custody disputes and
> compensation for World War II-era slave laborers.
>
> Germany, although one of Washington's strongest allies in the
> post-World War II period, has joined the chorus of European
> political voices warning that the national missile defense plan, or
> NMD, could undermine the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty
> between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union and compel a
> threatened Russia to reply in kind.
>
> The sensitive issue of foreign parental rights in cross-border
> battles over children has lately emerged as another point of
> contention between the U.S. and Germany, and the two leaders
> resolved to form a committee of experts from both sides to weigh
> individual complaints.
>
> In a message replete with implications for German officials, who
> have been accused by some U.S. parents of insensitivity, Clinton
> hailed the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision recognizing
> the father of Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez as the only
> legitimate guardian of the boy's legal interests. That ruling, which
> may allow Juan Miguel Gonzalez to take the 6-year-old back to his
> homeland within a few weeks, upheld the Clinton administration's
> handling of the case.
>
> Child custody disputes have become a persistent irritation in
> German-U.S. relations in the wake of a few high-profile cases, one
> involving Catherine Meyer, the French-born wife of the British
> ambassador to Washington, who has been unable to see her two
> sons, who are in the custody of her German ex-husband. A New
> York father, Joseph Cooke, also has been involved in a protracted
> and fruitless legal battle to see his two children, who have been in
> the care of German foster parents since their German mother
> checked into a mental hospital seven years ago.
>
> On the stalled slave-labor issue, U.S. and German negotiators
> had been expected to resume talks ahead of Clinton's arrival,
> tackling the legal fine print of an agreement reached in principle in
> December. But negotiators put off the discussions until late
> Thursday, unable to satisfy German industries' fears that they could
> face further claims beyond the nearly $5 billion already pledged for
> a compensation fund.
>
> Today's continuation of the German-U.S. summit is expected to
> take on a more amiable tone, as Clinton is to receive the
> Charlemagne Prize in the western border town of Aachen, the 8th
> century monarch's imperial capital. Clinton is the first U.S.
> president--and only the third American after former secretaries of
> State George C. Marshall and Henry Kissinger--to be so
> recognized for furthering European unity.
>
> Clinton also is expected to meet with reclusive former
> Chancellor Helmut Kohl, an apparent signal that the White House
> still holds him in high regard for his role in unifying Germany and
> fostering a more integrated Europe despite his involvement in a
> political funding scandal.
>
> Before departing for Russia on Saturday, Clinton will take part
> in a 15-nation "Modernization Summit" in Berlin about the role of
> government in steering technology and globalization.