President Yeltsin and top security officials sought ways Thursday to upgrade Russia's nuclear arsenal. One lawmaker said Moscow's nuclear strategy should allow for the launching of a pre-emptive strike. "We must definitely include a provision in our doctrine to the effect that Russia reserves the right to deliver a first or a pre-emptive strike," said Roman Popkovich, chairman of the defense committee in parliament's lower house.

Russia Thursday ordered its military to draw up plans for the development and use of tactical nuclear weapons in what may be a response to NATO's heightened profile, and at the same time begin a new diplomatic initiative to end the war in Yugoslavia. The nuclear order was given at a highly secretive meeting in Moscow between President Boris Yeltsin, and the advisory Security Council, according to a Russian news agency quoting Security Council Secretary Vladimir Putin. Tactical nuclear weapons are smaller than strategic weapons and are intended for battlefield use only.

At the same time, Russian Balkan envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin set out for a round of meetings in Western European capitals carrying what he said were new proposals to end the war in Yugoslavia. Analysts said the proposals called for NATO to first halt its airstrikes, something the alliance has refused to do. Mr. Yeltsin also met in Moscow with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to discuss the plan and other ideas to end the fighting.

Reuters news agency said Mr. Yeltsin signed three documents including one on tactical arms during his Security Council meeting, which was held in such secrey that even the chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces left the room. Russia's RIA news agency, monitored by Reuters, quoted Mr. Putin as saying the presidential decrees "covered the developement of the nuclear weapons complex and a concept for developing and using non-strategic nuclear weapons." Mr. Putin specifically ruled out any link between the council meeting and the alliance's bombing of Yugoslavia, Reuters said. But it said that defense experts noted that Russia was eager to respond to NATO's Yugoslav campaign and to last weekend's summit in Washington.

At the summit, the members adopted a document on strategy that reaffirmed NATO's intention to maintain a "credible nuclear posture with flexibility and suvivability" and for the first time extended the alliance's mandate to areas outside the geographic territory, of its members. "Don't take Mr. Yeltsin's decree seriously," a Russian arms expert told Reuters. "Its a game, so the West gets upset." Defense experts told Reuters that Russia's army has about 10,000 to 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons already, but they are largely in storage. The Russian rationale has been to keep them for perceived threats from the south and east rather than from the west.

Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania has been described by the US department of Energy as one of the most dangerous nuclear installations in the world and the European Union are also demanding its early closure. To add to the safety worries, the plant is built on a tectonic crack and last year alone Ignalina experienced over 20 low-level accidents, four of which led to temporary shut downs. But Ignalina also provides Lithuania with more than 85% of its electrical power, making this small Baltic state the most nuclear reliant country on the planet. Many Lithuanians argue that closing down Ignalina to satisfy western safety concerns would be a devastating blow to the country's fledgling market economy.

The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant operates two Soviet-era RBMK-1500 water cooled reactors - the most powerful nuclear reactors in existence. They feed off the nearby Druksiai Lake and by returning heated water to the lake, have raised its temperature by three degrees, prompting concern from local environmentalists. But this is a minor worry compared to some of the problems at Ignalina. The two reactors, both of which are more powerful than the ones at Chernobyl, have no protective containment shells.

The plant's supporters say its water piping control systems are just as safe, but none of this diminishes from the general air of decay and neglect surrounding the plant. Concrete walls and corridors are crumbling and cracked to the open air, paint is peeling from nearly all the walls, while most of the underpaid staff look lethargic and disinterested in their work.

Lithuania now has only a few weeks left to give a firm commitment to the early closure of Ignalina or face exclusion from EU membership talks at the very time the Baltic States are hoping to increase their ties to western Europe. Lithuania's Prime Minister, Gedeminas Vagnorious, says that closing Ignalina would cost Lithuania between two and six billion US dollars, money the country simply doesn't have. At the moment the situation is deadlocked and until a political solution is reached, whatever the dangers, the reactors at Ignalina will keep running - and they are 300 KM closer to western Europe than Chernobyl.

There has been a shake up in Yeltsin's government as four senior members of Russia's armed forces have jeopardized the country's nuclear security and left President Yeltsin in sole charge of the "nuclear suitcase." Lieutenant-General Anatoli Sokolov, commander of the Missile Attack Prevention Division, who felt his work for the army to be "senseless,"along with three of his deputies resigned "in protest at being brought under the control of the Strategic Missile Troops."The action leaves the "nuclear suitcase"as the primary control of President Yeltsin. (Joel 2:3, 20,30)

Kashmiri independence fighters, hotly pursued by Indian troops, slip across the Line of Control into the Pakistani portion of the strife-torn mountain state. Pakistani troops give the Islamic militants covering fire. Indian forces along the mountainous border return fire. An Indian general, invoking the right of hot pursuit, sends a brigade into Pakistani territory to follow the Kashmiri mujihadin. Heavy Pakistani fire pins down the Indians. To extricate them, an Indian corps commander orders a division forward. It, too, is pinned down, suffering severe losses.

Opposing forces exchange heavy fire along the 1,000-mile Indo-Pakistani border from the Arabian Sea to Tibet. Both sides mobilize reserves. They launch air and missile attacks on one another's forward air bases and supply depots.

Pakistani air defense radars report a wave of Indian missiles heading for Pakistan's nuclear complex, and main air and missile bases in northern Punjab. Pakistan's prime minister has 2 minutes to either launch his nuclear-armed aircraft and missiles or lose them.

Almost fainting from the pressure, he orders a launch. The reports, it turns out, were false. Too late. India launches a nuclear reply. Most major cities in northern India, and all Pakistan's cities, are incinerated. Two million people die immediately; 100 million within weeks.

Fiction--yes, so far. But the border between old foes India and Pakistan remains the world's most dangerous place--and, with Korea's DMZ--the likeliest flashpoint for a nuclear war.

It's the winter of 2001 and President Clinton's successor knows that criminals have stolen highly-enriched uranium and plutonium from a Russian nuclear weapons complex. Then comes worse news: Terrorists are planning an attack on the United States.

The new president and his advisers have to decide how much to tell the American public and whether to close ports and airports. And they don't even know the worst part: A freighter is steaming across the Atlantic with a nuclear device that a radical Islamic group plans to detonate in the Baltimore harbor.

For two days at the National Defense University in Washington, several of America's veteran intelligence specialists enacted this "loose nukes" scenario. The lessons they learned were chilling, according to a report they issued.

The exercise was designed to test how US intelligence specialists and scientists would work together, how international laws would hold up, and whether US agencies monitoring the borders would detect the entrance of illegal nuclear materials.

The results? You might not want to know. "We were ill-prepared to cope with what would be the most devastating thing in the history of mankind: a nuclear attack on the United States," said Arnaud de Borchgrave, the flamboyant correspondent, novelist, editor, and academic who directed the project.

The president was played by James R. Schlesinger, who has served as CIA director as well as secretary of defense and secretary of energy. In case anyone thinks this was an irrelevant parlor game, he reveals that while serving as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1971, he received a threat that an atomic bomb would be detonated unless he canceled a nuclear test. "In those days, it was easy to dismiss such a threat as a crude bluff," Schlesinger writes in the report. But the breakup of the Soviet Union, the emergence of global criminal networks, and the spread of technology have made it "all too easy" to ship the material to the United States, he writes.