The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 1

T7 Vy. fern I Mi HiA 1 WORLD CLASS Canada's female literary elite BOOKS VANIERCU GEE-GEES NO MATCH FOR UBC CI TIBET Spirit under siege THE CITIZEN'S WEEKLY QTTAmJClTIZBN COMFORT IN THE MIDST OF SORROW Holland's mercy killers Doctors in the Netherlands say helping patients die when they are in great pain is just part of the job. Leonard Stern talks to some of them. CSIS probes espionage in high-tech industry Ottawa-area companies among targets of foreign governments, firms i' 'V vw'- '4. i i 1 JOHN MAJOR.

THE OTTAWA CITIZEN Geoffrey Kasonde is surrounded by well-wishers at his mother's funeral yesterday at Pinecrest Cemetery. The death of his mother, Jane, is the latest tragedy to befall Geoffrey. His brother and sister were killed by his father, and another brother died from sickle-cell anemia, which Geoffrey also has. SEE STORY ON PAGE Bi. Canadian aid worker in Somalia kidnapped By Ian MacLeod The Ottawa Citizen The discovery of a woman poking through the files of a local high-tech firm has exposed a foreign government spy operation, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service suspects.

The woman, an employee of an area software company, was recently found snooping through restricted computer files containing sensitive technological and proprietary information. CSIS was alerted and "there's a strong indication that, in fact, there is a hidden hand at work here," says CSIS official Mike Kelly. He would not identify the company, the employee or the suspected foreign state. But he says the espionage investigation is continuing as CSIS tries to determine the extent of the alleged operation and to confirm and analyse any links to a foreign power. The case is one of several CSIS investigations under way into attempts by foreign governments to steal billions of dollars' worth of advanced technology, research and other sensitive information from Canadian industry.

"We're a juicy target and no juicy target is left alone," says David Harris, a former director of strategic planning forCSIS. Last week, a Southern Ontario company that does classified work for the Department of National Defence called in a security expert specializing in electronic coun-termeasures because it fears it may be a target of France's foreign intelligence service, the DGSE, which is ell-known for its electronic intelligence interception "They see a great potential td be hit," says Doug Ralph, the former RCMP veteran hired to protect the company from clandestine electronic surveillance. He wouldn't elaborate, except to say, "The threat is out there. The French are known, it's documented, that they're good at what they do in their trade craft." (It was the DGSE a few years ago that allegedly bugged the Air France seats of Northern Telecom officials and reportedly sabotaged a major Nortel contract in Hungary by forwarding the information to French competitors. Nortel didn't respond to a request for an interview for this story.) Another Ottawa high-tech firm was hit by a confirmed electronic eavesdropping campaign last year.

The company was losing contract after contract, by minuscule amounts, to a single foreign competitor. Executives became suspicious and ordered a security investigation, which eventually uncovered an electronic bug planted in the company's fax machine the same machine used to transmit details of contract proposals to one of its overseas offices. Because of the sophistication of the bugging equipment and the foreign connection, the company suspected a foreign government was tipping the commercial playing field in favour of the competitor. With national security increasingly tied to economic security, a country's survival today depends more on its ability to compete econormcaUy than ninitarily. See CSIS on page A4 Amsterdam When Dr.

Bert Keizer first started helping patients kill themselves, he made an interesting discovery: The human body can in some cases absorb enormous quantities of barbiturates without giving up the ghost. People normally need only 100 milligrams of the drug to fall asleep, explained the doctor, so when patients wanted to die he would concoct a potion loaded with 7,000 milligrams, or 70 times the normal amount. "Quite to my surprise, I learned that sometimes an hour, two hours, even more can roll by and the patient will still be breathing," said Dr. Keizer during a recent interview at the Amsterdam nursing home where he works. These days, the 49-year-old doctor always brings along a backup syringe when assisting at suicides.

The syringe is filled with the drug curare, which paralyses the lungs and produces near-instant death. "I promise my patients that if they are still breathing after 45 minutes, I'll use the curare," said Dr. Keizer. Although euthanasia is technically illegal in the Netherlands, it has gone un-prosecuted for many years as long as doctors follow guidelines. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, nearly 3.4 per cent of all deaths in the Netherlands (about 4,600 per year) are instances of euthanasia or assisted suicide.

Recent high-profile events in North America, including the Robert Latimer trial in Canada, have prompted outsiders to look more closely at the Dutch model, usually with conflicting conclusions. In arguments before the United States Supreme Court earlier this year, for example, both supporters and opponents of euthanasia presented briefs on the Netherlands' experience. "What pisses us Dutch doctors off is that we often are being painted abroad as guys who deal out overdoses over the phone," complained Dr. Keizer, who has presided over about 14 planned deaths. Three years ago, the Dutch Supreme Court decided that even patients suffering from mental disorders, rather than fatal physical illness, may be granted death.

The case before the court involved a 50-year-old woman who had lost her two sons, one to cancer and the other to suicide, and was battling a severe depression. In its ruling, the court did not penalize the doctor who prescribed her the lethal dose of drugs with which she killed herself. "When I am confronted by opponents from abroad, they often give religious arguments, warning me that someday I'll have to face judgment in heaven for having performed euthanasia," said Dr. Aycke Smook, a cancer surgeon at Amsterdam's largest teaching hospital. "You know what I tell them? I say that my patients will be there in heaven to embrace me.

I helped them in their moment of greatest suffering." See MERCY on page A2 United Nations officials negotiating with clan elders for release of five hostages ByMarkBourrie The Ottawa Citizen United Nations officials were negotiating with clan elders yesterday for the release of a Canadian and four other aid workers kidnapped off the Somali coast Friday. The clan elders are said to control the gang of gunmen who forced the UN and European Union workers from a boat moored off El Ayo, in the Indian Ocean. The name of Briton Dennis Cassidy, who works for the European Union's Somalia unit, was released yesterday, but UN and Canadian government officials refused to disclose the identity of the Canadian who was seized. A spokesman for Canada's Foreign Affairs Ministry said the name of the kidnapped Canadian may be released this morning. In London, the British Foreign Office said it was advised by UNICEF that in addition to Mr.

Cassidy and the Canadian, two Kenyans and one Indian were kidnapped. The United Nations did not know whether any of them had been harmed. Diplomats speculated yesterday that the aid workers were seized by groups vying for control of the region's lucrative charcoal market. UN aid workers hjive been trying to set up new, more efficient charcoal kilns to protect the region's trees, Most rural Somalis use charcoal made from the region's few surviving woodlands for heat and cooking. Deforestation has been blamed for thu month's devastating floods in the region.

On Friday, warlords in the southern Somali port of Kismayo promised the United Nations they would not attack aid workers delivering relief to nearly 230,000 people left homeless by the worst flooding in decades. Those factions are independent, however, from the ones in Soma-liland. Somaliland declared itself independent in 1991, during clan fighting and famine that left about 500,000 people dead in Somalia. Somaliland is the name of the former British colony that was merged with Italian Somaliland in 1969 to form Somalia. Few countries recognize Somaliland's independence, but its government has been able to maintain order in most of the country.

Mohammed Farah Mohammed, head of the police in Somaliland, said yesterday the kidnappers were trying to steal $70,000 in cash that the UN and EU workers were rumoured to be carrying. Mr. Mohammed said the group had just crossed the border from Ethiopia into Somaliland when they were seized. Mark Bourne is a freelance writer. With files from The Associated Press.

Medical marijuana to get 'serious look' departments to examine the matter. The key to whether regulatory or legislative change occurs will be whether it can be proven that marijuana has medicinal value. Bureaucrats will not launch their own research projects, but are ready to review evidence that anyone outside government is prepared to offer, Mr. Rock said. "I think we should allow ourselves to be governed by the evidence.

As in open mind at the evidence in deciding on whether the government should get out of the way and permit the use of a substance for medical purposes. And I encourage people to bring that evidence to us." Mr. Rock's comments echoed those last week by Justice Minister Anne McLellan, who called for a public debate on the issue. Indeed, Mr. Rock said, he and Ms.

McLellan have already "encouraged" officials in their the case with any other drug whether it's a new headache pill or an anti-depressant or some kind of medication for cold relief, or anything else the rule of thumb at Health Canada is: 'Show us the scientific In essence, Mr. Rock suggested, it's possible marijuana could be treated by federal regulators as they treat other proposed prescription drugs, See MARIJUANA on page A5 By mark Kennedy The Ottawa Citizen Health Minister Allan Rock says the federal government has an "open mind" on whether to decriminalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. "More and more we find people suggesting that marijuana, when smoked, has a medicinal value," Mr. Rock said in an interview. "I think my responsibility is to look seriously and with an INDEX Valley home to 'Canada's Dostoyevsky' Arts BH ('imswnrl2 H7 Aslnlc(ry 157 Kililnriiilw A14 FH B7 Hook El iVlh-in A15 Uridyl' U7 Mniiilne IM City HI Sniivhmml TH CliiHNirifd Sport (YiiKNxumll B7 Ti'li'viwiim Tjl 1 to Mr.

O'Brien's first novel because it is also a compelling thriller that weaves together the Vatican, Palestinian terrorists and an evil new world order, Mr. O'Brien is an unlikely success, too. He was abused in a residential school, failed Grade 10, and says he graduated from Grade 12 only on the condition that he "never, ever went on to university." "I don't remember having any extraordinary talents," he says. Today, however, some academics are comparing Mr. O'Brien, 49, to novelists such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Graham Greene.

David Jeffery, professor emeritus of English at the University of Ottawa, says Mr. O'Brien's unswerving commitment to writing about spiritual themes will delay his public recognition. But he says the novelist has "the potential to be recognized in 50 years as one of the truly signal voices of Canadian literature. He will be remembered long after many people who seem large today are forgotten." Mr. Jeffery says that what makes Mr O'Brien comparable to the likes of Dostoyevsky and French novelist Francois Mauriac is "a quality of spiritual penetration that is truly unusual, a kind of extraordinary judgment of human character that is hard to find in anything but the best works of art." See NOVEL on pageAl i By Bob Harvey The Ottawa Citizen Michael O'Brien's best-selling novel reads like Pope John Paul IPs worst nightmare: the subversion of the Catholic Church by a charismatic new world president.

Father Elijah is an unlikely success, if only because it was born in prayer in the hamlet of Brudenell, deep in the backwoods of the Ottawa Valley. Major reviewers and retail chains have ignored it because of its strong Christian themes: religious conversion and the role of the church as a voice of truth. But film companies and paperback publishers are competing for the rights 7, 1 Weathen Mainly cloudy. High -3, low -8. See page Fi Classified ads: 829-9321 Home delivery! 596-1950 Ottawa Citizen Onlinei www.ottawacitizen.com Published by the proprietor, Southam Inc.

at mi fluxhT Road. Uoxoio, Ottawa. Ont. KjC)M4. Russell Mills.

Publisher and President JOHN MAJOR. THl OTTAWA ClIIZtN The religious themes in Michael O'Brien's book have scared away some reviewers and retail chains. 4 4.