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To: Saulamanca who wrote (37533)	1/15/2000 6:06:00 PM
From: Don Green	Respond to of 99985

Russia, U.S. End Y2K Monitoring Without a Hitch Saturday January 15 1:47 PM ET PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (Reuters) - Russian and U.S. military experts on Saturday shook hands and took group snapshots as they successfully ended an unprecedented program to make sure no Y2K computer bug touched off a deadly nuclear accident. ``This is a great day. Another chapter in the cooperation between two great nations, Russia and America,' Air Force Major General Tom Goslin, director of operations of the U.S. Space Command, told reporters. Since Dec. 30, the experts have been working side by side at the ``Center for Year 2000 Strategic Stability' at Peterson in Colorado Springs to ensure that the world's two largest nuclear powers were in direct contact during the rollover in case a computer mistakenly indicated a nuclear missile launch. News that Russian President Boris Yeltsin had stepped down and handed the reins of power to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin did not have an impact on the operation, marked by a relaxed atmosphere in the command center. While much attention was focused on the project as the New Year arrived, the center remained operating until 8 a.m. MST Saturday to make sure no problems cropped up in the first days of 2000. The Russians and Americans shook hands and exchanged flags mounted in shadowboxes as others took snapshots of each other. ``We suffered no incidents and the personnel has accomplished all its tasks,' Russian Air Force Col. Sergey Kaplin said through an interpreter. No long-range missile launches were observed during the period, the military experts said. The command center at Peterson was in direct contact with Cheyenne Mountain, part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which monitors the skies 13 miles from Peterson. Russia and the United States have the most sophisticated warning devices, which could have made them vulnerable to mistaken ballistic missile launches if they had thought in error that a missile was headed their way. Concerns about a possible Y2K bug stemmed from older computer systems programmed to read only the last two digits of a year. If the glitch had been left uncorrected, systems could have misread 2000 as 1900, causing computers to malfunction or even crash. U.S. and Russian authorities are planning to establish a full-time joint missile launch monitoring program that will be based in Moscow, although no timetable has been set.