PLUTONIUM . . . RUSSIA'S FINE MESS

Germany and the U.S. have put former Soviet countries' lax control over weapons-grade plutonium on the international front burner. In Germany, where police have now seized four caches of smuggled plutonium, Chancellor Helmut Kohl demanded guarantees from Russia that it would step up efforts to crack down on thefts from nuclear plants. He had the full backing of the U.S. Other German officials said they want Europe's fledgling police agency, Europol, and German spies to fight the smugglers. Russia, despite solid German evidence to the contrary, denied that even one grain of its plutonium is missing. But TIME's Bonn bureau chief, Bruce Van Voorst, says Russia might be the last to know: "The Germans have lost confidence that the Russian accounting system is at all accurate. The Russians don't know what they've got -- even (Boris) Yeltsin doesn't know much about this." Meanwhile, Stern, a German news magazine, reported that some underpaid workers at Russian facilities were eager to steal