"Other displaced people who went back to look for firewood came back saying they had been attacked and three of them had died."

According to the UN refugee agency, 1,000 people a day have been walking the Sake road to the border and crossing into Rwanda since fighting broke out on 29 April.

According to last November's report by the UN group of experts on the arms embargo in the DR Congo, Gen Ntaganda controls mines and other businesses in the region despite a legal ban on military officers doing so.

Regardless of Gen Ntaganda's personal fate, uncertainty remains as to the new balance of power that will emerge in eastern DR Congo from the current turmoil.

Matthew Brubacher, a demobilisation and disarmament expert with the UN in Goma, believes there is now momentum to break the influence networks maintained by former CNDP leaders despite the 2009 peace agreement.

"A lot of the hardliners that were loyal to the side of Bosco have been marginalised, some of them have already been arrested, and those that have stayed loyal to the government, to the national government, have been rewarded," he said.

"It's not the end of the CNDP as such but it's the end of the CNDP as a parallel administration that's trying to be separate from the national government," Mr Brubacher added.

Jason Stearns, from the Rift Valley Institute think tank, is more cautious.

"Both Rwanda and the ex-CNDP cadres can suffer to see Bosco go – after all, many have personal quibbles with him. But they cannot suffer to see the CNDP networks and power dismantled," he wrote on his blog.

A lawyer representing some of the defectors arrested in the past month said their withdrawal from army ranks was not a rallying movement to protect Gen Ntaganda from arrest, but rather a natural reaction to the political manipulation and general hostility against troops integrated from the CNDP movement since 2009.

Competition for land and natural resources remain, with CNDP and army defectors claiming to defend the interests of Kinyarwanda-speaking communities, especially Tutsis, some of whom feel vulnerable after the 1994 genocide of their kinsmen in neighbouring Rwanda.

Leaders from other ethnic groups see the 2009 deal, which allows for the repatriation of Kinyarwanda-speaking refugees to North Kivu, as unduly favouring Tutsis – and some have been supporting their own militia, arguing "self-defence".

Since 2009, the UN-backed policy pushed by the Congolese government has been to integrate willing militias into the army and combat those that resist signing peace deals through joint military operations conducted by peacekeepers and Congolese troops.

Three years on, some local peace activists would like to try a new approach, based on talks with various rebels and traditional leaders to resolve long-standing ethnic disputes – and with the ever-present Rwandan neighbour.

- Francois Hollande, who was sworn in Tuesday as France’s new president

For his part, Hollande said that “anything that can contribute to growth, improving competitiveness, investment for the future, mobilizing funds, Eurobonds, everything has to be examined. And then we’ll draw the conclusions.”

The two leaders also said they hope Greece, despite its massive troubles, stays in the eurozone.

Europe’s Economy At Risk

The Greek political and fiscal mess, and deep worries about Spain’s debt-burdened banks, have renewed stark talk about Greece’s possible exit from the euro and fears of a financial catastrophe stretching across the continent.

Meanwhile, Germany’s main opposition party, the Social Democrats (SPD), has been emboldened by a big regional election win and by the Hollande’s victory.

The Social Democrats on Tuesday made demands for what they called a growth and investment pact in exchange for supporting parliamentary passage of a Merkel-designed European fiscal pact that sets firm debt limits.

SPD leader Peer Steinbrueck, a former finance minister, said at stake in the crisis was nothing less than the European project of postwar cooperation.

“In my eyes, the bottom line is whether we continue with the European project, one that has seen 60 years of integration, prosperity and peace — or whether we let it fall apart and into the hands of dangerous nationalists,” Steinbrueck said. “Crises eat away at democracy. It will cost money to stabilize Europe, and it is money well spent.”

Despite the tough talk, the German opposition is against new stimulus projects that would boost public debt — which is the same position as Merkel.

And the Social Democrats offered no specific growth proposals beyond ones that have been discussed for months: using European Investment Bank credit for infrastructure projects, and creating a financial transactions tax.

Mark Hallerberg at Berlin’s Hertie School says those projects, however sound, will take years to get going and are likely to prove insufficient.

“There aren’t many shovel-ready projects. We’re talking longer-term growth,” he says. “This is not going to address the crisis. It may over the medium term help out Europe, but this isn’t a magic bullet to solve the problem. It is however, rhetorically, something that politicians can use.

So the search continues for viable growth plans, he says, that aren’t just gimmicks.

More: Where the conflict stands now

Is the regime of al-Assad showing signs of cracking? What are possible avenues to stop the violence?

CNN’s Tim Lister weighs in on what options the U.N. and the United States might have, the likelihood of a long bloody war and what everyday life is like for Syrians now.

The Annan peace plan is widely viewed as failing. What are next steps for the U.N.? What likely options do the U.S. and the West have in all of this?

Diplomats acknowledge that Kofi Annan’s six-point plan has reached a critical stage. He is due to return to Damascus soon to seek adherence to the cease-fire — warning that without progress there is a real danger that what is now a budding insurgency will become a full-scale civil war.

The U.N. Security Council has authorized 300 unarmed observers for a large country where the pattern of violence is unpredictable and movement difficult. Analysts who recall the Bosnian experience say a mission even 10 times that size would struggle to make an impact. As of Friday, there were 145 on the ground.

The opposition has always doubted the plan’s viability, saying it can only work if backed by the threat of force against the regime. At a demonstration in Idlib province Friday, one slogan read “Annan Enough”; another “U.N. Go Out.”

The United States was never optimistic about the Annan plan either, but it was the “only game in town.” Writing in Foreign Policy last week, Salman Shaikh, a former U.N. official who is director of the Brookings Doha Center, said the premise of the plan was fatally flawed as it was based on the “misguided belief that the Assad regime will ever stop using violence against domestic protesters and negotiate with them in good faith.”

There’s not much that the U.S. or European powers can do to change the equation in the short-term, short of decisive intervention to support the rebels. That is unlikely to happen, partly because both the European and U.S. electorates have grown weary of foreign entanglements.

But there are practical impediments, too. In Libya, most regime targets were close to the Mediterranean coast and within easy reach of NATO air bases in Italy. Even so, NATO warplanes flew some 21,000 missions over nearly six months to enforce the no-fly zone. While no match for the best that NATO members could summon, Syrian armed forces are much better equipped and commanded than anything Moammar Gadhafi could muster.

So is it long to be a long and bloody war of attrition?

The signs are ominous, and such a conflict might begin spreading beyond Syria’s borders.

Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N. special envoy to the Middle East, said last week that arms were flowing between Lebanon and Syria.

“What we see across the region is a dance of death at the brink of the abyss of war,” he said — one reminiscent of the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s and 1980s that drew in surrounding states. The antagonisms in Syria between Sunni and Alawite communities are also played out in neighborhoods of Tripoli in northern Lebanon.

Two Lebanese killed in clashes Sunday

Syria has accused the Gulf states, and specifically Saudi Arabia and Qatar, of arming the opposition, after a ship carrying weapons and ammunition of Libyan origin was seized in Lebanese waters last week. Saudi officials rejected the charge.

Some Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq have signaled their support for the uprising and have begun providing some weapons across the long and leaky border between the two countries. One sheik told CNN in March he had sent more than $300,000 and hundreds of guns across the border.

Only Russia and Iran have influence on the al-Assad regime and neither is inclined to back it into a corner. For now, the regime’s existence is not threatened in a military sense. It will continue to pursue a crackdown rather than entertain real dialogue, as demanded by the U.N. Security Council, whose Resolution 2043 called for a “comprehensive political dialogue between the Syrian government and the whole spectrum of the Syrian opposition.”

Salman Shaikh says the regime has no incentive to stop the violence. “Doing so would hasten its demise, as Syrians took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands to protest freely and assume control of large parts of the country,” Shaikh wrote in FP.

Until recently, the capital Damascus had rarely seen the sort of violence that some parts of the country had experienced. The recent bomb attacks have changed that. How strong is the regime’s support in the capital city? Is the regime showing signs of buckling?

The Syrian regime does not wear its heart on its sleeve. Internal machinations rarely spill into public view. The inner circle is tightly knit, based on family associations strengthened through marriage and patronage. There are signs that some among the elite have tried to move assets abroad, but there are no signs of panic.

With Russian and Iranian support (and weapons from the former and “technical help” from the latter) the regime retains an overwhelming advantage in the military sense. It has hundreds of battle tanks; the Free Syrian Army has AK-47s. But remember that U.S. forces in Iraq also had an overwhelming advantage in firepower. That did not prevent a devastating campaign of bombings by al Qaeda and Sunni nationalist insurgents.

A similar campaign appears to have begun in earnest in Damascus, targeting military and intelligence facilities. There were several bomb attacks just last week, and Syrian security claims to have foiled a suicide bombing Friday. The risk to the regime is that if it cannot provide security for its supporters, their backing will ebb.

Like other Syrian cities, the capital is made up of districts and suburbs that to one degree or another are pro- or anti-Assad. The town of Douma, close to Damascus, saw large anti-regime protests last year and for a while came under the control of the Free Syrian Army. The regime then flushed out the rebels and Douma is now an area under virtual siege. When U.N. observers visited last week, protestors paraded the wounded in front of their vehicles.

Increasingly, Damascus appears to reflect the sectarian divisions that have flared elsewhere — in Homs for example. The Alawite and Christian minorities, generally speaking, continue to support the regime for fear of the alternative: Sunni rule that would persecute them. Sunni areas by contrast (and the Sunni make up more than half the population) are often the bedrock of opposition to the al-Assad regime.

What is the state of the opposition? Since the unrest began, we’ve heard that there wasn’t a united opposition as was the case in places such as Libya. Has that changed?

In Libya, the opposition had a stronghold in Benghazi, with an airport and seaport to bring in supplies. It certainly had divisions, and still does months after the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi. But it was able to operate freely because it had a base inside the country, and from an early stage liaised with an international “Friends of Libya” group that brought together the United States, European countries, Turkey and the Gulf states.

The Syrian opposition has been divided from the outset. An unwieldy Syrian National Council is based in Turkey, with Islamists and liberals having as much in common with each other as they do with the Assad regime. Western diplomats have long bemoaned the lack of purpose and unity in the SNC. Inside Syria it has no traction with influential clans and families.

Its leader, Burhan Ghalioun, is a Paris-based professor who has struggled to unify the 270-member council. In March, about 20 prominent members of the SNC decided to form the Syrian Patriotic Group with the aim of building closer ties to the rebels inside Syria.

Within Syria, Local Coordination Committees and the Free Syrian Army comprise the regime’s real opponents, but there are tribes and minorities such as the Kurds, who are also influential. The FSA has little time for the exiled political leadership, rebuffing its recent attempts to coordinate military operations and funding.

In Libya, the rebels soon received anti-tank weapons and other hardware from the Gulf states, as well as getting protection from the no fly-zone enforced by NATO. The Syrian rebels have neither; even basic weaponry is hugely expensive. That also feeds division, because the Islamist factions tend to have more money for buying weapons.

What is everyday life like for Syrians?

All the signs are that it’s becoming more and more difficult, with basics in short supply and many people in areas where there has been violence relying on charities and the Red Crescent for food and medical care. Inflation is rampant.

Syria expert Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma says a lack of finance means “authorities can no longer provide the basic commodities that have long been the central job of the government: providing grain and fuel.”

The World Food Program said recently that nearly 1.5 million Syrians were deprived of basic supplies. And the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization reported in March that Syria’s domestic grain output fell 10% in 2011 and that it would need to raise its imports by about one-third this year. But a shortage of hard currency may make that difficult.

There are electricity shortages in many areas as fuel-oil becomes more scarce.

And the fabric of society is fraying in other ways. Aleppo University has closed its doors after security forces raided the campus in response to student protests. It’s unclear whether it will re-open for final exams this month.

Landis writes on the Syria Comment blog: “It will only be the first of the universities to close. Most are trying to limp to the end of the academic year, but they will probably not be able to open in the fall. Students are becoming mobilized and radicalized.”

Then there is the growing tide of internally displaced people who have fled their homes and the exodus of refugees now in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The U.N. estimates that altogether one million Syrians are in need of assistance within the country, but there’s been little progress in getting humanitarian aid to them, one of the provisions in Annan’s plan.

]]> http://budsexpresscellular.com/what-options-are-left-in-syria/feed 0 http://budsexpresscellular.com/life-beyond-noma http://budsexpresscellular.com/life-beyond-noma#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 20:08:59 +0000 BudGrainger http://budsexpresscellular.com/life-beyond-noma

By J. S. MARCUS

Jorgensen Photography

New potatoes with warm green strawberries and arugula emulsion from Relæ.

A few years ago, when the attention of the food world was about to shift north to Scandinavia, a presiding wunderkind at Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant was kitchen sous chef Christian Puglisi. In 2009, Mr. Puglisi, now 29 years old, decided to leave Noma, along with Kim Rossen, a young waiter and chef, and the two made plans to open their own restaurant.

The result, called Relæ, opened in August 2010 in Copenhagen’s funky Nørrebro district, and was followed last year by Manfreds og Vin, a neighboring wine bar featuring natural wines. Relæ showcases Mr. Puglisi’s eclectic culinary mind-set—the result of a Sicilian father, a Norwegian mother, a Danish adolescence and a stint working at Spain’s El Bulli restaurant—and the partners’ preference for small wine producers.

Although the new eateries share Noma’s emphasis on local produce (carrots are a mainstay at both, just as they are at Noma), neither, stresses Mr. Puglisi, should be described as “Nordic,” the cuisine now associated with Noma chef René Redzepi, whose relentless investigation into the foodstuffs of Scandinavia, characterized by foraging through forests and beaches for ingredients, have arguably made him the most celebrated chef of this young decade.

Jim Henkens

Smoked salmon at the Willows Inn

“When we opened up, we acted like teenagers,” says Mr. Puglisi, speaking this spring in a small test kitchen near his two restaurants, alluding to an effort to break out from under Noma’s long shadow. “So we said, ‘No foraging at all.’ ” He wanted to avoid “the obvious” comparison, so he applied an axiom he had learned from Mr. Redzepi. “To be original,” says Mr. Puglisi, “you need to cook from within.” This spring, Mr. Puglisi’s pan-European instincts were vindicated, when Relæ—which highlights imported Noma no-nos like olive oil—won its first Michelin star.

From the west side of Copenhagen to the West Coast of America, former Noma chefs are making culinary headlines. Taking what they have learned from Mr. Redzepi, and often applying that knowledge to very different conditions or goals, these chefs are finding that there is life after Noma. In the process, the original restaurant has become not just the world’s best—according to the influential “50 World’s Best Restaurants” list, compiled by the U.K.’s Restaurant magazine—but a unique finishing school, training what seem destined to be several of tomorrow’s most important gastronomic talents.

Noma alumni who have gone on to create their own successful restaurants include Blaine Wetzel, a Noma chef de partie who runs a locally sourced restaurant on Lummi Island, two hours north of Seattle, and Noma sous chef Jesper Kirketerp, whose new Copenhagen eatery Restaurant Radio offers an accessible bistro-like riff on Noma’s cerebral approach.

The Joy of Cooking

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Christian Puglisi/Kim Rossen

Eggs Benedict

Try out recipes
from three Noma protégés.

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Jim Henkens

Blaine Wetzel holding a freshly caught salmon on the beach at Legoe Bay on Lummi Island.

Other Noma alumni are Claus Henriksen, head chef of the restaurant at Dragsholm Slot, a baroque castle an hour from Copenhagen; and Søren Ledet, a partner at Geranium, an upscale Copenhagen practitioner of Nordic cuisine, which also won its first Michelin star this year.

The trend is now in full export mode. Earlier this year, Mads Refslund, a head chef at Noma in its early days, relaunched a onetime Cajun restaurant in lower Manhattan called Acme as a New York outpost of Nordic cuisine. Later this year, Oliver Croucher-Stephens, a young Noma chef de partie who grew up on the Isle of Wight, will return home to the south English coast and prepare to relaunch the fine dining room of the island’s Priory Bay Hotel. And Noma’s own current star import, American-born head chef Matthew Orlando—whose CV includes stints at the U.K.’s the Fat Duck and New York’s Per Se and Le Bernardin—is looking ahead to the day when he will open his own restaurant in Copenhagen.

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Anders Schønnemann

Jesper Kirketerp with Radio co-head chef and co-owner Rasmus Kliim

“I love it,” says Mr. Redzepi, Noma’s 34-year-old co-founder, co-owner and guiding spirit, speaking this spring about his ability to send out accomplished chefs into the world. “The ultimate pleasure is to have a former worker succeed.”

In spite of the joy it gives him, however, employee ambition can mean a higher turnover. “When you have these potential megastars—who are really extraordinary food thinkers—you want them to stay until they die,” he says. Attracting—but then losing—talent is “a double-edged sword.”

Anders Schønnemann

Radio’s dry cake made of green plums, sugar beet syrup and salted caramel ice

Noma—now in its ninth year—is considered a locavore restaurant, but in fact it sources food all over Scandinavia, from Iceland to the north of Norway. The use of unusual tastes, like pine, and the banishment of more familiar tastes like citrus, can make a meal there an intellectual adventure—Mr. Redzepi’s larger goal is to translate the history and geography of an inhospitable region into something transcendentally edible. All this means that Noma is long on ideas but short on comfort food. Many Noma alumni are trying to reverse that.

A signature dish at the Willows Inn—an isolated, century-old hostelry, whose tiny restaurant was taken over by Blaine Wetzel in fall 2010—is ordinary smoked salmon, served fresh from the smokehouse behind the kitchen, and with nothing but a warm towel. “You eat it with your fingers,” says Mr. Wetzel, who turned 26 this year, adding that the dish’s freshness extends to the green alderwood used for smoking.

Mr. Wetzel’s tenure at Noma meant leaving behind a girlfriend back in Washington. They were reunited when he returned home after finding ideal conditions at the inn, whose isolated position on a fertile island meant that suppliers were already in place.

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Kim Rossen at Relæ

The inn makes its own salt and runs its own farms. “We slaughter chickens four times a year,” says Mr. Wetzel, which leads to the restaurant stocking up on stock. “There are times when we’re making chicken stock six days a week.”

Lower prices and familiar flavors are the bywords at Radio, which opened last fall just west of Copenhagen’s historic center. Like Noma, the restaurant features bread made from wheat grown on Öland, an island off Sweden’s Baltic coast, but Radio serves it with butter mixed with slowly caramelized onions—a homier touch. The restaurant includes ingredients associated with Noma, like local ramson and pickled elderberries, but the result is simple and satisfying, rather than overtly ambitious or amazing. A recent dinner included a creamy dish made of barley, Danish hay cheese, lumpfish caviar and dill—a Nordic twist on risotto.

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Pickled mackerel, cauliflower and lemon purée

“Our idea was that there should be space for everyone,” says Mr. Kirketerp, the 32-year-old former Noma sous chef, who shares cooking duties with his co-owner, Danish chef Rasmus Kliim. Radio reverses Noma’s complicated approach—and accompanying sky-high prices. These days, a meal at Noma is 1500 Danish kroner (€202); at Radio, you can get a three-course dinner for 300 kroner (€40).

“We do comfort food,” he says. “We can pleasure a lot of people,” while some diners—even if they could afford it—”just won’t understand” what Noma is trying to do. That said, he admits, “I would eat at Noma every day” but “it’s quite hard to get a table.”

CHICAGO (May 3, 2012) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that, for the first time, McDonald’s USA, LLC Oakbrook, Illinois, has made its list of the Top 50 green-powered organizations. McDonald’s is number 11 on the 2012 list. It made a commitment to match 30 percent of its electricity use at company-owned restaurants in 2011 and 2012 with renewable energy certificates from U.S. wind sources. It has also reduced energy consumption in its restaurants through multiple energy efficiency initiatives and technical innovations.

Combined, the Top 50 green power partners are using more than 15 billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually. Through their use of green power, these organizations are avoiding carbon pollution equal to that created by electricity use of more than 1.3 million American homes each year.

EPA’s Green Power Partnership works with more than 1,300 partner organizations, over half of which are small businesses and nonprofit organizations, to voluntarily use green power. Green power resources produce electricity with an environmental profile superior to conventional power technologies, and produce significantly fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

“We applaud all of our Green Power Partners for their use of clean, renewable energy. For the first time, each of the Top 50 partners is using more than 100 million kilowatt-hours of green power annually,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Their actions help to reduce harmful carbon pollution that threatens the health of our planet and the air we breathe, and mark another step toward a new era of clean, innovative American energy.”

More on the Top 50 list and other rankings: www.epa.gov/greenpower/toplists.

More on EPA’s Green Power Partnership: www.epa.gov/greenpower.

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Asha’s menu is inspired by the music diva’s passion for northwest Indian cuisine.

"Northwestern cuisine and Lucknawi or Awadhi cuisine are the hallmarks of Asha’s, but the strength also lies in innovative Indian food," Anand said.

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(ATLANTA – April 16, 2012) In response to requests from the Commonwealth of Kentucky, EPA will hold three public hearings in June to hear from stakeholders and the public about what actions to take on 36 draft individual National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits for coal mining discharges in Kentucky. EPA filed a “specific objection” to each of these 36 permits because it was concerned that the draft permits would not protect water quality, the environment and human health consistent with the Clean Water Act (CWA).

One hearing will be held on June 5 at the Frankfurt Convention Center from 7 to 11 p.m..; and two will be held on June 7 at the Eastern Kentucky Expo Center – the first from noon to 4 p.m. and the second from 7 to 11 p.m.

Since 2009, the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection’s Division of Water (KDOW) has authorized discharges from approximately 2,500 existing and new coal mining and processing projects under the Clean Water Act, mostly under an approved coal general permit. KDOW requires individual NPDES permits for mining or processing activities that discharge pollutants into waters that are already polluted and are not meeting water quality standards, along with new or expanding mines within five miles upstream of a drinking water intake. In the last three years, KDOW has issued 115 such individual permits.

For the 36 individual permits that are the subject of the hearings, EPA has been working with KDOW to collect and evaluate data on toxic metals, cyanide, phenols, specific conductance, and current biological health of the waters that receive discharges from the mines in an effort to work through the issues identified in the objections.

“Our intent is not to stop coal mining, but to ensure it proceeds in an environmentally acceptable way,” said EPA Region 4 Administrator Gwen Keyes Fleming. “We are holding these hearings on our permit objections to hear from those directly impacted and are hopeful that, following the hearings, the remaining 36 permits will be developed by KDOW with appropriate site-specific controls that will allow these projects to move forward while protecting human health and water quality as required by the CWA.”

Persons interested in attending a hearing are encouraged (but not required) to pre-register at least 72 hours before the hearing online or by calling 703-577-4953. When pre-registering, persons may request to speak at one of the hearings or they may sign up to speak in person on the day of a hearing, however, space is limited. People may also contribute comments, statements, data and other information to EPA regarding the specific objections in writing at any of the hearings, and either electronically or by mail by following the instructions on the website.

After careful consideration of all oral and written comments, data and the requirements of the Clean Water Act and applicable regulations, the EPA will determine whether to reaffirm, modify the terms of or withdraw each of the objections. For permits which EPA either reaffirms the original objection or modifies the terms of the objection, KDOW must, within 30 days, submit to EPA a revised permit that meets the terms of the remaining objection, or exclusive authority to issue the permit passes to EPA for one permit term. For any permits that EPA withdraws its objection, KDOW may proceed with the permit issuance process.

Instructions to register for the hearings and submit written comments, along with copies of KDOW’s 36 draft NPDES permits, fact sheets and specific objection letters, are available online at: www.epa.gov/region4/kycoalminehearings

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Philadelphia, USA – A Roman Catholic cardinal and his top aides lied about shredding a key piece of evidence in the Philadelphia clergy-abuse scandal, a long-time church lawyer testified Monday.

Lawyer Tim Coyne was looking for an internal 1994 list of 35 suspected predator-priests for a 2004 grand jury investigation. He asked Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and four top aides if they knew where to find it.

Coyne said he doesn’t remember any response from Bevilacqua. And the aides — two of whom went on to lead other dioceses — denied they knew where it was, Coyne said.

No one told him that Bevilacqua had ordered the list shredded in 1994, shortly after Monsignor William Lynn, his secretary for clergy, compiled it.

“Everyone who I spoke to said they didn’t know where it was and they didn’t have a copy of it,” Coyne testified Monday.

“Everybody lied to you?” Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington asked.

“That’s fair,” Coyne said.

The list is something of a smoking gun in Lynn’s child-endangerment trial, although each side is trying to spin it to their advantage.

Prosecutors in 2004 were deep into a three-year probe of the archdiocese. Their blistering 2005 grand jury report blasted Bevilacqua, Lynn and others for their handling of abuse complaints lodged against 63 priests, but said no criminal charges could be filed, mainly because the complaints were too old.

It’s not clear if the list — or suggestions that evidence was being shredded — would have helped them make a case against anyone.

Lynn, 61, was charged last year over his handling of more recent abuse complaints.

Defense lawyers argue that he alone tried to do something about the festering abuse problem when he served as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004.

They point to the list as proof.

Lynn told the grand jury in 2002 that he decided to go through secret church files holding abuse complaints to create a list of problem priests who were still active. His list described three priests as diagnosed pedophiles, and deemed others “guilty” because they had admitted the abuse. The list was discussed at a February 1994 meeting between Bevilacqua and his closest aides.

Another memo states that Bevilacqua ordered Monsignor James E. Molloy to shred the original list and three copies, including one sent to Bishop Edward Cullen, a top aide who later led the Allentown diocese.

Hand-written notes state that Molloy did so in the presence of another aide, Bishop Joseph R. Cistone, who is now the bishop of Saginaw, Mich.

Yet a surviving copy of the list was found at the archdiocese early this year — 10 days after Bevilacqua died.

The list was found in a gray file in Coyne’s office. But it had been found in 2006 in a locked safe at the Secretary for Clergy’s office.

In 2006, a staff person cleaning out that office’s file room came across the safe, according to the woman’s testimony last week. The room was in disarray after the three-year grand jury investigation. She hired a locksmith to open it, and found the gray file inside, she said.

The staffer said she left the file with an assistant to Monsignor Timothy Senior, who had followed Lynn as secretary for clergy. Coyne said that Senior later gave it to him. The lawyer said he only glanced at it before putting it in his files, and didn’t realize it contained the list he had sought in 2004.

On cross-examination, defense lawyer Thomas Bergstrom asked if Lynn had taken steps to look for it in 2004. Lynn had told the grand jury about his work compiling the list, but couldn’t find it to give the grand jury.

“My impression is he looked everywhere for it,” Coyne said.

The list was only discovered on Feb. 10, on the eve of Lynn’s trial. Bevilacqua, a potentially key trial witness, had died Jan. 31 at age 88.

Coyne has since been put on leave as counsel to the archdiocese.

Molloy is deceased. A spokeswoman for Cistone referred a call for comment to his lawyer, William Winning of Philadelphia, who did not immediately return a message Monday afternoon. A spokesman at the Allentown diocese did not immediately return a call for Cullen, who retired in 2009.

The Philadelphia archdiocese is not commenting on trial developments because of a gag order.