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Thursday, December 16 1:29 AM SGT

Israeli emergency services mobilised for New Year's Eve

JERUSALEM, Dec 15 (AFP) -

The Israeli police will have between 6,000 and 8,000 men on duty for the night of December 31, and emergency services are ready to deal with every possible disaster, a top police official said Wednesday.

"On that sabbath evening (the Jewish weekly day of rest) we shall have to deal simultaneously with the millennium bug and problems that could arise because of the New Year and the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan," Yaacov Borovski, head of the police planning department, told journalists.

He showed them a tiny room equipped with computers and two television screens in the basement of the Jerusalem police headquarters.

"We have a system set up here that will enable us to monitor anything that happens in Israel that evening," he said.

"The plan of campaign drawn up 18 months ago has gone through dry runs to be checked and re-checked, and shows that for the police the evening of Friday December 31 should be just an ordinary evening in Jerusalem," he said.

However, Jerusalem has trebled the normal number of policemen on duty on the last evening of the millennium, bumping the number up to 1,500.

The increase is to enable them to deal not only with the influx of tourists and pilgrims, but also to thwart possible provocations by extremist Christian millenarian sects.

"We are in contact with our colleagues abroad about this, and have also set up a special unit to deal with the issue. We will have our men at sensitive spots, including the Christian holy sites, some in uniform and some in plain clothes," he said.

"We are completely ready. Every possibility has been thought of, including floods, mass poisonings, breakdowns in supply, and so on," he added.

He said 500 to 600 police vans would be criss-crossing the country, and that firement and emergency services would be put on alert.

The command centre that the police have set up is linked by computer to every police station in the country as well as all the essential organisations, such as the electricity company, the Bezek telephone company, the army, the Mekorot water company, the interior ministry and the Magen David Adom -- the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross.

A team in an adjacent room will analyse situations and take decisions in order to give adequate answers in real time to any problems that may arise, in coordination with a ministerial team headed by Haim Ramon, Minister in charge of Relations with Parliament.

"The police has a back-up communication system in case of problems with the millennium bug," Borovski said. They will be alerted immediately to the least problem that could affect any of the country's infrastructure.

He added that the whole system would remain up and running throughout the millennium year.

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@AOL.COM), December 16, 1999