Filed at 7:02 a.m. EDT September 7, 1999 By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Kosovo-Force.html

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Two weeks before the Kosovo Liberation Army is to demilitarize, international officials and leaders of the former rebel army have agreed on the broad outlines of an armed force to replace it.

But the plan could derail at the United Nations, where the Russians and others object to giving such a prominent role to the former guerrillas, in part because of fears for the safeOf Bombs and Israeli Arabs, and Years of Loyalty

By JOEL GREENBERG, September 8, 1999 New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/090899israel-bombers.html

MASHHAD, Israel -- There was no funeral in this village Tuesday for Nazal Krayim, an Israeli Arab who was killed on Sunday when a car he was in blew up in the port city of Haifa.

His body was not brought home, but taken directly to the cemetery. There were no mosque prayers, no wreaths, no Koran verses broadcast over loudspeakers. There was only a heavy sense of grief and shame hanging over this community of 6,000, in the hills of Galilee near Nazareth.

Krayim's death, along with those of two other Israeli Arabs in a second car that exploded in a resort at Tiberias, sent shock waves through Israeli Arab communities Tuesday after the identities of the men were made public by the police.

Here and in nearby Daburiya, which was home to the other two men, people struggled to come to terms with what looked like the first suicide car-bombing attempts by Israeli Arabs -- the kind of attacks carried out previously by Palestinian militants from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Although doubts about the loyalty of the one million Arab citizens of Israel linger among Jewish Israelis, and although the Israeli Arabs sympathize with the national aspirations of their Palestinian brothers, few Israeli Arabs have been involved in anti-Jewish attacks.

So the revelation that Israeli Arabs were involved in the explosions on Sunday horrified many here, raising fears that they might all be tarred with the same brush.

"This is the blackest day of my life," said Krayim's brother, Mohammed, a 56-year-old schoolteacher, as he sat in his house with stunned relatives. "In my worst nightmares I never imagined such a thing. The whole family condemns this and we feel ashamed.

"We are proud of our loyalty to the state, and we seek peace and coexistence. We beg forgiveness from all the people of Israel, first of all the Jews, as well as the Arabs. Islam calls for mercy, not only to human beings but to animals and the trees. A person who carries out terrorist attacks is a heretic."

Just a few years ago, the brother recalled, he had gathered his students on the streets of Mashhad to demonstrate against suicide bombings by Palestinian militants that had killed dozens of people in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

"I drew 20 signs," he said. "We stood in the main street and cried out against the despicable suicide acts. God hates murder most of all. Murdering a human being is like murdering an entire world."

In Daburiya, a community of 7,000 at the foot of Mount Tabor, knots of sullen relatives stood outside the homes of the two villagers who had died in Tiberias: Amir Masalha, 25, a Muslim cleric, and Jad Azaizeh, 23, a plumber. No one was paying condolence calls.

Masalha, who had studied religion in East Jerusalem, had led prayers in a mosque in Mashhad and had been friendly with Krayim, an unemployed construction worker.

Yet Masalha's relatives argued that he was an unlikely candidate for a suicide attack, suggesting that he had been duped into driving the car laden with explosives to Tiberias. He had recently refurbished a home and gotten married, they said, and his wife was three months' pregnant. He drove to Tiberias with Azaizeh; suicide bombers usually travel alone.

"My son wouldn't do such a thing," said Masalha's father, Abdel Aziz Masalha. "The whole thing is suspicious."

Relatives and neighbors of the three men who died insisted that they had expressed no hostility toward Israel, and had acted normally on the day they died, giving no indication that they were embarking on a fatal mission.

But details emerging from an investigation painted a different picture, indicating possible links between the men and Islamic militants in the West Bank.

Krayim's mother is from Qabatiya, on the West Bank. Five years ago, investigators said, his Israeli identity card was found on the body of a Palestinian suicide bomber from Qabatiya who died in an attack in Afula, in northern Israel. Krayim said at the time that he had lost the card, and that he did not know how it had come into the possession of the attacker.

The police said the three men were members of the Islamic Movement, a political party and grass-roots group that conducts educational and social welfare activities among Israeli Arabs. Investigators are reportedly searching for possible links between some members of the movement and the militant Palestinian Islamic group Hamas.

Faisal Azaizeh, the mayor of Daburiya 'nd another member of the large Azaizeh clan, said the incidents have forced Israeli Arabs to take a hard look at themselves.

"There has to be deep soul-searching by the political leadership, by the religious leadership, by the families and all the residents," he said.

"But not only us," he added. "As an Israeli society, Arab and Jew, we have to see how we do this soul-searching as one family, to maintain the fabric of relations built over more than 50 years."

---

Filed at 7:41 a.m. EDT, By The Associated Press, September 8, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Israel-Torture.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Prime Minister Ehud Barak today indicated support for legislation that would soften a landmark Supreme Court ruling barring the use of force by Shin Bet security service interrogators.

The ruling has come under fire from opposition legislators and some members of Barak's coalition. Critics said the court has robbed the security service of the tools necessary to prevent terror attacks by Palestinian militants.

Opposition legislator Reuven Rivlin has said he will introduce a bill that will give the Shin Bet permission ahead of time to use force in emergencies, such as ``ticking bomb'' cases in which detainees are believed to have information about imminent attacks. Rivlin said the attorney general or another legal body should be the one to authorize force in such cases.

The high court's ban on force was absolute. The justices said violators would be tried, but that a court might accept an argument in a ticking bomb case that force was necessary.

Barak appeared to be siding with Rivlin. The prime minister said in a statement today that ``there must be an authority that can, in the hour of need, work quickly and availably to approve the necessary investigation in the case of immediate danger -- a ticking bomb.''

Attorney General Eliyakim Rubinstein has indicated he would support Rivlin's bill. However, Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and Public Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, both liberals, said new legislation was not necessary and that the Shin Bet could work with available means.

Agriculture Minister Haim Oron from the dovish Meretz party called the Supreme Court's decision ``a declaration of values,'' and said that any security problems it created should be solved without trying to bypass the ruling.

---

Filed at 6:52 a.m. EDT, By The Associated Press, September 8, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's Cabinet today overwhelmingly approved an Israeli troop redeployment in 7 percent of the West Bank, the first stage of a new land-for-security agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak said the decision to hand over parts of the biblical Land of Israel was not made easily, but that it was in Israel's best interest to move toward comprehensive peace agreements with its Arab neighbors.

``We are parting from areas that are precious to all of us,'' Barak said in a statement. ``We walked the land, we learned about its place in our history, we fought for it and we developed a connection to it.''

The Cabinet ministers voted 17-1, with one abstention, to approve the maps outlining the redeployment. Four ministers of the religious Shas party were absent because of a dispute with Barak over government funding for Shas schools.

The land to be transferred from sole Israeli to joint Israeli-Palestinian control is located south of the West Bank's largest city, Nablus, and close to the Palestinians' commercial center, the city of Ramallah.

The redeployment is expected to be completed by Monday, the day set for the festive launch of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a final peace agreement. As part of the first stage of the agreement, Israel also pledged to release 200 Palestinians held for anti-Israeli activity. The releases were expected by Friday.

After the Cabinet vote, the redeployment maps were presented to legislators in Israel's parliament, which was to ratify the agreement later today. Legislators were expected to approve the agreement, a revision of last year's U.S.-brokered Wye accord, by a large margin.

Under the agreement, Israel will hand over another 11 percent of the West Bank now under its exclusive control to the Palestinian Authority. By the end of the three pullbacks, on Jan. 20, the Palestinians will control just over 40 percent of the West Bank.

---

Filed at 11:37 p.m. EDT, By The Associated Press, September 7, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Israel-Pollard.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard appealed to Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday, demanding that Prime Minister Ehud Barak explain why he isn't fighting for his release from a U.S. prison.

Pollard, a former civilian analyst for the U.S. Navy, was convicted of espionage in 1985 and has served 14 years of a life sentence.

Israel has acknowledged that Pollard was its agent and has repeatedly asked the United States to release him.

But Pollard contended in his petition that since taking office, Barak has cut off contact with him and has not worked to release him.

Pollard's wife, Esther, repeated allegations that President Clinton reneged on a deal to release Pollard last year as part of an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord brokered in Wye River, Md.

Clinton has said he will review a clemency request.

Mrs. Pollard said Tuesday that Barak's office has repeatedly ignored requests to meet with her and has stopped updating her husband on efforts to secure his release.

The petition demands that Barak release documents showing that the tens of thousands of top-secret documents Pollard gave Israel did not harm U.S. national security. It also requests financial and medical assistance for Pollard while he is in his North Carolina jail.

Barak spokeswoman Merav Parsi-Tsadok said that public discussion of the case would only hurt release efforts.

``The prime minister's stance is to do everything possible so that Pollard will go free and return to Israel,'' she said.

Barak brought up the issue in his meeting with Clinton in July but said it should not be linked to the peace process.

Mrs. Pollard, who came from Toronto to file the petition, said Barak was behaving in ``a shabby fashion toward a man whom the government has recognized as its agent.''

-----------

Updated 5:33 AM ET September 6, 1999, By Danielle Haas
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990906/05/international-israel-torture

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's Supreme Court in a landmark decision Monday banned the security services from using interrogation methods it ruled were tantamount to torture.

It said it was illegal for Israel's Shin Bet security agency to use physical pressure in interrogation of detainees. Human rights groups had argued that the methods constitute torture and hailed the ruling as a watershed.

"The court declares the Shin Bet does not have the authority to shake a person, to force him into a (contorted) position or to kneel in a frog-like position or deprive him of sleep," the court said.

The special nine-judge panel ruled unanimously in favor of petitions brought by rights organizations and individuals after months of debate.

Until now, the Supreme Court had refrained from ruling on the legality of interrogation techniques used by Israel's Shin Bet security service primarily against Palestinian detainees.

The ruling effectively overturns a decision by a 1987 commission that gave the Shin Bet the go-ahead to use "moderate physical pressure" against suspects believed to have information that could prevent attacks against the Jewish state.

Human rights groups estimate that some 850 detainees a year are subjected to the interrogation techniques, which the Shin Bet says are justified by the so-called "ticking bomb" scenario.

Israel Radio quoted deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh as saying the ruling would damage Israel's security.

"Limiting the Shin Bet's (investigative) capabilities does not help protect Israel's citizens in the reality in which we live," the radio quoted him as saying.

Human rights groups warmly welcomed the ruling.

"It took 30 years of human rights abuse to get to this," said Israeli human rights lawyer Leah Tsemel outside the court. "It will stop torture and moderate physical pressure and make Israel abide by international law."

Amnesty International, which had accused Israeli interrogators of subjecting Palestinian detainees to effectively legalized torture, called the ruling a "real milestone.

"Now at last the Supreme Court has ruled that the unacceptable is unacceptable, that methods condemned by the world as torture have been banned," said Elizabeth Hodgkin of Amnesty's London-based headquarters.

The ruling said Shin Bet investigators would be bound by the same rules of investigation as police. These prohibit an investigator from "torturing a man or treating him in a brutal, inhumane or humiliating way." The court said the decision was difficult given Israel's security situation. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed in Arab guerrilla shootings, suicide bombings and other attacks in the state's 51-year history. Despite the ruling, the court gave parliament the option of drafting legislation to decide "if Israel, because of its security problems, should allow the use of physical measures in investigations...that deviate from 'normal' interrogation techniques."

"This is a question that must be decided by the legislative branch which represents the people...This is where the real debate should be," the court ruling said.

The court overruled an opinion of one judge who said the decision should take effect only after one year.

---

By The Associated Press, September 6, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Israel-Torture.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's Supreme Court today barred security service interrogators from using physical force, a landmark ruling hailed by human rights lawyers as a victory against methods they describe as torture.

Supreme Court Justice Eliyahu Matza, reading the decision of the nine-judge panel, said the Shin Bet security service has no right to use the interrogation methods, which have been inflicted on thousands of Palestinians detained over the years on suspicion of anti-Israeli activities.

The practices include violent shaking of detainees, tying them up in painful positions for extended periods, placing smelly hoods on their heads, depriving them of sleep and blasting them with loud music.

The ruling came 12 years after a government-appointed commission headed by a Supreme Court judge permitted these practices -- described as ``moderate physical pressure.''

Today's Supreme Court ruling came as Israelis once again tried to come to grips with terror attacks and what means are justifiable to prevent them.

On Sunday, two car bombs exploded simultaneously in the northern Israeli towns of Haifa and Tiberias, killing three people, presumably the bombers, who apparently were trying to derail the peace process. Security forces were placed on heightened alert, with commanders saying they feared Islamic militants would carry out more attacks, especially during the upcoming Jewish holidays.

Advocates of tough interrogation methods say the Shin Bet must be given a free hand to prevent such attacks, especially in ``ticking bomb'' cases when a detainee is believed to have information on an attack about to be carried out.

Human rights activists say such cases are extremely rare and that the Shin Bet systematically mistreats detainees to extract information.

``This is a real dilemma for a democratic country which is facing terrorism,'' Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, a liberal, told reporters. ``I hope that the solution in the future ... will be such that we will be able to deal with emergency cases, and on the other hand keep the democratic values of our country.''

Ten Palestinians have died during interrogation over the years, according to the Israeli human rights group Betselem.

One of the victims was Abdel Samad Harizat, who died in 1995 after being shaken by Shin Bet interrogators. ``The decision today of the Supreme Court is a good decision, but I hope the Israeli government will implement it,'' said his mother Fatmeh. ``Torture is against God's will.''

Dan Yakir, legal adviser of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, one of the petitioners in the case, praised the ruling and rejected the notion that it would harm Israel's security. ``The police also deal with organized crime and difficult situations without these means,'' Yakir said.

Matza, reading excerpts from the 27-page decision, said the Shin Bet's methods should be no different from those used by the police.

``The authority which allows the investigator to conduct a fair investigation does not allow him to torture a person, or treat him in a cruel, inhuman or degrading manner,'' the decision said.

Outside the courtroom, right-wing extremist Tiran Pollack yelled at Avigdor Feldman, a well-known human rights lawyer. ``Shame. You are an embarrassment. You are on the side of the Arabs and I'm on the side of the Jews,'' shouted Pollack, who lost a sister in a terror attack more than 20 years ago.

---

By Lee Hockstader Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, September 7, 1999; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/07/035l-090799-idx.html

JERUSALEM, Sept. 6Israel's High Court of Justice ruled unanimously today that the country's security police have acted illegally by routinely inflicting physical pain -- torture, in the view of human rights groups -- on Palestinian detainees.

The 9-0 ruling by Israel's highest court overturns decades of officially sanctioned practice. It strikes at the heart of a widely accepted credo in Israel's security community and society: Subjecting Arab prisoners to excruciating physical abuse -- including beatings, violent shaking and sleep deprivation -- is acceptable in the name of safeguarding the security of the Jewish state.

The court found that despite "the harsh reality of terrorism" against Israel, the methods that the General Security Service has used to interrogate Palestinian detainees, at least since the early 1970s, have no basis in law.

"This is the destiny of a democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it," Court President Aharon Barak wrote in a lengthy decision. "Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand."

Despite the court's evident distaste for the interrogation practices, it left open the possibility of a legislative end run around its ruling. It said Israel's parliament may enact a law permitting what the court delicately called "physical means in interrogation." But the court, in turn, could strike down such a law.

"We do not take any stand on this matter at this time," the court's Barak wrote.

The decision struck here with a moral force akin to the U.S. Supreme Court's ban on school segregation nearly a half-century ago, and raised basic questions about the nature of Israeli society. The ruling, which noted that international law prohibits torture in all cases, was the subject of immediate and impassioned public debate in a country that was reminded of the threat of terrorism a day earlier, when nearly simultaneous car bombs exploded in two northern cities.

Public debate, aired on radio talk shows and on television, was divided along two major lines: those who believe Israel is properly part of the democratic West and should behave accordingly, and those who contend that in the hostile reality of the Middle East, it cannot afford liberal niceties such as excluding some forms of torture.

"I cannot exaggerate the importance of this decision for victims and for the very nature of Israel as a democratic country that abides by international law," said Eitan Felner, executive director of B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. "Israel during all these years has undermined the universal consensus on the prohibition against torture."

Other Israelis denounced the decision, insisting the court had hamstrung the Shin Bet security service in its fight against terrorism. Scores of Israelis died in Arab terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings, in the mid-1990s, although the incidents have diminished somewhat since then.

"It's very nice to have a very liberal legislation," said deputy defense minister Ephraim Sneh, a retired general. "It's good in Scandinavia, in Western Europe, maybe North America. But in this part of the world, where we fight so bitterly with terrorism, it's such a burden that it's almost irrelevant to the reality that we live in."

The court, which had pointedly ignored the issue of interrogations for years, appeared to anticipate the storm of criticism its ruling generated. Nearly three-quarters of Israelis tell pollsters that they approve of the use of torture in some cases. Human rights groups that have demonstrated various interrogation techniques as street theater in Jerusalem have been met by passersby calling out: "They deserve it!"

"We are aware of the harsh reality of terrorism in which we are, at times, immersed," Barak wrote. "Our apprehension is that this decision will hamper the ability to properly deal with terrorists and terrorism, which disturbs us. We are, however, judges. Our brethren require us to act according to the law."

Prime Minister Ehud Barak -- no relation to the High Court president -- reacted cautiously to the decision, saying the ruling could cause difficulties for the security service in its fight against terrorism.

According to human rights groups, since 1970 about 20 Arabs have died and thousands have been hospitalized because of Shin Bet's methods. B'Tselem estimates that Shin Bet tortures about 85 percent of the 1,000 Palestinians it interrogates annually. Shin Bet denies it.

Human rights groups have documented cases of abuse of hundreds of detainees, some of whom were never charged with a crime.

Nonetheless, in 1987 a government commission headed by Moshe Landau, a former Supreme Court president, gave Shin Bet sweeping powers to use "moderate physical force" to extract information. Since then, Shin Bet has justified the use of these practices by invoking the "ticking time bomb argument" -- that because of the danger of imminent terrorist attack, Israel is justified in using torture to squeeze information from suspects.

Ruling today in a case brought four years ago by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, the court acknowledged that in exceptional circumstances, very rough treatment of detainees may be legally defensible. But that is different from granting Shin Bet agents blanket authority to inflict pain during interrogation, the court said. In fact, the court ruled, inflicting pain on detainees has no grounding in Israeli law.

"A reasonable investigation is necessarily one free of torture, free of cruel, inhuman treatment of the subject and free of any degrading handling whatsoever," it said.

That standard seemed at odds with the court's description of one technique used in Shin Bet interrogations:

"A suspect . . . has his hands tied behind his back. He is seated on a small and low chair, whose seat is tilted forward toward the ground. One hand is tied behind the suspect, and placed inside the gap between the chair's seat and back support. His second hand is tied behind the chair, against its back support. The suspect's head is covered by an opaque sack, falling down to his shoulders. Powerfully loud music is played in the room. . . . "

Former Palestinian detainees report lasting disabilities as a result of interrogation. In testimony to human rights groups, they supplied details that the court did not mention -- for instance, that the hoods placed over the heads of Arab detainees often stank of vomit or urine. Interrogations can last for days, weeks or months.

"Hundreds, thousands of Palestinians suffered like me," said Nawwaf Qeisi, 24, a political activist who said his three-month interrogation by Shin Bet in 1997 left him with an injured back. "How can I hate all Israelis because of that?"

Nonetheless, Qeisi did not disguise his feelings for his interrogators. "They must be punished," he said. "I always told my Shin Bet interrogator, 'I'm going to go to court and tell the judge what methods you are using against me.' "

"And he would say, 'Who are you going to complain to when the judge himself is your enemy?' "

---

Updated 9:42 PM ET September 6, 1999, By DALAL SAOUD
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/990906/21/international-economy

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 6 (UPI) Lebanese Finance Minister Georges Corm says peace, if effectively achieved in the Middle East, would give a very strong push to the region's economies, dismissing fears that Lebanon could lose its pivotal economic role.

Corm said in an interview with United Press International that peace could be secured by a complete Israeli withdrawal from all occupied territories in Lebanon and Syria, and by granting the Palestinians their legitimate rights.

He said, "Undoubtedly, if peace is effectively achieved, this will give a very strong push to the economy of the whole region, including Lebanon, which suffers from few problems that need to be solved quickly. "

But Corm said he was not "very optimistic" about the Arab-Israeli peace process "due to previous experiences, and the nature of the Israeli structure and its difficulty in adjusting as a normal state that lives equally to the rest (of the) Arab countries."

He emphasized that both Lebanon and Syria would exert all possible efforts to help the United States in its new effort to relaunch the stalled peace process.

His comments came as U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright toured the region in a bid to help restart peace negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Corm dismissed fears that Lebanon could lose its economic role in the region once peace was established, saying such anxieties stemmed from the economic difficulties of the war years and the sweeping changes witnessed by the entire region since the end of the 1960s.

He cited Lebanon's "huge human potential, geographical location, and business expertise at the Arab and international levels, as well as their great financial capabilities."

Corm said, "What is required today is to be transformed from a rent economy to a productive economy." He called for introducing modern technology, restoring competitive production ability, exploiting the country's water resources and establishing food industries that would help ease the difficult conditions in the rural areas.

He said Lebanon's assets "need to be rearranged and exploited in a new and effective way so that Lebanon benefits from the new climate that would result from a genuine peace, if it happens."

Corm warned that "globalization is undoubtedly coming, whether peace is achieved or not," which requires any country "to export or die."

He said, "Nothing prevents Lebanon from becoming a productive economy which has the ability to improve its living levels and (international) competition by abandoning the residue of its rent economy."

Corm was referring to Lebanese who have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate and construction since the 1990s, and the easy gains resulting from the high interest rates of Lebanese treasury bonds, which he blamed for causing the current economic crisis. Today, thousands of apartments in Beirut and other Lebanese regions are vacant.

Corm said his government was counting wealthy Lebanese living abroad to invest in their home country to "help reactivate the stagnant economy and release a new development movement."

He said, "The unstable security situation in the region should not be an obstacle."

Corm estimated Lebanon's debts at $19.9 billion, accumulated during years of war and an ambitions postwar reconstruction period.

[Nice try, but...]

---

Updated 5:42 AM ET September 7, 1999
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990907/05/international-lebanon-israel

BAALBEK, Lebanon (Reuters) - Israeli warplanes attacked suspected Hizbollah positions in northeastern Lebanon Tuesday, witnesses and security sources said.

They said the jets hit the Hermel area near the Syrian border. Ambulances were seen heading to the scene.

Israeli warplanes, which attack south Lebanon almost on a daily basis, seldom venture so far north into depressed rural areas.

Hizbollah is leading a war of attrition to drive out Israel from a 15-km (nine miles) deep zone it occupies in south Lebanon. Israel occupied the zone in 1985, saying it needed to protect its northern settlements from potential guerrilla attacks.

---

Updated 7:16 AM ET September 7, 1999
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/990907/07/international-fighting

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 7 (UPI) Israeli warplanes have bombarded an area in eastern Lebanon close to the border with Syria hours after a five-nation monitoring group accused Israel and Hezbollah of violating the 1996 April accord and urged them to protect civilians.

Four jets, in two consecutive sorties, dropped a number of missiles on an area on the Orontes River, 3 km east of the city of Hermel in the eastern Bekaa Valley and close to the Syrian-Lebanese border.

Police sources said the air raid targeted a scout camp of the Iran- backed Hezbollah that was evacuated a few days ago by the Muslim group.

A number of houses were damaged but there was no immediate report on casualties.

The Israeli airstrike came hours after the monitoring group, entrusted to monitor rules of combat in south Lebanon, acknowledged that Israel and Hezbollah violated the April accord, that ended Israel's Grapes of Wrath offensive against Lebanon in 1996 and calls on combatants to refrain from hurting civilians and limit attacks to military targets.

The group, made up of representatives from the United States, France, Israel, Syria and Lebanon, called in a statement released at the end of a meeting Monday night meant to discuss Israeli and Lebanese complaints over last week violence in south Lebanon that "the highest priority be given to the protection of civilians and civilian property."

The panel expressed concern over the recent incidents that resulted in the killing of two Lebanese civilians and wounding eight others by Israeli shelling on several villages in southern Lebanon and southwestern Bekaa Valley.

It said the Israeli shelling was in violation of the April accord and acknowledged that Hezbollah also violated the accord by firing rockets from civilian areas in south Lebanon against Israeli positions in the occupied security zone.

Hezbollah is the main group fighting Israel to force its withdrawal from the so-called security zone it has been occupying since 1985 to protect its northern border.

------------

Join the international campaign to avert a nuclear catastrophe.

diaspora@diaspora-net.org, March 12, 1999
http://www.diaspora-net.org/nuclear/
http://www.diaspora-net.org/nuclear/emailtofax.htm

Contact government officials, send a fax over the internet, read on-line expert analyses, learn about the environmental impact, the danger of nuclear proliferation, and follow the latest news.

Summary of the Issue

Three international consortia are bidding for a contract to sell nuclear reactors to Turkey. They are led by Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited; Westinghouse of the United States; and Nuclear Power International, a consortium led by Siemens of Germany and Framatome of of France. All of the consortia must involve Turkish firms in the bid, and all are required to provide 100% of the financing for the project.

The Canadian government is negotiating the sale of two CANDU-type nuclear reactors to the Turkish government. Canada has directly contributed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons by providing a nuclear reactor to India, which has built upgraded reactors based on what Canada provided, and has produced plutonium. The sale of Canadian CANDU-type reactors to Turkey would arm that country with the same technology that India and Pakistan used to build nuclear bombs. To make matters worse, the proposed site of Turkey's first nuclear power plant, Akkuyu Bay, is situated next to an active fault line.

Turkey was originally supposed to announce the winning nuclear vendor in June 1998. That deadline has slipped repeatedly. It now appears likely that the announcement will be delayed until after the Turkish national election, which is scheduled for April 18, 1999. Even after the announcement of the winning vendor, there will be a period of at least six months, during which a contract is negotiated. A campaign to stop the Akkuyu nuclear plant will be even more important during that period.

We ask you to join us in opposing the sale of the Canadian nuclear reactors to the Turkish government for the following reasons:

Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: India developed its nuclear weapons program based on the transfer of Canadian nuclear technology. Turkey will do the same.

Safety: nuclear power is unsafe. The nuclear industry has been plagued by accidents;

Seismic risk: the Akkuyu site is near an active fault line, the Ecemis fault. The Akkuyu region has experienced a number of strong earthquakes over the past 100 years;

Radioactive waste: nuclear power plants create toxic, extremely long-lived radioactive waste. No country with a nuclear power program has worked out what to do with its radioactive waste;

Cost: nuclear power is more expensive than conventional electricity generation technologies. Instead of investing billions in nuclear power for covering only 2-3% of its energy needs, Turkey should instead promote energy efficiency and conservation, and exploit its vast reserves of renewable energy;

Monk seals: the Mediterranean Monk Seal (monachus monachus) is one of the ten most endangered species in the world, with only about 200 seals left in existence. A colony of seals live on an island in the mouth of Akkuyu Bay. The water intake and sea traffic for the plant will pose a real danger to the remaining seals.

------------

September 6, 1999 / 25 Elul 5759, By DOUGLAS DAVIS
http://www.jpost.com/com/Archive/06.Sep.1999/News/Article-3.html

LONDON (September 6) - Britain and the United States have mounted an urgent diplomatic push at the UN to resume intrusive inspections in Iraq, according to a report in the London Sunday Times.

The new urgency has been prompted by US intelligence warnings that Iraq is rebuilding missile factories destroyed in allied bombing raids.

The paper also notes a classified White House report voicing alarm over "activity" at Iraqi sites known to be capable of producing weapons of mass destruction.

Experts familiar with Iraq's nuclear weapons program predict that Saddam Hussein could assemble a nuclear warhead within months, though testing it would take much longer.

"It is assumed," noted the paper, "that Saddam has taken advantage of the absence of United Nations weapons inspectors he expelled late last year to pursue chemical and biological weapons programs as well."

Foreign Ministry officials from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Britain, America, China, Russia and France - are scheduled to meet in Washington tomorrow to discuss how to deal with Saddam, who has consistently defied UN sanctions and thousands of allied airstrikes.

A security council debate on Iraq is expected later this month, but expectation are low for restoring weapons inspections by UNSCOM, with the Security Council reported to be more divided than ever over how to deal with Saddam.

While Britain and the US insist on reinstating the former inspections regime, with continued sanctions until Saddam complies with UN disarmament demands, France, Russia and China are seeking a relaxation in the sanctions regime and a watered-down weapons inspection program, Washington's position is said to be complicated by disquiet about Iraqi policy within the US military and Congress, where it is argued that tougher measures, including efforts to topple Saddam, are needed.

Pentagon officials are reportedly pressing for an intensification of the allied air campaign, in which US and British pilots have fired 1,100 missiles at 359 targets over the past eight months.

At the same time, some members of Congress support the arming of Saddam's opponents.

A secret White House report to Congress voiced concern about "Iraq's long-established covert procurement activity."

Experts believe Iraq will try to acquire enriched plutonium from Russia for use in building nuclear weapons and have little confidence in the ability of Western intelligence agencies to detect this.

"They know how to hide their tracks," David Albright, a former nuclear inspector in Iraq and president of the independent Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, was quoted as saying. "Russia is a shopper's paradise for them." He believes it is possible that Iraq already has a nuclear weapon design, lacking only the "fissile material" - enriched uranium or plutonium - necessary for building a bomb. With such material, he and other experts believe Iraq could produce nuclear weapons within two to 12 months.

Judith Yaphe, an Iraqi expert at the National Defense University in Washington, was quoted as warning that electronic intelligence-gathering over Iraq by the CIA could shed little light on the problem.

European Union member-states are deeply divided on the issue. A joint British-Dutch initiative would reimpose robust weapons inspections and continue economic sanctions until Iraq has complied on disarmament.

France, however, with an eye on post-sanctions trade opportunities, is suggesting a series of rewards for Iraq as it complies with UN demands, including a gradual easing of restrictions on sales of Iraqi oil.

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Filed at 6:07 a.m. EDT, By The Associated Press, September 8, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Deaths.html

LONDON (AP) -- Alan Clark, a maverick Conservative Party legislator who blew the whistle on British arms sales to Iraq, flaunted his philandering and flirted with Margaret Thatcher, died Sunday at age 71.

His 1993 political diaries hit the bestseller list packed with unflattering descriptions of political colleagues, betrayals and Clark's serial extramarital affairs. They included tales of addressing the House of Commons while ``not entirely sober,'' and of brushes with the one woman to whom he appeared faithful -- the prime minister.

In 1992, during the trial of three British executives charged with illegally exporting defense-related equipment to Iraq, Clark nonchalantly announced that he had encouraged the sales. The executives were acquitted and the government sharply criticized in a judicial inquiry.

Retiring once from politics in 1992, he made a successful comeback five years later. Nearly 70, Clark secured the nomination for London's Chelsea and Kensington district. He returned to the Commons in May 1997 elections in which the Conservatives lost power to the Labor Party.