------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
A Post-Cold-War Look at the Arms Race
British government gives go-ahead nuclear reprocessing
Study Looks at Gulf War Vets' Children
High-risk Radiation
Committed to Telling the Toxic Truth
Russia fires rage, no threat to radioactive dump
Mock terrorists breached security at weapons plants
US House panel backs renewal of nuclear plant law
House lawmakers OK nuclear plant security measures
Protesters disrupt hearing on Yucca Mountain repository
U.S. Pressed on Nuclear Response
The Challenges of Alliance With Russia

MILITARY
Who Will Rule in Kabul?
World's doctors warn of germ warfare risk
Money Short for Battle on Chemicals Used in War
Most Afghan Opium Grown in Rebel-Controlled Areas
Georgia Offers Airfields for War Against Terrorism
Israel harshly critical of U.S.
U.S. support for Palestinian state angers Sharon
NATO Allies Offer Help For U.S. Military Action
Flares Fired at Helicopter Off Vieques
Review of Military's Domestic Role Urged
ARMY WILL REVIEW IMPACTS OF HAWAII TRAINING

ENERGY AND OTHER
Ga. high court strikes down use of electric chair
Abandoned Anthrax Dump Site Sitting Unguarded
Report Warns AIDS Could Become Epidemic in Asia
Army of Afghan Refugees Could Spread a Deadly Virus
AINA: ASSYRIANS ARE CHRISTIANS -- AND NOT ARABS
Pakistan Readies Forbidding Moonscape for 10,000 Afghans

POLICE / PRISONERS
FBI, CIA Warn Congress of More Attacks
America accuses Cuba expert of spying for Castro

ACTIVISTS
Groups Plan Vigils and Rallies to Urge Alternatives to War
Protesters arrested at Dutch chemical plant
AFSC and a Coalition of other peace groups
Invitation to Join First Committee List
Comic relief: A solution to this problem...



-------- NUCLEAR

MOVIE REVIEW | 'STOCKPILE'
A Post-Cold-War Look at the Arms Race

New York Times
October 5, 2001
By DAVE KEHR
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/05/movies/05STOC.html?searchpv=nytToday

Made for the Discovery Channel, where it will be broadcast on next Friday, Stephen Trombley's "Stockpile: The New Nuclear Menace" has the stolid, stentorian tone of a 1950's educational film. That's appropriate in a way, because the film is about the dangers that continue to be posed by the arms race of the 50's and 60's, even now, 10 years after the ostensible end of the cold war.

The film is narrated by Martin Sheen, who, though he never appears on screen, gives the powerful impression that he is wearing a white lab coat and a pair of thick, horn-rimmed glasses. It is Mr. Sheen's job to bridge over the very wide and very uneven range of material assembled by Mr. Trombley, who wrote and directed the film. Mostly Mr. Sheen reels off figures that are individually stunning (it now costs $4.8 billion a year to maintain the worldwide stockpile of nuclear material), but, as figures tend to be, collectively numbing.

The most interesting film comes from Mr. Trombley's visit to Arzamos-16, the once-secret Russian city east of Moscow that was the Soviet Union's equivalent of Los Alamos. Leading the first film crew to have access to the site, Mr. Trombley captures a crumbling palace once populated by the nuclear scientists who were the pampered royalty of the Soviet regime and now haunted by their underpaid, underappreciated and underfinanced descendants. The job now is not to design new weapons but to find a way to guarantee the functionality of the aging warheads that continue to exist, some still pointed toward the strategic targets they have menaced since the 1950's.

This delicate job of testing and assurance must be performed, both by the scientists of Arzamos-16 and our own experts in Los Alamos, without resorting to underground nuclear tests, which have been banned since 1990. This means developing new equipment that uses pulsed power technology to create and measure miniature nuclear blasts, a procedure described in minute detail by the scientists, Russian and American, who helped invent it. The paradox, as Mr. Trombley repeatedly emphasizes, is that the two former enemy countries now work hand in hand to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons.

"Stockpile" is earnest, informative and more than a little bit dull. Mr. Trombley never seems to realize what a rich stock of characters he has in the eccentric savants he moves across the screen. If he had allowed one or two of his more colorful subjects to linger a while, he'd have had a much richer, more humane document. The picture opens today at the Pioneer Two Boots Theater (155 East Third Street, East Village).

Directed by Stephen Trombley. Not rated, 102 minutes.

-------- britain

British government gives go-ahead for controversial nuclear reprocessing

Environmental News Network
Friday, October 05, 2001
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/10/10052001/ap_45168.asp

LONDON - The government gave the go-ahead Wednesday for the start of operations at a controversial nuclear reprocessing plant.

Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett and Health Secretary Alan Milburn said work could begin on the manufacture of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel in the plant at the Sellafield nuclear site on the coast of Cumbria, northwest England.

Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace immediately attacked the decision, saying the transport of plutonium, which can be used to make weapons, was dangerous, especially at this time of increased concern about terrorism.

The Irish government, which has long been concerned about the operation of Sellafield just across the Irish Sea, said the British decision "defied logic in the current climate of international terrorist threats."

The MOX plant is intended to make fuel from plutonium and uranium separated from spent fuel that is processed mainly at the thermal oxide reprocessing plant also on the Sellafield site. The MOX plant was completed in 1996, but the commercial go-ahead was held up for financial reasons and because the operators of a MOX demonstration plant at the site admitted to falsifying records.

A report last year by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate also found management incompetence, complacency, and a "lack of safety culture" at Sellafield. The inspectorate said British Nuclear Fuels PLC, the state-owned company that operates Sellafield, regularly failed to perform safety checks on sample rods. Instead, safety records were copied from previous checks.

British Nuclear Fuels admitted that a batch of uranium and plutonium mixed-oxide fuel rods that it sent to Japan had false records.

Announcing the decision to permit operation, the government said Wednesday that all relevant information had been considered, including comments received in response to five public consultations held since 1997. Beckett said "the wider risks and benefits involved," had both been considered.

Ireland, whose coast is approximately 150 miles (240 km) from Sellafield, has repeatedly expressed its concern about nuclear pollution.

"In the light of the events of Sept. 11 in America, I find it difficult to comprehend today's decision," said Joe Jacob, the Irish official with responsibility for nuclear safety. "It is a minimum expectation that countries with nuclear installations will now consider the full implications of the recent tragedies and the real and present danger in terms of safety and security."

Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth, said, "It beggars belief that the government can give the go-ahead to a process involving the use and transportation of plutonium that could be used to make weapons. Producing MOX at Sellafield will make the world a less safe place."

Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace in Britain, said, "Expanding the global trade in plutonium is dangerously irresponsible, especially at a time of huge global insecurity."


-------- depleted uranium

Study Looks at Gulf War Vets' Children

October 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Gulf-Birth-Defects.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The children of Gulf War veterans are two to three times as likely as those of other vets to have birth defects, suggests a government study based on questionnaires and interviews with the veterans.

Gulf vets reported more miscarriages, too.

The research, published in this month's Annals of Epidemiology, follows other studies that did not find evidence of greater risk of birth defects.

The latest study, conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Johns Hopkins University scientists, surveyed Gulf and non-Gulf veterans from all four service branches. Just under 21,000 active and retired military, reserve and National Guard members answered questionnaires about their health, reproductive outcomes, exposure to risk factors and other issues.

Many of the veterans who did not respond to the questionnaire were interviewed by telephone. About 70 percent of those who were sent questionnaires participated.

``Veterans are very concerned that they have a higher risk of bearing children with birth defects,'' said Dr. Han Kang, a Veterans Affairs epidemiologist and the lead researcher.

``There are two or three studies that tried to address that concern and did not find any evidence of that,'' Kang said, ``and now we are reporting at least a strong possibility of that happening.''

The Pentagon says an estimated 90,000 troops who served in the Gulf War complain of maladies including memory loss, anxiety, fatigue, nausea, balance problems and chronic muscle and joint pain. The ailments are known collectively as Gulf War Syndrome. Some veterans also worry that their war exposure harmed their reproductive health, making them more likely to have babies with serious birth defects.

Millions of dollars have been spent on government studies on the subject. A presidential panel in December concluded that none of the research has validated any specific cause and that more study is needed.

The earlier studies that found no unusual risk of birth problems among Gulf vets were based on reviews of hospital records. Critics say a weakness of the latest study is that it used veterans' opinions of their children's births rather than hospital data. Some suggest, for instance, that Gulf veterans, aware of publicity about Gulf War Syndrome, might be more likely to consider their children as having birth defects.

Kang and his colleagues said they don't believe the results were skewed this way, but are double-checking the veterans' reports against hospital records.

The Pentagon has cited the previous studies in maintaining that Gulf War service and birth defects are not linked. Kang's study is worth further investigation, a Pentagon official said, but he remained skeptical.

``If the risk of having a child with a birth defect was that much increased simply by having served in the Gulf War, I find it hard to believe that previous studies would have missed that,'' said Dr. Francis O'Donnell, an epidemiologist with the Pentagon's Office of Gulf War Illness, Medical Readiness and Military Deployments.

The study focused on first pregnancies that ended after June 30, 1991. The researchers analyzed information on miscarriages, stillbirths, pre-term delivery, birth defects and infant mortality.

Male Gulf War veterans reported having infants with likely birth defects at twice the rate of non-veterans. Female veterans were almost three times more likely to report children with birth defects than their non-Gulf counterparts.

Likely birth defects included webbed digits, heart murmurs, chromosomal abnormalities and brain tumors, while excluding what the researchers considered developmental disorders, perinatal complications and pediatric illnesses.

Similar differences were found when researchers narrowed the births to those that resulted in moderate to severe birth defects, described as those requiring possible surgery or chronic medical supervision.

Both male and female veterans were more likely to report miscarriages, but the increase was statistically significant only for male Gulf War veterans -- 1.62 times as many as non-Gulf War veterans.

The prevalence of stillbirth, pre-term delivery and infant mortality did not differ significantly between the two groups.

Dr. Donald Mattison, March of Dimes medical director, said more research should be done on environmental factors to try to understand the origin of the birth defects. And, he said, doctors should consider the potential link between Gulf War exposure and birth defects when offering reproductive counseling.

-------- india / pakistan

High-risk Radiation

THE TIMES OF INDIA -
OCTOBER 05, 2001 EDITORIAL
From: Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@mnet.fr>

Even by India's notoriously lax safety standards, the story carried in this newspaper about the Nuclear Fuel Complex in Hyderabad makes for chilling reading. Workers in high radiation zones within the plant get nothing more than masks and gloves when the very least requirement is protective body suits.

Inhaling uranium dust has deadly side-effects which explains why the life expectancy of those working in the complex is no more than 45 years. As if this were not enough, the workers also have to use acids and other corrosive chemicals as part of the maintenance of the plant.

In any other place, the publication of this story would have seen heads roll. Not so here. We have seen such exposes from time to time -- Jadugoda is an example, but such is the mystique and secrecy which surrounds our nuclear establishment that no one dares to demand corrective action.

The horror of Jadugoda has been documented extensively. Children in the 15 villages surrounding the uranium mines show signs of genetic mutation and over 60 per cent of the workers manning the tailing ponds are afflicted with serious ailments like bone, blood and kidney disorders, brain damage, cancer, paralysis, tuberculosis and nausea.

Not surprising considering that workers manually handle uranium slurry. Heart-rending pictures of deformed children have been carried in a number of periodicals and papers, but the management dismisses all this evidence as the fabrication of anti-development lobbies. Alarmist as this may sound, a Chernobyl is waiting to happen here. India is the only country in the world where nuclear facilities are located in densely populated areas. Some like Kalpakkam and Rawatbhatta have inadequate cooling systems.

There have been major lapses in safety at Tarapur and Narora, yet they continue functioning, endangering both the workers and those living in the vicinity.

Far from it, our nuclear pundits will insist that a Chernobyl can never happen here. Their reasoning? Chernobyl was caused by human error and we Indians are apparently above such frailties. Such smugness is not seen even in the developed world which is much more conversant with nuclear technology.

Indeed, governments in these countries are mindful of public apprehensions about nuclear safety and all information regarding these issues is available. An active public is able to ensure that their lives are not put in danger by arbitrary actions by the government.

Unfortunately, in India, nuclear issues are treated as something quite out of the purview of the ordinary citizen and which can only be comprehended by a select group. This is precisely why the public has been so passive about the risks of compromising nuclear safety. Even now, it is not too late to admit that there are many gaping failures in our nuclear programme and try and plug them. Faulty reactors ought to be shut down and refurbished before being commissioned again.

The kind of medical horror being visited on innocent people by a lax nuclear establishment ought to prompt the National Human Rights Commission to take up this issue.

At the very least, the victims must be compensated for the irreversible damage they have suffered. In this, a vigilant press must play a role and ensure that this issue does not fade out of public view until justice is done.

-------- russia

Committed to Telling the Toxic Truth

By Russell Working
Friday, Oct. 5, 2001.
Moscow Times
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/10/05/101.html

Four years ago, navy Captain Grigory Pasko -- then a military journalist -- was jailed on charges of high treason for allegedly selling state secrets to Japan, primarily concerning Russia's disposal of nuclear waste. Pasko, who was a stringer for Japanese news station NHK, had filmed the dumping of liquid radioactive waste in the Sea of Japan and documented other environmental hazards created by the Pacific Fleet.

The charges against Pasko remained secret, but those leaked to the press by Pasko's supporters bordered on the ludicrous. He was accused, for example, of illegally covering a meeting at which top brass planned a military training exercise -- despite the fact that he had been specifically invited to cover the meeting for Boyevaya Vakhta, the Pacific Fleet newspaper. Amnesty International adopted Pasko as a prisoner of conscience, and a flood of letters arrived defending him as a second Alexander Nikitin, another former navy captain who was tried repeatedly for revealing environmental abuses by the Northern Fleet.

Last year after 20 months in jail, Pasko was acquitted of treason charges and convicted on a minor charge of unmilitary conduct. He was sentenced to time served and released. Both the Federal Security Service, or FSB, and Pasko sought to overturn the decision. The FSB wanted Pasko behind bars. Pasko wanted to clear his name. Pasko spoke with The Moscow Times in Vladivostok about the case against him, his fight for vindication, and the environmental problems facing Russia's Far East.

Q:Where does your case currently stand, and what verdict do you expect?

A: I suspect the appeal is two-thirds done. On Sept. 28 the court declared a one-month recess. On Nov. 29 the court will announce the results of its review of all the documents. Then both sides will present arguments. And finally, the court will announce a verdict.

Nov. 20 will mark four years since this whole thing started. Under the law, the court has no grounds for conviction. Our opponents are grasping at all sorts of charges. They're even trying to charge me under Article 283 -- divulging state secrets. It's nonsense. No crime has been committed. They leak information to the press, trying to convince the public that Pasko is a criminal. They failed to prove that I was a spy, so now they think any charge will do. Pasko must be convicted. But we think the verdict will be "not guilty." If not, we'll appeal to the international court in Strasbourg.

Q:Do you think that with the press distracted by the terrorist attacks on America and the possible war against Afghanistan, the FSB might feel freer to pressure the court for a guilty verdict?

A: In this country, anything can happen. But I'm ready. On May 25, I received word from Strasbourg that my case had been registered, and that the relevant documents were on file. The FSB knows about this, because all the mail I receive in Vladivostok is opened before it gets to me.

Q: It is said that since you no longer work for the Pacific Fleet, no one covers its environmental problems anymore. What dangers are people not hearing about?

A: I can't answer this concretely, because I have been out of the loop for four years. But judging from what Pacific Fleet officers tell me, and also from what I have learned during my closed military trial -- it was declared a "secret" proceeding only to prevent the public from learning about the lawlessness of the FSB and military officials in contaminated areas -- the biggest radiation threats in Primorye are the decommissioned nuclear submarines and nuclear waste storage sites. In the Far East nuclear submarines are located in two places: Krasheninnikova Bay in Kamchatka and near Sysoyeva Bay in Primorye. In these two spots there is potential for a disaster of enormous proportions.

But the environmentalists say we suffer most from the garbage dump at Gornostai Bay, and from the huge number of cars that poison the air. And they are right. The local government can't even cope with a relatively small problem like a garbage dump within Vladivostok city limits on the shore of Peter the Great Bay. How do you expect them to deal with decommissioned submarines?

Q: Have the authorities done anything right?

A: Yes, some things have been done. In Bolshoi Kamen, they built a floating plant to purify radioactive waste. The construction order was issued in 1992, but the plant only came online this year. Thanks to American aid, they have the capacity to store nuclear fuel at Sysoyeva Bay and to store ballistic missiles from the submarines before they are processed.

I suspect that the countries that might help solve these problems don't appreciate the truly horrific situation in our dangerous radioactive zones. And they don't know because Russia, following Soviet practice, classifies all information on nuclear waste storage.

Last year all the decommissioned submarines and storage facilities were handed over to the Atomic Energy Ministry. Now the Pacific Fleet bears no responsibility for them. The ministry created a government-owned company, Dalrao, to handle the subs and storage facilities. And they appointed a former military man, Rear Admiral [Nikolai] Lysenko, to run it. Lysenko has demonstrated a crude adherence to the government line. When he was asked in court what he knew about Article 7 of the Official Secrets Act [which stipulates that information about environmental dangers cannot be classified], he replied: "I don't need to know anything about that. The Defense Ministry issued a contrary decree, No. 075." Until someone charges officials like Lysenko with criminal concealment of information affecting public health, he and his ilk will never have any cause to shake up their petrified military mindset.

Q: Did you ever knowingly photocopy secret documents, as rumor has it?

A: I never broke the law. First of all, military journalists are so restricted in their work that they can't do anything without someone else's participation. It would be impossible to get hold of secret documents containing evidence of Soviet dumping of thousands of barrels of [the poisonous chemicals] lewisite and yperite without anyone's knowledge. I knew, however, that such documents existed, and that they contained the exact amounts dumped and geographic coordinates for the dumping sites. But I had no access to them.

Knowing that these documents existed, I exhausted every legal avenue demanding that they be declassified. And when I published articles about the environment I was protected by Article 7 of the Official Secrets Act. Many officers understood this and provided me with information. Strangely, after the articles came out, portions of this information were suddenly classified. Under Russian law, the FSB had no right to do this. They did so in order to build a criminal case against me.

Q: There was talk in navy circles that some of your sources were later punished for providing you with classified information.

A: That's nonsense. Fifty-three witnesses have been interrogated. None of my regular sources ever gave me classified documents. And none of them has been punished.

Q: If your cause hadn't been taken up by human rights groups and the international press, is it possible that the judge in your first trial would have ruled to keep you in jail instead of releasing you?

A: Had I been a Japanese spy, probably yes. The court received 24,000 letters from all over the world -- from Australia, America, all over Europe. If 48,000 letters had been delivered, but I had been guilty, they wouldn't have helped. Faced with my clear innocence and 24,000 letters, the court still found me guilty of a bizarre charge that doesn't apply to my case.

When I talk to journalists from other countries, I always thank the people and organizations for their concern. For some reason, the biggest number of letters to the court and various government agencies came from Holland. So I thank all the countries that supported me -- we counted 98 of them -- and to the Dutch I bear a special debt of gratitude.

Q: What are you doing now, and how will your life change when this trial is finally over?

A:Currently, I am a correspondent for Novaya Gazeta and a co-founder of the Environment and Human Rights Coalition. I'm also head of the environmental committee of the Russian PEN Center. Those three jobs keep me busy enough that I don't think too much about the trial.

----

Russia fires rage, no threat to radioactive dump

Planet Ark RUSSIA:
October 5, 2001
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12681/story.htm

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia - Officials in Russia's far east said yesterday firefighters had stopped forest fires sweeping towards a radioactive waste dump, but said more smoke was heading towards the city of Khabarovsk.

"The most important victory is that we managed to localise and contain the fires which threatened the radioactive storage," Vladimir Zhuravlev, a duty officer in the regional Emergencies Ministry, told Reuters.

On Wednesday night, Russian television showed soldiers fighting to control flames near the waste dump.

Zhuravlev said fires were still raging elsewhere in the hot, dry weather and a change in wind direction was sending poisonous fumes towards Khabarovsk, close to the Chinese border.

Meteorologists have forecast a small amount of rain later yesterday, which officials say is vital to douse the flames.

Health officials have advised Khabarovsk's residents to wear face masks and hang wet sheets in their homes to counter the smoke, which is heavy with carbon monoxide.

But Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov was quoted by RIA news agency as saying there was no serious risk to civilians.

Khabarovsk's airport has been closed for three days, with flights redirected to Vladivostok and other nearby cities.

Earlier in the week, regional authorities said the fires, which have affected 48,000 hectares (118,600 acres) of land, were thought to have been caused by arson.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

Mock terrorists breached security at weapons plants

By Stephen J. Hedges and Jeff Zeleny
Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau
October 5, 2001
http://chicagotribune.com/news/chi-0110050267oct05.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed

WASHINGTON -- America's 10 nuclear weapons research and production facilities are vulnerable to terrorist attack and have failed about half of recent security drills, a non-government watchdog group has found.

U.S. Army and Navy commando teams penetrated the plants and obtained nuclear material during exercises designed to test security, according to the Project on Government Oversight report, being released Friday.

In a drill in October 2000 at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, "the mock terrorists gained control of sensitive nuclear material which, if detonated, would have endangered significant parts of New Mexico, Colorado and downwind areas," the report says.

In an earlier test at the same lab, an Army Special Forces team used a household garden cart to haul away enough weapons-grade uranium to build several nuclear weapons.

In another test at the Rocky Flats site near Denver, Navy SEALs cut a hole in a chain link fence as they escaped with enough plutonium for several nuclear bombs. They were discovered only as they left the facility.

Government security rules require the nuclear facilities to defend themselves against the theft of nuclear materials by terrorists or through sabotage.

A spokeswoman at the National Nuclear Security Administration, a branch of the Energy Department, declined Thursday to comment on the report.

The report is based on information provided by 12 whistle-blowers, according to Danielle Brian, the non-government watchdog group's director, as well as declassified Energy Department material that describes the security exercises.

The repeated security breaches are cause for serious concern, Brian said, because Energy Department employees were warned before each security exercise but still failed to stop would-be terrorists in more than half of the drills.

"These are tests where the security forces are necessarily dumbed-down so that they know the tests are coming," Brian said. "They are very restrictive tests [but] they're still losing half of the time.

"No one thought it really mattered, until two weeks ago," Brian added.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon have raised alarms about security concerns, from local community responses to chemical and biological weapons to the security at nuclear power plants.

Nine of the weapons facilities are within 100 miles of cities with more than 75,000 people. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is near the San Francisco metropolitan area, which has more than 7 million people. The Rocky Flats site is near Denver, home to 2.6 million people.

Eight of the 10 weapons plants contained a total of 33.5 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium. Experts say it takes only a few pounds of plutonium to craft a nuclear bomb.

The study has drawn the attention of the House Reform Committee, which has launched its own review of security measure at the nuclear weapons plants.

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), chairman of a national security subcommittee in the House, declined to discuss the report. But he issued a statement indicating he was "deeply troubled" that the nuclear facilities failed security tests even though they had been alerted in advance.

"We want to know what DOE is doing to resolve this deficiency, both in the short term and in the long term," Shays' statement said.

Security tests at the nuclear weapons facilities are simulated on computers and run as drills between an invading terrorist force and the plant's security team. Participants strap on devices similar to those from a laser tag game.

When someone is "killed" by an opposing force, they must lie down and end their participation in the exercise.

----

US House panel backs renewal of nuclear plant law

Planeet Ark
USA: October 5, 2001
Story by Chris Baltimore
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12660/story.htm

WASHINGTON - Members of a House energy subcommittee yesterday voted to renew a federal law that insures U.S. nuclear power plants from huge legal damages in a major accident.

The U.S. nuclear power industry says the measure, set to expire in August 2002, is crucial before any new plants can be built.

The Price-Anderson law obligates the federal government to accept insurance liability to shield U.S. nuclear power plant owners from up to $9.4 billion in liability in the event of an accident.

"Given Price-Anderson's necessary role in the development of the nuclear power industry, it is important to get this done in advance of the ... expiration date," said Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin, chairman of the full energy committee.

A House energy subcommittee, chaired by Texas Republican Joe Barton, approved legislation yesterday which would renew the law with few changes.

The bill now goes to the full committee, where it may face some criticism from Democrats who oppose a provision to shield Department of Energy contractors from liability for accidents.

The Democratic-controlled Senate has yet to draft a bill that would extend the law.

With Congress aiming to adjourn in late October, it is unclear whether the nuclear power measure will be addressed by both chambers this session.

The Bush administration's national energy plan emphasizes nuclear power as an important and clean energy source for the future, a view opposed by many environmental groups and some Democrats.

Key regulatory agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department have already backed a renewal of the law without any substantial changes.

Critics argue that no other U.S. industry receives such generous protection from financial risks.

No new nuclear plants have been built in the United States since the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant, where the failure of the plant's water cooling system led to the partial melting of a reactor's uranium core.

Nuclear power currently produces about 20 percent of all U.S. electricity.

--------

House lawmakers OK nuclear plant security measures

Planeet Ark
USA: October 5, 2001
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12666/story.htm

WASHINGTON - U.S. lawmakers this week approved legislative measures to protect the nation's nuclear energy facilities against potential attacks.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved by voice vote measures to require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to boost security at the nation's 103 working nuclear reactors to guard against a repeat of the deadly Sept. 11 attacks in Washington and New York.

The measures could be tacked onto an anti-terrorism legislative package now under consideration by other House panels, according to an aide to Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican.

"A successful terrorist assault on a nuclear power plant could result in a full-scale nuclear core meltdown ... that could result in countless more deaths and injuries," warned Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, who backed the amendments.

The measures would obligate the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to prepare contingency plans for nuclear installations.

If enacted, the bill would require NRC to reassess the threat of a coordinated suicide attack by 20 individuals "with a sophisticated knowledge of facility operations" using modern explosives and weaponry.

It would give the NRC 60 days to propose rules after consulting with the Defense Department, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, the newly proposed Homeland Security Agency and other state and federal groups.

Another approved measure boosts maximum penalties for sabotage crimes against nuclear facilities to $1 million from $10,000 and maximum prison terms to life without parole from a previous 10-year maximum.

Markey made two other related amendments which he withdrew after committee members pledged future discussion. The measures would authorize the President to dispatch military forces to guard and enforce no-fly zones over NRC-licensed facilities during national emergencies.

-------- nevada

Protesters disrupt hearing on Yucca Mountain repository

By MARTIN GRIFFITH
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, October 05, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Oct-05-Fri-2001/news/17157205.html

RENO -- About 75 demonstrators marched into a meeting room Thursday to protest the latest round of federal hearings on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.

Waving placards and chanting "no dump, no way," protesters entered the room during a short break of a U.S. Energy Department hearing on the proposed site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Protest organizer Bob Fulkerson of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada climbed atop a table near the speaker's podium and addressed the crowd.

"They (federal officials) haven't listened to us so far, so maybe they'll understand this," he said. "We give no credence to their sham hearings or their sham project. Dump your plan and not your waste."

Shortly after protesters erupted in cheers, the hearing resumed and demonstrators and others were allowed to testify.

Representatives of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn joined in the criticism.

They said the hearings shouldn't be conducted now because the DOE hasn't finalized an environmental impact statement on the dump.

Most people who testified also spoke out against the dump.

Paul Harrington, the lone DOE official to preside at the hearing, declined comment on the criticism.

The DOE has been studying Yucca Mountain to determine its suitability as a repository for the nation's high-level radioactive waste.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected in the next several months to make a recommendation on the site to President Bush.

"Whenever your back is against the wall, you utilize actions you kept as a final resort. I'm talking about civil disobedience and other acts," Fulkerson said.

John Hadder of Citizen Alert agreed opponents are ready to take their protests "to the next level."

"This whole thing is scandalous and immoral and unjust," he said. "We're hearing from people who are saying they're ready to get out there and block trucks."

-------- us nuc politics

U.S. Pressed on Nuclear Response
A Policy of Less Ambiguity, More Pointed Threat Is Urged

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 5, 2001; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8353-2001Oct4.html

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York have invigorated national security strategists inside and outside the government who favor using nuclear arms to deter and respond to chemical or biological attacks.

Conservatives outside the administration have been calling on the administration to make an explicit threat to use nuclear weapons to respond to a biological or chemical attack. This would change a long-standing U.S. policy of refusing to rule in or rule out use of nuclear weapons in the event of such an attack.

So far, at least, senior Bush administration officials have maintained this policy of deliberate ambiguity, though some administration figures appear to be sympathetic to a change that would entail a more specific threat.

A report issued in January by the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) declared that "U.S. nuclear weapons may be necessary" to deter regional powers from using weapons of mass destruction or for "providing unique targeting capabilities" including buried or biological weapons targets. "Under certain circumstances, very severe nuclear threats may be needed to deter any of these potential adversaries," it said.

Among the report's authors were Stephen Hadley, now President Bush's deputy national security adviser, Robert G. Joseph, the head of proliferation strategy at the National Security Council, and Stephen A. Cambone and William Schneider Jr., key Bush defense advisers.

Proponents said last month's attacks on New York and Washington affirm their views. "September 11 really underscores the need to look at a full range of flexible options," said David Smith, a defense consultant who was an author of the NIPP report. "What we were trying to get at there is we don't believe the current arsenal of the United States is persuasively deterrent to all comers."

Many Bush administration officials have endorsed the notion of switching to smaller nuclear arms that could be used for, among other things, hitting chemical and biological weapons sites and targeting figures, such as Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, who hide in deep underground bunkers.

A report in June 2000 by Stephen Younger, who has been named to head the Defense Department's Threat Reduction Agency, called for smaller nuclear weapons as part of a "fundamental rethinking of the role of nuclear weapons."

Though a shift in the arsenal would take years to implement, an early sign will be the Nuclear Posture Review underway in the Pentagon and due to Congress by year's end. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, during his confirmation hearing Sept. 13, said deterrence against weapons of mass destruction "is a critical component" of the review. He also pointed out that the military already has "a number of low-yield weapons in the current stockpile."

Another author of the NIPP study, Southwest Missouri State University's William R. Van Cleave, said the review will argue "that we need to regain some capability for some low-yield [nuclear] weapons and particularly earth-penetrating low-yield weapons." Van Cleave, whose colleague, J.D. Crouch, is now assistant undersecretary of defense for international security policy, said some Bush advisers "believe we have marginalized nuclear weapons too much. We have removed them from extended deterrence too much."

Among his friends in the administration, Van Cleave said, "there's a sentiment for the view the way I expressed it."

For the last decade or so, U.S. leaders have been deliberately ambiguous about using nuclear weapons to respond to a chemical and biological threat. Then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney said in December 1990 that "were Saddam Hussein foolish enough to use weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. response would be absolutely overwhelming and it would be devastating." Administration officials later said Cheney wasn't implying a nuclear threat.

Others defend the ambiguous nature of U.S. policy. "We've purposefully avoided drawing bright lines in the past about when we might use nuclear weapons," said a former senior Clinton administration official. "If we change that now, it would upset a lot of our core NATO allies, not to mention others in the coalition against terrorism we're trying to build."

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter declared that "the United States will not use nuclear weapons against any nonnuclear weapon state" that is party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, unless the United States or its interests are attacked "by such a state allied to a nuclear weapon state." According to the State Department, this declaration has been reaffirmed by every successive administration.

So far in the current crisis, top administration officials have continued the ambiguous wording of threats. Asked by Fox News on Sunday whether it would be reasonable for the United States to respond to a chemical or biological attack with nuclear weapons, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said: "I'm not going to talk about the operations that might be considered by the Defense Department and the president. But we're going to do everything we can to defend the United States."

A week earlier, on CBS News's "Face the Nation," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked if he had ruled out the use of nuclear weapons in the current conflict, replied that the country had never ruled out a first nuclear strike. "What we need to do, it seems to me, as a country, is to recognize how different this situation is, and then the traditional -- think of it, the deterrence that worked in the Cold War didn't work," he said.

Some arms control experts believe the Bush administration's statements so far already go beyond past administrations' ambiguity. "That is an implied threat," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. "They've crossed the line or they're at the line by implying the possible use."

Opponents said nuclear threats will encourage nuclear proliferation and worry friendly governments. "It would create its own crisis, fracture the alliance and have no military purpose," said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.

--------

The Challenges of Alliance With Russia

New York Times
October 5, 2001
By STEPHAN SESTENOVICH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/05/opinion/05SEST.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON -- Throughout the 1990's, any use of force by the United States sent President Boris Yeltsin of Russia into a red-faced fury. No matter the target, he would fulminate about Washington's arrogance, invoke Russia's nuclear might, even warn of World War III. Mr. Yeltsin's outbursts were brief but ferocious, and they reflected a widespread conviction among Russians that deep down, America's interests were different from theirs.

Now comes Vladimir Putin - by instinct and training a less likely friend of the United States than was Mr. Yeltsin - to offer support in our struggle against terrorism. His presence on President Bush's bandwagon is more than just a reversal of Russian policy on America's use of force. Mr. Putin, unlike his predecessor, seems to believe that there is a domestic consensus, or that he can create one, in favor of a broad rapprochement between Russia and the West.

This offers huge potential payoffs for American policy, and both sides should work hard to make it a reality. Mr. Putin showed his readiness to do so this week, in a statement that seemed to relax Russia's opposition to the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Bush administration is reciprocating with talk of speeding up Russia's admission to the World Trade Organization.

Yet a long-term Russian-American realignment will require more than such statements and the better atmosphere they create. It will demand realism about the risks and difficulties of cooperation on the very issue - terrorism - that seems to bring us together.

The most obvious problem is Moscow's appallingly brutal war in Chechnya. The administration has sought to narrow its differences with Russia on this issue, commending Mr. Putin's proposal for a political dialogue with the Chechen rebels and echoing his demand that they expel foreign "terrorists." (No one denies such fighters are there).

The desire to take the edge off Russian-American disagreements is understandable. We're embarked on a large struggle and need the support even of those we disagree with. Yet getting too close to Mr. Putin's Chechnya policy is far more dangerous than keeping our distance from it. If the United States is to win this new war, our coalition partners need to believe that the effort is not anti-Islamic, that we do not apply the terrorist label carelessly and that we will not target civilians indiscriminately.

Mr. Putin discredits us on every point. His generals, moreover, are pushing for a new offensive that, with its inevitable atrocities, will blacken his reputation further. We should not let them blacken ours as well.

Russia's war in Chechnya has been a magnet and a motivator for the very terrorists who threaten Americans worldwide. It has given them new battlefield experience, extra fund-raising appeal, fresh recruits and greater fervor - the same fervor they deploy against us.

Mr. Putin says he has been fighting our enemies, alone, for the past two years. But has he made them weaker or stronger? The United States needs allies who can help us succeed, not the advice of ones who have already shown how to fail.

If the first threat to Russian-American cooperation is Moscow's effort to cast the Chechens in the role of Osama bin Laden, the second is the attempt to cast neighboring Georgia in the role of the Taliban - that is, as the protector of terrorists. We have had many differences with the Russians over Georgia. Mr. Putin seems particularly to enjoy shocking American visitors with his open hatred of the Georgian president, Eduard Shevardnadze. But Moscow's attitude has rarely been more ominous than it is now.

Since Sept. 11, Russian officials have repeatedly demanded that Georgia close down what Russia considers terrorist bases on its territory. To make the message more menacing, Russian state television recently aired a respectful interview with Igor Giorgadze, long wanted in Georgia for trying to assassinate Mr. Shevardnadze.

No one disputes that of the several thousand Chechen refugees Georgia has accepted, some are armed fighters. The Georgian government has to do more to contain this problem. But, although weak and disorganized, it has already cooperated with the Russian army in policing the border, has invited foreign monitors into border areas and camps, and has launched periodic offensives to keep order among the refugees.

Russia's charge that Georgia is a Taliban-style haven for terrorists is preposterous. The danger it creates, however, cannot be ignored. When President Bush meets Mr. Shevardnadze today in Washington, he should leave no doubt about America's support for Georgia.

A third obstacle to lasting cooperation is the one on which many wartime alliances founder: postwar arrangements. When Mr. Putin chose not to try to keep his Central Asian neighbors from cooperating with the United States, he removed a major obstacle to a successful war effort. Yet in doing so, he is likely to have tried to assure skeptical advisers that his choice would not lead to a long-term American military presence in Central Asia.

Was he right? Before Sept. 11, it would have been easy to answer yes. American interest in the region has been increasing, but nothing suggested the need for deeper military involvement.

The cooperation now developing between the United States and Central Asian governments will change all this. Those that put themselves in the line of fire with us today will face the risk of retaliation and revenge tomorrow.

They will want a shield: maybe thin, or even invisible, but real. And they will not want to rely exclusively on the two countries - Russia and China - that may be quickest to offer their services. One Uzbek official said just this week, "We want a guarantee that America will not begin a conflict and then just leave us to deal with the consequences."

It is no longer honest to disclaim, or prudent to forswear, the possibility of some kind of American military presence in Central Asia lasting well beyond a round or two of antiterrorist operations. Remembering the damage done by our indifference to Afghanistan once it had driven out the Soviet army, the United States cannot easily walk away from this war when it is over. Russia, having thought of the region as its natural sphere of influence for 150 years, will not easily accept our staying. Moscow and Washington may not be able to come to grips with this issue yet, but when and how they take it up will say a great deal about the depth and durability of their rapprochement.

Stephen Sestanovich is senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of diplomacy at Columbia University.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Who Will Rule in Kabul?
Factions Struggle to Succeed Taliban

By Molly Moore and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 5, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8489-2001Oct4.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 4 -- A wide variety of Afghan and foreign factions, convinced that Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement will be dismantled by a U.S. military strike or mounting internal dissent, are embroiled in a struggle for places in a future government, according to officials involved in the process.

Consensus is growing that Afghanistan's 86-year-old former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, is likely to be the arbiter in assembling an interim government. Today, the latest in the daily pilgrimages to the exiled monarch's Rome villa brought a senior U.S. State Department official, Richard Haass, the highest-level contact by the Bush administration with the nascent regime-building process.

Even Pakistan, which helped create and finance the Taliban and is the only nation that recognizes it as Afghanistan's government, announced its support for giving the king a role in organizing a future Afghan government, along with the United Nations. Both the United States and Pakistan are eager to see an Afghan political structure ready to succeed the Taliban and save the country from a fresh descent into chaos.

But agreement forming around the king has fired rival ambitions among those who might vie for power within a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Former warlords, exiled tribal chiefs and opposition military commanders are engaged in an intense bidding war for credibility and influence, officials said.

"The wheeling and dealing stretches from the Afghan border to Rome," said one official monitoring the process, much of which is being conducted in the former king's villa in Italy. "Everyone is trying to stake a claim."

The prospect of wresting power from the Taliban, which has harbored accused terrorist Osama bin Laden and imposed a harsh form of Islam on Afghans, has united old enemies, divided longtime allies and hardened the battle lines between the religious politics of modern mullahs and the centuries-old traditions of a tribal society. In a country with internal fractures, bordered by nations with conflicting interests, and bombed and battered over the years by many of the same people now seeking to regain a share of power, common ground is elusive.

In the past week, momentum has increased for giving a leading voice to the former king, who was deposed in 1973 by a cousin after four decades of rule. Long a sentimental favorite among an older generation nostalgic for the relative peace and stability of his tenure, Zahir Shah is now being courted by warlords who disdained him and acclaimed by nations that have supported some of his worst Afghan enemies.

"It is obvious the only person who can bring the country together is the former king," said Khair Mohammad Khan, an influential Afghan tribal leader who, along with more than one-third of his tribal people, is a refugee in Pakistan itching to reclaim his territory near the northeastern Afghan city of Kunduz. "He is neutral and he doesn't belong to any warring faction."

Meanwhile, far from the intense but relatively civil negotiations in Rome, Taliban leaders and anti-Taliban forces are competing for the loyalty of key commanders and tribal officials in Afghanistan's strategic southern provinces, the heartland of the Taliban and the Pashtun ethnic group that dominates it.

On one side, exiled Afghan tribal leaders and former military commanders who oppose the Taliban are plotting ways to entice Taliban military officers to defect in return for a voice in a future government, authorities involved in the efforts said. On the other, Taliban leaders -- attempting to seal potential fissures in their ranks -- reportedly have offered greater authority to tribal leaders and war commanders in three provinces on Afghanistan's southern border with Pakistan.

The most widely supported proposal for establishing a new representative government in Afghanistan is to have the king call a loya jirga, or grand assembly -- a traditional gathering used to debate issues of national interest.

The king, most likely in conjunction with the United Nations, would play a critical role in determining who qualifies for a vote in the grand assembly, which could potentially call elections, name a leadership council or otherwise set the conditions for deciding who will control Afghanistan after the Taliban. As a result, today a seat in the loya jirga -- and thus the blessing of the former king -- is the most valuable commodity in the region.

"There can be no question of factions, no question of destroying the Afghan nation," said Hamid Karzai, who is one of the most outspoken of the exiled Afghan tribal leaders hoping to return to his homeland in a new role. "We have to have all Afghans on board."

Among the most vocal applicants are the commanders of the opposition group known as the Northern Alliance, composed of warlords who were battling one another as recently as five years ago. The warlords largely represent Afghan ethnic groups eager to regain territory, power and commerce lost in the Taliban's nearly complete takeover of the country. Most were members of a failed coalition government that tried to rule Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 but quickly collapsed into hostile factions that battled for control of Kabul, almost destroying the city.

Since the assassination of the Northern Alliance's most popular, charismatic and powerful commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, two days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the alliance's most prominent leader is Ismail Khan, 54, an ethnic Tajik who once controlled the important commercial hub of Herat in western Afghanistan. Afghans regard Khan as a war hero, and some international aid organizations praise him as a reliable ally. But others complain that before the Taliban drove him from Herat in 1993, he imposed oppressive social restrictions on his people. Khan, who joined the Northern Alliance forces last April, is eager to reclaim his territory and take a seat in the loya jirga.

Another well-known alliance commander is Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, 47, a stocky ethnic Uzbek who is infamous for shifting his allegiance to whoever accorded him the most power, whether the Soviet army or any of several Afghan guerrilla forces. Before the rise of the Taliban, he controlled the strategically important northern city of Mazar-e Sharif from his massive mud fortress. Driven from Mazar in 1997, he returned from exile in Turkey only recently to join his onetime adversaries in the Northern Alliance.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, Dostum has been ubiquitous in the Turkish media, attempting to raise his profile and credibility as a legitimate representative of a segment of the Afghan people. He has publicly asserted his desire to reclaim Mazar and its extraordinary tile mosque complex.

Also backing the creation of a grand assembly under the king's leadership is the Northern Alliance's political leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani, who is still recognized by the United Nations as president of the Afghan government overthrown by the Taliban in 1996.

In addition to representatives of major factions, the king has hosted numerous freelance Afghan exiles, all seeking coveted representation.

For example, Abdul Haq, an ethnic Pashtun who opposes the Taliban, last week abandoned his comfortable exile in Dubai at the prospect of the fall of the Taliban. He flew to the Pakistani border town of Peshawar, where he is trying to muster support among Afghan Pashtuns for a military uprising against the Taliban's supreme leader, Mohammed Omar. But Abdul Haq, one of the most successful guerrilla commanders during the resistance to Soviet occupation, didn't return to Peshawar without a stop at the king's villa.

While employing the king in organizing a post-Taliban regime has appealed to factions trying to return to power, it has been bitterly criticized by those in power. Taliban leaders have threatened to charge any Afghan who voices support for the king with treason, punishable by death.

And even among the exiled factions, backing for the king is not unanimous. "It's not possible for him to go back unless Afghanistan is occupied by U.S. troops," said Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, 53, a former Afghan warlord who has been living in Tehran the last five years since being evicted from Afghanistan by the Taliban.

Hekmatyar, one of main recipients of U.S. and Pakistani military assistance during the decade-long battle to expel Soviet troops from Afghanistan, was Afghan prime minister after the fall of a communist regime in 1992. But he broke with Rabbani and became one of the most ruthless of the warring commanders who fought for control of the country before the Taliban seized power.

Now, he has begun public discussions of his visions of Afghanistan's future. "I am for the Afghan problem to be solved by Afghans themselves, and I am against any attack of Afghanistan," said Hekmatyar. "I want the problem to be solved peacefully, with Afghans to have elections to decide their own future."

While most factions attempting to construct a new Afghan government publicly say moderates among the Taliban leadership might have a future role to play, one observer monitoring the process noted: "The Taliban have no claim on a single seat at the table. All the power rests with the supreme leader [Omar]. The ministers are totally irrelevant."

Pakistan's decision to back the king's role in government-building was a sharp setback for the Taliban. Pakistani officials had become increasingly frustrated in recent days by the refusal of the United States or United Nations to include them in discussions about the future of Afghanistan, according to Pakistani officials. Fearing that they might lose any voice in deciding who will rule the country on their western border, Pakistani authorities angered domestic Taliban supporters by endorsing the king's intervention in Afghanistan.

"Pakistan is beginning to treat the Taliban as a faction rather than a government," said an official familiar with the internal debates.

Some Afghans in exile who are trying to maneuver their way into a post-Taliban government make clear that their efforts are being driven not only by hopes for peace and stability, but by the prospect of large amounts of foreign aid for rebuilding the country.

"We would like you to send air attacks and money," said one tribal representative. "Just no ground troops."

Moore reported from Islamabad, Khan from Karachi, Pakistan. Correspondents John Ward Anderson in Tehran and Daniel Williams in Rome contributed to this report.

-------- biological weapons

World's doctors warn of germ warfare risk

SWITZERLAND: October 5, 2001
Story by Richard Waddington
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12680/story.htm

GENEVA - The World Medical Association warned yesterday that nations were not adequately equipped to deal with terrorist attacks using biological or chemical weapons.

The group, bringing together doctors' associations from 72 countries, said the threat posed by such weaponry demanded vigilance from all sectors - governments down to individual physicians.

"The WMA called on governments to acknowledge and act on the extreme danger of chemical and biological weapons," the association said in a statement issued at the start of a special three-day meeting of its governing council.

The WMA had been scheduled to hold its annual assembly in New Delhi but the gathering was called off in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks in the United States. A smaller council meeting was convened instead for the French town of Ferney-Voltaire, near the Swiss border.

Doctors said they were deeply concerned that any future attacks might involve the use of biological weapons that had the potential to be even more lethal than last month's assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Some 6,000 people died or are missing and presumed dead after pilots slammed planes into the landmarks in attacks which the United States says were orchestrated by Saudi-born Islamic militant Osama bin Laden.

The WMA said a programme of education for doctors and health workers was required in order to ensure they could quickly detect symptoms of a chemical or biological attack. The WMA also called for greater international cooperation between health services.

INSIDIOUS RISK

A WMA report presented at the meeting pointed out that any attack with biological weapons was likely to be insidious rather than instantly dramatic, with infections possibly spreading for days or even weeks until detected.

"The release of organisms causing smallpox, plague and anthrax could prove catastrophic in terms of the resulting illnesses and deaths, compounded by the panic such outbreaks would generate," it said.

"We have to increase our vigilance and improve coordination between military defence and medical areas," the president of the American Medical Association, Richard Corlin, told Reuters.

This was because the first sign that any biological attack had been carried out would probably come with the appearance of a just a few patients at a clinic.

"We need to ensure that we will be quick off the mark. In dealing with a biological weapon attack, the key is the speed of the response. This means quickly identifying that it has taken place," Corlin said.

"The level of readiness is only spotty. I don't think we have in place the systems needed," he added.

The WMA report noted that advances in biological and genetic research had made it easier for groups of would-be attackers to obtain weapons of germ warfare. It was also often difficult to tell the difference between programmes of legitimate medical research and weapons production, it added.

The United States briefly grounded crop-dusting planes following the New York and Washington attacks on fears they could be used to spread toxic chemicals or germs.

-------- chemical weapons

Money Short for Battle on Chemicals Used in War

New York Times
October 5, 2001
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/05/international/05HAGU.html

THE HAGUE, Sept. 30 - The head of the 143-nation group overseeing the elimination of chemical weapons has warned that it lacks the financial muscle it needs.

The group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, has managed to make less than half the inspections scheduled for this year - of chemical weapons stocks and of chemical factories - because the United States and several other countries have been late in paying their dues, the group's director general, José M. Bustani, said in an interview.

Mr. Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat, also said that in case of an attack by terrorists, he lacks the money to provide "a credible response team" of experts and equipment to cope with its aftermath.

The organization, based here, is charged with verifying a 1997 treaty that bans chemical weapons. Among its 500 employees are more than 200 inspectors, including experts in nerve gases and industrial chemicals that can be used for other than peaceful purposes. Officials say the group has been chronically underfinanced from the start.

Last week, at the first meeting of the group's executive council since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Mr. Bustani described "a looming real threat" of chemical terrorism. "Yet the time for waiting is over," he told the council. "What might have seemed appropriate and sufficient only a few months ago is simply inadequate in this new reality."

In a final statement, the 47-nation council called on countries to redouble their efforts to make sure that chemicals and chemical weapons were not diverted and that "no safe haven" should exist for "terrorists contemplating the use of chemical weapons."

In the interview, Mr. Bustani painted an even more sober reality.

The group is not in a position to produce any meaningful response on short notice in case of a chemical weapon attack, he said. A response team, he said, would require portable hospitals or buses equipped as clinics as well as specialized medical staff to deal with chemical burns. It would require decontamination equipment and access to cargo planes or other transport to move people and goods. "At the moment, all this is still theoretical, all we have is a list of phone numbers and money that would last less than 48 hours," he said. Such a team had to be built with other agencies, he said.

But even the organization's normal tasks are in jeopardy, Mr. Bustani said. Because of the shortage of money, he went on, only 42 of the 98 military inspections planned for this year have been carried out. "And military inspections are a priority," he said. At issue are the chemical weapons owned by the United States, Russia, India and South Korea. The storage sites where weapons are waiting for destruction, are subject to control.

As for the chemical industry, he continued, "we had planned 132 industry inspections this year, but we've carried out only 61 and we have no money to proceed."

Part of the problem, he said, is insufficient financial support by the 143 states who are parties to the treaty. "We requested $70 million for this year, and $60 million was approved, but we received so far only $54 million." In addition, nations pay toward the inspections of their plant, but these payments often lag, Mr. Bustani said. Russia and the United States have some of the biggest outstanding bills.

The United States, which has been criticized from different sides, has advanced the most in destroying chemical weapons. In a report earlier this year, the Monterey Institute of International Studies said the chemical weapons treaty had yet to fulfill its promise "in large part because of a lack of U.S. leadership," during the Clinton administration.

Mr. Bustani agreed, but said he hoped the United States would now play a more active role.

When the Senate ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, it invoked national security reasons and exempted the United States from certain inspections and tests, the only country to do so. In addition, diplomats said, the United States had provided a delayed and incomplete list of chemical factories to be inspected. "The exceptions Washington demands of course are very irritating," said one European diplomat, adding that Washington now needed its allies. "They will not tolerate such exceptions from others."

Not all important nations are part of the treaty. Countries with chemical industries that have not joined include Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Others, such as Israel and Libya have signed but not ratified, Mr. Bustani said.

He said the weapons destruction programs should be speeded up. Russia especially needs help to start destroying its vast depots of chemical agents, shells and warheads. "Chemical weapons are a threat at present, everyone agrees," he added.

-------- drug war

DRUGS
Most Afghan Opium Grown in Rebel-Controlled Areas

By BARRY MEIER
New York Times
October 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/05/international/asia/05DRUG.html

New data collected by the United Nations indicates that most opium grown in Afghanistan this year was in areas controlled by the Northern Alliance, a rebel group now being courted by the United States and its Western allies as a means to destabilizing and even toppling the ruling Taliban.

The United Nations study confirmed earlier findings by United Nations officials and United States narcotics experts that opium harvests in areas controlled by the Taliban - said by the United Nations to be about 90 percent of Afghanistan - have plummeted after a recent Taliban ban on the growing of opium poppies. Opium is used to produce heroin and other narcotics.

The new data, which United Nations officials expect to issue shortly, is coming to light as government officials in the United States and Europe have emphasized the role of the Taliban in purveying Afghan opium and heroin.

Yesterday, for example, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, in a paper that fixed responsibility for last month's terrorist attacks on the network headed by Osama bin Laden, noted that both Mr. bin Laden and the Taliban "jointly exploited the drugs trade."

United Nations narcotics experts have estimated that the Taliban have earned $10 million to $30 million a year from taxes levied on opium growers, while United States government officials more recently gave higher estimates of $40 million to $50 million. The extent of Northern Alliance earnings from opium cultivation is not clear, the United Nations experts said.

"There are no white hats over there," said an American official familiar with the Afghan heroin trade, commenting on the broad involvement in narcotics trafficking in the region as a whole. "If the U.S. tries to find someone whose hands are completely free on this they are going to have to go thousands of miles."

The new data was assembled by the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna.

In a telephone interview yesterday, Pino Arlacchi, the office's director, said that production of opium poppies in Afghanistan, a country that until recently had accounted for 71 percent of the world's supply, had plummeted by 91 percent this year.

Mr. Arlacchi said areas controlled by the Taliban accounted for virtually all those changes. By contrast, he said that opium production in those areas controlled by the Northern Alliance had continued largely unchanged.

The Northern Alliance controls a small part of northeastern Afghanistan along the border with Tajikistan, which is a major corridor for trafficking drugs that eventually end up in Western Europe.

That production, however, still represents a small fraction of previous Afghan levels.

Two American officials said government information confirmed the drastic cuts in opium growing in Taliban-controlled areas. But in separate interviews, they cautioned that the Taliban had large stockpiles of opium and heroin from record harvests in the years before the ban on cultivation.

"I don't believe that the trade in opium has dropped over there," said one of the officials. "While the Taliban eliminated the plants, we saw no indication that they eliminated the market."

About 10 percent of Afghan heroin makes its way to this country. The remainder is sold in Europe, Russia and the former Soviet republics.

For its part, Britain has been extremely hard hit and Mr. Blair, in a speech this week, accused the Taliban of controlling the "biggest drugs hoards" in the world.

Asked to comment yesterday on the United Nations data, a spokesman for Mr. Blair's office estimated that 90 percent of the heroin sold on British streets came from Afghanistan. "We are determined to stem the flow of these drugs into the U.K., working with our international partners to stamp this out," the spokesman said.

Mr. Arlacchi said that Ahmed Shah Massoud, the former leader of the Northern Alliance, had discussed his interest in curbing the opium trade. But Mr. Massoud, who was assassinated last month by men believed to be linked to Mr. bid Laden's network, said that it was impossible for him to control all members of his alliance, Mr. Arlacchi said.

-------- georgia

Georgia Offers Airfields for War Against Terrorism

October 5, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-georgia-usa.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said on Friday he would allow his country's airports to be used for a military strike as part of the U.S.-led war on terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

``Both of our countries will be using all means at our disposal to wage an effective fight against terrorism,'' Shevardnadze told reporters after meeting U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon.

``On my part I will include Georgia's airspace and if need be airfields and other infrastructure as well,'' he said. Georgia had previously said only that it would make its airspace available.

Georgia, a former Soviet republic on the east coast of the Black Sea and bordering America's NATO ally Turkey, could be a useful staging point for the U.S. military, which is building up a force in the region for a possible strike on Afghanistan.

Washington has demanded the Taliban leaders in Afghanistan hand over Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, who it says was behind the attacks by hijacked planes on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

Shevardnadze, who also held talks with President Bush at the White House on Friday, told reporters his country was poor and unlikely to be able to contribute troops to Washington's new war.

Both Wolfowitz and Shevardnadze said the United States military would be helping Georgia improve its own ability to battle guerrilla forces, but they declined to be specific.

Shevardnadze, who as former Soviet foreign minister ultimately urged the withdrawal of that country's troops from a bloody war in Afghanistan, said he and Bush were in ``absolute mutual understanding'' and offered his ``full cooperation and full solidarity.''

``I believe that the president of the United States does not need my counsel,'' he replied when asked if he had advised Bush and U.S. defense officials to avoid getting bogged down in a long military operation in rugged Afghanistan.

``The war against a nation's people cannot be won,'' he stressed in apparent agreement with Bush's vow not to make war on the people of Afghanistan while pressing the Taliban to give up bin Laden.

``For 11 years the Soviet Union fought against Afghanistan -- and I was part of the decision to withdraw,'' Shevardnadze said.

-------- israel

Israel harshly critical of U.S.

By Dan Ephron
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 5, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011005-34232014.htm

TEL AVIV - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon issued a harsh rebuke to the United States yesterday, accusing it of appeasing Palestinians in an attempt to draw Arab states into a global anti-terror coalition.

"Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense," Mr. Sharon said at an evening news conference, drawing a comparison between President Bush's policies and efforts by European countries to appease Adolf Hitler before World War II.

"I call on the Western democracies, and primarily the leader of the free world, the United States: Do not repeat the dreadful mistakes of 1938, when enlightened European democracies decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a convenient temporary solution," Mr. Sharon said. "Israel will not be Czechoslovakia. Israel will fight terrorism."

The prime minister's remarks came in the wake of yet another Palestinian strike against the Jewish state, when a gunman posing as an Israeli soldier went on a shooting rampage at a bus station in northern Israel, killing three persons.

The latest attack came just minutes after Israeli and Palestinian negotiators finished another round of truce talks.

Mr. Sharon's remarks were among the toughest in years directed by an Israeli leader at the United States, usually Israel's unwavering ally.

They appeared to reflect growing frustration here over Washington's unwillingness so far to lump violence by Palestinian groups with the terrorism perpetrated by Osama bin Laden and other radical Islamic organizations.

Washington has ratcheted up mediation efforts since the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, leading to a meeting last week between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat - the first meeting in months.

Mr. Sharon had blocked the meeting on two previous occasions, insisting on at least two days of quiet in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a precondition, but that demand was effectively squelched as the result of American prodding.

Although the Sept. 26 meeting did produce a cease-fire agreement, violence on the ground never stopped.

Palestinians have borne the brunt of the casualties - 21, compared with five Israelis, but Mr. Sharon said Palestinians had been the instigators of the violence.

That was the case yesterday in the northern town of Afula, where a Palestinian wearing an olive-colored Israeli army uniform got off a minibus at the central station and fired an automatic rifle into a crowd of Israelis.

One woman was killed instantly and two others died later of their wounds. Security guards and soldiers at the station shot the gunman dead. One of the soldiers said later that the man had been carrying an identity card Israel issues to Palestinians and appeared to be from the West Bank town of Jenin.

The attack came just minutes after senior Israeli and Palestinian officials completed an apparently fruitless meeting in an attempt to salvage the latest truce.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Israel Radio said the gunman was probably a member of the Islamic militant Hamas group, which has flouted the recent cease-fire and previous ones.

Saeb Erekat, a member of Mr. Arafat's administration and a top peace negotiator with the Israelis, said Palestinian security branches were trying to prevent attacks on the Jewish state, but Israeli soldiers were provoking militants.

"President Arafat does not have a magic wand to change things in a minute," Mr. Erekat said.

In the West Bank town of Hebron later, a frequent flash point for Arab-Israeli violence, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man and wounded three children, Palestinian witnesses said.

An Israeli army spokesman said the Palestinians were killed in an exchange of fire.

The latest casualties brought the death toll in the fighting to some 850, most of them Palestinians.

In Bethlehem, a mysterious explosion critically wounded an activist in Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction, in what Palestinians called an Israeli assassination attempt. The activist, 21-year-old Rami Kamel, lost a hand and suffered shrapnel wounds throughout his body.

Israel has killed more than 60 Palestinian activists or militants in targeted attacks since the start of fighting in the West Bank and Gaza more than a year ago.

Last week's cease-fire called for Israel to halt all offensive action, but Israeli radio reported yesterday that the army would resume the track-and-kill policy in the aftermath of a deadly Palestinian attack on a Jewish settlement in Gaza Tuesday.

"The Cabinet has, therefore, instructed our security forces to take all the necessary measures to give full security for the citizens of Israel. We can rely on ourselves only," Mr. Sharon said last night.

In another sign of escalating tension, Jewish settlers who took a wrong turn on their way home in the West Bank yesterday strayed into the Palestinian village of Jaljily, near Nablus, took several people hostage and barricaded themselves in a home, fearing they would be attacked by village residents.

Soldiers summoned to the village freed the Palestinians and escorted the settlers home.

--------

U.S. support for Palestinian state angers Sharon

USA TODAY
10/05/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/10/05/sharon-speech.htm

JERUSALEM (AP) - Ariel Sharon's blistering attack on U.S. policy - that Washington is selling out Israel to appease the Arabs - may have been surprising in its harshness but was not entirely unexpected. The Israeli leader is frustrated by Washington's apparent unwillingness to target anti-Israeli militant groups in the global campaign against terrorism. Sharon was also stung by this week's U.S. declaration of support for Palestinian statehood

Israeli Cabinet Minister Tsipi Livni said Friday that President Bush's endorsement of eventual Palestinian statehood was seen by Israel as a reward for Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians, coming as it did on the same day as a fatal Palestinian raid on a Jewish settlement.

"The message that the Arab world is getting now is that terror pays," said Livni, who acts as a spokeswoman for the government.

The Bush administration has been trying to win the support of Arab and Muslim states for a possible military strike against Islamic militants suspected of having carried out the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

As part of this campaign, the U.S.-led alliance has approached several hard-line Arab states, including Syria, a country listed by Washington as a sponsor of terrorism. Israel has protested vehemently, but with little success.

Israel has also been concerned that anti-Israeli militant groups, including Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinians' Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have not been named as targets of the emerging anti-terror coalition.

Sharon on Thursday angered Washington by likening U.S. Mideast policy to that of Britain and France in 1938 when they allowed Nazi Germany to take over part of Czechoslovakia in exchange for a promise of peace that was quickly broken.

"Do not try to placate the Arabs at Israel's expense. We are not Czechoslovakia," Sharon told a news conference.

Opposition lawmaker Ran Cohen said Sharon was acting irrationally.

"Israel, in Mideast terms, is a major power," he told Israeli television. "The United States is not acting against the state of Israel. The United States stands behind the state of Israel. Sharon's problem is that he is helpless. He promised peace and delivered hell."

Israel's mass circulation newspapers were quick to chide Sharon.

"This was an unfortunate statement, historically mistaken, politically damaging and factually incorrect and it deepens the sense of threat and strangulation that Israelis feel," wrote analyst Sever Plotzker in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily. "It weakens us and insults our friends."

Washington was indeed deeply insulted. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer called Sharon to pass on the administration's displeasure and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer publicly denounced Sharon's attitude.

"The prime minister's comments are unacceptable," he said. "The United States is not doing anything to try to appease the Arabs at Israel's expense."

Sharon's office on Friday issued a conciliatory statement saying that Sharon had called Secretary of State Colin Powell to reaffirm Israel's bonds with the United States.

"The prime minister requested to forward to the president his appreciation of the bold and courageous decision of the president to fight terrorism," it said. "Israel fully supports this position and cooperates with it."

Maariv newspaper's Hemi Shalev suggested Sharon had been burned out by the strain of a year of unrelenting fighting with the Palestinians, the shock waves still resounding from the attacks in the United States and the loss on Thursday of a Russian airliner carrying Israelis and Russian Jews to Siberia.

Shalev said Sharon needed to talk tough to deflect criticism from conservative supporters of his coalition government who see him as too soft in his dealings with the Palestinians.

"It sounds good on the Israeli right, where Sharon is rapidly losing stature and also to American Jews, whom Sharon will need if he is to persist in his collision course with the American administration," Shalev wrote.

Palestinians who have long complained about what they see as U.S. bias toward Israel appeared to take quiet pleasure from the tiff.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat spoke of the 25 Palestinians killed in fighting with Israelis since the two sides agreed to a truce on Sept. 26.

"It is very ironic for Sharon to speak about Czechoslovakia in 1938," he said. "I wonder, in this case, who's Hitler?"

-------- nato

NATO Allies Offer Help For U.S. Military Action
Airspace, Facilities Made Available

By William Drozdiak and Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 5, 2001; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8300-2001Oct4.html

BRUSSELS, Oct. 4 -- The NATO allies agreed today to give the United States unlimited use of their airspace and full access to their ports, airfields and refueling facilities as part of their contribution to any U.S. military response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

The allies also said they would stage a naval show of force in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and deploy airborne warning-and-control aircraft as a demonstration of their support for the U.S. fight against terrorism. They promised to give extra financial aid to countries that "are or may be subject to increased terrorist threats as a result of their support for the campaign."

NATO diplomats said it was important to assure such countries as Pakistan, Oman, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan that they will be rewarded for taking political and security risks in supporting any U.S. military retaliation.

In Tokyo, the government said it would provideup to $160 million in humanitarian aid for an expected flow of Afghan refugees into Pakistan and send military cargo planes to deliver supplies for the new arrivals. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will fly to Beijing and Seoul to assure former foes that the moves do not signal renewed Japanese militarism.

The 18 NATO allies consented to an eight-point wish list submitted by the United States on Wednesday after NATO made the unprecedented decision to invoke Article 5 of its founding treaty, which declares that an attack on one member shall be considered an attack against them all.

The rapid acceptance of the entire set of its requests was applauded by the United States. "This is a unique moment in the history of this alliance which demonstrates total support for the United States and the notion of collective self-defense, which has been NATO's core purpose for 52 years," said Nicholas Burns, U.S. ambassador to the alliance.

In addition to opening up their airspace and all of their military facilities, the allies agreed to share intelligence related to terrorist threats, to increase security for U.S. embassies and troops based on their territory and to fill any gaps in NATO defenses that might occur if the United States diverts planes, ships and troops to the Afghanistan region.

NATO military sources have suggested that the first strikes could come as early as next week. Defense planners said the arrival of Afghanistan's first snow of the season, which usually occurs by early November, would greatly complicate any military actions, suggesting the United States would want to launch the brunt of its attacks soon.

But French Defense Minister Alain Richard said today that many key decisions have not been made and any retaliatory strikes could be delayed by logistics for several weeks. "This is an action that will be very targeted, which is oriented toward objectives to destroy or control without touching the population," Richard said. "Everyone is going to prepare their own means that will be well-adapted for a joint effort. We aren't at the end of that."

Japan's aid package is a fourfold increase of its previous pledge to help Pakistan, and dovetails with President Bush's announcement today of a plan to give humanitarian aid to Afghans. The pledges of money and aircraft signal Japan's determination to play an active role in the coalition being organized by the United States.

Koizumi also announced quick trips to capitals of his Asian neighbors, a sign of how the diplomatic landscape has been changing. China and South Korea had resisted a visit from him, so as to show their displeasure with revisionist Japanese history textbooks and Koizumi's August visit to a shrine honoring Japanese war criminals.

The dispatch of C-130H cargo planes on Saturday to take blankets and tents to Pakistan is part of Koizumi's effort to involve the Japanese self-defense forces in rearguard support of any military action. Japan is constitutionally prohibited from taking part in combat or assisting countries that do.

China and South Korea, which were targets of Japan's wartime aggression, are wary of Koizumi's plans and suspicious of a prime minister who has talked of a greater role for the military. Koizumi has asked for legislation allowing the self-defense forces to use weapons and undertake more ambitious military support. The aid to Pakistan does not require new laws.

But criticism by Beijing and Seoul had been muted since the attacks in New York and Washington.

Japan's offer of aid for Pakistan was also an abrupt change of diplomatic course. Since the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998, Japan had frozen new economic aid to both countries. Japan pledged today to pay up to$120 million -- 20 percent of the target set by the United Nations for an expected flood of Afghan refugees. It previously announced about $40 million in aid to Pakistan, and today took steps to pay the first $35 million of that pledge.

Struck reported from Tokyo.

-------- puerto rico

Flares Fired at Helicopter Off Vieques

New York Times
October 5, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/05/national/05VIEQ.html

VIEQUES, P.R., Oct. 4 - The Navy said two small boats fired what appeared to be marine flares today at a helicopter that was part of training exercises on this Puerto Rican island.

Navy officials said they believed the flares had been fired by protesters who regularly campaign against Navy war games on Vieques.

The Navy, whose current round of exercises began 10 days ago and are scheduled to last two more weeks, said in a statement that the incident began when Navy and police boats, as well as a helicopter and a Coast Guard cutter, were dispatched to pursue two small boats in restricted waters off the island.

"As the helicopter approached, two flares were fired at the aircraft from the boats," the statement from the United States Naval Forces Southern Command said.

The boats fled when the Coast Guard cutter tried to intercept them, the statement said, adding that no injuries or damage was reported, and that the exercises were not interrupted.

The incident today coincided with a four-hour general strike and a protest march on the island. The protesters contend that the war games endanger the health of Vieques residents and damage the environment.

Until today, the protests in the current round of Navy exercises had been muted in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Navy has used Vieques for bombing practice for 60 years, but the Bush administration has announced plans to withdraw the Navy from the island by May 2003.

-------- u.s.

Review of Military's Domestic Role Urged

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 5, 2001; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8944-2001Oct4.html

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said yesterday that to enhance the nation's ability to counter terrorism, he strongly favors reviewing a legal doctrine that has kept the U.S. military from engaging in domestic law enforcement activities since 1878.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Wolfowitz said the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have made it possible for Americans to envision terrorist attacks -- particularly those involving chemical or biological weapons -- in which the military would have unique response capabilities.

Wolfowitz's comment came in response to a question from Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the committee's ranking Republican. Warner told Wolfowitz that he believes it is time to reexamine the legal doctrine of posse comitatus and asked the Pentagon's second-ranking official whether he agreed.

"I agree very strongly," Wolfowitz said. He added that it would be much better to determine in advance how the military would function under civilian control in the event of terrorist incident.

While much of the questioning involved the Pentagon's response to the Sept. 11 attacks and its new plans for homeland defense, Wolfowitz appeared before the committee to discuss the Quadrennial Defense Review, a congressionally mandated codification of military strategy, force requirements and organization.

The 71-page document, completed Monday after months of preparation, makes homeland defense the Pentagon's highest priority and embraces "transformational" new technologies in information warfare, intelligence and space.

In a critical revision, the document does away with the military's long-standing requirement to be able to win two major theater wars simultaneously. Under the new plan, the military is expected to win one major war decisively, meaning that it could occupy the enemy's capital, if necessary. At the same time, the military would be able to swiftly defeat a second adversary, engage in peacekeeping operations and invest in advanced defense technologies.

Wolfowitz said the document represents a "paradigm shift" in planning the nation's future fighting force, defining six key priorities for military transformation.

But the committee's chairman, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), criticized the document, calling it a "vision" statement that lacked specifics about how Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will proceed beginning with next year's budget.

While the document makes homeland defense the Pentagon's highest priority, Levin said, it lacks detail on "how the military will rearrange itself to prevent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and support civilian authorities in managing their deadly consequences."

One specific initiative favored by some transformation advocates inside the U.S. Air Force -- the purchase of more B-2 stealth bombers -- arose when Sen. Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.) asked whether the Pentagon is considering an expansion of the fleet.

Previously, top Air Force officials have said the answer is no. But Air Force Lt. Gen. Bruce A. Carlson, a top planner on the Pentagon's Joint Staff who appeared with Wolfowitz, said expanding the B-2 fleet "will be one of the options that the Air Force considers."

----

ARMY WILL REVIEW IMPACTS OF HAWAII TRAINING

October 5, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-05-09.html

OAHU, Hawaii, The U.S. Army has agreed to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement to address the existing and potential impacts of its live fire training at Makua Military Reservation (MMR) on Oahu, Hawaii.

The Makua Valley, site of the Army's live fire training (Photo courtesy Earthjustice)

Malama Makua, represented by Earthjustice, and the U.S. Army filed a settlement Thursday, concluding Malama Makua's three year effort to compel the Army to prepare a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) exploring risks to cultural and environmental resources on the reservation.

In recognition of the possible increased need for training as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the settlement allows the Army to conduct limited live fire training during the preparation of the EIS.

Highlights of the agreement are:

The Army will establish a $50,000 technical assistance fund to enable the Wai'anae Coast community to hire independent experts to evaluate the EIS studies.

To improve access to cultural sites and protect public safety, the Army will begin clearing unexploded ordnance from MMR.

The Army will move all explosives, grenades, mines, and artillery, anti-tank and mortar rounds to MMR by helicopter when feasible. All transport of ammunition by land will avoid peak traffic hours and times when children are traveling to and from school.

The Army will allow daytime public access to MMR for cultural purposes a minimum of two days a month, with the public permitted to camp at MMR for nighttime cultural observances a minimum of two times a year.

The Army will be allowed to carry out 16 company maneuver combined arms live fire exercises (CALFEXs) in the first year following settlement, nine CALFEXs in the second year, and, should the EIS not yet be complete, 12 CALFEXs in the third year. After the third year, no training would take place at MMR until the EIS is complete.

"Every settlement requires compromise, and both sides have come a long way to settle this case," said Earthjustice attorney David Henkin. "The Army has committed to preparing the comprehensive environmental impact statement the Wai'anae Coast community has been demanding for years and will take important, unprecedented steps to address community concerns about cultural access and the removal of unexploded ordnance."


-------- OTHER

-------- death penalty

Ga. high court strikes down use of electric chair

USA TODAY
10/05/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/10/05/ga-chair.htm

ATLANTA (AP) - Georgia's highest court struck down the state's use of the electric chair Friday, saying electrocution violates the state constitution's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

In a 4-3 decision, the court said that death by electrocution "inflicts purposeless physical violence and needless mutilation that makes no measurable contribution to accepted goals of punishment."

The ruling leaves just two states with the electric chair as the sole method of execution, Alabama and Nebraska. A few states that once relied exclusively on the chair now offer condemned inmates a choice of electrocution or lethal injection.

With the ruling, Georgia automatically switches to the use of lethal injection under a law passed last year to provide an alternate method of execution if the courts ruled electrocution illegal.

Mike Light, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said the death chamber at the state prison near Jackson about 40 miles south of Atlanta has been retrofitted for injection. "We are fully prepared to carry out the order of the courts."

The most recent count showed that 128 men and one woman are under death sentence in Georgia.

Some 441 people have been put to death in Georgia's electric chair since it replaced hanging in 1924.

The court said electrocution, "with its specter of excruciating pain and its certainty of cooked brains and blistered bodies, violates the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment."

Three justices signed a strongly written dissent that said Friday's ruling "reflects not the evolving standards of decency of the people of Georgia, but the evolving opinions of the majority members of this court."

The long-awaited decision was a victory for lawyers who three months ago used the graphic photograph of a recently electrocuted prisoner to support their arguments that the electric chair is inhumane.

"We do not need burning flesh, disfigurement, cooking of the brain, the smell of burning flesh at 145 degrees Centigrade," argued attorney Stephen Bright. "That might have been acceptable a few years ago ... but today the state has available lethal injection."

The state had countered that electrocution brought immediate unconsciousness. "There is no way a person being electrocuted is able to feel pain," said Susan Boleyn, a senior assistant state attorney general.

Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker said he had not fully analyzed the ruling but that it was difficult to appeal any Georgia Supreme Court ruling on state law to a higher court.

The Georgia court had signaled in a series of decisions it was increasingly troubled by electrocution.

A year ago, Justice Norman Fletcher, now the chief justice, noted in an opinion that some members had "grave concerns about the humaneness of electrocution." He said they were willing to confront the issue if presented with "sufficient" evidence.

Electrocution was the sole means of execution in Georgia from 1924 until last year, when the state Legislature ordered lethal injection for all persons convicted of crimes committed after May 1, 2000.

The law left electrocution on the books for those convicted of crimes before that date but stipulated a switch to lethal injection if the courts outlawed electrocution.

The law was passed amid fears the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down electrocution.

The state's most recent execution was June 9, 1998, when 39-year-old David Loomis Cargill was electrocuted for the armed robberies and murders of a Columbus couple in 1985.

After several grisly executions - one inmate bled from the nose and two had flames shoot from their heads - Florida switched to lethal injection last year to avert a U.S. Supreme Court review of whether electrocution was cruel and unusual punishment.

-------- health

Abandoned Anthrax Dump Site Sitting Unguarded

By André Picard,
Friday, October 5, 2001
the Toronto Globe & Mail
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1005-02.htm

The escalating fear that terrorists will turn next to biological weapons is focusing attention on an isolated island that harbors enough anthrax to wipe out the world's population.

Buried on Vozrozhdeniye Island, a former Soviet biological weapons test site, is tons of powdered anthrax, the deadliest bacteria on Earth. There are also lesser quantities of plague, typhus, smallpox and a host of other disease-causing organisms at the site.

The island is abandoned and unguarded.

Contaminants were enclosed in stainless-steel drums that were soaked in bleach and buried in sand two meters deep, but tests conducted in recent years showed that some of the anthrax spores are still alive.

The bacteria were manufactured as part of the Soviet biological weapons program, but dumped at the site in 1988. The United States made similar toxins until 1972, but destroyed its biological weapons.

The anthrax dump is one of the most troubling legacies of the Cold War, but the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have transformed the environmental-disaster-in-progress into a grave security threat.

Some bioterrorism experts feel that only a shovel and a little guile are required to gain access to huge quantities of deadly organisms.

But other scientists are skeptical, saying that digging up the anthrax, determining which spores are virulent, transporting them and disseminating them anew would be an extremely complex undertaking.

Vozrozhdeniye Island is located in the middle of the Aral Sea, about 1,300 kilometers east of Moscow. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the island has been shared by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, neither of which can afford to police the dump, nor pay for its cleanup.

Because of irrigation projects, the Aral Sea is drying up, and Vozrozhdeniye Island may soon be connected to the mainland, making the toxic site more accessible.

Anthrax is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. It is commonly found in wild and domestic herbivores such as cattle, sheep, goats, camels and antelopes, but can occur in humans when they are exposed to infected animals or tissue.

Anthrax is one of the most feared bioterrorist weapons because it is extremely deadly, easy to spread (particularly in aerosolized form) and hard to kill. It is also odorless and invisible.

The anthrax buried on Vozrozhdeniye Island is a pink powder that was designed specifically to infect humans. It is like a freeze-dried form of bacteria that is resistant to disinfectants, drought, heat and freezing. The powder was designed to be packed into a missile, or dropped from a plane like a bomb.

Anthrax spores, when they get into a person's lungs, proliferate quickly, creating thick froth that suffocates the victim. The disease can be treated with antibiotics if caught early, and is rarely spread from human to human.

Projections prepared by Health Canada underscore just how calamitous a bioterrorist attack with anthrax could be.

Using computer models, scientists at the Population and Public Health Branch calculated that releasing anthrax bacteria into the air of a city of 100,000 could result in 50,000 cases of anthrax, cause 32,875 deaths and cost $6.5-billion to contain.

But the risk may be more theoretical than real. In 1995, leaders of the apocalyptic Japanese cult Aum Shinri Kyo tried nine times to unleash an anthrax attack in the Tokyo subway, but failed. They finally released the nerve gas sarin, killing 12 people.

Meanwhile, a 63-year-old Florida man has been hospitalized with pulmonary anthrax, but officials say there is no indication the illness is related to bioterrorism.

----

Report Warns AIDS Could Become Epidemic in Asia

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 5, 2001; Page A30
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8335-2001Oct4.html

Many Asian countries are on the verge of a potentially explosive epidemic of AIDS, and in a few, notably Indonesia, China and Vietnam, the number of infections is already starting to rise steeply, a new report says.

Data gathered from dozens of sites throughout the continent have dashed the theory that much of Asia might mysteriously escape the epidemic, despite having all the variables that have permitted human immunodeficiency virus to spread to crippling levels elsewhere.

"No country is immune," said Karen Stanecki, chairman of Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic Network, an international consortium of epidemiologists, demographers and statisticians that released the report yesterday at a meeting in Australia.

Stanecki, who works for the U.S. Census Bureau, hastened to add that the network "doesn't want to be alarmist."

"We see a window of opportunity," she said. "The spread of HIV is not inevitable. It is imperative that countries not waste time but act now."

The urgency of the findings was echoed by Bernhard Schwartlander, a World Health Organization epidemiologist, who added that threatened Asian countries might do well to study the experience of two of their neighbors.

"In Thailand . . . [a prevention] program has prevented millions of HIV infections. Cambodia is another example," he said. "We encourage other countries to also become active in similar ways now in order to avoid something that could be a massive, massive epidemic in the future."

The report doesn't attempt to estimate each Asian nation's HIV prevalence, which the World Health Organization calculates biannually for every country in the world. Instead, it gathered data on specific risk groups in specific places to sketch a more detailed picture of the evolving epidemic in the region.

In most of Asia, HIV infection is still confined largely to populations known to be at high risk -- intravenous drug users, homosexual men and prostitutes of both sexes. All three groups have substantial interaction with each other and with some members of the wider, low-risk population.

However, despite those ingredients for the spread of HIV, Asia has lagged far behind the rest of the world in AIDS cases. The exceptions are three countries where the virus was introduced relatively early: Thailand (where 2.2 percent of adults were infected at the end of 1999); Cambodia (4 percent); and Burma (2 percent). Elsewhere, the prevalence is below 1 percent.

Indonesia is the classic example of country that seemed curiously immune to the AIDS epidemic. Since 1988, public health agencies in the huge nation have routinely tested a sample of prostitutes and found virtually no cases of HIV infection.

This puzzled many epidemiologists, given that prostitution was common in Indonesia; that between 30 percent and 50 percent of prostitutes had a venereal disease when tested; and that even in recent years, only about 12 percent reported using condoms regularly.

"Some even thought that perhaps there were factors in Indonesian society which would continue to protect the country against HIV indefinitely," the authors wrote. "Unfortunately, this proved not to be the case."

Since 1999, however, HIV prevalence in prostitutes has risen from 1 percent to 2 percent to up to 8 percent in several cities at both ends of the archipelago. At several sites in Jakarta, it was as high as 18 percent.

At the same time, the intravenous use of drugs has risen substantially in Indonesia and with it the prevalence of HIV infection among addicts. In a sample of drug users in Jakarta, 40 percent were infected. Among imprisoned addicts in Bali, the prevalence was 53 percent.

Vietnam has seen a similar rise in prostitution and intravenous drug use -- and with both, HIV infection. HIV prevalence among addicts in the port city of Haiphong has risen from near zero in 1997 to about 65 percent last year. In Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, prevalence in the same group rose from about 30 percent to about 50 percent during that period. In 1994, less than 1 percent of prostitutes carried the AIDS virus; now about 3.5 percent do.

There is also substantial mixing of the risk groups. In a recent survey in Hanoi, 20 percent of street-based (as opposed to brothel-based) prostitutes reported having recently injected drugs. That behavior is likely to further raise HIV prevalence among them and increase their customers' exposure to the disease.

China remains the biggest question mark. In three cities where prostitutes were tested, HIV prevalence in one, Guangxi, has risen from zero to 11 percent over the past five years. In the others it rose, but less steeply. Condoms are used less than 15 percent of the time, according to the surveys. Over the same period, the number of cases of treated venereal disease doubled, from 430,000 in 1997 to 860,000 last year.

Schwartlander speculated that the number of people living with HIV infection or AIDS in China may reach 1 million by the end of this year, up from 500,000 at the end of 1999.

Bangladesh and the Philippines resemble Indonesia in their active sex trades and low condom use. The Philippines also has a large overseas migrant population, which increases the risk of disease introduction.

Both countries have a chance to abort a runaway epidemic by instituting prevention measures, the authors wrote. The Philippines enacted a law in 1998 aimed at promoting AIDS education, counseling and testing.

India was discussed only briefly in the report. It had about 3.7 million infected people in 1999, or about 0.7 percent of adults. The epidemic there varies greatly by region, and is concentrated in the south.

--------

Army of Afghan Refugees Could Spread a Deadly Virus

New York Times
October 5, 2001
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/05/international/asia/05FEVE.html

QUETTA, Pakistan, Oct. 4 - A 40- year-old truck driver bled to death today four hours after arriving at a hospital in this frontier city, the 34th person killed by Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever here in 16 months.

The cases of the tick-borne virus have raised alarms because they have been traced to villages and towns along the road between Quetta and Kandahar, Afghanistan, the main population centers in the region. Medical experts warned that the limited treatment capacity in this province bordering Afghanistan would be overwhelmed if the disease was carried by even a fraction of the tens of thousands of Afghans expected to flee their country in the event of an American attack.

"We are very much scared," said Dr. Akhlaq Hussain, medical superintendent of Fatima Jinnah hospital, the only treatment center in a huge province with a population of 4.4 million. "We have capacity for 10 patients. We don't know how bad it is in Afghanistan or what the refugees will bring here," the doctor said.

The four fever patients at the hospital are confined to a spartan, ill- equipped isolation ward in a squat concrete building behind barred windows and barbed wire.

Infected clothing, bandages and bedding are burned in a rusty barrel outside the building because the hospital has no proper incinerator. Rather than the full protection suits and headgear common in Western hospitals, doctors and nurses wear only latex gloves, surgical masks and cloth boots.

Inside one of the dingy rooms this morning, 9-year-old Muhammad Ismail was lying motionless and silent on a white metal bed, curled in a fetal position. His nostrils were stuffed with cotton to slow the bleeding.

Dr. Hussain said the boy had a good chance of recovery because he had been brought to the hospital in time to receive antiviral drugs and blood transfusions.

Muhammad Lal, the truck driver, who made his living hauling sheep and goats, was not so lucky. He was taken to a clinic in his town near the Afghan border after he started bleeding on Tuesday, Dr. Hussain said. By the time relatives got him to Quetta at 3 a.m. today, he was bleeding too much to be saved, the doctor said. He died shortly after 7 a.m.

Mr. Lal was the latest fatality in an outbreak that started spiraling last June, said Dr. Hussain. While sporadic cases are common, he said, the recent numbers are higher than usual. There have been 63 cases in the last four months and 11 deaths.

Among the victims were 6-year- old and 7-year-old sisters and health workers who are susceptible to infection because of the shortage of protective clothing. A doctor who contracted the virus in Chaman on the Afghan border survived, but a colleague died.

The viral infection, which causes massive bleeding and organ failure, threatens to add another layer of misery to an impoverished region already suffering from drought, 22 years of war in Afghanistan and waves of refugees straining the resources of neighboring countries.

Refugees are particularly susceptible to Crimean-Congo fever because of primitive living conditions and an almost complete lack of access to medical care, experts said.

People become infected through contact with blood or other tissue from livestock infected through the bites of a button-sized tick. A majority of cases have occurred in people who work or live around livestock.

Anyone with an open cut or abraded skin can be infected by contact with blood, vomit, urine or other liquids from an infected animal or person, experts said.

"Squash a tick picked off a dog and if juice gets in a cut you've had it," said Dr. Robert R. Swanepoel, head of the special pathogens unit at the National Institute for Virology in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Fever, vomiting, aches and abdominal cramps show up within days of infection. The initial onset is followed rapidly by bleeding from pores and orifices and liver and kidney failure. About three in 10 people who contract the fever die.

The fever was first identified in 1944 among Soviet soldiers in the Crimea and the identical virus was found in Africa in 1955. It shares many characteristics with the more deadly Ebola virus. The Crimean- Congo fever cases in Quetta were confirmed through tests on blood samples sent to the virology institute in Johannesburg. Officials there cautioned that Pakistan faced a potentially serious problem if there was an influx of refugees.

"There is reason for great concern, without being alarmist," Dr. Swanepoel said in a telephone interview. "There is more exposure when people are living outdoors in the circumstances going on now in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The potential has always been there, but the situation is worse."

The type of tick that carries the virus, hyaloma marginata, most often attacks livestock, but Dr. Swanepoel said the ticks sometimes bite humans. "If people are sleeping outdoors, it is eminently possible to pick it up," he said.

When the caseload here rose sharply early this summer, Dr. Hussain said officials of the provincial government appealed to the World Health Organization, seeking about $1.5 million to expand the ward and buy essential equipment. So far, he said, the organization had not responded.

Ian Simpson, a spokesman for the health organization in Geneva, said he did not know about any request from Quetta. He said the agency was following the outbreak, but that the numbers were not uncommonly high.

Crimean-Congo fever is widespread in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, though the number of cases is usually far smaller than the number in Quetta.

Widespread outbreaks have been reported in Afghanistan. In 1998, 19 cases were reported and 12 people died. Experts said the death rate was higher than normal because of a near-absence of medical treatment and the difficulty in reaching hospitals from remote areas.

"The living in Afghanistan is very much miserable," Dr. Hussain said. "You cannot imagine. They don't have water. They don't have food. Diseases and infections are common."

-------- human rights

AINA: ASSYRIANS ARE CHRISTIANS -- AND NOT ARABS

Posted 10-5-2001 www.aina.org
From: Zoiritsa@aol.com

AINA - Following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Assyrians, including Chaldeans and Syriacs, have found themselves in the bitterly ironic position of having to defend the integrity of their identity against an erroneous association with the Arab identity by both misinformed Americans and a persistent fundamentalist Arabist ideology transplanted from the Middle East.

The horrific attacks against New York and Washington served as a painful reminder to Assyrians of the numerous massacres and genocides they have endured throughout the centuries. Assyrians throughout the U.S. lined up to donate blood and assistance to the victims of the attacks. Assyrian organizations officially and unequivocally condemned the attacks (AINA, 9-17-2001) and denounced the loss of life. Still, though, Assyrians have found themselves as victims of hate crimes presumably because of their Middle Eastern background and a mistaken identification with Arabs. Most notable of the hate crimes was the burning of St. John's Assyrian Church in Chicago on September 23rd, in a suspected arson attack (Chicago Tribune). Although no injuries were suffered in the early morning attack, over $200,000 damage was sustained. In a second incident, St. Mary's Assyrian Church of Roselle, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, received a thinly veiled threat in the form of a letter as! king "Are you with the U.S. or with the enemy?" Other Assyrian individuals and businesses have received threats as well.

Assyrians are not Arabs. Assyrians, including Chaldeans and Syriacs, are the indigenous Christian people of Mesopotamia and have a history, spanning seven thousand years, that predates the Arab conquest of the region (history of Assyrians). Assyrian civilization at one time incorporated the entire Middle East, most notably the area of the Fertile Crescent. The heartland of Assyria lies in present day northern Iraq, southeast Turkey, northeast Syria, and northwest Iran. Till today, significant indigenous populations of Assyrians reside in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Lebanon. Assyrians embraced Christianity in the first century A.D. and continued to do so throughout the Arab Muslim conquest. Assyrians are a Semitic people and speak Modern Assyrian, which some scholars refer to as neo-Syriac or neo-Aramaic. The parent language of Modern Assyrian, Aramaic, the language of Christ, was made the second official language of the Assyrian state in 752 B.C. and remained the l! ingua franca of the Middle East until 900 A.D.

Today, the Assyrian presence in the Middle East is under immense pressure. In the past 30 years, Assyrians have fled from their native lands in record numbers with more than 1.5 million having emigrated to over 30 different countries, mostly in the West. The predominant reason for this flight is because of Assyrian religious and ethnic distinctiveness vis-a-vis their Arab, Persian, Turkish or Kurdish neighbors. Because of these differences, Assyrians are severely discriminated against and are denied basic civil, human, and political rights. In most Middle Eastern countries, Assyrians are not even recognized as a people. In Turkey, Iraq, and Syria Assyrians are officially recognized only as a religious minority, either as "Turkish" or "Arab Christians." Even in the so-called UN protected "Safe Haven" of northern Iraq, Assyrians are referred to as "Christian Kurds." [1] In Iran, Assyrians have recently been semi-officially recognized as a people but only after more than ! 90% have emigrated over the past 30 years.

Having fled their native lands to escape these hardships and to live freely, Assyrians now find themselves in the unenviable position of having to defend their identity in the West not only from a misinformed American backlash, but also from the same fundamentalist Arabist ideology that drove them from the Middle East. In the U.S., the Arab American Institute (AAI) has continued the Arabist policy of denying Assyrian identity and claiming that Assyrians, including Chaldeans and Syriacs, are Arab Christian minorities -- despite angry community protests. In the October 1 issue of Time magazine, AAI was cited as the source for statistics that stated the "majority of Arab Americans are Christians" and that these include "Antiochian, Syrian, Greek, Coptic, Chaldean, and Assyrian Rites." The AAI's perpetuation of Arabist ideology represents an egregious, wilful, and deliberate mischaracterization of Assyrian identity. The official AAI website does not show Chaldean and Assyrian! Rite as Arab, as reported by Time.

AINA contacted AAI for clarification, and was informed that AAI had only recently changed this because of protests from Assyrians.

Perhaps the most infamous example of the hijacking of an identity is that of Khalil Gibran, the famous Lebanese writer, author of The Prophet. The American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC) has a web page dedicated to the ethnically Assyrian/Syriac, and religiously Roman Catholic, poet and writer. Khalil Gibran never stated that he was an Arab, and in his biography he is referred to as the "little Assyrian boy" [2]. Yet, ADC takes great pains to identify Gibran as an "Arab", ignoring his self-identification and his real ethnicity. The American Maronite Union sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell addressing this very same issue. [3]

In fact,