------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
UNEP investigating DU sites in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia
Depleted Uranium Toxicity in Afghanistan
US mulls neutralising Pak nuclear facilities
Pak denies passing on nuke materials to Laden
Bush Waives More Pakistani Sanctions
WATCHING THE WARHEADS
Russia Hints at Missile Talks
Neptunium exposure evidence ignored

MILITARY
Allies Defend Cluster Bombs
Saudi paper accuses U.S. of "mass annihilation"
Taliban Claim U.S. Using Chemical Weapons
Diplomats Met With Taliban on Bin Laden
Over Afghanistan, Gantlets in the Sky
Milosevic Claims Anti-Terror Defense
New Weapon Wielded In Cleanup of Anthrax
Anthrax preparation indicates home-grown origin
A Haven From Bioterrorism
Israelis Withdraw Forces in 2 Towns
Japanese Military Cleared For Role In Anti-Terror War
Pakistani Intelligence Had Links to Al Qaeda
Support grows for U.S. troops on ground
U.S. strikes over Kabul go awry, kill 13 civilians
U.S. Jets Expand Afghan Strikes
In this crisis, history offers Bush few lessons

OTHER
Country examines energy options for vehicles, power plants
CALIFORNIAN FINED FOR DUMPING HAZARDOUS WASTES
Toxin levels at New York's WTC often high
Key Climate Change Talks Start in Morocco
Group says Alliance guilty of past atrocities
Border will open to neediest refugees
Aid Agencies Prepare for 'Anarchy' in Afghanistan
U.S. Warns Afghans of Yellow Cluster Bomblets
Secret U.S. court handed new power to fight terror
Novel Security Measures
Political ad is uniformly embarrassing
Giuliani: FBI must share data with police
Busted in Munich
U.S. 'guard down' due to anthrax attacks
F.B.I. Issues a New Terrorism Warning
San Jose Emergency Plans Set Example

ACTIVISTS
December/January Calendar Submissions
Pakistan's Peaceniks
Deep Distrust of Government Still Simmers
Activists Clash With Police in Ark.
DIRECTION ACTION INCLUDES SOLVING THE PROBLEM
Come to Washington Nov. 17-18



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- depleted uranium

UNEP investigating DU sites in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia
Little uranium contamination: UN

Agence France Presse,
29oct01
From: uranium@t-online.de uranium@t-online.de

DEPLETED uranium (DU) shells used by NATO forces had not caused widespread contamination in Kosovo, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has said.

"There was no widespread contamination," said Pekka Haavisto, the leader of a UNEP team which tested 11 sites in the Yugoslav province bombed by NATO from March until June of 1999.

Haavisto said there were also no signs of contamination in the water system or the food chain.

He said NATO had used nine tonnes of depleted uranium munitions in its air campaign against Yugoslav forces, but that it was only in the summer of 2000 that the alliance indicated which sites had been targeted.

After finishing in Kosovo, the UN team is to test four sites in Serbia and Montenegro, which were hit by depleted uranium shells during the same campaign.

The tests are due to be completed by November 5 and the full report is due to be presented in February next year.

"Our mission is to investigate sites targeted by ammunition containing depleted uranium and, if there is a need, to recommend what has to be done," said Haavisto.

He said Bosnia, which was hit by three tonnes of depleted uranium NATO shells in 1994-1995, would also be tested.

Tank-piercing cannon rounds tipped with depleted uranium and fired by NATO warplanes against Serbian tanks had been cited as the possible cause of the so-called "Balkans syndrome" - an allegation that NATO and US officials deny.

Haavisto ruled out any link between a string of leukaemia cases involving NATO peacekeepers returning from missions in Kosovo and Bosnia, and the depleted uranium munitions.

"According to our information, there is no connection with depleted uranium," he said.

--------

Depleted Uranium Toxicity in Afghanistan

by Richard S. Ehrlich,
The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 5, No 44,
October 29, 2001
http://www.zolatimes.com/V5.44/afghan_uranium.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - American warplanes are attacking Afghanistan with depleted uranium weapons which could poison combatants and civilians, especially children, according to U.S. officials.

The possibility of radioactive dust storms sweeping across Afghanistan and polluting rivers has meanwhile sparked fears in Pakistan.

"The radioactive dust released by the impact of these weapons can easily get into the food chain and the water supply through the Kabul River in Afghanistan and thus into Pakistan's Indus [River]," reported Dawn newspaper.

"There are simply no contingency measures to brace people against such a disastrous humanitarian fallout," Dawn added.

The narrow Kabul River cuts through the center of the heavily bombed, mile-high Afghan capital and provides drinking water for the people who dwell there.

After meandering east along the highway past Jalalabad and other U.S. bomb targets, the Kabul River crosses into Pakistan and feeds the Indus River, the country's biggest waterway. The Indus provides much of the liquid nourishment to Pakistan's farms and people along its route south to the Arabian Sea.

Pakistani Dr. Ali Rind warned Dawn's readers: "All flying bombs - Tomahawk, JDAM etc. - are made of depleted uranium metal."

Many experts insist the dangers of depleted uranium are often exaggerated.

Dr. Michael H. Repacholi of the World Health Organization, however, said in a January report: "DU [deleted uranium] is released from fired weapons in the form of small particles that may be inhaled, ingested or remain in the environment."

Dr. Repacholi said, "For smaller particles, a larger fraction will deposit in the lungs, where they may remain for months or years, unless they dissolve. Very small amounts may be retained in the lymphatic system for longer."

He added, "Breathing ultra-fine particles could lead to a theoretical risk of cancer.

"In arid regions, most DU remains on the surface as dust. It is dispersed in [non-arid] soil more easily, particularly in the areas of higher rainfall."

Dr. Repacholi stressed, "Children rather than adults may be considered to be more at risk of DU exposure when returning to normal activities within a war zone through contaminated food and water, since typical hand-to-mouth activity of inquisitive play could lead to high DU ingestion from contaminated soil."

Depleted uranium is "used in several types of munitions, but primarily in two types: it's used in 120-millimeter tank rounds and it's used in 30-millimeter rounds fired by the A-10," Defense Department spokesperson Kenneth H. Bacon told a newsconference in January.

The dreaded A-10 "Wart Hog" is a so-called a "tank killing" aircraft.

Every 30-millimeter round it fires has a 0.3-kilogram, depleted uranium "penetrator" to bust through armor, according to military reports.

Depleted uranium is "primarily for anti-armor, and those are its main uses," Mr. Bacon said.

"We obviously put out instructions about avoiding depleted uranium dust," he added.

"Troops are instructed to wear masks if they're around what they consider to be atomized or particle-ized depleted uranium - that is if rounds have struck tanks, there could be depleted uranium dust around.

"So if they were working around an [enemy] tank that had been disabled by a depleted uranium round, they would be instructed to wear some sort of mask to prevent breathing in particles," Mr. Bacon said.

"All our studies show that in cases where there is dust, it [depleted uranium] is washed away and nullified by the first heavy rain.

"But there aren't a lot of heavy rains in the desert, so obviously, when we were advising our soldiers how to deal with depleted uranium damage, or damaged vehicles in the desert, we were careful to point out that they should wear masks."

Depleted uranium is described as uranium that is 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium, though it retains identical chemical properties.

Natural uranium is found in everyday air, water and soil and, as a result, is also in each person's body.

Depleted uranium, however, has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

In 1998, the Pentagon noted: "Depleted uranium is the most effective material for [military] uses because of its high density and the metallic properties that allow it to 'self-sharpen' as it penetrates armor.

"Armor containing depleted uranium is very effective at blunting anti-tank weapons," the Pentagon added.

"The major health concerns about DU relate to its chemical properties as a heavy metal rather than to its radioactivity, which is very low."

Shrapnel from a depleted uranium weapon's explosion can pepper a victim's body much like a shotgun blast.

If the shrapnel remains embedded in a person, then the radiation "isn't eliminated," an expert said at a Defense Department briefing.

"By accumulation, is the [radioactive] dose increasing with time? Yes, it is," the expert added.

Dr. Ross Anthony, from the Rand Corporation, told the Defense Department briefing, "The kidney is the part that is the most susceptible."

In experiments with animals, however, "there seem to be no real highly negative effects until you get a very, very high dose," Dr. Anthony said.

In 1999, Steve Fetter and Frank von Hippel wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: "Radiation doses for soldiers with embedded fragments of depleted uranium may be troublesome.

"Apart from radiation, however, the risks related to the heavy-metal toxicity of uranium inhaled and ingested by soldiers in direct and unprotected contact with vehicles struck with DU munitions could be significant.

"Primarily at risk are those who were in vehicles when they were struck, or their rescuers, as well as those who worked for extended periods in cleanup efforts inside the vehicles without adequate respiratory protection," they added.

"Very prolonged exposure to high concentrations of depleted uranium is required to give radiation doses significantly above [normal] background" levels.

"Pieces and particles of depleted uranium lying about would be sources of most of the external radiation dose, which would come primarily from penetrating gamma rays.

"Inhalation of DU-contaminated dust - either directly or after resuspension [in the air] - would be the source of most of the internal dose, which would be primarily from very short-range alpha particles."

Referring to desert dust storms, the bulletin said, "The ground the DU-contaminated plumes passed over would be coated with a thin layer of DU dust, some of which would be later kicked up by wind and human activity.

"The munitions could deposit a layer of [depleted uranium] dust on crops that could be eaten directly by humans or by animals later consumed by humans.

"However, rough estimates suggest that the cancer risk from consumption of contaminated produce would be less than from inhalation."

As a result of the U.S.-Gulf War, "the number of Iraqi soldiers with embedded DU fragments could be in the thousands," the bulletin said.

"Natural curiosity may also lead children and other passersby to investigate the interiors of destroyed tanks and other vehicles...which would subject them to danger from DU dust," it warned.

"Such vehicles should be made inaccessible, perhaps by being buried and then pumped full of concrete."

Critics have expressed concern over depleted uranium contamination on battlefields which do not receive environmental clean-ups.

Some critics claimed birth defects among babies born in Iraq after the Gulf War - including headless victims and others with deformed limbs - may be linked to the U.S. use of depleted uranium.

Richard S. Ehrlich lives in Bangkok, Thailand. His web page is located at http://members.tripod.com/ehrlich, and he may be reached by email at animists@yahoo.com.

-------- india / pakistan

US mulls neutralising Pak nuclear facilities

MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2001
THE TIMES OF INDIA
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=599419125

WASHINGTON: President George W Bush is consulting senior leaders on plans to neutralise Pakistan's nuclear capabilities if the Pervez Musharraf regime collapses, a senior US lawmaker has indicated.

Joe Biden, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, strongly hinted this at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Biden was asked about an article in The New York Times on the need to render Pakistani nuclear weapons ineffective if the Musharraf regime falls. The Democrat senator replied: "Those discussions are underway with the Democratic and Republican members of Congress and the president on setting those priorities."

There have been strong protests from fundamentalist groups in Pakistan against Musharraf's decision to back the US war against Afghanistan. This has given rise to questions about a threat to the military regime and the possibility of Pakistan's nuclear facilities falling into the hands of religious groups.

Biden said: "The question is, the president (Bush) has an internal dilemma he has to overcome first. He (Bush) is focusing on first things first, but then he has to deal with ...and I'm going to get in trouble for saying this... but he has to deal with what has not gone away. There is, for lack of a better phrase, still a Rumsfeld-Powell split on how they look at the world, and how they look at these very issues that you've stated here."

Biden indicated a split between Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell with the suggestion that Rumsfeld, a known hawk, supported such a plan in Pakistan while Powell opposed it.

Biden, who said he had been in close consultations with Bush, also set out his views on US relations with India and Pakistan. "I think there has to be a clear understanding, both in Delhi and Islamabad, that we are interested, we are looking and we are watching. Secondly, I think a message should be delivered very strongly to the Indians - do not attempt to take advantage of the circumstances at this moment, it's against your interests across the board."

But finally, he said, "we have to make clear to the Pakistanis that, notwithstanding the fact we need you very much right now, you are in a position where if you are going to continue to foment the terror that does exist in Kashmir, then you are operating against your own near-term interests, because that very viper can turn on you."

Pakistan on Friday dismissed as absurd British media reports that Osama bin Laden had obtained nuclear material from Islamabad. The Times newspaper and Channel Four television quoted Western intelligence sources as saying the Saudi-born dissident had obtained the material illegally from Pakistan, a nuclear capable country. A Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday that the allegation was absurd.

"Our nuclear materials are in very safe hands, these are absurd allegations," spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said. The Times and Channel Four said that bin Laden and his al Qaeda network of Islamic extremists, which operates out of neighbouring Afghanistan, did not have the technology to make a nuclear bomb.

Kashmir will become central to resolving tensions between India and Pakistan, he said. "The truth of the matter is, the whole world is looking at their problem now in Kashmir, not just us, the spotlight is on and the consequences for how they will be treated relative to all other nations in the world is very much up in the air right now, and they should be made constantly aware of how tenuous the circumstance is for both of them. In this case, particularly India, in my view, particularly India."

Replying to a question on relations with India after the US had been seen to be moving close to the country before September 11, Biden said: "I think that was then, and it's almost still that way now. And let me explain what I mean by that. "I may be mistaken, and I may be a bit cynical, but I think the initial `tilt' toward India was related to Beijing more than it was to Pakistan or anything else. And I think that the relationship with Beijing was going south very rapidly."

Biden said "there is a desire in the administration to actually, genuinely (have) better relations with India. I think it is an absolute essential element of American foreign policy that that be done. And part of that is simply engaging ... engaging them and treating them like what they are. They will not (in) too long be the largest, most populous nation in the world. They are a democracy, as flawed as you may think it is. They are someone with whom we should and must have a much, much, much better relationship and understanding."

The whole world has changed for India in recent years, Biden said. "It has changed not only when the wall came down, and when their protector evaporated, it changed now as the relationship with China begins to mature, and they're going to have some great difficulty internally figuring out how to deal with that.

"But we should be engaged at the highest level on a daily basis, literally with India. So I don't think the administration is jettisoning India, but I think they're beginning to look at India in a different way, not as cynically as just a card to have been played against Beijing." ( IANS )

--------

Pak denies passing on nuke materials to Laden

MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2001
THE TIMES OF INDIA
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1220978850

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday denied passing on any nuclear material to terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden and said two of its retired nuclear scientists were only questioned for alleged involvement with the charities established by them to help Afghan people.

Pakistan has an "impeccable" record in safeguarding the nuclear materials and technologies and media reports in this regard are born out of prejudice, foreign office spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan told reporters here.

"These are absurd allegations. Pakistan's nuclear materials are under multi-layer custodial controls. We have unilateral commitment to the international community and to ourselves that we will not transfer technology raw materials which are of sensitive nature, including nuclear materials, to any country, any entity, any one," he said.

"That commitment is longstanding. Our record in this regard is impeccable, considering that these sensitive technologies are with us for the last 15 years. I can only say these sinister allegations are motivated by prejudice. Nothing else," he said.

Khan also denied reports appearing in both domestic and international press that two of its scientists were detained to probe their close links with Bin Laden.

An earlier report however quoted President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman Maj Gen Rashid Qureshi as saying that the two scientists were detained and were being interrogated about whether they had ties with Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Qureshi said the two scientists had been charged with nothing and would probably be released within days.

But Khan told reporters that the retired nuclear scientists - Dr Bashiruddin Mehmood and Abdul Majeed - were not detained. "They have been questioned in connection with their association with charities established to help Afghan people."

Asked whether they had passed any nuclear secrets to Bin Laden, he said: "Absolutely not. Neither there was any suspicion nor were there any investigations being held against them in this regard."

He said they were questioned as part of investigations being launched by Pakistan to look into all the NGOs connected with Afghanistan.

Of the two nuclear scientists, Mehmood was retired after 35 years of work in Pakistan atomic energy corporation. Majeed retired as a former chief engineer at the corporation.

According to reports, the two scientists have established Ummah Reconstruction, an NGO to organise rehabilitation work in Afghanistan. Both reportedly had close links with the Taliban and Bin Laden.

Khan said the two nuclear scientists "are not detained. They are retired people. For many years they are living retired life.

"Some time ago they had formed NGO which is basically to help the Afghans with charity work projects in welfare area. We are looking into the credentials into all NGO working in Afghanistan. They have been questioned in connection with it. It is wrong to say that they were arrested or detained." ( PTI )

--------

Bush Waives More Pakistani Sanctions

October 29, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Pakistan-Sanctions.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush waived the last sanctions against Pakistan on Monday, clearing the way for a fresh infusion of financial aid to the key ally in the U.S.-led military campaign in neighboring Afghanistan.

Bush signed legislation that allows him to waive the sanctions through September 2003. The Clinton administration imposed the punishment after Gen. Pervez Musharraf took over Pakistan's government in a coup.

``What this does is gives the president the flexibility to authorize additional aid to Pakistan,'' said White House spokesman Sean McCormack.

Legislative action was needed to remove the last sanction, which barred all foreign aid to Pakistan. Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said earlier this month it would also facilitate transfer of excess U.S. defense articles to Pakistan.

Bush approved the measure Saturday, but the White House waited until Monday night to disclose the move.

Despite Pakistan's record on democracy and nuclear testing, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to curry favor with the country since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Anti-American and anti-government sentiment has swept across Pakistan since Oct. 7, when the United States began airstrikes on Afghan cities and suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden's installations in Afghanistan. Protests have been vehement and sometimes violent.

Last month Bush dropped sanctions that were imposed on Pakistan and India after those two countries tested nuclear weapons in 1998. The sanctions barred economic and military assistance.

The administration plans to announce as early as this week new aid that could range from $300 million to $500 million, administration officials have said. Bush has already committed $100 million in economic aid. The United States and Pakistan also recently rescheduled $379 million of Pakistan's debt of about $3 billion to this country.

Also Monday, the administration announced Bush will have dinner with Musharraf in New York next month during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly.

--------

WATCHING THE WARHEADS
The risks to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

The New Yorker
2001-10-29
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

The Bush Administration's hunt for Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network has evolved into a regional crisis that has put Pakistan's nuclear arsenal at risk, exacerbated the instability of the government of General Pervez Musharraf, and raised the possibility of a nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India. These unintended consequences of the President's decision to mount air and ground attacks on the Taliban government in Afghanistan have created a serious rift between our government's intelligence and diplomatic experts on South Asia and the decision-makers of the Bush Administration.

Musharraf's standing has become more precarious as the intense American air war produces greater numbers of civilian casualties, street demonstrations in Islamabad, Quetta, Peshawar, and elsewhere, and discontent within his own military. The Administration's top officials are known to view the threat to Musharraf as potentially dangerous but manageable. "I was worried initially," a senior military planner told me. "But Musharraf has done a good job. He's put the hard-liners in a box and locked it." The officer was referring to Musharraf's decision three weeks ago to force the resignation or reassignment of a group of Army and intelligence officers he considered untrustworthy. (Musharraf himself came to power in a coup against Pakistan's elected government, in 1999, with the help of those officers.) Similarly, a former high-level State Department official, who maintains close contact with events in Pakistan, said he understands that Musharraf has assured the Bush Administration that "only the most reliable military people remain in control of the arsenal, and if there's any real worry he'd disarm them. He does not want the crazies to precipitate a real war."

Nonetheless, in recent weeks an élite Pentagon undercover unit-trained to slip into foreign countries and find suspected nuclear weapons, and disarm them if necessary-has explored plans for an operation inside Pakistan. In 1998, Pakistan successfully tested a nuclear device, heralded as the Islamic world's first atomic bomb. According to United States government estimates, Pakistan now has at least twenty-four warheads, which can be delivered by intermediate-range missiles and a fleet of F-16 aircraft.

Some of the government's most experienced South Asia experts have doubts about Musharraf's ability to maintain control over the military and its nuclear arsenal in the event of a coup; there are also fears that a dissident group of fundamentalist officers might try to seize a warhead. The Army and the influential Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., have long-standing religious and personal ties to many of the leaders of the Taliban, dating back to Afghanistan's war against the Soviet Union in the nineteen-eighties, when Pakistan was the main conduit for American support.

One U.S. intelligence officer expressed particular alarm late last week over the questioning in Pakistan of two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists, who were reported by authorities to have connections to the Taliban. Both men, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudry Abdul Majid, had spent their careers at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, working on weapons-related projects. The intelligence officer, who is a specialist in nuclear proliferation in South Asia, depicted this latest revelation as "the tip of a very serious iceberg," and told me that it shows that pro-Taliban feelings extend beyond the Pakistani Army into the country's supposedly highly disciplined nuclear-weapons laboratories. Pakistan's nuclear researchers are known for their nationalism and their fierce patriotism. If two of the most senior scientists are found to have been involved in unsanctioned dealings with the Taliban, it would suggest that the lure of fundamentalism has, in some cases, overcome state loyalty. "They're retired, but they have friends on the inside," the intelligence officer said.

Musharraf and many of his newly appointed senior aides are muhajir-immigrants who fled to Pakistan from India after Partition, in 1947-but they are in charge of an Army that traditionally has been dominated by officers from the Punjab region. Even now, an estimated ninety per cent of the officers are Punjabi. "These things matter a lot," a retired Pakistani diplomat told me. "The Punjabi officers would be thinking that there's an earthquake or a revolution taking place. Is it because of the ethnic background of Musharraf? Don't write off the unhappiness within the Army."

The former diplomat also took issue with the Bush Administration's belief that Musharraf has resolved the loyalty issue by replacing top commanders with officers believed to be less ideological. "To remove the top two or three doesn't matter at all," he said. "The philosophy remains." The I.S.I., he added, is "a parallel government of its own. If you go through the officer list, almost all of the I.S.I. regulars would say, of the Taliban, 'They are my boys.' " With no sign that the Taliban leadership is weakening, Musharraf, under threat, is suspected by some officials in Washington and New Delhi of seeking to placate the fundamentalists by looking the other way during renewed terrorist attacks in the last month, allegedly sponsored by the I.S.I., on Indian targets in the disputed region of Kashmir. India and Pakistan have gone to war twice over Kashmir, which is dominated by India but has a mostly Muslim population, and it is a highly emotional issue for fundamentalists in the I.S.I. and the Taliban.

With the continued American bombing of the Taliban, the strategic risks are escalating. Our government is, in effect, working against itself as the air war in Afghanistan intensifies the political pressure on Musharraf-internally from the I.S.I., and externally from the street demonstrations against him, which are led by the fundamentalists. "Nobody's going to move against Musharraf unless there's an uprising in the streets," a second Pakistani diplomat told me. "How to prevent the uprising is to stop dropping bombs on civilian targets."

Critics of the Administration's policy emphasized in interviews that they viewed the war against the Taliban as just. The problem is that the bombing has not had the quick, decisive effect that military planners had hoped for. One senior Administration official told me last week that, despite the bombings and the efforts by C.I.A. operatives in the area to persuade Taliban commanders to defect, "People in my building wonder why there hasn't been a truly significant defection." In a subsequent interview, a former C.I.A. officer provided one reason for that failure. The agency, he said, had few or no people in the field who speak fluent Pashto, the language of the Taliban, and had been forced to rely on I.S.I. officers to communicate its offers to potential defectors. Thus, he said, "the same Pakistani case officers who built up the Taliban are doing the translating for the C.I.A. It's like using the Gottis to translate a conversation with the Lucheses." Another intelligence officer depicted the language situation in Afghanistan as "madness." He added, "Our biggest mistake is allowing the I.S.I. to be our eyes and ears."

It was a lack of operational security that, apparently, led to the death, late last week, of one of the most prominent operatives in the Taliban war. According to press reports, Abdul Haq, an Afghan guerrilla leader who was a hero in the war against the Soviets, had been ambushed and executed after a two-day standoff in eastern Afghanistan. Haq was said by the Taliban to have been on a mission for the United States, and to have been carrying large amounts of money-presumably to be used to induce Taliban commanders to defect. An Afghan press report subsequently quoted a Taliban spokesman who said that fifty of Haq's supporters, possibly including "foreigners," had also been surrounded.

Haq's death was a major setback to the American anti-Taliban effort and to Pakistan's hopes of forming a broad-based new government in Afghanistan. One of Haq's close friends, Kurt Lohbeck, a former stringer for CBS Television who covered the Afghan-Soviet war for years, acknowledged in a telephone interview that Haq, who prided himself on his independence, had been on a temporary assignment for the C.I.A. at the time of his death, although he "never worked with them, for them, or loved them." Lohbeck told me, "He had two or three top Taliban people who were willing to defect, and he was going in with C.I.A. support and money to get these guys." Instead, he was double-crossed by the Taliban. "I'm furious at the C.I.A.," Lohbeck said. "They didn't provide operational security."

As Osama bin Laden continued to elude the American forces, there was talk in the Pentagon and the White House last week of lowered expectations. A high-level former intelligence official talked about how the air attacks had "contained" bin Laden and the Taliban leadership, rather than about the prospect of actually capturing him. Bin Laden, one senior general told me, may not be dead, "but he's hiding in a cave at six thousand feet freezing his ass off." The former State Department official acknowledged that the air attacks thus far had not been a success and added, "What worries me is if, a month from now, bin Laden gets on Al-Jazeera and thumbs his nose at us. It'd be a huge loss of prestige for the United States."

The White House's Afghanistan dilemma, and the risks of its war, were clearly spelled out last week in a speech given by Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., a Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The President has not been as blunt as I'm going to be," Biden told a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. "Pakistan may very well, and Musharraf may, in fact, collapse. It may be gone. . . . If that were the case, we would find ourselves with a whole hell of a lot more forces in the region than we have now."

Biden asked rhetorically, "How much longer does the bombing continue? Because we're going to pay an escalating price in the Muslim world. We're going to pay an escalating price in the region. And that in fact is going to make the aftermath of our 'victory' more difficult. . . . I hope to God it ends sooner rather than later."

Biden also had these words for the Musharraf regime: "We have to make clear to the Pakistanis that, notwithstanding the fact that we need you very much right now . . . if you are going to continue to foment the terror that does exist in Kashmir, then you are operating against your own near-term interests, because that very viper can turn on you."

Biden came as close as any Democrat has come since September 11th to straightforward criticism of President Bush's war aims. The White House had no specific response, but Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, a Republican from Illinois, depicted Biden's public skepticism about the bombing as "completely irresponsible." In a statement, Hastert said that the "American people want us to bring these terrorists to justice. They do not want comments that may bring comfort to our enemies."

The crisis may bring into play the élite unit, operating under Pentagon control with C.I.A. assistance, whose mission it is to destroy nuclear facilities, past and present government officials told me. "They're good," one American said. "If they screw up, they die. They've had good success in proving the negative"-that is, in determining that suspected facilities were not nuclear-related.

The American team is apparently getting help from Israel's most successful special-operations unit, the storied Sayeret Matkal, also known as Unit 262, a deep-penetration unit that has been involved in assassinations, the theft of foreign signals-intelligence materials, and the theft and destruction of foreign nuclear weaponry. Sayeret Matkal's most memorable operation took place in June, 1976, when Lieutenant Colonel Jonathon Netanyahu, brother of the future Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, led a team that stormed a hijacked Air France airliner that was forced down by Palestinian terrorists at Entebbe International Airport, in Uganda, after taking off from Tel Aviv with two hundred and fifty-seven passengers. Jonathon Netanyahu was killed in the raid, along with two of the hostages, but the operation is still considered one of the most successful and audacious in modern history. Members of the Israeli unit arrived in the United States a few days after September 11th, an informed source said, and as of last week were training with American special-forces units at undisclosed locations.

In recent weeks, the Administration has been reviewing and "refreshing" its contingency plans. Such operations depend on intelligence, however, and there is disagreement within the Administration about the quality of the C.I.A.'s data. The American intelligence community cannot be sure, for example, that it knows the precise whereabouts of every Pakistani warhead-or whether all the warheads that it has found are real. "They've got some dummy locations," an official told me. "You only get one chance, and then you've tried and failed. The cat is out of the bag."

Some senior officials say they remain confident that the intelligence community can do its job, despite the efforts of the Pakistani Army to mask its nuclear arsenal. "We'd be challenged to manage the problem, but there is contingency planning for that possibility," one Bush military adviser told me last week. "We can't exclude the possibility that the Pakistanis could make it harder for us to act on what we know, but that's an operational detail. We're going to have to work harder to get to it quickly. We still have some good access."

A senior military officer, after confirming that intense planning for the possible "exfiltration" of Pakistani warheads was under way, said that he had been concerned not about a military coup but about a localized insurrection by a clique of I.S.I. officers in the field who had access to a nuclear storage facility. "The Pakistanis have just as much of a vested interest as we do in making sure that that stuff is looked after, because if they"-I.S.I. dissidents-"throw one at India, they're all cooked meat." He was referring to the certainty of Indian nuclear retaliation: India's nuclear warheads are more numerous, more sophisticated, and more powerful than Pakistan's; its Army is twice as large; and its population is more than seven times as large.

The skeptics among intelligence and military officials, however, worry that there may not be enough reliable information about the location of all elements of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. The C.I.A., they note, provided effective information on the warheads in the late nineteen-eighties and early nineties, when it worked closely with the Pakistani military in Afghanistan. At that time, the United States was a major supplier of arms and military technology to Pakistan. The agency recruited informants inside the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and the National Security Agency found a way to intercept the back-channel communications of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the German-educated metallurgist who had run Pakistan's nuclear laboratories since the nineteen-seventies and is known as the father of the Pakistani bomb. But those assets no longer exist.

"We lost our interest in that area, and we do not have the same level of contact or knowledge that we once did," a former high-level C.I.A. officer said. "Today, there is a whole set of information that, when it comes down to it, we don't have. We can't count warheads. We never had the capacity to count. What we did have was a capacity to produce unusual material"-on the general state of the Pakistani arsenal. "The idea that you know where the warheads are at any given moment is not right," he said. "As the operation approaches and the question 'How certain are you?' is asked, it becomes more difficult. The fact is, we usually know hours later. We never could do it in real time."

Other officials expressed concern about what any team sent to Pakistan could really accomplish without risking significant casualties. "How are you going to conduct a covert commando operation in the middle of the country?" the former high-level State Department official said. "We don't know where this stuff is, and it would take far more than a commando operation to get at it."

A government expert on Pakistan's nuclear capabilities depicted the issue in strategic terms: "The United States has to look at a new doctrine. Our nuclear strategy has to incorporate the fact that we might have a nuclear-armed fundamentalist government in Pakistan. Even if we know where the weapons are now, it doesn't mean we'll know where they are if the fundamentalists take over. And after Pakistan it could be Iran and Iraq. These are countries that support state terrorism." Intelligence officials told me they believe that, in case of an imminent threat, the Indian military's special commando unit is preparing to make its own move on the Pakistani arsenal.

Kashmir remains, as always, an issue that could spark a general war in South Asia. The territory, on the northern border of India, spanning the Himalayas, has been a subject of dispute since 1947, when Britain's withdrawal from the subcontinent led to the partition of the Raj into India and Pakistan. In 1949, a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations placed about two-thirds of Kashmir, whose population was seventy-five per cent Muslim, under the control of India, and gave nominal control of the remaining third to Pakistan. A U.N. resolution called for a plebiscite to allow the people of Kashmir to vote on their political fate, but India has not permitted the election to take place, insisting that Pakistan must first withdraw its troops. Pakistan refused to do so unless India also withdrew. Over the years, India has taken advantage of the impasse by increasing military and political control over its mandated area of Kashmir, infuriating the Muslims there.

The ancestral home of the late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Kashmir has a revered status for Indians, and many believe that their country needs to hold on to the Muslim region in order to maintain its identity as a secular nation. Pakistanis believe that Kashmir, because of the Muslim predominance, should have become part of their nation at Partition. For most Indians and Pakistanis, it is an issue beyond political compromise, and Pakistan has responded to India's insistent presence by sponsoring terrorism in an effort to foment revolution. The two countries have gone to war over Kashmir twice, each time without a clear resolution.

India has had a tactical atomic bomb since the nineteen-seventies, and Pakistan's became operational in the late nineteen-eighties, although Pakistani leaders denied this fact for years. The Kashmiri dispute first veered close to nuclear confrontation in 1990. That spring, the American National Security Agency was monitoring what seemed to be yet another slowly escalating series of Pakistani and Indian attacks, when intercepts revealed that the Pakistani leadership had "panicked," as a senior intelligence official put it, at the prospect of a preëmptive Indian strike and had readied its small arsenal of nuclear warheads. (The previous fall, the Bush Administration had assured Congress that Pakistan did not possess such weapons-although it knew better-in order to gain continued approval for military aid to the country.)

The crisis was resolved after American diplomats intervened. Afterward, intelligence analysts concluded that the leadership in both nations was willing to run any risk, including that of nuclear war, to avoid political or military defeat in Kashmir. There was another scare in 1999, a year after both India and Pakistan successfully tested warheads. The situation was defused only with help from President Clinton. Conditions are no more stable now. Terrorists operating out of training camps believed to be armed and financed in part by the I.S.I. continue to hit Indian targets, while India is known to have conducted deep-penetration raids against terrorist camps in Pakistan. A nuclear-threat assessment published last January by the Secretary of Defense bleakly concluded, "Given the long-standing hostility between the two countries, even a minor conflict runs the risk of escalating into an exchange of missiles with nuclear warheads."

Several weeks ago, on October 1st, Islamic terrorists exploded a car bomb near the state-legislature building in Srinagar, Kashmir, killing at least thirty-eight people, more than half of them civilians, and wounding scores of others. In a conversation last week, a former high-level Pakistani diplomat noted that although the bombing attracted widespread attention in the United States, its underlying significance and its links to the broader war on terrorism were not fully understood. "The terrorists are not ignorant," the diplomat explained. "The state legislature represents the link with Delhi, and hitting it symbolizes a rejection of the Indian Constitution." Two weeks after the car bombing, the Indians responded by shelling military positions across the ceasefire line. The Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose political party is facing an important state election early next year, also brought back as Defense Minister George Fernandes, a hard-liner who had been removed from office in March after a bribery scandal. In his first press conference, Fernandes warned, "When it comes to punishing the enemy, we will hold back nothing."

India's rhetoric has not softened since then. Speculation about whether Musharraf is buying support, and time, from his antagonists within the I.S.I. by acquiescing to the guerrilla excursions inside Kashmir has become a repeated theme in Indian newspapers and in conversations with Indian diplomats. Another terrorist attack, on October 22nd, this time on an Indian airbase in Kashmir, failed when a group of would-be suicide bombers were killed in a shoot-out, but the event-it was the first time an airbase had been targeted-led Vajpayee to reject an offer from Musharraf to hold talks. Musharraf responded by warning darkly that Pakistan was "not a small country." That tense exchange made it clear that Secretary of State Colin Powell's highly visible visits to Pakistan and India, during which he urged both sides to resolve their differences over Kashmir through negotiation, had failed to ease the situation.

Two weeks ago, Richard N. Haass, the director of the Office of Policy Planning, was designated as the State Department's point man on the future of Afghanistan. Haass, who immediately scheduled a round of briefings on the situation in Pakistan, was a logical choice: he had been involved, as a junior White House aide, in the successful 1990 effort to prevent India and Pakistan from going to war over Kashmir. Some of the officials I spoke to believed that India would not be the one to start a war. Last week, the Bush Administration was said to have obtained assurances of restraint from the Vajpayee government. (The Prime Minister, who cancelled a scheduled visit to the United Nations last month in the wake of the September 11th attacks, is scheduled to meet with President Bush in early November.) "The Indians are much stronger than the Pakistanis," a former high-ranking government official said. A crossborder invasion into Pakistan would be against India's interests, he said, because it would "force Musharraf's hand": if he responded, it would trigger a wider war; if he failed to respond, it could provoke a coup that would topple him. "Either way, India is worse off." He added, however, that the Indian government and its military and intelligence agencies remain deeply divided over how to proceed in Kashmir. "India could feel sufficiently provoked to preëmpt militarily," he said.

Referring to the air and ground war against bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the former high-ranking government official, who has direct knowledge of the situation, said, "The Bush Administration is so focussed on the target and the objective that it's lost its peripheral vision. If Musharraf is toppled in a coup, or fears he'll be toppled, or, as a price for not being toppled, gives the I.S.I. permission to ratchet it up in Kashmir, that's very dangerous." (Neither the White House nor the State Department responded to a request for comment. A C.I.A. official who was asked to comment described the questions I raised as "policy issues," and added, "We don't do policy. I have nothing for you.")

A Pakistani diplomat I talked to last week acknowledged that the "situation is explosive." Much of the current dilemma, he told me, stemmed from the Reagan Administration's decision to finance many of today's I.S.I. and Taliban leaders in their successful war against the Soviet Union. "At one time, it was a three-way game," the former diplomat said. "The C.I.A., the I.S.I., and the mujahideen were creating these Frankensteins"-the Taliban-"and now the C.I.A. has pulled out, but you can't totally destroy the Frankensteins."

Another American intelligence official pointed out that Vajpayee, like Musharraf, was in a delicate position. "Vajpayee is under pressure to take out the camps in Pakistan and in the staging areas," the official said. The Prime Minister and his External Affairs Minister, Jaswant Singh, were "holding back the dam, but now that Fernandes is back Singh has lost influence," the official told me. "All the major figures in India said, 'We're not going to go across,' but that's if nothing else breaks out."

The former State Department official said that Musharraf, eager to find a way to justify the war to the Pakistani public, has sought in talks with U.S. officials to provide Pakistan's support in exchange for an American commitment to endorse the Pakistani position in Kashmir. The senior intelligence analyst confirmed that Indians had been alarmed by the muted private response of the Bush Administration to the October 1st bombing incident in Kashmir. "I've seen tough messages to the Pakistanis-'Keep these guys under control,' " he noted, but that message was not sent this time. He went on, "The I.S.I. is being allowed by Musharraf to develop policies of its own-to run Afghan policy and Kashmir policy. And that's where the danger is, if we continue to push the Indians. What would happen if there's another attack like October 1st?" Referring to the senior managers of the Bush Administration, the intelligence analyst said, "Americans have underestimated Indian anger- underestimated the degree of antiPakistan feeling that has developed inside India."

Not everyone in the intelligence community believes that Musharraf could stop the cross-border activity even if he wanted to. "I doubt he is encouraging these attacks in Kashmir," a former official said. "But it's very hard for him to control it. He's not going to alienate the I.S.I.-he's going to need them if and when it comes to stopping a demonstration. He has less control than Arafat has over the terrorists in the West Bank."

"Nitrogen and glycerine are being shaken up here," the former high-ranking government official said. "The Pakistanis are the small, scared ones. And they might use nuclear weapons as an equalizer. The danger is that the fifty-year dynamic between India and Pakistan is the backdrop for a scenario in which someone could hit a button."

In a CNN television interview with Larry King last week, Musharraf dismissed the American concerns about the integrity of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, depicting them as the thoughts of those in the West "who don't really understand the reality of Pakistan. . . . We have an excellent command-and-control system which we have evolved, and there is no question of their falling into the hands of any fundamentalists." However, in an interview last year with Jeffrey Goldberg, Musharraf described the arsenal's command-and-control mechanism as consisting of "a geographic separation between the warhead and the missile. . . . In order to arm the missile, the warhead would have to be moved by truck over a certain distance. I don't see any chance of this restraint being broken." He would not say how far apart the warhead and its launching missile were, or who controlled the system on a minute-to-minute basis.

"That's not a command-and-control system," one American intelligence expert subsequently told me. "You always keep the weapons separate." Musharraf's description, he added, "is like the argument the Pakistanis used to use in the late nineteen-eighties and early nineteen-nineties that they did not have a bomb because they hadn't put the components together." The intelligence expert also suggested that the Musharraf account was not credible. "What happens in a crisis? Are you going to have to drive warheads to the delivery vehicles? And leave you vulnerable to an enemy strike? A real command-and-control system allows you to have them ready to go, but always under the control of the leadership." One longtime C.I.A. operative who served under cover in South Asia argued that Musharraf is simply telling Washington what it wants to hear. "Why should he tell us the truth?" the operative said. "He's fighting for his life. We sit there dumbly listening to him, and it's wrong."

Pakistani military officials have approached Pentagon officials several times in the past decade in an unsuccessful attempt to get support for an upgrading of Pakistan's nuclear command-and-control mechanisms. Senior military and proliferation officials in the Clinton Administration told me, however, that they had determined that such assistance was barred by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, ratified in 1968, which prohibits declared nuclear states from providing any support or guidance to any emerging nuclear power. One former Pentagon official caustically depicted the Clinton Administration's Pakistani command-and-control debate as being similar to the debate over condoms in high schools and needle exchanges: "If you give out condoms, are you condoning teen-age sex? If you give out needles, are you condoning drugs? By helping with command-and-control, are you condoning nuclear weapons?"

-------- treaties

Russia Hints at Missile Talks

October 29, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia hinted again on Monday it might be ready to discuss changes in the key Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which bans the Bush administration's plans to build a defense shield against incoming missiles.

Two days before he leaves for Washington to meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Russia's foreign minister said Moscow was ready to talk about ``new parameters'' on strategic questions.

``The situation in the world is changing, and our relations with the United States are changing. In the framework of these changes we are ready to discuss new parameters of strategic cooperation,'' Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov as saying late Monday night.

Ivanov is scheduled to leave Wednesday for Washington to meet with Powell as part of a series of consultations with U.S. officials on strategic issues including nuclear weapons cuts and the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Ivanov said that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty ``remains a key element of preserving strategic stability in the world'' and emphasized that it should remain in full force while Russia's consultations with the United States continue.

``While this discussion is happening, we believe that the ABM treaty should continue fulfilling the important mission that it has been fulfilling until now,'' the ITAR-Tass and Interfax agencies quoted him as saying after a meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique.

His comments appeared to indicate Russia could be more flexible in the future on the ABM treaty, a key thorn in relations with the United States in recent years.

Ivanov's remarks came after U.S. defense officials said Thursday they were delaying three missile tracking tests that might have been interpreted as violating the treaty, the first time Washington has allowed concerns about the accord to slow its missile defense project.

The move was seen as a gesture to the Russians that would give President Bush room to maneuver during meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Washington and Texas Nov. 12-15.

U.S. officials have said the leaders could reach a landmark agreement at their summit on the American missile defense plans and on slashing both countries' nuclear arsenals.

The Bush administration says the United States needs a defense against long-range ballistic missiles and has said it may withdraw from the ABM treaty in order to create one. Russia says abandoning the accord would prompt a new arms race.

An agreement could come as amendments to the treaty that would allow for testing that the United States wants to conduct.

Ivanov would not comment on a possible agreement. But he said it is in Moscow's interests that Putin's visit ``strengthens the positive tendencies that have been observed in Russian-American relations recently,'' ITAR-Tass and Interfax said.

Putin's support for the U.S.-led anti-terrorist campaign in Afghanistan has given a powerful boost to relations.

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

-------- kentucky

Neptunium exposure evidence ignored

10/29/2001
UPI
http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=29102001-012507-6525r

PADUCAH, Ky., Oct. 29 -- The person responsible for monitoring radiation exposure at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant reportedly ignored evidence workers had been exposed to neptunium in 1961.

The Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal reported Monday that Richard C. Baker decided results from urine tests raised no cause for alarm.

Baker, who retired in 1986, made his comments in a deposition as part of a $10 billion federal lawsuit filed against the plant's operators and suppliers -- Union Carbide, Lockheed Martin, General Electric Co., E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., NLO Industries and NLO Inc. The plant itself was not named in the suit because of a state law that prohibits employees from suing their employers. The case is scheduled for trial in July 2003.

Baker said, while conceding he had little formal training on the effects of radiation, he believed the tests performed on 21 plant workers reflected acceptable levels of exposure. The workers handled plutonium and neptunium, which both interfere with blood cell production. The two materials are produced when uranium is enriched.

An attorney representing the plaintiffs contends the urine tests showed exposure levels "off the scale." William McMurry told the newspaper if the tests had been done properly, "they would have had to recognize that they were nuking people in there, but they turned their heads in an unscientific way."

Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has apologized to plant workers and their families for the exposure problems.

"That plant was designed to process uranium. It was never designed to protect workers from the most dangerous substances known to man," McMurry said.

Defense attorney Robert Tait of Columbus, Ohio, said given the level of knowledge at the time, Baker, who had earlier worked on the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic chain reaction, did everything he could to ensure the plant and everyone who worked there was safe.

"At the time he was there, he was one of the top experts in the world," Tait said.

Before being hired by Union Carbide to head the radiation protection project at Paducah, Baker was an instrument maintenance supervisor for the Atomic Energy Commission in Oak Ridge, Tenn. He worked in the health physics department at Oak Ridge for three years and said that's where he acquired most of his knowledge on the effects of radiation exposure.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Allies Defend Cluster Bombs

The Times (UK)
BY RICHARD BEESTON AND HELEN RUMBELOW
From: martin meissonnier martinm@imaginet.fr
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 22:45:03 +0100

BRITAIN and America hit back yesterday at the growing international outcry over the use of cluster bombs and insisted that they would be used again in Afghanistan if required.

Reacting to appeals from British and international charities to stop their use, Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secetary, was uncompromising. "We lost somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 people in a single day. We are now being threatened with weapons that could kill tens of thousands of people, and we are trying to avoid killing innocent people, but we have to win this war and we will use the weapons we need to win this war," he told The Sunday Telegraph.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defence in London echoed the US position. She said that the weapons were legal and used for specific targets, such as armour or aircraft parked on a runway. "Before using any weapon we assess which is best suited to the job," she said. "Cluster bombs remain an effective weapon."

Her comments were condemned as "utter nonsense" by Richard Lloyd, head of the Landmine Action charity, who led a chorus of British opposition to the weapons. "What they are saying is hard to believe because they really do know better than this," he said.

"The Government know that in Kosovo and the Gulf very few cluster bombs hit their targets because they were blown off course. Add to that the fact that a high proportion don't go off and effectively turn into landmines."

The Rev William Beaver, spokesman for the Church of England, said that many religious leaders were outraged that such an indiscriminate weapon was being used.

"You will not win the hearts and minds of a people if, in your effort to provide them with a better future, your real legacy is to be associated with hidden deaths and hideous wounds for years to come," he said.

The British Red Cross called on America to suspend the use of cluster bombs because they had proved so dangerous to civilians in Kosovo.

Christian Aid also joined the opposition, saying that the use of cluster bombs contradicted America's stated intention to minimise civilian casualties. "They are as dangerous as anti-personnel mines. In fact in Kosovo more people were killed in the years after the conflict by the bomblets left behind by cluster bombs than by landmines," a spokesman said.

"We are told the attacks are targeted but cluster bombs cannot be targeted in that way. Britain should be putting pressure on America to stop using them."

Unlike "smart bombs", the weapons used in the Gulf War, Kosovo and now Afghanistan to deliver a single bomb with pinpoint accuracy, cluster bombs are by their nature imprecise and designed to hit targets spread out over a wide area. They are dropped from heavy bombers or by ground-attack aircraft and regarded by military experts as a valuable weapon in attacking concentrations of troops, armour or artillery found in the Taleban's frontline positions.

The US Air Force and the Royal Air Force have developed their own design, but the concept of the cluster bomb remains the same as when it was first used in combat during the Vietnam War.

The American CBU87 is loaded on to a warplane as a single unit that looks like a large green pod. Inside the outer casing are about 200 individual bomblets, each the size of a can of soft drink and containing various charges from high explosives to incendiary devices.

After the bomb is released the outer casing falls away above the target and the bomblets rain down over a wide area. The higher the altitude that the bomblets are released, the wider the target zone. A single bomb is usually intended to hit an enemy spread over the area of a football pitch.

As many as 10 per cent of the bomblets fail to explode and remain, often half-buried, as a long-term threat to civilians. Children are especially vulnerable since they are often attracted by the harmless-looking and brightly coloured bomblets. In Kosovo the cluster bombs were blamed for the deaths of 200 civilians and two British Army bomb-disposal experts.

Cluster bombs have reportedly killed nine civilians in Afghanistan near the western city of Herat and are blamed for trapping other villagers too afraid to leave their homes.

Anti-mine organisations have been particularly critical of the use of the weapons, because they are difficult and dangerous to clear. Two British charities, the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and Landmine Action, appealed last week for a moratorium in the use of cluster bombs.

They were joined on Friday by Handicap International. "Politicians must tell the military that they do not have the right to use arms they know have dramatic consequences against civilian populations, even after a conflict is over," Philippe Chabasse, the group's director, said.

The appeal has won some backing in Europe. Nicole Fontaine, the President of the European Parliament, said that the bombs should be banned. The issue is likely to be raised at the United Nations, where Sweden is pressing for international action to regulate the use of cluster bombs.

----

Saudi paper accuses U.S. of "mass annihilation"

Oct 29 2001
Reuters
http://english.planetarabia.com/content/article.cfm/103300/108711/

DUBAI, A Saudi newspaper accused the United States on Monday of "mass annihilation" of Afghan civilians, saying Washington had strayed from its goal of combating terrorism.

"The air strikes on Afghanistan have taken on grave destructive dimensions to reach the level of mass annihilation of civilians," the al-Bilad newspaper said in an editorial.

"The American eagle is no longer noble in its campaign after it missed its targets," the Arabic-language daily said.

"For almost a month, tens of missiles and thousands of tonnes of massive bombs have been ravaging Afghan cities, destroying villages, claiming residents and burying entire families."

Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam, has pledged support for the international campaign against terrorism. But the key U.S. ally has voiced concern over the killing of innocent Afghans in U.S.-led air raids.

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban say hundreds of civilians have been killed by stray U.S. bombs or missiles since the military campaign was launched on October 7 in retaliation for the September 11 attacks on the United States.

U.S. officials call the figure exaggerated, and U.S.-led forces say they are targeting military installations and camps run by the Taliban and Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden, key suspect in the attacks on U.S. cities that killed thousands.

"No matter how long this war will be and no matter how thoughtless it becomes, it will not be able, on its own, ...to strike the strongholds of terrorism," the Saudi paper said.

----

Taliban Claim U.S. Using Chemical Weapons

Monday October 29 8:45 AM ET
By Sayed Salahuddin
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011029/wl/attack_afghan_health_dc_1. html

KABUL - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban accused the United States on Monday of using chemical weapons and invited foreign observers to check the claim.

But one deputy minister acknowledged that the war-shattered country did not have the facilities to test for chemical use. ``We have some patients with superficial injuries with symptoms of chemical weapons,'' doctor Wazir of Kabul's Wazir Akbar Khan hospital, told a news conference.

Public Health Minister Mullah Abbas also said the hardline Muslim militia had proof that chemical weapons were being used.

``Our findings prove that this is true. These bombardments have radioactive rays and chemical materials that also cause cancer,'' he told the same news conference.

Both men cited cases of chemical poisoning. None of the claims could be independently verified.

Deputy public health minister, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, said the government did not having testing facilities and would welcome outside observers.

``If there are more cases coming, we hope to be able to invite delegations to verify it and test it,'' he told Reuters Television. Doctors said such cases had been reported in several hospitals across Afghanistan, and Stanikzai cited between 10 and 15 cases.

``We can give details to people and doctors who understand for explanation. But we have several cases of acute diarrhea and also cases of breathing problems. In some of the cases it happened that people died,'' Stanikzai said.

``We do not have sophisticated laboratories in Afghanistan to test the blood of people and analyze it,'' he said, adding that the Taliban could not trust neighboring countries to carry out the testing because they backed U.S.-led attacks against them.

Wazir described the case of a 10-year-old boy with superficial wounds, but with respiratory problems who died after six hours.

He said a 50-year-old woman who had minor injuries had also died.

``They were both toxic cases,'' he said. ``We don't have the ability to make a diagnosis, but clinically we see symptoms as such.''

----

Diplomats Met With Taliban on Bin Laden
Some Contend U.S. Missed Its Chance

By David B.Ottaway and Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 29, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3483-2001Oct28.html

Over three years and on as many continents, U.S. officials met in public and secret at least 20 times with Taliban representatives to discuss ways the regime could bring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice.

Talks continued until just days before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Taliban representatives repeatedly suggested they would hand over bin Laden if their conditions were met, sources close to the discussions said.

Throughout the years, however, State Department officials refused to soften their demand that bin Laden face trial in the U.S. justice system. It also remained murky whether the Taliban envoys, representing at least one division of the fractious Islamic movement, could actually deliver on their promises.

The exchanges lie at the heart of a long and largely untold history of diplomatic efforts between the State Department and Afghanistan's ruling regime that paralleled covert CIA actions to take bin Laden. In the end, both diplomatic and covert efforts proved fruitless.

In interviews, U.S. participants and sources close to the Taliban discussed theexchanges in detail and debated whether the State Department should have been more flexible in its hard-line stance. Earlier this month, President Bush summarily rejected another Taliban offer to give up bin Laden to a neutral third country. "We know he's guilty. Turn him over," Bush said.

Some Afghan experts argue that throughout the negotiations, the United States never recognized the Taliban need for aabroh , the Pashtu word for "face-saving formula." Officials never found a way to ease the Taliban's fear of embarrassment if it turned over a fellow Muslim to an "infidel" Western power.

"We were not serious about the whole thing, not only this administration but the previous one," said Richard Hrair Dekmejian, an expert in Islamic fundamentalism and author at the University of Southern California. "We did not engage these people creatively. There were missed opportunities."

U.S. officials struggled to communicate with Muslim clerics unfamiliar with modern diplomacy and distrustful of the Western world, and they failed to take advantage of fractures in the Taliban leadership.

"We never heard what they were trying to say," said Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief who oversaw U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up.' "

State Department officials assert that despite hours of talks and proposals that were infuriatingly vague, the Afghan rulers never truly intended to give up bin Laden.

U.S. negotiators started out "very, very patient," one official said. But over the course of many meetings, the envoys "lost all patience with them because they kept saying they would do something and they did exactly nothing."

The meetings took place in Tashkent, Kandahar, Islamabad, Bonn, New York and Washington. There were surprise satellite calls, one of which led to a 40-minute chat between a mid-level State Department bureaucrat and the Taliban's supreme leader, Mohammad Omar. There was a surprise visit to Washington, made by a Taliban envoy bearing a gift carpet for Bush.

The diplomatic effort to snare bin Laden began as early as 1996, when officials devised a plan to use back channels to Sudan, one of seven countries on the U.S. list of terrorist-supporting states. Under the plan, bin Laden would be arrested in Khartoum and extradited to Saudi Arabia, which would turn him over to the United States.

But the United States could not persuade the Saudis to accept bin Laden, and Sudan instead expelled him to Afghanistan in May 1996 -- a few months before the Taliban seized power in Kabul.

The Clinton administration did not begin seriously pressing the Taliban for bin Laden's expulsion until the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injured 4,600.

The bombings were "a seminal moment," changing Washington's view of the Taliban, an administration official said. The attacks convinced U.S. policymakers that Omar was no longer simply interested in conquering Afghanistan, but that his protection was allowing bin Laden, a longtime friend, to engage in terrorist ventures abroad.

U.S. officials launched a two-pronged policy to pressure the Taliban into handing over bin Laden. On the one hand, the United States used the United Nations and the threat of sanctions. On the other, it began a hard-nosed dialogue.

Within days of the embassy bombings, State Department officer Michael Malinowski began telephoning Taliban officials. On one occasion, Malinowski, lounging on the deck of his Washington home, spoke by telephone with Omar.

"I would say, 'Hey, give up bin Laden,' and they would say, 'No. . . . Show us the evidence,' " Malinowski said. Taliban leaders argued they could not expel a guest, and Malinowski responded, "It is not all right if this visitor goes up to the roof of your house and shoots his gun at his neighbors."

On Feb. 3, 1999, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. Inderfurth, the Clinton administration's point man for talks with the Taliban, and Michael Sheehan, State Department counterterrorism chief, went to Islamabad to deliver a stern message to the Taliban's deputy foreign minister, Abdul Jalil: The United States henceforth would hold the Taliban responsible for any terrorist act by bin Laden.

By that time, bin Laden had been indicted for his alleged role in the embassy bombings. The officials reviewed the indictment in detail with the Taliban and offered to provide more evidence if the Taliban sent a delegation to New York. The Taliban did not do so.

Immediately after the U.S. warning, Taliban security forces took bin Laden from his Kandahar compound and spirited him away to a remote site, according to media reports at the time. They also seized his satellite communications and barred him from contact with the media.

Publicly, the Taliban said they no longer knew where he was. Inderfurth now says the United States interpreted such statements "as an effort to evade their responsibility to turn him over."

Others, however, say the cryptic statements should have been interpreted differently. Bearden, for example, believes the Taliban more than once set up bin Laden for capture by the United States and communicated its intent by saying he was lost.

"Every time the Afghans said, 'He's lost again,' they are saying something. They are saying, 'He's no longer under our protection,' " Bearden said. "They thought they were signaling us subtly, and we don't do signals."

U.N. pressure steadily mounted. In October 1999, a Security Council resolution demanded the Taliban turn over bin Laden to "appropriate authorities" but left open the possibility he could be tried somewhere besides a U.S. court.

In response, the Taliban proposed bringing bin Laden to justice, either in Afghanistan or another Muslim country.

One Taliban proposal suggested bin Laden be turned over to a panel of three Islamic jurists, one each chosen by Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

When the United States rejected that proposal, the Taliban countered that it would settle for only one Islamic jurist on such a panel, a source close to the Taliban leadership said.

Taliban leaders also kept demanding the United States provide more evidence of bin Laden's terrorist activities.

"It became clear that the call for more evidence was more a delaying tactic than a sincere effort to solve the bin Laden issue," Inderfurth said.

Throughout 1999 and 2000, Inderfurth, Sheehan and Thomas R. Pickering, then undersecretary of state, continued meeting in Washington, Islamabad, New York and Bonn to review evidence against bin Laden. They warned of war if there were another terrorist attack.

"We saw a continuing effort to evade, deny and obfuscate," Inderfurth said. "They had no interest in an international panel, really. Their only intention was not to hand bin Laden over."

Phyllis E. Oakley, head of the State Department's intelligence bureau in the late 1990s, said her bureau concluded Omar would never give up bin Laden.

Last March, Rahmatullah Hashimi, a 24-year-old Taliban envoy, arrived in Washington on a surprise visit, meeting with reporters, middle-ranking State Department bureaucrats and private Afghanistan experts. He carried a gift carpet and a letter from Omar, both meant for President Bush.

Hashimi said he had come with a new offer, but U.S. officials now dismiss his visit as just another feint. They say Hashimi simply wanted to know whether the new administration had a fresh idea for breaking the deadlock.

Yet the two sides kept meeting, mostly in Islamabad. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca saw Taliban ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef there in early August, and U.S. embassy officials held secret talks with Taliban security chief Hameed Rasoli. The Taliban invited a U.S. delegation to Kandahar, but the United States refused unless a solution for handing over bin Laden was first reached, a source close to the Taliban said.

Even after Sept. 11, as U.S. aircraft carriers and warplanes rushed toward Afghanistan, the Taliban's mysterious maneuvering continued.

Bearden, the former CIA administrator, picked up his phone in Reston in early October and dialed a satellite number in Kandahar. Hashimi answered, still full of optimism that Saudi clerics and an upcoming conference of Islamic nations would give their blessing to Bush's demand that they "cough him up."

"There was a 50-50 chance something could happen," Hashimi told Bearden, "if the Saudis stepped in."

Five days later, bin Laden remained at large and the United States began pummeling Kandahar and other Taliban strongholds.

"I have no doubts they wanted to get rid of him. He was a pain in the neck," Bearden said of bin Laden. "It never clicked."

Staff writers Gilbert M. Gaul, Mary Pat Flaherty and James V. Grimaldi and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.

--------

Over Afghanistan, Gantlets in the Sky
U.S. Pilots Are Tested by Complex and Sometimes Perilous Missions

By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 29, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3374-2001Oct28.html

ABOARD THE USS CARL VINSON -- Kabul had flashed by, and Cmdr. Morri "Moby" Leland rolled over the target area north of the city, looking for a Taliban bunker to destroy with his F/A-18 Hornet, a trusted fighter he had nicknamed War Admiral.

A U.S. operative on the ground below in Afghanistan had radioed Moby with landmarks directing him to an ammunition bunker along the Taliban front line. Moby was pretty sure he had it spotted, but asked the operative to shine a laser beam on the target. As the pilot raced in, War Admiral's laser spot tracker locked on the marked target.

Moby loosed one of the 1,000-pound laser-guided bombs under the jet's wing. It homed in on the laser spot and exploded in a flash of orange fire.

The operative on the ground radioed confirmation: "That's a shack," slang for a direct hit. Moby could see a satisfying string of secondary detonations from exploding ammunition. He then saw something else -- enemy fire coming his way. It was a good time to be leaving. After three weeks of strikes, the air war as seen in Pentagon briefings can appear sterile and routine. But for the pilots launching strikes into Afghanistan from the deck of this carrier, the experience is of a complex and hazardous campaign that no one on the ship believes will be quick or easy.

Despite the U.S. establishment of air supremacy in the first days of the campaign and success in hitting Taliban and al Qaeda targets, the pilots are facing a number of challenges: targets that are hard to find, smart bombs that occasionally fall short or are misdirected, missions that stretch the range of jets and the endurance of pilots, complicated coordination of changing target lists with ground and air controllers, dangers from enemy missiles, and concern about killing civilians or U.S. troops on the ground.

Many of these elements were in play during the missions flown last Wednesday by a single squadron of F/A-18 Hornets aboard the Vinson. This account is based on extensive interviews before and after combat missions with pilots, some of whom asked that they be referred to by their call signs and not fully identified. Navy commanders allowed access to pilot briefings on the condition that classified information not be disclosed.

Strike Fighter Squadron 97, known as Team Warhawk, is one of four fighter squadrons in the Vinson's air wing. The squadron consists of 12 Hornets supported by a crew of more than 225, including aviators, ordnance handlers and technicians. Warhawk is the only squadron still using F/A-18 "Alpha" models, first-generation Hornets that are more than 15 years old and among the oldest fighter jets in the Navy.

"We're the redheaded stepchild of the air wing," a Warhawk pilot said. Yet they lead the ship in the number of hours aloft -- more than 1,000 in October.

All of the jets in the squadron carry the names of horses: racehorses, such as War Admiral, the 1937 Triple Crown winner, or old war horses such as Traveler, Gen. Robert E. Lee's mount.

There are a few war horses among the Warhawks. Cmdr. Charles "Sterno" Sternberg, the Warhawk commanding officer, is 39, and Moby, the squadron executive officer, is 40. Four other squadron pilots are experienced officers, including Beacon, 35, a Naval Academy graduate and test pilot gunning to be an astronaut.

But most are like Buzz, 29, a lanky lieutenant, thoughtful and soft-spoken, who grew up in the Washington area and is serving aboard a carrier for the first time. Ten of the 16 Warhawk pilots are "nuggets" -- pilots making their first cruise aboard a carrier.

Last Wednesday, Buzz and Beacon, dressed in green flight suits, sat in dark blue naugahyde seats in the pilots' ready room, a paper pumpkin and a witch on a broomstick dangling over their heads. As they sipped coffee, details of their mission flashed on a screen in front of them.

"We've been tasked to five areas of interest north of Kabul," said the pilot leading the brief, a lieutenant with the call sign Stroke. "We're going to be looking for armor out there. There's primarily Taliban in that area. If we get clearance, we'll go ahead."

A map of northern Afghanistan flashed on the screen, with five sectors -- "kill boxes" in aviator parlance -- outlined in red. Stroke hit the remote, changing the slide, and rattled through the brief: Radio frequencies. Tactical call signs. Refueling points. Rescue plans in case of being shot down.

Afterward, Beacon, a lieutenant commander, reviewed the mission further with Buzz, his wingman.

"You'll be flying high cover on me," he told Buzz, and he cautioned about enemy fire. "I'm not so much worried about it going in as I am leaving, since we've highlighted the fact we're there."

Beacon ended with a warning about civilian casualties. "If you've got one hair standing on the back of your neck, don't drop," he told Buzz. "It may feel good letting that bomb off, but it won't feel so good debriefing, finding out the bad news."

The pilots donned their G-suits and survival vests. Buzz packed a survival map in a leg flap and a 9mm pistol in his flight bag, in case he ended up on the ground in Afghanistan. Another pilot, Edge, reminded Buzz to pack two clips for the pistol: "Otherwise you're going to have to throw it at them," Edge said.

"We're all Type A personalities here," Beacon said. "Everybody doesn't want to believe that the worst can happen. But everyone knows in the back of their minds it's a possibility."

This is not a war of vengeance, pilots say. But it does feel personal. Beacon is a combat veteran, having launched strikes against Serb positions in Bosnia. "That was different though," said Beacon. "After watching the twin towers fall to the ground and kill 6,000 fellow Americans, and the Pentagon being hit, that's the icing on the cake. It's a whole different set of resolve here."

Three weeks before the Vinson set sail in July, Buzz got married. Now, the war is being fought on two fronts in his family. Buzz's wife, who is completing her medical studies, is working a rotation at a hospital that has treated anthrax victims. A Change in Plans

On the steamy flight deck, Buzz climbed into his jet, named Black Jack for the riderless Army horse that accompanied John F. Kennedy's coffin.

It was like a sauna inside the cockpit, with the canopy closed and lengthy launch preparations underway. Flight deck crews hooked the jet to a catapult, and Buzz saluted, signaling he was ready. The catapult slung the Hornet forward at 150 mph, and he was aloft.

In the air he met up with Beacon, piloting Traveler, and together with two F-14 Tomcats that completed the "strike package," they flew north at 4:30 p.m. The sweat soaking Buzz's uniform quickly cooled as the jet climbed, and he fought off chills.

The jets reached land in less than half an hour. They followed designated routes over Pakistan, and then southern Afghanistan loomed below, desolate and extreme.

Once in Afghan airspace, all jets fall under the control of an AWACS aircraft. The surveillance plane, communicating with the air war operations center at Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, controls where the jets go and what they do.

"You've got everybody in the country talking through this guy," said Beacon. "He's got to prioritize what the most important information is, and who it needs to go to, and everyone else has to stand by."

Buzz and Beacon were just inside Afghanistan when the AWACS radioed with instructions to forget the Taliban tanks -- a better target had emerged.

"We've got some immediate tasking for you -- stand by," the controller said.

Beacon was not surprised. Of the 10 missions he had flown, only once had he gone to the target discussed during the brief. The controllers keep finding targets they like better.

"It's like you're driving across country and your wife decides she wants to eat at Denny's," Beacon said. "You pull up, you see the Denny's, Roger that, and then she sees McDonald's, and then she says, 'I want to go to McDonald's.' You just say, 'All right, Roger that.' You know fighting it is not going to be in your best interest."

Likewise, Moby, who had launched earlier in the afternoon on a separate mission, had been redirected. Everybody's brief was out the window.

"That increases the stress, whether you like it or not," said Moby. "If they give you a new location, you haven't had the luxury of doing that map study and photo study, and that makes it more difficult."

Now, with night fallen, Beacon and Buzz were directed to an area near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and told to monitor its status.

Hunting targets from high altitudes -- their precise flight level is classified -- can be difficult. Without reviewing satellite imagery beforehand, it can be risky. The day before, Beacon had refused to fire his weapons when controllers redirected him to follow the course of a road and bomb the compound it led to. To Beacon, it wasn't so obvious.

"Next to this compound was a little hamlet, and you can't decipher which one is which," he said. "I wasn't sure, so I didn't drop."

It was a good choice, Beacon said. The target turned out to be elsewhere.

On television sets aboard the Vinson, Buzz had seen the news clips showing civilians, including women and children, killed or terribly wounded by the bombing.

"I've watched CNN, and I'm sure, this being a war, that there are innocent people being hurt, and I grieve for that," said Buzz. "I'm also sure that in the controlled environment the Taliban have created, they can inflate those claims wildly."

Unlike Bosnia and Iraq, Afghanistan has no integrated air defense network, only individual elements operating independently. On many missions, the pilots draw antiaircraft and sometimes shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles.

"You don't want to be the first pilot shot down by a missile," said Beacon. "Firsts are good, but that's not one of them."

Early in the campaign, some bombs were falling short, and others were not exploding. "The first few days, they weren't performing the way we would have liked," said Moby. Not all the fault lay with the weapons; pilot error was also responsible.

As the campaign has worn on, the number of errors has decreased, Moby said. No jets from the squadron are known to have caused civilian casualties, commanders said. 'Going on Reflex and Training'

On Wednesday, Moby led his redirected force of four Hornets and two Tomcats to the front line between the Taliban and the rebel Northern Alliance just north of Kabul.

A U.S. operative on the ground inside Afghanistan, known as a "forward air controller," directed the warplanes via radio and a laser used to "paint" targets.

"He talks to you on the radio and builds a picture for you of the battlefield," said Moby. "He will talk you onto which targets he wants struck, where they are, and what their array is."

The ground controller identified two nearby villages that were off-limits, out of concern for civilian casualties. Then he identified the targets: Taliban bunkers and heavily fortified positions holding ammunition and troops.

Dropping his bomb on the bunker took Moby close to the range of antiaircraft fire and missiles, and he began taking fire.

"It's pretty intense," said Moby. "At that point you're going on reflex and training. You don't have a choice. If you bottom out too low or too slow, they can shoot you. Thing is, you don't want to spend too much time down there."

Moby dropped War Admiral's flares, which put out a heat signature as a decoy for the missiles, and quickly climbed out of range. The other jets dropped their bombs and followed suit.

Mission accomplished.

There was no such luck for Beacon and Buzz and the two Tomcats monitoring the position near Kandahar. "They described a place and told us to find it and report any changes in its status," said Buzz. "We didn't have anything to report."

As they circled, one of the Tomcats developed an engine problem. Beacon accompanied the jet back to the ship, leaving Buzz and the second Tomcat to monitor the site.

For hours, Buzz watched the site through night-vision goggles. He and the Tomcat took turns going to an Air Force tanker for fuel. Buzz would refuel eight times during the course of the mission. At the target, all was quiet.

The AWACS controller finally told them to return to the ship.

Carrier missions over Afghanistan often last six hours or more, three times longer than Buzz had previously flown. By now -- his 6-foot-3-inch frame immobile for hours atop a hard ejection seat -- it was painful to be in the cockpit.

The toughest job still lay ahead: landing a jet on a carrier at night. Pilots do not worry so much about crashing: Every landing is graded, with the score posted on the ready room wall for their peers to see.

"In that last hour or so when you're flying back to the carrier, you're at your most exhausted," said Buzz. "You've already been to a hostile nation, you've concentrated the whole time, you've spent a lot of energy. Now you still have to produce equally intense amounts of concentration to land on the boat. But you're already sapped."

Approaching the carrier, Buzz popped peppermint candy into his mouth. Back in the Warhawks' ready room, Beacon and other pilots awaited Buzz's return. A few gathered idly around a television screen to watch a "gun camera" video showing the results of an earlier strike on a warehouse. "Kaboom!" a pilot said admiringly as the building went sky-high.

At 12:25 a.m., the deck directly over the ready room shook. A closed-circuit television showed Buzz's jet catching a wire and coming to rest on the deck. He had been in the air eight hours, a personal record.

After a classified debriefing, Buzz walked into the ready room. His body was hunched and stiff, and he was exhausted.

"I didn't drop," he told Beacon. "Four hours orbiting around the area of interest. I don't know what was so interesting about it."

There was no time to dwell on it. In a 36-hour period, Buzz would fly 15 hours. In less than 10 hours, he was scheduled to brief for the next combat mission.

-------- balkans

Milosevic Claims Anti-Terror Defense

CNS News
By Mike Wendling CNSNews.com
London Bureau Chief
October 29, 2001
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archive\200110\FOR20011029j.html

London (CNSNews.com) - Former Yugoslav President Slobodon Milosevic claimed Monday that he was defending his country from terrorists when he committed alleged war crimes over an eight-year period.

Milosevic faced judges from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, Netherlands, for a third time Monday. At the hearing, prosecutors revealed new and amended charges against him for crimes in Croatia and the breakaway province of Kosovo.

"I have been indicted because I defended my people legally and with legitimate means on the basis of the right to self-defense that every nation has," Milosevic told the court. "I had the honour to defend my nation ... from terrorism."

The most recent indictments charge that Milosevic was responsible for mass sexual assault, the forcible deportation of 800,000 of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians and the murder of 600 more. Prosecutors also accuse Milosevic of driving out non-Serbs from Croatia starting in 1991.

U.N. prosecutors said that next week the former president would face an even more serious charge - genocide, for his role in the Bosnian conflict.

Milosevic was leader of Serbia, Yugoslavia's largest constituent republic, during the country's breakup in the early 90s. He presided over a series of bloody civil wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The decade of violence in the Balkans culminated in 78 days of NATO airstrikes against Serbia in 1999, leading to semi-autonomy for Kosovo and the removal of Milosevic from the Serbian presidency last year. He was later arrested by Serbian authorities and was given up to the war crimes tribunal four months ago.

As he has during his two previous hearings before the tribunal, on Monday Milosevic went on long diatribes accusing the court of being illegitimate and politically motivated. He also complained that he was facing a barrage of allegations.

"The truth cannot be sunk by any flood of false accusations," he told the court.

Milosevic has refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the tribunal and protested the appointment of three defense lawyers as "friends of the court" assigned to protect his interests. He has also refused to enter a plea to any of the charges against him, forcing the judges to lodged pleas of "not guilty" on his behalf.

Michail Wladimiroff, a Dutch attorney assigned by the court, argued that the ICTY has no jurisdiction over Milosevic's case. Wladimiroff asked for a ruling on jurisdiction from the United Nations World Court, a permanent tribunal that normally decides disputes between U.N. member states.

ICTY judges said they would consider the argument.

British lawyer Steven Kay asked the court to review Milosevic's claims that the tribunal is prejudiced. Milosevic's lawyers also argued that international law cast doubt over whether former heads of state could be put on trial.

Tribunal prosecutor Carla Del Ponte told the court the case should move forward despite Milosevic's objections.

"People don't want to understand that this tribunal was established by the international community explicitly to put an end to the impunity of powerful people, the heads of state," Del Ponte said. "Outside the tribunal there are thousands of victims who are demanding justice."

-------- biological weapons

New Weapon Wielded In Cleanup of Anthrax

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 29, 2001; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3489-2001Oct28.html

A newly developed soapy solution that can kill biological and chemical agents is one of the weapons U.S. officials plan to use to decontaminate buildings of deadly anthrax spores.

Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, other government agencies and private industry are planning daily how to eliminate the spores, spread by tainted letters sent to buildings in the District and several states.

Because this is the first time that office buildings are being decontaminated of anthrax spores in the United States, the effort is a work in progress. Officials are trying to incorporate tried and true methods, such as common bleach preparations, with new technology, such as the solution. Coordinating opinions is not easy.

"That certainly is part of the problem," said Larry Perrine, media relations project leader for the U.S. Department of Energy's Albuquerque-based Sandia National Laboratories, which developed the solution. "There is not a consensus in Washington."

There is no single coordinating agency for the various cleanup efforts in the District, Florida, New Jersey and New York, where various organizations have received tainted letters, said David Sternberg, of the EPA office in Philadelphia, which covers the Washington region.

The EPA is offering assistance in cleanup efforts, helping not only in Florida but also at the U.S. Postal Service's Brentwood facility and Capitol office buildings.

The U.S. government has long had procedures to respond to toxic contamination, said Fred Stroud, coordinator of EPA efforts to clean up the American Media Inc. building in West Palm Beach, Fla. There, anthrax spores killed an editor and sickened another worker.

What is new, he said, is dealing with anthrax spores in civilian settings -- and having technological advances to kill them.

The first line of defense has been an old-fashioned bleach solution, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has promoted for anthrax cleanup, according to Stroud. That solution was used to clean four post offices in Florida, he said.

A bleach solution was also used in NBC offices in New York, where Massachusetts-based Clean Harbors Environmental Services Inc., was hired after a letter sent to anchor Tom Brokaw left one employee with cutaneous anthrax and two more with suspected cases of it.

At that site, spore contamination was believed to be limited to a single floor. William Geary, general counsel for Clean Harbors, said workers used bleach for decontamination and will incinerate books, papers and other items. His company is investigating the Sandia-developed solution, he said.

At ABC offices in New York, Denver-based Modec Inc. used the new formulation. Modec is one of two companies licensed by Sandia to sell the substance; the other is Huntsville, Ala.-based EnviroFoam Technologies Inc.

The substance was developed after federal officials in the late 1990s called for a new way to combat biological and chemical weapons because technology dated from the 1950s, said Modec President Brian Kalamenka. Chemicals and gas used for decontamination carried their own health risks.

The new substance is nontoxic -- made of materials including hydrogen peroxide -- and can be used in various forms, such as foam, fog, gas and spray, according to Sandia spokesman John German.

Modec said it recently applied to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to use the substance as a skin decontaminant. Modec can produce 25,000 gallons a day, with a gallon able to clean about 10 square meters.

"You want it safe as baby shampoo but want it to kill the worst things on the planet," Kalamenka said. "And it can. You can fog this into the room, and it won't damage the computers, the furniture, anything."

Stroud said cleanup has not begun at American Media, but the new substance is being considered. Workers are taking surface and air samples to determine the extent of contamination and should be done in about 10 days, Stroud said.

A spokeswoman for EnviroFoam said the firm has been tapped to help decontaminate areas on Capitol Hill with the new substance, though details will be completed this week.

Experts said the substance is a major advance that will make cleanup easier.

Past efforts have taken years. On Gruinard Island in Scotland, where the British military experimented with anthrax during World War II, spores stayed viable for nearly 40 years. The island was declared clean in 1987 with the help of 280 tons of formaldehyde and 2,000 tons of seawater.

In a 1999 report in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, a group of 21 experts said, "Decontamination of large urban areas or even a building following an exposure to an anthrax aerosol would be extremely difficult and is not indicated."

But some experts said any building can now be decontaminated.

"What is going to be difficult is getting your employees back into the building," Kalamenka said.

--------

Anthrax preparation indicates home-grown origin

29 October 01,
Debora MacKenzie
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991490

Anthrax bacteria likely to be U.S. military strain http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991473

As anthrax continues to turn up in US postal facilities, and postal workers, evidence is emerging that it is an American product. Not only are the bacteria genetically close to the strain the US used in its own anthrax weapons in the 1960s, but New Scientist can reveal that the spores also seem to have been prepared according to the secret US "weaponisation" recipe.

This is troubling, say bioterrorism specialists. While the terrorists behind the anthrax-laced mail US might have got hold of the strain of anthrax in several laboratories around the world, the method the US developed for turning a wet bacterial culture into a dangerous, dry powder is a closely-guarded secret.

Its apparent use in the current spate of attacks could mean the secret is out. An alternative is that someone is using anthrax produced by the old US biological weapons programme that ended in 1969 - in which case the scope for further attacks could be limited. Experiments to determine which is true are underway now in the US.

Particle size

Analysis of the physical form of the anthrax powder used in the attacks has lagged behind the genetic analysis. Bacteria from patients or contaminated surfaces can be multiplied up to provide enough DNA for analysis. But a physical examination requires a sample of the actual powder, and so far, only two are known. One is from the letter opened in Senator Tom Daschle's office in Washington on 15 October, the other from a letter sent to the New York Post.

Last week, US Senator Bill Frist announced that the powder in the Daschle letter was in particles 1.5 to 3.0 microns wide, a very narrow size range. The results of the physical analysis of the New York Post letter are not yet known.

The actual bacterial spore is ovoid and around half a micron wide. The whole trick to making anthrax weapons, says Ken Alibek, the former deputy head of the Soviet Union's bioweapons programme, is to turn wet cultures of bacteria into dry clumps of spores that are each between one and five microns wide, the optimal size to penetrate a human lung and stay there.

But dried spores tend to form larger particles, with a static electric charge that makes them cling doggedly to surfaces rather than floating through the air where they can be inhaled.

Fluidising agent

The Soviet Union got around this by grinding dried cultures along with chemicals that cause the particles to remain separate. Iraq is the only other state known to have tried making such a weapon, and it dried anthrax cultures along with bentonite, a clay used as a fluidising agent in powders. But last week the White House said there was no bentonite in the Daschle letter.

For its weapon, say informed sources, the US added various molecules, including surfactants, to the wet spores so that when they were dried, they broke up into fine particles within a very narrow size range of a few microns. There was no need to grind the powder further. Chemical tests are now being conducted to see if any traces of the US additives are present.

Grinding was considered the most likely way for terrorists to create anthrax powders, as the milling machinery is not hard to obtain. But it results in a wider range of particle sizes. Large particles can be filtered out, but smaller ones remain. The Daschle anthrax, say sources, looks instead like it was made according to the US recipe.

Anthrax stockpile

The question is, when? At its peak, the US bioweapons programme made 900 kilograms of dry anthrax powder per year at a plant in Arkansas. That stockpile was destroyed when the US renounced bioweapons in 1969. But small samples might have been saved without being noticed.

Experiments are now underway in the US to determine how many bacterial generations separate the anthrax being used in the attacks from the most closely related strains in a reference collection of anthrax, which includes the US weapons strain.

If the number is very small, and the anthrax closely resembles the weapons strain genetically, it could be a leftover from weapons production before 1969.

If, however, the bacteria have gone through many cell divisions since the most closely related strain was frozen, they might have been produced more recently. That would mean someone has obtained not only a virulent strain of anthrax, but the know-how to turn it into what was probably the most sophisticated anthrax weapon ever produced.

--------

PATENTS
A Haven From Bioterrorism

October 29, 2001
By TERESA RIORDAN http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/29/business/29PATE.html?searchpv=past7days

The economy may be tanking, but for Walton McCarthy, business couldn't be better.

Earlier this month, Mr. McCarthy received a patent for his "life cell," an air purifying apparatus and communications system that he contends could transform an ordinary living room into safe, self-sufficient oasis in the midst of a bioterrorist attack.

Mr. McCarthy said his company, Radius Engineering, located near Concord, N.H., was two months behind in production on the life cells, which sell for $4,500, and six months behind on its underground shelters, which sell for $16,000 to nearly $60,000.

"We've got double shifts working six days a weeks," Mr. McCarthy said, noting that Radius is planning to expand production twelvefold in the coming year.

The life cell device, which is 4 feet in diameter, is basically a battery- powered filtering system that draws in air through a hose from the outside, purifies it and then pumps it into a room that has been sealed off from the rest of the house - and the world. The device is equipped with CB radio and scanner, a 12-volt lamp and a "chemical agent detector kit," designed to help the citizen under siege determine exactly which toxic agent has been unleashed. (Add-on options include a chemical toilet and water supplies.)

"The life cell goes right in the living room - it replaces your coffee table," Mr. McCarthy said. Although a buyer may opt to leave it in the basement while awaiting Armageddon - it can be assembled in 30 minutes - the 500-pound battery system might be hard to lug upstairs in a hurry.

Wouldn't a gas mask be a better bargain for the average safety-conscious American? Last week, for example, the starting bid on eBay (news/quote) for an "Israeli Gas Mask and Nuke Biochem Suit" was $79.

"Gas masks don't work," Mr. McCarthy said. "People think you can wear one for a day or two. If you're trained, you might be able to keep one on for two hours. They are hot and uncomfortable and make it hard to breathe."

Mr. McCarthy, who is 49 and thus old enough to remember the "duck and cover" drills that ostensibly prepared schoolchildren for a nuclear attack during the Cold War, said he did not recall having been preoccupied with the thought of nuclear war while growing up. And his family did not have a backyard bomb shelter.

But since his graduation from Montana State University in 1974, he has become an authority on underground shelters. He is the author of two books, "Nuclear Shelterist" and "Principles of Protection: The U.S. Handbook of NBC Weapon Fundamentals and Shelter Engineering Standards."

For Mr. McCarthy, "NBC" stands for nuclear-biological-chemical. But he said he was interviewed once for an NBC television show about survivalists called "Ancient Prophecies IV." He is now more circumspect about giving interviews. "They probably made me look like a looney tunes," he said.

Mr. McCarthy received patent 6,296,693 for his life cell. But he was selling underground disaster shelters long before it occurred to him to turn a living room into a chemically and biologically secure fortress. The standard Radius underground shelter, has a fiberglass, egg-shaped shell. Meant to accommodate six people, it comes with a toilet, a shower, food storage, an air filtration system, and three weeks' worth of battery power.

"That's our Ford Escort model," Mr. McCarthy said. The most expensive version listed on Radius's Web site (www.radius-defense.com) is a military model, which costs $57,000. It provides life support for up to two years, is designed to avoid detection by radar or thermal or magnetic sensors, and is meant to withstand "gunfire and hand grenades."

Mr. McCarthy said some potential customers expected the shelter to be like a posh condominium. But the top-of-the-line model is only as big as a single-car garage. "People come into this wondering where the color TV set is," he said, sighing.

Who are the typical buyers? Rather than the stereotypical "militia- type people, shoot 'em types of guys," Mr. McCarthy said, his customers are more likely to be safety- conscious people - like mothers who buy organic produce and make their children wear bike helmets. "We sell it to the type of people who wear seatbelts and don't smoke," he said.

But in 1996, according to a document from the Department of Commerce, the United States revoked Mr. McCarthy's export privileges for 10 years for "willfully, knowingly and unlawfully dealing and attempting to deal in property intended for exportation to Iraq, specifically an underground shelter known as an "S30 Remote Tactical Base.' "

Mr. McCarthy said that he never actually shipped any shelters to Iraq but that doing so would present no moral quandary for him. "I think of it as a humanitarian product," he said. "Do children in Iraq deserve to be protected? It's the same thing if someone from the Ku Klux Klan or some supremacist group calls me, as long as they are going to use it lawfully. I despise all of the hate groups, but I can't play God. I can't say they don't deserve to live."

Personal safety seems a preoccupation of many inventors. Dozens of patents have been issued recently for inventions offering protection against more conventional threats.

Dorene Jean Muñoz, of Racine, Wis., received a patent for "footwear having concealed storage cavity for personal items." It is essentially a shoe with a hollow heel that screws into the sole. "I thought of the idea when I went to a formal because it was difficult to dance with a purse swinging around," Ms. Muñoz said, who added that she did not want to leave her purse at a table for fear it might be stolen.

The heel can hold keys, lipstick, money and medications. Ms. Muñoz hopes to license her patent, 6,289,612.

Joe Thornblad, of St. Peter, Minn., has patented a wristwatch that serves as a smoke detector and a kidnapper alarm. The smoke detector sets off an alarm inside the watch; to activate the kidnapper alarm, a child would push a button that silently alerts the police of his location. Mr. Thornblad has not yet built a prototype, but said he hoped to license patent 6,285,289.

-------- israel

Israelis Withdraw Forces in 2 Towns
Pullback Comes as Palestinians Kill 5

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 29, 2001; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3053-2001Oct28.html

JERUSALEM, Oct. 28 -- Israeli troops withdrew from Bethlehem and neighboring Beit Jala tonight, as the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon swallowed its anger over the killing today of five Israelis inside Israel by Palestinian gunmen.

The withdrawal was designed as the first stage of a pullback from six West Bank Palestinian cities invaded by Israeli forces after the Oct. 17 assassination of Israel's tourism minister, Rehavam Zeevi. The Bush administration urged the Sharon government to pull out of the towns, so as not to enflame the conflict with the Palestinians.

There was subdued joy in Bethlehem, which had been battered by combat as Palestinian militias tried to oppose the Israeli incursion. Twenty-two Palestinians, including several civilians, died in the 11-day occupation. Businesses and schools were shut and several houses and other buildings were badly damaged. Tanks crushed cars, knocked over power poles and chewed up asphalt as they roamed the city.

At about 10 p.m., residents gingerly went into the streets as tank motors roared, heralding their exit. Palestinian officials moved troops into neighborhoods abandoned by the Israelis and warned residents who had fled to wait until morning to return home. They also asked Palestinians not to shoot guns into the air in celebration, for fear the Israelis would rush back at the sound of gunfire.

In Israel, somber attention focused on the day's killings, which took place in two separate attacks. The deadliest attack occurred in the Israeli coastal city of Hadera. Gunmen traveling in a red four-wheel drive vehicle sprayed bullets at pedestrians along a main boulevard, killing four women. A plainclothes policeman shot and killed both gunmen.

The militant group Islamic Jihad, which has frequently carried out suicide bombings, claimed responsibility. A video released by the group showed the two gunmen posing in front of a photo of a 10-year-old girl killed by Israeli forces last week. Israeli officials said the killers were also members of the Palestinian police force.

Earlier in the day, drive-by shooters killed an Israeli soldier near the northern West Bank frontier with Israel. The assailants escaped into the West Bank through an area that is strictly patrolled by the Israeli army. The attack was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Brigade, an armed unit of Fatah, the biggest faction of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. The brigade told news organizations it was avenging the recent death of a Fatah member by Israeli military fire.

Arafat condemned the shootings and said his Palestinian Authority would try to stop others.

Sharon's spokesman, Ranaan Gissin, said the killers were from Jenin, one of the West Bank towns invaded by Israel 11 days ago and still surrounded by tanks and infantry, ostensibly to prevent the kind of terror attacks that occurred today.

Despite the army's presence in Jenin, it was the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority to protect Israel from such gunmen, Gissin said. He warned, without elaboration, that the army would "act in ways that would deal with the current wave of terrorism."

Gissin said Sharon decided to go ahead with the Bethlehem pullout, despite the deaths in Israel, so as not to "link incidents in one place with events in another." Gissin warned that a pullout from other towns would depend on Arafat keeping the peace, rounding up violent armed groups and surrendering suspects in the slaying of Zeevi.

Those were also conditions that originally applied to Bethlehem and Beit Jala, but under U.S. pressure, Sharon reduced the conditions to one: that no firing take place before and during the withdrawal. The Bush administration wanted a reduction in violence and the beginning of reconciliation to mollify Arab allies in the U.S. war on terrorism.

Many right-wing Israelis have said that Sharon ought to ignore the Bush administration. "What was the point of carrying out such a wide-ranging operation . . . if not to eradicate the terrorist threat once and for all?" asked the conservative Jerusalem Post. "Instead, the government was prepared to yield to American pressure."

The killings and pullback are bound to add fuel to a debate over what Israel should do about its relations with the Palestinians. The liveliest public discussions involve two scenarios. The first is to engineer a physical separation from the Palestinians through a network of walls, fences, ditches and other controls. The second is to reoccupy the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip and put an end to Arafat's rule. Israel controls most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but left the big cities in the mid-1990s when peace talks were moving ahead.

Gissin said no one in the government is seriously considering a permanent reoccupation. But, he warned, Israel will continue to move in and out of Palestinian areas at its discretion.

Palestinian officials were nervous about Israel's short-term and long-range intentions. "The Israeli plan is obvious," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, an adviser to Arafat. "They want to topple the Authority and bring back the occupation of the entire . . . territory."

-------- japan

Japanese Military Cleared For Role In Anti-Terror War

CNS News
By Patrick Goodenough CNSNews.com
Pacific Rim Bureau Chief
October 29, 2001
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archive\200110\FOR20011029k.html

Pacific Rim (CNSNews.com) - The United States and Britain Monday welcomed the passage of anti-terrorism legislation in Japan, which will enable its military to participate in conflict situations abroad for the first time since World War II.

The law, passed earlier Monday, expands the role of Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) for use in a non-combatant capacity in the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism. They will thus be able to provide logistic support, surveillance, search and rescue and medical services to the combat forces.

Two separate bills passed enable the SDF to provide additional security around U.S. military bases in Japan, and allows Japan's Coast Guard to open fire on unidentified vessels suspected of criminal activity.

White House spokesman Ari Fleisher said the Japanese move "demonstrates the enduring strength of the U.S.-Japan alliance," words echoed by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Boucher said the U.S. also appreciated Japan's humanitarian and refugee assistance to affected countries in the western Asia region.

U.S.-led airstrikes against the Taliban and the al-Qaida terrorist network in Afghanistan in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have seen large numbers of Afghan refugees pour into neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

Japan's parliament approved the main bill by 140 votes to 100, the vote driven by the ruling three-party coalition. It was rushed through the parliamentary process in a faster-than-usual 25 days, after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi - a popular conservative - voiced strong backing for the anti-terror campaign.

A British foreign office official also noted and welcomed the "speed and strength of the Japanese response."

The legislation has been highly controversial. Following Japan's expansionist aggression before and during World War II, its post-war constitution strictly prohibited the SDF from participating in military operations on foreign soil. During the 1991 Gulf War, however, Tokyo came under fire from allies for offering financial help but not tangible military assets to join the coalition against Iraq.

Despite strong political opposition - opposition Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama called the decision not to require prior parliamentary approval "suicidal" - many ordinary Japanese appear to have been won over.

A weekend Kyodo News opinion poll published Monday showed 57 percent of voters supported the anti-terrorism bill, while almost 39 percent said they were opposed.

Sixty-three percent of respondents said they backed the U.S. military action in Afghanistan.

Shift in outlook

Just months ago, feelings were running high in Japan after a series of criminal incidents involving U.S. servicemen stationed in the country. A collision last February of an U.S. Navy submarine and a Japanese fisheries training vessel off Hawaii, in which nine Japanese died, added to the negative sentiment.

The events of Sept. 11 shook the nation, however. Koizumi later that month visited the scene of devastation where the World Trade Center had stood, and then in a meeting with President Bush pledged Japan's support to fight terrorism "with determination and patience."

Japan also offered $10 million in New York City rescue assistance, provided refugee relief funds to Pakistan, and lifted economic sanctions against both Pakistan and India in a move aimed at helping Pakistan's government withstand domestic opposition to backing the U.S.

The reality of terrorism has moved closer for many Japanese. Twenty-three Japanese remain missing, believed dead, in the Sept. 11 attacks. In the Kyodo survey, 78.1 percent of respondents voiced fears of possible terrorist attacks in Japan.

In a worldwide caution on Oct. 23, the State Department said there had been unconfirmed information that terrorists may target U.S. military facilities or places frequented by U.S. servicemen in Japan and Korea.

"These individuals do not distinguish between official and civilian targets," the caution said.

"The focus of the legislation was on whether we think of the U.S. terrorist incidents in New York and Washington on Sept. 11 as other people's business or as our own affair," Koizumi said after Monday's vote. "What was being questioned was our basic stance - whether or not we can share the sorrow and anger of the American people."

The legislation having been passed, the government will now draw up plans to send a naval contingent to the Indian Ocean for transport and shipment missions. Ships, possibly including one of Japan's four hi-tech Aegis guided-missile destroyers, are expected to leave by the end of November.

Their likeliest task will be to transport supplies from U.S. bases in Japan and Guam to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, where some of the U.S. bombers used in raids over Afghanistan are based.

"The passage of the anti-terrorism legislation will enable Japan's very modern and capable navy to perform logistics and intelligence operations in direct support of the U.S. Navy," noted Japan expert William Breer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"This function will relieve American forces of these responsibilities so that they may be used elsewhere, and contribute significantly to the prosecution of the effort against terrorism," Breer said. "This is a major step forward in U.S.-Japan cooperation for both regional and global security."

-------- pakistan

THE SPIES
Pakistani Intelligence Had Links to Al Qaeda, U.S. Officials Say

October 29, 2001
By JAMES RISEN and JUDITH MILLER
New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/29/international/asia/29PROB.html?searchpv=past7days&pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - The intelligence service of Pakistan, a crucial American ally in the war on terrorism, has had an indirect but longstanding relationship with Al Qaeda, turning a blind eye for years to the growing ties between Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, according to American officials.

The intelligence service even used Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan to train covert operatives for use in a war of terror against India, the Americans say.

The intelligence service, known as Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., also maintained direct links to guerrillas fighting in the disputed territory of Kashmir on Pakistan's border with India, the officials said.

American fears over the agency's dealings with Kashmiri militant groups and with the Taliban government of Afghanistan became so great last year that the Secret Service adamantly opposed a planned trip by President Clinton to Pakistan out of concern for his safety, former senior American officials said.

The fear was that Pakistani security forces were so badly penetrated by terrorists that extremist groups, possibly including Mr. bin Laden's network, Al Qaeda, would learn of the president's travel route from sympathizers within the I.S.I. and try to shoot down his plane.

Mr. Clinton overruled the Secret Service and went ahead with the trip, prompting his security detail to take extraordinary precautions. An empty Air Force One was flown into the country, and the president made the trip in a small unmarked plane. Later, his motorcade stopped under an overpass and Mr. Clinton changed cars, the former officials said.

The Kashmiri fighters, labeled a terrorist group by the State Department, are part of Pakistan's continuing efforts to put pressure on India in the Kashmir conflict. The I.S.I.'s reliance on Mr. bin Laden's camps for training came to light in August 1998, when the United States launched a cruise missile attack against Al Qaeda terrorist camps near Khost, Afghanistan, in response to the bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa. The casualties included several members of a Kashmiri militant group supported by Pakistan who were believed to be training in the Qaeda camps, American officials said.

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, the Pakistani government, led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has turned against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in favor of the United States.

One element in that shift was General Musharraf's decision to oust the chief of the intelligence service, Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, who may have been reluctant to join an American-led coalition against the Taliban government that his organization helped bring to power.

Still, American officials said the depth of support within elements of the I.S.I. for a war on the Taliban and Al Qaeda remained uncertain, and a former chief of the agency has become one of the most vocal critics of American policy in Pakistan.

The former director general, Hameed Gul, complained in an interview with a Pakistani newspaper that the Bush administration was demanding that the agency be placed at the disposal of the Americans, as if it were a mercenary force.

"The I.S.I. is a national intelligence agency, whose potential and ouput should not be shared or rented out to other countries," Mr. Gul said.

American officials acknowledged that recent American policies toward Pakistan had fueled such attitudes. In the 1990's the Central Intelligence Agency failed to maintain the close ties it had developed with the I.S.I. in the American agency's covert action program to support the Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet army of occupation in the 1980's.

The close personal relationships that had developed between C.I.A. and I.S.I. officials - General Gul among them - during the war against the Soviets withered away.

"After the Soviets were forced out of Afghanistan," said Shamshad Ahmad, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations and a former foreign secretary, "you left us in the lurch with all the problems stemming from the war: an influx of refugees, the drug and gun running, a Kalashnikov culture."

In recent years, in fact, American officials said, the United States offered few incentives to the Pakistanis to end their relationship with the Taliban. Washington gave other issues, including continuing concerns about Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and its human rights record, much greater emphasis than the fight against terrorism.

Those priorities were illustrated by the apathetic reaction within the United States government to a secret memorandum by the State Department's chief of counterterrorism in 1999 that called for a new approach to containing Mr. bin Laden.

Written in the the wake of the bombings of two embassies in East Africa in 1998, the memorandum from Michael A. Sheehan, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, urged the Clinton administration to step up efforts to persuade Afghanistan and its neighbors to cut off financing to Mr. bin Laden and end the sanctuary and support being offered to Al Qaeda.

Mr. Sheehan's memo outlined a series of actions the United States could take toward Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen to persuade them to help isolate Al Qaeda.

The document called Pakistan the key, and it suggested that the administration make terrorism the central issue in relations between Washington and Islamabad. The document also urged the administration to find ways to work with the countries to curb terrorist money laundering, and it recommended that the United States go public if any of the governments failed to cooperate.

Mr. Sheehan's plan "landed with a resounding thud," one former official recalled. "He couldn't get anyone interested." As the threat from Al Qaeda and Mr. bin Laden grew and the United States began to press Pakistan harder to break its ties to the Taliban, the Pakistanis feigned cooperation but did little, current and former American officials say.

One former official said the C.I.A. "fell for" what amounted to a stalling tactic aimed at fending off political pressure. The C.I.A. equipped and financed a special commando unit that Pakistan had offered to create to capture Mr. bin Laden. "But this was going nowhere," the former official said. "The I.S.I. never intended to go after bin Laden. We got completely snookered."

The C.I.A. declined to comment on its relationship with the Pakistani agency, saying it did not discuss its ties with foreign intelligence services. But a former senior Clinton administration official disagreed with the idea that the United States had had unrelaistic expectations about the commando proposal.

"There were some concerns about the penetration of the I.S.I., and a lot of uncertainty about whether it would work," the official said. "But all of us, including the intelligence community, thought it was worth doing. What was there to lose?"

What is most remarkable about the tensions that have grown in recent years between the United States and Pakistan's security service is that it was one of the C.I.A.'s closest allies just over a decade ago.

In the 1980's, when the C.I.A. mounted the largest covert action program in its history to support Afghan rebels against the Soviets, the Pakistani agency served as the critical link between the C.I.A. and the rebels at the front lines.

While the C.I.A. supplied money and weapons, it was the I.S.I. that moved them into Afghanistan. The Americans relied almost entirely on the Pakistani service to allocate the weapons to the rebel leaders, and the senior C.I.A. officials involved developed close relations with their counterparts.

But when the Soviet Army finally pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, the C.I.A. ended its support for the Afghan rebels, the agency's relationship with the Pakistani agency was neglected and Washington began to complain more openly about the Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.

By the early 1990's, officials of the Pakistani agency became resentful over the change in American policy. In 1990, just one year after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, Congress imposed sanctions on Pakistan for its nuclear program.

Faced with turmoil in post-Soviet Afghanistan - which the United States had no interest in addressing in the early 1990's - Pakistan moved in to support the Pashtun ethnic group in southern Afghanistan as it created the Taliban movement.

With Pakistani support, the Taliban gradually took control of most of the country. By 1996, Mr. bin Laden, who had been in Afghanistan in the 1980's, helping to pay for Arab fighters to battle the Soviets, returned and quickly forged a close alliance with the Taliban.

American officials do not believe that the I.S.I. was ever directly involved with Mr. bin Laden and Al Qaeda in terrorist activites against the United States. But the Pakistani agency used Afghan terrorist training camps for its Kashmiri operations, and the Pakistani leadership failed to act as it watched the the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taliban grow ever closer.

The I.S.I. did cooperate with the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. on several counterterrorism operations in the 1990's. Most notably, the Pakistanis were instrumental in the capture in Islamabad in 1995 of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and the arrest in Pakistan in 1997 of Mir Aimal Kansi, who killed two C.I.A. employees on a shooting rampage outside C.I.A. headquarters in 1993.

American officials now believe that the Pakistanis were finally starting to become alarmed in the last year or two by the extent to which the Taliban had been co-opted by Mr. bin Laden. Still, the I.S.I. did little to extricate itself from its relationship with the Taliban - until Sept. 11.

"I think the Pakistanis realized as time went on that they had made a bad deal," one State Department official said. "But they couldn't find an easy way out of it."

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

Support grows for U.S. troops on ground

October 29, 2001
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011029-88449132.htm

Support is growing in Congress to put thousands of U.S. ground troops in Afghanistan for precision operations aimed at wiping out terrorists' nests and tracking down Osama bin Laden.

In television interviews yesterday, key Republicans and Democrats alike said they recognized large numbers of American ground combat forces may be required if the United States is to achieve victory in its anti-terrorist military campaign, which in its first month has largely been limited to air strikes.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday defended the 3-week-old air campaign, saying there has been "measurable progress." But some critics on Capitol Hill say it is getting bogged down, and Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged deployment of ground troops is a possibility.

Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said yesterday on CBS' "Face the Nation" that the administration needs to deploy large-scale U.S. ground forces in Afghanistan in order to win the war on terrorism.

"We're going to have to put troops on the ground. We're going to have to put them in force. And although they will not be permanent, they are going to have to be very, very significant," Mr. McCain said.

"We're going to have to put in numbers of forces that are capable of maintaining a base for a period of time, relatively short, so they can branch out and move into certain areas where we believe that the Taliban and al Qaeda's network are located. That's going to be very difficult. It's going to require a lot of air support and may even require bases in different places than they are today," he said.

On CNN's "Late Edition," Mr. McCain said of the military operation he envisions: "It's going to take a very big effort, and probably casualties will be involved. And it won't be accomplished through air power alone."

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, who followed Mr. McCain on "Face the Nation," said, "I think John may be right I don't disagree with John's point that this is going to require an extensive military operation, including the possible use of ground forces."

Mr. Dodd said he recognizes "thousands" of ground troops would be required.

"Right now, we don't have enough people on the ground. We're guessing a lot here. We don't have the human intelligence on the ground to tell us what is really going on," said Mr. Dodd, a ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.

As things now stand, he said, "We don't have Osama bin Laden. We lost this leader of the opposition the other day, which was a blow. We're not seeing the kind of defections [from the Taliban regime] we would have liked to have seen."

Mr. Rumsfeld yesterday said that - contrary to press reports - the United States had sent air support to help prominent Afghan opposition leader Abdul Haq, who was captured and executed by the Taliban militia last week.

"He requested assistance and received it," said Mr. Rumsfeld. He added the aid was provided "by another element of the government," and not the U.S. military. He did not name the agency involved, but a government source told the Associated Press that it was the CIA.

House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, asked on CBS if he believes large numbers of ground troops may be necessary in Afghanistan, said: "You can't rule it out.

"If the president comes to the conclusion that it's going to take that or something like that in order to get these people and to get this network torn down, I would support it," Mr. Gephardt said.

"Look, we're in a war. This group declared war on the United States by bombing, in effect, our two largest buildings in New York. They killed thousands of Americans we have to prevail," Mr. Gephardt added.

The United States has blamed the fugitive Saudi-exile bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network for masterminding the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which killed more than 5,000 people.

Mr. Rumsfeld, interviewed on ABC, was asked if ground troops would be deployed to help hunt down and destroy terrorists in Afghanistan. "We have not ruled out the use of ground troops there is that possibility," he said.

But he would not say how soon that could happen.

As for the air campaign now underway, Mr. McCain said on CBS: "We can use our air power, I think, more intensively and more effectively than we have been. I think a lot more B-52s, a lot more B-2s and B-1s [should be used]. We can't have our planes flying at such a high altitude that not only is there no risk to them, but a degradation of accuracy is the result."

But even with improvements in the air campaign, ground forces will still be necessary, Mr. McCain said.

However, Mr. Rumsfeld disputed claims that the administration's bombing campaign has been ineffective. "We feel that the air campaign has been effective," he said.

He also said the war in Afghanistan is proceeding as officials expected and dismissed concerns that this will be another "quagmire" like Vietnam.

However, on CNN's "Late Edition," Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged that trying to find leaders of the al Qaeda network in Afghanistan is "like looking for a needle in a haystack," given the country's "miles and miles and miles of tunnels and caves that they can hide in."

He said that Afghanistan's complex cave and tunnel system were targets of the bombing campaign. "There's no question that we have been systematically working on the caves and on the tunnels and on their openings, and we've had some success. The problem is there are a great many of them, so it's going to take some time to deal with them and make them less habitable," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Another problem, he said, is that the Taliban and al Qaeda are "increasingly" and "systematically" using mosques, schools and hospitals for command-and-control centers and "ammunition storages." Because such facilities are in civilian areas, U.S. planes targeting those military sites have to be "more careful," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

--------

U.S. strikes over Kabul go awry, kill 13 civilians

October 29, 2001
By Kathy Gannon
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011029-11657227.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. air strikes meant to punish the Taliban spilled over yesterday into residential neighborhoods of the Afghan capital, killing 13 civilians - the second time in as many days that missiles have accidentally hit homes and killed residents.

Later yesterday, U.S. jets were back over the skies of the capital, and strong explosions could be heard in the direction of the main road from Kabul to the opposition-controlled Bagram air base.

Weeping families buried their dead hours after the morning bombardment, apparently aimed at Taliban targets to the north and east of Kabul.

"I have lost all my family. I am finished," said a sobbing woman in the Qali Hotair neighborhood on the northern edge of Kabul.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesmen had no immediate comment on the latest strikes and civilian casualties involved. It has stressed repeatedly that civilians are never deliberately targeted.

More than 5,000 American civilians were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In neighboring Pakistan, where the government has had to work to keep a lid on pro-Taliban unrest, there was growing concern over civilian casualties.

"We feel the military action should possibly be short and targeted in order to avoid civilian casualties," Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said after meeting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Pakistan's government has allied itself with the United States in the confrontation over Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

In a token of that cooperation, Pakistani officials said yesterday they had turned over to U.S. officials a man wanted in connection with another bin Laden-linked attack - the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. The hand-over of the suspect, a Yemeni microbiology student, was the first known arrest outside Yemen in connection with the Cole attack.

Pakistan's main radical Islamic party vowed to step up its challenge to Gen. Musharraf, saying it and other religious groups would meet today to plan a 10-day protest in the capital Islamabad to topple the president.

Qazi Hussain Ahmad, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami, said the protest would involve a march into Islamabad and a sit-in.

In yesterday morning's air strikes, witnesses said 10 persons were killed in Kabul's Qali Hotair neighborhood. An Associated Press reporter saw six bodies, four of them children. Three others died near an eastern housing complex called Macroyan, witnesses said.

The strikes that hit Kabul came 12 hours after stray bombs landed Saturday evening behind the rebel military alliance's battle lines north of the capital. Areas behind Taliban lines also were reported hit.

Eight or nine civilians were killed, most of them in alliance-held areas, witnesses said.

In the opposition-held village of Ghanikheil, villagers said a 20-year-old woman died in the ruins of her mud-brick house, and six were hurt. Four others were injured in a nearby house, they added.

Rebels confronting Taliban troops north of the capital had been complaining publicly that U.S. air strikes weren't doing enough to advance their cause.

It wasn't known if Saturday's heavy raids were in response to this airing of discontent.

The opposition's spokesman, Abdullah, who uses only one name, called the damage to the Taliban front lines from Saturday's raids significant, and said if such heavy bombardment would be employed routinely, "the objective of eradicating terrorism could be achieved much quicker."

Calling the civilian deaths an unfortunate mistake, Abdullah said, "of course we know this wasn't a deliberate targeting," and added, "we have to coordinate."

--------

U.S. Jets Expand Afghan Strikes
Border Areas Hit Near Tajikistan

By Keith B. Richburg and William Branigin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 29, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3414-2001Oct28.html

CHICHKEH, Afghanistan, Oct. 28 -- U.S. warplanes expanded their military campaign in Afghanistan today, striking the far north-central corner of the country near the border with Tajikistan for the first time, according to the opposition Northern Alliance.

Jets also struck targets in Kabul, the capital, Mazar-e Sharif in the north, Herat in the west, Jalalabad in the east and the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south, according to the Afghan Islamic Press news agency. An early morning bombardment on the edges of Kabul reportedly killed 13 people, including four children.

Northern Alliance commanders said two bombs were dropped near the Tajik border, but they missed Taliban positions and fell in an area separating the two forces. Northern Alliance fighters said the bombs were small and had limited impact when they hit the ground in the Qalaqatar district.

"Our front lines saw the American planes drop the bombs," said Faiz Mohamed, deputy commander of Northern Alliance forces in the nearby city of Dasht-e Qalat in Takhar province. "But the bombs did not reach the exact spot where the Taliban were."

"Maybe they just want to get more information," Mohamed said. He and other commanders speculated the U.S. forces were only testing Taliban positions or perhaps trying to push Taliban troops back from the border. "We think there are more American bombs coming," he said.

Asked about the distance separating Taliban forces from Northern Alliance troops, he replied, "A rifle bullet can reach across it."

There were no additional reports of U.S. bombing runs in this area by nightfall, although warplanes could be heard circling above Mazar Quzultumchuq Mountain, where a Northern Alliance outpost looks out over Taliban positions across a wide valley. Soldiers on the mountaintop said they heard the bombing run at Qalaqatar and were expecting more attacks.

Commanders in this area have expressed growing frustration that they have not seen more U.S. air activity against the Taliban here. They say the Taliban most directly faces Northern Alliance troops in three places: Mazar-e Sharif; Jabal Saraj, just north of Kabul; and here near the border with Tajikistan. Mazar-e Sharif and Jabal Saraj have experienced repeated U.S. military strikes, but this region had not, until today.

Agha Gul Ataee, deputy commander of rebel forces in Baghlan province, southwest of Takhar province, said the U.S.-led military campaign "is not effective. The main base of the Taliban is the front line, and they should be concentrating on that front line."

"They are not as weak as the United States thought at first," Ataee said, as his unit of 1,000 men drilled in a dusty field. "That is because there are a lot of foreign terrorists helping the Taliban. If there were not foreigners among them -- especially Pakistanis and Arabs -- the Taliban would not be able to defend themselves against the Americans."

"We want to see the American airplanes bomb," said Mohamed, the deputy commander. "Until now, no, they are not really helping."

Haron Amin, spokesman for the Northern Alliance in Washington, said that although the bombing of Taliban positions had increased, it still "was not sufficient for a move on the ground."

He said the alliance was looking for more supplies, closer military coordination and a commitment to a "long-term engagement" before moving on Taliban positions outside Kabul and around Mazar-e Sharif. "It would be premature to go on the attack now," he said.

The Northern Alliance's foreign minister, Abdullah, called today for greater coordination between U.S. and alliance military officials on the selection of bombing targets after civilians were killed this weekend by U.S. airstrikes on alliance territory.

Abdullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, made the appeal after a bombing run north of Kabul killed as many as nine civilians Saturday. The Associated Press said another 13 died today near the Bagram air base, about 40 miles north of Kabul.

"Of course we know this was not deliberate targeting," Abdullah said of the civilian casualties. "But we have to coordinate."

In Kabul, the AP reported that the bodies of four children and two adults lay at the scene of this morning's bombing and that witnesses said at least 10 people were killed in all.

Three other people died near an eastern housing complex called Macroyan, witnesses told the AP.

Abdullah said two people were killed in Saturday night's airstrikes near the front lines at Bagram, but a spokeswoman for an Italian-run surgical hospital in the Panjshir Valley quoted wounded people as reporting eight or nine civilian deaths from the bombing of three villages.

"Myself and [my] staff are deeply shocked, especially when you see a 4-year-old child and old people coming in," said Kate Rowlands, program director of the Emergency Hospital in Anoba. She said 14 people were wounded in the villages of Ghanikhel, Raqi and Nikhahil, the last on the Taliban side of the front line. Three injured people from Nikhahil were brought by donkey across the no man's land between the two sides to seek treatment, she said.

Those civilian casualties came during the heaviest bombardment of the three-week-old campaign, a day of airstrikes around Kabul that began shortly after dawn and continued well into the night.

Abdullah expressed satisfaction with the damage to Taliban positions from the airstrikes Saturday. "If yesterday's type of bombing becomes standard, the objective of eradicating terrorism could be achieved much quicker," he said at a news conference in the alliance stronghold of Jabal Saraj.

He rejected the idea that the U.S. campaign was failing to hurt the Taliban, saying it has "paralyzed" the extremist Muslim movement. "They have lost capacity as a military force," he said.

Abdullah also called on Pakistan to stop the entry into Afghanistan of an estimated 9,000 armed volunteers who are answering a call by Islamic fundamentalist groups to join the Taliban's fight against the United States.

The incursion "has to be stopped," Abdullah said, "because Pakistan cannot claim cooperation with the international allies and receive debt relief and then allow thousands of people across the border to join the battle against the people of Afghanistan."

Meanwhile, fighting in southern Takhar province, in the Taliban-controlled town of Taloqan, has produced a new flood of refugees, some of whom have fled north in recent days, destitute and with only the clothes they wore when they left.

At the Nawabad refugee camp, Abdul Wahid, 38, said he and 30 other families walked with several donkeys and arrived just as a cold front swept in on the back of a dust storm.

"Water and food is a big problem here," said Abdul Baqi, 48, a village chief in the refugee camp, who said his right leg was broken when Taliban troops ran over him with a jeep before he was carried to the Nawabad refugee camp. "We have been promised blankets, but nothing has come yet." He said many of the camp's tents were blown away in the weekend dust storm.

"America is bombing the Taliban, but we don't have any food or clothes, and our children are hungry," he said. "It's getting cold here. We don't have any medicine. And we are worried about the winter."

Branigin reported from Jabal Saraj. Staff writer Marc Kaufman in Washington contributed to this report.

--------

In this crisis, history offers Bush few lessons
In spite of its experience, his team is forced to improvise the war on terrorism.

Christian Science Monitor
October 29, 2001
By Francine Kiefer kieferf@csps.com
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1029/p1s2-uspo.html

WASHINGTON - With setbacks in Afghanistan and a confused response to the anthrax attacks, President Bush and his administration are showing the difficulties of managing a dual-front war that is virtually unprecedented in US history.

Much of the misstepping is understandable. The president is being forced to rally a nation behind a war overseas for which there may be no end, while trying to reassure Americans about a public-health threat at home - not to mention alerting them to other dangers unknown and perhaps unimaginable.

It's like trying to oversee the Gulf War, the leak at Three Mile Island, and the uncertainty of the cold war all at the same time.

Yet, so far, the White House can take some solace in one enduring characteristic of the American people: They tend to be long-suffering with leaders, at least in times of crisis. The question now is: for how long?

"We're a patient people, but not when the war is brought right into the daily mail," says presidential historian Henry Graff.

Indeed, a new poll by Newsweek shows that while 88 percent of Americans approve of the president's military action overseas, only 48 percent think the administration has a well thought-out plan for dealing with bioterrorism at home.

"This is obviously the first kind of domestic war we've had to confront, so it's not like there's a lot of precedent," says Leon Panetta, former chief of staff to President Clinton. But officials must quickly adjust, he says, "because they can't afford to go through too many weeks like the last one we went through."

Mr. Panetta is referring to the confusion that reigned as federal officials switched their characterization of the Washington anthrax attack from "run of the mill" to "highly concentrated," "pure," and "more dangerous." Additionally, postal workers were aggrieved at the belated attention they received in the attack that took the lives of two workers.

None of this is to mention the mixed messages that came out of the administration last week about the progress of the war in Afghanistan, nor the near obsessive focus the threat of terrorism is demanding of Washington.

To its credit, the administration seems to recognize the communication confusion, and the president for the first time on Monday is meeting with his full homeland security team, headed by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. Mr. Ridge is now expected to brief the media almost daily.

Interestingly, the Newsweek poll, taken late last week and released over the weekend, shows a high degree of empathy for the administration. A 65-percent majority said government officials made an honest mistake in underestimating the risks involved in handling contaminated mail.

It's the same point historians make as they emphasize the uniqueness of the crisis facing Mr. Bush. Not only is the nature of the threat unprecedented, but its timing so early in an administration makes it particularly unusual. Franklin Roosevelt had two terms behind him before he had to face Pearl Harbor. Woodrow Wilson had one in before confronting World War I. Bush had eight months.

Complicating the calculus is that Congress remains split, at least below the surface. This was not something Roosevelt needed to worry about, nor Lyndon Johnson, too much, when he began ramping up in Vietnam.

Yet even on some legislation related to the attack, Bush and lawmakers are divided over issues like airport security and an economic stimulus package.

All of this helps explain some of the bumps and blunders along the way. "No one anticipated the anthrax incident, or, indeed, Sept. 11," says historian Arthur Schlesinger, a senior aide to former President Kennedy. "You've had to improvise."

While the uniqueness of the challenge has helped mollify the public when it comes to mistakes, it hasn't offered the White House many parallels to study for lessons on governing. Moving the nation's capital, as the founding fathers did when yellow fever swept Philadelphia in 1793, isn't an option. Nor are the massive troop call-ups required by both world wars. "There's nothing more complex and challenging as this to compare it with," says Mr. Graff.

Yet there are things the Bush team can learn, and in some cases is learning, from history. While Bush may not possess the eloquence of Roosevelt, he recognizes the need to communicate regularly with the public about the war. This is critical, says presidential expert Charles Jones, because, as Vietnam taught Johnson, policy can't be maintained without public backing.

"I am really stunned at the extent to which Bush has been able to do this," says Mr. Jones. "My low expectations were in part a consequence of a mistake I and others made, that speaking well is the same as communicating well.... He is a terrible orator, but he gets the message across. Folks up and down the street understand what he's saying."

To his advantage, Bush does have an experienced coterie of advisers on foreign and military affairs to lean on. Fred Greenstein, a presidential scholar at Princeton University, compares Vice President Cheney and Bush's overall national-security team to what Truman had with George Marshall, his revered secretary of State who authored the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II.

Others, such as Graff, discount the experience of the national-security staff, arguing it only knows how to fight the last war, the Gulf War, while this one is completely different. Together with homefront generals like Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, as well as Ridge and the new FBI director, "we have a very inexperienced staff," says Graff.

Most experts agree that the one thing that Bush needs to avoid is setting vague goals with no hope of achievement. While Mr. Greenstein describes Bush as results-oriented, he is concerned about the generality of goals like, "rid the world of evil."

"It's hard to see where this thing is going to come out," he says. "There is the danger of a Vietnam sort of thing."


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Country examines energy options for vehicles, power plants

Monday, October 29, 2001
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/10/10292001/ap_power_45396.asp

A breakdown of some renewable-energy options:

WIND POWER: Wind farms are being developed more rapidly because technological improvements have made the energy comparable in price to natural gas, which fires many of the country's power plants. More than 16 percent of the natural gas used domestically last year came from Canada and other countries. The amount of wind-power generation capability in the United States is expected to grow by more than 75 percent this year to about 4,500 megawatts. That's enough to power about 4.5 million homes, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

SOLAR POWER: Solar's share of the energy market is small compared to wind and biomass, but it's expanding rapidly in Japan and Europe. Use of photovoltaic cells in the United States has lagged in the last decade. However, the Energy Department has increased funding for solar research, and scientists are investigating thin-film technology as a cheaper way to produce electricity from the sun.

BIOMASS: Biofuels, produced from items like corn, sawdust or cow manure, provide roughly 4 percent of the country's energy. Production of one biofuel in particular, ethanol, is expected to soar as California is forced to use the oxygenate instead of the additive MTBE, a water pollutant.

ELECTRIC VEHICLES: About 2,500 electric vehicles are on the road in California, where air-quality officials will require even more sales of the zero-emission vehicles beginning in 2003. Automakers are fighting the rules, calling the vehicles' expensive, heavy batteries impractical. State officials, however, consider electric vehicles an important step toward cleaner air and a bridge to fuel-cell technology.

FUEL CELLS: Fuel-cell vehicles use the power generated when hydrogen and oxygen combine. When pure hydrogen is used, the only byproduct is water vapor. Several technological challenges remain before fuel-cell vehicles can be mass-produced. Fuel cells need a low-cost hydrogen source, potentially costly fueling stations and fuel tanks that are both compact and safe to handle the ultralight, flammable gas.

-------- environment

CALIFORNIAN FINED FOR DUMPING HAZARDOUS WASTES

October 29, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-29-09.html

PASADENA, California, A California man has been sentenced to serve six months home detention for illegally disposing of hazardous waste.

Olumbamidele Dada, owner of Kamila, Inc., was sentenced on October 16 to pay $70,055 in restitution for violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

Dada had arranged with a shipper in Wilmington, California, to transport to Nigeria for resale thousands of containers of toxic, corrosive, flammable, chemicals which had been purchased from the U.S. military.

Dada never completed the transportation of the chemicals and they were left at the shipper's facility where some of their containers began to leak. The shipper was ordered by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Los Angeles County Fire Department to perform a cleanup that cost more than $80,000.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Criminal Investigation Division, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Los Angeles County Fire Department's Health Hazardous Materials Division. It was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.

----

Toxin levels at New York's WTC often high - report

Reuters
29/10/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13017/newsDate/29-Oct-2001/story.htm

NEW YORK - Toxic chemicals and metals are being released from fires and rubble in the ruins of the World Trade Center at levels sometimes exceeding U.S. government safety standards, the Daily News reported last week.

The newspaper, quoting from Environmental Protection Agency documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request, said benzene, chlorinated dioxins, chromium, copper, lead, polychlorinated dioxins and sulfur oxide had been found in the air and soil in lower Manhattan.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials and city officials said the article exaggerated the dangers.

"We have advised from day one that the workers need to be serious about the masks and the suits and all the protective gear," William Muszynski, acting regional administrator for the U.S. EPA, said at a news conference.

"We've also done monitoring not just at the site but also at the perimeters ... to make sure citizens can have assurance there is nothing to be overly concerned about," said Muszynski, who added that the EPA data were being made public.

"I can assure you that from all the data collected so far our representations are that the workers need to take protection and citizens who are healthy are safe. People with respiratory issues will have to take a little extra precaution."

The Daily News said that while much attention has been focused on possible asbestos contamination from the complex destroyed when two hijacked passenger planes slammed into the twin 110-story towers on Sept. 11, toxic chemical levels were more extensive at certain times than first believed.

The New York Times reported separately last week that most health experts were not alarmed about the effects on residents and office workers in lower Manhattan because the spikes in toxic levels do not last long and occur in the middle of the night.

But in the financial district last week, office workers said they were concerned about the "toxic zone" and breathing in the gritty, acrid, smelly air daily that still hangs over them more than six weeks after the attacks.

"We work in a toxic zone. So when you ask what do people think down here, they certainly don't think of gold," said a precious metals broker at the COMEX metals division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, a stone's throw from the wreckage.

"That's all anyone is talking about," said the broker, who asked not to be identified.

The Times said that monitors tracking pollution around the 16-acre (six acre) site of the ruined towers were unable to distinguish how much pollution was caused by smoldering fires deep inside the rubble, or diesel machinery operating around the clock on the surface.

Benzene, a colorless liquid that evaporates quickly and can cause leukemia, bone marrow damage and other diseases, has been found on same days to exceed federal safety standards, reported the Daily News, which received the documents via the non-profit New York Environmental Law and Justice Project.

It said one example was a benzene reading taken on Oct. 3 at three spots around "ground zero" and which measured at 42, 31 and 16 times higher than standards set by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The OSHA exposure limit for workers handling benzene is 1 part per million over an eight-hour day and the Daily News said the EPA documents showed on Oct. 3 for example, the benzene exposure at "ground zero" was measured at 39 parts per million.

-------

Key Climate Change Talks Start in Morocco

Yahoo News
Monday October 29
By Gilles Trequesser
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011029/sc/environment_climate_dc_5.html

MARRAKESH, Morocco - U.N. talks to seal an unprecedented climate change treaty got under way in Marrakesh Monday with the world's biggest polluter, the United States, taking a back seat.

The 2,000 delegates from 160 countries have two weeks to set out in legal detail principles adopted in Bonn in July on making significant cuts in the next decade in emissions of the 'greenhouse gases' blamed for raising the earth's temperature.

The treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol and forged in 1997 in Japan, must be ratified by a majority of industrial nations responsible for global warming in order to take effect.

It aims to cut emissions of greenhouses gases by an average of 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.

``In Marrakesh, the focus will be on completing the translation of the Bonn agreements into legal language,'' Dutch Environment Minister and outgoing conference chairman Jan Pronk told the opening plenary session.

A last-minute political compromise on the main issues was reached in Bonn three months ago and the Marrakesh session is expected to produce a legally binding document.

``You can put the icing on the Bonn cake,'' Pronk told delegates, urging them to set aside political differences. ''Don't renegotiate a political agreement already reached, just work it out,'' he said.

U.S. DELEGATION ON SIDELINES

The environmental group Greenpeace sounded a less optimistic note, saying rules already agreed were so weak that they were unlikely to lead to a reduction of greenhouse emissions.

``Even the protocol's nominal target of a 5 percent reduction hardly started the process of making the 80 percent reductions needed to prevent dangerous levels of climate change,'' said Bill Hare, Greenpeace climate policy director.

The Marrakesh conference ``must not be muddled with diplomatic double talk ... the processes that underpin the protocol must be transparent and open for public participation,'' he added in a communique.

The United States pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in March, calling it flawed and harmful to the U.S. economy.

Though represented in Marrakesh, Washington -- the world's biggest industrial power and biggest polluter -- is not expected to play an active role, delegates said. This made the support of the 15 European Union countries and Russia vital to the success of the meeting.

The treaty will enter into force if ratified by 55 countries responsible for 55 percent of emissions in 1990. Russia produced about 17 percent of those 11 years ago.

So far, 40 nations have ratified the treaty.

Michael Zummit Cutajar, executive secretary of the Climate Change Convention, said there were no obstacles on major issues.

From Russia ``what's on the table is larger allowances for the use of sinks,'' he told a news conference.

``Sinks'' is jargon for the forests and farms that absorb carbon from the earth's atmosphere. The deal allows Russia, Japan and Canada to use these widely to reach their goals.

PROGRESS MUST CONTINUE Moroccan Environment Minister Mohamed El Yazghi, who was elected conference chairman, said last month's suicide attacks on New York and Washington had shocked everyone, but the U.N. climate talks were a clear answer to those who thought they could stop human progress.

``We don't have the right to fail,'' Yazghi told delegates, urging them to avoid raising new demands.

Acknowledging that world attention might be focused on the U.S.-led strikes on Afghanistan, he said climatic dangers were not the least of the dangers threatening mankind, which must act as one family.

Organizers also stressed the importance of the venue, in Africa and in a Muslim country.

``Widespread poverty, recurrent drought and floods, and dependence on rain-fed agriculture, forestry and fisheries make this continent and its people most vulnerable to climate change,'' said Zummit Cutajar.

Security was tight at the conference and all mail addressed to the conference was being checked for anthrax.

Letters laced with the germ warfare agent have turned up in the United States in recent weeks.

The Marrakesh meeting, attended by some 4,000 people including non-governmental organizations and the press, is known as COP7, the seventh conference of the parties to a U.N. treaty signed in 1992 at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

-------- human rights

Group says Alliance guilty of past atrocities

October 29, 2001
By Richard S. Ehrlich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011029-18104408.htm

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A respected human-rights group is warning that Northern Alliance forces allied with the United States have a history of committing atrocities and should be prevented from an ethnic cleansing campaign if they capture Mazar-e-Sharif.

Alliance forces, backed by limited U.S. air strikes, have been closing in on the Taliban-held northern city, the scene of widespread ethnic massacres when the Taliban drove the Northern Alliance out in 1998. If they are successful, the New York-based organization Human Rights Watch fears a reprisal campaign.

Charges of mass rapes, looting, rocket attacks and other atrocities by the Alliance against civilians and the Taliban date back to the mid-1990s.

In an "Open Letter" to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the organization wrote: "As the frontline in northern Afghanistan shifts to the outskirts of Mazar-e-Sharif, Human Rights Watch is concerned about the risk of ethnically targeted violence and other abuses against civilians in the area.

"We believe the United States should use its influence with the Northern Alliance to ensure that their forces do not engage in reprisal killings, indiscriminate shelling and other serious violations of international humanitarian law."

The Northern Alliance is a loose collection of minority ethnic Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and Turkoman tribes, a variety indicative of its inability to rule Afghanistan's majority Pashtun population.

The Taliban enjoys support mostly from Pashtun tribes, who have traditionally dominated the Texas-sized, landlocked nation.

"After retaking Mazar-e-Sharif in August 1998, Taliban forces killed about 2,000 mostly ethnic Hazara civilians," Human Rights Watch reminded Mr. Powell.

If the Northern Alliance conquers Mazar-e-Sharif, "these abuses may provide motivation for reprisal actions by the Northern Alliance forces against local Pashtun civilians, Taliban prisoners and others perceived to be associated with Taliban rule."

The letter said the alliance's past record, "especially in this part of Afghanistan, is reason for great concern."

"In May 1997, Northern Alliance forces under the command of Gen. Abdul Malik Pahlawan killed an estimated 3,000 Taliban prisoners in Mazar-e-Sharif, taking some to the desert to be shot and throwing others down wells and blowing them up with grenades," the letter said.

Gen. Pahlawan no longer belongs to the Northern Alliance, but "other commanders who remain with the Alliance amassed a deplorable record of attacks on civilians between the fall of the Najibullah regime in 1992 and the Taliban's capture of Kabul in 1996," it said.

President Najibullah was installed by the Soviet Union during Moscow's decade-long occupation, and remained in power for three years after the Russians retreated in 1989.

The Northern Alliance ruled Kabul from 1992 to 1996. An estimated 25,000 people died in the city during 1994 alone during rocket and artillery duels between rival factions within the Northern Alliance.

The Taliban, supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, eventually marched into Kabul in 1996 and drove out the Northern Alliance, sparking hopes that the Taliban would bring peace.

As an ominous start to their harsh regime, however, the Taliban immediately hanged Najibullah and his brother, Ahmadzai, in public, letting their bodies twist above a Kabul street for several days.

--------

Border will open to neediest refugees

October 29, 2001
By Greg Myre
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011029-22020169.htm

QUETTA, Pakistan - Pakistan has agreed to open its doors to Afghans in need of urgent help, the U.N. refugee chief announced yesterday after a trip to a refugee camp on the barren border.

Ruud Lubbers, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said he hoped talks with Pakistani officials over the past two days would help end, or at least reduce, the chaotic scenes at the border, where Afghans fleeing the war often have been turned back.

Pakistan and the U.N. relief agency will screen Afghans at the border, and women, children, the elderly and those in need of medical treatment will be permitted to cross, he said.

"We have to improve the situation for people who badly need temporary protection," Mr. Lubbers told reporters after traveling to the Chaman border crossing in southwest Pakistan.

Mr. Lubbers visited a hot, dusty plain where UNHCR has set up about 100 tents for Afghan refugees, shelter intended to be temporary. The Afghans are expected to find their own housing in Pakistan as soon as they can.

Pakistan, which already hosts 2 million Afghans, the largest refugee population in the world, is fearful of a new flood of refugees and wants to maintain tight control of its border.

It also worries that armed groups from Afghanistan could infiltrate if it throws open its doors.

Afghan men of fighting age, particularly those traveling alone, are likely to have trouble crossing. Mr. Lubbers said the men may be trying to avoid conscription in the army of the ruling Taliban. He acknowledged that UNHCR and Pakistan disagreed on the issue.

The Taliban has established its own refugee camps on the Afghan side of the border, but Mr. Lubbers said his agency was wary, fearing that the camps could be used as a way to keep Afghans from leaving.

"We are very cautious about promoting [these camps] or providing any assistance at this stage," he said.

Afghanistan's neighbors all have officially sealed their borders. In practice, Pakistan has been allowing in some refugees, though the process has been haphazard. Many refugees have been turned away, only to sneak in illegally by traveling through mountain passes along the porous border.

Most have found shelter with relatives in existing Afghan neighborhoods in western Pakistan. No large-scale tent camps have sprouted, and none is planned. UNHCR is setting up 15 relatively small camps.

The war and a prolonged drought in Afghanistan have created desperate conditions for millions of Afghans. However, the number of refugees has not been as great as many had feared.

Since many have entered Pakistan by stealth, no official figures are available. U.N. officials have put the number as high as 150,000, but Mr. Lubbers said yesterday his best estimate was about 80,000.

Mr. Lubbers, who travels to Iran tomorrow as part of a regional tour, said he will lobby for the same arrangement reached with Pakistan.

"We think all neighboring countries have to keep their borders open for those who need to flee," he said.

--------

Aid Agencies Prepare for 'Anarchy' in Afghanistan
On Uzbek Border, Relief Is Readied for Millions

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 29, 2001; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3656-2001Oct28.html

TERMEZ, Uzbekistan -- Relief worker Mohammed Kumba Kumba had a rifle stuck in his ribs in Cambodia and spent long enough in Kosovo to understand the dangers of working where chaos reigns. So he is worried about Afghanistan.

On loan from another agency in Kosovo to help coordinate movement of UNICEF supplies to Afghanistan, Kumba says the biggest concern is what happens after U.N. agencies take the aid across the border.

"This is a country that is being drawn into anarchy," said Kumba, who is from Tanzania. "When the situation becomes so disorganized, it becomes very risky for humanitarian work. You don't know if the people on the ground will be receptive or not. The risks increase."

At this town in southern Uzbekistan, on the closed and mined border with Afghanistan, relief workers are preparing for the river port to reopen to barges that will carry aid they hope will help avert a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

Workers are piling blankets and mattresses to the ceiling in warehouses. Road crews are rolling fresh asphalt over the potholes in the road leading to the port, which has been closed for four years. Officials have checked the barges and inspected the facilities at the Termez airport in anticipation of moving thousands of tons of supplies to help an estimated 6 million Afghans that the United Nations says are in need of humanitarian aid because of drought and war.

"We inspected the facilities. Everything is ready to go," said Murad Kuchinkinov, a field officer for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, as he watched mattresses being unloaded from a truck from Tashkent on Saturday.

Not quite ready.

There still are no humanitarian food supplies in Termez, despite the approval given last week by Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, to allow barges to take food and other supplies across the border. Officials from the U.N. World Food Program say they still are working to cut through the red tape that is the principal impediment to the relief missions.

"Maybe we will move after one week. Maybe after two weeks, maybe a month," Kuchinkinov said.

The complications arise on both sides of the border. The government of the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan moves at what relief agencies say is a frustratingly slow pace.

But more crucial is what will happen when the barges cross the Amu Darya to the Afghan port of Khairaton, about 10 miles upriver. That area is controlled by the Taliban, and U.N. agencies hope their local employees in Afghanistan will be allowed to unload and transport the supplies to needy people.

"We are impartial and independent. We talk to whatever authorities are in control of the region," Kenzo Oshima, the U.N. undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, said before a visit here last week. "It's not going to be easy. Nothing is going to be taken for granted."

"It's always difficult to deliver assistance when you have an ongoing military activity," added Ramiro Lopes da Silva, the worldwide director of transport and logistics for the World Food Program. "You have risks involved. When things go totally wrong, you have to be fast enough to suspend the operation until things are stable."

The U.N. agencies have experience working in war conditions, but they have large handicaps in this situation. International aid workers have been withdrawn from Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan. Communication with the remaining Afghan staff is irregular because the Taliban has declared that anyone talking by phone to the outside is a spy. U.S. bombs have caused thousands of Afghans to flee cities, and some bombs have struck aid stockpiles. Three Red Cross warehouses were reportedly destroyed by U.S. bombs Friday.

In addition, Taliban forces have seized U.N. warehouses and supplies, though some goods have been returned.

Officials are concerned that the Taliban and those under its control may regard the U.N. agencies as being too closely identified with the West. More than half the food and other aid distributed by the agencies comes from the United States.

"It's important that the people we want to reach should see us as donors of aid, not as bombers," said Kumba. "It has to be handled very tenderly."

But there is no doubt the movement of humanitarian goods will be watched closely by military strategists. Just as Termez offers humanitarian agencies the best corridor to the northern half of Afghanistan, it also would be a strategic route for military movements. Soviet troops poured over the sturdy bridge here when they invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and limped back over it in retreat 10 years later.

The bridge was closed when the Taliban took control of the area on the Afghan side in 1997. Uzbekistan has refused to reopen it, even for one-way humanitarian convoys, for fear the Taliban will try to use it. Barge traffic can be more closely controlled, the Uzbek government says.

But this town of 120,000 is hoping a combination of war and the humanitarian effort will bring a reopening of the bridge and a resumption of the once-lively trade between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.

"If the war stops and the road opens up, this will become a more industrialized city," said Ramazen Ashurov, a Termez city hall official. But he cautioned, "sending humanitarian aid on barges doesn't mean the war has stopped. I don't see the road reopening."

For now, Termez continues to be divorced from the river on which it was founded. A long electrified fence snakes along a dirt pathway patrolled by Uzbek soldiers, bundled against the cold and dust storms they call the "Afghan wind."

The pathway stands between Termez and the riverbank. No one can use the river for catching the carp-like fish that are so popular here, for swimming in the blistering summers, or for the boat traffic that once connected the city with three neighboring countries: Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

"I can remember swimming in the river," said Rudmilla Kim, 49, one of the many ethnic Koreans whose family came here from eastern Russia during the Stalinist purges beginning in the late 1930s. "It was wonderful. And we used to come and go to Afghanistan at will."

"Sure we want to have the border and the bridge open," said Khader Pardive, 43, who was born in Termez. "They should reopen it if they are sure it will be quiet."

--------

U.S. Warns Afghans of Yellow Cluster Bomblets

Yahoo News
Reuters
Monday October 29 7:52 PM ET
By Deborah Zabarenko
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011029/wl/attack_military_yellow_dc_1.html

WASHINGTON - U.S. radio broadcasts into Afghanistan now include a safety warning: airdropped food parcels are square, unexploded cluster bombs are can-shaped, and both are yellow, so it is important to tell them apart.

``Attention people of Afghanistan!'' the broadcasts in Persian and Pashto say. ``As you may have heard, the Partnership of Nations is dropping yellow Humanitarian Daily Rations. The rations are square-shaped and are packaged in plastic. They are full of good nutritious, Halal food,'' prepared according to Islamic precepts.

``In areas far from where we are dropping food, we are dropping cluster bombs,'' the radio spots say, according to a transcript obtained on Monday.

``Although it is unlikely, it is possible that not every bomb will explode on impact. These bombs are a yellow color and are can-shaped ...

``Once again, we will not be using these bombs in areas near where we are dropping relief supplies. Please, please exercise caution when approaching unidentified yellow objects in areas that have been recently bombed.''

Cluster bombs are meant to hit so-called soft targets, including people and vehicles. Cluster bombs can contain many bomblets that disperse as they drop, and it is these that might be mistaken for food packages. Bomblets that fail to explode on impact could well blow up if disturbed on the ground.

The ones mentioned in the radio spot are cylindrical, measuring about 2.5 inches by 6.5 inches, some with a yellow ''tail'' on top. Each Humanitarian Daily Ration (HDR) is approximately 7 inches by 13 inches.

The radio warning is a departure from other broadcasts in the area delivered in a U.S. operation named ``Commando Solo.''

Transcripts of these broadcasts released earlier by the Pentagon (news - web sites) showed they were aimed at members of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, believed by Washington to be harboring Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and his al Qaeda guerrillas.

Washington holds bin Laden responsible for the Sept. 11 hijack attacks on the United States that killed some 4,800 people, and blames the Taliban for harboring him.

``When you decide to surrender, approach United States forces with your hands in the air,'' an earlier radio message said. ``Sling your weapons across your back, muzzle toward the ground. Remove your magazine and expel any rounds. Doing this is your only chance of survival.''

As of Monday, U.S. military planes had dropped some 960,000 HDR food packages on Afghanistan. The yellow-wrapped 2,000-calorie meatless bundles are a key propaganda component of President Bush (news - web sites)'s war against terrorism.

The Bush administration has stressed that the United States is not at war with the people of Afghanistan.

As airstrikes continued for a 23rd day on Monday, so did the delivery of airdropped HDRs, Defense Department officials said.

-------- police / prisoners

Secret U.S. court handed new power to fight terror
But some observers fear for civil liberties

By Scott Shane,
October 29, 2001
Baltimore Sun
http://www.sunspot.net/bal-te.court29oct29.story

In the government's all-out campaign against terrorism, it is one of the least-known and most important fronts: a windowless, soundproof, cipher-locked room on the sixth floor of the Department on Justice in Washington.

Inside, the judges of America's secret court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, rule on requests to tap the phones, bug the rooms and break into the houses of terror suspects on U.S. soil.

With President Bush's signing Friday of sweeping new anti-terror legislation, the secret court's jurisdiction has been widely expanded. Attorney General John Ashcroft said he would order investigators to immediately use the new wiretap powers to track down those responsible for the Sept. 11 and anthrax attacks and to prevent new acts of terror.

With authorities on highest alert, the FBI and the National Security Agency are casting a wide surveillance net, targeting suspicious foreigners in the United States. FISA court warrants are a key tool, because they can be issued on the basis of far less evidence than traditional criminal warrants.

Previously, the secret court could issue warrants only when the collection of foreign intelligence was "the purpose" of the bug or search. The new law allows the court to act when intelligence is "a significant purpose," allowing criminal investigation as a simultaneous goal.

Advocates of the change say it merely updates the original 1978 FISA law to cope with terrorism. Intelligence surveillance often grows into criminal cases, as wiretaps reveal plans for terrorism or other crimes. The new law merely acknowledges that fact, they say.

Stewart A. Baker, a Washington attorney who served as NSA general counsel from 1992 to 1994, says the expanded authority of the FISA court is justified and timely.

"Now there's almost no national security problem that doesn't have a law enforcement aspect," Baker says. "We're all aware there's a foreign terrorist gang operating inside the U.S."

Civil liberties concerns

But the court's new powers, which expire in 2005 if not renewed by Congress, disturb some civil libertarians. They say the change weakens constitutional protections by enabling the FBI to circumvent the requirements for criminal wiretap warrants.

"I'm as afraid of terrorism as the next person," says David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who opposed the changes. "But if we give up our principles, what are we fighting for?"

Critics such as Cole were already unhappy with the court's absolute secrecy and history of granting virtually all warrant requests the FBI and spy agencies seek. Its scorecard since 1979: 12,178 warrants approved, 1 denied.

Even before the law passed, the FISA court had never been busier. Last year it approved a record 1,005 warrants for eavesdropping and covert entries, twice the number in 1993 and more than double the 479 wiretap warrants issued by federal judges nationwide in all criminal cases. Legal observers say that record will be shattered.

"We're likely to see an explosion in the number of foreign intelligence surveillance authorizations," says David L. Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group in Washington.

There is no way of knowing for certain what goes on in that sixth-floor chamber. The annual number of warrants applied for and granted is the only record made public. "No one knows very much about the FISA court because it's so secret," says Cole.

The court gets no mention on the U.S. judiciary system's voluminous Web sites. "It's a court that would a lot rather operate, and can operate more efficiently, without a lot of media attention," said David A. Sellers, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. At The Sun's request, however, he did fax a list of the seven FISA court judges. Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth and three other judges turned down interview requests.

The court's members, appointed to seven-year terms by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, are federal judges who work most of the time in their home states on criminal and civil cases. They come to Washington to sit in FISA court in two-week rotations, working alone to review warrant requests.

Despite its secrecy, the court has surfaced in dozens of important criminal cases, from the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 to the prosecutions of John A. Walker Jr., Aldrich H. Ames and Robert P. Hanssen for spying.

One 1998 espionage case, in which a married couple were charged with spying for East Germany, revealed the intensive surveillance possible with the court's sanction.

The couple, Theresa Squillicote and Kurt Strand, were the targets of telephone taps, an electronic bug in their bedroom, two clandestine searches of their house and a download of files from their home computer. Agents even listened in while they talked to their psychotherapists, according to documents made public when their lawyers unsuccessfully challenged the FISA statute.

Despite its broad application in such cases, Bush administration officials decided after the Sept. 11 attacks that the FISA court needed more power. They may have been spurred by an episode that has tormented investigators by raising the possibility that the attacks might have been prevented.

A month before the attacks, FBI agents wanted to seek a FISA warrant against a Moroccan-born French citizen, Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested Aug. 17 on immigration charges after seeking training to fly -- but not land -- jetliners. But FBI supervisors decided that there was insufficient evidence under the FISA law to seek a warrant, according to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.

Now, having tracked phone calls and wire transfers between Moussaoui and the Sept. 11 hijackers, authorities believe Moussaoui may have planned to become the "20th hijacker," though he has not been charged in the plot.

Wider court powers

It's unclear whether the changes in the FISA law would have made it easier to target Moussaoui, but the changes that took effect Friday increase the secret court's powers. The new measure lengthens the term of its warrants from 45 to 120 days, with extensions permitted for up to a year. Warrants now target a person rather than a specific telephone number, a change Ashcroft said is necessary in an era of disposable cell phones.

Most of the objections, however, concern the blurring of the distinction between criminal and intelligence warrants.

To get a criminal warrant, investigators must convince a judge that there is "probable cause" to believe the target has committed a crime. For a FISA warrant, by contrast, they must present evidence only that the person is "an agent of a foreign power," such as a foreign nation or terrorist group.

"The concern is, you're basically obliterating a very important distinction in the law," says Sobel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "FISA was created for the most part for surveillance of foreign embassies. It lacks meaningful oversight and public accountability. There was no plan to use it for criminal prosecution."

Ironically, when it was created in 1978, the FISA court was intended to provide some protection against intelligence wiretaps, which previously were performed at the whim of the president and attorney general. A congressional investigation had disclosed that NSA had intercepted the communications of thousands of U.S. citizens targeted because of their political activities, from actress Jane Fonda to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The 1978 law forced the FBI and NSA to get the court's permission for spying on U.S. soil, whether on foreign citizens or Americans suspected of spying. A 1995 amendment required a FISA warrant if agents wanted to break in to search private premises.

"It was a significant improvement over prior practice," says Steven Aftergood, who studies intelligence and secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. He noted that in the 1999 investigation of Wen Ho Lee, a U.S. nuclear scientist suspected of spying for China, Justice Department attorneys declined to ask the FISA court for a warrant because they didn't think they could justify it.

"At that point, I was sold on the argument that FISA protects the civil liberties of innocent Americans," Aftergood says.

In his only public statement on the FISA court, Chief Judge Lamberth, a federal judge in Washington, disputed its reputation for never seeing a warrant application it didn't like.

Lamberth told an American Bar Association breakfast meeting in 1997 that he resented the charge that the court is a "rubber stamp for the executive branch." While applications may not be rejected, he said, they are closely scrutinized and may be revised before being approved.

"I ask questions. I get into the nitty-gritty. I know exactly what's going to be done and why," he said. "I have pen-and-inked changes myself on the things."

Lamberth said he couldn't imagine a better system for balancing intelligence secrecy and privacy rights. Then he added a comment that seems prescient today.

"The age of spying is not over," he said. "And the age of terrorism is just dawning."

----

Novel Security Measures
Philly man was kept off a recent flight because of a book he was carrying.

By Gwen Shaffer/Philadelphia City Paper
Mon, 29 Oct 2001
From: Cathy Gatling cg1146@yahoo.com

Book him: By carrying the novel Hayduke Lives!, Neil Godfrey set off a bizarre turn of events that prevented him from flying.

Everyone knows it is a bad idea to try and board a plane carrying a box cutter, a flight manual written in Arabic, or a sack full of mysterious white powder. But with ultra-tightened airport security, a book could also prevent you from boarding that plane.

No kidding. It happened just last week in Philadelphia.

Neil Godfrey arrived at Philadelphia International Airport around 9:30 a.m. on Wed., Oct. 10. His brother's girlfriend dropped him off with plenty of time to spare before his 11:40 a.m. United Airlines flight. Godfrey was on his way to Phoenix, where his father lives. From there, the family was planning to head out for a vacation at Disneyland.

It is fair to say that Godfrey - brother of City Paper webmaster Ryan Godfrey - doesn't look unusual for a 22-year-old kid living in Center City.

His outfit that day was typical: black Dockers, a T-shirt with a logo for the now-defunct Phoenix Gazette newspaper and New Balance running shoes. He has a medium build, recently dyed jet-black hair and a quiet demeanor.

When Godfrey stepped up to the ticket counter, the United clerk informed him he had been selected for a random baggage search.

"No problem," he replied, going through the usual motions of checking his bag and getting a boarding pass. Now toting nothing but a novel and the most recent copy of The Nation magazine, Godfrey hiked through the concourse toward his boarding gate.

As he passed through the metal detector, an airport security guard furrowed his brow at Godfrey's reading selections as they disappeared through the conveyor belt.

On the cover of the book, Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey, is an illustration of a man's hand holding several sticks of dynamite. The 1991 novel is about a radical environmentalist, George Washington Hayduke III, who blows up bridges, burns tractors and sabotages other projects he believes are destroying the beautiful Southwest landscape.

"For the first time, it occurred to me the book may be a problem," Godfrey recalls.

He proceeded through the security checkpoint and sat down to read near his boarding gate. About 10 minutes had passed when a National Guardsman approached Godfrey.

"He told me to step aside," Godfrey says. "Then he took my book and asked me why I was reading it."

Within minutes, Godfrey says, Philadelphia Police officers, Pennsylvania State Troopers and airport security officials joined the National Guardsman.

About 10 to 12 people examined the novel for 45 minutes, scratching out notes the entire time. They also questioned Godfrey about the purpose of his trip to Phoenix.

The fact that Godfrey recently dropped out of Temple University and has yet to find a job may have piqued suspicion of law enforcement officials even more.

"The fact that I don't work or go to school may have contributed to them thinking I have nothing to live for," Godfrey speculates.

Eventually, one of the law enforcement officials told Godfrey his book was "innocuous" and he would be allowed to board the plane.

"I was pretty shaken up," he says. "But I also felt guilty that I hadn't realized bringing this book to the airport may cause a problem."

Another 10 minutes or so passed while he sat in the waiting area. A female United employee - Godfrey failed to jot down her name - came over and informed him that he wouldn't be allowed to fly, "for three reasons."

The first reason, she said, was that Godfrey was reading a book with an illustration of a bomb on the cover. Secondly, she said, he purchased his ticket on Sept. 11. (Godfrey bought the ticket on Priceline.com shortly after midnight, at least eight hours before the World Trade Center was attacked).

And the final reason cited by the United employee was that Godfrey's Arizona driver's license had expired. The employee pointed to a date to substantiate this allegation.

"No," Godfrey told her. "That's the day the license was issued."

The woman then pointed to another date on the card, Feb. 17, 2000, contending it was the expiration date. Godfrey countered that the date identified him as "under 21" until then.

"Too bad, it's too late," the flight attendant informed him.

A defeated and disappointed Godfrey reclaimed his luggage and was escorted out of the airport.

When he got home, Godfrey did what a lot of guys do when they need consoling - he phoned his mom.

Godfrey's mother offered to call United and attempt to straighten things out. A central reservation clerk assured her that her son was not banned from ever flying United again. She booked him on a different flight to Phoenix, this one departing Philadelphia at 3:04 p.m. that same afternoon.

Godfrey scurried back to the airport, leaving the Abbey novel at home. He exchanged it for a seemingly benign novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

When Godfrey arrived at the airport around 1:15 p.m., his luggage was again searched. But as Godfrey passed through the metal detector, a police officer recognized him from the commotion just a few hours earlier. The cop pulled Godfrey aside and made a few phone calls. Ultimately, he declared that everything checked out fine. But a National Guardsman standing nearby vetoed that decision.

"This time, they took my Harry Potter book and about four people studied it for 20 minutes," Godfrey says.

Finally, at about 1:45 p.m., officials apparently felt reassured that Godfrey was not a security threat. They told Godfrey he would be permitted on the plane, but that he couldn't pass through security until 2:30 p.m.

At the appointed time, an escort took Godfrey through security, while at least 15 law enforcement officials looked on. Rather than taking Godfrey directly to his gate, however, he was ushered into a private interrogation room.

"They patted me down and found nothing," Godfrey says. But when he emerged from this room, Burt Zastera, supervisor of airport operations for United, told him he would not be allowed to fly.

"He told me he didn't know the reason why, that he was 'just conveying the information,'" Godfrey recalls. Zastera gave Godfrey a contact number he could call for a full explanation.

Godfrey's father called that number and was told his son was banned from flying United because he cracked "a joke about bombs."

"That is totally false," Godfrey says, pointing out that no one at the airport ever mentioned this to him. Plus, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations stipulate that any passenger who jokes about explosives be arrested on the spot. By contrast, Godfrey was never charged or even accused of breaking the law. In fact, Philadelphia Police officers didn't even file an incident report, according to department spokesman Cpl. Jim Pauley.

Other airport and law enforcement officials have very little to say about Godfrey's treatment.

Zastera says he is "not allowed to comment" on what happened because it is a security matter. United Airlines spokesman Chris Bradwig says he is "unaware" of the Oct. 10 incident.

"Even so, we don't comment on security matters," he says.

A supervisor with Aviation Safeguard, the company United contracts to man security checkpoints in Philadelphia, denied responsibility for detaining Godfrey.

"The only ones who determine who can't get on a flight is the airline," says an Aviation Safeguard supervisor, who refused to provide her name. "We don't stop any books."

Philadelphia International spokesman Mark Pesce agrees that only individual airlines determine whether to permit a passenger to fly.

"When a passenger passes through security, it is under the jurisdiction of the airline. We don't get involved," he says, adding that stories like Godfrey's are likely to become increasingly common.

The FAA has no policy regulating "specific types of reading material," says spokeswoman Arlene Salac.

----

Political ad is uniformly embarrassing

October 29, 2001
By Hugh Aynesworth
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011029-24603150.htm

DALLAS - Texas homeland security chief David Dewhurst wanted Texans to feel confident in these trying times and - as a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor - wanted Texans to know he was taking his new anti-terrorism job seriously.

So he purchased a full-color, four-page advertisement in Texas Monthly magazine a few days ago.

The ad layout has received far more comment than any similar effort in recent history - but perhaps for all the wrong reasons.

In the ad, a military officer is depicted standing in front of an unfurled American flag, with the caption, "As chairman of the Governor's Task Force on Homeland Security, David Dewhurst encourages you to support President Bush and the brave men and woman of our Armed Forces as they fight to eliminate terrorism and work to restore confidence in our economy."

Within hours of the magazine's hitting the streets last week, the Dewhurst campaign became inundated with calls - some angry, some joking - informing the state land commissioner that the officer in the photograph was not an American general, but was clearly a German Luftwaffe officer - complete with military decorations, insignias and a name tag bearing the German flag.

Early in the week, a stunned Mr. Dewhurst, 56, conceded he had examined the ad "a couple times" before OK'ing it but later he and his staff placed blame on the advertising agency that prepared the ad.

"When I had asked for a picture of an American soldier against the flag," he said Friday, "our graphics consultant made a mistake. The ad agency and the graphics consultant won't be doing further work for us."

Predictably, Democrats jumped all over the situation - not only making fun of the faux pas, but complaining that Mr. Dewhurst was using his new assignment as home security head for political advantage.

"The ink wasn't dry yet on the appointment when he was sending out political brochure copy to the print shop," said Kelly Fero, who is directing a coordinated state Democratic campaign.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry named Mr. Dewhurst to coordinate the state's anti-terrorism efforts earlier this month.

"It's pretty scary that the man Rick Perry has put in charge of homeland security doesn't know the difference between an Air Force uniform and a German uniform," snapped Democrat state Chairwoman Molly Beth Malcolm at an Austin party meeting Saturday.

Friday, with strong backing from Mr. Perry, Mr. Dewhurst defended his political ad - saying maybe he should not have stressed his new role, but solidly standing behind his expressed sentiments of supporting the president and the armed forces.

"If I had it do to over again," said the former Houston businessman and one-time Air Force officer and CIA agent, "I would have said the same words. I might not have said 'as chairman of the Governor's Task Force on Homeland Security.'"

Mr. Dewhurst said that at political gatherings people asked him about security issues and that he intended to continue to mention his state task force assignment. "Not in a way that politicizes what I'm doing for the state," he added. "I make a point of saying: 'All right, we've stopped talking about politics. We're going to talk about a state issue, and let me tell you what my thoughts are.'

"I didn't find anything out of the ordinary about saying 'Here's what I'm doing; here's what makes me qualified to lead you,'" said Mr. Dewhurst.

--------

Giuliani: FBI must share data with police

USA TODAY
10/29/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/10/29/giuliani-police.htm

NEW YORK (AP) - The FBI should be required to share information on efforts to fight terrorism with local law enforcement in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Monday. Testifying in City Hall at a field hearing of the House terrorism subcommittee, Giuliani proposed that Congress pass a law requiring the FBI and other federal authorities to share their intelligence with local police and government officials, especially in a crisis.

"We need the information and we need it right away," he said. "We need real-time information about what is happening."

"Do we really need to pass a law?" asked Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif. "Couldn't the director of the FBI just start doing that?"

"You need to legislate permission to do that," replied the mayor, himself a former federal prosecutor.

But Giuliani also acknowledged the risks federal authorities would face if they gave local officials access to sensitive information. "The more people you share it with, the more chance there is that it will get out," he said. "You have to think your way through this."

He added, however, that in his view, FBI officials "have to be willing to give top security clearances to more people. ... The barrier is one that's understandable. The barrier is, if it's classified information, you want to share it with as few people as possible."

He said there are 600,000 local law enforcers in the nation who could be helping the FBI if they received access to information on terrorism.

The FBI referred a call for comment to the Justice Department, which did not immediately return a call.

The mayor also said that the creation of the Office of Emergency Management in 1996 helped prepare the city to cope with emergencies. In 1997, for example, the agency conducted an exercise to prepare for a hypothetical chemical attack on a large public gathering.

"All of those things that they did and all of the gaps they noted back in 1997 ... helped us tremendously in the days after Sept. 11," Giuliani said, although he added that "all of these preparations did not mean we anticipated what happened with the World Trade Center."

The mayor added that officials in New York state have already created a committee on counter-terrorism to share intelligence and investigations, and have set up a multiagency intelligence database for New York and New Jersey.

Governors Frank Keating of Oklahoma, Jeb Bush of Florida and Roy Barnes of Georgia were also to testify Monday at the hearing, which is focusing on domestic preparedness to terrorism attacks.

--------

Busted in Munich
Germany's Green Police State

By Tariq Ali
October 29, 2001
http://www.counterpunch.org/tariq8.html

At 7am, on 29 October I was arrested at the Munich airport. After a day of interviews and book-signings and another two spent at a Goethe Institute seminar (on 'Islam and the Crisis'), I was exhausted and desperate for a cup of coffee. I checked in. Soon my hand-luggage was wending its way through the security machine. No metal objects were detected, but they insisted on dumping its contents on a table.

Newspapers, dirty underpants, shirts, magazines and books tumbled out in full view. Since news always reaches Germany a day after it has appeared in the US press, I thought the locals might be unaware of FBI and CIA briefings to the effect that Bin Laden or Iraqi complicity in the anthrax scare was extremely unlikely and were on the look-out for envelopes containing powder. There were no envelopes of any sort in my bag.

The machine-minder brushed aside the copies of the Sud-Deutsche Zeitung (SDZ), the International Herald Tribune and Le Monde Diplomatique. He appeared to be very interested in the Times Literary Supplement and was inspecting my scribbled notes on the margin of a particular book review.

I suggested that if he wanted my views on the present crisis he could read them in German in the SDZ which had published an article of mine. I pointed it out to him.

He grasped the text eagerly and then, in a state of some excitement, rushed it over to the armed policeman.

Then his eyes fell on a slim volume in German which had been handed to me by a local publisher. Since there had been no time to flip through the volume, it was still wrapped in cellophane.

The offending book was an essay by Karl Marx, 'On Suicide'. It was the reference to suicide that had got the policemen really excited. They barely registered the author, though when they did real panic set in and there were agitated exchanges.

I was slightly bemused by the spectacle, waiting for them to finish so I could read the morning papers. This was not to be. The way they began to watch me was an indication of their state of mind. They really thought they had got someone.

My passport and boarding card were taken from me. I was rudely instructed to re-pack my bag, minus the crucial 'evidence' (SDZ, the TLS and the offending text by Marx), after which I was escorted out of the departure area and taken to the police HQ at the airport.

On the way there, the arresting officer gave me a triumphant smile. 'After September 11, you can't travel with books like this', he said.

'In that case', I replied, 'perhaps you should stop publishing them in Germany or better still burn them in public view.'

Inside the HQ another officer informed me that it was unlikely I'd be boarding the BA flight and they would make inquiries about later departures. At this point my patience evaporated and I demanded to use a phone.

'Who do you want to ring?'

'The Mayor of Munich', I replied. 'His name is Christian Ude. He interviewed me about my books and the present crisis on Friday evening at the Hugundubel bookshop. I wish to inform him of what is taking place.'

The police officer disappeared.

A few minutes later another officer (this one sported a beard) appeared and beckoned me to follow him. He escorted me to the flight which had virtually finished boarding. We did not exchange words.

On the plane a German fellow-passenger came and expressed his dismay at the police behaviour. He told me how the policeman who had detained me had returned to boast to other passengers of how his vigilance had led to my arrest.

It was a trivial enough episode, but indicative of the mood of the Social Democrat-Green alliance that rules Germany today. It is almost as if many of those currently in power are trying desperately to exorcise their own pasts.

While Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was in Pakistan insisting that there could be no pause in the bombing and that the war of attrition would continue, his Minister for Interior, Otto Schilly, was busy masterminding the new security laws, which threaten traditional civil liberties. Schilly, once a radical lawyer and a friend of the generation of '68, first acquired public notoriety when he became the defense lawyer for the Red Army Faction, an urban terrorist network active in the Seventies. It was said at the time that he also supported their activities.

In 1980 Schilly joined the Greens and was their key spokesman in the fight against the stationing of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Germany. In 1989 he moved further by joining the Social Democrats. Today he is busy justifying extra powers to the police and infusing a sense of 'realism' in his Green coalition partners. One of the realist proposals being discussed is granting jurisdiction to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (the German equivalent of the FBI) so that it has the right to spy on individuals it suspects of working against the 'causes of international understanding or the peaceful coexistence of nations.'

And since in the debased coinage of the present 'peaceful coexistence of nations' includes waging war against some of them, I suppose that my experience was a tiny dress-rehearsal for what is yet to come.

It was a tiny enough scratch, but if untreated these can sometimes lead to gangrene.

Tariq Ali, a frequent CounterPunch contributor, is the author of The Stone Woman

-------- terrorism

U.S. 'guard down' due to anthrax attacks

October 29, 2001
By Daniel F. Drummond
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20011029-26230978.htm

Terrorist groups are using anthrax attacks as a diversion and taking advantage of an overburdened law-enforcement system to plan more attacks on America, federal law-enforcement and intelligence sources say.

The sources, all of whom are either working on or have close knowledge of the investigations of both the anthrax and Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said that regardless of whether Osama bin Laden or the al Qaeda terrorist network are behind the anthrax attacks, they are taking advantage of the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies' dedication to solving and dealing with the anthrax attacks as well as hoaxes and scares.

"Our guard is down now because we are looking at mail," one intelligence source said.

Indeed, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told a group of the country's mayors that more than 7,000 of its 11,000 agents and support personnel are working on investigations relating to the Sept. 11 and anthrax attacks.

"There is just too much going on," an FBI source said, adding that agents are working on the investigations almost simultaneously by asking about both the anthrax and Sept. 11 attacks with those they question.

"We still have to deal with the hoaxes."

In addition to federal law enforcement working on the two investigations, local and state police are also taxed.

And that combination of overburdened law enforcement coupled with the anthrax attacks, according to sources, has given terrorists abroad and living in America more time to plan attacks because investigators have had to react to emergencies instead of searching for terrorists.

Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican and ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he does not believe that Americans "should relax our guard in any way."

"This could be a ploy, a diversion, to scare us to make us panic - while they get ready to do something else," Mr. Shelby said, adding he believes "al Qaeda or Mr. bin Laden would try to do something big, like on September 11."

Mr. Shelby said it is a basic terrorist tactic to "get us thinking about one thing and then they hit us with another" attack.

FBI and CIA officials seem to believe the anthrax attacks are the work of a domestic terrorist, sources say, but they are not ruling out a connection with al Qaeda or bin Laden.

Mr. Shelby said even though law enforcement is stretched thin, he still thinks that officers "are focused on the areas that are most vulnerable."

Rep. Saxby Chambliss, Georgia Republican and member of the House Select Intelligence Committee, said that the dual investigations are leaving the country vulnerable in some places.

"We are just stretching law enforcement thin and we are just exposing us" to possible attacks, Mr. Chambliss said.

Meanwhile, a senior intelligence source who has been working closely on the investigations said that intelligence agencies have evidence that not only are there "sleeper" terrorist cells in the country, but that those cells are planning other attacks.

The intelligence source said both the FBI and the CIA have reason to believe that terrorist groups that are associated with bin Laden and the al Qaeda network were working on future attacks even before the Sept. 11 attacks. "In their eyes, this is a long war," the source said. "They planned for it."

Members of the cells, the source said, have been in the country for a number of years and have "woven into the fabric of American life," which makes it difficult for investigators to spot suspect terrorists.

Both federal law enforcement and intelligence sources said it is foolhardy for Americans to think that Sept. 11 was the end of terrorist assaults on U.S. soil, sentiments expressed by numerous government officials, including President Bush.

The sources noted that both the FBI and the CIA believe the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa were done by bin Laden's foot soldiers.

A senior law enforcement source who is working on the investigation said intelligence information points to terrorists plotting attacks that involved car and truck bombs.

The source would not, however, provide more details about when or where the attacks may occur.

Mr. Chambliss said he believes terrorist groups may actually try to attack the sites where anthrax scares have broken out, particularly Washington, New York City and parts of Florida. "This may mean that they know they are taxing law enforcement and they may go there," Mr. Chambliss said.

New anti-terrorism measures signed into law last Friday, which allow the government to more easily tap phones, check e-mail, and detain suspected terrorists, should help investigators track down terrorists and prevent future attacks.

Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and former member of the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, said he has no doubt terrorist groups have planned more attacks.

"I think they thought two or three steps ahead before they began," Mr. Daalder said. "It would be terribly shortsighted to not assume that there could be other attacks." And while FBI agents and other law-enforcement personnel are likely engaged in an investigation that is looking into both the hijackings and the anthrax attacks, Mr. Daalder said "the threat du jur" may have investigators "missing crystal finds."

Mr. Daalder said he still believes there are "sleeper" terrorist cells in the country and that despite the roundup of nearly 900 people suspected of having a connection with the Sept. 11 attacks the government probably has not disrupted any of those active cells.

"I think they are planning something different from what we have already seen," Mr. Daalder said.

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F.B.I. Issues a New Terrorism Warning

October 29, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Investigation.html

WASHINGTON -- The FBI issued a new terrorism warning Monday asking Americans and law enforcement to be on the highest alert for possible attacks this week in the United States and abroad.

The alert was based on new information about possible attacks but the information was not "specific as to intended target or intended method," FBI Director Robert Mueller said.

The warning went out to 18,000 law enforcement agencies.

"The administration has concluded based on information that has been developed that there may be additional terrorist attacks within the United States and against U.S. interests over the next week," Attorney General John Ashcroft said.

He said that while the information was not specific, the FBI was issuing the alert to the American people because "they can make good judgments and can understand this kind of information."

The attorney general asked citizens to be patient if they encounter additional security measures and to note any suspicious activities.

"We urge Americans in the course of their normal activities to remain alert and to report unusual circumstances and inappropriate behavior to the appropriate authorities," he said.

Mueller and Ashcroft declined to discuss the nature or source of the information that prompted the warning, saying only that it was deemed credible.

The alert is the second this month. On Oct. 11 the FBI said it had gathered "certain information" that additional terrorism attacks could occur within days.

Earlier Monday, President Bush was asked whether the government expected more attacks from groups associated with Osama bin Laden, the primary suspect in the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings. Bush said, "We believe the country must stay on alert, that our enemies still hate us."

Underscoring the balancing act that officials face in warning the public but not inciting panic, Bush urged people not to stop their daily activities.

"The American public must go about their lives. I understand it's a fine balance," Bush said.

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THE RESPONSE
San Jose Emergency Plans Set Example

October 29, 2001
By EVELYN NIEVES http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/29/national/29JOSE.html?searchpv=past7days
SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 26 - To understand why the San Jose department of emergency services is considered one of the best prepared in the nation, consider its recent handling of an attack of confetti.

The 911 call came from the San Jose International Airport after one passenger on an United Airlines flight from Chicago saw another passenger spill a white substance, which hovered around the air-conditioning vents. As soon as the plane landed, police and fire officials removed the witness and the other passenger, stripped them down and decontaminated them in a special tent, while the Fire Department's hazardous incident team scoured the plane to take a sample of the material.

It was then that a member of the team noticed that the material looked like plastic stars and hearts, confetti used in greeting cards. Still, the more than 80 passengers and crew members were quarantined on the airplane for three hours until the questioning of the witness and the other passenger was completed.

This false alarm was not just an example of how panicky the nation has become. To Frances Edwards- Winslow, San Jose's director of emergency preparedness, the case of the airborne confetti illustrates how a well-trained team responds quickly and thoroughly to threats to the public health.

"It was an example of the team in action," Dr. Edwards-Winslow said.

As anxieties grow about terror attacks - be it anthrax or anything else - cities across the country are looking for the most efficient ways to handle potential crises. (In Turlock, Calif., for example, the Police Department has set up a bright orange box labeled "suspicious mail," where anyone can dispose of suspicious envelopes or packages.) San Jose, which has developed an elaborate response plan to anthrax, sarin gas, smallpox or nuclear attacks, among other horrors, is considered ahead of the game, one of the cities the United States Department of Health and Human Services considers a model for the nation.

"She runs a very good operation," Elizabeth Armstrong, president of the International Association of Emergency Managers, said, referring to Dr. Edwards-Winslow.

Just how San Jose has prepared for terrorism is a secret. Its emergency plans and techniques and even the location of its operations center are known only to its members - and to other emergency managers who can see its guides on a secure Department of Defense Web site. But Dr. Edwards-Winslow, who has a doctorate in public administration and has worked in emergency preparedness for 18 years, did offer some hints as to what it takes to "have some level of comfort" in being prepared for catastrophe.

Money is crucial. San Jose has spent a total of $1.4 million in recent years to establish its program, which includes a cache of antibiotics and antidotes and training on treating large numbers of casualties. The city has also bought equipment. For example, San Jose rescue crews have detectors that warn if a biohazard has been released, and the police have robots with special monitors and grips to perform tasks too dangerous for humans.

The biggest cost is training, "because unless we have an adequately trained staff all the equipment in the world won't do us any good," Dr. Edwards-Winslow said.

Her department, which has vigorously pursued federal grants and awards for equipment and training, costs the city about $300,000 a year in salaries.

San Jose began its antiterrorism planning well before Sept. 11. Because the city, with a population of 900,000, is one of the nation's 27 largest, it was eligible to participate in a federal antiterrorism program. The program, which began in 1998, helps cities form task forces to respond to emergencies involving weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological or nuclear.

San Jose, the seat of Silicon Valley, was the first of the 27 cities in the federal program to complete the Defense Department's training and exercises program and the first to finish a written plan for dealing with terrorist attacks.

The genius of the program, said Dr. Edwards-Winslow, is that from its inception, it made sure that emergency plans were drawn up by every group that would be participating - the Police and Fire Departments, county public health emergency services, the medical examiner, representatives of the public and private hospitals, and ambulance services.

Dr. Gregory A. Schmunk, San Jose's chief medical examiner, said his department considered itself as prepared as it could be for emergencies.

"If something happens, if and when it happens," Dr. Schmunk said, "it will be on one location where the rest of us can pull together and send resources. And we have the contacts in place to make that work, as long as we don't have a scenario where we see four or five incidents at the same time."

Besides city departments, the emergency preparedness team has about 1,000 volunteers on call, with their own vests and hard hats and at least 16 hours of training for response to disaster, natural or otherwise.

"Preparedness is not a station, it's a journey." Dr. Edwards-Winslow said. "People who are terrorists and sociopaths don't have the normal thinking we have, so they would imagine things that would never occur to most of us. I would never say, `Oh, yeah, we're as prepared as we can be.' "


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December/January Calendar Submissions to Washington Peace Center Due November 16th

Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001
From: Washington Peace Center wpc@igc.org

The Washington Peace Center is now accepting calendar announcements for the December/ January issue. Send the who, when, where, why, and cost of your upcoming fundraisers, organized meetings, readings, demonstrations, campaign drives, rallies, forums, and more. Reply by email to wpc@igc.org with Dec/Jan Calendar Submission in the subject line. Deadline for announcements is Friday, November 16.

Calendar listings are free and the Peace Letter is distributed to libraries, bookstores, nonprofit, restaurants, and co-ops in the DC metropolitan area, in addition to regular subscribers.

Calendar listings also appear in our regularly updated web site. Please visit us at www.washingtonpeacecenter.org

Article submissions that are in keeping with the Peace Center's mission, between 400 and 1000 words, are also always welcome, as well as letters to the editor and artwork, including photographs and cartoons. We reserve the right to select or reject, edit, and shorten all submissions.

Washington Peace Center 1801 Columbia Road NW, Suite 104 (202) 234-2000; fax (202) 234-7064 wpc@igc.org http://www.washingtonpeacecenter.org

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Pakistan's Peaceniks
A Tiny Antiwar Movement Takes on Nukes, Military Spending, and Dictatorship

by Michael Kamber
The Village Voice
Week of October 24 - 30, 2001

From: Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 13:29:08 +0100
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0143/kamber.php

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN-"This is not the dawn we had dreamed of, this blood-stained dawn," wrote the Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz of his nation's violent birth. In 1947, when British India was divided into Muslim Pakistan and the largely Hindu India, the trains arrived silently at their destinations-their cargo a bumper crop of death; thousands of Muslims shot and stabbed by maddened crowds as they fled west. Half a million people would die on both sides before the carnage ended.

Pakistan was born in strife; in strife it remains, engaged in a nuclear standoff with India, deeply enmeshed in military actions in Afghanistan and the disputed province of Kashmir, and spending $2.9 billion a year on guns and soldiers. Today the populace takes comfort in the machine-gun toting soldiers that loiter in public places and street corners across the country.

The country's minuscule peace movement has its work cut out for it. "I don't know if I would even call it a peace movement. It is something-maybe an initiative?" says Saba Gul Khattak of the Citizens' Peace Committee, a group of 100 or so activists in Islamabad. The CPC is part of a large coalition, the Pakistan Peace Committee, an umbrella organization of about 1000 peace activists in this nation of 140 million.

The political views of this small group are wildly divergent from those of the average Pakistani, who could be described as pro-military, pro-nuclear, deeply hostile towards India, and content with Pakistan's military dictatorship. The peace activists conduct community workshops and hold small demonstrations and press conferences in the face of skepticism from the populace and harassment from the authorities. Their goal, they say, is to raise awareness about what they see as the dangers of Pakistan's massive militarization, its lack of democratic government, and the effects of economic globalization.

Faiza Mirza (right), with her daughter Fariha, supports militarism: "You have to fight back." (Photograph by Michael Kamber)

If there was a catalyzing event for Pakistan's antiwar movement, it was the country's first nuclear tests, which took place in 1998. Arch-rival India had provocatively detonated five nuclear devices. A wave of near hysteria swept Pakistan; the press and public demanded a response to the saber rattling. Faced with U.S. sanctions that would cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars, Pakistan nevertheless went ahead with its own series of trials; six bombs were exploded, doing India one better. Citizens celebrated in the streets and the government made May 28, the day of the first successful trial, a national holiday. (Simultaneously, it declared that May 2, the worldwide labor holiday, would no longer be celebrated.) Echoing the sentiment of many, an Islamabad resident explained recently, "We never felt secure until we had our own bomb."

A small group of academics and NGO (nongovernmental organization) employees-policy planners, aid workers, and union organizers-was stunned by these sentiments and banded together to form the CPC. "We don't need nuclear bombs in our country," said Roshan, a CPC member who asked that her real name not be used. "If we stop making bombs, all that money can be spent on schools, hospitals, and development."

CPC member Saba Gul Khattak is the daughter and granddaughter of army officers. She is now researching Pakistan's history of militarization, as well the peace movements of its early years. She vividly remembers the 1965 and 1971 wars with India, the bombs exploding, the roar of airplanes and tracers filling the night sky. She argues that there has always been a peace movement in Pakistan, but that much of it occurred in literature and poetry, which was banned by the government, allowing no consciousness to take root. "In a state-sanctioned discourse these thoughts were wiped out, and so there is no collective memory," she explains. "If the state bans your voice, then your words become just a solitary event that takes place, and with time, it fades from memory."

Today, state-sanctioned obstacles to peace organizing continue. Aasim Sajjad, a CPC mainstay and union organizer, can't remember how many times he has been jailed here. "Maybe a dozen," he says. His crime? Publicly criticizing-and demonstrating against-the military dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf. "All the power in Pakistan is in one man," says Izmat Shahjehan, a fiery, outspoken CPC member. "He's the president, the chief of the army, the prime minister. Parliament has been dissolved. He has no constituency-he's never been elected-and now he alone sits down with Bush and makes all decisions in the name of the people of Pakistan. We know this military government is going to stay-the U.S. supports it-but democracy has never been more important for us."

Yet most Pakistanis much prefer General Musharraf to the man from whom he seized control, the elected but unpopular Nawaz Sharif. "For most Pakistanis, the concept of peace and democracy is meaningless," says Sajjad. "It does not really mean anything unless linked to people putting food on the table. There was a military coup almost exactly two years ago [in which Musharraf took power]. Nobody said a word. Democracy in and of itself is irrelevant to these people."

Sajjad sees the current debate over the war in Afghanistan as a window of opportunity, one he is trying to exploit. He believes unionizing workers is an important step in getting them involved in the democratic process, and he is trying to organize brick-workers, shoemakers, and taxi drivers. "We need to link them to other groups and explain how the democratization of the state will benefit them," he says.

But unionizing here is a difficult process. Only 4 percent of the workforce is unionized, and unions are forbidden in the country's large industrial export zones. Students are forbidden from organizing as well, depriving Pakistan's antiwar movement of a natural source of activists.

A further obstacle is the class divide between the activists and Pakistan's proletariat. Most Pakistanis are agrarian, illiterate, and desperately poor. Per capita income is $480 a year. The CPC is made up of the upper-middle-class city dwellers. There are several Ph.D.'s among its members and many have studied abroad, usually in the United States or England.

The class divide was clearly on display at a mid-October press conference held at the Marriott hotel. The group held the briefing in English, in hopes of attracting the foreign press. But the English-language media was otherwise occupied, and only the local Urdu-language press attended, most of whose members know only rudimentary English. "Our speaker was speaking in the most complex academic jargon," recalls Roshan. "Intents are good, but the local journalists couldn't even follow what he was saying. I kept saying, 'Let's switch to Urdu,' but he just kept going." The CPC presentation was followed by a barrage of hostile, accusatory questions from the local press.

Roshan goes on to tell an anecdote about a friend who announced she was planning to take her servant to a CPC demonstration. Was the friend trying to increase consciousness among her employees? asked Roshan. "No," came the reply. "It's hot out, and if I get tired of holding this placard, she can carry it around for me."

Sajjad listened to Roshan talk on a recent evening. "What we're saying is unintelligible to others," he agreed. "Unless we change that, ordinary Pakistanis will never hear our message." Still, the CPC press conferences and demonstrations do occasionally get airtime. Often they are ridiculed, portrayed as unpatriotic, or even subject to veiled threats, yet even the brief television appearances are a valuable outlet for the group's message.

And there have been other successes as well. Shandana Khan, like most members, an employee of one of the dozens of NGOs scattered throughout Islamabad, recently sent out an e-mail to 18 friends and colleagues asking for funds and materials to aid the incoming Afghan refugees. Despite her objections, the e-mail was passed on, eventually arriving in places as far-flung as Singapore and the U.S. She has been deluged with donations and supplies. To date, five truckloads of food and blankets have been sent to Afghan refugees.

Other members see the antiwar efforts as intrinsically tied to an antiglobalization campaign. Pakistan's economy is in tatters; unemployment is rampant among young men, whom the activists see as providing cannon fodder for militant fundamentalist groups that indoctrinate and send teenagers to fight in Kashmir and Afghanistan. "My own cousins say, 'What can I do, our kids are out in the street, getting into trouble, they have nothing to do,' " says Shahjehan. "They say, 'We'll send them to a madrassa (a religious school where many Pakistani youth are taught by fundamentalist teachers), they'll learn the Qur'an. It will pacify them.' Now my brother's three sons have met these recruiters, and they want to go to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban. They say, 'We get three thousand rupees as a bonus (about $50), we get to see another country, and if we're killed, we get a one-way ticket to heaven.' "

In various forms, Pakistan has always had a small progressive movement. Yet for many Pakistani peace activists, it was time spent as students in England and America that helped to politicize them-that reinforced their belief in democracy and protest.

And yet today they are fighting against what they regard as the pernicious influences and policies of the West. Anti-American sentiment runs deep among many activists, so deep that it has created schisms within the group. "Who's the real terrorist? America!" was the favored chant at the CPC's last rally, a lackluster affair held last week and attended by perhaps 20 activists, 40 journalists, and 80 police officers. Towards the end of the rally, Pervez Hoodbhoy, a committee member, could take it no more. "I lost my temper," he recalls. "I started yelling, 'If you're going to talk about terrorists, let's shout about Osama first, then America.' "

Hoodbhoy talked about his differences with the majority of CPC members last week as he sat in his modest home on the grounds of Quaid-i-Azam University, where he has spent 28 years as a professor of nuclear physics. "How hard it is that I came back to Pakistan because of the crimes of Vietnam and that I should be here today stopping people from shouting death to America," he says. Hoodbhoy became radicalized during his time at MIT, where he arrived in 1968. He attended SDS rallies, participated in building takeovers, and later spurned job offers in the U.S. "Here in Pakistan, I can make more of a difference," he says. But he is increasingly disturbed by the attitudes of many of his fellow citizens.

"September 11 was mass murder," he says, "And it should be condemned. People who talk about peace have no business saying the U.S. brought it upon itself. It's one thing to try to understand the roots, but first you should condemn this mass murder. I'm not finding the condemnation."

Hoodbhoy had a seminar planned for September 12. He changed the topic to a discussion about the attack, seeking to use the event as a catalyst for change. Among many of the students there was a celebratory mood, he recalls. "They said, 'Worse things have happened in the world, many of them perpetrated by the U.S.-why are you making a big deal out of this?' I said, 'Before our eyes, we saw the deaths of thousands of people. This is a defining moment in history.' " Through the seminar, Hoodbhoy believes, he was able to remind a few students about the concept of a shared humanity.

One of only half a dozen nuclear physicists in Pakistan, Hoodbhoy understands better than most the dangers he says are inherent in his country's nuclear program. "In this century we may very well see the use of nuclear weapons," he says. "There are many scenarios. There could be fighting along the line of control (in Kashmir), during which India pursues Jihadis (guerrillas fighting against India) into Pakistan, and there is a conventional war. Pakistan is losing-before the major cities are lost, we use our nuclear weapons. And it would not be just one bomb, it will be many. They will respond. We're talking about tens of millions of people dying."

Hoodbhoy differs from his fellow peace activists in another way as well. Although he is against war on principle, Hoodbhoy is so alarmed by the extremist form of Islam that has swept through Pakistan and Afghanistan that he sees this war as "an opportunity for Pakistan to rid itself of something dangerous. If [the] U.S. does not succeed in driving out the Taliban, we're sunk. [The fundamentalists] have changed the character of Pakistan-they've taken us back and back and back," he says. "In Malakand [a city in western Pakistan], they have established Islamic penal codes. They cut off hands, stone people to death, smash televisions. They're the barbarians of our times. They're against culture, emancipation of women."

Ten years ago, Hoodbhoy says, a woman in a burkah, a full body covering, stood out on the university campus. Today he has three such students in a class with 13 women; seven others wear hijab, which covers their faces, leaving only a slit for their eyes. Only three go about with just a scarf over their heads.

A former dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq planted the seeds of Islamic fundamentalism in the 1970s. His goal was to create a more conservative Islamic state, one that would be stalwart in the fight against India. By all accounts, that vision has come to pass. Over the last 20 years, the public schools have been "Islamicized," the madrassas staffed with fundamentalist mullahs, and the country's mood has shifted far to the right.

Faiza Mirza, a 36-year-old housewife, is part of this wave of fundamentalism. She lives with her husband and four children in a well-appointed concrete house in the city of Rawalpindi, not far from the raucous downtown area where tens of thousands of merchants and shoppers jam the narrow streets.

She does all the things housewives do the world over. She shops, meets with her children's teachers, drives a car. But she is different from most Western women in that Islam is the guiding force in her life, and she believes that after puberty, women should not be seen uncovered by males outside the family. Accordingly, both she and her 15-year-old daughter, Fariha, wear the hijab.

Sitting in the living room recently, with the other children occasionally coming to listen in, Faiza and her oldest daughter spoke about their beliefs. "If a woman is good-looking," explained the outspoken Fariha, "men will treat her like she is important. They act like what is inside does not matter." Now that she has taken the hijab, she said, men treat her with far more respect. "They have to pay attention to what is inside, not just appearances."

Faiza is a supporter of Afghanistan's Taliban government-after all, she says, "under the Taliban, there are no guns [among the population], no drugs, no corruption; they are true believers." A college graduate, she thinks that the Taliban's poor treatment of women has been exaggerated; in any case, their beliefs dovetail to a large degree with her own.

As for her own country, she says, "The founders of Pakistan said, 'What is the meaning of Pakistan? There is but one God: Allah.' There is no point in having Pakistan except to have an Islamic state." (In fact, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the "father of Pakistan," specifically conceived of the country as a secular state.) Like many here, Faiza is fearful of India and in favor of Pakistan's nuclear weapons: "If you have a strong neighbor, and he tries to take part of your house, you have to fight back," she explains.

Yet she agrees with the peace activists on one point. General Musharraf speaks without a mandate. If there were a democracy, she and other fundamentalists could elect a more conservative politician, one who shares her and her family's views. If Pakistan's leader were elected, she says, he or she never would have sided with the U.S. against the Taliban. And Faiza's democracy has one caveat. "Only those of sufficient moral standing should be allowed to vote," she says.

Both mother and daughter are well-educated and intelligent-they come across as reasonable people. "People are the same the world over, we all want the same thing," she says. Then she reminds a visitor that Islam literally means peace.

It is Pakistanis like Faiza that the peace activists would like to reach. Yet the gaps between the two groups are immense. Part of the problem, some peace activists say, is that they have not found a way to explain their movement in a way that emphasizes Islam, an issue that is so central to the lives of many Pakistanis. As Roshan said recently, "There is no movement per se. We have not been able to link our cause to that of the ordinary Pakistani."

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Deep Distrust of Government Still Simmers
Many Americans Who Deplore Terrorist Acts of Sept. 11 Question or Criticize U.S. Actions

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 29, 2001; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3472-2001Oct28.html

During a forum on war and peace in Washington, Damu Smith said the United States is wrong for bombing Afghanistan. He believes the Sept. 11 attacks on America were the result of misguided U.S. foreign policy. When he reminded an audience of about 350 that Nelson Mandela was once considered a terrorist by a wrongheaded South African government, they erupted in applause.

On the telephone in Los Angeles, Rudy Arcuña said a very similar thing. The people suffering in the U.S. bombardment, he said, "are not terrorists. I don't think the people suffering in Iraq are terrorists." If Martin Luther King Jr. were still around, Arcuña said, "he would ask questions" about how the United States could bomb those countries.

In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, American trust in government hit a historic high. A Washington Post poll in September found that 64 percent of Americans trusted the government to do the right thing "most of the time" or "just about all the time," the highest figure since the poll began in 1966. Similarly, a Pew Research Center poll taken about the same time found that 90 percent of Americans supported President Bush's decision to bomb Afghanistan. Support among blacks wasn't as strong -- but registered at 70 percent.

But Smith, a longtime community and environmental activist, and Arcuña, a professor of Chicano studies at California State University at Northridge, represent minorities whose thoughts on government run contrary to popular opinion. They are attorneys, former police officers, authors and intellectuals who deplore the terrorist attacks that left about 5,000 people dead. They also have a deep distrust of government. Their suspicions are rooted in a history of government harassment, profiling, police brutality and internment experienced by their communities.

"I'm not justifying what happened on Sept. 11," said the Rev. Grayland Hagler, pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church in Northeast Washington. "But it's clear that when Bush said if you're not with us, you're with the terrorist -- when he said he wanted the man [alleged terrorist sponsor Osama bin Laden] dead or alive -- he was calling out the posse, and black people know the posse. They come by and get you in the middle of the night and kill you without due process."

Hagler and Smith recently sat on a panel of 12 black activists, lawyers, students, professors and law enforcement officials at a forum called "A Black Community National Dialogue" at Howard University's School of Law. Others at schools, think tanks and churches questioned U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

Stuart Kwoh, an activist for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles, said like everyone else he wanted justice for the attacks.

"But we do have to live up to ideals as Americans," Kwoh said. He cited a Sierra College Research Institute poll that said a third of New Yorkers favored internment camps for Arabs. "Asian Americans have seen internment camps, the scapegoating of Koreans during the L.A. riots [in 1992] and the scapegoating of Chinese Americans during the Wen Ho Lee case.

"My agency doesn't engage in foreign-policy issues," Kwoh said, "but we can see the fear in our communities that people will take out their frustrations on people who look Middle Eastern."

But other minorities do engage in foreign-policy issues -- particularly America's support of Israel. Several said the treatment of Palestinians in Israel reminds them of apartheid in South Africa and segregation in the United States before the civil rights movement.

"Growing up, I remember images of people in Israel with machine guns shooting at children who were throwing rocks at them," said Gabriel Gutierrez, director of the Center for the Study of the People of the Americas at California State University at Northridge. "If that's not terrorism, I don't know what is."

On this point, some minority activists and scholars sound strikingly like another group noted for its distrust of government -- white rights activists and supremacists. But the comparison goes only so far.

David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who runs a white rights organization called European American Unity and Rights, wrote on his Web site that U.S. bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan, along with its support of Israel, led to the Sept. 11 attacks.

When informed that he and some minorities were saying similar things, Duke seemed encouraged. "I think that's great," he said from Rome, where he's researching a book on the Roman empire. "I think a lot of portraits being painted of myself and black nationalist groups are unfair portraits."

But in the next breath, Duke revealed where he and minority activists part company: "I favor European rights," he said. "I'm against forced integration. I know that Jewish people want the same thing. The only difference is, the only people who are allowed to do that . . . is the Jewish minority [in Israel]. The Israeli state is an apartheid state."

The word association is "a problem" for minority activists, said Chip Berlet, a senior analyst for Political Research Associates, a group that monitors conservative and extreme white rights rhetoric.

"The rhetoric is similar, yet the goals are very different," Berlet said. Minorities seek inclusion and equality in a nation run by white people; white rights organizations want exclusion.

"Some people are failing to distance themselves from the racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia," Berlet said. "There's a way to criticize Israel and not be anti-Semitic. To me, the answer is . . . clear, and that's to articulate openly what your position is."

When told of Duke's remarks, the Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, a black poet and author, shuddered. His eyes narrowed as he thought before speaking.

"I think the difference between the extreme right and the black community is their ends are diametrically opposed to ours," said Sekou, an author and a poet. "The extreme right is concerned with returning America to pre-1960s. Their desire is to rescind the promise of the civil rights movement, ban abortions, increase American isolation throughout the world.

"They share very much in common with the Taliban," he said. "Like the Taliban, they go through so much trouble to say they think it's their way or the highway, and God is on their side. We don't stand in solidarity with them."

At one time, Smith said, the government Duke criticizes shared a face with the Ku Klux Klan that Duke once led. He remembers when white mayors, police officers and residents joined in terrorizing black communities.

"As I recall, while growing up in Mississippi in the 1950s, there were no Arabs riding horses terrorizing black folks," he said. "We have known terrorists in the community. I have been stopped on some dark roads in Mississippi, and just how that police officer who stopped me walked toward me the way he did was terrifying."

Sekou said he hadn't forgotten COINTELPRO, the covert FBI Counterintelligence Program that set out to erase organizations described as radical in the 1960s. Everyone from King to the Black Panther Party were targets of the program's informants, illegal wiretaps and police raids.

In those days, Smith and Arcuña pointed out, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover labeled King "the most dangerous man in America." Leaders of the NAACP and the National Urban League Inc. abandoned King after he called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" in April 1967, when the Vietnam War still enjoyed popular support.

The anti-terrorism legislation moving through Congress is another source of fear, said Gutierrez. He said white people who have not been profiled or jailed on the scale of minorities don't understand its implications.

If the anti-terrorism legislation passes, he would feel less secure, said Ronald E. Hampton, director of the National Black Police Association. "I don't believe we're any safer now than we were before Sept. 11," Hampton said.

Hampton wasn't worried about Arab terrorists. He was worried about the Justice Department and police. "They have a distraction now," Hampton said, "but the government will get back to us."

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Activists Clash With Police in Ark.

October 29, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Stephens-Animal-Rights.html

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- Police fired pepper spray at animal rights activists Monday after some tried to breach a barricade outside a firm with ties to a controversial British research company.

About two dozen activists were arrested outside the downtown headquarters of Stephens Inc. Nine of them had tried to scale the 3-foot barricade, chanting ``stop the torture, stop the pain.'' Many wore gas masks, bandanas and animal masks, and some had painted animal features on their faces.

``The Battle of Little Rock has begun,'' a protester yelled over a bullhorn.

Two protesters were treated for minor injuries. Little Rock Police Lt. Terry Hastings said most of those arrested were charged with disorderly conduct and released by Monday evening.

About 150 people arrived in Little Rock over the weekend for protests against the company and its investment in Huntingdon Life Sciences.

The demonstration was organized by Philadelphia-based Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, which claims the company's laboratories in Great Britain and New Jersey mistreat animals.

Stephens says Huntingdon complies with government regulations in its treatment of animals and does not abuse animals.

``The incidents of abuse they are talking about at Huntingdon happened prior to our investment,'' said Warren Stephens, chairman of Stephens. He said the protesters turned down an offer to tour the labs.

``Their response to that was `No. We're only interested in seeing Huntingdon out of business,''' Stephens said.

On its Web site, Huntingdon says it is certified by both the British and U.S. governments.

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DIRECTION ACTION INCLUDES SOLVING THE PROBLEM
Some personal reflections

by Brian Burch
Mon, 29 Oct 2001
From: "Brian Burch"

I've been asked by several people about what is happening with St. Clare's and 25 Leonard Ave. In summary, renovations are almost completed and we expect the move-ins to occur around December 1st.

I've also be asked why an advocate of non-violent direct action forms of protest is involved in what is seen by many as a form of activity at odds with much of my public persona.

This piece should help, I hope, address this.

Brian burch@tao.ca

To act directly is to address the actual issue of your concern. If you're working against hunger, it might be simply giving someone a meal. If youíre working against homelessness, it might be taking over an abandoned house and making it livable. If you want to stop military spending, it might be refusing to pay your income taxes.

Martin Kelly.

In the next few weeks 51 new units of housing will be coming into existence in Toronto, opening up because people with decades of experience in non-violent resistance felt it was possible to do something direct, practical and concrete to address homelessness in Toronto. After symbolic actions, such as the Queen's Park Plant-in or May Day on Bay, as a part of Toronto Action for Social Change (TASC) the movement to direct action was not a major leap.

Thus members of TASC could be found joining with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty at direction action housing protests at 88-90 Carlton Street and the Doctors' Hospital occupation. And members of TASC could also be found putting in bids to purchase buildings for the purpose of converting them to housing.

This search for space was definitively based on hope---that once a suitable building was found, funding would also be found. This hope was proven to be true as support has come from government, religious orders, individuals, co-op organizations and foundations for the work of converting 25 Leonard into affordable, transitional housing.

In the process of attempting to obtain building for conversion to housing, it was quickly felt that a different organization, seperate from TASC, was essential---and thus St. Clare's Multifaith Housing Society was formed. Our specific mandate is to develop affordable housing for those currently in the shelter and support services networks. St. Clare's is a registered charity, with published annual reports and annual audits available to our donors and contributors.

Working on the 25 Leonard Project has been an interesting experience. We did not expect, when we began, to be subjected to lengthy appeals and law suites by people in the Kensington Market area opposed to housing those in need---battles we were successful in fighting but expensive both financially and emotionally. Being hit with development levees by the Roman Catholic Separate School Board was a blow that really hurt---and for a brief period threatened the ability of the project to go ahead. Fortunately the City of Toronto agreed to lend St. Clare's the over $63,000 necessary to cover these fees. Even issues like asbestos containment and contaminated soil removal were problems we had little experience in dealing with until the problem was apparent---and the solutions required hard to come by funds.

We have sat down with neighbours and contractors, architects and city officials to work out problems and find solutions to ensure that at the end of the day 51 units of new transitional housing would be created.

We have reviewed and adapted budget projections, made difficult decisions around furnishing and fixtures and found ways of working together that make sense for a diverse board. We were fortunate to have as staff and consultants people like Jon Harstone and Margo Davidson (yes, the Margo that was part of the Parachute Club), who have poked and prodded us into being a board of management, a challenge given our background in movement activism.

This has not lessened the commitment of the board of St. Clare's for personal participation in public dissent around housing and justice issues. The majority of our board was in Quebec City and took part in the recent Ontario Common Front protests in Toronto. However, personal commitment to street level politics are seen as personal commitments. St. Clare's is a formal, focused charitable developer composed of people struggling to bridge these two worlds.

The background of our board is perhaps more typical of those that came together in the late 60s to challenge the ways that new housing was developed. Three were active in the Student Christian Movement. There are people from pagan, Jewish, atheist, Christian and agnostic backgrounds involved. Three had been part of the Alliance for Non-Violent Action. And while three of the directors have been involved as staff or board with various housing organizations, none had experience in developing new housing without a government programme. Yet we've done the impossible and new housing exists.

Our participation in street protests are symbolic actions. It is our mainstream work that actually seems to express our commitment to direct action. Symbolic action draws attention to issues. Direct action is taking initatives that actually solve all or part of the problem. 25 Leonard will provide housing. For St. Clare's, the opening of 25 Leonard is effective direct action---propaganda by deed that will hopefully encourage others to do the same.

People wanting more information, to make donations, to have someone from St. Clare's talk to their congregation, community group, union local, etc., contact us at:

St. Clare's Multifaith Housing Society 194 Crawford Street Toronto, Ontario M6J 2V6 Charitable Number: 87305-8192 416-703-6373

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Come to Washington Nov. 17-18
"Pacifica Campaign" <pacificacampaign@yahoo.com>

Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001
From: "Monica Gutierrez" <monicl@bellatlantic.net>

Please distribute widely....
Call To Action! Save Pacifica Now!

Come to Washington, DC Nov. 17-18, 2001 For the Pacifica Foundation Board of Directors Meeting

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY

All hands are needed in DC to help stop the destruction of the network that we cherish and need. The illegitimate majority on the Pacifica Board declared war on its traditions and its listeners when they stacked the board on Sept. 19th on a shamefully conducted conference call "meeting." Meanwhile, they continue to squander listeners funds on high-priced law firms, security companies, PR flacks, and huge executive pay raises.

On Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 17-18, they will publicly meet in Washington at an as-yet undisclosed hotel, for another sham meeting. The Pacifica reform movement will be there in great number to hold them accountable and put a stop to their illegal and destructive dealings. Forums, protests, vigils and other established, creative and Constitutionally-protected forms of SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER will be employed to save Pacifica from this clique of corporate raiders.

In the coming weeks, we will be contacting you daily with more detailed information on the schedule of activities for the mid-November board meeting.

In the meantime, seal off the weekend of Nov. 17 - 18 as we unleash an avalanche of protest to save the Pacifica Radio network.

For more information Pacifica Campaign 51 MacDougal St., #80 New York, NY 10012 Tel: 646-230-9588



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