------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
'Dirty' bombs latest fear
U.N. Pushes Nations on Nuke Protection
Committee Considers Nuclear Liability
U.S. fears bin Laden got nuclear help
Assessing Risks, Chemical, Biological, Even Nuclear
Raising Nuclear Concerns
Czech Temelin reactor N-plant shut down for 3 weeks
Pakistan Atom Experts Held Amid Fear of Leaked Secrets
Pakistan Says Nuclear Assets Ironclad
India Says Pakistan Making Provocative Troop Moves
The F-16 Solution
Fire at nuclear reactor facility north of Tokyo
Missile Defense Deal Is Likely
Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Discuss Nuclear Warheads
Doomed crewman's note found in bottle aboard Kursk
Powell, Ivanov Meet on Strategic Framework
Ukraine Destroys Nuke Facilities
Navy argues that lawsuit against weapon is baseless
The Nuclear Phoenix
Nuclear Power Plants Tighten Security
Energy secretary making 1st Hanford visit
Bush Clamping Down On Presidential Papers
Bush-Putin Boost US, Russia Relations
U.S., Russia Intensify Arms Talks
Paul Warnke Dies; Arms Control Negotiator

MILITARY
Official: Taliban Willing to Talk
Pakistan sends supplies to Taliban
Arms, Fuel Seen Smuggled to Taliban
The 'just war' oxymoron
SANDIA'S DECON FOAM HELPS CLEAN UP ANTHRAX
U.S. Seeks Changes in Germ War Pact
'Learning as We Go Along'
Anthrax's fatal dose is unknown quantity
Germ Weapons Plant Is Dismantled
Senate's New Strategy for Colombia's Drug War
6 Palestinians Slain in Israeli Strikes
Reservists Could Exceed 50,000
Pentagon insiders criticize tactics, missed opportunity
Gas Stations in the Sky Extend Fighters' Reach
U.S. Will Increase Number of Advisers in Afghanistan
POGO reveals Pentagon Predator anomaly

ENERGY AND OTHER
Australia renewable power campaign sets 10% target
Arsenic Drinking Water Standard Issued
Limit on Greenhouse Gases Urged
Nations Negotiate on Global Warming
Farmers urged to beat plows into drills
Stem Cell Registry to Be Posted Within a Week, Official Says
Maker of Anthrax Vaccine to Reopen After Renovating Mich. Plant
POLICE / PRISONERS
Ashcroft orders up new task force
Preparations Stepped Up For Possible New Attacks
FBI alert based on coded message
Preventing Future Terrorism

ACTIVISTS
French protesters delay nuclear waste shipment
European critics, pacifists condemn U.S.-led action
Women call for end to bombing on civilians

------

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired...

Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001
From: The Progressive Review <news@prorev.com>

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children . . . his is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953, before the American Society of Newspaper Editors.


-------- NUCLEAR

'Dirty' bombs latest fear

11/01/2001 -
By Dan Vergano,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/02/usat-dirty.htm

An international nuclear watchdog agency warned Thursday that terrorists may steal radioactive medical or industrial waste materials to build "dirty bombs" aimed at subways, train stations and other public places. Exploded with dynamite, a dirty bomb might kill hundreds through radiation poisoning and could contaminate large areas and stoke nuclear fears.

The warning came from the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as it concluded a weeklong meeting in Vienna devoted to combating nuclear terrorism in the post-Sept. 11 world.

The meeting was conducted in an atmosphere of growing concern over the safety of nuclear power plants, heightened by reports of Pakistan's detention of two prominent nuclear scientists linked to the al-Qa'eda network. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) continues to ask the 103 nuclear plants nationwide to keep security at its highest level.

"Everyone concurs now that terrorists have no qualms about what targets they go after," says the agency's Melissa Fleming. In addition to theft of radioactive medical and industrial material, the agency's concerns center on:

Nuclear plants. Sabotage of a reactor could lead to a Chernobyl-size disaster.

Nuclear fuel. Theft or diversion of plutonium or uranium could be used by terrorists to create a nuclear bomb. About 18 pounds of plutonium would be needed to craft a bomb.

Since 1993, the U.N. agency has confirmed 376 cases of illicit sales of stolen radioactive materials.

Such thefts occur regularly, says Sue Gagner of the NRC. Half the time, thieves abandon the material once they realize what it is they have stolen, she says. When the material isn't recovered, accidental exposure can be serious. In 1987, Cesium-137 scavenged from an abandoned medical clinic in Brazil killed four people.

"We're encouraged by the scope of the IAEA's concerns," says nuclear safety engineer David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Mass. In particular, his group fears the theft of spent nuclear fuel rods kept at 10 decommissioned plants. NRC officials say those facilities have increased security since Sept. 11.

At nuclear plants, "we, like the rest of society, are on high alert," says Steve Kerekes of the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington D.C., the policy organization of the nuclear energy industry.

---

U.N. Pushes Nations on Nuke Protection

November 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Nuclear.html?searchpv=aponline

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency warned of an increased threat of nuclear terrorism Thursday, urging governments to prevent radioactive material from falling into the hands of terrorists.

The Sept. 11 attacks on the United States have created new concerns about the vulnerability of nuclear sites and the danger that terrorist groups might obtain radioactive material, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters.

``The willingness of terrorists to commit suicide to achieve their evil aims makes the nuclear terrorism threat far more likely than it was before Sept. 11,'' ElBaradei said.

Delegates from most of the IAEA's 132 member states are meeting in Vienna on Friday for a special session to explore ways to minimize the risk of nuclear-related terrorism.

Founded in 1957, the agency sets world standards for nuclear safety and provides help to countries in case of a radiological disaster.

Before Sept. 11, the agency was worried most about the risk of governments ``diverting nuclear materials into clandestine weapons programs,'' ElBaradei said. Now, however, experts are more concerned about terrorists attacking nuclear plants directly or releasing radioactive material into the environment.

Nuclear experts are especially worried that terrorists could obtain low-level radioactive material and construct a so-called ``dirty bomb.'' Unlike more sophisticated nuclear weapons, a ``dirty bomb'' is a crude device using radioactive material taken from industrial sites or hospitals and detonated by conventional explosives.

When a ``dirty bomb'' explodes, radioactive material is dispersed. Such a crude weapon may not kill many people, but would touch off panic, ElBaradei said.

The IAEA will urge countries at the meeting on Friday to better safeguard nuclear material. Government regulation of some sources of radiation -- such as that used for radiotherapy in hospitals -- is very weak, the agency said.

ElBaradei singled out the former Soviet Union as a region where nuclear materials are not adequately regulated. The political vacuum caused by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in some nuclear material escaping government regulation, he said.

``Borders are too porous in certain areas,'' and ``security needs to be upgraded'' in some parts of the former Soviet Union, he said.

ElBaradei also stressed that all nuclear sites are vulnerable -- particularly in the nightmare scenario of a fuel-filled jumbo jet slamming into a nuclear reactor. Nuclear facilities are robust, but they were not built with this threat in mind, he said.

He said he welcomes the U.S. response to place anti-aircraft batteries near some nuclear facilities.

``This is an exceptional time,'' he said. ``All security measures are welcomed.''

--------

Committee Considers Nuclear Liability

By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, Nov. 1, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011101/aponline083359_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- Legislation that would extend a law limiting nuclear power plant operators' financial liability in a major accident or terrorist attack advanced in the House on Wednesday. Some critics have said the limits amounted to an unwarranted government subsidy.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee by a voice vote approved an extension until 2017 of the Price-Anderson Act, which limits the amount of damages the nuclear industry must pay in case of an accident to $9.5 billion. The law, enacted in 1957, is set to expire next August.

Rep. Billy Tauzin, D-La., the committee's chairman, said he would ask that the legislation be given quick action by the full House. A similar provision is pending in the Senate.

The nuclear industry has maintained that some liability limits are needed for nuclear plant operators to obtain insurance and financing for nuclear reactors. Opponents argue that the industry is mature enough to get insurance without government help.

The law requires individual plants to have private insurance covering at least $200 million. In addition, the industry as a whole must have insurance for another $9.3 billion for an accident at any of the plants.

A major release of radiation, a reactor core meltdown, or a terrorist attack that might destroy a reactor could lead to damages much larger than that, the critics charge. Under the law the government is liable.

The House bill also requires the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reassess its security requirements for nuclear power plants - something the NRC already has begun - and directs the agency to more closely monitor and grade mock terrorist exercises performed periodically at plants to test security.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the NRC already has begun a review of its requirements for nuclear plant security.

The legislation was held up in the House committee in a dispute over liability of Energy Department contractors, who also are protected under the 1957 law. In a compromise, it was decided the DOE contractors would be liable for damages caused by intentional misconduct, but that their liability would be limited to a contractor's profit under a specific DOE contract.

--------

U.S. fears bin Laden got nuclear help

11/01/2001
By Bill Nichols,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/01/usat-nuclear.htm

WASHINGTON - Pakistan's recent detention of two prominent Pakistani nuclear scientists with ties to Afghanistan's Taliban regime has set off alarms within the Bush administration and among nuclear experts. Their worry: The possibility that the scientists, one of them a pioneer in Pakistan's nuclear energy program, might have helped Osama bin Laden and his al-Qa'eda terrorist network develop nuclear weapons.

"It's very intriguing and obviously raises the question of: Did they provide anything?" says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a leading authority on Pakistan's nuclear program. "We think this case should be investigated much more thoroughly than I think the Pakistanis would like to."

U.S. officials say there is no definitive intelligence on whether bin Laden has any nuclear capability. But, in a 1999 interview with ABC, bin Laden said he considered his quest for such weapons his "religious duty."

U.S. officials say he has made numerous attempts over the years to purchase nuclear material:

The London Sunday Times reported in October that British officials are investigating claims that al-Qa'eda representatives tried to buy spent nuclear fuel rods from a Bulgarian nuclear plant. Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a prosecution witness who testified against bin Laden last year in a case concerning the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, said he tried to help al-Qa'eda obtain enriched uranium from Sudan in 1993-94. U.S. officials remain concerned about the sale or theft of so-called suitcase-size nuclear devices designed by the former Soviet Union.

Because of this history, U.S. officials are closely monitoring the Pakistani case, which began when authorities picked up Sultan Bashiru-Din Mahmood and Abdul Majid last week for questioning about their ties to Afghanistan. Pakistani officials said their interest in the two men had nothing to do with concerns about them passing nuclear secrets.

A Pakistani diplomat in Washington said Mahmood is being questioned about his work with a relief group that has operated in Afghanistan with the backing of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

"There are certain questions that we need to ask him," Major Gen. Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for President Pervez Musharraf, said in Islamabad on Tuesday.

Mahmood was released last weekend but taken back into custody Monday. His family said Wednesday that he has been hospitalized after suffering chest pains.

Majid is a junior colleague of Mahmood and is seen as a lesser security risk, U.S. officials say.

Pakistani authorities said neither man was involved in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, but instead with nuclear reactors. Pakistan is believed to have enough fissionable material for 30 to 50 nuclear bombs or warheads and 10 or more reactors or other nuclear facilities, according to U.S. estimates.

U.S. officials say privately that they believe Mahmood has played a more prominent role in nuclear weapons design than Pakistan has indicated.

Mahmood, according to U.S. experts, took early retirement from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in 1998 and has since devoted his time to welfare work, particularly within Afghanistan.

Administration officials continue to receive assurances from Mu-sharraf that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and the scientists who oversee it are uncompromised.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday he is confident that Musharraf "understands the importance of ensuring that all elements of his nuclear program are safe and secure."

Still, the murky nature of the detentions has unsettled many experts. Press reports in Pakistan, citing Pakistani intelligence sources, say Mahmood also has been questioned by U.S. intelligence officials. A CIA spokesman would not confirm or deny the reports.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, says it's hard to draw a clear link between al-Qa'eda and Pakistan's nuclear program. "But what it does indicate is a continuing concern at the official level in Pakistan about the safety and security of that arsenal," he says.

Experts say bin Laden would face huge technological obstacles in building a nuclear bomb, but a small-scale device would be within al-Qa'eda's reach if it could buy or create nuclear material.

Analysts say bin Laden also might be able to build a "dirty bomb" that wouldn't cause a nuclear explosion but could spread enough radioactivity to kill thousands in an urban environment.

Contributing: Paul Wiseman in Islamabad

-------

THE THREATS
Assessing Risks, Chemical, Biological, Even Nuclear

New York Times
November 1, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/national/01THRE.html?searchpv=nytToday

This article was reported and written by William J. Broad, Stephen Engelberg and James Glanz.

Since being jolted by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the persistent, mysterious spread of anthrax, the government has been struggling to discern what weapon, if any, might be aimed at the nation next.

Government analysts have been forced into broad agreement that the threat of terrorists wielding mass-casualty weapons - chemical, biological or even nuclear - is more serious than they had believed. At the same time, they say a widespread attack with any of these sophisticated weapons would be difficult to achieve.

But there is little precision behind these judgments, and officials acknowledge that the next attack by Al Qaeda or some other group could well involve conventional weapons - truck or car bombs.

The assessment of threats, the effort by government analysts to forecast the behavior of unseen enemies, even unknown ones, is at best an imprecise art that depends largely on the quality of the intelligence from which it is drawn. Many agencies do it, and they often disagree.

"Can we assess threats? Yes, we can and we've done so in the past. We've figured out things that people might try do to us and closed them off," said Kenneth M. Pollack, deputy director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former official at the Central Intelligence Agency. "But ultimately, when you have a very creative group of people like Al Qaeda, they are capable of surprising us."

"We may come up with a thousand scenarios of what they can do to us," Mr. Pollack said. "But the only one that matters is the one that the Al Qaeda person comes up with."

Nonetheless, a host of officials, from the intelligence agency to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the Pentagon, are trying to deliver the analysis that would help both fend off attacks in the near future and defend against longer-term threats.

The possibilities are almost limitless. The Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult tried several attacks with germ weapons, including anthrax, before turning to the nerve gas sarin, which they released in the Tokyo subways in 1995, killing 12.

Experts say that chemical weapons offer terrorist groups a chance to inflict mass casualties and spread panic, much as the release of a small amount of anthrax has stirred panic among a jittery public.

John Bolton, the State Department's top arms control official, told reporters that he was significantly more concerned about the possibility of nuclear, chemical or biological attack since Sept. 11.

A group that would ram airplanes into the World Trade Center, he said, was "not going to be deterred by anything."

"Had these people had ballistic missile technology, there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that they would have used it," Mr. Bolton said.

Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda group is believed to have what one senior Pentagon official recently termed a "crude chemical and possibly biological capability." The group also attempted to obtain nuclear materials in the mid-1990's. That effort was not successful, but officials viewed it as a clear indication of Mr. bin Laden's intentions.

The quest to imagine the unimaginable can have side effects. Richard K. Betts, a Columbia University professor who served on the National Commission on Terrorism, noted that the practitioners of threat assessment can produce a haze of lurking dangers.

"Which of the three dozen `out of the box ideas' do you decide to make the focus?" Professor Betts asked.

The terrorism commission, which produced its report in June 2000, reviewed the government's pre-Sept. 11 assessments of the terrorist threat. Professor Betts and others on the commission said they found much that could be improved with some low-cost steps.

"You can keep better track of who is ordering questionable biological agents," he said. "You can keep track of what foreigners are in this country working in sensitive industries."

There are, of course, limits to what can be accomplished with better threat assessment. "You can invest more to find out what kinds of threats are developing, but you're talking for the most part about reducing the odds at the margins," Professor Betts said. But in the business of forecasting terrorist threats, he said, even that would be valuable.

Biological Agents

All germ weapons are not created equal. Some are like sticks of dynamite - deadly if exploded in a crowd but otherwise limited in destructive power. Some can spread like fire through a dry forest. Most are hard to make, use and control, which limits their appeal to terrorists.

The United States and the Soviet Union, in their forsaken programs to make germ weapons, focused their bulk production of deadly biological agents on 10 kinds of bacteria, viruses and toxins.

Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists 36 classes of "select agents" - potential weapons whose transfer in the scientific and medical communities is regulated to keep them out of unfriendly hands. There are 13 viruses, 7 bacteria, 3 rickettsiae (micro-organisms that have traits common to both bacteria and viruses), 1 fungus and 12 biological toxins.

Of these, experts agree, the smallpox virus is in a class by itself. Ancient and vicious, the virus killed more people over the ages than any other infectious disease, up to a half billion in the 20th century alone. It is highly contagious and can spread rapidly.

In one of the great triumphs in public health, smallpox was eliminated from the world in 1980, and today, stocks of the virus are known to exist only in the United States and Russia. But experts suspect its presence in clandestine stockpiles.

Because vaccination for smallpox has been abandoned and immunity is not lifelong, most people today are believed to be vulnerable to the disease.

"It's my personal nightmare," said Al Zelicoff, a physician and smallpox specialist at the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M.

Anthrax bacteria, while more deadly, must be formed into tiny particles of just the right size to penetrate deep into a person's lungs. But even when infection sets in, the disease cannot pass from person to person.

Because anthrax cases are so rare in developed countries, much about it remains unknown. Even now, doctors are revising treatment regimens and mortality estimates based on the experiences of anthrax patients in the recent outbreaks in the United States.

Among the other potential biological weapons are these:

PLAGUE: The contagious and often fatal bacterial disease produces high fevers, headaches, glandular swelling and pneumonia.

BOTULINUM: A toxin that is the most poisonous compound known to science, it paralyzes muscles and lungs and kills quickly by suffocation.

Q FEVER: The relatively mild disease can produce crippling chills, coughing, headaches, hallucinations and fevers up to 104 degrees.

EASTERN EQUINE ENCEPHALITIS: It causes fever, headaches and seizures and is fatal in up to 70 percent of cases.

YELLOW FEVER: Characterized by chills, muscle pain, stomach bleeding, dark vomit, and yellow skin due to liver failure and bile accumulation, the mortality rate is up to 10 percent. MARBURG VIRUS: One of the bleeding diseases, like Ebola, it causes high fevers and kills one in four victims.

Despite a history going back ages, and despite occasional grim successes, germ weapons have never played decisive roles in warfare or terrorism. One reason is that it is difficult to acquire and use the complicated gear needed to make and scatter deadly pathogens. Another is the risk of a boomerang effect in which attacker becomes victim.

With the recent anthrax outbreaks, experts have had to recalculate their assessment of the threat of widespread biological terrorism. Many still feel that such an attack would be difficult to mount.

"There is an ocean of difference between learning how to steer a jetliner into a building and overcoming the technical hurdles in the dispersal of a biological agent to cause mass casualties," said Dr. Amy E. Smithson, an expert on biological and chemical weapons at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a private group in Washington.

The Congressional investigators of the General Accounting Office, in a September 1999 report, looked at a dozen biological agents and found that their use by terrorists was mostly possible or potential - not likely. For instance, it said bleeding disease agents like Marburg were unlikely "due to difficulty in acquiring pathogen, safety considerations and relative instability."

With smallpox, the investigators found that its use was questionable "due to limited access to the pathogen," even while agreeing that an outbreak would have devastating effects.

Many experts contend that no state possessing the virus would give it to a terrorist because of the danger of starting a global epidemic that would kill indiscriminately, especially in the developing world. "Societies that harbor terrorists might be at greater risk than we are," said a top federal adviser on biological terrorism who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Dr. Brad Roberts, a terrorism expert at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a private group in Alexandria, Va., that advises the Pentagon, said that doing careful threat assessments was almost impossible because of the lack of concrete information about terrorist capabilities, and that in that vacuum appraisals have often tended to be alarmist.

"This is not a classic military or criminal problem, which is to say we can't possibly see everything we need to see to know what the threat is," Dr. Roberts said. "All we can see is a catalog of vulnerabilities so long as to be overwhelming."

Chemical Perils

Chemical weapons are typically less likely than germ weapons to cause widespread death and illness, but experts say they are easier to make and deploy. For that reason, the experts regard them as worrisome.

Still, as with germ weapons, obtaining the requisite raw materials can be difficult, as is pulling off successful attacks. Fickle winds can easily blow toxic mists off target.

Because of the many potential snags, some experts see terrorist strikes on chemical plants and transportation links as an easier way to release noxious clouds that could injure or kill many people.

Dr. Smithson of the Stimson Center recently told a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs that roughly 850,000 American facilities, many in or near major cities, use hazardous or extremely hazardous chemicals.

"My main chemical terrorism concern relates to the possible sabotage of these industrial facilities," Dr. Smithson said, adding that new safeguards and precautions were attempting to deal with that danger.

But some potential ingredients for chemical weapons are available on the commercial market, avoiding the need to make them. Chlorine, phosgene and hydrogen cyanide are examples, all noxious if inhaled but limited in killing power. Small doses tend to produce no effects or nausea. Medium doses produce dizziness. Large doses can end in convulsions and death.

Far more deadly are nerve agents, small amounts of which can penetrate the skin or lungs to disrupt the body's nervous system and stop breathing. They are also technically more difficult for terrorists to acquire or make, the General Accounting Office pointed out in its 1999 study.

Examples are tabun, the first nerve agent ever produced; sarin, which the Aum Shinrikyo cult used in 1995; and soman, a colorless liquid with a fruity smell. VX gas, which Saddam Hussein of Iraq made in large quantities, is deadly but very hard to synthesize.

The Congressional investigators noted in their 1999 study that developing nerve agents requires multiple precursor chemicals and several manufacturing steps, some of them difficult and hazardous.

Moreover, the Congressional investigators said, "careful temperature control, cooling of the vessel, heating to complete chemical reactions, and distillation could be technically infeasible for terrorists without a sophisticated laboratory infrastructure."

Experts agree that spreading a chemical agent in a closed environment, such as a subway, would be most effective. Outdoor dissemination is much harder. Attacks can be disrupted by sunlight, moisture and wind, and some chemical agents are easily evaporated or diluted. As a result, experts agree that it is generally hard to use chemical agents outdoors with precision.

Nuclear Threats

Nuclear terrorism may represent the darkest fear of all, simply because of the degree of destruction and huge number of casualties that are possible.

After Sept. 11, experts began taking a fresh look at studies that largely ruled out the possibility that terrorists could obtain a nuclear device, said David Albright, an expert on nuclear proliferation who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, a nonprofit organization that works against the spread of nuclear weaponry.

"You'd always reach the point where you say, yes, a terrorist could theoretically do it," Mr. Albright said. "And you'd look at the terrorists and say `Nah, they're not capable or they don't want to.' That's what's changed. Al Qaeda could do it, and they want to."

Advances in nuclear weapon design have made bombs simpler to build. But even so, any terrorist group attempting a nuclear attack would face major barriers.

Among those obstacles are a lack of an industrial base available to terrorist groups that would enable the fashioning of a weapon, and a reluctance on the part of any host country to risk nuclear retaliation.

And if terrorists did obtain a nuclear device, the United States has programs to detect and disarm any weapon within its borders.

Given the difficulties involved in building a nuclear device, a terrorist would probably prefer to buy or steal a complete weapon. One might be obtained from a rogue scientist in a nuclear-armed nation like Pakistan or Russia.

If that is not possible, then obtaining a relatively pure form of the fissionable material at the heart of a nuclear weapon is a more complicated possibility that would require building the rest of the weapon. Obtaining lower-grade material and refining it would be still more complicated.

Experts no longer believe that getting a complete weapon is impossible. Pakistan has tested nuclear weapons, probably Hiroshima-size bombs fueled by enriched uranium, and the country's military and intelligence services are salted with sympathizers of the Taliban. Pakistan recently arrested three of its senior nuclear scientists because of concerns over possible connections with the Taliban.

The Hiroshima bomb had the explosive equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. Robert S. Norris, a researcher and analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the Pakistani weapon is thought to weigh around 1,500 pounds and be far from compact. "It's your basic starter model," Mr. Norris said.

Russia is believed to have developed extremely small nuclear weapons - "suitcase" bombs - probably with yields equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT or fewer. If those weapons were stolen or bought, Mr. Norris said, nuclear experts from the country of origin may be needed to detonate them.

Another possibility would be to obtain the grapefruitlike core of uranium from, say, the Pakistanis, which would be easier to smuggle out of the country than an entire bomb. It is no longer out of the question that Al Qaeda could somehow build the rest of the bomb, Mr. Albright said.

He said that if the terrorists could not get the core of a bomb, they might consider obtaining spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors in any number of countries. Concentrating the fissionable uranium from those rods would be a monumental task, but separating plutonium, which can also fuel a nuclear weapon, is just within the realm of possibility, Mr. Albright said.

"It's possible they could build a crude, plutonium enrichment plant," Mr. Albright said.

Over the years, countries have come up with simpler designs for nuclear weapons, making it much more likely that a shoestring operation inside Afghanistan could build one, Mr. Albright said.

Except for the suitcase bomb, any one of those weapons would probably have to be brought to the United States in a ship, perhaps hidden in a container on a freighter. The bombs could fit into a large van and, if exploded in downtown Manhattan, might cause tens of thousands to a hundred thousand deaths, Mr. Albright said.

A cruder but simpler way to use radioactive materials as a weapon would be to construct a radiological bomb, sometimes called a dirty bomb. The idea is to kill and terrorize with radiation alone, by packing radioactive material around an ordinary explosive and detonating it above a city.

The radioactive material could spread as a dust emanating from the explosion, falling on a wide area of a city, perhaps killing hundreds and requiring a cleanup that could run to billions of dollars. Without a cleanup, the material would cling to surfaces and contaminate the area for decades.

These dirty bombs are much easier to engineer than nuclear bombs. But because of the known sympathies of many Pakistanis for Al Qaeda, one threat easily stands out, said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Md.

"There's so many vulnerabilities," Dr. Makhijani said, but "the most immediate danger relates to Pakistani nuclear weapons."

-------

Raising Nuclear Concerns
Terrorists could use missing materials, experts say

The Patriot-News
Harrisburg PA
November 1, 2001
BY BRETT LIEBERMAN OF OUR WASHINGTON BUREAU
From: "Scott D. Portzline" <sportzline@home.com>

WASHINGTON - Terrorists are far more likely to target nuclear facilities, nuclear materials and radioactive sources worldwide since the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency is warning.

Nuclear and security experts have worried for years that unaccounted for nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union and other countries with weak controls could be bought or stolen by terrorists. Many experts believed the threat was not too great because of the personal risks involved.

But the extreme willingness of the terrorist hijackers to sacrifice their lives has alarmed many of these same experts.

"The willingness of terrorists to commit suicide . . . makes the nuclear terrorism threat 10 times greater than it was before September 11th," said Mohamed El Baraderi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Though nuclear power plants remain highly likely targets, a greater concern is tens of thousands of radioactive sources used for health care, agriculture, research and engineering or construction.

There are 10,000 radioactive sources for radiotherapy alone. The number of other radioactive sources, such as those used to check for cracks in buildings or pipelines, is unknown. Many of these lost materials could end up in a bomb that combined conventional explosives with radioactive materials to create a deadly combination.

"Security of radioactive materials has traditionally been relatively light," said Abel Gonzalez, the IAEA's director of radiation and waste safety.

"There are few security precautions on radiotherapy equipment and a large source could be removed quite easily, especially if those involved have no regard for their own health."

Nuclear experts are meeting this week at the IAEA in Vienna, Austria, symposium on nuclear safeguards and security. "The threat we see is potentially everywhere," said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. "Because this stuff is so deadly [it was believed that terrorists] wouldn't touch it. Now we see they don't care about their own lives."

Attacks on nuclear plants, re-processing or weapons plants remain a threat and would be the most devastating, but the more likely threats are potentially less devastating attacks using stolen radioactive sources, she said.

Nuclear facilities are mostly well-guarded, but radioactive material sources elsewhere remain plentiful and are easily obtained.

Even in the United States, radioactive sources are routinely lost, stolen or discarded on an almost daily basis.

"There are at least 9,000 missing orphaned nuclear devices in the United States," said Scott Portzline, former security chairman of Three Mile Island Alert and an expert in missing radioactive sources. "I just began noticing that just about every other day something was lost, missing or stolen."

In a 1992 incident, an 82-year-old woman died from radiation exposure and another 90 people were exposed after an Indiana, Pa., health center left a radioactive pellet used to treat cancer in her.

According to the IAEA, there have been 175 cases of trafficking in nuclear material and 201 cases of trafficking in other radioactive sources such as medical or industrial materials since 1993.

The Atomic Energy Commission, a precursor to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, identified the problem of lost radioactive sources in the 195Os, but concluded it did not have the resources to keep track. The NRC documented more than 9,000 missing devices in its own mid-1990s study, but took no action to recover devices other than making it easier for scrap dealers to dispose of radioactive materials without penalty.

Besides radioactive sources from medical and industrial uses, nuclear material has increased six-fold since 1970. The sources originate from 438 nuclear power reactors, including 103 in the United States, 851 research reactors and 250 fuel cycle plants.

Among the countries leading the charge to tighten security are the United States, France and Great Britain, partners in the U.S. led effort to combat terrorism.

In addition to tougher security ordered by the NRC, governors in at least six states have ordered National Guard troops to help protect nuclear plants. The FAA temporarily banned small aircraft from flying near nuclear facilities. France also positioned missile batteries at a major nuclear reprocessing plant and has given orders to shoot down aircraft that fail to respond to warnings.

Still, IAEA is urging countries to review plant designs and physical security for areas that can be strengthened.

Brett Lieberman may be reached at (202)383-7833 or blieberman@patriot-news.com

-------- europe

Czech Temelin reactor N-plant shut down for 3 weeks

November 1, 2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13056/newsDate/1-Nov-2001/story.htm

PRAGUE - The Czech Republic's controversial Temelin nuclear power plant shut down its first reactor yesterday after a leak was discovered in a pump, the CTK news agency reported.

CTK quoted the plant's spokesman, Milan Nebesar, as saying the problem would force the plant to go off line for about three weeks. Nebesar was not immediately available to confirm the report.

He did not say whether there had been any radioactive fluid associated with the leak.

One week ago Temelin boosted output in the reactor to 75 percent, its highest level ever, as it nears completion of its testing phase.

Temelin, 60 km (37 miles) from the border, has been plagued by Austrian objections. Vienna says that despite the introduction of western safety systems to the Communist-era design, the plant is unsafe and should be shut down.

The Czechs say the plant is safe.

The plant's owner CEZ has said it hopes to have the reactor in full operation by the end of the year, more than 18 months behind schedule.

Temelin was allowed last week to conduct final tests on the second block before nuclear fuel loading later this year. The second reactor is expected to be operational next year.

-------- india / pakistan

NUCLEAR FEARS
Pakistan Atom Experts Held Amid Fear of Leaked Secrets

New York Times
November 1, 2001
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/international/asia/01STAN.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 31 - Pakistan has arrested three of the country's leading nuclear scientists and held them for questioning for most of the last week in connection with American concerns that nuclear weapons technology could have found its way into the hands of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, officials in Pakistan said today.

They provided no details, and would not say whether they had turned up information to confirm American concerns. Nor would they comment on Pakistani newspaper reports that officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency were involved in questioning the men.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, described reports that the men had been "handed over" to American investigators as "absolutely baseless and incorrect."

Asked about the arrests and the general issue of the safety of nuclear weapons in Pakistan, Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state, said today in Washington, "I discussed this issue with President Musharraf when I was in Islamabad, and I'm confident that he understands the importance of ensuring that elements of his nuclear program are safe and secure." Referring to General Musharraf, Secretary Powell added, "And he knows that if he needs any technical assistance on how to improve that security level, we'd be more than willing to help in any way we can."

The Pakistani officials confirmed that one man who has been questioned is Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a former top official of Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission who has been identified in Pakistani newspapers as having been involved in the development of the atomic bombs Pakistan tested in its western desert in May 1998 after similar tests by India earlier that month.

The other arrested men were identified as Mirza Yusuf Baig and Abdul Majeed, also senior scientists with the Atomic Energy Commission. Dr. Majeed was said to have retired from the commission, while Dr. Baig's status was unclear.

Pakistani newspaper reports quoted the families of the three men as saying that they were originally picked up on Oct. 23. An Islamabad newspaper, The Pakistan Observer, regarded as having strong links to Pakistan's military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, said Dr. Mahmood had been released on Friday and rearrested on Sunday. It said he had been "in a very precarious mental and physical health" in the two days he spent at home, and had feared for his life when he was led away on Sunday.

Dr. Mahmood retired from the atomic research establishment shortly after the 1998 tests. At the time, the move was ascribed to his public criticism of suggestions that Nawaz Sharif, then the prime minister, might sign the treaty banning the spread of nuclear weapons.

But officials said today that there had been American pressure to remove the scientist after American intelligence officials learned that he had sympathies for Islamic militant groups, including the Taliban.

Since then, Pakistani newspapers have reported, Dr. Mahmood founded a private organization engaged in "relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction" work in Afghanistan, with activities that have been concentrated around Kandahar, the city that is the spiritual headquarters of the Taliban. He has traveled several times to Afghanistan, and the officials said the precise purpose of these visits was one focus of his interrogation.

Western intelligence officials said they had indications that Mr. bin Laden had made unsuccessful attempts to procure fissionable materials for nuclear weapons beginning at about the time of Pakistan's nuclear tests.

Publicly, officials on General Musharraf's staff have played down the case, saying that the three men had nothing to do with nuclear weapons.

Dr. Mahmood retired from government service in 1998, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, the spokesman for General Musharraf, said at a daily Foreign Ministry briefing for reporters on Tuesday. He said Dr. Mahmood had been operating a nongovernmental organization and in the course of his duties had traveled to Afghanistan.

He added: "There were certain questions that needed to be asked and those have been asked. The report about his handing over to the C.I.A. or F.B.I. or any other agency is absolutely incorrect and false. Presently, he is not under arrest at all and he is in hospital."

But members of the scientists' families denied today that the men had been released, saying they had no access to them and demanding that the government tell the truth about the arrests. "Speaking lies on such a sensitive issue is not going to serve any purpose," the wives of the scientists declared.

Other Pakistani officials said that the case was sensitive and that official denials should not be taken at face value. "What other nuclear program does Pakistan have, other than a nuclear weapons program?" one official said.

The official recalled receiving instructions in the mid-1990's to deny, in official contacts with American officials, that Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons, at a time when the country already had assembled nuclear bombs. "It's just one of those things you can't be absolutely straightforward about," he said.

Washington's concerns about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program heightened after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. General Musharraf's pledge to support American military operations against the Taliban and Mr. bin Laden touched off a wave of protests by Islamic militant groups in Pakistan.

American officials flew to Pakistan to discuss ways of preventing Pakistan's small arsenal of nuclear weapons, said to number fewer than 20, from falling into the hands of extremists if the government was toppled by Islamic militants within the army.

But until the arrests of the scientists last week, American concerns appeared to focus on the Pakistani weapons themselves, more than on the weapons-building expertise that could be transferred to the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

Officials in Washington have said that discussions about the Pakistani nuclear program have centered on providing technology that would make it more difficult for rogue elements to use the weapons if they got possession of them.

In their appeal today to General Musharraf, the wives of the scientists said Dr. Mahmood, the most senior of the three, had a heart attack on Tuesday while undergoing "intensive inhuman interrogation."

"As you are aware, they are eminent nuclear scientists who have served this country to the best of their abilities," the letter to General Musharraf said. "They do not have any association with any terrorist or anti-Pakistan organization."

--------

Pakistan Says Nuclear Assets Ironclad

November 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear-Safety.html?searchpv=aponline

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan said its nuclear assets are under strict control and dismissed concerns that they might fall into the hands of religious extremists.

``Pakistan has an impeccable record of custodial safety and security, free of any incident of theft or leakage of nuclear material, equipment or technology,'' Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar told a news conference Thursday.

He was responding to international concerns that Islamic extremists could seize the control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Islamic groups are staging nationwide demonstrations to protest President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's pro-U.S. policy in the global war against terrorism.

The groups are outraged because of the U.S. air attacks against the ruling Taliban, who have refused to hand over Osama bin Laden -- the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes in the United States.

Sattar said that a vast majority of the Pakistanis support the government's policy. ``Moderate and rational, they understand that our policy is founded in principal of law and world consensus, and it serves the national interest,'' he said.

``Demonstrations signifying compassion for innocent victims of stray bombs have been larger in Pakistan because of deep feelings of sympathy with the Afghan people,'' he said. ``It is illogical to interpret such a natural reaction as danger to the stability of the state or the government.''

Pakistan, the world's newest nuclear power, conducted underground nuclear explosions in May 1998 following similar tests by India. Pakistan says the tests were vital to maintain the strategic balance between the two rival nations, which have fought three wars since they were carved out of British India in 1947.

Sattar said Pakistani armed forces are professional, disciplined and known for their institutional strength. ``Any apprehension that the assets might fall into the hands of the extremists is entirely imaginary -- a product partly of distortion caused by TV images magnifying the sights and sounds of protesters,'' he said.

He said the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission has an ``unblemished record of safety and security'' of the nuclear power plants and other civilian projects. These nuclear installations are under safeguards and subject to periodic inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, he said.

Pakistan, which started its nuclear program in 1974, says that especially equipped forces guard its nuclear installations.

``A Strategic Force Command has been established for each of the three armed services. Clear chains of responsibility have been prescribed and enforced to ensure that strategic weapons cannot be deployed without due authorization,'' Sattar said. ``Stringent measures have been enforced to minimize risks of accidental, unintentional or unauthorized launch.''

Pakistan established a Strategic Plans Division to safeguard nuclear assets in February 2000.

The National Command Authority, chaired by the president, oversees its operations.

--------

India Says Pakistan Making Provocative Troop Moves

November 1, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-india-pakistan.html?searchpv=reuters

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India accused Pakistan on Thursday of carrying out provocative troop movements near the border in the bitterly disputed Kashmir region as tension between the nuclear foes mounted.

A senior Indian official said the Pakistani army had moved some offensive formations closer to the border, including along a sensitive stretch of the frontier dividing the Himalayan territory claimed by both countries.

``It is not dangerous but it is provocative,'' said the official who did not wish to be identified. In response, India had bolstered its defenses along the frontier, he said.

But Pakistan quickly dismissed the report as an attempt by New Delhi to blame Islamabad for raising tension across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

''This now seems to be a belated effort on their part... to put the blame on Pakistan to escalate the friction and tension,'' said Pakistani spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi.

``I think the Indian Armed Forces have very weak intelligence, if that's the conclusion they have made, if that's the information they have got,'' Qureshi said in Islamabad.

Tension has escalated along the India-Pakistan border in revolt-plagued Kashmir since U.S.-led strikes on Afghanistan began last month.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf engaged in tough rhetoric this week, each vowing to repulse any military action by the other.

TENSION RISES DESPITE U.S. PLEAS

The escalating tension has come despite strong pressure by the United States on the foes, both of which have tested nuclear weapons, to tone down their hostile talk while it focuses on the military campaign in Afghanistan.

The neighbors have twice gone to war over Kashmir.

The official said a Pakistani armored brigade had moved closer to the border in the area opposite India's Akhnoor sector in the Jammu region where the two sides exchanged heavy gunfire last month.

``The fact is they have been moving (troops) in the last 21 days in trickles,'' he said.

``Given the tense geo-political situation, we should have been informed by Pakistan of such large movement of formations,'' the official said, referring to the U.S. raids on Afghanistan to hunt down those Washington suspected were behind the attacks on the United States.

The official said until the latest Pakistani moves, Indian troop movements in Kashmir had been routine and no extra forces had been deployed.

The two armies engaged in another artillery and small arms duel in the Uri sector of Kashmir on Thursday which ended around mid-afternoon, an Indian army spokesman said in the summer capital Srinagar.

He said the firing in Uri, located on the military line dividing Kashmir between the two countries, was aimed at giving cover to Muslim guerrillas trying to sneak into the Indian side of Kashmir.

On Tuesday, an Indian soldier died and four were wounded in border firing in Uri, 100 km (60 miles) west of Srinagar.

WINTER CLOSES PASSES

Indian officials say traditionally there is an influx of Muslim guerrillas into Kashmir before winter closes the passes in the Himalayan region.

Indian officials also said Vajpayee was unlikely to meet Musharraf when they travel to New York later this month for a U.N. General Assembly session.

New Delhi has insisted that Islamabad first give up support of rebels in Muslim-majority Kashmir before any talks.

Islamabad says it only gives moral backing to the separatists in Kashmir where more than 30,000 people have died since the revolt erupted in late 1989.

Islamabad had earlier accused India of trying to exploit the tense situation on its border with Afghanistan by massing troops along Pakistan's eastern flank.

But the Indian official reiterated previous statements that the army movements in Kashmir had been routine and linked with the onset of winter.

``Our movements do not have offensive content,'' he said.

Some Indian government leaders have advocated a strike on camps they say exist in Pakistan to train fighters for Kashmir.

The Indian official added there had been no reduction in the level of guerrilla activity in Kashmir since the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan began last month.

``The level of infiltration is one (guerrilla) every two days,'' the official added.

-------- israel

The F-16 Solution

By George F. Will,
Washington Post
Thursday, November 1, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21270-2001Oct31?language=printer

When Israel's foreign minister, Shimon Peres, accompanied by Ambassador David Ivry, recently visited the Oval Office, President Bush remarked that Israel certainly has the right ambassador for the moment. He said this because Ivry has shown that he understands how preventive action is pertinent to the problem of weapons of mass destruction in dangerous hands. Bush's remark, pregnant with implications, revealed that the president as well as the vice president remembers and admires a bold Israeli action for which Israel was roundly condemned 20 years ago.

On the afternoon of June 7, 1981, Jordan's King Hussein, yachting in the Gulf of Aqaba, saw eight low-flying Israeli F-16s roar eastward. He called military headquarters in Amman for information, but got none. The aircraft had flown below Jordanian radar. So far, so good for Ivry's mission, code-named Opera.

Ivry, a short, balding grandfatherly figure with a gray mustache, was then commander of Israel's air force, which had acquired some of the 75 F-16s ordered by Iran from the United States but not delivered because of the 1979 revolution that toppled the shah. The F-16s were to be tested to their limits when Israel learned that Iraq was about to receive a shipment of enriched uranium for its reactor near Baghdad -- enough to build four or five Hiroshima-size bombs.

The reactor was 600 miles from Israel. Ensuring that the F-16s had the range to return to base required the dangerous expedient of topping off the fuel tanks on the runway, while the engines were running. Measures were taken to reduce the air drag of the planes' communications pods and munitions racks.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the attack to occur before the uranium arrived and the reactor went "hot," at which point bombing would have scattered radioactive waste over Baghdad. The raid was scheduled for a Sunday, to minimize casualties. It was executed perfectly. Aren't we glad. Now.

The raid probably was not Israel's first preemptive act against Iraq's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons. In April 1979 unidentified saboteurs blew up reactor parts at a French port, parts awaiting shipment to Iraq. In August 1980 an Egyptian-born nuclear physicist important to Iraq's nuclear program was killed in Paris.

The U.S. State Department said Israel's destruction of the reactor jeopardized the "peace process" of the day, said relations with Israel were being "reassessed," canceled meetings with Israeli officials and suspended deliveries of military equipment, including F-16s, pending a decision about whether Israel had violated the restriction that weapons obtained from America could be used only for defensive purposes. The New York Times said Israel had embraced "the code of terror" and that the raid was "inexcusable and short-sighted aggression." The Times added this remarkable thought:

"Even assuming that Iraq was hellbent to divert enriched uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it would have been working toward a capacity that Israel itself acquired long ago. Contrary to its official assertion, therefore, Israel was not in 'mortal danger' of being outgunned. It faced a potential danger of losing its Middle East nuclear monopoly, of being deterred one day from the use of atomic weapons in war."

The Times was sarcastic about fear of Saddam Hussein ("even assuming . . . hellbent") and sanguine about his acquiring nuclear weapons that would deter Israel from using such weapons. But 10 years later Americans had reason to be thankful for Israel's muscular unilateralism in 1981.

Today on Ivry's embassy office wall is a large black-and-white photograph taken by satellite 10 years after the raid, at the time of the Gulf War. It shows the wreckage of the reactor complex, which is still surrounded by a high, thick wall that was supposed to protect it. Trees are growing where the reactor dome had been.

The picture has this handwritten inscription. "For Gen. David Ivry, with thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981 -- which made our job much easier in Desert Storm." The author of the inscription signed it: "Dick Cheney, Sec. of Defense 1989-93."

Were it not for Israel's raid, Iraq probably would have had nuclear weapons in 1991 and there would have been no Desert Storm. The fact that Bush and Cheney are keenly appreciative of what Ivry and Israel's air force accomplished is welcome evidence of two things:

In spite of the secretary of state's coalition fetish, the administration understands the role of robust unilateralism. And neither lawyers citing "international law" nor diplomats invoking "world opinion" will prevent America from acting as Israel did, pre-emptively in self-defense.

-------- japan

Fire at nuclear reactor facility north of Tokyo

Reuters:
1/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13057/newsDate/1-Nov-2001/story.htm

TOKYO - A fire broke out at the site of an experimental fast-breeder nuclear reactor northeast of Tokyo last night, but the incident did not pose a threat to the reactor itself and there was no radiation leak, police said.

A police spokesman in the town of Mito told Reuters that the fire broke out on the first floor of a maintenance facility that is about 50 metres from the experimental reactor, which is currently undergoing maintenance.

The spokesman said the fire broke out around 8:40 p.m. (1140 GMT) and was under control about two hours later.

There were no injuries and authorities ruled out the possibility of a radioactive leak, he said.

The Joyo facility is located in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo.

The facility was the site of a controlling rod malfunction in the spring of 2000, forcing the reactor to shut down.

The facility is operated by the state-run Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute.

Japan is heavily reliant on nuclear power although there have been a number of accidents over the past decade that have undermined public support for the programmes.

In September 1999, one uranium plant worker was killed in a uncontrolled nuclear fission reaction at a reprocessing facility.

The accident, attributed to poor management controls over the reprocessing, was the worst ever in Japan.

Japan has 51 reactors supplying about one third of the country's electricity needs.

Another JNC reactor, the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor, remains shut since a December 8, 1995, accident in which it suffered a massive sodium coolant leak.

State-run JNC was launched in October 1, 1998, taking control of the three core fields of research and development that were previously run by the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp (PNC), which came under fire for mismanagement.

-------- missile defense

Missile Defense Deal Is Likely
U.S.-Russia Accord Would Allow Tests, Preserve ABM Pact

By Walter Pincus and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 1, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21122-2001Oct31?language=printer

The United States and Russia would allow extensive testing to develop a missile defense system and aim to cut strategic nuclear warhead levels by about two-thirds under a deal that U.S. officials said is likely to emerge from this month's summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This agreement would not scrap the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which U.S. officials said remains the ultimate goal of negotiations with Russia, but would allow the administration to move ahead with the vigorous testing and development program it hopes to begin early next year.

"Testing will go on, but there will be no announcement of a U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty," one official said. "That would be associated with a decision to deploy a system which will come later."

Under this interim arrangement, both countries would also set goals for slowly reducing the number of strategic warheads to between 1,750 and 2,250 each, officials said. This would be lower not only than the 3,000 to 3,500 warhead levels set under the START II treaty, but also the proposed ceiling for a START III pact that was reached by Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in 1997. Implementation of START II, which was signed in 1993 by Bush's father and Yeltsin, was to have been completed by December 2007.

Each country now has more than 6,000 strategic warheads on land- and submarine-based missiles and long-range bombers, but Russia's arsenal is expected to decline sharply in the years to come because of obsolescence and lack of money.

The agreement would represent a substantial breakthrough nine months after Bush came into office and made missile defense his top foreign policy priority in the face of adamant Russian opposition to dropping the 1972 ABM pact. It would further underscore how far the two former Cold War adversaries have moved in transforming their relations, especially after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks opened new areas of cooperation.

But preparations for the summit have also brought to a head the debate within the Bush team about how to achieve the goal of setting aside the ABM Treaty -- which prohibits a missile defense system of the type Bush envisions -- while trying to accommodate Putin's stated interest in reducing strategic nuclear weapons.

Bush and Putin will meet here Nov. 13 and then travel to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., for two additional days of talks.

Though an interim deal within the context of the ABM Treaty now seems likely, some key officials in the Pentagon and their allies elsewhere in the administration have continued pressing for the United States to withdraw from the pact sooner rather than later. The final shape of the upcoming agreement has yet to be cast and different members of the administration are still debating whether to accept a deal that substantially loosens the treaty's testing restriction or to push for complete freedom to test, according to current and former officials familiar with the discussion.

"This has been subject to debate for quite some time and there's renewed interest given the fact that Bush has an opportunity to see Putin shortly," said an administration official. "It's an opportunity to move the agenda one way or another."

The internal administration efforts to influence the U.S.-Russia negotiations, one official said, were behind the announcement last week by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the Pentagon would delay radar tests involved in the missile defense program. Rumsfeld opened a Pentagon news briefing by saying that the tests, scheduled for Oct. 24 and Nov. 14, were being put off because the radars to be used to monitor missile and rocket firings could be seen as violating the ABM Treaty.

Although this announcement was widely interpreted in the American and Russian media as meant to avoid a showdown with Moscow ahead of the summit meeting, U.S. officials said Rumsfeld did not have this in mind. Instead, officials said, he was trying to promote his goal of withdrawing from the treaty entirely as soon as possible by showing that the pact was already inhibiting the American testing program.

Defense officials pointed out that the two tests had already been delayed for technical reasons unrelated to the ABM Treaty. Moreover, Rumsfeld made his statement a month after the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the Pentagon office responsible for developing a missile shield, had been informed in an internal memo dated Sept. 24 that the radars involved in the tests could not be used in a fashion that violates the treaty.

Asked by reporters Monday whether his comments had been misleading, Rumsfeld said, "If one of those tests is canceled or has been canceled for technical reasons, so be it. All I know is, at the time I was asked what should they do, I said, 'Do not violate the treaty.' And if later there was a technical reason and we could not have used the radar anyway, that's life."

Senior administration officials said Rumsfeld and others who want to see the treaty quickly scrapped have been the most vigorous advocates of interpreting the ABM Treaty strictly. This allows them to make the case that the pact is already constraining the testing program and must go.

Others in the administration, including national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, have sought to depict greater room for compromise, saying for instance that Russia had said it does not see missile tests as a threat. Although Rice had argued in the summer the need for "maximum flexibility" from the treaty, she has stressed in recent days that Bush has the more modest short-term goal of ensuring that the pact does not constrain the testing and evaluation of missile defense technologies.

After meeting Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in Shanghai last month, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said, "I have had some discussions with Russian colleagues of mine who suggest we can probably do more testing than we think under the treaty. . . . We are looking at that."

The group within the administration that includes Powell and Rice wants "to do everything we need to do on our timetable and accomplish all the other objectives with Russia all at the same time," a senior official said.

Noting that no missile defense architecture exists and therefore a deployment decision on any shield remains years off, another senior official said, "You could argue we shouldn't get rid of the treaty now and give the Russians an understanding." The official added: "We're working through all the issues now."

The prospect that the administration would reach an interim deal with Russia short of full withdrawal from the ABM Treaty has grown in recent weeks. At his meeting with Putin in Shanghai last month, Bush refrained from giving a deadline for a pullout from the treaty. After the meeting, both leaders sounded upbeat about the chances of reaching a deal.

An essential part of a new understanding with Russia would be an agreement over levels of offensive weapons. In a campaign speech on May 23, 2000, Bush said he wanted to reach "the lowest number of nuclear weapons consistent with our national security needs including our obligations to our allies."

The strategic warhead reductions now envisioned would be accomplished over a long period, in part because the Russians do not have the money to carry out the costly destruction of land- and sea-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, nor the facilities to store the weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from the warheads.

Under START II, reductions down to the 3,000 to 3,500 level are not supposed to be accomplished before the end of 2007. "We are already on the downslope dismantling the first of the 50, 10-warhead, Peacekeeper ICBMs and cutting the number of Trident ballistic missile submarines down from 18 to 14," said a U.S. official involved in the nuclear weapons program. "The question is how fast we go down," he said, "since the Russians will go much slower."

Staff writers Bradley Graham and Steven Mufson and researcher Lynn Davis contributed to this report.

--------

ARMS CONTROL
Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Discuss Nuclear Warheads

November 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States and Russia would cut the number of nuclear warheads by about two-thirds, a U.S. official said Thursday, under an agreement being discussed before President Bush and President Vladimir Putin meet in two weeks.

The reductions are intended to ease Russia's concerns about U.S. missile defense tests now barred by a 1972 arms control treaty.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is mediating a dispute over what to do with the ABM treaty in exchange for the nuclear cutbacks. Rice argues that the treaty can be amended to allow the administration to test and develop the missile defense system -- at least in the short term. Others, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, are more inclined to scuttle the pact that Bush calls a Cold War-era relic.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov were holding arms control talks Thursday at the State Department.

A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a consensus is emerging to slowly reduce the number of strategic warheads to between 1,750 and 2,250 from the current level of 6,000 if that would entice Putin to allow for missile shield tests.

That is the range being suggested by State Department and Defense Department analysts, but the official stressed that Bush has not signed off on numbers, which could change during pre-summit negotiations.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush ``has not made a decision about what the appropriate numbers should be.''

Both sides have decided they need fewer long-range warheads than piled up in a process that continued even after the Cold War ended. Russia has suggested a lower ceiling of 1,500 to 2,000 warheads.

Ivanov's one-day visit to Washington could improve chances for concluding an agreement during talks Bush and Putin are to hold Nov. 13-15 in Washington and on Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Late Wednesday, Ivanov said the two nations need to find a way to maintain stability as they move toward a new status quo.

``We will also discuss issues in the fight against terrorism and how we can bolster our partnership,'' Ivanov said.

The two sides are closer to agreement on weapons cutbacks than on missile defense.

Bush plans to erect a shield against attack by smaller states with fledgling missile capabilities and by terrorist groups. Putin is leery of scrapping the 1972 U.S.-Soviet treaty that prohibits a nationwide defense system for either the United States or Russia.

Critics say an anti-missile shield will only encourage potential aggressors to develop more dangerous nuclear weapons with unorthodox delivery systems to get through the U.S. defense. Unprecedented cooperation from Russia in the U.S. campaign against terrorism could help the two leaders come to terms.

Otherwise, Bush has says he's ready to exercise his right to pull out of the treaty if he doesn't get his way with Putin.

Traditional diplomatic caution keeps American officials from predicting success in Bush's quest for leeway to proceed with a limited defense against missile attack and Putin's hope for substantial reductions in long-range nuclear arsenals.

``We will reach agreements with the Russians on what we can reach agreements on,'' John Bolton, the undersecretary of state in charge of arms control questions, said Wednesday ahead of Ivanov's arrival. Bolton has made four trips to Moscow during the administration's first 10 months for talks on U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons.

``It would be premature to be optimistic or pessimistic,'' he said.

Still, Bolton and other administration officials are having trouble containing sunny expectations for the Bush-Putin talks.

Leaders are supposed to be driven by national interests, not personal relations. But there was noticeable improvement in the Bush-Putin personal chemistry in their two meetings before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Then the curve shot upward as Putin called Bush to pledge his support -- the first foreign leader to get in touch -- and followed by helping in the U.S.-led coalition's campaign to uproot the al-Qaida terror network's Afghanistan headquarters.

Their meeting in Shanghai 10 days ago accelerated the momentum. According to the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Alexander Vershbow, it ``opened the way for a possible agreement, perhaps even as early as Putin's visit to the United States, on ... issues relating to strategic offensive and defensive arms.''

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Wednesday, after a meeting in Moscow with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, that Russia has no plans to widen its participation in the anti-terror coalition.

``Russia has long ago determined its position and its level of participation,'' he said. That will not change ``irrespective of how the operation proceeds,'' he said.

Last week, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld ordered a halt to elements of U.S. tests that might violate the 1972 pact.

Besides the Powell-Ivan Ivanov meeting in Washington, Rumsfeld is going to Moscow to confer with his counterpart, Sergei Ivanov, this weekend . And Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage conferred with Russian officials in Moscow on Thursday on the war in Afghanistan.

Perhaps the touchiest item on the agenda will be Bush's attempt to try again to persuade Putin to cut off the spread of sophisticated technology and conventional weapons to Iran.

-------- russia

Doomed crewman's note found in bottle aboard Kursk

by Natalia Andreassen,
1/11/2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13063/newsDate/1-Nov-2001/story.htm

MURMANSK, Russia - Investigators scouring Russia's Kursk submarine found a note this week from a doomed crewman, scrawled in darkness in the ill-fated vessel's last hours and stuffed inside a water bottle, officials said.

The message is the third found on board the nuclear-powered Kursk, 14 months after two unexplained explosions sank one of the Russian navy's most modern submarines in the icy waters of the Barents Sea, killing all 118 crew.

The first notes, discovered last year when 12 bodies were pulled from the Arctic deep, revealed that crew members who survived the initial blasts knew they were about to die.

Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov said the latest message was written by senior non-commissioned officer Oleg Borisov. He said the note was personal.

"A farewell note from a sailor has been found," Ustinov, who heads the teams of investigators on board the Kursk, told a news conference.

"I will not read the note to you as it gives us no new information and its contents are purely personal," he said, adding the message was found inside a plastic mineral water bottle.

Ustinov said workers had recovered the bodies of 49 servicemen as they made their way through the dank and mangled interior of the submarine, now in a dry dock in the Arctic port of Roslyakovo.

Salvage divers pulled the bodies of 12 servicemen from the wreck a year ago while it lay on the Arctic seabed, but halted the rescue operation when it was deemed too dangerous.

RADIATION LEAK FEARS

Local residents had said they feared radiation leaks and the possible detonation of missiles still aboard as the Kursk was being pulled into dry dock.

But officials have recorded no abnormal radiation levels and the Russian navy has ruled out any detonation of the Kursk's 22 cruise missiles, which have a range of 500 km (300 miles) and the power to destroy an aircraft carrier.

Navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov said this week eight live missiles had been extracted from the vessel's starboard side.

He said that all compartments of the ship were now being inspected after investigators had completed their search of the ship. The vessel's bow, heavily damaged in the accident, remains on the Arctic seabed and is to be raised next year.

President Vladimir Putin, criticised for remaining on holiday as attempts to rescue the crew proved fruitless, promised angry relatives the submarine would be lifted whatever the cost and the bodies handed over for proper burial.

The exact cause of the accident remains unclear.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, heading the government probe into the disaster, said on Monday the vessel sank after one of the submarine's torpedoes exploded, leaving open the possibility that the ship collided with an unspecified object.

Investigators say the cause of the accident will be found only when the bow section is brought ashore.

--------

Powell, Ivanov Meet on Strategic Framework

November 1, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-russia-ivanov.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Thursday began talks expected to include a compromise on U.S. missile defenses and Russia's interest in cutting nuclear arsenals.

Ivanov arrived in Washington on Wednesday evening and went to the State Department early on Thursday for open-ended talks with Powell and other U.S. officials.

After two hours of meetings, he went to the Russian Embassy, returning one hour later to resume.

The talks are in preparation for a summit from Nov. 13 to 15 between President George W.) Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, first at the White House and then at the U.S. president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

The summit could be the last chance for Russia and the United States to reach a deal on strategic missiles and missile defense before the United States starts carrying out tests that run up against the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.

Controversy over the ABM treaty, which Russia wants to preserve, dogged bilateral relations for the first eight months of Bush's presidency but the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11 have led to a new spirit of cooperation between Moscow and Washington.

The Washington Post said on Thursday the summit would probably lead to a deal allowing extensive testing to develop a missile defense system while also setting a target of cutting strategic nuclear warhead levels by about two thirds.

LOWER TOTAL WARHEADS

It said the agreement would not scrap the ABM treaty, which U.S. officials say remains the ultimate goal of negotiations with Russia, but would allow Washington to start a testing and development program it hopes to begin early next year.

They would set goals for slowly reducing the number of strategic warheads to between 1,750 and 2,250 each, the newspaper said.

This would be lower not only than the 3,000 to 3,500 warhead levels set under the START II treaty, but also the proposed ceiling for a START III pact that was reached by Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in 1997.

A State Department official said an agreement would clearly include a substantial reduction in offensive nuclear forces. ''But no decisions have been made on the numerical range,'' said the official, who asked not to be named.

He said Ivanov's visit was part of a dialogue which would continue when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld goes to Moscow this week, implying that the talks between Powell and Ivanov would not be decisive.

On his arrival in Washington, Ivanov told reporters outside the Russian Embassy: ``During the course of the talks, we will be discussing strategic stability.

``As you know, for the last several months, we've been holding active consultations on anti-ballistic missile defense, and right now we have to exchange our opinions on which direction we should move forward,'' he said.

Ivanov said the talks would also touch upon fighting terrorism. The United States is waging war in Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

It is trying to crush the network of Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden, blamed by Washington in the attacks, and the Taliban rulers who have harbored him.

``We will discuss mutual fighting against international terrorism,'' he said. ``We positively value our cooperation in fighting international terrorists and we hope to continue our cooperation between the two countries in this matter.''

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters on Wednesday the aim of the talks was to move forward on a broad range of issues in advance of next month's summit.

``I expect they'll have extensive discussions of all the issues in the U.S.-Russia relationship, especially the strategic framework issues offensive systems, and continue their work on the strategic framework,'' Boucher said.

``There is any number of areas of cooperation against terrorism that the U.S. and Russia will want to discuss. But the whole meeting should be seen in the context of expanding cooperation and working together in all these areas,'' he said.

Relations between Russia and the United States improved dramatically in September when Moscow said it would not object if the Central Asian republics allowed U.S. forces to use their territory for operations in Afghanistan.

European officials say Moscow has also toned down its opposition to NATO expansion into Eastern Europe.

In exchange, the United States and Europe have been more sympathetic to Russia's campaign in Chechnya, where Muslim separatists are seeking independence from Moscow. Russia says it is fighting ``terrorists'' in the breakaway republic.

-------- ukraine

Ukraine Destroys Nuke Facilities

Thursday, Nov. 1, 2001.
By Marina Sysoyeva
The Associated Press
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/11/01/014.html

KIEV - Ukraine destroyed its last nuclear missile silo on Tuesday, fulfilling the nation's pledge to give up the vast nuclear arsenal it inherited after the breakup of the former Soviet Union.

The silo was blown up at a military range in the southern Mykolaiv region near Pervomaisk, Interfax said. The U.S.-Ukrainian Cooperative Threat Reduction Program oversaw the process.

A team of U.S. and Ukrainian officials joined three schoolchildren in turning six keys to detonate the explosives that destroyed the nuclear missile silo, the last of 46 to be dismantled. The land beneath the silo is to be cleaned and converted for agricultural use, officials said.

"So far, Ukraine confirmed its commitment to secure peace and stability, and made a significant contribution to strengthening the international regime of arms nonproliferation," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Serhiy Borodenkov.

Ukraine inherited the world's third-largest nuclear stockpile with the 1991 Soviet collapse, including 130 SS-19 missiles, 46 SS-24 missiles and dozens of strategic bombers. It later renounced nuclear weapons and transferred all missiles and its 1,300 nuclear warheads to Russia. After processing, nuclear materials from the warheads were brought back to Ukraine as fuel for power plants.

In 1997, Ukraine and the United States signed a treaty on U.S. assistance in dismantling 38 Tu-160s and Tu-95s bombers and more than 480 Kh-55 air-launched cruise missiles. The last two bombers were gutted in February. Ukrainian officials said they had received security guarantees from Russia, the United States, Britain, China and France and financial assistance from foreign governments to assist disarmament.

All work in the disarmament program is to be completed by Dec. 4.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Navy argues that lawsuit against weapon is baseless

By Lloyd A. Pritchett,
The SUN Newspaper, Bremerton, Washington
Thu, 1 Nov 2001
From: Stephen Kobasa <skobasa@pop.snet.net>

The Navy is asking a judge to throw out allegations in a lawsuit filed by environmental and peace groups that claim a missile upgrade at Naval Submarine Base Bangor violates environmental laws.

In court papers filed late last week, Navy officials argued that the nuclear missile upgrade at Bangor meets all environmental laws and safeguards. Nor does the upgrade violate the Endangered Species Act or require the filing of a new environmental impact study, the Navy said.

Navy lawyers also went further, arguing that none of the lawsuit's allegations about the effects of nuclear weapons can be brought to trial because an executive order forbids the Navy from confirming or denying the presence of such weapons at the base, north of Bremerton on Hood Canal.

"Clearly these allegations depend on the assumption that nuclear weapons are in fact present at Submarine Base Bangor," the Navy said in court papers. "Yet ... for national security reasons, the Navy can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at Submarine Base Bangor."

The court papers add: "The Navy is not obligated to disclose the existence of a proposal to transport, store, handle, load or unload nuclear weapons at Submarine Base Bangor and plaintiffs cannot establish the existence of such a proposal."

Navy lawyers also sought to have other allegations in the lawsuit dismissed, including a claim that heightened terrorist activity requires a new review detailing the environmental impact of a terrorist attack on the Bangor base.

The Navy court papers were filed with Judge Franklin D. Burgess of the U.S. District Court in Tacoma, who is hearing the case.

Burgess is not expected to issue a decision on the Navy's request for dismissal of the allegations for a month or longer. A trial, if ordered, would not take place until next summer at the earliest.

The groups that filed the lawsuit want Burgess to order a full-blown environmental impact statement before the Navy is allowed to proceed with the missile upgrade at Bangor.

The upgrade will enable the base and its submarines to handle the Trident 2 long-range ballistic missile, which is bigger and more powerful than the Trident 1 missiles in use at the base.

Because the Trident 2 missiles are larger, an accidental explosion would create a bigger impact than the Trident 1 missiles and could spread plutonium or other radioactive substances contained in the missile's warheads, the lawsuit contends.

Therefore, the review should include the impact of a missile explosion, and should take into account the impact of the missile upgrade on threatened salmon stocks in Hood Canal.

Seattle attorney Dave Mann, who filed the lawsuit against the Navy on behalf of five environmental and peace groups and two individuals, said he found the Navy's request for dismissal "disturbing."

He said the presence of nuclear weapons at Bangor is no secret. By refusing to examine the potential impacts of an explosion caused by accident, sabotage or terrorism at Bangor, the Navy is violating the law and abdicating its responsibility to the community, he said.

"We're asking, what are the environmental impacts?" he said. "That has to include impacts from nuclear fallout or radiation fallout."

Navy officials declined to discuss the details of the case while it is in litigation.

But Lt. Kevin Stephens, spokesman for the Trident submarine fleet at Bangor, said, "We believe the lawsuit is without merit."

The lawsuit was filed by the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, Waste Action Project, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, Cascadia Wetlands Project, Peace Action of Washington and two individuals, Mary Gleysteen and Glen Milner.

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

The Nuclear Phoenix
The Bush Administration is Pushing Ahead with a Full-Scale Revival of Atomic Power

By Karl Grossman

The last time anyone ordered a new nuclear power plant in the United States was in 1978, but if you think that means nukes are dead forever, guess again. The Bush Administration and the nuclear industry are making an intense push to rehabilitate nuclear power in the U.S. "It's like reviving Frankenstein -- this is the sequel," says Robert Alvarez, executive director of the Standing for Truth About Radiation (STAR) Foundation and co-author of Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation.

Diane D'Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) uses another word when describing the Administration's work. Says D'Arrigo: "It's the push to relapse."

Ever since the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl shattered public trust in atomic power, advocates in government and industry have been laying the groundwork for a nuclear energy comeback. An unbridled drive has started under George W. Bush in what "may be the most ardently pro-nuclear power Presidency in U.S. history," says Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based NIRS. The Bush Administration's stance is aggressive, and it minimizes the dangers of nuclear power. As Bush's Secretary of Treasury, Paul O'Neill, told The Wall Street Journal, "If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear power really is good."

In Bed with the Industry

The Bush Administration struck a close working relationship with the nuclear industry well before taking office. The administration's energy "transition" advisors included Joseph Colvin, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), which describes itself as "the policy organization of the nuclear energy and technologies industry"; J. Bennett Johnston, who as a U.S. Senator was a leading pro-nuclear power figure in Congress and who now runs a consulting firm that assists the nuclear industry; Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, former head of the American Nuclear Energy Council (forerunner of NEI) and a reported "Bush buddy" going back to their days together at Yale; and representatives of four nuclear utilities. There were no advisors representing renewable energy or environmental organizations.

Two weeks after being sworn in, Bush set up a "National Energy Policy Development Group" and appointed as its chairman Vice President Dick Cheney.

Its members included O'Neill and other top administration officials. Ten weeks after it was organized, the group issued a report declaring its support for "the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States as a major component of our national energy policy." The plan would substantially increase the use of nuclear power both by building new nuclear power plants -- many to be constructed on existing nuclear plant sites -- and extending the 40-year licenses of currently operating plants each by another 20 years.

"Many U.S. nuclear plant sites were designed to host four to six reactors, and most operate only two or three; many sites across the country could host additional plants," says the energy policy group's report. "Building new generators on existing sites avoids many complex issues associated with building plants on new sites." It could also greatly amplify the impacts of an accident, notes Paul Gunter, head of NIRS' Reactor Watchdog Project. If one nuclear plant in a cluster of facilities undergoes a catastrophic accident, there is the potential, says Gunter, for a "cascading loss amplifying the release of radiation."

According to the policy report, "the licensing of as many as 90 percent of the currently operating nuclear plants may be renewed." There are 103 nuclear plants now in the U.S. They are, on average, 19 years old. Of the longevity of nuclear plants, "No one foresaw them running for more than 40 years," says Alvarez of STAR, who was also senior policy advisor at the Department of Energy (DOE) from 1993 to 1999. The effects of intense radioactive bombardment, especially on metals, have been seen as limiting the operating life of nuclear plants. And then there's the standard deterioration that occurs when any machine gets old.

"These reactors are just like old machines, but they are ultra-hazardous," says Alvarez. By pushing their operating span to 60 years, he says, "disaster is being invited."

New Nukes?

The Bush Administration's policy also supports "advanced" nuclear power plants -- supposedly new-and-improved nukes. "Advanced reactor technology promises to improve nuclear safety," it says. One example the report provides is "the gas-cooled, pebble bed reactor, which has inherent safety features." In fact, says Gunter, the pebble bed reactor is not new; it's just "old wine in a new bottle." It's a hybrid of the gas-cooled, high-temperature design that "has appeared and been rejected in England, Germany and the U.S." And far from being "inherently safe," a reactor of similar design, a THTR300 in Germany's Ruhr Valley, spewed out substantial amounts of radioactivity in a 1986 accident, leading to its permanent closure.

David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), says that the pebble bed reactor uses blocks of graphite to slow neutron action, although "graphite is a form of carbon, which can ignite in a reactor fire. It was the graphite that kept burning at Chernobyl for 10 days, releasing much of the radiation."

Also, the pebble bed would produce 10 times more high-level waste per amount of electricity generated as compared to existing plants, says Lochbaum, who worked in the nuclear power industry for 17 years and became a whistleblower before coming to UCS. Further, Exelon, the builder of the pebble bed reactor, wants five such units operated from a single control room, which is a dubious proposition, says Lochbaum. He also notes that the pebble bed systems' designers "reduced costs by eliminating a key safety feature -- the reactor containment building."

The Bush National Energy Policy, with its reliance on more nuclear power and greater fossil fuel generation, comes at a time when safe, clean, renewable energy sources have arrived. The need is for broad-scale implementation. Wind power, solar energy, hydrogen fuel technologies including fuel cells, among other renewable energy sources, are more than ready after years of dramatic advances. Coupled with energy efficiency, they can be tapped and widely used.

A coalition of renewable, safe-energy advocates -- including the Safe Energy Communication Council, Greenpeace USA, Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, Global Resource Action Center for the Environment and NIRS -- says of the National Energy Policy: "The Bush/Cheney Administration is recklessly promoting the building of new nuclear plants to address an energy crisis that in large part is being manufactured by the energy corporations that will benefit from building new power plants....We believe that instead of promoting dangerous and dirty forms of energy, the United States should be a world leader in promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency. Let us not sell our children's future."

But the Bush Administration is not to be turned around. As Cheney, in one speech, said of nuclear power: "If we are serious about environmental protection, then we must seriously question the wisdom of backing away from what is, as a matter of record, a safe, clean and very plentiful energy source."

Or, as he declared in another speech, "We're now at about 20 percent of our electricity being generated by nuclear. We'd like to increase that....If you're really concerned about global warming and carbon dioxide emissions, then we need to...aggressively pursue the use of nuclear power, which we can do safely and sanely, but for 20 some years [it] has been a big no-no-politically."

Not surprisingly, the nuclear power industry stands solidly alongside President Bush. Says NEI President Colvin, "The administration's support for nuclear power as a proven energy technology that protects our air quality is a tremendously positive development for our nation....The industry looks forward to working with the White House and Congress to make this long-term vision a reality."

Pushing Ahead

To fast track its vision of our radioactive future, the Bush Administration advocates a "one-step" licensing process for nuclear plants. It was part of an Energy Policy Act bill overwhelmingly approved by Congress in 1992 and signed into law by the former President George Bush. "One-step" licensing allows the NRC to hold a single hearing for a "combined construction and operating license." No longer can nuclear plant projects be slowed down or stopped at a separate operating license proceeding, at which evidence of construction defects can be revealed. As the New York Times described the passage of the 1992 Energy Policy Act, "Nuclear power lobbyists called the bill their biggest victory in Congress since the Three Mile Island accident."

That Energy Policy Act was approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress. As NIRS reported in its Nuclear Monitor in 1992: "As the bill wound its way through the Senate and House, the nuclear industry won nearly every vote that mattered, proving that Congress remains captive to industry lobbying and political contributions over public opinion."

That remains the situation today. Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program documents how the NEI regularly showers Congress -- including members of both major parties -- with political contributions. And when the nuclear industry gives, members of Congress act, notes Public Citizen, which charts the record of politicians on key nuclear issues. Likewise, nuclear industry money pours into Presidential campaigns.

The Republican Bush-Cheney posture on nuclear power is hard-line, but that doesn't mean the Democratic alternative was (or is) much different. The NEI's website includes a page of "Endorsements of Nuclear Energy," and among those quoted are Al Gore: "Nuclear power, designed well, regulated properly, cared for meticulously, has a place in the world's energy supply," he reportedly said in a speech at the Chernobyl Museum in Kiev in 1998. And Gore's former running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, is quoted as saying at a Senate hearing in 1998: "I am a supporter of nuclear energy. I believe it can be part of the solution to solving the world's energy, environment and global warming problems."

Basically, there is a difference in degrees and rhetoric between the politicians from the major parties, says Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. And "the Clinton Administration is by no means blameless" in the push to revive the moribund nuclear industry, she says, especially because of its support for development of "advanced" nuclear plants.

The Bush National Energy Policy says that because of "one-step" licensing, which it terms the "reformed licensing process," getting new nuclear plants built and operating will now be streamlined. And, to make sure public involvement is minimal in the process, the NRC is now seeking to undo the public's right to formal trial-type hearings on nuclear plant licensing. It plans to "deformalize" the hearings by eliminating due process procedures. Documents would be restricted to what the NRC staff and company deem relevant. Instead of cross-examining witnesses, interested parties will have to submit written questions as suggestions for the NRC's presiding officers to ask at their discretion at a hearing. Says Mariotte, "The administration should learn from Seattle, Prague and Quebec that when people are shut out of public policy pro-cesses, the streets are their only alternative."

Redefining Safety

Also to help in a nuclear power comeback is the effort to alter the standards for radiation exposure. As more has been learned about radioactivity, the realization has come that there is no "safe" level. This is called the "linear no-threshold theory," and it has been adopted by the NRC and other U.S. government agencies.

Now nuclear advocates in government and industry want to alter the standards premised on a contention that low doses of radiation are not so bad after all. They are "engaged in an all-out assault on radiation protection standards," says D'Arrigo. There is even interest in a long-rejected notion called "hormesis," which claims that a little radiation is good for people and helps exercise the immune system. The instrument for this change is a new Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) panel of the National Academy of Sciences, which is to make recommendations to the federal government. "The only way to convince the public that additional radiation is acceptable is to put together a skewed panel," says D'Arrigo. The new BEIR panel, she says, is thus stacked with high-level radiation advocates.

Nuclear waste is another obstacle the nuclear proponents in government and industry are seeking to get around. "If we don't deal with the waste problem," acknowledged Cheney in a speech, "then my guess is we won't get the investment in new facilities in the nuclear arena.... It's within our grasp as a government ... to move forward, to get the issue addressed and get it off the table so that utilities are prepared to invest in nuclear."

How is this being done? For high-level nuclear waste, there are drives to open Yucca Mountain in Nevada (100 miles northwest of Las Vegas) as a repository and also to use Utah's Skull Valley Goshute Reservation and possibly other Native American reservations.

The huge problem with Yucca Mountain, which the government began exploring as a repository in the 1980s, is that it is on or near 32 earthquake faults and has a "history and prospects of volcanoes and a likelihood of flooding and leakage," says D'Arrigo. Nevertheless, the Bush Administration is still seeking to "ram through" Yucca Mountain, says Mariotte. Resistance from people in Nevada and their elected representatives is so far blocking the scheme.

In 1997, tribal leaders of the Goshute Reservation "leased land to a private group of electrical utilities for the temporary storage of 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel," according to the Goshute's website. But some members of the tribe are fighting the deal in court, demanding to know who got what for what. Utah government officials are also challenging the arrangement. Governor Mike Leavitt says, "We intend to leave no stone unturned to make sure this waste does not come to Utah. The state's authority and responsibility to protect its citizens and the environment is clear."

But clear to advocates in government and the nuclear industry is that working with ostensibly sovereign American Indian reservations is a way to unload atomic garbage. Critics describe it as a new form of environmental racism -- "nuclear racism" -- seeking to take advantage of the poverty of Native Americans.

The drive to "recycle" low-level nuclear waste has been percolating for years. In 1980, the NRC first proposed that irradiated metal scrap could be converted, stressing that "radioactive waste burial costs could be avoided, [and] the resulting use of smelted scrap could be made into any number of consumer or capital equipment products such as automobiles, appliances, furniture, utensils, personal items and coins." Some thought the push for radioactive quarters and hot Pontiacs was too crazy to be true.

But now the scheme is coming down the pike full-speed with the DOE, Department of Transportation and the NRC moving to facilitate the "recycling of contaminated metal and other radioactive wastes," as the DOE recently announced. Says D'Arrigo: "Bush wants more nuclear power, and we are being told we'll have to do our part by accepting atomic waste in our daily use items."

Those behind the nuclear push are moving to extend a key piece of U.S. law that facilitated the nuclear power industry in the first place: the Price-Anderson Act. This law drastically limits the amount of money people can collect as a result of a nuclear power plant disaster. It was originally enacted in 1957 after nervous utilities and insurance companies balked at building nuclear power plants. "The potential for catastrophe is apparently many times as great as anything previously known in industry," said Herbert W. Yount, vice president of Liberty Mutual Insurance, before the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, from which Price-Anderson emerged. The committee was part of the earliest promotion for a nuclear establishment of government and corporations that had grown out of the World War II-era Manhattan Project. With the war over, nuclear scientists, government bureaucrats and corporate contractors involved in the Manhattan Project-like Westinghouse and GE-sought to perpetuate their nuclear activities through electricity generation. In what was supposed to be a temporary measure to boost the nuclear power industry, the Price-Anderson Act passed, limiting liability in the event of a nuclear plant accident to $560 million, with the federal government paying the first $500 million. It was supposed to last for only 10 years, but Price-Anderson has been repeatedly extended. Now the Bush Administration and the atomic industry are seeking to use it as a financial umbrella for the push to revive nuclear power.

"The renewal of Price-Anderson is only to build new reactors," says Mariotte."That's the issue. Existing nuclear plants are covered by the present law."

The Bush Administration and nuclear industry are proposing that the current liability limit of $9 billion be extended for another 10 years. The initial $560 million cap rose to, in recent years, $9 billion. Still, notes Alvarez, this is all just a fraction of what the NRC itself has concluded would be the financial consequences of a nuclear plant accident. Those figures are contained in a 1982 report prepared for the NRC by the DOE's Sandia National Laboratories entitled Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences for U.S. Nuclear Power Plants. It calculates (in 1980s dollars) costs as a result of a nuclear plant disaster as high as $314 billion at the Indian Point 3 nuclear plant north of New York City and $174 billion for the Millstone 3 nuclear plant in Connecticut. The report projects "early fatalities" with figures as high as 100,000 dead for the Salem 1 nuclear plant in New Jersey and 72,000 dead for the Peach Bottom 2 nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

What are the chances of such a disaster occurring? In 1985, the NRC was asked by a House oversight committee chaired by Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) to determine the probability of a "severe core melt accident" for reactors now operating and those expected to operate during the next 20 years. The NRC concluded: "The crude cumulative probability of such an accident would be 45 percent."

To that danger now has to be added the possibility of a World Trade Center-style airborne terrorist attack on American nuclear plants. Tom Clements, who heads the Nuclear Control Institute, says existing plants are vulnerable to such an attack, "which would be many times worse than what we've seen in New York because it could result in radiation and fallout over a vast area." And so the nightmare of our affair with nuclear power continues.

KARL GROSSMAN, a George Polk Award-winning journalist, teaches investigative and environmental reporting at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury.

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Nuclear Power Plants Tighten Security

By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, Nov. 1, 2001; 5:39 a.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011101/aponline053925_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- Nuclear power plants, already on high alert, have ratcheted up security even more in light of this week's new terrorist alert, and at least seven states are using National Guard troops to help secure reactors.

Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge has told governors in a conference call they ought to consider added police protection to help private security guards. Many of them did so immediately, according to spot checks by The Associated Press.

But along with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Ridge left the decision on using the military up to the governors, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Wednesday.

At least seven states, Arkansas becoming the latest on Wednesday, have ordered national guardsmen to help private forces and police guard nuclear facilities. New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Arizona and Kansas already had guardsmen on duty at reactors. Missouri was expected shortly to announce deployment of guardsmen to nuclear facilities.

Federal officials as well as industry spokesmen emphasized that there has not been a specific threat against any of the country's 103 power rectors. But in his conference call with the governors on Monday, Ridge, when pressed by Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack about specific areas of concern, suggested nuclear and other energy plants.

"Heighten your alerts and watch your vulnerable sites," Fleischer quoted Ridge as saying.

While many of the 31 states with nuclear power plants reported increased police presence at reactor sites, most governors have not felt a need to use national guardsmen.

"There is the potential to put them there," said National Guard Adjutant Gen. Joseph Tinkham II of Maine on Wednesday. But "we don't have any intelligence to indicate that they're needed right now."

Maine has one reactor, the Maine Yankee plant in Wiscasset, which is being decommissioned but still has its reactor fuel.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also asked power plant operators this week to take another look at their security although plants have been on high alert since the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks in New York and Washington.

NRC spokesman Bill Beecher said the NRC, in response to recent general alert issued by the Justice Department, issued another security advisory this week urging operators to keep in close communications with state officials in case additional security help was warranted. The NRC has left it to the states and plant operators to decide on whether National Guard troops are needed.

"We've asked them to request additional security patrols or posts, using local law enforcement, state police or National Guard if needed, in addition to using all of their own people," said Victor Dricks, another NRC official.

In Arkansas, National Guard troops were deployed Wednesday at the state's only nuclear power plant, the Arkansas Nuclear One reactor near Russellville, operated by Entergy Corp. The troops were guarding the perimeter of the plant and making additional patrols near the facility "to maximize our security effort," said Entergy spokesman Phil Fisher in Little Rock.

Fisher said the use of the guardsmen "was prompted by the Justice Department warning this week" that another terror attack of some kind - although not necessarily directed at a nuclear facility - could take place in the next week or so.

Fisher said that during Ridge's conference call Monday, "there was a recommendation that governors deploy National Guard troops at nuclear plants in their states." Fleischer said no recommendation was made on use of guardsmen and officials said the discrepancy could have resulted from a misunderstanding.

The latest alert has prompted many of the power plant operators to boost the number of security guards on duty, expand plant perimeters and more closely check incoming vehicles and workers. Many plants have closed visitor centers.

"We are coordinating very closely with all levels of law enforcement, including the FBI and military," said Rachel Scott, a spokeswoman for Florida Power & Light, which operators the Turkey Point plant 20 miles from Miami.

Underscoring the heightened security, two F-16 fighter jets on Wednesday escorted a private plane to an airport after it flew into restricted airspace near a former nuclear plant in Platteville, Colo. The Cessna 152 was being flown by a student pilot and his instructor.

On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration banned private planes from flying within 11 miles of nuclear plants. The U.S. Coast Guard last week began patrolling waters on the Great Lakes to keep ships away from several nuclear plants on the coastline.

Pentagon officials, meanwhile, left open the possibility that some additional reservists being called up for homeland defense might see duty at nuclear power plants or be on call to possibly intercept an aerial attack.

Gen. William F. Kernan, commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, told reporters he has considered "the full array of air defense systems" to protect potential terrorist targets sites including possibly nuclear power plants. He did not elaborate.

-------- washington

Energy secretary making 1st Hanford visit

Hanford News
Thu, Nov 1, 2001
By Annette Cary Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/1101.html

On the eve of the new Energy secretary's first visit to the Hanford nuclear reservation, organized labor pressed its case for a restart of the Fast Flux Test Facility.

It's a humanitarian issue more than a jobs issue, said Richard Berglund, president of the Building Trades Council.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is scheduled to make his first visit to Hanford this afternoon since being appointed this year. He'll spend about five hours here on a driving tour of Hanford, a meeting with employees, an invitation-only community reception, a brief news conference and a tour of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, part of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

He also is scheduled to tour Hanford's FFTF. He's considering whether to permanently shut down DOE's largest and most modern research reactor or proceed with a plan to commercialize it. The reactor would be restarted for nondefense uses, such as producing isotopes for cancer treatment, isotopes to irradiate food and mail and research related to nuclear energy.

"The FFTF is perfect for making a variety of isotopes that can be used to treat different cancers and other diseases," Berglund said. "It would be a national disgrace not to use the FFTF to help so many people and save so many lives."

The reactor has not operated since 1992 for lack of a government use. Those who want it permanently shut down have accused supporters of pushing for a restart primarily to bring more jobs to the Tri-City economy.

But Berglund pointed out the Tri-Cities already should be flush with construction jobs in the next few years as DOE gears up for its $4 billion effort to glassify Hanford's radioactive tank wastes. The project could require as many as 7,000 new employees during construction through 2011.

A proposal to restart FFTF through a commercial lease fits perfectly into DOE's efforts to diversify the Tri-City economy after cutting thousands of Hanford jobs in the 1990s, Berglund said. As DOE cut nuclear production work nationwide, it spent millions to help communities turn to other industries to replace dependence on jobs financed with federal money.

Supporters of restarting the reactor believe it would draw businesses to the Tri-Cities that use isotopes, particularly in the medical industry. A restart would take advantage of not just buildings and equipment now unused, but also employ a work force rich in nuclear and scientific experience.

Advanced Nuclear and Medical Systems, the company proposing a lease of FFTF, already is hearing from companies interested in building near the reactor if it's restarted, said Bill Stokes of ANMS.

Benton County Commissioner Claude Oliver said commercializing FFTF would fit well with DOE's mission to transfer government-developed technology to commercial use.

ANMS of Richland is asking to lease the reactor for 35 years. It's assembled a team led by Duke Engineering & Services, one of the largest nuclear engineering companies in the United States, to operate the reactor.

Although another member of the team, Science Applications International Corp. Inc., recently withdrew over allegations of conflicts of interest, the plan is proceeding. SAIC would have worked on separation and purification of the medical isotopes and some marketing and distribution work.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which had already agreed to help SAIC, will fill in until another company comes on board, Stokes said.

Organized labor would play a key part in the commercialization proposal. The Compass Group in Spokane, an investment advisory firm to building trade pension trust funds, is working out the details to lend $200 million for construction needed for a restart.

That would be supplemented with $120 million over the first three years from DOE until the private team assumes control of the reactor. That's the same amount of money DOE would spend to keep the reactor on standby.

However, under the proposal, proceeds from sales of isotopes would pay for deactivation of the reactor, which is estimated to cost DOE a minimum of $315 million if the reactor is permanently shut down now.

-------- us nuc politics

Bush Clamping Down On Presidential Papers
Incumbent Could Lock Up Predecessor's Records

By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2001; Page A33
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20731-2001Oct31?language=printer

The Bush White House has drafted an executive order that would usher in a new era of secrecy for presidential records and allow an incumbent president to withhold a former president's papers even if the former president wanted to make them public.

The five-page draft would also require members of the public seeking particular documents to show "at least a 'demonstrated, specific need' " for them before they would be considered for release.

Historians and others who have seen the proposed order called it unprecedented and said it would turn the 1978 Presidential Records Act on its head by allowing such materials to be kept secret "in perpetuity."

Under the order, incumbent and former presidents "could keep their records locked up for as long as they want," said Bruce Craig, executive director of the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History. "It reverses the very premise of the Presidential Records Act, which provides for a systematic release of presidential records after 12 years."

Other critics voiced concern about the impact of the order "in the post-September 11 world," with its wartime atmosphere.

"The executive branch is moving heavily into the nether world of dirty tricks, very likely including directed assassinations overseas and other violations of American norms and the U.N. charter," said Vanderbilt University historian Hugh Graham. "There is going to be so much to hide."

Bush is expected to sign the order shortly. A White House aide said the Supreme Court held in 1977 that former presidents can continue to assert various privileges for their records and the order will simply establish "a procedure by which they can protect their rights." The aide said "great deference" will be paid to their wishes.

"The majority of former presidents have released virtually all of their records," the aide added. "This executive order does nothing to change that."

The proposed order, dated Oct. 29, grew out of a decision by the Bush administration early this year to block the release of 68,000 pages of confidential communications between President Ronald Reagan and his advisers that officials at the National Archives, including the Reagan library, had wanted to make public.

Relying on an obscure executive order that Reagan issued just before leaving office, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales prescribed a series of delays so that Bush could decide whether to invoke "a constitutionally based privilege or take other appropriate action."

The papers in question, some dealing with Reagan-era officials who now have high posts in the Bush administration, were to have been disclosed last January under the 1978 law, which said that the documents could be restricted at the most for 12 years after Reagan left office.

The new executive order would replace the 1989 Reagan decree and cover not only confidential communications between a president and his advisers but, as Graham put it, "almost anything in the White House files."

For 12-year-old documents that are not covered by "constitutionally based privileges" but are subject to requests under the Freedom of Information Act, the order states that the archivist "must withhold" them if possible.

For records that might be privileged as state secrets, confidential communications, attorney-client communications, or "deliberative process" materials, a requester must establish "specific need" for them "as a threshold matter."

A former president would then review them and tell the archivist whether they should be withheld or made public. The incumbent president or a designee would then look at them to see if he or she agrees with the ex-president's decision. Unless both agree they should be made public, the records will remain secret unless "a final court order" should require disclosure.

"Absent compelling circumstances," the incumbent president will concur in the former president's privilege decision, the draft order states. But if the incumbent president does not agree on a former president's decision to grant access, "the incumbent president may independently order the archivist to withhold privileged records."

The order would work "like a one-way ratchet," said Scott Nelson, an attorney for the Public Citizen Litigation Group. "If the former president says the records are privileged, they will remain secret even if the sitting president disagrees. If the sitting president says they should be privileged, they remain secret even if the former president disagrees."

----

Bush-Putin Boost US, Russia Relations

By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Thursday, Nov. 1, 2001; 12:41 a.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011101/aponline004150_000.htm

WASHINGTON -- A boost in relations from unprecedented cooperation in the war against terrorism could lead President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin to find common ground next month on trimming nuclear arsenals and defending against missile attack.

Diplomatic caution keeps American officials from predicting success in the Bush quest for leeway to proceed with a limited defense against missile attack and Putin's hope for substantial reductions in long-range nuclear arsenals.

"We will reach agreements with the Russians on what we can reach agreements on," Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton told military and diplomatic reporters over scrambled eggs on Wednesday.

"It would be premature to be optimistic or pessimistic," he said.

But Bolton and other administration officials are having trouble containing sunny expectations for the talks Bush and Putin will hold in Washington and at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, Nov. 13-15.

A deal likely to emerge from the talks would allow extensive testing to develop a missile defense system and aim to cut strategic nuclear warhead levels by two-thirds, to between 1,750 and 2,250 for each side, The Washington Post reported on its Web site Thursday night.

There was a noticeable improvement in the two leaders personal chemistry in their two meetings before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

And then the curve shot upward as Putin called Bush to pledge his support - the first foreign leader to get in touch - and followed up by assisting the U.S.-led coalition in its campaign to uproot the al-Qaida terrorism network in Afghanistan.

Their meeting 10 days ago in Shanghai accelerated the momentum. According to the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Alexander Vershbow, it "opened the way for a possible agreement, perhaps even as early as Putin's visit, to the United States, on ... issues relating to strategic offensive and defensive arms."

Putin has moderated his opposition to Bush's missile-defense program and the possible scuttling of a pivotal 1973 treaty that prohibits a national anti-missile shield and some of the tests on the Pentagon's drawing board.

Russia and some U.S. allies are concerned the structure of arms control could come tumbling down if the treaty is jettisoned. Last week, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a halt to elements of U.S. tests that might violate the accord.

"We don't want people to think we are playing fast and loose with the treaty," Bolton said.

In the meantime, the Pentagon is nearing completion of an analysis of U.S. strategic needs. It is likely to set a lower ceiling for U.S. nuclear warheads - but perhaps not so low as the 1,500 to 2,000 limit that Russia has proposed for the two sides.

Summits sometimes produce trade-offs. If Putin went along with a limited U.S. anti-missile defense and Bush put on the table a proposal for small arsenals there could be such a deal.

At the very least, a senior U.S. official told The Associated Press this week, there is a clear path to cut offensive arsenals. And on the defensive side, the Russians have been clear that if the United States exercised its right to pull out of the treaty it would not be the end of the world, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Pre-summit talks are being held in Washington on Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

Ivanov said the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty will be discussed at the meeting, emphasizing the need to maintain stability.

"We will also discuss issues in the fight against terrorism and how we can bolster our partnership," Ivanov said.

Rumsfeld, meanwhile, is going to Moscow to confer with his counterpart, Sergei Ivanov.

"I think we will be in a position to have discussions on offensive weapons levels even before Putin arrives," Bolton said.

Perhaps the touchiest item on the agenda will be Bush's attempt to try again to persuade Putin to cut off the spread of sophisticated technology and conventional weapons to Iran.

"It would go a long way to improve the strategic structure if Russia's behavior was more like ours," Bolton said.

"It's not that the Iranians don't have other sources, which they do, and some of them are not particularly ones we can influence. But the overall level of Iranian efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction is very disturbing and has not changed that I can see since Sept. 11," he said.

The breakout of anthrax in the United States has already put the United States under terrorist attack with a weapon of mass destruction, Bolton said. "I think there is a connection between terrorism and nonproliferation that troubles me very greatly," he said.

---

U.S., Russia Intensify Arms Talks

Thursday November 1
Reuters
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011101/pl/arms_russia_usa_dc_2.html http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-russia-usa.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON - U.S. and Russian officials planned to intensify arms negotiations on Thursday amid fresh signs the two sides were nearing agreement on a new and potentially historic strategic relationship.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov were to hold talks in Washington, racing for a deal to sign at a U.S.-Russian summit at mid-month.

The Washington Post reported in Thursday's editions the two countries would allow extensive testing on a missile defense system and aim to cut strategic nuclear warhead levels by about two-thirds under a deal likely to emerge at the summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This accord would not scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a key Bush goal, but would let the administration move ahead with the vigorous missile defense testing and development program it hopes to begin early next year, the Post said.

``Testing will go on, but there will be no announcement of a U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty,'' the newspaper quoted one official as saying. ``That would be associated with a decision to deploy a system which will come later.''

On Wednesday, Undersecretary of State John Bolton said the U,S. was expected to tell Moscow in the Powell-Ivanov talks how deeply it can reduce its nuclear weapons arsenal, thus providing an important piece of the negotiations puzzle.

He also said debate continued on whether the two sides could live, at least temporarily, with the ABM Treaty that Bush has condemned as a constraint on his missile defense vision.

The Post said the administration is still debating whether to accept a deal that substantially loosens restrictions on missile defense testing or withdraw from the treaty outright.

ARMS NEEDS CHANGE

While giving no details, Bolton said the nuclear cuts issue would be on the Powell-Ivanov agenda.

How far the U.S. will go in reducing its nuclear arsenal is key to talks with Russia aimed at giving Washington freedom to pursue defenses against incoming enemy ballistic missiles.

Americans say reliance on huge nuclear stockpiles suited the Cold War. Now the threat is rogue states; missile defenses are an important new protection.

Russia, with a battered economy and deteriorating military infrastructure, has argued for reducing nuclear stockpiles beyond the levels specified by the START-2 treaty, which would cut each country's arsenal by half to about 3,500 warheads.

Russia has argued for a level of 1,500 warheads because that is about all it can financially support.

While some U.S. officials are willing to go that low, others insist on higher levels in the 1,800-to-2,500 range.

The Post said the two sides would slowly reduce strategic stockpiles to between 1,750 and 2,250 warheads each. The United States and Russia are seeking agreement on these matters as part of a broad strategic framework defining a markedly improved post-Cold War relationship.

They hope to complete it before the Nov. 13-15 summit between Bush and Russian Putin scheduled for Washington and Crawford, Texas, where Bush has a ranch.

Chances of a deal rose after Putin sided firmly with Bush in the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign launched after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

RUMSFELD TO VISIT MOSCOW

Bolton said an accord remained possible, not certain. ``The evidence of both our aspiration and our optimism about reaching agreement is demonstrated by the level of activity,'' he said.

In addition to the Powell-Ivanov talks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was to visit Moscow this weekend.

Bolton cautioned ``it would be premature to be optimistic or pessimistic about an agreement. We're going to do what we have to do, and we'll see what happens.''

Elements of the strategic framework include missile defenses, deep unilateral cuts in nuclear weapons and cooperation in curbing weapons of mass destruction.

The two sides also are discussing counterterrorism cooperation and ways to help the Russian economy.

One debate involves U.S. concern about Russia's nuclear and missile cooperation with Iran. Bolton said U.S. arguments had ''resonance'' with the Russian government, but he gave no hint Moscow was ready to end its long-standing ties to Tehran.

At their July 22 summit meeting in Genoa, Italy, Bush and Putin began edging toward a deal when they formally linked missile defense with reductions in nuclear weapons.

Bush has pledged to reduce U.S. nuclear arms to the lowest possible level consistent with national security interests.

U.S. officials said the two sides might decide to reduce to different -- but mutually acceptable -- levels.

Meeting in Shanghai recently, Bush and Putin reported progress on both missile defense and nuclear reductions.

Still, Bush continued to brand the 1972 ABM Treaty a dangerous constraint on the U.S. missile defense program, while Putin called it a key element of arms control stability.

Bush has warned the United States will give notice of intent to withdraw from the treaty in six months if an agreement with Russia proves impossible.

Asked if Washington could remain in the treaty and still pursue missile defense, Bolton said the administration remained determined to pursue missile defense in an unconstrained way.

But ``how and in what form ... that might play out in an agreement is obviously very much on the table,'' he said.

----

Paul Warnke Dies; Arms Control Negotiator

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2001; Page B06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21353-2001Oct31?language=printer

Paul C. Warnke, 81, a Washington lawyer who was a top Defense Department official in the 1960s and director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the Carter administration, died of a pulmonary embolism Oct. 31 at his home in Washington. He had kidney disease.

Mr. Warnke was a fixture for decades in the highest echelons of Washington's legal and government establishment. He had a reputation for calm reserve and a gift for diplomacy. Between his stints in government, he remained a respected voice, working as a consultant, writer and lecturer.

He was a partner at Covington & Burling before joining the government in 1966 as general counsel to the Defense Department. Within the year, he was made assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, the third-ranking position in the department and one from which he would help alter U.S. policy on the Vietnam War.

He often did policy briefing work for the defense secretary, first under Robert S. McNamara and then for Clark M. Clifford, who would become Mr. Warnke's law partner when both left the Pentagon in 1969.

Mr. Warnke was an ardent proponent of withdrawing troops from Vietnam and argued that U.S. policy on the war should be distinct from its Soviet policy. He said publicly that the United States was overcommitted to the war and that neither side fighting in Vietnam could be entirely victorious.

In "Counsel to the President," Clifford's autobiography, he called Mr. Warnke "my closest adviser" and credited him with providing convincing arguments to end U.S. involvement in the war. Clifford, in turn, helped persuade President Lyndon B. Johnson to open peace talks.

"For his courage in 1968," Clifford wrote, "Warnke was to earn my deepest admiration -- and the undying enmity of the American military services."

In the 1970s, Mr. Warnke was an adviser to Democrats on defense issues and nuclear disarmament. President Jimmy Carter, who regarded Mr. Warnke's appointment as "crucial" to the administration, nominated him as director of the arms control agency and chief arms negotiator at the strategic arms limitation talks, known as SALT II, with the Soviets.

Though never ratified, the SALT II treaty became the first nuclear agreement to limit the number of nuclear warheads as opposed to limiting the number of missile launchers.

In October 1978, after 20 months in office, Mr. Warnke resigned under attack by conservatives in both parties who accused him of making too many concessions to the Soviets.

"What people frequently ignore is that arms control is not a zero-sum game," he told an interviewer in 1998. "It's not one in which somebody's going to win and somebody's going to lose.

"Either it's good for both sides, or it's good for nobody. Any arms control agreement contains a clause that if either side concludes that continuing with the arms control regime is contrary to its supreme national interests, it can opt out. So you've got to have an agreement that is satisfactory to both sides. It's not like buying a used car."

Leslie H. Gelb, a colleague of Mr. Warnke in government and now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said his friend made proposals "on what he believed to be the merits of an argument versus whether it was politically salable" and never bristled at political attacks.

Paul Culliton Warnke, a native of Webster, Mass., was a 1941 graduate of Yale University.

He served in the Navy in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters during World War II and then intended to enroll in Columbia University's journalism school on the GI Bill. With no spots left at the journalism school, he insteadentered the law school and graduated in 1948. He also was editor in chief of the Columbia Law Review.

"I've always been glad the theological school wasn't across the street," he told the New York Post in 1966. "I might have turned out a Holy Roller."

He settled in Washington after graduation and joined Covington & Burling, where he specialized in trade regulations and antitrust law.

He was active with the Democratic National Committee in the early 1960s and did work on staffing at the Defense Department, where he became friendly with McNamara.

Mr. Warnke told an interviewer that he was offered several jobs at Defense before accepting the general counsel position in 1966. "I decided that if I were ever going to do something different the time had come," he said.

He later said that living through the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and working at Defense convinced him that nuclear war was "a genuine risk."

Mr. Warnke set forth his views in a controversial 1975 essay for the journal Foreign Policy, in which he proposed that U.S. and Soviet officials restrain from developing weapons programs for six months. "The Soviets," he argued, "are far more apt to emulate than to capitulate."

Mr. Warnke had faith in the long-held nuclear deterrence policy of mutual assured destruction. But he hoped that the strategy -- meant to reduce the possibility of an attack by increasing the likelihood of annihilation of both sides -- could be improved on.

Mr. Warnke said the answer to controlling arms was twofold: Stop building new weaponry and extensively reduce stockpiles. Otherwise, one side would always feel at a political and military disadvantage and foster a need for further arms development.

That, he wrote, left both countries looking like "apes on a treadmill."

After Carter nominated him for the arms post, Mr. Warnke vowed to "limit the world's armaments to those necessary for each nation's domestic safety" and underscored that the ultimate goal, even if not accomplished during his tenure, was the eradication of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Warnke's critics said he underestimated the Soviets and leaked to the media an anonymous document accusing him of supporting unilateral disarmament, the implication being endangerment to U.S. security.

In hearings, Sen. Barry M. Goldwater (R-Ariz.) saidMr. Warnke would put the United States in "a position of weakness" with other foreign nations.

Two weeks after assuming office, Mr. Warnke flew to the Soviet Union with Defense Secretary Cyrus R. Vance to negotiate a provisional SALT II agreement held over from the Ford administration. He was unsuccessful in persuading his Russian counterparts to amend the agreement to reduce the number of new nuclear weapons or dismantle existing ones.

Gelb, who was on that trip, said complications arose over cruise missiles and the Soviets' reluctance to make cuts.

Although a treaty was worked out in mid-1979, it was not ratified by Congress, largely because of bipartisan opposition sparked by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year.

Mr. Warnke was in private practice with Clifford from 1969 to 1991, until joining what became Howrey Simon Arnold & White. He retired in the late 1990s.

He continued doing arms control consulting and was a member of several advisory boards on arms policy during the Clinton administration.

In the 1980s, he was chairman of the Committee for National Security, a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit group.

His speeches included calls for citizen involvement in arms control. "These are basically the issues that have to do with peace, with survival," he told one gathering.

He received the Defense Department's Distinguished Public Service Medal.

He served as chairman of the D.C. Bar Association, director of the D.C. Health and Welfare Council, board chairman of the Potomac School and member of the Trilateral Commission. He was a former trustee of Georgetown and Columbia universities.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Official: Taliban Willing to Talk

By Kathy Gannon
Associated Press
Thursday, November 1, 2001; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20845-2001Oct31?language=printer

KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 31 -- With the U.S.-led air campaign in its fourth week, a senior Taliban official said today that Afghanistan's ruling militia is willing to negotiate an end to the conflict. But he reiterated a demand for proof of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

"We do not want to fight," Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban's chief spokesman, said in an interview. "We will negotiate. But talk to us like a sovereign country. We are not a province of the United States, to be issued orders to. We have asked for proof of Osama's involvement, but they have refused. Why?"

In Washington, Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said the Taliban already had plenty of proof.

"All one has to do is watch television to find Osama bin Laden claiming responsibility for the September 11 bombings," Boucher said. "There is no question of responsibility. There is no question of the responsibility of the Taliban, and there's no question of what they should do."

Muttaqi said the U.S. bombing would not crack the Taliban's resolve.

"We don't have anything for the American bombs to destroy," he said. "We are not a country with a sophisticated computer system, a big, important telecommunications system or modern aviation system to destroy."

If there were no negotiations, Muttaqi indicated that the war would turn into a conflict on the ground, which the Taliban would win.

"Each Afghan has a rifle in his home, and each Afghan's home is his bunker," he said.

----

Pakistan sends supplies to Taliban

November 1, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011031-23126172.htm

The Taliban militia is receiving military and other supplies covertly from Pakistan despite the Islamabad government's backing for American military operations, according to U.S. officials.

The military goods, including ammunition and fuel, are being sent with the help of elements of the Pakistani government, said officials familiar with intelligence reports of the transfers.

Officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the trade is approved by officials of the Pakistani military and the Inter-Services Intelligence service (ISI). The ISI, in particular, is said to have close ties with the Taliban regime.

The trade is said to take place at night by trucks. The goods travel from Quetta to the Pakistani border town of Chaman and then on to Kandahar, a known Taliban stronghold.

"There are two border control regimes: One before sundown and one after sundown," said one official.

The trade violates a resolution by the United Nations imposed in December that bars arms transfers to Afghanistan or the ruling Taliban militia.

The continuing support for the Taliban by Pakistan's intelligence service highlights the difficulties faced by Islamabad in supporting U.S. military operations against the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorist training camps.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf several weeks ago fired ISI chief Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed who was viewed as insufficiently loyal.

Gen. Musharraf said during the recent visit to Pakistan by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that his government would provide intelligence, overflight rights and logistical support "as long as the operation" in Afghanistan goes on.

It could not be learned whether the illicit trade is approved by the Pakistan government or is taking place behind the back of Gen. Musharraf.

A Pakistani Embassy spokesman denied the government was involved in any arms shipments or supplies to the Taliban. "This is certainly not true," said Mian Asad Hayauddin, the spokesman.

Mr. Hayauddin said, however, that the border with Afghanistan is porous, especially in the southern area and that local tribes are known to conduct cross-border trade.

Asked about foreign military supplies to the Taliban, a senior defense official said recently, "We know of no significant aid organized aid from a foreign state." The official would not answer when asked to detail the aid.

Meanwhile, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Staff, confirmed that B-52 bombers are being used to attack Taliban troops and terrorist training camps.

New reports from Afghanistan have shown U.S. bombing raids using 500-pound bombs in areas north of Kabul.

"The B-52s are being utilized in areas all over the country, including on Taliban forces in the North," said Adm. Stufflebeem. He declined to elaborate on the targets of the B-52 bombers but disputed that the raids were "carpet bombing" - high-altitude bomb drops that were used in the Vietnam War.

"I think it's an inaccurate term," said Adm. Stufflebeem. "It's an old expression. Heavy bombers have the capacity to carry large loads of weapons, and oftentimes if a target presents itself either in an engagement zone, or when directed, it's possible to release an entire load of bombs at once, in which case the real formal term for that is called a 'longstick,' which has also been called carpet bombing."

The use of B-52s "is part of our campaign," he said. "We do use it and have used it, and we'll use it when we need to."

The use of the B-52s in area bombing raids has followed the arrival in the past few days of U.S. troops who are assisting the opposition Northern Alliance by helping to identify targets and directing U.S. air strikes.

Pentagon officials said the U.S. soldiers have helped make the bombing raids more effective.

U.S. intelligence officials said the Pakistani government of Gen. Musharraf is struggling against internal opposition from hard-line Islamic elements within the military and intelligence service that are sympathetic to the Taliban. "The Taliban is a creature of the ISI," one official said.

Two Indian newspapers reported last month that Indian intelligence services said that Pakistani military-ISI elements were helping the Taliban with military supplies, including aviation fuel and ammunition.

The Pioneer newspaper of New Delhi stated that Pakistan military and intelligence officials are based in Afghanistan and are assisting the Taliban military forces.

The Deccan Herald of Bangalore, quoting a classified Indian intelligence report, stated that the arms from Pakistan to the Taliban were being sent disguised as United Nations humanitarian relief supplies.

Adm. Stufflebeem said Taliban "command and control" - the system used to communicate and direct orders to troops - has been "cut" and "degraded."

"They're having extreme difficulty communicating one to another," Adm. Stufflebeem said. "Mullah Omar is still their leader, their commander. They are still attempting to be able to communicate with Mullah Omar. They are also trying to be resupplied and reinforced, and they're having difficulties in all of that. We believe that that puts a terrific amount of stress on their military capability as their regional commanders, who have been used to a lot of top-down control, may not be getting that now."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, meanwhile, leaves today for Russia and Central Asia. In Moscow, he will discuss arms-control issues and he will then travel to undisclosed Central Asian nations for talks with leaders on the operations in Afghanistan.

----

Arms, Fuel Seen Smuggled to Taliban

Yahoo News
Thursday November 1
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011101/wl/attacks_us_pakistan.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Arms and fuel are probably being smuggled from Pakistan to the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, but without the approval of the Pakistani government, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.

The illicit flow could be the remains of what was a flourishing relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

The border between the two countries is a long one, comparable to the distance between Chicago and Texas, and difficult to patrol.

American diplomats are holding consultations with the government in Islamabad in an effort to tighten controls, said the official, on condition of anonymity.

The Washington Times reported Thursday that the Taliban militia are receiving covert aid from Pakistan despite the government's backing for American military operations against the Taliban and the al-Qaida terrorism network harbored in Afghanistan.

The Times said the weapons and fuel were being sent with the help of elements of the Pakistani government. The newspaper attributed its information to unnamed officials familiar with intelligence reports of the transfers.

Pakistani officials denied any official government involvement in fuel shipments to Afghanistan.

Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, and Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, both tried to cast Pakistan in a favorable light.

``We believe we're getting good cooperation with the Pakistanis and that they are doing what they can to avoid the situation that you are talking about,'' Rice told a reporter.

``We have excellent cooperation from Pakistan,'' Boucher said. ``We've gotten a lot of help and support in the campaign (against the Taliban), and I think we have every indication that the Pakistani government would be trying to avoid anything like that happening.''

----

The 'just war' oxymoron

Alexander Cockburn -
Creators Syndicate
11/01/01
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemId=12261

11.01.01 - The left is getting itself tied up in knots about the Just War and the propriety of bombing Afghanistan. The respected Princeton professor Richard Falk has outlined in The Nation an intricate guide to "the relevant frameworks of moral, legal and religious restraint" to be applied to the lethal business of attacking Afghans.

War, as the United States has been fighting it in Iraq and Yugoslavia, consists, at least thus far, mostly of bombing, intended to terrify the population and destroy the fabric of tolerable social existence. Remember that bombs mostly miss their targets. Colonel John Warden, who planned the air campaign in Iraq, said afterwards that dropping dumb bombs "is like shooting skeet -- 499 out of 500 pellets may miss the target, but that's irrelevant." There will always be shattered hospitals and wrecked old folks' homes, just as there will always be Defense Department flacks saying that the destruction "cannot be independently verified" or that the hospitals or old folks' homes were actually sanctuaries for enemy forces for "command and control."

How many bombing campaigns do we have to go through in a decade to recognize all the usual landmarks? What's unusual about the latest onslaught is that it is being leveled at a country where, on numerous estimates from reputable organizations, around 7.5 million people were, before Sept. 11, at risk of starving to death. Within four days of the Sept. 11 terror attacks the United States forcibly told Pakistan it desired elimination of truck convoys that were providing much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population. In early October, the UN's World Food Program was able to resume shipments at a lower level, then the bombing began and everything stopped once more, amid fierce outcry from relief agencies that the United States was placing millions at risk, with winter just around the corner.

On Oct. 15 the UN's special rapporteur, Jean Ziegler, said in Geneva that the food airdrops by the same military force dropping bombs undermined the credibility of humanitarian aid. "As special rapporteur I must condemn with the last ounce of energy this operation called snowdropping (the air drops of food packagers]; it is totally catastrophic for humanitarian aid." The relief organization Oxfam reckons that before Sept. 11, 400,000 Afghans were on the edge of starvation ("acute food insecurity"), 5.5 million were "extremely vulnerable," and the balance of the overall 7.5 million were at great risk. Once it starts snowing, 500,000 people will be cut off from the food convoys that should, were it not for the bombing, have been getting them provisions for the winter. Relief organizations are saying that the bizarre Pentagon charge that the Taliban is poisoning its own people further compromises humanitarian food aid.

So, by the time Falk was inscribing the protocols of what a just war might be, the United States was already creating the conditions for human disaster on an immense scale. Not, to be sure, the ghastly instant entombment of Sept. 11, what Noam Chomsky has called "the most devastating instant human toll of any crime in history, outside of war," but death on the installment plan: malnutrition, infant mortality, disease, premature death for the old and so on. The numbers will climb and climb, and there won't be any "independent verification," such as the Pentagon demands.

Let's accept the so-far unproven charge that the supreme strategist of the Sept. 11 terror is Osama bin Laden. He's the Enemy. So what have been this Enemy's objectives? He desires the widest possible war; to kill Americans on American soil; to destroy the symbols of U.S. military power; to engage the United States in a holy war. The first two objectives the Enemy could accomplish by themselves; the third required the cooperation of the United States. Bush fell into the trap, and Falk, The Nation and some on the left have jumped in after him.

There can be no "limited war with limited objectives" when the bombing sets matches to tinder from Pakistan and Kashmir to Ramallah and Bethlehem, Jerusalem. "Limited war" is a far less realistic prospect than to regard Sept. 11 as a crime, to pursue its perpetrators to justice in an international court, using all relevant police and intelligence agencies here and abroad.

The left should be for peace, which in no way means ignoring the demands of either side. Bin Laden calls for: an end to sanctions on Iraq; U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia; justice for Palestinians. The left says aye to those, though we want a two-state solution, whereas bin Laden wants to drive Jews along with secular and Christian Palestinians into the sea. The U.S. government calls for a dismantling of the Terror Network, and the left says aye to that, too. Of course, the left opposes networks of people who wage war on civilians.

So the left is pretty close to supporting demands on both sides, but knows these demands are not going to be achieved by war. The left doesn't want the "war on terror" to be cashed in blood in Colombia or anywhere else, or for anyone to kill or die in the name of Islamic fundamentalism. The left is for the common sense, humane and legal option. Go to the UN, proceed on the basis that Sept. 11 was a crime. Bring the perpetrators to justice by legal means.

-------- biological weapons

SANDIA'S DECON FOAM HELPS CLEAN UP ANTHRAX

November 1, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-01-09.html

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico, Federal authorities are using a decontamination formulation developed at the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Sandia National Laboratories to help rid Capitol Hill buildings of anthrax this week.

Cleanup workers have taken quantities of the formulation with them into Congressional office buildings as one of the decontamination products selected to help clean up the Hart Senate Office Complex and the Dirkson and Ford Congressional Offices in Washington DC. They also are preparing to use the foam to decontaminate mailrooms on Capitol Hill contaminated with anthrax.

Two Sandia researchers are on site in Washington as technical advisors. Sandia licensed rights to commercialize the chem-bio formulation (often referred to as a decon foam) to two companies last year - Modec, Inc. and EnviroFoam Technologies - following a five year research and development project at Sandia funded by the NNSA's Chemical and Biological National Security Program.

The formulation, a cocktail that includes ordinary household substances such as those found in hair conditioner and toothpaste, neutralizes both chemical and biological agents in minutes. It can be applied to a contaminated surface as a liquid spray, mist, fog or foam.

Traditional decontaminating products are based on bleach, chlorinated solvents, or other hazardous or corrosive materials. Many are designed to work against only a limited number of either chemical or biological agents.

The Sandia formulation works against a wide variety of both chemical and biological agents and is non-toxic, non-corrosive, and environmentally friendly. In multiple independent lab tests and field trials, the formulation was effective against anthrax spores and chemical warfare agents.

In lab tests at Sandia it also destroyed simulants of anthrax, simulants of chemical agents, vegetative cells, toxins and viruses.

"It has performed well against biological agents as well as the most worrisome chemical warfare agents," said co-developer Mark Tucker of Sandia.

----

BIOTERROR TREATY
U.S. Seeks Changes in Germ War Pact

New York Times
November 1, 2001
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/international/01TREA.html

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 - In the wake of anthrax attacks that have killed 4 and sickened some 12 others, the Bush administration is discussing new proposals with its allies that would make it a crime for individuals to buy, build or acquire a biological weapon for terrorist attacks.

The proposals, intended to strengthen the 1972 treaty banning germ weapons, abandon a previous approach favored by many other countries that sought to require treaty members to create a new international organization to conduct mandatory inspections of plants in which germ weapons could be made.

The administration opposed that approach, maintaining that it would have provided a false sense of security. Officials said the previous approach could not have been verified and countries determined to cheat would still have been able to do so.

Instead, the United States wants governments that have signed the treaty to pledge to open their countries to international investigations of suspicious outbreaks, according to a summary of the administration's proposal, the details of which have not been publicly disclosed.

The White House is expected to discuss the measure soon, possibly as early as Thursday.

Administration officials said the recent anthrax terrorism in the United States was helping to convince American allies of the advantages of the administration's approach.

"We strongly believe in the importance of the Biological Weapons Convention and the need to strengthen it," a senior administration official said. "But the anthrax attacks against Americans show that a treaty is not the be-all and end-all to stopping the spread of biological weapons or preventing and dealing with germ attacks."

The official said the attacks showed that "access to enough Cipro also matters, and so do epidemiological investigations and punishing the people who did this."

Donald H. Mahley, the American representative to the protracted international talks in Geneva aimed at strengthening the treaty, and Avis T. Bohlen, assistant secretary of state for arms control, discussed the proposals with key legislators on Capitol Hill last month and with key European allies last week. This week Ambassador Mahley is discussing the package with Japan and Australia.

The administration said that its ideas had been well received by several allies and that Britain had produced a list of suggestions for building on the American approach.

Two veteran European diplomats interviewed today confirmed that their governments were ready to work with the measures proposed by the administration. But both added that they still preferred the more sweeping approach that the administration rejected last summer and hoped that the White House would eventually endorse more of it.

"We are ready and willing to work with the Americans to bridge the gaps," said one of the diplomats. "But we hope this is only a first step and that it opens the door to more sweeping multilateral measures."

Arms control groups voiced similar reservations. "This is a good start," said Daryl Kimball, director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association. "But it doesn't do what the draft agreement that the administration rejected would have done."

Critics at home and abroad argued last summer that the White House's rejection of that proposed agreement, known as a protocol, showed that it was concentrating too much on new military programs and not enough on international treaties and prevention of the spread of weapons.

An interagency review within the administration had unanimously concluded that the protocol would have granted foreign inspectors too much access to American installations and companies.

The 1972 treaty, which 143 nations have ratified, prohibits the development, production and possession of biological weapons. But the treaty has always lacked a means of verifying compliance. The administration's rejection of the draft agreement last summer effectively torpedoed its prospects. Countries that have signed the treaty are to meet again to discuss ways of strengthening it in Geneva on Nov. 19.

The administration's new package, among other things, would require governments that have signed the accord to pass laws to criminalize violations of the treaty by individuals and to make violators subject to extradition. It would also, according to the summary, require signers to "adopt and implement strict regulations for access to particularly dangerous micro-organisms," and report "any releases or adverse events that could impact other countries."

Countries would also have to "sensitize scientists to the risks of genetic engineering" and "explore national oversight of high-risk experiments." Additionally, they would have to adopt a "code of conduct" for scientists working with dangerous germs, and enforce "strict biosafety procedures" for all germ research.

Another provision would require signatories to "accept international expert inspectors" if the United Nations secretary general decided that they should be sent, and create procedures for "international investigations of suspicious disease outbreaks" or alleged treaty violations.

The administration would also like to set up a "voluntary" mechanism for "clarifying and resolving compliance concerns by mutual consent." That would include exchanges of information, visits or other procedures.

Several critics noted that these procedures fall short of the inspections of suspected so-called dual use facilities long favored by many arms control advocates. The lack of mandatory inspections is troubling, one diplomat said.

Seth Brugger, managing editor of the Arms Control Association monthly, also said his group felt that creating a professional group of inspectors would help give the treaty teeth.

The administration has rejected both measures.

Col. David R. Franz, the former commander of the Army biological lab at Fort Detrick, who has inspected suspect installations in Iraq and Russia, said he felt the administration's approach would accomplish more than a mandatory enforcement scheme.

Officials said the Administration had not yet shared its proposals with Russia, a new ally in its war against terrorism.

--------

'Learning as We Go Along'
Doctors Must Rewrite Book on Anthrax

By Susan Okie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21188-2001Oct31?language=printer

Physician Susan Matcha got the call she had been dreading just after midnight on Saturday, Oct. 20. There was a sick postal worker at Inova Fairfax Hospital, a man with a fever and muscle aches who was coughing up blood-tinged sputum. A CAT scan showed massively swollen lymph nodes in his chest.

"It looks like he might have anthrax," the admitting doctor told her.

Matcha had been reading up on anthrax since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. An infectious disease specialist for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, she was worried that she might be called on to handle a case of the disease, which she had never seen.

Before her weekend on duty was over, Matcha, 35, would treat not one but two postal workers with inhalational anthrax, a dreaded and previously rare form of the bacterial infection that medical textbooks say has a mortality of 80 percent to 90 percent.

The cases of Matcha's two patients, and those of the seven others who have developed inhalational anthrax in recent weeks, will force those chapters to be rewritten. The cases often took surprising twists, defying conventional wisdom about the disease. In some people, the early symptoms have been confusing -- headache or vomiting, without the expected cough or chest discomfort. And, so far, the death rate has been 44 percent, far lower than had been feared.

"We're learning as we go along," Matcha said. "We're really in uncharted territory here. As much as we want to have literature to look at, we really have nothing to guide us."

Already, the nine cases have yielded valuable lessons. Treatment involving a combination of three antibiotics appears to help contain the infection, doctors said, and a CAT scan of the chest has been the test most likely to help clinch the diagnosis.

Above all, doctors familiar with the cases emphasized that physicians who suspect that a person might have inhalational anthrax should do blood cultures and start intravenous treatment with the appropriate antibiotics immediately.

"Once you suspect anthrax, you have no time to think," said Carlos Omenaca, a Miami specialist who treated Ernesto Blanco in Florida, the second case. "You first treat and then think."

Four of nine people with the disease have died. Some, such as Joseph P. Curseen of Maryland and Kathy T. Nguyen of New York, died within a few days of becoming ill, while Blanco, at 73 the oldest patient, was sick for a week before seeking treatment, yet is the only one who has gone home from the hospital.

Matcha's two patients -- Leroy Richmond of Stafford County and a second worker, both from the District's Brentwood postal facility -- remain in serious but stable condition at Inova Fairfax Hospital. Neither has suffered the catastrophic, downhill course described in medical articles about the disease. Both are able to eat, to breathe on their own and to talk with their families, said Susan Whyte Simon, a Kaiser spokeswoman.

Early symptoms in recent cases have not always matched the "flu-like" picture of fever, muscle aches, headache, cough and chest discomfort. The State Department mail handler being treated at Winchester Medical Center came to the emergency room with a fever, nausea and muscle aches but no cough or breathing difficulty, said Terry Sinclair, the hospital's medical director. He was initially sent home on a regimen of ciprofloxacin pills. When an alert laboratory technician spotted anthrax bacteria on a microscope slide of the man's blood, the patient was admitted to the hospital and given intravenous antibiotics.

One of Matcha's cases, the second worker from the District's Brentwood postal facility, had a fever and a terrible four-day headache. Fearing meningitis, Kaiser staff sent him to Inova Fairfax Hospital for a spinal tap. That test yielded a normal finding -- but X-rays revealed telltale enlarged lymph nodes in his chest, as well as pneumonia.

Blanco, the Florida patient, initially appeared to have an ordinary case of bacterial pneumonia. However, he worked at American Media Inc. with Robert Stevens, the first person to die in the ongoing anthrax outbreak.

"I said to myself, 'I don't think he has it, but if he does and I stop the antibiotics [for anthrax], he'll die. So I'm going to continue,' " recalled Omenaca, an infectious disease specialist at Miami's Cedars Medical Center.

Richmond, Matcha's first anthrax case, looked surprisingly well when she first examined him, the physician recalled. But within a few hours, samples of his blood being cultured in the hospital's laboratory tested positive for the cigar-shaped anthrax bacteria.

Matcha increased Richmond's dose of ciprofloxacin and added two other antibiotics, rifampin and clindamycin. Then she waited nervously for his condition to deteriorate, as the textbooks predicted it would.

"They talk about how you have this flu-like syndrome for three or four days, get a little better, then crash," she said. "We weren't really sure where we were in this cycle. [But] he sort of stayed the same."

Richmond's fever came down quickly. But fluid began to accumulate between the lungs and chest wall -- a complication medically known as pleural effusion.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Oct. 21, Matcha was called about a second postal worker, the man with the headache. Told that he worked at the Brentwood facility, she said: "Okay, let's get some blood cultures." The cultures soon were positive for the bacteria.

"I don't know what made me think anthrax, to be perfectly honest," Matcha said. "Maybe it was just that I had been seeing the other patient."

Omenaca, Blanco's doctor, didn't consider anthrax when he first examined Blanco in early October, on the patient's second day in the hospital. The mailroom clerk had been sick at home for a week with fever, a headache, a dry cough and mild confusion. A chest X-ray showed pneumonia but no enlarged lymph nodes. Omenaca started the man on two intravenous antibiotics.

Two days later, Blanco's doctors learned that he worked with Stevens. Omenaca promptly substituted ciprofloxacin for one of Blanco's antibiotics. But even when a swab of Blanco's nose tested positive for anthrax spores, Omenaca said he doubted that anthrax was the cause of his illness.

"I thought, 'This is a coincidental thing. He has pneumonia, and he's colonized with anthrax,' " Omenaca recalled.

Omenaca and Blanco's other doctors consulted with federal health experts by telephone, sometimes as often as every two hours. Because Blanco had been on antibiotics for two days by the time anthrax was suspected, his blood cultures didn't show the bacteria. Doctors had to perform multiple tests -- on blood, lung fluid and a biopsy of the lung lining -- before they finally nailed down his diagnosis.

"It was very stressful," Omenaca said. "If this was anthrax, it meant that somebody had put anthrax in that building. . . . Without the CDC, there's no way we could have made the diagnosis."

Blanco's crash came on his sixth day at the hospital. He went into shock from the effects of the toxins produced by the bacteria. His blood pressure plunged, and he was admitted to the intensive care unit. Fluid accumulated around his lungs and had to be drained through a chest tube. Gradually, over a three-week period, he recovered.

"I still don't know why he survived," Omenaca said.

Omenaca said that, since treating Blanco, he has pored over old medical books trying to discover why the case differed from the classic picture of inhalational anthrax. In a 1901 text, he read that the disease sometimes shows up as pneumonia without large lymph nodes in the chest, just as Blanco's did.

"I really look forward to having more insight on the other [recent] cases . . . to see what we can learn from those," he said. "And I hope that we are not able to do a large study."

----

Anthrax's fatal dose is unknown quantity

November 1, 2001
By August Gribbin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011031-41048.htm

Top scientists yesterday declared that no one knows the number of anthrax spores that must be inhaled to cause death, although government officials and the media repeatedly have put the number at 8,000 to 10,000.

Knowing the lethal dosage has become "critical," says Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

That's because trace amounts of anthrax have turned up at increasing numbers of postal facilities and government offices and because of the mysterious death from inhaled anthrax of a New York hospital worker who likely encountered just small amounts of the germ.

"I'm, quite frankly, uncomfortable with this empirical number of 8,000 to 10,000," Dr. Fauci said yesterday on NBC's "Today" show. "Certainly the studies that were done - the experimental studies in animal models - indicate ... that's the critical point in number ... [but at] this point in time, you have to keep an open mind. ... If you have 50,000 spores, there's no question that that could do it. If you have one, or two, or three, most people feel that won't do it. But it's the area in between that's the real gray zone now, and that has people scratching their heads."

Harvard microbiologist Matthew Meselson, one of the world's leading authorities on human anthrax outbreaks, says the number is "just plain wrong."

"No one knows how many anthrax spores it takes to kill a small percent of monkeys - much less humans."

Mr. Meselson points out that no studies of humans have been done.

Kathy Nguyen, 61, who died in New York yesterday, was not involved in sorting or handling large amounts of mail and worked in an area said to be anthrax-free.

Despite the mystery, her case provides a dramatic illustration of the difference between the anthrax to which victims of bioterrorist attacks are exposed and the "natural" type found in farmland that could be expected to routinely infect farmers and ranchers.

"Anthrax is not prevalent in the United States, but you could say it's not uncommon in a few states where it affects cattle," said Gary Weber of the National Cattleman's Beef Association. "I suspect the main reason it doesn't affect humans is that spores in soil are not in a form that would predispose them to be inhaled."

The anthrax that killed Mrs. Nguyen was engineered to be readily inhaled. It was finely milled - sliced and diced to be from one to two microns in size. It apparently was treated with some special additive that reduced the spores' natural tendency to bunch together and enabled them to hang unseen in the air.

That much about the weapons-grade anthrax is known, and study of the recent and unprecedented anthrax assaults eventually may reveal the lethal dose of inhaled anthrax.

Meanwhile, scientists can only guess. As Mr. Meselson explains, the 8,000-spore figure is based on almost irrelevant experiments conducted at Maryland's Fort Detrick in the 1950s.

The military wanted to know how much inhaled anthrax was required to kill 50 percent of the 1,000 monkeys in its trial. It came up with the 8,000 to 10,000 number.

"But they couldn't tell how much would be required to kill a smaller percent of the monkey population, because finding the smaller percentage actually required using a greater number of monkeys," Mr. Meselson says. "You can't get enough monkeys to calculate the amount of anthrax needed to kill 10 percent, for instance."

Mr. Meselson adds: "We want to know about humans. And which humans? It may take more or less anthrax to kill older persons than younger ones, or persons of different races and ethnic groups."

Mr. Meselson studied a famous 1979 anthrax release that occurred downwind of the Soviet Union's biological warfare center at Yekaterinburg, which was then known as Sverdlovsk. At least 66 persons died. He says, "What we found in Russia was that nobody died below age of 24. Which already tells you not all people are the same. So far, no one infected here has been young. What we see in the United States begins to look the same."

--------

Germ Weapons Plant Is Dismantled

By Alima Bissenova
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2001; 2:02 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24694-2001Nov1.html

STEPNOGORSK, Kazakstan -- Biological weapons engineers who worked to create the world's biggest anthrax-manufacturing plant are now laboring to dismantle it - and wondering whether they'll find jobs again.

The scrapping of the germ warfare plant at the Stepnogorsk Scientific Experimental and Production Base is being carried out under the U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. But scientists at the Soviet-era plant say another promised part of the U.S.-funded program - conversion of the plant to civilian use - seems to have been shelved.

"There have been no investments, no arrangements for long-term civilian production," said Yuri Rufov, director of Biomedpreparat, the main successor.

"We are fulfilling our obligations in liquidating all the equipment that could be used for germ weapons production," he said. "Now it is time for the United States to give us real support in developing a peaceful biotechnology industry here."

A former director of the Stepnogorsk plant, Vladimir Bugreyev, said most of the scientists left for Russia in 1992-93. As far as he knows, none have gone elsewhere.

Western officials have long expressed concern that Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya, which are all believed to have germ warfare programs, might try to hire some of the scientists.

A decade ago, when the Soviet Union was breaking up and the Cold War was ending, this town on the wind-swept steppes of northern Kazakstan wasn't listed on Soviet maps.

It was located inside a closed military zone where hundreds of scientists labored to develop lethal strains of biological weapons. It had the capacity to produce 330 tons of weapons-grade anthrax over a 10-month period, enough to decimate the population of the United States.

The facility's underground bunkers could hold up to 550 tons of anthrax powder, as well as equipment for loading the germs into bombs and missile warheads.

The plant was built starting in 1982 to replace a Soviet factory in the Ural Mountains' city of Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg, that accidentally released anthrax into the air in 1979, killing about 70 people. Boris Yeltsin, then the local Communist Party boss, has said he did not know about the germ warfare facility at the time.

The Stepnogorsk plant violated the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, which the Soviet Union signed in 1972. It wasn't until 1992 that Yeltsin, by then Russia's president, acknowledged the violation.

Russia cut off funding for biological weapons in 1991-92. A year later, the Stepnogorsk plant was reorganized for civilian use and renamed Biomedpreparat.

About 500 bioweapons engineers worked here in 1990; today, just 152 employees work in two civilian laboratories spun out of the Stepnogorsk weapons plant. Many are mechanics and technicians who are dismantling the equipment.

"There is nothing here, nothing left and nothing going on," director Rufov said. "Everything is in the past."

A U.S.-funded, $5.8 million joint venture to manufacture vitamins, antibiotics and other pharmaceutical projects never got off the ground, and equipment sent to Stepnogorsk has been mothballed.

"The equipment is worn out and outdated and didn't come with any supporting technical maintenance documentation," Rufov said bitterly.

U.S. officials say they are committed to developing the commercial potential at Stepnogorsk, but point to barriers to foreign investment. The site is remote - 100 miles from Kazakstan's new capital Astana. Buildings are in poor condition and the plant could be contaminated. A few weeks ago, U.S. inspectors found anthrax spores in a pipe at Stepnogorsk.

The plant was designed inefficiently for military production, so conversion to civilian uses would be costly. Rufov said the plant used a huge amount of energy, making it uncompetitive in the new market economy.

The Kazak government allocated only $500,000 for biotechnology research this year, and several institutes, including another laboratory at Stepnogorsk, the Institute of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, are vying for the funds, institute director Nadim Mukashev said.

His institute lacks heating because of unpaid utility bills. The 52 employees - many of them former Stepnogorsk bioweapons engineers - often aren't paid for months, Mukashev said.

The town's fate mirrors the plant. More than half the 1990 population of 70,000 has migrated, and entire apartment buildings stand abandoned.

Eighteen former bioweapons engineers now work for the environmental monitoring laboratory, which is responsible for the plant's safe dismantlement by 2004. Laboratory head Yevgeny Kalmykov said the department could expand its work to analyze soil samples in other regions of Kazakstan. U.S. officials say it is the most commercially viable sector of the plant.

"We have the most up-to-date equipment for organic, inorganic and microbiological analysis of environmental samples, as well as highly qualified specialists," Kalmykov said.

-------- drug war

Senate's New Strategy for Colombia's Drug War
Leahy Drives Shift from Militarization to Development

Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, November 1, 2001; 7:44 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22858-2001Nov1?language=printer

The U.S. Senate has taken a new stand on the drug war in Colombia, approving a reduced and refocused successor to last year's Plan Colombia that emphasizes economic and social programs over guns and helicopters.

Sixteen months after overwhelmingly endorsing the more militarized approach in Colombia, the upper chamber reversed itself and voted to assure funds for other countries in the region and to put the Agency for International Development in charge of administering more than one third of all the money in the package.

The change, if preserved in a House-Senate conference committee and signed by the President, could effectively gut the military centerpiece of the plan approved last year after months of debate and consultations between U.S. and Colombian officials.

The Bush Administration introduced the new plan, known as the Andean Initiative, earlier this year. It was generally seen as the continuation of President Clinton's first phase of support for Plan Colombia, which cost $1.3 billion. The Andean Initiative had a price tag of $731 million for anti drug programs, including $399 million for Colombia.

The House approved the package earlier this year reducing it $56 million without earmarks. Last week, the Senate cut a total of $184 million from the request and earmarked funds for USAID as well as some Andean countries. Colombia's share will come from what's left.

The change in the Senate's stance was emblematic of the fact that in this critical area of foreign aid, Washington today is a very different place than it was a year ago--and not just because of what happened September 11.

In 2000, the Clinton administration was wrapping up eight years in office, while today the Bush administration still does not have all of its key players for Latin American policy confirmed.

In 2000, the Colombian embassy in Washington put most of its efforts into securing U.S. support for Plan Colombia. This time around, that government spent more energy on trade issues, assuming that military and police aid could not dwindle under a Republican White House. In 2000, there was also a national election, and being "tough on drugs" usually plays well at the ballot box.

Ironically, in those elections, Republicans won the White House but lost ground and eventually control of the Senate, dealing now a major blow to supporters of the original Plan Colombia approach. The new chairman of the key foreign operations subcommittee in the Senate Appropriations Committee became Sen. Patrick J Leahy (D-Vt.), a self-described "skeptic" on the effectiveness of fighting drugs through police and military actions and leading advocate of human rights in Congress.

Leahy told colleagues during the floor debate last week that he didn't think such an approach would have any "appreciable impact on the amount of illegal drugs coming into the United States." With the United States already providing more assistance for anti drug programs in the Andes than to combat AIDS and other infectious diseases, provide disaster relief or promote basic education worldwide, he argued it was time to change priorities.

Most of the senators who took the floor did not disagree with Leahy, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Leahy's predecessor as subcommittee chairman who had supported the Plan Colombia approach last year. McConnell will be the leading Republican negotiator from the Senate when both chambers meet next week to iron out differences.

Oddly enough, there have been some in Washington and Colombia who predicted support for the South American country would increase in the aftermath of September 11, and Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fl.), tried that tack.

Calling Colombia "the global testing ground for our commitment against terrorism," Graham warned of a loss of U.S. credibility if the Leahy view prevailed. But Graham's call for full funding of the White House request was squashed in a procedural vote, 72-27. "Hardly more than a year into this battle we are beginning to sound the trumpet of retreat and run up the white flag of surrender," he complained, to no avail.

Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy, who has followed Plan Colombia since its inception and been a strong supporter of non-military aid, was heartened by news of the Senate's action. If it wins final approval, he said, it would be "an enormous change in direction and a real slap on what the [Bush] administration had planned to do."

-------- israel

6 Palestinians Slain in Israeli Strikes
Sharon Tells Powell Army Won't Withdraw Until Arafat Reins In Militants

By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 1, 2001; Page A32
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20894-2001Oct31?language=printer

JERUSALEM, Oct. 31 -- Israeli forces killed six Palestinians today, including one in a targeted assassination, and raided a West Bank village where they arrested six people, including a man alleged to be plotting a suicide bombing attack. The violence occurred as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon continued to defy U.S. requests that Israel withdraw from Palestinian areas and halt assassinations.

The latest violence undercut the Bush administration's intensified diplomatic efforts to achieve some semblance of calm in the region as Washington tries to maintain Arab support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

U.S. officials, including President Bush, have repeatedly urged Israel to pull its troops out of Palestinian areas they occupied after the assassination of a right-wing Israeli cabinet minister by Palestinian militants two weeks ago. But in a telephone conversation today with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Sharon again insisted he would not order his army to withdraw until Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority cracked down on militant groups operating from Palestinian territory.

"We have no intention of staying and we'd like to leave as soon as possible, but they [the Palestinians] are not complying," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon.

Israeli officials say the army's raids and what it calls "targeted killings" are a response to intelligence warnings of a wave of planned terrorist attacks. Israel has no choice but to intercept militants before they can put their plans into effect, officials say.

Palestinians say the latest Israeli military operations, especially the assassinations of Palestinian militants, will only deepen the bitterness that has fueled 13 months of violence. The fighting has killed more than 850 people, about four-fifths of them Palestinians.

Palestinians contend that they are only fighting back against Israeli provocations. The Israelis "should blame nobody but themselves when Palestinians retaliate to their terror," Ahmed Abdel Rahman, an aide to Arafat, told the Reuters news agency.

As a subtext to the violence, Sharon is involved in a sharpening political dispute with his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, over how to deal with the Palestinians.

Peres says he is open to meeting with Arafat at a conference they are both scheduled to attend this weekend on the Spanish island of Majorca. Peres also is reported to have prepared a peace plan that includes shutting down Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, home to more than 6,000 Israelis, as a "goodwill gesture" to the Palestinians.

Sharon remains adamantly opposed to Peres meeting Arafat this weekend, his aides say, or to any such gestures -- especially those that involve territorial concessions -- before the Palestinians halt all violence and crack down on militant groups.

At the same time, Sharon also asserted today that Israel is ready to bargain with the Palestinians. "We are ready to negotiate; myself, I am going to lead those negotiations. I really believe in that," Sharon told members of the World Jewish Congress meeting in Jerusalem, the Associated Press reported.

The Israeli army confirmed today that it used helicopter gunships to assassinate a man it described as a key militant in the radical Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, firing antitank missiles at the house where he was staying in the West Bank town of Hebron. The army said Jamil Jadallah, 25, a suspect in several terrorist attacks against Israelis, was on the verge of carrying out another such operation.

Israeli troops shot and killed two other Palestinian gunmen, who the army said were members of Palestinian security forces who had opened fire on an Israeli vehicle in the northern West Bank. A fourth Palestinian -- also a Hamas member -- was killed when an Israeli tank fired at his car in the West Bank town of Tulkarm. The Israeli army said it opened fire on a car it recognized as containing gunmen who shot at soldiers from a Palestinian neighborhood nearly every day.

Two other Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces that penetrated Palestinian territory in the West Bank town of Qalqilya.

And at dawn, Israeli soldiers backed by tanks and helicopter gunships stormed into the Palestinian village of Arrabe, in the northern West Bank, and arrested a man Israeli authorities identified as a would-be suicide bomber, his handler and four other suspects.

The army said the alleged prospective bomber, Mujahed Abu Jalboush, an activist of the radical group Islamic Jihad, was on the verge of carrying out an attack on Israel. Islamic Jihad and Hamas have staged attacks that have killed dozens of Israelis since September 2000, when the current Palestinian uprising began.

"This is a new crime added to Sharon's crimes against the Palestinian people," said Abdel Aziz Rantissi, a senior Hamas official in Gaza. "The enemy will pay a dear price for all its terrorist operations against our people."

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

Reservists Could Exceed 50,000

By Eun-Kyung Kim
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, Nov. 1, 2001; 9:03 a.m. EST
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011101/aponline090302_000.htm http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/01/reservists.htm

WASHINGTON -- As U.S. troops help rebels fighting the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, other teams of American special forces are clandestinely trying to recruit other anti-Taliban groups to join the campaign, Gen. Tommy Franks said Thursday.

U.S. jets Thursday attacked a strategic Taliban garrison that blocks the way for fighters of the northern alliance to regain the northern city of Taloqan. That followed a day of the most intense bombing in the air campaign so far along the front line blocking the alliance's way to the capital, Kabul.

The Pentagon has said success of the strikes has improved in recent days since U.S. troops went in on the ground to help the group with communications and pinpointing targets for warplanes. Other U.S. teams are working elsewhere in Afghanistan to get more opposition factions to help in the fight against Osama bin Laden and Taliban rulers harboring him.

"We have small numbers of liaison elements working with people of like mind inside Afghanistan today," Franks said on NBC's "Today" show Thursday.

"What we are doing right now is establishing contact with these opposition groups so we can determine where we have common goals ... where we can see a way ahead that will be satisfying to both of us."

Pentagon officials have said they are trying to sway tribes in the south to their side as well.

On Wednesday, as American warplanes carpet-bombed Taliban forces in Afghanistan, Pentagon officials said potential terror threats at home will mean calling up more reservists than they had planned.

The Pentagon did not announce publicly but notified the White House two weeks ago that it wants to mobilize more than the 50,000 first thought necessary for the U.S. war against terrorism, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said Wednesday. She did not offer a new projected total.

Clarke also announced that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will leave Friday for Russia and nations near Afghanistan to bolster support for the U.S. bombing campaign.

She would not identify what other cities Rumsfeld will visit except for Moscow, where the secretary plans to talk arms control and anti-terrorism with his counterpart, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.

In addition to precision-guided weapons used since air strikes began Oct. 7, the United States in Wednesday's intense attacks sent in B-52 bombers, huge lumbering aircraft that carry thousands of pounds of unguided bombs.

The B-52s were being used all over Afghanistan, "including (against) Taliban forces in the north," said Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

During a Pentagon news conference, Stufflebeem said that more than three consecutive weeks of airstrikes have severely damaged the Taliban's communications system to the point that field commanders are having trouble summoning new supplies and troop reinforcements.

"We believe that puts a terrific amount of stress on their military capability," he said.

Stufflebeem said the current focus of U.S. bombing includes bunkers and caves thought to be used by the Taliban and fighters of the al-Qaida terror network, as well as Taliban troops aligned against opposition forces near the northern crossroads city of Mazar-e-Sharif and just north of Kabul, the Afghan capital.

In explaining why more U.S. reservists are expected to be called to active duty, Pentagon officials said they continue to receive new requests for security forces at federal installations.

Gen. William Kernan, head of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, told reporters he has considered "the full array of air defense systems" to protect some sites.

"Most recently some of the things we looked at are some of the nuclear power plants, some of the other critical infrastructure that supports the national and state governments," he said without elaborating.

Seven states already have put Army National Guard units on security duty at nuclear plants. They are New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Arizona, Kansas and Arkansas.

On the Net: Pentagon site: http://www.defenselink.mil

----

Pentagon insiders criticize tactics, missed opportunity

November 1, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011031-455011.htm

Criticism of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is growing not only among the politicians and pundits, but inside the Pentagon, too.

Several high-ranking officers who have had a hand in plotting strategy say the White House has missed an early opportunity to help the opposition to the Taliban. Instead of bombing abandoned terrorist camps, U.S. strikes should have hit ruling Taliban forces from the air campaign's Oct. 7 start. The officials also said planners have used far too few special-operations forces to help find targets inside Afghanistan.

These officials are sympathetic to the views of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other civilian policy-makers who have pushed within the administration to form closer military ties to the Northern Alliance opposition. They want the United States to fully arm the rebels and use them aggressively to lead American troops in seeking hard-to-find targets for American bomber pilots.

One officer, who like the others speaks only for anonymous attribution, says the Joint Staff, which devises strategy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has erred in believing that air power alone could dislodge the Taliban. He cites the initial claim by the Pentagon that the bombing had "eviscerated" the Taliban's military power - a claim the military has since retracted.

"We can interfere with their ability to operate," he said of the Taliban. "But we can't make them go away. In fact, our operations to date have largely convinced people in the Third World that we are beatable. ... We've got to take the blinders off and start sending in the forces that will allow us to win this war."

Nevertheless, said one senior official, several generals and admirals at the Pentagon were "surprised" that after three weeks of strikes the Taliban continued to hold tenaciously to the key town of Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul, the capital.

"We've hit a lot of targets, but we're not dislodging the Taliban," this official said. "We're not giving the Northern Alliance a hole to go through. The Taliban is a lot more formidable than we thought they would be. ... [War planners] thought they would be farther ahead than they are. They are surprised, but determined."

Gen. Tommy Franks, who is the overall commander of U.S. and British forces, is said to be deeply skeptical of forming close military ties to the Northern Alliance. Officials say he has argued that the CIA, not his troops, should do the bulk of modernizing the rebels, just as the agency helped the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s.

The four-star Army general met this week for the first time with opposition leaders while visiting Uzbekistan, a new strategic ally that borders northern Afghanistan. But his comments to reporters afterward indicated that his campaign plan did not necessarily jell with the rebels'.

"We have taken a decision," the general told reporters, "that says we will remain focused on our objectives and we will retain the initiative rather than providing specific focus on a specific area, which would be a lot like previous wars but not much like this war."

A senior administration official said CIA field officers working in northern Afghanistan have run into problems recruiting Afghan agents - spies - who could provide vital information on the al Qaeda terror network and its protectors, the Taliban. This source said the Pentagon has approved the transfer of special-operations personnel to the CIA operation essentially to work as case officers to try to recruit spies.

"The CIA is showing the weakness of all the years of not working in the field," said this official. "They have to borrow Special Forces, Delta guys."

The CIA has a practice of not commenting on its operations, but is known to be working hand-in-hand with U.S. commandos in the region. A spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which is headed by Gen. Franks, said the command does not comment on current or future operations.

Added to the military disagreements were reservations expressed by the State Department. Diplomats voiced concerns that a partnership between the U.S.-British side and the Northern Alliance would alienate Pakistan, the chief U.S.-British ally, which regarded the Northern Alliance as an unpredictable neighbor.

The result of this infighting, said these Pentagon dissenters, was the lack of a coherent policy on how closely to work with the Northern Alliance, a ragtag army of several ethnic groups that the Taliban ousted from power in 1996.

That it took the administration three weeks after the bombing began to start supplying the alliance with only limited help - ammunition - is a direct result of the bureaucratic boxing, Pentagon sources say. Said one official: "We should have been working with the Northern Alliance on the 12th of September," referring to the day after the terrorists flew airliners into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

"The Northern Alliance has to be built up in two ways," he said. "Politically, it has to be expanded. It has to be able to recruit more widely. And it has to be armed with equipment in a more effective way and this to me is really a problem. If the Northern Alliance is the way to go, why is it that this week we just now hear that we are trying to give them ammunition?"

In public, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has taken no notice of the second-guessing percolating inside the building he runs. "It is going according to plan," he told reporters. He warned again that the war to destroy the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's terror network, al Qaeda, "is not going to be quick."

U.S. officials have made these points in interviews: •Gen. Franks made mistakes in some target selections. He should have ignored abandoned terrorist training camps and used heavy bombers to go after Taliban forces defending Kabul, the capital, and the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Mr. Rumsfeld went out of his way at a press conference this week to point out that Tuesday's bombing targeted Taliban troops almost exclusively. "I would think for today, for example, the intention was to have something like 80 percent of our effort addressed to the front-line troops." The previous percentage, he said, was 50 percent.

•For the past two weeks, as the enemy went into caves and tunnels, the focus on finding and bombing the Taliban has demanded the insertion of special-operations troops to locate them for air strikes.

Yet, say two senior U.S. officials, few commandos have taken part in targeting missions inside the country. "There's a lot more they could be doing," one of the officials said.

Still, plenty of Pentagon policy advisers believe the war is going well. One senior official said, "I think it's going as well as you could expect after three weeks."

Gen. Franks, a career Army artillery officer, has limited air war options. The vast majority of tactical sorties come from Navy carriers off the coast of Pakistan. Long-range Air Force bombers must travel from the United States and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Washington has not won the right to mount air strikes from any neighboring country, meaning the few Air Force fighters to participate must fly hundreds of miles from the Persian Gulf.

Mr. Rumsfeld says he won't be rushed into authorizing the beginning of the next critical stage of the war - a sustained campaign by special-operations troops to wipe out the Taliban and al Qaeda. Those who suggest turning up the heat now, he said, "would reflect a lack of understanding or knowledge as to the effort we've been putting into it."

----

Gas Stations in the Sky Extend Fighters' Reach
Mid-Air Refueling Vital to Lengthy Sorties

By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21301-2001Oct31?language=printer

ABOARD THE USS CARL VINSON, Oct. 31 -- High in the air, the tankers fly in endless orbits. They are little more than floating gas stations, but without them, the U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan against Taliban and al Qaeda positions would be crippled.

Military tankers lugging hundreds of thousands of pounds of fuel are flying virtually around the clock. There is no shortage of customers -- dozens of fighter pilots wait gratefully to have their gas-guzzling jets refueled via an intricate mid-air coupling.

"You're low on gas, it's dark, the tankers have their lights on very low, if at all," said an F/A-18 Hornet pilot who has refueled in flight dozens of times. "It's not easy, especially when it gets turbulent. Sometimes it's more difficult than finding a target and dropping a bomb on it."

The United States is attacking a landlocked nation, relying heavily on Navy jets with limited range. The distance the jets have to fly to reach targets in Afghanistan -- often more than 500 miles each way -- combined with the time they are spending on targets, translates into heavy fuel consumption.

The Vinson alone dispensed 3.2 million gallons of JP-5 jet fuel to its aircraft in October, a figure that does not include the fuel they sucked from Air Force tankers, or that used by other carrier- or land-based aircraft.

The ability to refuel repeatedly in the air is a critical part of the tactics being employed in the air war, which increasingly involve keeping strike fighters over Afghanistan, ready to attack when targets are spotted by unmanned aerial vehicles, forward air controllers on the ground or other sources of intelligence.

"We need to have those fighters on call with bombs, so when we get a target, we can hit it," said Cmdr. Bruce Lindsey, the commanding officer of the Vinson's squadron of S-3B Viking refueling aircraft. "That way, there's no sanctuary for the Taliban. Anytime they poke their head out of a cave, we're ready to hit them."

To keep the fighters aloft, air war commanders have established an elaborate refueling system involving Air Force strategic tankers flying thousands of miles to the region, augmented by British Royal Air Force tankers and Navy carrier-based refuelers.

Rear Adm. Thomas E. Zelibor, commander of Navy forces in the Arabian Sea, likens it to "a bucket brigade."

Viking refuelers launched from the carrier wait off the coast of Pakistan to top off jets on their way to Afghanistan. The big U.S. and British strategic tankers are on station farther north. Sometimes the strike fighters dock with the Vikings for a bit more fuel on the way back to the carriers.

Strike fighters might refuel more than a half-dozen times on a six-hour flight. "We're flying very long missions, and fuel becomes a critical part of that," Zelibor said.

Despite the enormous dependence now on mid-air refueling, the Navy, like the Air Force, has put little emphasis on tankers in recent decades. Last week, the Pentagon awarded a contract that could eventually be worth more than $200 billion to produce the new Joint Strike Fighter, one of three new tactical fighters being pursued by the Defense Department. But little money is being invested in tankers.

The Viking is a quarter-century-old aircraft designed for hunting Soviet submarines. After the Cold War ended and the Vikings' mission largely disappeared, the planes were refitted to carry fuel tanks.

Now the Vikings aboard the Vinson -- the Sea Control Squadron 29 Dragonfires -- are one of the busiest outfits on the ship.

"This is like nothing I've ever seen before," said Lt. Cmdr. Randy "Bernie" Bratcher, a veteran Viking aviator. "The pace is phenomenal."

Almost all their time is spent refueling, although the Dragonfires have participated in other missions.

On Monday, a Hornet from the Vinson on a mission to Afghanistan experienced engine problems and was diverted to an airfield in a country in the region for an emergency landing. A Viking was quickly launched on a rescue mission to bring parts and a mechanic to the airfield. The Hornet was repaired within 30 minutes and the two aircraft soon returned to the Vinson.

Most of the Vikings and their pilots are flying two, even three missions a day, with the squadron dispensing at least 80,000 pounds of fuel each day. After midnight, when the Vikings return from their final missions of the day, maintenance crews work through the night getting them ready for the next day.

The work is unromantic, but the crews ignore that.

Playing on the fighter crews' tradition of painting their fuselages with bomb silhouettes, some of the Viking refueling tanks are painted with little gasoline pumps, each one representing 10,000 pounds of fuel dispensed. "Got fuel?" is painted on one tank.

When Bratcher went up today, he was wearing a rubber Viking helmet -- the kind with horns and blond braids -- atop his flight helmet to commemorate Halloween.

The Vikings -- porpoise-nosed jets affectionately called Hoovers by the crews, for the vacuum-like sucking sound their engines make -- are the first airplanes launched from the carrier whenever a strike mission begins.

The Vikings position themselves near the coastline of Pakistan, where the faster strike fighters quickly catch up with them. A 50-foot hose with a soft basket at the end is released from a fuel tank carried under the Viking's wing. With the refueler flying at a steady 250 knots, or about 288 mph, a fighter jet slips behind the refueler and inserts a fuel probe into the basket. The hookup is coordinated with hand gestures and lights.

The strike fighters carry enough fuel to reach targets in Afghanistan without refueling, but topping off gives them more flexibility -- "the comfy factor," Lindsey called it -- and relieves demand on the much larger Air Force tankers.

"It gives you a little more leg going in there, leg being range," said a Hornet pilot with the call sign Beacon.

Each Viking has about 8,000 pounds of fuel to dispense -- enough for two Hornets. In about five minutes, the Hornet, a notorious gas-eater, will take on about 4,000 pounds of fuel -- and burn about 500 pounds in the process.

Zelibor flew as the co-pilot on a Viking mission on Sunday, refueling two jets, but he said the fighter pilots likely did not know they were getting a fill-up from their commanding admiral. "All they know is they want to get their gas and keep on moving," Zelibor said. "They could care less if I'm around."

----

THE PENTAGON
U.S. Will Increase Number of Advisers in Afghanistan

New York Times
November 1, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/international/asia/01MILI.html

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 - The Pentagon is planning to expand the number of advisers working with anti-Taliban groups in Afghanistan, and they will move with the rebel forces when they start to advance against Taliban troops, a senior military official said today.

The teams the United States is using are making the bombing more effective by enabling the United States to evaluate potential targets, determining which are the best to strike and which aircraft and ordnance should be used, officials said.

Until now, the Pentagon's commanders have had to hold back the use of B-52's near the fronts because of fears their unguided bombs would fall into territory held by the Northern Alliance rebels, as happened on at least one occasion last week.

Beginning Tuesday and continuing today, however, American raids on Taliban troops along the erratic frontlines in the north have included the B-52's, each of which can carry up to 51 500-pound bombs in the bomb bays and under the wings, or more than 50,000 pounds of bombs and missiles in other configurations.

Hoping to maintain momentum, the Pentagon has also indicated it wants to continue its military operation during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. And in Washington today, a Northern Alliance special envoy, Haron Amin, said that if assistance was increased quickly, the resistance would attack during Ramadan.

Even as the United States military has begun to help the Northern Alliance take the fight to Taliban forces in the north, it is also continuing airstrikes in the south, particularly around Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold.

Pentagon officials said that American aircraft attacked a building in Kandahar where the Taliban's ruler, Mullah Muhammad Omar, had been seen in recent days. It was not clear whether Mullah Omar or other Taliban leaders were in the building at the time of the strike. But the airstrike, coming at 4:30 a.m., was clearly timed to kill anyone who was sleeping there.

It was at least the third time the Pentagon had hit a building believed to be a home or headquarters for Mullah Omar. He is believed to be constantly on the move, changing his residence every night.

Taliban officials said that airstrikes hit a medical dispensary belonging to the Red Crescent and a neighboring house before dawn today, killing 13, and they escorted a group of foreign journalists and television crews to the site.

Pentagon officials said that it was possible the dispensary was damaged, but that the actual target that was hit and destroyed was the building where Mullah Omar had recently been spotted, which was 600 feet away. Military vehicles were monitored moving to and from the building before and after the raid.

As the military campaign enters its fourth week, the Pentagon is using several means to try to topple the Taliban, destroy Al Qaeda and hunt down its leader, Osama bin Laden. They include a classic air campaign of around-the-clock bombing and at least one raid by Special Forces. But a new element is more active support for the Northern Alliance.

With Afghanistan long racked by ethnic tensions, the Bush administration initially shied away from cooperating too directly with the Northern Alliance, which is dominated by Uzbeks and Tajiks, for fear of alienating the Pashtuns in the south and Pakistan, which has long been at odds with the resistance group.

But the Taliban have turned out to be more resilient than the administration expected, and with winter approaching, Washington has decided that it needs to work more closely with the alliance.

Picking targets, however, is not the only task for the American teams on the ground. They will also help Washington reduce the risk of killing civilians.

Another task is to improve deliveries of weapons and aid. Some Northern Alliance commanders have said they are running short on weapons and ammunition and they have complained that some of the American food drops have fallen outside the territory they control.

A Pentagon official said the goal of the ground troops was to attach a team to each opposition group that was prepared to work with Washington against the Taliban. He said it would include groups in the north and anti-Taliban factions in the south if any emerged. The teams will be mobile so they can move with the groups deep into Afghanistan as they advance.

"Right now, we are talking about small numbers of folks," a military official said today. "We are planning to ramp it up to include a wider variety of opposition groups when we ascertain that they share our goals."

The Northern Alliance is a loose coalition of disparate groups that is fighting on several fronts. Mr. Amin, the Washington representative of the movement, said it planned to mount an attack on Mazar-i-Sharif within a week.

The city sits astride a strategic crossroads in northern Afghanistan. Seizing it would not only cut off Taliban forces further to the east; it would also open a supply route to Northern Alliance forces from Uzbekistan. The airfield there could also prove useful for distributing humanitarian relief and for commando operations.

Another Northern Alliance objective is Taliqan, in the northeast, Mr. Amin indicated. The Northern Alliance has also informed the Bush administration that it does not plan to enter and occupy Kabul should it advance to the gates of the city. The administration of the capital, it says, should be left to an international security force for the time being.

In the 24 hours ending at midnight Tuesday, American bombers and fighters struck 20 planned targets, the vast majority north of Kabul and south of Mazar-i-Sharif, both frontlines in Afghanistan's civil war.

It was the greatest number of planned targets since the first day of the war. At the Pentagon, Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem offered a graphic portrayal of the frontline bombing, showing a video of strikes on "a group of dispersed armored vehicles" arrayed along a ridge outside Mazar-i-Sharif that faces the Northern Alliance's forces.

Pentagon officials said that today's strikes were similar in scale to Tuesday's, relying on carrier aircraft and the B-1's and B-52's, operating out of Diego Garcia.

The admiral and other Pentagon officials also said the B-52's were being used in a tactic commonly known as carpet bombing, but he referred to as using the "long stick," dropping a series of 500-pound munitions in a concentrated, punishing row of strikes.

--------

POGO reveals Pentagon Predator anomaly

1 November 2001
http://defence-data.com/current/page12596.htm

Photo Predator http://defence-data.com/storypic/predatorleft.jpg

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a US non-profit governmental watchdog, has revealed an as yet undisclosed report by the Department of Defence's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, which describes significant limitations to the capabilities of the Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. The Predator has been portrayed by the Pentagon and in some recent media reports as an unsung hero of the Kosovo air war and destined to be the "revolutionary" reconnaissance aircraft of the future. One major media outlet even suggested that the $20 million per copy Predator, which is being deployed in the war in Afghanistan, "may turn out to be Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare."

However, according to the report by Thomas Christie DoD's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation , "the system's limitations have a substantial negative impact on the Predator's ability to conduct its missions," and that "poor target location accuracy, ineffective communications, and limits imposed by relatively benign weather, including rain, negatively impact missions such as strike support, combat search and rescue, area search, and continuous coverage."

According to the Pentagon's report and inside sources, since 1995, an estimated 17 of the 50 Predator aircraft built for the US Air Force have crashed during testing and another 5 are believed to have been shot down on military missions. Meaning that at $20 million per vehicle, hundreds of millions of dollars have been lost during testing alone.

Christie wrote in the report that the Predator is "not operationally effective or suitable" because the aircraft has several critical limitations. When flying in the rain, Predator missions are negatively impacted in a number of ways including poor target location accuracy and ineffective communications, according to the Pentagon's report. There is considerable concern that the Predator is highly vulnerable to being shot down because it flies at a slow speed and at low altitudes. It also cannot perform its mission while flying at night, according to the Pentagon's report.

Ultimately, the report concludes, "DOT&E finds the system to be not operationally suitable...because of the serious deficiencies in reliability, maintainability and human factors design." Current media coverage, which barely scratches the surface of such vitally important issues, is feeding the Pentagon's defence spending frenzy, and suggests to the American public that the Predator is a weapon that the nation's fighting men and women can rely on.

"When the national media fails in their investigative responsibilities, it is American service men and women, as well as American taxpayers, who suffer the consequences," said Danielle Brian, Executive Director of POGO.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Australia renewable power campaign sets 10% target

November 1, 2001,
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13058/newsDate/1-Nov-2001/story.htm

MELBOURNE - Australia's target for renewable energy use by 2010 should be raised to 10 percent, generator Pacific Hydro Ltd and renewable energy lobby groups said this week.

Australia currently requires power retailers to source an extra two percent of their energy from renewable power by 2010, equating to 9,500 gigawatt hours, as it grapples to reduce rising greenhouse gas emissions.

But Pacific Hydro, which is expanding in wind generation in Australia, the Australian EcoGeneration Association and the Australian Conservation Foundation said the target should be raised to 10 percent, equating to 35,500 gigawatt hours.

"This is consistent with other countries around the world. Many countries are looking to double or even quadruple their target," Pacific Hydro chief operating officer Roy Adair told reporters.

The groups plan to leaflet marginal electorates mainly in Adelaide and Melbourne ahead of the November 10 Federal election on the importance of Australia ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and raising use of renewables.

The Opposition Australian Labor Party has said it would ratify Kyoto and review the target, while the minor Australian Democrats and Australian Greens parties both favor increasing the target.

Adair said Australia's wind generation capacity could be increased from just over 100 megawatts to an easily achievable 15,000 megawatts if the target was raised.

"Germany is talking about 24,000 megawatts by 2010 and they haven't got anything like the wind regime or coastal areas that we have," he said.

Pacific Hydro this year opened the 18.3 MW Codrington windfarm and has plans for about 3,000 MW of wind generation capacity.

Adair said Australia had one of the lowest electricity generation prices among developed countries and raising the target would not affect its energy competitiveness.

The current average National Electricity Market (NEM) wholesale price was A$40 per megawatt hour, compared to the current wind generation price of A$70 percent hour, he said.

But if 10 percent of power used was wind-fired the price would rise to only A$43 per MWh.

The campaign says increasing renewable energy use would create jobs in regional areas, recognise the environmental and health costs of more high-polluting sources of energy and help Australia to meet its commitments to limit emissions.

But the Energy Users Association, which represents large-scale consumers, has said improved operation of the NEM needed to be addressed before the renewables target was raised.

"There are a whole series of question markets in the minds of customers that need to be resolved. It is premature and inappropriate to be talking about lifting the target," executive director Roman Domanski said recently.

Pacific Hydro shares were down five cents at A$4.35 at 1:10 p.m. (0210 GMT), while the broad market was down 0.4 percent.

-------- environment

Arsenic Drinking Water Standard Issued
After Seven-Month Scientific Review, EPA Backs Clinton-Established Levels

By Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2001; Page A31
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20926-2001Oct31?language=printer

Seven months after it set off a political firestorm by suspending the Clinton administration's toughened standard for acceptable levels of naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water, the Bush administration announced yesterday that it is adopting the same standard of 10 parts arsenic per billion parts water.

In a letter to key congressional appropriations committee members announcing the decision, Christine Todd Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the standard "will improve the safety of drinking water for millions of Americans and better protect against the risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes."

But administration critics greeted the announcement by saying the EPA had no choice but to retain the 10-parts-per-billion standard. They argued that a recent study commissioned by the administration showed that it should have adopted an even tougher standard of 3 parts per billion.

"They're moving in the right direction, but they did it because they had no choice," said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

Boxer and others said a National Academy of Sciences study released in September concluded that an arsenic standard of 10 parts per billion would produce a cancer risk that far exceeds what the EPA considers acceptable.

"We think that obviously they recognized the writing on the wall and decided to stick with 10 parts per billion rather than follow the new science that shows they should go below 10," said Erik D. Olson, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The EPA asked for the study in March when it suspended one of the last acts of the Clinton administration, a tightening of the long-standing federal standard for arsenic levels in drinking water from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion. Whitman said at the time that the Clinton rule had been hastily adopted without adequate scientific study or consideration of costs to small communities that would be forced to change their water filtration systems.

But suspension of the Clinton standard caused an uproar and led to portrayals of the new Bush administration as hostile to the environment, and Bush's job approval ratings slipped significantly in public opinion surveys. The House and the Senate later adopted measures requiring the administration to adopt an arsenic standard of no more than 10 parts per billion.

Then came the National Academy of Sciences report, which Olson said showed that a standard of 10 parts per billion resulted in a cancer risk "far higher than anyone had previously estimated." According to Olson, the study said that exposure to water with arsenic levels of 10 parts per billion is associated with a risk of 30 cancer deaths per 10,000 people drinking the water, which would be 30 times the EPA's acceptable rate of one death per 10,000 drinkers.

"They ordered a new study as a delaying tactic, and it came back and bit them in the arsenic," Boxer said.

But Mike Keegan, an analyst with the National Rural Water Association, which he said represents 22,000 small communities across the country, said there is "an incredible amount of uncertainty" even about the National Academy of Sciences report on arsenic levels and that, with such uncertainty, the communities that will be directly affected should be allowed to decide what is an acceptable level of arsenic in their drinking water.

Keegan predicted that the tougher standard will lead to substantial increases in water charges in many towns, as they purchase improved filtration systems. "You've taken a public health step backward," he said. "All of these people have limited funds to pay for health costs. Each time you force them to raise their water bills you limit their choices of where they would like to put their limited public health funds."

Boxer said she will push for legislation forcing the EPA to adopt "the lowest level that is achievable" for arsenic in drinking water. Olson said that is considered to be 3 parts per billion.

House Minority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) said he was pleased the administration had done "what they should have done months ago." He said there would be continued battles over the issue but added, "I think right now people will accept the 10 parts per billion, and that will be the standard."

The EPA said that water systems across the country will have to be in compliance with the 10-parts-per-billion standard by 2006. In her letter to Congress, Whitman said that almost 97 percent of the water systems that will be affected by the new standard serve fewer than 10,000 people each. She said the EPA plans to provide $20 million during the next two years for research and development of cost-effective technologies to help small water systems meet the standard.

Arsenic occurs naturally in rocks, soil, water, air, plants and animals. According to the EPA, international studies have linked long-term exposure to arsenic in drinking water to cancer of the bladder, lungs, skin, kidney, nasal passages, liver and prostate.

--------

Limit on Greenhouse Gases Urged

November 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Power-Plant-Pollution.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress is being urged to enact mandatory limits on greenhouse gases linked to global warming so regulators and companies alike can plan ahead with certainty.

Environmental officials and political leaders from states as diverse as mile-high Colorado and coal-burning West Virginia were appearing Thursday before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee headed by Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., to back legislation to modernize electric power plants.

But state officials and leaders were split over Jeffords' determination to pass a ``four-pollutant'' bill setting government limits on industry emissions of carbon dioxide along with mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, according to prepared testimony.

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a Democrat, said the voluntary steps favored by President Bush to deal with global warming will not work.

``Climate-altering gases such as carbon dioxide represent a significant long-term global threat,'' Dean said in prepared testimony. ``Any program that excludes carbon cannot, at this point, provide industry with meaningful longer-term investment certainty they need.''

``Only a comprehensive, '4-P' approach can give industry the investment and planning certainty it needs,'' agreed Kenneth A. Colburn, director of the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services' air resources division.

In abandoning an international climate treaty earlier this year, Bush expressed his opposition to mandatory restrictions or regulation of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. Such controls, he said, would cost too much and hurt the economy.

Carbon dioxide and other gases from the burning of coal and oil have been blamed by many researchers for warming of the climate.

Two state officials, David Ouimette, who directs Colorado's air pollution program for stationary sources like factories and mines, and Brock M. Nicholson, planning chief for North Carolina's air quality division, each recommended further study of the impact of carbon dioxide reductions on power plants.

``Our concern is that we do not fully understand the implications of the CO2 rollback provisions and there may be unintended consequences for energy supplies in the West that may be difficult to cope with,'' Ouimette said.

Michael Callaghan, head of West Virginia's Department of Environmental Protection, agreed a bill enacting a nationwide regulatory scheme would provide ``stability and certainty'' for affected parties.

``Many of our environmental protection programs, including air quality, have developed in a somewhat parochial fashion, sometimes leading to a hodgepodge of complex regulations,'' he said.

Callaghan said he recommends removing the carbon dioxide provision from the bill since developing nations, especially heavy polluters, must make commitments, too.

In August, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., also said there was a need for regulations for carbon dioxide and other emissions that are believed to be changing the earth's climate. They supported imposing a nationwide ``cap and trade'' system on greenhouse emissions.

Otherwise, they argued, American businesses will suffer as the rest of the industrial countries begin trading emission credits under the 1997 climate agreement negotiated in Kyoto, Japan that was rejected by the Bush administration.

A Cabinet-level working group on climate change has been developing alternatives to the Kyoto accord. But the Bush administration has not yet offered a specific program to deal with climate change.

``Climate change remains a priority for the administration,'' Paul Kelly, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, said in a letter Friday to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. ``That Cabinet-level review is still in progress.''

Bush has said his approach would rely on voluntary actions by industry and development of new technologies to capture carbon releases and reduce energy use.

-------

Nations Negotiate on Global Warming

November 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Climate-Talks.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States won't stand in the way of negotiations among other countries on terms and mechanisms of a global warming treaty that President Bush has disavowed, the State Department says.

American officials at this month's talks in Morocco will engage in ``issues that have the potential to set negative precedents or be contrary to U.S. interests,'' the department said in a letter to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

The letter said, however, that the issues do not include talks to come up with binding regulations for reaching the greenhouse gas reductions targets set by a protocol signed in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997.

``Climate change remains a priority issue for the administration,'' Paul Kelly, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, wrote in the 12-page letter that responded to questions from Kerry.

``We intend to engage on Kyoto Protocol issues that have the potential to set negative precedents or be contrary to U.S. interests,'' Kelly said in the letter sent just before the treaty talks opened Monday. As long as those interests are protected, ``We will not impede other countries from moving ahead,'' he wrote.

Early this year, the Bush administration renounced the use of mandatory measures, accepted by 178 countries, to achieve the targets. That means the United States officially is on the sidelines as treaty participants negotiate specific actions to be taken.

Items under discussion include how much credit toward meeting the targets that countries can claim for forests and farmland and terms under which nations exceeding targets can buy so-called pollution credits from countries that produce less heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

To reduce the impact on American industry, the Clinton administration pushed both ideas but couldn't get Europeans to agree on details. Bush insisted that such deals should be market-driven and voluntary. When other countries balked, he renounced the treaty.

Other issues bothersome to the administration include penalty rates for noncompliance with targeted reductions and the number of developed countries represented on compliance committees.

Kerry said the U.S. coalition-building to win the war on terrorism underscores the need for more American involvement in other issues like global warming.

``More than ever, it's clear that the United States cannot afford a global environmental policy of rigid unilateralism,'' he wrote.

The treaty aims to reduce global warming by requiring industrialized countries to cut emissions of pollutants from 1990 levels by an average of 5.2 percent between 2008 and 2012.

Environmental groups in Morocco have been keeping their eyes on actions by several key countries, particularly Japan, which have said it would be difficult to ratify the treaty without the United States. The treaty takes effect only after ratification by countries that produced 55 percent of the industrialized nations' greenhouse gas emissions in 1990. The United States alone produced well over 20 percent.

Jennifer Morgan, climate director for the World Wildlife Fund, said the administration is taking sitting out the negotiations despite requests from some U.S. companies to take a more active role.

``It seems they don't want to give any signal they might try to consider this agreement,'' she said. ``Thus far they have kept their word in Marrakech that they will not obstruct other countries from moving forward -- and hopefully that will continue.''

Supporters of the administration's position say the United States can afford to remain on the sidelines.

``It's sort of irrelevant for the United States,'' said Glenn Kelly, executive director of the Global Climate Coalition, an advocacy group funded largely by the fossil fuel industry.

``If the protocol is ever ratified and adhered to, countries like Japan, the European nations and others ... will be at a distinct competitive disadvantage,'' he said.

--------

FARMJOURNAL
Farmers urged to beat plows into drills

Christian Science Monitor
November 01, 2001
By Noel C. Paul | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1101/p16s1-sten.html

The world's most significant environmental crisis, according to farmers, is playing out in the very ground beneath their feet.

The earth's endowment of topsoil - a delicate seven-inch layer of sediment and minerals built over thousands of years - is deteriorating at an alarming rate, even by modern standards of consumption.

In the same time it takes the earth to replenish two-and-a-half tons of soil per acre - about one year - wind and rain erode more than 43 tons per acre in most areas of the third world. It is estimated that one-sixth of the world's soil supply has already been degraded. That fraction will likely grow significantly as farmers turn to marginal lands or their own outstripped fields to feed an additional 2 billion people by 2025.

To avert a global soil crisis, policymakers are attempting to get farmers to pick up their plows - for good.

For 7,000 years, farmers turned up ground to make troughs and seed beds. Their plows have exposed the earth's soil to punishing wind and rain, driving rich nutrients into river beds and untilled ground.

The alternative: A system called "no-till," which leaves the soil and its skin of protective overgrowth undisturbed by slipping seed and fertilizer through a small slit in the ground's surface.

The technique promises to save not only soil, but time and money as well. Unfortunately, advocates admit, the threat posed by no-till to common tradition and local economies could blunt its progress in the third world.

No-till techniques were popularized in the US during the 1980s, when farmers first took significant steps to reduce their depleted surface soil. After harvesting their crop, many US farmers now leave leftover leaves, husks, and grasses on their fields. The residue crowds out weeds, decreasing herbicide costs. More importantly, it provides a protective covering for the top soil, shielding it from punishing wind and soaking in rain water that might otherwise escape.

Since 1982, soil erosion rates in the US have fallen 38 percent, according to the National Resource Inventory.

"By setting the goal of retaining at least 35 percent of crop residue, they've cut erosion to almost nothing," says Edward Deibert, professor of soil science at North Dakota State University.

No-till methods also enable farmers to reduce their workforce and scale back machinery. By not tilling their fields, they need take only a few passes through each crop row, rather than five to 10.

The ecological and financial benefits have drawn the attention of policymakers.

Later this month, officials from the World Bank, which began to aggressively promote the technique a few years ago, will visit successful no-till operations in South America, where Argentina and Brazil have used the technique to plant a total of 57 million acres.

Their harvests have born an unexpected boon: Water efficiency is up 40 percent. In the Pampas region of Argentina, for example, the untilled soil conserved an average of four inches of usable water each year.

"The cover crop absorbs raindrops and allows it to flow into the soil rather than letting it run off," says Dan Towery, a natural resource specialist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

In 15 years, the water savings will be required to meet the needs of booming populations in China, India, and Pakistan - each of which is experiencing severe groundwater depletion after nearly 50 years of heavy irrigation.

No-till methods might not take root outside the Americas, however. Most farmers, many of whom still use livestock for plowing, would require a substantial subsidy to pay for new seed drills. In many cases, farmers would not leave crop residue on their fields, preferring to use it for housing, animal feed, or to burn for heat. And the need for less labor could seriously disrupt local economies.

The primary obstacle, like in all shifts in a community's way of life, could be a simple reluctance to change.

"The basic issue is that this requires trust that what you will start doing will work as well as previous techniques," says Raymond Hopkins, a professor of political science at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pa.

-------- genetics

Stem Cell Registry to Be Posted Within a Week, Official Says

New York Times
November 1, 2001
By WARREN E. LEARY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/health/01STEM.html

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 - A much- anticipated registry of human embryonic stem cells that could be used for federally financed research should be available to scientists and the public within a week, a government health official said today.

The official, Dr. Wendy Baldwin of the National Institutes of Health, which is coordinating federally sponsored research in the promising but controversial area, said at a Senate subcommittee hearing that the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry was almost ready for posting on the Internet after several delays.

The panel's chairman, Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who is a strong supporter of stem cell research, pressed Dr. Baldwin to set a date, finally asking if it could be done "within a week."

Dr. Baldwin replied, "I think that is a reasonable expectation."

Mr. Specter then said he would hold the agency to that timing.

President Bush announced in August that he would allow federal financing for some stem cell research, but only if it involved the 60 or so colonies, or lines, of embryonic cells, that existed before his decision. The embryos are destroyed in the process of obtaining the cells, and Mr. Bush said he would not support research that required further destruction of embryos.

On Sept. 5, Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, told another Senate panel that a registry listing 64 stem cell lines, including details of their biological characteristics and availability, would be put on the health institutes' Web site within two weeks. Scientists and advocates for patients have grown impatient with delays in posting the registry, noting that researchers could not draft applications for financing without the information.

Stem cells have the ability to grow into any of the body's more than 200 cell types, and scientists hope to use them to create replacement tissue that might cure many ailments, including spinal cord injury, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and damaged heart tissue. While acknowledging the promise of the research, others have moral objections because obtaining the cells requires destroying human embryos.

Dr. Baldwin said after today's hearing that the health institutes expected to begin financing research with the acceptable stem cell lines early next year. Posting the registry has taken longer than expected, she said, because of governmentwide disruption and renewed security concerns after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

She added that government representatives had met with the 10 laboratories in five countries that developed the cell lines to discuss their terms for making the cells available to others. And she said the government wanted to detail the characteristics of each cell line, some of them fully developed and others in earlier stages.

"The registry is 99.9 percent done," Dr. Baldwin said. "We are crossing the t's and dotting the i's to make sure we have everything right before it goes up."

-------- health

Maker of Anthrax Vaccine to Reopen After Renovating Mich. Plant

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2001; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20835-2001Oct31?language=printer

The sole maker of anthrax vaccine, which has been unable to sell its products since 1998, may be ready to resume business late this month.

BioPort Corp. has been under orders by the Food and Drug Administration to not release vaccine because of problems involving cleanliness and sterility at its manufacturing plant in Lansing, Mich. However, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said earlier this week that the company's renovated and expanded plant may begin producing vaccine as early as Nov. 22.

Once production resumes, FDA officials will reinspect BioPort's production laboratories. If they meet government standards, as many as 5 million doses of quarantined doses of vaccine could be released for use.

Most of those stocks are earmarked for the Department of Defense. The military is immunizing an unspecified number of people in "special mission units" with vaccine made by BioPort's predecessor, Michigan Biologics Products Institute. Ultimately, however, it hopes to vaccinate 2.4 million active-duty and reserve service members, and civilians designated as "emergency essential."

In 1998 and 1999, about 400,000 military personnel were vaccinated against anthrax. The pace has slowed considerably since then because of the vaccine shortage.

When more vaccine becomes available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will receive enough to immunize about 800 laboratory workers around the country, and possibly 200 other people responsible for collecting environmental samples at sites potentially contaminated with anthrax bacteria.

Government public health officials are debating whether to acquire a substantially larger amount of vaccine to immunize a much larger population of people at higher-than-usual risk of exposure to Bacillus anthracis , the bacterium that causes anthrax. Postal workers, firefighters, police officers and workers at private environmental testing companies are among groups that might be candidates for vaccination, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

The vaccine is made from the three toxinsthat B. anthracis produces and secretes into tissues and the bloodstream, where it causes illness or death. A full course of immunization consists of an initial injection, and injections at 2 and 4 weeks, and at 6, 12 and 18 months following the first shot.

Studies in the 1960s among 800 goat-hair mill workers showed the vaccine was 93 percent effective in preventing skin anthrax infection. Too few inhalational cases occurred to assess its effectiveness in preventing that frequently fatal form of the disease. However, studies in rhesus monkeys show that vaccine protects against inhalational infection. Veterinarians, anthrax researchers and military personnel have received the vaccine since it was first licensed in 1970, although it is not available to the general public.

Staff writer Ceci Connolly contributed to this report.

-------- police / prisoners

Ashcroft orders up new task force

November 1, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011031-34535875.htm

Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday ordered a new terrorism task force to crack down on illegal immigration, warning that members and associates of 46 international terrorists groups - including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network - will be barred from entering the United States.

Mr. Ashcroft also said that persons already in this country with suspected ties to terrorist organizations will be detained, prosecuted and deported.

"America will not allow terrorists to use our hospitality as a weapon against us," Mr. Ashcroft said.

"Aggressive detention of lawbreakers and material witnesses is vital to preventing, disrupting or delaying new attacks. It is difficult for a person in jail or under detention to murder innocent people or to aid or abet in terrorism," he said.

Detained suspects who are not linked to terrorist groups will be released.

Mr. Ashcroft said the new Terrorist Tracking Task Force will be headed by Steven C. McCraw, deputy assistant director of the FBI's intelligence branch of the investigative services division at FBI Headquarters. His duty will be to ensure that federal agencies coordinate efforts to prevent representatives, members or supporters of terrorist organizations from entering the country.

In addition, Mr. McCraw will oversee the government's efforts to coordinate information among the FBI, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs Service that allows the Justice Department to track, detain, prosecute and deport any undesirable aliens who have entered the country.

Mr. Ashcroft noted that in order to prevent terrorists and their supporters from entering the United States, the Justice Department, the State Department and the CIA have agreed to impose new security measures on the issuance of non-immigrant visas.

He said the visa process will now include additional biographical information from applicants, as well as security advisory opinions and background investigations of some non-immigrant visa applicants.

He said no visa will be issued "unless and until a favorable security advisory opinion or the additional time allowed for background investigation has been completed or expired."

At least nine of the 19 hijackers involved in the September terrorist attacks were in the United States legally at the time of the attacks. All had obtained visas to visit this country. Six others had overstayed their visas and were not legally in the United States.

Fifteen of the air pirates who commandeered four aircraft had obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Ashcroft also said the Justice Department was moving ahead aggressively to implement new anti-terrorism laws passed last week by Congress. He said INS officials have been instructed on new detention, arrest and removal sections of the law, which broadens the grounds of inadmissibility.

Under the new law, persons can be denied access to the United States if identified as members or associates of organizations that have publicly endorsed terrorist activity in this country; or if they have provided material support to a designated terrorist organization, even if they don't specifically intend to support the terrorist activity. In most cases, under the law, aliens will be deemed inadmissible if they provided support to terrorist organizations in the past.

The groups identified by Mr. Ashcroft as terrorist organizations are those the State Department has named as having been engaged in terrorist activity. The formal designation of the 46 groups brings their members and supporters under the provisions of the new anti-terrorism law.

Designating the organizations as terrorists also enables the Justice Department to prevent aliens who are affiliated with them from entering the United States. Mr. Ashcroft said aliens who have used their positions of prominence to endorse terrorist activity also would be barred.

INS Commissioner James Ziglar, who attended the news conference, said his agency "welcomes" the task force, adding that it would give INS "real-time access to information that we can share in order to do our job better."

He said field agents were being briefed on the new anti-terrorism laws and the agency would "exercise this new and very powerful authority in a very careful manner in order to protect our cherished liberties."

Mr. McCraw said he welcomed the challenge of the task force and said its members would do "everything they can to prevent another foreign terrorist act."

----

Preparations Stepped Up For Possible New Attacks
Concern Focuses on Power Plants, Trucks, Ships, Bridges

By Eric Pianin and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 1, 2001; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20995-2001Oct31?language=printer

While authorities try to cope with the anthrax outbreak, federal and state officials are taking steps to prepare for a possible escalation of terrorism that experts say could include truck bombings and attacks on nuclear power plants as well as more hijackings.

Since the FBI issued its second national terrorism alert Monday, administration officials and congressional intelligence experts have studied myriad terrorist threats, including the outside possibility of the use of portable nuclear weapons. Steps taken by state and federal officials point, in particular, to concern about assaults on power plants and utilities, truck explosions in tunnels and on bridges, and attacks on ships carrying hazardous materials.

"If you're asking for a scenario of things that could go wrong, it's a mighty long list," said Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House intelligence committee and a former CIA officer.

Yesterday, the governors of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi ordered National Guard troops to strengthen security at nuclear facilities in their states, following a recommendation from Tom Ridge, the homeland security director, according to a spokesman for Entergy Corp. in Arkansas.

In a conference call Tuesday, Ridge advised governors throughout the country to take such precautions if they had not already done so, according to Phil Fisher, the Entergy spokesman. The Federal Aviation Administration this week temporarily barred private aircraft from approaching 86 sensitive nuclear sites, including power plants and waste storage facilities.

The Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, meanwhile, has begun intensive inspections of all 9,500 mining and construction companies and others licensed to use explosives across the country. New York Gov. George E. Pataki (R) said that more than 1,500 National Guard troops patrolling in and around New York City will be armed for the first time by week's end.

Federal and local officials also remain concerned about the possibility that terrorists would attack ships carrying propane and other fuels. The city of Boston went to court in an attempt to keep liquefied natural gas tankers out of Boston harbor, but a judge ruled against the city on Monday -- just hours before the FBI issued its alert -- saying officials had failed to demonstrate a sufficient threat.

President Bush yesterday defended his decision to put the country on national security alert, telling business leaders that the country was still under attack.

"I wanted our law enforcement officials to know we had some information that made it necessary for us to protect United States assets, to protect those areas that might be vulnerable. And that's exactly what's taking place today," Bush said.

"This is a very unusual period in American history, obviously. We've never been attacked like this before. We're still being attacked," he said.

The nation has been awash in special warnings and alerts since Sept. 11, many focused on the types of potential terrorist targets that have been used in previous attacks or identified as possibilities by intelligence officials.

One example is commercial trucks, which have been used by terrorists around the world as delivery vehicles for makeshift but effective bombs.

Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network has been particularly fond of explosives packed into trucks or cars, using the method in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and on the coordinated 1998 assaults on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. A homegrown U.S. terrorist, Timothy J. McVeigh, used a rental truck to deliver the bomb that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the FBI and the Department of Transportation have warned the trucking industry to watch for suspicious activity in connection with hazardous chemicals, including radioactive waste and other substances that can be used to create weapons of mass destruction.

State and federal authorities in the United States have dramatically stepped up roadside inspections of tractor-trailers, especially those carrying hazardous materials, and Canadian officials are now asking for two forms of identification from truckers crossing the border, according to the American Trucking Associations industry group.

"We've been on high alert since September 11, and there is more focus on overall security in the industry," said Mike Russell, a spokesman for the trucking group. "We're transitioning to focus as much on security as on highway safety."

The ATF has temporarily halted its other regular inspections to focus on 9,500 mining and construction firms, fireworks factories and other companies that hold federal explosives licenses. The ATF is particularly interested in identifying any missing stocks, and has devoted a quarter of its agents to the task, an ATF official said.

The ATF and the FBI are still investigating the discovery of C-4 plastic explosive, along with a highly explosive, 1,000-foot strand of detonator cord, in a Greyhound bus locker in Philadelphia earlier last month. Authorities have determined that the cord was manufactured for military use, and have found no connection so far to the terrorist network blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Nancy Savage, an FBI agent in Eugene, Ore., who is president of the FBI Agents Association, said the biggest concerns for investigators include airports, power plants and other key infrastructure points.

"Everyone expects additional attacks," Savage said. "We don't think they're going to give up now. That's why we're at war: We don't think they plan to give up anytime soon."

The FBI was particularly concerned in the weeks after Sept. 11 about crop-duster airplanes, which are fixtures in rural areas but which also could be used as part of a chemical or biological attack.

The presumed ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta, showed interest in crop-dusters and how much poison they could carry, and even tried unsuccessfully this year to secure a U.S. government loan to purchase one. In addition, one of the key suspects now in U.S. custody, Zacarias Moussaoui, had information about crop-dusters on a computer.

The discoveries prompted the FAA to twice ground crop-dusters, and agricultural spraying companies have been asked to lock their planes and take other precautions since resuming flights.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said yesterday that the threat level announced Monday has not abated.

"I wish I could turn the clock back to before September the 11th," Ashcroft said. "I wish that we didn't have to talk about threats, I wish we didn't have to make announcements about threats. But the facts are different."

Staff writer Peter Behr contributed to this report.

-------- terrorism

FBI alert based on coded message

November 1, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011031-72728736.htm

A nationwide FBI alert was ordered after Canadian intelligence officials intercepted a coded message sent to Afghanistan by a suspected associate of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, suggesting possible new attacks this week, federal law enforcement authorities said yesterday.

The message, authorities said, said a major event would take place "down south" over the next few days, although there was no elaboration.

Delivered to the FBI by Canadian officials, the intercepted message prompted Attorney General John Ashcroft to make public an order he had given to 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide to be on the "highest alert."

Authorities said that while the message had no specifics on the intended targets or the method of delivery, U.S. intelligence officials believe the coded dispatch is an indication that terrorist cells operating in this country, Canada and Europe are free to plan and carry out strikes without first seeking the permission from leaders of bin Laden's al Qaeda group in Afghanistan.

The message, intercepted Sunday, was the latest in a series of communications detected over the past 10 days by intelligence sources in this country, Canada and overseas. During the 10-day period, authorities said, several of the intercepted messages were routed to Afghanistan and to various al Qaeda operatives by associates in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Jakarta, Indonesia.

Authorities said the intercepted messages suggested that new terrorist attacks against American targets would come in retaliation for the U.S. bombing of Taliban and al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, and to coincide with the start this month of Ramadan, the ninth month of the lunar-based Islamic calendar.

A similar flurry of messages was intercepted in the days before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, all of which suggested pending terrorist strikes against U.S. targets in Europe or the Middle East. Those messages, which gave no clue that New York and Washington would be struck by suicide pilots, were later described as part of a diversionary plan to conceal the terrorists' real intent.

Mr. Ashcroft issued the nationwide alert Monday, the second time the Justice Department had made the notice public, although he offered no details on intended targets or how the attacks would be carried out. He said the warning was made public because Americans were smart enough to "make good judgments" about what to do with the information.

A similar warning was issued Oct. 11, which said the FBI had "certain information" that additional attacks could occur within days. That was the same week a rash of anthrax-laced letters began to appear in Florida and later in New York and Washington, although the FBI has not determined if that warning and the anthrax letters were related.

Some members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have questioned whether the public alerts are necessary or if their intended message has become confusing.

Republican Sens. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama and Robert F. Bennett of Utah asked whether the administration would be viewed as "crying wolf" if nothing happens, causing people to ignore the warnings. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat, said it was "crazy to make those kinds of statements."

But others, particularly in the wake of information showing that U.S. and Canadian intelligence officials had credible concerns about a possible new attack, seemed to agree yesterday with Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who said the Bush administration was in a "very understandable dilemma."

"Under the circumstances, I really don't know that they could have made any other choice," the South Dakota Democrat said.

Mr. Ashcroft added yesterday that there was no reason to downgrade the new alert, although he again declined to elaborate.

"I wish I could turn the clock back to before September the 11th. I wish that we didn't have to talk about threats. I wish we didn't have to make announcements about threats. But the facts are different. We simply have an environment in which threats exist, and we have to, and I believe we are warranted in, trusting the American people to talk to them about that," he said.

"And I don't believe we can say that the threats have abated. I believe we still have to ask people to be alert, but we all have to understand that being American includes a certain amount of activity, and the freedoms we've enjoyed we should continue to enjoy. It's with that in mind that I can't say that people have any right to think that the risks have abated as it relates either to the anthrax or other terrorist risks," he said.

--------

Preventing Future Terrorism

Antiwar.com
by Harry Browne
November 1, 2001
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/browne8.html

How can we prevent future terrorist attacks?
The first step is a foreign policy that rests on a simple principle:
We're prepared to defend ourselves, but we threaten no one.
Such a foreign policy should have four elements.

1. Noninterference

Our government should never interfere in other countries' disputes, never arm foreign governments, and never give terrorists a reason to pressure our government.

The idea that our government acts to defend human rights around the world is absurd. It replaces democratically elected governments with dictators like the Shah of Iran or Augusto Pinochet. And it rarely comes close to achieving any of its goals. Too often Americans have fought and died for nothing.

Any American who wants to fight for - or send money to - a foreign government or revolutionary movement should be free to do so (even though that's currently illegal). But our government should stay out of such conflicts. When the U.S. no longer imposes its way on foreign people, those people will have no reason to fear us or hate us.

2. No Foreign Aid or Military Assistance

The Constitution doesn't authorize our government to use your money to support foreign governments.

It's not only unconstitutional, it's unfair. As Fred Smith has pointed out, foreign aid taxes poor people in rich countries for the benefit of rich people in poor countries.

And by giving tons of money and military hardware to Israel's enemies, the politicians can say we have to give massive aid to Israel to keep it from being destroyed.

Every American should be free to send money or weapons to any government anywhere. But you shouldn't be taxed for that purpose.

Without our government arming dictators, the dictators' subjects would have no reason to hate us or fear us.

3. Security against Attack

If the world's bad people want to conquer America, they'd have to pulverize American cities until we submit to being occupied.

In 1983 Ronald Reagan said America should protect itself against missile attacks. Unfortunately, he gave the job to the Department of Defense - which is really the Post Office in fatigues.

And so 18 years later we're no closer to being protected than we were in 1983.

We should rely as little as possible on politics and bureaucracy to achieve anything. The government should simply post a reward - say, $25 billion - to go to the first private company that produces a functioning, foolproof missile defense. We'd probably have it within five years.

Will that make us 100% secure? Of course not. Nothing will.

But it will make us far safer than we are today. And it will eliminate a principal excuse for meddling in other countries' affairs, so that foreign people have no reason to hate us or fear us.

4. Target the Aggressors, Not the Innocent

Even with a missile defense, America could be threatened by a foreign ruler.

But a Libertarian President would target the aggressor himself - not his innocent subjects.

He would warn the ruler that an actual attack against the US would trigger the posting of a reward of, say, $100 million for the person who kills the ruler. Everyone would be eligible to collect the reward - including the ruler's guards and wives.

This response would spare both innocent foreigners and Americans. Only those who try for the reward would be at risk. Americans wouldn't fight and die invading a foreign country.

If you believe assassination is an unsavory act, what's the alternative - killing thousands of people?

Once we stop bullying innocent foreigners, they will have no reason to hate us or fear us.

Peace for All Time

These policies will produce a strong national defense, instead of the strong national offense we now have. And terrorists will have no reason to attack us.

Then we must find a way to permanently stop politicians from playing with loaded weapons.

Here's a start - a proposed Peace Amendment to the Constitution:

Except in time of war as declared by Congress, the United States will deploy no military personnel or weapons outside the boundaries of the United States; will not provide money, military equipment, or other resources to foreign governments; and will not attack any foreign power. Upon any violation of this article, Congress will immediately institute impeachment proceedings against the President.

If such an amendment had been enforced over the past 55 years, it would have . . .

Prevented the deaths of almost 100,000 American military personnel;

Saved each American family thousands of dollars in foreign aid - most of which went into the pockets of foreign dictators;

Saved a trillion dollars in unnecessary military costs; and

Allowed people around the world to like us for what we are, instead of hating us because of our government's meddling.

And it's 99% probable that the September 11 attack would not have occurred.

This constitutional amendment is the only kind of gun control that truly makes sense.


-------- activists

French protesters delay nuclear waste shipment

Reuters:
1/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13062/newsDate/1-Nov-2001/story.htm

SCHILTIGHEIM, France - Anti-nuclear activists set off rockets and chained themselves to rail tracks this week in a bid to stop a German train carrying nuclear waste from crossing France.

A Reuters reporter in the town of Schiltigheim in eastern France, close to the German border, said several protesters managed to halt the train briefly at about 1900 GMT before police quickly stepped in and cut them free from the tracks. Two people were arrested.

The train, which is bound for a nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield in northwestern England, continued on its journey across northern France after a 15-minute delay.

It is carrying two containers of nuclear waste from the northern German plant of Kleinensiel.

Earlier, German police detained about 50 anti-nuclear protesters who forced the train to stop several times by sitting on railway tracks.

Convoys transporting nuclear waste for reprocessing or back to its country of origin afterwards are frequently targeted by anti-nuclear protesters.

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European critics, pacifists condemn U.S.-led action

USA Today
11/01/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/01/critics.htm

LONDON (AP) - Initially silenced by the terrorist attacks on America, European critics of the United States and pacifists are condemning the U.S. military campaign against Afghanistan and calling for an end to the bombing. Small but vocal political, religious and labor groups are advocating a halt to the bombing or at least a pause until aid can be delivered to help Afghans survive the coming winter.

The small but shrill chorus of European criticism has spurred media speculation and some concern among officials that support for the United States is waning in Europe. But most of the criticism comes from leftist groups traditionally critical of U.S. policy and does not reflect a threat to Western unity, analysts say.

"Generally, it's a vocal minority whom you would expect to object," said Terry Taylor, assistant director general of Britain's Royal Institute for International Affairs. "They have been muted until now, but reports of casualties (in Afghanistan) have caused concern."

Most Europeans support action against the terrorist groups behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and opposition to the U.S. bombing is minor. Still, Western leaders - wanting to retain popular backing for the campaign against terrorism - are trying to allay public concern about the bombing.

Taylor said most European governments are backing the United States. Differences among the partners in various coalition governments are "unlikely to bring those governments down," he said.

At a meeting in Copenhagen this week, the prime ministers of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Finland reiterated their support for the U.S. attacks - but Finnish leader Paavo Lipponen, speaking for the five, said they were "all worried about this and we regret the civilian casualties."

"We hope that the operations can come to an end as soon as possible," Lipponen said.

Some Norwegian church and labor leaders are publicly voicing doubts for the first time. Gerd Liv Valla, leader of Norway's Confederation of Trade Unions, said the bombings in their current form, with civilian casualties, should end.

Some members of Sweden's minority ruling party, the Social Democrats, have urged an end to the bombings. The government's coalition partners, the Left Party and the Greens have expressed doubts about the attacks from the outset.

In Britain, an ICM poll for The Guardian newspaper, published Tuesday, said support for the campaign fell by 12 percentage points over the past two weeks to 62%.

Last month, a group of government Labor Party lawmakers tabled a motion in the House of Commons urging an end to the offensive, even though Prime Minister Tony Blair is the campaign's strongest European backer.

Speaking Tuesday to the Welsh Assembly, Blair urged Britons to remember the atrocities of Sept. 11 and harden their resolve.

Osama bin Laden and his associates hope, Blair said, "That we are somehow decadent, that we lack the moral fiber or will or courage to take them on; that we might begin, but we won't finish ... And they are wrong."

In Germany, the main opposition has come from the ex-communist Party of Democratic Socialism, which opposed the bombings from day one. There are signs of dissent emerging among the once-pacifist Greens, junior partners in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's governing coalition. Although the party has backed the action, one of its leaders, Claudia Roth, called for a suspension of the bombing to allow aid in to Afghanistan.

Political opposition to the attacks in Spain is led by the third-running United Left party. "Spain is not just another star on the U.S. flag," the party's leader, Gaspar Llamazares, told parliament.

About 60% of Spaniards surveyed in recent polls oppose Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's offer of troops.

French polls show two-thirds of France back the airstrikes, although only half agree French forces should participate.

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Women call for end to bombing on civilians

Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2001
From: "radtimes" <resist@best.com>

KARACHI, Oct 23: A peaceful demonstration, organized by various NGOs working for the betterment of women, on Tuesday, called for an immediate end to the US-led bombing on Afghanistan.

The women, who staged the demonstration at the Press Club, were raising slogans for acceptance of their demands, urging the United States and its allies to stop attacks on Afghan cities due to which, they said, innocent civilians, including women and children, were being killed.

They condemned the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and termed it wicked and evil acts of sick minds.

The protesters said that it was imperative for all the nations to use their competent minds and superior technologies to unearth the criminals and eliminate them along with their networks. But the bombardment of the helpless civilians of a country, already traumatized by hunger and war, defied human compassion and all norms of justice and fair play, they maintained.

Another terrible human tragedy was being witnessed in which, they said, women and children were trapped in crossfire, forced to seek shelter in remote areas with winter aggravating their plight.

They said that killing of 6,000 innocent civilians in the US could not justify the annihilation of the Afghans. They said that the persistent aerial strikes on Afghanistan would swell an influx of refugees into the surrounding countries destabilising the entire region.

The participants called for a political solution through mediations and negotiations within Afghanistan to bring about a viable peace.

The protesters raised slogans which included: "To eliminate terrorism, make peace not war"; "UN resolve all outstanding conflicts, give justice to oppressed peoples"; "US coalition stop the shameful bombardment of helpless civilians in Afghanistan"; "No issue has ever been solved by waging war"; "We are against terrorism, the world must stop killing women and children in the name of justice and peace."

The demonstration concluded with a prayer, led by Shaista Zaidi, Nargis Rehman, Rehana Afroze, calling for an end to terrorism, end to the bombing on Afghanistan, prevalence of peace and harmony in the world, and integrity and solidarity of Pakistan.

The demonstration was jointly organized by Karachi Peace Women's Committee, Bazm-i-Aamna, and Working Women Welfare Trust, while the representatives of various other NGOs including Lyari Women's Skill Development, Lawyers for Human Rights, Mufaad-i-Aamma, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Saarc Women Association, Shehri, CEDF, Pawla, Falah Association, SEWA, Ladies Forum, Helpline, HANDS, Tehrik-i-Niswan, EAWS, Samaj Sudhar Tehrik, Patients Welfare Association, etc also participated.



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