------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Pentagon doubts nuclear claims
Scientists Say They Met bin Laden
Rumsfeld Says U.S. Bombed Suspected Weapons Sites
Russia shrugs off nuclear ban to seal deal with India
Rice Plays Down Chance of Immediate ABM Accord
Missile Defense on Russia, US Agenda
Missile Defense Strikes Back
Pak nukes not ready to be fired: president
Pakistan's nukes in 'safe hands'
Pakistan Moves Nuclear Weapons
Putin Sees Chance for Accord on ABM Pact
Russia Says Test Ban Impasse Could Bring Crisis
Russia, EU, Annan Press Test Ban Case
U.S. Boycotts U.N. Conference
USS Aviators Act As Choreographers
Nuclear Neighbors Generating Alarm
Group mulls leaving some wastes
U.S., Russia Likely To Agree on Arms

MILITARY
A War in the Planning for Four Years
Pressure builds on U.S. to begin a ground war
130-plus civilians killed: report
Afghan Opposition Does Not Rule Out Entering Kabul
Opposition Anxious to Move on Kabul
'Holy War, Inc.
Russian mafia selling arms to Taliban
Ridge sees anthrax threat subsiding
Trace amounts of anthrax found in senators' offices
Al Qaeda Sites Point to Tests of Chemicals
Russia's Germ Warfare Secrets
British ground troops helping Afghan rebels
Britain Confirms Its Troops Are in Afghanistan
Colombian Lawmaker Flees Raid
War May be Costing $500M - $1B a Month
U.S. Welcoming Allies' Troops
Sailors on Enterprise Return to a Different Homeland

ENERGY AND OTHER
Protect sensitive documents
Self-serving secrecy
'Citizen witnesses' look death in the eye
160 Nations Agree to Warming Pact

POLICE / PRISONERS
Symbolic change not enough
Police commissioner sees a changed New York
Story of C.I.A. and Peru's Former Spy Chief May Soon Be Told
Has someone been sitting on the FBI?
Running Terrorism as a Business
World leaders: War on terrorism must be global
In Bush's Words: Nations Must Resist 'Decisively and Collectively'

ACTIVISTS
Anti-Koodankulam Struggle Launched!
Chelsea protests anti-war procession
Anti-Nuke Activists Protest Shipment




-------- NUCLEAR

Pentagon doubts nuclear claims

news.com.au
From AFP in Washington
11nov01

THE Pentagon doubts Islamist militant leader Osama bin Laden has nuclear weapons.

"We do take seriously what he has said in past about trying to obtain nuclear and chemical weapons," Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel David Lapan said.

"We don't have any credible information that he has obtained nuclear weapons."

Bin Laden, the chief US suspect in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, told the Dawn, a Pakistani daily, in an interview published today that he had nuclear and chemical weapons and was prepared to use them against the US if the US used chemical or nuclear weapons against him.

------

Scientists Say They Met bin Laden

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Pakistan-Nuclear.html?searchpv=aponline

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Two retired nuclear scientists who were recently arrested and questioned have acknowledged that they met terror suspect Osama bin Laden at least twice this year, Pakistani investigators said Sunday.

Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood and Abdul Majid left their senior positions at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission about two years ago and established a relief organization in Afghanistan.

The men said they met bin Laden at least twice during visits to Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar in connection with the construction of a flour mill, according to a Pakistani official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mehmood heads Tameer-e-Ummah, or the Nation Building, a private group involved in rehabilitating war-ravaged Afghanistan. Majid also worked for the aid group.

The scientists were arrested Oct. 23 and questioned about their work in Afghanistan. They were released after a few days in detention, only to be arrested again a couple of days later.

They were questioned by both Pakistani and U.S. investigators, the Pakistani official said.

Neither man has been charged with any offense, and Pakistani officials said there was nothing to suggest that the men passed on nuclear information or materials to anyone in Afghanistan.

In a newspaper interview published Saturday, bin Laden claimed he had acquired nuclear and chemical weapons and would unleash them if the United States used such weapons against him.

U.S. officials have said that bin Laden has attempted to acquire weapons of mass destruction but that they have no information to suggest he has been successful.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and until the Sept. 11 terror attacks, supported Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement. The Taliban have harbored bin Laden and his al-Qaida network, suspected in the attacks on New York and Washington.

But Pakistan insists it has not leaked nuclear information or material, and that its nuclear weapons remain well protected.

``Pakistan is fully alive to the responsibilities of its nuclear status,'' President Pervez Musharraf said Saturday at the United Nations in New York. ``Let me assure you all that our strategic assets are well guarded and are in safe hands.''

Musharraf is a key partner in the U.S.-led military campaign to root out bin Laden and al-Qaida and defeat the Taliban.

------

AIR CAMPAIGN
Rumsfeld Says U.S. Bombed Suspected Weapons Sites

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Military.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Osama bin Laden likely has some chemical or biological weapons, and U.S. forces have bombed some sites in Afghanistan that could have been involved in producing them, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.

Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials said they doubt bin Laden's al-Qaida network has a nuclear weapon, as bin Laden told a Pakistani journalist in a recent interview.

``I think it's unlikely that they have a nuclear weapon, but on the other hand, with the determination they have, they may very well,'' Rumsfeld said on CBS' ``Face the Nation.''

The defense secretary and other officials said they were worried, however, that al-Qaida network could have weapons of mass destruction that possibly include radiological weapons -- mixtures of conventional explosives and nuclear material designed to spread radiation without a nuclear detonation.

``We have every intelligence operation practically in the world on the problem of al-Qaida and the Taliban and their weapons of mass destruction at this point,'' the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said on ABC's ``This Week.''

The United States has identified several sites in Afghanistan where al-Qaida may have been producing weapons of mass destruction, Rumsfeld said. Some of them have been bombed, some of have not and others have not been found, he said.

``If we had good information on a chemical or biological development area, we would do something about it,'' Rumsfeld said on CBS. ``It is not an easy thing to do. We have every desire in the world to prevent the terrorists from using these capabilities.''

Getting information that a site may be producing weapons of mass destruction ``faces you with a situation, are you best taking it out or are you best learning more about it,'' Rumsfeld said earlier on ``Fox News Sunday.''

The New York Times reported Sunday that the United States had identified three possible chemical or biological weapons sites in Afghanistan used by al-Qaida, and had avoided bombing them.

President Bush has said the anti-Taliban northern alliance should not take over the Afghan capital of Kabul, preferring to wait for a broad-based, post-Taliban government can be formed. Rumsfeld said that was important to encourage anti-Taliban resistance by some tribes of the Taliban's Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan's south.

The northern alliance is largely made up of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, not Afghanistan's main Pashtun ethnic group.

``We need them to oppose the Taliban, so they will have a voice in post-Taliban business,'' Rumsfeld said.

An official with the northern alliance said Sunday that ``it would be ideal'' if a broad coalition of all ethnic groups could come together before Kabul is taken. Abdullah, the opposition's foreign minister, said the alliance already includes some Pashtun forces.

The United States has had difficulty recruiting anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan's south. The Taliban captured and executed opposition Pashtun figure Abdul Haq last month, for example.

Besides, Rumsfeld said, ``Kabul is not the military prize of prizes.'' The Taliban's capital is in the southern city of Kandahar, and Kabul has been so devastated by two decades of war that its 1 million people will need immediate humanitarian aid when the city changes hands, Rumsfeld said.

``The real prize of prizes is the Taliban leadership and the al-Qaida leadership and the al-Qaida fighting forces and the Taliban fighting forces,'' Rumsfeld said. ``And they are not, for the most part, in Kabul.''

Anti-Taliban forces have control of the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, but are facing pockets of resistance from Taliban and al-Qaida forces, as well as foreign Taliban supporters, Rumsfeld said. The city's main airport is not yet completely secured by the northern alliance, he said.

Taliban convoys are streaming out of the city and are being attacked by the U.S. from the air and by the northern alliance from the ground, Rumsfeld said. More than 200 Taliban fighters were killed in the fighting around Mazar-e-Sharif, he said.

The northern alliance also is ``putting pressure'' on the cities of Herat in the northwest and Taloqan in the northeast, Rumsfeld said. Northern alliance forces said Sunday they had captured Taloqan, their former headquarters; the Taliban denied that claim.

Rumsfeld and Rice echoed comments by Bush, who has said he believes al-Qaida would use any chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons it has.

``They are not worried about loss of life,'' Rumsfeld said.

He said that even if al-Qaida has biological or chemical agents, it may lack the expertise to use them.

U.S. officials have said they believe al-Qaida has access to crude chemical weapons such as chlorine and phosgene poison gases, but not more complex weapons such as sarin.

-------- india

Russia shrugs off nuclear ban to seal deal with India

Asia Times
November 10, 2001
By Ranjit Devraj
From: Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@mnet.fr>

NEW DELHI - By this week finalizing a deal that was conceived 13 years ago to help India design and build two large nuclear power reactors, Russia has broken an international boycott on the transfer of nuclear equipment imposed as punishment when New Delhi first exploded a nuclear device almost 30 years ago. Concluded in Moscow during Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's November 4-7 visit, the deal facilitates the construction of two reactors for a US$3 billion power station at Kudankulam village on the coast of southern Tamil Nadu, expected to generate , 2000 MW of power.

Under the deal, Russia will design the plant and supply 90 percent of the equipment and materials. Construction of Kudankulam-1 is scheduled to start within months, with the reactor going online in December 2007. Kudankulam-2 is due to begin operating in 2008. The plant will consist of two standard high-pressure VVER 1,000 water-cooled and water-moderated reactors that will produce 1,000 MW of power per unit. The uranium used in the reactors will be 4.2 to 4.3 percent enriched and will be supplied by, and returned to, Russia after it is burned.

While the international boycott slowed down India's ambitious nuclear program, it by no means halted it, either for the production of power or for defense, as demonstrated by a second round of tests in May 1998.

India is not a signatory to the 1970 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and does not accept "full-scope" inspections of its nuclear facilities by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), established in 1975, of which Russia is a member, prohibits the export of nuclear technology to countries which do not accept full-scope safeguards.

Indeed, soon after the administration of President George W Bush took over `1earlier this year, it demanded that Russia stop supplying nuclear fuel to reactors at the Tarapore power plant near Mumbai, although the plant observes full IAEA safeguards and was in fact originally installed by the US power giant General Electric in 1969.

The US stopped supplies of nuclear fuel for the reactors after 1974, but India kept the reactors running by sourcing fuel from France and China, as well as from Russia which kept up supply even after the 1998 nuclear tests. According to the Indian Express newspaper, Russia supplied 58 tonnes of low enriched uranium for Tarapore this year. The paper described it as "rare evidence that Moscow is prepared to defy Washington when it comes to its own strategic and business interests and its special relationship with New Delhi".

Leading anti-nuclear and environmental groups such as Greenpeace International have charged the Indian government with maintaining close links between its nuclear energy and its nuclear weapons program. "It was technology acquired by India, ostensibly to generate nuclear electricity, that was used in the 1974 nuclear weapons test and subsequent tests in 1998," says Greenpeace anti-nuclear campaigner Ben Pearson.

When the US passed its non-proliferation act in 1978, specifying that nuclear reactors cannot be exported to countries that do not observe full-scope safeguards, it was guided by Congressional findings that US technology may have contributed to India's 1974 nuclear tests.

Russia appears unconcerned by charges that India's nuclear power and weapon programs are linked. Last October, Russian President Vladmir Putin even visited the Bhabha Atomic Research Center near Mumbai, which played a key role in "weaponization". And some years back, the then head of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, known as Minatom, Yevgeny Adamov, said Russia's motivation for proceeding with the nuclear energy pact with India was "because we need the money, we need the work ... we will not be pressured to reject such commercial projects because we must earn our keep".

The conclusion of the Kudankulam deal this week has not so far evoked any reaction from Washington, and the Hindu newspaper's analyst C Raja Mohan has speculated that it might even serve as a cue for Washington to review its policy on non-cooperation with India in the civilian nuclear energy sector.

Since the US favors designating nuclear power as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol, it could end up losing out to Russia in partnering India's stated goal of stepping up nuclear power generation capacity to 20,000 MW by the year 2020 from the present 2,280 MW.

The Kudankulam project is being implemented under an Inter-Governmental Agreement signed between India and the Russian Federation, represented by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and Atomstroyexport. Russia will extend by way of credit 54 percent of total expenditure of the project at 4 percent interest repayable in 14 equal installments, one year after the commissioning of the plant.

The NPCIL will manage the project. It is a wholly-owned government enterprise under the administrative control of the Department of Atomic Energy. It undertakes the design, construction, operation and maintenance of the country's atomic power stations for generation of electricity.

Atomstroyexport was born in 1998 as the legal successor of Atomenergoexport and Zarubezhatomenergostroy, a specialized foreign trade export-import association and an industrial association, respectively, that had previously given technical assistance to other countries in the development of their atomic energy programs, both in the era of the former Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. It is also developing projects in China and Iran.

The project was the brainchild in 1988 of then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Since then, Russia has been urged to finalize the pact. But a section of officials at India's Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) strongly opposed it. And the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union delayed the project. It was not clear then whether the project would be taken up by Ukraine or the Russian Federation. Initially, the designers of the project were Ukranians. Later, the Russian Federation took up the project.

Some officials of the DAE argued that a nuclear energy pact would serve only to benefit the Russian nuclear industry. "Nuclear power generation in India has not succeeded because it requires stable grids. The existing grids in the country cannot handle the output of a 1000 MW unit from Kudankulam. So there is no logic in going ahead with the deal," one senior DAE official was quoted as saying. Opponents also said that the Kudankulam project would harm India's autonomous nuclear program, breaking the country's control of the nuclear fuel cycle and creating unnecessary dependency. Another reason for the delay was pressure from the US, with senior officials, including former president Bill Clinton, publicly saying that the move was "not good news".

India's total electricity generation capacity last year was estimated at 454 billion kilowatt-hours. Of this, 79 percent is conventional thermal; 18 percent hydroelectric and only 2 percent nuclear. India's nuclear power program currently has 14 operating reactors, including two boiling water reactors (BWR) and 12 pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWR). Nuclear power units in India operated at an average capacity factor (plant load factor) of 79 percent during the first half of the financial year 2001-2002.

While India has steadfastly refused to accept international safeguards for its indigenously-built nuclear facilities, it accepts full-scope controls for facilities built with foreign collaboration. Opposition to the building of the Kudankulam power station is now largely confined to local activists who have been organizing demonstrations against the project in the coastal village. According to the activists, the project has all the makings of another Chernobyl (the Soviet Union accident of 1986) and is being pushed through without making environmental, seismological or epidemiological assessments in a heavily populated, poverty-stricken area of the country.

However, located 25 kilometers northeast of Kanyakumai, Kudankulam is considered by the government to be the safest place to set up such a nuclear project, as the region falls in seismic zone 2, where there are no active faults in the vicinity, nor any major lakes or dams to cause induced seismic activity. And being right on the coast of the Gulf of Mannar, surrounded by the Indian Ocean on one side and the Bay of Bengal on the other, the site has a plenty of sea water for condenser cooling and dilution of effluents. The area is also not subject to severe cyclonic storms or tidal waves.

Further, all land for the plant has been acquired, and site investigation, including hydrological surveys and micro-seismic studies, have been completed, says the NPCIL.

-------- missile defense

Rice Plays Down Chance of Immediate ABM Accord

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-usa-russia.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice played down prospects Sunday for a framework agreement to settle a dispute over the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty when President Bush meets Russian President Vladimir Putin this week.

Bush and Putin, headed into their fourth series of meetings since June, will talk this week in Washington and at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

U.S. officials have said the two could reach an agreement on unilateral reductions in nuclear missile stockpiles, which could in turn lead to progress on the big irritant in U.S.-Russian relations -- Bush's demand that the 1972 ABM Treaty be scrapped to allow U.S. testing of a missile defense system.

Asked on the ABC program ``This Week'' if Bush and Putin could reach a framework agreement on the ABM treaty at the meetings, Rice said: ``I would not look for any particular agreement at any particular time.''

The United States hopes an agreement on missile cuts will help persuade Russia to go along with scrapping the ABM treaty, which forbids missile defense testing and is considered by Bush to be a Cold War relic.

Washington wants to proceed with testing but the Pentagon on Oct. 25 announced it was postponing tests it had planned in October and November to avoid violating the ABM treaty while it tries to strike a deal with Moscow

Putin has said Russia's position on the ABM treaty was flexible but cutting a deal with the United States would require tough talks.

With the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States serving to bring the two leaders closer together, Rice said the United States and Russian had made progress on a ``very different kind of relationship'' and the summit would focus on counterterrorism as well as the nuclear issue.

``The president's been very clear that our purpose here is to change the nature of the relationship with the Russians. That includes changing the nature of the nuclear relationship,'' she said on ``This Week.''

``They will undoubtedly discuss the importance of strategic offensive force reductions which the president, all the way back in the campaign, said needed to be made because we have numbers that are too high for current deterrent trends.

``We will also talk with the Russians about how to move beyond the ABM treaty. But we're not looking to any specific agreement at any specific time.''

---

Missile Defense on Russia, US Agenda

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Russia-Bushs-Goals.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When Russian President Vladimir Putin makes his first visit to the White House on Tuesday, President Bush hopes he can overcome Russian objections to his missile defense plans with promises of new cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

What the two presidents can accomplish the next day at Bush's Texas ranch -- over a chuck-wagon picnic with crooning cowboys -- is less tangible, but perhaps more important to Bush's war on terrorism and his broader agenda for U.S.-Russia relations.

As national security adviser Condoleezza Rice put it, Bush and Putin are steadily building ``a relationship that is very, very good, and also normal,'' where issues can be addressed without the high-stakes negotiations that were the hallmark of the Soviet era.

On Bush's wish list for his three days with Putin are several issues, both long-range and immediate, that could benefit from the personal friendship and trust that Bush hopes to cultivate in a mix of formal White House talks and down-home hospitality at his 1,600-acre ranch in central Texas:

--Unflinching Russian support in the U.S.-led war against Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaida terrorist network and its allies in Afghanistan's ruling Taliban.

Putin has called the terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks a common enemy and vowed to help the United States ``fight this evil.''

Putin said in a weekend interview that Russia has supplied the United States with air corridors and ``very valuable intelligence information,'' as well as ``tens of millions dollars worth of military-technical assistance'' to Afghan opposition forces fighting the Taliban.

Andrew Kuchins, Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, warned that ``if the United States wanted to take the military efforts outside Afghanistan, especially Iraq or Iran, our nascent partnership with Russia is going to get pretty complicated pretty fast.'' There are also signs that a U.S.-Russia squabble over the political configuration of any post-Taliban Afghanistan could be in the offing.

--A deal to begin reducing warheads on each side.

Bush will present to Putin the results of a nuclear strategy review by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and announce plans to send two-thirds of America's stockpiled nuclear warheads to the scrap heap.

The idea is that, if the American arsenal fell below 2,000 -- to roughly match the 1,500 that would be left in Russia's stockpile under Putin's cost-savings plans -- then the Russians might rest easy that any American missile shield is not meant as a weapon against Russia. Each side currently has about 6,000 warheads.

--Further softening of Russian opposition to U.S. missile defense.

Whether it happens this week or further down the road, experts monitoring U.S.-Russia talks expect Bush and Putin to arrive at some sort of accomodation on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. One approach could be to interpret the treaty to permit testing of a system to protect the United States and its allies from missiles launched by Iraq, North Korea or other rogue states. Such an agreement would forestall for years the question of what to do with the treaty when it bumps up against actual deployment of a U.S. missile shield.

On the other hand, a senior White House official said Sunday that Bush is expected to announce his nuclear reduction target Tuesday but that it's possible he and Putin will not reach agreement on the ABM. One real possibility, the official said, is that Bush and Putin agree to disagree on the treaty -- meaning Bush would give notice that the U.S. is pulling out of the treaty, the official said, and Putin would indicate that the move would not damage U.S.-Russian relations.

Putin said in the interview that he was very optimistic a compromise could be found.

``We know the president's view that strategic offensive weapons can and must be reduced. This is a compromise in the right direction,'' Putin said.

Bush will forge ahead with or without agreement.

--Tight control over the nuclear and other weapons material lying around Russia, some 40,000 tons of chemical weapons and enough plutonium and uranium for an estimated tens of thousands of nuclear bombs.

``If even a minuscule fraction of Russia's nuclear weaponry, material or expertise leaked out of the country, it would be a bonanza for state or terrorist organizations that might do us harm,'' said Karl F. Inderfuth, President Clinton's assistant secretary of State for South Asian affairs.

--A change of heart on stricter weapons sanctions against Iraq.

Russia, which has billions of dollars at stake in Iraq's oil industry, is the only permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to oppose a Bush administration plan for making international sanctions against Iraq less onerous for Iraqi civilians and more effective in blocking imports that could be used by Iraq's military. Rice said America will not back off. ``The United States does not intend to let the Iraqis threaten their own people, threaten their neighbors, or threaten our interests,'' she said.

This summit was carefully designed to encourage dialogue between two world powers and warmth between two men.

Bush, Putin and their respective national security teams meet at the White House on Tuesday morning. The presidents then, over lunch with senior advisers, address economic and business issues before participating in a joint press conference.

Wednesday and Thursday offer private time at Bush's Prairie Chapel Ranch, where Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, will bunk in a guest house adjacent to the Bushes' home. Laura Bush has meticulously planned a colorful dinner for Wednesday night: a chuck wagon on the lawn; cowboys cooking beef tenderloin and pecan pie; and a Texas swing band singing western songs like ``Drifting Along with the Tumbling Tumbleweeds.''

Mrs. Bush said she and her husband aim to build a strong relationship with the Putins -- ``especially now, when our friendship with so many countries, our alliance with so many countries in our fight against terrorism is so important.''

---

Missile Defense Strikes Back

November 11, 2001
By JEFF STEIN
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/books/review/11STEINT.html?searchpv=nytToday

The case for a trillion-dollar missile defense system would seem to have collapsed on Sept. 11. In the time it took for suicide bombers to fly into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, it seemed instantly clear that even the most sophisticated antimissile missile system would have been worthless against hijacked domestic passenger jets. Or pretending for a moment that a missile shield could be made to work -- at any cost -- how would it cope with anthrax?

Questions of nuclear strategy would seem laughably passe now -- if they weren't so serious. But with nuclear-armed India and Pakistan very much in play, and Iran and Iraq engaged in their own arms race, readers who've been emptying bookstores in search of instant wisdom on low-tech terrorism and early Islam would be wise to pick up ''Hit to Kill'' and ''The Unfinished Twentieth Century,'' thoughtful but very different books that, taken together, tell how we got into this nuclear mess and how we might get out of it.

The single most important proponent of missile defenses, in any event, thinks the case for perfecting rockets to knock out incoming missiles is still strong. ''Envision a world in which a terrorist thug and/or a host nation might have the ability to develop -- to deliver a weapon of mass destruction via rocket,'' President Bush urged last month. ''At the very least it should be in our nation's advantage to determine whether we can shoot it down.''

''Whether,'' of course, is still the big question, as Bradley Graham ably shows in ''Hit to Kill.'' No one said it would be easy, but after the billions of dollars spent since 1962 trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, critics have earned the right to raise questions. Missile defense, of course, is not just rocket science, as Graham, a tenacious military and foreign affairs reporter for The Washington Post , recounts with resolute evenhandedness; it has far-reaching military, diplomatic and economic ripples as well. But what's astonishing in his tale is how much the quest for a missile shield remains, as Bill Clinton put it, ''a matter of theology, not evidence'' for its mostly Republican proponents.

Graham aptly starts his story where many disciples first get Star Wars religion, in the darkened command center of the North American Aerospace Defense complex inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colo. On a global radar screen, visiting officials get to see a glowing dot rising in the Far East -- a simulated North Korean missile launch. As the warhead floats toward the United States, most people naturally ask how it'll be stopped. When they learn there's no way, they leave shaken. That was the show that hooked the presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980. George W. Bush got the fever from Reagan back then, he told Graham in an interview last summer. ''I don't think I'd really focused on missile defense until Ronald Reagan brought up Star Wars.''

Graham pushes the story through seemingly every study, commission and political fight from the mid-1980's through the Clinton administration, which had about as much enthusiasm for missile defense as it did welfare reform. In the end, Clinton kept the program alive because he calculated that letting it die would be politically dangerous, which is saying a lot for a $60 billion idea.

Graham finds some lovable rogues to blow needed air into his story, like Gen. Larry Welch of the Air Force, a missile proponent who battled political pressures that created a ''rush to failure'' in the tests, and Donald Rumsfeld, now secretary of defense, who served as chairman of a hardheaded 1995 commission that destroyed the C.I.A.'s mushy reports on enemy missile threats. Then there are the missile scientists themselves, who often seem only grown-up versions of the rocket-shooting boys in the movie ''October Sky.'' It's easy to feel their pain when yet another test goes awry.

But Graham gives too little voice to crusty skeptics like Gen. Charles Krulak of the Marines and Gen. Hugh Shelton of the Army, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who winced at the billions thrown at Star Wars at the expense of better equipping and training ordinary troops. ''Do you really think North Korea would send a missile?'' Krulak barks. ''We'd vaporize them. They would never get a missile off.'' How refreshing: a hawk's argument for missile-defense doves.

But even if a shield were perfected -- a subject that is part of the backdrop to the three-day meeting between Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia scheduled for this week -- Moscow and Washington may well cling to just enough missiles to guarantee ''mutually assured destruction,'' which could destroy all life itself.

That prospect chills Jonathan Schell, who became sort of a poet laureate of the nuclear freeze movement in the late 1970's and 80's, offering eloquent arguments about the psychology of weapons and the inevitablity of their use when they are in hand, whether in a Vietnamese hamlet or a high-tech bunker in Cheyenne Mountain. Terror ''became the lingua franca of 20th-century politics,'' he writes, from poison gas in the trenches of 1914-18 to the wholesale bombing of cities in World War II to nuclear doctrine now.

It wasn't supposed to be this way after the giddy days of Gorbachev and Reagan, when the whiff of disarmament was in the air. But, Schell writes, the ''startling fact is that nuclear arms control is faring worse in a world without the Soviet Union than it did in the last days of the cold war.''

In the context of current events, ''Hit to Kill'' already seems like distant history, a maddening chronicle of Washington fiddling while South Asia burns. One need not entirely agree with Schell that ''if in the early 1990's the existing nuclear powers had committed themselves to the elimination of nuclear weapons and had by 1998 traveled some of the distance to that goal, it is hard to believe that South Asia would be engaged in a nuclear arms race today.'' But his somber plea for the major nuclear powers to adopt an abolitionist agenda before the minor nuclear players do us all in, written well before Sept. 11 shattered our false sense of security, comes freighted with a poignant urgency.

Jeff Stein is the author, with Khidhir Hamza, of ''Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda.''

---- pakistan

Pak nukes not ready to be fired: president

The News International
Sunday November 11, 2001
By our correspondent
From: Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@mnet.fr>

NEW YORK: President Pervez Musharraf has revealed that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are not ready to be fired, they are not mated, they are geographically apart and they are not in a condition in which a button has to be pressed to fire them.

In an interview with Ted Koppel of ABC Television in New York, the president said on a confidence rating of 100, he would place their safety at 90. " I would certainly give it over 90. I am very sure of it, although I know there are apprehensions around the world. But I'm extremely sure ofnothing of the sort. They are in very secure hands."

Asked about the warnings he gave about the consequences throughout the Muslim world if, indeed, the bombing campaign in Afghanistan continues throughout Ramadan, President Musharraf said: "I can't be very positive about it, but I said that it will have negative effects in the Muslim world. Now, I don't think it's going to be such that to take it over-seriously, but it will have a negative effect."

General Musharraf said he would like to talk to President Bush on the issue of terrorism in general, and the operation in Afghanistan in particular, and - in all its perspectives - the military and political and rehabilitation perspective. "And then I would like to very surely get involved in our national interests - Pakistan's national interests, domestic interests. And that is the area of focus that I would like to really keep.

Q: Economic, political, military, vis-a-vis India, all of those things?

A: Economic is the base. Q: Where do things stand at the moment in terms of the restructuring of Pakistan's debt?

A: We have got a lot of promises, but the substance has yet to come.

Q: And the lifting of the embargo, the lifting of the sanctions?

A: Embargoes and sanctions have been lifted. But on the lifting of sanctions, also, I would like to talk to the president, that the waiver has been given to the president, and I would suggest to him that this arrangement should be long-term.

Q: Any particular message that you would like to convey to the Americanpeople now that you are here, in what is really - you know, six months ago you would not have been welcomed with the same open arms that you're greeted with today. Is there anything you would like to convey to the American public?

A: Well, I would like to convey to them that I come to United States with a resolve and with a conviction to fight terrorism with them all around the world.

Speaking about the demonstrations in Pakistan, President Musharraf said they were very small all over the country. "And this is one of the most remote areas near Darashmahan (ph) that some students from an extremist madrassa, being run by one of the extremist religious parties, they came out. Otherwise, in the rest of the country, there were hardly any sizable demonstrations.

Q: How nervous were you about leaving? I mean, sometimes, as they say, when the cat's away, the mice will play. Are you concerned about some of your opponents taking advantage of your absence?

A: If I was concerned, I wouldn't be out. It's too serious an issue. I wouldn't have come out at all. I wasn't concerned. I know everything is all right. The military is behind me, and political situation is absolutely all right (inaudible).

Q: I was told - and I have no way of knowing whether this is true, but you would - that, in anticipation of being out of the country, you took particular precautions with regard to your nuclear installations and your nuclear weapons. Is that true?

A: No, I didn't take any particular precautions. The precautions are in place. We have very strong custodial controls, and a command and control system which is very effective. I didn't issue any special orders as such.

--------

Pakistan's nukes in 'safe hands'

From AFP at the United Nations
11nov01
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,3228869%255E15574,00.html

PAKISTAN'S nuclear arsenal is in "safe hands", President Pervez Musharraf said, rejecting concern that its weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists or radical Islamic groups.

"Our strategic assets are very well guarded and in very safe hands," Musharraf said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in which he also expressed concern about civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

He said Pakistan had instituted an elaborate nuclear command and control mechanism "for iron-clad custodial controls to ensure the safety and security of all our assets".

Concern over the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal has mounted, particularly in the West, since Islamabad pledged to support the US war in Afghanistan targeting terror suspect Osama bin Laden.

Pakistani officials have repeatedly insisted the country's nuclear arsenal is safe, despite observers' concerns about political instability and a rise of radical Islam in the country.

Musharraf's speech in the high-profile venue of the United Nations appeared designed to quell those fears, even though many analysts have already argued that Islamabad's arsenal is secure.

Before his meeting with President George W. Bush later today, Musharraf also expressed concern about civilian casualties in the US-led war in Afghanistan.

"The operation against terrorists in Afghanistan continues with no immediate end in sight," he said.

"Sadly enough the civilian casualties in this action are getting projected more as an open war against the already poor, suffering and innocent people in Afghanistan."

"The world in general and Pakistan in particular mourns the loss of those innocent lives and sympathises with the bereaved," Musharraf said, adding that the world must launch a massive relief effort for Afghan refugees.

But he fell short of previous statements in which he had called for a halt of US bombing of Afghanistan during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, which this year begins November 17.

Musharraf assured delegates Pakistan was a responsible nuclear state.

"Pakistan is also deeply conscious of the nuclear dimension of the security environment of our region, the danger it poses and the responsibility it places on nuclear weapons states -- particularly the two nuclear states in South Asia."

He argued Pakistan was not interested in a nuclear arms race and noted arch-rival India upped the stakes in the region when it first resumed nuclear weapons tests in 1998, prompting Islamabad to follow suit.

"Pakistan is opposed to an arms race in South Asia, be it nuclear or conventional. We will maintain deterrence at the minimum level."

In a speech in which he swiped at India over the disputed region of Kashmir, Musharraf nevertheless said Pakistan was ready to open talks with its neighbour on reducing tensions.

"We are ready to discuss how Pakistan and India can create a stable South Asian security mechanism through a peaceful resolution of disputes, preservation of nuclear and conventional balance, confidence building measures and non-use of force prescribed by the UN charter," he said.

-------

Pakistan Moves Nuclear Weapons
Musharraf Says Arsenal Is Now Secure

By Molly Moore and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9038-2001Nov10?language=printer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 10 -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ordered an emergency redeployment of the country's nuclear arsenal to at least six secret new locations and has reorganized military oversight of the nuclear forces in the weeks since Pakistan joined the U.S. campaign against terrorism, according to senior officials here.

Pakistan's military began relocating critical nuclear weapons components within two days of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, fearful of possible strikes against the country's nuclear facilities, military officials said. Another reason for the movement, officials added, was to remove them from air bases and corridors that might be used by the United States in an attack on Afghanistan.

Musharraf also created a new Strategic Planning Division within the nuclear program, headed by a three-star general to oversee operations. This decision, not previously disclosed, was part of the shuffle of top military and intelligence leaders just hours before the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began on Oct. 7. The shake-up was designed to sideline officers considered too sympathetic to the Taliban or other extremist religious factions, officials said.

Musharraf's actions were part of an effort to tighten security around Pakistan's nuclear weapons program in the face of widespread concerns that nuclear devices or fissile material could be vulnerable to attack or theft.

In addition, the changes were intended to help keep control of the nuclear program out of the hands of religious hard-liners in the military if Musharraf is assassinated or ousted from office, officials said.

"Nukes everywhere are susceptible to hijacking," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a nuclear physics professor at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University and one of the few vocal anti-nuclear activists in Pakistan. "There are special dangers here."

Although Pakistan's nuclear program remains one of the world's most secretive, the country is believed to have the materials to assemble between 30 and 40 warheads and has test-fired intermediate-range missiles that potentially could be used to launch them, according to intelligence reports and nuclear experts.

Pakistan and India, both nuclear powers, have fought three conventional wars, two of them over the contentious Kashmir border region. Both Pakistan and India tested underground nuclear devices in 1998, and the two countries are viewed by many security experts as the globe's most worrisome nuclear flashpoint. An escalation of attacks across the Kashmir border just over two years ago underscored the dangers between the distrustful neighbors.

Pakistani fears of an Indian attack on its nuclear sites were so great in the summer of 1999, after Pakistani-supported guerrillas invaded Indian territory, that military officers here secretly contacted Taliban officials about the possibility of moving some nuclear assets west to neighboring Afghanistan for safekeeping, according to a recently retired Pakistani general officer familiar with the talks.

"The option was actively discussed with the Taliban after some indications emerged that India may open hostilities at the eastern border," the official said. "The Taliban accepted the requests with open arms."

The official also said the talks were "exploratory" and that no nuclear-related assets were placed in Afghanistan. At the time, Pakistan's military and intelligence services had close relations with the Taliban, providing training, weapons and other support.

Concerned that the 1999 flare-up could lead to full-scale war between India and Pakistan, President Bill Clinton intervened, inviting Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister at the time, to the White House for a July 4 meeting.

Musharraf, who ousted Pakistan's civilian government in a nonviolent coup six months later, now controls the nuclear weapons program more by virtue of his position as army chief of staff than his title as president. Pakistan's nuclear program has always been under the control of the military, which has often hidden the most basic details of the program from civilian leaders.

Since agreeing to assist the United States in the military and anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan, Musharraf has remained solidly in control of Pakistan and its military. Speaking today before the U.N. General Assembly, he sought to reassure the world that his country's nuclear arsenal was secure.

"Pakistan is fully alive to the responsibilities of its nuclear status," Musharraf said. "Let me assure you all that our strategic assets are well guarded and in safe hands."

But some military leaders and political analysts have expressed concern about whether his grip will weaken if the conflict in Afghanistan continues. Pakistan in the past 25 years has endured two military coups, four dismissed governments and an attempted coupagainst the top civilian and military leadership.

After the 1998 tests, Pakistan's civilian prime minister, Sharif, had promised to set up a national command authority over the nuclear arsenal, but his efforts stalled over over what role the army would allow civilian authorities to play, Pakistani officials said.

With Musharraf's coup and military control over the country in 1999, the question of civilian control became moot. In February 2000, Musharraf established the National Command Authority over the nuclear program.

Last month he further tightened oversight, creating the new division to handle the daily operations and control of the nuclear program, officials said.

Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who answers directly to Musharraf, is now directing the operational security of the country's nuclear sites and weapons. Military officials said he has increased the number of troops and antiaircraft batteries guarding sensitive locations, and has supervised the relocation of nuclear devices and potential delivery vehicles, such as missiles and aircraft.

Reports by the CIA and other sources say Pakistan stores its nuclear weapons devices and missiles separately. However, military officials here said that in emergency conditions, such as those of the past two months, equipment is repositioned to allow for rapid assembly. Pakistani officials said that in general the repositioning represented a dispersal of the materials, but details could not be learned.

Pakistani officials have dismissed recent reports of alleged U.S. contingency plans to seize Pakistan's nuclear devices in the event that Musharraf is overthrown or assassinated by religious extremists. "It would be an unmitigated disaster," said Mushahid Hussain, a ranking official in the Sharif government at the time of Pakistan's nuclear tests. "You would be talking about waging war on Pakistan," he said, adding that if the United States had sufficient intelligence to locate Pakistan's nuclear sites, "we wouldn't have built the bomb."

Still, for many Pakistanis, U.S. officials and international observers, one of the greatest concerns for the country's nuclear weapons program is the potential that extremist Islamic elements could either gain control of the nuclear weapons or materials, or share knowledge about them with hostile organizations or regimes.

"Both India and Pakistan have their own fundamentalists," Abdul Qadir Khan, the now-retired founder of Pakistan's nuclear program, said in an interview earlier this year. "This is a serious matter, and we don't want to take any chances that they could fall into the wrong hands."

Six years ago a group of Pakistani army officers, described at the time as holding "fanatic Islamic views," was arrested for plotting to overthrow then-prime minister Benazir Bhutto, as well as the army chief of staff, Gen. Abdul Waheed. Waheed had angered extremist elements in the military when he fired the chief of Pakistan's intelligence service for providing covert military support to Muslim rebels in about a dozen countries.

Musharraf has likewise attempted to purge the military and intelligence services of officers he considers overly sympathetic to the Taliban and other extremist religious groups. He fired the country's top intelligence chief and reassigned other key officials two hours before the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan.

Another sign of anxiety over the nuclear program was the unusual arrest last month of three Pakistani nuclear scientists, including one of the country's most decorated nuclear experts.

Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who held key appointments in each of Pakistan's three most important nuclear facilities in a career that spanned nearly three decades and earned him the country's second-highest civilian award, remains under investigation by Pakistan's military intelligence services for alleged meetings with Taliban officials and Arab nationals during three visits to Kandahar, the birthplace and spiritual capital of the Taliban, according to an official familiar with the probe.

"The basic fact that Mahmood came in contact with some Arabs -- close to both [Taliban leader] Mullah Mohammad Omar and Osama bin Laden -- is enough to keep him under investigation," the official said.

Pakistani officials said that throughout his interrogation by senior military intelligence officials, Mahmood insisted that his contacts with Taliban ministers and two Arab nationals in Kandahar were related to the work of Ummah Tameer-e-Nau [Islamic Reconstruction], a relief agency he helped establish last year for building roads and other construction projects in Afghanistan.

The two other nuclear scientists who were arrested reportedly worked for the same charitable organization. One has been cleared of suspicion, while the other remains under investigation, officials said.

A Pakistani government official said last week that all three men had been cleared of any wrongdoing, but officials involved in the investigation said it is continuing.

"We would love to believe all . . . [Mahmood] says, but some questions like the satellite phone calls that he had received from Afghanistan in August this year are yet to be answered to our satisfaction," the official said. "It would still be premature to claim that Mahmood discussed his nuclear expertise with his foreign friends."

Under questioning, Mahmood indicated that he became disillusioned with the Pakistani government when the Inter-Services Intelligence agency recommended his transfer from the sensitive position of the director of plutonium production at the Khushab atomic reactor to a desk job in the spring of 1999, according to the official.

Senior Pakistani officials reportedly were concerned that Mahmood had been vocally advocating extensive production of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium enrichment to help equip other Islamic nations with nuclear arsenals.

"Intelligence agencies had strongly recommended that it would be dangerous to allow Mahmood to hold a crucial appointment at the country's plutonium production facility," said a senior civilian official involved in Pakistan's nuclear program.

A family friend, who asked that his name not be used, said Mahmood felt betrayed by the government he had served for 28 years. The friend said that in a recent conversation, Mahmood told him that his knowledge about Pakistan's nuclear program was a state secret, but not his expertise on enriching uranium and producing weapons-grade plutonium.

Mahmood did not hide his personal views, which he articulated in numerous public speeches in the past several months, according to several associates.

Khan reported from Karachi, Pakistan. Correspondent Pamela Constable and researcher Yesim Forsythe also contributed to this report.

------ russia

Putin Sees Chance for Accord on ABM Pact
Russian Suggests Parts Of Treaty Could Change

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page A42
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9496-2001Nov10?language=printer

MOSCOW, Nov. 10 -- President Vladimir Putin, sounding an optimistic note on the eve of his first summit with President Bush in the United States, said there has been "movement toward a compromise" linking significant cuts in the two countries' nuclear arsenals with changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Without specifying the terms of an agreement, Putin indicated he was prepared to change certain aspects of the treaty to allow the Bush administration to proceed with testing for a missile defense system. But he said the United States has yet to present him with specific proposals.

Even so, he said, "I'm very optimistic." Linking arms cuts to a modified ABM Treaty, he added, "is the correct approach."

Looking ahead toward a strategic arms deal that seemed a remote possibility only a few months ago, Putin said he had not changed his view of the ABM Treaty as a "cornerstone of international security." But, he added, Russia has also come "to recognize the justified concerns of the United States."

One day before flying to Washington for the summit, Putin commented on the treaty during a wide-ranging interview at the Kremlin with The Washington Post and 10 other U.S. news organizations. For more than two hours, Putin also discussed such topics as the lessons of the failed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the risk of Russia's overdependence on oil revenue. But he repeatedly returned to his central theme since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States -- that it is time for Russia to end its isolation from the West and become a "full-fledged member of the international community."

Putin denied that he expects "transient benefits" or concessions from the United States in exchange for Russia's cooperation. He again strongly backed the U.S.-led strikes against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, adding, "Terrorism must be eradicated, expunged, eliminated, and not just in Afghanistan but throughout the world."

Putin outlined several goals of his shift toward the West, including a relationship with NATO that would give Russia the chance to participate in the alliance's decision-making process. The current Russian relationship with NATO, he said, is based on an outdated joint permanent council, set up in 1997, that should be replaced.

"Today that body is insufficient to improve the quality of our relationship," Putin said, insisting that from now on Russia could promise to be "effective and energetic" in assisting NATO only if given a say in decisions before they were made. Russia is prepared to reconsider its previous opposition to NATO expansion to include the three former Soviet Baltic states, he added, but only if that, too, is linked to a significant improvement in Russia's relationship with NATO.

The key, he said, is "to look beyond the old Cold War cliches and adopt a new world outlook."

Even as he turns toward the West, Putin refused to renounce Russia's extensive dealings with several countries that the United States has condemned for seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction, including North Korea and Iraq.

As for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, Putin touted the "very valuable intelligence information" that Russia has contributed, along with "tens of millions of dollars" in weapons he said Russia has supplied to the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban.

Referring to the Northern Alliance's capture of the key northern city of Mazar-e Sharif on Friday, Putin said, "The situation in Afghanistan has been developing as we expected. The Northern Alliance has launched the operations it was planning, and is now effectively taking the entire northern part of Afghanistan under control."

Commenting on accused terrorist Osama bin Laden's reported statement that he has weapons of mass destruction, Putin struck a cautious note. "I don't think we should exaggerate the existing danger. . . . At the same time it would be a mistake to understate the scope of the risk," he said, citing what he said were bin Laden's close ties to radical groups in Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons.

Putin also categorically denied that terrorists could obtain nuclear weapons originating in Russia or the former Soviet Union. "It's unlikely that the terrorists in Afghanistan have weapons of mass destruction," he said. "In any case, they can't be of Soviet or Russian origin, I'm absolutely sure of that."

Putin also argued that Russia's war against Islamic rebels in the breakaway republic of Chechnya is an important front in the war against international terrorism. He claimed that if the Russians were not fighting there, more radical Islamic "mercenaries" would head to Afghanistan to fight the Americans. Putin said more than 500 such "mercenaries" had been killed in Chechnya and that his intelligence data indicated that between 500 and 700 "Islamic terrorists" are fighting in the region.

Putin is scheduled to arrive in Washington on Monday. He plans to meet with Bush there at at the president's ranch in Crawford, Tex.

-------- treaties

Russia Says Test Ban Impasse Could Bring Crisis

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-un-russia.html?searchpv=reuters

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia, challenging U.S. objections, on Sunday warned of ``dangerous trends toward disrupting'' a global treaty banning nuclear tests and said this could lead to a crisis and the uncontrolled spread of nuclear weapons.

In strongly-worded statements to a U.N. conference that the Americans boycotted, Russian officials dismissed U.S. concerns that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would undermine the safety of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and they offered to develop new verification measures that go beyond treaty requirements.

In one statement, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow has always considered the treaty a ``most important instrument'' in limiting nuclear weapons and preserving strategic stability. He expressed concern the pact has not yet taken effect and urged its quick ratification by the United States and others.

In another statement, senior Russian official Igor Sergeyev said: ``There are dangerous trends toward disrupting (the treaty). This may result in a crisis of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty regime and an uncontained spread of the nuclear weapons.''

He did not mention the United States directly in this regard. Washington signed the pact, but it has not ratified it and the Bush administration, which refused to even send a representative to the conference, has said it had no plans to do so.

The aim of the conference is to review progress toward ratification of the CTBT, which would ban all nuclear blasts, whether in the atmosphere, in space or underground.

The pact was opened for signature in 1996. Since then 161 states have signed it and 85 of those ratified it.

Still, the treaty has not yet entered into force because it needs ratification by 44 states deemed nuclear arms-capable.

To date, 31 of those 44 countries including avowed nuclear powers France, Russia and Britain have signed and ratified the pact. So 13 more must ratify before it can take hold.

In that group, India, Pakistan and North Korea have neither signed nor ratified the treaty while the United States, China and eight others have signed but not ratified.

In his written statement distributed by the Russian mission to the U.N., Putin reaffirmed Russia's intention to stand by its nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation commitments and said this is why it ratified the CTBT promptly.

``We are convinced that both the early entry into force of the treaty and making it universal in nature meet the interests of the world community,'' he said.

CTBT skeptics say it is impossible to assure the reliability and safety of nuclear weapons without tests.

But Sergeyev said Russia is convinced ``present-day science and technology provide a sufficient set of measures to assure the realiability and safety of nuclear weapons.''

Opponents also say it is difficult if not impossible to verify the pact. Sergeyev said the verification regime being developed under the CTBT is unprecedented and makes it ``absolutely impossible to hide any violation of the treaty,''

Nevertheless, ``we are prepared to suggest, to the United States in the first place, considering the possibility to develop additional verification measures for nuclear test ranges going far beyond the treaty provisions,'' he said.

This could include the exchange of geological data and results of certain experiments, installation of additional sensors and other measures, he added.

---

Russia, EU, Annan Press Test Ban Case

November 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-un.html?searchpv=reuters

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia, the European Union and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan pleaded on Sunday for nations to ratify a global ban on nuclear testing as U.S. opposition posed a major obstacle to the pact's future.

In strong comments to a U.N. conference that was boycotted by the Americans, Russia challenged U.S. objections and warned that disrupting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty could lead to ''crisis'' and the ``uncontained spread of nuclear weapons.''

Moscow dismissed U.S. concerns the pact would threaten the safety of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and offered to work on new verification measures beyond treaty requirements.

Annan called the treaty, known as CTBT, a ``crucial element'' in the fight to keep nuclear weapons from terrorists -- a key U.S. goal since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

``The longer we delay its entry into force, the greater the risk that nuclear testing will resume -- and that in turn would make nonproliferation much harder to sustain,'' he said.

The United States did not attend the conference, which took place on the fringes of the U.N. General Assembly annual meeting and drew many foreign ministers.

President Bush's administration has not formally explained its decision to stay away. The Pentagon, hoping to hasten the treaty's death, pressed for months for the United States to sit out the meeting.

The aim of the conference is to review progress toward ratification of the treaty, which would ban all nuclear blasts, whether in the atmosphere, in space or underground.

The pact was opened for signature in 1996. Since then, 161 states have signed it and 85 of those ratified it. The treaty has not yet entered into force because it needs ratification by 44 specific states deemed nuclear arms-capable.

To date, 31 of those 44 countries, including nuclear powers France, Russia and Britain, have signed and ratified the pact. Of the rest, India, Pakistan and North Korea have neither signed nor ratified the treaty, while the United States, China and eight others have signed but not ratified.

RUSSIA WANTS RATIFICATION

In one Russian statement, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow considered the treaty a ``most important instrument'' in limiting nuclear weapons and preserving strategic stability.

He expressed concern the pact had not yet taken effect and urged its quick ratification by the United States and others.

Putin said Moscow would stand by its nonproliferation commitments and that was why it ratified CTBT promptly.

Another senior Russian official, Igor Sergeyev, said: ''There are dangerous trends toward disrupting (the pact). This may result in a crisis of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty regime and an uncontained spread of the nuclear weapons.''

Some Bush aides say it is impossible to ensure the reliability and safety of nuclear weapons without testing.

Sergeyev said Russia was convinced computer simulators and other modern technology could satisfy that concern.

Critics also cite a verification problem. Sergeyev said the CTBT regime made it ``impossible'' to hide violations.

Still, ``we are prepared to suggest ... the possibility to develop additional verification measures for nuclear test ranges going far beyond the treaty provisions,'' he said.

That could include exchanges of geological data and results of certain experiments and installation of more sensors.

Sergeyev called it ``quite alarming'' that the test ban treaty challenge occurred at the same time as U.S. attempts to revise the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Reinforcing a common tone, the European Union expressed ''regret'' at the Bush administration's CTBT position and appealed to its American ally to reconsider its position.

Japan voiced ``concern'' the pact was not in force and said it was of ``paramount importance'' that nuclear-capable states continued a voluntary moratorium on tests.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was the first world leader to sign the CTBT. The Senate, then under Republican control, rejected it during the 2000 election.

Even before taking office in January, Bush, a Republican, made clear his CTBT opposition. Aides say he will abide by a 1992 test moratorium put in place by his father, former President George Bush.

Despite the impasse, a structure to monitor and verify CTBT is progressing. Plans call for a global network of 337 monitoring facilities, of which 121 have been constructed and upgraded. Ninety other stations are under construction.

--------

U.S. Boycotts U.N. Conference

New York Times
November 11, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-UN-Nuclear-Tests.html?searchpv=aponline

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- A U.N. conference on speeding ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty opened Sunday -- without the United States, which reiterated last week that it did not support the pact.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed by 161 nations and ratified by 84 of them, cannot take effect until all 44 countries that possess nuclear weapons or have nuclear power programs have signed or ratified the treaty.

Only 31 such nations, including Britain, France and Russia, have ratified the 1996 accord that bans nuclear tests in any environment. The United States is among 13 non-ratifiers.

Washington had signed the pact five years ago, but the Senate rejected the treaty in 1999. Opponents of the treaty say it is unenforceable.

The United States forced a vote last week in the U.N. Committee on Disarmament and Security to demonstrate its opposition to the test ban accord.

At that session, the United States was the only nation to vote against the accord, while India and Pakistan -- both new nuclear nations that have not yet signed the treaty -- joined Russia, China, Britain and France in voted in its favor.

The United States was invited to attend Sunday's conference as an observer but decided not to go, State Department spokeswoman Eliza Koch said.

``The purpose of the conference is to promote ratifications of the treaty, and the administration has made clear that it has no plans to ask the Senate to reconsider its 1999 vote on this issue,'' she said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan opened the three-day conference Sunday by urging nations who haven't ratified to approve the pact. In a pointed allusion to the United States, Annan said some nations withholding ratification ``are states which themselves worked hard to conclude the treaty.''

``Now it is within their power to bring it into force,'' Annan said. ``I implore them to do so.''

Annan also stressed that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks show more than ever that the treaty is needed.

``Those events should have made it clear to everyone that we cannot afford further proliferation of nuclear weapons,'' he said.

Vice-Minister Miguel Marin Bosch of Mexico stressed the need to end the ``qualitative'' arms race. ``If you can't test, you can't improve, and if you can't improve, that means you can stop the nuclear arms race,'' he said.

The American boycott reveals ``U.S. contempt for its allies just one day after President Bush said he wanted the world to work together to stop terrorists getting these deadly weapons,'' Rebecca Johnson of the Institute for Disarmament and Diplomacy said.

India and Pakistan, which have nuclear weapons, and North Korea, which has an advanced nuclear program, have not signed the treaty, either.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer urged all three to sign and ratify it, and called on the United States and China to help move the treaty forward by doing the same.

Igor Sergeev, assistant to Russian President Vladimir Putin on strategic stability, called the pact's early entry into force ``the imperative of the time.''

He said Russia was prepared to suggest to the United States the possibility of developing additional verification measures for nuclear test ranges.

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

USS Aviators Act As Choreographers

November 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Ships.html?searchpv=aponline

ABOARD THE USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (AP) -- Minutes after takeoff, the jet fighter pilot radios that he's having problems with the hydraulic system that controls his landing gear and is heading back to his aircraft carrier.

On board, the sailors on the flight deck spring into action.

``Clear the deck. Man all stations,'' the air boss, Capt. Gay Galloway, instructs the men on flight deck.

The ``shooters,'' clad in distinctive yellow shirts, fling aircraft into the sky using the carrier's catapult system and make sure the pilots land safely on their return.

Despite a dozen phone calls in the space of a few minutes from senior officers inquiring about the jet, Galloway, a 43-year-old from Virginia Beach, Va., works calmly on the flight bridge that serves as the ship's control tower.

In the end, the pilot manage to land using backup hydraulics.

``We've got days when things run smoothly. Then, there are days when they don't,'' Galloway said Saturday, chuckling, a mug of fresh coffee in his hands.

For landing, known as recovery, the air boss and his deputy, the mini-boss, choreograph the planes so that the deck is free of aircraft as soon as possible. Shooters watch to make sure the jet's tailhook has caught one of the four thick cables stretched across the deck.

One mistake, one wrong signal, one malfunction can send the pilot and a $70 million aircraft into the sea.

``Everybody's pretty much equally responsible on the flight deck,'' said shooter Lt. Bill Schlemmer, 32, of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. ``We just happen to be the last persons looking at the plane to make sure it's going to go flying. We have the final say whether it's going to go or not.''

Fully armed U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcats, Marine F/A-18C Hornets, S-3B Viking tankers and the support surveillance planes taxi onto the four catapult launch pads with their wings, normally swept back to save space, fully extended.

The yellow shirts guide the pilots to position the aircraft. Before takeoff, they check that the flaps are working and that pilots are ready before the green-shirted ``hookup'' man runs forward, kneels beside the nose wheel and hooks the catapult to the aircraft.

Soon after, pilots turn on two 20,000-pound engines at full throttle and signal the shooter to push the button that sets the catapult in motion.

The pressure of the steam from the ship's two nuclear reactors hurls the plane 300 feet forward at a speed of 150 mph in two seconds.

Sometimes, if a launch is aborted, the shooter will walk in front of the jet while its engines are still at full power and signal the pilot to turn them off.

``We get in front of the airplane and the pilots know they are not going to get fired. They feel safe seeing us in front knowing they actually are not going to be launched inadvertently,'' said another shooter, Lt. Cmdr. Pat Cavanagh, 34, of Cleveland.

Schlemmer said he doesn't have time to think about the danger of walking in front of a roaring jet.

``You just want to do it soon as possible to get the pilot comfortable so that he isn't going to go flying,'' he said.

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

Nuclear Neighbors Generating Alarm
Some Residents Fear Area Plants Might Be Terrorist Targets

By Fredrick Kunkle and Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8853-2001Nov10?language=printer

The night the sirens went off at the North Anna nuclear power plant near Mineral, Va., Peggy Hairfield's eyes snapped open.

Her husband started awake, too. Lying there in bed, a few miles downwind of the nuclear plant, she tamped down panic and wondered: Is this the big one? A meltdown? An accidental release of deadly radiation?

The couple held hands. They tuned the clock radio to an emergency broadcasting network to see whether they should evacuate their home about 90 miles southwest of Washington.

But it was only a false alarm. Unable to find a babysitter, a dispatcher in the Louisa County sheriff's office had brought a child to work who accidentally triggered the sirens.

The next day, life returned to normal, and for 3 1/2 years, the nuke next door became an afterthought -- until Sept. 11. Now the worries have started all over.

"You think about it while you're lying there. You think: Am I going to wake up tomorrow? Or am I going to lie here and die? Then you try not to think about it till next time," said Hairfield, a clerk in Mineral's Town Office.

At least the sirens worked. Last week, even as nuclear plant operators and government officials were on high alert, two-thirds of the sirens around the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, about 55 miles from the District in Southern Maryland, failed during a test.

"I didn't hear one of them," Dale Maxwell said as he gassed up his car in nearby Lusby.

Neither did anyone else in Calvert County, including people who live closest to the plant. Of 72 sirens within 10 miles, all 49 in Calvert remained silent during the test at noon Monday. A computer glitch was blamed.

Nuclear power plants have been generating more than electricity since the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed, soon after hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, some officials initially feared that a fourth plane could be bearing down on Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pa. On Oct. 17, officials closed two nearby airports and scrambled fighter jets in response to a terrorist threat against TMI that was later deemed to be not credible.

Around TMI, scene in 1979 of the nation's worst nuclear power accident, that was enough for some residents to clamor for potassium iodide tablets, which block the body's absorption of radioactive iodine.

Lancaster County's Emergency Management Agency, which has stored enough tablets for emergency crews, has been referring callers to private labs.

"Some of the general public are concerned," said Randy Gockley, Lancaster County's emergency management coordinator. "The vast majority of people feel comfortable with the plants."

Maryland has one nuclear plant. Virginia has two, in Louisa and Surry counties, in central Virginia and Southside, respectively. Folks who live near them wonder what would happen if their nuclear neighbors became the next target.

Just last week, Rita Steele's 16-year-old grandson offered to build her an underground fallout shelter.

"Before, he would have never thought about it," said Steele, 50, who owns a bric-a-brac shop in Mineral. "Now, it even affects the kids, because they hear so much about it. It's scary."

Arms folded over a T-shirt that says, "Wherever I go, God goes with me," Steele said she has not given a lot of thought to what she would do, except get in a car and drive. She worries that radiation would spread too fast anyway.

"I'd probably try to get my nine dogs into the car. We probably wouldn't make it," she said.

Her neighbors are suddenly paying attention to calendars mailed out by the company that owns the North Anna plant that include detailed instructions on what to do in a crisis. The calendar lists evacuation centers, school evacuation procedures, escape routes and placards that residents can prop in their windows to show that they have exited their homes or need assistance to leave.

The calendar goes out to people in five counties surrounding the plant.

"I've been reading that, too, and this is the first year I've ever paid attention," said Pat Martin, who runs the Country Roads Cafe in Mineral.

For many, though, worry is an acceptable trade-off for facilities that provide more jobs than any other local business and pay at least 20 percent of the county's taxes. Others are simply fatalistic.

"If it blows up, it blows up," said Joseph Boggs Sr., whose home sits about a half-mile across Lake Anna from the plant.

One of the first to build on Lake Anna about 30 years ago, he's used to the low whine of the turbines coming across the glassy water like the hum of an air conditioner.

Boggs, who owns the Lake Anna Marina, said he also likes the way the lights from the plant play across the water at night.

"It's beautiful," he said.

There are 103 commercial nuclear power plants operating in 31 states. The day of the attacks, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission urged all to go to Level III, its highest level of security.

The NRC also reassured the public that nuclear power plants are built to withstand extreme events such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. But in a Sept. 21 news release, the agency also acknowledged that it had not contemplated attacks by airliners as big as the Boeing 767s that slammed into the twin towers.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Oct. 30 banned private aircraft below 18,000 feet and within 10 nautical miles of nuclear power plants. That order expired at midnight Tuesday.

In Virginia, Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) directed the National Guard and the state police to defend the state's nuclear plants. The Marine Resources Commission and the Game and Inland Fisheries Department are guarding waterways around the plants.

The North Anna plant, on the shore of man-made Lake Anna, has a capacity of 1,842 megawatts -- enough electricity to light a city the size of Albuquerque. The Surry nuclear power plant, with a 1,625-megawatt capacity, is on the James River across from historic Jamestown. Both are operated by Richmond-based Dominion Virginia Power, a division of Dominion Resources Inc. That company serves more than 2 million customers in Virginia and North Carolina.

Dominion intensified security before the NRC asked, said spokesman Richard Zuercher. Officials have conducted additional background checks on some employees. Media visits were banned. Public tours ceased.

But the plants -- ringed by razor wire, concrete barriers to thwart truck bombs and armed security guards -- were safe even before Sept. 11, Zuercher said.

The reactors and their cooling systems are below ground and encased in hardened structures, including a three-eighth-inch carbon steel liner. The domes -- whose shape is intended to minimize the impact from an aircraft crash -- are 2 1/2- to 3-foot-thick concrete reinforced with eight layers of steel bars.

Calvert Cliffs, operated by Baltimore-based Constellation Energy Group's nuclear division, also closed its visitors center, and jets from Patuxent River Naval Air Station have soared overhead on guard. But plant officials declined to say much else.

"We feel not discussing our security measures ourselves is in fact a security measure," plant spokesman Karl Neddenien said.

Neighbors worry about plans to reactivate the Cove Point liquefied natural gas plant, about two miles from Calvert Cliffs. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's go-ahead, announced Oct. 11, has drawn widespread criticism. U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D) has urged the commission to rethink the notion of allowing foreign tankers to haul the fuel up the Chesapeake Bay past the nuclear power plant. On Friday, the agency agreed to reconsider its approval in light of national security concerns.

"The closeness of the two facilities is a concern," said resident Leonard Addiss. "If one goes, the other goes with it."

-------- washington

Group mulls leaving some wastes

Hanford News
Sun, Nov 11, 2001
By John Stang
Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/1111.html

A proposal to leave behind some of Hanford's most dangerous wastes after cleanup is complete was met last week with a mix of skepticism, curiosity and sense of urgency.

The idea is to speed up cleanup of Hanford's tank farms by not glassifying some of the highly radioactive wastes buried in underground tanks.

The Hanford Advisory Board tank waste committee discussed details of the concept with state and Department of Energy officials in Richland last week.

A few days earlier, Harry Boston, manager of DOE's Office of River Protection, floated some preliminary pieces of the plan by the entire HAB.

The idea calls for Hanford to go ahead with the first-phase of the waste glassification complex, which is scheduled to begin construction late in 2002, start turning wastes into glass in 2007 and finish treating 10 percent of Hanford's tanks wastes by 2018.

Construction of the bigger second-phase plants for the remaining 53 million gallons of wastes are expected to begin around 2010 and at a cost billions of dollars more, with the final price tag still far from certain.

No one in Hanford's universe, including Boston, expects the federal government to agree to pay for the second phase as it's currently envisioned.

That has led DOE's experts to wonder if some -- mostly solid -- wastes could be left in the tanks and still have the tank farms declared safe under the Tri-Party Agreement, the legal pact governing Hanford's cleanup.

Under the plan, the glassification facility would be scaled back and some tank wastes neutralized by cheaper chemical methods or by mixing them with some type of concrete. It's not clear when DOE will make a formal proposal to the state on this idea, said Steve Wiegman, a senior technical advisor at DOE's Office of River Protection.

But in the meantime, federal officials need to know whether state approval is possible for any of the cheaper alternatives.

That's because changes in dealing with the second-phase wastes will affect construction of the plant's first phase, said Al Conklin, the state health department's radioactive emissions manager.

Hanford's current round of brainstorming has leaned toward not ever building the larger glassification plants several years from now, but instead expanding the first-phase plants.

However, if DOE chooses that route, the state health and ecology departments need to approve the permits and designs for the bigger, more complicated concept before construction begins, Conklins said.

HAB members thought DOE's overall concept should be explored, but with a healthy dose of skepticism..

"Some creative thinking is required," said board member Pam Brown, representing Richland.

Vice chairman Ken Bracken, representing Kennewick, said: "I've not heard (Boston) yet say he would accomplish this outside of (federal and state) regulations.

Dealing with the tank wastes on time and finding money to do it is like walking a tightrope, Bracken said. "And people are sawing it at both ends." But Roger Stanley, the state's Tri-Party Agreement negotiator, said DOE needs to prove its idea poses no additional risks to the region before the state would consider it.

Suzanne Dahl, the ecology department's tank waste disposal project manager, expressed skepticism. "In order to clean up the site, we're going to leave some wastes in the tanks? That's counterintuitive."

-------- us nuc politics

U.S., Russia Likely To Agree on Arms
Summit Could Lead to Historic Cuts

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page A43
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9493-2001Nov10.html

The United States and Russia are working to establish an unprecedented arms control agreement that calls for deep but unequal reductions in strategic nuclear weapons over the next decade but avoids complicated new treaties like those that were the hallmark of the Cold War, according to senior Bush administration officials.

The reductions in strategic warheads would be verified by on-site inspection systems already in effect under the 1972 START I treaty, officials said.

The two countries are expected to reach an understanding at this week's U.S. summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin under which Russia would not object to unlimited U.S. testing for a missile defense system. At the same time, the United States would not seek to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty until it decided to deploy the system, which could be years away.

But Washington and Moscow are also moving on a parallel track that could lead to historic cuts in nuclear weapons to levels not seen since the 1960s, reducing both arsenals by two-thirds and below the ceilings envisioned by the 1993 START II agreement.

"This is not going to be a classic Cold War situation," a senior U.S. official said.

The strategic framework with Moscow that Bush has said he will seek would cover not only offensive and defensive strategic weapons, but also increased cooperation in the military, proliferation and counterterrorism fields, according to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

U.S. officials said the two countries will also make a push to develop a joint early-warning center outside Moscow to guard against a strategic nuclear missile or bomber attack and a joint radar satellite development program called RAMOS. The Bush administration is also talking to the Russians about cooperation in nuclear nonproliferation, a senior official said.

The Russians have suggested a new program under which Russian technicians would participate in the dismantling of American intercontinental ballistic missiles, in much the same way as Americans are working at taking down Russian missile systems.

"Those discussions are ongoing, and I think they are quite promising for the future," the senior official said. "The whole notion is one of cooperation, not of confrontation."

The administration is hoping to win an agreement at the summit -- which begins in Washington on Tuesday and then moves to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex. -- under which each country would set its own goal for a level of offensive nuclear warheads to be reached by the end of this decade. The United States would go down to between 1,750 and 2,250 warheads from more than 6,000. Russia would drop to between 1,000 and 1,500 from more than 6,000.

Putin and other Russian officials who have had talks with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, most recently in Moscow, have put forward lower figures, in part because Russia's economic situation has made it difficult to build missiles and keep existing ones operational.

The United States, on the other hand, is prepared to cut its strategic arsenal below START II levels of 3,000 to 3,500 warheads, officials said. Pentagon experts have argued that the United States should not go much lower than 2,000 warheads, however, to ensure it can cover targets required to protect North America and U.S. allies in Europe.

For that reason, the senior official said, "ultimately, I do see a range, and it's possible that there will be two different ranges, a range for the United States and a range for Russia."

But what will distinguish this arrangement from previous agreements, the official added, "is that the level of animosity and the basis of the arsenals will have changed. So you don't need the reams of treaties and the months of negotiations."

Rice illustrated the new, more informal approach last week by describing a possible summit scene. Bush will "share with President Putin the results of the nuclear review that he initiated," she said. Then, she continued, Putin "will also share with President Bush what they are thinking about in terms of their offensive forces."

"Neither president is going to be looking at one for one and category for category," the senior official said. "But the intention is to get an agreement at some point, at Crawford, and if not Crawford beyond Crawford, to move down mutually, and to commit to lower deployed strategic nuclear force levels in the future."

The Bush administration's dislike for the Cold War era's complicated arms control arrangements has been a hallmark of its discussions with Moscow over the past year.

One precedent could be the 1991 decision by President George Bush, who, without prior agreement with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, unilaterally withdrew almost all tactical nuclear weapons from Europe and Asia, downloaded Minuteman II ICBMs before required by treaty, and halted development of two new strategic nuclear systems.

The current Bush administration wants to work with Moscow, the senior official said, "in a way that does not get bound up by the arms control bureaucracies on either side, or on both sides . . . which delight in tying up the progress in reductions, in favor of the production of reams of paper."

A senior official said the administration is envisioning "a constant schedule of consultations, verification, transparency, monitoring . . . anything that is needed to demystify the process."


-------- MILITARY

A War in the Planning for Four Years

by Michael Ruppert
From The Wilderness Publications
11 November 2001
http://www.copvcia.com
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP111B.html

Centre for Research on Globalisation http://globalresearch.ca/

Zbigniew Brzezinski and the CFR Put War Plans in a 1997 Book - It is "A Blueprint for World Dictatorship," Says a Former German Defense and NATO Official Who Warned of Global Domination in 1984, in an Exclusive Interview With FTW

Summary

"THE GRAND CHESSBOARD - American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives," Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 1997.

These are the very first words in the book, "Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power." - p. xiii. Eurasia is all of the territory east of Germany and Poland, stretching all the way through Russia and China to the Pacific Ocean. It includes the Middle East and most of the Indian subcontinent. The key to controlling Eurasia, says Brzezinski, is controlling the Central Asian Republics. And the key to controlling the Central Asian republics is Uzbekistan. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Uzbekistan was forcefully mentioned by President George W. Bush in his address to a joint session of Congress just days after the attacks of September 11 as the very first place that the U.S. military would be deployed.

As FTW has documented in previous stories, major deployments of U.S. and British forces had taken place before the attacks. And the U.S. Army and the CIA had been active in Uzbekistan for several years. There is now evidence that what the world is witnessing is a cold and calculated war plan - at least four years in the making - and that, from reading Brzezinski's own words about Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center attacks were just the trigger needed to set the final conquest in motion.

FTW, November 7, 2001, 1200 PST - There's a quote often attributed to Allen Dulles after it was noted that the final 1964 report of the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK contained dramatic inconsistencies. Those inconsistencies, in effect, disproved the Commission's own final conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone on November 22, 1963. Dulles, a career spy, Wall Street lawyer, the CIA director whom JFK had fired after the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco - and the Warren Commission member who took charge of the investigation and final report - is reported to have said, "The American people don't read."

Some Americans do read. So do Europeans and Asians and Africans and Latin Americans. World events since the attacks of September 11, 2001 have not only been predicted, but also planned, orchestrated and - as their architects would like to believe - controlled. The current Central Asian war is not a response to terrorism, nor is it a reaction to Islamic fundamentalism. It is in fact, in the words of one of the most powerful men on the planet, the beginning of a final conflict before total world domination by the United States leads to the dissolution of all national governments. This, says Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and former Carter National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, will lead to nation states being incorporated into a new world order, controlled solely by economic interests as dictated by banks, corporations and ruling elites concerned with the maintenance (by manipulation and war) of their power. As a means of intimidation for the unenlightened reader who happens upon this frightening plan - the plan of the CFR - Brzezinski offers the alternative of a world in chaos unless the U.S. controls the planet by whatever means are necessary and likely to succeed.

This position is corroborated by Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, Ph.D. a former German defense ministry official and advisor to former NATO Secretary General Manfred Werner. On November 6, he told FTW, "The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the CFR, The Trilateral Commission - founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller - and the Bliderberger Group, have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years. They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens."

Brzezinski's own words - laid against the current official line that the United States is waging a war to end terrorism - are self-incriminating. In an ongoing series of articles, FTW has consistently established that the U.S. government had foreknowledge of the World Trade Center attacks and chose not to stop them because it needed to secure public approval for a war that is now in progress. It is a war, as described by Vice President Dick Cheney, "that may not end in our lifetimes." What that means is that it will not end until all armed groups, anywhere in the world, which possess the political, economic or military ability to resist the imposition of this dictatorship, have been destroyed.

These are the "terrorists" the U.S. now fights in Afghanistan and plans to soon fight all over the globe.

Before exposing Brzezinski (and those he represents) with his own words, or hearing more from Dr. Koeppl, it is worthwhile to take a look at Brzezinski's background.

According to his resume Brzezinski, holding a 1953 Ph.D. from Harvard, lists the following achievements:

Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies Professor of American Foreign Policy, Johns Hopkins University National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter (1977-81) Trustee and founder of the Trilateral Commission International advisor of several major US/Global corporations Associate of Henry Kissinger Under Ronald Reagan - member of NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy Under Ronald Reagan - member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Past member, Board of Directors, The Council on Foreign Relations 1988 - Co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force.

Brzezinski is also a past attendee and presenter at several conferences of the Bliderberger group - a non-partisan affiliation of the wealthiest and most powerful families and corporations on the planet.

The Grand Chessboard

Brzezinski sets the tone for his strategy by describing Russia and China as the two most important countries - almost but not quite superpowers - whose interests that might threaten the U.S. in Central Asia. Of the two, Brzezinski considers Russia to be the more serious threat. Both nations border Central Asia. In a lesser context he describes the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Iran and Kazakhstan as essential "lesser" nations that must be managed by the U.S. as buffers or counterweights to Russian and Chinese moves to control the oil, gas and minerals of the Central Asian Republics (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan).

He also notes, quite clearly (p. 53) that any nation that might become predominant in Central Asia would directly threaten the current U.S. control of oil resources in the Persian Gulf. In reading the book it becomes clear why the U.S. had a direct motive for the looting of some $300 billion in Russian assets during the 1990s, destabilizing Russia's currency (1998) and ensuring that a weakened Russia would have to look westward to Europe for economic and political survival, rather than southward to Central Asia. A dependent Russia would lack the military, economic and political clout to exert influence in the region and this weakening of Russia would explain why Russian President Vladimir Putin has been such a willing ally of U.S. efforts to date. (See FTW Vol. IV, No. 1 - March 31, 2001)

An examination of selected quotes from "The Grand Chessboard," in the context of current events reveals the darker agenda behind military operations that were planned long before September 11th, 2001.

"...The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world's paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power... (p. xiii)

"... But in the meantime, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book. (p. xiv)

"The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (pp 24-5)

"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained. (p.30)

"America's withdrawal from the world or because of the sudden emergence of a successful rival - would produce massive international instability. It would prompt global anarchy." (p. 30)

"In that context, how America 'manages' Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe's largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31)

Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them;... second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above... (p. 40)

"...To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." (p.40)

"Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power." (p.55)

"Uzbekistan - with its much more ethnically homogeneous population of approximately 25 million and its leaders emphasizing the country's historic glories - has become increasingly assertive in affirming the region's new postcolonial status." (p.95)

"Thus, even the ethnically vulnerable Kazakhstan joined the other Central Asian states in abandoning the Cyrillic alphabet and replacing it with Latin script as adapted earlier by Turkey. In effect, by the mid-1990s a bloc, quietly led by Ukraine and comprising Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and sometimes also Kazakhstan, Georgia and Moldova, had informally emerged to obstruct Russian efforts to use the CIS as the tool for political integration." (p.114)

"...Hence, support for the new post-Soviet states - for geopolitical pluralism in the space of the former Soviet empire - has to be an integral part of a policy designed to induce Russia to exercise unambiguously its European option. Among these states. Three are geopolitically especially important: Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine." (p. 121) "Uzbekistan, nationally the most vital and the most populous of the central Asian states, represents the major obstacle to any renewed Russian control over the region. Its independence is critical to the survival of the other Central Asian states, and it is the least vulnerable to Russian pressures." (p. 121)

Referring to an area he calls the "Eurasian Balkans" and a 1997 map in which he has circled the exact location of the current conflict - describing it as the central region of pending conflict for world dominance - Brzezinski writes: "Moreover, they [the Central Asian Republics] are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold." (p.124) [Emphasis added]

The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea." (p.125)

"Kazakhstan is the shield and Uzbekistan is the soul for the region's diverse national awakenings." (p.130)

"Uzbekistan is, in fact, the prime candidate for regional leadership in Central Asia." (p.130) "Once pipelines to the area have been developed, Turkmenistan's truly vast natural gas reserves augur a prosperous future for the country's people. (p.132)

"In fact, an Islamic revival - already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia - is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian - and hence infidel - control." (p. 133).

"For Pakistan, the primary interest is to gain Geostrategic depth through political influence in Afghanistan - and to deny to Iran the exercise of such influence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan - and to benefit eventually from any pipeline construction linking Central Asia with the Arabian Sea." (p.139)

"Moreover, sensible Russian leaders realize that the demographic explosion underway in the new states means that their failure to sustain economic growth will eventually create an explosive situation along Russia's entire southern frontier." (p.141) [This would explain why Putin would welcome U.S. military presence to stabilize the region.]

"Turkmenistan... has been actively exploring the construction of a new pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea..." (p.145)

"It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it." (p148)

"China's growing economic presence in the region and its political stake in the area's independence are also congruent with America's interests." (p.149)

"America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe's central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and to America's historical legacy." (p.194)

"...the Eurasian Balkans - threatens to become a cauldron of ethnic conflict and great-power rivalry." (p.195)

"Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today's Eurasia but of the world more generally." (p.194)

"With warning signs on the horizon across Europe and Asia, any successful American policy must focus on Eurasia as a whole and be guided by a Geostrategic design." (p.197)

"That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America's primacy..." (p. 198)

"The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role." (p. 198)

"In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last." (p.209)

"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." (p. 211) [Emphasis added]

The Horror - And Comments From Someone Who Worked With Brzezinski

Brzezinski's book is sublimely arrogant. While singing the praises of the IMF and the World Bank, which have economically terrorized nations on every continent, and while totally ignoring the worldwide terrorist actions of the U.S. government that have led to genocide; cluster bombings of civilian populations from Kosovo, to Laos, to Iraq, to Afghanistan; the development and battlefield use of both biological and chemical agents such as Sarin gas; and the financial rape of entire cultures it would leave the reader believing that such actions are for the good of mankind.

While seconded from the German defense ministry to NATO in the late 1970s, Dr. Johannes Koeppl - mentioned at the top of this article - traveled to Washington on more than one occasion. He also met with Brzezinski in the White House on more than one occasion. His other Washington contacts included Steve Larabee from the CFR, John J. McCloy, former CIA Director, economist Milton Friedman, and officials from Carter's Office of Management and Budget. He is the first person I have ever interviewed who has made a direct presentation at a Bliderberger conference and he has also made numerous presentations to sub-groups of the Trilateral Commission. That was before he spoke out against them.

His fall from grace was rapid after he realized that Brzezinski was part of a group intending to impose a world dictatorship. "In 1983/4 I warned of a take-over of world governments being orchestrated by these people. There was an obvious plan to subvert true democracies and selected leaders were not being chosen based upon character but upon their loyalty to an economic system run by the elites and dedicated to preserving their power.

"All we have now are pseudo-democracies."

Koeppl recalls meeting U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald in Nuremburg in the early 80s. McDonald, who was then contemplating a run for the Presidency, was a severe critic of these elites. He was killed in the Russian shootdown of Korean Air flight 007 in 1985. Koeppl believes that it might have been an assassination. Over the years many writers have made these allegations about 007 and the fact that someone with Koeppl's credentials believes that an entire plane full of passengers would be destroyed to eliminate one man offers a chilling opinion of the value placed on human life by the powers that be.

In 1983, Koeppl warned, through Op-Ed pieces published in NEWSWEEK and elsewhere, that Brzezinski and the CFR were part of an effort to impose a global dictatorship. His fall from grace was swift. "It was a criminal society that I was dealing with. It was not possible to publish anymore in the so-called respected publications. My 30 year career in politics ended.

"The people of the western world have been trained to be good consumers; to focus on money, sports cars, beauty, consumer goods. They have not been trained to look for character in people. Therefore what we need is education for politicians, a form of training that instills in them a higher sense of ethics than service to money. There is no training now for world leaders. This is a shame because of the responsibility that leaders hold to benefit all mankind rather than to blindly pursue destructive paths.

"We also need education for citizens to be more efficient in their democracies, in addition to education for politicians that will create a new network of elites based upon character and social intelligence."

Koeppl, who wrote his 1989 doctoral thesis on NATO management, also authored a 1989 book - largely ignored because of its controversial revelations - entitled "The Most Important Secrets in the World." He maintains a German language web site at www.antaris.com and he can be reached by email at jbk@antaris.com.

As to the present conflict Koeppl expressed the gravest concerns, "This is more than a war against terrorism. This is a war against the citizens of all countries. The current elites are creating so much fear that people don't know how to respond. But they must remember. This is a move to implement a world dictatorship within the next five years. There may not be another chance."

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Pressure builds on U.S. to begin a ground war

USA Today
11/11/2001
By Andrea Stone and Kirk Spitzer, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/acovfri.htm

WASHINGTON - Just one month into the U.S. war in Afghanistan, military experts increasingly are coming to the same conclusion: Airstrikes and commandos won't be enough to rout the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network. American ground forces will be needed to finish the job.

Those calling for a massive deployment of Army soldiers and Marines differ over how many are required. But a common scenario calls for up to 100,000 troops who would move into Afghanistan by spring or summer to control major cities, set up bases and hunt down the enemy.

The Pentagon, which so far has relied on aerial bombings and a few hundred special operations forces, hasn't ruled out a ground war. "We will not take off of the table the possible use of ground forces," Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. Central Command chief who is directing the Afghanistan campaign, said Thursday. "We want to keep all the options open." He said the war is going according to plan and urged the public and critics to remain patient.

Privately, senior war planners say they are reluctant to commit large numbers of troops, in part because a mass deployment of soldiers and supplies to a landlocked, mountainous country would be a logistics nightmare. They estimate it could take at least 6 months to deploy 100,000 troops.

For now, U.S. military leaders say they believe that relentless air attacks, commando raids and pressure from Afghan opposition groups will be sufficient to topple the Taliban and destroy al-Qa'eda.

But the strategy has put the Bush administration in a bind. Abroad, the bombing campaign has already triggered protests and calls for a cease-fire, especially in Muslim nations.

At home, a growing chorus of critics - military and foreign policy analysts, members of Congress and conservatives - says the administration's plan isn't working. The Taliban has proved more resilient than expected. Few of its fighters have defected, and those who remain are believed to be hiding in residences, mosques, schools, hospitals and other civilian areas that U.S. war planners are reluctant to bomb.

Meanwhile, fighters from the opposition Northern Alliance say they are advancing on the key Taliban city of Mazar-e Sharif in the north. Even so, the rebels have yet to seize control of any strategic cities or towns despite weeks of support from U.S. warplanes and more recent help from special operations forces. Army Rangers and Delta Force commandos have mounted only two raids.

And the Pentagon doesn't seem to be mobilizing for Plan B: a massive ground invasion.

"If the expectations were for a long war, they haven't prepared for one," complains Ivo Daalder, who served on President Clinton's National Security Council. "The lesson of Vietnam was, if you don't really know what you're doing, don't do it. They don't appear to have learned the lesson."

Nor, Pentagon critics say, has the Pentagon learned the lesson from a more recent conflict: The biggest ground force since Vietnam was needed to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War.

"To have any success in Afghanistan ... you need conventional forces to secure territory," says retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Robert Johnston, who commanded U.S. forces in Somalia in 1993 and was chief of staff to Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a member of the Armed Services Committee and one of the most vocal critics of the Pentagon's strategy, says victory will "take a very big effort (by a) large number of troops." Meanwhile, conservative activists accuse the administration of waging a timid war. Sending ground troops into Afghanistan carries the risk of battlefield deaths. But polls show most Americans are willing to accept significant casualties to punish those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. "This is a war. And in a war there will be casualties," Franks said.

The Soviets lost 15,000 soldiers during their failed 10-year war in Afghanistan. Pentagon planners say U.S. troops won't get sucked into a prolonged conflict. If they do, President Bush's sky-high approval ratings might tumble by the time of the 2004 election.

Military analysts' estimates of how many troops might be required range from 8,000 to 300,000. Missions range from securing one or two Afghan bases to taking control of major cities to occupying regions of the country.

"Clearly, we would have to take and secure bases ... (but) it's a daunting task," Johnston says.

For starters, Afghanistan's lack of seaports and its mountainous terrain pose a major challenge for sending in troops, weapons and supplies. Neighboring Pakistan would be the logical staging ground. But the Pakistani government, worried about unrest among Islamic extremists at home, might block a full-blown U.S. military buildup on its soil.

Tajikistan, Afghanistan's neighbor to the north, has offered the United States the use of three massive air bases built by the Soviet Union. They are in poor condition, however. And an airlift of men and materiel would take a long time, even under the best of conditions.

Logistics nightmare

If a major U.S. ground operation is to take place in the spring, the Bush administration would have to give the go-ahead soon to get troops and equipment into place.

Conditions in Afghanistan are, perhaps, as bad as they can get. Even in the Persian Gulf, where clear weather, good roads and modern seaports and airfields presented near-ideal conditions, it took 6 months to deploy about 500,000 ground troops.

Afghanistan lacks modern air bases. The nearest seaport is 700 miles away in Pakistan. Because ships carry most supplies and gear, Pakistan is crucial to any buildup, says retired rear admiral Jim Davidson, a specialist in military logistics.

The bases that Tajikistan is letting U.S. forces use are close to the Afghan border, but they might not be suitable for launching ground attacks. The bases are located high in the mountains, hundreds of miles from Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan. U.S. troops would have to negotiate treacherous roads and high passes just to reach the battlefields north of Kabul. Many of those roads would be closed in winter and prone to ambush when the weather clears.

Pakistan, which is closer to the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar and endowed with better airfields, roads and access to the sea, would make a better staging ground for a major offensive.

But anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan creates other problems for the Pentagon, which got a preview last month of the risks it faces in staging troops there. Marine helicopters trying to recover a downed Black Hawk helicopter were fired on by unknown assailants during a refueling stop in Pakistan. The Pentagon says the Marines didn't suffer any casualties but had to temporarily abort the mission.

The 101st Airborne Division, which could be one of the first ground units called up, presents a snapshot of the challenges facing Pentagon planners.

The division includes about 20,000 soldiers, 280 helicopters, 60 heavy artillery pieces and more than 500 Humvees, trucks and other vehicles. It would require thousands of tons of food, fuel, ammunition, water, medical supplies, tents, cots, winter-weather gear and other accoutrements of war.

Most of the soldiers would be flown in on chartered civilian aircraft that can hold no more than 225 passengers each. That's a minimum of 89 flights.

But much, if not most, of the weaponry would have to come in by military cargo plane. The Air Force has only 250 long-range transports in its fleet. The biggest can carry no more than one helicopter or two pieces of heavy equipment per flight.

Transporting the 101st's equipment by air would require hundreds of flights over several months. That's just one division.

5 tons per soldier

Supplying the troops once they are on the ground is another huge challenge. During the Gulf War, logistics specialists moved 5 tons of equipment and supplies for every soldier. Eighty percent came by sea. About 4,000 private trucks and drivers were hired to haul the equipment from ports in eastern Saudi Arabia to desert bases.

For now, there are few signs that a major deployment is in the works. Pentagon officials say they will supply the Northern Alliance rebels with ammunition, food and cold-weather fighting gear this winter. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says U.S. forces will keep fighting through the winter.

Most analysts expect little progress as winter sets in, however. Any major offensive, most agree, will have to wait until spring.

Avoiding a quagmire

Not everyone agrees a major buildup is necessary - or wise. Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, predicts the Pentagon will expand the air campaign with attack helicopters and large-scale raids in support of opposition forces. That would require up to 8,000 troops. Any more than that would be "a last resort and a bad one," he says.

Cordesman says the best way to avoid getting bogged down in Afghanistan as Soviet troops did in the 1980s is to limit American ground forces and make sure the outcome of the war is "one shaped by Muslim Afghans and not an invading 'Christian' power."

Cordesman says that no matter how many U.S. troops are deployed, "messy sieges" around Kabul and Kandahar are likely, although "the risk of an endless stalemate or apparent defeat is much worse."

That could happen even if U.S. and rebel forces capture Afghanistan's cities, he warns. The Taliban could retreat into the mountains to wage an endless guerrilla war, much like that faced by American troops in Vietnam a generation ago. "Even major U.S. ground forces cannot ensure that it is really over when it is over," Cordesman says.

As many as 300,000 troops would be needed if planners are "trying to do a conventional invasion," says former NATO commander Wesley Clark, who commanded troops in Kosovo. Clark's advice: Limit U.S. involvement to 40,000 troops, spearheaded by a heavy armored division and supplemented by a light infantry unit such as the 10th Mountain Division. An army that size could topple the Taliban with the help of British, Turkish and other forces.

Mackubin Owens, a former Marine who teaches strategy at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., says two light infantry divisions totaling about 40,000 troops should be sent to shore up the Northern Alliance but not to fight inside Afghanistan's cities. He'd give the job to the 10th Mountain, which already has troops in Uzbekistan, and the 25th Infantry Division based in Hawaii.

Owens would reserve the fast-deploying 82nd Airborne Division and the heavier 101st "in case we have to use them in a second ph