------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Today's quotes
Bush, Putin agree to deep cuts in arsenals
High - Tech Talk About Nuclear Weapons
Bush and Putin Agree to Reduce Stockpile of Nuclear Warheads
U.S. Arsenal: Treaties vs. Nontreaties
New Allies: One Trusts, The Other's Not So Sure
New Rules for Weapons Cuts
British Energy wants to stop N-fuel reprocessing
UK nukes want higher prices for their CO2-free power
Baltic states' courts, nuclear plant worry EU
NUKE WASTE TRANSMUTATION?
Putin Issues New Appeal on Arms Cuts
Uranium leak forces temporary shutdown of nuclear reactor
How far Americans would go to fight terror
Where Warheads Are Made
Federal government to give money to workers
DOE whistle-blower suit delayed again
Wackenhut disappointed by contract rejection
Y-12 safety system gets good review
Bush signs bill giving Hanford $1.82 billion
Hanford project a runner-up in international contest
Bush, Putin Agree to Slash Nuclear Arms
A Familiar Bush Strategy on Disarmament

MILITARY
President approves trials by military
Text of president's military order
Muslim Peacekeepers in Kabul
Power and politics shaping Afghanistan
War takes positive shift; future hinges on diplomacy
Opposition takes over key posts as Taliban retreats
Reclaiming Kabul
Documenting a Death Camp in Nazi Croatia
Two Pakistanis questioned in anthrax connection
Building the ultimate bioweapon
Alaska
Bombings hit unintended target: European opinion
Likud member arrested for arming Palestinians
Seizure Of Kabul Alarms Pakistan
NASA has selected new chief, reports say
U.S. not set to back U.N. force
Peacekeepers Pulling Out of E. Timor
'With or against us' war irks many UN nations
U.N. Seeks Meeting of Afghans to Fill Vacuum in Kabul
Pentagon and press can both do their jobs
Terrorist tribunals allowed
Use of Military Court Divides Legal Experts
U.S. Troops Must Go In
U.S. Jets Target Retreating Taliban
History, Declassified

ENERGY AND OTHER
Bush Orders Increased Emergency Supply of Oil
Navy plans a pilot project to harness the power of ocean waves
OPEC agrees to cut output if other producers do
DRILLING IN THE ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE
As Taliban Withdraws, Relief Workers Return
WTO delegates agree to launch trade talks
Feeling Pressure, Trade Officials Extend Talks in Qatar

POLICE / PRISONERS
States
Administration to divide INS districts
Justice seeks to question 5,000 possible witnesses
Ramsey cites need to share intelligence
After Terror at His Doorstep, Kelly Returns to Police Dept.
Caught by radar?
A Line That Can't Be Moved
Terrorism's Africa link
Freedom fighters or terrorists?
Britain Issues New Evidence of Bin Laden 'Guilt'
North Carolina
All Liberty Fund donations will go to attacks victims
4 Guilty in Fatal 1986 Berlin Disco Bombing Linked to Libya

ACTIVISTS
Environmental Activism
Maine
Victory for the Charleston 5!



-------- NUCLEAR

Today's quotes

Opinion
USA Today
11/14/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/debate.htm

''Security is created not by piles of metal or weapons. It is created by political will of people, nation states and their leaders.'' - Russian President Vladimir Putin, who along with President Bush pledged to slash nuclear arsenals by two-thirds.

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Bush, Putin agree to deep cuts in arsenals

USA Today
11/14/2001
By Laurence McQuillan and Bill Nichols, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-13-bush-putin.htm

WASHINGTON - President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged Tuesday to dramatically cut the nuclear arsenals of both nations by at least two-thirds in the coming decade.

At the White House, Bush called for slashing the U.S. nuclear arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads - prompting Putin to say he will "try to respond in kind."

Later, in a speech at the Russian Embassy, Putin said he is willing to reduce his country's arsenal to roughly the same level as proposed by Bush. He did not give a specific number, however.

Wednesday

Putin stops in Houston for a meeting with former President Bush and a speech at Rice University to business leaders. The Bushes welcome Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, to Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, where they have a chuck-wagon picnic dinner and remain overnight.

Thursday

The presidents meet in private at the Bush ranch. Putin visits a Crawford school and addresses the news media at the nearby Waco, Texas, airport on departure for New York, where he tours the ruins of the World Trade Center and takes questions on a National Public Radio call-in show. The Bushes remain in Crawford for a long weekend.

The United States has 7,013 nuclear warheads; Russia has 5,858.

"This is a new day in the long history of U.S.-Russia relations," Bush said. "The challenge of terrorism makes our close cooperation on all issues more urgent."

Said Putin: "We intend to dismantle, conclusively, the vestiges of the Cold War."

They resume talks today at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Still unresolved are differences over U.S. plans for a missile-defense shield. The two presidents said more discussions were needed on the future of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Bush wants to scrap the treaty because it bans development of a national missile-defense system. Putin considers it a key component for U.S.-Russia stability.

Bush said he will ask Congress to grant Putin's request to lift the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which links U.S.-Russia trade to Russia's commitment to allowing free immigration for Russian Jews.

---

High - Tech Talk About Nuclear Weapons

Associated Press
November 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia-Analysis.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For decades, America's nuclear arsenal and the threat of retaliation has been regarded as the nation's best defense against attacks on its cities and population.

But this doctrine of deterrence didn't prevent terrorists from turning passenger planes into deadly missiles in attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed thousands of people. Nor would the national anti-missile shield being sought by President Bush have stopped those Sept. 11 attacks.

Against the background of low-tech terrorist attacks, Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the scariest weapons known to mankind -- nuclear bombs atop long-range ballistic missiles -- and possible high-tech defenses against them and ways to stop their proliferation.

With the world's attention riveted to the terror attacks, and conventional warfare in Afghanistan, the Bush-Putin talks, which began on Tuesday in Washington and continued Wednesday on Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, seemed somehow out of sync.

But arms control experts said the talks were crucial.

Just because the worst terror attacks on U.S. soil came in low-tech packages and not aboard missiles, or in suitcase bombs, does not rule out an effort by terrorists or hostile nations to mount a nuclear attack in the future, U.S. officials caution.

``Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction,'' Bush said on Tuesday at a joint news conference with Putin at the White House.

Earlier, Bush and Putin agreed to link missile-defense talks to cuts in nuclear arsenals.

On Tuesday, Bush pledged to reduce the United States' long-range nuclear arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads, from roughly 7,000 now. Putin, who has earlier proposed cuts to as low as 1,500 warheads, said he would match the offer. Russia has about 6,000 long-range warheads.

But unlike Bush, who said earlier that he did not favor formal treaties, Putin said he preferred relying on them to codify weapons reductions.

``They haven't figured out the other side of the coin, which is missile defense,'' said Tom Collina, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a public policy group which opposes creating a national missile defense system. ``The Russians are still worried about U.S. deployment of a missile defense system.''

A related issue, Collina said, ``is what's going to happen to those warheads in Russia when they're taken off the missiles? Just having these things in storage is not helpful, and may be less than helpful. ``

In Crawford, Bush and Putin intended to hash out their differences on U.S. plans for a national missile defense and the future of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which prohibits such defenses. ``I'm convinced the treaty is outdated,'' Bush said Tuesday. ``We need to move beyond it.''

Bush would like to proceed with construction next spring at Fort Greely, Alaska, of five silos for interceptor missiles and a command and control testing center -- and to set aside the ABM treaty.

But Putin contends the treaty is a cornerstone for maintaining stability, a position he said ``remains unchanged.'' Still, Putin also signaled flexibility, saying he and Bush would ``continue dialogue and consultations.''

U.S. officials believe that Putin might agree to allow testing to proceed, including construction of the Alaska site, but would oppose any move toward actual deployment.

Even if they can reach an agreement, money and scientific shortcomings threaten to keep the missile-defense program stalled for years.

The technology -- often likened to hitting bullets with other bullets -- is not proven. And Congress, trying to balance multibillion-dollar demands for the war on terrorism with shrinking resources, is showing reluctance to shelling out what analysts say could amount to $60 billion over the next 15 years.

Last week, a House Appropriations subcommittee recommended canceling an expensive infrared satellite radar system that the Pentagon considers an integral missile-defense component.

The Pentagon has had mixed results so far on interceptor tests over the Pacific, with two failures and two successes since 1999. A fifth test that had been scheduled for October was postponed because of mechanical problems.

The administration does not have a timetable for deployment. Even top proponents agree deploying an effective system remains years away, perhaps 2007 at the earliest.

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.

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Bush and Putin Agree to Reduce Stockpile of Nuclear Warheads

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/international/14PREX.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia pledged today to cut their nuclear stockpiles by roughly two-thirds over the next decade, leaving each side with fewer than 2,200 warheads.

But the two nations still seemed far apart on missile defenses, with Mr. Putin resisting American efforts for a quick agreement that would allow Mr. Bush to conduct tests that would violate the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty.

At the start of three days of meetings in Washington and Crawford, Tex., Mr. Bush told Mr. Putin today that the United States would unilaterally reduce its nuclear arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads.

While he did not immediately respond to Mr. Bush's announcement, Mr. Putin stressed in a speech tonight at the Russian Embassy that he, too, planned deep cuts.

"Russia declares and reiterates its readiness to make considerable reductions in strategic arms," he said. "We propose a radical program of further reductions of strategic offensive arms by at least three times, to a minimal level necessary for maintaining strategic balance in the world. We no longer have to intimidate each other to reach agreements."

The cuts suggested by each side, while not in any formal agreement, appeared to mark a milestone in strategic relations between the two countries, swiftly achieving deep weapons cuts that used to take years to negotiate.

Russia's current arsenal contains about 5,800 warheads; the reduction Mr. Putin indicated would cut that to about 1,500. The Russians, who cannot afford to maintain their current nuclear arsenal, have stated that number before.

The Russian president, clearly concerned about verifying cuts and making sure no successor to Mr. Bush reverses course, appeared to insist, however, on written agreements. Russia, he said at the news conference, was "prepared to present all our agreements in a treaty form" - exactly what Mr. Bush wants to avoid.

At the embassy, Mr. Putin reiterated his belief in treaties, while appearing to leave room to agree to let the administration pursue missile tests so long as it does not abandon the ABM treaty outright.

It remained unclear whether the differences reflected a gulf that cannot be bridged, or were part of a choreographed scenario to damp expectations about their meeting in Texas.

In a brief conversation after Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin spoke, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell seemed to acknowledge that the talks on amending the ABM Treaty would take longer than he hoped, and perhaps had hit serious obstacles. He warned against expecting the kind of quick accord that Mr. Putin seemed to hint at in recent days.

"You got the public statement that you are going to get and live with for some time," Secretary Powell said. Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, echoed the sentiment, joining the conversation to say, "Don't expect any particular agreement at a particular time."

Mr. Bush has made no secret of his view that the ABM Treaty - and by implication other arms control treaties - are outdated relics of the cold war. Today, he repeated his distaste for "endless hours of arms control discussions," and suggested that his oral commitment to reduce American arms levels should be sufficient in a new relationship based on trust. With an arch voice, he added, "If we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'd be glad to do that."

Mr. Putin, at the Russian Embassy, took a markedly different tack. "Indeed, today the world is far from having international relations based solely on trust," he said. "That is why it's so important today to rely on the existing foundation of treaties and agreements in the arms control and disarmament areas."

Their first four-hour meeting at the White House seemed somewhat more tense and formal than their last three sessions this year.

Nonetheless, Mr. Bush characterized today's session, the first of a three-day summit meeting, as "a new day in the history of Russian- American relations, a day of progress and a day of hope."

By the time they met with reporters in the East Room this afternoon, the two leaders sought to emphasize that their four meetings this year had turned them from competitors into allies, and they announced steps to tighten economic links and smooth Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization, which China joined last weekend.

Mr. Bush promised to speed through Congress legislation taking Russia and other former Soviet republics off the list of countries that are subject to economic sanctions under the cold-war-era Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was aimed at nations that restricted emigration of Jews and others. "We intend to dismantle conclusively the vestiges of the cold war," Mr. Putin said.

But the show of warmth could not mask the many indications that despite the agreements and a common belief in the need to fight terrorism, the long-awaited meeting here and at the Bush ranch in Crawford on Wednesday and Thursday may fall short of optimistic expectations.

Mr. Putin had talked extensively before his arrival about his willingness to make compromises that might amend the ABM Treaty, or at least find a way around the restrictions that prevent the United States from proceeding with tests of its antimissile systems.

"We have different points of view about the ABM Treaty," Mr. Bush declared after the meeting, though he said the two men planned to discuss it further at the ranch. Other officials said they were unable to resolve impediments that had stymied American and Russian negotiators in long sessions in the last three days.

The United States now has between 6,000 and 7,000 weapons deployed, depending on how the weapons are counted. That is down sharply from more than 15,000 strategic warheads at the height the cold war. The Start II treaty, which has never been fully carried out, mandates cuts to around 3,000 weapons.

But Mr. Bush said his own review of America's nuclear posture, completed last week, had led him to conclude that the United States could eliminate more than two-thirds of its weapons. By giving a range of numbers, rather than one specific figure, he essentially opted not to resolve a dispute with the Pentagon about exactly how many weapons would be required a decade from now.

He also slightly changed the way weapons are counted: A statement issued by the White House referred to operational nuclear weapons - a figure that would seem to exclude the hundreds being refurbished or inspected at any given time.

Not surprisingly, much of the discussion at the White House was dominated by talk of military strategy in Afghanistan, how to contain the Northern Alliance if it continues to sweep south and ousts the Taliban, and how a post-Taliban government could be established in Afghanistan.

The discussion in itself illustrated how far the two countries have traveled since 1989, when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan after a decade of cold war conflict against Afghan warriors financed and armed by the United States.

Today, Mr. Putin suggested that the joint consultation and action of the last two months was a model for a new military relationship, not only with Washington but also with NATO, the organization created to contain the Soviet Union. "We consider that there are opportunities for an entirely new mechanism," Mr. Putin said, that included "joint decision-making, and coordinated action in the area of security and stability."

Mr. Bush agreed that "NATO members and Russia are increasingly allied against terrorism, regional instability and other threats of our age, and NATO must reflect this alliance." But neither leader publicly mentioned the possibility of eventual Russian membership in NATO, something Mr. Putin discussed at their first encounter, in Slovenia earlier this year.

They still had significant divergences over the campaign in Afghanistan.

Mr. Bush warned the Northern Alliance to halt the widely reported executions of wounded and captured Taliban soldiers. Mr. Putin took a different tack, suggesting that the Taliban were getting what they deserved. "We tend to forget now the atrocities by the Taliban," he said.

He suggested that some of the reports of executions by the Northern Alliance in the Kabul area were manufactured, and he noted that the alliance would have little reason to rampage in its traditional strongholds in the north.

The two men moved gingerly on sensitive issues like Russia's military action in Chechnya and Mr. Putin's use of the tax authorities to crack down on some independent - and critical - Russian media.

Instead, the administration convinced Mr. Putin to sign on to a "Russian-American Media Entrepreneurship Dialogue," which they said would involve journalists and media executives in both countries to "explore ways to improve the conditions necessary for media to flourish as a business in Russia." It was cast entirely as a business advisory group, while the White House clearly intended it to focus on press freedom.

"It was as far as they were willing to go," a senior administration official said.

Another statement by the White House concerned American efforts to help Russia improve security for its nuclear material and to dismantle nuclear warheads. Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the White House had modestly cut those funds.

Now, however, officials fear that Russia and other former Soviet republics are the most likely source of smuggled uranium or plutonium that could fall into the hands of terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, who has often discussed his desire to develop nuclear weapons. Today, the administration turned out a listing of how it wanted to expand assistance soon.

Among the most interesting of today's announcements was one on Russia's plans to pass laws necessary to open its economy in coming months, a major step toward qualifying for membership in the World Trade Organization.

---

MILITARY ANALYSIS
U.S. Arsenal: Treaties vs. Nontreaties

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/international/14NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - President Bush did not mention it, but the arms control approach he presented today would undo one of the signal accomplishments of his father's administration: the ban on multiple- warhead missiles based on land.

Throughout the cold war, it was widely assumed that such missiles were particularly destabilizing weapons. NATO was so worried about the Soviet Union's 10-warhead SS-18 that its code name for the missile was Satan, and Reagan administration hard-liners warned darkly that it would be useful for a surprise strike.

Start II, a treaty signed in 1993 by the first Bush administration, banned land-based Mirvs, as the multiple-warhead missiles are known, a move that arms control specialists agreed made the nuclear balance more stable.

But the new Bush administration does not see Russia as a nuclear adversary and, officials say, has no interest in rescuing Start II, which has never taken effect because of disputes about conditions attached by both the United States Congress and the Russian parliament.

By omitting any mention of Start II, the administration signaled that its strategy is to leapfrog over that agreement and move to a more streamlined arrangement in which the United States and Russia separately announce plans for deep cuts.

That means that Start II and its provisions, including the ban on land- based missiles with multiple warheads, becomes an artifact of history, one policymaker said.

Administration officials say there is no need to perpetuate a ban hammered out during the tense days of the cold war. Much of the new American deterrent will be based on submarines, making it almost invulnerable to surprise attack.

But some arms control proponents are critical.

"It means abandoning one of the most hard fought gains for U.S. national security," said Joseph Cirincione, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Multiple warhead missiles are dangerous weapons and will remain in the Russian arsenal long after Putin is gone."

The new administration stance is part of a broad rethinking about arms control that has led the administration to announce reductions in its nuclear arsenal.

In considering how deeply to cut America's nuclear arsenal, President Bush faced a quandary.

The Russians, whose own nuclear force is shrinking by the day because of economic pressures, wanted the United States to reduce the number of warheads to 1,500. But the United States Strategic Command, which oversees American nuclear forces, had been actively resisting such a deep cut, hoping to keep the level at around 2,250 warheads.

Today, Mr. Bush gave them both what they were looking for.

With President Vladimir V. Putin by his side, Mr. Bush announced that the United States would cut the number of its warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 over 10 years, from the current level of more than 6,000.

When Mr. Bush took office, he called for a fresh look at the United States' nuclear posture, taking full account of the end of the cold war competition with the Soviets. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld began a review of the country's nuclear requirements.

Still, there was no consensus on how deep the nuclear cuts should go, particularly because of the hawkish views of Adm. Richard W. Mies, the commander of the Strategic Command, who also resisted the push for deep cuts during the Clinton administration.

While Bush administration officials insist that their review was driven by a hard-headed look at nuclear requirements, no one was oblivious to the foreign policy implications.

A public pledge to slash the number of nuclear arms, officials understood, would help make the case to the Russians, as well as to other Europeans, that the administration's plan to build a missile defense was not part of a drive for strategic dominance.

It might even make the Russians more willing to go along with the administration's plans to conduct antimissile tests. These were not permitted by the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, an accord that is still a bone of contention.

The results of this American promise to cut the arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads over the next decade are significant. It would bring about a two-thirds reduction in the current arsenal. It is also an important advance over Start II, which called for reductions to 3,000 to 3,500 warheads.

"The Bush team are on a positive trend line for the first time toward moving below 2,000 warheads," said Rose Gottemoeller, a senior Energy Department official from the Clinton administration.

Still, the cuts were not as deep as some arms control advocates would have liked. They are only a little lower than the goals President Clinton and President Boris N. Yeltsin set in 1997 - 2,000 to 2,500 warheads each. (The Pentagon assumed that American warheads would be on the high end of that range and Russian warheads would be on the low end.)

In outlining the cuts today, the administration also changed how nuclear weapons are counted, excluding those on submarines and bombers that are being overahuled. This will reduce the count by several hundred weapons without actually eliminating them.

Still, some of the most important shifts had nothing to do with numbers. In addition to quietly walking away from Start II's ban on land- based multiple warhead missiles, the Bush administration says there is no need for formal treaties on offensive nuclear arms.

Instead, the administration's approach is to spell out the reductions the United States is planning while the Russians do the same. The reductions would be verified by provisions for on-site monitoring carried over from Start I, signed in 1991.

Administration officials say that dispensing with treaties will enable them to avoid the lengthy process it takes to negotiate them. But critics say it will also leave the two sides without a solid legal undertaking on nuclear arms that would outlast the Bush and Putin administrations.

Mr. Putin was skeptical as well, saying he was prepared to codify all of the understandings between the United States and the Russians "in treaty form."

Mr. Bush signaled that he did not think that a formal treaty was necessary, but added he would be willing to make a less formal commitment.

"If we need to write it down on piece of paper," he said, "I'd be glad to do that."

---

NEWS ANALYSIS
New Allies: One Trusts, The Other's Not So Sure

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/international/14ASSE.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - Ronald Reagan used to say about arms control agreements with the Soviet Union: "Trust but verify."

President Bush altered that formula today in a joint appearance with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, describing the new relationship with Russia as one based on "cooperation and trust."

This time, it was the Russian leader who insisted on verification. Mr. Putin told Mr. Bush today that he wanted to see a new arms control deal on slashing strategic nuclear weapons in writing. And he refused to agree to alter the Antiballistic Missile Treaty based on mere promises of cuts in the American nuclear arsenal.

The different approaches underscore how the two leaders are struggling to define the boundaries of a fast-evolving relationship after the terror attacks of Sept. 11.

For Mr. Bush, a personal relationship is in full bloom and what he called a "partnership" has already been forged. Today, at a news conference on the first day of their summit meeting, he said relations between the United States and Russia had been "transformationed." And he indicated that for him a gentleman's agreement on arms control would have been enough.

For Mr. Putin, a marriage contract is necessary before he can commit to a similar reduction in his country's weaponry. "We, for our part - for the Russian part - are prepared to present all our agreements in a treaty form, including the issues of verification and control," Mr. Putin said.

In an effort to preserve the spirit of the summit meeting, Mr. Bush said, although a bit testily, "I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand, and if we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do that."

While Mr. Bush said the two countries enjoyed "a new relationship based upon trust and cooperation," Mr. Putin said cautiously, "We need to, and want to, build a new relationship in the 21st century."

Clearly, the events of Sept. 11 shocked the international system and reordered the priorities of both countries, focusing both leaders on their shared goals and future cooperation rather than their disputes.

Immediately after the terror attacks in Washington and New York, Mr. Putin called Mr. Bush to say that Russia was completely with the United States in its moment of crisis. The gesture was reminiscent of one by Mr. Bush's father who, as president, contacted President Mikhail S. Gorbachev immediately after the coup in Moscow in August 1991 to say that the United States was completely with Russia in its moment of crisis.

Since then, Mr. Putin has cooperated enthusiastically with the United States in its war on terrorism. That has won him effusive praise on Capitol Hill, including a recent statement by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that "No Russian leader since Peter the Great has looked as far west as Putin seems to have."

For its part, the United States has canceled a scheduled test of an antiballistic missile system, overlooked Russia's behavior in Chechnya and avoided criticism of a clampdown on the news media.

The question is whether the cooperation in one area will evolve into a new multidimensional relationship. "Putin is determined to modernize his nation and bring it into the Western orbit, while Bush wants to create new strategic realities that transcend cold war arms control constraints," said Toby Gati, who served as a Russia specialist on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

"Under normal circumstances, these separate agendas would compete with each other. But now, there is a common enemy in the fight against international terrorism, providing a framework - for perhaps the first time since World War II - within which shared interests can overcome differences. The question facing both presidents is whether a common danger is enough to spur further, long-term, positive changes."

For the moment, the two presidents are going out of their way to show just how much they like each other. Mr. Bush led Mr. Putin on a tour of the White House and the two will eat beef tenderloin and pecan pie from a chuck wagon when Mr. Putin visits Mr. Bush at his Prairie Chapel ranch in Crawford, Tex.

At the news conference today, Mr. Putin extended an invitation for Mr. Bush to visit Russia "in any format, at any time convenient."

Paradoxically, Mr. Bush, who once accused President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore of overpersonalizing relationships with Russian leaders, now runs the risk of falling into the trap he once warned of. He may learn the hard way that he cannot count on personal diplomacy - even when there is an immediate shared goal - to overcome differences.

Mr. Putin made that clear today, when he stated that Russia had no intention of abandoning its objection to scrapping the 1972 AntiBallistic Missile Treaty that bars national missile defenses. To make such a sweeping concession would be seen back home as a sign of weakness.

"The position of Russia remains unchanged," he said bluntly.

Which proves that while Mr. Bush has already cast his relationship with Mr. Putin far into the future, Mr. Putin, setting limits, is restrained by the past.

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New Rules for Weapons Cuts

New York Times
November 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/opinion/14WED1.html?searchpv=nytToday

The last time American and Russian leaders stepped into the East Room of the White House to initiate a new round of nuclear arms reductions, in 1987, they signed an elaborate, painstakingly negotiated treaty. Yesterday George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin used the same setting to unveil a very different approach. President Bush announced steep cuts in America's nuclear arsenal, which President Putin later in the day said he would match. No legally binding treaties were presented or signed. This new method has its advantages. Legislative action in Washington and Moscow, for example, is not needed. It also has some disadvantages. These include the possibility that either party will simply change its mind.

Although Moscow says it will be matching Washington's cut, without a treaty it is under no legal obligation to do so, and Washington cannot oblige it to carry out its promised reduction. On the American side, Mr. Bush's plan to reduce long- range nuclear weapons by about two-thirds over the next decade can be readily reversed by the next president or even by Mr. Bush himself.

For now, existing arms treaties remain in force, although some, like the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, face an uncertain future. Mr. Bush is keen to change the way Washington and Moscow manage their nuclear relationship. He hopes to replace the familiar system of arms control negotiations with a much simpler process of independent actions anchored by mutual trust and the verbal commitment of national leaders. That may work as long as the two nations have coinciding interests. If those interests diverge, however, there will be no binding accord that requires America and Russia to honor their commitments.

Nevertheless, Mr. Bush's cuts are welcome and overdue. A decade after the end of the cold war, it makes no sense for the United States to maintain nearly 7,000 nuclear weapons on its missiles, submarines and bombers, or for Russia to maintain nearly 6,000. The oversize Russian arsenal is the more dangerous, since decaying Russian technology poses a risk of accident, poor security arrangements invite theft and high maintenance expenses burden Moscow's strained economy. Realistically, steep Russian reductions still depend on equivalent American reductions, and with the Pentagon assuring Mr. Bush that the nation now needs no more than 1,700 to 2,200 long-range nuclear weapons, there was little reason for delay.

The new American reductions are in line with Washington's negotiating objectives in recent years. Nearly nine years ago, a treaty negotiated by Mr. Bush's father and Boris Yeltsin set limits between 3,000 and 3,500 for each country's arsenal. Regrettably, political disputes in both countries have so far kept that agreement from being carried out. During the Clinton years, Washington and Moscow announced plans to negotiate a new treaty to reduce total long-range warheads to somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500.

Moscow has long advertised its desire to see both countries reduce their totals to 1,500 or less, a goal they will now be approaching.

Over the next two days at Mr. Bush's Texas ranch, the two men will tackle the still unresolved issue of the ABM treaty and American missile defense tests. Mr. Putin has made clear he is willing to accommodate future American testing plans if Washington does not walk away from the treaty. President Bush should accept the Russian offer. Existing treaties that have worked well and helped keep the peace for decades should not be needlessly discarded.

-------- britain

British Energy wants to stop N-fuel reprocessing

Story by Matthew Jones
Reuters
14/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13299/story.htm

LONDON - British Energy , the UK's largest power generator, told a parliamentary committee yesterday that reprocessing nuclear fuel from its AGR power stations was uneconomic and should end.

"British Energy is calling for an immediate moratorium on the reprocessing of AGR (Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor) fuel. It is uneconomic and adds to the stockpile of plutonium," a company spokesman told Reuters.

British Energy wants the spent uranium fuel to be stored instead of sending it to state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) for reprocessing at a cost of 300 million pounds a year under contracts set up prior to British Energy's privatisation in 1996.

British Energy argues that storing the spent uranium, a policy favoured by some experts, would not only save it about 250 million pounds a year but also stop the growth of Britain's stockpile of plutonium which results from reprocessing.

British Energy's submission will raise fresh questions about the viability of BNFL which generates around 50 percent of its revenue from reprocessing - the extraction of plutonium from spent uranium fuel rods.

The government says it still intends a partial sell-off of BNFL although no dates have been set.

The first attempt to privatise BNFL was shelved in 2000 following a scandal over falsified nuclear fuel data.

British Energy, which has capacity to supply about 20 percent of the UK's electricity, made the submission to the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

The committee is conducting a review of Britain's radioactive waste policy.

A Parliamentary select committee in 1999 recommended burying radioactive waste in deep underground vaults after a 250 million pound project to do just that failed in 1997 when planning permission from a local council was denied.

----

UK nukes want higher prices for their CO2-free power

Reuters:
14/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13283/story.htm

LONDON - Britain should pay nuclear power generators extra for their electricity in recognition they do not produce greenhouse gases and to make it economic to build new plants, nuclear power companies argued yesterday.

Companies say as nuclear power does not produce greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2), widely blamed for contributing to global warming, they should receive similar incentives to renewable energy generators.

"We need a coherent commitment to a long-term mechanism in the market which will encourage CO2-free forms of electricity generation," Adrian Ham, director general of the British Nuclear Industry Forum told a parliamentary trade and industry committee investigating energy policy.

The committee inquiry coincides with a government review of energy policy which will look at the future for nuclear power.

Nuclear supplies about a quarter of the UK's electricity but this is set to decline in coming years unless new plants are built to replace old ones due to close.

A recent slump in UK electricity prices has made it uneconomic to build new nuclear power stations and, unless the government intervenes, companies will choose to build gas-fired plants, the committee heard.

British Energy , the country's largest generator, said it generated electricity for 1.8 pence/kilowatt hour - on a par with UK forward power prices - but the cost of power from new nuclear power stations was at least 2.2 pence/KWh.

New costs are higher because they include full capital costs whereas British Energy's plants were built by the government and some of the costs were written off on privatisation in 1996.

British Energy said a premium for nuclear power of one pence/KWh would bridge the gap between power prices and new plant costs, and add a 0.25 pence/KWh to consumers' bills.

"This compares to the extra cost of 0.75 pence for renewables. Renewables have a much higher cost for consumers than nuclear," Mike Kirwan, director of strategy and business development at British Energy, told the hearing.

The government, keen to boost the green energy sector, has introduced rules from next year obliging electricity suppliers to buy a certain amount of power from renewable sources.

Nuclear companies also called on the government to make a decision quickly on whether to allow them to build new plants, saying slow planning procedures mean it can take up to 10 years from deciding to build a plant to it coming on line.

Britain's other nuclear generator, state-owned BNFL, operates the ageing Magnox plants and has already started closing its plants and will switch off the last one in 2021, leaving only British Energy's more modern plants running.

-------- europe

Baltic states' courts, nuclear plant worry EU

14/11/2001
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13288/story.htm

RIGA - The European Union pressed the Baltic states - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - yesterdayto bring their ex-Soviet judicial systems to EU standards as part of their efforts to join the bloc as early as 2004.

In its annual report on preparedness to join the union, the European Commission, the EU's executive, said court cases needed to be dealt with more quickly.

In particular, it said the problem was a "serious concern" in Latvia, where backlogs had crowded jails with defendants awaiting their day in court.

"The situation continues to be especially serious for juveniles, who constitute 70 percent of the pre-trial detainees," the Latvia report said.

"The length of pre-trial detention for juveniles is not always in conformity with international standards."

It also said it had concerns about pre-trial detentions in Lithuania. In Estonia, progress had been made to shorten the duration of pre-trial imprisonment, but ill-treatment and use of punishment cells remained "issues of concern".

Despite the criticism, the Commisison praised all three for progress in judicial, economic and other areas, doing little to suggest they would fail to end entry talks in 2002 as planned.

But the Commission reminded Lithuania it must make a final decision on the closure of its Chernobyl-style nuclear power plant before it can conclude membership negotiations.

The EU considers Lithuania's Ignalina atomic plant a safety concern because it was built on the same design as Ukraine's ill-fated Chernobyl plant - site of the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster in 1986.

Under pressure from Brussels, Vilnius agreed to close the first of its two reactors before 2005. The EU has strongly suggested a 2009 deadline for shutting the second.

-------- japan

NUKE WASTE TRANSMUTATION?
Japanese Scientists Corroborate Nuclear Waste Remediation Technology Owned by Nuclear Solutions, Inc.

Wed, Nov 14 9:03 AM EST
BUSINESS WIRE
http://news.excite.com/news/bw/011114/id-nuclear-solutions
From: "Jim Hoerner" <jim_hoerner@hotmail.com>

MERIDIAN, Idaho - Independent research conducted by a consortium of five Japanese organizations confirms the viability of photonuclear transmutation for nuclear waste remediation, Nuclear Solutions, Inc. announced today.

Nuclear Solutions is engaged in the development of a photonuclear-based system for transmutation of nuclear waste and safe, clean generation of electricity.

It has come to my attention that some people, and now myself included, are skeptical of this company's claim. Indeed, at an international free energy, ahem, future energy conference, the VP supposedly did the unrelated demonstration described below.

http://www.mv.com/ipusers/zeropoint/IEHTML/FEATURE/FEATR/cofe1.html

Next came Dr. Paul M. Brown of Nuclear Solutions, LLC, who talked about "Betavoltaic Batteries." These are nuclear batteries that convert energy from a beta source, such as tritium, into electrical power. Dr. Brown's talk was lucid and intriguing, until he got to the theory part, which reflected some confusion about just what energy it is that's being converted. One battery described has as its source of power a strontium-90 sample, good for about 30 milliwatts of output as reckoned by the kinetic energy of the beta particle (electron) emissions. However, the battery itself, which employs passive components, puts out 75 watts of AC electrical power. Brown's explanation accounts for this "extra energy" by suggesting that not only is the emission energy from the nuclear expulsion of beta particles reclaimed, but also the magnetic field energy associated with the moving charged particle. But in conventional analysis, the emission energy is supposed to include the field energy, so the 30-milliwatt figure given for the radioactive source is supposed to be the whole shebang, kinetic energy and field energy combined.

Jim Hoerner

-------- russia

Putin Issues New Appeal on Arms Cuts

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-summit-arms.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin issued a fresh appeal to proceed quickly with cuts in nuclear arsenals after differences emerged on arms issues at White House summit talks with President Bush.

Putin told academics and businessmen at the Russian embassy on Tuesday evening that he had ``no doubt that we will secure the understanding of the United States'' in moving ahead with the reductions long proposed by Moscow.

``Today's meeting with President Bush confirmed it. That's why Russia is declaring its readiness to proceed with significant reductions in its strategic weaponry,'' he said.

``That's why we today propose a radical program of further reductions of strategic weapons to at least one third of current levels, to the minimum level necessary to maintain strategic balance in the world.''

Putin sought reliance on ``the existing foundation of disarmament treaties'', a new allusion to Moscow's call to uphold the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile pact. Bush wants to abandon ABM treaty to build a missile shield against ``rogue states''.

Putin's proposals broke no new ground as Moscow, unable to maintain a large post-Soviet arsenal, has sought a level of 1,500 warheads for each side. Washington has roughly 7,000 deployed strategic warheads against Moscow's 6,000.

Putin is to make another address on Wednesday at Houston's Rice University in Bush's home state of Texas. He then heads for an overnight stay at the president's 1,600-acre ranch in central Texas.

Bush had earlier proposed paring the U.S. stockpile to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads over the next decade, an offer Putin said Moscow would ``try to respond to in kind.'' But the Russian president gave no precise figures.

The Russian side also appeared reticent over Bush's contention that no new treaty was needed to entrench the cuts.

Bush said new arms control pacts were obviated by improved ties, embodied by Russian backing for the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan in retaliation for September's hijack attacks on the United States.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Moscow viewed such agreements as vital to international stability.

``Of course, we will cut levels in any event. There is no point keeping offensive weapons in amounts which cannot be justified,'' Ivanov told reporters at the embassy.

``But we have always stood for making the system work more reliably by putting it in a full agreement. This is not because someone doesn't trust someone else. On the contrary, it is meant to reinforce the links of trust.''

Ivanov said details had to be elaborated on whether arms would be destroyed or taken out of service. He also wanted further evidence on why Washington wanted to abandon ABM.

``No one has yet said what is outmoded or just what hurts one side or other in terms of national security,'' he said.

-------- sweden

Uranium leak forces temporary shutdown of nuclear reactor

Wednesday, November 14, 2001
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11142001/ap_45575.asp

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - One of Sweden's 11 nuclear reactors will shut down for repairs at the end of next week because of a uranium leak, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Claes-Goeran Falk, a spokesman at the Oskarshamn plant, said the leak was minor and the public was not at risk. Falk said the repairs would take about a week and were needed to prevent a stoppage later in the winter season.

Small amounts of uranium may have been leaking from the fuel rods into the reactor water since August, Falk said. Plant officials thought repairs could wait until next summer's annual system overhaul, but the leak increased gradually, he said.

"It's hardly measurable," Falk said. "The risk is that the water spreads the contamination into pipes throughout the system," Falk said.

The Oskarshamn plant, 250 kilometers (150 miles) south of the capital, Stockholm, shut down another of its three reactors for nine days in August for a similar problem. The plant is one of four nuclear generating facilities in Sweden and provides 10 percent of the country's electricity.

Swedish voters decided in a 1980 referendum to phase out nuclear power, but so far only one reactor at the southwestern Barsebaeck plant has been closed.

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

How far Americans would go to fight terror
In a gauge of public values, a majority supports assassination - and 1 in 4 even backs use of nuclear arms.

Christian Science Monitor
November 14, 2001
By Abraham McLaughlin mclaughlina@csps.com
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1114/p1s3-usju.html

WASHINGTON - Americans' support for the war on terrorism is so firmly rooted that a solid majority would now back the assassination of foreign leaders to achieve victory.

A new Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll shows sizeable segments of the public support other "taboos," too: One in 3 could accept government-sanctioned torture of suspects. One in 4 could envision a scenario in which they'd back use of nuclear weapons.

The findings indicate how far sentiment has shifted, especially from the 1970s, when the CIA was denounced for helping to plot assassinations of foreign leaders. More telling, they reveal a nation struggling to reconcile two prominent facets of the American character: a deep respect for human rights versus a historical imperative to be safe and free from fear, at almost any cost.

"The American soul is in turmoil," says Wade Clark Roof, chairman of the religious studies department at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Attacks like those on Sept. 11 are akin to "primitive warfare between tribes," tending to elicit "a forthright, aggressive response," he says. Yet, over time, that reaction tends to be tempered by a more-reasoned approach.

"Most Americans," says Mr. Roof, "still feel caught in the middle."

The depth of commitment to this war, though, does not mean the events of Sept. 11 created a warmonger nation. Even if the terrorist attack untethered an American impulse to strike back, the Monitor/TIPP survey still finds wide disdain for use of chemical or biological weapons, for instance. Gaps exist, too, over what constitutes an acceptable tactic, with the biggest divide between men and women.

Among those who would back the previously unthinkable, the portent of their answer is not lost. "I'd hate to use nuclear weapons," says Judith, a computer programmer and mother of three in Cordova, Tenn., who asked that her last name be withheld. But "if there weren't any children involved, and it was the only way to kill terrorists, then, yes." Likewise with assassinations: "If it's going to stop all the terrorism," she could accept it.

Not surprisingly, the survey found strong support for President Bush's performance in fighting terrorism, with 82 percent calling it "excellent" or "good."

But 87 percent also agreed on this point: If Afghanistan's Taliban government is toppled, but Osama bin Laden and his top aides aren't captured or killed, the US will have failed in its first objective of the war. That clear idea of what constitutes victory may eventually pose a problem for the Bush administration, which has recently begun asserting that its goal is the fall of the Taliban and not necessarily the elimination of Mr. bin Laden.

In presenting four extreme scenarios, the poll provides a gauge for measuring how serious Americans are about winning. The most acceptable: assassinations, with 60 percent saying they "could envision a scenario in which they would support" the tactic; 35 percent could not.

In 1981, by contrast, a Gallup poll found that 82 percent said they could never support political assassinations. That was after a decade of widespread criticism of the CIA for promoting that tactic in Central and South America - and President Ford's 1976 executive order banning US involvement in political assassinations.

Indeed, lack of historical perspective may be one reason younger people are more accepting of government-sanctioned assassinations: Support among 18- to 24-year-olds is 65 percent, compared with 56 percent among those 65 and over.

"I think you have to take these people out," says Keith Malinak, a 20-something Texan, about terrorism supporters like Iraq's Saddam Hussein. He knows there may be consequences. "If that means a wider war, that means a wider war," he says with a resigned air. But "this country has a history of doing what's necessary to win wars."

One difference between the 1980s and today is a more concrete threat. "We disapprove of assassinations in principle," but when a specific opponent - such as bin Laden - becomes sufficiently menacing, "we approve of it right away," says Sheldon Appleton, a political scientist at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich. It's the tension, he says, between maintaining high principles and wanting to protect ourselves.

Yet even today, not everyone is convinced: 53 percent of women and 68 percent of men back assassinations - a 15-point spread. Also, 54 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans could support them.

Next on the most-acceptable list is torture of suspects, which 32 percent support.

Finally, 27 percent could support using nuclear weapons, compared with just 10 percent for use of chemical or biological weapons - even though nuclear weapons are typically far more destructive. Observers attribute the gap to the menacing image of biological and chemical weapons - as used by Saddam Hussein in Iraq or in the recent anthrax attacks here. Nuclear weapons, by contrast, are a more distant memory, having been used in the 1940s in the US attacks on Japan that killed about 200,000 people.

Debates over all the tactics represent a national soul-searching over how to fight a just war.

The question for a nation defending itself and its Western ideals is: "How do you get a good result to come out of a bad thing - war?" says Michael Birkner, a historian at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. "We have to weigh it all, and ask, 'Do the ends justify the means?' "

Seth Stern contributed to this report.

---

THE NUCLEAR JUNKYARD
Where Warheads Are Made, and Where a Good Pair of Pliers Can Put Them to Rest

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By JAMES GLANZ and DENNIS OVERBYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/international/14DISM.html?searchpv=nytToday

Experts on nuclear arms are uncertain how many weapons would actually be dismantled under President Bush's proposal and how many simply placed in some kind of storage, where they would no longer be "operationally deployed," in his words.

But American weapons destined for destruction will end up at the Pantex plant near the Texas panhandle town of Amarillo, the place where warheads are made and where they go to die. The plant, a place of concrete bunkers surrounded by razor wire and patrolled by guards armed with machine guns, has been taking apart thousands of decommissioned weapons for decades.

The final resting place for the plutonium "pits," or nuclear cores, of the disassembled bombs, is less clear. So far, they have simply been stockpiled at Pantex.

The United States has produced about 100 tons of plutonium, the prime fuel for thermonuclear bombs, said David Albright, a defense expert who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

About 32 tons of this is in the 10,000 warheads in the present arsenal. Another 15 tons reside in some 5,000 bomb cores that are stored as a strategic reserve at Pantex.

About 38 tons of weapons-grade plutonium at Pantex has been declared surplus under an agreement with Russia and is scheduled to be converted to a form called mixed- oxide (MOX) fuel to be burned in reactors. But a proposed plant to do the conversion in Savannah River, S.C., has not yet been built. Most of the rest of the plutonium is spent reactor fuel and other non-weapons- grade plutonium.

Russia is thought to have produced about 130 tons of plutonium, Mr. Albright said.

When a weapon is to be dismantled, its warhead is separated from the missile or other delivery system before being sent to Pantex. There, the pits and other parts containing uranium are separated in bunkerlike assembly lines. The pits are stored there in enclosures resembling giant igloos, said Robert S. Norris, a researcher and analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"Literally you are taking out a screwdriver and a pliers and a clippers and you are taking it apart in the reverse process of putting it together," Mr. Norris said.

Dismantling warheads has been going on a long time. "They don't last forever," Mr. Albright said, and the material is often recycled into newer designs.

He estimated that the United States has already dismantled 50,000 weapons. From 1990 to 1997, 10,482 warheads were disassembled at Pantex, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Until 1997 the company dismantled slightly over 1,000 a year; but accidents and other delays that year, the last for which numbers are available, cut the figure in half.

There are many components to a warhead, including high explosives, toxic chemicals, electronics packages, and various radioactive materials, including plutonium.

Mr. Albright said that warheads could also contain explosive switches or security devices that would disable the warhead if the wrong person tampered with it. Typically, the high explosives are burned, and the electronics are smashed, Mr. Albright said. The highly enriched uranium is trucked to Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee. That uranium can be used as fuel in Navy nuclear reactors, Mr. Albright said.

The disposition of plutonium is a worry, say nuclear experts who fear that it could be diverted to produce weapons for terrorists or other states like Iraq. "The warhead is easier to protect than fissile material," Mr. Albright said.

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

-------- colorado

Federal government to give money to workers diseased by uranium exposure

Wednesday, November 14, 2001
By Nancy Lofholm,
The Denver Post
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11142001/krt_45579.asp

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. - Wayne Hill was front and center, proudly sporting a brand-new Colorado Uranium Workers Council cap, when U.S. Justice Department officials came to town last week.

Forty years after he hauled uranium ore from mines to mills in the Four Corners area and just months after his latest round of radiation and chemotherapy for lung and brain cancer, Hill is smiling because he is one of 5,123 former uranium workers who have received a piece of paper from the Justice Department telling them they have been approved for compensation.

Hill's letter tells him that he'll soon be getting a check for $100,000 for the illnesses he has suffered as a result of his work during the Cold War. Hill, 70, is one of the lucky ones, even though he had been waiting for that approval for nearly two years. He almost died several times during that wait. Many others have died waiting.

"I don't think people realize how hard that waiting is. You think he is going to die before he gets it," said Hill's wife, Lucille, who was next to him at the meeting.

There were more than a few satisfied uranium workers or widows and children of those workers who came out Thursday night to hear the latest updates on the Radiation Compensation Exposure Act in a Grand Junction meeting that had been delayed several times by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"We're doing our level best," said Jerry Fischer, director of the radiation-exposure compensation program for the Justice Department, after he spent two hours answering questions about payments. "I know some people have had claims pending for a long time, but we're doing our best. People have seen some evidence of progress."

The compensation program was initially approved in 1990 and amended in July 2000 to increase the one-time compensation amounts from $50,000 to $100,000 and to expand the coverage to some previously excluded workers, such as millers and haulers, such as Hill. The expansion of the program resulted in 250 to 400 claims per week flowing into the Justice Department, rather than the 24 to 40 per week the department used to receive.

More than 4,000 new claims have been sent in since the act was amended. More than $359 million worth of those claims have been approved so far.

Questions at the meeting illustrated why many others have been delayed and snarled in red tape. Records have been difficult to access: Many of the uranium subcontracting companies no longer exist. Some paid in cash, so there are no government employment records. Old medical records and X-rays have been just as difficult to find in many cases, according to Becky Rockwell, a Durango private investigator who specializes in helping claimants find the records they need.

Even with the records, some uranium workers don't qualify because they don't have specified types of cancer. The government has approved differing lists of cancers and a few nonmalignant diseases for each type of exposure: above ground, underground, or in the vicinity of atom bomb tests.

Funding has also been a pervasive problem. The trust fund set aside for the compensation payments was depleted in 2001, and the Justice Department had to send out IOUs. Most of those claims were eventually paid under an emergency appropriation.

The department is still waiting on its fiscal 2002 budget and may run short again. "The last thing we want to do is send out IOUs again," Fischer said. "If we do it, we will be able to communicate to people that their claim has been approved."

Uranium workers now face one more hurdle in this compensation process: anthrax. In the past several weeks, the compensation program mail - including claims and documents relating to claims - has been cut off because of the anthrax cases in Washington.

-------- kentucky

DOE whistle-blower suit delayed again
The Justice Department still hasn't decided whether to join the 1999 suit against previous operators of the gaseous diffusion plant.

Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky
Wednesday, November 14, 2001
By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2001/nn11467.htm

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked for its eighth extension in deciding whether to join a whistle-blower lawsuit against Lockheed Martin Corp. and predecessors that operated the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

The suit claims the companies filed false environmental reports. At stake are hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses paid to Lockheed for meeting environmental milestones the suit claims were never met.

The suit was filed in June 1999 by the Natural Resources Defense Council; Thomas Cochran, nuclear program director for the council; and Paducah plant workers Charles Deuschele, Garland Jenkins and Ronald Fowler. Lockheed operated the plant for the U.S. Department of Energy.

The delay could be another indication the government and plaintiffs are trying to reach a settlement, although a Lockheed Martin spokesman downplays the possibility.

Justice investigators have reviewed thousands of pages of documents and conducted on-site investigations to determine the validity of the claims. Justice's involvement would add the full resources of the federal government to pursue the claims in court.

The latest deadline expired Monday, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Campbell has filed a motion asking U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley Jr. to extend the deadline to Feb. 15, 2002. The plaintiffs and defendants agreed to the extension, according to Campbell's motion.

Campbell was not available Tuesday, but said previously settlement talks with Lockheed Martin were one reason for past delays. Campbell said in the motion that Lockheed lawyers "have expressed a desire to meet" with Department of Justice attorneys, and the parties "believe that further discussions will be useful."

Plaintiff attorney Joseph Egan said that as the delays continue, the plaintiffs are continuing to find records and documents to strengthen their case.

In August, Campbell said he forwarded a recommendation to Attorney General John Ashcroft regarding the government's involvement. Sources at that time said government investigators found sufficient evidence to warrant intervention. But the same sources said the Department of Energy disagreed and felt the government should not get involved.

Egan said the plaintiffs will continue the case, even without the government's help. "Every extension of time has provided a wealth of new evidence that has aided our case," Egan said. "It has allowed us to uncover a vast amount of new information that is relevant to our claims."

He also hinted another whistle-blower suit could be filed. "We found enough new material recently that we are considering a whole new case," he said. "I'm not allowed to discuss what we found and what the case would involve."

If Lockheed Martin is ordered to repay funds to the government, or if there is an out of court settlement, those who filed the suit would receive up to 25 percent of the proceeds.

Egan said previously that most of the money received by the plaintiffs would be used to support the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental watchdog agency.

One new element that one source said could entice Lockheed to settle is that Lockheed recently was awarded a $200 billion defense contract to build new fighter jets for the military. Some on Capitol Hill have objected to the contract, the largest ever by the Defense Department, and want the work divided among several companies.

If the government gets involved in a suit claiming Lockheed falsified records while operating the Paducah plant, political opponents could use leverage to discredit Lockheed and force a change in the contract, the source speculated.

James Fetig, chief spokesman for Lockheed, said the fighter jet contract is not a factor in the Paducah case.

"We have been cooperating with the government throughout the course of their investigation," Fetig said. "There have been no negotiations for a settlement, nor do we anticipate any. We don't believe there is any basis for the suit in the first place."

Egan would not comment on settlement negotiations. He said in an interview last summer that a settlement figure was being discussed by Department of Justice attorneys. He would not reveal the figure, but said if the case goes to court, the potential cost for Lockheed "is in the hundreds of millions of dollars."

He also declined to comment when asked if Lockheed might be encouraged to settle in order to prevent the suit from becoming an issue in the fighter jet contract.

Egan expressed optimism this will be the government's final extension request.

Martin Marietta and its subsidiaries began operating the Paducah plant in 1984, merging with Lockheed in 1994 to form Lockheed Martin, and continued to operate until 1999 when the uranium enrichment operations were formally taken over by the United States Enrichment Corp.

-------- tennessee

Wackenhut disappointed by contract rejection

Oak Ridger
Wednesday, November 14, 2001
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/111401/new_1114010047.html

Despite an unapproved union contract, the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge security provider maintains the local facilities will remain secure.

"We're disappointed," says Lynn Calvert, senior vice president and general manager of Wackenhut Services Inc. in Oak Ridge, regarding the International Guards Union of America's vote Monday night not to approve a new five-year contract.

Calvert said Wackenhut feels the contract offered the guards an "excellent package," adding that he thought negotiations with the union were going well. Around 331 security guards working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Federal Building and the Y-12 National Security Complex are affected by the deal.

However, union officials issued a press release earlier this week citing some inadequacies with the contract, including protection for short-term disability. As of this morning, those officials had not returned calls for comment.

The union voted on the contract Monday night with 93 percent of its eligible voters rejecting the deal. In a separate vote, a proposal affecting 33 ORNL officers was approved by their membership.

The current contracts are set to expire before the end of the year.

"No matter what happens," Calvert said, "We will make sure these facilities are protected."

Calvert pointed out that Wackenhut's guards are currently doing a lot of overtime to sustain the heightened state of security implemented following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Wackenhut is in the process of hiring additional guards. It is rumored that at least 100 extra guards could be added at Y-12, though that figure could not be confirmed.

---

Y-12 safety system gets good review

Oak Ridger
Wednesday, November 14, 2001
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/111401/new_1114010020.html

BWXT Y-12 has successfully implemented the Integrated Safety Management System, according to a recent review by the Department of Energy.

The system is a process that incorporates safety into management and work practices at all levels, addressing all types of work and all types of hazards, to ensure safety for the workers, the public and the environment.

A 12-person team representing DOE headquarters spent a week and a half looking at a broad range of management activities and work practices including fire protection, chemical safety, project management, environmental management and hazard identification. The team noted that it had found "significant improvement overall."

In June, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board had urged DOE to make safety improvements at Y-12. The independent federal agency indicated inadequate attention had been paid to the storage of hazardous materials, maintenance needs and fire prevention.

When announcing the team's findings this morning, John Mitchell, president and general manager of BWXT Y-12, said the Integrated Safety Management verification is a major step forward for Y-12.

"It is a clear recognition of the tremendous efforts by all Y-12 employees to make safety our first priority and to reflect this in our management processes and our everyday activities," Mitchell said. "The focus of our continuous improvement efforts to fully incorporate ISM into every facet of our company is making a significant difference in the way Y-12 is now and will be in the future."

Mitchell also pointed out that the assessment team left BWXT Y-12 with some "very focused and very effective suggestions" on how the company can improve the Integrated Safety Management System in the future and "stay on the path to continuous improvement."

BWXT Y-12 officially took over as Y-12's manager on Nov. 1, 2000.

Besides Y-12, safety concerns have been a lingering problem at DOE's other Oak Ridge facilities.

Recently, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board pointed out that several Integrated Safety Management System-related deficiencies have yet to be remedied despite the fact that DOE pointed them out to Bechtel Jacobs Co. over a year ago. Bechtel Jacobs is in charge of nuclear cleanup activities at facilities under the jurisdiction of DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office, including the Oak Ridge K-25 site.

Last week, DOE halted cleanup activities at K-25 because of deficiencies in several key safety documents.

-------- washington

Bush signs bill giving Hanford $1.82 billion

Wed, Nov 14, 2001
By John Stang Herald staff writer
Tri-City Herald
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/1114-1.html

President Bush signed a federal bill Monday that provides money to keep Hanford cleanup strategies on track through next fall.

The energy and water appropriations bill earmarks $7.13 billion to the Department of Energy's nationwide nuclear cleanup efforts, including $1.82 billion to Hanford. Originally, the administration wanted $6.33 billion for national cleanup and $1.4 billion for Hanford.

The president's action means Bechtel National Inc., lead contractor for the biggest part of the cleanup work, can proceed with its work through the current fiscal year, which ends next October.

Bechtel has added about 1,500 engineers and other workers to its payroll since March, when it took over the project to encapsulate nuclear wastes in glass logs.

The administration previously argued with congressional efforts to increase the cleanup money but did not protest the final amounts.

"This year's budget process did not begin well when the administration's budget recommendations included reductions in nuclear waste cleanup funding. This proposal was unacceptable and was rejected by Congress," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.

"Congress' support for full cleanup funding has prevailed, and the federal government's legal, contractual and moral cleanup obligations will be met at Hanford," he added.

Hastings and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., led caucuses of representatives and senators from states with DOE sites to push for increased cleanup funding.

Hanford's allocation includes $690 million to pay the 2002 bill for building the tank waste glassification complex. Originally, the administration wanted to underfund the glassification project by spending $500 million.

Although the energy and water appropriations bill calls for a total of $1.82 billion for Hanford, DOE traditionally tweaks and juggles Congress' allocations to each site after the president signs the appropriations bill each year.

In slightly more than three months, Hanford's budget debate begins again for fiscal 2003, when Bush unveils his federal budget request to Congress.

Currently, DOE is in the final stages of reviewing its cleanup programs to see if it wants to accelerate cleanup in some cases. That review is to be done by Dec. 31 and likely will affect the 2003 budget request.

----

Hanford project a runner-up in international contest

Wed, Nov 14, 2001
By the Herald staff
Tri-City Herald
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/1114-3.html

A Hanford project was one of two runners-up for the Project Management Institute's International Project of the Year award for 2001.

CH2M Hill Hanford Group's successful effort to neutralize a thickening, rising crust of radioactive wastes in central Hanford's Tank SY-101 and then removing the wastes was one of the three finalists in the competition. Construction of an aluminum smelter project in Mozambique won first place.

Past winners included the 2000 removal of Oregon's Trojan reactor vessel, which ended up stored at central Hanford, and the 1998 Mars Pathfinder project.

-------- us nuc politics

Bush, Putin Agree to Slash Nuclear Arms

By Karen DeYoung and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 14, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24766-2001Nov13.html

President Bush announced yesterday that the United States will reduce its arsenal of deployed nuclear warheads by more than two-thirds over the next decade, turning one of the final pages in the Cold War history of the last half-century.

In a speech last night at the Russian Embassy, President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow would reciprocate with similar cuts, bringing the level of nuclear weapons the two countries have targeted at each other down to a level not seen since the 1960s.

The announcements were a stark contrast to the months, and sometimes years, of negotiations that have long marked arms control agreements between the Soviet Union and the United States. Although both Washington and Moscow had let it be known they were contemplating unilateral reductions, and the subject has been discussed on a ministerial level between the two governments for months, yesterday's announcements seemed finally to shatter the arms control stalemate of the past decade.

They followed three hours of meetings at the beginning of a three-day summit between the two presidents that marked what a joint statement they issued called "a new relationship . . . founded on a commitment to the values of democracy, the free market and the rule of law. The United States and Russia have overcome the legacy of the Cold War. Neither country regards the other as an enemy or threat."

Speaking at a White House news conference yesterday afternoon with Putin at his side, Bush said, "The current levels of our nuclear forces do not reflect today's strategic realities." Dropping the number of deployed warheads from their current total near 7,000 to between 1,700 and 2,200, he said, would leave "a level fully consistent with American security."

In his reciprocal announcement several hours later, Putin gave no specific numbers but told an invited embassy audience, "We no longer have to intimidate each other to reach agreements. Security is created not by piles of metal or weapons. It is created by political will of people, nation-states and their leaders."

At the peak of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union each had at least 10,000 nuclear weapons. But as Bush said yesterday at their joint appearance, the world they face today is far different from the one faced by any of their predecessors. The two are working closely together "to meet new 21st-century threats," even as they are "working hard to put the threats of the 20th century behind us once and for all," Bush said.

Despite the momentous announcements, questions of Cold War nuclear weaponry seemed almost peripheral to the pressing issues of international terrorism and the rapidly moving situation in Afghanistan. That emphasis served to overshadow the fact that, to the extent they discussed their nuclear arsenals at all, Bush and Putin encountered ongoing areas of disagreement as well as accord.

The administration had hoped that Putin would accept what amounts to a fig leaf behind which the two could conceal their differences of opinion on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Russia wants to continue in force and the administration has disdained as an obsolete impediment to its plans for a missile defense system.

But it seemed clear that, even with two more days of discussion continuing today at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., Putin was not prepared to accept a deal under which the United States would refrain from formally withdrawing from the treaty in return for Russian acquiescence to continued U.S. testing of missile defense components. Questions of actual deployment of a missile defense system -- which all agree falls outside the ABM confines -- would be deferred for later discussions.

"There are issues still to be resolved, otherwise they would have said something" at the news conference, an administration official said. "The whole tone of this summit is not being confrontational about these issues. Everybody has downplayed the significance of agreement on the missile defense issue, and agreed not to make a big deal of it" if, as now seems likely, no agreement is reached.

On the question of cuts in nuclear arsenals, Putin had previously signaled his intent to cut the number of Russian warheads down to 1,500 or less, a planned reduction that has as much to do with the country's inability to maintain and guard the weapons as it does with strategic outreach to Washington.

Putin also indicated yesterday he was not prepared to accept whatever the administration offered in terms of verification of new weapons levels, unless it was on paper. "We are prepared to present all our agreements in treaty form, including the issues of verification and control," he said at the news conference.

"A new relationship based upon trust and cooperation is one that doesn't need endless hours of arms control discussions," Bush countered amiably. " . . . My attitude is, here's what we can live with. And so I've announced a level that we're going to stick by. To me, that's how you approach a relationship that is changed, and different."

"I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand, and if we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do that," Bush said. "But that's what our government is going to do over the next 10 years."

The administration's decision to reduce its nuclear weaponry, and the terms under which it will do it, does not depend on Russian reciprocation or agreement on verification procedures. At the same time, the United States had made clear its determination move forward on missile defense, beyond the confines of the ABM Treaty, whether Moscow agrees or not.

In the best of all possible worlds, an administration official said yesterday, what the White House considers an "evolutionary process" of talks would result in Russia seeing things the U.S. way.

But while that process evolves, there are other issues to talk about. Senior administration officials said discussions yesterday morning were dominated by the startling takeover of Kabul, the Afghan capital, by the U.S.- and Russian-backed Northern Alliance opposition. In their news conference, Bush hastened to emphasize Northern Alliance promises that it would not permanently occupy the city before a government representing all Afghan ethnic and tribal groups could be organized.

Both leaders said they were concerned about reports of human rights abuses by the alliance forces against suspected members and sympathizers of the Taliban militia left behind as the bulk of that force fled the city overnight, although Bush seemed somewhat more concerned than Putin.

"We will continue to work with the Northern Alliance commanders to make sure they respect the human rights of the people that they are liberating," Bush said. "We are particularly mindful of the need for us to work with our Northern Alliance friends to treat people with respect."

For his part, Putin said he found such reports "difficult . . . to imagine" and said that the international media reporting on the liberation of Afghan cities should "pay attention to" the jubilation the Afghan people are showing at their liberation from the Taliban.

Aides said that in their private meetings, Putin told Bush of the importance of completing the mission in Afghanistan. Bush replied, "Until the al Qaeda is brought to justice, we're not leaving."

In one of a flurry of pieces of paper issued after the news conference to document their "joint understandings," the two leaders agreed to place "considerable priority" on accelerating Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization.

They also vowed to redouble efforts to prevent the proliferation of biological weapons, pledging to increase security and controls of biological material in Russia and dismantling infrastructure once used for biological weapons. In addition, Putin and Bush promised to expand commercial ties.

Bush also agreed that he would press Congress to make permanent the perennial presidential waiver of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment that restricts trade with countries that inhibit free emigration. Although the amendment, originally passed as a protest against Soviet prohibitions against Jewish departures to Israel, has not been applied for years, the fact that it remains on the books has long riled Moscow.

During the news conference, both presidents approvingly referred to the informality of their relationship, with Putin describing a tour Bush gave him to look at White House art. In the Oval Office, Bush took time to describe the Texas landscape paintings to Putin, who then asked, "Where are the Texas people?"

Bush replied, "I'm a Texas person."

Aides said Bush, who during the two leaders' first meeting in Slovenia in June said he had looked into Putin's soul and determined he could trust the Russian, yesterday told Putin: "You're the kind of guy I like to have in a foxhole with me."

Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.

--------

Analysis
A Familiar Bush Strategy on Disarmament

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 14, 2001; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24574-2001Nov13.html

Ten years ago this fall, President George Bush broke with military orthodoxy by announcing historic deep unilateral cuts in nuclear arms and was rewarded a week later when the Soviet Union matched him.

Now the son has taken a page from the father's playbook. Abandoning the cumbersome construct of formal negotiations and treaties, President Bush has decided to head down the path to disarmament based on nothing more than a handshake. With Russian President Vladimir Putin promising to reciprocate "in kind," the world will be rid of 8,000 nuclear warheads.

Bush's decision to slash the U.S. strategic arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads over the next 10 years, and the Russian response, reinvigorate a disarmament process that had largely stalled out in the decade since the end of the Cold War. Although no longer locked in a geopolitical death struggle, Washington and Moscow failed throughout the 1990s to transform their new relationship into a strategic balance reflecting the imperatives of the new era. President Bill Clinton left office without enacting a treaty eliminating a single nuclear weapon.

"Bush finally came up with a formula to push us out of the dead end we'd gotten into at the end of the Clinton administration," said Rose Gottemoeller, a former Clinton administration official. "We're breaking what had been an effective sound barrier in the arms control world, which is the 2,000 number. That had always been the holy grail -- if you go below 2,000 [the theory went] you'll lose the strategic triad."

In doing so, Bush muscled past the objections of top Pentagon commanders, just as Putin has brushed aside generals insistent on preserving the arsenal that is the last vestige of real Russian power. But as articulated yesterday, Bush's formula left many questions unanswered.

While Putin previously endorsed cutting Russian forces to 1,500 nuclear warheads, he and his advisers believe such cuts should be subject to a binding agreement in writing, with verification procedures such as those used in past arms control treaties. Bush opposes any such pact on the grounds that it would devolve into "endless hours" of negotiations over the fine print.

In fact, the dispute produced the only moment of discord at yesterday's joint news conference at the White House. When Putin mentioned his preference for treaties, Bush twice tried to interrupt him.

"We for our part, for the Russian part, are prepared to present all our agreements in a treaty form, including the issues of verification and control," Putin said.

Bush insisted that was no longer necessary for two countries that have become partners, especially since the terrorist acts of Sept. 11. But he signaled a willingness to craft a written agreement short of a treaty. "I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand, and if we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do that," he said. "But that's what our government is going to do over the next 10 years."

Although Bush does not want to create a new treaty, the two sides have discussed an agreement in which the verification provisions of the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), such as on-site inspections, would be kept in place to monitor each side's progress. Without such an agreement, several arms control specialists said the "unilateral, reciprocal" cuts would be less credible.

"Whatever happens, they really need to start talking about some new transparency -- it's an absolute must," said Nikolai Sokov, a former Soviet arms control negotiator. "It's very good that the Cold War is over and everyone is friends. But I don't see a foundation for a truly new long-term relationship between Russia and the United States. Afghanistan is not a serious foundation for that."

Other arms control advocates complained that Bush did not go far enough to seize the moment, noting that Clinton had proposed going as low as 2,500 warheads in 1997. The only reason to keep as many as 2,200 warheads, they said, is to wage war against Russia.

"What this represents in my view is a superficial trimming of the old Cold War nuclear targeting list," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. "We have to be careful not to overestimate the significance because if we look at the military plan it's still a Cold War plan."

In 1990, as the Cold War was ending, the United States and Russia each maintained about 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads. The START I treaty, signed in 1991, mandated that each side slice that to 6,000, and the deadline for meeting that ceiling is just a few weeks away, Dec. 5.

Russia has already reached that goal, cutting to 5,858 warheads as of July, according to the Arms Control Association. As part of an agreement following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine recently destroyed its final missile silo and Putin announced yesterday that the last nuclear warhead brought to Russia from Ukraine had been destroyed last month. Ill equipped to maintain a superpower arsenal after a decade of economic decline, Russia anxiously wants to cut even deeper to save money.

The United States still had 7,013 warheads in July, but policymakers expect to get to the 6,000 ceiling by next month.

A second treaty, START II, would have cut both arsenals to between 3,000 and 3,500 warheads. However, it never completed the ratification process. Clinton and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed in 1997 to pursue a START III treaty that would go to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads. But that idea foundered because of Pentagon opposition and a dispute over U.S. missile defense plans.

In proposing a range below that, Bush overrode the objections of Adm. Richard Mies, head of the U.S. Strategic Command, who did not want to go below 2,300 and had the sympathy of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The White House included a top figure of 2,200 in deference to those concerns but prefers the lower number.

Putin did not give a particular number yesterday but said at the Russian Embassy last night that he was prepared to cut Moscow's arsenal by two thirds, which would put it in the same range Bush cited. In a speech reaching out to the United States on economic, political and military fronts, Putin said the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 had permanently changed the U.S.-Russian relationship.

"Terrorists hoped to intimidate us, to take advantage of our differences, to divide us," he said. "But what they achieved was our consolidation and solidarity -- I would say a solidarity unheard of in modern history."

Bush's approach to the new strategic relationship has its roots in his father's actions a decade ago when the senior Bush announced he would unilaterally withdraw almost all U.S. tactical weapons from Europe and Asia, halt development of two new strategic weapons and take off alert status Minuteman II ballistic missiles scheduled to be dismantled under START I. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev followed with a comparable declaration about withdrawal of tactical weapons from Eastern Europe.

"Things went a hell of a lot faster without [U.S.-Soviet] working groups and negotiations . . . and at the time we agreed we would do it without a treaty," said Robert Gates, who served as deputy national security adviser then.

Not publicized at the time was then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney's role as an active player in the year-long push for the unilateral step. "President Bush kept pushing the Pentagon for more radical ideas, and Cheney pushed the services," Gates said. He "hated long arms control negotiations."

Today, of course, Cheney is vice president.

Staff writers Walter Pincus and Bradley Graham contributed to this report.


-------- MILITARY

President approves trials by military

By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 14, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011114-645152.htm

President Bush yesterday established a framework for the creation of special U.S. military tribunals to try foreigners accused of terrorist attacks and mete out sentences, including the death penalty.

The military order gives Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld the authority to establish the courts, similar to those established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.

"Having fully considered the magnitude of the potential deaths, injuries, and property destruction that would result from potential acts of terrorism against the United States, and the probability that such acts will occur, I have determined that an extraordinary emergency exists for national defense purposes, that this emergency constitutes an urgent and compelling government interest, and that issuance of this order is necessary to meet the emergency," Mr. Bush said in the order.

White House Counsel Al Gonzales said the order gives Mr. Bush an option and a tool besides civilian courts for bringing to justice those directly responsible for attacks like the September 11 assaults on New York and Washington.

"The president would make a separate independent finding that someone was a member of a terrorist organization like al Qaeda and that it was in the interests of the United States that the person be prosecuted," said Mr. Gonzales. "That person would then be delivered to the secretary of defense who would take control of the individual."

But the establishment of the framework for military tribunals does not tie the president's hands.

"There may not be a need for this and the president may make a determination that he does not want to use this tool, but he felt it appropriate that he have this tool available to him," said Mr. Gonzales.

The order specifically names the al Qaeda terrorist group, led by Osama bin Laden, the mastermind in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Mr. Bush said that individuals "subject to this order" include anyone who:

•"Is or was a member of the organization known as al Qaeda."

•"Has engaged in, aided or abetted, or conspired to commit, acts of international terrorism, or acts in preparation therefor, that have caused, threaten to cause, or have as their aim to cause, injury to or adverse effects on the United States, its citizens, national security, foreign policy, or economy."

• "Has knowingly harbored one or more [of the above] individuals."

The order gives the secretary of defense broad powers, including the right to seize any suspect "subject to this order" from any state in the nation and commence a military tribunal. The defense secretary also will determine when to establish a military tribunal and will oversee the courts.

The order sets out the punishment those tried by the tribunals face.

"Any individual subject to this order shall, when tried, be tried by military commission for any and all offenses triable by military commission that such individual is alleged to have committed, and may be punished in accordance with the penalties provided under applicable law, including life imprisonment or death," the order states.

The tribunal will act "as the triers of both fact and law" and both conviction and sentencing require a two-thirds vote of the court's members.

Mr. Bush will stand as the final judge upon conviction, unless he designates the duty to the defense secretary, the order states.

The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the move, saying Mr. Bush should first "justify why the current system does not allow for the timely prosecution of those accused of terrorist activities."

"Absent such a compelling justification, today's order is deeply disturbing and further evidence that the administration is totally unwilling to abide by the checks and balances that are so central to our democracy," said Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU's national office.

"Increasingly they appear willing to circumvent the requirements of the Bill of Rights," she said.

The order also forbids any individual from seeking "remedy" in any other U.S. court or "any court of any foreign nation or any international tribunal."

"These are obviously extraordinary times and the president wants to have as many options available to him as possible," said Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker. "This particular option does not preclude any Department of Justice options that might also be available."

There is precedent for the military tribunals, said Mr. Gonzales, citing the trial of eight German saboteurs during World War II. He said the system also had been used in the 19th century in the Civil War and the Mexican War.

Mr. Bush signed the order before leaving Washington for his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

---

Text of president's military order

November 13, 2001,
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/13112001-082024-2788r.htm

Text of President Bush's Nov. 13 military order:

MILITARY ORDER DETENTION, TREATMENT, AND TRIAL OF CERTAIN NON-CITIZENS IN THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM

By the authority vested in me as President and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution (Public Law 107-40, 115 Stat. 224) and sections 821 and 836 of title 10, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Findings.

(a) International terrorists, including members of al Qaida, have carried out attacks on United States diplomatic and military personnel and facilities abroad and on citizens and property within the United States on a scale that has created a state of armed conflict that requires the use of the United States Armed Forces.

(b) In light of grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism, including the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, on the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense in the national capital region, on the World Trade Center in New York, and on civilian aircraft such as in Pennsylvania, I proclaimed a national emergency on September 14, 2001 (Proc. 7463, Declaration of National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks).

(c) Individuals acting alone and in concert involved in international terrorism possess both the capability and the intention to undertake further terrorist attacks against the United States that, if not detected and prevented, will cause mass deaths, mass injuries, and massive destruction of property, and may place at risk the continuity of the operations of the United States Government.

(d) The ability of the United States to protect the United States and its citizens, and to help its allies and other cooperating nations protect their nations and their citizens, from such further terrorist attacks depends in significant part upon using the United States Armed Forces to identify terrorists and those who support them, to disrupt their activities, and to eliminate their ability to conduct or support such attacks.

(e) To protect the United States and its citizens, and for the effective conduct of military operations and prevention of terrorist attacks, it is necessary for individuals subject to this order pursuant to section 2 hereof to be detained, and, when tried, to be tried for violations of the laws of war and other applicable laws by military tribunals.

(f) Given the danger to the safety of the United States and the nature of international terrorism, and to the extent provided by and under this order, I find consistent with section 836 of title 10, United States Code, that it is not practicable to apply in military commissions under this order the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district courts.

(g) Having fully considered the magnitude of the potential deaths, injuries, and property destruction that would result from potential acts of terrorism against the United States, and the probability that such acts will occur, I have determined that an extraordinary emergency exists for national defense purposes, that this emergency constitutes an urgent and compelling govern-ment interest, and that issuance of this order is necessary to meet the emergency.

Sec. 2. Definition and Policy.

(a) The term "individual subject to this order" shall mean any individual who is not a United States citizen with respect to whom I determine from time to time in writing that:

(1) there is reason to believe that such individual, at the relevant times,

(i) is or was a member of the organization known as al Qaida;

(ii) has engaged in, aided or abetted, or conspired to commit, acts of international terrorism, or acts in preparation therefor, that have caused, threaten to cause, or have as their aim to cause, injury to or adverse effects on the United States, its citizens, national security, foreign policy, or economy; or

(iii) has knowingly harbored one or more individuals described in subparagraphs (i) or (ii) of subsection 2(a)(1) of this order; and (2) it is in the interest of the United States that such individual be subject to this order.

(b) It is the policy of the United States that the Secretary of Defense shall take all necessary measures to ensure that any individual subject to this order is detained in accordance with section 3, and, if the individual is to be tried, that such individual is tried only in accordance with section 4.

(c) It is further the policy of the United States that any individual subject to this order who is not already under the control of the Secretary of Defense but who is under the control of any other officer or agent of the United States or any State shall, upon delivery of a copy of such written determination to such officer or agent, forthwith be placed under the control of the Secretary of Defense.

Sec. 3. Detention Authority of the Secretary of Defense.

Any individual subject to this order shall be--

(a) detained at an appropriate location designated by the Secretary of Defense outside or within the United States;

(b) treated humanely, without any adverse distinction based on race, color, religion, gender, birth, wealth, or any similar criteria;

(c) afforded adequate food, drinking water, shelter, clothing, and medical treatment;

(d) allowed the free exercise of religion consistent with the requirements of such detention; and

(e) detained in accordance with such other conditions as the Secretary of Defense may prescribe.

Sec. 4. Authority of the Secretary of Defense Regarding Trials of Individuals Subject to this Order.

(a) Any individual subject to this order shall, when tried, be tried by military commission for any and all offenses triable by military commission that such individual is alleged to have committed, and may be punished in accordance with the penalties provided under applicable law, including life imprisonment or death.

(b) As a military function and in light of the findings in section 1, including subsection (f) thereof, the Secretary of Defense shall issue such orders and regulations, including orders for the appointment of one or more military commissions, as may be necessary to carry out subsection (a) of this section.

(c) Orders and regulations issued under subsection (b) of this section shall include, but not be limited to, rules for the conduct of the proceedings of military commissions, including pretrial, trial, and post-trial procedures, modes of proof, issuance of process, and qualifications of attorneys, which shall at a minimum provide for--

(1) military commissions to sit at any time and any place, consistent with such guidance regarding time and place as the Secretary of Defense may provide;

(2) a full and fair trial, with the military commission sitting as the triers of both fact and law;

(3) admission of such evidence as would, in the opinion of the presiding officer of the military commission (or instead, if any other member of the commission so requests at the time the presiding officer renders that opinion, the opinion of the commission rendered at that time by a majority of the commission), have probative value to a reasonable person;

(4) in a manner consistent with the protection of information classified or classifiable under Executive Order 12958 of April 17, 1995, as amended, or any successor Executive Order, protected by statute or rule from unauthorized disclosure, or otherwise protected by law, (A) the handling of, admission into evidence of, and access to materials and information, and (B) the conduct, closure of, and access to proceedings;

(5) conduct of the prosecution by one or more attorneys designated by the Secretary of Defense and conduct of the defense by attorneys for the individual subject to this order;

(6) conviction only upon the concurrence of two-thirds of the members of the commission present at the time of the vote, a majority being present;

(7) sentencing only upon the concurrence of two-thirds of the members of the commission present at the time of the vote, a majority being present; and

(8) submission of the record of the trial, including any conviction or sentence, for review and final decision by me or by the Secretary of Defense if so designated by me for that purpose.

Sec. 5. Obligation of Other Agencies to Assist the Secretary of Defense.

Departments, agencies, entities, and officers of the United States shall, to the maximum extent permitted by law, provide to the Secretary of Defense such assistance as he may request to implement this order.

Sec. 6. Additional Authorities of the Secretary of Defense.

(a) As a military function and in light of the findings in section 1, the Secretary of Defense shall issue such orders and regulations as may be necessary to carry out any of the provisions of this order.

(b) The Secretary of Defense may perform any of his functions or duties, and may exercise any of the powers provided to him under this order (other than under section 4(c)(8) hereof) in accordance with section 113(d) of title 10, United States Code.

Sec. 7. Relationship to Other Law and Forums.

(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to--

(1) authorize the disclosure of state secrets to any person not otherwise authorized to have access to them;

(2) limit the authority of the President as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces or the power of the President to grant reprieves and pardons; or

(3) limit the lawful authority of the Secretary of Defense, any military commander, or any other officer or agent of the United States or of any State to detain or try any person who is not an individual subject to this order.

(b) With respect to any individual subject to this order--

(1) military tribunals shall have exclusive jurisdiction with respect to offenses by the individual; and

(2) the individual shall not be privileged to seek any remedy or maintain any proceeding, directly or indirectly, or to have any such remedy or proceeding sought on the individual's behalf, in (i) any court of the United States, or any State thereof, (ii) any court of any foreign nation, or (iii) any international tribunal.

(c) This order is not intended to and does not create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or equity by any party, against the United States, its departments, agencies, or other entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.

(d) For purposes of this order, the term "State" includes any State, district, territory, or possession of the United States.

(e) I reserve the authority to direct the Secretary of Defense, at any time hereafter, to transfer to a governmental authority control of any individual subject to this order. Nothing in this order shall be construed to limit the authority of any such governmental authority to prosecute any individual for whom control is transferred.

Sec. 8. Publication. This order shall be published in the Federal Register.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE, November 13, 2001.

-------- afghanistan

Muslim Peacekeepers in Kabul

Christian Science Monitor
November 14, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1114/p8s1-comv.html

The sudden retreat of the Taliban from Kabul may shorten the war in Afghanistan and could also rule out a large deployment of US troops to that hostile land.

That's the good news. A big unknown is who can govern Afghanistan so it is never again a launching pad for terrorism.

The war has outpaced diplomacy aimed at patching together a post-Taliban government, forcing the US to line up friendly Muslim countries, such as Turkey and Indonesia, to offer troops as "neutral" peacekeepers.

That's a risky move. Much of the tensions in Afghanistan are ethnic, not religious. And the United Nations will need to provide a broad mandate to those forces in being aggressive against Afghan factions fighting one another over blood feuds.

The US has a strong stake in keeping the Al Qaeda terrorist network out of Afghanistan, even if Muslim soldiers soon patrol the streets. Perhaps the commander of the UN-mandated peacekeepers should be an American.

Juggling the interests of Afghan ethnic groups, as well as the interests of neighboring states, still requires the skill and the oomph of a big power like the US, even if it's not perceived as a "Muslim nation." While religion may play a part in US tactics, the goal is to have a world free from terrorism.

------

Power and politics shaping Afghanistan

USA Today
11/14/2001
By Christine A. Saah, USATODAY.com
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/afghanplayers.htm

As events unfold in Afghanistan, the United States and the United Nations seek to create a post-Taliban regime in the landlocked Central Asian country. The United States seeks to create a broad-based coalition government that includes all Afghan ethnic groups, despite the conquest of Kabul by the Northern Alliance. The alliance invited all the country's factions to negotiate a postwar government and has asked the United Nations to help bring stability and peace to the war-ravaged country. This is a quick look at who might be involved in shaping Afghanistan's future.

Northern Alliance

The Northern Alliance is the military wing of Afghanistan's pre-Taliban government, which is still recognized by most countries and by the United Nations. The alliance consists of feuding ethnic groups, including Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara, in a predominantly Pashtun country. After the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the groups fought in a civil war that left the country in ruins. The alliance is believed to have about 12,000 troops, supported by a limited number of Soviet-era tanks, fighter jets and helicopter gunships.

Groups that make up the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan:

- Jamiat-e-Islami, led by former president Burhanuddin Rabbani and, until his assassination in September, military strategist Ahmed Shah Masood. Most members are ethnic Tajiks.

- Ittehad-e-Islami, led by Abdur Rasool Sayyaf, a close ally of Saudi Arabia. Most members are Pashtuns, like the Taliban.

- Jimbush-e-Milli-Movement, led by former communist Gen. Rashid Dostum. Ethnic Uzbeks.

- Hezb-e-Wahadat, minority Shiite Muslim party led by Karim Khalili. Ethnic Hazaras.

- Harakat-e-Islami, another minority Shiite party, led by Asif Mohsini. Ethnic Hazaras.

Northern Alliance leaders

Ahmed Shah Massood

Ahmed Shah Massood, a longtime commander in the 1979-1989 war against Soviet occupation and a legendary guerrilla leader in the fight against the Taliban, was killed by assassins Sept. 9, two days before the terrorist attacks on the United States. Northern Alliance leaders claim Massood was killed on orders by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. The death of the commander, known as the "Lion of Panjshir," left a major void in the opposition leadership.

Mohammed Fahim

Gen. Mohammed Fahim is the successor of assassinated guerrilla commander Ahmed Shah Massood. Fahim is a Tajik, the major ethnic group in the Northern Alliance. He was a loyal lieutenant of Massood's, but it is not yet clear whether he has the same charisma and battlefield skills.

Rashid Dostum

Gen. Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, commands the Uzbek component of the Northern Alliance, one of the major factions. A commander during the communist regime, he was among the warlords that battled for control of Kabul after the Soviets withdrew from the country. He was driven out by the Taliban four years ago and was in exile in Turkey until recently. He returned to prominence last week when his troops helped capture Mazar-e-Sharif, once headquarters of his northern fiefdom. He recently rejoined the Northern Alliance after a history of bad blood with many other Northern Alliance commanders.

Abdullah Abdullah

Abdullah, the foreign minister of the Rabbani government, has emerged as a key spokesman for the northern alliance. English and French are among several languages he speaks. He was close to Ahmed Shah Massood, the revered military commander who was killed shortly before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Karim Khalili

Karim Khalili heads a Northern Alliance force primarily made up of ethnic Hazaras. He is a Shiite Muslim and carries the torch for this minority in predominantly Sunni Afghanistan. His forces are believed to have support from Iran.

Deposed Afghan leaders in exile

Afghan leaders who were ousted by the Taliban and maintain some support while in exile:

Burhanuddin Rabbani

A former professor of Islamic theology and an ethnic Tajik, Burhanuddin Rabbani returned to the Afghan capital of Kabul from exile in Pakistan after the communists fell. He became president of the Northern Alliance government in 1992. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Rabbani fled the country once again, and he now leads the government in exile. The United States and other Western powers still recognize Rabbani as Afghanistan's legitimate leader, and his deposed government holds Afghanistan's seat at the United Nations. But he has little hold on the hearts of Afghans, who accuse him of atrocities while in power.

Mohammed Zahir Shah

Mohammed Zahir Shah was the last monarch of the ethnic Pashtun dynasty, which lasted 200 years. Today he is in his 87 years old and is living in exile in Rome. Zahir Shah has said he is "ready willing and able" to return to Afghanistan and lead an interim government. He was crowned in 1933 after his father, Mohammed Nadir Shah, was assassinated. He was toppled by his cousin, Mohammed Baud, in 1973 while he was on a trip to Italy. Shah has said he has no desire for the throne but hopes to serve as a neutral, ''grandfatherly,'' figure uniting the Afghan people. His plan for post-Taliban Afghanistan calls for convening a traditional Afghan grand council to choose a new government.

Hamid Karzai

Influential anti-Taliban Pashtun tribal leader entered Afghanistan last month to try to rally Pashtun people behind King Mohammed Zahir Shah or loya jirga, which is a coalition of respected tribal chiefs. Karzai is head of the large Popalzai clan, which has been linked to the Afghan royal dynasty that existed from the mid-18th century until Zaher Shah was deposed in 1973. The United States says it plucked him out of the country a few weeks ago because the Taliban was trailing him. He is well-educated and speaks English fluently.

The Taliban

The Taliban is a group of Islamic fundamentalists, mainly from Afghanistan's Pashtun ethnic group, that formed in the early 1990's after the Soviet withdrawal from the country. The Taliban gained power over most of Afghanistan by 1997 and imposed a hard-line form of Islam on the country that forbids educating women and carries out public executions and amputations. The Taliban offered shelter to Saudi-exile Osama bin Laden, who the United States says is the prime suspect for masterminding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Key Taliban players

Mullah Mohammed Omar

The supreme leader of the Taliban who seized power five years ago and once ruled roughly 95% of Afghanistan, Mullah Mohammed Omar has set himself the goal of transforming the country into the purest Islamic state in the world. The Commander of the Faithful, as he has come to be known, created the Taliban in the early 1990s to overcome what he saw as Afghanistan's descent into warlordism and lawlessness. The elusive cleric is rarely photographed. He is in his early 40s and missing one eye, lost in a gunfight with Soviet troops during the occupation of Afghanistan. Omar recently married one of the daughters of Osama bin Laden.

Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil

The Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil has been the public face of the group while its supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, refuses to be photographed.

Abdul Salam Zaeef

Abdul Salam Zaeef is the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, a key position because Pakistan is the only country that recognizes the Taliban as a legitimate government. Zaeef has held news conferences in Pakistan, calling for negotiations with the United States over its demand for the Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden. He also has said that the Taliban needs proof of bin Laden's involvement in terrorism.

------

War takes positive shift; future hinges on diplomacy

USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-14-edtwof2.htm

How quickly circumstances change.

Just a week ago, the news from Afghanistan was that Northern Alliance fighters were pinned down on their front lines, unable to advance. Their commanders were grumbling about the limited nature of U.S. airstrikes. Indications were that the war effort was bogging down.

Today, the same fighters are walking the streets of the Afghan capital, Kabul, along with U.S. Special Forces. They've seized key cities across the northern part of the country, and Taliban troops - described days ago as tough and battle hardened - are in full retreat.

Given the challenges that still remain, the Pentagon was appropriately cautious Tuesday in analyzing the turnaround. But by any measure, the routing of the Taliban is a major victory that will make the rest of the campaign easier.

U.S. forces soon will be able to operate effectively throughout the north. This will make the pursuit of Osama bin Laden swifter and more effective. It also will ease the delivery of relief supplies to starving Afghans, most of whom are in the north - a critical step in the battle for hearts and minds in the Muslim world.

But success now pivots as much on restraining our newly emboldened Afghan allies as on extending military success. If Northern Alliance fighters occupying Kabul commit atrocities against the country's dominant Pashtuns, who share ethnicity with the Taliban, the resistance in southern Afghanistan will stiffen. That would invite a lengthy, bloody guerrilla campaign.

On the other hand, if the Kabul occupiers resist revenge killing and remain open to a multiethnic coalition government there, Taliban commanders will be more likely to roll with the winners, as happened in several cities in northern Afghanistan.

As of Tuesday, it appeared the outcome could turn in either direction. The United Nations reported that 100 Taliban fighters were executed in Mazar-e Sharif, but the alliance denied the report. The U.S. envoy to the alliance, James Dobbins, quickly scheduled a visit to Islamabad to work on a future, multiethnic Afghan government, and President Bush urged restraint. At the United Nations, where negotiators have made little progress so far, Secretary-General Kofi Annan appears to understand the need to act immediately.

The next 48 hours should say a lot about whether the important military victories in northern Afghanistan will translate into a successful campaign in the south, and ultimately the destruction of the al-Qa'eda terrorist network. Chances certainly look far better than they did a week ago. The need now is for speedy diplomacy to prove as effective as a squadron of B-52s.

---

Opposition takes over key posts as Taliban retreats

USA Today
11/14/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/14/attack.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The northern alliance moved Wednesday to consolidate its grip on Kabul, taking over key posts and ministries despite a pledge to support a broad-based government. Forced to retreat south, the Taliban were reportedly struggling to prevent their movement from disintegrating. Pashtun tribal leaders in key areas of the south were reportedly in open revolt against the fundamentalist Islamic militia. In the capital, radio broadcasts resumed and television was promised soon. Northern alliance officials returned to government offices they abandoned in 1996 when the Taliban drove them from power.

Officials portrayed the takeover of key ministries, such as defense and interior, as temporary and said they support a U.N.-supervised political settlement in which all ethnic groups would be represented.

In the south and east of the country, the situation appeared chaotic as local tribal leaders appeared to challenge the Taliban in the ethnic Pashtun heartlands.

Afghan sources in Pakistan, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the airport in the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar was held by about 200 fighters loyal to Arif Khan, a member of a southern Pashtun tribe.

A Taliban official along the Pakistani border at Chaman, Mullah Najibullah, said Taliban fighters were firing on the airport Wednesday from hilltop positions.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported that tribal elders took control Wednesday of the town of Gardez, in Paktia province about 60 miles south of Kabul.

Followers of a local, independent powerbroker, Yunus Khalis, took control of the Afghan border station at Torkham, a major crossing point into Pakistan.

In Kabul, relieved residents awoke Wednesday after a night free of the nearby crash of U.S. bombs. Triumphant northern alliance fighters patrolled the streets.

The Taliban abandoned Kabul and headed south before dawn Tuesday after the northern alliance, backed by intensive American bombing, fought their way to the edge of the city.

Supporters say the Taliban's withdrawal from urban areas throughout the country is a strategy that will allow the militia and its allies to wage a guerrilla war from Kandahar's rugged mountains and caves.

U.S. warplanes kept up pressure on the Taliban with more air raids outside the capital Wednesday. American aircraft bombed the airport and military installations around the city of Jalalabad at least six times overnight and early in the morning, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported.

Citing an unidentified Taliban official, the agency also said warplanes attacked a military base in Khost, six miles from the Pakistan border.

Mohammed Alam Ezdediar, who headed a northern alliance radio station before Kabul fell, assumed control of the newly renamed Radio Afghanistan and resumed airing music, which the Taliban had banned as frivolous.

He hired three women as news readers, and aired statements from the alliance defense ministry urging people to remain calm and return to work. Under the Taliban, women were banned from working outside the home except in the health sector.

Daoud Naimi, the new acting director of TV Afghanistan, said he hoped to resume television broadcasts soon. Television was also banned by the Taliban as un-Islamic.

Kabul residents cheerfully abandoned other Taliban edicts - children flew kites, teen-agers listened to music and men shaved their beards. But most women retained their all-encompassing burqas.

The top U.N. envoy for Afghanistan outlined a plan for a two-year transitional government with a multinational security force. On Tuesday, northern alliance spokesman Abdullah said his movement supported the plan.

For the time being, however, the alliance, especially the Jamiat-e-Islami faction of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, moved into key ministries in the capital.

Pakistani intelligence sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said many Taliban leaders had sent their families across the border into Pakistan under the protection of tribal leaders from their Pashtun ethnic group.

The sources said the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was trying to rally his remaining followers. Omar was either traveling with or was remaining in close communications with terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden, they added.

In a radio address, Omar said he was in Kandahar - a report that could not be verified - and urged his fighters to resist in the name of Islam.

Those who do not are "just like a chicken with its head cut off," he said. "It falls in a ditch and dies."

President Bush ordered airstrikes on Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his suspected role in the September terrorist attacks that killed 4,500 people in the United States.

Under relentless pounding by U.S. planes, Taliban defenses crumbled, first in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and then throughout most of the country.

The Pentagon said U.S. special forces were in southern Afghanistan, working on the next phase of the campaign. U.S military planners think the best course is to approach ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders in the south who are unhappy with the Taliban - and persuade them to defect.

In Kabul, a northern alliance official said there were reports of uprisings against the Taliban by residents in eastern Nangarhar province as well as in the southern provinces of Ghazni and Wardak.

The Afghan Islamic Press reported that Nangarhar's capital, Jalalabad, was under the control of Khalis, who declared himself independent of both the Taliban and the northern alliance.

Witnesses said Khalis' followers at the Torkham border station were preventing anyone, including Afghans, from entering the country Wednesday.

"People have revolted against the Taliban," said Saeed Hussain Anwari, a top Shiite Muslim commander who rode triumphantly into Kabul after a string of sudden victories in northern Afghanistan.

Anwari said anti-Taliban fighters held the airport in Kandahar but Taliban forces were in the mountains outside the city. The center of the city was contested, he said, but it was unclear if there was any actual fighting.

In Islamabad, Pakistan, the Taliban deputy ambassador Suhail Shaheen accused the northern alliance of atrocities against people in Kabul and other recently occupied cities and claimed human rights organizations were remaining silent "and watching the bloodshed of innocent people."

"The Afghans will never accept the murderous communist generals who are being imposed on the Afghans by foreign powers," he said.

------

Reclaiming Kabul

New York Times
November 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/opinion/14WED2.html

The chaotic retreat by Taliban forces from Kabul, and indeed from most of northern Afghanistan, is a dramatic development that did not seem conceivable even a week ago. But the Northern Alliance's triumph does not, by itself, achieve the basic American objective of defeating the Taliban and destroying the terrorist organization Al Qaeda. That may require more difficult military operations against the Taliban in their southern stronghold, where the United States lacks a combined Afghan force like the Northern Alliance.

The difficulties will be compounded unless a broadly based government is swiftly installed in Kabul and neutral peacekeeping forces introduced. Indeed, reprisals reportedly carried out against Taliban supporters by out-of-control Northern Alliance fighters may undercut American efforts to weaken the Taliban by luring away their supporters.

The stunning events of recent days suggest that the Taliban are closer to military collapse than generally recognized. But if Taliban forces manage to regroup in the Pashtun-speaking parts of the country where they still command loyalty, they may be difficult to dislodge.

In turning its attention to the fluid situation in Kabul, the United States has to act with great care. Although the Northern Alliance and its president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, are recognized by some ethnic groups as the rightful leaders of Afghanistan, they are feared and hated by others. They controlled the city after the Communists fell in 1992 and carried out violent attacks on their enemies. The United States should step up its efforts in conjunction with the United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, to assemble an interim governing authority in Kabul that reflects every ethnic, tribal or religious grouping in the country, leaving out no one with any significant power base.

In coming weeks, the outside powers that have taken an interest in Afghanistan must rapidly put together a multinational force that could establish security in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan. This process has begun under the prompting of Russia, the United States and Afghanistan's six neighboring countries. Such a force should receive authorization by the United Nations Security Council and be composed of what Secretary of State Colin Powell calls "a coalition of the willing," led by troops from Islamic countries, such as Turkey, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

To prevent a repetition of past cycles of violent reprisals, the United States, Russia, India and other countries that have supported the Northern Alliance must exert pressure on its commanders to exercise restraint on the ground in Kabul and other areas it has seized. The chain of command is weak in some places, nonexistent in others. But the entire international community must make it clear that a bloodbath in Afghanistan will destroy any chances of bringing unity to the country.

Finally, the other urgent priority is to speed relief to Afghans in the country's mountains and deserts who have been suffering for years from war, drought and repression. Airlifts and truck convoys can bring food to these areas more easily because of the Northern Alliance's extraordinary victory in Kabul. Ultimately, saving the lives of the innocent in Afghanistan is the best way to save its stability and future peace.

-------- balkans

Documenting a Death Camp in Nazi Croatia

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By NEIL A. LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/national/14CAMP.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - Officials of the United States Holocaust Museum said today that they had discovered and preserved a cache of decaying documents and artifacts from one of the lesser-known but most brutal concentration camps of World War II. The camp, known as Jasenovac, was operated in Croatia by the Ustasha, the Nazi puppet government.

The artifacts were found deteriorating in a building in Banja Luka in the Serbian part of Bosnia last year, officials said.

Peter Black, the museum's chief historian, told reporters today that Jasenovac was crude in comparison to the industrialized Nazi extermination camps like Auschwitz. Mr. Black said there were no gas chambers or crematories, so prisoners were murdered one by one with axes, guns, knives or prolonged torture. Bodies were buried or thrown into the adjacent Sava River.

Jasenovac (pronounced ya-SEN- oh-vatz), actually a complex of five camps about 60 miles from the Croatian capital, Zagreb, has been little studied in the West, but the history has long resonated in the modern Balkans, where analysts and historians have debated about how much of the region's violence may be traced to historic ethnic enmities.

Mr. Black estimated that nearly 100,000 people had been killed in Jasenovac, the largest number being Serbs, followed by Jews and Gypsies.

The camp was established by the Republic of Croatia to eliminate anyone who was not an ethnic Croatian. Mr. Black said a combination of factors, including the reluctance of officials to agree on what happened, had led to its history's remaining largely hidden from scholars until now.

The collection includes 2,000 photographs, many of atrocities; tens of thousands of papers; and thousands of artifacts, like inmate crafts.

Sara J. Bloomfield, director of the Holocaust Museum, said the project to save the documents and artifacts was especially significant because of the cooperation of the government of Croatia, whose history is cast in a poor light, as well as the governments of Serbia and Bosnia. Ms. Bloomfield said the governments had cooperated despite "the continuing sensitivity of all sides to this collection."

That sensitivity was on display moments after the museum's presentation today when a diplomat from Croatia, Mate Maras, objected to the assertion by museum officials that more than 300,000 Serbs had died at the hands of the Ustasha throughout Croatia in World War II.

Mr. Maras complained to Ms. Bloomfield and Mr. Black that the number was misleading because it included what he said were combatants throughout Croatia and thus was comparable to the hundreds of thousands of Croats killed in the war.

Mr. Maras said that while he thought the assertions of the museum's personnel about Serb casualties were misleading, he agreed it was "a good day for Croatia to open up these sad pages of our history."

Copies of the collection have been made and will be maintained at the Holocaust Museum and in Israel, officials said. The original collection will be returned to a museum in Croatia, where it will be put on display at the site of the Jasenovic complex, officials said.

-------- biological weapons

Two Pakistanis questioned in anthrax connection

USA Today
11/14/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/14/pakistanis.htm

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - Two Pakistanis questioned last month by U.S. authorities investigating the mailing of anthrax-contaminated letters are being held on immigration violations, their lawyer said. FBI agents last month took into custody Muhammad "Asif" Khan and Tariq Maqsood at a Hamilton Township apartment complex. At least three anthrax-tainted letters passed through a Hamilton Township processing center.

The men were questioned about the letters, but neither has been charged with involvement in terrorist activity, immigration attorney Vinaya Saijwani said.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service declined to comment on the men's status, citing a policy put into effect after Sept. 11.

The two are being held at the Hudson County Correctional Center in Kearny because they do not have valid visas, Saijwani said. An immigration judge has cleared Maqsood for release, and he could be allowed to return to Pakistan by early December. She said his paperwork is still being processed by federal immigration officials.

Khan's wife is Guatemalan but has U.S. citizen. He applied for residency in March. Saijwani said the application is still being processed.

Saijwani said Khan was picked up because he was living in the Hamilton Township apartment complex where Mohammad Aslam Pervez once lived.

Pervez has been charged with lying about more than $110,000 in transfers into and out of his bank account. He also is reportedly being questioned about his roommates, Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan. The two were arrested aboard a train in Fort Worth, Texas, a day after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. Authorities said the two were carrying box cutters, $5,000 in cash and hair dye.

---

Building the ultimate bioweapon

USA Today
11/13/2001
By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/healthscience/science/biology/2001-11-14-microbe-usat.htm

Stealth viruses triggered from afar like remote-controlled bombs. Designer bugs packed with genes that simultaneously signal millions of human cells to commit suicide. Germs that wipe out the human immune system's ability to combat viruses.

Fanciful as these fearsome innovations may seem, they're edging closer to fact than science fiction. Today, 20 years into the genetic revolution, scientists say that the biotech tools used to make human insulin, interferon and other breakthrough medications could be put to more sinister use.

Military microbiologists equipped with the latest genetic technology, they say, could use it to turn ordinary germs into extra-virulent, drug-resistant superbugs.

Indeed, Australian scientists reported in January that they had created a superbug while trying to make a contraceptive vaccine for rodent control. By inserting a gene for an immune-system chemical into a relatively harmless mousepox virus, researchers turned the virus into a monster that kills 100% of its rodent victims by wiping out part of their immune system.

Although mousepox doesn't infect humans, it is a close cousin of smallpox, suggesting that smallpox would be receptive to the same lethal trick.

"Such 'tailoring' of biowarfare agents could make them harder to detect, diagnose and treat. It could, in short, make them more militarily useful and thus increase the temptation to pursue offensive programs," Claire Fraser of the Institute for Genomic Research and Michael Dando of the University of Bradford in the U.K. report in the Oct. 22 issue of Nature Genetics.

Some defense experts reportedly fear that the government may inadvertently increase the risk posed by mutant microbes by funding a major effort to sequence the genomes of more than 100 microbes and stipulating that all findings be posted on the Web. But other biologists argue that the genetic databases will catapult our understanding of biology into new realms.

"In the past, people could only study bacteria that they could single out and grow," says Mary Ann Henkart of the National Science Foundation. "By comparing microbial (gene) sequences, you can learn things we never dreamed we would know before we could do these genetic tricks."

Much of the work so far has focused on disease-causing germs and germs that can be used for environmental cleanup. But other researchers are focusing on germs that may shed light on the history of life on Earth, germs relevant to agriculture and germs that live in extreme environments.

Legitimate scientists have tinkered with microbial genes for decades. As early as 1973, scientists spliced a drug-resistance gene from an unrelated microbe into the DNA of the benign intestinal microbe E. coli. Although this pioneering gene-splicing experiment was done by civilians seeking insights into biology, it's exactly the kind of enhancement that might be made by a bioweaponeer.

Bioweapon designers have achieved their own breakthroughs. Although much of their work has been cloaked in secrecy, hints of their accomplishments have surfaced.

Two years ago, a team of leading anthrax researchers led by Paul Jackson of Los Alamos National Laboratory reported that the former Soviet Union had apparently succeeded in combining at least four strains of anthrax into a single bioweapon.

The researchers obtained the bacteria from 11 people who died in a 1979 anthrax outbreak. The outbreak is believed to have resulted from an accidental release of anthrax from a military research facility in Sverdlovsk, though the Soviets insisted for years that the outbreak was triggered by anthrax-contaminated meat. The Jackson team helped dispel the lie, because an outbreak of intestinal anthrax caused by contaminated meat would be caused by one strain of anthrax, not four of them.

The biotechnology revolution has made altering microbes easier by turning gene splicing into an automated, industrial process. Posting the genetic sequences of microbes on the Web will by 2003 provide scientists with an unprecedented resource, the sequences of 250,000 microbial genes.

Comparing genes from other organisms or from humans with those in this library can supply clues to how the genes function and how important they are, pointing the way to new diagnostics, drugs and vaccines.

Scientists have already begun to identify genes in each microbe that are needed for infection and that govern the bug's virulence and resistance to antibiotics. Such information could be used, for example, to splice the genes for anthrax toxin from Bacillus anthracis into less dangerous members of the anthrax family, such as B. cereus, which causes food poisoning.

Such manipulations could create stealth bacteria that are as deadly as anthrax but harder to detect. "The similarity between (bacteria) in the anthracis family suggests you could shuffle their genes back and forth, creating Trojan horse biowarfare agents," Fraser says.

Advocates say easy access to genetic information will benefit scientists working on biowarfare defense.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, spent $167 million on biological defense in the fiscal year that ended last month. Among other things, the agency contracted with civilian laboratories to sequence the genomes of the deadly germs that cause anthrax, Q fever and tularemia. One crucial focus of Darpa research is to develop ways to detect biological agents in time to counter their effects. By layering computer chips with genetic sequences from important human, animal and plant germs, scientists are trying to create biowarfare-detection devices.

Maj. Gen. John Parker, who heads biodefense research at Fort Detrick, Md., says, "As we look out 10 or 20 years, I see each of us wearing a microchip that we could look at periodically and see what we've been exposed to." He says it is just as crucial to use genetic research to find new treatments for infectious diseases. "We ought not to put detectors out, until we know what to do with those readings."

-------- drug war

Alaska

States
USA Today
01/11/14
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Juneau - A ballot measure seeking to legalize marijuana has cleared its first major hurdle, but it's unclear whether sponsors have enough time to put the question to voters in 2002. The state approved an application for an initiative petition, meaning supporters may start collecting the 28,783 signatures required to get the measure on next year's ballot. However, the deadline is Jan. 14. The measure would make it legal for adults to grow, use, sell or give away marijuana or other hemp products, according to a state summary of the initiative.

-------- germany

Bombings hit unintended target: European opinion
A parliamentary vote in Berlin this week on whether to deploy German troops could trigger a political crisis.

Christian Science Monitor
November 14, 2001
By Arie Farnam | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1114/p7s2-woeu.html

HAMBURG, GERMANY - President George Bush's declaration in September, "Either you are with us or you are against us," has sown confusion and dissension among many Europeans.

"We are with the Americans and against terrorism, but we are also against war," says Alexandra Filipp, a bookshop owner in the northern German city of Hamburg. "We feel that our politicians are being forced to accept this war against their better judgment."

After Sept. 11, governments across the continent declared their support for American retaliation, but amid reports of civilian casualties from US bombing in Afghanistan, Europeans are questioning "America's war." Analysts now warn that antiwar sentiment in Europe could lead to fractures in the global antiterror coalition.

Public opposition to sending troops hovers at 50 percent or more in many European countries.

"This campaign is not going very well for the Americans," says Steve Garrett, professor of international policy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "Public support in Europe, even in Britain, is very shallow. I don't think it is sustainable, and if the bombing extends to other countries like Iraq, you will see opinion turn negative overnight."

Recent Gallup polls showed 32 out of 35 surveyed countries, including European NATO members, favoring a criminal-justice response over military retaliation. Only American and Israeli public opinion favored the military option.

Even in Britain, which has been the closest US ally, a majority now opts for a cease-fire. In Germany, the weekly Die Woche reports that 55 percent oppose "unconditional solidarity" with the United States and 60 percent are against involving German troops in ground operations in Afghanistan.

"In early October, two-thirds of Germans felt that the US had the right to wage war against Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden, but now they are asking for a cease-fire, because they disagree with the way the war is being fought," says Sabine Rosenbladt, deputy editor of Die Woche.

Germany has been extremely hesitant about engaging in military action since its disastrous defeat in World War II. In 1999, German troops were deployed abroad in a military action beyond peacekeeping for the first time in 50 years - in Kosovo. Today, the prospect of sending nearly 4,000 soldiers to assist US troops in the war on terror leaves many Germans wary.

A vote in the German parliament on whether to dispatch the troops is expected by Friday, and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is considering staking his political future on it by attaching a vote of confidence in his government. Schroeder has pledged "unbreakable support" for the American military retaliation, though some prominent members of his Social Democratic Party (SDP) disagree.

Critics say he has not sufficiently explained the goals of the bombing campaign to the German public. "The public has very little information about what the aims of this war are," says Hajo Funke, chair of Berlin's Otto-Suhr Institute for Political Science, "They fear that the death toll in the civilian population will be too high in a war without clear goals."

"The public is seeing a lot of disturbing pictures from Afghanistan, dead children, destroyed homes. We are told 6.5 million Afghans are in danger of starving to death and can't be helped because of the bombing," Ms. Rosenbladt says. On Tuesday, as Northern Alliance troops rolled into Kabul after a Taliban retreat from the city, UN relief agencies appealed to the alliance to ensure stability so that foreign aid workers could return to Afghanistan.

In other developments Tuesday, the Taliban's Pakistani supporters said the hardline Islamic movement will now wage a guerrilla war after withdrawing from Afghanistan's major cities to save the population from further US bombing.

Because of the impact on Afghan civilians, anti-war feelings are common in Germany. Young Hamburg professionals Britta Hoeper and Marco Di Sturini don't consider themselves anti-American.

"Of course, we are angry and sad that someone attacked the United States," Ms. Hoeper says. "But that doesn't mean we have to agree with everything the Americans do or say. We see that people are suffering and dying in Afghanistan, and most of them had nothing to do with what happened in New York."

Like many Germans, they fear that too much support for the US military policy could make Germany a terrorist target. "If you make war, you risk having it turn up on your doorstep," says Mr. Di Sturini.

Nana Petzet, a mother of two small children, worries about US prospects for success.

"I don't doubt that fundamentalist Islam is very dangerous and they hate our Western way of life," she says. "But even if they catch bin Laden, terrorism will not go away. Western countries must start to take the third world more seriously."

-------- israel

Likud member arrested for arming Palestinians

World Scene
November 14, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011114-69129136.htm

JERUSALEM - An Israeli Bedouin who is a member of the central committee of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party has been arrested for smuggling weapons to Palestinian militants, Israeli television said yesterday.

Attala Abu Aida, a Bedouin from the Negev Desert in the south, was arrested nine days ago and is currently being investigated, Israel's Channel Two reported.

The television showed pictures of Mr. Abu Aida with Mr. Sharon, who vowed not to compromise in his fight against the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, during his campaign for the February elections.

Mr. Abu Aida was smuggling weapons to militants via a Palestinian village south of Hebron, on the edge of the Negev Desert, where 120,000 Bedouin of nomadic tribal origin live, the report said.

-------- pakistan

Seizure Of Kabul Alarms Pakistan
Musharraf Requests U.N. Force for Capital

By Pamela Constable and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 14, 2001; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24815-2001Nov13.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 13 -- The seizure of Afghanistan's capital by opposition Northern Alliance forces has deeply alarmed Pakistani authorities, who fear a regime hostile to Pakistan will now take power there and that fighters from the collapsing Taliban militia will seek refuge across the border and destabilize this country.

"With the Northern Alliance takeover of Kabul, our worst nightmare has come true," a senior military official said today. "At least for the time being, the United States military power has handed Afghanistan to Pakistan's worst enemies in that country."

In hopes of preventing the Northern Alliance from becoming firmly entrenched in power, Pakistani officials strongly urged today that an international security force be sent to Kabul to maintain order and establish a demilitarized zone, and they suggested for the first time that Pakistani troops might participate in such a force.

"It is very important that there ought to be a United Nations force . . . to prevent ethnic fighting" and avoid repeating "the atrocities of the past," Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said during a visit to Istanbul. He said such a force should be composed of Muslim troops, and that Pakistan "could play a role."

Pakistan is deeply suspicious of the Northern Alliance. The rebel coalition has been backed by Iran, India and Russia in its struggle against the Taliban, which Pakistan supported from its beginnings in the early 1990s until September, when Musharraf chose to support the U.S.-led international coalition in its efforts against the Taliban and its ally, terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden.

The swiftness of the alliance's military advance over the past week caught Pakistani officials by surprise. Having abandoned the Taliban and failed in subsequent attempts to promote an alternative government, Pakistan now faces an antagonistic force in Kabul, which swept into the city with help from U.S. bombing and military support on the ground.

This afternoon, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aziz Khan, said Kabul should be made a demilitarized city under the control of a U.N. or multinational force and that a "broad-based" government, "acceptable to all Afghans and at peace with its neighbors" should ultimately be established under U.N. auspices.

Musharraf has repeatedly advised U.S. officials not to allow the Northern Alliance to take control of Kabul. He has warned that alliance rule could lead to revenge killings and abuses similar to those that occurred in Kabul and other cities in the early 1990s, when the alliance's current leaders headed a fractious national government.

The alliance is a loose coalition of ethnic minority militias, principally Tajiks and Uzbeks, based in the northern part of the country. These groups are longtime rivals of the southern-based Pashtun ethnic group, Afghanistan's largest, from which the Taliban draws most of its internal leadership and support.

U.S. officials said last week that they agreed the alliance should not be allowed to seize Kabul. President Bush said today that alliance leaders had "made it clear they have no intention of occupying Kabul" and that the United States would "continue to work with the Northern Alliance commanders to make sure they respect the human rights of the people they are liberating."

In Kabul tonight, Abdullah, the Northern Alliance foreign representative, said the alliance takeover of the city and much of Afghanistan "will not be a threat to Pakistan." He said that "achieving peace in Afghanistan will be in the interests of Pakistan. We hope there will be a new look at the situation from the Pakistani side."

Abdullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said the alliance has asked the United Nations to send a team of negotiators to Kabul and that it would favor establishing a government with representatives from all Afghan groups.

Pakistani officials also said today that they feared retreating Taliban troops would flee into Pakistan and use its lawless border regions to stage guerrilla attacks against Afghanistan, creating havoc in Pakistan and threatening the government's grip on power.

In Peshawar, a city in northwestern Pakistan that is home to hundreds of thousands of Afghans, many people said today that they were overjoyed that the Taliban appeared to be losing power, but were equally alarmed over the prospect of a Northern Alliance takeover.

"If I hear the Taliban have fallen, I will be so happy that I will shave off my beard right away," said Hamidullah, 40, an agronomist from Kabul who earns a living as a sidewalk currency changer in Peshawar. "But if the Northern Alliance comes in and puts on the same horror show they did before, I will hate them just as much."

-------- space

NASA has selected new chief, reports say

USA Today
11/14/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/healthscience/science/astro/2001-11-14-new-nasa-head.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sean O'Keefe, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget who recently criticized NASA cost estimates, will be named the new space agency administrator, sources said Wednesday.

Republican congressional aides said that President Bush planned to name O'Keefe to the NASA job this week and that O'Keefe has told associates of his plans to leave OMB.

O'Keefe was named to the OMB job in February. He was critical of NASA in discussing a recent report analyzing NASA's budget problems, including the agency's announcement that it would have a $4 billion overrun in the construction of the International Space Station.

Last week, O'Keefe told the House Science Committee that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was badly in need of new leadership, although it had been well-served by Daniel Goldin, the outgoing administrator.

"The administration recognizes the importance of getting the right leaders in place as soon as possible and I am personally engaged in making sure that happens," O'Keefe said in testimony before the committee.

Goldin announced last month that he would leave NASA at the end of this week after more than nine years as head of the space agency.

A report from a task force led by Thomas Young found that NASA's estimated cost of the International Space Station would reach more than $30 billion and would not be completed before 2006. In 1993, NASA said the station would be completed in 2002 and cost about $17.4 billion.

But O'Keefe, in his testimony about the report, said NASA's cost estimate "is not credible" and called for major changes in the design and management of the space station and NASA's human space flight program.

"While unpleasant in the near-term, these reforms are the medicine that will restore NASA's health and produce great benefits to the nation in the long run," he said.

O'Keefe served as a security and management expert in the Department of Defense during the administration of former President Bush and received a distinguished public service award from the president and Dick Cheney, who then was secretary of defense.

He has written widely in journals on defense management subjects and has conducted seminars on strategic studies at Oxford University in England.

O'Keefe is a 1977 graduate from Loyola University, New Orleans, and holds an advanced degree from the Maxwell School.

-------- u.n.

U.S. not set to back U.N. force

By Ben Barber and Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011114-96485595.htm

NEW YORK - The United States is not prepared to endorse a U.N. call for a multinational security force to police the Afghan capital Kabul while the world body works with Afghan groups to set up an interim government, U.S. officials said yesterday.

U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi told the Security Council that the force, expected to be from mainly Muslim countries, should be formed to support the creation "as early as humanly possible" of a temporary administration drawn from the country's various ethnic groups.

Britain last night circulated a draft U.N. resolution saying the United Nations "should play a central role in supporting the efforts of the Afghan people to establish urgently" a broad-based, multiethnic transitional government.

But a senior State Department official and other sources said the United States "has never been hot on" using U.N. forces to deal with the volatile, proud and warlike Afghans.

The Bush administration would prefer to see an all-Afghan security force replace the Taliban, whose troops were being driven yesterday toward their last redoubt in the southern city of Kandahar. The United States is also reluctant to see U.N. member nations or officials do more in Afghanistan than reinforce the sense of security, prevent human rights violations and distribute humanitarian relief.

"We are asking two questions: Do we need some international role in an interim administration, and [do we need] some role in an interim security arrangement," said the senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

"Those are not yet decided by the administration or the international community. The chief thrust is to get the Afghans to organize themselves as soon as possible into a broad-based government."

President Bush voiced solid support for the Northern Alliance at a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, rejecting suggestions its forces had massacred Taliban troops and defending their decision to enter Kabul after promising they would not.

"First of all, we're making great progress in our objective, and that is to tighten the net and eventually bring al Qaeda to justice, and at the same time deal with a government that's been harboring them," he said. Al Qaeda is the terror network headed by Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Bush said the alliance, made up mainly from the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara ethnic groups of the north, "must recognize that a future government must include representatives from all of Afghanistan," especially the largest ethnic group, the Pashtun.

He also said the Northern Alliance had promised it had "no intention of occupying Kabul," and had sent forces inside the city only because "on their way out of town, the Taliban was wreaking havoc on the citizenry of Kabul."

In Kabul, Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah issued an invitation for all ethnic, tribal and regional groups except the Taliban to meet urgently to form an interim administration.

"We invite all Afghan groups to participate, to come to Kabul and to start negotiations and to speed up the negotiations about the future of Afghanistan," he said. "We have also invited the United Nations to send their teams into Kabul in order to help us in the peace process."

Under Mr. Brahimi's proposal, the United Nations would organize a multiethnic government, possibly headed by the exiled king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, to serve for two years.

During that period, a "loya jirga," or grand council of prominent Afghans, would draw up a constitution.

A second gathering would approve it and create a permanent Afghan government.

Mr. Brahimi ruled out a traditional U.N. peacekeeping operation to maintain order in the meantime, saying it would take months to organize.

His preferred option, an all-Afghan force, would also be difficult to set up quickly.

He suggested instead a volunteer force to be quickly assembled from willing, mainly Muslim countries, much as was done in East Timor in 1999.

The State Department official acknowledged there had been discussion among U.S. and other diplomats at the United Nations of assembling "a coalition of the willing" from countries such as Turkey, Bangladesh, Jordan and Indonesia.

However, a source said the administration was cool to the idea, and especially reluctant to see a troop presence in Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan, whose President Pervez Musharraf yesterday offered such a role.

"It is very important that there ought to be a United Nations force composed of OIC countries," Mr. Musharraf said, referring to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which groups Muslim nations. "Turkey could play a role and also other Muslim countries, and maybe also Pakistan."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he wants Mr. Brahimi's deputy to travel to Kabul soon, and that the United Nations is eager to try to get its staff back into the country to deliver humanitarian aid.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon that he remained more concerned with pursuing bin Laden and his supporters.

"First priority is unquestionably tracking down the leadership in al Qaeda and Taliban," he said. "I would say the second priority is destroying the Taliban and al Qaeda's military capability, which is what props up that leadership, and tracking it down, finding it, and destroying it.

"Third to create a presence that is professional and will be stabilizing in those cities. And fourth begin the kinds of humanitarian assistance that these people are clearly going to need."

• Joseph Curl contributed to this report in Washington.

----

Peacekeepers Pulling Out of E. Timor

NOVEMBER 14,
By JOANNA JOLLY
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7FP58900

GLENO, East Timor (AP)- U.N. peacekeepers began scaling down their operation in East Timor with a ceremony Wednesday to honor departing Kenyan troops.

The contingent of 264 Kenyan soldiers in the central town of Gleno received U.N. medals before handing over their duties to Portuguese peacekeepers. The soldiers are pulling out after a two-year tour of duty in the mountainous region, 18 miles south of the capital Dili.

``This is indicative of the great (improvement) in the security situation in East Timor,'' said Lt. Gen. Winai Phattiyakul, the force commander.

The United Nations plans to reduce its forces in East Timor from their current level of 8,000 to about 5,000 over the next six months.

East Timor, which voted for independence from Indonesia in a 1999 referendum, is scheduled to become fully independent in May 2002. Despite the cutback, the United Nations has said it plans to maintain peacekeepers for several more years to ensure security.

An Australian-led international force first arrived in East Timor in September 1999, after Indonesian troops and their East Timorese militia laid waste to the country, following the referendum.

Peacekeepers have been responsible for securing the border with Indonesia from where pro-Jakarta militiamen attempted to launch a number of incursions.

Last year, a New Zealand and Nepalese peacekeeper were killed in skirmishes with the paramilitaries. However, the past year has seen little activity on the border.

Over the next few months, troops will be withdrawn from other sectors of the country. As they withdraw, responsibility for security will gradually be transferred to East Timor's nascent defense force which is expected to be fully operation by 2004.

----

'With or against us' war irks many UN nations
Bush's intention to broaden the war beyond Afghanistan fails to galvanize UN.

Christian Science Monitor
November 14, 2001
By Michael J. Jordan | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1114/p7s1-wogi.html

UNITED NATIONS - Until now, supporting the United States in its war against terrorists has been relatively easy for many members of the United Nations. But faultlines deepened in the international coalition this week when President Bush informed the UN General Assembly that he intends to take the antiterror campaign beyond Afghanistan.

In comments before the assembly of more than 1,000 delegates, the president warned that some states, "while pledging to uphold the principles of the UN, have cast their lot with the terrorists," alluding to Iraq. There will be "a price to be paid," Bush said.

That message has some diplomats and UN-watchers wondering how Washington will simultaneously hold together its coalition while broadening its war aims. Meanwhile, a growing number of UN members are signaling a waning appetite for Bush's "with-us-or-against-us" campaign.

To some, the with-us-or-against-us smacks of Stalinism. They say it muzzles domestic critics and squelches dissent from those abroad who fear repercussions from the world's economic and military superpower.

The president's good-versus-evil rhetoric also denies shades of gray, says Richard Falk, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. Such language "implies too much clarity in a world that's much messier than that," he says. "It shows a lack of respect for the sovereignty of other countries and may place them between contradictory pressures."

President Bush's with-us-or-against-us slogan was an effective rallying tool following the Sept. 11 suicide attacks. But the power of those words is fading with every civilian casualty in Afghanistan, and could even be polarizing opposition to the US course.

By contrast, says one analyst, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is making a convincing case. "Blair is not boxing leaders in, but saying, 'This is the moral imperative, this is the task at hand, will you help us?' " says Scott Lasensky, a Mideast expert with the Council on Foreign Relations.

"If you ask whether we condemn the Sept. 11 attack, we're with you," says one South American diplomat. "But is more violence the best answer? The Americans don't leave room for alternative opinions. When will countries speak out: after 1,000, 100,000, or 1 million more are killed?"

Yesterday, UN officials were rushing to put together an interim government in Kabul. And US Secretary of State Colin Powell earlier indicated he thought a UN peacekeeping force in Afghanistan should be led by Muslim states such as Turkey, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.

To encourage the coalition support of all of America's key partners in the campaign - from Russia to China, from the Middle East to Africa - Washington will pay them off in one way or another, says a diplomat from a NATO country.

Each country, he says, expects the US "to offer economic or military assistance, debt relief, or at least that Washington will turn a blind eye to human-rights abuses or political repression."

They would be happy to have Mr. bin Laden out of the picture, the European diplomat says, but "it's not that there's genuine anger against terrorism. They're looking to benefit somehow, to promote their own interests."

Pakistan, for one, was rewarded by Bush this week with a $1 billion aid package and the likelihood that assorted sanctions will be lifted.

Important Arab and Muslim coalition partners also need something to soothe their restive publics: a renewed American push to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and greater "balance" toward the Palestinian side.

So they praised Bush for his vow Saturday to pursue a "just peace" and then for becoming the first US president ever to utter publicly the name "Palestine." However, the Arab world seemed to overlook that Bush also rejected "national aspiration" as justification for "the deliberate murder of the innocent" - an implicit reference to Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis.

A quick test of coalition support came last week when Lebanon refused to freeze the assets of Hizbullah, which is supported by both Syria and Iran. Syria is expected to follow Lebanon's example. Under a new UN Security Council resolution, sanctions of some sort may be in the offing. But would the US pursue a military option as well? Furthermore, will the hawks at the Pentagon prevail and win approval for attacks on Iraq?

European public support for the Afghan war is dwindling, so a move on Iraq may cause coalition defections on the Continent. If nothing else, it would further inflame Arab-Muslim public opinion and perhaps apply enough pressure on the regimes to cause "diminishing returns" in coalition partnership, Lasensky said.

Out of self-preservation, then, they would presumably withdraw, regardless of the with-us-or-against-us ultimatum. "I can see some in the Middle East associating that phrase with American policy writ large," he said. "And there are a lot of US policies they oppose."

And that might spell the end of the coalition itself. If that happens, even countries that steadfastly support the war in Afghanistan say America would have only itself to blame.

While much of the world views America as a mostly benevolent power, diplomats say, there was sufficient anti-American resentment pre-Sept. 11 that it won't take much more than the passage of time for remaining sympathy to dissipate altogether.

Which is why so many diplomats say they hope the events of Sept. 11 will spur Washington to reflect on the sources of terrorism and anti-American enmity - and reassess its policies abroad.

"As long as the great socio-economic disparities are there, the problems will remain," said a diplomat from a developing Asian nation. "If you act as if other countries don't exist, as if other people don't exist, they will find the means to bring attention to themselves."

--------

THE FUTURE
U.N. Seeks Meeting of Afghans to Fill Vacuum in Kabul

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/international/asia/14NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 13 - Rushing to fill the void in Kabul created by the unexpected flight of the Taliban, the United Nations proposed today to convene a meeting of Afghan representatives quickly to start work on a provisional administration, and to deploy an "international security presence" in the Afghan capital until a national force can be readied.

Speaking to a Security Council seized with an unusual sense of urgency and excitement, the special United Nations envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, said establishing order in Kabul as soon as possible was especially important because the capital carried "immense symbolic value." He reminded delegates that the failure to do so after the collapse of the Soviet- backed regime brought about a devastating civil war and destroyed the city.

Diplomats said Mr. Brahimi's plan was certain to receive unanimous approval as nation after nation lined up to endorse it, and the formal vote on a resolution could come Wednesday. An American diplomat, asked if Washington supported the plan, said: "Totally. One hundred percent."

Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was sending a longtime emissary, Francesc Vendrell, to Afghanistan to take charge there. At the same time, Mr. Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, will work on securing the coalition government from abroad. Mr. Vendrell, of Spain, was expected to enter Kabul as soon as an advance United Nations security team deemed it safe.

All those involved agreed that speed was required. Diplomats said delays could cause Afghanistan to be divided into a Northern Alliance-controlled region and a Taliban-controlled area in the south, around Kandahar. "This is why the moment is imperative," said the French ambassador, David Levitte, adding in reference to the majority ethnic group from which the Taliban come, "We have to show the Pashtun that they have a future in Kabul."

Outlining his plan to the Security Council, Mr. Brahimi repeatedly stressed that any plan must be broad-based and developed from within the country to stand a chance of acceptance. Above all, diplomats said, it could not appear to be imposed by victorious powers.

"The bitter experience of the last 10 years shows that the solution must be carefully put together and be homegrown, so that it enjoys the support of all the internal and external players, and so that there are no spoilers from the inside or outside who would disrupt its implementation," Mr. Brahimi told the Council.

No political settlement, he said, would survive without a security force, especially given the large Arab and Qaeda bands in the country. "The pervasive presence of non- Afghan armed and terrorist groups with no interest in a lasting peace will necessitate the introduction of a robust security force able to deter and, if necessary, defeat challenges to its authority," he said.

Mr. Brahimi said that the best option was an all-Afghan security force, but that this would require time, so the Security Council would have to consider sending in a multinational force. Diplomats said possible participants included Turkey, Bangladesh and Indonesia, all Islamic countries. Mr. Brahimi in effect ruled out a United Nations peacekeeping force, arguing that such forces were intended to monitor existing agreements and took a long time to set up.

The political plan outlined by Mr. Brahimi called first for an immediate meeting of representatives of the Northern Alliance and various exile groups to agree on a framework for a political transition. No venue was decided, but there was talk of Qatar or even Kabul. That meeting would propose concrete steps to convene a provisional council drawn from all ethnic and regional groupings and presided over by someone who symbolized national unity. No one was mentioned, but the obvious candidate was the former Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir, 87, who has been meeting with Mr. Brahimi and Afghan groups in Rome, where he has lived in exile for almost 30 years.

Next, the provisional council would form a traditional administration and devise a plan for a political transition to take no more than two years. An emergency loya jirga, a traditional national assembly, would be called to approve the program.

A draft resolution circulated tonight in effect endorsed all of Mr. Brahimi's proposals, though it phrased the security proposals in broad terms, calling on member nations only to "ensure the safety and security of areas of Afghanistan no longer under Taliban control." Diplomats said this would give the United Nations maximum flexibility as the situation evolved in Afghanistan.

The American ambassador, John D. Negroponte, noted that only 72 hours earlier, President Bush had told the General Assembly that "the Taliban's days of harboring terrorists are drawing to a close." In addition to giving a full endorsement for Mr. Brahimi and his proposals, Mr. Negroponte called on the Afghan "liberation forces" to show restraint as they continue their advance. "Afghanistan does not need another cycle of revenge and retribution as the Taliban collapses," he said.

Mr. Brahimi concluded his long and detailed statement to the Council with a strong and personal plea that the world not abandon the Afghans, as it had before. Though he did not specify when, the reference was clearly to the American abandoning of Afghanistan after supporting the Afghans against the Soviet Union for years.

"The people of Afghanistan have endured over 23 years of war and misery, and the conflict has spilled over to neighboring countries," he said. "It has threatened their internal stability and placed a tremendous burden on their already limited means. I appeal to all to show the people of Afghanistan that we are not going to give up on them this time and that we are going to show genuine solidarity and real generosity."

Mr. Brahimi also spoke of the challenge of feeding the Afghans through the winter. He said the United Nations had to ship and distribute at least 52,000 tons of food per month for the next several months.

Reports reaching the United Nations from Mazar-i-Sharif, the northern city from which the Taliban withdrew on Friday, said that it was being torn by pillaging, kidnapping and street fighting, and that 89 tons of food in United Nations warehouses had been stolen.

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

Pentagon and press can both do their jobs

Christian Science Monitor
November 14, 2001
By John Hughes
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1114/p9s2-cojh.html

SALT LAKE CITY - When I was State Department spokesman in the Reagan administration, Bernie Kalb, then diplomatic correspondent for one of the three major television networks, came to me to confirm what could have been a major scoop for him.

He'd been tipped that an American seized in the Middle East, and being held by the Hizbullah, was actually a CIA agent. I told Bernie that I could only continue our discussion off the record. We fenced, and finally Bernie went back to his network and got its agreement that we could talk off the record.

Then I told Bernie that the American was in fact the CIA station chief in the country where he'd been captured, but we didn't know if his captors knew that yet. If Bernie's network went with that story, the CIA man would certainly be killed. Bernie and his network kept silent. Ultimately, after torturing him terribly, the Hizbullah did find out the CIA officer's identity, and they killed him. But he did not die because of any leak or indiscretion on the part of the press. Bernie and his network behaved honorably. Of course, it helped that Kalb and I had been friends for years, racketing around Southeast Asia as foreign correspondents together. It helped that I trusted him. I knew him as a patriot as well as a professional.

I tell this story to illustrate that over the years responsible journalists and news organizations have kept many secrets that, if published, might have put heroes at risk, or run counter to the national interest. For instance, when Iranian radicals seized the American Embassy in Iran, some Embassy officers who were outside the Embassy, sought refuge in the homes of friendly diplomats from other countries, and stayed safely there throughout the long months of the embassy siege. A number of journalists knew that and never reported it.

As a lifelong journalist who spent a few years in government, I'm familiar with both sides of the press-versus-government tension that currently afflicts Washington. More specifically, it's a press-versus-Pentagon tension, as reporters bridle at their inability to get to the war front to find out for themselves what's going on, and at home a distrustful military clamps down on information that it says could endanger lives and security if published.

For now, public opinion seems to be favoring the Pentagon. But that could change, and in any major foreign adventure - and especially in time of war - better that government should engage the press as friend, not foe.

Though the press and military have jousted through history, the current distrust between them took root in the Vietnam War. Reporters in Vietnam were allowed widespread travel and access to combat, but found their firsthand observations often at odds with the optimistic views advanced by military briefers at the "Five O'clock Follies" in Saigon.

With the lessons of Vietnam in mind, the military in the Gulf War discouraged reporters from wandering under their own steam, but produced frequent briefings at headquarters by the charismatic commander, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who paid special attention to the press. In the Afghan campaign, the press has so far been denied access to troops and pilots involved, but has been briefed directly by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who clearly is in command of wartime information but who has not been forthcoming enough to satisfy the Pentagon press corps.

Not all military briefings need be mass ones, on camera. Small background briefings for trusted reporters, columnists and editorial writers, and TV anchors and editors, in which strategy is confidentially explained, can be mutually beneficial.

Clearly, the press cannot expect to trot alongside every clandestine special operations unit in Afghanistan. But after the Gulf War, formulas for coverage were worked out between news organizations and the military that included access to "all major military units." They should be implemented as time and place permit.

The mission of the military is to spearhead the war and ultimately achieve victory. The role of the press is to report the campaign and inform the public how the government is doing. Neither side will always agree with the way the other is doing its job. There are complications, because the war against terrorism requires new, nontraditional, and sometimes secretive measures.

But it is not heretical to suggest that journalistic professionalism and patriotism can coexist for the common good.

John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, served as assistant secretary of State for public affairs from 1982 to 1985.

---

Terrorist tribunals allowed

USA Today
11/14/2001
By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/14/lede.htm

WASHINGTON - President Bush signed an executive order on Tuesday that allows military tribunals to try any foreigners captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or linked to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Bush's order, the first such action by a U.S. president since World War II, gives Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the power to establish tribunals that could try foreign terrorism suspects here or abroad in secret, without many of the constitutional protections given to defendants in the federal court system.

By operating in secret, the tribunals could avoid public disclosure of sensitive information, such as how the U.S. government gathers intelligence. They also likely would resolve charges far quicker than the U.S. court system, partly because defendants would not be allowed lengthy appeals of the verdicts rendered by military officers. The military panels could order the death penalty for those found guilty.

Bush said that such a dramatic departure from the traditional court system is needed to avoid having to prosecute accused terrorists under court rules that might result in the disclosure of state secrets or make the United States more vulnerable to terrorism.

"Having fully considered the magnitude of the potential deaths, injuries, and property destruction that would result from potential acts of terrorism against the United States, and the probability that such acts will occur, I have determined that an extraordinary emergency exists for national defense," Bush said in his order. He cited his role as military commander-in-chief and the national emergency he proclaimed on Sept. 14. That day, Congress gave him the power to use "all necessary and appropriate force" to fight terrorism.

Military tribunals have been used during national crises to try terrorists, saboteurs and other enemies.

After President Lincoln was slain in 1865, a panel of generals and colonels tried eight civilians charged with aiding the president's killer, John Wilkes Booth. All eight were convicted, and four were hanged.

In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt had a military tribunal try eight Nazi saboteurs who had been sneaked into New York and Florida on German submarines. The judges were military officers, and the accused were represented by military officers who were specialists in military law. All eight defendants were convicted, and six were executed.

The saboteurs' lawyers challenged the constitutionality of the tribunal, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the president's power to set up tribunals. The justices said the president's authority stemmed from the war powers granted to him by Congress.

Critics of tribunals say they improperly deny defendants the constitutional safeguards found in federal courts, or pre-empt the creation of international courts that would include judges from many countries - in this case, possibly from Muslim nations.

"It flies in the face of the values we're fighting for," says Harvard law professor Anne-Marie Slaughter. "We're going to present a lot of evidence in secret."

White House officials stressed that Bush signed the order to give U.S. authorities another weapon against terrorism. The administration might use the mere possibility of tribunals to try to get suspects to cooperate with investigators. Several immigrants who have been linked to the Sept. 11 hijackers have refused to cooperate. No individual has been targeted for a special trial, the White House said.

The tribunals could try only non-citizens, who do not have the same legal protections as citizens. The president would decide who would be tried.

The order refers to the al-Qa'eda network linked to the Sept. 11 attacks, but it covers any foreigners involved in terrorism.

Contributing: Richard Willing

------

JURISDICTION
Use of Military Court Divides Legal Experts

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/national/14LEGA.html

Though there is clear legal authority for the government to use military tribunals to try people accused of crimes during war, legal experts were divided yesterday on the merits of allowing such proceedings against foreign terrorists.

Some experts questioned the symbolism of President Bush's order to allow the tribunals, saying that the advantages such courts give the government - like fewer barriers to admission of evidence against a defendant - could raise questions about the nation's commitment to its basic values.

"We're fighting to defend freedom, democracy and the rule of law - let's use those things the way we usually do," said Barry Friedman, a constitutional law professor at New York University School of Law.

Mr. Bush's defenders were quick to say that the Sept. 11 attacks showed that the country was at war with an enemy willing to kill thousands of civilians. A rigorous legal response is justified, they said, even if that means a flexible approach to some protections of the American legal system.

In a military tribunal, officers, not civilian jurors, reach verdicts. Appeal would be through levels of military courts and, ultimately, to the United States Supreme Court, if it decided to hear a case.

Some parts of a tribunal could be closed to the public. Ruth Wedgwood, an international law professor at Yale University's law school and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said that such courts would have far more power than a civilian court to limit the information available to a defendant.

For example, Professor Wedgwood said, a military court could keep from the defendant and the public certain intelligence information if the disclosure was found to place the country's military operations at risk. In a civilian trial, she said, a defendant might learn information that would help a terrorist group operate.

In addition, Professor Wedgwood said, "there are fewer obstacles to the admission of evidence," which she said could be a key to streamlining the process.

Over all, she added, "given the dangerousness of the Al Qaeda network, it is the prudent way to try these cases."

Douglas W. Kmiec, the dean of The Catholic University of America, said such limitations made military courts an important option.

"This alternative is fully consistent with historical practice in past military campaigns, and fully advisable in light of the unlawful belligerent status of terrorists," Mr. Kmiec said.

But some legal experts who expressed concern about Mr. Bush"s plan said they were not convinced that these cases were beyond the capacity of civilian courts, which have dealt with terrorism and espionage cases before.

"This suggests that we ourselves don't trust our civilian courts," said Jonathan L. Entin, a professor of constitutional law at the Case Western Reserve University law school.

Akhil Reed Amar, a constitutional law expert at Yale University, said Mr. Bush's action would place terrorism cases in military courts that are not independent of the government. Federal courts are independent of the executive branch and Mr. Amar said such independence might prove useful in conferring legitimacy to decisions reached about people accused of terrorism.

Jurors, Mr. Amar said, brought their own skepticism of the government into court and that could be useful in demonstrating the fairness of a legal process.

"`If you have military courts making the decision, they answer to the president," he said. "There's something beneficial about having the courts independent of the government."

------

U.S. Troops Must Go In

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By LARRY P. GOODSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/opinion/14GOOD.html

WALTHAM, Mass. -- We are at a critical moment not only for Afghanistan, but for the United States. The Northern Alliance has proved itself a good proxy force, working in conjunction with American air power to drive the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces into disarray. But in a country whose recent history is one of warring factions and hostile ethnic divisions, America cannot allow Northern Alliance occupation of Afghan cities to become the order of the day. Before the alliance can become entrenched, we must send in our own soldiers - in large numbers - to enforce human rights and keep the peace.

We may well need American troops as fighters to secure victory in the southern regions, too. The Taliban still have troops in their southern stronghold, around Kandahar. In these heavily Pashtun areas, the northern troops are unlikely to be welcomed as liberators.

But beyond a military victory over Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the great opportunity for the United States now is to lead the rebuilding of Afghanistan in a way that convinces open-minded people in the Islamic countries that America is a force for good in the world.

Yes, this is nation-building. State failure is the cause of Afghanistan's current woes, and by extension, many of the problems of the surrounding region. We must be active in Afghanistan until it is a functional nation once again - one with a just sharing of power among its competing ethnic groups.

Americans who still fear committing our troops need to know that this is not the Afghanistan of the past. In the 1980's the Afghan mujahedeen tormented their Soviet occupiers until the Soviets were finally forced out. But the mujahedeen had sanctuary in Pakistan, United States backing and the near-total support of the Afghan people. None of this applies to the Taliban. After the Taliban are driven from all the Afghan cities, their most dedicated elements might try to fight from mountain strongholds as guerrilla warriors. But without wide local support and help from the outside, they will be able to make only limited forays.

There is a commanding humanitarian reason, too, for the quick entry of a large American force into Afghanistan. Our troops can provide a transitional military government over the winter months, one that can maintain law and order, collect heavy weapons from local militias, and facilitate the distribution of food, emergency supplies and reconstruction aid.

United Nations troops and forces from many nations can help with the work of stabilizing and rebuilding. But only the United States has the ability to keep Afghanistan stable as it recovers from Taliban rule and then to stay the course through what should be a long reconstruction phase. Only the United States has the overwhelming national interest to pursue what is best for Afghanistan: all of Afghanistan's neighbors, but especially Pakistan, have their own, shortsighted political agendas in Afghanistan.

For America, the goal must be to destroy the conditions that allowed Afghanistan to play host to terrorism. And a defeat of terrorism in Afghanistan would rob the world's terrorist movements of much of their momentum.

The work of military engineers and civilian construction companies will be just as important as the combat campaign. Scenes of Afghan parents mourning their dead children, killed by stray American bombs, should be replaced by scenes of American soldiers feeding and clothing Afghan children and rebuilding their homes.

Larry P. Goodson, an associate professor of international studies at Bentley College, is the author of "Afghanistan's Endless War."

----

U.S. Jets Target Retreating Taliban

NOVEMBER 14, 08:35 EST
By STEVEN GUTKIN
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/?PACKAGEID=russia

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The northern alliance moved Wednesday to consolidate its grip on Kabul, taking over key posts and ministries despite a pledge to support a broad-based government. Forced to retreat south, the Taliban were reportedly struggling to prevent their movement from disintegrating.

Pashtun tribal leaders in key areas of the south were reportedly in open revolt against the fundamentalist Islamic militia.

In the capital, radio broadcasts resumed and television was promised soon. Northern alliance officials returned to government offices they abandoned in 1996 when the Taliban drove them from power.

Officials portrayed the takeover of key ministries, such as defense and interior, as temporary and said they support a U.N.-supervised political settlement in which all ethnic groups would be represented.

In the south and east of the country, the situation appeared chaotic as local tribal leaders appeared to challenge the Taliban in the ethnic Pashtun heartlands.

Afghan sources in Pakistan, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the airport in the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar was held by about 200 fighters loyal to Arif Khan, a member of a southern Pashtun tribe.

A Taliban official along the Pakistani border at Chaman, Mullah Najibullah, said Taliban fighters were firing on the airport Wednesday from hilltop positions.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported that tribal elders took control Wednesday of the town of Gardez, in Paktia province about 60 miles south of Kabul.

Followers of a local, independent powerbroker, Yunus Khalis, took control of the Afghan border station at Torkham, a major crossing point into Pakistan.

In Kabul, relieved residents awoke Wednesday after a night free of the nearby crash of U.S. bombs. Triumphant northern alliance fighters patrolled the streets.

The Taliban abandoned Kabul and headed south before dawn Tuesday after the northern alliance, backed by intensive American bombing, fought their way to the edge of the city.

Supporters say the Taliban's withdrawal from urban areas throughout the country is a strategy that will allow the militia and its allies to wage a guerrilla war from Kandahar's rugged mountains and caves.

U.S. warplanes kept up pressure on the Taliban with more air raids outside the capital Wednesday. American aircraft bombed the airport and military installations around the city of Jalalabad at least six times overnight and early in the morning, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported.

Citing an unidentified Taliban official, the agency also said warplanes attacked a military base in Khost, six miles from the Pakistan border.

Mohammed Alam Ezdediar, who headed a northern alliance radio station before Kabul fell, assumed control of the newly renamed Radio Afghanistan and resumed airing music, which the Taliban had banned as frivolous.

He hired three women as news readers, and aired statements from the alliance defense ministry urging people to remain calm and return to work. Under the Taliban, women were banned from working outside the home except in the health sector.

Daoud Naimi, the new acting director of TV Afghanistan, said he hoped to resume television broadcasts soon. Television was also banned by the Taliban as un-Islamic.

Kabul residents cheerfully abandoned other Taliban edicts - children flew kites, teen-agers listened to music and men shaved their beards. But most women retained their all-encompassing burqas.

The top U.N. envoy for Afghanistan outlined a plan for a two-year transitional government with a multinational security force. On Tuesday, northern alliance spokesman Abdullah said his movement supported the plan.

For the time being, however, the alliance, especially the Jamiat-e-Islami faction of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, moved into key ministries in the capital.

Pakistani intelligence sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said many Taliban leaders had sent their families across the border into Pakistan under the protection of tribal leaders from their Pashtun ethnic group.

The sources said the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was trying to rally his remaining followers. Omar was either traveling with or was remaining in close communications with terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden, they added.

In a radio address, Omar said he was in Kandahar - a report that could not be verified - and urged his fighters to resist in the name of Islam.

Those who do not are ``just like a chicken with its head cut off,'' he said. ``It falls in a ditch and dies.''

President Bush ordered airstrikes on Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his suspected role in the September terrorist attacks that killed 4,500 people in the United States.

Under relentless pounding by U.S. planes, Taliban defenses crumbled, first in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and then throughout most of the country.

The Pentagon said U.S. special forces were in southern Afghanistan, working on the next phase of the campaign. U.S military planners think the best course is to approach ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders in the south who are unhappy with the Taliban - and persuade them to defect.

In Kabul, a northern alliance official said there were reports of uprisings against the Taliban by residents in eastern Nangarhar province as well as in the southern provinces of Ghazni and Wardak.

The Afghan Islamic Press reported that Nangarhar's capital, Jalalabad, was under the control of Khalis, who declared himself independent of both the Taliban and the northern alliance.

Witnesses said Khalis' followers at the Torkham border station were preventing anyone, including Afghans, from entering the country Wednesday.

``People have revolted against the Taliban,'' said Saeed Hussain Anwari, a top Shiite Muslim commander who rode triumphantly into Kabul after a string of sudden victories in northern Afghanistan.

Anwari said anti-Taliban fighters held the airport in Kandahar but Taliban forces were in the mountains outside the city. The center of the city was contested, he said, but it was unclear if there was any actual fighting.

In Islamabad, Pakistan, the Taliban deputy ambassador Suhail Shaheen accused the northern alliance of atrocities against people in Kabul and other recently occupied cities and claimed human rights organizations were remaining silent ``and watching the bloodshed of innocent people.''

``The Afghans will never accept the murderous communist generals who are being imposed on the Afghans by foreign powers,'' he said.

In other attacks-related news:

- An aide to Afhanistan's exiled monarch, Zaher Shah, said Wednesday that the 87-year-old king was willing to return to Afghanistan. Yusuf Nuristani quoted the king as saying, ``I offer myself to serve the nation wholeheartedly to restore peace and security.'' Shah, who ruled for 40 years, has lived in Rome since he was ousted in 1973 in a palace coup.

- The United Nations sent its first delivery of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan on Wednesday, 55 tons of winter supplies via a barge across the Amu Darya River that separates Afghanistan from Uzbekistan. If the shipment is successful, as much as 17,600 tons of aid a month could be routed through northern Afghanistan.

- In London, thousands of British troops were ordered Wednesday to prepare for possible duty in Kabul and other cities of Afghanistan captured from the Taliban regime.

--------

History, Declassified

Christian Science Monitor
November 14, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1114/p8s3-comv.html

A recent directive by President Bush severely restricts access to presidential records. It allows a sitting president to declare archives of past presidents "privileged," and thus inaccessible to the public, even if the former president disagrees.

The White House says sitting presidents are better positioned to determine national security issues. Historians say the move would eviscerate access to presidential archival material, greatly hampering those who study presidential decisions.

Balancing national security with access to government records has a long history. Rules such as the Presidential Records Act of 1978 already address the issue. That law sets a 12-year waiting period before releasing papers relating to communications between a president and his policy advisers, and a 25-year waiting period with regard to papers deemed linked to matters of national security. The Bush order adds the requirement that members of the public show a "demonstrated, specific need" to gain such access. That's entirely too restrictive. Public figures and public access to them, should, for the most part, go hand in hand.

Legal challenges to the Bush order are expected. But the process could take years and Congress may need to take up the matter. At a time when the public is being asked to give up at least some civil liberties for safety, every effort should be made by government to promote openness as much as possible in its operations.


-------- OTHER

-------- energy

OIL RESERVE
Bush Orders Increased Emergency Supply of Oil

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By NEELA BANERJEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/business/14OIL.html

VIENNA, Nov. 13 - President Bush ordered the Energy Department today to increase the United States' emergency supply of oil, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to its capacity over the next few years, the first time it will be full.

Filling the oil reserve to capacity "will strengthen the long-term energy security of the United States," Mr. Bush said in a statement.

Analysts have said that strengthening the United States' insurance against a break in the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf region gained urgency when the strikes on Afghanistan began. But Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham denied that the president's decision was influenced by the heightened tension.

Created in 1975, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a network of underground caverns in Louisiana and Texas, was intended to smooth out, in the short run, the price spikes and possible shortages that could be caused by a disruption in supplies. It has a capacity of 700 million barrels of oil and now contains about 545 million barrels, which at the country's current rate of imports would last 53 days if foreign supplies were halted. The most the oil reserve has ever contained was about 590 million barrels in the early 1990's, which at the time would have been enough for 82 days if there were no imports.

The United States imports a smaller percentage of its oil from the Middle East than it did 30 years ago, and would not be paralyzed by oil shortages if supplies from the region fell considerably. But the broad economy, and the individual consumer, would encounter sharply higher prices as supplies dwindled. Despite the reduced reliance on oil from the Persian Gulf, the country consumes and imports far more oil over all than it did a decade ago, exacerbating the vulnerability of the economy to a precipitous drop in supplies.

The White House announcement comes on the eve of a meeting by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries here on Wednesday. OPEC, facing falling prices, is expected to reduce output by a million to 1.5 million barrels a day.

Analysts in Vienna, Washington and New York were divided over whether the White House's announcement was meant to sway OPEC's decision.

Some said the timing was a coincidence. But others thought that the White House might want OPEC to factor into its forecasts that filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would require, on average, an extra 100,000 barrels of oil a day for about two years. The move might also be viewed by OPEC, some experts said, as an effort by the White House to help stabilize oil markets by bolstering demand, if only by a relatively small part of worldwide use - now estimated a little above 76 million barrels a day.

"It goes to underscore the notion that there are common interests between the United States and a country like Saudi Arabia on oil prices," said Jan Stuart, head of research on global energy futures at ABN Amro (news/quote ). "They don't want prices too high or too low. Very low prices would hurt the oil industry in the United States, an important industry here, and it would be damaging to parts of the world we care about like Venezuela, the Middle East and Indonesia."

Crude oil prices rose on the announcement. In New York, crude oil for December delivery climbed 44 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $21.67 a barrel. Brent crude oil for December delivery also rose 2.1 percent in London.

Mr. Bush has been considering ways to fill the strategic reserve for at least three weeks, industry experts said. The reserve could have been filled rapidly if the White House had asked Congress to appropriate money to buy oil on the open market. But with many industries and constituencies competing for federal money, the chances of an appropriation were considered slim.

Instead, the Energy Department will take oil rather than cash royalty payments from companies that lease federal lands for drilling. The quantities will be small at first, the Interior Department said, because there are still contracts in force between the government and the companies for cash payments. But once many of those contracts expire in late March, the in-kind oil payments should start in greater amounts.

The plan will add 108 million barrels of oil to the reserve on top of an increase of 48 million barrels already expected by 2003, much of it as the payment for a deal last year under which oil companies received crude oil from the government to be refined into heating fuel. At current prices, the 108 million barrels would be valued around $2.3 billion.

Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, referring to the time needed to fill the reserve through the in-kind payment plan, said: "It will take two and a half years or more to get a job done that should have been done in the next six months. But to avoid an appropriations battle, the White House took the line of least political resistance."

The Bush administration's move comes as the Saudi Arabian oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, the de facto leader of OPEC, completed a quick tour of major non-OPEC exporters, including Russia and Norway, to coax them to hold output at current levels or decrease it in an effort to shore up prices.

So far, he has had little success. Russia agreed to reduce exports by only 30,000 barrels a day, at a time when its exports would have declined slightly anyway because of increased heating oil use at home. Norway rebuffed Mr. Naimi's entreaties. Oman, a small producer, has said that it will decrease exports. And it is uncertain what Mexico, a principal exporter to the United States, will do.

---

Navy plans a pilot project to harness the power of ocean waves

States
USA Today
01/11/14
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Hawaii

Honolulu - The Navy plans a pilot project to harness the power of ocean waves to provide electricity for the Marine Corps' Base Kaneohe. The renewable wave energy is a non-polluting source of power and could reduce the military's dependence on oil, officials said.

---

OPEC agrees to cut output if other producers do

USA Today
11/14/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/14/opec-cut.htm

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - OPEC has agreed to reduce its daily production target for oil by 1.5 million barrels, or 6%, but only if non-OPEC producers share the burden by making a deep cut of their own, the cartel announced Wednesday.

Delegates of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said they were asking oil- producing countries outside the cartel to decrease output by 500,000 barrels for a combined cut of 2 million barrels a day, aimed halting the recent slide in oil prices. The cuts are to take effect Jan. 1.

Confronted with a sharp drop in global demand for crude, OPEC members are eager to tighten their taps and have called on major non-OPEC producers such as Mexico and Norway to do the same. Despite pleas and veiled threats of a price war, however, Russia is the only major non-OPEC producer so far to publicly declare its willingness to oblige.

"The situation has deteriorated beyond the control of OPEC. It is not an issue of whether 'we want' or 'we don't want.' The issue is whether 'we can' or 'we cannot,"' Kuwaiti oil minister Adel al-Sabeeh said at OPEC's headquarters in Vienna.

Al-Sabeeh stressed that OPEC would not trim production on its own. "Without a substantial contribution from non-OPEC (countries), OPEC cannot maintain the prices," he said.

"Everybody would be the loser," said Qatar's oil minister, Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Attiyah. "If it is just OPEC, then in my opinion it would be a disaster."

OPEC president Chakib Khelil insisted the group would not follow through with its planned cuts unless non-OPEC producers shouldered some of the responsibility.

"I don't think this is beyond the capacity of non-OPEC (countries) to do," Khelil told reporters after the delegates ended their formal talks.

He noted that OPEC has curtailed its output by 3.5 million barrels a day this year without a meaningful contribution from other producers.

OPEC members tried to put a brave face on their uncertain agreement.

"We'll have a cut of 2 million (barrels) on the 1st of January, I don't have any doubt," Khelil said.

So far, the group has garnered pledges of non-OPEC cuts totaling about 175,000 barrels a day, said Libyan Oil Minister Abdulhafid Mahmoud Zlitni. Russia, the world's third-largest oil producer, has offered to make a token cut of 30,000 barrels a day.

Zlitni refused to name the other countries that have committed to cut output.

OPEC, which pumps about a third of the world's oil, is alarmed by the collapse in demand for crude and the economic uncertainty lingering from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Oil prices have tumbled by 25% since Sept. 11.

OPEC continues to try to peg the price for its benchmark blend of seven crudes within a range of $22-$28 per barrel. The price of the OPEC benchmark was 12 cents higher at $19.23 a barrel on Tuesday, the most recent day for which the data was compiled.

Leo Drollas, chief economist for the Center for Global Energy Studies in London, forecast that OPEC's benchmark price would fall to $18.10 during the first quarter of next year even with cuts of 2 million barrels a day.

President Bush gave a modest boost to prices Tuesday when he ordered the U.S. government to put more oil into America's emergency stockpile and for the first time fill the reserve to full capacity.

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which now has 544 million barrels of oil, is to be filled "in a deliberate and cost-effective manner" up to its full capacity of 700 million barrels, Bush said. The first deliveries were to begin in April.

Qatar's Al Attiyah said Tuesday he was concerned that non-OPEC nations might try to grab a bigger share of the world market by increasing their production. That could trigger rounds of competitive discounts - "a disaster for everybody," he said.

However, some industry analysts said major non-OPEC producers are unwilling to cooperate unless they see OPEC members making a serious effort to keep from busting their own quotas. OPEC currently pumps about 800,000 barrels above its daily target of 23.2 million barrels.

December contracts for North Sea Brent crude fell $1.78 Wednesday to $19.03 in trading on the International Petroleum Exchange in London.

Light, sweet crude for December delivery was $1.77 lower at $19.90 in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

--------

U.S. SENATOR BARBARA BOXER STATEMENT ON DRILLING IN THE ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

11.14.01
http://www.truthout.com/11.18C.Boxer.ANWR.htm

The economic stimulus package is supposed to stimulate our economy, not destroy our environment.

I am pleased to join my colleagues here today as we unite to send the loud and clear message that we will not stand by and watch one of our nation's most precious resources destroyed as part of a so-called "stimulus" package.

Drilling in ANWR is not a solution, it is an illusion. It gives us the false impression that we are solving our problems and boosting the economy at the same time. But the truth is, it does neither. It only deters us from finding real energy solutions.

Not only would drilling in ANWR destroy our precious environment, but it would produce only enough energy for six months of use. The answer to our problems is increasing energy efficiency.

In seven years, we could save the same amount of oil available in the Arctic Refuge by requiring light trucks and SUVs to meet the same efficiency standards as regular cars.

Just as we will continue to fight for an economic stimulus plan that helps those who need it most, we will also continue to fight against any plan that destroys our environment and ignores real solutions.

-------- human rights

As Taliban Withdraws, First Few Relief Workers Return to Afghanistan

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 14, 2001; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24605-2001Nov13.html

The first few international relief workers returned yesterday to Afghanistan after being ordered out by the Taliban two months ago. But with security still uncertain and reports of looting and violence, the United Nations and international aid groups kept most of their staff outside the country.

A doctor, a nurse and two administrators from the French group Doctors Without Borders were the first international workers to return to Kabul, having come in through the Northern Alliance-controlled Panshjer Valley.

The chaotic situation in some parts of the country, however, kept truck drivers from bringing in food from Pakistan, and officials warned that a humanitarian crisis is inevitable this winter.

"The commercial drivers are fearful -- they know there are still troop movements on main roads," said Abigail Spring of the United Nations' World Food Program.

"Our distribution will slow down for the next few days because of the instability."

Spring said, however, that initial reports were that the WFP warehouse in Kabul is intact, and that no food had been stolen.

She said that Northern Alliance commanders provided security for the Kabul warehouse, although there are reports that relief offices were looted in other cities.

The agency has warned that millions of Afghans are facing hunger and starvation this winter.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations' special envoy on Afghanistan, said yesterday that even a massive infusion of humanitarian relief may not be able to prevent a calamity, noting that U.N. officials had lost contact with a large concentration of Afghans who had fled the bombing raids.

"Even if progress is maintained, there will still be a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan," Brahimi said.

Brahimi said that he hopes to see a humanitarian pipeline from Uzbekistan to the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, which could dramatically increase the flow of food and medicine into central and northern Afghanistan.

The United States already has plans to improve that pipeline from Uzbekistan by repairing the Friendship Bridge that connects the two countries.

But Bernd McConnell of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) said that it remains too dangerous to do the work, and that a United Nations team hoping to examine the road approaching the bridge had been turned back yesterday for security reasons.

U.N. officials said that they hoped to send international teams into Afghanistan soon to assess the most pressing relief and development needs and that the security situation was being reviewed hourly.

But so far, conditions remained too unsafe.

"Clearly, we need to get people in as quickly as possible," said Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the U.N. Development Program.

"Obviously there are security concerns, and equally obvious we have to be in there. . . . Our reconstruction teams will be going in along with the first emergency relief people."

International relief groups said that communication was being restored with field offices that had gone largely silent after the Taliban announced two months ago that people could be executed for making contacts outside the country.

Michael Delaney, director of humanitarian assistance for Oxfam America, said that his group had made contact with all field offices for the first time in 10 days.

"Our people are reporting a tremendous amount of chaos, and that offices were ransacked and people were being killed in the area," said Delaney, who heard from one office that Taliban soldiers left behind land mines as they fled.

"It's just not safe yet to return."

Special correspondent Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.

-------- imf / world bank

WTO delegates agree to launch trade talks

USA Today
11/14/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/14/trade-talks.htm

DOHA, Qatar (AP) - A deal for new talks to free up global commerce moved within grasp Wednesday after the European Union accepted a compromise on agriculture.

But India's refusal at World Trade Organization discussions to budge on issues key to developing countries kept the accord tantalizingly out of reach.

Negotiators extended the conference into an extra, sixth day in the hopes of avoiding another embarrassing collapse like two years ago in Seattle.

"It's a last, best shot at trying to reach an agreement," WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said.

Many are counting on an agreement for new trade talks to inject confidence into a global economy careening toward recession. But efforts to reach consensus have been bedeviled by some of the same issues that led to the 1999 failure, including agriculture and charges from poor countries that some past promises have not been kept.

During all-night negotiating, diplomats managed a linguistic finesse on whether new trade talks should aim at "phasing out" farm export subsidies - as almost all of the WTO's 142 members want.

Only the European Union - most emphatically France - had called that wording unacceptable. France, the world's second-biggest agricultural exporter after the United States, has a militant farm lobby and presidential elections just six months away.

A compromise was found to keep the words "phasing out" in the declaration, but preceded by "without prejudging the outcome of the negotiations," according to a Wednesday morning draft.

The 15 EU nations agreed to the pact after a break to allow the French to consult with Paris.

In return, other countries were willing to accept EU demands that the new talks consider some environmental issues, negotiators said. For example, the EU wants to clarify how agreements like the Kyoto accord on global warming relate to the WTO, and whose rules would take precedence in case of conflict.

But India was refusing to go along, said Sergio Marchi, Canada's ambassador to the WTO.

"We have to help India understand that there's much more to lose without a deal," he said.

Indian officials heading into a heads of delegation meeting at midday refused comment.

Developing countries have resisted references to environmental protection because they fear such standards would be used as a cover to keep their goods out of the EU.

India also wants rich countries, mainly the United States and Canada, to agree to quicker reductions in limits on imports of textiles.

The United States, which has already compromised on poor countries' access to patented drugs and by agreeing to a review of antidumping rules, says it has conceded everything it can without the approval of Congress.

"There is an offer on the table and India has to say yes or no. The U.S. said it can't go there," Marchi said.

The new draft also includes talks in some areas that the EU wanted but had been previously rejected by developing countries, mainly because they said they did not yet have the capacity to tackle them.

They include rules protecting investment; assuring the equal application of antitrust policy; making government purchasing more transparent and easing red tape at customs offices.

Negotiations on these issues will not start for at least two years, however.

---

Feeling Pressure, Trade Officials Extend Talks in Qatar

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/international/14WTO.html

DOHA, Qatar, Wednesday, Nov. 14 - Representatives of 142 nations wrangled into the early morning today, past their deadline to reach agreement on a comprehensive plan to liberalize world trade.

The negotiations are widely seen as crucial to stimulating the global economy and restoring confidence in the trading system, which suffered a severe blow two years ago when similar talks collapsed in Seattle.

Ministers here said their willingness to continue talks suggested an agreement remained within reach. But the possibility of failure continued to hover over the discussions, which bogged down over food-export subsidies and environmental and investment rules.

The participants, exhausted by five days of nearly nonstop haggling, still tried to forge compromises on core trade issues that have been on the agenda for years. One incentive to continue discussions is a common feeling that a setback could damage prospects for economic recovery and potentially reduce the rate of growth in trade that powered the world economy in the 1990's.

There is also concern about the viability of the World Trade Organization itself, the umbrella trade body that depends on consensus agreements by its members to work toward freer trade.

"If we fail, this is the end of the W.T.O.," the agriculture minister of Brazil, Marcus Pratini de Moraes, said. "You fight recession with more trade, not with less trade."

The talks snagged for many hours on the sensitive issue of payments to European farmers, which at midnight, the French trade minister, François Huwart, called a "deal breaker." Nearly all parties had agreed that unless Europe promises to eliminate some $4 billion in annual export payments to its farmers, the talks will collapse.

But by this morning, Europe had accepted revised language in a draft text on agriculture in exchange for a proposal to conduct broader negotiations on environmental issues involved in trade, only to have the negotiations run into a fresh obstacle. India, which has strongly opposed beginning any negotiations on environmental issues, rejected the compromise, as did some African nations, leaving the talks in limbo nine hours after the deadline had passed.

Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, had already given ground on two trade issues that are highly sensitive to American businesses - revising patent rules and allowing talks on antidumping measures. Those compromises propelled negotiations into the final stages and put heavy pressure on Europe, the other main proponent of global negotiations, to offer its own sacrifices.

Mr. Zoellick focused today on helping Europe win benefits in some contested areas that would allow it to claim success at the talks even after compromising on the farm question. Among these is Europe's desire to begin negotiations on competition and investment issues as well as the environment.

Critics fear that any attempt to dictate laws or regulations in those areas would intrude on sovereignty of nations and give a big advantage to large multinational companies.

But agreeing on talks about these so-called "new issues" - even vaguely worded commitment to begin studying their relationship to trade - was seen as pivotal to give Europeans the political cover they need.

"There's a sense that our issues are settled," an American trade official said. "Bob is spending his day on Europe."

It is not clear, however, that European concerns were the only remaining barrier.

The United States has come under pressure to accelerate reducing tariffs and increasing quotas on textiles and clothing, an issue of special importance to India, Pakistan and some southeast Asian nations.

Mr. Zoellick has already offered to make textiles and clothing a subject of negotiations in future years. But he has so far rejected demands to take immediate steps to increase market access for developing countries. There is some sentiment here that the United States may have to offer more on textiles as part of a multifaceted tradeoff in the final hours.

Some delegates also say India, which until China's entry into the trade group this weekend was the most populous and most influential developing country, has so far refused to accept any element of the proposed negotiating agenda. Its commerce minister, Murasoli Maran, "has just said no to everything," an American trade official said.

India has warned for months that it opposes a new round of talks, because, it says, developing countries have yet to receive the full benefits promised them earlier. But after days of talks, most other poor nations say they have a great deal to gain from the proposals under discussion here.

An American trade official said he was confident that India would not say no to new talks if it was faced with a "binary choice," meaning that it would not want to be seen as the one to veto the agenda if others agreed. But Indian officials have so far said little to justify that optimism.

The ministers have reached some significant agreements. On Monday, they settled an emotional battle over rules on drug patents that pitted African nations, as well as Brazil and India, against Switzerland, United States and some other industrial countries.

Some poor nations, backed by an aggressive campaign by health advocates, have argued that international rules to protect intellectual property have kept the price of essential medicines too high, making it impossible for the poor to afford lifesaving treatments for epidemic diseases like AIDS and malaria.

Drug companies, backed at times by the United States, argue that patents were not the problem and that the trade rules already allowed nations to violate patents if they faced health emergencies. The standoff exploded into an ideological North- South dispute over whether trade took precedence over the lives of the poor.

The United States and several African nations agreed to a compromise on Monday, a settlement that was finished today, in the form of a political declaration that makes it clear that patents will not stand in the way of public health.

Some drug companies complained that the implied exception to patent rules was too broad, reducing their incentive to develop medicines for the poorest countries.

-------- police / prisoners

States

USA Today
01/11/14
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Florida

Pensacola - For years, crossing guard Dale Rooks tried everything to slow down speeders at a Pensacola elementary school. Then he got out a hair dryer, wrapped it with electrical tape and aimed it at passing drivers. They hit the brakes, mistaking the hair dryer for a radar gun. Police Chief Jerry Potts said he didn't see any harm in the gimmick.

Indiana

Indianapolis - The city could be $40 million short of the money needed to pay for police and fire services by 2006, officials said. Mayor Bart Peterson favors creating a countywide district to raise $31 million annually for police protection by 2006. Other options involve raising property taxes 12.5% or increasing the county income tax rate 43%.

Kentucky

Nicholasville - A deputy was killed and two others were wounded in a shootout while serving a warrant. The assailant was killed by the deputies in the exchange of gunfire, police said. Killed was Jessamine County Sheriff's Deputy Billy Walls, 28. Sheriff's Capt. Chuck Morgan, 51, was in critical condition, and Deputy Sammy Brown, 29, was in fair condition at a hospital.

Mississippi

Jackson - State emergency workers should be prepared to deal with the perception as well as the reality of terrorism, officials said. About 400 law enforcement agents, emergency directors and fire chiefs met for a two-day seminar on how to prepare for emergencies. Gov. Musgrove said it's imperative to educate the public in order to avoid panic.

Missouri

St. Louis - The FBI is trying to learn the identity of the pilots of three small, unidentified planes that flew low over tugboats on the Mississippi River. One of the planes dropped white smoke over some boats. Authorities suspect pranksters flew the planes, but they still want to talk to the pilots. No one was hurt in the three incidents.

Texas

Lubbock - A Lubbock County grand jury declined to return indictments over the death of a policeman on July 13. Sgt. Kevin Cox, 38, was accidentally killed by police gunfire at the scene of a domestic dispute, an investigation found. Police Chief Ken Walker resigned last week as part of a settlement.

Utah

Draper - An inmate at the Utah State Prison is suing officials in federal court for allegedly failing to make good on promises to reduce his sentence in exchange for becoming a jailhouse informant. The state says the inmate provided information officials already knew and denies any early release deal. Rory Dean, 42, claims officials spread the word he was a snitch, and a fellow inmate subsequently attacked him.

Virginia

Charlottesville - Corrections officials are asking judges to put more criminals on home electronic monitoring instead of sending them to the crowded Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Despite a $17.4 million expansion that added 120 beds, the jail population regularly exceeds capacity. Electronic monitoring is available for non-violent criminals sentenced to less than 2 years.

Washington

Montesano - Grays Harbor County Deputy Prosecutor Jim Baker has been reviewing outdated ordinances and is recommending 61 for repeal by county commissioners. He said it's no longer necessary for public dances to be chaperoned by a woman of good moral character, recommended by the sheriff.

Wyoming

Riverton - A proposed expansion of the Wyoming Honor Farm won't mean a change in the type of inmates housed at the minimum-security facility, state corrections officials said. The state is short on beds for medium-security prisoners, but the Honor Farm will continue to house only minimum-security inmates, officials said.

---

Administration to divide INS districts

USA Today
11/14/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-11-14-ins.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration plans a major restructuring of the Immigration and Naturalization Service that would separate law enforcement and service duties.

The move would fulfill a campaign pledge by President Bush to reduce the long waits endured by people who apply for benefits such as naturalization or permanent residency. It also seeks to address deficiencies in how the INS tracks foreigners who enter the country.

Thirteen of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks entered the United States legally, but no entry records exist for the other six.

INS Commissioner James Ziglar was expected to announce the changes at a Wednesday afternoon news conference.

The restructuring comes as Congress is considering its own plans for remaking the agency, including one that would abolish the INS and create two new agencies. Critics in Congress say they field more calls from constituents about INS-related problems than other agencies.

The INS budget for processing applications has nearly quadrupled since 1994 to $500 million, and the staff has more than doubled to about 6,100, according to a General Accounting Office report issued in June.

But during the same time, the INS backlog on processing applications increased nearly fourfold to about 3.9 million, the GAO said. The GAO is an investigative arm of Congress.

Ziglar, who took over the agency in August, has said he wanted to divide the INS functions, but keep the agency intact.

Ziglar said separating the functions made sense because district managers whose INS experience is largely in enforcement may not place emphasis on service work and vice versa. The two functions should not be completely separated, he said, because at times they overlap.

These changes also can be made more quickly, because creating two separate agencies requires legislation, he said.

The changes will not require congressional approval, although the agency will need to inform Congress of transfers of money to support the changes.

------

Justice seeks to question 5,000 possible witnesses

USA Today
11/14/2001
By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/14/justice.htm

WASHINGTON - In an extraordinary move aimed at disrupting new terrorist threats, federal law enforcement officials are seeking to question more than 5,000 men who have entered the United States since January 2000 from countries identified as staging areas for past terrorist acts against Americans. Justice Department officials on Tuesday said the men, all between the ages of 18 and 33, were not considered suspects. Rather, they were described as potential witnesses who "may have information helpful" in the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Federal officials say Saudi exile Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network al-Qa'eda were behind the attacks.

Lists of the potential witnesses were assembled according to their reported locations in the United States late last week. Their names were sent to all 94 offices of federal prosecutors across the nation.

Investigators have been frustrated by the lack of cooperation so far from material witnesses who are already in custody.

Senior FBI officials said that the step taken Tuesday was the logical extension of what already is the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history.

"We recognize that this will be a time-consuming and complicated task," Attorney General John Ashcroft told federal prosecutors assembled here Tuesday for an anti-terrorism summit. "But it is critical that we expand our knowledge of terrorist networks operating within the United States."

The attorney general's "intelligence gathering initiative" is unprecedented in scope and comes just days after the Justice Department announced that it would exploit any tactic available to law enforcement - including surveillance authority approved by Congress - to prevent additional acts of terrorism against U.S. interests.

Included in the Justice Department anti-terrorism effort was a recent Justice directive allowing prisons to monitor phone calls between terrorism suspects and their lawyers if there is a "reasonable suspicion" the conversations are fostering more terrorist acts.

But questions were being raised about the roundup of 5,000 potential witnesses.

"This effort strikes me as incredibly overbroad and very similar to the racial profiling of young black men," said David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown Law Center. "In this case, whatever kind of list is developed is certain to include an overwhelming majority of Middle Eastern men."

Stanford University law professor Pamela Karlan described the effort as "extraordinary in scope" but not necessarily an "extraordinary intrusion" on personal rights.

"Police ask questions all the time," Karlan said. "What is unusual are the numbers involved here."

Government officials declined to identify any of the possible witnesses. Justice Department officials said not all of the men were of Middle Eastern origin.

"They entered the United States from a country from which a terrorist might be likely to plot possible additional attacks," a Justice Department official said. "The criterion is the country that an individual entered the United States from, not his national origin."

------

Ramsey cites need to share intelligence

November 14, 2001
By Mary Shaffrey
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011114-73752652.htm

D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey told a congressional panel yesterday that increased coordination and communication between federal and local authorities is needed when addressing crime, including terrorism.

"I believe that [intelligence officials] are giving me all the information they are allowed to give me, but that does not mean that I am getting all the information I need," Chief Ramsey told members the Government Reform Committee during a hearing on emergency preparedness.

"I don't need to know the source of information, I just need to know it's credible. I have another responsibility for neighborhoods in my city, and if I don't have the information to justify why [police resources are being used to protect federal areas instead of all of the District], it's hard."

Chief Ramsey was joined by other police chiefs and officials from other cities and representatives from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the FBI.

State and local officials argued they are the first lines of homeland defense and should be given whatever clearance is needed to secure information to protect their areas. Pictures of wanted criminals or easy access to a national clearinghouse for information on criminals would be a big help, they said.

"There is no federal fire department, and 911 does not ring in either the national or state capitals," said Scott L. King, mayor of Gary, Ind., and co-chairman of the Federal-Local Law Enforcement Task Force of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Chief Ramsey told the committee it is difficult for his department when officers assigned to joint task force committees, particularly if they pertain to terrorism, are given access to classified information, but he is not.

"It adds to the confusion because we are supposed to go on the highest level of alert, but honestly, I don't know if we can go any higher if we don't have any concrete information," Chief Ramsey said. Ultimately, it all comes down to trust, he said.

Localities have different rules regarding investigations and intelligence. As a result, often the local departments and the federal departments are caught in battles over who can know what and when.

We need to "abandon the turf wars," said William Dwyer, chief of the Farmington Hills Police Department in Michigan.

Federal officials agreed more communication was needed, but disagreed that local authorities were being left in the dark.

Presently, they pointed out, there are several organizations that allow for coordination between law enforcement agencies, including the Regional Information Sharing System (RISS) and the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC). RISS, which has six field offices, is the only nationwide, multijurisdictional criminal-intelligence-sharing system operated by and for local and state law enforcement agencies. EPIC is a national clearinghouse for intelligence and analysis. Finally, the FBI is considering opening up to eight additional joint terrorism task force field offices around the country, including Baltimore and Norfolk.

The one area both sides agreed on was the new Office of Homeland Security, headed by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, would be the best place to coordinate the different needs of agencies.

"Someone needs to be the referee for these turf battles," Chief Ramsey said. "If he is not given the authority, he's useless."

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After Terror at His Doorstep, Kelly Returns to Police Dept.

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By JIM DWYER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/nyregion/14KELL.html

Hours after Raymond W. Kelly was officially introduced by Mayor-elect Michael R. Bloomberg as the next police commissioner of New York, Mr. Kelly sat in a plush executive conference room at Bear Stearns, where he serves as director of global security, to explain his return to the government- issue chair he left in January 1994.

About three weeks ago, Mr. Kelly said, he and his wife, Veronica, stood on the roof of a building in Battery Park City, where they live. For the first time, they took in the breadth of the destruction. Their neighborhood was in ruins.

"We were in the trade center three or four times a week," Mr. Kelly said. "Our bank was in there. The Borders was our neighborhood bookstore. We had the Gap."

Mrs. Kelly wept. Mr. Kelly decided that for all the pleasures of his new life - an income higher than the wages of his last three jobs put together, the private jets, the evening hours and weekends free from endless alarms about big-city troubles - he was helpless. "I felt a tremendous loss," Mr. Kelly said. "It's my neighborhood. It's such a violation."

For Mr. Kelly, 60, who served in Vietnam with the Marines and saw combat there, and who headed the international police monitors in Haiti, where he plunged into mobs of demonstrators armed with machetes to seize men about to be lynched, the good life would not be one of evasion.

"I want to be involved in addressing the problem," he said. "I want to be involved in helping the city come back. It's where we live. This is the opportunity of a lifetime."

The son of a milkman and a garment checker at Macy's, Mr. Kelly was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and served 31 years in the Police Department, holding every rank from patrol officer to commissioner. Along the way, he earned two law degrees at New York University and a master's in government at Harvard.

"We live in a time of peril and a time of opportunity," Mr. Kelly said. "It is the job of the police commissioner to minimize the former, and the job of the mayor to maximize the latter."

Mr. Bloomberg had relied on Mr. Kelly for law enforcement advice during his campaign, and both men had asked the current police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik, to remain in the post he has held for slightly more than a year. Mr. Kerik declined, saying he wanted to spend time with his young family.

Yesterday, in making the announcement that Mr. Kelly will take the job, Mr. Bloomberg said that he would rely not only on Mr. Kelly's service in New York, but also his eight years in federal law enforcement positions in Washington. "His experience is exactly what we need for police commissioner right now," he said. "I think the police commissioner is perhaps the most important appointment I will make."

As an under secretary in the Treasury Department, Mr. Kelly oversaw the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, among other operations. Mr. Kelly also served as commissioner of the Customs Service, and as a vice president of Interpol, the international police organization.

These jobs, he said, helped him understand the bureaucratic mazes where information and intelligence are often stashed. "I know how things work in Washington, and who to call," Mr. Kelly said.

Mr. Bloomberg said he had consulted with the two living former mayors, Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins, and the incumbent, Rudolph W. Giuliani, about his choice of Mr. Kelly.

The police mission will have to expand, Mr. Kelly said, to answer the threats of a new age. "We've all been robbed, somewhat, of our sense of security," he said. "We are a target in ways that other places are not. This department must focus on counterterrorism in ways that other departments do not."

There will be new training on responding to terrorism threats, he said. In addition, he would make sure that emergency response skills "remain vigorous," he said. "We have to be ready to live through the unthinkable again."

The Police Department would not relent in a campaign against quality- of-life violations, he said. He was unequivocal about the role of wages in police morale.

"They need a reasonable contract," Mr. Kelly said. "They want a raise. Right now, the way it's configured, they have to work overtime."

When he was commissioner in 1992 and 1993, Mr. Kelly often drove himself to work. Now, security details stay with the commissioner 24 hours a day, often sweeping through restaurants before he enters. Would he retain that level of security? "I'll have to see what the threats are, but I am going to walk around, and I'm going to ride the subway," he said.

In his remarks yesterday, Mr. Kelly praised the successes of the Giuliani administration, but was careful to note that crime reduction began under Mayor Dinkins, who engineered the expansion of the Police Department. Most of the new officers did not come onto the force until Mr. Giuliani took office, Mr. Kelly said.

Later, when asked if his return was in part an attempt to vindicate his work in the Dinkins years, Mr. Kelly said that was pointless. "The public relations war was fought and won by Giuliani a long time ago," he said. "His version of history is that everything good began on Jan. 1, 1994, and everything bad happened before then."

Mr. Kelly had sought to stay on as commissioner when Mr. Giuliani became mayor, but William J. Bratton was selected instead. At a recent chance meeting with Mr. Giuliani at the Cigar Bar, Mr. Kelly said, the mayor was warm, gracious and funny. Both men attended Manhattan College as undergraduates.

While Mr. Giuliani is a devoted follower of the opera, Mr. Kelly played rock 'n' roll drums for many years, a fan of Robert Plant and the Rolling Stones.

Paul Brown, an aide who worked with Mr. Kelly in New York, Haiti, and Washington and is likely to rejoin him in January, recalled an evening in 1993 when he was working late at Police Headquarters. Mr. Kelly phoned to invite him to a dinner in Harlem. Mr. Brown could not leave his work, so he declined. An hour or so later, Mr. Kelly arrived with a white pizza from a place in Brooklyn that the commissioner was fond of. "That's his Marine ethic - the leaders are there to serve the troops," Mr. Brown said.

Mr. Kelly, who underwent cardiac bypass surgery a few years ago, said he works out in a gym nearly every day, though he lifts lighter weights than before the operation.

In a speech he has delivered more than once at college graduations, Mr. Kelly says: "Money is overrated." As police commissioner, he will earn $150,500 a year. While Mr. Kelly did not disclose his current salary, associates say that it is "several multiples" of the commissioner's pay. The big change ahead in his life, he said, is not a financial one, but the erosion of his personal time. He and his wife, who recently retired from a job selling medical supplies, enjoyed traveling to museums and walking through Lower Manhattan. Their two sons, Jim and Greg, backed his decision to return.

"My wife has been terrific, traveling to Washington while I was down there every week," he said, "but her support this time comes with an asterisk."

He hopes to keep one job from his current portfolio: chairman of the State Athletic Commission, which regulates boxing. It is, he notes wryly, the only one that is unpaid.

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Caught by radar?
Tell us your tale

November 14, 2001
The Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011114-10743676.htm

The Washington Times wants to hear from motorists who got a ticket for speeding in the mail after passing one of the photo-radar traps operated from unmarked D.C. police cars.

We'd like to hear the details of what happened, when and where, for possible inclusion in future articles about the photo-radar cameras. Tell us whether you paid the fine or are fighting it in traffic adjudication or D.C. Superior Court.

Leave a message for Brian DeBose at 202/636-3185 or e-mail him at bdebose@washingtontimes.com. Please include your full name as well as day and evening telephone numbers. We may consider requests for anonymity, but must be able to verify identities.

-------- terrorism

A Line That Can't Be Moved

Christian Science Monitor
November 14, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1114/p8s2-comv.html

Americans are being asked to live with such inconveniences as longer lines at airports to help thwart terrorist attacks. But when it comes to setting limits on civil liberties, more debate using sound principles is required.

As the Bush administration moves to restrict liberties, there's one path that should not be taken: the use of torture to extract information from suspected terrorists or accomplices.

Physical coercion of suspects with possible knowledge of planned mass killings is used by many countries. But the US legal system rejects torture as a tool for police or prosecutors. To use torture would be to erode the rights and freedoms that make this country precious to its citizens.

Still, the argument is being raised that these are unprecedented times. If a detained person - such as someone being held indefinitely as a material witness - might have information that could prevent another terrorist attack, wouldn't a measure of coercion be justified? Or, to avoid legal and moral strictures on torture here, how about transferring the suspect to another country known for harsh interrogation? Or forced administration of a so-called "truth serum"?

Even these "moderate" options, which reportedly have been debated inside the government, raise questions about when they're moral or even effective. Information obtained by coercion is as often false as true.

It's worth recalling the experience of another democratic country, Israel, which has had to endure regular attacks on civilians. Its legal system allows for some use of physical coercion in limited cases, but the exact limits have been hard to establish. But for free people everywhere, torture of any kind must be unacceptable.

---

Terrorism's Africa link

Christian Science Monitor
November 14, 2001
By Timothy W. Docking
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1114/p9s1-coop.html

WASHINGTON - As the United States searches the earth for links between the Al Qaeda terrorist network and its sources of financial and logistical support, reports from West Africa are connecting Osama bin Laden to the collapsed states of Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Al Qaeda has raised and laundered tens of millions of dollars through the purchase and sale of illicit diamonds mined by rebel forces in Sierra Leone. The mining and sale of these gemstones - known as "conflict diamonds," because of the financial incentive they provide to combatants - have fueled nearly a decade of civil war in Sierra Leone. And despite a global boycott on trade in these diamonds, the flow of tiny uncut stones from West Africa has proved impossible to stop.

At the heart of this problem is the criminal government of neighboring Liberia, which has continued to channel diamonds out of Sierra Leone and onto the world market, often trading the stones for guns to unseemly nonstate actors. The Post report is the first tying West African diamonds to an international terrorist network.

Given the apparent scope of the Al Qaeda network and the depraved regime of Charles Taylor in Liberia, one may not be surprised by the bin Laden-Taylor marriage. Yet on second look, this revelation should set off alarm bells warning of the dangers posed by the emergence of warlords, the failure of central government, and the rise of despots like Mr. Taylor.

Another collapsed African state, Somalia, also has emerged as a key target in America's war against terrorism. Much like the Liberian case, Somalia was plunged into anarchy during the '90s, as warring groups fought for control of power. Al Qaeda effectively used the cover of chaos in Somalia to set up a regional base that it used to plan and execute attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Today Mr. bin Laden's network continues to use Somalia as a transit point for money, weapons, and personnel for its war against the US.

In Liberia, Al Qaeda operations appear to be limited to buying rough diamonds mined in the open-pit alluvial deposits of southeastern Sierra Leone. These mines have been held by the villainous Revolutionary Unity Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone and used to fuel the fighting that has led to the collapse of that state as well. And despite a lull in fighting in Sierra Leone, the disarmament of large numbers of RUF fighters - whose hallmark during times of war is the amputation of innocents' hands and feet - and the presence of 17,000 UN troops, the RUF still maintains control of the diamond fields and continues to funnel them through the Taylor regime to the rest of the world.

The connection between Al Qaeda and collapsed states in Afghanistan, Somalia, Liberia, and Sierra Leone is not a coincidence. As we have seen over the past decade, societies with weak governments are breeding grounds for transnational crime, drug traffickers, and terrorist networks. These forsaken lands, populated by millions of destitute people, also are often fertile grounds for religious extremists.

But the defeat of bin Laden and his network will not spell the end of terrorism or any other global criminal element. The most we can do is cull and contain the drug lords, gun runners, and terrorists of the world. Limiting the spread and hastening the recovery of collapsed states will play a large part in draining the swamps they thrive in.

A good starting point for the global community in such an endeavor is to redouble its diplomatic efforts to stem the tide of conflict that grips more than a third of sub-Saharan Africa's states. Wars in Central Africa, and in the horn of Africa, including Sudan, threaten to plunge these regions deeper into lawlessness and chaos. In West Africa, more than a decade of violence in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea has produced an ideal growth medium for groups like Al Qaeda.

Yes, Africa is the poorest, least developed, and most conflict-torn region on earth. But the West must not throw up its hands. The crumbling of Africa will continue to affect us all.

If the US and the world community are serious about ending the threat of terrorist organizations like bin Laden's, it must address the scourge of collapsed states.

Beyond diplomacy targeted at preventing and ending Africa's wars, the West should accelerate debt forgiveness and liberalize trade relations with African states. While it is difficult to imagine these measures turning Africa into an oasis of peaceful free-market democracies, these acts would help level the playing field for Africans, so they can better help themselves stabilize and rebuild their troubled lands.

Timothy W. Docking is a program officer at the United States Institute of Peace. These views are his own.

---

Freedom fighters or terrorists?
Lebanese of all stripes praise Hizbullah for ousting Israeli army and say they're not terrorists.

Christian Science Monitors
November 14, 2001
By Nicholas Blanford | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1114/p6s1-wome.html

BEIRUT - Abdullah Qassir, who represents the Shia Muslim Hizbullah organization in the Lebanese parliament, is unimpressed with President Bush's executive order to freeze the group's financial assets. If anything, he takes pride in it.

"We feel strong when the United States deals with us as a worthy adversary," Mr. Qassir says. "Hizbullah is known in the region as a resistance party. We were never a terrorist group."

But Washington believes differently. At the beginning of the month, Mr. Bush slapped the order on 22 groups listed by the State Department as terrorist organizations in a bid to neutralize their activities. Although the list encompasses organizations based around the world, few Lebanese doubt that the executive order was primarily aimed at radical organizations opposed to Israel and the stagnant Middle East peace process.

Since Hizbullah's fighters ousted the Israeli army from South Lebanon 18 months ago, ending a 22-year occupation, the organization's activities have centered on a sporadic guerrilla campaign against Israeli troops occupying a mountainous district known as the Shebaa Farms along Lebanon's southeast border with the Syrian Golan Heights. Some in Lebanon, including Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, had begun to question the wisdom of the Shebaa Farms campaign, fearing further instability in the country. But if Bush thought the executive order would encourage the Lebanese government to curb Hizbullah's activities, he was wrong.

"The US classification of Hizbullah as a terrorist faction is unacceptable altogether," Mr. Hariri said. "The Lebanese government holds Hizbullah in high esteem for expelling the Israeli army from occupied south Lebanon last year, and the people of Lebanon are united with the government in this stance."

The mood of outrage at the US decision crossed Lebanon's sectarian divide, uniting right-wing Maronite Christians with Shia Muslims.

Former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite whose father founded the Phalange party, a key ally of Israel in the early 1980s, described the executive order as "definitely an act of arrogance." He said, "There is a difference between resistance to occupation and terrorism, and we need no lessons from anyone in this matter."

Yet Hizbullah is connected to a bloody history of anti-American attacks in war-torn 1980s Lebanon. They include the devastating suicide truck bombing of the US Embassy in 1983 that killed 63 people. Six months later, another explosive-laden truck was driven into the US Marines barracks beside Beirut airport. The blast killed 241 servicemen.

But since the end of Lebanon's civil war in 1990, Hizbullah has undergone a considerable transformation, channeling its energies into fighting Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. The organization has turned into a respected political party, represented in parliament. It has established an effective social welfare network of schools, clinics, and hospitals, bringing basic services to those impoverished parts of the country traditionally ignored by the government.

The US even tacitly recognized the organization as a legitimate military force when it co-chaired with France a five-nation group to monitor a 1996 understanding that forbid both Hizbullah and the Israeli army from targeting civilians.

European diplomats in Beirut regularly meet with Hizbullah's leadership. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan even drove into Hizbullah's stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut in June last year to meet with the party's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.

Edward Walker, president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute, says that while no one disagrees that civilians have been attacked by Palestinian groups subject to the executive order, such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas, Hizbullah's case is more "complicated."

"They have [attacked civilians] in the past," Mr. Walker says. "What their [terrorist] activity is now, I don't know. The State Department still seems to think that they are engaged [in civilian attacks] - that's what they say. But they haven't given any evidence."

Walker, a former US ambassador to Israel, was in Lebanon as part of a fact-finding tour of the Middle East. The Monitor accompanied him to the mountainous Shebaa Farms front line in south Lebanon.

The US does not recognize Lebanon's claim to the Shebaa Farms and condemns Hizbullah's attempts to drive Israeli troops from the area. But Walker concedes that Hizbullah's occasional hit-and-run attacks in the farms were directed solely at military targets.

"What I see Hizbullah having done is to fire at Israeli troops and not fire at civilians," he says. "You can argue about Shebaa and whether it's a legitimate target or not ... but it's not global terrorism, and it's not against civilians. So it does not fit into the categorization that the president has made."

Proof is required, Walker says, if any group is to be accused of terrorism. "The State Department ... should indicate what it is that Hizbullah has been doing" to warrant inclusion on the list.

Walker is not alone in noting the ambiguity of Hizbullah's terrorist classification. Earlier this year, the British government passed new antiterrorism legislation, which resulted in its first-ever list of terrorist groups. The British, however, distinguished between Hizbullah, the political party, which maintains an armed wing, and what it called Hizbullah's External Security Organization. The ESO was a name devised by the British under which to lump all the terrorist acts of the 1980s that have been associated with Hizbullah.

A European diplomat acknowledged that the ESO was created simply as a device to confer legitimacy on Hizbullah's mainstream political activities.

"Is there any proof that the ESO actually exists? No," he says.

But the distinction leaves open the possibility of dialogue between London and Hizbullah without compromising Britain's new antiterrorism laws.

Mr. Qassir, the Hizbullah member of parliament, says the organization was created in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and not as a means to attack the West.

"There was no Hizbullah before the Israeli invasion," he says. "Our resistance will stop when the Zionist terrorism stops."

Qassir also says that US interests in the Middle East are being undermined by Washington's support for Israel.

"Arabs do not have any hostility against the American people, and we want them to live in peace," he says. "But America's support for the Zionist entity is exacting a high price. It's raising hostility among Arabs."

------

Britain Issues New Evidence of Bin Laden 'Guilt'

Yahoo News
Wednesday November 14
Reuters
By Mike Peacock
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011114/ts/attack_britain_binladen_dc.html

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain unveiled Wednesday what it said was further evidence that Osama bin Laden masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

It published a 23-page document listing bin Laden statements and a series of assertions about his associates. Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said the document was directed at the ``ever dwindling number of people around the world who believe Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were not responsible.''

The paper, published in parliament, included quotes which the government said bin Laden uttered on a video that has not been broadcast but is circulating among his al Qaeda network. ``'It is what we instigated for a while in self-defense ... So if avenging the killing of our people is terrorism, let history be a witness that we are terrorists,''' the document quoted the Saudi-born dissident as saying.

It said Britain had learned that shortly before Sept. 11, bin Laden said he was preparing a major attack on the United States. But it could never have been carried out without the support of Afghanistan's Taliban, now in headlong retreat.

Three hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing more than 4,000 people. Prime suspect bin Laden is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan.

The British government produced a first list of assertions about bin Laden's guilt last month.

It said that of the 19 hijackers identified as taking over four planes in the United States on Sept. 11, at least three had been positively identified as associates of bin Laden with track records in his camps and organizations.

One of the three had also been identified as playing a key role in attacks on U.S. embassies in east Africa in 1998 and later on the U.S. warship Cole in Yemen, Blair said at the time.

Wednesday's updated document said the ``majority'' of those hijackers had now been shown to have links to bin Laden.

``The detailed planning for the terrorist attacks of September 11 was carried out by one of bin Laden's close associates,'' it said. It did not name the suspect.

As last month, the government said it had not detailed the ''totality'' of its evidence and intelligence in order to protect its sources.

The government's conclusions remained the same:

- Bin Laden and al Qaeda planned and carried out the Sept. 11 attacks
- They retain the ``will and resources'' to carry out further attacks.
- Britain and British nationals are potential targets.

---

North Carolina

States
USA Today
01/11/14
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Raleigh - So many people in North Carolina gave blood in the days after the terrorist attacks that donations from about 1,600 people went unused and had to be thrown out, officials said. Red blood cells are good for 42 days. Blood banks in American Red Cross Carolinas Region collected nearly 49,000 pints, 16,000 more than the goal, officials said.

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All Liberty Fund donations will go to attacks victims

USA Today
11/14/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/14/redcross.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The American Red Cross said Wednesday it will use all the money donated to the Liberty Fund for people affected by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, reversing a plan to set aside some of the money for other needs. The Liberty Fund has collected $543 million. The Red Cross had planned to put about $200 million aside for use in the event of future terrorist attacks. That move drew a sharp rebuke from critics, who said the money donated to the fund was given under the assumption only people affected by the Sept. 11 attacks would get it.

"We deeply regret that our actions over the last eight weeks have not been as sharply focused as the American public wants or the victims of this tragedy deserve," Red Cross interim CEO Harold Decker said at a news conference.

Decker called the change a "course correction" and said among those eligible for the money will be survivors of the attacks and their families, those with homes damaged in the attacks and those unemployed because their workplaces are in lower Manhattan.

He said $275 million would be paid out by the end of this year. Grants to families, which had been restricted to just three months of living expenses, will be extended to one year.

About 9% of the total fund will pay overhead and administrative costs for distributing the money. Decker said it could take many years before all the money is spent.

The Red Cross has stopped accepting donations to the fund, saying the amount collected so far is sufficient. The charity already has distributed about $121 million in direct aid to Sept. 11 victims and their families.

Red Cross President Bernadine Healy is stepping down as head of the charity at the end of the year in part because of criticism of the fund. Healy took the unusual step of setting up the fund as a separate account to deal with the attacks, over the objections of some Red Cross board members.

Healy was lambasted at a House hearing on charitable contributions last week after two widows who lost their husbands in the World Trade Center attack described how they have had to fight a maze of bureaucracy to obtain financial help.

Lawmakers from both parties said they believed donors to the Liberty Fund contributed as generously as they did because they thought their money would be channeled quickly and directly to the victims and families of the attacks.

Since Sept. 11, about 2,500 families have received Liberty Fund benefits, averaging about $25,000 per household. On Monday, the Red Cross said it would return donations to any contributor who requests a refund.

The 37,000-employee American Red Cross administers almost half the nation's blood supply and provides relief to victims of disasters.

------

4 Guilty in Fatal 1986 Berlin Disco Bombing Linked to Libya

New York Times
November 14, 2001
By STEVEN ERLANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/international/14LABE.html

BERLIN, Nov. 13 - After a four- year trial involving a 15-year-old terrorist act, four people were convicted today of bombing a disco in West Berlin at the behest of Libya, killing two American soldiers and a Turkish woman and wounding 229 others.

The court, complaining about "the limited willingness" of the German and American governments to share intelligence, found that the bombing had been planned by the Libyan secret service and the Libyan Embassy in what was East Berlin.

"Libya bears at the very least a considerable part of the responsibility for the attack," said the judge, Peter Marhofer. But he added that the personal responsibility of the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, had not been proven.

Three men and a woman were sentenced to 12 to 14 years in prison. Prosecutors had sought life sentences and said they would appeal.

A German, Verena Chanaa, 42, who carried the bomb into the disco in a travel bag and left, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 14 years. A Palestinian, Yasir Shraydi, who worked in the Libyan Embassy and organized the bombing, was convicted on multiple counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 14 years. A Libyan diplomat, Musbah Eter, 44, was convicted of being an accomplice and was given 12 years. A Lebanese-born German, Ali Chanaa, 42, former husband of Ms. Chanaa, was given a 12-year term.

Ms. Chanaa's sister, Andrea Häusler, 36, who accompanied her into the disco was acquitted because it was not proven that she knew of the presence of the bomb.

Prosecutors argued that Libya was guilty of "state-sponsored terrorism," the bombing of the disco frequented by American soldiers, La Belle, to retaliate against the sinking of two Libyan boats by the United States in the Gulf of Sirte.

Ten days after the bombing, on April 15, 1986, President Ronald Reagan ordered retaliatory strikes on Tripoli and Bengasi, Libya, and reportedly killed Mr. Qaddafi's daughter. In December 1998, Pan American World Airways Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Last January, a special court convicted one Libyan and acquitted another in that attack.

In something of a historical paradox, Mr. Qaddafi has now put Libya on the side of the American-led antiterrorist coalition in Afghanistan.

The disco bombing was the subject of a scandal last May, when a memo leaked from the German Foreign Ministry that detailed a conversation in March between Mr. Qaddafi and Michael Steiner, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's top diplomatic aide

According to the cable, "Qaddafi admitted that Libya took part in terrorist actions (La Belle, Lockerbie). He clarified that he had abandoned terrorism and seeks the opportunity to make Libya's new position known. Qaddafi, too, is worried about fundamentalist trends."

The judge asked Mr. Steiner to testify in court. But the government refused to make him available.

The explosion killed Sgt. Kenneth T. Ford, 21; Sgt. James E. Goins, 25; and Nermin Hannay, 29. Of the 229 wounded, many lost limbs.

Mr. Goins's widow, Mr. Ford's father and several former American soldiers were in the courtroom when the verdict was read. Some expressed disappointment with the length of the sentences.

"They took my son from me, and no verdict can replace that for me," Mr. Ford's father, Larry Beecham, said. "It seemed like it was no big deal for them."


-------- activists

Environmental Activism

New York Times
November 14, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/opinion/L14ENVI.html

To the Editor:
Re "Radical Animal Rights Groups Step Up Protests" (news article, Nov. 11):

It is distressing to read that thoughtless criminals continue to threaten lives and property at this sensitive time for America, while trying to justify their conduct with purported concern for the environment.

The protection of wildlife, wild places and a healthy environment can be achieved through efforts that unite people on the common ground of their shared concerns, guided by an unwavering commitment to nonviolence and respect for the rights and property of others and the laws of our society.

So-called ecoterrorism has no place in such efforts and should be condemned by people and organizations everywhere.

MARK VAN PUTTEN President and Chief Executive National Wildlife Federation Reston, Va., Nov. 12, 2001

---

Maine

States
USA Today
01/11/14
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Freeport - Members of a Quaker organization have collected about 1,500 blankets for use this winter by Afghan refugees in Pakistan. The donated blankets will be trucked to the national headquarters of the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia for delivery overseas.

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Victory for the Charleston 5!

starcgrassroots Digest Number 572
Wed, 14 Nov 2001
From: "Steven Beltram" <stevenbeltram@hotmail.com>

Attorney General Condon's felony indictment was dismissed and the Charleston 5 plead "no contest" to a misdemeanor and will pay a $100 fine. The case of the Charleston 5 has ended in a victory.

While it is appropriate for us to use the dismissal to point out Condon's political opportunism, the strategy now is to focus on what actually caused the situation (Condon was just reacting to it). What caused the incident on the docks was the state's Right to Work laws.

The Charleston 5 case has been an example of how this law allows the police powers of the state to be used to prevent working people from organizing. This situation never would have occured in a civilized country, or in the majority of states that don't have anti-union, right to work laws.

The Network, along with member groups the ILA and SC AFLCIO, will be coming up with a plan to educate about the evils of Right to Work laws.

The ILA is planning a HUGE party in Charleston and you are all invited. We'll let you know when and where.

Steven Beltram
1205 Baker St.
Fort Collins, CO 80524
970-419-0703 sbeltram@hotmail.com
http://www.starcalliance.org

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