NUCLEAR
Fallout shelter gets new life
The Specter of Nuclear Terror
Japan town residents vote against nuclear plant
US warns "time is coming" to scrap ABM treaty
Senate Democrats plan US nuclear plant safety bill
NUKE PLANT TERROR ATTACK
Nuclear plants trouble neighbors
FERC meets on LNG plant restart security concerns
Utah battles proposed nuclear dump
Torricelli Backed Donor's Bid for a Korean Project
DOE offers us more evidence Yucca Mt. process is political
LV area chambers may leave U.S. group over Yucca
MILITARY
NATO Lends a Hand With U.S. Sky Patrol
A tribunal too far
Another attack . . . on the Bill of Rights
Taliban ready to surrender Kunduz
More U.S. Troops in bin Laden Hunt; Hide-Outs Bombed
One Corner of Afghanistan Peacefully Selects a Governor
The Corrupt and Brutal Reclaim Afghan Thrones
Uzbekistan Hinders Plan to Aid Afghans, Relief Workers Say
Foes Claim Taliban Are Killing Soldiers Who Seek to Defect
No one controls Afghanistan
Blast Rocks Macedonian Market
U.S. Publicly Accusing 5 Countries of Violating Germ-Weapons Treaty
States Weighing Laws to Fight Bioterrorism
Lockheed, TRW get satellite order
Egypt Begins Trial of Militants
Pakistan Fears 3,000 Fleeing Fighters May Have Entered
Jordan's king seeks guarantees for Israel
Belgian court summons Sharon to appear over Lebanon massacre
Philippine Muslim soldiers mutiny
Russia Opens Face-to-Face Negotiations Over Chechnya
ENERGY AND OTHER
German parliament ups subsidies for green energy
Edison eyes UK onshore wind power projects
Dams back big Northwest US push for wind power
War on terrorism brings focus to oil alternatives
Phillips and Conoco to Form U.S. Gasoline Giant
Change and Fear in Colombia Rights Panel
Another Plea for More Aid to Poor
POLICE / PRISONERS
'Aggressive' air security coming in phases
Officers Keep Lid On U-Md. Revelry
DNA IN THE USA: PATRIOT ACT ALLOWS FORMATION OF DATABASE
Zimbabwe President Says Britain Aids 'Plot'
With Water and Sweat, Fighting the Most Stubborn Fire
ACTIVISTS
London anti-war march attracts 15,000 protesters
Thousands protest at ex-Army school
-------- NUCLEAR
Fallout shelter gets new life
November 19, 2001
By John Biemer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011119-90226760.htm
BALTIMORE - A poster on the wall of the underground bunker reads: "Are you ready for the next disaster? Civil Defense for you, your family and America."
What's old is becoming new again as Baltimore rapidly modernizes a relic of the Cold War days - a fallout shelter five miles north of downtown that will serve as the city government's emergency operations center.
The September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon have caused cities like Baltimore to revisit some ideas that had been shelved since the fall of the Soviet Union.
After the atomic bomb scare faded, some fallout shelters fell into disuse as funding for civil defense shifted toward handling natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes.
Baltimore's operations center could be used if there were floods or massive fires near City Hall. However, it's being brought up to speed now due to recent terrorist attacks, and the threat of biological, chemical and possibly nuclear attacks, said Richard McKoy, the city's director of emergency management.
"During a potential attack, we need a center of command with redundant modes of communication and a secure flow of information," Mayor Martin O'Malley said. "The bunker is a perfect fit."
Who would be inside?
The mayor, of course, and his top Cabinet officials, including the police chief, the fire chief and the head of the Department of Public Works. Other key support agencies also have places, including representatives of the telephone company, Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., the Red Cross and the National Guard.
"You don't have to look for a resource," Mr. McKoy said. "They're all here right at the table."
Milton Copulos, president of the National Defense Council Foundation, an Alexandria-based think tank, said making a fallout shelter into an emergency control center makes good sense.
"There are a bunch of bunkers that are just there, many of which can be resurrected," Mr. Copulos said. "I know an awful lot of [cities] are looking at what they have in place and looking at what the next level of preparedness needs to be."
Built under federal guidance during the Cold War, the fallout shelters became the responsibility of state and local officials when the Federal Emergency Management Agency was formed in 1979 with an eye toward natural disasters.
A FEMA spokesman said the agency does not know how many cities are converting old fallout shelters, but many may be reviewing their plans after considering the experience of New York, which had its emergency control center in the World Trade Center, which was destroyed September 11.
Many other emergency control centers are already subterranean.
Los Angeles' Emergency Operations Center is located four floors underground. New York's State Emergency Management Office operates from a bunker below state police headquarters in Albany.
If there were a disaster in Iowa, state agencies would operate out of the STARC (State Area Command) Armory at Camp Dodge in Johnston, an underground bunker with a high-tech communications system and reinforced concrete walls a foot thick.
Renovating the nuclear bombproof shelter will cost Baltimore about $400,000, part of $17.6 million in security enhancements ordered since September 11 that are stretching out an already strained city budget.
The underground bunker, located beneath a fire station, was built in 1952 as a Civil Defense Control Center. The 22-inch thick concrete walls were intended to withstand the blast from a nuclear explosion.
With food reserves and an air recirculating system, those inside could survive for two weeks while the most dangerous radioactive fallout dissipated outside.
William C. Codd II, the city's emergency management director for 13 years ending in 1993, said the only time he recalls the center being used was during the 1968 riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Sifting through the dated supplies, Mr. McKoy has encountered some interesting artifacts. The gray, 50-year-old cans of emergency water must go. The same goes for the 45 rpm records teaching medical self help.
Fourteen new fiber optic telephone lines and three computers have been added. Antennae were erected on the roof so pagers and cell phones will work underground.
Mr. McKoy points to some Geiger counters and dosimeters - portable radiation detecting devices - left over from Cold War days.
"[Osama] bin Laden says he has nuclear agents," Mr. Codd said. "If in fact he does, we might start thinking about radiation again."
Indeed, Mr. McKoy said, FEMA advised local jurisdictions last week to act quickly to prepare for nuclear attacks - including radiation detection equipment. The detectors at the Baltimore center need to be calibrated, and they may need new batteries, but they still work, Mr. Codd said.
There's now room for about 50 people in the shelter - with 18 able to sit at small cubicles facing each other in the main room, which is equipped with city maps stretching from floor to ceiling.
The nonperishable food stash has to be restocked and there's no room for those inside to sleep, save a few old canvas cots, Mr. McKoy said.
"They'd have to find a spot where they can," Mr. Codd said. "But it's a lot better being in here than being out there."
----
The Specter of Nuclear Terror
New York Times
November 19, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/opinion/19MON1.html?searchpv=nytToday
For most Americans there is no more frightening threat than terrorists with nuclear weapons. Assuming Osama bin Laden does not already have them - the assumption most experts make - everything possible must be done to prevent him or other terrorists from obtaining them.
The starting point is Russia, where poorly protected nuclear bombs and materials remain vulnerable to theft. It is not enough that President Bush and Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, have agreed to greatly reduce the number of nuclear missiles in each country's arsenal. The two leaders must also do more to safeguard the remaining weapons and any vulnerable nuclear materials in Russia that could be used to make bombs if stolen.
Russia insists that it is guarding its weapons carefully. But a Russian general raised concern recently when he revealed that terrorists have twice this year conducted surveillance at a Russian nuclear arms storage facility, presumably with an eye to storming it. Another Russian general created alarm four years ago by asserting that many of Russia's small, portable nuclear bombs could not be accounted for. That was emphatically denied at the time, and was denied again just recently.
An alternative path to nuclear capability is for terrorists to make a weapon themselves. That would be extremely difficult for most terrorist groups - far harder than making a chemical or biological weapon - but it can't be ruled out entirely. The primary barrier has always been the difficulty of obtaining or producing the highly enriched uranium or the plutonium that would be needed to make a bomb. Unfortunately, the opportunities for theft have multiplied in recent years as the political and economic disintegration of the former Soviet Union has left many sites only loosely guarded, and their nuclear experts impoverished and vulnerable to bribes.
With enough plutonium or highly enriched uranium in hand, a terrorist group with three or four specialists in its ranks, a machine shop and sufficient time could probably make a crude nuclear weapon, weighing more than a ton. That, at least, was the alarming verdict of five American nuclear weapons experts who examined the question a few years ago. Even terrorist groups that were short on expertise and had only low-grade radioactive materials from medicine or industry could make a "dirty bomb" in which radioactive materials are placed around conventional explosives, with the goal of contaminating a large area.
With so much nuclear material in the former Soviet Union potentially vulnerable, it would seem imperative to swiftly safeguard the warheads and fissile materials not yet adequately protected. Farsighted cooperative programs begun a decade ago have done much to upgrade security at Russian nuclear facilities and to retain Russian scientists who might be tempted to sell their expertise. But the effort is proceeding at too lackadaisical a pace, and the Bush administration seems inclined to let it creep along.
A task force led by former Senator Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler, a former White House counsel, called early this year for a huge increase in financing. Yet Congress has approved less than $200 million for such programs in the 2002 fiscal year, a small fraction of what the panel recommended, and the Bush administration has rebuffed attempts to boost the supplemental terrorism package to provide more. One way or another more money should be found. Even more important, Presidents Bush and Putin need to summon the political will to brush aside all obstacles that have slowed the program. Otherwise, the growing sophistication of terrorist groups will eventually overtake the lagging efforts to keep nuclear weapons out of their reach.
-------- japan
Japan town residents vote against nuclear plant
REUTERS
JAPAN: November 19, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13351/story.htm
TOKYO - A majority of residents of a small Japanese town voted against having a nuclear power plant built nearby, the latest sign of public distrust in nuclear power on which Japan relies for its electricity.
Kyodo news agency said yesterday the plebiscite in Miyama in the western prefecture of Mie was non-binding but makes it unlikely the town will become a host to a nuclear power plant since a local ordinance requires the mayor to respect voters' wishes.
Although no specific project was at stake in the area, the vote was yet another sign of voters' allergy to the nuclear power on which Japan relies to supply about one third of its electricity.
Earlier this year, residents of a small farming village in northern Japan that is home to the world's largest nuclear power plant voted against the use of the controversial recycled nuclear fuel MOX (plutonium-uranium mixed oxide).
Unlike that plebescite and another in 1996, the latest vote was proposed by local businesses who wanted local utility Chubu Electric Power Co to build a nuclear power plant there, hoping it would revitalise the stagnant economy, Kyodo said.
Just days before the vote, Chubu Electric, Japan's third largest utility, found a steam leak containing some radiation during an inspection of the 540-megawatt No. 1 reactor at the Hamaoka power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture.
It was forced to shut down the reactor and suspend the plant's No. 2 reactor, with a capacity of 840 megawatts, to conduct an inspection.
Japan's nuclear industry faces strong anti-nuclear sentiment among the public after a series of accidents including the nation's worst at a uranium processing plant in September 1999, which exposed hundreds of residents, plant workers and emergency personnel to radiation. Two plant workers later died.
-------- treaties
US warns "time is coming" to scrap ABM treaty
Monday November 19,
Agence France Presse
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011119/1/1twym.html
The United States warned it soon would have to move beyond the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to accommodate new tests of its proposed national missile defense system.
But a top Republican lawmaker suggested despite the lack of a formal agreement on modifying or replacing the treaty at last week's US-Russian summit, US President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, may have reached a tacit understanding on how to tackle the thorny issue.
During their talks in Washington and Crawford, Texas, Bush and Putin failed to agree on a way for the United States to avoid treaty constraints and proceed with a rigorous testing program of its missile defense system.
The accord, based on the concept of mutual assured destruction, bars the United States and Russia from having nationwide defenses against ballistic missiles.
Underscoring the president's determination to forge ahead with the system's testing program, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday "the time is coming where our testing programs will start to bump up against the constraints of the treaty."
"We're not going to violate the treaty, and that means that, one way or another, we're going to have to move beyond the ABM Treaty," she said on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.
Secretary of State Colin Powell had a similar message to the Russians.
"They know that sooner or later that testing that we have to do will run into the constraints of the ABM Treaty and when that happens we have got to get out of the constraints of the ABM Treaty," Powell said on "Fox News Sunday."
He declined to say when the testing program would conflict with the treaty, saying the schedule would be worked out by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Last month, in a bid to avoid controversy ahead of the Bush-Putin summit, the Pentagon called off two missile defense tests that US officials said could have been seen as a violation of the accord.
White House and Pentagon officials declined to say Sunday whether the comments by Powell and Rice meant that the delayed tests had now been rescheduled.
The September 11 attacks on the United States had the unintended consequence of bolstering the missile defense program, as many lawmakers concluded that the threat of a missile strike against the United States might be more realistic than they had previously thought.
After previously stripping more than one billion dollars from Bush's budget request for missile defense, the Democratic-controlled US Senate made an about-face and gave the Pentagon all of the 8.3 billion dollars asked for the program.
Powell said the United States intended to continue having discussions with the Russians on the treaty and missile defense.
But Republican Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, who was among the congressional leaders who met with Putin during his visit in Washington, indicated the US and Russian presidents might already have an understanding on missile defense.
"I do think that they have more of an understanding and more of a commitment to each other than they can make publicly right now," Lott told Fox News.
The Mississippi Republican said that although he did not have any insider information, "just from watching them and listening to what they say, I have a feeling that's how it's developed."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Senate Democrats plan US nuclear plant safety bill
Reuters:
19/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13353/story.htm
WASHINGTON - Two Democratic senators said last week they plan to soon introduce legislation that would station federal agents at the nation's 103 nuclear power plants to guard against security threats.
Assistant Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York said they would offer the bill when Congress returns from its Thanksgiving holiday.
Details about the number of federal planned bill were not immediately available.
Current security measures are handled by individual plant operators, who have been on high alert since the deadly Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. A few state governors have assigned National Guard units to nuclear power plants as an extra precaution.
After passing an airline safety bill last week, the Senate should "focus the same energy to improve safety at nuclear power plants," Reid said in a statement.
"If professional law enforcement agents are the right answer for America's airports, then surely they are also the answer for guarding America's nuclear reactors," he said.
New York has six nuclear plants, including the Indian Point-2 plant, within close proximity to New York City.
"We cannot continue with a piecemeal approach of no-fly zones and Coast Guard patrols that are here one day and gone the next," Clinton said.
Both senators serve on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the commercial nuclear power industry.
--------
NUKE PLANT TERROR ATTACK: AREA 6 TIMES THE SIZE OF CT. WOULD BE UNINHABITABLE
From: "Jim Hoerner" <jim_hoerner@hotmail.com>
Mon, 19 Nov 2001
The Russian nuclear power plant accident released about 27 kilograms of cesium-137 into the atmosphere. The Millstone Unit 3 containment pool currently holds 350 kilograms of the isotope. A release of that much cesium-137 would render about 75,000 square kilometers of land uninhabitable an area roughly six times as large as Connecticut, according to Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, Mass.
A clean region is considered to be one where contamination is less than 1 Curie per square kilometer (Ci/km^2). (1)
15 Ci/km^2 is used as the uninhabitable lower limit (2).
This is equivalent to Cs-137 contamination of 1305 grams per km^2 (3), or 3375 grams Cs-137 per square mile.
350 kg of Cs-137 spread evenly over 75,000 square miles is the equivalent of 5 grams per square mile, a factor of 675 less than the unihabitable limit, or a factor of 45 less than a clean region.
1. http://ecolu-info.unige.ch/colloques/Chernobyl/actes97/MS-DOS-Word.doc/f9genomc.html
2. http://www.un.kiev.ua:8080/chorn/social.htm
3. http://www.usace.army.mil/inet/usace-docs/eng-manuals/em385-1-80/c-3.pdf
Jim Hoerner
---
GET THE STRAIGHT FACTS ABOUT HOW RADIATION IS AFFECTING YOU AND YOUR BODY
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Recent nuclear tests by French and Chinese scientists have once again made the explosive and cumulative issue of radiation a real and serious concern to man's survival. Read this book now to discover how to protect yourself and your loved ones from this threat.
Among the subject matter you will find:
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-------- maryland
Nuclear plants trouble neighbors
November 19, 2001
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011119-31522988.htm
Nuclear power plants have been generating more than electricity since the September 11 strikes have left some neighbors worrying they could become the next victims of a terrorist attack.
Virginia has two nuclear plants - in Louisa and Surry counties. Nearby residents wonder what would happen if their nuclear neighbors became the next target.
Rita Steele's 16-year-old grandson recently offered to build her an underground fallout shelter.
"Before, he would have never thought about it," said Mrs. Steele, 50, who owns a shop in Mineral near the Louisa plant. "Now, it even affects the kids, because they hear so much about it. It's scary."
Arms folded over a T-shirt that says, "Wherever I go, God goes with me," Mrs. Steele said she has not given a lot of thought to what she would do, except get in a car and drive. She worries that radiation would spread too fast anyway.
"I'd probably try to get my nine dogs into the car. We probably wouldn't make it," she said.
Her neighbors are suddenly paying attention to calendars mailed out by Dominion Virginia Power, the company that owns the plant, that include detailed instructions on what to do in a crisis. The calendar lists evacuation centers, school evacuation procedures, escape routes and placards that residents can prop in their windows to show that they have left their home or need assistance to leave.
"I've been reading that, too, and this is the first year I've ever paid attention," said Pat Martin, who runs the Country Roads Cafe in Mineral, about 100 miles from the Washington Monument.
On the shore of man-made Lake Anna, the North Anna plant has a capacity of 1,842 megawatts - enough electricity to light a city the size of Albuquerque. The Surry nuclear power plant, with a 1,625-megawatt capacity, is on the James River across from historic Jamestown. Both are operated by Richmond-based Dominion, which serves more than 2 million customers in Virginia and North Carolina.
There are 103 commercial nuclear power plants operating in 31 states. The day of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission urged all to go to Level III, its highest security level.
The NRC also assured the public that nuclear power plants are built to withstand extreme events such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. But in a Sept. 21 news release, the agency also acknowledged that it had not contemplated attacks by airliners as big as the ones that slammed into the twin towers.
Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III directed the National Guard and state police to defend both nuclear plants. The Marine Resources Commission and the Game and Inland Fisheries Department are guarding waterways around the plants.
Dominion intensified security before the NRC asked, said spokesman Richard Zuercher. Officials have conducted additional background checks on some employees, stopped media visits and public tours.
But the plants, ringed by razor wire, concrete barriers to thwart truck bombs and armed security guards, were safe even before September 11, Mr. Zuercher said.
The reactors and their cooling systems are below ground and encased in hardened structures, including a three-eighth-inch carbon steel liner. The domes - whose shape is intended to minimize the impact from an aircraft crash - are 21/2- to 3-foot-thick concrete reinforced with eight layers of steel bars.
For many neighbors, worry is an acceptable trade-off for facilities that provide more jobs than any other local business and pay at least 20 percent of the county's taxes. Others are simply fatalistic.
"If it blows up, it blows up," said Joseph Boggs Sr., whose home sits about a half-mile across Lake Anna from the plant.
----
FERC meets on LNG plant restart security concerns
Reuters:
19/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13355
WASHINGTON - Federal energy market regulators met last week with state and local officials to discuss national security concerns connected with restarting a liquefied natural gas plant near the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in southern Maryland.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hosted the conference to reconsider its decision last month to approve the request of Tulsa, Oklahoma-based energy company Williams Cos. Inc. to reopen and expand the company's Cove Point liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant.
FERC gave its approval for restarting the plant despite concerns that the facility could be subject to sabotage that would threaten a nearby nuclear plant owned by Baltimore utility Constellation Energy Group .
An LNG facility in Boston had been closed by state officials following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Officials feared an LNG tanker entering Boston harbor could be subject to sabotage, causing massive damage.
The agency is now having second thoughts about its decision on the Cove Point facility.
FERC said it would be "in the public interest to reconsider" the agency's reactivation decision and "take further evidence with respect to national security implications" connected with restarting the plant.
The conference was closed to the public, and the agency will not release the names of the participants at the meeting or their comments, a FERC spokeswoman said last week.
"In view of the nature of the national security issues to be explored, the conference will not be open to the pubic," FERC said in a prior notice of the meeting.
Williams wants to resume LNG shipments to the Cove Point plant during the second quarter of 2002. The company also plans to build a fifth storage tank at the site that could hold up to 2.5 billion cubic feet of gas.
The Cove Point plant, built in 1974, was bought by Williams last year from Columbia Energy Group, now a unit of Merrillville, Indiana, utility holding company NiSource Inc. , for $150 million. The plant stopped importing natural gas in the early 1980s, but reopened as a natural gas storage site about 10 years later.
LNG is kept at ultra-cold temperatures and compressed for transport aboard special tankers.
It begins as natural gas in a vapor form. The manufacturing process cools the gas to minus-259 degrees Fahrenheit, changing the gas into a liquid and shrinking it to less than 1/600th of its original size.
LNG, which is odorless and colorless, is then loaded into tankers and shipped to markets where it is converted back into dry gas for electric power generation or another use as a fuel source.
LNG facilities are also located in Massachusetts, Louisiana and Georgia.
-------- utah
Utah battles proposed nuclear dump
by Leonard Anderson,
REUTERS
USA: November 19, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13350/story.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - The State of Utah is battling a group of energy companies that plans to build a dumping ground for radioactive nuclear waste on an American Indian reservation about an hour's drive from Salt Lake City.
The fight is but the latest skirmish in the continuing dilemma of where to stash the thousands of tonnes of waste fuel piling up at the nation's 103 atomic reactors.
Despite 20 years of scientific and environmental studies, a final decision has yet to be made on whether to build a permanent federal underground storage site at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert about 90 miles (144 km) from Las Vegas.
The Utah project - Private Fuel Storage LLC, led by utility holding company Xcel Energy of Minneapolis - aims to store up to 40,000 metric tonnes of waste fuel for up to 20 years on 820 leased acres of reservation land belonging to the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians.
The plan also carries a 20-year extension.
Waste fuel, packed in 175-tonne steel and concrete canisters called dry casks, would be shipped by rail from nuclear power plants to Utah, to sit on thick concrete above-ground pads until Congress approved Yucca Mountain for permanent storage.
Utah officials, led by Governor Mike Leavitt, insist Xcel and other utilities should keep their waste fuel at home.
Utah has no nuclear power stations of its own and has even passed legislation banning in-state nuclear waste storage.
KEEP OUT
"Skull Valley is a legal and environmental farce," said Monte Stewart, appointed by Leavitt in May as lead attorney to keep the waste out of Utah.
Stewart said the 1982 federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act bars private waste storage outside nuclear power plants.
But Indian reservations, because of their special status as semi-sovereign land, might be able to skirt the federal law.
"American Indians control their lands, so utilities can exploit that and try to avoid the democratic process. The utilities go to tribes because they know the states are going to fight them. They only have to deal with the tribe," Larry Jensen, Utah's deputy attorney general, said.
The Utah project is the latest bid to store waste fuel on an American Indian reservation. In the 1990s a group of 33 utilities explored a dump on a Mescalero Apache reservation in New Mexico, but the project was never built.
The Goshute Indians would get lease revenues from the dump which could fund housing, healthcare and education at the Skull Valley Reservation, Sue Martin, a spokeswoman for the project, said. Nuclear power opponents say transport accidents and leaks or other damage in storing highly radioactive waste fuel pose a huge environmental risk.
Supporters of the Utah project argue that cask storage has been proven safe in the United States and at overseas nuclear plants.
"Private Fuel Storage is an excellent alternative fuel management strategy until Yucca Mountain is developed," said Rod McCullum, a senior project manager at the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based nuclear trade group.
LOSING SPACE
Nuclear plants, which supply a fifth of the nation's electricity, are running out of waste storage room in fuel pools and many are shifting to dry casks, McCullum said.
About 44,000 tons of spent fuel rods now are stored in U.S. fuel pools and casks - enough to cover a football field 15 feet (4.6 meters) deep - and reactors produce another 2,000 tons each year.
Xcel is pushing the Utah project because waste storage at its twin-reactor Prairie Island nuclear plant in Minnesota is filling up.
The Minnesota legislature capped storage at the plant at 17 casks while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved 48, said Scott Northard, Xcel's director of nuclear asset management.
The utility has not challenged the state's storage cap but said this week it was working on a back-up plan to buy electricity from other generators if a lack of waste storage space forced it to shut Prairie Island before the plant's operating licenses expire in 2013 and 2014.
The way things are going, Prairie Island would reach its waste storage limit in 2007, Northard said.
-------- us nuc politics
Torricelli Backed Donor's Bid for a Korean Project, a Letter Shows
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By TIM GOLDEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/politics/19TORC.html?searchpv=nytToday
Despite Senator Robert G. Torricelli's insistence that he did almost nothing for a political donor who claims to have given him expensive gifts and cash, Mr. Torricelli strongly recommended the man for a contract on a sensitive nuclear-reactor project in North Korea.
In a letter to a senior United States official, Mr. Torricelli, a New Jersey Democrat, also asked the Clinton administration to press the North Korean government to repay a huge debt it owed to the contributor, David Chang.
Since last year, Mr. Torricelli, his lawyers and his aides have repeatedly denied that he tried to resolve the debt problem for Mr. Chang or his company, Nikko Enterprises, or did anything more for Mr. Chang than he would for any constituent.
But on Sept. 22, 1995, Mr. Torricelli wrote to a senior State Department official, Robert L. Gallucci, that he was "greatly concerned" about Mr. Chang's debt.
"I hope you will join me in urging the North Korean government to settle their account with Nikko Enterprises," Mr. Torricelli wrote.
The letter, a copy of which was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, could be important to federal prosecutors who are investigating whether Mr. Torricelli took tens of thousands of dollars in unreported gifts and cash from Mr. Chang after Mr. Torricelli's election to the Senate in 1996.
In a plea bargain last year, Mr. Chang admitted to obstructing justice and giving $53,700 in illegal contributions to Mr. Torricelli's campaign. Since then, he has told investigators he made the gifts to secure the senator's assistance in recovering some or all of the $71 million he said he was owed by North Korea for grain shipments to that country in the early 1990's.
People familiar with Mr. Chang's account said he has also stated that the senator repeatedly promised to help him with the debt problem. Legal experts said that assertion might be more plausible if it were shown that Mr. Torricelli had already acted on Mr. Chang's behalf.
Mr. Torricelli has said he never did anything illegal in his five-year relationship with Mr. Chang. But he has not denied taking gifts from the businessman, whom he has taken pains to characterize as a one- time friend.
Federal law bars public officials from taking gifts in return for specific official actions, even if those actions are merely promised and not taken. Senate ethics rules do allow some gifts from longstanding friends if the gifts are reported in a timely way.
In a statement yesterday, one of Mr. Torricelli's lawyers, Mark F. Pomerantz, argued that there was "nothing new" in the senator's letter to Mr. Gallucci.
"This letter is consistent with routine constituent support that all senators provide upon request," Mr. Pomerantz said. "This matter has been fully investigated and we remain confident that it will soon come to a close."
In 1999, Mr. Torricelli also lobbied government leaders in South Korea for Mr. Chang, strongly backing his bid to buy a $1.5 billion insurance company from the state even though it turned out that Mr. Chang had no experience in the business and never had anything close to the needed financing. Before evidence of his efforts came to light earlier this year, Mr. Torricelli had also denied ever intervening for Mr. Chang with officials in South Korea.
On the same day of his 1995 letter to Mr. Gallucci, Mr. Torricelli appealed directly to North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Park Gil Yoon, warning that unless Mr. Chang's debt was settled, the dispute could hinder the country's trade relations with the United States.
Mr. Gallucci, the recipient of Mr. Torricelli's other letter, was an ambassador at large for the State Department and was the Clinton administration's senior negotiator with North Korea. He was also chairman of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO, which had been created the previous March to carry out the accord by which South Korea, the United States and Japan paid for the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea in return for the country's dismantling of nuclear energy plants that could have been used to produce weapons- grade plutonium.
Mr. Chang had long wanted some part of the job of building the nuclear reactors, and he was able to get a small contract transporting fuel-rod disposal equipment into North Korea from China. Still, he knew virtually nothing about nuclear energy, and his small commodities-trading firm employed only a handful of people, several of his former employees said in interviews.
Mr. Chang was able to win the attention of people like Mr. Torricelli, then a United States congressman and an influential member of the House Committee on International Relations, because he had had some business dealings with North Korea and was a generous political donor. A former aide to Mr. Torricelli, Georgianna Evans, said that the congressman turned to Mr. Chang for donations immediately after writing the two 1995 letters.
Yet by the time Mr. Torricelli wrote to Mr. Gallucci, the job of building the two light-water reactors had been given to the main utility company in South Korea, where the government had agreed to pay most of their estimated $4.6 billion cost. Former employees of Mr. Chang said he continued to make middling efforts to secure a technical-consulting contract from KEDO that ultimately went to Duke Engineering & Services Inc., of Charlotte, N.C.
Mr. Chang's former employees and several business associates said he and his company were utterly unqualified to take on the consulting contract. Mr. Torricelli was also vague in his letter about Nikko's qualifications for the job, other than to note Mr. Chang's previous experience dealing with the North Korean government (in the unpaid grain transactions).
Nevertheless, Mr. Torricelli strongly recommended Nikko to be the "project coordinator."
"I wholeheartedly recommend Nikko Enterprises and, in particular, their senior vice president, David Chang," Mr. Torricelli wrote. "I hope you will give Nikko Enterprises every consideration for this position."
Mr. Torricelli's recommendation apparently made no difference. Although Mr. Chang and an associate, Daniel J. Murphy, met with senior KEDO officials the next year, Nikko never presented a formal bid for the contract, a spokesman for the organization, Marc Vogelaar, said.
Mr. Gallucci had almost nothing to do with deciding the contract, and within days of Mr. Torricelli's letter, he was off to a new post overseeing a peace accord for Bosnia.
"This wasn't even a blip - it wasn't on my screen," Mr. Gallucci said in an interview. "I don't think there was anything more that came of any of this."
Mr. Gallucci, who was interviewed about the matter by federal investigators last May, said he could not recall whether Mr. Torricelli ever followed up his letter and did not know whether it was ever answered.
-------- us nuc waste
DOE offers us more evidence Yucca Mt. process is political
Reno Gazette-Journal
November 19th, 2001
From: "L.V. Citizen Alert" <lvcitizenalert@earthlink.net>
http://www.rgj.com/news/stories/opinion/1006239370.php
Opponents looking for ammunition to head off the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain couldn't have asked for much more than was provided last week by the Department of Energy's own inspector general.
The inspector general's report, released on Thursday, confirmed earlier press reports that the law firm representing the DOE's Yucca Mountain project had close ties to the nuclear-energy industry, providing further evidence - hardly needed - that the plan to store the industry's waste in Nevada is all about politics and not science. That has been clear ever since Congress voted to eliminate other contenders for the underground repository and concentrate on Yucca Mountain, even before scientific studies were completed.
Now, according to the inspector general, it turns out that Winston & Strawn, hired to give the government "impartial advice" in the licensing process, lobbied for the Nuclear Energy Institute in its DOE application. The IG also said that employees who billed the DOE for work on Yucca Mountain also did work for the institute, and that the firm represented other groups with nuclear-waste business before the DOE.
Proponents of storing the waste at Yucca Mountain have long maintained that the science should be allowed to proceed and that opposition in Nevada is purely political. It's the industry that's been playing politics, however. For proof, no one need look further than the DOE's own report.
Kalynda Tilges Nuclear Issues Coordinator
Citizen Alert - Las Vegas
P.O.Box 17173
Las Vegas, NV 89114
702-796-5662 702-796-4886 Fax
lvcitizenalert@earthlink.net
http://www.citizenalert.org
-------
LV area chambers may leave U.S. group over Yucca
By Erin Neff <erin@lasvegassun.com>
Mon, 19 Nov 2001
LAS VEGAS SUN
http://www.lasvegassun.com/dossier/nuke/
Last week's decision by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to back a nuclear waste repository in Nevada could lead local chambers of commerce to pull out of the group and encourage their counterparts nationwide to follow their lead.
Henderson Chamber of Commerce President Ron Meek met Friday with other chamber representatives and discussed the possibility that "we should all notify all the chambers about the transportation of waste through their areas."
Meek said the Henderson chamber had just renewed its membership and sent dues when he picked up the newspaper Friday to learn of the national group's decision.
"We're very, very disturbed about it," Meek said. "We're definitely part of what will probably be a group of chambers here that will withdraw" from the national group.
The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce -- the third biggest in the nation -- has sent a letter to U.S. Chamber President Thomas Donohue to discuss its displeasure over the decision to back a repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The group's board of directors will wait for a response before voting to withdraw membership, said Kami Dempsey, government affairs director for the Las Vegas Chamber.
Meek said he would like local chambers to encourage their counterparts outside Nevada to withdraw from the national group to widen the blow any loss of membership would cause the U.S. Chamber.
The U.S. Chamber's Donohue said Thursday that his group runs the risk of losing members over such tough decisions.
Boulder City Chamber of Commerce Director Beth Walker has plenty she would like to say about the chamber's decision but cannot issue any statements without first gauging the mood of the roughly 250 to 300 businesses that belong to her group.
"First I'll have to take things up with our membership," Walker said.
The North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce said it does not belong to the national chamber.
Meek and Las Vegas Restaurant Association President Van Heffner are trying to make the best of the decision by working to alter it.
Heffner said that for the time being he would remain a member of the U.S. Chamber's Alliance on Energy and Economic Growth to try to "work within the system to change it."
Meek believes building momentum against the decision by enlisting other chambers is the way to go -- a move similar to the tactics employed by Nevada's congressional delegation.
Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., have been highlighting the route that 77,000 tons of nuclear waste would likely travel through the nation. They hope to persuade officials along the route that transporting the material could be as dangerous as storing it.
"Nobody wants it in their back yard," Meek said. "We should ask if they want it in their back yard."
Kalynda Tilges Nuclear Issues Coordinator Citizen Alert - Las Vegas P.O.Box 17173 Las Vegas, NV 89114 702-796-5662 702-796-4886 Fax lvcitizenalert@earthlink.net http://www.citizenalert.org
CITIZEN ALERT -- "A Voice For The Land And People Of Nevada"
-------- MILITARY
NATO Lends a Hand With U.S. Sky Patrol
In Role Reversal, Foreign Crews Defend U.S.
By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 19, 2001; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50734-2001Nov18?language=printer
ABOARD NATO 25 -- Thirty-one thousand feet up in the nighttime sky, the military surveillance plane is circling over a classified location in the southwestern United States.
In the cockpit sits Chuck, guiding the airborne radar center through the skies. He's Canadian. Behind him, in the windowless cabin, Rosario, the weapons controller, is talking to the crew of a fighter jet. He's from Naples. Bernd, a German major and the mission's tactical director, stares at his radar screen, which displays nearby planes as flashing green dots. And Markos, who is Greek, makes sure all communications systems are operating smoothly.
Together, with 13 other men from a total of nine NATO nations, they are doing something they never contemplated in their long military careers -- protecting the United States from terrorists.
For the first time since the American Revolution, the United States has asked for and received foreign assistance with domestic security. The request came three days after NATO, responding to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, invoked Article 5 of its charter, which states that a military attack against one member nation is considered an attack against all.
Last month, NATO dispatched about 180 military personnel and five AWACS planes to Oklahoma's Tinker Air Force Base to assist Operation Noble Eagle, the U.S. military's sweeping homeland security effort.
"I never, ever imagined that we'd be here," said Chuck, the pilot. "This place in the world that we're now trying to defend has always been the biggest boy in town. It has always been the U.S. protecting everyone else."
Added Victor, a Belgian radar operator whose last high-profile mission was the war in Kosovo, "The U.S. is the great superpower of the world. It's the last place I thought I would be sent."
Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Air Force and NATO airborne warning and control systems aircraft, known as AWACS, have been patrolling the skies over the United States coast to coast. Deployed from Tinker, they are usually sent on specific missions -- above power stations or crowded stadiums, for example, or to assist with presidential protection. They monitor the New York-Washington corridor 24 hours a day.
Pentagon officials have allowed reporters to accompany certain AWACS missions as part of their effort to show the public what the government is doing for homeland security. Journalists are prohibited from revealing any mission's surveillance target -- its "point of interest" -- and can identify crew members only by their first names.
Tonight's mission is largely uneventful until 11 p.m., when a blip on nine radar screens suddenly causes the specialists to straighten in their seats. Sitting elbow-to-elbow under stark white lighting, they glare at the same maze of green dots that might mean trouble: A low-flying aircraft has come within 25 miles of the mission's "point of interest" -- and dangerously close to the 10-mile no-fly zone. The crew notifies two fighter jets and alerts ground control.
By 11:06 p.m., the fighters have maneuvered above and in front of the suspicious plane, and various ground controllers, from the Federal Aviation Administration to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, have it in their electronic sights. It quickly becomes clear that it is just a private plane on a routine flight -- and another false alarm in the often intangible war against terrorism.
Most of tonight's crew, some of whom are Americans, conceded they would rather be in Afghanistan fighting the real war, but they all passionately articulated how privileged they felt to be part of the historic assignment.
"I am very proud to be here, to return what you guys have done for us -- and so many other countries -- during World War II," said Carlos, the Portuguese navigator, who like everybody in the crew speaks fluent English. Added Rosario, "I feel we are doing something very big and useful."
Long considered military symbols of U.S. might overseas, AWACS aircraft have never before been used defensively within U.S. borders. The planes are Boeing 707s, modified for surveillance with the distinctive rotating sensory dome, 14 feet high and 30 feet in diameter, above the fuselage. There are no weapons on board. In addition to the radar technicians, the crew includes two pilots, an engineer, a communications specialist and other technical experts.
The AWACS radar has a range of 200 to 300 miles, depending on the aircraft -- which means a single plane can monitor the New York-Washington corridor. On this trip, however, the NATO plane has been dispatched to watch a much smaller area.
"It's tough because we need to be in the same place that the commercial airliners fly," Bernd said. "And there's a lot of air traffic tonight. The controllers want to keep us out of the commercial routes. They tell us, 'This is your airspace and you stay here.' "
For tonight's mission, the aircraft is stationed about 100 miles to the west of the "point of interest." When the crew reaches the approximate site, Carlos, the navigator, programs the AWACS for a 120-mile circular orbit. By the end of the 12-hour mission, it will have flown more than 5,000 miles, at 460 miles an hour -- in that one circle.
Inside the cold, noisy cabin, three rows of monitor stations are set up with nine screens, which the crew members stare at for hours, studying an array of blinking green and gold dots.
What they are looking for, they say, is anything out of the ordinary -- an aircraft flying too low, for example, or without radio communication. "We look at a plane's altitude, speed and heading," explained Victor, the radar operator. "But the decision to act on what we detect is not our decision."
In many ways, they say, this is a far more taxing assignment than patrolling a war zone. "When I flew over Kosovo, I knew where the enemy was, knew where to look, and knew what they might do," Victor said.
"Here," Rosario said, "you have to be aware that anything could happen. You don't have an identified enemy or an identified threat. You have to be very alert . . . watch every little movement."
Mere endurance, the men say, is the most grueling part of these missions -- but the in-air refueling is the most intense. The pilots must leave the "station" and guide the plane to a precise location just under an air tanker's tail, where a tanker crew member manually guides a fuel line to the AWACS. This is done as both jets are traveling at about 300 mph, 12 to 50 feet apart.
Since arriving five weeks ago, the crew members said, the NATO team has been overwhelmed by its warm reception, reminiscent of the gratitude American soldiers experienced when they arrived in Europe during World War II. There have been Chamber of Commerce receptions, private tours of museums -- not to mention much shopping. "I bought cowboy stuff -- some long horns to take back," Victor said. "I didn't have to buy a hat because a cowboy gave me his in a bar. I want to buy boots, but I don't know, they are too expensive."
Twenty-eight of the Air Force's 32 AWACS are normally stationed at Tinker. But many of them -- the Air Force will not say how many -- have been dispatched overseas, engaged in Operation Enduring Freedom and guarding the no-fly zone over Iraq. Others are being used for homeland security and training. "Our people and our jets are spread thin right now," Tinker spokesman Capt. Steven Rolenc said. "It is essential that the NATO jets are here."
Military officials conceded that the indefinite nature of NATO's AWACS U.S. mission could stretch the limits of the fleet, and cut into training and other important activities. "It always depends on the additional tasking," said Col. Jos van Dam, the commander of NATO's AWACS forces at Tinker. "But if we skip training for a longer period of time, we burn up our own people. There will be a lot of spin-off afterward to get everyone up to speed again."
Nonetheless, van Dam added, "this is a special mission. It's very special flying in the middle of the night over Washington, D.C."
----
A tribunal too far
EDITORIAL •
November 19, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011119-761815.htm
Just before dawn on a June morning in 1942, four Nazi saboteurs landed on Long Island, N.Y. They quickly changed from German marine uniforms into civilian clothes and, with supplies of explosives and timing devices, went on the scout to New York City. Four days later, four more saboteurs slipped ashore in Florida. The FBI quickly rounded up all eight. They were tried in military courts and four of them were swiftly hanged. Three decades on, as al Qaeda and their Taliban hosts flee south into the caves of Afghanistan, we face the prospect of dealing once more with captured saboteurs in America. What to do with them is the subject of an executive order signed Nov. 13 by President Bush authorizing, as FDR did in 1942, that such prisoners be tried by special military tribunals.
As tempting as it may be to follow the FDR example, Mr. Bush should not.
Various arguments are advanced in favor of the special tribunes: Captured terrorists pose special problems both here and abroad. Intelligence information that may have led to their capture would be admissible in a normal criminal trial, and making that information available to the terrorists would endanger the lives of the sources of that information. Our civilian courts have no jurisdiction overseas. Can we trust foreign systems of justice to ensure fair trials and fair punishments?
We are meant to be reassured that military tribunals will reach only those who are not American citizens, and who are identified as either current or former members of al Qaeda who have participated in acts against the United States, or those who have aided or abetted al Qaeda's acts. The executive order empowers the Defense Department to detain, try and punish those people, either in the United States or abroad. But the scope of the order is extraordinarily broad, the legal implications uncertain and the precedent it sets is dangerous indeed.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld such tribunals in the past, citing precedent going back to the American Revolution. In Ex Parte Quirin, the 1942 decision upholding FDR's order, the high court ruled that there are "lawful" and "unlawful" belligerents, and that the latter - such as terrorists and saboteurs who are disguised as civilians - are not entitled to treatment as prisoners of war.
But this does not make the precedent right this time. We are engaged in a "war on terrorism," but we are not actually at war, without the quotation marks, because Congress has not declared war. And there are precedents, you might say, for the Supreme Court upsetting its precedents. There are other ways of dealing with terrorists, and it is neither necessary nor right to abandon the spirit and guarantees of our judicial traditions. Battlefield justice, without ceremony, would be quicker, and as just, as the special tribunals.
Mr. Bush's executive order has brought both right and left together in opposition and disbelief, in concern for American principles and due process. Some of the opposition is fuzzy-headed, such as concern for the vapor of "world opinion." America must always do what it must do, and "world opinion" will follow. But the concern is real. Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, a former U.S. district attorney and as staunch in his conservatism as anyone, and the American Civil Liberties Union, the fount of the kind of liberalism that infuriates conservatives, are making common cause this time. Several congressmen, including reliable friends of Mr. Bush, suggest that congressional hearings may be useful to discuss how to deal with terrorist threats to the nation.
Federal law and Senate Joint Resolution 23 give the president the authority to use all necessary military force to respond to the September 11 attacks, and they are all the legal authority the president needed to issue his order. But this should not be taken as an invitation to a display of power. Osama bin Laden and his barbarians are not such supermen that America must stand its respect for its traditions of equality under the law on its head to deliver what the barbarians have coming to them. The president and his men should think again.
----
Another attack . . . on the Bill of Rights
Nat Hentoff
November 19, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20011119-24183028.htm
I have no doubt that Attorney General John Ashcroft speaks sincerely when he repeatedly says that, in our war on terrorism, he is protecting and honoring the Constitution. But ignorance of the cornerstone of our freedoms is no excuse for his actions.
His anti-terrorism law, the U.S.A. Patriot Act, has already torn holes into that document by radically expanding electronic surveillance and secret physical searches of homes and offices. Too few of these expanded powers are subject to adequate judicial review.
Now, however, he has directly attacked the Sixth Amendment's right to effective counsel. Without the usual time for public comment on so fundamental a change in our system of justice, the government will now be able to eavesdrop on conversations of lawyers and inmates in federal prisons, thereby shredding the lawyer-client privilege of confidentiality.
Among those included are some of the detained - a euphemism for arrested - who are not charged with any crime. This monitoring will take place without a court order, solely on the certification by the attorney general that "reasonable suspicion exists to believe that an inmate may use communications with attorneys or their agents to facilitate acts of terrorism."
Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office, is not engaging in hyperbole when she says, "This is a terrifying precedent - it threatens to negate the keystone of our system of checks and balances, the right to a competent legal defense."
Irwin Schwartz, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, makes the crucially obvious point that "the Code of Professional Responsibility is very clear: An attorney cannot communicate with a client when confidentiality is not assured. The client is stripped of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel."
A law degree is not necessary to understand this essence of American justice. "Law and Order" and "NYPD Blue" teach lawyer-client confidentiality every week on television.
As Mr. Schwartz says: "The federal government has no business eavesdropping on these conversations, absent a court order." But Mr. Ashcroft has little patience with ordered liberty.
As the New York Times said in a Nov. 10 editorial: "Two months into the war against terrorism, the nation is sliding toward a trap that we entered in this conflict vowing to avoid. Civil liberties are eroding."
But the Justice Department assures us that "procedural safeguards" are securely in place to protect lawyer-client confidentiality under this new edict.
The Justice Department says that inmates and their lawyers will be told that they are no longer alone in their conversations. Moreover, the eavesdropping will be done by a government "taint team," which will not be allowed to reveal what they hear to federal prosecutors or investigators until a federal judge has approved. It's an honor system. But in view of the past and present FBI history of abusing civil liberties, this pledge is hardly reassuring. It's like appointing Bill Clinton to head the official committee on obstruction of justice.
When a person in custody cannot fully and privately talk to his or her attorney, and when the attorney's advice is monitored by the government, Mr. Ashcroft has unilaterally changed the Constitution.
Professor Leonard Levy, a justly honored constitutional historian, has said that the guarantees of a fair trial and representation by counsel "reflected the judgment of [the Constitution´s] framers that in a free society, based on respect for the individual, the determination of guilt or innocence must be made in accordance with just procedures by which the accused made no unwilling contribution to his own conviction."
In leaving office, George Washington warned of government asserting overweening power. When that happens, he said, "Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire, a dangerous servant and a terrible master."
In his impressive address to the United Nations on Nov. 10, the president said that law unites people "across cultures and continents." But if the rule of law does not hold in this country, what of his administration's fundamental responsibility to uphold the Constitution?
Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Washington Times. His column runs on Mondays.
-------- afghanistan
Taliban ready to surrender Kunduz, as US vows to get bin Laden
Monday November 19,
Agence France Presse
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011119/1/1u0pr.html
As US officials expressed confidence they would track down chief terror suspect Osama bin Laden, besieged Taliban fighters in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz said they would surrender under UN supervision.
The noose was tightening on bin Laden and his Taliban protectors Monday, as Taliban-controlled regions in the country shrunk to the surrounded city of Kunduz, and pockets in southern Afghanistan that include the city of Kandahar.
"We're going to get him out of his hole sooner or later, but we'll get him," Secretary of State Colin Powell told ABC News on Sunday.
In an interview via satellite phone published Monday in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, militia commander Mulla Fazil said from Kunduz the offer to surrender was prompted by the constant US bombings, which he said had killed some 800 people over the weekend and 250 in nearby Khanabad district.
With thousands of Taliban troops backed by hardcore Chechen, Arab and Pakistani loyalists making a stand at Kunduz, US B-52 heavy bombers and fighters have intensified their attacks in recent days.
Fazil said the Taliban would under no circumstances surrender to the rival Northern Alliance after hearing reports of a bloody settling of accounts in the capital Kabul and northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Estimates of the number of besieged troops at Kunduz run between 20,000 and 30,000, including many foreign fighters linked to bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
Aside from United Nations intervention, the Kunduz fighters also want safe passage home, the right to hand over their heavy weapons to neutral caretakers, and foreign fighters -- including bin Laden supporters -- repatriated through UN officials, Dawn reported.
Meanwhile Younis Qanooni, the interior minister of the opposition Northern Alliance, claimed bin Laden was hiding at a base 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of Kandahar, the stronghold of the Taliban militia that had ruled most of Afghanistan until a week ago.
The Taliban said bin Laden was not in an area under their control and said they did not know whether he remained in Afghanistan, where he had been their "guest" for years.
"The Taliban are trying to cheat the international community so that they stop the aerial bombardments," Qanooni said. "According to my information, bin Laden is still in ... Maruf. He has training camps there and strong underground bunkers."
London's Sunday Times newspaper said US and British forces had narrowed the search for bin Laden to 78 square kilometers (30 square miles) of rugged terrain in southern Afghanistan.
Powell said he would not be surprised if a Taliban member eventually revealed where bin Laden was hiding, pointing out the United States had put a 25 million dollar reward on the head of the Saudi-born fundamentalist.
"And, as they start to realize that there is no future hanging around with either the al-Qaeda organization or, for that matter, with the Taliban regime, it wouldn't surprise me to see some people start to make more informed choices about where their best interests lie," he told Fox News.
The militant al-Qaeda network already suffered a major setback last week, when bin Laden's right-hand man, Mohammad Atef, was killed in US bombing strikes.
Atef was accused of participating in the planning of the September 11 attacks, as well as the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and assaults on US troops in Somalia in 1993. He was also believed to have been in charge of al-Qaeda training camps and the main link with other organisations and financial backers of the movement.
In Kandahar, Taliban commanders were reportedly negotiating with tribal leaders.
"Soon, as a result of contacts and negotiations, the situation in Kandahar will be peacefully solved," said Hamid Karzai, a top Pashtun leader and a former Afghan deputy foreign minister.
Karzai also claimed that some high-ranking Taliban officials had shown interest in joining efforts to set up a broad-based government.
One day after returning to Kabul after five years in exile, deposed president Burhanuddin Rabbani, held talks with UN envoy Francesc Vendrell to discuss plans to forge a government representing the various Afghan factions.
Vendrell urged the Tajik-dominated alliance, which seized control of the Afghan capital Tuesday, to meet other Afghan factions in a neutral country.
The alliance's representative to the United Nations, Haron Amin, told US television network CBS an alliance delegation should be heading "hopefully soon" to Europe for such talks.
He named Germany as a possible host for the meeting, though Switzerland has also indicated interest in organizing the conference.
UN, US and other officials have stressed the urgency of forming a government representing the main Afghan groups to avert a repetition of the infighting that has torn the country apart for much of its recent past.
The officials hope former king Mohammed Zahir Shah could help bring together the various Afghan groups.
The king is a member of the Pashtun majority, while the alliance, which backs Rabbani, is made up of a disparate mix of Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara and other minorities.
US officials said the proposed new government was not likely to include any "moderate" members of the Taliban.
"I don't think the words 'moderate' and 'Taliban' go in the same sentence, frankly," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said.
Powell also suggested that if the Afghans wanted "a representative government that will be respected in the eyes of the world," they should have women in the ruling body.
----
MANHUNT
More U.S. Troops in bin Laden Hunt; Hide-Outs Bombed
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/international/asia/19MILI.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 - With the rapid collapse of the Taliban, the United States has intensified its pursuit of Osama bin Laden and his network, adding more commandos to the chase and aiming more airstrikes at hide-outs near the border with Pakistan, officials said today.
Dozens of additional Special Operations troops have entered Afghanistan since Thursday, officials said, in the north as well as in a narrowing band of mountains along the southeast border with Pakistan, where intelligence reports suggest he is most likely to be.
In the dwindling areas the Taliban still control, those commandos are hunting not only for top lieutenants but also for non-Afghan fighters who are tied both to the Taliban leadership and the Qaeda terrorist group.
Working in small teams, sometimes independently and sometimes in conjunction with Afghan rebels or British Special Air Service forces, American commandos have been bombarding suspected command posts, firing on enemy vehicles and sealing off roads near Kandahar by blowing up bridges. The allied forces are watching all movements closely from the air.
They have narrowed their focus with new intelligence seized in searches and obtained by interrogating prisoners, officials said.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that "the noose is getting tighter" on Mr. bin Laden, crediting the collaboration of American Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency with having limited Mr. bin Laden's avenues of escape. At the same time, officials have acknowledged that he is an elusive target and that his quick capture is far from assured.
"As more and more of the country is released from Taliban domination, he has fewer and fewer places in which to hide," Secretary Powell said.
"We think he's still in Afghanistan," he said on the ABC News program "This Week." "There aren't many countries around Afghanistan that would welcome him, or for that matter, any country in the world, with one or two exceptions, that would welcome him."
While fighting raged today for control of one major Taliban redoubt at Kunduz in the north, and skirmishes continued around Kandahar in the south, with heavy airstrikes in both areas, senior Bush administration officials emphasized that the primary goal is to kill or capture Mr. bin Laden and leaders of his terrorist network.
"I want to be very clear that getting the Al Qaeda network broken up is really what we are after here," said Condoleezza Rice, the White House national security adviser. "It's terrific that the Northern Alliance has had the successes that it's had, it's very important that the Taliban are fleeing and that they are loosening their grip on the country. But this mission will not be complete until we have broken up this Al Qaeda network and until it cannot do the kind of harm that it did on Sept. 11." She spoke on the CNN program "Late Edition."
Asked today if the United States was seeking to capture Mr. bin Laden and put him on trial, or simply kill him, Ms. Rice replied:
"I think the most important thing is that he is not able to function any longer and we're agnostic as to how that happens. I rather doubt - just given the circumstances here - I rather doubt we're talking about a long, drawn-out trial."
She said the military also wanted to eliminate the Taliban's leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar.
President Bush signed an order last week creating special military tribunals where foreigners charged with terrorism could be tried in secret, with juries of military officers.
Though officials said they did not know where Mr. bin Laden was, they said that dozens of Navy F-18 fighter jets and some land-based B-52 and B- 1B bombers have in the past two days increasingly focused on underground bunkers to the east and southeast of Kabul.
Fewer jets are attacking planned targets, the officials said. Instead, American warplanes are increasingly circling areas where Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are thought to be congregating, searching for "targets of opportunity."
But while the administration has cited evidence, including intercepted radio messages, suggesting that airstrikes killed a number of senior Al Qaeda and Taliban officials, including Muhammad Atef, a trusted lieutenant, officials said that many jets are returning to base with unused bombs for lack of clear targets.
"It's a process of elimination" a Pentagon official said. "You hit on a cave, see where they run to, and then hit that cave. We're working our way across the entire country that way."
American officials did not confirm a statement by a Northern Alliance official that Mr. bin Laden is in a district known as Maruf, about 80 miles east of Kandahar. They made clear that he is not their only target.
"We want to go after Al Qaeda wherever it exists in the world," Secretary Powell said.
There are only a few hundred American Special Forces troops in Afghanistan, and their missions have differed significantly depending on where they have been operating.
In the north, Army Special Forces soldiers, better known as Green Berets, have been advising Northern Alliance commanders as well as calling in airstrikes and pinpointing targets with hand-held lasers.
More recently, Special Forces have been working with British troops to assess the condition of an airstrip in Bagram, north of Kabul, where the Pentagon hopes to land C- 130 and possibly C-17 cargo planes carrying relief and military supplies.
In the Taliban's stronghold in the south, where opposition forces are not as well organized, more than 100 Special Operations troops have been operating more independently, roaming the countryside conducting covert operations.
Pentagon officials said today that the flow of additional Special Operations troops into Afghanistan remained small, though steady. They also noted that there are now two Marine Expeditionary Units - each carrying 2,200 marines and each qualified to conduct Special Operations - on ships in the Arabian Sea.
For now, however, the officials said the Pentagon seemed prepared to rely on small numbers of commandos, aided by airstrikes.
"One of the lessons of Afghanistan's history, which we've tried to apply in this campaign, is if you're a foreigner, try not to go in," said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. "If you go in, don't stay too long, because they don't tend to like any foreigners who stay too long."
---
DEMOCRACY
One Corner of Afghanistan Peacefully Selects a Governor
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By TIM WEINER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/international/asia/19TOWN.html
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Nov. 18 - Peace reigned here today.
The governor's palace guard, in legal uniforms mothballed since the days of the king decades ago, marched past rose gardens, cypresses, swaybacked palms and feathery pines. They wore sneakers. They looked proud.
The new governor, Hajji Abdul Qadir, sat down on the grass with the oldest, wisest and best-armed men in town to lead prayers and talk about the future. The blue sky held no bombers' contrails.
"We have seen so much death in Afghanistan," Governor Qadir said. "We are blessed to be alive and sitting here today."
It took the elders of this eastern city three days after the Taliban melted away to form the kind of coalition that is so rare in Afghanistan. They sat down on Thursday and arose on Sunday with a government for the province, led by a thoughtful and cultured man, balancing the three biggest local powers. Whether it will last is another question.
The sunny palace gardens were an oasis of calm, but when the sun went down, the night watch went to work. Jumpy young men with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades guard every important intersection and many meaningless ones, challenging unfamiliar cars. A driver gauges the gunman's politics by the length of his beard.
The night watchmen line the highway in and out of the city, where power has quickly changed hands and could change again: the man who rules in Afghanistan is usually the one with the most guns.
But the man who rules here now rules by choice, not force, a rare turn of good fortune for this home of proud Pashtuns and ragged refugees from half of Afghanistan who struggled here on route to Pakistan.
On Wednesday morning the Taliban ran things here. Then the Northern Alliance said it had taken the city, a claim staked by having a spokesman call Cable News Network. The alliance does not appear to have been here, ever.
But on Thursday the Taliban vanished as a political force.
"They are still here, though the regime is gone," said Aziz Ahmed, 25. "They just cut their hair and trimmed their beards."
That night the oldest and wisest leaders sat down in a local version of a loya jirga, the grand national council that may convene someday to choose the next leader of Afghanistan. This is Afghan democracy: hashing things out over tea. The scene was somewhere between and all-male church social and a Mafia sit-down. The result would be harmony, haggling or gunfire.
On Friday there were still two or three potential governors, and things were tense. For a while it was looking like Florida a year ago, with far fewer lawyers and far more guns.
The leading candidate was always Mr. Qadir, who was governor from 1992 to 1996.
He served under the failed presidency of Burhanuddin Rabbani, who now wants to lead the country again under the monochrome banner of the Northern Alliance. Mr. Qadir has a record of moderation rare in Afghanistan; his tenure as governor was marked by what passes for stability.
The other contenders were Hajji Zaman, a former Afghan rebel commander during the Soviet invasion, and Yunis Khalis, a gray eminence in Afghan power struggles for a quarter-century and a major influence on the men who created the Taliban.
On Sunday morning the deal was done.
Governor Qadir chose Yunis Khalis's son as his chief of staff. Mr. Zaman will be military commander of Jalalabad. The police chief will be Hazarat Ali, once aligned with the Taliban.
The cabinet shows that "Afghan coalition" may not be an oxymoron. Though this is Pashtun country, the people who surrounded Mr. Qadir in prayer today included most of Afghanistan's other main ethnic groups. "We're providing an example to the country," Mr. Qadir said in an interview after the prayers outside the palace.
He is in his 60's, a rare member of the educated Afghan elites still living in Afghanistan, unlike the exiled king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, overthrown in 1973 and still in Rome awaiting a change in the political weather.
"Here in Jalalabad we have no disputes between clerics and commanders," Governor Qadir said. "We're united. And I say to all the people and all the world, help us make a broad-based Afghan government.
"We've had 22 years of war in Afghanistan, and we're in a bad situation. When we fought the Russians, all the world supported us. The Afghan people destroyed the Soviet Union, a very great power. And when the Americans left, we were abandoned.
"Now we can help America defeat terrorism, but we are going to need help in turn. Our children are suffering. They know nothing of schools. The schools have been destroyed. They know only fighting."
Jalalabad has not been physically destroyed by a generation of war, but it has been damaged in every other respect. Still, the streets were alive and relaxed this afternoon.
This is the first weekend of Ramadan, when people fast by day, so the kebab shops and teahouses were closed, but the markets were filled with people shopping for fruits and vegetables - apples, spinach, turnips, radishes and pomegranates overflowing from handmade carts. At a butcher's stall, a sheep sat peacefully, waiting for the knife.
Under a huge globe, the centerpiece of a traffic circle, young men with no work talked world politics.
"What's happened is that some of our people decided that the old system was no good, and now we have our own system," said Yar Muhammad, 27. "The people - we took over here. We decided that these are our leaders. They will decide things correctly, and if they don't, there will be new leaders. Jalalabad is telling the country: do as we did. It's the last chance for the Afghan people."
Back at the palace, Maulvi Rustum, a 34-year-old cleric and an exemplar of Pashtun pride, was positively ecstatic about what Jalalabad had wrought.
"It's a very good situation," he said. "We're making a broad-based government. But it's not possible for any one person to do it. I know Rabbani very well, and he cannot bring peace alone."
He added: "What we want from America and the British is for them to help the Afghan government. If they don't, it means they don't care for Afghanistan, they are making war for themselves."
And who would Maulvi Rustum like to see lead the country? In Afghanistan that question usually provokes a passionate and implacable response. But today, in the sunny confines of the palace gardens, tolerance ruled.
"I personally don't like Zahir Shah," he said with a smile. "But if he is what the people of Afghanistan want, he's fine with me."
---
THE WARLORDS
The Corrupt and Brutal Reclaim Afghan Thrones, Evoking Chaos of Somalia
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/international/asia/19WARL.html
QUETTA, Pakistan, Nov. 18 - The galaxy of warlords who tore Afghanistan apart in the early 1990's and who were vanquished by the Taliban because of their corruption and perfidy are back on their thrones, poised to exercise power in the ways they always have.
From the western part of the country to the east, control of the strategic cities passed in less than a week to the same warlords who fled from the Taliban up to six years ago. The relatively popular Ismail Khan reinstalled himself as the governor of Herat, a cultural and trading center; the ruthless Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum is back in power in northern Mazar-i-Sharif; and Haji Abdul Qadir, who let Osama bin Laden stay in his province in 1996, emerged as the victor this weekend after the Taliban fled the southern center of Jalalabad.
Even in Kandahar, the last city still held by the Taliban, the ruler who handed the city over to the Taliban - Mullah Naquib - has been designated as a possible successor to the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar.
And as if to finish the roll call, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who turned much of Kabul, the capital, into rubble in the early 1990's, has asked his old patron, Pakistan, for permission to return to the border town of Peshawar so he can cross into Afghanistan and proclaim himself a provincial governor.
The rapid return of the warlords will make the task of forming the broad-based Afghan government the Bush administration says it wants to help forge much more difficult.
In some ways, the challenge of creating a national government in Afghanistan is not unlike the quandary faced by the United States, albeit in a smaller way and on a smaller scale, in Somalia, where the United States tried so-called nation-building in a country that had never experienced a unified government. Somalia reeled back into rule by the gun after the failed effort to create a coalition government.
Afghanistan has had forms of national rule in its history, but for more than 20 years, the norm has been the rule of war, a state of affairs that the country could slip seamlessly back into unless the United States and United Nations act quickly to slow down the rapid entrenchment of the warlords, diplomats and experts said.
"The Taliban years are already beginning to look like an aberration," said Ahmed Rashid, the author of the book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia," as he considered the return of the warlords. "It's like the Taliban were a blip on the political horizon."
Since possession of territory is the most important facet of political power in Afghanistan, the warlords are in no hurry to form coalitions, he said. Most of the big warlords are affiliated with the Northern Alliance, whose commanders in Kabul are refusing to remove their troops, an important first step if negotiations for a new government embracing all of the country's factions are to get under way.
Mr. Rashid said that in order to help bring order to the chaos, some kind of international force needed to be deployed throughout Afghanistan, and the major Western powers needed to send diplomats to help push the political process along.
So far, those things are not happening, he said. The acting foreign minister for the Northern Alliance, Abdullah Abdullah, expressed deep reservations over the weekend about allowing foreign troops to land in Afghanistan. Britain appears to have lost its early enthusiasm for deploying the 4,000 troops it has on 48-hour standby for Afghanistan.
An aide to the former Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, warned that Afghanistan was threatened with a return to the past. The presence in Kabul of the Northern Alliance, which is made up of the three main minority groups, was a poor beginning for a new Afghanistan, said the aide, Abdul Sirat.
"People should elect their leadership and decide the current situation instead of reimposing themselves on them," Mr. Sirat said, "particularly in view of the fact we have gone through this experience more than once and every time it has proved a failure."
The records of the warlords vary, but all have one thing in common: they fled the better-organized, better-financed Taliban, who picked them off one by one from 1994 to 1996. In one case, in Kandahar, the warlord Mullah Naquib received a reward from the Taliban for handing over his fighters and his weapons without a struggle when the Taliban swept into the city in November 1994.
Mullah Naquib was named by Mullah Omar late last week as one of two commanders he planned to pass power to before fleeing to the hills to carry out guerrilla warfare. Many Afghans expect that when Kandahar finally falls and the Taliban leave, Mullah Naquib will emerge as the new leader.
In Jalalabad, a strategically important city south of Kabul, Hajji Abdul Qadir was a governor from 1992 to 1996 when he allowed Osama bin Laden to stay in the area after his return from Sudan. Mr. Qadir has emerged as the new governor of Jalalabad in the last two days; it is perhaps too soon to judge whether he will survive or not.
But Mr. Qadir could turn out to be an important player if ethnic groups come together in a coalition government.
Mr. Qadir is from the Pashtun ethnic group, which dominates in the south, but he is also a member of the Northern Alliance. He could conceivably act as a bridge between the south and the alliance if the diplomats can help organize a broad- based government.
In Mazar-i-Sharif, once a busy trading stop on the old Silk Road, General Dostum has taken up the post he vacated when the Taliban chased him out of the city in 1997. He has allied himself with almost every Afghan leader of the last 20 years, including the Taliban, and is known for his particularly brutal behavior towards soldiers and civilians.
General Dostum comes from the Uzbek ethnic group, and in the early 1990's he was used by Uzbekistan, Russia and Iran as a secular alternative to the religious fundamentalism of the Taliban.
In Herat, Ismail Khan was greeted on his return last week as a favorite son, and as the man residents had been waiting for the last seven years. He is considered a more liberal warlord, perhaps because he has ensured that the antiquities of his ancient city are not exported and because he has always encouraged the education of girls and women.
One of the more surprising returns would be that of Mr. Hekmatyar to Afghanistan. Perhaps the most brutal of a generally brutal group, Mr. Hekmatyar retreated to the hills of Kabul in 1994 after a feud with its rulers and then went about trying to systematically destroy the city. By the end of 1994, his indiscriminate bombing of Kabul destroyed about half the city and killed an estimated 25,000 people.
One of the goals of Mr. Hekmatyar then was to discourage a unified capital and to ensure that the city was divided up into small fiefs. He would be expected to continue that policy no matter where he returned to in Afghanistan.
---
SUPPLIES
Uzbekistan Hinders Plan to Aid Afghans, Relief Workers Say
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By C. J. CHIVERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/international/asia/19UZBE.html
TERMEZ, Uzbekistan, Nov. 18 - The plan to move relief supplies from Uzbekistan into northern Afghanistan, promoted by the United Nations as the best way to assist three million civilians as winter approaches, has left many relief workers frustrated. They say the plan's promise has been bogged down by Uzbek bureaucracy and infighting among relief agencies.
The relief effort here is just five days old, and it is too early to know how effective it will be. But already there is considerable disappointment.
"Day after day you have people on the other side dying, and day after day there are always more delays," said Gil Gonzalez-Foerster, a spokesman for the Paris office of Action Against Hunger, which is trying to get its staff into Afghanistan to distribute food.
The Uzbek-Afghan corridor is supposed to grow into a thruway for aid from the old Soviet Army logistics center in Termez to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, which the Northern Alliance liberated from Taliban control last weekend. But the list of problems is long.
The Amu Darya, a wide and murky river, forms the border between the nations, and so far the Uzbek government has refused to let aid pass over the only bridge. Instead, all the food, medical supplies, winter clothing and other goods have been transported by barge, a mode of transportation that is labor-intensive and slow.
Making matters more difficult, the Uzbek government has not allowed the people who would hand out the United Nations supplies to remain on the far side of the river. The staff members of about 15 nongovernmental organizations who would actually distribute the relief supplies are languishing in Termez.
And so, the modest amount of aid that has crossed into Afghanistan has mostly not been distributed.
So far, six barges have made the trip, allowing the United Nations World Food Program to ship 1,150 tons of wheat to the Afghan port of Hairatan. Of this, 125 tons of wheat have been distributed to a camp at Sakhi, between the river and Mazar- i-Sharif, where 2,500 displaced families live, said Michael Huggins, a spokesman for the World Food Program.
But the rest of the wheat is sitting in Hairatan, Mr. Gonzalez-Foerster said. "A lot of what we have seen so far is just for show," he said.
Uzbek officials could not be reached for comment tonight. But the government has said that the bridge remains closed because of unspecified security concerns, an explanation that aid workers said seemed more hollow every day now that the Taliban had been chased from the area.
Mr. Gonzalez-Foerster said the obvious solution would be for the Uzbek government to open the bridge and let the supplies and the aid workers cross quickly into Afghanistan.
The problems in the current logistics arrangement have been compounded by a souring of the mood in Termez, which is apparent both among the aid organizations and the more than 120 journalists waiting at the border.
Last week, three French organizations demanded that the Uzbek government and the United Nations give them access to the barges. The French, German and American Embassies have also been pressing the Uzbek government to open the border for relief officials and journalists, so far without success.
The United Nations insists that it has been working with the other aid organizations, but it has been bound by an agreement with Uzbekistan that restricts travel on the barges and access to the port.
But Cedric Petit, the mission coordinator for Solidarités, an aid organization based in Paris, said that since the French organizations went public with their complaints last week, the United Nations had been more helpful and planned to seek permission for 25 to 30 aid workers to cross the river on Monday.
"I think now the U.N. is willing to do something for us," Mr. Petit said.
Some aid workers were also pleased to hear that there might soon be another way into Mazar-i- Sharif. A group of French soldiers is expected to arrive soon at the Khanabad air base in Uzbekistan, where they will form a security force with Jordanian and American soldiers, and then occupy the airfield at Mazar-i-Sharif.
Herve Fouilland, a French Army spokesman, said the mission for the multinational security force would be to make the airfield in Afghanistan safe for relief efforts.
One aid official said that reports from Mazar-i-Sharif indicated that the airport's runways were pockmarked with bomb craters. Nonetheless, Mr. Gonzalez-Foerster said a new route into Afghanistan "would be very good news."
------
INTERNECINE STRIFE
Foes Claim Taliban Are Killing Soldiers Who Seek to Defect
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/international/asia/19NORT.html
BANGI, Afghanistan, Nov. 18 - Foreign soldiers fighting for the Taliban have begun killing their Afghan Taliban comrades in a desperate effort to hang on to the encircled city of Kunduz, refugees and Northern Alliance soldiers here say.
Foreign Taliban soldiers, who have gathered in Kunduz for what appears to be a last stand, have gunned down more than 400 Afghan Taliban soldiers trying to defect to the Northern Alliance, the refugees and the alliance soldiers said.
The 400 were killed in mass shootings late last week, refugees said, and were prompted in part by the defection of a local Taliban commander to the Northern Alliance.
According to the reports, Arab and Pakistani soldiers with the Taliban have also begun shooting young civilian men of the Uzbek and Tajik ethnic groups suspected of trying to escape to territory controlled by the Northern Alliance. "The foreigners came into the village and shot all the men," said Muhammadullah, a 21- year-old man who crossed into Northern Alliance territory today. "I saw this with my own eyes."
Refugees fleeing Kunduz, which has been surrounded by Northern Alliance forces since last week, said foreign Taliban soldiers had executed more than 30 Uzbeks and Tajiks in incidents last week.
The reports, which are trickling in as refugees cross the front lines from Kunduz, are sketchy and often secondhand, but they are largely consistent about the date, location and circumstances of the alleged attacks. In the chaos of the fighting, none of the accounts could be confirmed. Even if the Taliban carried out some of the killings, it is unclear whether the killers were foreign or Afghan.
Mr. Muhammadullah said he had seen foreign Taliban soldiers gun down 25 men in his village, Mullahkarim, on Friday. "Before they fired," he said, "they were speaking a language I did not understand."
Gen. Daoud Khan, the commander of the Northern Alliance forces here, said today that his men had received nearly identical reports. The general's account essentially matched the reports from the refugees, although General Khan estimated that the number of Afghan Taliban killed by foreign fighters was about 125, not more than 400.
"The Taliban is breaking apart," General Khan said in an interview at his headquarters in Taliqan, about 30 miles from Kunduz. They are killing each other. The Arabs and Pakistanis have decided that the Afghans are not pure enough for them, and so they are killing them."
The allegations of mass killings follow reports that thousands of foreign Taliban soldiers have seized control of Kunduz from local Taliban authorities.
Refugees fleeing the city said the foreign fighters were occupying the major military and government posts in the city and had grown so distrustful of local Taliban soldiers that they had blocked their access to many buildings and areas, including the front lines.
The refugees said the foreign fighters, whom they described as Pakistanis, Arabs, Chinese and Chechens, were vowing in speeches to fight to the death.
The foreigners often travel with translators, the refugees said, and have beaten and arrested hundreds of Kunduz residents in the last week.
Northern Alliance commanders estimate that 20,000 Taliban troops, about a third of them foreigners, are trapped in Kunduz. Pentagon officials say the number of Taliban troops in Kunduz is probably closer to 3,000. Either estimate would make the garrison in Kunduz one of the largest concentrations of Taliban fighters left in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance says it has blocked every escape route.
The reports of the killings coincided with an intensifying campaign to encircle Kunduz on the ground and bomb it from the air. American B- 52's and fighter-bombers pummeled targets today in their heaviest strikes yet. Northern Alliance fighters began inching forward, capturing the abandoned hamlet of Amirabad just inside the no man's land between the lines.
As they prepare to mount an offensive on Kunduz, Northern Alliance leaders are trying to persuade local Taliban commanders in Kunduz to defect. So far, one has agreed to change sides. It is the Taliban's fear of more such defectors that appears to have prompted them to kill their own troops.
In the first of the reported killings, foreign Taliban soldiers gunned down as many as 300 local Taliban who were preparing to defect, several refugees said who arrived here today. The refugees and the Northern Alliance leaders said the killings had occurred before sunrise on Friday in the village of Alchin, a front- line hamlet about three miles north of Kunduz.
According to the accounts, the slain troops belonged to a commander named Nizamuddin, a Pashtun from Kandahar. An overwhelming majority of the Taliban troops are Pashtuns, so a defection by commander of that ethnic group with his men could provoke particular anger among hard-line Taliban leaders.
The refugees and Northern Alliance leaders said the foreign Taliban fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a truck carrying fleeing Afghan Taliban as it neared the front line. Then, the refugees said, the foreign Taliban sprayed the remaining group with machine-gun fire. Although the refugees said the number killed totaled about 300, Northern Alliance officials put the number at about 70.
Lal Muhammad, 36, an Uzbek refugee, said he was preparing to sleep on the floor of a restaurant in Kunduz on Saturday night when a group of villagers from Alchin arrived to tell the story.
"They told us that the foreigners surrounded the locals and killed them," Mr. Muhammad said. "The foreigners are terrified that the local Taliban will defect to the Northern Alliance."
Foreign Taliban soldiers also killed dozens of Afghan Taliban soldiers on Friday at the village of Musazai near the Kunduz airport, refugees and Northern Alliance soldiers said. Refugees fleeing Kunduz said foreign Taliban soldiers had gunned down 125 Afghan Taliban soldiers who had been stopped on their way to the front lines.
The foreign Taliban soldiers seem to have decided that the local Taliban were trying to defect. When they tried to stop them, a fight began and the foreign Taliban opened fire, the refugees said.
The reported killings at Musazai occurred just after the Northern Alliance announced the defection of Mirza Muhammad Nasri, a prominent Taliban commander.
Refugees and Northern Alliance officials say Mr. Nasri's son-in-law, Noor Aga, was the commander of those killed at Musazai.
Abdul Satar, 20, who crossed the front lines today, said he was in the Musazai neighborhood the day of the reported killings, and he said he had seen men carrying bodies away in trucks. "They told me the Punjabis killed them," Mr. Satar said, referring to people who come from a province of Pakistan.
Refugees also reported that foreign Taliban soldiers had recently carried out two mass shootings of Uzbek and Tajik civilians. In the village of Mullahkarim, foreign Taliban soldiers are said to have executed 25 Tajik men on Friday, when foreign Taliban soldiers feared that the men were going to sneak across the front lines to fight for the other side.
Mr. Muhammadullah said he could hear the attackers speaking in unfamiliar languages before they fired on the villagers.
"Everyone in the village is afraid of the foreigners," he said. "They all want to embrace the Northern Alliance."
Another reported mass shooting unfolded at the village of Actosh when foreign Taliban soldiers allegedly gunned down seven young Uzbek men suspected of preparing to fight for the Northern Alliance.
Nasir Muhammad, an Uzbek who fled Kunduz today, said he had heard the story from his brother-in-law, Abdullah, who lives in the village. Mr. Muhammad said he had left Kunduz to save himself and his family from the carnage he thought was still coming.
"The foreign fighters are afraid of the locals," Mr. Muhammad said. "They know the people hate them."
---
No one controls Afghanistan
USA Today 11/19/2001 - Updated 10:34 PM ET By Tim Friend and Thor Valdmanis, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/20/control-usat.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Northern Alliance says it controls up to 85% of this country, a stunning reversal from just 10 days ago, when Taliban forces laid claim to at least that much territory. But in truth, Afghanistan is now a chaotic country where no one group or person is in charge and gun-toting "armies" loyal to local warlords are patrolling cities, provinces and regions. In many places, those armies are basically rival gangs. Their presence is a major reason Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous places on the planet, even though the U.S.-led bombing campaign has been significantly scaled back since the Taliban gave up most of its territory.
The apparent killings Monday of four journalists - none of them American - underscore the dangers in this now largely lawless nation. The journalists were traveling in a four-truck convoy of foreign correspondents from Jalalabad, near the Pakistani border, toward Kabul. Six armed men stopped the two front vehicles and demanded that the four get out and follow them into the mountains.
A translator and a driver accompanying the group escaped after begging for their lives. The translator reported to local alliance commanders that the four reporters were marched behind a hill near a narrow gorge and that he later heard gunshots.
One of the journalists was reporter Maria Cutuli of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra. Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero told reporters in Brussels that the four are dead and that their bodies had been found. The other three were Julio Fuentes of Spain's El Mundo newspaper, Australian TV cameraman Harry Burton and Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari. Burton and Haidari were working for the Reuters news service.
Reporters here are always at risk. "It's not like Kosovo or other wars," says Tom Carew, a former British Special Air Service officer in Afghanistan who now runs a survival school in Belgium. "It's fluid and you can suddenly find yourself in a very dangerous situation." Unlike when covering professional soldiers, who understand the role of the media, "it's more like being with a load of (soccer) hooligans."
Journalists are especially in danger because it's well known in Afghanistan that many of them are carrying thousands of dollars in cash. They need lots of money to pay for transportation, lodging, food and other necessities in a country where credit cards are of no use. It wasn't known late Monday whether the four journalists were targets of robbers or Taliban forces seeking a measure of revenge against Western reporters.
But what's happening to journalists is by no means the only sign of the Wild West nature of life in Afghanistan.
For foreigners, the differences start at the nation's border. At a crossing from Tajikistan, for example, passports are stamped in a mud-walled hut lit by a single kerosene lamp. Outside, young men wearing baggy, ragged fatigues and carrying Russian-built assault rifles stand guard. Drivers of barely running four-wheel-drive vehicles offer rides to the nearest towns, at prices running into the hundreds of dollars.
The only remotely safe way to travel is as part of a convoy, ostensibly protected by troops loyal to the alliance. But even then, a 50-mile journey through northern Afghanistan can take 6 hours or more because roads are little more than bomb-scarred ruts and land mines are a constant danger.
Convoys must stop at night to avoid running into roving gangs of local soldiers who may be part of the alliance but who also look for opportunities to plunder. A convoy last week that was making its way from northern Afghanistan to Kabul came to a halt at dusk. It was reported that the village ahead was controlled by a local warlord. His 300 soldiers were known to have robbed such processions, just as outlaws in the American West once held up trains.
In many cities reported to have been taken over by alliance forces, "control" remains elusive. Taloqan, a city in the north that the Taliban gave up last week, was still dangerous days after that militia's troops supposedly left. Some were still hiding inside the town. Gunbattles continued into last weekend.
In Kabul, though Taliban forces have reportedly fled well to the south, nerves remain on edge. Armed men, all saying they are alliance fighters, are everywhere. Monday, after a minor traffic accident caused a truck's tire to blow out, several of those soldiers opened fire on the driver. They thought he had fired a shot and might be a Taliban fighter. There was no word of his fate.
The simple answer to why Afghanistan is lawless now, of course, is that there is no government. The Taliban, which took effective control in 1996, is in tatters.
But the forces churning the country are more complicated than that simple answer implies.
The alliance is in reality a confederation of many warlords who have shifted allegiances several times in recent years - from the communists who ran Afghanistan in the '70s to the Soviets in the early '80s and then to mujahedin guerrillas.
To further complicate matters, most of the alliance's leaders are from northern Afghanistan and are not Pashtun, the country's largest ethnic group. Pashtuns are predominantly southern.
So the alliance leaders' interests don't always agree either with one another or with those of Pashtun tribal leaders. And all the leaders want to maintain control over "their" territory.
International efforts to forge a plan for a new government are still in the early stages. A meeting tentatively set for this weekend in Germany of representatives from Afghanistan's various ethnic groups could kick-start that process.
Throw into the mix decades of fighting and the bitterness it engenders, and chaos is inevitable. So is danger.
"Obviously, citizens need to be cautious in a country that has seen 23 years of war and has thousands of weapons unaccounted for in the hands of Taliban and other Taliban splinter groups," says Hashmatullah Moslih, a deputy in the alliance's foreign ministry. Left unsaid: the fact that there are thousands of weapons in the hands of other fighters as well.
Contributing: Gary Strauss in Islamabad, Pakistan; Vivienne Walt in Quetta, Pakistan; and Steven Komarow in Dushanbe, Tajikistan
-------- balkans
Blast Rocks Macedonian Market
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50731-2001Nov18?language=printer
SKOPJE, Macedonia -- A powerful explosion ripped through a city market in northwestern Macedonia. Police said several shops were damaged, but no one was injured in the blast in Tetovo.
Alban Berisha, a spokesman for a new militant group calling itself the Albanian National Army, said his organization claimed responsibility for the attack.
-------- biological weapons
BIOTERROR
U.S. Publicly Accusing 5 Countries of Violating Germ-Weapons Treaty
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/international/19GERM.html http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011119/1/1tyy7.html (Agence France Presse)
The United States has concluded that North Korea, Iraq and at least three other countries are developing germ weapons, and has decided to accuse them of violating a treaty they ratified banning such weapons, administration officials said this weekend.
The others to be cited include Iran, Libya and Syria, the officials said.
They said that Washington believes additional countries are also violating the treaty in secret, including some that are friendly with the United States, but that the administration is not prepared to identify them.
The accusations are to be made today in Geneva by John R. Bolton, under secretary of state, at an international conference aimed at strengthening compliance with and enforcement of the treaty, which dates to 1972 and has been ratified by more than 140 countries, including the United States.
The public nature of the accusations, in front of the delegates of the nations cited, is a departure in approach for the government, although in the past the executive branch has leveled charges against individual governments in testimony before Congress and in State Department reports.
Mr. Bolton is also expected to accuse Osama bin Laden of trying to develop biological weapons. His text says that Washington is worried that Mr. bin Laden may have tried to acquire germ weapons "with support from a state," which Mr. Bolton does not identify.
The decision to "name names," as Mr. Bolton's speech puts it, is part of a new strategy to persuade countries to stop developing germ weapons by embarrassing suspected treaty cheaters. "Prior to September 11, some would have avoided this approach," states the speech Mr. Bolton is scheduled to give, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times. "The world has changed, however, and so must our business-as-usual approach."
The allegations are not specific, nor is the source of any evidence provided.
But they are intended to deflect criticism of the Bush administration from those who say that it is Washington that has undermined the treaty, which it pioneered. Critics at home and abroad reproached the administration last summer for rejecting an agreement that was meant to strengthen compliance by establishing an inspection system.
While most other parties to the treaty overwhelmingly supported the so-called protocol, the administration rejected it, arguing that it would have undermined American bio-defense programs and given the world a false sense of security by failing to prevent cheating.
Administration officials said they hoped that the policy of accusing countries will focus public ire not on the United States, but on the countries that have signed and ratified the treaty but are cheating on it. They also hope that the strategy will encourage countries to consider alternative measures that the United States has proposed to strengthen the treaty and compliance.
Officials, historians and arms control experts said the United States has accused North Korea and 11 other states of cheating in annual reports filed by the State Department and in periodic testimony that administration officials have given on Capitol Hill. But they said this is the first time that the United States has used an international gathering of treaty members to denounce alleged violators to their faces.
Philip Zelikow, an official in the first Bush White House and a historian of the presidency, called the denunciations "entirely appropriate."
Previously, he said, the United States had shunned open confrontations, relying on "quiet pressure" with the idea that it was more effective. For instance, he said, two defectors warned Washington that thousands of Soviet scientists were developing and stockpiling germ weapons at dozens of sites throughout the Soviet Union in violation of the treaty.
After that, American officials tried quiet persuasion to get Moscow to change its ways. "That effort was not entirely successful," Mr. Zelikow recalled. "While the leaders agreed with us, they were unable to deal with their own internal problems and end the program."
A new awareness of the dangers of germ weapons began with the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax letters later sent to Capitol Hill and to news organizations, Mr. Zelikow said.
In the prepared text, Mr. Bolton asks, "Will we be courageous, unflinching, and timely in our actions to develop effective tools to deal with the threat as it exists today? Or will we merely defer to slow-moving multilateral mechanisms that are oblivious to what is happening in the real world?"
But Mary Elizabeth Hoinkes, a former senior official in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, which has been merged into the State Department, called the approach ham-handed.
"Such finger-pointing is aimed at deflecting pressure on the Bush administration for its rejection of a serious verification system," she said. Ms. Hoinkes noted that Washington would not previously have identified a suspected cheater before listing it in annual compliance reports and having discussions with the individual states.
She and other experts on the treaty noted that Mr. Bolton's list did not include Russia, China, Israel, Egypt, and others that Washington also believes are violating the treaty.
Mr. Bolton's text makes clear that he could well have mentioned "other states," which he said the administration would be "contacting privately." Russia is one of the countries that is working in close conjunction with the administration's campaign against Osama bin Laden.
Mr. Bolton's speech says that beyond the bin Laden network, Al Qaeda, Washington's most serious concern is Iraq's germ weapons efforts.
Also extremely "disturbing," he says, is North Korea, which has a "dedicated national-level effort" to acquire germ weapons. He said that North Korea "may have weaponized" some germs, and that it has the capacity to produce "sufficient quantities of biological agents for military purposes within weeks of a decision to do so."
Iran, he says, "probably has produced and weaponized" germ agents, and Libya "may be capable of producing small quantities of agent."
Syria, which has not ratified the treaty, operates a program that may "be capable of producing small quantities of agent," Mr. Bolton said.
Finally, Mr. Bolton said the administration was concerned that Sudan, which has not ratified or even signed the treaty, may be increasingly interested in developing a germ weapons program.
----
States Weighing Laws to Fight Bioterrorism
By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 19, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50435-2001Nov18.html
Spurred by fears of bioterrorism, state legislators across the country are pushing new laws that would permit large-scale quarantine, forcible seizure of hospitals and other businesses, mandatory vaccination or treatment, and destruction of contaminated property without the owners' consent.
The state lawmakers are basing their efforts on a model law drawn up in Washington and backed by the Bush administration. As preparation for an attack using smallpox or other germ weapons, the lawmakers want to replace existing public-health statutes with a sweeping, detailed enumeration of state emergency powers.
Some variation of the measure is likely to be considered in virtually every state next year, forcing lawmakers to grapple with the right balance between civil liberties and emergency health powers in a new age of biological terrorism.
"Most public-health laws were written years ago -- some are over 100 years old," said Georges Benjamin, Maryland's health secretary. "There really hasn't been a comprehensive update. Now is the time to have the debate, not when you have a crisis."
Existing laws vary from state to state, but they are often just a paragraph or even a sentence granting health authorities emergency powers like quarantine. The laws, which haven't been put to a severe test in the modern era of constitutional rights, rarely describe the health commissioner's powers in detail or set out standards for using them.
The old laws usually don't provide for steps like property destruction or requisition of medical facilities and supplies. In many states, the laws prohibit private businesses like pharmacies, which might be first to pick up on a bioterror attack, from sharing information with the health authorities, and they prohibit the health authorities from sharing information with the state police.
The model law would alter all that, replacing the old statutes with 40 pages of legal code detailing powers and standards, as well as requirements for information-sharing. The powers would be accompanied by broad procedural safeguards, including a requirement that authorities present evidence and obtain court orders before instituting most mandatory measures, such as quarantine. Owners whose property was seized would be entitled to compensation.
People who refused to comply with the emergency measures would in some cases be subject to criminal penalties, and the measures could be enforced at gunpoint, if necessary, by state police or the National Guard.
Backers say the powers, though extraordinary, would be used only in an emergency that threatened the lives of large numbers of Americans. The scenario they cite most often is an outbreak of smallpox, which could sweep across the world and kill a third of the people it infected. There is talk of adding nuclear and chemical attack as events that would trigger the emergency powers.
Many state political leaders and health officials are critiquing aspects of the model law, and it continues to evolve. But the basic idea has already won backing from the Department of Health and Human Services. It's being developed with input from state attorneys general, governors and other groups.
"It's really been overwhelming," said Lawrence Gostin, primary author of the proposed legislation and director of a center on public-health law at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities. "The horrible tragedy that befell the nation on September 11 did produce one silver lining, which is that it got together groups that very rarely get together to solve a major health problem."
Gostin's draft has already been introduced as legislation in a few states, including Illinois and Nevada. Acting Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift, ruing her state's antiquated health laws, also plans to push a measure based on the model law.
Sponsors in several states, including Nevada, are expected to scale back some of the powers in the draft. But support for the overall measure ranges across the political spectrum.
"People just haven't realized the potential scope of a problem like" smallpox, said Lisa Madigan, a Democratic state senator from Chicago who has introduced the Gostin measure into the Illinois General Assembly. "The reality is that a third of the people who were infected would die, and it's extremely contagious."
The law is already encountering opposition, however. Some people say it would substitute a complicated, dangerous new scheme for older state health laws that, while sometimes vague, at least had the virtue of simplicity.
"When you actually look at the state public-health laws, they aren't bad," said Edward Richards, head of the Center for Public Health Law at the University of Missouri Kansas City. "One size just doesn't fit all. Each state needs to look at its own laws to figure out what needs to be fixed."
Many of the state laws date to the 19th or early 20th centuries, when states and cities often used coercive health measures grounded in vague legal authority.
These days, public health measures may involve practices such as mandatory vaccinations for children entering school or periodic court orders isolating recalcitrant tuberculosis patients or forcing them to take medicine.
But quarantine power has not been used extensively in more than half a century. It once generated widespread debate in the United States, mostly over how health officers decided who was to be cut off from the rest of the population. San Francisco's Chinatown was locked down in 1900 in the name of preventing the spread of plague, provoking bitter protest.
An Irish immigrant cook named Mary Mallon was confined to an island in New York's East River for 26 years in the early part of the 20th century to prevent her from spreading typhoid fever. Other healthy typhoid carriers were not locked up, and "Typhoid Mary" was perceived in some quarters as a victim of the anti-Irish bigotry then pervasive in the country.
Gostin said he believes that, with improvements in the law, the nation can avoid similar perceptions of injustice even if it has to use expanded emergency powers to cope with a 21st century bioterror attack. He said his model statute builds in safeguards that older laws almost uniformly lack.
"Unless the emergency simply prohibits it, we require the court to approve the quarantine beforehand," Gostin said. "That goes a lot farther than almost any current statute. When people can get beyond the scary powers, you have to think this is a much better way."
He drafted his model law during the anthrax scare at the explicit request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It went out to states in late October with the backing of Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of the federal Health and Human Services Department. "We need not only a strong health infrastructure and a full stockpile of medical resources, but also the legal and emergency tools to help our citizens quickly," Thompson said.
The federal government, though a vital repository of expertise, has relatively little power in health emergencies. Two centuries of American constitutional law have vested the power to protect the public's health and safety -- the "police power" -- in the states, and state governors and health directors would be on the front lines of any catastrophic disease outbreak.
Gostin's law would give them new rights to monitor personal information in their attempt to track public health. Under his measure, for instance, a pharmacist who noticed a sudden increase in sales of medicine for diarrheaor cough, perhaps signaling a bioterror attack, would be required to report that information to the health department -- along with the names and addresses of the patients buying the medicine.
Once an attack occurred, a governor could declare an emergency and invoke the powers in the law. Health authorities could seize or ration medical supplies, seize any hospital or other facility needed to contain the outbreak, decontaminate or destroy any building posing a threat, seize and destroy corpses, impose quarantine measures, and force people to undergo medical examination, vaccination or treatment.
Some of these actions would require court orders or hearings, with provision for emergency courts if necessary. Refusal to submit to vaccination, quarantine or treatment would be misdemeanors.
Gostin originally contemplated epidemic disease in drafting his law, but some state officials want him to add nuclear and chemical attack as triggering events, since they could render large areas of a city or state dangerous to public health, perhaps for years.
Health departments in Washington, Maryland and Virginia are all expected to study Gostin's draft, but they are approaching the proposed law cautiously. All of them have quarantine power already.
"What the recent attacks have raised is the unimaginable: What if a large number of people are affected by terrorism?" said Louis Rossiter, Virginia's secretary of health and human resources. "Are we ready for that?"
He expressed confidence in Virginia's laws. Several health administrators said it's likely they will pick and choose from the Gostin measure to close any serious gaps in their laws, rather than adopting it wholesale.
"States should look at it as a menu, and compare their existing authority with the menu," said Benjamin, the Maryland health secretary. "I think the most important thing is that people not take any model act and simply try to push it through willy-nilly."
-------- business
Lockheed, TRW get satellite order
Around the Nation
November 19, 2001 •
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011119-63113550.htm
Lockheed Martin Corp. and TRW Inc. have been awarded a $2.7 billion contract to develop and deliver the U.S. military's next-generation communications satellite system, the Air Force said.
Boeing Co., which had been part of the system's design team, said over the weekend it had pulled out as a TRW subcontractor because of what it described as an unacceptable risk-reward ratio.
In awarding the contract after the close of markets Friday, the Air Force said the Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite system would have 10 times the capacity of the Milstar system it was designed to replace.
The first of two satellites under the new contract is scheduled for launch in 2006. When completed in December 2011, the system will consist of four cross-linked satellites in geosynchronous orbit capable of covering regional and global military operations. A fifth satellite is to be an orbiting spare
-------- egypt
Egypt Begins Trial of Militants
Reuters
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50731-2001Nov18?language=printer
CAIRO -- An Egyptian military court began the trial of 94 suspected Muslim militants, including two prominent preachers, charged with forming or belonging to a secret group. Some of the men faced additional charges, including plotting to assassinate security officials, planning to blow up government economic institutions, possessing weapons without a license and receiving military training abroad.
The main defendant, Nashat Ahmed Mohamed Ibrahim, a prominent preacher, said he was not guilty. "I have been preaching for 27 years, and they have never found anything wrong with my sermons," he said. "We are against terrorism and violence."
Lawyers said they believed it was the first time Egypt had tried preachers in a military court. Egypt had put Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman on trial in a state security court, where he faced charges of issuing a religious ruling justifying the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Rahman is now in prison in the United States for his part in a plot to blow up New York City landmarks in 1993.
International and local rights groups have accused Egypt of using military justice because it was not confident of getting guilty verdicts from civilian courts.
-------- india / pakistan
THE BORDER
Pakistan Fears 3,000 Fleeing Fighters May Have Entered
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/international/asia/19BORD.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 18 - Pakistani intelligence officials, addressing a subject of mounting concern, estimated today that 3,000 or more Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters have slipped over the border into Pakistan's tribal areas in the week since the fall of Kabul.
The officials warned that those fighters could add to the potentially volatile mix in the semiautonomous tribal region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Some tribal leaders remain sympathetic to the Taliban and are willing to conceal former fighters out of longstanding loyalties.
Most of the fighters fled northeastern Afghanistan after the stunning reversals of recent days, escaping sometimes deadly reprisals as the Northern Alliance took control. There also have been cases of soldiers' joining Afghan refugees to cross into southern Pakistan.
Officials in Pakistan fear that the fighters could mount antigovernment operations inside Pakistan or cross back into Afghanistan to carry out hit-and-run raids.
In an intriguing twist, five Yemeni women were detained on Saturday as they tried to cross into southwestern Pakistan at the Chaman border gate, United Nations and other officials said. The women were not identified, but their exit from Afghanistan is a reminder of the close links between Osama bin Laden and Yemen.
His family originated in Yemen, and intelligence officials said thousands of agents of his Qaeda organization lived in Yemen, where they are organized into cells and retain a measure of protection from the government.
Speculation ran high this weekend about whether Mr. bin Laden might seek or had sought refuge in Pakistan, particularly in the rugged tribal areas in the northwestern part of the country adjoining Afghanistan.
He and Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, are the primary targets of the American- led search in Afghanistan. There is no precise information on their whereabouts, though American Special Forces have been hunting for Mr. bin Laden on foot and on horseback.
The Taliban provided conflicting reports on whether Mr. bin Laden was still inside Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said on Friday that he thought that Mr. bin Laden remained in Afghanistan, but no one except perhaps Mr. bin Laden's inner circle seems to know his whereabouts.
The chances of finding the world's most wanted man will increase if the Taliban cede control of the southern part of Afghanistan, which would give Americans and their anti-Taliban allies free rein to scour the difficult terrain for him and other Al Qaeda leaders.
Tracking down Mr. bin Laden may be possible because he offers a relatively big target. The suspected terrorist leader travels with at least 20 family members and many guards.
The contingent leaves traces that could be visible to the American military using high-resolution cameras in unmanned planes and technology sensitive to body heat, said a former American law enforcement official, now in Pakistan.
As the search intensifies in Afghanistan, Pakistan might offer Mr. bin Laden a better refuge despite the risks of crossing the border because the American military is forbidden to operate inside this country.
Finding Mullah Omar may prove tougher. Even if the Taliban loses power, he is likely to retain the loyalty of his tribal brethren. In addition, while Mr. bin Laden's face is well known, Mullah Omar has been photographed rarely, and identifying him could be difficult.
Pakistan said that it would not provide asylum to Mr. bin Laden or to Mullah Omar and that it was intent on keeping out fighters associated with them. In a demonstration of commitment, the government moved a large number of soldiers to the border late last week to augment its border guards.
But the 1,500-mile border is remote and rugged, offering countless centuries-old routes out of Afghanistan. Along with the 3,000 soldiers estimated to have crossed into northwestern Pakistan, large numbers are entering the southern regions around Chagai and Dalbandin, officials said.
Officials in Pakistan are wary of stirring resentment in the border region if they try to crack down too hard in the tribal areas, which operate with a high degree of autonomy from Islamabad.
Several hundred Afghans have been stopped trying to cross the border with weapons, officials said. For the most part, they have been released after turning over their weapons.
Sufi Muhammad, the leader of a militant Pakistani religious organization, was refused entry when he and 30 followers tried to return from Afghanistan with rocket launchers and other weapons.
He and thousands of his radical followers had gone to fight alongside the Taliban after Pakistan sided with the United States. One official said Mr. Muhammad was jailed in what was once a colonial British prison in Kohat, but that could not be confirmed.
Pakistani officials said an attack on a truck in a village in northwestern Pakistan by an American warplane on Friday was apparently an attempt to kill Taliban or Al Qaeda soldiers tracked as they slipped across the border.
Residents in the village of Shabqadar said an American plane or helicopter had fired a rocket at a truck carrying Taliban soldiers in the village, killing some troops and wounding several villagers.
-------- israel
Jordan's king seeks guarantees for Israel
By Paul Martin
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011119-1400839.htm
LONDON - King Abdullah II of Jordan has embarked on a bold but secretive peace-building campaign aimed at eliciting public guarantees from all Arab states that Israel will be accepted as a state and "integrated" into the region.
He revealed that he has received pledges from President Bush to back the move, which would be a major breakthrough in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict - but only if and when its success is assured.
The declaration the king is seeking would offer Israel for the first time collective guarantees for its own security and acceptance from 22 Arab nations, stretching from north and west Africa across to the Arabian Sea.
It would constitute a dramatic and unprecedented shift in the overall Arab position: Of Israel's key Arab adversaries, only Egypt and Jordan have ever recognized the legitimacy of the Jewish state since the United Nations agreed to partition Palestine in 1947 and Arab armies invaded the newly declared Jewish state in 1948.
The remaining Arab states have only ever acknowledged the existence of Israel indirectly through endorsing two U.N. Security Council Resolutions after the 1967 war. These demanded its withdrawal to secure and recognized borders.
In a radio talk show and a briefing to foreign correspondents in London, where he was the official guest of Queen Elizabeth II, the Jordanian monarch outlined a strategy that, if accepted, would constitute the Arab world's most widespread shift toward peace with Israel.
The king's descriptions of the current Mideast conflict appear to distance him from anti-Israeli stances taken by other Arab leaders, and are in marked contrast to the vitriolic criticisms of the Jewish state recently expressed by his closest Arab negotiating partner, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
The Jordanian monarch called on his fellow Arab leaders to recognize that the world's new realities after September 11 made the Arab-Israeli conflict secondary to the combating of worldwide terrorism. It was, he said, false to argue that solving the Arab-Israeli conflict was the key to reducing global terrorism, though terrorists did use the conflict as an excuse for their crimes.
He also demurred from the usual Arab accusation that Israel, rather than the Palestinians, is to blame for the current impasse.
"We have to get the violence removed from both sides and get them back around the peace table," he said.
King Abdullah, who succeeded his father, the late King Hussein, two years ago, said measures to bring about a Palestinian state would not come about unless Israel receives the necessary formal Arab assurances, and this has "unfortunately not been stipulated enough." The pan-Arab declaration would need to provide the underpinning for "the integration and security of Israel into the [Middle East] region."
The idea of "integrating" Israel into the region has until now been anathema to most Arab countries. Even Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, has declined to promote extensive trade and cultural links, arousing regular Israeli claims that the Egyptians favor only a "cold peace."
The king said he agreed with cautionary remarks made to him by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Israel would never disappear, Mr. Blair had told him, but it remained to be seen if "Palestine" would appear.
"To this day, as an Arab, I don't know whether or not there'll be a Palestinian state," said the king.
The so-called "two-basket" deal - a Palestinian state in return for strong security guarantees - is presently being hammered out, according to the king, in a coordinated campaign by a grouping comprising the United States, Russia, the European Union, the United Nations, Jordan and Egypt.
Jordan's prime minister, Ali Abu Ragheb, announced Tuesday that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is expected to tour the region within the next two weeks, preceded this weekend by a European Union delegation.
Indications are that the stiffest resistance to the "recognition and integration" declaration will come from Syria and Iraq.
Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, once the most radical Arab leader, recently surprised an Arab summit meeting in Cairo by proposing a not-too-dissimilar pan-Arab declaration, but tied it to Israel's acceptance of East Jerusalem as the future Palestinian state's capital.
Crucial to the king's strategy is to have the full endorsement of the U.S. president.
"He is ready to move," the 39-year-old monarch told a British reporter. But King Abdullah said that "the way he [Bush] describes it you can't play that card if there's a chance of failure. What happens if that fails? You are going to have to wait for years. It must be 99 percent clear, and I agree with him."
----
Belgian court summons Sharon to appear over Lebanon massacre
Monday November 19,
Agence France Presse
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011119/1/1u0px.html
A Belgian court has summoned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to appear November 28 concerning civil suits over his role in the 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, the daily Le Soir said.
The civil complaint was brought by 23 victims of the massacres or their families under a 1993 Belgian law which allows war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide to be tried in Belgian courts, regardless of where they took place or the nationality or residence of the victims or the accused.
An estimated 800 to 1,500 Palestinian refugees died in the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila camps by Christian militiamen after Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, when Sharon was Israeli defense minister.
Sharon was forced to resign from the post after an Israeli investigation in 1983 found him indirectly but "personally" responsible for the deaths.
The summons to appear is theoretically to be served on Sharon by the Belgian ambassador to Israel, Wilfried Geens, Le Soir said, adding that it was delayed because of the weekend visit to the Middle East by a high-level European Union mission.
Belgium holds the EU rotating presidency until the end of the year.
The Belgian grand jury is to decide on November 28 whether the court here has jurisdiction in the case under the 1993 law.
That jurisdiction is being challenged by Sharon's Belgian lawyer, resulting in suspension of the investigation pending the current enquiry.
Two related lawsuits brought last June are pending against Sharon, alleging that he was guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the massacres at the Palestinian refugee camps.
Suspension of the investigation was in response to a motion by Michele Hirsch, a Belgian lawyer retained by the Israeli government to represent Sharon, a 73-year-old former general.
Hirsch contended in July that Belgian investigations of Sharon "violate the judicial sovereignty of the state of Israel," and that the investigating magistrate had no authority in the matter.
Patrick Collignon, the investigating magistrate appointed to prepare a possible case against Sharon, ruled in July that his office was competent to investigate the cases.
The first of the two suits, charging him with responsibility for the deaths, was lodged by an ad hoc group of Palestinian, Lebanese, Moroccan and Belgian nationals.
The second suit, alleging crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes, was filed by 23 survivors of the massacres as well as five eyewitnesses.
-------- philippines
Philippine Muslim soldiers mutiny
November 19, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/19112001-121247-8198r.htm
The Philippine military said units of Muslim soldiers mutinied Monday and took about 20 loyal soldiers hostage on the southern island of Jolo. There were no casualties, reports said.
The mutineers -- former members of the Moro National Liberation Front guerrilla group -- declared their allegiance to the Abu Sayyaf guerrilla movement.
Philippine military officials believe Abu Sayyaf has received arms and training from Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.
The former members of the MNLF were integrated into the army after a 1996 peace agreement giving parts of the southern Philippines more autonomy.
Abu Sayyaf insists it is fighting for a Muslim homeland.
--
Philippine President in DC today
Daybook,
November 19, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011119-959152.htm
Wreath-laying ceremony - B>8 a.m. - The Military District of Washington holds a full-honors wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns with President of the Philippines Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Location: Tomb of the Unknowns, Arlington National Cemetery. Contact: 202/438-6722.
-------- russia
Russia Opens Face-to-Face Negotiations Over Chechnya
Putin Drops Preconditions For Talks With Separatists
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 19, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50298-2001Nov18?language=printer
MOSCOW, Nov. 18 -- After dropping all its preconditions for talks with Chechen rebels, Russia opened negotiations today for the first time during the stalemated two-year-old war.
When Russia invaded the rebellious Muslim region in 1999, President Vladimir Putin branded Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov a terrorist who would have to give himself up before the war could end. Just two months ago, Putin insisted that the Chechens must lay down arms before talks could begin.
But today, an envoy of Maskhadov's, Akhmed Zakayev, flew to Moscow and met with Putin's representative, Viktor Kazantsev, for two hours. Kazantsev described the talks as "serious."
"This is an attempt to establish the framework for future negotiations," Mairbek Vachagayev, a Maskhadov aide, told a Russian radio station.
Putin's move on Chechnya, his latest policy turnabout, might upset members of the armed forces and the Federal Security Service, Russia's internal security agency. Both institutions want to ensure that Russia dominates Chechnya, which has some oil reserves and sits near petroleum pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea.
Putin has already made dramatic policy decisions that have offended conservatives in the military. Following the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, he took the side of the United States in the war on terrorism, reversing two years of burgeoning anti-Americanism. He made no objections to U.S. requests to use air bases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia, an area that Russia considers part of its sphere of influence.
Putin also closed an intelligence listening post in Cuba over military objections. He rejected efforts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to increase the price of oil, a decision that favors the United States and Western Europe at a time of recession.
In any event, a Russian victory in Chechnya seems remote. The region won de facto independence through warfare in 1996. Three years of chaos followed. Russia launched a new attack in September 1999, after Putin blamed Chechnya for a series of apartment bombings in Moscow and other cities that killed about 300 people.
After overrunning much of Chechnya -- including Grozny, the devastated capital -- in 2000, the Russians got bogged down in a brutal occupation. The events of the last few days were typical: On Friday, the bodyguard of a Chechen collaborator with Russia was shot dead on the streets of Grozny. Guerrillas ambushed Russian police in 12 different locations, and a car full of police engineers ran over a mine. At the end of the day, one policeman was dead, and nine others were wounded.
On Saturday, Chechen saboteurs blew up a Russian medical station. Six policemen were wounded by a nearby mine. Guerrillas stole $67,000 from soldiers making payroll deliveries into Chechnya.
A Western diplomat who keeps a close eye on Chechnya said the Russians want Maskhadov to isolate and destroy the Islamic branch of the Chechen resistance, led by a shadowy Jordanian fighter named Khattab and a Chechen, Shamil Basayev. Over the years, Khattab has received funds from Afghanistan as well as from Muslim charities in oil-rich countries.
However, it is uncertain that Maskhadov has either the will or the muscle to fight the Islamic forces. At least 60 percent of the full-time guerrilla force in Chechnya belongs to the Muslim group, the diplomat said. Moreover, it is not clear what Maskhadov would gain in return. After the first Chechen war, aid promised by Russia never materialized and a cease-fire agreement stipulated that the independence issued be postponed.
Maskhadov's rule in Chechnya has been rife with banditry and kidnapping. He instituted Islamic law, but many Chechens opposed it. However, the invasion of Russian forces deeply embittered the Chechens. Human rights groups and other independent observers have reported that Russian soldiers looted, raped and tortured Chechens.
Putin declared the war won two Februaries ago. Today, Kazantsev, a former general who led the 1999 invasion, insisted that Zakayev was suing for peace. Zakayev said the Russians had called him.
-------- OTHER
-------- alternative energy
German parliament ups subsidies for green energy
Reuters:
19/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13358/story.htm
FRANKFURT - Germany's parliament has agreed to increase subsidies next year for four kinds of renewable energy, overruling Economics Minister Werner Mueller who had wanted to cut financial support for the sector.
The parliamentary budget committee decided to raise subsidies for solar, thermal, biogas and geothermal energy to 400 million marks from 300 million in 2001, said a source from the Green Party on Thursday.
Mueller, who is politically independent, had proposed to cut this budget by 100 million marks.
The minister had also wanted to cut the government's research budget into renewable energy by 65 million marks to 235 million marks from 300 million but the committee decided to cut the budget by less to 274 million marks.
It might end up being higher than the 274 million figure because another six million marks could still become available from the science ministry.
"It is positive that Mueller's plans could be partially averted," the source said.
"There was a consensus that it is important to help ease the way for renewable energies into the market.
----
Edison eyes UK onshore wind power projects
Reuters:
19/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13357/story.htm
LONDON - US-owned power company Edison Mission Energy is looking to develop up to 200 megawatts of onshore wind power generation capacity in the UK as part of a pan-European renewable energy strategy.
William J. Heller told Reuters the company is working with a number of smaller companies on wind power projects in mid-Wales.
"We are working with a lot of small developers, we are almost like a venture capital firm," said Heller.
But he said gaining planning permission at local level for wind farms in the UK remained a big problem for developers, despite the government's aim to boost the use of renewable energy.
Edison's plans for Wales come as the company works on a 90 megawatt offshore wind project off Rhyl in north Wales.
The company was awarded the offshore site in April by the Crown Estate, which manages Britain's seabeds and territorial waters.
Eighteen companies were granted sites for 13 offshore projects to produce between 1,000 and 1,500 megawatts.
"We are working on the initial subsea analysis and collecting environmental information," said Heller.
He said the company expected to gain government consent to build the 90-million-pound ($128.6-million) wind farm in June next year.
If approved, the project should be online in late 2004.
Edison's first foray into wind power, in Italy, is on track for completion by the first quarter of 2001. In a joint venture with Italian wind generator UPC, Edison is building a 283-megawatt onshore project with turbines across southern Italy and Sardinia. "We are adding a megawatt a day," said Heller.
Heller said Edison was also looking to develop renewable energy projects in Spain and Portugal.
----
Dams back big Northwest US push for wind power
by Nigel Hunt,
Reuters:
19/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13354/story.htm
LOS ANGELES - The Pacific Northwest is not among the windiest areas of the United States but that doesn't seem to be slowing its rapid emergence as a leading region for the production of wind energy.
"A lot of it is driven by the environmental consciousness of the Northwest ... Wind resources in the Northwest in general are of lesser production quality than places like Palm Springs (California)," said David Roberts, a vice president with wind project developer SeaWest WindPower Inc.
A second major factor behind the rise in wind power is the fact that the Pacific Northwest is a region where "the fuel comes from the sky." About 70 to 80 percent of the Northwest's electricity comes from a vast system of hydroelectric dams.
Wind projects only work about about 30 to 40 percent of the time compared with about 90 percent for some fossil fueled power plants. When the wind doesn't blow, they don't produce.
To ensure a reliable flow of electricity they must therefore be paired with another power source. Hydropower is the ideal partner since water can be stored behind the dams when the wind is blowing and released through turbines when it dies down.
"It (hydropower) makes a nice battery for the wind," said Rachel Shimshak, Director of the Renewable Northwest Project, an advocacy group promoting wind, solar and geothermal energy.
Roberts of SeaWest noted some of best wind potential in the region was in the Columbia River gorge area which runs along the Washington-Oregon border.
WORLD'S LARGEST
Along that border FPL Energy, a unit of FPL Group Inc , is constructing a project which may next year become the largest wind energy generating site in the world.
Dave Kvamme, of Scottish Power Plc unit PacifiCorp Power Marketing (PPM), said the Stateline Wind Generating Plant should have a capacity of 265 megawatts by the end of the year and could reach its original target of 300 MW next year.
PPM is marketing the energy produced at Stateline.
Kvamme said that by the end of the year Stateline should be the second biggest wind farm in the country, surpassed only by FPL Energy's 282 MW King Mountain facility in Texas.
One megawatt is roughly enough power for 1,000 homes.
"Projects are tending to grow larger. Wind energy projects used to be in the 20 to 30 MW size. Now projects are often 50 to 100 MW and once or twice greater than 200 MW. There are economies of scale in construction," SeaWest's Roberts said.
Roberts said the willingness of PPM and its sister company utility PacifiCorp to buy wind power, combined with similar interest from a federal agency, the Portland, Ore.-based Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), had also been key factors behind the expansion.
Shimshak noted PPM's willingness to buy Stateline's entire output had sent a strong signal to wind power developers.
"For a single entity to buy that much wind all at once was a big deal and was another signal to the market that the Northwest was the place to be," Shimshak said.
BPA, which markets power from such giant federal hydropower dams as Bonneville and Grand Coulee, said in June they were looking at seven wind projects totaling 830 MW for possible development.
On Thursday, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said BPA will buy the entire output of a 50 MW wind project in Gilliam County in Oregon.
----
War on terrorism brings focus to oil alternatives
Reuters:
19/11/2001
Story by Manuela Badawy
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13352
NEW YORK - Even as oil prices tumble, a new outbreak of violence involving Islamic extremists is renewing concerns that the United States is too dependent on Middle East for its energy needs.
World oil prices have slumped 40 percent since mid-September, with U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude touching a new low of $17.15 per barrel since June 1999.
Still, a gnawing unease over instability in the Islamic world has revived long-dormant debate over whether America should embrace new energy sources and conservation programs.
While the air strikes against Afghanistan last month have failed to trigger significant turmoil in Arab oil-producing countries, the events of the past two months have sparked a sense of deja vu among energy industry experts.
"If we can reduce our dependence on oil, and our need to go the extra mile in going along with some of the things that repressive regimes do, we would be a lot better off," James Woolsey, a former CIA director and now a Washington attorney, told Reuters. "But to get that kind of independence we have got to be not so dependent on their oil."
The plan to reduce foreign-oil dependence has three main aspects: First, aggressive conservation measures; second, the development of alternative energy sources like wind, solar, bio-fuels and hydrogen; third, drilling of new domestic oil wells, notably in Alaska.
"Diversification is the key to energy security in this country, that is relying on different source of energy," said U.S. Department of Energy's spokeswoman Jill Shroeder. "The president has initiatives not only in solar, wind, biomass and geothermal but also in oil, by drilling in the Artic refuge in order to get more energy independence."
The United States has spent over $10 billion in the last 15 years on renewable energy, research and development, the official added.
But while the Bush administration has made moves in these three areas, critics fault the leadership in Washington for stressing new drilling too much and for failing to grasp that seriously embracing conservation and alternative energy could cut U.S. oil consumption by a third within 15 years.
A GROWING HABIT
In the period immediately after the oil shocks of the 1970s, the country began to initiate much tighter controls on energy use. But in the past four years, U.S. reliance on foreign supply has rocketed, rising by 11 percentage points to 60 percent of the 20 million barrels of oil it now guzzles a day after nearly a decade of robust economic growth.
The biggest concern when it comes to foreign oil, say energy and national security experts, has been focused in recent recent weeks focused on Saudi Arabia. That country, home to the holiest site in Islam, presides over one-fourth of world oil reserves and supplies the United States with nearly 20 percent of its petroleum imports.
Another 8 percent of the oil the United States consumes comes from countries like Iraq and Kuwait, bringing U.S. reliance on the region to nearly 30 percent of current needs.
While the odds of Saudi production being disrupted by the current conflict in the near term are remote, concern has risen over the longer-term stability of the Saudi monarchy and the safety of its oil fields, energy experts say.
"In order to deal with a reemergence of a tight-supply market, there should be an emphasis on looking for alternative sources of supply and alternative fuels to oil," said Edward Morse, an executive at Hess Energy Trading Co., LLC who has written on oil-related issues.
Despite the political concerns, the global economic slowdown helped push down U.S. oil futures prices to near two-year lows this week - hardly a catalyst for Americans to give up oil-intensive lifestyles epitomized by the popularity of gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles.
If the possibility of a supply disruption from the Middle East is remote, it is nonetheless most likely to occur, if it ever does, in connection with Iraq. That country, run by U.S. nemesis Saddam Hussein, exports some 600,000 barrels daily to the United States - or about 6 percent of current U.S. needs.
"Only if Iraq is attacked there will be a disruption," said Robert Mabro, Director of Oxford University's Institute for Energy Studies in England. "A change of regime in Saudi Arabia is very unlikely, and even if there's a change why should they stop exporting oil?"
ALTERNATIVES TO OIL ARE REAL
Critics say that for it's long term policy, the Bush administration has focused mainly on increasing domestic energy drilling and opening up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But it has not gone far enough to wean the United States off its oil habit.
"If it weren't for the three letter word - oil - we would be free in the Middle East, as we are elsewhere, to support human rights, democracy and so forth," Woolsey said. "This is why waste and biomass is so important as a source for fuel," he said referring to organic fuels like ethanol that can be derived from plants like corn or from decomposed waste.
Leaders in the alternative energy world, like Amory Lovins, the head the Rocky Mountain Institute, said that real change is completely possible if the United States finds the political will to make it happen.
"What they (the Bush administration) don't yet have is a way to build a balanced portfolio of supply-side and demand-side measures to meet policy objectives at least cost," Lovins said.
Lovins said, for example, that by boosting light vehicle mileage requirements by 2.7 miles per gallon, the United States could wipe out the need for all of last year's Mideast oil imports.
Other specialists like Scott Sklar, president of Stella Group Ltd, a company that sells fuel cells, said that within 15 years, renewable fuels could provide 15 percent of U.S. energy, and conservation measures could cut oil demand by 20 percent.
"The 20 percent is on top of that 15 percent, so we could cut back a little more than a third of total U.S. energy use through use of renewables - both for transportation fuel and electric generation - and the use of efficiency," Sklar said.
Lovins stressed that even if the U.S. government is falling short in leading the way to less reliance on oil imports, some of the more progressive oil companies are showing initiative.
Major oil firms like Royal Dutch/Shell and BP are starting to develop alternative energy and being careful to create environmentally friendly public images.
Shell has pledged to spend between $500 million and $1 billion in the next five years to develop new energy businesses, concentrating primarily on solar and wind energy. BP is also making a push toward solar energy, and is now the world's No. 3 photovoltaic maker after two Japanese firms, Sharp Corp. and Kyocera Corp.
The world's No. 1 oil firm, Exxon Mobil Corp., which remains opposed to the 1997 Kyoto protocol that mandates cuts in emissions of carbon gases, is focusing on energy efficiency. The huge oil company is meanwhile skipping on developing renewable energy sources, such as biomass, wind and solar.
POLITICAL PAYOFF?
Jitters over foreign supply have also spurred moves to increase the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), created by Congress in the mid-1970s after the Arab oil embargo.
The SPR currently holds about 545 million barrels of crude at several sites in Texas and Louisiana ready to provide a 54-day supply in the event of a sudden cutoff in foreign oil imports. The U.S. government now plans fill the reserve to its capacity of 700 million barrels over three years.
But over the longer term, the United States could improve its standing on the Arab street if it could reduce its vulnerability to oil flows from the Middle East, analysts say.
"If we start a trend of replacing 1 percent a year of crude oil with fuel from organic waste materials, they (Arab regimes) will be able to read the writing on the wall very quickly," Woolsey said.
"One of the things that has drawn us into disfavor in the streets of the Arab countries is that they see us sponsoring, defending, their regimes," Woolsey added.
Additional reporting by Soo Youn.
-------- energy
Phillips and Conoco to Form U.S. Gasoline Giant
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By NEELA BANERJEE and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/business/19ENER.html
The Phillips Petroleum Company and Conoco Inc. agreed yesterday to merge, creating an oil company with a market value of $35 billion. It would be the nation's largest gasoline retailer and would combine pump brands like Conoco, Phillips 66, Union 76 and Circle K.
The deal is the latest step in the relentless consolidation of the oil and gas industry. For Phillips and Conoco, both proudly independent, the merger comes as an acknowledgment that they can no longer afford to go it alone. Plummeting oil prices have eroded the value of their stocks, making companies like them vulnerable to takeovers.
Joining forces as ConocoPhillips, as the company would be called, would allow Conoco and Phillips to preserve a measure of independence and marshal the billions of dollars needed for exploration, production and the latest technology.
"Everyone is trying to get into higher-risk, higher-reward fields, and both have tilted that way," said Scott Smith, a senior oil analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. "Both of them have done fairly well playing niche markets and now can be players of size."
ConocoPhillips would be the nation's third-largest oil and gas company and the world's sixth-largest, based on reserves. But the deal would not make them fully competitive with the so-called oil supermajors, like Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/ Shell and BP.
"Size is a plus, but they won't have the same economies of scale and geographical spread as the three biggest companies have," said Kate Warne, an oil analyst with the brokerage firm Edward Jones. "They still have to define strategies carefully and look for core areas and not spread their resources too thin."
Although the companies described their agreement as a merger of equals, Phillips appears, in some respects, to be the acquirer. Phillips shareholders would get one share of the new company for each Phillips share they hold; they would end up owning 56.6 percent of the combined company. Conoco shareholders, who would get 0.4677 share of the new company for each Conoco share, would own 43.4 percent. The combined company would have $18.6 billion in debt.
Archie W. Dunham, Conoco's chairman and chief executive, would become chairman of ConocoPhillips and would delay his retirement to 2004. James J. Mulva, the Phillips chairman and chief executive, would be president and chief executive officer of the combined company and would become chairman upon Mr. Dunham's retirement. Each company would have eight seats on the new board.
At some merged companies - like Citigroup, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and DaimlerChrysler - plans to share authority at the top have faltered. But Matthew Warburton, a senior oil analyst at UBS Warburg, said that such an arrangement at ConocoPhillips would probably work out.
"I think you have two people in Archie and Jim who can work together," Mr. Warburton said. "I don't see strikingly dissimilar cultures, as we had with, say, Exxon and Mobil when they first got together."
The combined company would be based in Houston, Conoco's headquarters, but executives said it would keep a presence in Bartlesville, Okla., where Phillips is based. They refused to say how many of the combined work force of 58,500 employees worldwide would be cut.
As with previous industry mergers, Conoco and Phillips plan to focus on greater exploration and production. Right now, about 57 percent of the combined company's business would be from exploration and production, Mr. Dunham said. The company would like to increase that proportion to 60 to 70 percent, he added.
The companies have each staked out significant positions in mature but still productive oil and gas basins in places like Alaska, northern Canada and the North Sea. They have also won coveted places in new ventures, including in two international consortiums that have been tapped by Saudi Arabia to develop its huge gas fields.
Together, the companies will have proven reserves equivalent to 8.7 billion barrels of oil and daily production of 1.7 million barrels. Exxon Mobil, the industry leader, has 21.5 billion barrels of reserves and daily production of 2.6 million barrels.
Like other powerful, newly merged companies, ConocoPhillips would also place a greater emphasis on natural gas. Mr. Dunham said that about 38 percent of the combined company's holdings right now were in natural gas but that the goal was to increase that share to 50 percent.
With the nation's leaders debating how best to reduce reliance on Middle East oil, Mr. Dunham was quick to point out that the combined company would have more than 70 percent of its reserves in North America and the North Sea.
Canada and Alaska offer enormous, undeveloped natural gas reserves, and the Gulf of Mexico holds huge, untapped oil and gas deposits. But analysts said that for the most part, North America and the North Sea were mature basins where oil companies would gradually scale back.
"Clearly, saying that was the flavor of the times," said Mr. Warburton, the analyst, referring to Mr. Dunham's comments. "But those are the areas that people are looking to diversify away from."
As geology would have it, some of the most promising opportunities for oil and gas companies are in places more volatile than Norway or northern Canada. But Conoco in particular has never been shy about entering tricky regions, be it Russia, Vietnam or Venezuela, and planting its flag. Phillips, for its part, has a sizable stake in the Kashagan oil field in the Caspian region of Kazakhstan.
The merger comes on the heels of acquisitions each company made earlier this year. In the spring, Phillips bought Tosco, the country's largest independent refiner, and Conoco purchased Gulf Canada Resources in July. Conoco was itself spun off by DuPont in 1999.
The companies are hoping to save $750 million annually by combining exploration projects and cutting staff, adding to earnings per share in the first year.
"For example, if they have two drilling rigs next to one another that are not working at full capacity, they might get rid of one," said Ms. Warne, of Edward Jones. "Companies always save because they will not do as many projects as before. When they put two lists of exploration projects side by side, they will lop off the bottom 10 percent or so, which are good projects but not great."
The deal would require approval by regulators. Since gasoline prices are low and the combined company would have much bigger competitors, analysts expect the government to approve the deal. Mr. Mulva said, "We see no conditions going forth that would change the deal materially."
While analysts generally agreed with that, some thought the companies might have to sell some properties or operations that overlap somewhat in the United States. Several noted that regulators might be likely to scrutinize their operations in the Rocky Mountain region because both companies have many gasoline stations there.
If either company reneges on the deal, it would be forced to pay a $550 million breakup fee.
Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse First Boston and Salomon Smith Barney acted as financial advisers, and Cravath, Swaine & Moore acted as legal counsel to Conoco. Goldman, Sachs & Company, J. P. Morgan Securities and Merrill Lynch & Company acted as financial advisers and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz acted as legal counsel to Phillips.
-------- human rights
Change and Fear in Colombia Rights Panel
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/international/americas/19COLO.html
BOGOTA, Colombia, Nov. 18 - Working under death threats, the prosecutors investigating the massacres and assassinations in Colombia's civil war have never had it easy. Some have been killed or driven from the country, and because of a chronic shortage of money in the national attorney general's office, investigations have sometimes stalled.
But since 1995, a specialized human rights unit within the office has sidestepped daunting obstacles to investigate the most horrific crimes, in some cases mass murders in which military officials were implicated. In the process, the group of 28 prosecutors earned admirers, including members of the United States Congress, the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, the rights monitoring group based in New York.
Now, some of the unit's supporters have begun to criticize the new attorney general, Luis Camilo Osorio, who they fear may stall investigations against right-wing paramilitary groups and rogue military officers. They fear that Mr. Osorio, a close ally of President Andrés Pastrana, was selected to mend relations between the president and an army bruised by recent investigations, not to carry out serious investigations to correct Colombia's abysmal human rights record.
"We think that maybe we will not be able to touch some people," said one prosecutor in the human rights unit, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "My colleagues are going to think twice before they take on a case involving the military."
Mr. Osorio, chosen by the Supreme Court in July for the four-year posting, has said that the attorney general's office has focused so much on paramilitary groups and military officers that cases against leftist rebels have suffered - a stand welcomed by many in the military establishment.
He forced out two highly respected prosecutors - Pedro Diaz, who ran the human rights unit, and Virgilio Hernandez, the chief of the anti- corruption unit - after criticizing the arrest in July of a general, Rito Alejo del Rio, accused of organizing paramilitary groups.
"There is a new viewpoint, in terms of human rights investigations," said Mr. Diaz, now in exile in the United States. "What is happening to those big investigations, involving military officials? The way things are looking, the outlook is not good."
Under Mr. Osorio, some prosecutors investigating high-profile anticorruption cases have been transferred or cases have been nullified on procedural grounds. The cases, while not directly tied to rights abuses, underscored the high level of official malfeasance that has helped fuel Colombia's conflict.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Osorio said the cases were found to have had serious legal problems, requiring further inquiries. "That does not mean they are being filed away," she said.
Criticism of Mr. Osorio has gained momentum since last month, when Hina Jilani, the special representative for human rights for the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, called into question Mr. Osorio's independence.
Mr. Osorio said he did not intend to slow investigations of paramilitary forces or state security officials.
But in an interview, he said the paramilitary groups did not commit "a fourth part of the actions of the guerrillas." Saying cases involving human rights violations have had a "privileged" status, Mr. Osorio said the human rights unit would instead simply step up its activities against the rebels.
"For every 100 guerrilla actions there are fewer than 25 effective investigations," he said, "while for 25 actions by the paramilitaries or the public security forces there are more than 100 investigations."
Mr. Osorio said most Colombians believed that the state must do more to attack the rebels, who themselves are responsible for massacres, widespread extortion and most of the 3,700 kidnappings last year. "We have to take investigations against guerrillas, which have been deficient, and elevate them," he said.
Critics of Mr. Osorio, though, have said he misses a central reality of Colombia's conflict: the paramilitary militias, financed by the cocaine trade and wealthy Colombians as protection against the rebels, commit most of the killings in the country.
According to the Ministry of Defense, paramilitary forces killed at least 1,335 people from January 1999 to this past September, compared with 473 killings by the rebels.
"That is exactly why we also have to investigate paramilitaries, since they cause violence and unrest," said Pablo Elias, who resigned as deputy attorney general to protest Mr. Osorio's management. "And although theoretically in favor of the state, they are criminals."
Former prosecutors said the role of the human rights unit since its founding in 1995 had been to investigate the most serious crimes - mass murders and political assassinations, in some cases involving state security forces.
Of 1,198 people formally investigated since the unit's founding, 634 were members of paramilitary groups and 234 were members of the public security forces.
The human rights unit has also opened formal investigations against 200 rebels, issuing arrest orders for top guerrilla commanders. And other units within the attorney general's office have investigated other rebel crimes.
But former prosecutors and human rights officials say crimes by paramilitary groups, especially those in which state agents played a role, were a priority for the unit.
"You cannot compare a guerrilla's actions with that of a member of the public force, who has authority and is given arms from the state," said Mr. Hernandez, who ran the human rights unit from 1997 to 1999. "Of course, guerrillas should be investigated with the same rigor, but the general thesis is the state cannot gloss over human rights violations by its agents."
Alejandro Ramelli, the new chief of the human rights unit, said his prosecutors would now "investigate everyone." He noted that in his first three months on the job, 17 members of paramilitary groups and 2 members of the military had been formally charged along with 4 rebels.
But Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Americas division, worries that cases involving paramilitary forces will be dropped in time - if not for a lack of will then because of limited resources. The unit operates on about $1.7 million a year, Mr. Ramelli said.
Meanwhile, human rights groups are worried that Mr. Osorio's assertions that too much attention has been paid to paramilitary groups could further endanger those prosecutors who continue investigating those forces.
Since 1995, 6 prosecutors working on rights cases - none from the human rights unit, but investigators of rights violations from regional offices - have been slain, along with 22 investigators. Another 22 prosecutors and investigators have sought exile in other countries, according to Human Rights Watch.
Those who have fled under threat of death, like Luis Sarmiento, who was a regional prosecutor in the country's north, said that some of his colleagues might have died for nothing.
"Their work has not been valued or recognized," said Mr. Sarmiento, now in Florida. "This hurts very much because the people who do this work are very brave."
-------- imf / world bank
Another Plea for More Aid to Poor
U.S. Hesitant as IMF, World Bank Urge Bigger Contributions
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 19, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50293-2001Nov18?language=printer
OTTAWA, Nov. 18 -- The International Monetary Fund and World Bank wrapped up a weekend meeting today with fresh calls for increasing aid to developing countries, but resistance to the idea by the United States raised doubts about how much new assistance would be forthcoming.
A "substantial increase" in current levels of official development assistance would be required in coming years, the World Bank's policy-setting development committee said in a statement. The bank's president, James Wolfensohn, said support among panel members for a major increase in aid was the highest he had ever seen.
Wolfensohn, at a press conference after the meeting of the panel, which represents the World Bank's 183 member countries, said there has been a "growing realization" since Sept. 11 that aid "is not just charity; it's self interest" for donor nations.
Wolfensohn acknowledged, however, that the most powerful member of the committee, U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, was by far the least enthusiastic about that proposition.
Exhortations by Wolfensohn and others underscored the view among aid advocates that the chance and the need for mobilizing more assistance for poor countries was greater than ever since Sept. 11. That is because the slowing global economy has hit developing countries particularly hard, which has raised concern about a worsening of conditions that foster anti-Western sentiment.
The issue was teed up for this weekend's meeting in a speech Friday by Gordon Brown, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer, who proposed a $50 billion increase in aid provided annually to developing countries to reach a United Nations goal of halving global poverty by 2015. Brown's speech drew cheers from Oxfam, a leading advocacy group for the world's poor. The proposal, which doubles the current amount of aid, was "extremely welcome," Oxfam said.
At a press conference, O'Neill agreed that rich nations "need to pay attention and try to do something" about the millions living in poverty, but he gave the idea of more aid a cold reception. "Over the last 50 years the world has spent an awful large amount of money in the name of development without a great degree of success," he said.
Rich countries need to concentrate on "producing results" in poor countries, O'Neill said. "It's time for us to become determined and purposeful about making a difference in living conditions [of the poor] by creasing real economic development and not just more giving," he added
The disparities over aid between the United States and its allies is a longstanding source of tension. U.S. aid contributions total about 0.1 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, the lowest among the Group of Seven major industrial countries. That amount compares with with an average 0.22 percent of GDP for all rich nations, with several European nations contribution about 1 percent of their GDP.
In remarks today to the development committee, O'Neill urged his colleagues to rally behind a U.S. proposal, first advanced last summer, that the Bush administration has cited as evidence of the "compassionate conservatism" behind its aid philosophy. Under the proposal, up to half the World Bank's aid to the poorest nations would be converted from loans to grants.
The administration, however, has proposed no additional contributions to the World Bank to pay for the plan, which has raised European suspicion that it was intended to starve the bank of funding.
-------- police / prisoners
'Aggressive' air security coming in phases
USA Today
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-19-bush.htm
WASHINGTON - Travelers won't notice big changes in airport security during the holiday season, but legislation signed Monday by President Bush will prompt some quick action behind the scenes. "Today, we take permanent and aggressive steps to improve the security of our airways," Bush said at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the last airport in the USA to reopen after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
What will change:
- Federal managers will soon begin monitoring some airport security checkpoints in preparation for training screeners.
- More police officers will be visible soon. At least one will be posted at every screening station at major airports.
- Uniformed federal workers may take over screening passengers at some airports in about 3 months. Within a year, all 28,000 screeners will be federal workers.
- Within 60 days, airlines must inspect all checked baggage with X-rays, hand searches or bomb-sniffing dogs, or match every checked bag with a passenger. Other methods may be allowed with the Transportation Department's approval. By the end of 2002, all checked bags must be inspected by machines that detect explosives. Fewer than 10% are inspected for bombs now.
- Within 60 days, airlines will start charging a $2.50 fee for each flight to help pay for new security. Maximum fee for a one-way trip: $5. Implementing the legislation will cost up to $2.6 billion.
- More plainclothes air marshals will be aboard flights. Cockpit doors, which have already been reinforced, will be made even more secure.
Toughened security began before the bill became law. Criminal background checks on all 750,000 airport employees have begun, National Guard personnel patrol airports, carry-on bags are searched more carefully, and passengers' names are cross-checked with lists of people the FBI deems suspicious.
"Security comes first," Bush said. "The federal government will set high standards, and we will enforce them."
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta plans to "move expeditiously and with caution," spokesman Chet Lunner said.
Mineta wants the new measures in place as soon as possible, but he also wants to make sure that new regulations are drafted properly. The Transportation Department will create a new agency and a new undersecretary position to oversee the changes.
"There's a lot of requirements and milestones that we have to understand quickly," Lunner said.
He said Mineta wants to reassure the public that security will not be compromised during the transition to the new rules. Mineta met with airline executives last week to make certain that security does not deteriorate before the federal presence is in place.
A tip for fliers: Some airline Web sites now tell passengers how much time to allow for security checks at specific airports.
Contributing: Marilyn Adams and Alan Levin
---
Officers Keep Lid On U-Md. Revelry
Some Students Allege Use of Excessive Force
By Hamil R. Harris and Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 19, 2001; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50245-2001Nov18?language=printer
Police and fire officials said yesterday they doused several small fires and dispersed a large, rowdy crowd celebrating the University of Maryland's football victory Saturday night, but several students have filed complaints alleging that officers used excessive force.
Fifteen people were arrested on disorderly conduct charges after officers and firefighters rushed into the crowd gathered on a large field on Fraternity Row in College Park. The crowd was celebrating the Terrapins' 23-19 come-from-behind victory over North Carolina State, which clinched a conference championship and ensured the team a prized bowl game berth.
Two people were treated at the scene for reactions to pepper spray, officials said. But no one was seriously hurt, property damage was minimal and the area was calm by about 12:30 a.m., they said.
Officials said they wanted to avoid a repeat of March 31, when hundreds of students set more than 60 fires, causing an estimated $500,000 in damage to property and cable television, telephone and power lines, after Maryland lost to Duke University in the NCAA basketball semifinals. Neighborhood residents and political leaders complained that police were slow to respond.
This time, many students said they believed that authorities overreacted to a long-awaited celebration at a traditional gathering place, just off Route 1. Campus police were aided by Prince George's County police and firefighters, Maryland State Police, Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission police, and U.S. Park Police, officials said.
Well before Saturday's game in Raleigh, N.C., drew to a close, more than 100 police and firefighters were on campus and near Fraternity Row, off Route 1, following instructions from supervisors working in a nearby command center in hopes of preventing fires, vandalism and other problems.
About 200 people were outside fraternity houses as the game ended. But soon after, waves of additional students joined them, many coming out of nearby high-rise dormitories.
Campus police Maj. Cathy Atwell estimated that the crowd grew to 2,000. Police and firefighters moved to clear the area after the first small fire, following earlier warnings that post-game bonfires -- a tradition at some colleges -- would not be tolerated.
Mark Brady, a Prince George's County fire department spokesman, said firefighters extinguished two or three small fires on Fraternity Row as well as a fire in a trash bin outside a dormitory.
"As far as the fire department was concerned, everything was small in nature," he said yesterday, adding that most students were well behaved.
Police, meanwhile, flew overhead in helicopters and moved onto the field on foot, on horseback and in a heavy-duty truck, using bullhorns as they ordered people to leave the area or risk arrest. Most students fled.
"It was a little scary. All we wanted to do was have a little revelry and celebrate," Joahim Van Brandt, a senior, said as helicopters lighted the area.
"There is no clear reason for this," said sophomore engineering student Russ Pellicot, watching officers chase students off the field.
Freshman Greg Nep, 18, said police bloodied a woman's nose and that pepper spray got in his eyes. Several students filed formal complaints yesterday, including freshman Simon Fitzgerald, who went to campus police headquarters and said he believed that campus officials "gave the green light for police to come on this campus and beat people."
Those arrested were 13 men and two women ranging in age from 18 to 22, police said. Nearly all are university students.
Atwell defended the response, saying the fires were dangerous.
Lt. Col. Gerald Wilson, deputy chief of Prince George's County police, said officers acted properly to maintain security on and off campus.
"These are students, and they should be proud of their team," Wilson said. "We are proud of the Maryland Terrapins, but at the same time, we have a responsibility to ensure the safety of the community."
College Park Mayor Michael J. Jacobs said police have strengthened their presence on campus and surrounding areas for games throughout the football season. He said university officials also have said they will not tolerate unruly behavior and that many students have gotten the message. Those students, in turn, are urging others to stay in line, Jacobs said.
"There's always going to be an element in any group that's going to want to do something stupid," Jacobs said. "The lower level of activity is, I think, in large measure due to the police presence. I think it's also attributable to the fact the university has worked hard to ensure standards of behavior are well understood by the student body."
Staff writers Clarence Williams and Andrew DeMillo contributed to this report.
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DNA IN THE USA: PATRIOT ACT ALLOWS FORMATION OF DATABASE
From: wob3@psualum.com
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001
The United States will soon begin construction on a giant database containing DNA codes of criminal offenders.
Buried in the USA Patriot Act -- signed into law by President Bush last month -- is a provision that allows for the government collection of a person's DNA for "qualifying Federal offenses, as determined by the Attorney General."
The DNA development has gone unreported in the nation's mainpress.
Section 503 of the Patriot Act now requires persons convicted of terrorism offenses and other crimes of violence to submit to DNA samples.
"The [DNA] database will be a powerful new tool for law enforcement and crime prevention," an administration official told the DRUDGE REPORT last week.
A 30-page Field Guidance of New Authorities issued by the Justice Department states the "collection of DNA samples from federal offenders" extends "to all federal offenders convicted of the types of offenses that are likely to be committed by terrorists or any crime of violence."
Specifics on the deployment of the database could not be obtained as this transmits.
Under prior law, the statutory provisions governing the collection of DNA samples from federal offenders were restrictive.
-------- terrorism
Zimbabwe President Says Britain Aids 'Plot'
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/international/africa/19ZIMB.html
HARARE, Zimbabwe, Nov. 18 (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe today accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of helping to finance what he called a "terrorist plot" against Mr. Mugabe's government and vowed to crush antigovernment opposition.
In a 40-minute speech attacking his enemies at the funeral for a slain war veterans' leader, Cain Nkala, Mr. Mugabe labeled the main opposition group, the Movement for Democratic Change, and the country's white farmers "terrorists."
The opposition party leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, poses an unprecedented challenge to Mr. Mugabe's 21- year rule in the presidential election next year. Mr. Mugabe has repeatedly accused the opposition and white farmers of sabotaging the economy in an effort to oust him from power.
Mr. Mugabe, under fire from the Commonwealth and other international bodies for his campaign to seize white farmland for redistribution to landless blacks, has banned foreign financing for independent news media and opposition parties.
He said his government had established that a group that helps the opposition, a British pro-democracy group, "gets its dirty money, its dirty tricks from the British Labor Party, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and also from the government of Tony Blair."
The police arrested 16 opposition activists and an opposition member of Parliament on murder charges after Mr. Nkala's body was found on Tuesday. The opposition party has denied involvement in the death.
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THE FIREFIGHTERS
With Water and Sweat, Fighting the Most Stubborn Fire
New York Times
November 19, 2001
By ERIC LIPTON and ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/nyregion/19FIRE.html
Jose Maldonado has all the basic tools: a ladder truck to lift him up and out toward the fire; a pumper to ensure nearly 800 gallons a minute is poured onto it; and his respirator, boots and other protective gear to guard against the roiling waves of heat and toxic smoke.
But as dawn turns into day and day into night, it is hard to tell if the 12 hours of labor put in by Mr. Maldonado, a barrel-chested firefighter from the Bronx, has made even a bit of difference.
On detail at the World Trade Center site, he is helping fight no ordinary blaze. His assignment is to somehow put out what firefighting experts are calling the longest commercial building fire in United States history.
As in a stubborn coal mine fire, the combustion taking place deep below the surface is in many places not a fire at all. Instead, oxygen is charring the surfaces of buried fuels in a slow burn more akin to what is seen in the glowing coals of a raked-over campfire. But the scale of the trade center burning is vast, with thousands of plastic computers, acres of flammable carpet, tons of office furniture and steel and reservoirs of hydraulic oil and other fuels piled upon one another.
Steel beams pulled from the debris at times are so hot they are cherry red. Benzene, propylene, styrene and other chemicals generated by the combustion of computers, office products and fuels drift through the air. And at times, plumes of this smoke are still carried across Lower Manhattan, into City Hall, down to Wall Street, and up through TriBeCa, a relentless reminder of that morning on Sept. 11.
"You keep hitting it again and again with water," Mr. Maldonado said, his respirator momentarily pulled from his face, as he stood in the scorched landscape that once was the World Trade Center plaza. "But the fire won't give up. It is just a constant fight."
Progress has been made, to be sure.
Thermal aerial photographs and videotape shot in the days just after the attack show a nearly constant field of heat across large swaths of the 16-acre site. An aerial video shot late last week showed an underground blaze now confined largely to where the two towers once stood.
Deputy Fire Chief Charles R. Blaich said that even though almost no smoke could be seen coming up from the north tower site, the video showed that the smoldering still continued underground, as it did at the south tower, where smoke and steam was obvious.
"We are headed in the right direction," Chief Blaich said, as he watched the video at the World Trade Center incident command center on Duane Street. "But there still seems to be a significant amount of work to accomplish."
The trade center fire suppression effort is a decidedly low-tech affair.
A variety of creative approaches have been considered, including drilling holes deep into the debris piles so that foam could be pumped directly onto the fire, or somehow injecting nitrogen into the piles to try to extinguish the fire by forcing out the oxygen.
But with the exception of a week in early October, when 3,000 gallons of a special chemical were added to the water being pumped onto the site, it has largely been just firefighters with hoses and city water.
Nearly 110 firefighters and rescue workers are at the scene at all times, but most of them act as spotters, watching as the demolition effort continues and trying to find human remains. The actual fire suppression team has 10 firefighters and officers on each 12-hour shift who are given two basic assignments: some work with hand lines; and others, like Mr. Maldonado, 35, are lifted in ladder trucks, and then use high pressure hoses to shoot the water down.
"It is tedious work, hour after hour operating a line," said Tom Ferreri, 32, a fireighter from Brooklyn who has worn his respirator so much that a scar has formed at the top of his nose. "It is not like any other fire I have ever faced."
But there is no lack of determination and few complaints from the firefighters, who consider it an honor to be at ground zero, laboring to put out a fire at a site where 343 firefighters and more than 2,500 others died.
"Unfortunately, we aren't here saving people or getting people out of a fire," Mr. Ferreri said. "But we are here to get our brothers out, trying to bring closure for families."
Each day's firefighting targets are largely dictated by how the demolition work is going. Dozens of giant backhoes, grapplers and other earth- moving equipment move constantly across the site, resembling a pack of dinosaurs voraciously feeding in some primordial swamp. As they grab at the debris, they open up air vents that feed the underground fire.
Most of the time, the hoses are trained on spots where the firefighters can see smoke, which changes from white to gray, and sometimes to black, depending on how close and intense the underground blaze is. Greenish-yellow smoke rises from where the ironworkers cut apart steel beams. And at times, without any notice, bright flames erupt and suddenly surround the earth-moving equipment as workers shift debris and oxygen flows to meet combustible materials.
These are the toughest moments for the firefighters. The giant mounds of debris in some spots and the deep pits elsewhere prevent firefighters from quickly repositioning their ladder trucks and hoses. So a special all-terrain vehicle designed to fight brush fires is quickly dispatched, carrying its own small supply of water to douse the flames.
The chiefs in charge often stand on the rooftop of a small fire station on Liberty Street, just at the edge of ground zero, a station that miraculously was not damaged as the towers collapsed. With binoculars, they survey the scene, calling out orders to the suppression teams below.
"We need to make sure we keep that ladder truck right there," one of the fire chiefs squawked into his radio Thursday morning, as he realized that all his other suppression firefighters had been temporarily moved off the site as demolition crews prepared to tear down a section of what remained of the north tower. "Keep him right there."
It is no mystery why the fire has burned for so long. Mangled steel and concrete, plastics from office furniture and equipment, fuels from elevator hydraulics, cars and other sources are all in great supply in the six-story basement area where the two towers collapsed.
Water alone rarely can quench this kind of fire, which will burn as long as there is adequate fuel and oxygen and as long as heat cannot escape, fire experts said.
The longest-burning fire on earth, in southeastern Australia, is thought to have been started by a lightning strike 2,000 years ago and is slowly eating away at a buried coal deposit. In Centralia, Pa., a fire that began in a landfill in 1962 spread to old coal mines and has been burning ever since.
"When you have a huge mass of materials deeply buried like this, it's sort of analogous to the Centralia mine fire," said Dr. Thomas J. Ohlemiller, a chemical engineer and fire expert at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md. "Very little heat is lost, so the reaction can keep going at relatively low temperatures, provided you have a weak supply of oxygen coming through the debris."
In September, several government and private experts offered various proposals to help curb the fire, including the use of foams commonly employed to fight underground fires in oil fields and of hand-held heat- sensing instruments to track hot spots. But the city turned down almost all the suggestions.
"It's frustrating to find yourself sitting on the sidelines when you know what to do," said a federal official.
City fire officials defended their approach, saying they rejected several proposals after deeming them either too dangerous or possibly ineffective.
One idea that was accepted came from a company in Lynchburg, Va., that sold the city about 3,000 gallons of its product Pyrocool, which, when mixed with water, is intended to absorb heat from a fire until the temperature drops below the point of combustion. A total of 750,000 gallons of the diluted Pyrocool was spread over ground zero in late September and early October, at a cost of about $120,000.
Pyrocool's operations director, Eddie Tyler, said the substance had been used to quickly douse thousands of fires worldwide over the past eight years.
When round-the-clock Pyrocool treatment at the trade center was stopped after a week, Chief Blaich said, there was noticeable progress. But the fires were still burning, in large part because of difficulty in getting the substance down through the debris pile and directly onto hot spots.
In a hot flaming fire, many toxic chemicals are incinerated, with little given off except carbon soot, carbon dioxide, water vapor and other fairly innocuous emissions.
But the relatively low temperatures of the trade center fires mean that traces of dozens of toxic chemicals and heavy metals are carried into the air, including benzene, a cancer-causing compound released when fuels are burned, and styrene, a gas emitted by burning plastic. At times the chemicals in the air at the site reach dangerous levels, particularly when fire flares up, as it did on Nov. 8.
Firefighters and others who work atop the debris pile are supposed to wear respirators at all times, but not everyone does.
Health and environmental officials have repeatedly said that the emissions pose no significant health hazard outside the wreckage zone; and air samples taken even a few yards from the heart of the wreckage usually fail to detect chemicals at dangerous levels.
But aside from any health threat, the emissions have caused persistent sore throats, stinging eyes and frayed nerves in many workers and residents in Lower Manhattan.
No one knows just how long it will take to put out the fires; predictions range from two more weeks to several months. Deputy Assistant Chief Peter E. Hayden, the trade center incident commander, is among the more optimistic.
During a tour of the underground area near hot spots, officials found that the fire did not extend below the third basement level, he said.
Demolition crews are getting close to this point, and when they reach it, Mr. Hayden said, firefighters should be able to extinguish the remaining fire.
Firefighters at the site say they try to stay focused on their work, drawing inspiration from memories of their colleagues who died on Sept. 11.
"I just see their faces," Mr. Maldonado said. "But it is hard. It is nothing but destruction down here."
Those who live and work near the site say that while they appreciate the effort to fight the fires, they are eager for the day when the air will finally be cleared of smoke.
"It really is sickening, depressing," said Jonathan Rapport, a lawyer who works on the 38th floor of the Woolworth Building, overlooking the site. "A good day is when the wind is blowing out to the river so I don't have to smell it."
-------- activists
London anti-war march attracts 15,000 protesters
War on Terrorism: Demonstration
By Julia Stuart
19 November 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=105631
While their grammar was questionable, there was no mistaking their message. "1-2-3-4, we don't want no bloody war; 5-6-7-8, stop the bombing, stop the hate,'' bellowed the peace protesters as they inched their way through central London yesterday.
Upwards of 15,000 people, including well-heeled Middle Englanders, dubious-smelling crusties, veteran peace campaigners and pensioners, took part in what is believed to have been the biggest protest to date against the "war on terrorism". The event, which reverberated to the sound of whistles and drumming, was organised by Stop The War, a coalition representing numerous groups from trade unionists to politicians.
The peace campaigners at first massed in Hyde Park, some in carnival-style costumes, some on stilts and others in woollen hats and hiking boots who gave the impression that the event had been infiltrated by the Ramblers Association.
Standing next to a stage was Michael Letwin, president of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys. Representing the New York City Trade Unionists Against the War, he said: "We want to make sure that people in Britain know there are people in the States, in New York in particular, who do not support the war because we view it as the same kind of criminal terrorism that we saw on 11 September. It is important that people know that those of us who have suffered don't want to inflict the same thing on other people.''
The rebel Labour MP Paul Marsden, who has just returned from a personal fact-finding mission to the region, later spoke at Trafalgar Square, saying that Afghanistan was now on the brink of anarchy. "The warlords are back with a vengeance and we are starting to read about the atrocities they are committing. There is no victory. It is the innocent civilians who are going to die. America in its grief has a lot to answer for in its revenge attacks on the civilians."
Louise Christian, a civil rights lawyer, said: "They are claiming justification under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which is self-defence. But there were no people from Afghanistan involved in what happened on 11 September. There is no justification in international law.
"All we have achieved in Afghanistan is to replace the Taliban with gangs of warlords who have no legitimacy and who are fighting amongst themselves.''
Andy Dean, 26, a student dressed as a pea-green alien, with eyes on stalks on top of his head, carried a sign reading: "No weapons in space''.
"We thought we'd dress up to have some fun, though I know it's a serious issue,'' he said. Other banners, many made at home with pieces of cardboard, read: "Muslims not guilty for twin towers''; "Make scones not war''; and "Another fine mess you've got us into''.
Mike Gabel, 28, a fashion designer from east London, was selling T-shirts bearing the words: "Make love not war", for £5. He had sold 12 in an hour. However, the man selling whistles for £1 and trumpets for £3 was not doing so well. "I'm representing entrepreneurial spirits for the over-50s who can't get work,'' he said, adding that he was keeping about 10p in every pound for himself. "It's very slow. A lot of people bought stuff for the march three weeks ago.''
Under a heavy police presence, the campaigners started their march towards Trafalgar Square. One group of students pulled a 25ft Grim Reaper on a wooden trolley. Two members of Artists Against The War stood on the pavement of Piccadilly operating the skeletal fingers of an enormous puppet whose face was half that of bin Laden and half that of George Bush. "They're both doing the same thing, killing people,'' said one of the artists.
Near the front was Godfrey King, 62, a retired company director from Wimbledon, south-west London, who usually spends his Sundays playing golf. "Bush and Blair are the biggest terrorists the world has ever seen,'' he said. "America has committed more deaths by terrorism than any individual has ever done. This isn't a war, this is state terrorism.''
In Trafalgar Square, Bianca Jagger, Tony Benn, Michael Mansfield QC, and Yvonne Ridley, the Express journalist held by the Taliban, were among the campaigners who gave speeches.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said the demonstration was "peaceful" and there had been no arrests.
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Thousands protest at ex-Army school
Around the Nation
November 19, 2001 •
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011119-63113550.htm
COLUMBUS, Ga. - Thousands of demonstrators marched outside Fort Benning yesterday to protest a former Army school they said was responsible for human rights violations against Latin-American civilians.
During the annual march to the front gate of the post, protesters carried signs reading "Imperialist Assassins." The School of the Americas, which was a training center for Latin-American soldiers, closed in December.
About 40 people were taken into custody after they slipped through an opening in a fence and onto base property. The crowd was estimated by police at 6,000 to 7,000.
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