------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Many Respond to Teeth Donor Study
Irish case part of a 'wider war' on Sellafield
Depleted Uranium Weapons in the Age of Virtual War
Bombing Afghan water supplies
New nuclear-fuel shipment reaches Poland
France Deploys Missiles at Key Site
Man Faces Charges on Nuclear Devices
Agency resists call for drug stockpiles
Federal Control Will Be Sought for Protection of Nuclear Plants
Panel Suggests More Sharing of Research
Blessings and Bombings
Nuke firms behind U.S. Chamber's pro-Yucca campaign

MILITARY
US warned on human rights over treatment of troops
Aid projects intended to produce quick results
U.S. moves to seal escape routes for bin Laden
Taliban vow to fight on
Taliban may surrender Kunduz, talks continue
Militants warn against Kunduz killings
Change of target saved hundreds of Taliban soldiers
Foreign Militants in Kunduz Seek Safe Passage to Pakistan
Afghan Factions to Meet and Discuss Interim Rule
Court Ruling in Arms Case Frees Menem in Argentina
Asian Regimes Appear to Use War on Terror to Stem Dissent
In Utah, a Government Hater Sells a Germ-Warfare Book
At an Anthrax Lab, the World Changed Quickly
Security Firms Ready to Sell Safety
Conneticut
Drug Smugglers Change Travel Habits
U.S. vows to fight terrorism against India
Lebanon, U.S. talk Mideast peace
Bush to meet with Sharon early next month
Israelis offered free housing in West Bank
Israel Denies Groups' Charge That It Is Torturing Detainees
Barak Testifies on Israeli Arab Violence
U.S. fleet blocks bin Laden's escape route
Alliance's Rise Catches Pakistan Off-Guard
Censorship - Can a free press survive America's new war?
Appeals court rejects appeal in Vieques bombing battle
Taliban asks UN for help to surrender
Afghan Victors Agree to Talks in Berlin
U.N.-led power-sharing talks to start next week
Report: U.S. Military Wants Domestic Defense Command
America determined to call the shots
Military favors a homeland command
Homeland Security Team's Key Members Announced
Marines May Be Sent Into Afghanistan

ENERGY AND OTHER
Enron's Growing Financial Crisis
Russian Oil Production Still Soars, for Better and Worse
Lynne Cheney, daughters serve dinner to homeless
Turkey expands women's rights
U.S. and 21 Other Nations Pledge Billions to Rebuild Afghanistan

POLICE / PRISONERS
FBI develops new tools for eavesdropping
Zimbabwe seeks law to crack down on subversives
A Police Force Rebuffs F.B.I. on Querying Mideast Men
Dozens of Israeli Jews Are Being Kept in Federal Detention
Number of WTC missing, dead falls below 3,900
To understand terrorism, trace its bloodline
Charges Discarded in Zimbabwe Terror Case
An Investigation in Egypt Illustrates Al Qaeda's Web
Direction of Global War on Terror
As Soliders Cheer, Bush Braces Country for Long Campaign

ACTIVISTS
China expels six Americans, other Western activists
Protesters Find the Web to Be a Powerful Tool
China Arrests Foreigners at Rally
PETA gives tofu to save live turkeys



-------- NUCLEAR

Many Respond to Teeth Donor Study

The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 20, 2001; 6:17 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57035-2001Nov20?language=printer

ST. LOUIS -- Scientists in New York said they are overwhelmed by the response from adults who once donated their baby teeth for a survey about radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests and now wish to participate in a follow-up survey.

Close to 1,000 people have called or e-mailed the scientists since the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a story Nov. 9 about a new study trying to determine whether teeth donors developed cancer and other health problems years later as a result of the fallout.

"We're all very stunned by this," said Joseph Mangano, national coordinator with the Radiation and Public Health Project.

The study began after 85,000 teeth were found in an old bunker at Washington University where they'd been stored since the 1970s. The teeth were part of the St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey, in which thousands of children from the region sent their teeth to science instead of the tooth fairy.

The study called for anyone born and living in St. Louis from the late 1940s through the 1960s - especially if they believe they submitted teeth - to contact his group. If matched with any of the baby teeth, the person would be mailed a health questionnaire.

The original project helped scientists determine that children were absorbing radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests. It received international attention and helped to persuade the United States to adopt a 1963 treaty banning atmospheric bomb tests.

-------- britain

Irish case part of a 'wider war' on Sellafield

Wednesday, November 21, 2001
From Derek Scally, in Hamburg
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2001/1121/hom52.htm

The British government has called Ireland's case to prevent the commissioning of the MOX plant next month "an ill-founded application" which is "part of a wider war against Sellafield".

Lord Goldsmith, the British Attorney General, said the British government would face "catastrophic losses" if Ireland's "scheme" for an injunction was granted.

"The tribunal is again confronted by a spectre of danger not anything approaching a real risk of serious harm to the Irish Sea," he said at the second day of a hearing at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg.

The tribunal, a court which applies the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea, has been asked by the Government to examine whether the operation of the MOX plant next month would infringe Ireland's rights under the convention.

If the tribunal agrees to grant "provisional measures" to halt the opening of the MOX plant, the case will go before a full tribunal.

Britain argued yesterday that the tribunal had no jurisdiction over the case, and that it should be dealt with by the European Court of Justice and the OSPAR tribunal, which rules on the OSPAR convention on maritime issues in the north-west Atlantic.

It also argued that the MOX plant, producing ceramic-coated plutonium fuel pellets, would increase safety at Sellafield by reducing shipments of toxic plutonium-oxide through the Irish Sea.

Any shipments are governed by international guidelines drafted by international bodies such as IAEA, of which Ireland is a member, said Lord Goldsmith.

Fuel pellets produced at MOX would first be shipped in October 2002, and in special flasks to reduce risks, he said.

"The risks of transporting highly-radioactive material ... are 'very small'," said Lord Goldsmith, quoting an IAEA report. He said precautions at Sellafield against terrorist attacks, which Ireland claims are inadequate, were in fact "amply robust to cope with any credible threat".

Mr Daniel Bethlehem said Ireland was seeking "some flexible notion of the law ... to make life difficult for those with whom they take issue, even if their claims have no substance".

In his rebuttal, Mr Eoin Fitzsimons, for Ireland, produced a report from a 1985 Select Committee of the House of Commons. It said that a quarter of a tonne of plutonium from "huge volumes of liquid waste from the Sellafield pipeline ... \had made the Irish Sea the most radioactive sea in the world".

Mr Phillipe Sands, for Ireland, said the United Kingdom believed it "has the right to continue polluting the Irish Sea as it has done for 40 years".

"No account can be taken of Ireland's interests once the MOX plant begins to spew out its radioactive pollution after December 20th," he said.

Mr Sands asked the tribunal to recognise that Ireland had rights under the 1982 convention, and that these rights would be prejudiced by the opening of the MOX plant.

The 21-judge tribunal will return its judgment on December 3rd.


-------- depleted uranium

"Downwind : Depleted Uranium Weapons in the Age of Virtual War" (2001) 50 minutes

http://www.pinholepictures.com/

Downwind draws a line from Hiroshima through the Nevada nuclear test site to the sands of Iraq and Kuwait, where thousands of soldiers and civilians were exposed to toxic, irradiating dust particles by the use of depleted Uranium tank penetrators. Used extensively in the 1991 Gulf War, in Bosnia, and in Kosovo, these DU weapons have already been sent to Afghanistan. There is little indication that the U.S. military has warned soldiers and civilians about the possible adverse health and environmental effects. Downwind raises questions about the true human cost when the desire for total victory outweighs the moral obligations of humanitarian intervention.

----

DYING OF THIRST
Bombing Afghan water supplies

by Fred Pearce
New Scientist 17 Nov page 7
From: "Dai Williams" <eosuk@btinternet.com>

The plight of Afghans will get even worse if water-supply tunnels are targeted with bunker-busting bombs.

The US bombing raids on Afghanistan could dramatically increase water shortages in this drought-stricken country.

Military authorities are increasingly talking of introducing a new phase to the bombing campaign, using "bunker bombs" to flush out Osama bin Laden, his Al-Qaida group and Taliban fighters from hillside tunnels that riddle the landscape. These same ancient tunnels are a vital source of water for hundreds of villages.

(Full article may be available at http://www.newscientist.com in next 2-3 days).

==

This may explain why bombing continues after most of the Taliban have retreated.

Fred Pearce's report adds urgency to my question to the US and UK governments - What is the dense metal that the GBU-37 bunker buster bombs (and other hard target guided weapons e.g. GBU-24, AGM-86D etc) rely on for their penetration effect?

If water supply tunnels are bombed with DU weapons (1.9 ton dense metal penetrator per GBU 37) they may perpetually poison these water supplies. If they intend to send troops into these underground tunnels to flush out Taliban or Al Queda troops after using DU weapons they will need to operate in full NBC equipment if they are not to risk severe uranium oxide contamination.

This also means that water supplies in the affected regions could be extremely hazardous to the aid teams and troops that the US, UK and other Governments are planning to send to Afghanistan. The DU question must be put to all Governments and aid organisations involved and preferably to the UN. Water pollution monitoring seems an immediate precaution.

Dai Williams eosuk@btinternet.com

-------- europe

New nuclear-fuel shipment reaches Poland
en route to Czech Republic's Temelin plant

Wednesday, November 21, 2001
By Andrzej Stylinski,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11212001/ap_45634.asp

WARSAW, Poland - A shipment of uranium fuel bound for a Czech plant that is a source of friction with nuclear-free Austria was transferred to a train Tuesday in the Polish port of Szczecin, a city official said.

It is believed to be the second shipment of fuel from the United States to be transported across Poland to the new Temelin plant, 60 kilometers (35 miles) north of the Austrian border.

A similar shipment last April drew protests from Polish environmentalists. It was disclosed only after it was under way, and the route across Poland was kept secret. Poland has no nuclear power plants.

Szczecin authorities were informed of the current shipment by the governor of Zachodniopomorskie province in northwestern Poland, said Sylwia Kalwaryjska, a spokeswoman for the city.

Witold Lada, deputy president of the Polish Atomic Agency, said the fuel rods were packed in special containers and posed no environmental threat. The shipment was expected to leave Poland by late Wednesday, traveling with special police protection. Lada said its route wouldn't be disclosed.

The state rail company, PKP, confirmed in a statement that it was transporting a shipment of 20 containers, weighing about 33 tons.

The Temelin plant is a Soviet-type facility upgraded with Western technology. Testing started last year, but the plant has been shut down several times because of technical problems. It currently is undergoing a weeklong inspection under the direction of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

A spokesman for the Czech energy concern CEZ, Ladislav Kriz, said any information on a possible shipment of nuclear rods for Temelin would be classified. He acknowledged, however, that any such shipment would be coming from the United States.

The environmental group Greenpeace said Tuesday that the shipment left the port of Norfolk, Va., Nov. 2 aboard the vessel Capricorn, the Austria News Agency reported.

-------- france

France Deploys Missiles at Key Site

The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 20, 2001; 12:45 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58633-2001Nov20?language=printer

PARIS -- The French military has increased the number of surface-to-air missiles stationed near a key nuclear processing site in western France, a precaution against airborne suicide attacks following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, an Air Force official said.

The new installment of anti-aircraft missile defense systems near La Hague - the site of Europe's largest nuclear waste reprocessing plant - is intended to bolster missiles already moved into place near the site last month.

An Air Force official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the additional deployment was part of the normal development of the defense plan for the region.

The official added that there had been no threat against France and the measures were purely precautionary.

The missiles were placed about a mile from the plant, a top regional official said.

In October, the Defense Ministry said that radar systems capable of detecting low-flying planes and surface-to-air missiles had been positioned at La Hague and at a military base for nuclear submarines at Ile Longue, off the Brittany coast in northwest France.

France has been bolstering defense in the northwest since the Sept. 11 attacks, because many of the country's air bases are located in the south.

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

Man Faces Charges on Nuclear Devices

By Andrew Bridges
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2001; 5:07 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56771-2001Nov20?language=printer

LOS ANGELES -- A man who eluded authorities for 16 years was back in a U.S. courtroom to face charges of illegally exporting nuclear weapons triggers to Israel.

The brief hearing Monday was the first court appearance for Richard Kelly Smyth since he and his wife fled before his 1985 pretrial hearing. He was arrested in Spain in July and extradited to the United States on Friday.

Smyth, 72, was charged in a 30-count indictment with illegally exporting about $60,000 worth of krytrons - two-inch triggering devices that can be used in nuclear weapons.

Krytrons can't be exported without a license or written approval from the State Department. Smyth, who had been president of Milco International Inc., is accused of preparing false documentation for the export of roughly 800 of the tubelike devices, which authorities say were sent abroad in 15 shipments between January 1980 and December 1982.

During Monday's hearing, Smyth told U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olguin he understood the charges against him. He was ordered to return to court for another hearing next Monday.

His attorney, James Riddet, declined comment.

Smyth, who faces up to 105 years in jail, pleaded innocent in 1985 before fleeing while free on $100,000 bail. Although he had surrendered his passport, he managed to leave the United States for Spain, where he and his wife had lived in the same Malaga apartment since the mid-1980s.

"We weren't going to have him go to jail for 105 years," his wife, Emilie, said Monday.

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

Agency resists call for drug stockpiles

USA Today
11/21/2001
By Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-21-nukes.htm

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is resisting congressional efforts to stockpile potassium iodide tablets near nuclear power plants in case a terrorist attack releases deadly radiation.

The commission plans to fund only a limited purchase of the drug, which reduces the threat of thyroid cancer after exposure to radiation. It would be available to states that request it, once the Food and Drug Administration issues guidelines on appropriate dosages.

The commission's resistance has led some members of Congress to seek a stockpile through legislation or by transferring jurisdiction to the Department of Health and Human Services. "In this new age of terrorism, in which the threat of an intentional release of radioactivity can no longer be ignored, we should waste no more time studying the problem," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.

The commission began studying the use of potassium iodide after the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. In 1985, it decided that stockpiling was not necessary.

But since Sept. 11, concerns that a terrorist strike might cause radiation exposure have led some lawmakers to urge that the drug be stockpiled across the country.

There are 103 operating nuclear reactors at 64 sites in 31 states. They produce radioactive iodine, which could be released by an accident or act of terrorism. The iodine can cause thyroid cancer or other thyroid diseases. Children are most susceptible to thyroid cancer because their thyroid glands are small. A few tablets of potassium iodide keep the thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine, significantly reducing its risks. But the drug does not lessen other effects of radiation exposure, such as leukemia or skin cancer.

Commission spokeswoman Susan Gagner said the commission is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop guidelines for using potassium iodide as part of the response to nuclear exposure.

"Evacuation is still the preferred and primary emergency measure, then sheltering," Gagner said. "We don't want people to think that they take potassium iodide and that's it."

Potassium iodide costs 3 to 5 cents a tablet. The NRC set aside $400,000 for 2001 and is seeking the same amount for 2002, but no purchases have been made.

The FDA ruled in 1978 that potassium iodide was safe and effective in the event of radiation exposure. Two companies have been authorized by the FDA to manufacture the drug, but only Alabama, Arizona, New Hampshire and Tennessee have stockpiles.

Some lawmakers have asked HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson to take jurisdiction and begin a stockpiling program. But Thompson told reporters from USA TODAY and Gannett News Service on Tuesday that he would not assume jurisdiction. He said HHS might include potassium iodide in "push packets," the pre-packaged crates of drugs and medical equipment that the government sends to disaster sites.

Legislation pushed by Markey and Rep. Phil English, R-Pa., would require that potassium iodide be stockpiled in homes and public facilities within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, and at community stockpiles up to 200 miles away.

---

Federal Control Will Be Sought for Protection of Nuclear Plants

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/nyregion/21NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday

BUCHANAN, N.Y., Nov. 20 - The federal government should assume responsibility for protecting the country's nuclear power plants to safeguard them from terrorist attack, a group of Democratic members of Congress from New York said today.

Speaking outside the Indian Point nuclear plant here, the lawmakers - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Representatives Nita M. Lowey and Eliot L. Engel - said they planned to introduce legislation that would include the creation of a security force within the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Mrs. Clinton also proposed to expand the evacuation zone around nuclear plants to 50 miles from 10 miles, along with other measures to protect people living close to the plants.

The federalization of airport security ignited a fierce debate in Congress before a compromise was reached. But so far, the Democrats' proposal, whose details remain vague, has not drawn a clear response. Security at the nation's 103 nuclear plants is handled by each plant's owner, or a subcontractor, and that arrangement has not drawn serious criticism.

David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said federalizing security at the plants would probably be helpful, because security is uneven, with some owners doing the job well and others cutting back to save money.

"Having federal oversight would tend to be better than what we've had in the past," he said.

Spokesmen for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Entergy, the company that owns Indian Point, said they supported better security but that it was too early to comment on the proposals.

Several elected officials have urged tighter security measures at nuclear plants since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, including Senator Charles E. Schumer, who toured Indian Point last week. But none have yet proposed that the job be federalized.

"I don't think a piecemeal approach to security is what the people of Westchester or New York is really asking for," said Mrs. Clinton, who plans to co-sponsor a bill next week with Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. "We're asking for a comprehensive approach."

The bill also calls for an expansion of the evacuation zone, and new measures to toughen the simulated terrorist attacks the federal government already conducts periodically on nuclear plants to evaluate their safety. Mrs. Clinton said she would also propose stockpiling potassium iodide, which helps to prevent cancer and other diseases among people exposed to radiation.

Safety measures have been enhanced at all of the nation's nuclear plants since Sept. 11. At Indian Point, National Guard troops can still be seen and the Coast Guard has patrolled the Hudson nearby. But many believe that the plant's proximity to New York makes it inherently dangerous. About 20 million people live within 50 miles of the plant, and two weeks ago four members of Congress and a number of officials signed a petition urging that Indian Point be closed until its safety could be guaranteed.

Expanding the evacuation zone to 50 miles would include New York City, which is 30 miles to the south. Mrs. Clinton did not offer details but said "the direction and force of the wind" would be the major determinant of where an evacuation would be needed. The evacuation plan has become a sore point for many people in Westchester County who believe that it would not work in a serious accident.

Many questions about the proposals remained unanswered, including their cost. "I don't think you can put a price tag on real security and peace of mind," Mrs. Clinton said.

---

THE ENGINEERS' REPORT
Panel Suggests More Sharing of Research

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By KENNETH CHANG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/national/21ACAD.html?searchpv=nytToday

The Department of Defense should share more information with civilian engineers on constructing bomb-resistant buildings, a panel of engineering experts said yesterday.

The Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which has conducted extensive research on protecting buildings from bomb blasts, should "spend some time and money to get their information and put it in a format that is easily accessible and understandable," said Dr. Mete A. Sozen, a professor of structural engineering at Purdue University.

Dr. Sozen headed the 14-member panel, which was convened by the National Research Council. The committee's work had been mostly completed before Sept. 11, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did not change the committee's recommendations, Dr. Sozen said.

Though a handful of engineering firms possess bomb-blast expertise, most engineers and architects are not familiar with how to incorporate protective technology in commercial buildings.

The committee also recommended that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency work with professional organizations like the American Society of Civil Engineers to add bomb- resistant features to their sample codes, on which state and local governments base their building codes.

"We probably had two main points," said Dr. Eugene Sevin, an independent consultant in Lyndhurst, Ohio, and a member of the committee. "One is the government should be more proactive in dealing with industry. The second thing is that there are serious barriers to providing blast mitigation. That has to change somehow."

Douglas Sunshine, manager of the agency's blast mitigation program, said he could not comment on the report because he had not yet seen it.

The agency's research has included carefully monitored explosions at a full-size model of an office building at the Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The explosions tested new designs for shatterproof windows, retrofitted concrete columns and a reinforced mailroom.

"Right now, the test data is not generally available," Mr. Sunshine said. He added that the agency would like to spread the information about techniques to strengthen buildings, but without data that could be helpful to terrorists, like how strong a blast a building could withstand.

"There's a balance between what you can get out and you can't get out," Mr. Sunshine said.

-------- us nuc politics

LIBERTIES
Blessings and Bombings

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By MAUREEN DOWD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/opinion/21DOWD.html

WASHINGTON -- In "The Crack-Up," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

So now we know for sure that George W. Bush has a first-rate intelligence.

The president, his team and the rest of us have been juggling a lot of contradictory notions since Sept. 11.

Many who came of age during the Vietnam War, wincing at America's overweening military stance in the world, are now surprised to find themselves lustily rooting for the overwhelming display of force against the Taliban.

Over the years the country's ethos had gone from John Wayne to Jerry Springer, from gunfighter nation to anger-management nation, rugged frontier mentality to designer lifestyle mentality.

Once we prided ourselves on being strong and silent. Then we got weak and chatty. And now we seem to be evolving to strong and chatty.

We are pulverizing our enemies even as we try to show them a little compassion, crushing our foes even as we try to understand and address some of their grievances against us.

We are functioning holding opposing ideas, new ones every day.

The president invited 52 Muslim diplomats to a traditional lamb and rice dinner at the White House Monday to wish them "a blessed Ramadan," even as the U.S. bombed Muslims in Afghanistan over Ramadan.

The president urged Americans to travel and act normally as they celebrated the holiday season, even as the White House and the Capitol were closed to public tours, and the audience for the lighting of the national Christmas tree was limited to ticket holders for the first time.

George Bush was rooting out Osama bin Laden from underground even as Dick Cheney was burrowing underground.

The president continued to cozy up to the Saudis and protect them with American forces, even though the Saudis were educating, exporting and financing terrorists.

Administration officials made the argument that the Saudis are bad rulers but great allies, even as their bad rule threatened us more than their allied behavior helped us.

The president told aides not to press the Saudis to change the strict Islamic teaching in schools that encourages young men to die for Allah and hate Western infidels. "We didn't go to the American Methodists about Tim McVeigh," Mr. Bush said to aides. This even as the president told the Muslim diplomats dining at the White House that the holidays were "a good time for people of different faiths to learn more about each other."

Condoleezza Rice urged that women be included in the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan and have equal rights. "When women are fully incorporated, a country is better off for it," she said. This even as our allies, the Northern Alliance, did not let any women into the reopened 600-seat movie theater in Kabul to see the Afghan film "Uruj," about three mujahedeen heroes who fought the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (No date movies or chick flicks for these guys.)

The president christened the Justice Department building for the antiwar presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy, even as the U.S. was waging a war. John Ashcroft sought to link his assault on terrorism, with its heightened surveillance and wiretaps, with his Democratic predecessor's assault on organized crime. But Kerry Kennedy Cuomo declared publicly yesterday that her father would never have swallowed the restrictions on civil liberties that the Bush attorney general is pushing.

The president continued to espouse the conservative orthodoxy of keeping the federal government from growing, even as he breathed a sigh of relief when Congress voted to turn airport screeners into federal employees, thus saving the Republicans a political beating on the issue.

After Sept. 11, Mr. Bush promised $20 billion to New York for reconstruction, but the White House says the city has gotten enough for now, though only about half of it may be in hand. No bailouts for big business was a Bush principle, but the White House speedily funneled money to the airlines and limited payouts for insurance companies, both politically powerful industries.

Mr. Bush definitely has a talent for holding opposed ideas in his mind. But then, he did start as a compassionate conservative.

-------- us nuc waste

Nuke firms behind U.S. Chamber's pro-Yucca campaign
Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste repository

Las Vegas Sun
By Benjamin Grove <grove@lasvegassun.com>
Nov. 21, 2001
http://www.lasvegassun.com/dossier/nuke/

WASHINGTON -- A national alliance of energy companies that includes nuclear utilities led the effort to craft the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's lobbying campaign to promote Yucca Mountain.

The U.S. Chamber manages the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, but officials are releasing few behind-the-scenes details about how the lobbying initiative was developed -- or specifically who developed it. The campaign was announced last week at a Washington press conference.

What's clear is that the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the federal plan to ship 77,000 tons of the nation's nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, was not contacted for input. The local chamber withdrew its U.S. Chamber membership over the issue Monday.

"There are those times when good organizations disagree on policy, and this is one of those times," said J.P. Moery, a U.S. Chamber vice president. "Obviously we wish they had not withdrawn their membership over a single issue."

The Yucca Mountain plan is backed by nuclear power companies, but Nevada officials oppose it. Nuclear power companies have long demanded that the Department of Energy, which manages the proposed Yucca project, honor a legal commitment to haul their high-level waste to a national dump.

The Yucca plan has not been approved by Congress, the president or Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The U.S. Chamber and energy alliance on Thursday launched the campaign led by high-profile figureheads Geraldine Ferraro and John Sununu to urge final approvals of the Yucca plan.

Leaders of the energy alliance developed the strategy, Moery said. The alliance is a group of 1,200 members including the nation's top nuclear lobby group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and nuclear power companies including the Southern Co., Duke Energy and Exelon Corp.

U.S. Chamber officials said details were not available about how the initiative was developed but said the Las Vegas Chamber was not contacted about it. Energy alliance leader and U.S. Chamber vice president Bruce Josten has not been available for comment this week, U.S. Chamber officials said.

Like the Las Vegas group, local Chamber of Commerce chapters in cities on nuclear waste transportation routes had no input in developing the U.S. Chamber strategy.

But unlike the Las Vegas chamber, other chapters contacted by the Sun have limited interest in the issue. They don't mind that their parent group is promoting a plan to ship high-level waste to Nevada through their cities, several chamber leaders said.

The Gary, Ind., Chamber of Commerce has no formal position on the federal plan to ship waste through town bound for permanent burial at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"From what I have read and hear, they are providing for safe (waste transportation)," Gary Chamber board chairman Ross Amundson said. "How safe is a subject of some scrutiny. Apparently the U.S. Chamber thinks it's safe."

No pro-Yucca nuclear utilities belong to the Gary chamber, but Indiana relies on nuclear-generated electricity from neighboring states, Amundson said. He believes the nation needs a national nuclear waste repository and supports the Yucca plan.

"I support the U.S. Chamber," Amundson added.

The Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce does not have much regular contact with the U.S. Chamber, although it is a member of the parent group, president and CEO Lou Burgher said.

"If they had called me, I certainly would have been supportive of the (Yucca) project," Burgher said. "We've always got the problem of not-in-my-backyard. It's got to go somewhere."

Nearly 8,000 casks could be shipped near Omaha, according to an estimate by the anti-Yucca Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"To the best of my knowledge, (waste shipping) goes on now, and we haven't had any problems," Burgher said. "I'm more concerned about anhydrous ammonia being spilled than I am about nuclear waste shipments."

The St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association has no formal position on Yucca, even though 4,800 casks of nuclear waste in the coming years could be transported on trucks and trains near St. Louis, according to Nevada estimates.

"It just hasn't risen to a level of taking a formal position," said Tom Irwin, a St. Louis chamber vice president. The chamber's president and CEO Dick Fleming is not familiar with the details of the Yucca plan, Irwin said.

A spokeswoman for the Missouri state chapter of the Chamber of Commerce said the chapter's officers were not familiar with the Yucca project or the new U.S. Chamber initiative.

The U.S. Chamber has had a pro-Yucca position for about 12 years, Moery said. The new lobbying campaign is still being developed, U.S. Chamber spokeswoman Linda Rozett said.

The chamber enlisted former Democratic vice presidential candidate Ferraro and former President George Bush chief-of-staff Sununu to lead the effort. Rozett would not say if Ferraro and Sununu were being paid. She would not say how they were chosen.

Ferraro, of New York, and Sununu, of New Hampshire, hail from states with nuclear power plants.


-------- MILITARY

US warned on human rights over treatment of troops

War on Terrorism: Kunduz and Kandahar

By Robert Verkaik,
Legal Affairs Correspondent
21 November 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=105976

America would be in breach of its international obligations if it allowed the Northern Alliance to refuse to accept the surrender of Taliban soldiers in the Afghan cities of Kunduz and Kandahar, lawyers and human rights groups have warned.

They said that under international law America could be held responsible for genocide if Taliban troops were massacred despite offering to surrender. Under the Geneva Convention, it is illegal to give no quarter to the enemy.

Richard Gordon QC, an international human rights barrister, said: "The US does bear some responsibility for ensuring [the Taliban troops] are treated humanely because [the US] are effectively in control."

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, has warned United Nations and anti-Taliban fighters not to let Taliban and al-Qa'ida hardliners negotiate flight from Afghanistan to "make their mischief" else-where. He also opposed any settlement that might permit the surrender and ultimate release of Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters now trapped in the besieged cities of Kunduz in the north and Kandahar in the south.

Human Rights Watch is also concerned by reports of large-scale summary executions of would-be Taliban defectors by foreign fighters in Kunduz.

-------- afghanistan

Aid projects intended to produce quick results

USA Today
11/21/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/21/afghan-aid.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The international effort to rebuild Afghanistan will begin with projects designed to achieve results within 100 days, the State Department said Wednesday. Projects could include agricultural development, demining, community development, education, health care and civil and social service development, department spokesman Richard Boucher said. He said the plan emerged from an Afghanistan reconstruction meeting in Washington on Tuesday that was attended by representatives of more than 20 countries and international organizations.

The rebuilding process is expected to start once stability is restored to Afghanistan. Planning meetings will take place in a variety of places in the coming weeks.

Boucher said he has not seen a dollar figure attached to the reconstruction effort.

One encouraging sign that normalcy may be returning is the repatriation of an estimated 12,000 Afghans from Iran, he said. This represents a tiny fraction of the overall refugee population, much of which is located in Pakistan.

He suggested that some of the Iran-based Afghans many have opted for an early return because snow soon will close the passes between the two countries.

Boucher said their return also "is a sign that there are areas of Afghanistan now to which people are able to return and not fear the oppression of the Taliban."

------

U.S. moves to seal escape routes for bin Laden

USA Today
11/21/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/21/escape.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The United States and its allies moved to seal off potential escape routes Osama bin Laden could use to leave Afghanistan, while a spokesman for the Taliban said Wednesday the Islamic militia no longer knew the terror suspect's whereabouts. "They keep tracking and dodging and bobbing and weaving, and we're looking," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said when asked how close the military was to finding bin Laden and his terrorist cohorts. Taliban spokesman Syed Tayyab Agha said the Taliban have "no idea" where bin Laden, the top suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States, was located. "There is no relation right now. There is no communication," he told journalists in the southern Afghanistan border town of Spinboldak, in Taliban-controlled territory.

Agha vowed that the Taliban would fight to keep the one-quarter of Afghanistan they still hold, particularly the southern city of Kandahar. But Taliban commanders in Kunduz - the last city held by the militia in the north - held negotiations Wednesday with the alliance for the city's surrender.

CNN, reporting from the site of the talks in Mazar-e-Sharif, said a Taliban deputy defense minister, Muhammed Fazil Mazlon, agreed that forces under his command at Kunduz - both Afghan Taliban and foreign fighters loyal to bin Laden - would surrender. Details of a deal were not yet worked out, CNN reported. In Washington, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lt. Col. Thomas Rheinlander, said he had no information about such a deal.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-led coalition moved to cut off a potential escape route for bin Laden if he manages to slip out of landlocked Afghanistan into neighboring Pakistan.

The U.S. Navy gave notice Tuesday that it will stop and board merchant shipping off the Pakistani coast if the ships are suspected of carrying him or other al-Qa'eda leaders, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said Wednesday in Washington.

Gen. Peter Pace, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the Navy so far has not stopped and boarded any ships off of Pakistan. He said there was no specific information indicating that terrorist leaders will try to flee by sea.

The Navy has a large fleet in the northern Arabian Sea able to interdict shipping, but the long, sparsely populated Pakistani coast is ideal for smugglers, with many places where small boats can pick up passengers. The only major port is Karachi, also home to several hardline Islamic parties that support the Taliban and bin Laden, and the towns of Omara and Pasni have harbors that could take small boats - but otherwise there are few natural harbors.

U.S. forces have destroyed two or three enemy aircraft in recent weeks, but officials do not know if they were carrying Taliban or al-Qa'eda leaders trying to flee Afghanistan, Pace said at the Pentagon.

As many as 1,500 Marines specially trained for complex missions such as counterterrorism probably will be sent to Afghanistan soon, perhaps this week, a senior U.S. official said, though no final decision has been made on their use. The Marines could provide security for other U.S. forces or help Army and Air Force special operations troops expand the search for bin Laden.

President Bush launched the campaign against the Taliban in early October for their refusal to hand over bin Laden. After weeks of U.S. bombing against Taliban positions, a Northern Alliance advance swept the Islamic militia out of almost all the north and took Kabul on Nov. 13.

The U.S.-backed Northern Alliance has agreed to attend power-sharing talks for a post-Taliban government in Bonn, Germany next week, and the search is on for leaders to represent the dominant Pashtun ethnic group.

On Wednesday, Bush told cheering U.S. troops at Fort Campbell, Ky., that the United States had "made a good start in Afghanistan, yet there is still a lot to be done."

"There are still terrorists on the loose in Afghanistan, yet we will find and destroy their network piece by piece," he said.

Gen. Tommy Franks, who is commanding the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan, said the allies would keep up relentless pressure to bring about the fall of the Taliban's last redoubts. "We need to complete the work in Kandahar ... and most importantly we need to complete the destruction of the al-Qa'eda terrorist network," he said.

Franks said the siege of Kunduz would end in defeat for its defenders: Taliban forces and fighters loyal to bin Laden.

"I don't know how long that battle will continue, but at the end of the day, we will prevail in the city of Kunduz," said Franks.

Franks was speaking in Uzbekistan after meeting top leaders of the Northern Alliance across the border in Afghanistan. to discuss the war effort. Pace said Franks also told the two leaders - Gen. Rashid Dostum in Mazar-e-Sharif and alliance defense minister Mohammed Fahim - "that if there are prisoners, they should be humanely treated."

There was little activity on the Kunduz battle front Wednesday, either in the skies or on the ground.

U.S. officials said they had no independent confirmation of any surrender at Kunduz, said one administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Gen. Dostum has been meeting with some Afghan Taliban leaders outside of Kunduz, the official said, but it is unclear who these leaders speak for.

The alliance's main commander in the north, Atta Mohammed, said terms of any surrender deal with Afghan Taliban fighters in Kunduz would not necessarily apply to several thousand Arab, Pakistani and Chechen fighters loyal to bin Laden holed up with the Taliban.

Rumsfeld has said the al-Qa'eda fighters should not be allowed to escape Kunduz and should either be killed or taken prisoner.

Refugees fleeing Kunduz have said the foreign fighters were preventing a Taliban surrender and shooting would-be defectors.

Over the past week, ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders from across the border in Pakistan have been trying to persuade the Taliban to surrender Kandahar in the south. Coalition spokesman Kenton Keith told reporters in Islamabad that Taliban control over Kandahar was "loosening."

Agha, the Taliban spokesman, insisted the militia would hold out in the city where their movement was born. "We will not give any chance to anybody to disturb our Islamic rule in Kandahar and other provinces," Agha said, adding that the militia's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was safe in a secret location.

He said America and its allies "should forget the 11 September attacks" because Afghans had nothing to do with them.

"The attacks have taken place in America and the people who performed and did the attacks, they were in America, so this is not something connecting with Afghanistan," he said. "This is not our problem."

That drew a sharp response from U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "I can assure them we will not forget about Sept. 11," Wolfowitz said in Washington. "We are moving on, and I think before long the world will forget about the Taliban."

---

Taliban vow to fight on

11/21/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/21/attacks.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The Taliban vowed Wednesday to stand and fight on their home ground, but the U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan said the allies would drive them from their stronghold of Kandahar and destroy Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Having clinched control of three-quarters of the country, anti-Taliban forces were preparing to talk about how to govern Afghanistan. The northern alliance, which controls the capital and the largest share of territory, has agreed to attend power-sharing talks in Germany next week, and the search was on for leaders to represent the dominant Pashtun ethnic group.

A spokesman for the top Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, said the Taliban would defend territory they still control - including their home base, Kandahar - after a week of sweeping retreats across Afghanistan.

"They have decided to defend the presently controlled areas," said the spokesman, Syed Tayyad Agha. "We will try our best and we will defend our nation ... and we will not give any chance to anybody to disturb our Islamic rule in Kandahar and other provinces."

At a news conference in the Afghan border town of Spinboldak, the spokesman also claimed - as the militia has claimed before - to know nothing about bin Laden's whereabouts.

"We have no idea where he is," Agha said. "There is no relation right now. There is no communication."

The American commander of the military campaign in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks, told reporters in Uzbekistan that U.S.-led forces would keep up the pressure on the Taliban and al-Qa'eda to the end.

"We need to complete the work in Kandahar ... and most importantly we need to complete the destruction of the al-Qa'eda terrorist network," he said.

Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, said he was confident a $25 million reward for bin Laden's capture will help locate the suspected terrorist.

"I believe the incentives that have been placed on the table will in fact lead to information that will assist us in this effort," he said.

In London, the U.S. special envoy to Central Asia said opinion among the anti-Taliban forces was "less divergent and more convergent than I expected." James F. Dobbin had held talks with northern alliance leaders in Afghanistan on Monday.

The northern alliance "said they are ready to form a new, broad-based government, recognizing it would have to have full southern and Pashtun participation" he said.

The Taliban spokesman, meanwhile, suggested that the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan and Muslim suffering elsewhere had counterbalanced the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which killed about 4,000 people.

"You should forget the 11 September attacks because now there is new fighting against Muslims and Islam," Agha said, because "the international and global terrorists like America and Britain ... are killing daily our innocent people."

President Bush launched the military campaign against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his alleged role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Franks said the siege of the northern city of Kunduz - the last Taliban redoubt in the north - would end in defeat for its defenders: Taliban forces and fighters loyal to bin Laden.

"I don't know how long that battle will continue, but at the end of the day, we will prevail in the city of Kunduz," said Franks.

He traveled into northern Afghanistan Tuesday night to meet with anti-Taliban leaders - the first trip inside the country by such a senior U.S. military official.

The northern alliance's Gen. Mohammed Daoud said late Tuesday he was optimistic that he could finish brokering surrender of Afghan Taliban at Kunduz, perhaps within a day.

"We are hopeful that (Wednesday) will be the conclusion of talks," he said in the northern city of Taloqan.

Talks have been carried out in the no-man's land between Taliban and northern alliance front lines east of Kunduz, and were resuming Wednesday. Daoud has been negotiating with the Taliban commander of Kunduz, Dadullah, and former deputy defense minister Mullah Fazil Muslimyar.

Daoud said the talks are being carried out independently of the foreign fighters holed up at Kunduz - mostly Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis loyal to bin Laden - and that there have been no negotiations with them.

The alliance's main commander in the north said the Taliban were being increasingly squeezed. But Atta Mohammed, speaking by phone from the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, suggested there would be little mercy for those fighters loyal to bin Laden.

"We can't guarantee the safety of the foreign fighters because they have created a humanitarian calamity in Afghanistan," he said. U.S. bombing of Taliban positions outside Kunduz was light despite clear skies, with only a few bombs dropped by heavy warplanes and by smaller attack aircraft.

Also Wednesday, the bodies of four journalists dragged from their cars and killed by gunmen in eastern Afghanistan on Monday arrived in Pakistan with a Red Cross convoy. Two were from the Reuters news agency, one from the Italian daily Corriere della Sera and one from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

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Taliban may surrender Kunduz, talks continue

USA Today
11/21/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/21/taliban-kandahar.htm

TALOQAN, Afghanistan (AP) - A lull in fighting Wednesday allowed northern alliance forces to retrieve the bodies of fallen fighters near Kunduz, the Taliban's sole bastion in the north, as commanders tried to negotiate a surrender and avert what they say would be a bloody assault. Taliban commanders held negotiations over Kunduz with the alliance in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Haron Amin, a northern alliance spokesman in Washington, said that a final deal had not been reached. Amin told The Associated Press that the main obstacle was the presence of foreign fighters in Kunduz supporting the al-Qaida and Taliban. CNN, reporting from Mazar-e-Sharif, said a Taliban deputy defense minister, Muhammed Fazil Mazlon, agreed that forces under his command at Kunduz - both Afghan Taliban and foreign fighters - would surrender. Details of a deal were not yet worked out, CNN reported.

Along with Taliban forces, some 3,000 foreign fighters are holed up in Kunduz, according to Northern Alliance commanders, and they have vowed to fight to the end because of fears that a surrender would mean their certain death.

Amin said negotiators have discussed giving the foriegners amnesty and allowing them free passage to leave Kunduz, but the foreigners seem to "want to fight to the end unless the Taliban can convince them not to."

But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said U.S. officials don't want the foreign fighters to escape. "It would be most unfortunate if the foreigners in Afghanistan - the al Qaida and the Chechens and others who have been there working with the Taliban - if those folks were set free and in any way allowed to go to another country and cause the same kind of terrorist acts," he said on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Northern Alliance fighters ventured into no man's land just east of the besieged city to retrieve the bodies of nine fighters killed in a battle last week. A sniper opened fire when the troops returned for more bodies, but aside from that burst, the Taliban side was eerily silent.

The skies over Kunduz were clear, but the U.S. bombing of Taliban positions outside the city was also light. Only a few bombs were dropped by heavy planes and smaller attack aircraft.

The Northern Alliance swept across most of northern Afghanistan and entered the capital, Kabul, last week in an offensive that left the Taliban in control of only two major cities - Kandahar, in the south, and Kunduz, where a standoff has dragged on amid surrender talks.

The standoff continued Wednesday, with Northern Alliance forces holding artillery and tank positions atop high dirt ridges leading to the front line separating the two sides. When they fired on Taliban-held ridges ahead of them, there was no response.

And when a band of Northern Alliance fighters went down the road into no man's land, chanting "Kunduz, Kunduz," nothing happened.

The alliance has said its forces will launch an assault to take the city if the Taliban do not surrender it by Friday.

The alliance's Gen. Mohammed Daoud said late Tuesday he was optimistic that he could broker the surrender of the Taliban at Kunduz.

"We are hopeful that (Wednesday) will be the conclusion of talks," he said in the northern city of Taloqan.

Daoud has been negotiating with the Taliban commander of Kunduz, Dadullah, and former Taliban deputy defense minister Mullah Fazil Muslimyar.

Daoud said the talks are being carried out independently of the foreign fighters in at Kunduz - mostly Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis loyal to terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden - and that there have been no negotiations with them.

Refugees and defectors have said the foreign fighters have been preventing the Afghan Taliban from surrendering Kunduz.

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Militants warn against Kunduz killings

November 21, 2001
UPI
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/21112001-043314-8114r.htm

Muslim militants in Pakistan warned the government Wednesday that it will face a violent reaction at home if hundreds of Pakistani and other foreign Taliban fighters stranded in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz are killed.

"The United Nations and the government must do something to save those fighters," said a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Council.

The council represents more than a dozen religious parties in Pakistan and was formed after Oct. 7 when U.S. launched military strikes against Afghanistan's Taliban rulers for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden. A Saudi fugitive, bin Laden is the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.

"There will be a bloodbath in Kunduz if the international community did not intervene," the spokesman said.

An estimated 12,000 Taliban have been trapped in Kunduz, the last Taliban enclave in northern Afghanistan, including about 3,000 Pakistani, Arab, Chechen and Uzbek fighters.

Taliban leaders have offered to surrender to the United Nations instead of the rival Northern Alliance which surrounds the city. The alliance has offered a safe passage to Afghan Taliban soldiers but has pledged not to spare the foreign fighters.

The United Nations has rejected the offer saying it does not have the resources to accommodate thousands of prisoners of war.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has also refused to accept the Taliban soldiers saying that the United States did not have enough troops in Afghanistan to accept the surrender.

----

Change of target saved hundreds of Taliban soldiers

November 21, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011121-30720058.htm

The Pentagon lost an opportunity to kill hundreds of Taliban soldiers with the world's biggest conventional bomb when the target was changed in midmission, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.

The U.S. military has dropped two of the 15,000-pound BLU-82 "daisy cutter" weapons during the air campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda terror network in Afghanistan.

The weapon's massive explosion delivers a 600-yard-wide swath of destruction and can unnerve an enemy force.

On one of the two missions late last month, U.S. Central Command, which oversees the war, picked as a target a concentration of Taliban troops that had moved into a civilian area and turned the buildings into their garrison.

"Central Command watches these sites, and when intelligence confirms it has become a Taliban military site, it orders a strike," the official said.

A decision was made to drop one daisy cutter out of a C-130 cargo plane to kill "in the hundreds" of Taliban, the intelligence official said. But in midmission, the pilot was given new coordinates for a target in barren territory where "no confirmed Taliban existed," the official said.

He said he supported using the weapon, even if dropped near, instead of on, the enemy because the BLU-82's huge explosion and mushroom cloud can unnerve the opposition.

The official said he believed the target was changed because of a fear that civilians might be killed - even though planners had studied the site for days and confirmed it as a military one. He suggested the order to change the target came from Washington.

The official said he was disclosing the mission because the United States lost a chance to eliminate Taliban fighters who he presumes continue to fight today and who may wage a guerrilla war on any new post-Taliban government in Kabul.

The Washington Times submitted detailed questions about the "daisy cutter" mission to spokesmen for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who heads Central Command and approves each day's target list. Both spokesmen declined to comment.

Mr. Rumsfeld on Monday told reporters that Gen. Franks has wide latitude to pick targets. He said that in any war, planners must weigh a target's value against the civilian damage that might be inflicted in a bombing.

The defense secretary said Gen. Franks "has to balance the question of doing the maximum amount to kill people on the ground who might be part of al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, against trying to avoid so much collateral damage and blowing up of mosques and the like, that he ends up creating a feeling against the United States and the coalition forces on the ground in Afghanistan. So he makes a series of judgments."

Pentagon officials say air planners worked hard to avoid hitting civilian targets, even the type of facilities struck in the 1991 Persian Gulf war and the 1998 bombing of Serbia.

For example, electrical power stations were prime targets in those two wars but have been avoided in Afghanistan.

When opposition Northern Alliance troops captured Kabul, they found the lights on.

"I don't think you'll ever witness a nation that has worked so hard to avoid civilian casualties as the United States has," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday. "It is part of the training, part of the mission, part of the professionalism of the men and women who serve in the armed forces that they work so hard to conduct a war that works so hard to protect innocent lives on the ground."

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Foreign Militants in Kunduz Seek Safe Passage to Pakistan

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By DEXTER FILKINS with DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/international/21CND-KUND.html

EMAM SAHEB, Afghanistan, Nov. 21 - Foreign militants trapped inside the besieged city of Kunduz have asked to leave the country and travel overland to Pakistan through a protected corridor, a senior Northern Alliance official said here today. He added that the alliance was giving some thought to the proposal.

The request, forwarded by Taliban leaders in Kunduz to officials here and in Pakistan, appears intended to avert a massacre of hundreds of foreign soldiers at the hands of Northern Alliance troops, who have cut off roads leading into the city.

The proposal coincides with an official request by the Pakistani government that the United States ensure the safety of fighters trapped inside Kunduz, a Pakistani government official said today. The Pakistanis, who have not officially acknowledged that their citizens are among those trapped in the city, told the American government that no one deserves to be slaughtered and asked that they be protected.

So far, American officials have rejected the idea of allowing the foreigners to leave Kunduz. Northern Alliance officials have said the group includes several members of Al Qaeda, the militant organization headed by Osama bin Laden.

The militants' evacuation request surfaced here as leaders of the Taliban and Northern Alliance gathered at the front line near Kunduz to discuss the terms of a Taliban surrender. The leaders negotiated late into the night, and there was no confirmed information on whether a deal was struck.

Northern Alliance leaders said they were considering the proposed evacuation. They said they might be inclined to support it if the Pakistani government promised to arrest the militants once they crossed the border.

"Perhaps we should consider it," the alliance's deputy defense minister, Atiqullah Baryalai, said at his headquarters here. "The foreigners are a problem, definitely a problem. We want them out of our country."

In Washington on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sought to rule out allowing the foreign militants in Kunduz to escape.

"It would be most unfortunate if the foreigners in Afghanistan - the Al Qaeda and the Chechens and others who have been there working with the Taliban - if those folks were set free and in any way allowed to go to another country and cause the same kind of terrorist acts," he said.

Earlier this week, the United Nations was approached by the Taliban about evacuating the militants. But U.N. officials said they did not have the wherewithal to carry out such an operation. An evacuation to Pakistan would require transporting hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of militants more than 300 miles across rugged terrain that would offer many opportunities for ambush.

Up to now, the foreign fighters trapped inside Kunduz have been given the choice of surrendering and facing a Northern Alliance trial, or being killed in combat.

According to refugees coming out of Kunduz, foreign militants have publicly vowed to fight to the death and have killed Afghan Taliban soldiers who have tried to surrender. They have apparently grown so distrustful of Afghan Taliban troops that they have the Afghans' access to many important government posts.

The exact number of foreign fighters trapped inside Kunduz is unclear. Northern Alliance leaders say as many 6,000 foreign militants are stuck in Kunduz, out of a total force of about 16,000 Taliban soldiers. The Pentagon puts the total number of militants in the city at about 3,000. Taliban leaders inside Kunduz say about 1,000 foreign fighters are there.

Pakistani officials and others have expressed fears that if nothing is done, the Northern Alliance will kill the foreigners left in the city.

Alliance forces have been poised on the edge of the city since last week and have been promising an offensive for days. Northern Alliance soldiers typically regard the foreigners fighting with the Taliban with contempt, seeing them as invaders who murdered their longtime leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud.

Fighters from other countries, usually Muslim ones, began joining the Taliban movement when it was born in the Afghan desert seven years ago. Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, thousands of Pakistanis have crossed into Afghanistan with the aim of helping the Taliban.

Taliban leaders pitched the idea of safe passage to the Pakistanis two days ago. According to a Pakistani government official in Islamabad, the siege of Kunduz is especially sensitive because the relatives of some of the country's most powerful religious leaders are apparently trapped there.

The Pakistani government has made it clear that anyone who is brought onto their soil will be arrested. Under the proposal, non-Pakistani fighters would likely be returned to their own countries.

President Pervez Musharraf said today that the foreign fighters should surrender to the United Nations and be treated as prisoners of war.

The maneuvering over the evacuation proposal unfolded as the two sides met for several hours at a remote desert site to discuss a Taliban surrender. Gathering at Dashti Abdan, a desolate crossroads north of Kunduz, a group of Northern Alliance commanders gave Taliban leaders a proposed schedule for the surrender of the Taliban troops. As midnight approached here, the Northern Alliance commanders had not returned from their meeting with their Taliban counterparts.

Under the surrender proposal, Taliban soldiers based in the town of Khanabad, to the east of Kunduz, would surrender first, and other units would follow. Under an amnesty offered by the Northern Alliance, all Afghan Taliban, with the exception of an unspecified number of "criminals," would be allowed to turn over their weapons and go home. Those suspected of carrying out atrocities against civilians would be arrested.

Mr. Baryalai, the alliance's deputy defense minister, said Taliban leaders in Kunduz told him they were prepared to surrender. But he said he was suspicious of the assurances and expected that while some Taliban troops might turn over their arms, others would stand and fight.

"These are evil people," Mr. Baryalai said. "When an evil person is cornered, he surrenders. But as soon as he gets a chance to stab you in the back, he will take it."

American military activity around the city was relatively quiet today, but a Pentagon spokesman said Kunduz and Kandahar had been targeted.

The spokesman, Richard McGraw, said warplanes were targeting "Taliban on the run" as well as fleeing Al Qaeda guerrillas. "If they show, we shoot them," he said.

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Afghan Factions to Meet and Discuss Interim Rule

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/international/21AFGH.html

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 20 - Representatives of the Northern Alliance and several other Afghan factions will meet in Berlin next week to try to set up an interim administration for Afghanistan, the special United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, said today. A similar announcement was made in Kabul.

Setting up some form of broad- based coalition to run Afghanistan has become an increasingly urgent priority for the United Nations, and the United States, with the precipitous collapse of Taliban control over many parts of the country and the return of warlords and tribal leaders to their former fiefs.

Mr. Brahimi said that in addition to the Northern Alliance, the loose- knit coalition whose forces have moved into areas ceded by the Taliban, the meeting would include representatives of the former Afghan king; exiles who gathered in Peshawar, Pakistan, last month; and other exiles who have met in Cyprus.

The selection represented an attempt to include all major ethnic groups - in particular the largest, the Pashtun - as well as to ensure the support of Pakistan and Iran, who would be crucial to the success of any administration. Most delegates were expected to be from the Northern Alliance, which is composed largely of Tajiks and Uzbeks, and from the Peshawar exiles, who are largely Pashtuns supported by Pakistan. They met in October under Pir Syed Ahmad Gailani, one of the more moderate mujahedeen leaders in the war against the Soviet Union.

The Cyprus exiles are predominantly Hazara people supported by Iran, while the former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, who was deposed in 1973, is expected to play the role of a unifying symbol in Kabul, though he was not expected to personally take part in the talks in Berlin.

At a news conference in Kabul, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the designated foreign minister of the Northern Alliance, said it was crucial for Afghan tribes and factions to show they could work together. "If we go into this cycle of Afghan leaders showing that they know how to sign agreements and then know how to not obey them, the world will get tired," he said. "They will come up with the excuse that the Afghans cannot govern themselves."

Yet the very process of setting up the Berlin meeting suggested problems ahead in persuading Northern Alliance leaders to share the power they have unexpectedly seized in Kabul. James F. Dobbins, the Bush administration's envoy in the region, said on Monday that he had received a commitment from leaders of the alliance to surrender powers to a transitional government. But a senior alliance official in Kabul said that objections from Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former president who is seeking to reclaim his office, and other conservative members of the alliance had slowed negotiation over the meeting for two days.

Mr. Rabbani was not expected at the meeting, and his absence raised questions about the strength of whatever commitments the moderate members of the delegation might make. The leader of the delegation, Yunos Qanooni, and Dr. Abdullah are regarded as moderates, and they have argued publicly with the conservatives in recent days over issues like the presence of British troops in Afghanistan.

One major question that the meeting will consider will be bringing a multinational force into Kabul to provide security, which some alliance commanders have rejected.

A fundamental premise of the United Nations is that any attempt by the alliance to consolidate its gains at the expense of Pashtuns or other groups would lead to a renewal of war. But formally, the United Nations still recognizes Mr. Rabbani as president, though officials said that would not give him any special standing in a future administration.

The decision to try to form a small, interim authority as quickly as possible marked a change in the program Mr. Brahimi outlined last week, which called first for a large council that would create a smaller ruling authority. The change also reflected the urgency created by the collapse of Taliban authority. Under the new plan, the provisional administration would then convene the larger council, and eventually a loya jirga, a traditional national assembly.

The formal gathering in Berlin - or at some nearby venue, as yet unspecified - was to be limited to about 30 Afghans, in line with Mr. Brahimi's insistence that any nascent administration be perceived as "homegrown." But Mr. Brahimi said the site would be selected to keep the proceedings out of the eye of the public, and to allow representatives of interested nations - the United States and its allies, Pakistan, Iran, Russia and Afghanistan's neighbors chief among them - to meet informally with the Afghans.

Mr. Brahimi said he hoped the meeting would conclude its work in a week.

In Kabul, Mr. Brahimi's deputy, Francesc Vendrell, repeatedly underscored that the meeting in Berlin would be only a first stage. "Please remember we are not setting up the formal government of Afghanistan," he said. "We are looking at setting up an interim council for the setting up of a loya jirga."

One of the problems the United Nations has faced is the absence of obvious national leaders in any of the rival camps.

The Northern Alliance has not had a strong leader since the assassination of the charismatic Ahmed Shah Massoud by the Taliban last September. Neither Mr. Rabbani nor Gen. Muhammad Fahim, Mr. Massoud's successor as the Northern Alliance's military chief, approach the authority Mr. Massoud had.

Among the Pashtun, the problem has been to find leaders who were not with the Taliban, which had its roots in the Pashtun people. One anti-Taliban leader, Abdul Haq, was recently captured and killed by the Taliban. Another Pashtun warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has a past so soaked in blood that he is more likely to face a war crimes tribunal.

A Pashtun on whom Americans have placed some hope is Hamid Karzai, who was deputy foreign minister in the pre-Taliban government. There were reports that he might be in the king's delegation to Berlin.

-------- arms sales

Court Ruling in Arms Case Frees Menem in Argentina

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/international/americas/21ARGE.html

BUENOS AIRES, Nov. 20 - Former President Carlos Saúl Menem was released from house arrest today after the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors had failed to prove that he and his former brother-in-law were involved in a conspiracy to smuggle arms to Croatia and Ecuador between 1991 and 1995.

The six-to-two decision does not close the door to future prosecution of Mr. Menem, but aides said he was already planning a national tour to begin his campaign to become the presidential candidate of his Justicialist Party in 2003.

Mr. Menem has cast a long shadow over Argentina since his election in 1989 when he burst onto the political scene with his mutton-chop sideburns, zest for fast sports cars and ostentatious way of life. During his decade in power, he sold off much of the state to private businesses, pegged the value of the peso to the dollar, expanded commercial relations with Brazil and linked his country's foreign policy with that of the United States.

The 71-year-old former president, still the official head of his party, faces a challenge for the leadership from former Vice President Eduardo Duhalde, now a senator- elect from Buenos Aires Province. The fight is expected to be heated and could determine how helpful the opposition will be as President Fernando de la Rúa tries to avert a financial collapse in the coming months.

Mr. Menem is considered a less aggressive opponent of the de la Rúa administration than Mr. Duhalde, who has called for a complete revamping of economic policy.

Today's ruling dropped charges of illicit association against Emir Yoma, Mr. Menem's former brother- in-law and business associate, who prosecutors said was put in charge of a gun-running scheme by the former president. But by ruling that there was a lack of evidence, the court by implication extended the decision to Mr. Menem, who had been under house arrest since June in a friend's house outside Buenos Aires.

Congressman Adrián Menem, the former president's nephew, said Mr. Menem told his supporters today that "without rancor or hatred I will work for Argentina."

A federal judge and prosecutors charged that Mr. Menem, Mr. Yoma and several senior officials had secretly transferred 6,500 tons of arms and munitions supposedly destined for Panama and Venezuela to Croatia and Ecuador.

Mr. Menem and the others said they did not know that arms dealers had rerouted the shipments, in violation of a United Nations arms embargo in the Balkans in Croatia's case and in the case of Ecuador when Argentina was mediating a border dispute between that country and Peru.

Polls indicate that Mr. Menem does not have wide popular support these days because of persistent accusations of corruption and a continuing recession that began in the last two years of his second term. Nevertheless, he is a charismatic campaigner with strong support in several western rural provinces and among several powerful governors and members of Congress.

Shortly before his arrest he married Cecilia Bolocco, a 36-year-old Chilean who is a former Miss Universe. Ms. Bolocco has since tried hard to imitate Eva Perón, the wife of Juan Domingo Perón, the Justicialist Party's founder, by flashing the V for victory salute just as Ms. Perón did when her husband was a political prisoner and, later, president.

In recent months, Ms. Bolocco appeared on the cover of one magazine apparently wearing only a rabbit stole dyed in the colors of the Argentine flag and for a time she tied back her hair in the Eva Perón style. She has also proved to be a fiery speaker and says she is eager to join her husband on the campaign trail.

The two are expected to tour La Rioja Province, Mr. Menem's home base, within the next few days and then head for Buenos Aires Province, Mr. Duhalde's stronghold.

After the announcement of her husband's release, Ms. Bolocco greeted dozens of well-wishers outside the house where she has remained with her husband and exchanged hugs and kisses. "We are very content," she said.

In recent days, Mr. de la Rúa and his senior aides have said they thought it was a mistake to hold a former president under arrest on charges of "illicit association." Critics viewed the comments as an unusual public intervention by the executive branch in a judicial case.

President de la Rúa denied today that he had anything to do with the court's decision despite a long history of presidential interference in cases here.

Mr. Duhalde said he would forcefully compete with Mr. Menem for leadership of the party in a primary election scheduled for next year. "Menem became an ally of the powerful and that is not what Justicialism is all about," Mr. Duhalde said.

-------- asia

Asian Regimes Appear to Use War on Terror to Stem Dissent

Michael Richardson
International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, November 21, 2001
http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=39523

SINGAPORE An increasing number of Asian governments are using the U.S.-led campaign against global terrorism to justify repression of separatism and other political dissent even when it is nonviolent, human rights activists charge.

The crackdown is being led by the region's largest and most populous nations - China, India and Indonesia - all of which are trying to quell ethnic and religious groups that want to break away.

Asian countries say that, in acting against separatists, they are following the example of the United States, Britain and other Western states that are curbing civil liberties to protect their people from terrorist attack.

When the United Nations human rights commissioner, Mary Robinson, visited China this month and expressed concern about the mistreatment of people in Xinjiang and Tibet - whom Beijing has branded as separatists - she was rebuffed by Chinese officials, including President Jiang Zemin.

China's moves to prevent Xinjiang and Tibet from breaking away to form independent states were part of the global anti-terror battle and "no double standards should be pursued here," said the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhu Bangzao.

But political opponents of governments in Asia worry that the drive against terrorism is being used as a catch-all against any dissent that is considered a threat to ruling regimes.

"Where there is now a strong global attack on terrorism, of course it is much easier for the government to take additional repressive measures," said Syed Hassan Ali, president of the opposition Malaysian People's Party.

The deputy prime minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, said recently that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States have shown the value of Malaysia's Internal Security Act, which enables the government to take preventive measures against threats.

The act, which allows suspects to be detained without trial for as long as two years at a time, is similar to one in place in Singapore, where the government said recently it is working on a new concept of domestic security that will be based on closer cooperation between the military and the police to prevent terrorists threats.

In Malaysia, the security act has been used to detain supporters of a jailed former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, as well as members of the main opposition Islamic Party of Malaysia, which wants to establish a strict Islamic state in what is now a multireligious country.

"The war against terrorism has been a heaven-sent opportunity for some governments in Asia to justify ongoing repression against government critics," said Sidney Jones, the Asia director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The result of the crackdown in Asia, some analysts said, may be a significant surge in human rights abuses and a rollback of democratic reform across a region that traditionally has looked to authoritarian government in times of instability and economic hardship.

In India, the focus has been on Kashmir and the northeastern state of Manipur, the latter in cooperation with the Burmese Army. More than 200 separatist rebels from Manipur have been arrested in counterinsurgency operations by the Burmese Army in recent weeks, Indian military officials in the area have reported.

The Indian government is on the verge of enacting the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, which already is in effect temporarily, pending action by Parliament.

The law gives the Indian police sweeping powers of arrest and detention and has been criticized strongly by civil rights groups and opposition parties.

In Indonesia, human rights activists said that the military is using the global campaign against terrorism to justify an escalation of the army campaign to contain and to neutralize separatists in the resource-rich provinces of Aceh and Papua, formerly Irian Jaya.

Critics charge that, despite paying lip service to the notion that the battle against terrorism must not be an excuse to persecute minorities, the United States is muting its previously outspoken protection of human rights in countries like China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia, which are regarded by Washington as important allies in the global fight against terror.

"Just as the U.S. has grown silent over Russian abuses in Chechnya, Chinese abuses in Tibet and Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, so it will play down problems in Indonesia," said Geoff Mulherin, an associate at the Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific at the University of Sydney. "In the post-Sept. 11 world, national self-interest is triumphing over the embrace of human rights."

But Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia said that the United States has been learning from his country how to combat terrorism and that the West, which once accused him of trampling on human rights, now is following him.

"It's no good taking action after the crime," Mr. Mahathir said. "We have to act in anticipation, and not in the usual manner, because having to find proof of a crime which has not yet been committed is difficult."

-------- biological weapons

THE HOW-TO BOOK
In Utah, a Government Hater Sells a Germ-Warfare Book

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By PAUL ZIELBAUER with WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/national/21BOOK.html

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 19 - At the "Crossroads of the West" gun show here last weekend, weapons dealers sold semi- automatic rifles and custom-made pistols, and ammunition wholesalers unloaded bullets by the case. But perhaps the most fearsome weapon for sale in the cavernous, crowded exposition center was a book.

Next to the Indian handicraft booth, Timothy W. Tobiason was selling printed and CD copies of his book, "Scientific Principles of Improvised Warfare and Home Defense Volume 6-1: Advanced Biological Weapons Design and Manufacture," a germ-warfare cookbook that bioterrorism experts say is accurate enough to be dangerous.

Mr. Tobiason, an agricultural-chemicals entrepreneur from Nebraska with a bitter hatred for the government, said he sold about 2,000 copies of his self-published book a year as he moved from gun show to gun show across America. The book, which includes directions for making "mail delivered" anthrax, suggests that the knowledge necessary to start an anthrax attack like the one that has terrorized the East Coast is readily accessible.

While Mr. Tobiason's instructions fall short of what would be needed to produce the highly refined form of germ spores found last month in letters to Congressional leaders, experts find much to worry about.

"The guy who wrote this is very smart, very dangerous," said Ken Alibek, a former top official in the Soviet germ-weapons program who is now president of Advanced Biosystems, a consulting company in Manassas, Va. "We shouldn't ignore this.

"It's not sophisticated," he said of Mr. Tobiason's anthrax formula, "but this process is going to work."

F.B.I. officials theorize that the culprit behind the recent attacks might have been a home-grown loner with sufficient scientific knowledge and a deep grudge. Mr. Tobiason denies any knowledge of the anthrax-laced letters, and federal officials say he is not a suspect. But he is part of an American subculture of people with a profound mistrust of government, some of whom traffic in the intricacies of germ warfare.

Federal officials said they monitored Mr. Tobiason for years before the attacks began last month; indeed, there are indications that they recently stepped up surveillance of him and others who have shown inclinations toward antigovernment violence.

The talk from Mr. Tobiason and some who stopped by his table at the gun show reflected the conspiratorial view of government that some investigators believe may have been an ingredient in the anthrax attacks.

"I don't trust him completely, and I don't trust the government completely," a former nurse named Linda said of Mr. Tobiason after buying a $10 CD from him last weekend. One element of her mistrust of the government was the F.B.I., which she said is "taking away civil liberties all the time."

Mr. Tobiason, who is 45 and lives in an aging Dodge Caravan in which he travels the country, traces his own anger at the federal government to patent laws he said cheated him out of money and to what he said was surveillance by the F.B.I.

"If this government continues to do this to people," he said, referring to what he called years of F.B.I. harassment, "they're going to have a lot more Tim McVeighs and Tim Tobiasons."

The sale of survival and doomsday books is not unusual at gun shows and elsewhere, and the Internet is filled with advice on how to make explosives. What makes Mr. Tobiason's writings more dangerous, germ-warfare experts who have read it say, is that it offers anyone with $10 the ability to build crude biological weapons capable of killing thousands of people.

Those experts say Mr. Tobiason's 250-page book does not give specific directions for producing the finely milled anthrax that was sent to Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader, and, in fact, contains some errors. The book deals mostly with the production of wet anthrax, though it does suggest a way to grind clusters of anthrax into microscopic pieces, which can settle into the lungs.

But Dr. Alibek said Mr. Tobiason's work "could be a step on the road," for someone intent on producing highly lethal anthrax.

Richard Spertzel, a former head of biological inspections in Iraq for the United Nations, said Mr. Tobiason's instructions would produce "a low-grade product" at best but added that the book, "ought to be damn near illegal, if it's not now."

Mr. Tobiason's work, which he said was drawn from military and biology books he borrowed from the University of Nebraska library, is written in mostly dispassionate, technical terms.

But his anger is hardly hidden. The cover of his germ-warfare manual includes the introduction: "Why pay to recruit troops and build factories to wage war and kill for you when nature can do it for free? Or, if you can make Jell-O, you can wipe out cities. Enjoy!"

In an interview on Saturday, Mr. Tobiason said he had made small amounts of pathogens including anthrax, though he said he had never used them to harm anyone.

He has written about a dozen books on military history and germ warfare and said he planned another soon that would describe how to make "huge scale" germ weapons.

"It will have some planet killers in it," he said at a Sizzler Restaurant after the show. "It will allow anyone to arm themselves with biological weapons in their basements."

Mr. Tobiason said he writes "to fight against dishonest government," and said that if he wanted to, he could initiate a far more deadly biological attack than the recent one.

"It would be a hard thing to do, but I'm prepared to do it," he said.

He said he would kill innocent people if he had to to defend himself. "All my morals and ethics are gone, just like the government's."

Mr. Tobiason has distributed his work widely. In June, he said, he left copies of his book at the offices of dozens of United States senators, including Mr. Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota, Fred Thompson, Republican of Tennessee, and Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska.

Mr. Tobiason said he was trying to get the attention of lawmakers for his complaints about the government. If Congress granted him a public hearing, he said, he would drop his plans to publish his next book. But other than a visit by federal agents, Mr. Tobiason said, his book did not get him any notice.

Mr. Tobiason, who grew up in Columbus, Neb., left Columbus High School during his junior year and enlisted in the Navy.

He said that he had been an antisubmarine warfare specialist aboard the carrier Enterprise and that he had spied on Soviet submarines and used electronic tricks to create phantom images on Russian military radar.

He was absent without leave for three months in the early 1980's, he said, because of bitter disagreements with a ranking officer. He surrendered to the F.B.I. in Memphis after 92 days, he said, and eventually received an "other than honorable" discharge with full medical benefits.

Ronald Callan, Mr. Tobiason's high school biology teacher, described him as an above-average science student who was quiet and lacked self-confidence. "You could tell he was looking for something more in life," Mr. Callan said.

In the mid-1980's, he started an animal-feed company, Designer Phosphate and Premix, in Silver Creek, Neb., and garnered $3 million in sales, said Mayor Bill Lee of Silver Creek, who worked for Mr. Tobiason at the time.

But Mr. Tobiason, whose knowledge of chemistry and microbiology is largely self-taught, had grander plans. He developed a phosphate- based feed additive, only to learn later that the government determined it was dangerous to cattle, he said. Not long after, Mr. Tobiason and others said, he patented a bubbling herbicide that killed tree roots in pipes and sewers and sold the patent to an herbicide manufacturer.

Max Jenny, a retired farmer who invested $20,000 in Mr. Tobiason's company, called him sloppy with finances but a wizard with chemicals. "I don't know where he got that education," Mr. Jenny said, "but I don't know anyone who is better at it than he was."

Designer Phosphate and Premix went bankrupt in 1992 and Mr. Tobiason became outraged because, he said, the government let his phosphate-based additive be patented by a larger agricultural company.

At about the same time, some of Mr. Tobiason's behavior began concerning people in Silver Creek. He once told Mr. Lee he knew how to make anthrax and could "destroy people without firing a shot."

Mr. Tobiason's neighbors, Deb and John Cave, said he mixed chemicals in a garage. Deb Cave said she called the F.B.I in 1998 after spotting Mr. Tobiason driving a minivan covered with sticker with slogans like, "I love explosives," and "Make your own bombs." An agent eagerly took down her observations, she said.

Mr. Tobiason's younger brother, Todd A. Tobiason, 37, a corporate pilot for an Omaha company, said he did not consider his brother dangerous but would have preferred that he had never published his writings.

"I don't think he's doing anything with it," Todd Tobiason said. "He's just got a grudge against the federal government and this is his way of getting back at them."

Mr. Tobiason believes that F.B.I. agents follow him everywhere, including once, he said, to the supermarket. There is no doubt that the F.B.I. has been interested in him since at least the late 1990's.

At a December 1998 gun show in Wichita, Daniel Rupp, then an investigator in the federal public defender's office in Kansas, said he had a talk with Mr. Tobiason that prompted him to call the F.B.I.

"He threatened to destroy cities," Mr. Rupp, 51, now with the public defender's office in Salina, Kan., said on Friday. "He threatened to make Oklahoma City look like nothing. At the end, I said, `Hope to see you next year,' and he said, `You won't. You'll just read about it in the papers.'"

Mr. Rupp said the F.B.I. asked him to meet Mr. Tobiason again wearing a hidden microphone, but his supervisor at the time, fearing a conflict of interest, would not allow it.

Mr. Tobiason said an F.B.I. agent once told him bureau psychologists believed he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. "I'm not completely nuts," he joked to passers-by at the show Saturday. But asked about his mental health over dinner later, he said, "I probably show some symptoms of schizophrenia."

At the gun show over the week, Mr. Tobiason spoke as if on a mission. "I'm not going to stop," he said, "until everyone is this country knows how" to make those weapons.

On Sunday the show ended, and Mr. Tobiason left Salt Lake City in his Caravan, loaded with his computer, CD's and a laundry basket of biology and chemistry library books. His itinerary includes gun shows in Las Vegas and Reno, Nev., Phoenix and Del Mar, Calif., before heading back to Nebraska for Christmas.

---

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
At an Anthrax Lab, the World Changed Quickly

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By JIM YARDLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/national/21LAB.html

HOUSTON, Nov. 20 - The rectangular box arrived via overnight delivery at Dr. Theresa Koehler's laboratory. That box contained a smaller box, which held a canister. Inside the canister was another canister, which safeguarded a glass vial. And at the bottom of the vial were anthrax bacteria.

The anthrax, sent last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was placed in a refrigerator with six other tubes of virulent anthrax. The refrigerator stands in a small room, which is monitored by a video camera and secured by special locks and an alarm system. There is not even a sign outside the door.

The layers of security at Dr. Koehler's laboratory, at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, are byproducts of the new, suddenly uncomfortable world of anthrax research. The deaths of four people in unsolved anthrax attacks have brought heightened scrutiny to the domestic laboratories where anthrax is stored, particularly now that investigators suspect a home-grown terrorist.

For Dr. Koehler, 42, a microbiologist who has studied anthrax for 20 years, the fact that someone made a weapon from the organism to which she has dedicated her professional life is particularly horrifying, even strangely personal. "Even though I had run in circles for years with people who talked about anthrax as a potential bioweapon, I thought, `No way.'" she said. "I just couldn't believe it."

Accustomed to the quiet obscurity of her field, Dr. Koehler has found her life upended. Her phone has rung for weeks with calls from reporters and scientists, and from companies asking that she test disinfectants and other products that might have some application to anthrax. Her co-workers have so often stopped her in the hall with questions about the risks of exposure to the anthrax in her laboratory that she has held meetings to offer reassurance.

And though university officials refuse to confirm the fact, Dr. Koehler's laboratory is among scores of research facilities nationwide whose records have been subpoenaed as federal investigators compile a list of people who have had access to anthrax. The laboratory is one of a limited number - the disease control centers will not say how many - licensed by the C.D.C. to ship and receive anthrax and other potentially lethal organisms.

Dr. Koehler arrived in Houston in 1991, after doing postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School, and for the last decade she and researchers in her laboratory have studied the genetics of Bacillus anthracis, the anthrax bacterium.

Until this year, she had used only strains that, through mutation, she and her researchers had made nonvirulent, posing no health risk. Then, in January, one of her eight researchers wanted to study how white blood cells respond to early infection, an experiment that would require a virulent strain. With little hesitation, everyone agreed.

The decision prompted several safety steps: Dr. Koehler's department head provided a small room, situated off a shared equipment room, as a separate laboratory for virulent anthrax. To conduct the experiments, she got supplemental financing from the National Institutes of Health to buy a biosafety cabinet with a protective metal hood. In February, everyone began getting vaccinations against anthrax.

Finally, the research team needed to acquire a virulent strain. Rather than getting one from another laboratory, Dr. Koehler decided to make one from her lab's mutated, nonvirulent strains.

A virulent bacterium is able to produce anthrax toxin proteins and cover itself with a protective layer called a capsule. The mutated strains that the laboratory had previously worked with did only one or the other. But in September, after a number of failed attempts, Dr. Agathe Bourgogne, a postdoctoral fellow, and Melissa Drysdale, a graduate student, created a virulent strain.

"The postdoc who did it said, `Get the champagne!' " Dr. Koehler recalled. "We were very excited. We had a new tool for the lab."

But the celebration was short- lived: the abstract world of the laboratory was soon confronted by the reality of Sept. 11. Administrators immediately began instituting tighter security on the medical school and its laboratories. Before, Dr. Koehler had planned to store the virulent anthrax behind a locked door. But the school quickly installed video cameras, the alarm and a card swipe system restricting access.

Those steps took on greater significance after Oct. 4, when the first case of inhalation anthrax was reported in Florida. Dr. Koehler says her emotions became ragged, her sleep spotty. Having become known through interviews she gave to news organizations, she removed the nameplate from her office and her laboratory, fearing a break-in. She felt guilt, she says, because for years her work had involved studying genes and proteins rather than research directly applicable to human exposure.

"I thought, `God, what have I done for 20 years to put us in a better situation to deal with this?' " she said. "It was like somebody used this organism that we think is fascinating and interesting and fun for such a horrible purpose."

The laws regulating anthrax laboratories will undoubtedly soon change. This week Dr. Koehler received e-mail about legislation before Congress that would require criminal background checks of foreign students working in the labs. Her own laboratory includes students and research fellows from Canada, Germany, France, Cyprus and China.

Many scientists fear additional restrictions, on legitimate researchers who have always been entirely law- abiding. For Dr. Elke Saile, 39, a postdoctoral research fellow in Dr. Koehler's laboratory who left Germany for the better educational opportunities in the United States, such prospects are chilling.

"In academia, we don't spend time on trying to make a more potent killer," Dr. Saile said. "We spend time trying to figure out what the organism does in your body."

In that spirit, the researchers are moving ahead with their experiments. The disease control centers recently contacted Dr. Koehler to ask about a presentation in which a research fellow at the laboratory, Yahua Chen, reported at a scientific meeting the discovery of inactive genes in the anthrax bacterium that, if activated, could bring on resistance to penicillin. Penicillin was among the alternative anthrax treatments at which the C.D.C. had already been looking, and so the report raised concern. The centers contacted the laboratory for further study and then forwarded the anthrax sample that arrived last week.

The initial experiments are under way. "I feel like now I am contributing something relevant and important," Dr. Koehler said.

-------- business

Security Firms Ready to Sell Safety

By Laurie Copans
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 20, 2001; 2:31 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59136-2001Nov20?language=printer

JERUSALEM -- While the global concerns about terrorism have spelled trouble for many businesses, the new climate offers a potential bonanza for companies in security-conscious Israel - from the El Al airline, hijacker-free for decades, to Internet startups selling safety in cyberspace.

The reports of companies adding shifts and hiring workers to meet surging demand for gas masks, electronic fences and encryption systems is welcome news in a country whose economy has otherwise been hobbled by the year of fighting with the Palestinians and the global high-tech crisis.

Max Livnat, head of the Investment Promotion Center at the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said it was too early to put a figure on the windfall, but that Israel had found "a new market, in the field of security, which will remain for quite a long time."

"People are contacting Israel because they feel we have the expertise," he said - an expertise that comes from a half-century of conflict with the Arabs and one of the longest track records in fighting modern forms of terrorism such as hijackings and - with much less success - suicide bombings.

Private security spending in the United States will reach $30 billion in 2002 and Israeli firms will rake in a chunk of that, said New York-based analyst Jack Mallon, who writes the Mallon Security Investing newsletter.

"Because Israel has been under fire, they are in the forefront in terms of security products," he said.

One example is the Israeli company Magal Security Systems, established by the government in the 1960s to create a fence system to prevent border raids from Jordan. Now it's known for installing the security fence around Buckingham Palace.

Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington, the phone calls to Magal from airports, nuclear facilities, power stations and army bases around the world have sharply increased, Magal President Izhar Dekel said.

Sales should take off in 2002, Dekel said.

Israel's national carrier, El Al, had to deal with several hijackings before it adopted new security procedures in the late 1960s that included security marshals on every flight, specially trained pilots, X-raying all luggage and profiling of passengers. Three decades have passed without an El Al hijacking.

Ticket sales at El Al have jumped 10 percent since the attacks on the United States, and travel agents say customers are switching due to security concerns.

El Al and the U.S. firm Boeing are examining a joint venture on airline security that would offer advice to airports, train stations and subways. El Al hopes to use the venture to adapt its security measures to other forms of travel, said its president David Hermesh.

Individual Israelis have also benefitted.

Raphael Ron, the former head of security at Israel's Ben Gurion airport, has been hired to strengthen security at Boston's Logan Airport, the takeoff point of the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

The anthrax attacks that followed widened the security net.

Shalon Chemical Industries - which makes gas masks, hoods and tents to protect against unconventional attacks - is booming. By the end of December, Shalon will increase its production tenfold compared with August output, and has almost tripled is staff to 350.

Shalon has been approached since Sept. 11 by the U.S. Army and U.S Homeland Security - but CEO Itai Barel refused to disclose if any deals were concluded.

Israeli software companies - a mainstay of the economy, and one that has been battered by the past year's global high-tech crisis - might bounce back a little by joining the war on "cyberterror," Mallon said.

Several Israeli firms - including the already successful Check Point Software Technologies and Aladdin Knowledge Systems - are working on this, as are newer, smaller firms.

Check Point's status as a leading provider of Internet security systems helped it rake in a net profit of $74.3 million for the third quarter of the year, when revenue increased 1.7 percent to $118 million.

Aliroo - a new startup that provides protective systems for laptops, data encryption programs that secure e-mail, and electronic signature programs - saw a 30 percent increase in sales in October compared with August, and a doubling of downloads of its programs online.

"People are more aware of security and know that Israel has a good reputation for its products," said Aliroo president Meir Zorea. "We see that the market is in recession but ... we are growing."

Barel, the Shalon chief, expects to keep his employees for some time.

"As long as terror exists, we will be needed," Barel said.

-------- drug war

Conneticut

States
USA Today
01/11/21
http://www.usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Bridgeport - A federal appeals court has rejected a bid by two brothers serving time for the double murder of a boy and his mother to overturn their convictions for drug trafficking. Adrian and Russell Peeler Jr. were also convicted of state charges stemming from the ambush killings. The 8-year-old boy was to have testified against Russell Peeler in a murder trial.

---

Drug Smugglers Change Travel Habits

NOVEMBER 21, 07:03 EST
By KEN GUGGENHEIM
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&PACKAGEID=center-domestic-reax&STORYID=APIS7FTPGA00

WASHINGTON (AP) - The war on terrorists is forcing another American enemy to change tactics. Since Sept. 11, drug smugglers would rather drive than fly and are heading for the suburbs rather than New York City.

Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson said it appears smugglers are attempting to capitalize on America's preoccupation with terrorism, but it is too early to tell whether there will be a lasting uptick.

In the month after the Sept. 11 attacks, the DEA saw a 25 percent increase in its trafficking investigations in the Caribbean over the same period in 2000.

``My conclusion both from that fact and other information (is) they have seen it as a window of opportunity and they are testing us in that area,'' Hutchinson said in a recent interview.

``The dust is still settling,'' Hutchinson said. ``Everyone is making adjustments and we'll learn a little more as time goes along as to the final impact.''

There are a variety of factors at work. Security at border crossings and airports have been tightened since September, but drug patrols at sea are down markedly.

Bob Brown, acting deputy director for supply at the White House drug policy office, said drug traffickers are reassessing their methods ``and some of those assessments probably required new trafficking routes and methods.''

Traffickers who manage to get a load of drugs past the tougher border controls are now more likely to use cars instead of planes to transport it within the United States, Hutchinson said. That allows them to bypass stepped-up airport security.

And with New York-bound traffic getting greater scrutiny since the World Trade Center was leveled, some traffickers apparently are keeping large loads out of New York City, sending them instead to suburbs in Connecticut, Hutchinson said. New York long has been the first destination for drug shipments entering the United States.

Because of the terrorism fight, law enforcement and military personnel and equipment that had been used to spot international drug traffickers have been diverted to homeland defense and the campaign in Afghanistan.

The Coast Guard has made some of the biggest adjustments. It is the main agency for maritime drug interdiction, its ships and planes patrolling 3.4 million square miles.

But since Sept. 11, maritime drug patrols have been reduced by 75 percent and its planes have stopped drug missions altogether, said Cmdr Jim McPherson, a Coast Guard spokesman. The Coast Guard is focusing on protecting U.S. ports and performing other services closer to home.

``We're basically guarding the goal line. We're not covering the field,'' McPherson said.

To compensate for the scaled-back patrols, U.S. officials have requested and received help from ships from other nations.

While traffickers may face less scrutiny on the high seas, they face tighter controls on the borders.

In the first few weeks after the attacks, trafficking seemed to decrease along the Mexican border - the main entry point for illegal drugs. Authorities said traffickers were wary of tighter U.S. security.

Drug smuggling seemed to increase weeks later - and seizures jumped as well, the U.S. Customs Service reported. They have since returned to about normal levels.

For Customs, terrorism concerns meant more inspectors working long hours at borders and other ports of entry. The more searches they perform, the greater the likelihood of finding drugs and other smuggled items.

``When we put out the net at our nations' border, if we catch terrorists, drug traffickers or other criminals, we'll take each and every one of them,'' Customs spokesman Dean Boyd said.

The terrorism fight also could affect worldwide supplies of heroin, though not necessarily in the United States. Afghanistan has been the world's leading producer of opium, the raw material for heroin. But most of the heroin is destined for Europe and Asia and little reaches U.S. shores. Colombia and Mexico are the main sources of heroin sold in the United States.

-------- india

U.S. vows to fight terrorism against India

November 21, 2001
UPI
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/21112001-052143-9203r.htm

The U.S. ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, pledged Wednesday that the war against terrorism would not end until terrorism had ended against India and the United States.

Blackwill insisted no country will be permitted to provide sanctuaries to terrorists.

"A terrorist is a terrorist. They are not freedom fighters," Blackwill told a news conference for foreign journalists.

India accuses neighboring Pakistan of financing a separatist Islamic uprising in Kashmir, a charge Islamabad denies.

Blackwill said Washington and New Delhi were on the verge of establishling a "major relationship" following the Nov. 9 meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

India had earlier asked the United States to look beyond Afghanistan in its fight against terrorism.

India has supported the United States in its war against terrorism. New Delhi has also offered logistical support to U.S.-led forces fighting the Taliban regime.

-------- israel

Lebanon, U.S. talk Mideast peace

USA Today
11/22/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/22/lebanon.htm

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Lebanon's prime minister told Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday that Arabs are ready for a rapid settlement with Israel if it is based on a just and comprehensive Mideast peace agreement. Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's office said Powell called the Lebanese leader to discuss the latest U.S. bid to revive the stalled peace process and an upcoming visit to the region by two envoys, Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni.

Hariri urged Powell to forge "a comprehensive approach to the peace process on the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese tracks," his office said in a statement.

Lebanese officials have urged the international community not to forget about Lebanon and Syria as they seek to end 14 months of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians.

At the United Nations last week, Lebanon's foreign minister said a Mideast peace would not be complete without a full Israeli withdrawal from lands claimed by Lebanon and Syria and a solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees, many of whom live in camps in Lebanon.

Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in May 2000, ending an 18-year occupation. Syria and Lebanon have said the Chebaa farms region, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war, should be returned to Lebanon, but Israel has refused.

---

Bush to meet with Sharon early next month

USA Today
11/21/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-21-us-israel-meeting.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon early next month to discuss the U.S.-led war against terrorism and the search for peace in the Middle East.

Sharon will make a working visit to the White House on Dec. 3-4.

Sharon's plans were announced Wednesday followed a meeting of Bush and two key players in the Middle East peace effort, retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns. Zinni and Burns depart Sunday for the region to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, with the goal of obtaining a lasting cease-fire.

Also attending the meeting was Secretary of State Colin Powell, who spoke by telephone with Sharon. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Sharon told Powell he looks forward to the arrival of the U.S. envoys.

While outlining plans Monday for a more active U.S. role in the Middle East, Powell said a cease-fire was the first goal. He also indicated that Zinni will resort to pressure to achieve that objective.

"You'll see what pushing and prodding is when Tony Zinni gets on the ground," Powell told reporters.

Zinni and Burns will be accompanied on their trip by Aaron Miller, a Middle East troubleshooter during the Clinton administration. Boucher said Miller is assuming a new role with the title of senior adviser.

Zinni will be based in the region, most likely taking up residence in Jerusalem.

Sharon has said he will create a team to manage negotiations for a cease-fire.

---

Israelis offered free housing in West Bank

USA Today
11/21/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/21/israelis-freehousing.htm

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israelis are being offered free housing in an isolated part of the West Bank where settlers have been leaving because of danger from the Palestinian uprising and an economic slump, a municipal official said Wednesday.

The newcomers will not be charged rent or municipal taxes, said Orit Artzielli, spokeswoman of the Jordan Valley Regional Council.

Since Israeli-Palestinian fighting began just over a year ago, four Israelis have been killed in Palestinian shooting attacks in the West Bank's Jordan Valley.

About 4,000 Israelis live in 18 settlements in the Jordan Valley. More than 50 families have left since the outbreak of fighting in September 2000.

The purpose of the free housing offer is to encourage the settlers who have stayed behind. "It is very depressing to walk down a street at night and see empty houses," Artzielli said.

The Jordan Valley economy is based on agriculture and the tourist industry. But due to the Palestinian attacks, most Israelis and foreign tourists have stopped coming. Agriculture has also been hit hard because it was dependent on Palestinian labor, which is frequently unavailable due to Israeli blockades of Palestinian cities. The danger on the roads has also made it difficult for the farmers to get fresh produce to markets, Artzielli said.

In another part of the West Bank, the divided city of Hebron, Jewish settlers are to have their prefabricated homes replaced by concrete and stone structures because of constant Palestinian shooting attacks, an Israeli official said Wednesday.

The tiny Tel Romeida enclave is under fire almost every night from a nearby Palestinian neighborhood, said Yarden Vatikay, an adviser to Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. "The houses have so many holes in them they look like strainers," Vatikay said.

Ben-Eliezer approved the construction despite new U.S. calls for a halt to construction in the settlements.

-------

Israel Denies Groups' Charge That It Is Torturing Detainees

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By ELIZABETH OLSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/international/middleeast/21TORT.html

GENEVA, Nov. 20 - Appearing before a United Nations committee, Israel defended itself today against accusations by Amnesty International and other groups that it uses methods amounting to torture during the interrogation of Palestinian detainees.

The London-based Amnesty International, in a written report to the Committee Against Torture, said that it had "strong evidence" that Israeli authorities continued to use methods of dealing with detainees that violated international standards even after the Israeli Supreme Court barred such practices.

Those methods, Amnesty International contends, include painful handcuffing, sleep deprivation and forcing prisoners to sit in painful positions or to squat on their haunches for prolonged periods.

The groups making the accusations say t such practices would violate the 1987 Convention Against Torture, which requires the 126 countries that have signed, including Israel, to report periodically on their compliance. The groups say their information comes from investigations that include interviews with former prisoners.

Israel's delegate, Yaakov Levy, told the committee's 10 experts that the country "must often fight with one hand tied behind its back." Israel is forced to balance its treaty obligations with a duty to protect citizens from being the targets of "indiscriminate terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings in the heart of Israel's cities, in coffee shops, market places, disco pubs and pizza restaurants," Mr. Levy said.

Force is used only in isolated cases, he said, producing consequences that are no more extreme than causing discomfort or lack of sleep.

Mr. Levy said that despite more than a year of increasingly violent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the rights of "even the most dangerous and brutal of criminals" have been protected. Israeli officials "are not authorized to use torture, even in cases where the use of such procedures might prevent terrible attacks," he said.

While the Supreme Court's ruling in 1999 changed the conduct of Israeli security forces, he said, the decision did not find that the interrogation methods that were banned amounted to torture under the convention's definition. A "careful reading" of the convention, Mr. Levy said, "clearly suggests that pain and suffering, in themselves, do not necessarily constitute torture."

Elizabeth Hodgkin, a representative of Amnesty International, said the organization's investigation found increased incidences of torture, brutality and prolonged detention in solitary confinement by Israeli authorities.

The Israeli court ruling came the year after Israel last reported to the committee against torture, which criticized the country for some of its practices when questioning detainees. The committee's position, reiterated during its semiannual meetings, is that there are no circumstances, including war, that justify using torture.

In a written report, its third to the committee since signing the treaty, Israel said that since the ruling, certain physical methods of interrogation, including violent shaking and forced crouching, have been banned.

The World Organization Against Torture, based in Geneva, told the committee that its investigations, which also included interviews with former prisoners, indicate that Palestinian women and girls have been subjected to prolonged solitary confinement, beatings, sleep deprivation, shackling and denial of medical attention when in detention.

The groups making the accusations also urged the committee to make a finding that demolishing Palestinian houses in the occupied territories amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" in violation of the treaty. Ms. Hodgkin said that more than 500 houses had been bulldozed during the past year, leaving up to 3,000 people, many of them children, without homes.

Israel has destroyed homes where family members have been accused of carrying out attacks on Israelis as well as homes in disputed areas.

Israeli officials were asked to justify this practice in responses to questions posed by the committee's members. Those responses are due Wednesday, and the committee's findings are expected on Friday.

---

Barak Testifies on Israeli Arab Violence

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By JOEL GREENBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/international/middleeast/21ISRA.html

JERUSALEM, Nov. 20 - Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, told a state inquiry commission today that he was caught by surprise by the wave of violent protests by Israeli Arabs that erupted after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising last year.

"I did not expect those type of events" Mr. Barak, said, referring to the Israeli Arab protests in October 2000 in which 13 people were killed by police gunfire. "There was no concrete warning of such an eruption from any intelligence agency. The power, scope and intensity of the violence could not have been expected."

The three-member panel, headed by a supreme court judge, Theodor Or, is investigating the police shootings and the causes of the Israeli Arab protests. The commission has become a focus of the grievances of Israel's one million Arab citizens, who have long complained of discrimination, and whose communities lack state services and have high rates of poverty and unemployment.

Outside the Supreme Court building where today's hearing was held, relatives of the Arabs who were killed held up pictures of their loved ones and signs demanding accountability from the officials being questioned by the commission.

"Responsibility reaches the political echelon," one sign said. Another said: "13 dead, 0 responsible."

Mr. Barak and Shlomo Ben-Ami, the former foreign minister and the head of Internal Security, both of whom took the stand today, were the highest ranking officials serving at the time of the protests to testify before the commission.

With relatives of the dead in the audience, Mr. Barak argued that despite accumulation of simmering discontent among Israeli Arabs, neither he, his intelligence agencies nor the police expected the kind of violence that erupted last year.

Describing it as "extreme violence," Mr. Barak asserted that a minority had exploited a genuine sense of grievance to organize violent protests in which rioters attacked banks and post offices, blocked roads and stoned passing cars and police officers. Those protesters ultimately seek to "undermine the foundations of the State of Israel as a Zionist and democratic state," Mr. Barak said.

Mr. Barak testified that he had instructed the police to enforce the law while avoiding unnecessary confrontations with the protesters. The directive, he said, was "on the one hand to restore law and order, and on the other to carry this out wisely," even if that meant waiting 24 hours or more to open a blocked road.

Contradicting testimony heard earlier by the commission, Mr. Barak asserted that fatal shootings by the police occurred when small groups of officers were attacked by hostile mobs and responded with firearms.

Mr. Barak said he had failed to anticipate the serious Palestinian unrest that followed the visit of Ariel Sharon, the opposition leader at the time, to the area of Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount, the ancient plateau in Jerusalem that is sacred to both Jews and Muslims. That visit on Sept. 28, 2000, approved by Mr. Barak, was followed by Palestinian protests that mushroomed into the current uprising, and it was also a prelude to the Israeli Arab protests.

Mr. Barak said Mr. Sharon's visit could only have been prevented on the ground that it posed a clear and present danger to public safety, but intelligence assessments by the police and the Shin Bet security service at the time did not indicate that it would be followed by protests.

Furthermore, Mr. Barak said, Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian security chief in the West Bank, had assured Mr. Ben-Ami that if Mr. Sharon steered clear of the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount, the visit would be peaceful.

At the time "there was no reason not to approve it," Mr. Barak said, but he added, "It wasn't the reason for the whole eruption, but it supplied a good pretext for it, I admit."

In separate testimony, which began on Monday, Mr. Ben-Ami said that the police had failed to report to the government on the use of sharpshooters who fired live ammunition at protesters in the town of Umm al- Fahm. "This was hidden from the political echelon," Mr. Ben-Ami said, accusing the police of "a culture of faulty reporting."

Mr. Ben-Ami said the attempt to forcibly repel the protesters at Umm al-Fahm, who were blocking a highway, violated his instructions to avoid such actions because they could cause casualties. The police used milder methods when responding to similar protests by Jewish Israelis, Mr. Ben-Ami said.

As Mr. Barak testified, Jamila Asleh, whose 17 year-old son, Asel, was killed by the police, held up a picture of her son's body. "Here is Asel who you killed, Nazi!" she shouted at Mr. Barak before she was dragged out by security officers.

Her husband, Hassan Asleh, said later that he resented Mr. Barak's description of the protests as the work of a small extremist minority.

"The Arab sector cannot be marginalized for so many years," he said. "This is a people."

-------- pakistan

U.S. fleet blocks bin Laden's escape route

November 21, 2001
UPI
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/21112001-053520-3977r.htm

The U.S. 5th Fleet is searching all ships leaving Pakistan to prevent Osama bin Laden and other suspected terrorists from using a sea route to escape, a Pakistani newspaper reported Wednesday.

A Saudi fugitive, bin Laden is the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States. Reports from Afghanistan say that bin Laden and his lieutenants have been confined to a small area in southern part of the country since Nov. 13 when his Taliban supporters lost the Afghan capital, Kabul.

As the Taliban control over Afghanistan shrinks, U.S. officials fear that bin Laden may try to escape through Pakistan or other bordering countries to avoid arrest. U.S. officials ordered the 5th Fleet to search all ships leaving Pakistan's territorial waters to cut off a possible marine escape route for bin Laden and his associates.

The operation began Monday after the U.S. maritime liaison office in Bahrain ordered the fleet to move close to Pakistan.

Under the order, the U.S. 5th Fleet mounted a picket on all ships leaving Pakistani waters, including commercial vessels.

It warned all mariners that any attempt to resist the search could lead to severe repercussions, Pakistan daily The Nation reported.

Anyone suspected of assisting or transporting bin Laden or al Qaida leaders will risk the sinking or seizure of their vessel and will be jailed, the order said.

Also, any perceived hostility towards a U.S. or coalition ship during these operations will result in the destruction of the commercial vessel, the directive said.

U.S. officials also have dropped leaflets inside Afghanistan, informing ordinary people that there is a reward of $25 million for anyone who turns up bin Laden. The offer has also been broadcast by U.S., Pakistani and British radio stations in programs beamed to Afghanistan.

----

Alliance's Rise Catches Pakistan Off-Guard
'Strategic Debacle' Leaves Islamabad With Little Influence Over Afghanistan

By Susan B. Glasser and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 21, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61144-2001Nov20?language=printer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 20 -- More than a week after the Taliban retreat from the Afghan capital of Kabul and other cities, Pakistan is reeling from the rout of the strict Islamic militia it helped create.

Pakistan remains the only country in the world that still recognizes the Taliban and is unwilling to sever those ties. Pakistan also is not on speaking terms with the Northern Alliance, which now controls most of Afghanistan.

According to high-ranking political, military and diplomatic officials, Pakistan has seen its influence in Afghanistan evaporateas the future of the country is being plotted by the United Nations and the Northern Alliance, among others. Unable to wield power in Afghan affairs, Pakistan fears that it is now sandwiched between two hostile countries: India to the east and Afghanistan to the west. Pakistan's military is on high alert, fearing trouble and instability along the 1,500-mile border it shares with Afghanistan.

Although Pakistan enlisted as a key ally in the U.S.-led coalition to oust the Taliban after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, even top officials in President Pervez Musharraf's government have expressed alarm in recent days at the outcome of the coalition's efforts. Television screens here are flashing pictures of angry Afghans shouting "Death to Pakistan!" and Pakistan's regional rivals are advising the new rulers of Kabul. One senior Pakistani Foreign Ministry official pronounced his country's policy "a strategic debacle."

A top military official called the situation a "quagmire" for Pakistan, while several other senior government figures spoke bitterly in interviews of what they called a U.S. promise to keep the Northern Alliance out of Kabul -- a promise that was not kept.

The Northern Alliance, made up of Tajik, Uzbek and other ethnic groups in the northern part of Afghanistan, grew out of the mujaheddin who fought the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. After the Soviet pullout, the guerrillas fell into a civil war. Pakistan nurtured and supported the Taliban, whose members are mostly from the large Pashtun ethnic group in the south, in the mid-1990s. Pakistani officials saw the Taliban as a counterweight to the fractious, chaotic rule from 1992 to 1996 of the Kabul government, whose members are now largely back in control of the country.

Despite the enmity, Pakistan has signaled a willingness to open backdoor communications with the Northern Alliance through Turkey and Iran, both of which supported the alliance during its five-year battle to oust the Taliban. The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin, said in an interview that "yes, they are reaching out to the Northern Alliance."

Pakistani sources said top Foreign Ministry officials have also told Chamberlin they would welcome any U.S. efforts to help bridge the gap. Musharraf had talks with Iranian officials in Tehran earlier this month on his way to the United Nations, and then met with President Mohammad Khatami in New York. An Iranian official visited Musharraf in Islamabad last week. Musharraf also met with Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit in Istanbul last week.

Officially, Pakistan supports the creation of a "broad-based, multi-ethnic government" for Afghanistan and says the Northern Alliance occupation of Kabul should be replaced by an international peacekeeping force.

But Pakistan's diplomatic contortions in recent days suggest how tentative and confused the government's policy has become.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar told reporters that Pakistan would allow the Taliban's embassy here to remain open. But he also offered this confusing formula: Pakistan has not decided on the "de-recognition of the Taliban government," but that "does not mean that we continue to recognize it." Today, the Foreign Ministry spokesman announced the closure of two remaining Taliban consulates in the cities of Peshawar and Quetta, while insisting there have been no direct contacts between Islamabad and the Northern Alliance.

On Monday, Musharraf proclaimed vindication for his decision to join the U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition. Pakistan is now on the world's "center stage," he told local leaders. "Our policy will prove useful for the country, and everyone will benefit from it," he said.

But Musharraf's government was unprepared for the consequences of ousting the Taliban, according to several senior government officials and political analysts here. A week after the Taliban fled major cities in Afghanistan, a new policy toward Afghanistan has yet to emerge.

"Pakistan has an important role to play in shaping the future of Afghanistan, but we are losing that role by virtue of indecision," said Mushahid Hussain, a member of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's cabinet, now a commentator here. "We should recognize the new realities in the region, but instead our policy is reactive. Decisions are being made on the battlefield and not around the conference table."

A senior Foreign Ministry official said: "The sheer pace of events jolted each one of us here last week. It seemed that Taliban settled scores with Pakistan by offering Kabul to the Northern Alliance on a silver platter. The Taliban knew how much Islamabad would hate to see Northern Alliance leaders taking full control of the Afghan capital."

"The very fact that people such as Abdullah and General Fahim have assumed power in Kabul is enough to push Pakistan into a strategic quagmire," added a senior Pakistani military official, referring to the Northern Alliance's foreign minister and top military leader. "To our displeasure, the Northern Alliance will now remain a grim reality in Kabul."

Several top officials in Musharraf's government privately questioned whether the Bush administration had tried hard enough to prevent the Northern Alliance from taking Kabul.

"The U.S. has rewarded its most formidable ally by allowing its sworn enemies to capture the seat of power in Afghanistan," said another senior military officer, who added pointedly, "What actually happened in Kabul was opposite to what President Bush had promised to General Musharraf."

Nonetheless, critics also point to the failure of Pakistan's own Afghanistan policy, which for years backed the Taliban militia.

"The Americans never promised us a rose garden. We helped the Americans to oust the Taliban, so we shouldn't be surprised when the Taliban's principal opponents -- that is, the Northern Alliance -- are in a better position," Hussain said. "We should stop carping about it. We should recognize that the government in Afghanistan has changed, and we helped change the status quo."

But so far, Pakistan has been unable to even withdraw diplomatic recognition from the Taliban. "It's time," said Chamberlin, the U.S. ambassador. "This is the Taliban really on the skids, and it's my personal view that they should definitively sever their relationship with the Taliban. At this point, it's really a pro forma thing."

While the political situation remains muddled, the Taliban's collapse has also reshaped Pakistan's military strategy, according to interviews with several top officials.

The current crisis along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is "most unique in nature," as one official put it, because never before has the security situation -- not even during the Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989 -- warranted extensive deployment of army regulars, heavy artillery and tanks near the Afghan border.

But now, officials said, about 40,000 regular troops of the Pakistani army, 65,000 paramilitary troops and 35,000 frontier police and conscripts have been put on the highest alert to confront any emergency near the border.

"Before yesterday, Pakistan's military strategy and most doctrines almost exclusively focused on an Indian threat to Pakistan's security," a senior official said. "The normal security situation on the western borders allowed us to allocate most of our military resources to the eastern borders."

Correspondent John Ward Anderson in Istanbul contributed to this report.

-------- propaganda wars

Censorship - Can a free press survive America's new war?

by Alan Pittman,
Eugene Weekly,
November 21, 2001
http://www.eugeneweekly.com/coverstory.html

In "America's New War" the first U.S. casualty may be the First Amendment.

The military, Bush administration propaganda and the media itself have squelched news in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Asked at a press conference whether he would lie to the media about the war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quoted Winston Churchill about disinformation around the D-Day invasion. "Sometimes the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies."

Rumsfeld is about the only source the U.S. media has for covering the Afghan war. The military has refused to allow journalists to accompany troops and pilots fighting in Afghanistan or even interview them after their missions.

"They plan to fight the war and then tell the press and the public how it turned out afterwards," the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) quoted CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre.

The military spin is that pinpoint smart bombings will keep civilian casualties to a minimum, international investigative reporter Phillip Knightley wrote in a CPI commentary. "Bloody TV footage or grim still photographs of civilian bomb victims would threaten this most outrageous piece of propaganda, so an essential part of the Western alliance's strategy has been not only to bomb in the dark but, as far as possible, to keep the public in the dark as well."

John Barry, Newsweek's Pentagon reporter, told The New York Times that the military is restricting coverage, that "might not be consonant with their basic message that they're making inexorable progress toward inevitable victory."

The media blackout is the culmination of a long trend toward military censorship. After Vietnam, the military blamed the media for turning public opinion against the war.

The British managed to successfully keep the media away from directly covering their Falklands War. A U.S. Naval War College publication reported on the Falkland lessons. To maintain public support, the article said, a government should sanitize the visual images of war; control media access; censor information that could upset readers or viewers; and exclude journalists who would not write favorable stories, according to CPI.

The U.S. applied the Falklands model in Grenada and Panama. The biggest application was in the Gulf War. A CPI report on Gulf War coverage noted gross exaggerations of the effectiveness of Patriot missiles and smart bombs and success rates for bombing missions. The 1991 report concluded, "information about Defense Department activities ... [was] restricted or manipulated not for national security purposes, but for political purposes -- to protect the image and priorities of the Defense Department and its civilian leaders, including the president."

Media groups complained after the Gulf War, and the Pentagon promised to allow more access next time. But that hasn't happened and media groups are complaining again.

The presidents of a group of 20 journalism organizations issued a statement expressing concern "over the increasing restrictions by the United States government that limit news gathering and inhibit the free flow of information in the wake of the September 11 attack. ... We believe that these restrictions pose dangers to American democracy and prevent American citizens from obtaining the information they need."

But the Pentagon has not budged. With patriotism running high, the military may reason that the public isn't likely to complain. A recent Pew Research Center poll showed 59 percent of respondents want more military control over reporting the war. Only 28 percent want more media control, the Times reported.

That has left journalists trying to cover the Afghan war from Pakistan. Masood Anwar of the News International in Pakistan describes the coverage from Quetta as "mainly cooked up and rubbish, as the journalists themselves are hostages to circumstances and strict security concerns" and must have Pakistani military escorts.

When a reporter in Pakistan does manage to report news, they can be kicked out. The London Telegraph reported that its correspondent was deported from Pakistan after uncovering evidence of a covert operation by rogue elements of Pakistan's military intelligence service to smuggle arms to the Taliban.

UO Prof. Anita Weiss, author of several books on Pakistan, reads Pakistani and other Arabic newspapers and is "appalled" by the local interviews and perspectives U.S. media are missing. "We're being fed a line," she said. A free press "is a civil liberty we've quickly lost."

Domestic Censorship Reporting on the domestic war on terrorism has also been severely curtailed. After the media complained that the Justice Department refused to provide the names and charges for 1,200 people it detained after the terrorist attacks, the department announced that it would no longer release even the total number of detainees. Now, President Bush has signed an order allowing an unknown number of present and future accused terrorists to be tried and potentially executed in secret by military courts.

Government censorship has moved onto the Internet, with information being removed from dozens of government web sites on the theory that terrorists might use it, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has removed information about nuclear reactors, the Environmental Protection Agency pulled information about chemical plant accidents and the Federal Aviation Administration removed information about airport security violations. The public now must trust that the government will make nuclear plants, chemical plants and airports safe.

Government censorship has even moved into space. The Pentagon has bought exclusive rights to commercial satellite imagery of Afghanistan, blocking media from using the images, the Times reported.

The censorship is producing growing mistrust. Variety reported that ABC News anchor Peter Jennings wrote about his misgivings in an e-mail to viewers: "We have been given to understand that the Taliban forces had been 'eviscerated,' that its ranks had been severely depleted by defections, and that the United States had bombed so heavily it was running out of targets. -- Today, as bombing enters week four, those claims appear questionable.''

A Frankfurt, Germany newspaper has warned readers about disinformation, the Times reported. "Substantial amounts of information about current military actions and their consequences is subject to censorship by parties to the conflict," the warning said. "In many cases, an independent confirmation of such information is not possible for this newspaper."

UO political science professor Jerry Medler said the military censorship has been successful in limiting opposition to the war. "No one has stood up to say, 'wait a minute--' and the reason is we have very little information."

But the military may be shooting itself in the foot in the long run. The New York Times held back from reporting on the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba under pressure from President John F. Kennedy. Later, after the disastrous invasion, Kennedy told the paper's editor that he wished the paper had printed everything. "If you had printed more about the operation, you would have saved us from a colossal mistake," the Times reported.

Propaganda "There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and that this is not a time for remarks like that," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer in response to comments from ABC satirist Bill Maher questioning whether terrorists on suicide missions should be called "cowardly."

In its propaganda war against Al Qaeda, the Bush administration is pushing the media to watch what it says and does on many fronts.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice told network news executives that they shouldn't broadcast taped messages from Osama bin Laden. The networks now paraphrase or air only snippets of the tapes.

"We Americans -- are now the only people in the whole developed world who can't actually hear what our enemy is saying about us," lamented New York University media professor Mark Crispin Miller in a Mother Jones column.

Censoring bin Laden's anti-American rants is actually counter-productive, according to Robert Giles, of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism. The violent bin Laden statements would only support the need for the war, he wrote in a Times op-ed, "which makes it especially odd that the administration would want to keep it from the American public."

The bin Laden videos come to U.S. media through the Al-Jazeera Arabic news channel. Bush sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to press Qatar to censor the independent media outlet that U.S. officials have criticized as anti-American. Recently, the U.S. bombed the station's Kabul office.

The Bush Administration would likely be secretive and anti-media even without the war. Journalists have complained about administration efforts to fight Freedom of Information Act requests, subpoena the phone records of a reporter, and withhold presidential records from George Bush senior's administration that could prove embarrassing to officials in junior's White House.

After Sept. 11, the Bush Administration came down hard on leaks. Bush even threatened to end security briefings for many members of Congress before the Republican and Democratic officials complained bitterly.

There's so little information from the U.S. government that Americans have come to rely on the British government for news about their country. Prime Minister Tony Blair was the first to release details of the legal case against bin Laden, and British military officials were the first to discuss the likely need for ground troops to catch bin Laden.

The Bush administration is now asking Hollywood to contribute to the propaganda war. Moviemakers are reportedly willing to do their part.

Bush's moves to sacrifice civil liberties in the war on terrorism has been chilling, the Village Voice reported. Paul McMasters, of the Freedom Forum, said that "In such an atmosphere, voices of dissent grow silent, probing questions by the press are viewed as unpatriotic and subversive, and whistle-blowers within the government are quieted."

With public opinion polls registering a patriotic 80 percent or more support for Bush, the president is seeing few limits to his power to bend the First Amendment and other rights to his will. Tim Lynch, of the conservative Cato Institute, told The Washington Post that the high polling numbers have fostered "an arrogance at the White House." He said officials believe they can take presidential power "farther than it's gone before."

Self-Censorship The Bush administration doesn't need to do anything to censor many media outlets; they do it themselves.

CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson ordered news staff to limit reports of Afghan war casualties and use World Trade Center deaths to justify the killings, the Washington Post reported. After the deaths in the U.S., it "seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan," Isaacson wrote in a memo.

Other U.S. networks have taken a similar approach, according to the Times. "In the United States television images of Afghan bombing victims are fleeting, cushioned between anchors or American officials explaining that such sights are only one side of the story," the Times reported. In other countries, however, "images of wounded Afghan children curled in hospital beds or women rocking in despair over a baby's corpse" are "more frequent and lingering."

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) called CNN's casualty coverage policy itself "perverse." "One of the world's most powerful news outlets has instructed its journalists not to report Afghan civilian casualties without attempting to justify those deaths."

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Stephanie Salter wrote, "Between the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the so-called war in Afghanistan, a once-great news operation seems to be morphing into the Atlanta-based annex of the West Wing." Salter quoted from a New York Times report that "after two months, American television's cautious approach has turned into knee-jerk pandering to the public, reflecting a mood of patriotism rather than informing viewers of the complex, sometimes harsh realities they need to know."

Too many journalists view themselves as part of the military. CBS's Dan Rather said of the commander in chief, "Wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where. And he'll make the call," reported media commentator Norman Solomon.

Brit Hume, anchor for the conservative Fox News Channel, said that neutrality isn't appropriate in coverage for this war because the enemy are "murderous barbarians," WorkingForChange reported.

But ABC President David Westin warned in a speech that "unless we are diligent our enemy could use our own patriotism against us by encouraging us to shut down independent thinking and open mindedness."

Many media outlets appear to be shutting down reporting for fear of negative reaction from patriotic zealots.

FAIR quotes from a warning memo from the chief copy editor of the Panama City, Florida News Herald. "DO NOT USE photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties from the U.S. war on Afghanistan. Our sister paper in Fort Walton Beach has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening e-mails and the like. ... DO NOT USE wire stories which lead with civilian casualties from the U.S. war on Afghanistan. They should be mentioned further down in the story. If the story needs rewriting to play down the civilian casualties, DO IT."

Organized right-wing "patriot police" have hounded network executives, according to FAIR. ABC's Westin said his network got a "torrent of complaints" when it aired an interview with a PLO spokesman.

Some media outlets don't need prompting to toe the popular line. "If you get on the wrong side of public opinion, you are going to get into trouble," CNN's Isaacson said, according to WorkingForChange.

Newspaper columnists have felt the heat. Columnists for the Texas City Sun and Grants Pass Daily Courier were fired after they criticized Bush for cowardice in not immediately returning to Washington after the Sept. 11 attacks.

At a UO peace conference last month, UO journalism Prof. Carl Bybee held up a copy of The Register-Guard coverage of the conference that he said was skewed. The story reported that a keynote speaker favored a police action to apprehend bin Laden. "Even peace activists want revenge," began the R-G story.

In the atmosphere of self-censorship, FAIR has complained that peace protests have been undercovered and peace opinions are given little room on op-ed pages.

Rallying around the president in war time may have even skewed the reported results of the media consortium recount of the Florida presidential vote. The Nation notes that the recount showed that Al Gore would have narrowly won if all ballots in the state were accurately counted. But CNN declared, "Florida recount study: Bush still wins."

With the U.S. media censored and waving flags on the air, more aggressive British reporters have repeatedly scooped American journalists. The Brits were first to report on a new video in which bin Laden justifies Sept. 11th, first to find documents abandoned by retreating Al Qaeda forces hinting at efforts to build nuclear bombs, and first with an interview of Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Times reported.

Recently, the BBC gave far more detailed and prominent coverage of alleged atrocities by Northern Alliance troops in Mazar-i-Sharif than did CNN or The New York Times.

America cannot risk losing the First Amendment to war, said NYU Prof. Crispin. "If we allow the government and media to keep us all in nervous ignorance, American democracy will not prevail against the terrorists; it will have been destroyed regardless of the outcome of this latest war."

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Appeals court rejects appeal in Vieques bombing battle

Wednesday, November 21, 2001
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11212001/ap_45631.asp

BOSTON - A federal appeals court has rejected an appeal from environmental groups, who hoped to use the Endangered Species Act to halt Navy bombing exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

The First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over the U.S. territory, upheld a ruling that national security concerns of the Navy outweighed potential harm to endangered species. It rebuffed the claim that the Navy made procedural errors in consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The military stopped using live explosives on Vieques after bombs killed a civilian security guard in 1999, triggering demonstrations.

Under an agreement signed last year, the Navy was forced to switch to dummy bombs. President Bush has said the Navy should abandon the training areas in Vieques by May 2003.

The environmental groups led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. contend there are 13 endangered species in the bombing area, including pelicans, manatees, whales, turtles, and plants.

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

Taliban asks UN for help to surrender
War on Terrorism: Kunduz and Kandahar

By Justin Huggler, in Taloqan, Afghanistan
21 November 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=105977

The Taliban have pleaded formally with the United Nations to arrange the unconditional surrender of their forces besieged inside the northern Afghan city of Kunduz. However, the top UN envoy for Afghanistan said the UN had no presence on the ground, "and simply cannot unfortunately accede to this request".

Lakhdar Brahimi said a religious leader and another unidentified person formally approached the UN in Islamabad on Monday night saying that Taliban commanders from inside Kunduz wanted to surrender unconditionally and wanted to do it to the UN.

He said the UN secretary general Kofi Annan had been in touch with the Northern Alliance, whose forces are outside the city, and members of the international coalition, asking that they "respect their obligations under international humanitarian law and treat this question with as much humanity as possible".

Thousands of Taliban troops are trapped in and around Kunduz, their every possible means of escape cut off by the Northern Alliance troops who surround them. Among them, say Alliance commanders, are 1,000 members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network and more than 10,000 foreign Taliban volunteers who appear determined to fight to the death.

Anxious to avoid a bloodbath, the Alliance is holding back from attacking the city while it tries to help negotiate the Taliban's surrender. But grim tales come out of the city of the foreigners massacring Afghan Taliban who try to defect.

The United States has pulled the rug out from under the negotiators' feet, saying it would vehemently oppose any solution that would allow the al-Qa'ida fighters to escape. The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, on Monday told reporters he would prefer the al-Qa'ida fighters to be killed, rather than to be allowed to escape alive from Afghanistan.

Taliban commanders inside Kunduz have reportedly said that the foreign fighters are prepared to surrender if they are given a UN guarantee of safe passage from Afghanistan. But Mr Rumsfeld said he would do everything he could to prevent them being allowed to leave Afghanistan. "My preference is that they will either be killed or taken prisoner," he said.

As many as 470 Afghan Taliban are said to have been killed in three separate alleged incidents in the past five days.

"I am not optimistic that the foreigners will surrender," General Mohammed Daud of the Northern Alliance said yesterday. He said 20,000 Taliban still remain in Kunduz, more than 10,000 of them foreigners. The 1,000 al-Qa'ida fighters include a senior commander of the network, Omar al-Khatab, he claimed.

American planes are pounding the Taliban in and around Kunduz, but on the front lines the Northern Alliance guns remain silent. The Alliance has Kunduz surrounded on all sides. To the west are the forces of the Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum, whose victory in Mazar-i-Sherif prompted the collapse of the Taliban across Afghanistan. To the east are an array of warlord's private armies, under the command of General Daud.

The Alliance has not attacked, General Daud said yesterday, because it wants to avoid "widespread bloodshed and destruction".

It is not only the blood of the Taliban he is worried about. Last week, Northern Alliance troops walked into a Taliban ambush, fooled by false reports that the Taliban in Kunduz had surrendered. More than 50 soldiers were killed, according to one commander.

The Alliance's sensational victories across Afghanistan have been on the back of defections by Afghan Taliban who saw which way the wind was blowing. Many of the Alliance troops now besieging Kunduz were Taliban a week ago.

If the last of the Taliban put up a serious defence of Kunduz, the battle could be far bloodier than anything yet seen. The Americans may be eager for the al-Qa'ida fighters to be killed or captured, but the Northern Alliance are far from eager to walk into the lion's den on America's behalf.

With the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan all but consigned to history, already there are signs of cracks in the loose alliance of warlords that toppled them - even between the different commanders besieging Kunduz. General Dostum said yesterday that two senior Taliban commanders were travelling to Mazar to negotiate with him. General Daud denied it. General Daud is a member of the ethnic Tajik-dominated hardcore of the Northern Alliance once led by Ahmad Shah Massood, who are calling the shots at the moment because it was they who walked into Mazar. Usually General Dostum would be a far more powerful warlord than General Daud. Already, the warlords are jostling for position.

The easy collapse of the Taliban has shown how few Afghans were ideologically committed to their fundamentalist rule. The former Taliban now manning Northern Alliance front lines are in it strictly for themselves.

----

Afghan Victors Agree to Talks in Berlin
Northern Alliance Acceptance of U.N. Invitation Called 'Very Important Step'

By Keith B. Richburg and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 21, 2001; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61152-2001Nov20?language=printer

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 20 -- The Northern Alliance accepted an invitation to U.N.-sponsored talks in Germany next week to begin planning a broad-based government, as U.S. warplanes continued pounding Taliban troops in their remaining strongholds in the north and south of the country.

The announcement was made by the alliance foreign minister, Abdullah, at a news conference in the capital with U.N. envoy Francesc Vendrell.

Agreeing to attend the talks marked a major concession for the anti-Taliban alliance, whose forces now control more than half the country, including this battle-scarred city. Alliance officials had wanted any political power-sharing talks to be held here, where as the de facto government in place they would have a significant advantage in bargaining with other Afghan factions, mostly coming from abroad.

Vendrell hailed the alliance's decision as "a first and very important step." He added, "The fact that they're willing to travel abroad is a signal of flexibility. We're in a new era."

But the leader of the Northern Alliance, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was deposed by the Taliban in 1996 and returned to Kabul Saturday still claiming the right to rule, seemed to send a different signal that suggested tough bargaining ahead. He told CNN in an interview that the talks in Berlin would be only "symbolic," and that major decisions regarding the future of Afghanistan would have to be held inside the country.

"We can have the first gathering in a foreign country, in Europe, but this gathering will be mostly symbolic, that's all," Rabbani said.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan, said he hoped the Berlin talks could provide a transitional government composed of up to 30 Afghan leaders to take power immediately in Kabul.

The new government would also devise a security plan for the country, select a larger provisional national council and begin drafting a constitution. The process would ultimately require the endorsement of a loya jirga, a traditional Afghan assembly representing the various ethnic and religious factions.

"We think that there is a real consensus among all Afghans that what you need is a large council, a small authority to run the country on a provisional basis," Brahimi said. "We hope that this would be the beginning we have been looking for to end the conflict in Afghanistan and start building new institutions for the country."

Brahimi said that representatives of the key Afghan factions, including the Northern Alliance, southern-based ethnic Pashtuns and the exiled former king Mohammed Zahir Shah, 87, have agreed to attend the meeting. The conference would also include ethnic Pashtuns based in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Iranian-backed Afghans who have participated in the so-called Cyprus Group.

On a related issue, alliance leaders showed little flexibility on the issue of admitting foreign peacekeepers until a new government can be formed. Britain already has about 100 troops at Bagram, north of Kabul, and France and Turkey have announced their intention to send peacekeeping troops to Mazar-e Sharif in the north, and to Kabul.

But Abdullah, who like many Afghans goes by one name, said again today that countries wanting to deploy peacekeepers to Afghanistan first needed the alliance's agreement. "Any such decision -- which would be considered a major development -- should be discussed with us," Abdullah said. "At this stage, there hasn't been such a consultation with us."

One group excluded from the forthcoming talks will be the Taliban, the radical Islamic group that seized power in Afghanistan in 1996 but saw its grip on the country crumble during 45 days of relentless U.S. airstrikes and a surprisingly swift military advance by the Northern Alliance guerrillas.

"As for the Taliban, it seems to all of us that the Taliban movement and structure is on the verge of collapse," Vendrell said.

Another group that may have a hard time finding a seat at the table is Afghanistan's women. For the last five years, under Taliban rule, they have been forced indoors and behind veils, but some are now beginning to demand that their rights be restored. But there is no formal way to include women -- whom traditional Afghans in any case would not consider for such a role -- in the talks on Afghanistan's future.

Today, hundreds of women shed their enveloping burqas and gathered in central Kabul for what was supposed to be a mass march to the U.N. headquarters compound, to demand that women be included in next week's talks. Northern Alliance police halted the march, organized by a former politician, Saraya Parlika. She said she would try again next week.

Pentagon officials, meanwhile, offered new details about the airstrikes last week that killed Mohammed Atef, a senior lieutenant to suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden, who is believed to have orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington and is now hiding in Afghanistan.

A senior defense official said as many as 50 other al Qaeda leaders and fighters were killed in the attack, which was on a building about 40 miles south of Kabul on Oct. 13. The Pentagon calculated the death toll by examining reconnaissance pictures showing that extensive efforts were made to pull people from the rubble.

After Navy F-18 Hornets twice struck the building with laser-guided bombs, defense officials said, a Predator drone flown by the CIA that initially had targeted the facility fired Hellfire antitank missiles at people attempting to flee the devastation.

One U.S. official added that there were intelligence reports before the strike that a senior al Qaeda leader -- now believed to be Atef -- was planning to enter the building and speak to those assembled there. "We know there was a senior person who went into the building," the official said. "It was unclear weather he was giving them an address. "

As the Pentagon's attention increasingly focuses on finding bin Laden and senior Taliban leaders, defense officials said that 4,400 U.S. Marines from the 15th and 26th Marine Expeditionary Units are on amphibious assault ships in the Arabian Sea and ready to be deployed in Afghanistan, if intelligence indicated that substantial ground forces are necessary. But so far no Marines are on the ground in Afghanistan, the officials said.

Dozens of U.S. fighters, bombers and AC-130 gunships continue flying missions in northern and southern Afghanistan in support of opposition forces opposing the Taliban in both areas. But at least half of about 50 carrier-based Navy fighters are returning to their ships with all of their bombs, because no "emerging targets" were identified for them to strike.

Briefing reporters at the Pentagon, Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem said there is no plan to curtail airstrikes for the Thanksgiving holiday. But he said the United States would abide by requests from opposition commanders to halt bombing missions temporarily as they attempt to negotiate for the surrender of Taliban forces.

"I think that it would be fair to say that if the opposition groups were to ask us not to bomb a specific facility or a location so they could continue their discussions, we'll certainly honor that," Stufflebeem said.

The Taliban fled Kabul a week ago, retreating to their stronghold in the largely Pashtun province of Kandahar in the south. Another group of Taliban troops -- along with Arab, Pakistani and other foreign fighters with them -- have taken refuge in Kunduz province in the north, which also has a large Pashtun population.

That group in Kunduz is now surrounded, and Northern Alliance officials have been trying to negotiate a surrender. Afghan Taliban commanders have said they would surrender to the United Nations but will not give up the besieged city to the Northern Alliance for fear of a massacre. But U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan turned down the Taliban request and instead appealed to the Northern Alliance to show restraint in the event that the Taliban forces lay down their arms.

More U.S. airstrikes were also reported around Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement and the home of its spiritual leader, Mohammad Omar. Northern Alliance intelligence officials believe Omar and bin Laden have been traveling together, moving constantly to escape the airstrikes and to evade a tightening American net.

Kenton Keith, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Islamabad, Pakistan, said U.S. intelligence suggests that bin Laden remains in hiding in Taliban territory, possibly in Kandahar or in a stronghold northeast of there. "We believe Osama bin Laden and Mohammad Omar are still within Afghanistan," he said.

Even as the Taliban appears to have been routed in many key areas of the country, alliance officials were still warning of "pockets" of ex-Taliban fighters who may still be roaming the countryside, and who may be targeting foreigners, including journalists.

Gunmen killed four foreign reporters Monday along a deserted stretch of the main road from Kabul to Jalalabad, and their bodies were recovered today and positively identified. They were Reuters television cameraman Harry Burton and photographer Azizullah Haidari, Spanish journalist Julio Fuentes of El Mundo and Italian journalist Maria Grazia Cutuli of Corriere della Sera.

Abdullah said the killers may have come "perhaps from those pockets that have remained here or there from the Taliban."

A police official also warned of small roving bands of Taliban who may be trying to attack foreigners in the country.

Lynch reported from the United Nations. Staff writer Vernon Loeb in Washington and correspondent Peter Baker in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

----

U.N.-led power-sharing talks to start next week

11/21/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/21/talks.htm

BERLIN (AP) - U.N.-sponsored talks on the formation of a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan will start next week in Bonn, the German Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. The U.S. envoy to Afghanistan's anti-Taliban forces said he was optimistic the meeting, which is expected to start Monday with four main groups representing Afghanistan's various ethnic and political groups, will produce a broad-based government.

James F. Dobbins, who spent the last two weeks in the Central Asian region, said "high levels of suspicion and anxiety" remained among the anti-Taliban factions, but added that opinion was "less divergent and more convergent than I expected."

He spoke in London after briefing British officials on his meetings with the Northern Alliance, Pashtun leaders, Pakistani officials in Islamabad and representatives of the exiled Afghan king in Rome.

The talks will be held at the chateau-like Petersberg hotel, a former government guesthouse perched on a hilltop overlooking the Rhine River near Bonn, the former West German capital.

The hotel was used by former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he came to meet with Adolf Hitler on the eve of World War II. After the war, it was the seat of the three Western wartime allies - the United States, France and Britain - that occupied West Germany.

State visitors have included the Shah of Iran, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who took a Mercedes on a spin down the winding Petersberg road and promptly wrecked it.

It was not known how long the talks will last, but the top U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said Tuesday he hoped for a quick decision by fewer than 30 Afghan leaders. Still, Sparwasser said she was expecting "maybe in the order of 50-70" participants next week.

The Northern Alliance, which now holds most of Afghanistan, will send a delegation to the talks. The alliance is made up largely of ethnic minorities, and U.N. organizers have been trying to find representatives for Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns.

Three groups that include Pashtuns will attend: representatives from the former king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, and two other groups of Afghan exiles.

Zaher Shah, who has lived in Italy since his 1973 ouster, has decided to include at least one woman in his delegation, his aide Hamid Sidig said. "The role of the women for the future of Afghanistan is very crucial and important," Sidig said.

German officials emphasized that their government would have no role in the talks.

"The conference is planned at the moment in such a way that it will be a purely internal Afghan meeting under the leadership of and hosted by the United Nations here in Germany," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Sparwasser said.

Berlin had been touted as a possible venue for the talks. U.N. spokesman U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said it was decided to hold it in Bonn when the chateau conference center became free.

Germany has been an important donor to humanitarian relief efforts in Afghanistan. It is the current chairman of the Afghanistan Support Group, which was formed in the late 1990s and includes over a dozen key donor nations that have been helping the embattled country. The group will meet from Dec. 5-7 in Berlin.

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Report: U.S. Military Wants Domestic Defense Command

Yahoo News
Wednesday November 21
Reuters
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011121/pl/attack_homeland_command_dc_1.html

WASHINGTON - An agreement has been reached by military officials to name a four-star commander to coordinate troops used for defending the United States from attack, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The Pentagon currently has regional commanders in chief responsible for Europe, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and South Asia, but has no corresponding post for managing the deployment of U.S. forces within the United States for homeland defense.

Unnamed military officials quoted by the Post said creating a domestic regional commander in chief would clarify the chain of command for troops being used for homeland defense.

The issue has arisen in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, which have prompted a rethinking of the Pentagon's command structure and force assignments, the Post said.

The newspaper said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has yet to make a final decision on appointing a four-star commander for domestic defense, but quoted senior military officials working on the issue as saying an agreement has been reached on establishing such a post.

``There's a consensus of opinion now that a need exists to quickly pin the rose on some four-star commander,'' a senior official was quoted as telling the Post.

The newspaper said officials are considering restructuring an existing command already headquartered within the United States to take up the homeland defense role. The Post said two possibilities were the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado and the Joint Forces Command in Virginia.

The U.S. military traditionally is not used for domestic security purposes. But the Sept. 11 attacks have thrust the U.S. military into such a role, with Air Force jets patrolling the skies above U.S. cities and National Guard troops protecting airports and bridges and assisting at border checkpoints. National Guard troops last week began assisting in providing security at the U.S. Capitol.

------

America determined to call the shots over deployment of ground troops War on Terrorism: Strategy

By Kim Sengupta
21 November 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=105971

The conduct of the war in Afghanistan is still very much a show made in America, as Britain's convoluted attempts to deploy a large force in the country show.

Downing Street is putting on a brave face, but there is little doubt that a significant contingent of the 6,000 troops on stand-by will only go to Afghanistan when the United States says so.

Marching his troops up the hill and then marching them down again may be embarrassing for Tony Blair, but there is also irritation on the American side at what is happening. It was, after all, American air power that broke the Taliban so quickly and many US officials cannot understand why Britain should take the glory of having the first and largest force on the ground. The New York Times reported that a State Department spokesman, asked if Washington believed that thousands of British forces were needed to stabilise the situation in northern Afghanistan, would only say: "We appreciate the important role contributed by the armed forces of the United Kingdom in the campaign against terrorism."

The criticism of American policy by Clare Short, the Secretary of State for International Development, may be the first public crack in the so-called global coalition.

Ms Short said that America did not appear to share in the growing international consensus that action was needed to alleviate poverty if a repeat of the 11 September attack was to be avoided.

There is also annoyance in London that Washington has not beenappreciative in public of the contribution made by Britain in the air campaign, even though America asked for British help.

After the 11 September attack, Tony Blair in effect told the Americans that they could choose whatever they wanted from the British military machine. They allocated British forces a support role, but the British help was still vital when it came to sustaining the prolonged air raids.

Royal Air Force Awacs (airborne warning and control system) aircraft are controlling one-third of all the raids and refuelling one-fifth of all American air activity.

The mid-air refuelling by the British is crucial for US Navy warplanes because their system for fuel intake is more compatible with the RAF than it is with the US Air Force.

There is also the role of the British special forces inside Afghanistan. The Americans admire their expertise and acknowledge the significant part they played in the undercover war. The strength of the British performance contrasts to that of their own forces, whose first, and last, ground attack before the fall of Kabul ended in near disaster.

But, by definition, the special forces' undercover role could not be publicised - hence Downing Street's desire to have the overt presence of a large-scale British force doing good work in Afghanistan.

The Americans are unlikely to want to prolong the embarrassment of Mr Blair, their staunchest ally, and permission is likely to be granted for deployment, though it may come later rather than sooner.

But the lesson, say Whitehall sources, is that European partners must fully consult Washington before announcing grand plans for Afghanistan.

----

Military favors a homeland command

November 21, 2001
UPI
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/21112001-032103-6321r.htm

U.S. military authorities favor the appointment a four-star commander to coordinate troops to defend the United States from attack in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The measure would be part of a broad reorganization that Pentagon officials say could change some forces' primary mission from waging war overseas to patrolling at home.

"There's a consensus of opinion now that a need exists to quickly pin the rose on some four-star commander," a senior official said.

The Pentagon has regional commanders in chief for Europe, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and South Asia, but no such post for managing the deployment of forces in the United States.

"The chain of command is not as clear in the United States as overseas," the senior official said. "We think it's time to clarify things."

The Post said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has yet to make a final decision on appointing a four-star commander, but senior military officials have reached an agreement on establishing a homeland defense post.

The purpose of the Pentagon's new four-star assignment would be to consolidate the chain of command running from the president through the secretary of defense to those federal troops enlisted in the defensive effort.

----

Homeland Security Team's Key Members Announced
Top Appointees Have Close Ties to Senior Bush Officials

By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 21, 2001; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60974-2001Nov20?language=printer

The Bush administration yesterday presented the core of its homeland security team, a diverse group dominated by officials with strong loyalties to Vice President Cheney, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

After more than two months of frenetic responding to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent anthrax crisis, administration officials now are turning their attention to drafting a detailed plan for combating terrorism. That proposal will include a major overhaul of intelligence gathering and sharing as well as potentially profound changes in public and private security measures.

Cheney, who headed the administration's National Preparedness Review before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, put his stamp on the new homeland security office by installing retired Adm. Steve Abbot, a senior aide, as Ridge's chief deputy. Abbot will oversee the office's day-to-day operations and the development of the long-term strategy, with the goal of presenting the plan to President Bush for consideration next spring.

Maj. Gen. Bruce Lawlor, the first commander of a sensitive new military operation that would respond if the United States were struck by a chemical, germ or nuclear attack, is the homeland security office's senior director of protection and prevention. Michael Byrne, a former New York firefighter and Federal Emergency Management Agency official, was appointed senior director of response and recovery.

Mark Holman, chief of staff to Ridge during his years as a member of Congress and governor of Pennsylvania, is deputy assistant to the president for homeland security, responsible for communications, legislative affairs and general political troubleshooting. Susan Neely, Ridge's press secretary, managed the "Harry and Louise" ad campaign for the Health Insurance Association of America from 1994 to 1996 that blocked Clinton administration health care initiatives.

"We have a very gregarious, outspoken group of talented people that are going to be willing to mix it up quickly," Holman told reporters yesterday. "Governor Ridge's style has always been to welcome people of diverse opinions and ask them to speak up."

Many lawmakers and anti-terrorism experts have warned that Ridge is being set up to fail unless Congress acts to create a permanent homeland security post with a large staff and consolidated government agencies under it. But Ridge and other White House officials disagree, saying that Ridge can do more as a senior adviser with the president's mandate and a large staff of people detailed from other agencies than as the head of a separate bureaucracy.

Ridge has been operating with a skeletal staff of about 30 aides, with 18 others about to come on board. The operation is planned to expand to nearly 100 members by early next year, about the size of the National Security Council staff.

Holman said Ridge may also temporarily hire a number of "special employees" from private industry and business who would serve for 60 to 90 days to help in preparing the new homeland defense policies. Such a move would raise questions of accountability, since these people would not be subject to the same screening as permanent hires.

Under the Oct. 8 executive order that created the homeland security office, Ridge was mandated to prepare a comprehensive national plan for securing the nation's borders, improving intelligence gathering and sharing of information by federal agencies, and beefing up law enforcement agencies' efforts to detect and apprehend terrorists seeking to harm U.S. citizens and property.

The plan is likely to have a profound impact on government, industry and the lives of average citizens, yet it will not be subject to congressional approval. While members of Congress will be asked to provide advice and input, according to Ridge aides, the final decision on the details of the plan will be left to Bush.

Holman vowed that the process would be open and that the administration, for example, would disclose the business affiliations and other background information of the special employees retained to help shape the government policy. However, the administration has clashed before with members of Congress, the General Accounting Office and environmental groups by refusing to divulge the names of industry officials who advised a White House energy policy task force that was headed by Cheney.

Comptroller General David M. Walker, reluctant to challenge the administration in the midst of a war, recently put on hold a lawsuit seeking to force Cheney to turn over records from his energy task force. However, Walker said the GAO wants to focus more on homeland security.

"There's no doubt that Congress feels much stronger about the need to exercise reasonable oversight in the critical area of homeland security than it does about" the Cheney task force, Walker said recently. "This could become the new battleground."

Ridge and roughly two dozen of his senior staff will work out of the White House and the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building, while the remainder of the new staff will be housed several miles away in Upper Northwest Washington, in a highly secure naval building near Massachusetts and Nebraska avenues NW.

Ridge's emerging team also includes:

• Richard Falkenrath, a biological and chemical terrorism expert at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, who was named senior director of policy and plans. Falkenrath is taking the lead in developing budget proposals for strengthening anti-terrorism efforts.

• Ed McNally, a former partner and trial lawyer with the firm of Altheimer & Gray in Chicago, is Ridge's general counsel. McNally previously served as assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York and was a speechwriter for President George Bush.

• Frank Cilluffo, a prominent author and speaker on counterterrorism, was retained as a special assistant to the president and adviser for external affairs on homeland security.

Others are Becky Halkias, the legislative affairs director; Carl Buckholz, a lawyer who will serve as executive secretary; and Barbara Chaffee, the office's public liaison. Halkias and Chaffee both served Ridge while he was governor, and Buckholz was an aide to the late Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.).

--------

Marines May Be Sent Into Afghanistan

NOVEMBER 21,
By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&PACKAGEID=attacks-military&STORYID=APIS7FTPGP80

WASHINGTON (AP) - A battalion of Marines trained for counterterrorism and other complex missions probably will be sent to Afghanistan soon, perhaps this week, a senior U.S. official says.

As many as 1,500 of the Marines would join Army and Air Force special operations troops already in Afghanistan, the official said Monday. The Marines could provide security for other U.S. forces or expand the search for Osama bin Laden and members of his al-Qaida terrorist network.

Pentagon officials have not made a final decision on sending in the Marines, the official said, nor have they determined how many troops would be sent and for what tasks. A small advance team might slip into Afghanistan first to arrange for the others' arrival, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Two Marine units are waiting aboard ships in the nearby Arabian Sea.

Sending in the Marines would substantially increase the number of U.S. troops on the ground inside Afghanistan. Several hundred U.S. special forces are there now, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said. The forces, including Army Green Beret and Delta Force units, are in Afghanistan helping anti-Taliban groups and searching for al-Qaida leaders.

That hunt already has had some success. A Nov. 14 airstrike on a building outside the capital of Kabul killed al-Qaida's military chief, Mohammed Atef. The strike also killed another 50 al-Qaida members, several senior Taliban officials and an undisclosed number of Taliban fighters, said another U.S. official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The Pentagon also plans to send additional troops into northern Afghanistan soon to work with other nations' forces in protecting a land route for humanitarian relief, other officials said Tuesday.

The U.S. Central Command is still working out details, including how many U.S. troops may be needed to repair and secure roads, even as it steps up the search for bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida members.

Victoria Clarke, Rumsfeld's spokeswoman, said the extra U.S. troops may include engineers for road repairs and explosives experts to clear mines and booby traps in the vicinity of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. officials don't know whether bin Laden is still in Afghanistan. Stufflebeem said U.S. bombing continues to target caves and tunnels thought to be used by al-Qaida leaders.

The Pentagon is considering sending Marines who are part of Marine Expeditionary Units, groups of about 2,200 fighters, pilots and support staff trained to be the first large units to respond to a military crisis. Each unit is anchored by a battalion of about 1,500 Marine infantry troops, who are supported by groups of attack and transport helicopters, fighter jets and armored vehicles.

Both units have special training for missions such as urban combat, counterterrorism and quick-strike ground assaults.

One is the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Pendleton, Calif., which is based on the USS Peleliu and its support ships. Helicopters from that unit retrieved an Army Black Hawk helicopter that crashed in Pakistan last month, then briefly had to abandon it at a Pakistani airfield when unidentified assailants opened fire on the Marines.

The other unit in the Arabian Sea is the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejune, N.C., based on the USS Bataan. The unit participated in the Operation Bright Star training exercise in Egypt last month that brought together soldiers from several nations in the region.

The United States is not participating in negotiations between anti-Taliban forces and the Taliban and al-Qaida troops under siege in the northern city of Kunduz, Stufflebeem said.

Negotiations with the Taliban commander of Kunduz aim to secure the surrender of the city of 100,000 and stave off what threatens to be the bloodiest battle yet of the Taliban's collapse.

Rumsfeld has said he is against any deal that would allow Taliban or terrorist forces to escape to do harm in another country another day. But Stufflebeem said Tuesday that bombing could be halted if opposition forces asked.

The Pentagon released transcripts of two radio broadcasts touting $25 million in reward money for information leading to the location or capture of bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri, a top bin Laden lieutenant. The broadcasts are being made from transmitters aboard EC-130 Commando Solo airplanes.

The U.S. military also is distributing leaflets touting the reward.


-------- OTHER

-------- energy

Enron's Growing Financial Crisis Raises Doubts About Merger Deal

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/business/21ENRO.html

Shares of Enron plunged 23 percent yesterday as expectations grew in the stock and bond markets that Dynegy would either back out of its deal to rescue the company or seek to renegotiate terms of their merger.

Wall Street analysts said top officials of both companies had not known until the last few days that a recent downgrading of Enron's credit meant that it would face a $690 million loan payment next week unless it could come up with collateral. Enron's disclosure of the obligation late on Monday - along with new numbers about the extent of its cash squeeze - raised fresh doubts among investors about Enron's financial controls and credibility, they said.

Other trading companies, worried about being paid as Enron's financial picture has darkened, continued yesterday to limit their exposure to the company, which has been the nation's biggest energy trader. Analysts also expressed concern about the rate at which Enron appeared to be burning through cash.

Yesterday evening, Karen Denne, a spokeswoman for Enron, which is based in Houston, said the company had obtained "verbal indications" from lenders that they would extend the time Enron had to repay the $690 million debt. Details of the extension - including how long it would last - were still being worked out, she said. The payment had been due next Tuesday.

An executive close to the talks said that bankers could "see a light at the end of the tunnel" for Enron, in the form of the deal with Dynegy, and so had an incentive to roll over the loan.

Dynegy, also based in Houston, declined to comment about details of Enron's disclosures, which came in a delayed report by the company - a so-called 10Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission - of its third-quarter results.

Just a week ago, Dynegy's chief executive, Chuck Watson, reassured investors that Enron's business was strong and that a $1.5 billion cash infusion by ChevronTexaco, Dynegy's biggest investor, would calm the market's jitters.

Dynegy was less impassioned yesterday. A spokesman, John Sousa, said that "to the best of my knowledge, there have been no changes" in the merger plans.

He added, "We are in due diligence, and the 10Q is an important part of due diligence," he said. Due diligence refers to a company's thorough review of the financial and commercial soundness of a pending deal.

The merger deal, announced on Nov. 9, allows Dynegy to back out of the transaction should there be a "material adverse change" in circumstances.

Enron shares fell $2.07, to $6.99, in trading yesterday; Dynegy shares fell 4.4 percent, or $1.90, to $41.70.

Those stock prices suggest widespread investor skepticism that the deal will go through under the current terms, which call for each Enron share to be exchanged for 0.2685 share of Dynegy. At yesterday's prices, Dynegy would be paying a 60 percent premium for Enron.

A year ago, Enron's stock market valuation topped $60 billion, and the company was considered the smartest and most fearsome company in the electricity and natural gas industries. Its chief executive, Kenneth L. Lay, was a key backer and confidante of President George W. Bush; its name was hoisted above Houston's new baseball stadium, Enron Field.

But Enron's shares have slid 92 percent from their peak, dropping its valuation to $5.2 billion, with a series of unwelcome disclosures in the last month - including the admission that it has overstated profits by almost $600 million since 1997.

Now, some analysts and executives at rival energy trading companies say Enron faces collapse if the merger with Dynegy, a much smaller company, falls apart.

"If Enron is out there standing on its own, I don't think that's sustainable," said a senior executive of one of Enron's largest energy-trading competitors.

Besides Dynegy's continued commitment to the merger, analysts and industry executives said the most crucial issue for Enron was restoring the confidence of investors and trading partners in its financial health.

The restatement of earnings two weeks ago and other disclosures about complex dealings with partnerships, some of them run by Enron's former chief financial officer, had prompted the major credit-rating agencies to rate Enron's bond's at the lowest investment-grade level.

"If the rating agencies take them below investment grade, they can't do business anymore," the rival executive said yesterday. "That's become almost conventional wisdom." Another downgrade could force Enron to pay or refinance up to $3.9 billion in debt, and it could prompt other energy traders to halt dealings with the company entirely.

In fact, Standard & Poor's, one of the major credit-rating agencies, gave Enron something of a vote of confidence yesterday. While it will continue to review the company for a potential downgrade, S.& P. said, it expects Enron's near-term financial health "to be sufficient to carry the company through the completion of its proposed merger with Dynegy."

S.& P. noted that Enron was continuing to negotiate with major banks and other institutions for an infusion of $500 million or more in new equity and that Enron executives still believed that the company would complete the sale of $800 million in assets by the end of the year, raising badly needed cash.

Major energy trading companies continued to limit their exposure to Enron and carefully watch the company's financial condition. Officials at the El Paso Corporation and Reliant Energy, two large energy traders in Houston, said yesterday that they continued to do business with Enron.

But others have pulled back. Mirant, a large electricity generator and trader in Atlanta, is "trading on a very limited basis, and we don't expect to broaden that until Enron's credit situation improves," a spokesman said.

Executives at two other companies that rank among the nation's largest traders but who spoke on condition their companies not be identified, also said they had scaled back trading. One of those companies was selling natural gas and electricity to Enron only in cases in which the sales helped balance its account with Enron, an executive said.

"We're trying to do business that offsets our risk," the executive said.

Ms. Denne, the Enron spokeswoman, said the company's "transaction volume remains within the normal range," adding that there was "no recognizable change" yesterday in the number of companies willing to trade with Enron.

"No one significant has dropped off," she said.

Analysts said Enron's disclosures late on Monday indicated that the company was using up cash more rapidly than had previously been thought. Most of the $5.5 billion that the company has taken in through equity infusions and borrowings the last month has already been depleted.

"The cash burn is greater than anticipated," said Carol Coale, an analyst with Prudential Securities in Houston. "They are in obvious need of cash." She estimated that by next summer, Enron could be $2 billion short of the cash it would need to meet its obligations.

Ms. Coale noted that the $690 million obligation whose disclosure shook the markets yesterday was set off by a credit downgrade on Nov. 12 - two days before a conference call with investors. When she asked an Enron official yesterday why the matter was not disclosed in the call, Ms. Coale said, she was told, "We weren't aware of that contingency at the time of that call."

Donato J. Eassey, an analyst in Houston with Merrill Lynch, said in a report that Dynegy, too, was unaware of the obligation. He calculated that Enron had exhausted about $5 billion in cash the last 50 days.

Ms. Denne, the Enron spokeswoman, said that the company had paid off $1.9 billion in short-term i.o.u.'s, used more than $1 billion to post deposits with its trading partners and spent $800 million to $1 billion to pay off or refinance other loans.

The company has about $1.2 billion in cash, she said, not including $450 million from a new line of credit that closed this week and a separate credit line with $103 million remaining.

Jitters about Enron's future extended to the debt market, where prices for the company's bonds fell sharply yesterday. Enron's short- term bonds fell 5 points, to about 80 cents for each dollar of face value, according to traders in distressed securities. Its longer-term debt, maturing in 2004 or later, dropped 10 points, to around 60 cents on the dollar. Enron's bank debt has not traded recently, these traders said.

---

Russian Oil Production Still Soars, for Better and Worse

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By MICHAEL WINES and SABRINA TAVERNISE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/business/worldbusiness/21OIL.html

MOSCOW, Nov. 20 - While nobody was watching, this country's oil producers so dramatically ratcheted up production in the last two years that they now occupy a catbird seat, able to whipsaw oil prices - and potentially the global economy - just by turning down the Russian spigot.

Trouble is, they only seem to know how to turn the spigot up.

Witness last week's remarkable events. In the space of 10 days, the price of a barrel of crude has fallen 20 percent. Saudi Arabia beseeched the Russians to cut oil exports, to no avail. OPEC nations threatened a price war if Russia did not change its mind, again to no avail.

Today the Kremlin had to pare back its 2002 economic forecast, principally because of lower oil prices. Meanwhile, the state-owned pipeline company, Transneft, trumpeted the opening of a Baltic Sea terminal that will flood an already saturated market with another 240,000 barrels of oil a day.

That is only the beginning. In the next four years alone, according to analysts at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, huge sums already sunk into new pipelines and reinvigorated oilfields should boost Russian oil exports by a fifth, to 5.34 million barrels a day.

"There's nothing in there that indicates a willingness to cut back either on the part of the oil companies or the government," said Thane Gustafson, the top Eurasian expert at Cambridge Energy (news/quote ) Research Associates in Washington. "If Russia were to slam on the brakes now, it would be Ben Hur pulling back suddenly on his chariot while it's going full speed ahead."

In that case, other oil-producing nations might have little choice but to go along for what could be, at least briefly, a wild ride. Prospects for a further plunge in oil prices seemed to ebb a bit today as two other big non- OPEC exporters, Norway and Mexico, said they would reduce their output in line with OPEC requests.

If, that is, Russia goes along.

Even some Russian oil companies are mulling over a temporary cut in exports. But they key word is temporary. No one, including the companies themselves, believes that the explosive growth in Russian output will be restrained for long, even amid a recession that has cut deeply into demand.

The temptation is to view Russia's sudden emergence as the swing vote on world oil prices as deft strategy by a Kremlin determined to reassert itself as a global power and a force in Western affairs.

President Vladimir V. Putin has surely packaged it that way, telling a World Economic Forum meeting in Moscow last month that as "instability in the world directly impacts world markets, Russia remains a reliable and predictable partner and supplier of oil." Translation: remember that should the Middle East crumble under terrorism and religious ferment, Russia can keep oil flowing westward.

Americans are listening. "The Saudis aren't so popular in the U.S. right now," Michael McFaul, a leading Russia scholar at Stanford University, said last week. "I've been on a hundred news programs over the past two months and every time, the question comes up. "Why doesn't the U.S. import more oil from Russia?' "

But there is less strategy here than meets the eye. Russia has influence by dint of being the world's second- largest oil exporter behind the Saudis, a ranking it has held for decades. Its present extraordinary hold on oil prices, however, has less to do with strategy than with the lack of one.

Russian oil is a free market. The major oil companies, profit-hungry and mutually mistrustful, are mostly beyond control by either the government or each other. If OPEC ministers can usually turn their government-owned spigots up or down with ease, Russia's powerful and mostly private oil industry argues for pumping and exporting as much oil as possible, as quickly as possible.

Chief among them is economics. From 1990 to 1996, oil output here dropped by a staggering 3.86 million barrels a day - almost 40 percent of all production. Russia's economy ground to a halt, as did the financing of its oil industry. Wells and refineries remained mismanaged and investment-starved for years.

But Russia's 1998 fiscal collapse transformed the industry's economics. Suddenly, currency devaluation made Russian oil companies the world's low-cost producers and put a huge premium on selling oil for dollars, as exports, instead of rubles.

Combined with a spike that sent oil prices to the mid-$30's per barrel, that sparked a staggering investment in oil fields: in the first half of this year, spending on Russian exploration and drilling rose 50 percent. The government, meanwhile, has helped build new pipelines to the Baltic and Black Seas to capitalize on surging demand for the region's crude.

From Russian companies' standpoint, limiting production now would amount to idling a multibillion-dollar investment - and all to satiate Arab oil barons who profited handsomely from Russia's 1990's decline. Just as galling, perhaps, is that OPEC's proposed cut in exports, 500,000 barrels a day, happens to precisely match Russia's export increase this year.

"Russians will say, `You had billions of dollars in revenue in the 1990's, and the only reason was that we cut our oil production while we reorganized our economic system,' " Adam E. Sieminski, a global oil analyst at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown in Maryland, said. " `What right do you have to tell me that we can't go up a million barrels after we lost four million! How dare you!' And it would be true."

All that said, the Kremlin might well profit from limiting exports, because Russia's budget hangs on petroleum. Oil and gas exports provide $4 of every $10 in government revenue. The government's economic plans assume that oil will average $20 per barrel in 2002.

Historically, low oil prices have not been good for Russia. Mikhail Gorbachev's government foundered in part because sagging oil prices in the late 1980's left it starved for cash to feed the Soviet Union's inefficient economy. A 1998 collapse in oil prices, to below $10 a barrel, broke President Boris N. Yeltsin's budget and doomed his government.

Avoiding that would be no problem if the Kremlin could dictate oil policy the way the Soviet Union did in the 1970's and 1980's. But here, at least, the Soviet Union is dead.

"The government does not control the oil industry - it's the other way around," Yevgeny Khartukov, the director of the nonprofit International Center for Petroleum Business Studies in Moscow, said in an interview.

"Western specialists very often don't understand this. They ask, `How will Putin's position affect the development of the oil industry?' And I answer: `Putin's position will be handed to him by the oil sector.'"

In the long run, Russia's oil influence may not last.

No. 2 in exports or not, Moscow produces only between 9 and 10 percent of the world's output, and its newfound power rests in part on a recession that has reduced worldwide demand.

When global demand recovers - and when Russian consumption increases, as it must if the economy continues to thrive - Russian companies will gradually shift more oil flow to buyers at home, leaving less for better-heeled foreign clients.

But that assumes that a future Middle East crisis does not catapult Russia to the top of the list of favored suppliers, an assumption that looks less reliable these days than in the past.

"If you think that is a problem, then substituting oil outside the Arab region is a good idea," said Lucian Pugliaresi, a Washington, D.C., oil consultant who advised President Reagan on energy security.

-------- homelessness

Lynne Cheney, daughters serve dinner to homeless

USA Today
11/22/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/11/22/cheney-thanksgiving.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Lynne Cheney spent part of her Thanksgiving serving turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pie to some of the city's homeless and hungry.

The vice president's wife and their two daughters, Liz Perry and Mary, spent just under an hour Thursday afternoon at the Gospel Rescue Ministries with about 30 other volunteers for its annual Thanksgiving Feast.

Cheney welcomed diners as they walked into the mission's basement, decorated with balloons and holiday decorations.

"Anybody who sits at this table is lucky because they get to be served by me," she said. "And you're really lucky because I didn't cook the food."

Shaking hands and dishing out meals, Cheney said it was "an honor for us to be here. It's a great organization."

Eric Baine, among the first to be served by Cheney, was grateful Cheney and her daughters came to the mission.

"At times like this the disenfranchised feel more disenfranchised, and she makes us feel like (part of) the whole," he said.

"There was a million places she could've gone," he said.

Sitting beside him, Sammie Jones seemed to be in awe.

"I'm just so shook up that she shook this hand," he said. "Nobody's gonna touch this hand."

Organizers anticipated they would feed about 300 people.

-------- human rights

Turkey expands women's rights

USA Today
11/22/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/22/turkey.htm

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Parliament formally recognized Turkish men and women as equals Thursday under a series of revisions to the civil code.

The changes, which take effect Jan. 1, came after a month of debate on 1,030 new articles.

"This symbolizes a historic turning point," the Flying Broom women's rights group said in a statement after the final vote. "Our country is closer to achieving the goal of equality between women and men."

The previous code, virtually unchanged since it was introduced in 1926, had designated the husband as head of a family and gave the wife no say in decisions concerning home or children. The new code gives men and women equal roles in family matters.

Previously, in a divorce women were entitled only to property legally registered under their names. Now, property and assets are to be divided equally. At the same time, men will be able to seek alimony from wives.

Under the previous code, a woman had to seek her husband's permission to work outside the home, although a court voided that provision in 1994. The new code makes clear a wife does not need her husband's consent to get a job.

Turkey's secular government adopted the previous code from Swiss family law, replacing the old Ottoman system that, among other things, allowed a man to have more than one wife and to repudiate a wife no longer in favor.

The 1926 code was considered revolutionary for a Muslim country when it was adopted, but it failed to keep up with changes in women's roles in modern society.

"Turkey at the start of the 21st century has renewed the great legal reform it achieved in 1926," Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk said.

In other areas, the new code raises the legal age for marriage to 18 from 17 for men and 15 for women. And it requires spouses to be legally separated for six months before a divorce filing.

The legal age for adopting children is being lowered from 35 to 30 and single parents will be allowed to adopt. Out-of-wedlock offspring are given the same inheritance rights as others.

The new code does not mention modern issues such as surrogate motherhood or homosexual marriages. In this predominantly Muslim country where unmarried couples living together are still frowned on, it also makes no provisions for cohabiting families.

--------

U.S. and 21 Other Nations Pledge Billions to Rebuild Afghanistan

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By JOSEPH KAHN with STEPHANIE FLANDERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/international/asia/21DIPL.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 - The United States and 21 other nations agreed today to spend billions of dollars to reconstruct Afghanistan after the war, as officials said they were prepared to pay for "high-impact" farm, road and school-building projects to try to win over the Afghan people as soon as the Taliban are defeated.

Though discussions were still in the early stages, some officials estimated privately that the cost of feeding, clothing and housing people and ultimately creating a functioning society in Afghanistan would reach $10 billion.

The task seemed likely to dwarf recent reconstruction efforts in East Timor and Kosovo, which have much smaller populations and less devastation from war.

"The vast majority of the Afghan people awaken hungry, cold and sick every morning," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said at a conference on aid convened at his agency this morning.

"All of us know that the international community must be prepared to sustain a reconstruction program that will take many, many years."

While the United States and its allies have yet to defeat fully the Taliban or Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's organization, officials said they had begun preparing a blueprint for reconstruction because nations were more likely to pledge large amounts of money now than later, before so-called donor fatigue sets in.

Some also said that the war could end abruptly, while major aid projects take months to get under way.

"We are very focused on quick-hitting projects that can inspire hope that the international community is able and ready to help people live better lives," said Al Larson, undersecretary of state for economic affairs.

He referred in particular to improving irrigation to create viable farms and to building schools that would be open to girls and women, both as students and teachers, as projects that had the potential to deliver quick benefits to large numbers of people.

The Bush administration has emphasized since it began attacking targets in Afghanistan last month that it considers the aid mission there an urgent priority. Military aircraft dropped food packets to refugees even as they dropped the first bombs.

The administration is also eager to rebut the contention that the United States is waging war on Islam generally, while it is also seeking to ease the extreme poverty that helped make Afghanistan a terrorist base.

But the cost and complexity of rebuilding Afghanistan could prove as formidable as the effort to oust the Taliban and capture or kill Mr. bin Laden.

Experts say that international aid often goes to waste when it is suddenly showered on undeveloped nations and that it can be almost impossible to distribute effectively in countries that lack stable governments.

Moreover, the costs in Afghanistan are likely to rise over time. Delivering food and basic medical care, considered emergency priorities, is far less expensive than building roads, schools and hospitals, or training teachers and government officials.

"It's really three to five years out that it will really get expensive," said Mark Malloch Brown, the administrator of the United Nations Development Program, who attended today's session in Washington.

"The trick is to turn today's political support into a check" that can be banked for aid programs several years hence, he said.

The meeting today, arranged on short notice by the United States and Japan, brought together officials from Britain, Germany, Saudi Arabia and other major donor countries, as well as the United Nations and the World Bank, which are expected to administer most of the aid.

Officials said they would finish preparing a more concrete plan of action and costs by January, when a major conference on aid is scheduled to take place in Japan.

"It is the early days yet," said William Byrd, the World Bank's country director for Afghanistan. "But we want to keep moving quickly because no one can predict how fast political events will move."

Few officials are willing to give a public estimate of the cost of rebuilding an economy in which the most recent economic statistics date to 1994.

The World Bank calculated in a recent study that just clearing known minefields in the country would cost $500 million, more than the entire reconstruction budget for East Timor.

Even before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1978, setting off more than two decades of armed resistance and civil war, the country was one of the world's poorest.

Most institutions in Afghanistan will have to be built from scratch.

Other recent reconstruction efforts have ranged from $700 per person in the case of East Timor to roughly $1,500 per person in the West Bank and Gaza, according to the World Bank.

Those places have much smaller populations than Afghanistan's 25 million people, though.

Some United Nations officials have compared the task in Afghanistan to a five-year rebuilding effort for Mozambique after a civil war there ended in 1992. Other countries and international groups ultimately spent $6.5 billion, or just under $400 for each of the nation's 17 million people.

A slight silver lining in Afghanistan's long history of war and drought is that it has a standing army of aid workers, many of them Afghans, who have years of experience running basic social services in the countryside and delivering aid.

There are now 2,200 Afghans working in their own country for United Nations agencies, for example.

The United Nations aims to increase that number to 10,000 by the middle of next year.

"Because it's been in difficulty for so long you have homegrown experience and capacity to build on," said Mr. Byrd of the World Bank.

"You also have several million Afghans who've gone through the refugee experience and have skills or have learned skills because refugees by the nature have to become entrepreneurial."

Officials said they were trying to make longer-term rebuilding aid meld seamlessly with ongoing aid efforts to avoid what Mr. Malloch Brown called the "funding gap" that often opens up when an immediate crisis fades.

-------- police / prisoners

FBI develops new tools for eavesdropping

USA Today
11/21/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-21-fbi.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI is going to new lengths to eavesdrop, building software to monitor computer use and urging phone companies to help make wiretaps more reliable.

The FBI's "Magic Lantern" technology would allow investigators, via the Internet, to secretly install powerful software that records every keystroke on a person's computer, according to people familiar with the effort. The software is similar to "Trojan horse" programs already used by some hackers and corporate spies.

The FBI envisions using Magic Lantern, part of a broad FBI project called "Cyber Knight," to record the secret key a person might use to encrypt messages or computer files.

The bureau has been largely frustrated in efforts to break open such messages by trying random combinations, and officials are increasingly concerned about their inability to read encrypted messages in criminal or terrorist investigations.

The FBI said in a statement Wednesday that it can not discuss details of its technical surveillance efforts, though it noted that "encryption can pose potentially insurmountable challenges to law enforcement when used in conjunction with communication or plans for executing serious terrorist and criminal acts."

The FBI added that its research is "always mindful of constitutional, privacy and commercial equities," and that its use of new technology can be challenged in court and in Congress.

The FBI's existing monitoring technology, called the "Key Logger System," has required investigators to sneak into a target's home or business and attach the device to a computer.

Magic Lantern could be installed over the Internet by tricking a person into opening an e-mail attachment or by exploiting the same weaknesses in popular software that allow hackers to break into computers. It's unclear whether Magic Lantern would transmit the keystrokes it records back to the FBI over the Internet or store the information to be seized later in a raid.

The existence of Magic Lantern was first disclosed by MSNBC.

"If they are using this kind of program, it would be a highly effective way to bypass any encryption problems," said James E. Gordon, who heads the information technology practice for Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations Inc. "Once they have the keys to the kingdom, they have complete access to anything that individual is doing."

People familiar with the project, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the package is being developed at the FBI's electronic tools laboratory, the same outfit that built the bureau's "Carnivore" Internet surveillance technology.

The former head of the lab, Donald M. Kerr, became head of the CIA's science and technology unit in August.

Some experts said Magic Lantern raises important legal questions, such as whether the FBI would need a wiretap order from a judge to use it. The government has previously argued that the FBI can capture a person's computer keystrokes under the authority of a traditional search warrant, which involves less oversight by the courts.

"It's an open question whether the covert installation of something on a computer without a physical entry requires a search warrant," said David Sobel, a lawyer with the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group.

Earlier this month the FBI urged some of the nation's largest telephone companies to change their networks so that investigators can reliably eavesdrop on conversations using new data technology.

At a conference Nov. 6 in Tucson, Ariz. - and in a 32-page follow-up letter sent about two weeks ago - the FBI told leading telecommunications officials that increasing use of Internet-style data technology to transmit voice calls is frustrating FBI wiretap efforts. Although Carnivore can be used to capture electronic messages, it can't record voice messages sent over data networks for a variety of technical reasons.

The bureau's access to voice calls using traditional technology is guaranteed under the 1994 Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, but it exempted "information services." The FBI said Wednesday it is not seeking to broaden the 1994 law to cover modern data technology; industry officials say the changes being sought by the FBI could take years to make.

The FBI told companies that it will need access to voice calls sent over data networks "within a few hours" in some emergency situations, and that any interference caused by a wiretap "should not be perceptible" to avoid tipping off a person that his calls might be monitored.

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Zimbabwe seeks law to crack down on subversives

USA Today
11/21/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/21/zimbabwe.htm

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - In its latest crackdown against the opposition, the Zimbabwean government will propose legislation for the hanging of those found guilty of trying to overthrow the government, media reports said Wednesday.

Describing opposition work as "terrorist activities," the government said the new bill would also prohibit courts from granting bail to suspects in allegedly politically motivated crimes, The Herald, a state-run newspaper reported.

The report of the new legislation followed a ruling Tuesday by the Supreme Court that dismissed subversion charges by the government against opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

The court ruled that a colonial-era law invoked to prosecute Tsvangirai on allegations he incited an overthrow of the government violated his constitutional rights to a fair trial.

Tsvangirai welcomed the decision but said he doubted future cases would be granted a fair hearing because President Robert Mugabe has recently stacked the Supreme Court with ruling party loyalists.

"I am pleased if our courts can maintain this integrity but I fear in any future constitutional case we will find it difficult," Tsvangirai said.

Tsvangirai faced a five-year jail term if found guilty and conviction would have barred him from running against Mugabe in presidential elections scheduled for next year.

Mugabe faces a tight race against Tsvangirai, whose Movement for Democratic Change is running on a platform of accountable government and has widespread support in the cities.

Copies of the proposed legislation against sedition have not yet been made public, but opposition officials said it appeared to be part of a government plan to intimidate critics before elections.

The legislation would also prohibit courts from granting bail to suspects in allegedly politically motivated crimes ranging from murder to car theft, the report said. Rural Zimbabwe has spiraled into chaos since March 2000, when ruling party militants began violently occupying white-owned farms, demanding they be handed over to landless blacks.

Opposition officials accuse Mugabe of using land seizures without compensation to the farmers, as a pre-election ploy to garner support and scare off opponents.

Also Wednesday, opposition officials announced the death of MDC activist, Kufa Rukara, 55. Rukara died Tuesday of injuries suffered in September after he was allegedly beaten by ruling party militants in the Gokwe district, some 200 miles west of Harare.

There has been no comment by police on his death.

Mugabe's government has executed 66 people since coming to power in 1980, but has granted amnesty to 2,000 security force members and ruling ZANU-PF party members accused of killing suspected opponents.

In a recent wave of unrest following the death of a leading ruling party militant, opposition members were arrested. Militants who torched an opposition office and beat up whites in the western city of Bulawayo were not apprehended.

The Amani Trust, a Zimbabwean human rights group, said ruling party militants were responsible for most of the some 100 political related killings in the last year. There have been no arrests.

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A Police Force Rebuffs F.B.I. on Querying Mideast Men

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/national/21PORT.html

The Portland, Ore., police will not cooperate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its efforts to interview 5,000 young Middle Eastern men nationwide because such questioning violates state law, the department's acting police chief, Andrew Kirkland, said yesterday.

The decision is the first known case of a city's refusing to go along with the antiterrorism effort, which was announced last week by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

But top police officials in several other cities have also said that Mr. Ashcroft's plan raises troubling questions about racial profiling - an issue that has brought endless grief to police departments nationwide - and may violate local and state laws about issues like intelligence gathering for political purposes.

Charles Gorder, an assistant United States attorney in Portland, said he could not comment on the decision by the police. But Mr. Gorder, who is coordinator of the local F.B.I. joint terrorism task force, said, "We will get the interviews done," suggesting that F.B.I. agents would do the questioning themselves. "We do not think there any violations of state or federal law," Mr. Gorder added.

Acting Chief Kirkland said the United States attorney's office in Portland asked the police last Thursday to help with interviews of young Middle Eastern men in the city, sending along a list of 200 names. He said he quickly decided not to cooperate.

"I didn't have to think too long about it," Mr. Kirkland said yesterday in a telephone interview. "We're not going to do it."

Mr. Kirkland said Oregon law prohibited the local police from questioning immigrants when they were not suspected of any crime and the only issue under discussion was their foreign citizenship.

"If the F.B.I. has something specific about a crime they are investigating, or a potential crime that these people might commit, then we would reconsider," said Mr. Kirkland, an assistant chief who is Portland's acting chief this week while Chief Mark Kroeker is on vacation.

But the F.B.I. list, he said, contained "no specifics" about what crimes the 5,000 men might be involved with, saying only that they had come to this country in the last two years on student, tourist or business visas from countries with suspected terrorist links. The department also received a list of questions about the men's activities and knowledge of terrorist groups, he said.

Portland has a large immigrant population, and Acting Chief Kirkland said the city had historically passed through periods when immigrants were targets of political and police persecution.

Mr. Kirkland, who is black, said his own background had also played a role in his decision. "I grew up in Detroit," he said, "and I hated the police with a passion. They were always stopping and bothering me."

F.B.I. agents began interviewing some of the 5,000 men late last week, but there are so many on the list that Mr. Ashcroft has asked local police forces around the nation to conduct many of the interviews themselves, so they can be completed within 30 days. Despite his sense of urgency, a number of major city police departments said they had not yet been officially contacted by the F.B.I. or the Justice Department. Those cities include Baltimore, Minneapolis, Tucson and Seattle, police officials said.

In Seattle, the police chief, Gil Kerlikowske, said that he had not received a formal request for help but that he had contacted the local F.B.I. office himself and was told the bureau was interested in questioning fewer than two dozen men in Seattle. Since the number was small, Chief Kerlikowske said, the F.B.I. might be doing all the interviews itself.

"I think for police departments this is an incredibly sensitive problem," the chief said. "On the one hand, we don't want to harm relationships with community members that we have worked hard for years to build. We depend on information that these people bring to us when they come to trust us."

"On the other hand," he said, "we want to track down the terrorists. So it is a Hobson's choice. We'd like to be able to help the F.B.I., and we know the local community in a way they don't."

But before he could have his officers conduct such interviews, Chief Kerlikowske said, he would have to review an ordinance prohibiting investigations to determine a person's political or religious thinking.

In Ann Arbor, Mich., the police chief, Daniel Oates, also expressed reservations, saying he had not yet been contacted about the interviews. Because the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has international students who might be on the list, Chief Oates said, "I have questions about the propriety of this."

How, he asked, "does someone end up on this list?"

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Dozens of Israeli Jews Are Being Kept in Federal Detention

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By TAMAR LEWIN with ALISON LEIGH COWAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/national/21OHIO.html

Among the more than 1,100 people the government has detained since Sept. 11 are dozens of young Israeli Jews who came to the United States in recent months and took jobs selling trinkets at shopping malls throughout the country.

Charged with working without proper papers, some have been kept in detention by the Immigration and Naturalization Service for nearly a month. In some cases, the immigration service has invoked special post- Sept. 11 laws to keep the Israelis in jail but presented no evidence of a link to the terrorism investigation.

"We think there are about 50 in detention now, in San Diego, Houston, Kansas City, St. Louis and Cleveland, and there are some who have been released," said Ido Aharoni, a spokesman for the Israeli consulate in New York. "It's not easy to get an exact count. They may be embarrassed that they were working illegally, and we only find out when their mothers call, because they haven't been in touch, and we check and find them in jail."

Normally, working without papers is treated as a minor offense, for which foreigners are not detained.

While both the detainees and their lawyers say they are baffled by the detentions, some of those familiar with the cases said they believed the impetus was the interest of law enforcement officials in companies that offer young Israelis - and perhaps others in the Middle East - help in coming to, and working in, the United States.

"It's hard to understand," said Suzanne Brown, a St. Louis lawyer representing 5 of the 10 Israelis detained there. "Just today, I talked with the I.N.S. officer in charge of the St. Louis office, who said he doesn't know who is conducting the investigation of the Israelis. And what are they investigating? I don't know."

In Ohio, on Oct. 31, the immigration service detained nine men and two women, all of whom had valid passports and tourist visas. Nine of the 11 were released on bond on Friday, but two remain in the Medina County jail, outside of Cleveland. The next hearing for the Israelis - all in their early 20's and recently finished with their Israeli army service - is scheduled for Nov. 27, in Cleveland.

"It doesn't make sense that they held any of these kids as long as they did, and we don't know of any reason why they're still holding two," said David Leopold, the Cleveland lawyer representing them. "You hear there's more than 1,000 detainees, and if these cases are any example, you have to wonder if they're just locking people up to make it look like they're getting somewhere on their investigation."

Dan Nelson, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said that he was unaware of the Israeli detainees, but that generally, since Sept. 11, there has been greater scrutiny of those who violate immigration laws.

"We are taking every step we can to prevent future terrorist attacks," Mr. Nelson said. "We are conducting the largest investigation in U.S. history, and we are leaving no stone unturned."

In New York, immigration officials began deporting five young Israeli moving men who have been in federal custody since Sept. 11. Two of the deportees, Oded Ellner and Omer Gavriel Marmari, landed in Tel Aviv yesterday. The others, Paul Kurzberg and his brother Sivan, and Yaron Shmuel, were expected to fly to Israel today.

The five aroused attention in New Jersey after people noticed them going to unusual lengths to photograph the World Trade Center ruins and making light of the situation. One photograph developed by the F.B.I. showed Sivan Kurzberg holding a lighted lighter in the foreground, with the smoldering wreckage in the background, said Steven Noah Gordon, a lawyer for the five.

As objectionable as their behavior may be, Mr. Gordon said of their long incarceration, "It's not a crime and they were being treated as if it was."

The five were asked to take polygraph tests before being allowed to leave. But Paul Kurzberg refused on principle to divulge much about his role in the Israeli army or subsequently working for people who may have had ties to Israeli intelligence, Mr. Gordon said. His client had trouble with one seven-hour polygraph test administered last week, but did better on a second try.

Mr. Kurzberg's lawyer said it was his understanding that Attorney General John Ashcroft had to sign off on his release.

In the Ohio cases, the immigration service said at a hearing last week that the 11 Israelis were "special" nonterrorist cases. But Judge Elizabeth Hacker, the immigration judge conducting the hearing, questioned the agency's case for keeping the Israelis in jail.

"Although the service alleges that these cases are `special,' it has failed to present any credible evidence of the basis for this finding," Judge Hacker said in a bond memorandum. "Indeed, the service has failed to submit any evidence of terrorist activity or of a threat to the national security. There is no evidence of the risk of harm to the community."

Russell Bergeron, a spokesman for the immigration service, said decisions on when to refuse bond were made case by case.

When Judge Hacker set bond, the government filed an emergency appeal, which, under procedures adopted last month, automatically allows the government extra time to detain people.

At the hearing, the government lawyers said the Israelis were the subject of a criminal investigation by the F.B.I. of an individual or company that promised living and travel expenses in return for selling at shopping-mall pushcarts. The government says the Ohio detainees worked for Quality Sales Inc., a Florida concern.

Tom Dean, the lawyer representing Quality Sales, declined to provide information about the company or its principals, but he said the company was cooperating with federal authorities to resolve "any concern about possible criminal conduct."

The F.B.I. refused to comment on its dealings with Quality Sales or other such companies.

Some of those familiar with the cases said such companies may provide an open channel for terrorists to enter the country without background checks.

The Israelis who were detained in Ohio lived in three apartments in Findlay, Ohio, south of Toledo, and worked in several different malls.

"When they came Oct. 31, the immigration agents knocked on the door, and waked us from sleep," said Ori Ben-Tur, one of the Ohio detainees who was released on Friday. "When we asked why they arrest us, they said they suspect we work in illegal jobs. They told us we could probably come back to our apartment the same day, or the day after."

When the detention dragged on, he said, the Israelis became increasingly worried, and, after several days in detention, arranged legal representation by Mr. Leopold.

Mr. Ben-Tur said he and the others had been interrogated separately.

"Some of the questions weren't so nice for an Israeli, who has served in the army, and fought against terrorism," he said. "I asked them, do they know what Israel thinks of the Arab countries, do they know Israel thinks of America as a big, big friend?"

Mr. Ben-Tur, and his lawyer, said they had no idea why he and most of the others had been released, while two, Oren Behr and Yaniv Hani, were still being detained.

-------- terrorism

Number of WTC missing, dead falls below 3,900

USA Today
11/21/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/21/casualty.htm

NEW YORK (AP) - The number of people missing or dead in the Sept. 11 terrorist assault on the World Trade Center has dropped below 3,900, according to the city's official tally. The number, which once neared 7,000, has dropped steadily as police eliminate duplicate names and winnow out people who were initially reported missing but turned out to be safe and sound.

Police Chief Charles Campisi, who heads the missing-persons effort, said last month that the number "is in a state of flux and it will continue to be" as detectives pore over the missing person list.

The city's official count stood at 3,899 on Wednesday. Of that total, the city reported that 624 bodies have been identified; an additional 3,275 names are on its missing person list. The city has not released a list of names for those still missing.

Other, persistent indicators show the death toll will continue to fall.

Independent tallies maintained by news organizations have stayed well below the city's official toll. An ongoing Associated Press tally of people confirmed dead and those reported dead or missing at the World Trade Center stood at 2,772 on Wednesday. The deaths in the crashes at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania bring the day's toll to 2,996.

AP's figure is derived from information provided by the medical examiner, those declared dead by a court, funeral homes, places of worship, death notices, employers, public agencies, families and AP's foreign bureaus. Both the city's and the AP's total for the trade center include the people on the two planes that hit it.

The number of identified dead has risen as forensic pathologists identify more remains. But the city's number of missing in the attacks has dropped at a faster rate - by at least 200 over the last weekend - as duplications and errors continue to be resolved.

Throughout the two months since the attacks, the number of missing has jumped, sometimes erratically. The overall count peaked at 6,729 on Sept. 24. But six days later, Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced that a cross-check of names had eliminated more than 1,000 duplications.

The fluctuation was due in part to the flooding of the police database with missing person reports from a dozen sources, including family members, the Red Cross, airlines, employers and law enforcement agencies. Sometimes names were spelled differently in the various reports. And early on, foreign consulates accounted for much of the overcount, officials have said.

City officials acknowledge that the number of families seeking expedited death certificates has lagged far behind the number of missing. The city has issued 1,893 such certificates; other requests are pending. The expedited procedure is meant to streamline obtaining a death certificate without a body so that families can quickly get life insurance and other such benefits.

------

To understand terrorism, trace its bloodline

USA Today
11/21/2001
By Uri Avnery
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-21-ncguest2.htm

Since the atrocities of Sept. 11, it has become fashionable to talk about "terrorism." As a result, the word has lost all precise meaning.

Osama bin Laden is undoubtedly a terrorist. Killing thousands of civilians was a terrorist outrage. But the United States would have declared a "war on terrorism" against bin Laden even if he had been satisfied with killing U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia or blowing up Middle East oil installations. It is not the methods of bin Laden that have caused this war, but his aim: to get rid of the United States and its satellites, the Arab kings and presidents throughout the Middle East.

To pursue its war, the United States has set up a worldwide coalition. Every country joining it has been issued an American permit to call his enemies "terrorists": Russia in Chechnya; China in its Muslim regions; India in Kashmir; Israel in the occupied territories.

But just what is terrorism? "Terror" means extreme fear. The modern term was first used to describe the regime of terror instituted by the Jacobins, one of the factions of the French Revolution, to destroy their opponents by beheading them with the guillotine during the years 1793-1794.

Since then, the term has acquired a more general use. Terrorism is a method of attaining political goals by frightening the civilian population. It does not apply to the frightening of soldiers. The Japanese who attacked the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, for instance, were not terrorists. Neither were the Jews who attacked the soldiers of the British occupation regime in Palestine.

Terrorism and politics

Clausewitz said that war is the continuation of politics by other means. That is true for terrorism, too. Terrorism is always an instrument for the attainment of political aims. Since these may be rightist or leftist, revolutionary or reactionary, religious or secularist, the term "international terrorism" is nonsense. Each terrorist body has its own specific agenda.

There is hardly a liberation movement that has not used terrorism. Algerian women put bombs in the cafes of the French settlers. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison because he refused to order his followers to abstain from terrorism. The Maccabees were terrorists who went around killing Hellenized Jews. So were the Irgun fighters who in 1938 put bombs in the Arab markets of Jaffa and Haifa in retaliation for Arab attacks. Shlomo Ben-Josef committed a terrorist act when he shot at an Arab bus.

Used by weak and strong

Generally, terrorism is the weapon of the weak. As Palestinian "terrorists" have been wont to say, "Give us tanks and airplanes, and we shall stop sending suicide bombers into Israel."

But big powers can use terror, too. Dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima was a terrorist act, designed to frighten the Japanese population into demanding that their government surrender. So was the Nazi blitz on London and the British bombing of Dresden. Churchill and Hitler were as different as day and night, but they used the same method.

Israel has used this method from the day of its inception. In the early 1950s, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) committed "retaliation raids" to frighten villagers beyond the border so they would put pressure on the Jordanian and Egyptian governments to prevent the infiltration of Palestinians into Israel. It is the same method that is used in the army when a commander punishes all of the soldiers in a company so they will turn against the one who made him angry.

The trouble is, terrorism generally is counterproductive in conflicts between nations. Rather than hand bin Laden over, the Taliban has become more extreme in its opposition to the United States. The recent IDF blockade against Palestinian villages did not isolate the "terrorists," but to the contrary, turned them into heroes. The devastation caused by the Russians in Chechnya strengthened the opposing guerilla forces.

Since terrorism is always a political instrument, the right way to combat it is always political. Solve the problem that breeds terrorism and you get rid of the terrorism. Solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem and the other flash points in the Middle East, and you get rid of al-Qaeda. It will wilt like a flower deprived of water. No one has yet devised another method.

Uri Avnery is a former member of the Israeli Knesset.

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Charges Discarded in Zimbabwe Terror Case

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/international/africa/21ZIMB.html

HARARE, Zimbabwe, Nov. 20 (Agence France-Presse) - The Supreme Court threw out charges of terrorism today against the country's leading opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, declaring that the law under which he was charged was unconstitutional, his lawyer said.

The ruling paves the way for Mr. Tsvangirai to run in next year's presidential election, in which he is expected to pose the greatest challenge yet to President Robert Mugabe's uninterrupted 21-year rule.

Mr. Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, was charged under the notorious Law and Order Maintenance Act, for a speech he made at a rally last year calling for Mr. Mugabe's violent removal from power.

Had he been tried and convicted, Mr. Tsvangirai could have been sentenced to life in jail.

Civil rights groups, meanwhile, said they would stage a mass rally here on Wednesday against proposed amendments to election laws that they say will deny millions of Zimbabweans the right to vote. They will also protest a government decision, made earlier this month, to ban foreign election monitors.

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BIN LADEN'S ALLIES
An Investigation in Egypt Illustrates Al Qaeda's Web

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By SUSAN SACHS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/international/middleeast/21JIHA.html

CAIRO, Nov. 20 - To support their terrorism, they skimmed money from a charity for Muslim orphans in Albania and robbed an Italian diplomat's home in Jordan. They acquired or forged seals from universities, border guards and the Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry.

They brooked no dissent or deceit: suspecting that the 15-year- old son of one member in Sudan was an informant, they murdered the boy.

These were the hard-hearted, often itinerant men of Al Qaeda at work, according to thousands of pages of documents produced for a 1999 trial of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the terror group whose members became foot soldiers for Osama bin Laden.

These men used the Muslim pilgrimages to Islamic holy sites in Saudi Arabia as a cover for recruiting new members or passing cash from one member to another. They moved money around the globe to bail members out of jail in Algeria or Canada, and to finance applications for political asylum and thus implant terrorist cells in Western Europe.

The merger of Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad, gradual at first over a decade, then completed in 1998, vastly enhanced Mr. bin Laden's reach and organizational ability.

In 1981 members of Islamic Jihad joined other terrorists in assassinating President Anwar el- Sadat. But after that attack, before moving under Al Qaeda's umbrella, Islamic Jihad rarely scored successes on its own.

Still, the network that the two groups have developed has ranged across the world, extending from the United States to Yemen, from Azerbaijan to Britain. The headquarters in Afghanistan has been damaged, but not yet destroyed, by the American- led attacks.

American officials accuse Jihad leaders and Mr. bin Laden of conspiring to plot murders, including the bombings of United States Embassies in Africa three years ago, where 224 people died.

The confessions and investigative reports, provided to The New York Times by Montasser al- Zayat, the lawyer in Cairo who represented most defendants in the trial, show that the Egyptians provided the tactical support for Al Qaeda by forging travel documents, transferring money and arranging communications.

In early 1998, when the two groups announced that they had formed the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, the focus of Islamic Jihad shifted from overthrowing the Egyptian government to attacking American interests. The merger also appeared to increase the Egyptians' sense of purpose, according to the confessions of defendants in the trial.

"Osama wanted to launch a guerrilla war not only in the Arab and Islamic world, but in the whole world," one Jihad member, Ahmed Ibrahim al-Sayed al-Naggar, said during his interrogation by Egyptian security agents.

"He believed these attacks would force America and its allies to change their policy in the Middle East and the Islamic world, and this would fulfill the ultimate goals of the Front. It would show the weakness of these Arab and Islamic leaders compared to the Front."

Dozens of Tentacles

It is not clear what role Islamic Jihad or its leaders may have played in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But its fate is now intimately linked to Al Qaeda; earlier this month, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Jihad's leader and now Mr. bin Laden's second in command, was at Mr. bin Laden's side in a mud-hut hideout somewhere in Afghanistan, according to a Pakistani journalist who met with them.

The scope of the Jihad network is illustrated by the countries where the 107 defendants in the 1999 trial were arrested - Albania, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. It was Egypt's biggest terrorism trial since that of Jihad members in 1981 for the assassination of Sadat. In what became known here as "the trial of the Albanian returnees," the court convicted 87 people and sentenced 10 of them to death, including Dr. Zawahiri, who was tried in absentia.

Mr. Zayat, the lawyer, said the defendants were "certainly" tortured by Egyptian intelligence agents before they confessed to being Jihad members and gave up the names of their contacts. He declined to speculate on whether the content of the confessions may be less credible because of the presumed torture.

There have also been reports that the police in Albania used torture to extract confessions from suspects arrested there. Albania, whose chaotic transition from Communist rule after 1990 made it a magnet for the fugitive terrorists, was the first European state to join the 50-plus members in the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

However the confessions were obtained, they both corroborated and amplified descriptions of the terrorist network from previous Egyptian trials, the New York trial of the embassy bombers and more recent investigations in Europe of Al Qaeda.

Many defendants in the 1999 trial said they had been members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad for nearly 20 years. They had served time in Egyptian prisons together after the killing of Sadat, as did Dr. Zawahiri, and had gone to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet invaders in the 1980's.

But many were also younger recruits, in their early 30's. They arrived in Afghanistan after the fighting against the Soviet occupiers stopped, when the anger of men like Dr. Zawahiri and Mr. bin Laden turned on the United States and its Arab allies. They were drawn to the movement by conviction.

"It has nothing to do with age or era," said Mr. Zayat, who has defended thousands of Islamic militants over the years and served time in prison for his youthful involvement in an extremist movement. "It is ideology. These groups have their own literature that is passed down from generation to generation. This literature promotes the idea of `jihad' and the use of violence to overthrow those who do not rule according to God's law."

Organizing Terror

The defendants in the 1999 trial described a network of isolated cells throughout the Middle East and Europe, staffed by people who kept in contact with Al Qaeda and Jihad leaders in Afghanistan.

Several men said they had acquired forged passports, including a forged Saudi Arabian passport, from contacts in Damascus and Latakia in Syria during the 1990's. They made frequent reference to Mr. bin Laden as the organization's financier and some spoke of a safe house he financed in Sana, Yemen, the country where the American destroyer Cole was rammed by suicide bombers in a boat in October 2000, with 17 sailors killed.

The network maintained bank accounts in many countries - England, Germany, Poland and Albania, among them - and sent small amounts, less than $2,000 at a time, through the accounts to support the activities of its members.

Several defendants also referred to men living in Britain, Austria and Germany who worked with Jihad.

Mr. Naggar, the Jihad member, tied Mr. bin Laden directly to the network in Albania.

He said he once received a phone call there from a Jihad leader. "He told me that in case the situation gets complicated in Albania, Osama bin Laden said he is ready to sponsor any member in Afghanistan," Mr. Naggar said in his confession. "He said Osama can give each family $100 a month through his contacts with the Taliban."

Mr. Naggar also described punishment for those who strayed. The 15- year-old son of Muhammad Sharaf, a prominent Jihad member living in Sudan, was believed to be collaborating with Egyptian intelligence. The boy was killed on the orders of Dr. Zawahiri, he said.

Descriptions of Mr. bin Laden's role also came from one defendant, Ahmed Salama Mabrouk, who spoke to reporters in the courtroom. In a boastful interview warning the United States of the network's power, Mr. Mabrouk said Mr. bin Laden had purchased chemical and biological weapons in Eastern Europe.

During the 1990's, according to the court documents, Dr. Zawahiri appeared to be on the move almost constantly. In 1995 he went to the United States under an assumed name, and presumably a counterfeit passport, to raise money for Jihad operations. Khaled Abu el-Dahab, an Egyptian-American who said in his confession that he had helped put together the California leg of the trip, said his main contact in Jihad was Ali Abul Saoud.

Mr. Saoud, using the name Ali A. Mohamed, was a defendant in the embassy bombings case and is believed to be cooperating with the prosecution in New York.

He has been a figure of some mystery. A former Egyptian Army officer, he married an American woman, acquired American citizenship and served in the United States Army in the late 1980's. American authorities said he began talking to the F.B.I about Mr. bin Laden as early as 1993.

Mr. Mohamed, however, figured prominently as a trusted bin Laden aide in the confessions of several defendants in the Cairo case.

Mr. Abu el-Dahab said that Mr. Mohamed had provided topographical maps for remote places in Egypt to help Jihad fugitives escape the country, and that he took part in attacks on American troops in Somalia in 1993. (American officials say Mr. bin Laden's followers helped to orchestrate those attacks.)

He also said Mr. Mohamed was "on assignment" for Islamic Jihad in Algeria in 1994 when Mr. bin Laden sent him money to bribe Algerian officials to free an accused terrorist from jail.

Mr. Mohamed was dispatched on a similar mission to Canada to pay the lawyer for Essam Hafez Marzouk, an Egyptian traveling on a false Saudi Arabian passport who had asked for refugee status. According to Mr. Abu el-Dahab's account, the money for Mr. Marzouk's Canadian case came from Mr. bin Laden.

Canadian authorities have since said Mr. Marzouk was the contact point for a bin Laden terrorist cell in Canada. He was arrested in Azerbaijan in 1998 and convicted in the "Albanian returnees" case in Cairo.

Mr. Abu el-Dahab said Mr. Mohamed ran afoul of the bin Laden organization after 1995 because of a murky dispute involving money and was no longer trusted by bin Laden lieutenants.

One defendant, Essam Abdel Tawwab Abdel Alim, described how Islamic Jihad trained recruits in Yemen, which became a base after 1990, when Egypt blocked the return of mujahadeen who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, realizing that they had not abandoned their goal of attacking the Egyptian government.

Recruits in Yemen took courses in Islamic law, the ideology of Islamic Jihad, the political history of militant Islamic movements, passport forgery and surveillance. Others said they were taught how to make letter bombs.

The letter-bomb training was put to use, according to Egyptian investigators. In documents presented to the prosecutors, the investigators said Jihad members were responsible for sending letter bombs from Egypt to "news organizations outside the country."

That apparently was a reference to a spate of letter bombs sent in 1997 from Alexandria, Egypt, to the London, New York and Washington offices of the newspaper Al Hayat. The paper, owned by Saudis, is the leading international Arabic-language newspaper. Two people were injured when one bomb went off in London.

Despite its reputation as the shrewdest of the Egyptian terrorist groups, Jihad actually failed to achieve most of its targets. A suicide bomber failed in his attempt to kill the Egyptian interior minister in 1993. A car bomb later that year that was meant to kill the prime minister instead killed a child who was standing nearby.

Two years later, Jihad did manage to carry out a dramatic slaughter by bombing the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan, killing 17 people and wounding more than 60. But in 1997, the group was foiled again when 85 of its members were arrested and charged with planning to bomb the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, a Cairo attraction usually filled with tourists.

On to Sudan and Albania

After the failed 1993 assassination attempts, Yemen became less hospitable, and many Jihad members moved to Sudan, where Mr. bin Laden had established a base and provided them work, and then to Albania.

According to the trial documents, the Albania cell's members, most employed at Islamic charities in Tirana, were forced to transfer 26 percent of their salaries to Islamic Jihad.

Some defendants said they were also instructed to find money to set up a training camp "to serve the purposes of Jihad" in Albania. The instructions, they said, came from Muhammad al-Zawahiri, the brother of the Jihad leader.

Despite such connections, the network was not always well-oiled or in any way lavish. One defendant who was working for a Kuwaiti charity in Albania recalled that he was told by a Jihad leader that money was urgently needed to support the families of Jihad prisoners in Egypt. The defendant said he diverted $800 a month - money intended for Albanian orphans - from the charity's funds to Jihad.

Some of the most detailed information came from Jihan Hassan, the wife of Shawki Salama Mustafa, the Egyptian who ran the Albania cell. Mrs. Hassan was interrogated but not charged in the case.

After their marriage in 1987, the couple first moved to Saudi Arabia, then to Afghanistan, where her husband became very secretive about his work.

"I noticed that his pockets were always filled with pieces of paper that proved he was doing military training in the camps there," she told investigators. "When I confronted him with this, he told me he had nothing to do with the camps and was just working in a workshop for cars that was owned by Osama bin Laden."

Mrs. Hassan read her husband's diary, and realized that he was being trained to make bombs to be hidden in everything from suitcases to alarm clocks. When her husband locked the door to one room in their house, she broke in, she told investigators, and found a cache of apparently fake documents - birth certificates, university diplomas and border stamps from Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Yemen and Syria.

In Sudan in 1994, the ground floor of the couple's house was occupied by loud, rumbling machines. "Shawki prevented me from going to that floor, but I knew this machinery was for the forgery business," Mrs. Hassan recalled.

Once the couple moved to Albania, Mr. Mustafa was churning out passports. "I saw a passport with my name on it and it said I was Albanian," Mrs. Hassan said. "And I saw different passports for him, with five different names."

Asked by Egyptian interrogators how she knew so much, Mrs. Hassan replied simply, "The wives were sitting together talking while our husbands were spending so much time in the camps."

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Direction of Global War on Terror Raises Unsettling Questions

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/international/21ASSE.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 - The seven-week military campaign in Afghanistan has given the world a stark view of a new American doctrine to make war on the sources of terrorism in the world. But with the defeat of the Taliban perhaps only days away and the hunt for Osama bin Laden intensifying, the force of the American destruction of Afghan targets has sent an unambiguous warning far beyond the war theater to a number of nations that continue to provide bases and training to terrorist groups. The warning is: this could happen to you.

Yet how President Bush takes the war campaign from phase one in Afghanistan to phase two against Al Qaeda and other "global reach" terrorist groups in dozens of other countries remains an unsettled and, in some quarters, an unsettling question.

Deep reservations exist among allies in Europe, the Middle East and Russia over the advocacy by some Bush administration officials who want to expand military operations to other countries, especially by taking the next phase of the war to Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein once and for all.

Although Mr. Bush has yet to speak to the American people about the next phase of the war, its risk and its burdens - all of which are still under intense debate inside the administration - the pulverizing effect of the first phase in Afghanistan sends a clear message that the Bush administration has discarded the old military doctrines that applied so rigidly under his father.

At the time of the first Bush presidency, Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now secretary of state, prevailed with the Powell Doctrine that "overwhelming force" needed to be massed to defeat an entrenched Iraqi enemy in Kuwait. The doctrine insisted on clear objectives and a clear exit strategy. It now seems possible that such a strategy could have been employed in Afghanistan by massing forces within a coalition to break the Taliban's entrenched conventional forces.

But the second Bush administration has modified that equation in favor of innovative tactics that quickly exploit enemy weaknesses with ruthless bombardment from the air under a doctrine in which the use of force is unrestrained by borders or allies.

Where Mr. Bush now takes this doctrine is an open question, but he has painted his mission broadly across the world.

In his Sept. 20 address to Congress, Mr. Bush put it this way: "From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." He added that while the war on terror began with Al Qaeda, it did not end there. "It will not end," he said, "until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated."

One great task of wartime leadership, said Eliot A. Cohen, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, "is not only to communicate resolve and determination and will, but to explain what you are doing and why you are doing it."

"I think thus far that is not quite what we have seen," he said. "We have seen a tremendous pulse of staunchness, but we have not seen the more intellectual side of war leadership, making the case for what we are doing and laying out the arguments for what we do next."

To Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority, the United States military has demonstrated, as it did in the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the shattering effects of 500- pound bombs dropped on troop concentrations. Once Special Forces spotters got on the ground, American commanders showed how a large arsenal of precision guided weapons could lay the Taliban forces naked to the Navy's carrier-based bombers.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, an advocate of taking the antiterror campaign into Iraq, told an interviewer over the weekend, "I think any government that supports or harbors terrorists should be very worried right now."

Bush administration officials have begun to try to exploit the psychological advantage that is accruing from the fact that they appear to be winning in Afghanistan.

During the weekend, Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, signaled that Iraq's leader should not be indifferent to what was happening in Afghanistan, if only because the United States had once again demonstrated a level of resolve that might have been underestimated in the region.

"We have said for a number of years that Iraq is a threat to its neighbors, to its people, to the region and to American interests," Ms. Rice said in an interview on CNN. "We didn't need Sept. 11 to tell us that he is a threat to our interests," she said, adding, "We'll deal with that situation eventually."

Even if the goals are more modest than toppling Mr. Hussein, the Iraqi leader will have to consider how much the United States has been changed by the events of Sept. 11, especially in its willingness to support a president who has yet to map out precisely where he is going with his campaign.

Still, what is remarkable just two months into this war is how close the Bush administration has come to its objective of destroying Al Qaeda's sanctuary, how unrestrained the executive power of the president has suddenly become at a time when no war has been officially declared - and how murky the way forward in this war remains.

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As Soliders Cheer, Bush Braces Country for Long Campaign

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/politics/21CND-BUSH.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 - With the Taliban forces in retreat across much of Afghanistan, President Bush sought today to brace the country and its soldiers for a long campaign, one that will be fought in many places.

"We have made great strides," Mr. Bush told cheering soldiers at Fort Campbell, Ky., home of the storied 101st Airborne Division. But he added, "The most difficult steps of the mission still lie ahead."

After the more concentrated forces of the Taliban are smashed, scattered remnants will hide in the hills and caves of Afghanistan to fight on, Mr. Bush said. These hideouts will be "defended by fanatics who will fight to the death," the president warned.

Mr. Bush drew cheers when he said the American-led military campaign had apparently wrested 27 of 30 Afghan provinces from Taliban control in the last few weeks. But speaking of the determination of small Taliban units to soldier on, he said, "Success against these cells may come more slowly."

Mr. Bush sketched the overall campaign as nothing less than a struggle to the death between good and evil, a struggle he said the United States and its allies would win. "I believe in the fearless heart of the United States military," he said.

The president did not refer specifically to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that led to the military campaign against the Taliban, the Afghan regime that has given shelter to Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network. Noting that food and medicine as well as bombs have been dropped on the Afghan countryside, Mr. Bush said, "The Afghan people deserve a just and stable government."

A moment later, he said, "Afghanistan is just the beginning of the war on terrorism."

The president and his top aides, civilian and military, have stressed repeatedly that the campaign to avenge the Sept. 11 attacks and discourage future assaults will be long and difficult, and fought on many fronts.

Mr. Bush repeated that theme today, in words tailored to an audience of soldiers. Alluding to the 101st Airborne's exploits of yore, he said, "Once again you have a rendezvous with destiny - and so does our country."

The troops, apparently pleased to be joined by the president for a pre-Thanksgiving feast, interrupted Mr. Bush's remarks with repeated cheering, and he said he was proud to be their commander in chief.

"Great causes are not easy causes," he said. "It was a long way from Bunker Hill to Yorktown," and a long way from Normandy to victory in Europe.


-------- activists

China expels six Americans, other Western activists

USA Today
11/21/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/21/china-detainees.htm

BEIJING (AP) - China swiftly expelled six Americans and more than two dozen other Westerners who protested in the heart of Beijing against the government's repression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

By Wednesday evening - little more than 24 hours after they chanted, sat cross-legged and unveiled a banner on Tiananmen Square - all 35 protesters had been forced to leave the country, China's official Xinhua News Agency said.

It said they were treated with "humanitarian concern," contradicting Falun Gong claims that some were slapped and kicked by police. Police told them they broke laws on protest, assembly and cults, Xinhua said. China's government views Falun Gong as a cult.

The demonstrators called for an end to China's often brutal crackdown on Falun Gong. Falun Gong says more than 300 practitioners have died from torture and abuse in custody since China's communist leaders outlawed the movement in July 1999. Thousands of followers have been imprisoned.

Chinese Falun Gong members are regularly detained and often beaten and kicked for demonstrating on Tiananmen Square, the nation's symbolic heart. But Tuesday's protest was the first to involve only Western supporters of the movement.

Falun Gong said demonstrators included Australians, Canadians, French, Germans, Irish, Israelis, Swedes, Swiss, Britons and Americans. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said six Americans detained had all been expelled by Wednesday evening. It did not give their names.

Seven demonstrators were Swedes, said the Swedish ambassador to China, Kjell Anneling. He said the protest would focus attention on allegations of official brutality against Falun Gong adherents.

Sweden, like many European nations, has told Chinese officials their treatment of Falun Gong followers "is not acceptable," Anneling said.

Falun Gong identified one detainee as Zenon Dolnyckyj, of Toronto. A practitioner for 3 years, Falun Gong helped him "turn from a life of drugs and mischief," the group said in a statement.

Falun Gong attracted members in the late 1990s with a combination of slow-motion exercises and beliefs that mixes traditional Chinese thinking with the teachings of its founder, Li Hongzhi.

The group used to claim a following in the tens of millions, mostly in but not exclusively in China, where Li used to be a government clerk. He now lives in exile in the United States.

Falun Gong followers believe Li's teachings and Falun Gong meditation promote health, good citizenship and even supernatural powers for accomplished practitioners.

China's government accuses Falun Gong of causing more than 1,600 deaths by driving followers insane or encouraging them to substitute meditation for medicine. Officials have imprisoned followers in labor camps and reeducation centers to force them the renounce the group.

---

Protesters Find the Web to Be a Powerful Tool

New York Times
November 21, 2001
By AMY HARMON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/21/technology/21ANTI.html

It was just before Jodie Hemerda set off a family feud by announcing her opposition to the United States bombing in Afghanistan that she began scouring the Internet for others who shared her views.

She was not having much success in her hometown, Parker, Colo., where only the rare minivan does not fly an American flag. Rather than risk alienating the other mothers in the neighborhood, Ms. Hemerda, 30, has refrained from voicing her antiwar sentiments as they shuttle the children to and from school.

Even her husband, who threatened to boycott Thanksgiving dinner with his parents if they could not respect Ms. Hemerda's right to her opinions, stops short of endorsing her viewpoint.

Like many of the small and scattered group of Americans who disapprove of the Bush administration's response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, Ms. Hemerda is finding the Internet to be a powerful tool for reaching other dissenters. After joining thousands of others in signing an antiwar petition on the Web site www.9-11peace.org, she was emboldened to speak out at a local gathering about the death of Afghan civilians.

"Knowing that there were other people out there with my opinions made it a lot easier," Ms. Hemerda said. "It's just really nice to know that you're not alone."

With opinion polls showing overwhelming support for President Bush, war protesters are relying heavily on the Internet to weave their fragmented constituents into a movement. Though they number far fewer than the opponents of the war in Vietnam or even the Persian Gulf war, the first generation of Internet activists may well be spreading their message farther and faster than their predecessors in political protest.

Protesters making use of the Internet range from former hippies in rural Vermont who download ready- made leaflets to hand out at their weekly demonstrations to David H. Pickering, 22, of Brooklyn, who started an online peace petition that was presented to Prime Minister Tony Blair by members of the British Parliament last month with 500,000 signatures from around the world.

And then there are those like Cleo Meek, of Los Angeles, who simply typed "protest" into the Internet search engine Yahoo a few days after the bombing began in Afghanistan and discovered the International Action Center, which has organized several protests since the airstrikes began. Ms. Meek has since joined the center's volunteer staff.

"The character of political action organizing has completely shifted since the gulf war," said Brian Becker, co-director of the International Action Center, which was founded in 1992 by Ramsey Clark, a former United States attorney general. "Instead of a physical location like our office, the Web site has become our mobilization headquarters."

The relative anonymity of the technology also allows Internet users to absorb and express alternative views without fear of reprisal or to do so anonymously at a time when some protesters say the nation's patriotic fervor makes it more difficult to voice dissent.

People opposed to the war are "certainly one of the most vocal groups on the Net," said Andrew Carvin, who runs an online discussion forum about Sept. 11 and its aftermath. Mr. Carvin said many participants use free, disposable e- mail addresses and do not identify themselves.

America's first war of the Internet age is spawning a new cohort of protesters who take for granted the ability to consult a vast array of international news sources with a few mouse-clicks and is teaching old activists new tactics.

Jack Smith, a veteran of the movement against the Vietnam War started using e-mail only a year ago. But when he saw the names of student antiwar protesters at Vassar College in a local newspaper article, he looked up their e-mail addresses on the college Web site and persuaded them to join in the activities of a community group in New Paltz, N.Y., committed to social justice causes.

"Everyone has their own e-mail list," said Mr. Smith, 67, of New Paltz, adding that those networks are one reason that "at this stage an antiwar movement, and quite a vital one, has formed faster than any I can remember."

When students at Occidental College in Los Angeles decided to begin a 56-hour fast on Nov. 9 as a show of solidarity with Afghan civilians injured in the bombardments, they sent e-mail messages to their friends at other colleges, who forwarded them to their friends, and so on. One message found its way to an e-mail list called ActionLA and caught the attention of activists on several other Los Angeles-area campuses. Soon students at Princeton, Boston College and Oxford University in England had signed on.

"I don't understand how Vietnam got organized in the way it did," said Robert James Wallace, 18, a freshman at Occidental who helped organize the hunger strike. "Without the Internet there's no way we would have gotten 17 colleges on board in two weeks."

Of course, those 1960's peaceniks somehow did manage to make themselves heard without the Internet, and some latter-day advocates argue that the tool can be overused.

"We need to talk to people face-to- face about why we think the war is bad," said Kirstin Roberts, 30, a student at Harold Washington College in Chicago. "I spend way too much time in front of my computer."

Still, Ms. Roberts said the Internet was vital to pulling together three regional student antiwar conferences in recent weeks. Alyssa Erickson, 21, a senior at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, saw an announcement for the Nov. 10 Chicago conference on the Protest.net Web site.

After returning from Chicago, Ms. Erickson, who had previously been hesitant to express her views, organized a teach-in to discuss nonviolent options for bringing to justice the terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

To those who pointed out that the Taliban has almost been defeated, she replied by handing out information from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan criticizing the Northern Alliance.

"When people say `Why are you opposed to the war, the Northern Alliance is winning,' I say `Look at what the women of Afghanistan are saying about the Northern Alliance,' " Ms. Erickson said. "More people are refugees and more people are starving and they still don't have a government of their choosing."

She said she had downloaded the information from www.rawa.org.

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China Arrests Foreigners at Rally
Group Protests Violence Against Falun Gong

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 21, 2001; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60955-2001Nov20?language=printer

BEIJING, Nov. 20 -- Chinese police detained about 35 foreigners who unfurled a banner in Tiananmen Square today to protest the government's violent crackdown on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. Police repeatedly kicked and hit at least one protester after forcing him into a van.

The demonstrators, including American, European and Australian members of the group, posed as tourists milling about the square before gathering to chant a Falun Gong mantra. Some held up a large yellow banner emblazoned with the words "truth, benevolence, forbearance," the Falun Gong slogan, while others sat in the lotus position, shut their eyes and pressed their hands together in prayer.

Despite frequent international criticism of China's human rights record, foreigners rarely attempt to stage protests on Chinese soil, much less in Tiananmen, the country's political heart. Similar protests by Chinese members of Falun Gong occurred almost daily less than a year ago, but a state campaign of torture and intimidation has made such demonstrations increasingly uncommon.

Seconds after the foreigners converged, police vans surrounded the group and officers began forcing them inside, dragging several along the pavement and roughly lifting others off the ground. Three officers chased and tackled one demonstrator, who had broken free and run toward a crowd of Chinese onlookers while shouting, in Chinese, "Falun Gong is good!"

At least one police officer punched a protester repeatedly in his back as he forced him into a van. The officer could be seen continuing to pummel and kick the man before the van drove away. But police used less force than they have against Chinese members of the Buddhist-like group, refraining from drawing their batons, for example.

China outlawed Falun Gong as an "evil cult" in 1999 after thousands of adherents stunned the leadership with a mass protest outside Communist Party headquarters. The government blames the organization for the deaths of more than 1,000 people by suicide or refusal of medical treatment. Falun Gong says more than 50,000 believers have been sent to prisons, labor camps and mental hospitals, and about 300 have died in custody.

"We are here to appeal on behalf of tens of thousands of innocent people who suffer imprisonment, torture or even death at the hands of their own government in China," said a statement from the protesters issued by Falun Gong organizers based in the United States, who notified a few Western reporters in advance about the protest. "And we are here to appeal to China's leaders and to seek an end to the violence and terror they have waged against Falun Gong for 2 1/2 years."

China's state-run media said the protesters had been ordered to leave the country, but it was not known if they remained in police custody tonight.

"The relevant departments have given the 35 foreigners who broke Chinese law a warning for disrupting public order, and have dealt with them according to the law by ordering them to leave the country by a specified time," state radio said.

[On Wednesday, after meeting with Foreign Ministry officials, the Swedish ambassador to China, Kjell Anneling, said the 35 foreigners could be deported immediately.]

It was unclear what impact, if any, the protest might have on the Chinese public, which has largely turned against Falun Gong since five purported members set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square in January. The government has tried to cast Falun Gong as an organization with ties to China's enemies in the West, and it could use the protest to drive home that point.

Some Chinese bystanders in Tiananmen today shouted, "Hit them!" as police hauled away the protesters. Others expressed bewilderment. "Foreigners believe in Falun Gong too?" one asked.

In a related development, the official New China News Agency reported today that a U.S. permanent resident serving a three-year sentence in a Chinese labor camp had renounced her devotion to Falun Gong.

Teng Chunyan, who was detained last year in May and whose case had been raised by U.S. diplomats, was quoted defending conditions in the labor camp. "I have not been abused since my detention and have not seen any sign of beating or admonishment here," the news agency quoted her as saying. "Police in the center are very polite and kind."

----

[Clever. Remember when anti-war activists handed out flowers to people 35 years ago? et]

PETA gives tofu to save live turkeys

By Sonja Barisic
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 21, 2001

NORFOLK - The activists in People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) still would prefer that turkey be banished from the Thanksgiving dinner table. They have just stopped being so in-your-face about it.

The Norfolk-based group known for its sometimes outrageous tactics has become decidedly more low-key since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

So the banners PETA previously has hung from overpasses proclaiming that "Thanksgiving is Murder on Turkeys" are absent this holiday season.

Instead, PETA is sending meatless, soy-based turkey substitutes and fake-beef roasts to more than 50 homeless shelters nationwide this week, plus giving tofu turkeys to 20 winners of an online essay contest. It's also shipping tofu jerky samples to the 5,000-member crew of the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, deployed in the war against terrorism.

In addition, PETA supporters in animal costumes and women clad in bikinis made of lettuce will pass out recipes and other vegetarian information to holiday travelers this week at a half-dozen airports, including Norfolk International Airport.

"Obviously, everybody in the country has been profoundly affected by the events and aftermath of September 11," spokesman Bruce Friedrich said. As a result, "we're trying to focus on things that are positive and that pull us together, rather than things that unsettle people."

How long PETA will continue in this vein remains to be seen. The group long has used stunts - such as smashing a tofu-cream pie in the face of a corporate leader to protest product testing on animals - to publicize its agenda.

"If we're able to capture people's attention and maintain that with exclusively upbeat campaigns, we'll continue to do exclusively upbeat campaigns," Mr. Friedrich said.

PETA is getting some celebrity help with its upbeat campaigns for Thanksgiving.

Martin Sheen, who portrays the president on NBC-TV's "The West Wing," sent letters on PETA's behalf to 450 homeless shelters, offering them a free meatless alternative to turkey to serve on Thanksgiving.

"With 17 million vegetarians in the United States today, you will undoubtedly have some visitors who have given up meat," Mr. Sheen wrote. With the soy substitute, "they can enjoy a delicious main course instead of making a meal out of side dishes."

More than 50 shelters responded, and PETA is sending them meatless turkeys and/or roasts.

"It's President Bartlett really pardoning some turkeys," Mr. Friedrich said, referring to Mr. Sheen's character in the NBC drama.

Meanwhile, John Popper of the band Blues Traveler is talking turkey on PETA's hot line (888/VEG-FOOD). Callers can request vegetarian recipes and listen to a recorded message from the singer.

"You probably figure a meat-and-potato guy like me would be the last person that you'd expect to hear on a PETA hot line," Mr. Popper says. "But I gotta tell you, the more I learn about how turkeys suffer before they end up in the oven, the more I like the sound of a meat-free holiday meal."

PETA contends turkeys suffer by being crammed into warehouses and killed while conscious, and that the birds have been genetically bred to grow so quickly that they suffer from leg deformities and illnesses.

Those charges are disputed by the National Turkey Federation, a Washington-based group that represents much of the turkey industry.

"It's simply not in the economic interest of turkey growers to mistreat animals," group spokeswoman Sherrie Rosenblatt said. "It costs more to grow a stressed animal to market weight; it lowers the quality at the end of the product."

The federation estimates 45 million turkeys will be eaten this Thanksgiving by 95 percent of American families.

"In light of the events of September 11, people are going to be more traditional than ever, and turkey is part of an American holiday tradition," Miss Rosenblatt said.


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