------- 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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