------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Dr. Francis Moore, 88, Dies; Innovative Leader in Surgery
UK to set up national nuclear liabilities body
India - U.S. Military Exercises to Resume Soon
Iraq: Experts Debate Weapons Of Mass Destruction Potential
Russia backs curbs
North Korea Rejects U.S. Call for Arms Inspections
North Korea Rejects U.S. Warnings
S. Korea protests North's shooting
Pentagon Readies for Missile Test
U.S. CONSIDERS NUKES TO DESTROY SADDAM'S WMD
Writings hint at Condi's bio-attack response plan
Agency Weighs Buying Drug Against Radiation-Induced Ailments
Bush Defends Investigation Tactics

MILITARY
US investigates 'execution' of 160 Taliban near Kandahar
Allies Justify Mass Killing of Taliban Prisoners in Fort
Afghans Plunge Into Talks, Differing on Peacekeepers
Rebels May Push South of Kabul
U.S. air strikes kill leaders of al Qaeda
Northern Alliance Refuses to Submit Candidates for Interim Government
Briefly - Africa
Somalia's Internet is casualty of war on terrorism
Anthrax plan pops out of Pak scientist's cupboard
Letter's Anthrax Spores Pose Many Obstacles to Analysis
Enemy of My Enemy
Hearings against Sharon postponed
U.S. Urges Moscow to Keep TV-6 Open
U.S. Talks To Moscow About Force In Kabul
Spain pledges help to bring justice
C.I.A. Names Agent Killed in Fortress

POLICE / PRISONERS
Man in Custody for Nuke Plant Photos
Many Held on Tenuous Ties to Sept. 11
New Needs Transform Capitol Security
After a Veto Threat, Vote in House Goes Bush's Way
Ashcroft Accused Of 'Global Internet Power Grab'
Scientists Find the New Field of Threat Assessment Full of Uncertainties
President Defends Secret Tribunals in Terrorist Cases

ENERGY AND OTHER
Norton Leads Renewable Energy Gathering
Boeing to study electric plane, fuel cell technology
Meet energy challenges
US sets another monthly record for ethanol output
Technology could make for more fuel efficient cars
UNICEF estimates

ACTIVISTS
Biden To Give First Major Speech On Missile Defense Since Sept. 11
Request from former Piketon Uranium Enrichment Plant electrician
DOE meeting looks at possibility of uranium conversion facility



-------- NUCLEAR

Dr. Francis Moore, 88, Dies; Innovative Leader in Surgery

New York Times
November 29, 2001
By ERICA GOODE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/obituaries/29MOOR.html?searchpv=nytToday

Dr. Francis D. Moore, a giant of 20th-century surgery who made profound contributions to the understanding of how bodily fluids and chemicals change during surgery, the development of organ transplantation and the care of critically ill surgical patients, died on Saturday at his home in Westwood, Mass.

Dr. Moore, 88, was seriously ill with chronic heart failure and took his own life, his family said.

For almost three decades, beginning in 1948, Dr. Moore was a professor of surgery at Harvard and the surgeon in chief at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston (now Brigham and Women's Hospital).

Under his stewardship, the hospital's surgical department became a leader in organ transplantation. In 1954, a surgical team at Brigham led by Dr. Joseph Murray performed the first successful human organ transplant, transferring a kidney between identical twins. Successful kidney transplants between fraternal twins and between unrelated donors and recipients followed quickly over the next decade. In 1990, Dr. Murray won the Nobel Prize for his transplantation work at the hospital.

Dr. Moore, many of his colleagues said, provided the inspiration and guidance that allowed the transplantation program to move forward.

"His contribution in building the vehicle, if you will, of transplantation was enormous and it was very unselfish," said Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, the emeritus professor of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, who in 1967 performed the first successful human liver transplant.

"I think he was really the driving force of that Brigham program," Dr. Starzl said.

In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, Dr. Murray also credited Dr. Moore with providing much of the "leadership, creativity, courage and unselfishness" that he said underlay the success of the hospital's efforts.

Dr. Moore also added significantly to the development of procedures for liver transplants, and in 1958 described transplant surgeries in dogs similar to the procedures performed today .

But it was for his ingenious experiments on the composition of fluids and chemicals in the human body that Dr. Moore was perhaps best known. By using radioactive tracer elements, he was able to measure the total amount of water, potassium, sodium, nitrogen, blood volume and other bodily components and how they changed during surgery.

Before Dr. Moore reported his findings, many decisions about postoperative care - whether a patient needed more fluids, for example - "were all seat-of-the-pants type decisions," said Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute, who trained under Dr. Moore in Boston.

"You had imperfect information and tried to develop decisions based on that," he said.

Dr. Moore's methods for the first time allowed for precise calculations.

"When you attach a number to measurement," Dr. Rosenberg said, "then you've increased your ability to make rational decisions in medicine by an enormous extent."

A textbook Dr. Moore wrote on the subject, "The Metabolic Care of the Surgical Patient," first published in 1959, became a classic in the field.

Yet beyond his accomplishments as a surgeon, Dr. Moore also influenced medicine in broader ways, said Dr. Derek Bok, a former president of Harvard and now a university professor there.

Dr. Bok said the era when Dr. Moore was Brigham's chief of surgery was a time when the tone, the standards and the ethical principles of medical schools were shaped by such department chiefs.

"He stands out in my mind as one of the three or four people who were most likely to articulate what the medical school stood for and what doctors ought to be," Dr. Bok said. "It was people like that who really helped define standards of conduct for doctors. Their influence radiated out across the medical school and across medicine generally."

Francis Daniels Moore was born in Evanston, Ill., and graduated from Harvard in 1935, where he was president of the Harvard Lampoon magazine and the Hasty Pudding Club. That same year, he married Laura Benton Bartlett of Winnetka, Ill. She died in 1988.

In 1939, he received his medical degree from the university, moving on to an internship and residency in surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

In 1942, Dr. Moore treated many patients who were casualties of the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in Boston and witnessed firsthand the extreme toll of severe burns on the body's complex systems. The experience in part drove his interest in critical care and bodily composition.

In the Korean War, he was enlisted by the office of the surgeon general of the Army to study potassium intoxication in wounded soldiers, a condition that resulted from transfusion with blood that was too old.

"He recognized that the treatment was worse than the original injury," said Dr. Joseph Martin, the dean of Harvard Medical School. Retiring from his post at Brigham in 1976, Dr. Moore continued on the faculty of Harvard Medical School as a professor of surgery until 1981 and then as the Mosely professor emeritus, a position he retained until his death. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981.

In 1990, he married Katharyn Watson Saltonstall of Exeter, N.H., and Marion, Mass. Five years later, he published his autobiography, "A Miracle and a Privilege: Recounting a Half Century of Surgical Advance."

It was one of six books and hundreds of research papers Dr. Moore published.

Dr. Moore is survived by his wife; five children, Nancy Moore Hill of Stratham, N.H., Dr. Peter B., of New Haven, Sarah Moore Warren of Grafton, Vt., Caroline Moore Tripp of New York City and Dr. Francis D. Jr., of Medfield, Mass.; a sister, Harriet Moore Gelfan of Brattleboro, Vt.; 17 grandchildren; and 4 great-grandchildren.

-------- britain

UK to set up national nuclear liabilities body

Story by Matthew Jones,
Reuters:
29/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13474

LONDON - Britain said yesterday it will set up a national body to take on most of the country's nuclear liabilities, such as the cost of decommissioning old plants and disposing of waste.

A Liabilities Management Authority (LMA) will assume the 35 billion pound ($49.86 billion) liabilities of state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) and the seven billion pound liabilities of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt told Parliament.

Hewitt said the LMA will be responsible for developing a national decommissioning strategy.

"The work required to deal with the legacy (of Britain's nuclear involvement) extends decades into the future and the costs involved are inherently uncertain," she said, adding the cost will be about one billion pounds a year over the next 10 to 15 years, decreasing thereafter.

Under government proposals the LMA will take over the liabilities and associated assets of BNFL and UKAEA.

In the case of BNFL, which the government is keen to part-privatise, these will be the Sellafield nuclear facility in Cumbria and the ageing Magnox power stations, all of which are slated for closure within the next 20 years or so.

BNFL says about 88 percent of its liabilities are already covered.

Analysts say shifting BNFL's liabilities to a government body will make the group more attractive to investors although there will remain uncertainties about other parts of the group's business.

Ireland is currently taking legal action at a United Nations body to make sure BNFL's 472 million pound Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) does not open because of worries about low-level radioactive emissions into the Irish Sea.

Britain's Appeal Court is also set to rule in the next few days about whether the government was right in October to grant approval for the SMP to start up.

BNFL's Westinghouse division which designs and builds nuclear power stations and its AGR nuclear fuel manufacturing unit in Lancashire are seen by analysts as being among the group's strongest assets.

Hewitt said a partial sell-off of BNFL would not occur before 2004/2005.

Previous plans by the government to sell 49 percent of BNFL had to be shelved in 2000 after revelations the company had falisified data on a batch of MOX nuclear fuel sent overseas.

The international furore about the incident led to a swathe of contracts being cancelled by key customers in Japan and Germany.

British Energy , the country's main nuclear generator which was privatised in 1996, will retain its liabilitie

-------- india / pakistan

India - U.S. Military Exercises to Resume Soon

New York Times
November 29, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-india-usa.html?searchpv=reuters

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command said Thursday he expected joint Indian-U.S. military exercises to resume soon.

``We are looking at the near future, weeks and months, not years,'' Admiral Dennis Blair told a news conference.

Joint military exercises were canceled under U.S. sanctions imposed on India after it conducted nuclear tests in 1998. President Bush waived the sanctions following the deadly air attacks on Washington and New York in September.

Blair, on a visit to India to boost U.S.-Indian military cooperation in the wake of the attacks on the United States, said Washington was looking for enhanced security cooperation between the two countries.

``We are not looking for a defense treaty,'' he said. ``We are looking for cooperation in security matters that serves the interests of both countries.

-------- iraq

Iraq: Experts Debate Weapons Of Mass Destruction Potential

By Jeffrey Donovan,
Radio Free Europe,
November 29, 2001
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2001/11/29112001091513.asp

There are growing signs that Washington may seek to shift the war on terrorism to Iraq in a bid to topple Saddam Hussein, who is believed to be a terrorist threat with the ability to use weapons of mass destruction. With United Nations weapons inspectors absent from Iraq since 1998, has Saddam been able to rebuild his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs? Our correspondent Jeffrey Donovan spoke with three former UN arms inspectors in Iraq.

Washington, 29 November 2001 (RFE/RL) -- With the United States closing in on success in Afghanistan, there are rumblings in Washington that the war on terrorism may soon be shifted to a new front: Iraq.

Although there has been much talk in the U.S. media about the need to go after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein -- whom many view as a terrorist threat with the potential to use weapons of mass destruction -- President George W. Bush has avoided any shift in focus away from the campaign in Afghanistan.

That is, until this week.

As the United Nations Security Council began debate 26 November on overhauling the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Bush weighed in with perhaps his strongest statement yet on the possible use of U.S. forces against Iraq.

Bush urged Iraq, which expelled UN arms inspectors in 1998, to allow their return. Asked what the U.S. would do if Saddam fails to comply, Bush said vaguely: "He'll find out."

U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, have said Bush's remarks did not represent a shift in U.S. policy. Some observers say his comments may actually have been intended to add urgency to the U.S. position in the UN Security Council, where Washington and Moscow reached a compromise this week on proceeding with sanctions against Iraq.

Still, whether or not they will lead to conflict, the rumblings of an imminent new war are audible.

Its proponents argue that Saddam has had three years to rebuild since the departure of UNSCOM, the UN special commission that oversaw the dismantling of much of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear programs.

Charles Duelfer is former deputy chairman of UNSCOM. Now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, Duelfer says that despite UNSCOM's work, Iraq is still a clear threat.

Duelfer says that UNSCOM did not account for all of the country's biological weapons facilities and that Iraq still has the scientific ability to reconstitute the destroyed programs -- and has had enough time to make significant progress, at least in chemical and biological arms rebuilding.

Iraq used chemical weapons during its war with Iran in the 1980s as well as against its Kurd minority. And Baghdad is known to have developed weaponized anthrax, the deadly bacteria used in the recent letter attacks that have killed five people in the United States.

Duelfer, however, played down the possibility that Saddam has re-acquired the ability to build a nuclear weapon, which he was close to achieving before the Persian Gulf War: "Iraq still has the intellectual talent to produce one [a nuclear weapon]. What they don't have, we believe, is the fissile material -- the enriched uranium or plutonium that forms the heart of a nuclear weapon. The possibilities exist, I suppose, for them to acquire that from the former Soviet Union, or more speculatively, to clandestinely produce this enriched material."

Richard Zilinskas, a former UNSCOM biological analyst, agrees with Duelfer. Noting that UNSCOM left intact 80 civilian biological research and production units that could easily be redirected for military use, Zilinskas says Iraq may have redeveloped a biological weapons program: "I would downplay the danger of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, but I would not downplay chemical weapons and certainly not biological weapons. I do think, like I said, it would be easy for Iraq to reconstitute its biological weapons program and come out with some very scary weapons."

Scott Ritter is the odd man out among former UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. A former military intelligence official, Ritter believes that UNSCOM was so successful that Saddam now poses a threat to no one -- except, perhaps, to Iraqi people themselves: "The level of disarmament achieved exceeded the expectations of just about everybody. I'm a proponent of quantifying it at 90-95 percent level and a lot of people will agree with that. What remained are the vestiges of these programs -- not the massive factories; those were destroyed. Not the production equipment itself -- that was eliminated. Not the vast stockpiles of weapons or the raw materiel -- these were identified and eliminated."

Ritter also plays down any possible link of Saddam with the Al-Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the 11 September attacks on the United States. Mohammed Atta, who is believed to have flown one of the planes into the World Trade Center in New York, reportedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official earlier this year in Prague.

But Ritter, citing the war with Iran and other examples, says Saddam has fought Islamic fundamentalists for 30 years and that he would never team up with his enemy.

He says that since the early 1990s, the chief aim of U.S. policy toward Iraq is the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. He says that even if Saddam disarmed completely, the U.S. would likely continue sanctions against Iraq until he is overthrown. Ritter says this explains the remarks by Bush: "The drumbeats of war are ringing in everybody's ear and President Bush has thrown out a potential justification for...the resumption of major military activity against Iraq."

But Duelfer disagrees strongly about Saddam's possible hand in the 11 September attacks, the anthrax letters or links with Al-Qaeda. Much as the U.S. teamed up with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in World War II, Duelfer says that secular Saddam and fundamentalist bin Laden are now united by a "commonality of interest" that will become clearer as time goes by: "I'm convinced that we will see Iraqi connections. I'd put money on it. They have the talent, they've supported groups like that in the past. Why not? You know, Iraq's been at war with the United States for over 10 years now. We may think the war ended in 1991, but certainly Baghdad doesn't."

To be sure, U.S. and British warplanes continue occasional strikes on Iraqi targets to defend "no-fly" zones set up in 1991 to protect Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south from attack by Saddam's forces. In the latest strike, U.S. jets attacked Iraqi air-defense targets on 27 November in response to threats against American and British planes patrolling the "no fly" zones.

Ritter believes these strikes will be ratcheted up in the coming weeks to weaken Iraqi air defenses so that Bush, when and if he wants, can launch an attack on Iraq.

----

Russia backs curbs

By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 29, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011129-91496519.htm

NEW YORK - The Russian government for the first time has agreed to develop a list of "dual use" items that cannot be exported to Iraq, removing a major obstacle to the introduction of the more humane, targeted sanctions long sought by the United States.

Once the list of prohibited items is accepted by the U.N. Security Council, Iraq, in theory, will be able to use its oil revenues to import anything that is not forbidden.

The list, hundreds of items long, is still a work in progress. It includes everything from garden-variety pesticides to precursors for chemical weapons to sophisticated military hardware.

Diplomats yesterday said they were pleased with the negotiations, and expected to vote on the resolution today.

"We're not just kicking the issue forward another six months," said Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham. "This is significant."

Even after the list is adopted - on June 1 - Iraq's revenues will continue to be spent through a U.N. escrow account. However, the council's 15 members no longer will have the right to vet Baghdad's shopping list.

The council imposed a crippling embargo on Iraq after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The sanctions in place today are to ensure that Baghdad cooperates with U.N. inspectors looking for signs of prohibited chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

The Iraqi government claims that sanctions have killed some 1.6 million civilians, and have compromised its domestic manufacturing and oil-production facilities. U.N. estimates are more conservative, but the humanitarian impact has been undeniable.

Baghdad so successfully eroded international support for the embargo that U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last year said Iraq had "won the propaganda war."

The resolution the council is expected to adopt today is essentially a rollover of the oil-for-food plan that allows Iraq to pump unlimited supplies and sell it to U.N.-approved companies.

But it also takes note of the so-called goods review list, "and decides to adopt the list and the procedures, subject to any refinements to them agreed by the council in light of further consultations, for implementation beginning 1 June 2002."

The list had been in the works for six months, when the United States and Britain first proposed a more focused sanctions regime that would let more aid through to the Iraqi people. Western governments wanted a more comprehensive accounting while France and China demanded that whole categories of items be stricken.

But the Russians, who have most closely represented Baghdad's interests in the council, said at the time that more consultations were necessary. They have agreed to the concept of a list, but not what belongs on it.

The United States, in return, has agreed to re-examine the December 1999 resolution that promises to temporarily suspend the sanctions once the weapons inspectors are back at work.

The resolution was left deliberately vague, diplomats said at the time, not defining what was required of Iraq in the way of cooperation, nor outlining how the sanctions could be reimposed, if necessary.

Some diplomats here said that was an important concession by Washington, but Mr. Cunningham downplayed such thoughts.

"Our approach on the inspections hasn't changed," he said yesterday. "We're willing to discuss anything."

Iraq has refused to allow the weapons inspectors to return since Dec. 16, 1998, when an exasperated Clinton administration bombed military targets to force compliance with Security Council resolutions.

Earlier this week, President Bush was asked if he envisioned the war on terrorism spreading to Iraq.

"As for Mr. Saddam Hussein, he needs to let inspectors back in his country to show us that he is not developing weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Bush said in a Rose Garden press conference.

Baghdad categorically rejected new inspections, and said it would not be intimidated by threats. It was not clear yesterday whether Iraq would accept the new sanctions regime, which could undercut international sympathy and bite into smuggling revenues.

-------- korea

North Korea Rejects U.S. Call for Arms Inspections

New York Times
November 29, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-korea-north-usa.html?searchpv=reuters

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea angrily rejected on Thursday U.S. calls for inspections to hunt for suspected weapons of mass destruction and threatened to take unspecified ``necessary countermeasures.''

The North Korean Foreign Ministry, in a statement published by the state-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA), also dismissed as ``quite nonsensical'' U.S. statements urging the communist state to do more to cooperate against terrorism.

``The U.S. is unreasonably demanding the DPRK receive an 'inspection' just as a thief turns on the master with a club,'' said the statement.

DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name -- the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

``Under this situation the DPRK cannot sit idle but is left with no option but to take necessary countermeasures,'' it said, without elaborating.

In a reminder of unresolved tensions across the world's most heavily armed frontier, South Korea's Defense Ministry condemned North Korea for triggering an incident two days earlier in which South and North Korean border guards exchanged machine gun fire.

SCOPE FOR CRISIS DIPLOMACY NARROW

The North's statement said U.S. calls for arms inspections and criticism of its abuses of human rights and religious freedom ``goes to prove that some forces in the United States, in fact, do not want the dialogue for the solution of the problems.''

North Korea frequently uses brinkmanship, threats and bluffs as a diplomatic tool to extract concessions from or get the attention of the United States.

``There is nothing that North Korea hates more than to be ignored by the U.S.,'' said Daryl Plunk, a Korea expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative American think tank.

But analysts say the North's scope for using such tactics has narrowed recently, because the United States is focused on the Afghan conflict and because the North is dependent on international support that would erode if it created a crisis.

Still, the United States has shown interest in the arms programs of North Korea, which remains on the list of states Washington accuses of sponsoring terrorism. The United States has raised concerns about the North's missile sales and possible stocks of biological arms.

President Bush has urged North Korea to allow inspectors to determine whether it has been producing weapons of mass destruction. The top U.S. disarmament diplomat has also listed the North as a leading germ warfare worry.

NUCLEAR PROJECT CONCERNS

The State Department, asked Tuesday what the United States was demanding, referred to the 1994 Agreed Framework deal with North Korea, under which Western countries agreed to build light-water reactors in North Korea in return for a freeze of the North's suspected nuclear weapons program.

North Korea must allow international inspections to determine the extent of its past nuclear program, before any critical parts of the new reactors are delivered to the North.

A senior delegation of the Korean peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the multinational agency set up to build the reactors, will visit North Korea this weekend.

Renewing an earlier demand already rejected by the United States, the North Korean statement said Washington should comply ``with the DPRK's just demand for the compensation for the loss of electricity'' as a result of delays to the reactor project.

In an interview with Reuters Wednesday, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung urged the United States and North Korea to talk because they had ``many things to tell each other.''

SHOOTING BLAMED ON NORTH

In comments which attracted wide attention in South Korea, Kim said he was ``disappointed'' with the stalemate in the South's relations with North Korea. But he said his ``Sunshine Policy'' of engaging the North had helped keep the Korean peninsula stable.

The opposition Grand National Party, which has advocated a tougher stance toward North Korea, said: ``It is fortunate that President Kim has belatedly recognized the North's duplicity.''

On the recent border shooting incident, the South Korean Defense Ministry voiced ``grave concern'' over what it said U.N. investigators found to be a violation of the truce which ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

It urged the North to rethink its refusal to meet U.N. officials to discuss the brief firefight, in which no one was hurt but a South Korean guardpost window was shot out.

Because the Korean conflict ended in an armed truce that has not been replaced by a peace treaty, capitalist South Korea and the communist North remain in a technical state of war.

----

North Korea Rejects U.S. Warnings

By Paul Shin
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, November 28, 2001; 11:02 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31446-2001Nov28?language=printer

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea rejected U.S. warnings against producing weapons of mass destruction, saying it is now compelled to take unspecified "countermeasures" against what the reclusive Marxist government sees as Washington's hostile policy toward it.

"Under this circumstances, we can no longer sit idle, and we will thus be compelled to take proper countermeasures," the North's state news agency, KCNA, quoted an unidentified Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

The statement was monitored in Seoul on Thursday.

"All circumstances show that the prospects of resolving problems through a dialogue with the United States have in fact become remote," the statement said.

The tough talk from the North came after President Bush on Monday warned Iraq and North Korea there would be unspecified consequences for producing weapons of mass destruction.

"If they develop weapons of mass destruction that will be used to terrorize nations, they will be held accountable," Bush said. He said North Korea must allow weapons inspectors into the country if Pyongyang hoped for better ties with Washington.

The spokesman denounced Washington for continuing what was termed the United States' decades-old hostile policy toward North Korea which he claimed was unrelated to the U.S. war on terrorism.

The North, which is included on a U.S. list of nations that sponsor terrorism, has called the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States "very regrettable and tragic." It also signed two United Nations treaties barring the financing of terrorism and the taking of hostages.

But Pyongyang is opposed to the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan over concerns about civilian casualties.

"It is nonsense that the United States, which has put a hat of terror on us, is talking about our cooperation for anti-terrorism," the spokesman said.

The statement also rejected Bush's demand for an outside inspection of North Korean suspected nuclear weapons program, frozen under a 1994 agreement with the United States. As a reward for the freeze, a U.S.-led Western consortium is building two safe nuclear reactors in North Korea.

Despite Pyongyang's denial, some U.S. experts think that North Korea might have secretly stockpiled enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs before it shut down its old Soviet-made reactors.

----

S. Korea protests North's shooting

November 29, 2001
By Jong-Heon Lee
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/29112001-042907-4575r.htm

The South Korean military on Thursday protested against North Korea's recent shooting across their heavily armed border, demanding an explanation from the communist rival.

In a statement, the Defense Ministry expressed deep concern over the incident that South Korea considered was "a blatant violation of the armistice agreement that could breed military confrontation and heighten tension between the two Koreas."

"We call for the North to offer an explanation and take measures to prevent such violations in the future," said the statement read by the ministry spokesman, Hwang Eui-don. "We declare here and now that the North's side will be held full responsible for the consequences from such conduct," it said.

North Korean border guards fired several shots at a South Korean guard post inside the demilitarized zone on Tuesday, and the South's soldiers returned the fire. North Korean shots broke a window at a South Korean guard post and hit a wire fence in the southern sector of the buffer zone. No South Korean soldier was injured.

The North has remained silent on the incident, and rejected a proposal by the U.N. Command to have border contacts to deal with the cross-border fire.

Some analysts here consider the North's shooting as part of its efforts to nullify the truce agreement that ended the 1950-53 Korean War by raising military tensions on the peninsula which remains technically at war since the conflict.

The North's move aimed at concluding a peace treaty with the United States as part of a strategy to remove U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, they said.

In 1996 the North said it would not abide by an earlier agreement that allow U.S. soldiers to be stationed in the peninsula and sent heavily armed troops to the truce village of Panmunjom.

This week, the North tried to fuel tension by claiming the South has deployed howitzer artillery and other armored tanks into the DMZ in violation of the armistice.

Rejecting the charges as groundless, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Dong-shin said the North's shooting could be an intentional move in line with its long-time attempts to nullify the armistice mechanism.

The cross-border fire came amid a new tension between the two Koreas in the wake of the failed peace talks this month. The inter-Korean talks collapsed after the North protested against a security alert imposed in the South following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

-------- missile defense

Pentagon Readies for Missile Test

New York Times
November 29, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline also
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011129-4251735.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32317-2001Nov29?language=printer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon plans to test part of its missile defense program Saturday by trying to shoot a mock warhead out of the sky with an interceptor rocket, military officials said.

The test had been scheduled for Oct. 24, but was delayed because of technical problems. U.S. officials say the test is designed to stay within the limits of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty that governs missile defenses.

President Bush has said repeatedly that the United States needs an effective defense against long-range ballistic missiles and that the ABM treaty must not be allowed to stand in the way. Administration officials have said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, while not involving missiles, show the country is vulnerable to unconventional surprise attack that one day could come from missiles.

For now, however, the administration is adhering to the treaty while it attempts to persuade Russia to set it aside.

Saturday's test, in which a missile interceptor is fired from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands to chase down an intercontinental-range missile carrying a mock nuclear warhead, will be the first since July. That test was successful, although the previous one in July 2000 failed.

The missile intercept tests cost about $100 million each.

Bush has said that unless he gets an arrangement with Russia that accommodates his missile defense program, the United States will withdraw from the treaty, which it is permitted to do with six months' notice. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to reach an agreement during Putin's visit to the United States this month.

Vocal supporters of missile defense have urged the administration to declare the treaty invalid -- since one of its two original signatories, the Soviet Union, no longer exists -- and move ahead with unlimited testing.

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

U.S. CONSIDERS NUKES TO DESTROY SADDAM'S WMD

Middle East Newsline,
November 29, 2001
http://menewsline.com/stories/2001/november/11_30_3.html

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The Bush administration is being quietly urged to develop low-yield nuclear bombs to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program.

Industry sources said the administration is being lobbied by both the Pentagon and members of Congress to develop a new generation of low-yield nuclear weapons. The bombs would seek to destroy hardened targets in rogue states, particularly Iraq.

The U.S. military, the sources said, have been largely unsuccessful in destroying the bunkers used by Saudi fugitive Osama Bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan. The U.S. Air Force has used the conventional GBU-28 bombs for such missions.

Dr. Robert Nelson of the Federation of American Scientists disclosed the program during a conference on Nov. 8 in Washington. Nelson is regarded as close to the Pentagon and knowledgeable of classified military projects....

----

Writings hint at Condi's bio-attack response plan
Bush's top security adviser doesn't rule out nukes to retaliate against non-nuclear state

By Paul Sperry
November 29, 2001
WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25488

WAR ON TERROR

WASHINGTON - In policy remarks written three years ago, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice doesn't rule out the threat of nuclear strikes as an option for a president faced with a biological or chemical attack, even if one were carried out by a non-nuclear state.

With speculation growing that Iraq's biowarfare program may have been the source of the so-called Ames strain of anthrax that has killed five Americans and infected 13 others, Rice's position, though dated and based on hypothetical scenarios, may bear some relevance.

"The question is whether explicit nuclear threats in retaliation for BCW [biological-chemical weapons] use are tolerable, given the long-standing norm of non-use of NW [nuclear weapons] against non-nuclear states," Rice said.

"It may be an unpalatable policy, but one of the few available to a U.S. president should deterrence fail," she concluded.

To be sure, Rice prepared the remarks as a Stanford University political science professor for a November 1998 Hoover Institution conference on the biological and chemical warfare threat. They were published by the Hoover Institution Press in a book called, "The New Terror: Facing the Threat of Biological and Chemical Weapons."

But now, the scenario of a non-nuclear state attacking the U.S. with lethal germs may not be so far off.

Last week, a State Department arms-control official announced that Washington was worried that terrorist overlord Osama bin Laden may have been "trying to acquire a rudimentary biological-weapons capability, possibly with support from a state." He went on to cite Iraq, a non-nuclear state, as one of six countries developing germ-warfare programs.

Iraq claims it destroyed its biological weapons after the Gulf war, but it has not allowed weapons inspectors into the country to verify this since December 1998.

Ten years earlier, Iraqi scientists tried to order samples of the virulent Ames strain of anthrax from a British biodefense institute.

Lab tests have shown that the Ames strain matches the spores that appeared in attacks in Florida, Washington and New York. And according to DNA testing, the bacteria found in a 94-year-old Connecticut woman who died of inhalation anthrax is indistinguishable from Ames.

The terrorists who mailed the anthrax-laced letters praised Allah in their sinister notes, but the FBI still doesn't know if they are connected to the Sept. 11 cell or al-Qaida. They've confirmed, however, that Mohamed Atta, the suspected hijacking ringleader, met with Iraqi intelligence agents earlier this year.

Also, at the time of the Gulf war, Iraq was starting to weaponize VX nerve gas, the deadliest chem-warfare agent. VX's major penetration route is through the skin; it doesn't have to be inhaled.

By one U.S. estimate, Iraq could restart pre-Gulf war levels of production of VX within two or three years.

Missile defense

In her 1998 conference remarks, Rice also argued for a missile-defense shield, saying biological or chemical agents delivered by ballistic missiles are not too much less a threat than nuclear-tipped missiles.

"The recent emphasis on ballistic missile defense against nuclear attack could be important for the BCW problem, too, and ought to be pursued," she said, adding that the prospect of some of Russia's BCW stockpile leaking to rogue states "seems a virtual certainty."

Rice even revealed some of her thinking on gathering intelligence on terrorist cells in the U.S., and how such efforts might infringe on civil liberties.

She seemed to favor allowing the CIA to hire informants with shady backgrounds to infiltrate such cells, saying "we've turned squeamish and apologetic in recent years about our association with tough actors in places like Guatemala and Nicaragua during the Cold War."

"The human assets likely to be involved in BCW intelligence may be even more unsavory," said Rice, who was also Stanford's provost at the time. "Can we stomach those associations?"

She said the U.S. is "simply ill-prepared" to deal with a major terrorist attack.

"We need to devote attention to the challenges that our decentralized federal system poses for a coordinated response to a serious incident," said Rice, a Council on Foreign Relations member. "The importance of proper civil-defense measures and means of recovery cannot be underestimated as a counter to blackmail and panic."

She added: "The role of the armed forces on the territory of the U.S. is also at issue, and must be reassessed."

At the same time, Rice cautioned against overtightening security and undermining traditional American values such as openness and individual freedom.

"No one would suggest that the U.S. become 'Fortress America' in order to diminish the BCW threat, no matter how grave," said Rice, a Hoover senior fellow. "It would not work and would change dramatically who we are and what we are trying to protect."

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

RADIATION THREAT
Agency Weighs Buying Drug to Protect Against Radiation-Induced Ailments

New York Times
November 29, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/national/29RADI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 - Spurred by the attacks in September, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is moving toward buying millions of doses of a drug that protects against thyroid cancer that might result from radiation exposure.

The idea of stockpiling the drug, potassium iodide, has been debated since the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pa. Proponents renewed discussions of the proposal after the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor in the Ukraine, a 1986 accident that is now blamed for thousands of thyroid cancers, mostly in people who were in utero or younger than 2 years old at the time. Those people, regardless of their age, who took potassium iodide at the time were protected.

In 1998, the commission decided to offer the drug free to any state that wanted to stockpile it, but the following year it reversed itself and rescinded the offer.

Now the commission has set aside $800,000, enough to buy millions of doses to offer to states, and is waiting for a guidance document from the Food and Drug Administration on how big a radiation dose warrants use of the drug, and how much of the drug should be given to babies, children, adults and pregnant women.

The guidance, based on data from Chernobyl, will call for using potassium iodide at far lower levels of exposure to radiation than previously recommended, said Dr. David G. Orloff, who is in charge of the document. It will conclude that the benefits of use far exceed risks, even though some people may have adverse reactions, Dr. Orloff said.

The earlier recommendation was based on data from the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast in 1945.

William Beecher, the commission's chief spokesman, said that the agency was eager to proceed. The F.D.A. document, he said, is "the missing piece," and when it is completed, his agency will enter negotiations with pharmaceutical companies for a large order, and then ship pills to any state that wants to stockpile them near a nuclear plant.

But the new recommendation is far more complex, establishing different recommended doses and different conditions for use for eight categories of people: newborns; infants younger than 3 years old; children 3 to 12; youths 12 to 18; adults 18 to 40; adults older than 40; and women who are lactating or are pregnant.

For those younger than 18 and for pregnant or lactating women, the F.D.A. will recommend giving the drug at a level of radiation exposure a fifth as large as advised in the 1980's.

Dr. Orloff, director of the division of metabolic and endocrine drug products at the Food and Drug Administration, said, "What's happened between 1982 and now is Chernobyl, and the rash of thyroid cancers that occurred in the aftermath, notably in children who were between zero and 4 years old at the time of the accident."

The World Health Organization has called for giving children potassium iodide at an anticipated radiation dose one-fifth of the standard to be proposed by the F.D.A.

But Dr. Orloff said the disparity is not serious. The larger problem, he said, is predicting the radiation dose from an unfolding accident.

"The ability to predict in advance, when you see smoke starting to billow, what the precise exposure is going to be, is pretty poor," he said.

When reactors split uranium atoms, one of the fragments is an intensely radioactive form of iodine, which can be absorbed by people directly or can land in pastures, where it is eaten by cows and concentrated in their milk. One reason children are vulnerable is that they drink more milk than adults do. Potassium iodide works by saturating the human thyroid gland with normal iodine so it cannot absorb radioactive iodine. Potassium iodide can cross the placenta, but the prime protective mechanism in pregnant women is that its use reduces the ability of the mother to absorb the radioactive variety.

But the drug must be given before the radiation exposure, or very soon after, which means it must be stored near the site of potential exposure.

Adverse reactions are rare, but are more common among people older than 40, said the F.D.A., which set a radiation exposure threshold for those people at 100 times the level for children and adolescents.

-------- us politics

Bush Defends Investigation Tactics

By RON FOURNIER,
AP White House Correspondent
Thursday November 29 5:14 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20011129/us/attacks_bush_1.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - Brushing aside criticism, President Bush defended his authorization of military tribunals and the questioning of Middle Easterners in the United States. ``We're an open society, but we're at war,'' the president said Thursday.

``We will act with fairness and we will deliver justice, which is far more than terrorists ever grant to their innocent victims,'' the president told federal prosecutors visiting the White House.

The speech was Bush's most forceful defense of the administration's investigation tactics after the Sept. 11 attacks. The tactics include authorization of military courts to try non-citizen suspects, interviews with hundreds of people of Middle Eastern descent, secret detentions and the monitoring of jailhouse conversations between lawyers and clients.

Military tribunals can hold closed-door trials and afford fewer rights for the accused than civilian U.S. courts. For example, two-thirds of a jury can convict in a military court, as opposed to the unanimous civilian court verdicts.

Bush, citing precedent from World War II and the Civil War, signed an order to authorize the courts and give himself power to decide who would be tried before them. Aides say it could be weeks or months before the first tribunal is formed, if ever.

Some lawmakers, including Republicans, and civil liberties groups have questioned whether the military courts would violate due process rights.

Bush's response: ``Non-U.S. citizens who plan and/or commit mass murder are more than criminal suspects. They are unlawful combatants who seek to destroy our country and our way of life. And if I determine that it is in the national security interests of our great land to try by military commission those who make war on America, then we will do so.''

Applause filled the theater where prosecutors gathered, across a private street from the West Wing.

White House lawyers say military trials, which can be conducted overseas or aboard ships, might be needed to protect jurors, ensure safe trials and keep confidential intelligence from becoming public.

``We're an open society, but we're at war. The enemies declared war on us,'' Bush said. ``We must not let foreign enemies use those forms of liberty to destroy liberty itself. Foreign terrorists and agents must never again be allowed to use our freedoms against us.''

A majority of Americans - six in 10 - supported holding military trials for suspected non-citizen terrorists, according to a recent poll. About nine in 10 said they support the detentions of more than 600 people in the terrorism investigation.

Bush defended the Justice Department's attempt to interview American residents of Middle Eastern descent, including those with no known connection to the attacks.

``We're interviewing people on a voluntary basis. We're saying, `Welcome to America. You come to our country, why don't you help make us safe? Why don't you share information with us? Why don't you help protect innocent people, women and children? Why don't you help us value life? As you enjoy the freedoms of our country help us protect those freedoms,''' Bush said.

Critics of the practice say the administration is snagging innocent people in a dragnet.

In Afghanistan, the president said, troops are routing the Taliban and have al-Qaida terrorists on the run. ``We will patiently, diligently pursue them until they are brought to justice,'' he said.

Bush reminded the attorneys that catching and prosecuting terrorists is not their only job. They also must fight street crime, including gun violations.

``We must help people claim their neighborhoods and their streets,'' he said.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

US investigates 'execution' of 160 Taliban near Kandahar

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
29 November 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=107385

The Pentagon is investigating reports of the massacre of about 160 unarmed Taliban prisoners by American and Pakistani-backed opposition forces who ignored US pleas not to kill them.

The unarmed Taliban fighters were said to have been lined up and shot by Northern Alliance soldiers, having been captured after fighting for the strategic southern town of Takteh Pol, situated between the Pakistani border and the final remaining Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Those Taliban fighters who surrendered immediately were not killed. An unnamed commander with the forces of Gul Agha, a former mujahedin governor of Kandahar, said seven or eight US military personnel who were filming the battle for the town tried to prevent the executions but their requests were ignored.

"We tried our best to persuade [the Taliban] to surrender before we attacked. We asked them many times, quoted the Koran and even offered them money," the commander, who asked not be named, told Reuters. "But they replied with abuse so we had no choice. We executed around 160 Taliban that were captured. They were made to stand in a long line and five or six of our fighters used light machine-guns on them."

The claims - coming after numerous other reports of summary executions of Taliban fighters by opposition forces in the past two weeks - will not help the difficult negotiations taking place in Bonn about the future rule of Afghanistan. The Alliance representatives have rejected suggestions that peace-keepers enter the country because they have "already ensured security".

The opposition commander said his fighters travelled to Afghanistan from their base in the Pakistan border town of Quetta, accompanied by a colonel from Pakistan and supported by US air power. On the way, they stopped at the site of an old refugee camp to collect a large cache of weapons, including machine-guns, rocket launchers and bazookas, he said.

Over the next few days, the group made its way through mountains and desert and crossed into Afghanistan where it captured a number of towns and villages. The force moved on Takteh Pol on 23 November, where fighting for the town lasted three hours. "There were seven or eight Americans with us at Takteh Pol. They just filmed how we attacked, how we moved and how we went forward," the opposition commander said. "They did not fight. Those Taliban who surrendered were not killed, only those who fired on us were killed."

He said graves were dug and 10 to 12 bodies were buried in each of them.

Yesterday the Pentagon said it was looking into the reports of the shooting.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said it seemed that the shootings represented a "serious war crime".

---

Allies Justify Mass Killing of Taliban Prisoners in Fort

by Nicholas Watt, Richard Norton-Taylor, and Luke Harding in Mazar-i-Sharif
Thursday, November 29, 2001
Guardian of London
http://commondreams.org/headlines01/1129-02.htm
http://commondreams.org/headlines01/images/1128-01.jpg

Britain and the US were facing growing international pressure last night to explain their role in the deaths of up to 400 Taliban prisoners who were killed by US warplanes and Northern Alliance fighters at a fortress outside the northern Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif.

As America was forced to apologize for the high death toll, the UN said its high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, would question the allied action during a visit to London tomorrow.

The former Irish president will call for alliance forces who have abused human rights to be barred from Afghanistan's future government.

The Pentagon was also investigating a Reuters report which said a senior Pashtun commander admitted executing 160 captured Taliban after a battle last week in the town of Takteh Pol, in southern Afghanistan, in the presence of US military personnel.

The commander of forces loyal to Gul Agha, a former mojahedin governor of Kandahar, is quoted as saying: "We tried our best to persuade [the Taliban] to surrender before we attacked. But they replied with abuse so we had no choice. We executed around 160 Taliban that were captured. They were made to stand in a long line and five or six of our fighters used light machine guns on them."

The commander said seven or eight US military personnel, who had been filming the fighting, tried unsuccessfully to prevent the killings.

In an unrelated incident, earlier today the Pentagon announced that during the drop of humanitarian aid on Afghanistan, a woman and a child had been killed when a load landed on their house.

Britain and the US defended the action of American special forces who directed warplanes to bomb hundreds of Taliban prisoners at the Mazar fortress after an uprising. One British government source said: "We had to deal with a situation in which prisoners tried to break out with grenades and Kalashnikovs. That situation had to be dealt with and you cannot be too squeamish."

Kenton Keith, the chief US spokesman in Islamabad, said: "We are sorry that so many people did die in Mazar-i-Sharif." He insisted that the bombing was "not a massacre, not a reprisal", adding: "What happened in Mazar-i-Sharif was a pitched battle."

His response failed to satisfy human rights groups and opposition MPs who believe the US may have breached international law by bombing the Taliban forces, many of whom were tied up and unable to move. Human rights lawyers said that any response to an armed revolt by prisoners of war should be proportionate.

As Amnesty International called for a full investigation, the UN said its high commissioner for human rights will voice her disquiet over the bombings at a press conference in London tomorrow.

The UNHCR spokesman, José Diaz, said: "Mary Robinson has said one of the things that should be kept very much in mind is the necessity and proportionality [of military action]. This incident might provide an argument for developing this stance."

Tony Blair faced pressure at home last night when Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, questioned the bombing of the fortress. "The UN is best placed to make an urgent, impartial inquiry," he said. "The governments of any of the Taliban troops who were killed as a result of the aerial bombardment may well feel that the response was disproportionate."

The US named the CIA officer who died in the revolt as Johnny "Mike" Spann, 32.

Mr Spann and a second CIA colleague are alleged to have sparked the revolt on Sunday when they attempted to question foreign Taliban fighters about their links with al-Qaida, according to Northern Alliance soldiers and a German television crew at the fortress.

The Red Cross said that its workers on the ground would try to answer the "many unanswered questions" that have arisen. A spokeswoman said: "We will be asking the alliance and the coalition forces whether the response was proportionate. How many of the prisoners were armed and how many had a real combat role?

"If 700 prisoners were heavily armed then it may be argued that the fortress became a legitimate combat target. But nobody knows the answers to these questions."

Human rights groups were less circumspect. Amnesty International said: "An urgent inquiry should look into what triggered this violent incident, including any shortcomings in the holding and processing of the prisoners, and into the proportionality of the response by United Front, US and UK forces."

Sadiq Khan, a London-based human rights lawyer, said there appeared to have been a breach of the Geneva convention, which says prisoners "must at all times be humanely treated". Mr Khan said: "There is no doubt that the prisoners' human rights were violated."

He added that international law, which says that any military response should be proportionate, may also have been broken. "There should be an urgent inquiry as to whether the International Criminal Court should be set up to assess whether war crimes have been committed.

"If this is a war, and the US says it is, then rules of engagement should apply. It does not sound like the [US bombing] was a proportionate response. Many of the Taliban were tied up."

The criticism of the bombing comes amid growing British disquiet at the tough language adopted by the US defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who said America was "not inclined to negotiate surrenders" and that he hoped al-Qaida forces would "either be killed or taken prisoner".

"Belligerence is not helpful," a British defense source said.

A 1977 protocol to the Geneva convention makes it illegal "to order that there shall be no survivors".

----

THE CONFERENCE
Afghans Plunge Into Talks, Differing on Peacekeepers

New York Times
November 29, 2001
By STEVEN ERLANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/international/asia/29TALK.html

BONN, Nov. 28 - Delegates from the four Afghan factions here began intensive negotiations today over the shape of an interim post-Taliban government. But United Nations officials warned that these talks were not likely to end with a full agreement.

A sense of the challenges ahead emerged from a news conference by the head of the Northern Alliance delegation, Yunus Qanooni, who appeared to dismiss any important role for the exiled king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, 87, and said there was "no need" for foreign peacekeepers.

But Mr. Qanooni was careful not to rule out a security force as part of a settlement, senior diplomats said. They suggested that his remarks served at least two purposes: reassuring his colleagues in Kabul as well as informing the world's press.

"They're negotiating and he's stating their positions," said one senior Western diplomat, while another said that Qanooni was "not quite as entrenched in his positions as we might think."

Britain was "probably prepared to provide the leadership and core of a peacekeeping force in Kabul if there's a demand for it," as an outcome of these negotiations, a senior Western diplomat said.

American officials emphasized that the Bush administration had made no judgment yet about whether such a peacekeeping force was necessary, saying that Washington would wait to see how these talks progressed. A senior administration official in Washington said on Tuesday that the United States would seek to avoid such a role, reserving its postwar efforts to helping shape Afghanistan's political and economic future.

The position of the Northern Alliance is crucial. Its military victories in the last few weeks have given it control of Kabul, the capital, and much of the north, east and west of the country.

The three other factions here, of which the king's is the most important, control no territory, and they are eager for the Northern Alliance to cede some of its control to other ethnic and regional actors - especially the Pashtun, who make up 40 percent of Afghanistan's population and are the backbone of the Taliban.

The Northern Alliance has agreed in principle to the formation of a broad-based, more representative authority to rule at least temporarily in Kabul, but the delegations have only begun to discuss its structure and composition.

Alliance and royalist delegations met today "to talk about how to form an administrative council and agreed to begin to exchange names," a senior diplomat said, calling it an important beginning.

The other factions are also eager to have a multinational peacekeeping force in Kabul, partly for political reasons, "to show that the Northern Alliance does not rule alone in Kabul," an American diplomat said. But for now, Mr. Qanooni made it clear that an "all-Afghan" security force was the alliance's preference, although it is prepared to discuss the inclusion of other factions and fighters in that force.

"We prefer that security is looked after by Afghan forces themselves, a force consisting of different ethnic groups and different forces," Mr. Qanooni said, adding that "there is complete security in Kabul, and if we need extra security we can bring in other ethnic groups." But a multinational force "can be part of a comprehensive peace package," he said, implying that it was a bargaining chip in the negotiations.

United Nations officials are wary about large aid and reconstruction projects if some form of international security force is not in place, but history has not been kind to foreigners who try to keep troops in Afghanistan for too long.

Asked about the deposed king, Mr. Qanooni was dismissive, saying that he wanted to focus on systems, not personalities, and that the capacities of individuals were as important as their ethnicity and affiliation.

"In the future system, we want the Afghan people to express their will through a loya jirga," a form of constituent assembly of elders, he said.

"In that case the former king, who is a veteran politician and a national figure, can have a role in the transitional period if approved by the people," he said. It would take several months for any loya jirga to be called, and the other factions here would like to include the king at an earlier stage.

All the factions seem to agree that the king can play a symbolic, unifying role for the nation, the diplomats said, with that role still to be defined. Some suggested that he could go to Kabul to bless a new authority as an honorary figure but not stay there to take part in it.

Neighboring Iran, in particular, having deposed its own shah, is not pleased at the prospect of a restored king next door, diplomats say.

The deputy United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, was more downbeat today about the negotiations, emphasizing their complexity and the lack of full representation among the Afghan delegates, who were grappling with the future of their country in a serious way for the first time in nearly 30 years.

"In this meeting of four delegations, there is no question of it deciding here the composition of the new government of Afghanistan," Mr. Vendrell said. Another meeting might be necessary in Afghanistan itself to complete the deal, he said.

The United Nations and the West could do no serious reconstruction aid in Afghanistan until a new, broadly based authority was functioning in Kabul, he said.

A United Nations spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, was also cautious today, saying: "These talks are not going to be easy. One grain of sand can stop the machine."

---

THE ADVANCE
Rebels May Push South of Kabul;
Move Is Likely to Anger Pakistan

New York Times
November 29, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/international/asia/29ALLI.html

MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan, Nov. 28 - Commanders for the Northern Alliance, which reneged on a pledge to Washington not to enter the Afghan capital, said today that they plan to send their forces south of Kabul after they secure their position around the city.

Such a move would increase pressure on the Taliban, but is also likely to anger Pakistan, a vital American ally already concerned by the Northern Alliance's advance across much of Afghanistan.

The goal, senior commanders said, was to establish control of the whole province of Ghazni, including its capital of the same name. That would move Northern Alliance forces almost halfway to the Taliban's stronghold of Kandahar, and put them firmly in territory traditionally controlled by Pashtun tribes.

Pashtuns, many of whom live in Pakistan, are generally wary of the ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks who dominate the alliance.

Officers of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency have been holding talks with both Taliban and anti-Taliban Pashtun leaders to encourage Taliban defections and try to ensure a greater role for Pashtuns in any new Afghan government. "The Northern Alliance has taken the decision to send its forces to Ghazni," Hajji Sher Alam, the Northern Alliance field commander south of Kabul, said in an interview. Ghazni lies about 100 miles south of Kabul.

Commander Alam said he had had no discussions with the United States and characterized the plan as a decision by the Northern Alliance's Defense Ministry.

During the alliance's advance on Kabul, however, its actions were closely coordinated with the United States. A senior American military official said today that Northern Alliance forces may push deeper into the southern part of the country. This, the official said, would give the United States additional proxy forces in the south.

Commander Alam said that the alliance might even move its forces beyond Ghazni and toward Kandahar itself if the opportunity arose, because Taliban defenses had deteriorated.

Before the Northern Alliance can begin a campaign to the south of Kabul, however, it needs to cement its control in an area southwest of the capital, alliance commanders say. That task has eluded them so far in the two and a half weeks since the Taliban abandoned Kabul.

The confrontation with a pocket of Taliban forces some 20 miles from the capital is still not over after a week of negotiating and a day of fighting in which Commander Alam's troops were forced to retreat. Negotiations are under way, and Northern Alliance commanders say they hope to complete the deal in upcoming days.

The Northern Alliance surprised the Bush administration and many experts with its sudden string of victories in northern Afghanistan, which began with the capture of Mazar-i-Sharif, included the dramatic seizure of the capital and culminated with the fall of Kunduz this week.

President Bush had asked the alliance to keep its forces outside Kabul so as not to upset neighboring Pakistan, an important ally for Washington in its war on terror.

The Western-led attempt to establish a broad-based government in Afghanistan has also been complicated by the fact that the Northern Alliance now governs from Kabul.

Northern Alliance leaders insist they want a broad government, but the talks now under way under United Nations auspices in Bonn to create a post-Taliban regime may prove difficult.

The situation directly south and west of Kabul has become very complex. There are no longer any clear front lines, but rather areas of Northern Alliance control, small pockets of Taliban resistance, and beyond that a lawless no man's land.

The Northern Alliance's southernmost checkpoint on the road from Kabul to Kandahar is at Sar-i-Pul, just south of Maidan Shahr. The highway going south from Sar-i-Pul is a dusty and dilapidated road that only a few buses and trucks dare to navigate and which passes by jagged mountains of striking beauty.

Nominally, this dusty track is already under Northern Alliance control up to the town of Ghazni. Abdul Ahmad, Commander's Alam's deputy in Maidan Shahr, said that some alliance fighters had moved up and down the route, while many of the villages in the area had made clear they did not want to pick a fight with the new de facto authority in Kabul.

But the alliance does not really control the settlements or the road.

"Right now, we cannot say we are keeping complete security," said Mr. Ahmad, the deputy commander. "There may be some Talibs, Arab and Pakistani militia in some the houses."

Not all of the Taliban and Arab fighters in the Ghazni area are hiding. The Taliban have set up a checkpoint at Mukur at the southern end of the Ghazni province.

Commander Alam said that the alliance's goal was to evict the Taliban from this position and even move south toward Kandahar if possible.

The immediate concern, commanders said, is the town of Jalez, which is only 20 miles west of Kabul on an important east-west route that connects Kabul with Herat, the main city in western Afghanistan.

Jalez, Northern Alliance commanders said, is under the control of Ghullan Muhammad, who has sided with the Taliban and has been denounced by the Northern Alliance as a ruthless warlord.

The Northern Alliance suffered a humiliating setback last week when it was forced to retreat after attacking Commander Muhammad's outnumbered forces. In the days since, it had appeared that a deal typical of Afghanistan's fast-shifting warfare had been struck: Commander Muhammad's forces turned over their heavy weapons and some of the Taliban fighters appeared to slip away.

Today, however, Northern Alliance commanders admitted that there was still a problem in Jalez, where they said Commander Muhammad's men had yet to turn over their small arms, including Kalashnikov automatic weapons.

The standoff at this point may have more to do with the fears of Jalez's warlord about the intentions of those in power in Kabul than with any loyalty he feels toward the Taliban. Negotiations are continuing.

Commander Alam said there would be no assault on Jalez during the talks in Bonn, whose duration is so far undetermined, but that he might attack if no deal had been reached on Jalez once the Bonn talks ended.

Today, his deputy, Mr. Ahmad, elaborated on the strategy in his command center in a beaten-up compound in Maidan Shahr.

"This is being done step by step," he explained. "We need to solve the situation in Jalez and around Maidan Shahr.

"If we finish this trouble today tomorrow, god willing, we can send troops of the Islamic State of Afghanistan south."

-------

U.S. air strikes kill leaders of al Qaeda

November 29, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011129-2383874.htm

The Pentagon said yesterday that a recent U.S. air strike had killed Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, but a Taliban spokesman said Mullah Mohammed Omar - the militia's leader - was still alive after the raid.

Meanwhile, U.S. military forces in Afghanistan are stepping up attacks on Taliban and al Qaeda terrorist leaders now that most of the country is in the hands of opposition forces.

"The pressure is on that leadership, and we're doing it in a multitude of ways," said Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Staff.

The admiral spoke to reporters after an air strike late Monday that killed several midlevel Taliban and al Qaeda leaders who had gathered in a building south of Kandahar, the last stronghold of the Taliban militia.

In the attack, a U.S. Air Force B-1 bomber dropped about 10 precision-guided bombs on two facilities that intelligence sources indicated were "Taliban leadership locations," Adm. Stufflebeem said.

"We were confident that it was Taliban leadership," Adm. Stufflebeem said when asked if Taliban leader Mullah Omar was in one of the facilities. "I think we're always going to be hopeful that the senior leadership will be in one of these locations once we get those kinds of reports that allow us targeting information."

The U.S. Army, meanwhile, has set up a base inside northern Afghanistan to match the deployment of U.S. Marines in the south.

Defense officials said a small team of U.S. Army Rangers from the 10th Mountain Division have formed a quick-reaction force near Mazar-e-Sharif. The troops will be used to oppose any Taliban counterattacks, the officials said.

The Rangers will be deployed near the failed Taliban uprising that took place over the past three days and claimed the lives of several hundred Taliban soldiers and at least 40 Northern Alliance fighters, according to news agency reports from the region.

CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann was killed Sunday during the uprising, which began when captured Taliban forces revolted.

More Marines arrived in southern Afghanistan yesterday by helicopters from ships in the Indian Ocean. The number of Marines now based near Kandahar is between 750 and 800, defense officials said.

Adm. Stufflebeem said military operations are now focused on applying pressure on the leadership. "If we break the leadership of the Taliban and break the leadership of al Qaeda, there is reduced emphasis or reduced motivation for troops to stay loyal to the cause and continue to fight," he said.

"There will always be pockets who are going to fight to the death in any case," he said. "But getting the key leadership and breaking the chain of command is going to render much of that ineffective."

Adm. Stufflebeem said support for the Taliban militia and al Qaeda around most of Afghanistan has diminished. "With much of that now gone, and for much of the leadership in hiding and just trying to survive, the pressure is now being applied to shrink down the areas of where they can go to be found, and then they make the decision if they're going to surrender or fight to the death," he said.

A senior defense official said of the Monday night raid near Kandahar: "We know we got a lot of people who were in there. We just don't know who."

Adm. Stufflebeem said Taliban and al Qaeda leaders are continuing to communicate with their forces. "They're using radios," he said. "They're trying to meet physically together. And in some cases they are severed from communicating by any means whatsoever."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on Tuesday that the leadership compound targeted in the bombing raid included leaders of the Taliban, the al Qaeda group headed by Osama bin Laden and a Saudi Arabian humanitarian group known as Wafa that U.S. officials believe is a front for terrorist operations.

"It was clearly a leadership area," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters late Monday. "Whoever was there is going to wish they weren't."

The Pentagon released video footage showing of the bombing raids.

U.S. officials said several hundred members of al Qaeda were killed in military operations that began Oct. 7. Seven of the terrorists were considered al Qaeda leaders, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The most senior al Qaeda leader to have been killed is Mohammed Atef, a top aide to bin Laden.

Other terrorist leaders who have been killed include Mohammed Salah and Tariq Anwar. The two men are senior members of the terrorist group Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a subgroup of al Qaeda, said officials who spoke to Associated Press.

In Kabul, Mullah Omar urged Taliban fighters in a radio message to fight to the death against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. "Stick to your positions and fight to the death," a Taliban spokesman quoted Mullah Omar as saying.

According to news reports from Afghanistan, some of the Taliban prisoners found dead inside the fortress had their hands tied.

A Northern Alliance fighter identified only as Shabudin said alliance fighters had been tying the hands of fighters who were believed to be Arabs when some of the prisoners grabbed guns and began firing.

In Landstuhl, Germany, a U.S. soldier wounded by an errant U.S. bomb was in serious condition and four other soldiers were in good condition at a U.S. military hospital.

The soldiers had been wounded by a U.S. air strike that had been targeted against the uprising Taliban troops near Mazar-e-Sharif.

Also yesterday, the U.S. military said that bundles of humanitarian relief supplies, including wheat and blankets, dropped over Afghanistan had hit a house, killing a woman and child.

This first known mishap involving air drops of food and other supplies to refugees inside Afghanistan happened Tuesday about 120 miles north of Mazar-e-Sharif, near the border with Uzbekistan.

"The U.S. deeply regrets any unnecessary loss of life," said a statement from the U.S. Central Command. "Great time and care goes into the selection of sites selected for the delivery of humanitarian assistance."

--------

Northern Alliance Refuses to Submit Candidates for Interim Government

By STEVEN ERLANGER
November 30, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/30/international/30CND-TALK.html

BONN, Nov. 30 - Negotiations on a future government for Afghanistan stalled badly today, after the leader of the Northern Alliance, holding power in Kabul, refused to authorize his delegation to submit a list of proposed candidates for a new, temporary administration intended to be broadly representative of the nation as a whole.

The alliance leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani, at a news conference in Kabul, also questioned the whole point of the talks, saying any new temporary government could wait a month or two for elections. Mr. Rabbani also said that the former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, should be given no special role, and that any international security force should be limited to some 200 people.

"The talks are at a critical point," a senior Western diplomat said. "We're holding our breath."

Delegates and diplomats said that the Northern Alliance was stalling for time, trying to consolidate its hold on power, and had today demanded a break of 10 days in the talks to return to Kabul for consultations before it put forward its own list of candidates.

But the United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, who is running the talks, told the Alliance delegation leader, Yunus Qanooni, that such a delay was unacceptable. The alliance should submit its names no later than Saturday morning, Mr. Brahimi said.

"Rabbani has been dragging his feet right along," said a senior Western diplomat, "on the theory that the longer he delays things, the more power they may have." Mr. Rabbani is the former president of Afghanistan, ousted by the Taliban.

The United States is asking Russia and Iran, which have closer ties to Mr. Rabbani, to press him to live up to his stated commitments to abide by the results of the talks in Bonn and to stop blocking the work of his delegation.

Mr. Qanooni, too, has pledged to Mr. Brahimi and foreign diplomats that the alliance would negotiate in good faith here and abide by the results. But Mr. Rabbani's comments today seemed to undercut the pledges of his own delegation, and of his own promise to step down once a new administration is formed.

Some members of the Northern Alliance, a loose collection of ethnic, political and religious groups dominated by minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, said the alliance could very likely split over the impasse. They suggested that a challenge to Mr. Rabbani's authority could be forthcoming from inside the alliance, from more Western-oriented figures like the foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, and Mr. Qanooni himself, the interior minister.

Among the members of the alliance who want to press forward with the negotiations is Haji Abdul Qadir, who left the conference this morning, saying that his Pashtun tribe was not sufficiently represented here.

His departure was described as "a calculated gesture," however, designed to increase his leverage within an alliance he only recently joined, and he is said not to have left Germany.

The Northern Alliance is the most important of the four Afghan factions at the conference, and the only one to hold territory in Afghanistan. The other major faction is loyal to Mr. Zahir Shah, and it is eager to find a symbolic, unifying role for the former king, perhaps as a titular head of state.

The royalists and the other two factions, exiles more dependent on Iran and Pakistan, all want an international security force in Kabul to dilute the Northern Alliance's political and strategic control over the capital.

The American special envoy to Afghanistan, James F. Dobbins, said the three other factions at the conference were waiting for the alliance to submit a list of proposed representatives for the interim government - something the alliance's envoys here did not have the authority to do.

"It is important this be overcome," Mr. Dobbins said. "This will be the most difficult part of the negotiations and it hasn't started yet."

The intention of the conference is to produce a temporary administration of some 15 to 20 people, a kind of cabinet under a prime minister, and a temporary council, the Supreme National Council, a form of parliament.

These bodies are meant to be broadly based and representative of Afghanistan as a whole, including its women, and go to work immediately to run Afghanistan and be a partner with foreign countries wanting to provide large amounts of reconstruction aid.

But negotiations on who should be part of which group, and in what job, have simply not begun as expected today, delegates said, because the Northern Alliance did not submit its list of candidates.

Under the United Nations plan, these temporary institutions will function for a few months until the spring, when an emergency loya jirga, a traditional consitutent assembly of elders, can meet. That assembly will name a provisional administration and council, which will serve for some two years, and also work to write a new constitution.

Then a new loya jirga would meet to ratify the constitution and new elections would be held.

But all that seemed theoretical today, as the talks bogged down. If the Northern Alliance continues to withhold its candidates, the diplomats say, the talks themselves could fail, and Afghans would have a further period of instability, with little organized western aid.

What the United Nations, Washington and other nations want to avoid is prolonged chaos in Kabul, with the likelihood of renewed civil war if the alliance refuses to bargain in good faith. But this darker scenario is also something the Afghans themselves, weary of war, want to avoid.

Given the impasse, two other key issues for the talks have not been seriously discussed. There is a consensus that the former king should play some kind of symbolic unifying role, but there is no agreement on what that should be - or when it should take place.

Today, in Kabul, Mr. Rabbani, a Tajik, said that the king, a Pashtun, could return as an ordinary individual, but that the Afghans would chose their own leaders. "The monarchy is extinct like the dinosaurs, so why would we have it?" he asked.

Mr. Rabbani also said that any multinational force should be limited to providing security for returning exiled leaders, suspicious of the Northern Alliance which has control of most of Afghanistan since rule by the Taliban crumbled this month.

"Those who want it could have around 100 to 200, a little bit more than that," he said. "That is practical but more than that is not needed."

The other factions are insisting on a security force for Kabul that would be larger and more visible, to provide a neutral political space in the capital.

On Thursday Mr. Qanooni said that the alliance would agree to such a force as part of a larger agreement on a temporary government, and said only that Afghans would prefer" soldiers from other predominantly Muslim countries.

-------- africa

Briefly - Africa

November 29, 2001 • Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011129-279370.htm

A Rwandan former officer suspected of being involved in the 1994 genocide has been arrested in Senegal, the independent Hirondelle news agency said yesterday. Aloys Simba, former head of a civil-defense unit, was sought by the U.N. genocide tribunal in connection with a massacre of ethnic Tutsis at Gikongoro.

----

Somalia's Internet is casualty of war on terrorism

by John DeSio,
Digital Freedom Network
November 29, 2001
http://dfn.org/focus/somalia/internet-casualty.htm

As the war against terrorism rolls on, one move against suspected Al Qaeda allies by the United States may have put one country's developing economy in jeopardy.

As a part of the war against Osama bin Laden's terror network, two firms suspected by the United States of terrorist connections, the Somalia Internet Company and al-Barakaat, have been shut down. Somalia Internet Company is the nation's only Internet provider, and its closure has effectively shut Somalian citizens out of any Internet connection. In addition, al-Barakaat, which is essentially an informal, unregulated financial network, had been a main source of money transfers to the nation's people from out of country relatives, of which more than 80 percent relied upon to live.

Both companies have denied any link to bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network and have asked that the closures, which also severely affect the nation's international telephone capabilities, end immediately. Sixty-two organizations and people in various countries, including Somalia Internet Company and al-Barakaat, have been accused of funneling money to bin Laden and his terrorist network, resulting in their forced closure.

Founded by bin Laden?

The United States government will not release any information regarding the closings, but has stated that al-Barakaat provides an easy method of transferring money for Al Qaeda operatives. It is also suspected that the agency's founder, Ahmed Noor Ali Jumale, is a business associate of bin Laden's, and may have funded the organization with money from the terrorist leader. Jumale was shocked at the allegations, and has denied any link to bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

"We have been hearing a lot of lies about us, but I never thought they would reach to this extent," said Jumale in an interview with U.S.-based daily Newsday. "We're asking for mercy and justice from President George Bush." Jumale states that he founded al-Barakaat, which means "blessing," fifteen years ago while working as a mid-level clerk with Citibank in the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

While there, Jumale noted that Somali workers were struggling to find a safe and inexpensive way to send money back to their families at home, and founded al-Barakaat as a means for such activity. The company grew to become the country's largest financial lifeline following the collapse of the Somali government in 1991, which threw the nation into a civil war.

A system of trust

Al-Barakaat functions as a "hawala," a money transfer system based on trust that is practiced in many Muslim countries. A person in New York wishing to send his money home to his family in Mogadishu will give the hawala, such as al-Barakaat, that sum of money, paying a five percent commission. The hawala will then contact an affiliated broker in Mogadishu, who will pay out the sum of money to the man's family, usually within 24 hours.

The two brokers will settle the accounts at a later date. Hawalas are completely unregulated, making such transactions between terrorist groups easy and virtually undetectable. Al-Barakaat also provided telephone and postal service for the roughly one million residents of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital city, in addition to its money transfer services.

Somalia Internet Company was also a part of the consortium that held al-Barakaat, forcing its closure along with the money transferring firm. The company maintains that it transfers mainly small amounts of money to its various clients, but the United States has noted that the September 11 attacks may have only cost US$200,000 to execute, making such small transfers a vital part of any terrorist organization.

Economy in ruins

While the closure of the two firms may seem insignificant to the United States due to the overall scope of the war on terrorism, they have had drastic effects in Somalia. Before its closure, al-Barakaat, which has 600 stockholders, employed 1,300 people, making it the largest employer in the nation.

In addition, millions of Somalis depended on money transfers through the company as their only means of financial stability, and no other banking systems have existed in Somalia since the 1991 government collapse. The closures have also effectively sealed the nation off from the outside world, due to the lack of Internet service.

All Internet cafes in Somalia have closed, and international phone lines have failed to handle the extra volume of calls over their phone lines. Additionally, several agencies, such as the United Nations as well as the country's government itself, which all heavily relied on Internet access, have ceased normal function.

A Sorrowful Ramadan

While such closures would greatly affect Somalia at any time, they are felt even more now, since they have coincided with Ramadan, the Islam holy month.

Asha Malak Mahdi, a mother of five living in the Hamar Weyne village of Somalia, told Newsday that Ramadan would be dreary for her and her family, since she is unable to receive the usual US$100 a month from her sister in Los Angeles.

"The Americans are hurting us, and we haven't done anything to them," said Mahdi.

Somalian President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan hopes that the United States will lift the sanctions against the two companies, which have been critical to the nation's economy, and added that he would be more than willing to work with America's government to make his country unfriendly to terrorism.

"If the United States will cooperate with us, they will know the facts," said Hassan to the Associated Press. "Not only will they not attack Somalia, we will join hands to develop Somalia so it does not become a safe haven for any terrorists."

This article was written using information from the Nando Times, BBC, and Newsday.

-------- biological weapons

Anthrax plan pops out of Pak scientist's cupboard

November 29, 2001
Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=2060894688

NEW DELHI: Sketches and calculations to make a helium-powered balloon bomb filled with anthrax have been found from the Kabul office of an NGO headed by Bashiruddin Mehmood, one of the two Pakistani nuclear scientists detained in Islamabad for questioning on their alleged links with Osama Bin Laden, The Economist has said.

Such a balloon bomb was capable of showering deadly anthrax over areas as vast as New York or Washington.

The "most chilling" items found from the Kabul premises included small bags of white powder and the "mass of calculations and drawings" of weather balloons with arrows indicating the suggested height of 10 km or 33,000 feet, said The Economist in its print edition.

The premises located in the "wealthiest district" of Kabul belonged to the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), whose president is a leading nuclear scientist and a plutonium technology specialist Mehmood, who along with another scientist Abdul Majid were detained again on Tuesday in Islamabad for questioning, The Economist said.

The two men, who are alleged to have made frequent trips to Afghanistan and met Laden on two occasions, have denied the charges.

"Since UTN was run by one of Pakistan's top scientists, a man with close links to the Taliban and, it is said, close ideological affinities with Laden, the circumstantial evidence points to only one conclusion, the paper said.

"Whoever fled this house when the Taliban fell was working on a plan to build a helium-powered balloon bomb carrying anthrax," the journal said.

In Islamabad, Pakistani authorities ruled out any link between two nuclear scientists and anthrax attacks in the US.

"There are no linkages established at all with any anthrax-related capability between the scientists and those people (al-Qaeda)," military government spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi told reporters.

Despite the clearance, the two scientists remained in custody on as yet unspecified charges.

Qureshi said there were certain rules retired scientists were supposed to observe, which include "prevention from making certain statements and also travelling."

"Frankly, beyond that I am not privy to any other details."

Qureshi denied any knowledge of reports that US officials had also questioned the two scientists in custody.

"I do know that the investigation is being carried out by Pakistan authorities. I am quite sure that information is being shared if it of any value (with the Americans)," he said.

----

Letter's Anthrax Spores Pose Many Obstacles to Analysis

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 29, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31242-2001Nov28?language=printer

Strange things happened on Oct. 15 when U.S. Army experts gathered around a microscope in a specially sealed room to examine the anthrax spores that had been mailed to Sen. Thomas A. Daschle: The tiny spores, each one less than one-twentieth the diameter of a human hair, kept leaping off the glass microscope slide as though by magic, then wafting away like weightless wisps of cigarette smoke.

When the scientists tried to weigh the sample, the spores refused to rest on the scale but again became airborne, propelled by imperceptible air movements and tabletop vibrations.

Finally the team dunked some of the spores in liquid chemicals and embedded others in wax just so they could examine and test them. That prevented further losses, but even then investigators ran short of spores long before they had done every test they had hoped to do.

Such are the problems that Army and FBI investigators face as they begin their analysis of a similar letter sent to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy -- an investigation slated to begin today or tomorrow with the meticulously orchestrated opening of the letter and examination of its contents at a military lab at Fort Detrick in Maryland.

The letter -- discovered Nov. 16 in a barrel of unopened congressional mail and leaking anthrax spores "like a sieve," according to an Army scientist -- stands today as the best potential source of clues in the unyielding mystery of this fall's bioterrorist attacks. Experts have spent two weeks devising a plan for opening the envelope so scientists can make the most of its valuable microbial contents and FBI agents can gather fibers, fingerprints or human DNA that may be inside.

In recent days, a team has conducted dry runs on a "body-double" envelope wrapped in tape like the Leahy letter, just to confirm the approach. Several experts said they knew of no previous law enforcement case in which so much planning went into so seemingly simple an act as opening a piece of mail -- an indication of how much is riding on the clues the letter may hold.

"The U.S. Army and the FBI . . . know the sample is precious," said Maj. Gen. John Parker, commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command Center, which is overseeing the analysis. "They want to make every study count toward the end of linking the sample to the perpetrator."

Evidence has been hard to come by in the spate of 18 anthrax cases that started Oct. 1. Three deaths -- one each in Florida, New York and Connecticut -- have not been linked to a known bacterial source. And of the four letters containing spores that authorities have in their possession, only the letter to Leahy (D-Vt.) was obtained unopened and in pristine condition.

The letter to Daschle (D-S.D.) lost some of its contents when it was opened by an aide, and almost all the rest has been used by scientists. A letter received by the New York Post appears to have become damp before being discovered, turning the contents into something resembling "Purina Dog Chow," Army scientists said, and making analysis difficult. And so few spores remained in the letter sent to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw after its contents were spilled by his assistant that the FBI has asked the Army to delay any analysis, Parker said.

"The Leahy letter is the most intact piece of evidence we have," said FBI spokeswoman Tracy Silberling. "It may be the only complete opportunity we have to study this stuff in detail."

Neither the Army nor the FBI has said precisely what tests are planned for the Leahy specimen, which has been locked in a low-humidity refrigerator at Fort Detrick for the past two weeks. But a detailed look at how the Army analyzed the Daschle letter offers insights.

An FBI agent delivered that letter to Detrick's Special Pathogens Laboratory on Oct. 15, doubly sealed in a pair of plastic bags. A preliminary field test had suggested the presence of the anthrax bacterium, Bacillus anthracis, but visual inspection by experts at Fort Detrick immediately suggested they were dealing with spores that had been processed to a surprisingly fine grade.

In the four years that the special pathogens sample test lab has existed, "this was the first time we had ever received a real impression that this is something to be very concerned about," said Col. Erik Henchal, chief of the diagnostics systems division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, which is home to the lab.

The letter and its surrounding bags were placed inside a third plastic bag and whisked from the biosafety level two (BL-2) facility where the package had first been brought to a more secure BL-3 lab. (The highest level is BL-4.)

That is where the Army's premier anthrax expert, John Ezzell, tried in frustration to look at the powder under a microscope. As spores drifted about, Ezzell began to worry -- about the level of expertise that had apparently been brought to bear in the powder's production, and about the number of spores escaping.

So after transferring a few spores to a microbial culture dish where they could germinate and grow into colonies for genetic analysis, the team put most of the powder away and restricted further inspection to samples immersed in special fluid or embedded in thin slices of paraffin.

A battery of biological assays followed. Tests for antibiotic sensitivity indicated the bugs were not resistant to standard antibiotics. DNA tests confirmed they belonged to the Ames strain, as have all of the terrorism-related specimens. And electron microscope studies of the powder in paraffin showed that the particles were remarkably small -- just 1.5 to 3 microns in diameter -- and consisted almost entirely of purified spores, a perfect recipe for inhalational anthrax.

But there was something else in there, too, and it would require analysis by others to say what. That job fell to a laboratory on the campus of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Northwest Washington. An aging building there is home to a device called an energy dispersive X-ray spectroscope, which can detect the presence of extremely tiny quantities of chemicals.

That device found that silica, but not aluminum, was mixed with the Daschle spores -- an important finding that differentiated the sample from known Iraqi specimens in which spores were combined with bentonite, a mixture of silica and aluminum.

The spectroscope found traces of other elements, too, but there was virtually no specimen left for follow-up studies. One goal of the Leahy letter analysis, Parker said, is to conduct further physical and chemical analyses that may offer clues about the powder's provenance.

Three or four people will probably be in the BL-3 facility when the Leahy letter is opened, Henchal said. Ezzell will be among them, he predicted, and he will probably not wear a protective suit but simply don a surgical mask because he has been vaccinated against anthrax many times. An FBI forensic expert will also attend, while other agents look on through the few windows.

The FBI generally likes to photograph evidence, Henchal added, but that won't be easy. "How do you lay out the material so you can adequately photograph it? It's a real problem with something so lightweight and so fragile."

It is just one of the many ironies of the anthrax murder mystery that something so consequential can be so light.

-------- iran

Enemy of My Enemy

New York Times
November 29, 2001
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/opinion/29SAFI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON -- Here is the modern corollary to a Middle Eastern proverb: The enemy of my enemy can be my enemy, too.

Iran's Shiites despise the Taliban Sunnis; fundamentalists of both branches of Islam have long been killing one another. Iran's ayatollahs also hate another U.S. enemy, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who killed a half million Persians in the Iran-Iraq war.

Does that enmity of our enemies make Iran our friend? You might deduce that from the warm handshake extended to Iran's foreign minister by Secretary of State Colin Powell at the U.N. last week, the first such contact since the mass kidnapping at our Tehran embassy in 1979. Or from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when asked by Bob Schieffer of CBS about Iranian liaison with U.S. forces in Afghanistan: "You're going to see new relationships coming out all across the globe."

That's because we've been falling for the tough-cop-nice-cop routine from Tehran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who rules as Iran's religious commander, punishes dissenters as he spews hatred of Israel and "Great Satan" America. Meanwhile, nice-cop President Mohammad Khatami condemns the Sept. 11 attacks and supports the Afghan rebels, feeding dreams of "moderation" in bloom.

But reformers in Iran's Parliament are repeatedly squelched by Khamenei's ruthless Guardian Council. Suppressed Iranians now know that front-man Khatami's election led to a false spring. Fifty newspapers have since been closed; the vigilantes of Hezbollah, the "Party of God," are urged by clerics to beat up students with democratic yearnings; savage public executions are on the rise. When rumors spread last month that the government had bribed soccer players to lose a World Cup qualifying match, tens of thousands marched in the streets to denounce the ayatollahs and to hail America.

In our State Department's most recent report on global terrorism, Iran beat out Iraq and Syria to win the title of "most active state sponsor of terrorism." This conclusion, unwelcome to dovish policy makers at Foggy Bottom, was not lightly arrived at. Evidence is mounting that Tehran sponsored the killing of Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Even today, Iran's air cargo planes fly arms and explosives to Damascus for trucking to terrorist headquarters of Hezbollah in Lebanon, for use by suicide bombers against Israeli civilians.

Most dangerous to us, Iran leads the terror-sponsorship world in the development of nuclear capacity. Sitting atop a sea of cheap oil, Iran needs atomic energy like a hole in the head, but its rulers take income sorely needed by hungry Iranians and spend it on nuclear material and scientific know-how from Russia. Vladimir Putin, President Bush's fervently trusted ally, continues to refuse all appeals from the U.S. and Israel to curtail sales to its customer at the center of terror sponsorship.

Why the intense economic and diplomatic pressure from Tehran on Moscow, which overwhelms the pleas of the Bush White House? Because Iran's Hezbollah wants its nuclear bomb and no so-called moderates in Tehran stand in its way.

Here's new evidence of Hezbollah's increased power: Imad Mughniya is called by Israelis "the Lebanese Carlos," after the former jackal of terror, because he is suspected of leading a string of hijackings and embassy bombings, including the attacks on Jews in Buenos Aires in 1994. A key figure in the Islamic Jihad, he has enjoyed asylum in Iran.

Six weeks before Sept. 11, in a meeting in Beirut, the top Hezbollah commander, Hassan Nasrallah, placed Mughniya on the terror group's governing body, the Shura Council. To maintain the fiction that Hezbollah is a local Lebanese political party, the global terrorist's name was changed to Jawad Nour al-Din.

Whatever he calls himself, the Lebanese Carlos is now considered by Israelis to be the man selected by Iran's strongman, Khamenei, to be Tehran's operational leader in Lebanon. The significance is that Mughniya is not a radical politician, like the man he replaced, but an experienced international terrorist on the lam from three governments.

In Iran as in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria, local tyranny and global terror go hand in hand. That's why we should resist strange antiterrorist bedfellowship with Iran's tough-cop-nice-cop rulers. Iran is becoming ripe for democratic revolution. We should not ally ourselves with the cruel clerics whom secular Persian patriots will one day throw out.

-------- israel

Hearings against Sharon postponed

November 29, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011129-34249280.htm

BRUSSELS - A Belgian legal panel yesterday put off hearings on arguments in a case charging Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with genocide.

The closed-door hearing by the trial committal chamber of the Brussels Court of Appeals was to have determined if Belgian courts had jurisdiction in the case brought by a group of Palestinians.

The plaintiffs, 23 survivors or families of victims of the estimated 800 to 1,500 Palestinians massacred in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982, accuse Mr. Sharon of responsibility for the massacres.

The court postponed hearings until December 26 and January 23, although officials did not elaborate.

Belgian law allows the prosecution of foreigners, including heads of state, for suspected rights abuses and war crimes committed abroad. The case has led to tension between Israel and Belgium.

Mr. Sharon faces lawsuits filed by Palestinians in Brussels about his role in the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the refugee camps near Israeli-occupied Beirut. An Israeli inquiry in 1983 found Mr. Sharon, then defense minister, indirectly responsible, and he resigned from his post.

Lawyers representing the plaintiffs presented to the Brussels appeals court their arguments about whether an examining magistrate should proceed with the investigation.

Mr. Sharon's lawyers were expected to have their turn in late January, and the court's decision would follow weeks later, an Israeli observer said outside the courtroom.

They are to contest the lifting of diplomatic immunity, which the law allows, and argue that accused parties should only be prosecuted if found on Belgian soil.

On Tuesday, Israelis filed a complaint against Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat under the same Belgian law, accusing him and his lieutenants of acts of violence dating back to 1974.

Mr. Sharon dealt Belgium, heading an EU mission as holder of the rolling EU presidency, a stinging rebuff by urging the European Union to stop funding the Palestinian Authority.

"It would be hypocrisy to pretend that this affair has not been a cloud on our relations," said Israeli foreign ministry official Danny Shek yesterday.

-------- propaganda wars

U.S. Urges Moscow to Keep TV-6 Open

Reuters,
November 29, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31575-2001Nov28?language=printer

The White House urged the Russian government not to allow the closing of TV-6, the largest television station still outside the control of the Kremlin.

"We feel as though the political actions to close down independent media such as TV-6 would be a step backward and out of keeping with a modern democratic society," said Sean McCormack, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.

A Moscow court on Monday ordered the dissolution of TV-6, ruling that the station, owned largely by exiled media and automobile magnate Boris Berezovsky, was financially unsound.

-------- russia

U.S. Talks To Moscow About Force In Kabul
Russia Is Urged Not to Undertake Any Abrupt Moves

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 29, 2001; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31179-2001Nov28?language=printer

Taken off guard by the arrival of scores of Russian troops in Kabul, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell spoke to Russia's foreign minister by phone this week and urged Moscow to avoid abrupt diplomatic or military moves in Afghanistan that might undermine trust between the United States and Russia, U.S. officials said.

Powell also said Russia should avoid doing anything to promote its longtime ally, Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, as the official leader of a postconflict Afghanistan.

"This is the way we need to go if we're going to build on the trust and momentum in the relationship that's built up over the past few weeks," said a U.S. official.

The Bush administration's concern about the dispatch of Russian troops to Kabul and the Bagram air base 35 miles north of the Afghan capital was a rare dissonant note between Moscow and Washington since the Sept. 11 attacks, when Russian President Vladimir Putin was the first foreign leader to call President Bush and express his condolences. The Powell call to Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov came on the heels of warm talks this month between Putin and Bush in the United States.

Russia has also helped the United States make contacts with Northern Alliance leaders, who over the past month have taken control of Kabul and much of northern Afghanistan with the help of U.S. airstrikes. And it has raised no objections to growing U.S. military presence in former Soviet republics bordering on Afghanistan.

But as a postwar phase approaches, U.S. officials say that Russia has a different perspective on what a future Afghan government would look like. They say that while some members of the Bush administration are ready to countenance the inclusion of former Taliban members in a new government, Russia is more leery. It sees the Taliban as an anti-Russia group and a wedge for Pakistani influence, U.S. officials believe.

U.S. sources said Ivanov told Powell the Russians would work harder to coordinate with the United States.

Publicly, the administration played down its concerns. "To the best of our knowledge, Russian activity in Afghanistan is related to humanitarian assistance, not to military operations," State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said Tuesday.

But the Russian troops sent to Afghanistan were from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, an agency split off from the defense ministry after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. The ministry has its own military wing with 70,000 troops, experts said.

On Monday, Putin announced that 12 Russian transport planes had arrived in Afghanistan, bringing staff and supplies for a humanitarian mission. Putin told his cabinet that the Il-76 planes carried emergency ministry staff, construction crews, demining experts and diplomats to Kabul to establish a humanitarian center and reopen the heavily damaged Russian Embassy, which was abandoned when Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 after a 10-year occupation.

"This action was carried out at the request of the Islamic State of Afghanistan," Putin said, using the name of the Afghan government led by Rabbani that was ousted by the Taliban in 1996.

On Tuesday, a senior Bush administration official said the United States had told Moscow that the Russian presence should "not in any way be construed as normal diplomatic relations or recognition of the so-called Rabbani government."

Rabbani has received Russian support for several years in his battle against the Taliban. Though discredited by human rights abuses and factional fighting when he was leader of the country, Rabbani was still officially recognized as president by the United Nations during the years of Taliban rule. Putin met with Rabbani in Dushambe, the capital of Tajikistan, on his way back from the October Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shanghai.

The U.S. position, however, as State Department spokesman Boucher said on Tuesday, is that Rabbani "is one of the Afghan leaders that needs to be involved in the process of finding a political arrangement for the future of Afghanistan." Another senior administration official, while praising Rabbani's restraint of his forces in Kabul, said that an Afghan government would not be stable unless it is broad based.

Now back in Kabul with his forces, Rabbani has said he would support a broad coalition Afghan government, though at U.N.-sponsored talks in Bonn yesterday his representatives said they would oppose any international or U.N. peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan.

"I'm not sure the Russians see the postwar settlement the way we do," said Michael McFaul, a Russia expert and professor at Stanford University. "They are trying to reaffirm the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan [Rabbani's regime] at same time we're trying to transform that government."

A U.S. official agreed. "The fundamental point is that Moscow wants to demonstrate is that it wants to play some sort of role in post-Taliban Afghanistan," said the official. "It is trying to raise the prestige and influence of the Northern Alliance so that they will have a greater say or sway in these talks in putting together a post-Taliban coalition. The Russians are smart enough to know that the important thing is not what happens in Bonn, but what happens on the ground."

The official said the differences had created some "friction," but that they could be resolved.

At the United Nations yesterday, there was evidence of sensitivities about shaping the postwar Afghanistan.

Russia's U.N. ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, threatened to press for the dismissal of Barnett Rubin, a respected American scholar serving in the delegation of U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi. Rubin, in an interview published Nov. 24 in the French newspaper Le Monde, called Russia "very irresponsible" because it "has less interest in Afghanistan's stability than in the reestablishment of its influence."

Lavrov complained to the Security Council yesterday that Rubin said Russia is seeking to replace Pakistan as the chief regional power-broker in Afghanistan.

"If Rubin ventures to drive a wedge between the members of the anti-terrorism coalition, we would require he be immediately dismissed," Lavrov warned in the closed-door consultations. Lavrov said that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan told him that he was also "enraged" by Rubin's remarks and pledged to "take some action."

U.N. officials said they would ask Rubin to behave more diplomatically while he is under U.N. contract, but they noted the interview took place before his temporary contract with the United Nations began and there were no plans to fire him.

Special correspondent Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.

-------- spain

Spain pledges help to bring justice

November 29, 2001
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011129-71068.htm

Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, a nation holding 14 suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist group, yesterday pledged to work toward extradition of terrorists and voiced support for President Bush's use of military tribunals if deemed necessary.

The Spanish leader, who met and lunched with Mr. Bush at the White House, also offered to supply military forces for the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

"We intend to maintain and, if necessary, strengthen our political commitment, our cooperation in the area of intelligence and security and information-sharing, and, if need be, to commit military forces to that battle," he said. "The only fate that awaits terrorists is defeat and the only option for terrorists is to be brought to justice."

Mr. Aznar reiterated that commitment in remarks last night at a dinner at the Spanish Embassy on 16th Street NW.

"President Bush earned the heartfelt gratitude of Spanish people when he offered to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us in the fight against terrorism," the prime minister said in Spanish. A written English translation of his remarks was provided to guests.

"That is why tonight I solemnly reiterate Spain's commitment to supporting the United States in its - in our - campaign against terrorism. Our commitment has no sell-by date, no 'if' and 'buts,' and will spare no effort."

Spain already had offered the United States use of its airspace and military bases for the campaign in Afghanistan. Defense Minister Frederico Trillo told the Spanish parliament on Monday that he was committing 13 transport planes, including half the Spanish air force's Hercules C-130s, to take humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

After an Oval Office meeting with the president, Mr. Aznar took issue with opponents of Mr. Bush's decision to create a mechanism to try foreigners for terrorist crimes in military tribunals. The courts can be convened in secret and do not require the same burden of proof as other U.S. courts.

"Can I also say that the United States is free to organize its own jurisdiction as it sees fit as a free and democratic country," Mr. Aznar said through an interpreter in a brief joint press conference in the Rose Garden.

But, he added: "Any action taken on the extradition issue will be taken with full respect of Spanish and United States law." Mr. Aznar also said Spain would decide whether to extradite the 14 men to the United States only "if and when the United States requests that extradition."

Mr. Bush noted Spain's cooperation in the war against terrorism.

"Recently Spain has arrested al Qaeda members and has shared information about those al Qaeda members. And that is incredibly helpful," the president said.

Of the prime minister, Mr. Bush said: "He assured me that he would cooperate in any way possible in our mutual desire to fight terror."

But extradition of the al Qaeda members may be difficult. Most European nations, including Spain, resist extradition of suspects facing the death penalty.

The United States often assures nations any extradited suspect will not be executed.

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer called the issue "hypothetical" since the United States had not requested extradition of the men, some of whom were believed to have given logistical support to the hijackers who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Bush met with Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations. The two discussed the situation in Afghanistan and vowed to work to deliver relief to more than 7 million Afghans affected by weeks of bombing in the country.

"The degree of difficulty is high," Mr. Bush said. "There's no question we have a large task ahead of ourselves. We've got ample money We've got the food. The fundamental question is, in an environment that is not very secure, how do we get the food in to people? And that's what we're working on."

The secretary-general said the United Nations was trying to get food to the Afghans most in need. "And I hope the situation will clarify in the not-too-distant future to allow us to reach all those in need," he said.

Mr. Annan also looked ahead to a post-Taliban Afghanistan, a subject under discussion among rival Afghan factions in Bonn yesterday.

-------- spy agencies

THE CASUALTY
C.I.A. Names Agent Killed in Fortress

New York Times
November 29, 2001
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/national/29INTE.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 - The Central Intelligence Agency said today that one of its officers was killed in a chaotic uprising by Taliban prisoners near Mazar-i-Sharif on Sunday, the first American combat death in Afghanistan since the military campaign began.

The officer, Johnny Michael Spann, a 32-year-old former Marine captain who served in the Directorate of Operations, the agency's clandestine espionage arm, was killed inside the fortress at Qala Jangi where Taliban prisoners were being held and questioned, George Tenet, the C.I.A. director, said in a statement.

The revolt led to three days of pitched battle at the prison. Northern Alliance soldiers said on Tuesday that they had crushed it, and journalists were allowed access to the fort for the first time today. Witnesses said Mr. Spann and anti-Taliban guards were shot shortly after the uprising broke out on a parade ground.

In Winfield, Ala., Mr. Spann's hometown, he was remembered today as an "ordinary" young man and a patriot. "We consider him a hero," his father said.

The C.I.A. took the unusual step of publicly acknowledging the death of one of its officers largely because reports that an agency employee had been killed in the prison uprising had already been circulating widely for several days, and the presence of C.I.A. operatives in Afghanistan is not a secret.

Until today, though, agency officials had refused to comment on the reports of a C.I.A. casualty.

The fact that the first American to die in combat in Afghanistan was an intelligence officer and not a uniformed soldier serves to underscore the scope of the agency's role in the war in Afghanistan. Since the military campaign began, C.I.A. officers have provided training, logistical and intelligence support to American special forces and to the anti-Taliban rebels, both in the country's northern and southern regions.

Many C.I.A. officers in the field are paramilitary operatives from the agency's Special Activities Division inside the Directorate of Operations. Others are from the agency's Counterterrorism Center, which has led the C.I.A.'s investigation of Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda.

Mr. Spann, who was known as Mike, joined the agency in 1999 and had been based in the Special Activities Division. He was assigned to the Counterterrorism Center and sent to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, officials said.

Contrary to previous reports about the incident at Mazar-i-Sharif, Mr. Spann was not a contractor to the C.I.A., but a staff officer.

In his statement today, Mr. Tenet said Mr. Spann's body had been recovered this morning. Mr. Tenet praised him as "an American hero."

"Quiet, serious and absolutely unflappable, Mike's stoicism concealed a dry sense of humor and a heart of gold," Mr. Tenet said. "His brand