------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Technology of 'Dirty Bomb' Simple
Alert highlights 'dirty bomb' fears
Magnox fuel reprocesser ahead of schedule - BNFL
International tribunal turns down Irish bid
Japanese power company begins dismantling reactor
Putin Praises Improved U.S. Relations
Safety of Nuclear Plants Again Raises Concerns
Russia, U.S. Cut Arsenals to Comply with START - 1
Russia questions U.S. on nuclear reductions
Risk of Gas Tankers in Bay Revisited

MILITARY
At Hospital, Villagers Tell of U.S. Bombing
US cluster bombs add to Afghan landmine tragedy
Warplanes, Tanks Hit Afghan Caves
Troops mass to hunt bin Laden
Gun shop sues ATF in records fight
Envoy aims to 'help' biological-warfare pact review
Democrats Seek to Add Funds for Homeland Defense
Thousands Displaced by Drug War
Frenchman Unhappy With Country's War Role
Israelis Fire Missiles Near Arafat's Offices
Missile blasts leave Arafat the master of nothing
U.S. Questions If Arafat Can Lead the Palestinians
NATO Girding for All - Out War on Terrorism
NATO Plans New Anti-Terror Statement
Rosenberg's Brother Admits Perjury
Errant B-52 Bomb Kills 2 U.S. Forces
Marines Advance Toward Kandahar to Prepare Siege
3 U.S. Servicemen Killed by 'Friendly Fire'
Pentagon auditors get poor grade in examination

POLICE / PRISONERS
U.S. investigators wield vast new powers
55 Nations Endorse Measures to Fight Terrorism
FBI's Focus on Terrorism Sidelines Other Categories
Senate Committee Backs $15 Billion Emergency Spending
U.S. prepares for next fight against al-Qaeda

ENERGY AND OTHER
GEOTHERMAL POWER PROJECTS INSTALLED ON LONG ISLAND
German turbine maker Nordex woos Enron Wind
Air pollution trading can be done on Internet - EPA
General Electric Ordered to Pay for Cleanup of Hudson

ACTIVISTS
FAS back - freedom, truth and security
Protesters up a tree, but loggers steer clear
Afghans protest at U.N. talks
Group's Defenders Deny U.S. Allegations
U.N. celebrates International Volunteer Day



-------- NUCLEAR

Technology of 'Dirty Bomb' Simple, but Not the Execution

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58018-2001Dec4?language=printer

Finding enough radioactive material to make a "dirty bomb" might be relatively easy, experts say, but the effects of such a weapon could never remotely approach those of a nuclear explosion.

"The nuclear device is a weapon of mass destruction," said nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. "Dirty bombs are weapons of mass disruption, in terms of frightening people, the cleanup and the potential economic consequences."

Interest in dirty bombs has deepened recently among U.S. intelligence officials because of mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network may be developing expertise in building them.

But Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said yesterday that U.S. authorities had no information that bin Laden had made such a weapon. Ridge added that the Bush administration's latest anti-terrorist alert had nothing to do with the threat of a dirty bomb. Sources have told The Washington Post that concerns about al Qaeda's nuclear capabilities had played a role in the alert.

The technology to make the bomb is relatively simple: Find some radioactive material, wrap it around a core of ordinary high explosive and detonate it so that contamination spreads over the widest possible area.

This is not a nuclear explosion. That occurs when two subcritical masses of highly processed radioactive material are thrust suddenly together, triggering a violent chain reaction and release of energy.

Blast effects and heat from a nuclear device can flatten city blocks and kill thousands of people; the only blast from a dirty bomb is provided by the explosive.

Still, while fatalities may be light, a dirty bomb can cause a higher incidence of cancer in local residents even decades after the attack, and more immediately, provokes the same psychology of fear as a chemical or bioweapons threat. In that respect, Hecker said, a dirty bomb "would have an instant terrorist effect."

But the bomb-maker must always contend with a Catch-22, for the more powerful the radiation source, the more dangerous it is to handle. The weaker the source, the less damage the weapon will cause.

"The dirtiest spent fuel is from a nuclear reactor," said Lisbeth Gronlund, senior staff scientist of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It is very radioactive, and one reason to consider it proliferation-resistant is that the dose you get from stealing it would kill you pretty quickly."

Even if the thief is prepared to die, making bombs from "hot" radioactive material and getting them to the target present dangers. "How do you figure out how much you need?" asked Tom Cochrane, nuclear program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "And how do you transport it?"

The alternative is to pick a weaker radiation source. That means using plutonium or enriched uranium, which give off "alpha" particles that cannot penetrate the human body from outside, unlike the "gamma" particles or neutron radiation common in spent fuel waste or cobalt-60.

If the terrorist chooses alpha, then the plutonium must be milled fine, like anthrax spores, because the only way it can hurt humans is through inhalation, Cochrane said. This adds another requirement for technical expertise. But as long as the maker can deal with the radioactivity, detonating the device is as easy as triggering a bomb in a car or arming it from the air.

Damage could be problematic, experts say. In October, the nonprofit National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements estimated that contamination would spread over "only a small area of a few city blocks."

The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War argued that a plutonium dirty bomb would have almost no immediate health consequences, and even though it could lead to cancer years after the attack, the effects "would probably not be dramatic."

Still, the terrorist group that used a dirty bomb would garner immense prestige among its peers, said British political scientist Gavin Cameron in a paper prepared last month for the International Atomic Energy Association, and "the mere fact of being nuclear would almost certainly ensure that it had a considerable impact on the public's imagination and fear."

-------

Alert highlights 'dirty bomb' fears
Nuclear fuel rods can be used in 'dirty bombs'

BBC News
By Nick Caistor
Wednesday, 5 December
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1693000/1693425.stm

The White House is concerned that Osama Bin Laden may have radioactive material that could be used to make a "dirty bomb", press reports in the United States suggest.

Tom Ridge, director of homeland security, issued a new security alert this week, the third since the 11 September attacks for which the US blames Bin Laden.

Mr Ridge denied that his warning on Tuesday was related to any specific threat, but the Washington Post newspaper reported that intelligence sources are increasingly worried at the possibility that Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network could explode a radioactive device.

A "dirty bomb" involves wrapping radioactive material such as spent nuclear fuel rods around ordinary high explosives, and detonating the device.

The package could be used in a car bomb or many other forms of delivery. The damage is not caused so much by the explosion, but by the intense radiation that would be released into the atmosphere.

This could cause deaths, and cancers and other health problems over many years, as after the nuclear accident at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine.

There are also fears that a terrorist group could hijack a plane and crash it into a nuclear power station.

'Deterrent' claims

In October, Bin Laden, the main suspect in the 11 September attacks on America, told a Pakistani newspaper his group possessed chemical and nuclear weapons.

The Dawn newspaper quoted Bin Laden as saying: "If America used chemical and nuclear weapons against us, then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons. We have the weapons as a deterrent."

More recently, the US confirmed documents found in a building in Kabul believed to have been used as a safe house by al-Qaeda fighters contained instructions on how to build a nuclear device.

US special forces who raided former al-Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan also spoke of evidence that they were planning to create weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear devices.

While intelligence sources consider al-Qaeda does not have the capability for building a fully-fledged nuclear device, a "dirty bomb" is a more feasible alternative.

Possible sources for spent uranium or plutonium could be Pakistan or former Soviet republics.

David Kyd, a spokesman for the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, told the BBC that there were some 175 cases of seizure of nuclear material being smuggled from former Soviet republics.

"We cannot exclude the possibility that Bin Laden's group could get hold of this material to make a radioactive weapon rather than buying a nuclear weapon off the shelf or making one themselves," he said.

Pakistan has insisted that its nuclear assets are in safe hands.

John Large, an independent nuclear consultant, also says Pakistan is an unlikely source.

"Pakistan has an early nuclear programme and its highly-enriched uranium would be very precious to it. It would not have enough to spare, even if it wanted to", he says.

Robbery threat

But the IAEA warned recently that security and regulation of nuclear material in the former Soviet Union is poor.

The agency's director, Mohamed ElBaradei, said "the prospect of nuclear terrorism has been catapulted to the forefront," and called for increased international efforts to reduce the risks of nuclear smuggling.

A report in the Washington Post newspaper quoted a Russian general as saying that unidentified terrorists had recently twice tried and failed to penetrate Russian nuclear storage facilities.

At the end of November, the United States announced it would provide the IAEA with an additional $1.2 million to strengthen protection of nuclear and radioactive materials.

Announcing the new state of alert on Tuesday, Mr Ridge insisted he had no idea how any terrorist attack might come, but said the level of reported threats had increased considerably in recent days.

-------- britain

Magnox fuel reprocesser ahead of schedule - BNFL

Reuters:
5/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13572

LONDON - The ageing nuclear reprocessing plant which deals with spent fuel from Britain's Magnox power stations is on course to exceed reprocessing targets for 2001/2002, a British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) spokesman told Reuters.

"We've demonstrated that the plant can do what's required to meet the needs of our Magnox stations," BNFL spokesman Nigel Monkton said.

BNFL has said that before the Sellafield-based B205 closes in 2012, it must reprocess all the spent fuel from Britain's first-generation Magnox nuclear power stations slated for closure over the next 20 years.

"The plant has reprocessed 479 tons pro rata so far this financial year, 60 tons ahead of schedule," Monkton said.

Throughput at 36-year old B205 was only 366 tons in the year to March 31, BNFL said.

B205's reprocessing target for the current financial year was 725 tons, Monkton said.

That target would be stepped up to deal with spent fuel from Magnox shutdowns.

At its peak, the plant reprocessed more than 1,000 tons of spent fuel per year. Last year's underperformance was due to maintenance work and unscheduled shutdowns caused by downstream problems at waste plants, he said.

"The engineers knew B205 could do what's required with the necessary resources in place," Monkton said.

----

International tribunal turns down Irish bid to block nuclear reprocessing facility

Wednesday, December 05, 2001
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/12/12052001/ap_45777.asp

HAMBURG, Germany - An international tribunal on Monday rejected a bid by Ireland to force Britain to suspend a decision allowing a contested reprocessing facility at the Sellafield nuclear site to start work.

Britain's decision in October to authorize the Sellafield nuclear facility to begin production of mixed-oxide fuel at its MOX plant - a facility mothballed since 1996 because of financial and safety concerns - provoked fury in Dublin.

The Irish government wants an international arbitration tribunal to be established under a United Nations provision to resolve the dispute.

Last month, it asked the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to order immediate suspension of the British decision pending conclusion of the arbitration.

The tribunal ruled Monday, however, that "the urgency of the situation did not require the prescription of the provisional measures as requested by Ireland."

Campaigners in the Irish east coast towns of Dundalk and Drogheda have alleged for years that citizens suffer a higher-than-average incidence of cancer, which they blame on Britain's Sellafield nuclear site.

Irish Attorney General Michael McDowell told a two-day hearing last month in Hamburg that "this is about protecting the Irish Sea from further radioactive pollution."

The British government argued in a written submission that the court "lacks jurisdiction in this matter."

-------- japan

Japanese power company begins dismantling country's oldest nuclear reactor

Wednesday, December 05, 2001
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/12/12052001/ap_45784.asp

TOKYO - A Japanese power company on Tuesday sealed a 35-year-old nuclear reactor, a first step in dismantling the country's oldest commercial power-generating nuclear plant.

Japan Atomic Power Co., which took the Tokaimura plant off line in 1998, won't begin taking apart the reactor for another 10 years because extremely high levels of radiation remain inside, said spokesman Eichi Miyatani. It will completely dismantle the plant by 2017 and spend an estimated 92.7 billion yen (US$748 million), Miyatani said.

Tokaimura is 110 kilometers (70 miles) northeast of Tokyo.

Fueled by uranium, the carbon-dioxide-cooled reactor began operating in 1966. But the plant was shuttered in 1998 after it proved too costly to run, Miyatani said.

Much of the nuclear waste has already been sent to Britain for processing, he said. An additional 177,000 tons of radioactive waste, including graphite used in the reactor core, will be buried in the ground, Miyatani said.

Japanese have become increasingly wary of nuclear power since a radiation leak at a fuel-reprocessing plant in Tokaimura two years ago killed two workers and affected hundreds of others.

Japan relies on nuclear power to supply 30 percent of its electricity.

-------- russia

Putin Praises Improved U.S. Relations

By Sarah Karush
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; 9:31 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60561-2001Dec5?language=printer

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin praised Russia's improved relations with the United States and NATO, but said Moscow's previous opposition to U.S. missile defense plans and the alliance's eastward expansion remained.

Moscow's relations with Washington and NATO have warmed in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, and NATO is considering proposals to give Russia a voice in decision-making on certain issues.

In an interview with Greek media ahead of his visit to Greece beginning Thursday, Putin said the evolving relationship did not change Russia's view that NATO expansion "makes no sense from a security point of view." The interview was posted on the Kremlin Web site on Wednesday.

However, if Russia is given an equal voice with NATO countries on certain security issues, that "would make the problem of NATO expansion no longer relevant or important," Putin said.

Also on Wednesday, Russia's Foreign Ministry said Moscow had fully met its obligations under the START I nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States, but said it had some "questions" about whether Washington had lived up to its part of the deal.

"We expect the United States to also reach the thresholds designated by the treaty," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in the statement. "At the same time, we have questions concerning (its) fulfillment of some obligations under the treaty."

Putin also reiterated Moscow's opposition to scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The United States is running up against the treaty in its development of a national missile defense system and wants to modify the agreement.

"As before, Russia views this treaty as a cornerstone of international security," Putin said.

He added that Russia itself did not feel threatened by a U.S. missile shield.

"The security of Russia itself, at least in the next decade, would not suffer at all," he said. "We have enough weapons saved up of the type that cannot be countered by modern missile defense technology."

Putin praised the anti-terrorism operation in Afghanistan, but warned against assuming the war against terrorism had been won.

"To solve all the problems with one swoop in the course of a few weeks is not possible," he said. "Now it is more important than ever to launch a complex political settlement in Afghanistan."

He added that settlement of regional conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere was also vital to fighting terrorism.

-------- terrorism

NUCLEAR SECURITY
Safety of Nuclear Plants Again Raises Concerns

December 5, 2001
New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/05/national/05NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday

BRATTLEBORO, Vt., Dec. 4 - Some people here never liked the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, worrying about accidents and radioactive waste. Others always thought it was a reliable, cheap and clean source of electricity. Over 30 years of arguing, they had mostly run out of new things to say and bored the general public with their arguments. But that was before Sept. 11.

Now discussions about Vermont Yankee, and other reactors around the Northeast, are drawing big crowds. There were 600 people here on Monday night, in the auditorium of Brattleboro Union High School, not counting the 20 federal, state and local officials on stage to answer their questions. They were at it for four hours, and a while longer in the parking lot.

"This is a small town, in a small state," said Representative Bernard Sanders, who convened the meeting, marveling at the turnout. "People are very, very concerned."

Last month there were hearings near the Pilgrim plant, in Plymouth, Mass.; the Seabrook plant, in the New Hampshire town of the same name; and the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pa.

There was also a hearing near the Maine Yankee plant, in Wiscasset, Me., which was shut down five years ago, but where radioactive spent fuel is still stored. Next week in White Plains, a committee of the Westchester County Board of Legislators plans a hearing on whether to revoke approval of the emergency plan for the Indian Point reactors. A hearing about the dangers of spent fuel is planned for the Shearon Harris plant in North Carolina.

"Sept. 11 has been the biggest challenge to nuclear power since Chernobyl," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group that frequent criticizes government oversight of nuclear safety. "Congressmen who have had very little interest in nuclear power in the five years I've been at U.C.S. are suddenly competing with each other to examine security issues at the plants."

Although it is not clear how seriously local governments or members of Congress can threaten the future of licensed reactors, the industry hardly welcomes the discussion.

Until Sept. 11, the outlook for the nation's 103 nuclear power plants was improving. The years since the 1986 accident at Chernobyl have been mostly quiet, with no significant unusual radiation releases in the United States, and rising reliability. Reactors were beginning to look more attractive given the increasing demand for electricity. Several have recently won 20-year extensions on their 40-year licenses, and others have met the first challenge of deregulation of the electricity business, having sold at prices higher than analysts expected.

But since Sept. 11, public officials have mused publicly about whether a nuclear plant would withstand the crash of a jet any better than the World Trade Center did, and the technology's opponents have found a wider audience.

"We have handed our enemies a radiological weapon, a target of opportunity," said Ned Childs, one of dozens of people who spoke at the hearing last night. Mr. Childs lives in Dummerston, Vt., 10 miles from the plant in Vernon.

State officials have voiced the same concern. Kate O'Conner, chairwoman of the Vermont Terrorist Task Force, said Sept. 11 had prompted Gov. Howard Dean, who is a doctor, to seek a stockpile of a drug to protect the public against radiation-induced thyroid cancer, something that has been debated nationwide for 20 years.

The industry does not relish the attention. At the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, Angelina Howard, a spokeswoman for the industry's trade group, said some people in New York and New England had always shown "skittishness" about nuclear power. But elsewhere, she said, there were anecdotal reports that more tourists were stopping by the visitor centers at the plants, or at least those centers that were still open after Sept. 11.

"When the public has a concern and they go look into it, usually they come off feeling better about it," she said. Opinion polls commissioned by her organization show growing approval of nuclear power since Sept. 11, Ms. Howard said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has defended the design of the plants. Hubert J. Miller, the commission's administrator for the Northeast, said that while Vermont Yankee's designers did not have an attack by a Boeing 767 in mind when they designed it, the building is "very robust," and that nuclear plants are among the strongest buildings of any kind.

Defending Vermont Yankee's security preparations is somewhat harder. On Aug. 23, it was the plant's turn for a mock attack by federal agents playing terrorists, and the evaluators found so many deficiencies that they graded the plant "yellow," in a grading system that runs green, white, yellow and red. It was the lowest grade in the industry.

But Mr. Miller said the problems had been corrected.

At the town meeting, calls for conservation and renewable energy drew applause, although this being Vermont, at the mention of windmills, one strong voice shouted, "They're bird killers."

Ross Barkhurst, the chief executive of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation, stood his ground on reasons of safety and economics. Speaking of wind power, he said: "As long as we have the ability to compete, bring it on. Right now my best friend is the renewable energy we have in the state - it costs about two and a half times what mine does."

Public officials here and elsewhere have described the risk of terrorist attack on a reactor, especially by big planes, as remote, though some members of the public doubt the government's ability to pick what the next target might be.

"I know the opinion of many of you is that the best thing to do is not to have a plant down here," said Edward von Turkovich, the director of Vermont Emergency Management, to loud applause. But he added, "We're going to coexist with a plant. The best thing to do is to have a plan in place."

-------- treaties

Russia, U.S. Cut Arsenals to Comply with START - 1

December 5, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-russia.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and the United States said on Wednesday they had slashed their strategic weapons stockpile down to the levels required by the START-1 treaty, signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1991.

A Russian Foreign Ministry statement said Russia had cut the number of vehicles to 1,136 and the number of nuclear warheads to 5,518, well below the ceilings of 1,600 and 6,000 established by the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, which set Wednesday as the deadline for compliance with the targets.

``The United States and Russia each now maintain fewer than the treaty's mandated limits of 1,600 deployed strategic delivery vehicles and 6,000 accountable warheads,'' State Department spokesman Philip Reeker added in Washington.

``We're marking an important milestone today in dismantling the legacy of the Cold War. The treaty's final ceilings came into effect today and they have been met,'' he told a briefing.

The treaty was signed by former President George Bush, father of the current U.S. president, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Russian statement said: ``The full and timely fulfillment of the provisions in the START-1 treaty establishes good conditions for working out an agreement on further radical reductions of strategic offensive weapons.''

The United States added in a written statement: ``As we cooperate in building this new strategic relationship and as we move beyond the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, we will make further reductions in strategic nuclear forces.''

Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Bush announced substantial cuts in nuclear arms stockpiles during Putin's visit to the United States last month, bringing them to the lowest level since the 1950s.

At the summit, Bush announced plans to cut U.S. strategic offensive weapons from 7,000 warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200. Russia has said it is ready to cut the number of its strategic warheads to about 1,500.

However, Russia has complained that Washington has so far failed to make clear whether the United States intends to destroy nuclear warheads or simply remove them from their delivery vehicle and store them.

The Bush administration does not want to enshrine the next phase of reductions in a formal verifiable agreement, arguing that it is enough for each to tell the other of its plans.

The two countries have also failed to agree on the future of the 1972 ABM treaty, which the United States sees as a relic of the Cold War and an obstacle to the missile defense tests it wants to carry out.

Russia still sees the treaty, which bans large-scale missile defenses, as a cornerstone of strategic stability.

The Arms Control Association, an independent organization which favors arms control agreements, congratulated Moscow and Washington on the cuts but urged the United States to account for the large and growing stockpile ``hedge'' warheads which START-1 allows the parties to hold.

``This reserve of some 4,500 to 5,000 strategic and tactical warheads was once mostly intended to provide the United States with the capability to quickly reverse reductions of its deployed arsenal to guard against a Russian buildup,'' it said.

``Now the presence of the hedge arsenal creates a strong disincentive for Russia to implement further nuclear reductions,'' the executive director of the association, Daryl Kimball, said in a statement.

``Bush's handshake brand of unilateral, voluntary arms restraint would not only make nuclear stockpiles more opaque and more difficult to verify gut also would do little to decrease the overall size of nuclear stockpiles,'' he added.

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

Russia questions U.S. on nuclear reductions

The Associated Press
12/05/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/dec01/2001-12-05-nuke.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States said Wednesday it has complied fully with nuclear arms reductions prescribed in the START I treaty signed 10 years ago by former Presidents Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union.

In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it, too, is in compliance, but it questions whether the United States is living up to its end of the deal.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a statement issued as he was traveling in Europe and made available by the State Department, said the treaty's "final ceilings came into effect today, and they have been met."

The 1991 treaty obligated the United States and the then-Soviet Union to reduce their numbers of nuclear warheads from about 10,000 to 6,000 each by Dec. 5, 2001. The treaty also required each country to reduce the number of its ballistic missiles and strategic bombers to 1,600.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in a statement Wednesday that Russia has brought down its number of nuclear warheads to 5,518 and reduced its number of missiles and bombers to 1,136.

"We expect the United States to also reach the thresholds designated by the treaty," Yakovenko said. "At the same time, we have questions concerning (its) fulfillment of some obligations under the treaty."

"We proceed from the assumption that these issues will be solved in the nearest future," Yakovenko said without elaborating.

A team of Russian military experts led by Maj.-Gen. Nikolai Artyukhin has arrived in the United States to check compliance with START I, the Interfax news agency reported.

The agency quoted an unidentified Defense Ministry spokesman as saying the U.S. military denied Russian inspectors access to some facilities.

There was no hint in Powell's statement of any disagreement.

"Today we mark an important milestone in dismantling the legacy of the Cold War," Powell said.

He added that all the former Soviet states except the Russian Federation are free of nuclear weapons, and the U.S. and Russia have cut their arsenals nearly in half to a level of 6,000 deployed warheads each.

"As we cooperate in building this new strategic relationship, and as we move beyond the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, we will make further reductions in strategic nuclear forces," Powell said.

President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to agree last month at their summit meeting on Bush's plans for a national missile defense, which is forbidden by the ABM Treaty.

Russia opposed any effort to dismantle the treaty. Putin said Moscow was open to further discussions on possible modifications to the treaty and pledged that the issue wouldn't mar bilateral relations as it has in the past.

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

-------- maryland

Risk of Gas Tankers in Bay Revisited
Mikulski's Objection to Reopening Plant Near Nuclear Facility Spurs Review

By Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; Page B03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58464-2001Dec4?language=printer

The Coast Guard today will begin assessing the risk of allowing foreign tankers to carry liquefied natural gas into the Chesapeake Bay, part of a Calvert County project that federal regulators are reconsidering at the urging of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge.

Both Maryland and Virginia are expected to send representatives to Portsmouth, Va., for the two-day meeting, at which participants will discuss not just the Williams Co. plan to reactivate the Cove Point plant in southern Calvert, but also the safety of permitting importation of liquefied natural gas along the Eastern seaboard in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The meeting will be closed to the public.

"If we had never received a letter of intent to resume operations at Cove Point, this meeting probably would never have taken place," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Gordon A. Loebl. "With Sept. 11th, there's lots and lots to look at. . . . Obviously this has become a politically charged issue."

Ridge's involvement came at the urging of U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who had publicly criticized the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's approval in October, a month after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, of the reopening and expanding of the Cove Point liquefied natural gas plant.

Mikulski, who sent letters to FERC, the Coast Guard, the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as Ridge, wrote that the project "could create a new vulnerability to terrorism." She pointed out that the facility is within 3 miles of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant.

Ridge subsequently asked federal officials to move up the completion of a safety review of the project, according to Susan Neely, director of communications for the Office of Homeland Security.

Mikulski renewed her call on Nov. 26 for officials to "rigorously review the proposal" following Justice Department warnings about possible threats to gas plants and pipelines.

The Coast Guard has had to respond to concerns about importation of liquified natural gas from officials elsewhere along the East Coast, all at a time when fuel demand is rising in the United States. The Coast Guard in Boston recently denied port entry to a tanker containing liquefied natural gas, and later lifted the ban.

"That's a market that's expanding considerably," Loebl said. "Odds are pretty good that we're going to see more of these requests. And I think that's what prompted the Coast Guard to take a broader look, to use the Cove Point process . . . as a blueprint."

Issues to be decided include whether to require moving buffers around the tankers and Coast Guard escorts for the tankers when they move into the bay, according to Loebl.

In October, FERC voted at a meeting in Washington to allow the Tulsa-based Williams Co. to move forward with a $120 million project at the Cove Point plant. The company plans to reactivate the offshore facility, which became dormant after the previous owner ceased operation, and build a fifth storage tank. Natural gas in a vapor form would be ferried from the plant through a pipeline that runs 87 miles from Calvert to utilities in Prince George's, Charles, Fairfax and Loudoun counties.

The pier where the product is offloaded -- about a mile and a quarter offshore and connected to the plant by an underwater tunnel -- would be refurbished to handle tankers that typically are about 1,000 feet long, according to the county. Although company officials contend their plan is safe, residents have expressed concern that terrorists could bomb a tanker, creating a giant fireball that could touch off a nuclear disaster at nearby Calvert Cliffs.

Company officials have continued to express hope that they can get government approval in time to begin importing gas in the second quarter of 2002.

FERC announced on Nov. 9 that it would reconsider the plan, just two days after Mikulski publicly criticized the commission's original approval. A week after the announcement, the FERC staff conducted a technical conference not open to the public during which interested parties and regulatory agencies discussed "any national security issues" raised after Sept. 11.

Williams Co. officials were at the conference but declined to reveal how they would address concerns about the project.

Maryland officials were also at that meeting but have declined to talk about what was discussed, citing security reasons. However, the state also formally requested that FERC look again at the Cove Point project after its initial approval.

"The Maryland Agencies believe that without crucial information necessary to assess the full suite of impacts from reopening the facility, and especially in light of the events of September 11th, the Commission should reconsider its cursory assessment of tanker operations in the Chesapeake Bay and withhold full approval" until it can review the Coast Guard's conclusions, said a letter to FERC from the state attorney general's office.

Richard McLean, manager of nuclear programs for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, added that "we applaud FERC" for revisiting the matter.

"It was an absolutely appropriate action in my mind," McLean said.

The terrorist attacks have also caused many local officials to revisit the possible security risks of the Cove Point project.

Previously, Calvert County Commissioners President David F. Hale (R-Owings) told FERC officials about local support for the plant, which when fully operational would become the county's second-highest taxpayer, behind Calvert Cliffs. However, on Nov. 13, Hale and the four other board members sent a letter to the FERC requesting a reevaluation in light of the need to prevent terrorism.

And officials at Calvert Cliffs, who previously determined that the Cove Point operation would not jeopardize their facility, are reexamining safety concerns, too, according to Karl Neddenien, a Calvert Cliffs spokesman.

FERC's approval came despite concerns of nearby residents and elected officials about the potential for a disaster if there was a fire or explosion on a tanker or at the facility. Neighbors told FERC representatives at a public meeting earlier this year about their worries, long before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Although a draft of the FERC's October order dealt with safety concerns, it did not specifically address the possibility of terrorism, according to FERC spokeswoman Tamara Young-Allen.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

At Hospital, Villagers Tell of U.S. Bombing
Many Wounded, Dead Taken to Jalalabad; Pentagon Says Targets Were Military

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58555-2001Dec4?language=printer

JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 4 -- The patients in the intensive care unit of Jalalabad's Public Hospital No. 1 are burned and bloodied, their limbs amputated.

Most cannot speak; many are children who lie unconscious and bruised beneath ragged, filthy blankets. Altogether, 36 patients have been admitted here who say they are victims of U.S. bombing strikes on their villages southwest of Jalalabad. The hospital has also taken in 35 dead, according to chief physician Gulojan Shinwari.

The death toll from four days of bombing raids that began Friday is more than 150, according to local officials and witnesses.

The Pentagon this week acknowledged that U.S. forces struck military targets at the location where the villagers say they were attacked. But a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said Monday that the bombs were aimed at concrete buildings that were believed to hold Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

Today, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters at a briefing in Washington that "with the disorder that reigns in Afghanistan, it is next to impossible to get factual information about civilian casualties."

The victims of the bombing here are civilians such as 10-year-old Noor Mohammed. He has lost both eyes and both arms. Sometimes, he turns his head and moans to himself. Once, he told the uncle sitting vigil by his bedside about the sound of the plane overhead and how he ran from the room and how he doesn't know what happened after that. Asked this morning how he felt, the boy whispered, "I feel cold and I cannot talk."

The boy and the other injured and dead came trickling in by car, between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m., over three days. The doctor gestured angrily to his patient. "I think they were thinking he is Osama," Shinwari said. He said hospital officials had appealed to local authorities, hoping they can persuade the Americans to stop the bombing. "We cannot clean the blood" of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks "by the blood of others," he said. Another doctor making morning rounds chimed in. "There is no one to share the grief with us," said Shafiqulla Atish.

From one extended family, there were 12 dead and 15 injured, said Niaz Mohammed as he stood over the bed of a wounded 8-year-old nephew. The boy suffers from head injuries and has been in a coma since he arrived. "His prognosis is not good," his doctor said. His uncle escaped the bombing because he was not home at the time.

Down the hall, in another intensive care ward, there are many more children from this family. There is the baby Raheem, who stares quietly and doesn't cry, bundled tight in his uninjured sister's arms. And his brother Ismatunnah, suffering from serious head injuries. Their mother, Zainab, lies in another bed, in critical condition. Two toddler twins are also there, sharing a single bed. One of them is hurt more seriously than the other. Their father, Faizal Karim, is dead. They don't know that yet.

"We heard the sound of the airplane," said their sister, Zeba, who says she is "maybe 12 years old." The family was in their mud house after breaking their Ramadan fast. "We heard the sound of the airplane first," then the bomb came. She said she escaped harm only because she stood under the wood frame as the house collapsed around her.

As he stood guard over Zeba's brother, Niaz Mohammed noted the sad irony of the bombings. Their village, he said, was always hostile to the Taliban and bin Laden's foreign fighters, and they supported the Americans in their hunt for the accused terrorist. "They are our enemies," he said. "We would never let them in our village."

He asked why U.S. planes were seeking out targets in a settlement of mud houses 20 miles from bin Laden's reputed mountain hideout in Tora Bora. "Our home is far away from there," he said. "We are civilian people. So why are they bombing civilian people?"

----

US cluster bombs add to Afghan landmine tragedy

Story by Michael Steen
Reuters:
5/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13573

QARAH BAGH, Afghanistan - Abdul Haddi is explaining how his mine clearing team safely detonated a large anti-tank mine buried at the edge of the highway when a second, unplanned explosion rips through the air and everyone gasps.

Behind a line of stones painted red for danger, a cloud of smoke and dust has erupted into the clear blue sky and someone is shouting. A stone ricochets off the rusting hulk of one of the old Soviet-built tanks that dot the landscape.

The blast was from a U.S. cluster bomblet, accidentally triggered by a shepherd who narrowly avoided being killed. Until recently the village of Qarah Bagh, north of the Afghan capital Kabul, was a front line position.

Like other mine clearance agencies, Haddi's team, from the British anti-landmine charity the Halo Trust, has not yet been trained to destroy cluster bomblets, and can only mark out patches of them as danger areas.

"It was a small yellow thing, I didn't know what it was," said the shepherd, Habib Ullahjan, 45. "I picked it up and threw it away, then it exploded."

Afghanistan is already one of the world's most heavily mined countries, littered with ordnance made by Russians, Iranians, Italians and Pakistanis.

But the U.S. bombing of former Taliban positions has added a new killing machine to the multitude of unexploded devices strewn across Afghanistan's expansive dusty plains, in orchards, rice fields, and villages.

DESIGNED TO SHRED FLESH

Campaign group Landmine Action says U.S. military figures show 600 cluster bombs have been dropped in Afghanistan.

Each cluster bomb contains 202 "BLU 97" bomblets which are designed to shred enemies' flesh and wreck their equipment on the ground.

But somewhere between seven and 30 percent of the devices fail to detonate on impact and either sink into the ground or lie on the surface. They effectively become landmines.

Now that the Taliban have retreated - bombed out of the north by Washington which accuses the hardline Islamic movement of harbouring Osama bin Laden - refugees from the fighting are returning to their homes.

"I only came back three days ago. We fled to Kabul from the fighting," said Ullahjan, the shepherd, leading his flock of sheep away from the field where he set off the cluster bomblet.

"I came back to check my house. It's been destroyed. I thought this place was clear of mines."

Ullahjan was luckier than 12-year-old Nickwalli or Samim Ahsanullah, who is eight. Both boys are recovering in Kabul's Karta Se hospital from cluster bomblet explosions.

Nickwalli lost one eye and has injuries to his arms and head. Samim's thin legs, arms and chest are badly injured.

BOMBLET LOOKED LIKE A BISCUIT

"There were three of us going to school. We saw small yellow things on the ground. I picked one up and it exploded. It looked like a big biscuit," said Samim.

The hospital's head nurse, Mohammed Zaman, said the surgeons had almost amputated Samim's leg but decided against it at the last minute. "I think it will be okay," he said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said the United States has every right to use cluster bombs after the September 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The United States, along with Russia and China, has refused to back an international ban on anti-personnel mines, signed in Ottawa in 1997. But the U.S. State Department pledged to increase its funding of landmine clearance in Afghanistan.

And once it was revealed that the yellow bomblets were the same size and colour as yellow U.S. food packets being air dropped for civilians in Afghanistan, Washington said it would in future colour food packets blue.

None of which immediately helps the Karta Se hospital, a rickety collection of buildings in the heart of west Kabul, a part of the city turned into a nightmare vision of pulverised buildings by the brutal civil war here in the early 1990s.

Zaman said the hospital receives up to five people every day who have stepped on a landmine, picked up unexploded ordnance, or stumbled across a cluster bomblet.

The U.N. estimates that 10 Afghans are killed or maimed every day by mines.

GATHERING FIREWOOD

No one has yet compiled any data on how many cluster bomblets have injured civilians, but they add to the daily toll of mine victims which increases at this time of year as poor people stray off roads to seek firewood or scrap metal to sell.

"I was in Kala Kan (south of Qara Bagh) the day before yesterday and just one of these small bomblets killed one person and injured another," said Abdul Latif Matin, the regional manager of the U.N. Mine Action Programme.

"(Cluster bombs) are making the situation in Afghanistan even worse," said Matin, whose office is dominated by a large map of central Afghanistan covered with red dots that represent minefields.

Every time a minefield is cleared, he crosses the dot. Many dots remain uncrossed - just to clear minefields designated high priority will take another seven to 10 years, Matin said.

"Of course it's disappointing that we had cleared some of the sites that have now been hit, and we now have to re-clear them," Matin said.

The Red Cross has set up six orthopaedic centres in Afghanistan, staffed mostly by landmine victims. The centre in Kabul produces prosthetic legs, crutches and wheelchairs for the hundreds of people who come every week.

So far no cluster bomb victims have shown up at the Kabul centre, said the head doctor, Najmuddin, but it takes several months for amputees' stumps to heal enough for a prosthetic leg to be fitted.

"It's very difficult to know if things will get worse," said Najmuddin. "If peace comes, if there's no fighting, maybe we'll see fewer patients."

----

Warplanes, Tanks Hit Afghan Caves

By Chris Tomlinson
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; 11:07 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61032-2001Dec5?language=printer

TORA BORA, Afghanistan -- American bombs accidentally killed two U.S. servicemen and injured 20 others in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday. Anti-Taliban fighters in the mountainous east battled al-Qaida guerrillas, capturing territory below a suspected cave hide-out of Osama bin Laden.

The friendly fire incident happened when a B-52 seeking to target enemy Taliban forces missed and dropped its ordnance too close to opposition forces and their American advisers north of Kandahar, the last stronghold of the Taliban, U.S. officials said.

An unknown number of Afghan forces were also killed or wounded, and some of the American and Afghan injured were rushed to a forward U.S. Marine base in the deserts outside Kandahar.

In Germany, Afghan factions trying to put decades of war behind them named respected Pashtun tribal leader Hamid Karzai to head a 30-member Cabinet that will take power on Dec. 22 as an interim post-Taliban government.

As the announcement was made, Karzai was reported to be with his fighters who are part of the push to oust the Taliban from Kandahar.

To the north, high-flying B-52s pounded a vast cave complex in the rugged White mountains near the city of Jalalabad. Reporters at front line positions watched anti-Taliban tanks fire repeated volleys at the caves of Tora Bora, named after this village at the base of the mountain in eastern Afghanistan.

One tribal commander, Alim Shah, said his Afghan fighters were pursuing a mainly Arab al-Qaida force that was retreating with mortars, rocket launchers and assault rifles to positions above the caves.

"We are trying our best to capture them alive. They are surrounded by us, but they are not surrendering," Shah said.

Shah said his fighters were meeting heavy resistance. Escape routes to Pakistan to the east have been snowed in, he added, and the Taliban and al-Qaida defenders had nowhere else to go.

Moreover, there was no sign of bin Laden, who is accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Some of the Americans injured by the friendly fire outside Kandahar were taken to Base Rhino, a forward operating base of some 1,000 U.S. Marines southwest of the city. The base's public affairs officer, Capt. Stewart Upton, said that the Americans were sent on to other facilities from the base, while other American injured went directly.

About 20 wounded Afghan troops, some with serious injuries from the errant missile strike, were treated at the base then transferred elsewhere, he said.

Spokesman Capt. David Romley said pilots and crews from the base were "in very short order" able to get the injured forces "return them and begin treatment and triage." Romley said some of the injured U.S. personnel were evacuated from the area by helicopters.

The deaths bring to three the number of Americans killed inside Afghanistan in the two-month war. CIA paramilitary Johnny "Mike" Spann was killed Nov. 25 in a prisoner uprising while questioning forces captured in the fighting. Five U.S. soldiers were wounded in that same uprising when a U.S. bomb went astray.

At a Pentagon news conference, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would not say whether American ground troops would themselves search for al-Qaida and bin Laden. But he said they "have been actively encouraging Afghan elements to seek out and find the al-Qaida and Taliban leadership."

Muslim activists in Egypt said the wife and three daughters of Osama bin Laden's top strategist, Ayman al-Zawahri, were killed by U.S. bombing along with some relatives of other Arabs in al-Qaida.

U.S. officials believe al-Zawahri escaped, although unconfirmed reports claimed he had been wounded.

Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian physician who founded the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, is widely considered the No. 2 man in bin Laden's network.

In the south, Pashtun tribesmen Wednesday pushed toward Kandahar, the Taliban's last major stronghold.

However, some pulled back from the city's airport after fierce resistance to allow U.S. jets to bomb Taliban and al-Qaida defenders there.

Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has ordered his forces to fight to the death and has rejected repeated demands to surrender.

Rumsfeld accused Taliban leaders of "in effect using the civilian population of Kandahar as shields." He predicted the city would soon fall without the help of the Marines at Camp Rhino.

Meanwhile, French troops were expected to arrive in Tajikistan on Wednesday, a day after the Central Asian nation on Afghanistan's northern border agreed to allow use of one of its airbases for operations in Afghanistan.

The French Foreign Ministry said the 60 French troops would pass through Tajikistan on route to the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, where they were to help rebuild an airport for humanitarian aid deliveries.

The Tajik president said Tuesday that U.S. and French combat aircraft would be allowed to use Tajikistan's Kulyab airbase, about 30 miles north of the Afghan border.

Associated Press correspondents Kathy Gannon in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Christopher Torchia in Quetta, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

-------

Troops mass to hunt bin Laden

12/05/2001
By Jack Kelley, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/12/05/troops-mass.htm

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Thousands of Afghan tribal warriors set off Tuesday to hunt down Osama bin Laden, heading for what they suspect is the terrorist mastermind's stronghold in eastern Afghanistan. They were being assisted by a small number of U.S. special operations forces. As those allied forces moved in on bin Laden, President Bush warned Americans that Afghanistan might not be the only place where U.S. ground forces will be needed in the war on terrorism.

"Strikes will be incredibly important, and there may be a need to use military troops elsewhere," Bush said in an interview that will air tonight on ABC's 20/20.

The dangers ground troops face were reinforced with the news that a U.S. soldier was shot in the shoulder during a combat operation Tuesday near Kandahar. The soldier was in stable condition.

The hunt for bin Laden appeared to focus Tuesday on the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar. Local officials there said hundreds of anti-Taliban troops - aided by at least 20 U.S. commandos - skirmished with al-Qaeda scouts near Tora Bora, the heavily fortified cave complex where bin Laden might be hiding. Provincial defense chief Hazrat Ali said 1,000 troops moved into the mountains Tuesday, and 2,000 more are on their way.

U.S. officials say anti-Taliban troops plan to seal off the complex's water sources. Guards at Jalalabad's airport said U.S. helicopters brought in supplies Tuesday. U.S. warplanes are expected as early as Thursday.

U.S. air power is taking a toll. Ali said an intermediary reported that Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's top lieutenant and the brains behind al-Qaeda, had been injured Monday during U.S. bombardment of Tora Bora, which is 35 miles southwest of Jalalabad. U.S. sources said they have received credible reports that al-Zawahiri's wife and three daughters were killed in U.S. airstrikes in Kandahar. The same strikes reportedly killed family members of other Arab al-Qaeda leaders.

Also, a provincial leader told reporters that al-Qaeda's treasurer, Ali Mahmud, had been killed.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he could not confirm the reports, but if true, they would herald the most significant blow to al-Qaeda since the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7 in response to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington that have been blamed on bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Pentagon officials consider al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian-born doctor, to be as important as bin Laden. The State Department has placed a $25 million bounty on each of the men.

Reports last month of the death of Muhammad Atef, al-Qaeda's military commander, emerged from Afghanistan several days before they were confirmed.

In southern Afghanistan, opposition troops announced their pullout from the airport outside Kandahar at the request of the U.S. military, which continues to bomb the area. Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual home, is the last city still in Taliban hands.

Pockets of resistance have re-emerged outside Kabul and in the north, where as many as 2,500 Taliban fighters who were allowed to leave the besieged city of Kunduz, have regrouped, a Pentagon official said.

Contributing: Andrea Stone at the Pentagon and Jonathan Weisman in Washington; wire reports

-------- arms sales

Gun shop sues ATF in records fight

December 5, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011205-3285295.htm

NORFOLK (AP) - A downtown gun shop owner is suing to prevent the federal government from requiring him to turn over records of his store's used-gun sales.

Robert Marcus contends the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) is trying to compile a database of gun owners, something Congress has forbidden. He filed the lawsuit Nov. 23 in U.S. District Court.

The case hinges on the privacy of gun owners and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

"While no one has accused me of committing a crime, they're going on a fishing expedition, and I'm not going fishing with them," said Mr. Marcus, who owns Bob's Gun & Tackle Shop.

The bureau says it is trying only to stop handgun violence and the illegal trafficking of firearms.

ATF officials cited a federal law that allows the agency to collect gun-sales data as long as they do not create a prohibited database that includes names and addresses.

"We have to encourage some responsibility, and we feel we're within our rights, and the courts have agreed with us," said Jim Crandall, an ATF spokesman in Washington. "It's not a condemnation of the manner or the way they conduct business."

In February 2000, the ATF's National Tracing Center sent Bob's a letter demanding that the shop turn over the make, model, caliber and serial number of each used gun it bought and sold in 1999. For the first time, the federal government was collecting data on gun sales.

Bob's was among 430 firearms dealers - out of 80,000 - nationwide to receive the letter. The dealers were singled out because they had sold 10 or more guns that had been used in a crime within three years of purchase, according to ATF.

ATF said the average "time-to-crime" from when a gun leaves a retailer is six years. In the letter, the ATF did not give the number of weapons traced to Bob's or say what crimes they had been used in.

Records obtained by the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot show that the ATF traced 114 firearms to Bob's between 1990 and 1995, and that 19 were tied to violent crimes, including seven slayings. The records do not show whether the guns belonged to a victim or a suspect, or whether the trace led to criminal charges.

Licensed firearms dealers conduct instant criminal background checks on all gun buyers through a national computer system. Felons are prohibited from buying or possessing guns.

The ATF letter to Mr. Marcus said the gun shop would face administrative or criminal sanctions, including the revocation of his dealer license, if he did not comply.

After a U.S.4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a Baltimore case in June, ATF officials sent more letters to Bob's gun shop demanding it turn over the information. Mr. Marcus took the agency to court instead.

-------- biological weapons

Envoy aims to 'help' biological-warfare pact review

December 5, 2001
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011205-23347293.htm

The United States yesterday began the last round of intensive negotiations with allies and other major powers on measures to strengthen a 1972 treaty banning biological warfare, but an agreement was hardly in sight.

John Bolton, undersecretary of state for international security and arms control, arrived in Geneva for the second time since the start of a Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) review conference on Nov. 19 to bolster the U.S. delegation's bargaining power, a U.S. official said.

"He will do whatever he can to help," the official said, declining to predict the outcome of the conference, which ends on Friday.

Another official said the negotiations are now down to minute details spread over more than 100 pages, but there are no guarantees that they will be successful.

"This conference could still fail and that would send out a bad message," a European diplomat told the Reuters news agency. "We really need something that shows we are able to act."

The Bush administration has much more at stake in Geneva than the future of the nearly-30-year-old treaty. Its rejection in July of a widely supported protocol to enforce the BWC through on-site inspections put it at odds with most of its allies and fueled accusations of U.S. unilateralism.

The European Union has been trying to break a deadlock between the United States and some developing countries, which want sweeping revisions to the existing treaty, including firmer commitments on the transfer of technology to the developing world.

A State Department official said that some countries "have an interest in weakening and abolishing multilateral export controls," but added, "We are not going to water down our approach to get a least-common-denominator agreement."

One U.S. position that has provoked strong disagreement between Washington and most other participants deals with the future of the so-called "ad hoc group," which spent six years working on the July protocol. The United States has proposed ending the group's mandate.

The Bush administration, which had already abandoned the Kyoto agreement on climate change and threatened to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty banning missile defenses, called the BWC protocol "unworkable" and said the regime it proposed would threaten U.S. military and trade secrets while allowing "rogue states" such as Iran and Iraq to "cheat."

But after the recent anthrax attacks in the United States, which have infected 17 persons and killed five, the administration prepared its own proposal that would commit the BWC's 144 signatories to criminalizing biological-weapons activities on their territories.

In a Nov. 1 statement, President Bush called for "strict national criminal legislation against prohibited bioweapons activities, with strong extradition requirements" and "sound national oversight mechanisms for the security and genetic engineering of pathogenic organisms."

He also proposed "an effective United Nations procedure for investigating suspicious outbreaks or allegations of biological-weapons use," as well as a code of ethical conduct for biologic scientists and "responsible conduct in the study, use, modification and shipment of pathogenic organisms."

The response of the European and other allies with whom Washington shared its ideas before the Geneva conference was hardly enthusiastic, administration officials and experts said. There was a consensus, they said, that the U.S. draft is a good first step, but it doesn't legally bind all parties to international standards.

The United States would like to see its proposals become part of a declaration adopted at the end of the three-week-long conference, which takes place every five years. But the differences with most other countries are still too large, diplomats said.

-------- business

Senate Democrats Seek to Add Funds for Homeland Defense

By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58527-2001Dec4?language=printer

Senate Democrats yesterday took up the cause of homeland defense, pushing a $7.5 billion package of additional funds through a key committee despite a pledge by President Bush to veto it on grounds that enough money is already available for his campaign against terrorism.

"All wisdom does not reside at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), whose proposal to add the money to a $317.6 billion defense bill was approved by a voice vote of the committee over the opposition of Republican members.

A similar attempt by Democrats to increase homeland defense funding failed in the House last week, but under Senate rules, Republicans could be forced to vote down the entire defense bill to delete the money -- an unpleasant prospect with the nation at war. The huge underlying defense measure, approved unanimously and scheduled to go to the Senate floor Thursday, includes a provision that will enable Boeing Co. to relieve some of the slack in its production lines by building and leasing 100 of its 767-series planes to the Air Force over the next 15 years for use as long-haul military tankers.

Boeing, reeling from cutbacks in commercial aircraft orders after Sept. 11, sent its top executives to lobby Congress for the unusual deal, valued at $15 billion to $20 billion.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did not request the planes, and the White House budget office opposed the original lease-purchase proposal. To get around budget rules, Senate officials worked out a lease arrangement that will not count against the Pentagon's regular procurement budget.

Boeing will be required to repossess the planes after the leases expire, and the Air Force will have to remove the modifications. Military analysts have argued that the nation must start replacing the Air Force's aging fleet of tankers, which are playing a critical role supporting the Afghan war as well as military aircraft flying reconnaissance over 26 U.S. cities.

But competition for the lucrative contract appears to have been all but ruled out. "I'm confident [the Air Force] will lease Boeing planes, because they are the ones available right now," said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), ranking Republican on the defense appropriations subcommittee. Parochial considerations helped persuade key members of the Senate Budget Committee to support the leasing arrangement, sources said.

Forty-eight planes from the U.S. tanker force are based at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, the home state of Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D). Sen. Pete V. Domenici (N.M.), the Budget Committee's ranking Republican, also endorsed the leasing plan after appropriators agreed to include several provisions he had sought in the anti-terrorism legislation attached to the defense bill. Along with the Boeing provision, the Senate defense bill provided as much as $8.3 billion for missile defense, the full amount sought by the president and nearly $500 million more than the House bill. But the president would have latitude to spend as much as $1.3 billion of that for other counterterrorism programs.

With the nation at war, the military expenditures have generated little controversy. But homeland defense has emerged as a major partisan sticking point as Congress enters the final weeks of its session.

In addition to the $7.5 billion for protecting borders, ports and federal facilities, securing the mail, and developing more vaccines against bioterrorist attacks, Byrd also pushed through an amendment containing an identical increase to aid the post-attack recovery effort in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Included in Byrd's $7.5 billion homeland defense amendment is $4 billion in emergency money to combat bioterrorism, more than double the amount requested by the Bush administration.

Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) pushed for the increase. Much of the money would be spent purchasing smallpox vaccine and antibiotics for the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile and upgrading hospitals and laboratories across the United States.

The $15 billion in additional money for homeland defense and New York City is on top of the $20 billion in anti-terrorism funding that represents the final installment from a $40 billion emergency reserve set up by Congress in September.

-------- drug war

Thousands Displaced by Drug War

December 5, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-UN-Refugees.html

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Thousands of people have been uprooted by a U.S.-backed aerial offensive to wipe out drug crops, but fears of a massive refugee crisis have not materialized, a top U.N. refugee official said Wednesday.

``The fumigation has not displaced the numbers of people expected,'' Leila Lima, of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told a gathering of reporters in Bogota.

Lima said the number of displaced people could increase, however, if Washington's drug war intensifies as planned next year.

When the aerial spraying campaign began a year ago in southern Putumayo province, Colombia's cocaine heartland bordering Ecuador, officials here and in Washington said they were bracing for an exodus of tens of thousands of people.

Peasant coca farmers and migrant farmhands who pick the plant used to make cocaine were expected to flee in large numbers across the border or to other Colombian regions as their livelihoods were destroyed.

According to Lima, estimates show as many as 15,000 people fled the remote state since late last year. But, she said, about 12,000 of them left only briefly, and not because of fumigation, but in flight from a prolonged guerrilla blockade.

The blockade was launched by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, purportedly to protest the aerial offensive, part of a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package. The rebel group and a rival right-wing paramilitary militia active in Putumayo finance themselves through taxes and a protection racket on the cocaine trade.

Washington is providing troop training, intelligence, helicopters and fumigation aircraft to help Colombia destroy coca plantations and clandestine jungle drug laboratories in the area. The so-called ``push in to southern Colombia'' is expected to intensify this year with the arrival of more aircraft from the United States.

-------- france

Frenchman Unhappy With Country's War Role

By Nora Boustany
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58554-2001Dec4?language=printer

Pierre Lellouche, a French legislator who was in Washington this week as part of a NATO parliamentary delegation, is not too happy with the low profile France has had in the war in Afghanistan.

"In a way I would have preferred France to take a much more visible stand very early on, rather than be held back with this very slow buildup, which gives the impression of irresoluteness," he said while puffing on a cigarette in the lounge of the Monarch Hotel yesterday.

Lellouche is an adviser to French President Jacques Chirac on diplomacy and defense and a member of the opposition Rally for the Republic.

Because they are running the show and have the most advanced battlefield technology, the Americans have been extremely reluctant to get anyone else's input, even Britain's, he said. He spoke of a "dramatic capability gap" between Europe and the United States and of tactics that have been "so effective in Afghanistan" -- feeding intelligence data from satellites to Special Forces on the ground, for example.

"I suspect the French and the British will have trouble being interoperable [with the Americans] at this stage. If we are going to be involved, we would like to have some input in the selection of targets.

"The Americans want to get Osama bin Laden and get out and leave us to put Afghanistan together again," Lellouche said.

Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin were not ready to plunge into the war in a big way for different domestic reasons, despite their expressed solidarity to the war effort, he said. Lellouche said 200 French soldiers are standing by to secure the airport at Mazar-e Sharif and to guard roads if necessary to channel in and distribute humanitarian aid. They will be joined by U.S. and Jordanian soldiers.

Jean-Michel Boucheron, another French legislator with the NATO delegation, had a different take. One must remember, he said, that it was the United States that was attacked on Sept. 11.

"The press in France is always in a hurry for a major story," he said, referring to reports critical of the war's prosecution. "I find the United States has managed this whole thing very well from the very beginning. What bin Laden was betting on was that the United States would react brutally and indiscriminately. He has failed; the United States acted with great finesse and great intelligence.".

-------- israel

Israelis Fire Missiles Near Arafat's West Bank Offices

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58081-2001Dec4?language=printer

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Dec. 4 -- Two Israeli attack helicopters hovered motionless in the sky for a few moments and then, when the clock struck 11 a.m. today, they turned and headed for a building here that sheltered Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader.

The helicopters rapidly fired three missiles. Two of the rockets blasted a nondescript stone annex belonging to the Palestinian Interior Ministry complex next door to Arafat's offices. The third hit a police station down the hill.

Arafat's building was spared and he was unhurt. But the attack was an unmistakable signal to the Palestinian leader.

"This was not an accident," said Israeli army spokesman Ron Kitri. "We know where he works and we know what he does." Nonetheless, today's attack was not aimed at him, Kitri said.

But in an interview broadcast on ABC News tonight, Arafat took a different view. He said that Sharon "wants to destroy the authority of the Palestinians and to kill the leaders of the Palestinians."

Today was the second day of Israel's offensive against Arafat's forces in retaliation for horrific suicide bombings by Palestinians last weekend at a pedestrian mall in Jerusalem and on a bus in Haifa.

In Gaza, an Israeli helicopter missile raid on Arafat's Force 17 elite security unit killed a 15-year-old schoolboy and a policeman, both Palestinians. Shrapnel wounded scores of Palestinian children who attended a school nearby. Israeli jets and helicopters rocketed police, intelligence and other security agency buildings in Tulkarm, Salfit and Jenin in the West Bank, and Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. Tanks and armored cars reoccupied parts of Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin, cities nominally under Palestinian control. Israeli army guards barred Palestinians from traveling among West Bank cities.

On Monday, Israeli helicopter gunships demolished Arafat's presidential helicopters in the Gaza Strip and, around midnight, military bulldozers plowed up Gaza airport.

The killing of the teenager in Gaza did not elicit the customary official regrets from Israel. "I must remind you that the kids in Jerusalem were very scared when the suicide bomber exploded among them," said Kitri. He insisted the army targets carefully.

Israeli officials said the military attacks were designed to pressure Arafat to crack down on Islamic militant groups that carried out the recent bombings in Israel and many others in the preceding months.

Palestinians criticized the Israeli attacks on their security forces. During the 14-month-old conflict, Israeli forces have targeted security personnel who, Israel insists, have a duty to chase terrorists, keep gunmen from shooting Israelis and generally work out now-discarded cease-fire arrangements. Palestinians ask: How can their security forces make arrests of militants while Israel shoots at them?

Today, it was easy to see this paradox in play. When Palestinian guards spotted the hovering helicopters, they called for the evacuation of the Interior Ministry. The few workers inside scattered to fields and behind nearby walled residences. Inside Arafat's offices, workers headed for underground shelters. Arafat descended to an underground bunker.

After the attack, ambulances arrived to pick up three lightly wounded guards. In Ramallah and throughout Palestinian areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, police, intelligence and other offices were vacant out of fear of more attacks. Agents camped out in fields or in empty houses and garages. Officials vacated even these havens when helicopters or tanks appeared on the horizon.

"It's a simple question. How can Israel and the United States ask us to take measures while they bomb Palestinian institutions and police?" asked Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top Arafat aide.

The Palestinian complaint, however, ignores Arafat's reluctance, whether Israel is attacking his police or not, to round up suspected terrorists. Today, Jibril Rajoub, Arafat's chief security officer in the West Bank, said Arafat could not fully crack down unless Israel pulled troops back from Palestinian areas, permitted traffic to flow freely among Palestinian cities and hamlets, and ended liquidations of Palestinian armed militants.

In answer to a radio reporter's question about how attacking the police helped the Palestinians fight terrorism, Danny Ayalon, senior foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, replied, "We have given the Palestinians and Arafat all the chances in the world to do what they should."

The destruction of Arafat's helicopters and airport runway appears to be part of a campaign by Israel to show that Arafat can protect neither the prerogatives of his office nor prized Palestinian resources. The Israeli army has taken pains recently to point out how near its tanks approach Arafat "offices" in various West Bank towns.

The attacks today quickly turned Arafat into a sympathetic figure among Palestinians who are usually at odds with him. Persistent critics extolled him as the irreplaceable repository of Palestinian national hopes.

For instance, Marwan Barghouti, West Bank leader of Fatah, the main Palestine Liberation Organization faction, arrived at the Interior Ministry to inspect the damage, and lavished praise on Arafat. Barghouti has opposed Arafat's attempts to reach a cease-fire with Israel as well as the initial roundups of Islamic militants that followed last weekend's attacks in Israel. "All Palestinians support Arafat," Barghouti said today. "All the factions, Islamic or not, will back Arafat."

More startling was praise issued by Hassan Yusuf, a leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas. Because Hamas claimed responsibility for the terrorist acts in Jerusalem and Haifa, its members have been targeted for arrest by Arafat and for death by Israel. Hamas members despise Arafat. Yet Yusuf said, "We will give our lives for Arafat. We have strong support in the street. We can mobilize it on behalf of Arafat."

Early Wednesday, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Jerusalem hotel, slightly injuring three people, the Reuters news agency reported.

While Palestinians rallied behind Arafat, he drew criticism from U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. "I think Arafat can do more," Powell said in Romania, where he was attending a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

"I think we have not seen 100 percent effort," Powell added. "I don't know if we can expect 100 percent results. I think we should expect to see a lot more results than we have seen thus far."

Powell met with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. The two agreed that Arafat should take stiff measures against extremist groups and jail militants who plan and execute attacks on Israel, a senior State Department official said.

But Powell also publicly cautioned Sharon against sharp escalation of the conflict. "We have to get back to a process that will lead to a cease-fire and to negotiations," he said. "So as one takes action and counteraction, always keep in mind that sooner or later, you have to find a way to move forward."

Peres apparently had not heard about the casualties in Gaza and said, "Israel hit material. It didn't hit people."

In Israel, the Bush administration's special envoy, Anthony C. Zinni, continued to try to work out a cease-fire between the Israelis and Palestinians.

In the ABC News interview, however, Arafat said he had been unable to reach Zinni, who was not returning his phone calls. "I am asking President Bush to give the order to General Zinni," Arafat said. "He's here, General Zinni. We're trying, but no response."

The administration has put its emphasis on getting Arafat to crack down on extremists. Israel has scoffed at reports of 100 arrests by the Palestinians. They say the detainees are insignificant activists.

Arafat, meanwhile, grew concerned today that Israel might execute the militants in his custody, an aide said. So he moved them from jails to secret locations, in case the Israeli army decides to bombard the detention facilities. The Palestinians made no arrests today, officials in Ramallah said.

Staff writer Alan Sipress in Bucharest, Romania, contributed to this report.

----

Missile blasts leave Arafat the master of nothing

By Phil Reeves in Ramallah
05 December 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=108382

He has sought for so long to rule the hills and deserts of the West Bank, from the Old City of Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley, from the wheat fields of Jenin to the northern tip of the Dead Sea. But Yasser Arafat was master of nothing.

He only had to walk a few hundred yards out of his West Bank headquarters to find himself staring down the barrel of an Israeli Merkava tank.

Concealed behind freshly dug barricades, the Israeli army was occupying the heart of Ramallah as the ex-general who now runs Israel, Ariel Sharon, tightened the squeeze on the Palestinian leader, and his crumbling Palestinian Authority. He was imprisoned, trapped in a few square miles.

The soldiers in the tank were enjoying themselves in the malicious manner that occupying armies often display. When we walked up, in the hope of talking to residents imprisoned in their homes by an Israeli curfew, they pointed the tank barrel directly at us, following our path for sport as if we were ducks in a fairground shooting range.

But Mr Arafat did not need to go even that short distance - a mere 400 yards down Irsal Street - to witness the meaning of Israel's new military offensive, launched by Mr Sharon in the guise of "war on terror" but which has more to do with a territorial conflict that has simmered away in this landscape , on and off, for more than three decades. It came to him.

Yesterday was grey, and unusually chilly. Ramallah - its entrance to neighbouring east Jerusalem now entirely sealed off by concrete barriers - was fretful and tense, knowing that it would soon be the subject of an Israeli retaliatory strike after the weekend atrocities committed by Hamas suicide bombers, who killed 25 Israelis, some of them teenagers.

The Gaza Strip and Jenin had been hit the night before. As the West Bank headquarters of the Palestinian Authority - now defined by the Israeli government as an "entity which supports terrorism" - Ramallah was bound to be next. Every few minutes, the town could hear the unnerving sound of Israeli F-16 jets, concealed above the low grey clouds.

At 11am, two Apache helicopters emerged through the cloud cover, and sent several missiles arcing into a police post next to Mr Arafat's compound.

He was sitting in his office, only 50 yards away, and must have felt the explosion. "He didn't react," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian Information Minister who was among a group of officials with the Palestinian leader when the rockets struck.

The minister loyally added, with no small touch of bravado: "The president spent months under Israeli bombardment in Beirut. He is used to this." He neglected to mention that Mr Arafat was eventually driven out of Beirut.

The smoke was still wafting out of the gaping hole in the police post when we arrived, five minutes after the strike.

Soldiers from the presidential guard, Force 17 - also now defined as a "terrorist organisation" by Mr Sharon's government - were crowding around the wreckage, some eager to show off the detritus, others hostile and officious, bellowing at us to get out of the area. Amazingly, there were only a couple of injuries.

Not so in the Gaza Strip, where two Palestinians - one a security officer, the other a 15-year-old boy - were killed when F-16 jets fired missiles into an office of the Palestinian Preventive Security.

It was one of eight security installations - in Gaza, Tulkarm, Salfit and Ramallah - that had been hit by dusk in the fiercest Israeli air strikes since the start of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000.

Israeli officials insisted that Mr Arafat had not been the target of the attack close to his headquarters, pointing out - accurately enough - that they could have hit his office if had chosen to do so. It was meant as "a message".

"We have stated publicly that we do not intend to harm him personally," said one of Mr Sharon's advisers, Danny Ayalon. "But since he is responsible for the wave of terrorism which has been going on, we had to hit something close to him personally."

The same message had on Monday been delivered close to his beachside presidential headquarters in Gaza, where the Israeli air force destroyed or damaged his fleet of three Russian-made helicopters and - in the south of the strip - the army dug up the runway to the airport, used by Mr Arafat when he sets off on his frequent foreign trips. In reality, he has never been able to travel out of the occupied territories without Israel's permission, and he will have no problem commandeering more choppers. He usually flies into Ramallah in one of King Abdullah of Jordan's helicopters.

The real question is exactly what the "message" means. Is Mr Sharon merely applying the thumbscrews on Mr Arafat to get him to do the same on the Palestinians' militant paramilitary groups - an approach based on the doubtful assumption that jailing the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad will end attacks inside Israel? Certainly, this is Israel's publicly stated intention. Brigadier General Ron Kitrey, the Israeli army spokesman, said: "The purpose was to send a clear military message: 'Friends, we've had enough; take the responsibility that you have and stop the terrorism."

Or does Mr Sharon have a longer-term plan which involves dismantling the Oslo accords - which he has always opposed - consolidating control of the prime parts of the occupied territories, and creating the conditions which will eventually lead to the fall of Mr Arafat, ushering a non-celebrity and more compliant figure into his place?

The Palestinians had their own interpretation of the message yesterday. Mr Arafat, in a television interview shortly after the rocket strike, said: "The Israelis don't want me to succeed and for this he [Sharon] is escalating his military activities against our people, against our towns, against our cities, against our establishments.

"He doesn't want a peace process to start."

----

POLICY SHIFT
U.S. Questions If Arafat Can Lead the Palestinians

New York Times
December 5, 2001
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/05/international/middleeast/05POLI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 - In the wake of deadly suicide bombings and shootings by Palestinians last weekend, the Bush administration is questioning whether Yasir Arafat is capable of leading the Palestinian people and has dropped its public calls for Israel to use restraint in the Middle East crisis.

It is unclear whether the policy shift is a tactical move to force Mr. Arafat to dismantle the terror organizations responsible for the attacks or a strategic change in the administration's approach.

Administration officials denied that the United States has given Prime Minister Ariel Sharon any go- ahead to eliminate Mr. Arafat as the legitimate political leader of the Palestinians. Rather, they said the administration still recognizes Mr. Arafat's leadership and was not considering suspending relations with him and his Palestinian Authority.

Officials said they did not believe that Israel intended to take aim at Mr. Arafat today when it launched airstrikes against Palestinian Authority offices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, firing one missile near the office where he was working.

But in recent days, a number of administration officials have sent the message, both privately to Mr. Arafat and in public, that his days as the recognized leader of the Palestinian people may be numbered if he does not act swiftly and decisively in rooting out terrorists.

"We're not going after Arafat and we haven't taken decisions or positions about Arafat as a leader," said one senior administration official. "Rather, we're saying that Arafat is well on course to bring himself down if he keeps going this way." But the official underscored the dangers posed by a weak Palestinian leadership, adding, "The last thing we need to see is the collapse of the whole Palestinian Authority."

To underscore Mr. Arafat's vulnerability, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has defined the Palestinian terrorist attacks last weekend as attacks on Mr. Arafat himself. "This assault was not only an assault against innocent Israeli civilians, it was an assault against his authority," he said today at a news conference in Bucharest, Romania.

Secretary Powell described Israel's two days of military strikes in Palestinian territory as justified. "Israel, at this moment, is recovering from a terrible blow inflicted on her last Saturday night by acts of terror," he said. "Prime Minister Sharon, as the elected prime minister, freely elected prime minister of a democratic nation, is responding in a way that he believes is appropriate to defend his people and to defend his country."

Asked today whether Israel's target was Mr. Arafat himself, an aide to Secretary Powell said, "Israel says they are not targeting Arafat and we believe them."

At a town hall meeting in Orlando, Fla., today, Mr. Bush also gave unconditional support for Israel, saying, "I have a dream - I can't think of anything better than to have a dream of peace for Israel." By contrast, he did not repeat his call for the creation of a Palestinian state and told Mr. Arafat to "respond forcefully to rout out those who killed."

In an interview with Barbara Walters to be broadcast on Wednesday, Mr. Bush excused Israel for not returning to the bargaining table, saying, "There is no way that Israel can negotiate a peace process so long as its country is being terrorized."

The administration's acceptance of Israel's retaliatory strikes, at least in public statements, contrasts with its unusually harsh response to Israeli military retaliation against terror in Palestinian-controlled areas in October. The State Department then called on Mr. Arafat to do much more but also criticized the Israeli incursions.

This time, senior officials said, the scale of the horror of the Palestinian attacks against innocent civilians, particularly during a peacemaking mission by retired Gen. Anthony C.Zinni, the new Middle East envoy, put the entire burden on Mr. Arafat.

Administration officials also acknowledged that the all-out American campaign to eradicate terror following the Sept. 11 attacks makes it challenging for the United States to urge Israel to use restraint, especially after the Israeli cabinet's resolution today branding Mr. Arafat's government a "terror-supporting entity." The language was similar to the administration's characterization of Afghanistan's Taliban rulers.

The American stance once again exposed the divide that has long existed between the United States and its European allies, who today not only condemned the Palestinian terror attacks and reiterated demands that Mr. Arafat take action but also urged Israel to use restraint.

Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, called on Mr. Arafat today to do much more to stop terrorist acts, but chided the Israelis for calling him a terrorist. "I think he may do more to fight terrorism but I don't think Arafat is a terrorist," Mr. Solana said.

The European Union said in a statement today that Mr. Arafat must "convincingly and relentlessly" pursue a crackdown against Islamic militants but warned Israel that airstrikes only destabilize the Palestinian leadership.

In Arab countries, a primary concern seemed to be that Mr. Sharon has decided to eliminate Mr. Arafat, at least politically.

Foreign Minister Abdul-Ilah Khatib of Jordan said his country was trying to persuade the United States and European countries to act "to end the aggression of the Israeli occupation forces and to contain the explosive situation."

In Cairo, Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, said the Palestinians could not "be blamed for acts of resistance against occupation in case of an attack on Mr. Arafat."

And in Beirut, Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud said the Israeli strikes were "a dangerous attack on the rights of the Palestinian people and international legitimacy."

-------- nato

NATO Girding for All - Out War on Terrorism

By REUTERS
December 5, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-nato.html

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO, stung into action by the September 11 attacks on the United States, will declare war on terrorism this week and consider how best to gird itself for a new kind of battle.

``It's not just rhetoric,'' a senior NATO official said ahead of a two-day meeting of foreign ministers that will end on Friday with a special standalone statement on terrorism.

``We're going to adjust to prepare for new types of threat. Ministers are committing NATO to walk down that road.''

The 19-nation alliance evoked a mutual defense clause in its founding treaty the day after the hijacked aircraft attacks on New York and Washington.

But apart from sending early warning planes to patrol U.S. skies and putting on a show of naval power in the eastern Mediterranean, it has not played a visible role in the U.S.-dominated theater of war against terrorism in Afghanistan.

Officials insist that NATO has not been sidelined. They point to offers by several allies to send troops and refueling and overflight facilities provided for U.S. warplanes.

They also deny that NATO's exclusion from the frontline means it has lost its purpose as a military machine.

``This is no time to transform NATO from a serious collective defense organization into a talking shop,'' one said. ''We didn't fight the Gulf War at 16 (NATO's membership at that time), and NATO survived to become the most important defense organization in the 1990s.''

COLD WAR TO TERROR WAR

However, officials acknowledge that a machine geared during the Cold War for fighting major land battles in Europe needs an overhaul if it is to take on the nebulous target of terrorism.

``We will be thinking about the new threats we face,'' one official said. ``The kind of NATO you see will not be the same NATO you saw on September 10, it will change.''

The new battle will mean intelligence-sharing, closer border security and law enforcement cooperation and coordination with non-NATO countries like Russia, whose relations with the West have warmed considerably since September 11.

It will also require joint efforts to defend both civilians and the military, notably against weapons of mass destruction.

Finally, it will require spending -- on better surveillance, suppression of enemy air defense and mid-air refueling capabilities and heavy transport to move forces quickly.

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said in a speech this week that the attacks on the United States had shattered the illusion that ``somehow we can have security on the cheap.''

``You cannot scrimp on dollars and pay on human lives. We face a great challenge today to ensure security in a changing world,'' he said.

It will be difficult for European NATO states to respond to such calls. With economic slowdown denting tax receipts, defense ministers will be hard pressed to find more funds.

----

NATO Plans New Anti-Terror Statement

By Jeffrey Ulbrich
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; 2:08 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62122-2001Dec5?language=printer

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and his NATO allies will make a tough new statement on international terrorism at their winter meeting Thursday and offer greater cooperation to Russia, NATO officials and diplomats said.

Though it has no direct role in the conflict in Afghanistan, NATO invoked Article 5 of its founding treaty declaring that an attack on one member is an attack on all. As an alliance, NATO is providing such support as blanket overflight clearances, access to ports and airfields, and increased intelligence sharing for the U.S.-led coalition forces.

Nearly all member nations are providing additional military help on a bilateral basis, and countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands have offered troops, ships and aircraft.

The Americans obtained strong backing for tougher civilian police and financial controls from foreign ministers of the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe at their meeting Tuesday in Romania. Washington believes another declaration from NATO will be useful.

The United States is not seeking anything new from the alliance beyond a renewed common commitment and a declaration that the fight against terrorism is now clearly one of NATO's priorities, according to the alliance officials and diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

As a 19-nation collective defense organization, NATO is ill-prepared for the anti-terrorism struggle sparked by the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Even though terrorism and the development of weapons of mass destruction are among what NATO identified as the threats of the future in its latest strategic concept, top military officials acknowledge they have no real strategy for defending against it.

What the allies hope to do during two days of talks in Brussels is to identify the capabilities the alliance has for fighting terrorism and begin the long process of adjusting to changing times and new threats.

Alliance officials say individual nations or civilian organizations like the European Union often are better armed for the fight against terrorism through civilian police and financial institutions. But there clearly are areas in which NATO needs to do more thinking, such as civil protection and combatting chemical, biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the officials say.

On Friday, the allies will hold talks with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on bringing Moscow at least part of the way into the NATO fold.

The United States says it appreciates Russia's cooperation in the war in Afghanistan and has taken President Vladimir Putin's overtures for closer relations at face value. The allies believe they must seize this opportunity to take a new direction in Europe, making Russia a full partner in forging European security, alliance officials and diplomats said.

The NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council was created in 1997 in the wake of the alliance's enlargement plans as a forum for consultation with Moscow. But all agree that format has not been satisfactory and had a tendency to pit the 19 allies against Russia.

The foreign ministers are expected to instruct the permanent North Atlantic Council, NATO's ruling body, to begin working out a new forum where the Russians will be brought in at the beginning of discussions on specific issues. This will allow them to participate fully in planning and decision-making.

Because the alliance works on a consensus basis, some fear this will give Russia an effective veto. But officials insist the council will continue to function as it always has, and say that if agreement cannot be reached with the Russians, NATO will meet on its own and reach a decision.

The allies also will discuss the situation in the Balkans, where NATO is leading three military operations - in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia- and relations with the European Union.

-------- spies

Rosenberg's Brother Admits Perjury

By Richard Pyle
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; 4:10 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59472-2001Dec5?language=printer

NEW YORK -- Nearly 50 years after convicted Soviet spy Ethel Rosenberg was executed, her brother has admitted that he lied under oath to save himself and says he is unconcerned that his perjury may have sent his sister and her husband to the electric chair.

"As a spy who turned his family in ... I don't care," David Greenglass says in a television interview to be broadcast Wednesday. "I sleep very well."

The admission may shed new light on the Rosenberg case, one of the most infamous events of the Cold War. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in Sing Sing prison in June 1953, two years after a sensational trial on charges of conspiring to steal U.S. atomic secrets for the Soviet Union.

They were the only people ever executed in the United States for Cold War espionage, and their conviction helped give fuel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy's communist-hunting crusade.

Greenglass, now 79, makes the disclosure of false testimony in "The Brother," a new book by veteran New York Times editor Sam Roberts, and in a taped interview to be broadcast Wednesday on the CBS program "60 Minutes II."

Greenglass, Ethel's younger brother, admits in the book that he, too, was a spy who gave the Soviets information about atomic research and a detonator invented by another scientist.

When the Rosenbergs came to trial, Greenglass was also under indictment and worried that he and his wife, Ruth, would be convicted. He says Roy Cohn, an assistant prosecutor and later aide to McCarthy, encouraged him to lie.

In court, Greenglass delivered what would be the most incriminating testimony against Ethel Rosenberg - that she transcribed his spy notes destined for Moscow on a portable Remington typewriter. His wife corroborated his testimony.

But now, Greenglass tells author Roberts that he based his account entirely on his wife's recollection, not on his own. In the TV interview, he says, "I don't know who typed it, frankly, and to this day I can't remember that the typing took place. I had no memory of that at all - none whatsoever."

Roberts writes in his book, "Handwritten or typed, the notes contained little or nothing that was new. But from the prosecution's perspective, the Remington was as good as a smoking gun in Ethel Rosenberg's hands."

In the TV interview, Greenglass is asked why the Rosenbergs went to their deaths rather than admit espionage.

"One word - stupidity," Greenglass replies. Asked whether that makes Ethel responsible for her own death, he says, "Yeah."

Greenglass admits he is sometimes haunted by the Rosenberg case, but adds, "My wife says, 'Look, we're still alive.'"

Should he ever encounter the pair's two sons, Greenglass says, he would tell them he was "sorry that your parents are dead," but would not apologize for his part in their execution.

"I had no idea they would give them the death sentence," he tells "60 Minutes II."

In the book, subtitled "The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister Ethel Rosenberg to the Electric Chair," Greenglass admits to further perjury in court and before a congressional committee - all aimed at gaining leniency for himself and keeping his wife out of prison.

Sentenced to 15 years, Greenglass was released in 1960. He lives in the New York area under an assumed name.

The Rosenberg case became a political cause celebre with anti-Semitic overtones. While some historians say evidence against Ethel Rosenberg was weak compared with that against her husband, the pair's refusal to admit spying for Moscow added to public fears of a nuclear showdown with the Soviets.

"This was a time when people were terrified," Roberts said in an interview with The Associated Press. "There was no way the Russians could have obtained the atomic bomb without stealing it from us."

Roberts said the late William Rogers, a deputy U.S. attorney general in 1951 and later President Nixon's secretary of state, told him the government had expected Ethel Rosenberg to save herself by providing incriminating evidence against Julius.

But in the end, "she called our bluff," Rogers said.

Some tidbits of Cold War espionage lore related by Roberts are almost comic. According to Roberts, Greenglass admitted sleeping through the first A-bomb test, using atomic implosion technology to make artificial diamonds, and being picked up while hitchhiking by Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, head of the top-secret Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.

-------- us

Errant B-52 Bomb Kills 2 U.S. Forces

By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 05, 10:55 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7G73U680

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two American soldiers were killed and 20 wounded in Afghanistan on Wednesday when a B-52 bomber missed its target. The friendly-fire accident produced the worst U.S. casualty toll of the war.

An unknown number of opposition fighters also died in the incident north of the last Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan. That is where opposition forces are trying to overthrow the besieged former rulers of the country.

The munition was a 2,000-pound satellite-guided bomb called JDAM, or Joint Direct Attack Munition - and was meant to hit Taliban troops, Lapan said.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said President Bush ``regrets the loss of life and wishes the injured a full and speedy recovery.''

``Our thoughts and prayers are going out to them and to their families,'' Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told a Pentagon briefing. ``And it just underscores what we don't say often enough around here - that every single day there are men and women willing to put their necks on the line and put themselves in grave danger, and we appreciate what they do.''

The troops were hit at about 12:30 a.m. EST Wednesday (10 a.m. local time) when a B-52 flying a bombing raid dropped a bomb ``in close proximity to friendly forces,'' said a Pentagon statement.

Two main groups of anti-Taliban forces are pressing toward Kandahar as recently deployed Marines operate within striking distance to the south of the city.

The opposition forces included those of Hamid Karzai, who has just been named head of the provisional government in Afghanistan. It was unclear whether Karzai was among those hit, Clarke said.

Some casualties were evacuated to a Marine base in southern Afghanistan for transfer to another, undisclosed, medical facility and others went directly to the facility, said Capt. Stewart Upton, a public affairs officer at the base. About 20 Afghan troops were treated at the Marines' base, he said.

The deaths bring to three the number of Americans killed inside Afghanistan in the two-month war. CIA paramilitary Johnny ``Mike'' Spann was killed Nov. 25 in a prisoner uprising while questioning forces captured in the fighting.

Five U.S. soldiers were seriously wounded when another JDAM bomb went astray while warplanes were helping put down the uprising in which Spann was killed.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has pointed out in recent days that the United States has entered a more dangerous phase in the war to root out the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network.

``It is a very complicated, untidy circumstance, and it makes it a dangerous and difficult task,'' Rumsfeld said Tuesday of fighting around the country.

The base where the casualties were taken is temporary home for some 1,300 U.S. Marines, along with British and Australians, and was set up about 70 miles southwest of Kandahar to put more pressure on Taliban holding out in the city. Rumsfeld said the Marines probably would not be involved in attacking the city, but are blocking Taliban forces from leaving or entering Kandahar.

Some of the American casualties included special operations soldiers from Fort Campbell, Ky., home of the 5th Special Forces Group, said a spokesman at Fort Bragg, N.C., headquarters for all Army special forces.

The names of the killed and wounded were being withheld pending notification of their families.

The Pentagon said an investigation was under way. Clarke said she didn't know whether the troops hit had called in the strike. It also was unclear whether those on the ground had called in incorrect coordinates; the coordinates were entered incorrectly into the bomb delivery system by the bomber; or whether the weapon malfunctioned, Lapan said.

American troops have been on the ground in Afghanistan for weeks to help forces fighting the Taliban militia, giving them weapons, food and other supplies. They also have been helping call in airstrikes, pinpointing targets for U.S. warplanes.

American planes have been bombing Kandahar to help anti-Taliban attackers, while Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has instructed his followers not to surrender.

The United States is focusing its bombing on Kandahar and the mountainous area near the Khyber Pass south of Jalalabad, where it is believed bin Laden and his top lieutenants are hiding in a complex of caves and tunnels.

In addition to Spann, four Americans, all military personnel, have been killed in connection with the fighting in Afghanistan. All died in accidents outside the country, two in a helicopter crash in Pakistan.

The Pentagon said a U.S. soldier was wounded in the fighting near Kandahar Tuesday. The special forces soldier was shot under the collarbone, but his injuries were not life-threatening, defense officials said. The soldier was working with one of the anti-Taliban groups surrounding Kandahar, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The wounded soldier was evacuated from Afghanistan and was in stable condition at a military hospital, a U.S. Central Command statement said.

--------

Marines Advance Toward Kandahar to Prepare Siege

New York Times
December 5, 2001
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/05/international/asia/05MILI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 - United States marines advanced today from their Afghan desert base to prepare the siege of Kandahar, scouting enemy movements from helicopters and armored vehicles, and setting up checkpoints to seal the roads and prevent the Taliban from reinforcing - or from escaping - their largest stronghold, Pentagon officials said.

Special Operations forces from Britain and Australia joined the marines as they began their new mission overnight to seek direct confrontation with Taliban forces, Pentagon officials said in announcing a steady increase of the American role in the ground war. One American commando was shot in the shoulder today in fighting north of Kandahar. His injury was not life-threatening, and he was evacuated for medical care.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that, as of today, there were no plans for the marines to join the rapidly approaching final assault on Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual capital. For now, the job of conquering the city will be left to southern Pashtun tribal fighters who have been gradually encircling it.

In a Pentagon briefing today Gen. Richard B. Myers of the Air Force, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he was aware of reports that Ayman al-Zawahiri, a top deputy to Osama bin Laden, had been wounded in an airstrike but that he could not confirm the reports. There were other unconfirmed reports of Al Qaeda figures being killed.

In the air campaign today, American warplanes focused their attacks on cave and tunnel complexes in eastern Afghanistan, from Kabul to the Khyber Pass, in the continuing effort to dig out or kill Al Qaeda leadership believed to be in hiding there - among them, perhaps, Mr. bin Laden.

Pentagon officials said today that a new weapon has entered the hunt for Mr. bin Laden, a precision missile called the AGM-142 "HAVE NAP." In recent days, B-52 bombers have launched at those caves a handful of the 3,000-pound missiles, which have a special tip that penetrates rocks. The weapon is jointly produced with Israel.

In that region, the Afghan opposition, called the Eastern Shura, said today that its fighters moved toward the well-defended cave complex of Tora Bora, where one of its leaders said Mr. bin Laden had been observed four or five days ago, a claim that Pentagon and intelligence officials said they could not confirm.

"We think he's in Afghanistan," Mr. Rumsfeld said today. "He may not be. No one knows."

Pentagon officials said they had reports of opposition movement there, but also could not confirm the number of 1,000 troops claimed by Eastern Shura commanders.

Mr. Rumsfeld again warned that the war was entering a complicated and dangerous phase, particularly as American and coalition forces, joined by opposition fighters, attempt to encircle and pacify significant pockets of resistance.

A senior Defense Department official shared detailed intelligence assessments for the first time today on Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters who have not laid down their arms. In addition to Kandahar, where the estimates range widely from 4,000 to 6,000 and up to 17,000 fighters, and the cave network outside Jalalabad where an unknown number of Al Qaeda are hiding, there are four other large concentrations.

One is to the west of Mazar-i-Sharif, where an estimated 2,000 to 2,500 fighters remain at Balkh. Another is south of Kunduz in the direction of Kabul, where 800 to 1,000 fighters have massed. Another area almost due east of Kabul has 800 to 1,000 fighters. And the final is southeast of Herat, near the Iranian border, where 300 to 500 fighters remain.

"They are still armed, at least with small arms, but have no armor or artillery," the senior Defense Department official said. "We are watching them closely. We don't know whether they will fade away, or turn and fight."

Mr. Rumsfeld said the size of the resistance meant that "there are risks that will exist for Americans on the ground in Afghanistan, probably to a greater extent going forward than was the case in the past."

General Myers also announced the beginning of the Marine deployment toward roads circling Kandahar. "The marines and coalition forces operating from the forward operating base have begun interdicting lines of communication south of Kandahar," he said. Officials would not disclose the number of marines.

Senior Pentagon and military officials expanded on General Myers's terse statement. Surveillance and reconnaissance teams will use the latest in sensing devices to track any movements of Taliban forces in and out of the city, including the movement of weapons and other matériel. If needed, helicopter gunships, light armored vehicles and Marine combat troops will attack enemy forces with greater power, speed and agility than now possessed by the Pashtun fighters in the area.

"They are trying to isolate Kandahar," one senior official said. "They are trying to stop bad guys from getting out and make the trip from Kandahar to paradise a short one. And they will stop any reinforcements - equipment, supplies, manpower."

But Mr. Rumsfeld stressed that any final assault on Kandahar would be mounted by Afghan fighters themselves. "At least two reasonably sized forces of Afghan opposition forces are in reasonably close proximity," he said.

He noted that the United States military had the most integrated coordination with opposition forces that swept across northern Afghanistan, but less so with the southern tribal fighters. He said the military had, thus far, the least-significant coordination with opposition fighters in the east, around Jalalabad and the cave complexes.

"We have been actively encouraging Afghan elements to seek out and find the Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership that we hope to capture and stop from executing terrorist acts around the world," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "There is no question but that at various parts of the country people have responded to that interest." He said the $25 million in reward money had contributed to enlisting support.

--------

3 U.S. Servicemen Killed by 'Friendly Fire' Near Kandahar

New York Times
December 5, 2001
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/05/international/_05CND-MILI.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - Three American soldiers and five Afghan fighters were killed today when a one-ton bomb dropped from a B-52 went off course and landed near their positions, the Pentagon said.

The accident occurred north of Kandahar, the last Taliban-held stronghold, where American special-operations troops are helping the anti-Taliban Afghanis in their drive to seize the city and topple the Afghanistan regime, officials said.

The friendly-fire incident produced the worst American casualty toll in the war so far and came a day after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned again that, despite the recent successes in the campaign against the Taliban, much fighting remains and the United States must be prepared to accept casualties.

The errant bomb landed about 10 a.m. local time (12:30 a.m. Eastern time), said a Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke. Two Americans were killed outright and a third died while being taken to a hospital, she said. Nineteen other Americans were wounded.

"Our thoughts and prayers are going out to them and to their families," Ms. Clarke said. Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said President Bush regretted the loss of life.

The bomb also slightly injured Hamid Karzai, the Pashtun tribal chief named to lead an interim government in Afghanistan when the Taliban is dislodged, but Ms. Clarke said his injuries did not appear to be serious.

The bomb was a 2,000-pound satellite-guided bomb known as a JDAM, for joint direct attack munition, and was meant for Taliban soldiers. Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the bomb landed about 100 meters from American troops, or just over a football field's length away.

When a questioner seemed surprised that a bomb exploding that far away could be lethal, Admiral Stufflebeem said a 2,000-pound bomb is "a devastating weapon," so deadly that the pilot of an aircraft dropping one would want his plane to be at least 4,000 feet away when it went off.

Asked whether the bomb's guidance system might have malfunctioned or whether the bomb might have been fed incorrect data from a pilot or ground controller, the admiral said it might be days before investigators determine what went wrong. He said that, given the bomb's guidance system, it should have made no difference what type of plane dropped it, and from what altitude.

Admiral Stufflebeem said United States troops had called for a B-52 strike as Afghan opposition forces were battling the Taliban. He said he did not know how far off target the bomb fell.

Last week, a Central Intelligence Agency officer, Johnny Spann, was killed in a revolt of Taliban prisoners. Several other Americans have been killed in accidents since the American-led campaign began on Oct. 7.

-------

Pentagon auditors get poor grade in examination

The Associated Press
12/05/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/dec01/2001-12-05-pentagon-audit.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The agency that investigates fraud and abuse inside the Pentagon is getting a poor grade after it was caught cheating on a review of its own performance.

The Pentagon inspector general's office was subjected to an intensive audit this fall after discovery that the watchdog office destroyed internal documents, and created new ones, to win a favorable grade in a previous check of its work.

The discovery invalidated the previous review, which had given the office a passing grade.

In the new review, also called a "peer review," federal investigators gave the Pentagon a "qualified opinion," the second-lowest rating a federal inspector general can receive.

The review found the agency didn't always follow proper auditing procedures and raised new questions about its paperwork, noting some investigative documents were prepared or changed after the fact.

"If working papers are added or changed after a report is issued, they may no longer support the issued report or clearly support the auditor's conclusions and judgments," the review said.

The review said the Pentagon agency had a subpar performance in planning audits, documenting its conclusions and, in one instance, allowing an auditor to review a program in which he directly participated.

The Defense Department's deputy inspector general, Robert Lieberman, said his agency is correcting the problems, and a new computer program will avoid many of the mistakes.

"A lot of these things are not show-stoppers in terms of the accuracy of the (audit) reports themselves," Lieberman said. "The peer review is concerned with procedures rather than results."

Lieberman would not discuss the document destruction, revealed by a whistle-blower and confirmed by an internal report.

Inspector general offices are installed inside federal agencies as internal watchdog to investigate fraud, waste and abuse and to audit financial statements, a massive task in the Pentagon, which spends some $300 billion a year.

President Bush has nominated Joseph Schmitz to be the Defense Department's new inspector general. He has not been confirmed by the Senate.

"Once President Bush's nominee for the IG job is in place, he will need to clean house from top to bottom. Heads must roll," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a frequent critic of the Pentagon audit agency.

Federal audit guidelines could have justified an adverse rating, the lowest possible, had the review identified similar deficiencies in all aspects of the Pentagon's inspector general operations. The agency was spared that grade because the problems were discovered in only two of its four audit divisions.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

U.S. investigators wield vast new powers

December 5, 2001
By Nicholas Horrock and Mark Benjamin
A UPI special report
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/05122001-031018-4211r.htm

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- In less than three months, President Bush has enacted the largest extension of national security powers in a quarter century, giving investigative agencies new authority to delve into the lives of Americans and foreign nationals alike.

Moving almost immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and capitalizing on national anxiety as the war in Afghanistan and the anthrax crisis dominated the American psyche, the administration swept aside long-standing civil liberties protections and practices in order to pursue terrorists.

The administration says these steps are necessary to defend the country against attack, but civil libertarians counter that they undermine the privacy and legal rights of ordinary Americans.

President Bush said Wednesday that the government must take aggressive steps to protect Americans from further attacks. "I want the people of the world to understand that our great nation will never forgo the values that have made us unique, that we believe in democracy and rule of law and the constitution," Bush said.

"But we're under attack. Every morning I wake up and read the threat assessments."

Nonetheless, Congress is now asking serious questions about some of these actions in a series of hearings slated to last another 10 days. At a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing Tuesday, both Republicans and Democrats had sharp questions about Bush's plan to try non-citizen terror suspects before special military tribunals. On Thursday, Attorney General John Ashcroft will come to the Senate to answer further questions about it.

Next week the spotlight will turn to a possible hearing featuring Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who is charged with writing rules for this controversial court.

In just three months, the Bush administration has:

-- Rounded up more 1,200 persons, most of them without any apparent connection to the terrorist attack; held many for weeks without charges in jails across the country; kept their names secret; and charged many with crimes not connected to terrorism. Others were held on procedural immigration violations. The government won't give even the number of unidentified suspects being held as material witnesses.

-- Gained passage in Congress of the USA Patriot Act, which extended the power of the government to wiretap persons suspected of connection to terrorism, allowed searches of homes and offices without notifying the owners for weeks or months -- so-called "sneak and peek" power -- and vastly extended the right of agents to obtain personal data including banking, medical, educational and even library records of suspects.

-- Ordered the Department of Defense to create the ground rules for possible military tribunals, special courts for trying non-citizen terrorist suspects. In those tribunals the government would choose the lawyers, the venue, the rules of evidence and the standard of proof. A two-thirds vote of those judges could sentence a defendant to death. The tribunals would allow secret evidence to be used and can be held in secret as well.

-- Authorized agents to listen in on conversations between suspects and their lawyers.

-- Clamped down on the release of information available through the Freedom of Information Act, tightening public access to many government records and policy decisions.

-- Ordered law enforcement officers to interview some 5,000 persons legally in the United States, who the administration says are from countries where terrorists are active. Most of the targeted men and women are from the Middle East.

-- Just weeks after passing the USA Patriot Act, asked Congress to skip congressional hearings and quietly expand its spy powers even further, by slipping the provisions into a must-pass funding bill headed for final passage. Among other things, that request would have given investigators vast new power to delve into the Internet. One provision would let the CIA obtain from electronic communication providers' e-mail traffic that goes from one country to another in the world and only incidentally passes through the United States. Congress is unlikely to grant most of the requests.

-- Planned to permit investigations and wiretap surveillance of religious organizations saying that some Islamic mosques and groups are aiding terrorists.

The Bush administration has moved so boldly, it has caught Congress off guard and left civil liberties groups straining to understand and evaluate this rush of regulations and orders. Where it could, the administration has avoided actions that would require Congressional approval. Except for the Patriot anti-terrorist legislation, Bush has largely ignored Congress. The administration has also declined to send witnesses to several hearings, and by doing so given critics a fast moving target.

"Congressional oversight is important in helping to maintain public confidence in our system of laws," Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy told United Press International Wednesday. "In our society, unlike in so many other nations, when a judge issues an order, it is respected and carried out, because the public has faith in our system and its laws.

"In a democracy, there are never going to be enough police to enforce an order. The division of power and the checks and balances built into our system help sustain and earn the public's confidence in the actions taken by the government."

The president has had enormous public support for many of these moves. The military tribunals, for instance -- soundly opposed by many in Congress on both sides of the political aisle and by civil liberties groups -- were approved by 68 percent of the persons questioned in a Newsweek Magazine poll last week. On the other hand, only 43 percent were willing to accept the idea that aliens could be rounded up and detained as a way to prevent further terrorism.

On Capitol Hill, Bush defenders like Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions argue that "when we wage war, the Constitution does not give foreign enemies rights to invoke against us. Rather the Constitution provides us with the means to defeat and destroy our enemies. Otherwise our liberties would be subject to a potential victory by a terrorist group who doesn't value the values we cherish in this country."

James X. Dempsey, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a liberal Washington think tank, counters that neither Congress nor the news media has "put all of this together," to recognize the breadth of the aggressive moves by the administration and the breadth of the dragnet methods now available to government investigators.

Dempsey focused on aspects of the Patriot Act and the surveillance changes to warn that the government can now delve into personal and private records of individuals even if they cannot be directly connected to a terrorist or a foreign government.

Bank records, credit card records, telephone toll calls, local call records, e-mails, library records, even the track of discount cards at grocery stores can be obtained on individuals without establishing for judges any connection to a terrorist.

"Previously to get any of this information, the government had to link it to particular suspected terrorists. They had to name the person and give specific facts and say we believe this person is an agent of a foreign power.

"That whole requirement is gone. In the past, they could go to an airline and say, give us the travel records of a specific person; now they can go and say give us the records of everyone who flew on Sept. 11."

The investigators know, he said, that most of the people they are focusing on are innocent, but they want to put the material in their computer, crunch it and find out if any connections emerge.

The Patriot Act erased the line between FBI criminal investigations and intelligence gathering, so under the rubric of intelligence gathering, the bureau can obtain information that can be used against someone in a criminal case.

The problem, he argues, is that names will remain in that computer, available to the government at any time. "You are arriving at the airport after a foreign trip and your named shows that your records were gathered in investigation of international terrorism," Dempsey said.

In effect, he said, the act erases the line set between the CIA and domestic intelligence created in the 1970s. The CIA now has the authority for the first time to get the product of an FBI criminal investigation and task the FBI to gather information in the U.S.

Armed with personal public approval polls of 90 per cent or more, Bush has aggressively defended the need for these tough new actions. Taking on attacks against military tribunals before a town meeting in Orlando, Fla., Tuesday, the president said, "I know a lot of people have some concerns about how safe we can make the country and if we're doing things within the Constitution Let me give you an example of why it may be necessary to use such a tribunal.

"What if the information necessary to bring him [a terrorist] to justice would compromise our capacity to keep America safe? In the court of law, there would be all kinds of questions that might compromise our ability to gather incredibly important intelligence to prevent the next attack from happening to America.

"It seems like to me that the President of the United States ought to have the option to protect the national security interests of the country." His explanation was met with a standing ovation.

The president and his key officials, Attorney General John Ashcroft, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and others, argue that critics should not predict the laws will be abused.

Twentieth-century history is not reassuring on that point, however. Indeed, many of the safeguards that were imposed on intelligence agencies came in the middle 1970s after sweeping hearings by the Select Committee on Intelligence headed by Idaho Sen. Frank Church.

The committee had uncovered illegal wiretapping, burglaries by government agents, crimes by informants under direction of agents as well as assassination plots and other violations by the Central Intelligence Agency.

It reported on "Cointelpro," the acronym for Counter Intelligence Program under which the FBI wiretapped Martin Luther King and the Socialist Workers Party among thousands of others, and used techniques such as character assassination, harassment and physical intimidation to attack their enemies.

In 1975, Rep. Don Edwards, a former FBI agent, wrote this assessment on the disclosures:

"Regardless of the unattractiveness or noisy militancy of some private citizens or organizations, the Constitution does not permit federal interference with activities except through the criminal justice system, armed with its ancient safeguards. There are no exceptions. No federal agency, the CIA, the IRS, or the FBI, can at the same time be policeman, prosecutor, judge and jury."

----

55 Nations Endorse Measures to Fight Terrorism

By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58322-2001Dec4?language=printer

BUCHAREST, Romania, Dec. 4 -- The U.S.-led campaign against terrorism received a boost today when foreign ministers from 55 European, North American and Central Asian countries unanimously adopted a plan that includes enhanced police cooperation and steps to choke off the international finances of militant groups.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, here for the meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told reporters that the program approved by the group would give "a new level of energy" to the counterterrorism effort. The plan calls on member countries to sign on by the end of next year to all 12 U.N. resolutions related to fighting terrorism.

In attending the annual OSCE gathering, Powell sought to demonstrate that the Bush administration remains committed to fighting terrorism as part of an international coalition. Some allies have complained recently that the United States seems interested in waging the military campaign alone.

Several governments, including those of Britain, France and Turkey, have been eager to dispatch troops to Afghanistan to serve as peacekeepers, but their deployment was put on hold in recent days by the U.S. Central Command, which oversees the war effort.

"Some of our allies were a little frustrated that they didn't get into the battle right away, but I think they understand the reasons for that and it will all sort itself out," Powell told reporters.

Powell said the United States appreciates these offers of assistance and expects that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, head of the Central Command, will take them up once foreign forces fit into his plans. Administration officials have said Franks is concerned for now that an international security presence would encumber U.S. military operations.

The war in Afghanistan is expected to figure prominently in Powell's discussions in European and Central Asian capitals during a 10-country tour over the next week. The anti-terrorism action taken today by the OSCE represents a significant departure for an organization that historically has focused on resolving European conflicts, promoting arms control and fostering human rights and democracy.

"All OSCE participating states can and should work to sever terrorists' financial lifelines," Powell told his fellow ministers in Bucharest's enormous and ornate Palace of Parliament. "All OSCE participating states can and should take additional steps to improve cooperation among law enforcement and financial institutions."

Although the "plan of action" embodied few substantial initiatives beyond those already launched at the United Nations and other organizations, diplomats said the unanimous adoption will create momentum for carrying them out.

The plan could also extend the high-level law enforcement cooperation within the 15-nation European Union to former Soviet republics in Central Asia, diplomats said.

In a separate action, Powell announced that the United States would support the withdrawal of Russian troops from the former Soviet republic of Moldova, a presence that dates to the Soviet era, by contributing $14 million to help pay for the withdrawal and the disposal of munitions and small arms.

----

FBI's Focus on Terrorism Sidelines Other Categories of Crime

By Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57935-2001Dec4?language=printer

With thousands of FBI agents concentrating on terrorism, the bureau's field offices across the country have put aside a wide array of other matters, including some undercover drug investigations, the pursuit of many nonviolent fugitives and a mix of cases involving white-collar crimes, according to law enforcement officials.

Instead, the FBI has been relying on state and local police departments and other federal law enforcement agencies to fill the gaps created by the massive redeployment of FBI agents after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, police, FBI agents and federal prosecutors said.

As the FBI continues to transform itself into more of a counterterrorism organization, these agencies will be asked to take on added responsibility for drug enforcement and investigations of street crimes.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, acknowledging that some non-terror cases have been set aside, said Monday that he will decide by early next year which investigations the bureau may cede to local authorities, possibly including bank robberies and drug probes.

"Are there areas where we will be doing less and, if so, who will take up the slack?" Mueller said. "When you don't do something, you have to fill that gap."

More than 4,000 of the FBI's 11,000 agents have worked on various facets of the terrorism and anthrax probes since Sept. 11 -- though not necessarily full time -- forcing the FBI to become choosier about accepting new cases.

"Everything is prioritized," said Gail Marcinkiewicz, spokeswoman for the FBI's Boston field office. "Just as any company would handle a crisis, you organize your resources the right way. You prioritize the things you need to get done."

Peter A. Gulotta Jr., spokesman for the FBI's Baltimore field office, said priorities are determined by each case's impact, timeliness and other factors. He declined to give details, saying that would provide a road map for would-be criminals.

Officials said the FBI continues to act aggressively in non-terrorist matters involving violence or the threat of violence, as well as cases in which evidence could disappear if not immediately gathered and processed.

But some cases have stalled. Several federal sources said agents in the FBI's Washington field office have much less time to work the streets in drug investigations, gather and analyze paperwork in fraud cases and help track fugitives. The number of drug squads in the field office -- which supervises the anthrax investigation and has devoted many agents to the Sept. 11 probe -- was scaled back from three to two, and the bank robbery and fugitive squads recently were merged in a shift of personnel.

"They definitely have laid way down on the fugitive scenario. They almost have been nonexistent," said one federal marshal who works with the FBI in Washington.

A federal prosecutor said the FBI dispatched some of its Washington area specialists in white-collar criminal investigations to duties at airports and other places, where they have tracked leads, guarded evidence, protected facilities or worked on stand-by. Agents in other field offices across the nation have been redeployed in similar ways.

"For the first three or four weeks, we couldn't get anybody to do anything else," the Washington prosecutor said, adding that he didn't question the personnel moves.

"It's an intangible -- witnesses not being served, documents not being reviewed, cases going a little staler," said the prosecutor, who, like numerous law enforcement sources interviewed for this article, declined to be identified. But white-collar paper trails can be re-created later without causing harm to investigations, he said.

"I can't think of any case that's been dismissed or had any consequence. In most of these cases, the evidence isn't going anywhere," he said.

A recent analysis done for the Associated Press found a 76 percent drop-off in the number of cases referred by the FBI for federal prosecutions in the weeks after Sept. 11. The analysis, done for the AP by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse program, showed that fewer cases were filed between Sept. 12 and Sept. 30 than in the same period last year in matters involving drugs, bank robberies, illegal immigration and white-collar crime.

Anthony E. Daniels, a consultant and former FBI assistant director, noted that the FBI has shifted resources on an emergency basis in other times of crisis, such as the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

"They're trying to strike that balance," Daniels added. "There's no way they would ignore the violent crime cases or back-burner a case coming for trial, or a case with a deadline or a statute-of-limitations issue. The objective is to protect the public with the resources they have. No one would say crime is going to run rampant."

Bill Berger, chief of the North Miami Beach police department, said that the FBI in Florida pulled back on some drug and money laundering investigations after Sept. 11 but that other agencies have filled the void.

Aided by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, state and local police forces are stepping in across the country, Berger said.

"I don't think [the FBI's pullback] has had a devastating effect," said Berger, who heads the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

An FBI supervisor on the West Coast said that "cases that have no link to terrorism are not going to get a lot of juice. What's going by the wayside? Everything else. We have been told in as blunt terms as possible that we are to work nothing but this case."

When the stack of leads to be investigated is completed, the agents are supposed to be cultivating informants or doing other terrorism-related tasks, the supervisor said.

"We've had a real restriction on new cases unless they've been so egregious we can't say no to them," the supervisor said.

An agent assigned to a field office in New York said the FBI there isn't devoting the same level of attention that used to go to cases concerning bank robberies, deadbeat dads and marijuana distribution rings. But he said agents were still working on organized crime, civil rights, public corruption, high-caliber white-collar crime and fraud cases, saying the agency is uniquely qualified to conduct those investigations.

Although the FBI's shifting focus is in response to the terrorist acts, it could continue evolving as the agency moves heavily into a long-term focus on terrorism and counterterrorism. Mueller and Justice Department officials have spoken in recent weeks about the need for the FBI to retool by shedding its role in areas where the FBI's jurisdiction overlaps with another agency, such as carjacking cases, auto thefts, bank robberies, weapons violations, child support matters and drug investigations.

Some of these crimes were added to the FBI's responsibilities in the past decade, or assigned to joint task forces in which the FBI participates with other law enforcement agencies.

"They're going to have to slack off in some areas," said Robert K. Ressler, a former agent who runs a consulting business. "But it's not a bad thing. If you don't get 'em today, you'll get 'em tomorrow. Right now I think Mueller's doing the right thing."

Nancy L. Savage, head of the FBI Agents Association, a group of active and retired FBI agents, said some agents have worked six or seven days a week or put in longer hours to prevent their other cases from suffering lasting damage.

"Most of it is just being picked up by everyone working a lot longer hours or more days," she said, adding that morale remains high. "I've been in the bureau for 25 years. I've never seen where there's been a more critical need for FBI investigative resources, and I think the agents feel it."

Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.

--------

THE APPROPRIATIONS
Senate Committee Backs $15 Billion More in Emergency Spending

December 5, 2001
New York Times
By ADAM CLYMER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/05/politics/05CONG.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 - Though Senate Republicans accused Democrats of playing politics with homeland defense, the Appropriations Committee voted an additional $7.5 billion today for measures to combat bioterrorism and improve security at ports, borders and nuclear facilities.

The proposal, sponsored by the committee's chairman, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, also included $7.5 billion more for New York and other areas hit on Sept. 11. Both provisions were added to the military spending bill, making its cost $352 billion, and the bill was passed by the committee on a party- line voice vote.

Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas, called the measure "a slap in the face to the president." President Bush said on Nov. 6 that he would veto any emergency spending beyond the $40 billion voted in September. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the minority leader, said Vice President Dick Cheney told Senate Republicans at lunch today that Mr. Bush still felt strongly that "that's enough."

Mr. Lott said Democrats were trying to scare Republicans into voting more money than was needed now. "They say, `Give us more money, and by the way, if you don't, if something happens, we'll say it's your fault,' " he declared.

But Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the senior Republican on the committee, said he thought the spending that Mr. Byrd proposed made sense, though it could probably not be done as quickly as Mr. Byrd believed.

"There is no question," Mr. Stevens told the committee, "if the administration had not made a strong request to me, I would have supported Senator Byrd."

Mr. Stevens said the president would probably ask for a supplemental appropriation in March.

Mr. Byrd, however, maintained that the money was needed now. While Mr. Lott said the Democrats were breaking an agreement to hold emergency spending in the current fiscal year to $40 billion, Mr. Byrd said there was no such pact. In September, he maintained, "nobody said, `This much, no more.' "

The New York money in the Byrd measure got hardly any discussion in committee. New York's senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, hailed the provision, although both acknowledged that committee action was only one step. The full bill is expected to be brought up on the floor on Thursday.

-------- terrorism

U.S. prepares for next fight against al-Qaeda

12/05/2001
By Barbara Slavin and Bill Nichols,
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/12/05/next.htm

WASHINGTON - Even before U.S. forces have tracked down Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, President Bush is laying the groundwork on four continents for the next phase of the U.S. war on terrorism. From Africa to South America, U.S. officials are plotting ways to root out bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network, and prevent the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and his soldiers from fleeing Afghanistan for refuge in their home countries.

Administration officials say the United States is conducting surveillance flights over Somalia, investigating bin Laden allies in the Balkans, urging Yemen to arrest known al-Qaeda members and helping Uruguay and Paraguay destroy terrorist cells on their borders.

U.S. officials also are trying to make sure al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan don't slip into Pakistan, former Soviet republics in Central Asia, the Russian breakaway province of Chechnya or more than 40 other countries where al-Qaeda is known to operate.

Still undecided: What to do about terrorist-sponsor Iraq, which some Bush advisers want to bomb and others want to deal with diplomatically so as not to fracture the international anti-terror coalition the president has assembled. In a taped interview to be aired tonight on ABC's 20/20, the president said that U.S. troops might be used for strikes outside Afghanistan. But he did not reveal where he might order new military action, according to a transcript of his remarks released Tuesday.

For now, other officials say, the administration will focus on rooting out al-Qaeda cells around the world. But in contrast to the massive attack on Afghanistan, bombings of other countries are unlikely in the near term, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official says.

Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, agrees. "Military intervention is not likely elsewhere unless countries give refuge to fugitives coming out of Afghanistan," says Cordesman, who estimates that "several thousand may escape."

Steps the administration is taking:

- Somalia. Navy pilots are flying surveillance flights over the country and mapping two al-Qaeda camps near the border with Kenya, U.S. officials say. U.S. warships are positioned off the coast of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, to prevent bin Laden from seeking refuge there.

But congressional aides say the administration is reluctant to get too embroiled in Somalia, where anarchy dwarfs even the chaos in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has not forgotten its last mission in Somalia, in 1993, when 18 Army Rangers were killed in an ambush while they hunted a Somali warlord.

- Philippines. Military advisers went there last month to assess how to deal with the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf. During a recent visit to the White House, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo won Bush's promise of $100 million in military aid, including tens of thousands of M-16 rifles, three helicopters and a patrol craft, a White House official says. Abu Sayyaf, which seeks an independent Muslim state in the country's southernmost islands, gained worldwide attention last year when it kidnapped Western tourists from a Malaysian resort. The hostages were freed after 5 months when a Libyan intermediary paid a $25 million ransom. But the group is still holding a Wichita couple kidnapped in May.

U.S. officials say al-Qaeda planned two terrorist acts in the mid-1990's: a plot to kill Pope John Paul II during a 1994 visit and an assassination plot against President Clinton during a 1995 visit to Manila. Last month, Filippino authorities arrested an Iraqi teacher in the southern Philippines on suspicion of having ties to al-Qaeda.

Even so, State Department officials say the group's links to al-Qaeda are only tenuous, and the Filipino government is overemphasizing the ties to lure U.S. aid to clean up what is basically a local insurgency.

- Yemen. President Bush met with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh at the White House last week and urged him to arrest known al-Qaeda supporters. U.S. officials say Abdullah promised to do so, but concerns remain about his ability to comply. The State Department warned Americans Monday to defer travel to Yemen and those in the country to exercise extreme caution. Bin Laden's father was born in northern Yemen, and U.S. officials say al-Qaeda has operated there for a decade. The group is believed responsible for last year's bombing of the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors. * Sudan. Long sanctioned and isolated by the United States, Sudan was trying to change its image even before Sept. 11. Although Sudan remains on the State Department's list of sponsors of terrorism, U.S. officials say the country has offered significant intelligence information on bin Laden, who lived there from 1991 until 1996, when he moved to Afghanistan.

Sudan's government says al-Qaeda no longer has cells in the country. But U.S. officials are closely monitoring followers of Hassan Turabi, a once powerful Islamic leader whose niece is married to bin Laden. Turabi is under house arrest.

- The Balkans. During a visit to Bosnia in late November, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussed action against al-Qaeda cells there, a senior Pentagon official says. The discussions with NATO and Balkan leaders indicated a high level of U.S. concern because U.S. troops are in the region and there is evidence that some Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims sought training at bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

- Uruguay and Paraguay. The CIA is helping these governments clean up remote border areas that have been a haven for Middle Eastern terrorists, including some al-Qaeda members.

A military campaign against Iraq is unlikely in the near future, despite the urgings of a group of Pentagon officials led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, experts say.

"There is a lot of pressure to find something else to do to show that we're not just after Muslim countries," says Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Center for Near East Policy. "Iraq is much more likely to be Stage 3 than Stage 2."

For Bush, deciding what to do about Iraq is personal as well as geopolitical: His father led a coalition that expelled Iraqi invaders from Kuwait in 1991 but left Saddam in power. Since then, Iraq has been implicated in an assassination attempt in 1993 against the first President Bush and has harbored terrorist groups targeting Israel and Iran.

"We know Saddam has been involved with terrorists in the past and has weapons of mass destruction," says Richard Perle, a member of a Pentagon advisory board and a vocal advocate of deposing Saddam without the need to implicate him in the Sept. 11 attacks. "We don't have to prove anything to anybody to defend ourselves."

The only confirmed potential link between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks is a meeting between hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April. Arab leaders have warned that attacking Iraq without more concrete evidence would inflame anti-U.S. sentiment in the Middle East and fracture the U.S.-led coalition. Amr Moussa, secretary general of the 22-member Arab League, said last week that going after Iraq would "spell the end of consensus in the international alliance against terrorism."

Proponents of war against Iraq say critics would be silenced by televised scenes of liberated Iraqis cheering on their rooftops, much as Arab criticism of the U.S. war in Afghanistan has been muted by Afghan celebrations on being freed from the Taliban yoke.

Ousting Saddam wouldn't be that hard, former CIA director James Woolsey says. "Saddam's forces are considerably smaller and weaker than during the Gulf War, and our weapons are smarter. I don't pretend this would be a slam dunk, but some combination of U.S. air power and local resistance could make possible removal of the Iraqi regime."

But Edward Walker, president of the Middle East Institute, says the challenge would be more daunting. He doubts that Kurds in the northern part of Iraq would be willing to attack Saddam's regime, which has given them considerable autonomy and allowed them to profit from oil smuggling.

The Clinton administration abandoned Kurds fighting Saddam in 1995 and 1996, leaving bitter memories. Walker also doubts that members of Saddam's elite Republican Guard would defect as readily as have Taliban soldiers.

Cordesman says a campaign against Iraq would require at least 100,000 U.S. troops, plus support from U.S. ally and Iraq neighbor, Turkey, which is unlikely to consent because it fears re-energizing a separatist movement among its own Kurdish population.

Participants in a recent meeting with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld say he also is wary about broadening the campaign to Iraq.

Moreover, the State Department has little faith in the military prowess of the Iraqi National Congress, an exiled opposition group. Judith Yaphe, an Iraq expert at the National Defense University, asks, "If you agree to overthrow Saddam, how do you do it?"

Contributing: Jonathan Weisman in Washington and Jack Kelley in Islamabad, Pakistan.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

GEOTHERMAL POWER PROJECTS INSTALLED ON LONG ISLAND

December 5, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-05-09.html

RIVERHEAD, New York, Eleven new geothermal power projects in New York state are expected to save commercial customers about $200,000 a year in electricity costs, Governor George Pataki said Saturday.

"New York State continues to lead the nation in promoting new and alternative energy sources that help protect and enhance the quality of our environment," Pataki said. "Geothermal technology offers one of the most environmentally friendly means of heating and cooling buildings while also lowering energy costs for New York's consumers."

Pataki visited Atlantis Marine World in Riverhead to announce the geothermal projects, which will provide almost $1,000,000 in rebates to commercial customers who install the systems during 2001 and 2002. The projects are sponsored by the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA).

The electricity use savings from these geothermal projects in Suffolk and Nassau counties and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens will include more than half a megawatt of electricity during peak demand periods, or about 1.4 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity a year. That is enough electricity to power about 175 average sized homes on Long Island.

"This promising technology can play an important role in our efforts to ensure we have the power we need to continue to create jobs and offer consumers new ways to save money," said Pataki. "Whether its solar power or geothermal technology, we must continue to expand the menu of energy options for all New Yorkers."

At Atlantis Marine World, sharks can be seen swimming in a tank whose water is temperature controlled by geothermal technology. Placards will explain the geothermal heating and cooling technology that control the shark tank environment to visitors.

LIPA encouraged the use of the geothermal system when Atlantis Marine World was being designed. Since its installation, Atlantis has saved about $20,000 in energy costs and received a $52,500 rebate from LIPA for installing the geothermal system.

Pataki directed the implementation of LIPA's Clean Energy Initiative as part of the purchase of a new electric transmission and distribution system. The five year, $170 million initiative provides technical assistance and financial incentives to commercial customers who use geothermal technology for their heating and cooling needs.

The program also provides rebates and incentives to residential and commercial customers to save electricity, and helps promote the development and use of clean energy alternatives such as wind, solar, fuel cells and geothermal.

----

German turbine maker Nordex woos Enron Wind

Reuters :
5/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13570

COPENHAGEN - German wind turbine maker Nordex said yesterday it would like to buy rival Enron Wind following the fall of its parent company, American energy giant Enron.

"Of course, we are interested in acquiring Enron Wind, but we would strive for a friendly takeover that the management supports," Carsten Pedersen, member of Nordex AG's management board, told Reuters by telephone.

Nordex has not yet been in contact with Enron Wind, he said.

Enron filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sunday after rival Dynegy retreated from a rescue merger.

Analysts said Enron Wind's manufacturing unit was worth around $125-200 million. The U.S. firm had a global market share of six percent last year of total installed megawatts.

Nordex, with a market share of eight to nine percent, is worth 240 million euro ($213 million).

Enron Wind's turbine production unit has unofficially been up for sale for a couple of years, but buyers, including rival turbine companies, have been scared off by the price which was estimated at more than $500 million only months ago, sources said.

"All wind turbine makers might have an interest in buying Enron Wind or parts of it in this particular situation," one analyst said.

The world's leading turbine maker Danish Vestas's Chief Executive Johannes Poulsen said this week his company had no plans "at present to acquire any rivals".

"Enron Wind would be a good buy for Vestas. Vestas would acquire production capacity in Spain and at the same time increase its market share in Germany significantly," Dresdner Bank analyst James Stettler said.

Enron's turbine unit has production capacity in the United States as well as in Spain and Germany, the two large European wind markets.

Vestas this weeksold its 40 percent stake in world's wind turbine maker No 2, Spanish Gamesa Eolica , following disputes about Gamesa's plans to grow into Vestas's markets.

The worldwide wind power industry was valued at 4.5 billion euros last year with this figure projected to rise to 80 billion euros by 2020, according to the European Wind Energy Association.

-------- energy

Air pollution trading can be done on Internet - EPA

Reuters:
5/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13578

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration this week unveiled an Internet system for utilities and other companies to trade air pollution allowances electronically instead of submitting paper documents to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The system is designed for trade in the $20 billion U.S. sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide market, which is regulated by the EPA. The pollutants are primarily emitted by coal-fired power plants and are linked to acid rain and smog.

"EPA expects this online system will streamline and accelerate emission trading, saving industry and government time and money," EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said in a statement.

"The cap and trade approach has already proven to be extremely successful in air pollution control, and today's online breakthrough will make it even better," she added.

In the EPA's cap and trade emissions program, a trading unit is called an allowance and is equivalent to 1 ton of air emissions.

The EPA's tracking systems, which currently hold allowances worth more than $20 billion, record transfers of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

The cap and trade programs reduce air pollution by setting a permanent cap on emissions, then allowing trading within that cap. The EPA requires companies that want to trade the pollutants to keep detailed records and to pay fees to the federal government is emissions exceed the legal limit.

The EPA said its program for trading sulfur oxides has cut emissions by 6 million tons annually from 1980 at a cheaper cost to industry. That program is being expanded.

The agency's program for trading nitrogen oxide has reduced emissions by more than 50 percent from 1990, it said. The program may expand to as many as 19 states in 2004.

-------- environment

General Electric Ordered to Pay for Cleanup of Hudson
EPA Mandates $500 Million Dredging

By Eric Pianin and Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57956-2001Dec4?language=printer

The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday ordered General Electric Co. to pay nearly half a billion dollars to dredge toxic chemicals off the floor of the upper Hudson River, despite vigorous efforts by the company and its political allies to derail or dilute the plan.

While making some modest concessions to the company, EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman held fast to the essential proposal unveiled last summer calling for the dredging of 2.65 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment along 40 miles of the picturesque Hudson. The riverbed from just north of Albany upstream to Fort Edward was contaminated with PCBs from GE manufacturing plants over several decades.

"We are going ahead with this important cleanup," Whitman said. "We will do so with a continuing open process that will involve all parties."

The final decision capped an epic environmental battle that in recent years pitted the industrial giant, which insisted in millions of dollars' worth of advertising that the dredging would further damage the river, against environmentalists and New York's political establishment, including Gov. George E. Pataki and Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer.

Some upstate Republicans, from Rep. John E. Sweeney to state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, vowed to press appeals with President Bush in August, after Whitman preliminarily approved the plan. But GE came away with only minor concessions from an administration generally considered more sympathetic to big business than environmentalists -- mostly promises for public hearings on several important performance standards associated with the cleanup.

"Overall, we're pleased Administrator Whitman recommited to the cleanup and the restoration of the Hudson," said Chris Ballantyne, director of the Sierra Club's Hudson River campaign. "We thought GE would seek to kill the cleanup before it began."

"This cleanup is essential to the future of the river," said Richard Schiafo, environmental project manager for Scenic Hudson, which has led the battle to dredge the river. "We have a broken water highway and it needs fixing."

Gary Shefford, a GE spokesman, said the company would reserve comment "until we have a document we can look at," although he said GE approved of some of the EPA's last-minute changes on performance standards.

The decision met with far less approval from some public officials along the twisting upper Hudson.

Merrilyn Pulver, the Fort Edward town supervisor, has led the impassioned battle against dredging the river, arguing that it would be another nail in the coffin of an economically depressed region. She spoke with little surprise of today's decision and said opponents would now concentrate on ensuring the tightest possible regulations.

Her greatest concern is that the dredging will stir up PCBs that now lie dormant on the river bottom -- as the GE ads warned. She wants General Electric and the EPA to continually test the river waters during the dredging. If more contaminants than exist now are found floating -- resuspended, in scientific lingo -- in the river, she wants the dredging to stop.

"It's a no-brainer," she said. "If there are true environmentalists here, they should join us."

The administration plan, formally transmitted yesterday to New York environmental officials, would remove in two phases about 150,000 pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls that were dumped in the Hudson.

The plan specifies stringent air quality and noise standards associated with the dredging, measures favored by environmentalists and the company.

Other standards -- for determining the permissible levels of PCBs that could be resuspended in the water during dredging and the amount of material that could be removed and dried at nearby sites -- would be worked out later after public hearings including state and federal officials, environmental groups and local communities.

Environmental leaders said they had feared that GE might derail the plan by persuading the EPA this summer to adopt performance standards so tough that they would be virtually impossible to meet using existing technology.

"We're pleased Governor Whitman has done the right thing and issued the right decision," said Katherine Kennedy of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Sweeney, said that Whitman's final decision "represents a significant shift by the EPA with regard to performance standards . . . and has finally addressed the core concerns of affected communities."


-------- activists

FAS back - freedom, truth and security

From: "Dai Williams" <eosuk@btinternet.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 10:38:57 -0000

Good news - the FAS (Federation of American Scientists) weapons files are back this morning (Dec 5) after being closed on Dec 3. Perhaps the Christian Science Monitor article on Monday helped see http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1203/p1s3-ussc.html together with Internet protests.

Public and press vigilance for freedom issues is alive and well, and increasingly alert at this time as anti-terrorism measures mix the prudent with over-zealous and potentially sinister. This seems to be a kind of active freedom that we have to shout for when it is threatened - no room for complacency.

One thing the FAS incident has done is encourage me to visit their other sections on secrecy, responsibility etc. Links from their home page at http://www.fas.org These are well worth checking.

The links re DU are mostly back at: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/docs/du/mr1018.7.chap1.html except Chapter 2 on health effects.

The links re smart (guided) weapons systems are back from the index at http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/index.html This includes links to all the hard target systems that use advanced penetrators with the dense metal that the UK and US governments still decline to identify and which I suspect may be, or include depleted uranium. See GBU-24, 28, 32, 37 and AGM-86C/D, 154C, 65G etc. and links in my reports about suspected use of DU in the Afghan war.

Freedom of the Net is becoming an issue like freedom of the press. Freedom with responsibility perhaps. But a freedom to use and defend. Thank you FAS. Thank you Internet lists for supporting them.

Dai Williams, UK eosuk@btinternet.com

----

Protesters up a tree, but loggers steer clear

December 5, 2001
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011205-97828946.htm

Radical environmentalists who lived in the treetops of an Oregon forest for more than three months abandoned their perches after loggers outwitted them by cutting surrounding trees for a state timber sale.

"We decided not to remove the tree-sitters but to safely cut as closely as we could," said Jeff Foreman, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Forestry.

The agency is also examining whether to charge the tree-sitters, who peacefully dismantled their tree stands over the weekend, for the 10 trees they did prevent from being cut.

The retreat marks the first victory against protesters opposed to logging since the Clinton administration, when the prevailing attitude among state and federal forestry agencies was to either halt timber sales or try to wait out the protesters.

"The Clinton administration chose to not be aggressive when they had people trespassing and destroying public property," said Chris West, spokesman for the Northwest Forestry Association.

The timber sale, described as a "thinning" as opposed to a "clear-cut" of 124 acres in the Tillamook State Forest, is nearly complete. It will generate $265,000 in revenues for schools and local governments while improving wildlife habitat, officials said.

The Oregon protest, during which one tree-sitter was seriously injured after a 60-foot fall, is the first "significant protest or encampment" during the Bush administration, Mr. West said.

"Their actions did not deter the project from going ahead and they were not getting any media," Mr. West said. "I think another thing playing out here is that public sympathy for this after September 11 is not as high."

Many of the second-generation Douglas fir trees were severely infected with Swiss needle cast, a disease that stunts tree growth. The number of trees was reduced from 125 per acre to 70 per acre.

Protester Michael Scarpitti, also known as "Tre Arrow," fell from a tree Oct. 4 fracturing his pelvis and breaking several bones.

Law-enforcement officials tried to isolate Mr. Scarpitti in one tree and coax him down by cutting away lower branches. Officials agreed to drop legal charges but the tree-sitter continued to climb "dangerously" high, Mr. Foreman said.

At 10 p.m., Mr. Scarpitti used his body weight to sway the tree back and forth and was able to transfer to another tree 30 feet away. He apparently fell asleep and fell from the tree at 2 a.m., Mr. Foreman said.

"That was unfortunate and obviously something we hoped would not happen," Mr. Foreman said.

"No matter how much you plan or prepare, if someone is intent on total disregard for their own safety it is difficult to protect them," Mr. Foreman said.

The most famous tree-sitter, Julia Butterfly Hill, became an icon for the environmental movement in 1997 when she took up residence in a Redwood tree preventing logging on private property in California.

She succeeded in blocking a timber operation for two years on the property owned by Pacific Lumber, to save a tree she named Luna and others in a 200-foot buffer zone.

The Clinton administration aided a separate group of tree-sitters during a 1996 Oregon protest to block a timber sale by leaking information on law-enforcement activities, according to a 1999 report by the House Resources Committee.

Documents subpoenaed by the committee also indicate that four months before the 1996 presidential election, former Chief of Staff Leon Panetta gave the order for officers to "stand down" and not arrest the radical environmentalists.

----

Afghans protest at U.N. talks

December 5, 2001
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011205-20179886.htm

KOENIGSWINTER, Germany - Shahala Asad, one of several Afghan women demonstrating outside the U.N. talks on Afghanistan's future, is angry.

The United Nations does not consider her worthy of inclusion in the ongoing negotiations at the secluded hilltop luxury Petersberg Hotel, despite promises to secure the rights of the downtrodden female Afghan population.

In response to the public protest by the Revolutionary Afghan Women's Association (RAWA), the United Nations has pointed out that it deliberately limited the talks to four Afghan political groups and 20 international observers.

There are women in each group, even one in the Northern Alliance delegation, and Lakhtar Brahimi, the U.N. chief envoy, met with RAWA in Pakistan in October, a U.N. spokesman said.

For years, the women of RAWA have been risking their lives in Afghanistan and refugee camps to provide secret schooling and support for girls and women amid the terrors of Taliban rule.

Now they have new fears.

"Many women are fleeing even after the fall of Taliban out of fear of Northern Alliance," said Mrs. Asad, 27. "Women do not want to leave their burkas even now because they afraid of systematic raping by Northern Alliance troops."

While her organization says the Taliban imposed "the most oppressive regime on earth," Mrs. Asad has equal contempt for the men who are destined to take over.

"We are against the Northern Alliance," she said. "We experienced them from 1992 to 1996, the most dark period of our history. Our people will not forget and forgive the atrocities - killing, raping of women, destruction, fighting among factions, looting of houses, beating, using the gun for power. There is no difference between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. They [both] are anti-democracy and anti-women."

Shahala Asad, not her real name, never lets herself be photographed, and when she enters her homeland secretly, her burka is a means of disguise.

It has been women like Mrs. Asad who secretly filmed and chronicled some of the Taliban's most grisly acts, including the executions of women inside the Kabul Football Stadium in full view of thousands of spectators.

Now though, Mrs. Asad wants a very different kind of government to take over in Afghanistan, not a reversion to their past masters.

"The U.S. and U.N. must not now put non-democrats in power," she said.

She points out that Osama bin Laden got his "first hospitality" from the Northern Alliance. Mrs. Asad believes the supporters of the former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, should be supported by the Western powers and the United Nations.

As for the Northern Alliance warlords, she demands: "The old leaders must go to an international court to pay for their past crimes."

When Mrs. Asad was 9, her father was killed fighting the Soviet occupation of her country. She and her four sisters fled with her mother and grandmother into a squalid refugee camp in Pakistan.

There she was enrolled into a school that gave her a remarkably good education, with a science laboratory and teachers of English. It also provided her with food and a bed.

It was run by RAWA, the women's group that has continued to be central to her life, even though she now has a husband and a son who is nearly 3. She absorbed the movement's radical ideology: a hard line on rights for women and, some say, a Marxist view of the world.

These ideological inclinations are brushed aside by Mrs. Asad: "We are just democratic."

Created in 1977 to resist Soviet rule over Afghanistan, the women's group went underground after its founder was bound, gagged and strangled in the Pakistani border city of Quetta, reportedly by KGB agents assisted by fundamentalists.

"We've been much more cunning and secret since then," said Mrs. Asad.

Under the Taliban, RAWA mounted the country's only substantial underground operations.

"We made movie clips, hiding cameras under our burkas. We ran home-based classes for girls and boys. We helped women become literate and to make carpets, do handicraft, and provided small mobile health teams," said Mrs. Asad.

Since it was illegal to teach girls anything except the Koran, the venue for classes was changed often, and the children were trained to pull out the holy book and recite loudly from it whenever any Taliban members were spied in the vicinity.

Other resistance activities included providing women and children with ice cream, and secret boutiques to allow women to put on makeup - both activities barred by the Taliban.

Under the coming new regime, Mrs. Asad believes she will still have an underground role to play.

"The struggle is far from over," she said.

----

Group's Defenders Deny U.S. Allegations

By Paul Duggan and John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 5, 2001; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58345-2001Dec4?language=printer

RICHARDSON, Tex., Dec. 4 -- The sign on the front of the modern, one-story stone and brick building reads: "Holy Land Foundation Relief & Development" and, beneath that, "A Helping Hand for All Mankind."

Today, another sign was posted, this one on the front door: "These premises have been sealed by order of the U.S. Treasury Department, office of Foreign Assets Control."

Even as FBI agents and U.S. Customs Service officials watched workers lug computers and boxes of documents from Holy Land's office park headquarters into a 14-wheel tractor-trailer, the group's defenders denied U.S. accusations that it is affiliated with the Palestinian extremist movement Hamas. Instead, they said, it is a main source of humanitarian aid to bedraggled Palestinians requiring medical care, food and schooling.

"Holy Land has been the only help for many in the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza, and now, with this move, a big void will exist," said Khalid Hamideh, a Texas attorney for the group.

Federal government officials acknowledge that Holy Land, founded in 1989, is a Muslim charity that raised $13 million last year for Islamic causes around the world. But after investigating the agency for years, they also say that it is intimately connected with Hamas, an organization that has killed scores of Israelis and some Americans in suicide bombings in Israel over the last decade.

Holy Land "acts for or on behalf of Hamas" in the United States, the FBI said in a statement today, as federal officials went further than ever before in outlining Holy Land's alleged Hamas ties.

The FBI said, for example, that Shukri Abu Baker, Holy Land's founder and now chief executive, "has been repeatedly identified as a member [of] Hamas" -- an assertion Holy Land officials denied. The bureau said an informant quoted him as saying the group's "mission" is financially supporting the families of suicide bombers.

Moreover, a ranking Hamas political operative named Mousa Abu Marzook gave $200,000 to Holy Land in 1992, the bureau statement said, and two years later, he privately designated Holy Land in Muslim circles as Hamas's "primary fundraising entity in the United States, and ordered a rival fund to curtail operations."

Holy Land Executive Director Haitham Maghawri once told the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service that he had been arrested for planting a car bomb in a foreign country, the FBI said.

Representatives of Holy Land and an array of Islamic groups yesterday repeated their response that the allegations against the organization are falsehoods fabricated by the Israelis.

"The attorney general's office has been looking into Holy Land since probably 1992," said Ghassan Elashi, Holy Land's chairman. "They have overstepped. . . . All these allegations are false. They are absolutely coming from Israel."

Foundation records show that, in some cases, Palestinian families tied to Hamas receive much larger sums from Holy Land than those lacking such affiliations, the FBI said.

One of the most incendiary allegations lodged by President Bush and other government officials against Holy Land is that it encourages terrorist attacks by supporting the families of Hamas suicide bombers and jailed Hamas militants. The foundation "assists Hamas by providing a constant flow of suicide volunteers and buttresses a terrorist infrastructure heavily reliant on moral support of the Palestinian populace," the FBI statement said. It cited several such cases, such as Holy Land aid to the family of a Hamas member in jail for killing a Canadian Jewish tourist on a Tel Aviv beach.

Holy Land officials maintained today that such payments constitute a tiny portion of the money the group spends supporting orphans and destitute families in the West Bank and Gaza.

Elashi, who is related by marriage to Hamas official Marzook, also scoffed at one of the key allegations lodged by Israeli officials for years -- that the schools for Palestinian children funded by Holy Land glorify suicide bombing and try to recruit martyrs for their movement.

"The Palestinian children are beautiful children, and we are helping them become suicide bombers?" Elashi said. "No, no, no. It is unbelievable to think that."

The FBI said Holy Land provides funds to Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza in three ways: through its own offices in the territories; through other Muslim charities controlled by Hamas; and through other charities not directly run by Hamas but supporting it.

At a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia, the FBI said, top Hamas and Holy Land officials agreed that Muslims in this country could be key to financing Hamas.

"In the United States, they could raise funds, propagate their political goals, affect public opinion and influence decision-making of the U.S. government," the FBI said the participants agreed.

"The democratic environment in the United States allowed them to perform activities that are extremely important to their cause," the FBI quoted them as saying. "In discussing financial matters the participants stated a belief that continuation of the Holy War was inevitable."

Staff writer Kathleen Day contributed to this report. She and Mintz reported from Washington.

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U.N. celebrates International Volunteer Day

The Associated Press
12/05/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001/12/05/volunteer.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Vaccinating millions of children against polio. Helping people register to vote. Giving blood, food and moral support to survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A wide range of volunteer activities was being honored by the United Nations on Wednesday for International Volunteer Day - the climax of the world body's campaign this year to focus on volunteerism.

The United Nations designated 2001 the International Year of Volunteers to recognize the millions of people who donate their time to help others, and to encourage millions more to follow in their footsteps.

Sharon Capeling-Alakija, executive coordinator of the United Nations Volunteers, which is overseeing the yearlong observance, said Tuesday that Sept. 11 showed a global television audience what volunteering is all about - from rescuing people to serving coffee and offering free counseling.

"The one shaft of light that did pierce through the dust and debris was this tremendous outpouring of volunteerism," she said. "I think as a result of that, the world isn't going to think of volunteering in quite the same way."

The U.N. General Assembly is expected to adopt a resolution spelling out how governments and the United Nations system can increase support for volunteering.

The resolution notes that a growing number of countries have laws that cover rights and responsibilities of volunteers and their organizations. Some provide tax incentives and subsidies for the organizations. At the same time, it says governments can review legal and financial measures that have a negative impact on organizations that use volunteers.

The vast majority of volunteers serve in their own countries but Capeling-Alakija oversees 5,000 U.N. Volunteers from 163 nations who help U.N. agencies on projects ranging from voter registration in Kosovo and East Timor to promoting human rights in Guatemala.

One particularly successful volunteer project last year was the vaccination against polio of 550 million children by 10 million volunteers. According to the U.N. World Health Organization, it would have cost $10 billion without the local volunteers - a price tag neither WHO nor the U.N. Children's Fund could have afforded.


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