------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
The 'Dirty Bomb' and the Alert
Nuclear Experts in Pakistan May Have Links to Al Qaeda
Pakistan Ups Probe of Nuke Workers
A Terrorist's Guide To Infiltrate West
Recent safety hazards at aging nuclear plants
San Onofre's safety record
Going dark at San Onofre
Legendary Los Alamos Turns Its Focus to Anti-Terrorism
Powell Marks New Alliance with Russia on Terrorism
TEXT: Cheney on bin Laden tape

MILITARY
Shifting Fronts, Rising Danger: The Afghanistan War Evolves
U.S. Jets Pound Tora Bora to Clear Way for Afghan Assault
War on terrorism affects role of EU's future
Suicide Bomber Strikes N. Israel
Suicide Bombers Trying Chemical Devices - Officials
N. Korea statement accuses Bush of trying to start a war
North Korea 'not afraid' of war
Chiapas Governor Wants Peace Talks
KUCINICH SPACE BAN BILL ENDORSERS (HR 2977)
Rollout for new ways of warfare
More US Troops May Go to Afghanistan

POLICE / PRISONERS
Report: Bin Laden surprised at damage

ENERGY AND OTHER
Shrimp save lives
Plan to Salvage Burned Forest Brings Controversy
Outbreak of Fever in Gabon Confirmed as Ebola
Uzbeks Open a Bridge Crucial to Afghan Aid

ACTIVISTS
JOIN THE CITIZENS' CAMPAIGN TO END TERRORISM
Cuban dissidents open Web site
7 Arrested In Rally for Release of Abu-Jamal
JOIN THE CITIZENS' CAMPAIGN TO END TERRORISM



-------- NUCLEAR

The 'Dirty Bomb' and the Alert

By Michael Getler
Sunday, December 9, 2001; Page B06
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11482-2001Dec7?language=printer

The Post had a pretty scary front page Tuesday.

At the top of the page, in the lead position, was an exclusive story from three of the paper's top guns -- reporters Bob Woodward, Robert Kaiser and David Ottaway. The main headline said, "U.S. Fears Bin Laden Made Nuclear Strides," and the smaller head underneath said, "Concern Over 'Dirty Bomb' Affects Security."

The story reported that U.S. intelligence agencies recently had concluded that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network "may have made greater strides than previously thought toward obtaining plans or materials to make a crude radiological weapon that would use conventional explosives to spread radioactivity over a wide area, according to U.S. and foreign sources."

The story also reported that "the worry about al Qaeda's efforts to obtain a nuclear capability was a factor in the decision" by the White House the day before "to issue another national alert about possible terrorist attacks," according to "a senior source."

Next to the triple-byline account was the news story about Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge's issuance of that new warning. "Ridge Issues 3rd Alert of New Attack Threat" was the headline. As with past warnings, Ridge said the signs were credible but not specific. But that Post story included a line written into it that repeated the point of the accompanying article, that "there is also increased worry that bin Laden may have made greater strides than previously thought" to make a crude radioactive weapon.

Wednesday, an article by Post reporter Guy Gugliotta appeared, explaining that while finding enough radioactive material to make a dirty bomb might be relatively easy, "the effects of such a weapon could never remotely approach those of a nuclear explosion." Inside that same article, it was reported that Homeland Security Director Ridge said that the latest anti-terrorist alert had nothing to do with the threat of a dirty bomb. That story appeared on Page A12. There was no mention of Ridge's comments on the front page, despite the big play of the bin Laden story on Tuesday's front page.

Also on Tuesday, Ridge was asked directly by CBS's Bryant Gumbel if the alert, as The Post reported, was tied in any way to the fears about a dirty bomb, and Ridge replied "absolutely not." At the Pentagon, spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said the Defense Department was "not aware of anything new or different. He [bin Laden] made clear his desire to have such weapons, so we need to be very attentive, very concerned. . . . But I don't know what prompted that particular story." Those comments weren't in The Post on Wednesday.

The ombudsman has no sources of his own on such matters. So I pay close attention, as a news consumer and Washington resident, to everything Woodward and company report. I trust him and his colleagues. But that was a scary combination of stories, and because the super-sourced Woodward was associated with the lead story, it adds an extra dimension that gets the readers' attention.

Considering the emotional baggage that mention of radioactive and nuclear capabilities carries with it, it would have been proper, in my view, to give more prominence to the following day's denials and comments by Ridge and Clarke, and to Gugliotta's more detailed explanation of the difference between a dirty bomb and a nuclear bomb.

The initial story did explain that a dirty bomb is made by taking highly radioactive material, such as spent reactor fuel rods, and wrapping it around readily available conventional explosives. That is bad enough, killing by radiation in a zone that could amount to several city blocks. But a real atomic, or fission bomb, is vastly more devastating, killing over a much larger area by blast, heat and a variety of long-lasting radioactive elements. Explaining the difference more thoroughly in the initial story might have helped readers who can be forgiven for thinking of dirty-bomb radiological weapons as atomic bombs.

-------- india / pakistan

INTELLIGENCE
Nuclear Experts in Pakistan May Have Links to Al Qaeda

New York Times
December 9, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
This article was reported by Douglas Frantz, James Risen and David E. Sanger and written by Mr. Sanger.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/international/asia/09NUKE.html

The United States is investigating new intelligence reports of contacts between Pakistani nuclear weapons scientists and the Taliban or the terrorist network Al Qaeda, according to Pakistani and American officials.

More than a month ago, Pakistan detained and interrogated two nuclear scientists who had contacts with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but neither had any knowledge or expertise that would have helped terrorists build or obtain a nuclear weapon, the officials said.

Since then, however, American and Pakistani officials have received new reports of other possible contacts involving scientists with actual experience in production of nuclear weapons and related technology.

The officials in the United States and Pakistan offered different, and sometimes conflicting, accounts of the nature of those contacts and who might be involved. But American officials said the intelligence was credible enough for them to focus new concern on the security of Pakistan's weapons program.

Pakistani officials said their government was resisting some of the American efforts to interrogate several of the scientists and engineers, for fear that the intelligence reports may be a ploy by Washington to learn details of Pakistan's secret nuclear program.

According to Pakistani officials and news reports in Pakistan in recent days, the United States has asked that two other nuclear experts, Suleiman Asad and Muhammed Ali Mukhtar, with long experience at two of Pakistan's most secret nuclear installations, be questioned.

Pakistani officials said George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, discussed this issue with top Pakistani officials while he was in the country last weekend. C.I.A. officials would not confirm that account, but White House officials said Mr. Tenet's trip was related in part to nuclear issues.

But in an unusual move, as soon as Mr. Tenet returned to Washington, Pakistani officials volunteered to Pakistani and Western reporters that Mr. Asad and Mr. Mukhtar were the subjects of concern by the C.I.A. The motives of the Pakistani officials for disclosing the information were unclear, but they also said the two men were unavailable because they were sent, shortly after Sept. 11, on a vague research project to Myanmar, formerly Burma, and were not expected home anytime soon.

In fact, one Pakistani official said that Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military president, who met Mr. Tenet during his trip, telephoned one of Myanmar's military rulers to ask him to provide temporary asylum for the two nuclear specialists, offering his assurances that they were not connected to terrorism. A spokesman for Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission told a Pakistani news service that "we don't want to interrupt them" by returning them to Pakistan for questioning.

While much about this latest dispute remains unclear, it underscores the degree to which Pakistan and the United States are at odds over important issues despite recent cooperation in the war against terrorism.

The United States is concerned that Al Qaeda is trying to obtain at least a primitive radioactive weapon and has concerns about the security of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program, the officials said.

The Pakistani government, for its part, is suspicious that Washington, which is also trying to grow closer to Pakistan's nuclear rival, India, is using its security concerns as a pretext for prying open Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.

Pakistan has always barred international inspectors from examining its facilities or taking stock of its production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, used to make weapons.

So far, American officials say, the Bush administration does not believe Al Qaeda has a nuclear weapon, despite its clear desire to obtain one. On Friday Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the American commander heading the Afghanistan operations, said, "We have not yet found evidence of weapons of mass destruction in the sites that we have been in."

But officials in Washington remain concerned that Al Qaeda cells elsewhere may be searching for enough material to make a "dirty bomb," in which radioactive material would be wrapped around a conventional explosive and detonated, spreading nuclear contamination.

Two Pakistani nuclear scientists who have been detained and questioned by Pakistan did meet with Taliban and Al Qaeda officials in Afghanistan to discuss nuclear issues. But the scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudry Abdul Majeed, were not weapons experts, and therefore of little value to terrorists, American officials say.

Under interrogation, Mr. Mahmood and Mr. Majeed have recounted discussions with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, an American official said. The interrogations disclosed that Al Qaeda officials did not have even the most basic knowledge of nuclear weapons and materials, the American official said. "It was the blind leading the blind," the official said.

The interrogations have provided new evidence to suggest that Al Qaeda has been lacking in technical expertise, the official added. "If they had been handed the plans for a nuclear bomb, the worst they could have done is use them as kindling to start a fire," the official said.

But in the interrogations, one of the two scientists mentioned that he had a personal relationship with a Pakistani, and that the man had also been in contact with the Taliban, an American official said. United States intelligence officials believe that they have identified the man as a weapons expert who has left the Pakistani program and is now in business, an intelligence official said. While unable to confirm that account, another American intelligence official said there were new reports suggesting previously undisclosed connections between Pakistani nuclear weapons experts and the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

American and Pakistani officials said that at least some of the scientists the United States is worried about had been involved in the complex of top-secret nuclear facilities southwest of Islamabad where much of Pakistan's rogue nuclear weapons program is concentrated. It remains unclear whether Pakistan plans to detain any of the individuals suspected of involvement.

The new American concern over Pakistan's nuclear program highlights what could well become a growing source of tension between the United States and Pakistan as the war against terrorism enters a new phase. Mr. Bush is more focused than ever, his aides say, on preventing any repeat of the Sept. 11 terrorism, and is particularly worried that Al Qaeda, seeking revenge for the American success in Afghanistan, will use any weapon it can find.

But in private, midlevel Pakistani officials say that while they share Mr. Bush's concern, they also believe that the United States is trying to leverage the current crisis to discover more about Pakistan's facilities, in case Washington someday feels the need to secure or destroy them.

But the American approach, to one Pakistani government official, seems straightforward. Asked in Islamabad about the American requests for cooperation, he characterized the requests this way: "One of the things the U.S. wants is Pakistani knowledge of the market. Could these people have passed on how to acquire technology? Who is selling on the international market?"

If the survivors of the American- led military assault on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan are searching for such nuclear technology and materials, there are two natural targets: Russia and Pakistan. The Pakistani program may be particularly tempting, American officials say, because its major facilities are near the Afghanistan border, as far from India as possible. Pakistan has barred international inspections of the facilities, so their security is unclear.

While American officials believe that Pakistan has built fewer than 20 complete nuclear weapons, all based on designs that use uranium, they also believe that Pakistan has enough weapons-grade material to build a total of at least 45 nuclear weapons. That figure includes Pakistan's recent production of plutonium, enough for at least five bombs.

As one former American official who carefully followed the program until recently said, the estimates of Pakistan's nuclear material are "almost certainly way, way low." The fact of the matter, said another senior Bush administration official in Washington this week, is, "we simply don't know what they've got, how much they've made. That means we can't create a baseline" to determine whether nuclear material is missing.

But the most immediate concern is whether Pakistani scientists and engineers harbor sympathies for the defeated Taliban government in Afghanistan, or are willing to carry on for Osama bin Laden. "Is there loose plutonium in Pakistan?" one senior administration official with lengthy experience in Pakistan said on Friday. "I don't think so. Is there loose technology? That's a different question, and everyone there who has knowledge and access to the material needs to be talked to."

The interrogations of Pakistani scientists and engineers began several weeks ago. After a tip from the United States, Pakistani authorities last month arrested Mr. Mahmood and Mr. Majeed. Both men were associated with a private foundation that did humanitarian work in Afghanistan, and both apparently had contact with Al Qaeda members within the country. Papers found in the foundation's office in Kabul indicated that someone there was also sketching out designs for a helium balloon that could disperse anthrax.

The two men were released and then rearrested, and attempts to reach them have been unsuccessful. They are still being detained without charges. A spokesman for the Pakistani foreign ministry said yesterday that several other associates of the private foundation had recently been detained for questioning, but that none of them were nuclear experts. The families of Mr. Mahmood and Mr. Majeed have said they are innocent of any wrongdoing.

Gary Samore, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London and a former senior nonproliferation specialist in the Clinton White House, returned from Pakistan last week with a similar report.

"Pakistani officials claim that no sensitive nuclear materials or information was provided by these retired scientists to Al Qaeda, although they acknowledged that there were discussions that were ongoing," he said. "The critical question is whether that is accurate, and whether there are other cases of individual Pakistani scientists willing to sell nuclear or missile information."

American intelligence officials are increasingly convinced that Pakistan may become the site of a furtive struggle between those trying to keep nuclear technology secure and those looking to export it for terrorism or for profit.

"The Pakistanis themselves have a strong interest in keeping everything locked down," one senior American official said. "But at the same time, they refuse to stop producing new material," because India, Pakistan's nuclear rival, continues its own production. "And there are some in the Pakistani hierarchy who fear a Trojan horse that we are learning about their nuclear program because, in their minds, we may one day need to deal with it."

--------

Pakistan Ups Probe of Nuke Workers

December 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear-Scientists.html?searchpv=aponline

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan has broadened its investigation of nuclear scientists suspected of having links to Osama bin Laden after receiving new information from the CIA, a senior Pakistani official said Sunday.

Two nuclear scientists are already in custody, and Pakistani officials are questioning at least two others about their possible links to bin Laden, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Suleiman Asad and Mohammed Ali Mukhtar have been ordered to report for questioning but are not in custody, the official said. Two others, Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood and Abdul Majid, were detained after CIA Director George Tenet visited this month.

They had been in custody since October but were released without charges before Tenet's visit. Both worked for Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission until retiring in 1999.

Afterward, they managed a charity organization, Tameer-e-Ummah, or ``Nation Builder,'' and had made several trips to Afghanistan, where they met bin Laden.

Both Mehmood and Majid, however, denied transferring any nuclear-related information in Afghanistan and said they only ran education programs and helped poor Afghan farmers.

Authorities said they defied service rules that apply to government scientists even after retirement, and violated travel restrictions.

The Pakistani official said the issue of nuclear scientists was a major point of discussion during a meeting between Tenet and Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence.

Tenet told them that information obtained inside Afghanistan indicated that other Pakistani scientists -- including Asad and Mukhtar -- may have been involved with the charity organization run by Mehmood, the official said.

The official refused to give further details since the investigation is in the early stage.

Pakistan was the closest international ally of the Taliban until the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, which bin Laden allegedly orchestrated.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf then joined the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism and changed the leadership of the spy agency, which had been close to the Taliban.

However, the ranks of the ISI and other Pakistani agencies are believed filled with Taliban and bin Laden supporters. That has led to increased concern in the United States about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and the possibility that al-Qaida could have obtained expertise of nuclear materials from the Pakistanis.

-------- terrorism

A Terrorist's Guide To Infiltrate West

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 9, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14348-2001Dec8?language=printer

FARM HADA, Afghanistan, Dec. 8 -- Handwritten notes found today in a house abandoned by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization amount to a detailed handbook for operating undercover in the West, advising agents on such varied topics as traveling with a false passport, how to scout out a target and the proper way to apply deodorant.

The notes, written mostly in error-filled English with a few passages in Arabic, provide specific instruction in activities such as setting up a safe house, buying a plane ticket and establishing a "good cover story." General in nature, the notes do not mention any specific terrorist actions, but they do warn that Muslims "are facing a war of security" as they "target kuffar," the Arabic word for nonbelievers.

No detail appears too small to have escaped attention, down to the "normal" underwear an agent should wear and the wrist on which he should put his watch. The notes place painstaking emphasis on covering up telltale signs that an agent is an Islamic fundamentalist, advising recruits to shave their beards one week before traveling to a targeted country and engage in such forbidden practices as playing music to "show that you are not a Islamic person."

The documents offer an unusual window into the clandestine lives of al Qaeda operatives sent to the West to carry out secret missions, suggesting the meticulous preparation that went into setting up terrorist cells like those that are suspected in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. They also suggest the global aspirations of bin Laden's terrorist network, indicating how his recruits living in Afghanistan were assigned to infiltrate targets around the world.

Several local residents who accompanied two American reporters to the al Qaeda house where the notes were found identified the man who lived there as Julaibeeb, an Arab bodyguard for bin Laden who they said received a leg injury in 1998 when the United States bombed a bin Laden training camp in the Afghan city of Khost. Their claims could not be confirmed, and there was nothing in the notes to indicate who took them, who provided the information or when they were made.

The notes are the latest documentary traces found in places abandoned by the al Qaeda network and the ruling Taliban militia, which hosted bin Laden. After the Taliban fled Kabul last month, reporters found documents in houses there describing how to make weapons such as suitcase bombs. The notes found today, however, appear to be the first discovered here that instruct adherents to go to the West to carry out their activities, and could add to the evidence linking al Qaeda to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The instructions in the notes are also similar to the techniques described by a defector from bin Laden's network during a New York trial this year of four bin Laden associates convicted of plotting the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

The notes, ripped out of an ordinary lined-paper notebook, with several pages torn in pieces, were found scattered on the floor of a housing compound used by al Qaeda in this village about six miles outside the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Thirty-five pages in all, they read at times like a travel guide for would-be terrorists, dispensing practical advice about hotels (avoid those frequented by drug dealers) and obtaining visas.

But the notes are also a primer on al Qaeda tradecraft, detailing techniques for tracking down and reporting back on a target. One checklist identifies the goals for an agent: find a place for a secret meeting, locate a "dead box," carry out "secret watching," and finally, "distroy the target."

Jalalabad has served as a major center of operations for bin Laden and al Qaeda since 1996, when the strict Islamic Taliban militia came to power and the Saudi-born fugitive left his exile in Sudan to make his home here. Just across the dusty street from the housing compound where the notes were found is another complex where bin Laden is reported to have spent the night and where many of his recruits from Arab countries and Chechnya lived.

Several neighbors interviewed today said the al Qaeda fighters fled with their families to their mountain stronghold in the nearby White Mountains a few days after Sept. 11. Abandoned baby bottles, scattered shoes and other evidence of their hasty departure can be found throughout the housing compound. Many of the men who lived there are believed to be holed up in the mountain valley of Milawa, where anti-Taliban forces launched an offensive this week against the heavily fortified al Qaeda network of caves.

An estimated 1,000 bin Laden loyalists are fighting in the mountains, according to field commanders who say they are the same al Qaeda troops who lived freely among them in Jalalabad. The compounds here in Farm Hada appear capable of housing hundreds in mud houses surrounded by a high wall.

The house in which the notes were found was typically modest, consisting of a main room, bedroom and kitchen. Squash is still growing on a vine outside, while inside little remains besides scattered papers on the floor. This morning, several U.S. warplanes flew directly overhead, on their way to bombing runs against al Qaeda in the mountains.

The notes can be roughly divided into two categories: instructions on how to go after a target, and tips for avoiding getting caught.

One page, with the Arabic heading "By the name of Allah, the most compassionate and most merciful," is a checklist of "how to observe a house and Perticular Target," recommending a survey of how many cars and people are around the house, how well it is secured and how to travel to and from the place.

"We have to watch our target by microscopic eyes," the notes say.

But al Qaeda expected more than just simple logistics. The notes say that agents in the West were also required to collect vast amounts of information about their "watching area," including "heretic habits," population, security measures, military presence, local religious practices and extensive political information about parties, "minority government organisation" and Islamic organizations.

Once assembled, all such information about the target was to be returned in detailed reports, and the notes dwell at some length on the proper form and contents of an approved scouting report, down to the formatting of the title page. Among the information demanded: how many "pepols in the ground [named], what kind of technologi is used in the mission . . . cover story -- any mistake." Photographs and maps of the target should also be included, as well as a notation as to whether the report was "normal" or "urgent."

Concerns about how to travel under a false identity and successfully infiltrate the alien culture of the West take up much of the notes. Those traveling with forged passports were advised to have a supporting document with the same name, as well as knowledge about the country being visited. "If you have any forge nationality and passports you have to know" the language, important cities, a telephone number, the name of the president, its population, currency and "interior problem," the notes instruct. Most important, though, is a "good cover story why you carry this passport."

Even the process of buying a plane ticket is not left to chance. Instructions include buying the ticket in person, wearing European-style clothes and selecting a popular tourist destination as the first stop en route to the real target.

Finally, there are many tips on passing for a Westerner. Clothes should be used, not new and therefore "suspicious," but they should match well. And under no circumstances should the agent bring along any clothing made in countries associated with Islamic terrorism.

Deodorant is meant to be used directly on the body, the notes advise, rather than on clothing, while watches should be worn on the left wrist. Rings should be made of gold, even though Islamic fundamentalists say it violates religious law for men to wear gold. It is important to know the difference between perfume and after-shave, the notes say, and even more significant to know the difference between perfume for men and that for women. "If you will use the female perfume so you will be in big trouble."

In the end, the advice for going undercover comes down to this simple precept for packing: "Don't taike any thing wich belong to Islam."

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

Recent safety hazards at aging nuclear plants

BY CHRIS KNAP,
The Orange County Register,
December 9, 2001
http://www.ocregister.com/sitearchives/2001/12/9/news/nukeax01209cci5.shtml

Since January 1999, worn-out equipment at U.S. nuclear power plants has caused more than 50 fires, radiation or steam leaks, or other serious safety hazards requiring shutdown of the nuclear reactor. Here are details of some of the most serious accidents:

January 1999: Inadequate maintenance led to a six-hour hydrogen fire on the roof of the control building at J.A. Fitzpatrick in Syracuse, N.Y., forcing a plant shutdown.

August 1999: A cooling- water drain line in Callaway, Mo., broke because of severe corrosion, forcing a reactor shutdown. A subsequent inspection revealed at least 10 areas where pipes had decayed and were in danger of breaking.

1999-2000: Millstone in Waterford, Conn., had to repeatedly shut down due to failures of the reactor control-rod drive system, including control rods that came loose and dropped into the reactor. The plant operator blamed failed insulation and damaged electrical leads.

February 2000: A steam generator tube ruptured at Indian Point 2 in New York, contaminating 19,000 gallons of cooling water and releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere.

May 2000: A failed electrical conductor at Diablo Canyon 1 in San Luis Obispo County triggered a fire that cut power to the coolant and circulating water pumps that keep the nuclear core from overheating.

August 2000: Peach Bottom Unit 3, in Pennsylvania, was forced into emergency shutdown when an instrument valve failed and caused a leak of contaminated reactor cool ant outside of primary containment. A similar valve failure and leak of radiation had occurred May 28, 2000, but the valves were not replaced.

October 2000: At V.C. Summer, in South Carolina, a 29- inch diameter coolant pipe, with walls more than 2 inches thick, suffered a crack due to water stress corrosion, creating a leak of radioactive cooling water. Crack indications were later found at four more reactor inlets.

November 2000 to April 2001: After receiving a 20-year license extension, operators of Oconee 1, in Seneca, S.C., found 19 cracks in the reactor where control rods pass through to the nuclear core. Radioactive cooling water had been leaking into the containment sump. In February nine leaks were found in Oconee 3, which had been taken down for refueling. Oconee 2 was later found to have four leaking control-rod nozzles.

January 2001: Failure of an 18-year-old valve at North Anna, Va., created a leak of radioactive coolant of more than 10 gallons per minute, forcing a shutdown of the reactor.

February 2001: A 20-year-old circuit breaker at San Onofre 3, near Camp Pendleton, failed to close, creating a 4000-volt arc and fire that cut power to coolant control systems, drowned emergency switching valves and shut down emergency oil pumps, destroying the Unit 3 generator shaft. Currently, 150 identical breakers remain in service at the plant.

February 2001: After Arkansas 1 was re-licensed for 20 years, extensive cracking was found on the control-rod drives and thermocouple nozzles entering the nuclear reactor.

August 2001: Failure of a valve at Palo Verde 3, in Arizona, caused a leak of radioactive cooling water from the irradiated fuel-cooling pool into the reactor containment building, forcing a reactor shutdown.

-------- california

San Onofre's safety record

December 9, 2001
By Chris Knap,
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/sitearchives/2001/12/9/news/nuketime01209cci6.shtml

Although the safety record and performance of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station has improved in recent years, the plant had a poor record in the 1980s. Here's a look back:

1968: Southern California Edison and its minority partner, San Diego Gas & Electric, open San Onofre Unit 1, a 400-megawatt nuclear power plant on the beach near Camp Pendleton. San Onofre is touted as a demonstration plant for pressurized-water reactors.

1980: With Unit 1's steam generator badly dented and leaking from corrosion, Edison brings in 600 workers to patch 7,000 faults in the radioactive steam tubes. Edison is later fined $100,000 for allowing 66 workers to become exposed to dangerous amounts of radiation.

1981: San Onofre workers excavating for a walkway across the beachfront adjacent to the Unit 1 reactor discover 700 cubic yards of radioactive sand, apparently contaminated by water that leaked from the cooling system at Unit 1. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission lists San Onofre among 10 U.S. reactors whose safety record is "far below average."

1982: San Onofre Unit 2, a pressurized-water reactor rated at 1,070 megawatts, comes on line.

1983: San Onofre Unit 3, the twin of Unit 2, comes on line.

1984: Defective fuel rods disintegrate during refueling, scattering radioactive particles that are tracked throughout the plant. The contamination is so widespread that protective clothing on the ready-to-issue shelves is found to contain radioactive particles. San Onofre reports release of 40,000 curies of airborne radioactivity in 1984, 10 times average. The NRC fines Edison $100,000.

1986: Edison reports 236 worker contaminations, about 100 more than the industry annual average. SCE internal documents, unearthed during a lawsuit by a worker who later died of cancer, suggest that the true number of contaminations between 1984 and 1987 was as high as 500 workers per year.

1987: San Onofre workers are found to have carried radioactive fuel particles out of the plant on their jackets, shoes, and other personal articles. One health technician finds a radioactive fuel fragment embedded in his home carpet.

1992: Facing problems with leaks and cracking of the reactor vessel after 24 years in operation, Edison decides to close Unit 1; decommissioning begins.

1994: Edison agrees to a multimillion-dollar settlement with Rung Tang, a nuclear-safety monitor at San Onofre in the '80s who allegedly contracted leukemia from exposure to microscopic particles of highly irradiated fuel. The exact amount of the settlement is kept secret.

1998: NRC cites Edison for losing a Safeguards Contingency Plan, which details how the plant would respond to security breaches.

2000: NRC extends the operating licenses for San Onofre Units 2 and 3 from 2013 to 2022. Edison obtains a coastal permit to store irradiated fuel in concrete casks because it has run out of room in its cooling ponds.

2001: Failure of a 20-year-old breaker sparks a stubborn electrical fire that forces an emergency reactor shutdown, floods backup water supply valves and damages the generator shaft on Unit 3. No one is injured and no radiation is released, but damage tops $40 million and the reactor is shut down for four months. Replacement power costs financially weakened Edison $98 million.

Reporting by Chris Knap / The Register. Sources: NRC documents, federal court files, The Orange County Register, The Associated Press, other published reports.

----

Going dark at San Onofre
A February fire that led to four-month closure of nuclear power plant fits a pattern of industry failures.

December 9, 2001,
By CHRIS KNAP,
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/sitearchives/2001/12/9/news/nuke01209cci2.shtml

San Onofre -- It was 3:18 on a quiet Saturday afternoon when the control panel went dark at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

The date was Feb. 3, and operators were bringing Unit 3 back to full power after installing fresh uranium fuel.

When the reactor reached 40 percent power, an alarm horn suddenly blared. As its jarring 'BOOOP! BOOOP! BOOOP!" echoed through the control room, operators rushed in to diagnose what was happening.

All across the plant, circuit breakers were popping. The coolant pumps had slowed and the reactor's computer, sensing danger, had begun to shut down.

The room-sized instrument panel that warns of malfunctions was spangled with red.

Then a rogue blast of current popped safety breakers and the warning panel shut down too. Inside the control room, operators scrambled for a computer printout that would tell them what was happening.

Outside, something was on fire.

While operators struggled in the dark, a 20-year-old circuit breaker was about to cost troubled Southern California Edison more than $100 million. The fire would shut down the reactor for four months at the height of California's energy crisis and contribute to statewide rolling blackouts.

No one was hurt on Feb. 3. But in a worst-case scenario, a series of failures such as those that day could lead to a meltdown of the nuclear core. According to documents filed by Edison when the plant was first licensed, a meltdown could kill 130,000 people, cause 300,000 cancers and create 600,000 birth defects.

Nuclear power has a good safety record in the United States. But it is not impeccable. Leaks and accidents happen every month, but the general public rarely learns of them.

Since 1999, corroded pipes, leaking valves and other worn-out safety equipment has caused more than 50 fires, leaks, and safety hazards serious enough to require an emergency reactor shutdown. In three of the incidents - in New York and Pennsylvania - radiation was released into the atmosphere.

September's suicide bombings raised fears that terrorists might attack U.S. nuclear plants. But Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection reports and technical bulletins show that another danger lurks every day within these 20- to 40-year-old plants. "These reactors were built at a time when the impacts of prolonged radiation exposure on materials wasn't known. We now know some of these components are deteriorating more quickly than expected," said Anna Aurilio, an engineer with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which opposes nuclear power.

"There is no question that as reactors get older, more and more equipment will become degraded," said Dan Hirsch, former director of the Adlai Stevenson Program on Nuclear Policy at UC Santa Cruz and president of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a Los Angeles nuclear-watchdog group. "The San Onofre incident is troubling because it suggests there are other accidents waiting to happen with equipment that hasn't been adequately maintained or checked."

THE HEAD OF the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying group for the nation's commercial nuclear reactors, agrees that aging equipment is "an issue," but says the industry is working hard to address it through preventive maintenance.

Overall, the industry is proud of its record and believes more nuclear plants should be built in the United States.

"Existing plants are operating safely and reliably. From a nuclear standpoint, the record is pretty impeccable over the last 20 years," says Marvin Fertel, executive director of the institute.

The NRC's top officials agree, saying U.S. atomic power plants are safer than they've ever been.

The NRC's own statistics aren't as clear on that point. For instance, after a decade of improvement, the number of incidents that could lead to a serious nuclear accident has increased since 1999, NRC reports show.

Regulators don't think those increases are significant and have already given 20-year extensions to three nuclear plants approaching the expiration of their 40-year licenses.

Shortly after the extensions were approved, two of the three, Oconee in South Carolina and Arkansas 1 in Russellville, Ark., were found to have cracks in their nuclear reactors at the point where graphite rods are inserted to shut down the reaction.

The NRC has warned 69 nuclear plants, including San Onofre, to check for similar cracks, which could lead to an accident that melts the uranium core and releases toxic radiation outside the plant.

"When we relicense a plant, we are not saying that aging effects will not show up," said Jack Strosnider, director of engineering in the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.

"Machines and mechanical components age. Power plants age. We have requirements for the plants to do inspections on all the important equipment. They have to do testing for corrosion, for cracking. They may not find these problems early in every case, but the people are out there looking," he said.

But some experts say regulators are not doing enough.

David Lochbaum, a nuclear-safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, testified before Congress in May that the NRC has allowed plant owners to cut back on safety checks and to operate with dangerously worn equipment. Lochbaum's group does not oppose nuclear power but argues that regulation should be tighter.

"These aging-related failures indicate beyond a reasonable doubt that the aging- management programs are inadequate," Lochbaum said.

NRC reports confirm that cooling pipes, valves and other safety systems have failed in service weeks or months after their poor condition was documented.

The NRC's inspector general criticized Strosnider's office last year for failing to follow up on engineering reports that showed a dangerous condition at Indian Point 2, which later leaked radioactive gases into the air near New York City. Strosnider acknowledged in an interview that the agency had made mistakes.

Aurilio, the citizens group lobbyist, said, "There is a consistent pattern of wanting to promote the industry and protect its profits instead of being a watchdog for the citizens. It's very troubling."

The industry and the NRC argue that nuclear plants have so many safety systems that these types of accidents don't threaten public safety. The amount of radiation released last year at Indian Point, they say, was so small it was difficult to measure.

But some health scientists argue that even small releases of radiation can endanger pregnant women and babies - leading to higher rates of cancer.

Studies that document higher cancer rates have been made at Turkey Point in South Florida, at Trojan Nuclear Station in Oregon and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Scientists still disagree on the cause and significance of those findings.

"I've been very skeptical," said Lyn Harris Hicks, a San Onofre watcher who has lived in San Clemente's Cypress Shores, less than three miles from the plant, for 30 years.

"During the licensing hearing, they told us they couldn't have any accidents at San Onofre because there were so many backup systems. Later we learned they have accidents all the time. They just don't call them accidents, they call them incidents. The general public accepts that we're not vulnerable, and that's wrong."

MOST OF THE time the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is a quiet giant, slumbering peacefully by the ocean. Two massive concrete containment domes form its chest. Its legs are the cooling pipes sending heated water a mile and a half out to sea. Its arms are the transmission towers pumping 2,200 megawatts of electricity to a power-hungry state.

Together with the 2,300-megawatt Diablo Canyon plant in Central California and the 4,200-megawatt Palo Verde in Arizona, this nuclear family provides about 20 percent of the power used in California on an average day.

All three plants are high-performance designs called pressurized-water reactors. That means they make extra power from their reactors by pressurizing water in their steam generators to 2,200 pounds - about 200 times the pressure of your car radiator.

NRC reports show these highly-stressed plants are six times as likely to have a serious accident as the simpler but less powerful boiling- water reactors.

The weak point of these reactors is the pressurized steam generator, which separates radioactive cooling water from clean water drawn from rivers or oceans.

A half-dozen of these steam generators have failed in the past 20 years, most recently at Indian Point 2.

Consolidated Edison, which operated the Hudson River plant, had inspected its steam-generator tubes in 1997 using an electronic device. The test results - which everyone agrees are difficult to read - showed that the tubes had deep cracks.

NRC inspectors allowed the company, which is not affiliated with Southern California Edison, to put the device back in service - and then granted the company an additional one-year extension before it had to retest or replace the tubes.

On Feb. 2, 2000, the steam generator failed, contaminating 20,000 gallons of cooling water and releasing radioactive gases into the air.

Palo Verde similarly failed to identify a tube defect during an inspection in 1998 and put a flawed generator back in service, NRC records show. That defect held until 2000, when it was discovered and repaired.

San Onofre, like Indian Point and Palo Verde, has been delaying the multimillion-dollar cost of replacing its steam generators.

Eight percent of the tubes in Unit 2 and 6 percent of the tubes in Unit 3 have had to be removed from service and plugged because of cracks and leaks, according to Southern California Edison. Once 10 percent of the tubes are plugged, Edison will have to replace the generators - or cut back power.

"We are trying to nurse these as long as we can," Edison's Ray Golden said.

WHILE SAN ONOFRE operators struggled that winter afternoon to restore power to their control panel, the plant's firefighters rushed to the Unit 3 switchroom, finding it filled with heavy smoke.

Plant engineers would later discover that a circuit breaker installed when the plant was built 25 years earlier had failed to close properly, likely due to wear, NRC reports show. When plant operators began to power up Unit 3, the partially closed contacts created a 4,000-volt arc that melted the breaker and filled the switchroom with smoke and ozone.

Like a welder out of control, that single breaker wreaked havoc. Nearby circuit breakers shorted or popped, cutting off power to safety systems throughout the plant.

Operators were able to cool the nuclear core by powering cooling pumps from Unit 2.

But other safety systems were crippled.

A backup cooling tank flooded its valves and could not be used - a violation of NRC rules.

The emergency oil pumps for the Unit 3 turbine never started, apparently due to another bad breaker.

The 200-ton generator continued to spin without oil, grinding its precisely- machined shaft into junk.

"It's analogous to being in your car on the highway and losing all your oil at 80 mph," said Edison's Golden.

Although the generator was destroying itself, it was still putting out enough power to fuel a stubborn blaze inside the refrigerator-size cabinet where the breaker was vaporizing. Firefighters repeatedly doused the cabinet with fire extinguishers. The blaze repeatedly restarted.

After arguing with control-room operators, firefighters finally received permission to use water on the fire at 5:40 p.m.

At 6:11 p.m., just shy of three hours after it started, the fire was out.

Repairs to the generator and the electrical system would eventually cost $40million, although Edison's insurer would pay for all but $2.5million.

The big hit was the cost of replacement power for 117 days - $98million

IN THE PAST three years the NRC has found eight violations at San Onofre related to old or worn-out equipment.

In December 1999, Southern California Edison admitted having an "inadequate equipment status control program." Less than eight months later, NRC regulators found another "pattern of delayed maintenance" including electrical relays that weren't properly tested and failed when finally checked.

But Edison says the fire in February was not caused by inadequate maintenance.

Prior to the fire, breakers that didn't control safety functions were cleaned, lubricated and adjusted every six years, the company says. Breakers that control safety circuits were cleaned and adjusted every four years.

Breaker 3A0712, which sparked the fire, was cleaned, and adjusted on May 8, 1997, according to documents - three years and eight months before the fire.

More than 150 identical breakers are still in operation at San Onofre, dozens of them protecting critical safety systems.

Golden said the company has no plans to change its maintenance schedule. "This was original equipment," Golden said. "For 20 years it operated properly. If (engineers) see reoccurrence, it potentially could lead to a change in (maintenance) frequency. But right now that wouldn't be the case."

The NRC has found nothing wrong with Edison's breaker-maintenance schedule.

Hirsch, the nuclear-safety activist, disagrees.

"The PR spokespeople for nuclear power plants seem to have a button on their computer; they push it and out comes the phrase: "There's no evidence of unsafe conditions," Hirsch said.

"I would be much more relieved if they sometimes said, 'This is a problem, and we're going to take steps to fix it.'"

-------- new mexico

Legendary Los Alamos Turns Its Focus to Anti-Terrorism

Sunday, December 9, 2001
BY ROBERT L. KAISER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
http://www.sltrib.com/12092001/nation_w/156378.htm

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- This is a place where the mundane and the unthinkable are hopelessly tangled, where scientists who get $10 haircuts at lunchtime design devastating weapons in the afternoon, and men spending retirement in the craggy mountains remember working on the Manhattan Project.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, birthplace of the atomic bomb, still gives some around here the creeps. But in a twist brought about by the specter of terrorism, many workers in the mysterious, low-slung buildings and metal trailers are working overtime trying to save the world from weapons of mass destruction. And the nuclear age Los Alamos helped usher in nearly 60 years ago occasionally comes back to haunt employees such as Terry Hawkins, whose job sometimes requires him to imagine what Osama bin Laden might do next.

"We sit around and think of these very bad things, and we dare not tell anybody," said Hawkins, the director of the Nonproliferation and International Security division at Los Alamos.

"It's quite a burden to live in that world," he said. What happened Sept. 11 has altered the tenor and rhythm of days at Los Alamos, reinvigorating a symbol from history books that many Americans might have ceased to consider or might think of only as that ominous place "on the hill" where scientists dream up dark technology. Even veteran scientists, engineers and technicians here say they feel rejuvenated by the stepped-up relevance and urgency of their jobs, a feeling that recently has been fueled by bin Laden's claim to have devastating weapons of his own.

"We know our mission now has a renewed sense of urgency," said Gil Garduno, 30, a nuclear-weapons engineer who wears jeans and hiking boots to work. "It brings it back to life how important it is."

Hawkins said, "I think all our people generally understand that we're in a race against the bad guys."

Besides Hawkins' division, where hundreds of employees work to detect, deter and defuse everything from nuclear to cyberterrorism, Los Alamos houses the world's most comprehensive anthrax database -- one that has 1,200 strains, according to Peter Lyons, science adviser for Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.

The lab also has computers that can simulate and predict the effects of a terrorist attack on the nation's infrastructure. The program stands to get an extra $20 million from the new anti-terrorism act.

While none of these programs is new -- the labs have long been involved in more than nuclear research, building databases on everything from AIDS to the flu -- many have been accelerated, emphasized or redirected since Sept. 11.

And now the lab wants to build a research facility where scientists would work with live infectious agents such as plague, anthrax and tuberculosis, a proposal that has been received less than enthusiastically by those who think it is enough merely to have plutonium in their back yard.

The new, more secure unit would be the only such lab in the Department of Energy's complex and could give Los Alamos an even bigger role in the nation's burgeoning fight against bioterrorism.

"Maybe with all this, there will be more money flowing into Los Alamos," said Ernest Lujan, the barber whose shop Los Alamos employees flood at lunchtime. He added that the mood in town has improved since the attacks.

So far the benefit to Los Alamos has been an increase in morale. Workers throughout the lab have come to view old jobs in a new light and to attack them with new energy.

Hawkins works with U.S. intelligence to develop, redirect and expedite technology that might help save lives. Since Sept. 11 he often is at the lab from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and then takes work home that he must keep secret even from his wife. He often works weekends, too.

"People in this division are working longer hours under higher pressure," said Juan Baldonado, a veteran mechanical technician in space sciences, which among other things has developed surveillance satellites. "People who work at the lab really like their jobs, and when there's a real need for something like this they really buckle down.

"It's about like the military: 'Hey, we have a real purpose now.' "

The emerging image of Los Alamos as a valuable asset in the war on terrorism and the defense of American lives has failed to impress its detractors, who hold the lab in contempt because of how much federal money it gets and what it is perceived to represent.

"I would say the people here are quite a bit less swept up in the vicissitudes of the moment than you might expect," said Greg Mello, the head of the Los Alamos Study Group and a frequent critic of the lab.

"I think there is a little more acceptance of things military probably right now. But there's really quite a bit of skepticism about the political uses of Sept. 11. And there's a lot less to the lab's touted accomplishments than meets the eye. It's been hard to recruit good people to make weapons of mass destruction for a long time."

The uneasy relationship northern New Mexicans have with the lab began in the early 1940s, when a top-secret collaboration of some of science's brightest minds led to the development of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 and gave birth to the town of Los Alamos.

Even today Los Alamos is home to one of the highest concentrations of doctorates on the planet, scientists who not only developed atomic weaponry but also have in recent years pioneered research into AIDS, genetics and other fields. The complex covers some 43 square miles and employs roughly 7,000 researchers and support personnel.

The city itself has a population of about 11,000 people, most of whom work for the Los Alamos National Laboratory or for local businesses that directly support the facility.

On the outskirts, in a house with a breathtaking view of the Rio Grande River cutting through a mountain canyon, lives 81-year-old vintner John Balagna, a retired chemist who worked on the Manhattan Project and who now makes a wine he labels "La Bomba."

"We had a lot of smart people here during World War II," Balagna said. "In two years we went from nothing to nuclear weapons. But there weren't any secrets, it was just fact. Anyone with scientific knowledge and smarts was going to figure it out eventually."

Betty Lou Stein, 76, remembers the fear of moving to Los Alamos in 1948, when her husband joined the lab's security team.

"My mother was frantic," she said. "She told me, 'My God, you're living on top of a time bomb.' " Almost 60 years later, Stein is ill at ease once again over living in Los Alamos.

"We're upset because of what happened Sept. 11," she said. "We don't know that Los Alamos won't be a target. The day the attack happened, I said to my husband, 'Oh my God, are we going to get it?' "

But at Ernie's Barber Shop, the mood has mellowed since Sept. 11, and the Los Alamos employees who keep the chairs warm at lunchtime are taking the threat of terrorism in stride.

"I'm noticing more of a presence of guards at the lab, but I don't think anybody is really fearful that Los Alamos will be a target," Garduno said, taking a mirror from Lujan to check his haircut.

"Looks good, thanks," Garduno told the barber. Then he headed back to work at the lab.

-------- us politics

Powell Marks New Alliance with Russia on Terrorism

December 9, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-attack-powell.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell swapped Soviet suspicion and nuclear angst for arms cuts and a shoulder-to-shoulder war against terrorism on Sunday on his first trip to Russia since taking charge of foreign policy.

In 1973 he got his first taste of Russia as a White House fellow, tailed by communist spies and dragged away if he tried to break free. Soviet ground was ``hard with suspicion and mistrust,'' he wrote in his autobiography.

In 2001 police closed roads so he could speed into a snow-clad central Moscow, whisking him off to the Kremlin for a tour and leisurely dinner with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, or Igor, as Powell calls him affectionately after 15 meetings.

Powell had just laid flowers at a memorial to 13 people killed and 47 hurt by a bomb that ripped through a pedestrian passageway in the heart of downtown Moscow last year.

If U.S.-Russian relations were in second gear before hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center's twin towers, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside on September 11, they have since blasted into overdrive.

The attacks brought home to Washington the threat President Vladimir Putin has blamed on Chechen militants, who he says have links with Osama bin Laden, the man Washington says killed nearly 4,000 people in the September attacks.

Russia's death tolls have been lower -- 118 people killed in an eight-story Moscow apartment block, 94 in another apartment block blast, 64 people -- mostly wives and children of Russian officers -- at a military housing block near Chechnya, more than 50 dead in a bomb blast in a market in Vladikavkaz.

Human rights groups say thousands of Chechen civilians have been killed since the second Russian campaign to crush the rebels began and helped propel Putin to power.

PUTIN FIRST TO CALL

September 11 prompted Putin, whose KGB past made Washington suspicious, to race to call President Bush, an initiative that spelled the start of a more understanding brand of rhetoric out of Washington about Moscow's Chechen campaign.

``He was the first world leader to call Mr. Bush and that meant a lot to the American people,'' Powell told independent television station TV6 after he arrived in Moscow.

``Russia has suffered from terrorist acts and understands that this is a campaign that the whole of Russia should be aligned to,'' he added of the U.S. war in Afghanistan that Russia has supported vigorously.

``There are terrorists in Chechnya and we understand that, but they have to use restraint, to try to find a political solution and be very, very considerate of human rights.''

September 11 also appears to have give an impetus to talks aimed at resolving differences over U.S. plans to build a missile defense system that was banned in the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty signed the year before Powell's first visit.

Powell may hear a final figure from Putin when he meets him on Monday on how much he is prepared to cut his nuclear arsenal as part of ongoing arms reductions that are running in tandem with efforts to agree a graceful exit from the ABM.

The two countries announced on Wednesday that they had slashed their stockpile to levels set by the START-1 treaty, signed by Washington and Moscow in 1991, to 5,518, well below the ceiling of 6,000 established by the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.

Putin and 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.

----

TEXT: Cheney on bin Laden tape

Sunday, Dec. 9, 2001
eMediaMillWorks
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/cheneytext_120901.html

Following is the text of Vice President Richard Cheney's interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" with host Tim Russert. During the interview the vice president commented that a recent tape of Osama bin Laden solidified his view that bin Laden was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

RUSSERT: He's out of his cave, I'm happy to report, here at a disclosed location, the set of Meet the Press.

Mr. Vice President, welcome back.

CHENEY: Good morning, Tim. It's good to be back on your tenth anniversary show.

RUSSERT: Thank you, sir.

CHENEY: Very nice.

RUSSERT: Let's go right to Afghanistan. Concerns that in Kandahar there are some pro-Taliban elements in charge in parts of the city. Are we comfortable with the situation in Kandahar?

CHENEY: It's better than it was a few days ago when the Taliban still controlled the city clearly, but it's still in the state of flux. This is not sort of a neat, orderly process. There are a lot of negotiations that have gone on back and forth.

I think there's no question but what the Taliban hold on the city is history. There are still pockets of Taliban left not only there, but elsewhere around the country.

But, in effect, I think the Taliban as an effective government has been destroyed, and it's only a matter of time until they're all shut down.

RUSSERT: Are Mullah Muhammed Omar and Osama bin Laden still in Afghanistan?

CHENEY: I believe so. Can't say with absolute certainty, but the volume of the reporting has increased over time as we've gotten more and more people into those areas that they've been active in. And I would say the preponderance of the reporting at this point indicates that Mullah Omar is still down in the Kandahar region someplace and that Osama bin Laden is also still in Afghanistan.

RUSSERT: Up in Tora Bora?

CHENEY: In that general area.

RUSSERT: Both those men had a lot to say during the course of this war about destroying infidels and destroying America. Omar said, ``Stand and fight until death. Don't run around like chickens with your head cut off.''

How do you compare that rhetoric with their behavior this morning?

CHENEY: Well, you know, they were eager to send young men on suicide missions, but they appear to be holding up in caves. You know, they talk a bold game when it's others they're trying to command to fight to the last drop of blood, but of course, in the final analysis, they're running and hiding, as the president said they would.

RUSSERT: Do you detect there are people on the ground who are interested in the reward and interested in helping us find them?

CHENEY: Absolutely. The reward is a significant incentive, obviously.

But there's another element operating here, too. The people of Afghanistan feel a great sense of liberation, having the opportunity to get out from under the heavy hand of the Taliban.

And at the same time I think there's a real sense of outrage on the part of many Afghans about what Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden brought down on the heads of the Afghan people.

The fact that they did become a sanctuary for terrorist, of course, has been devastating from the standpoint of what we've had to do to go rout them out. And they blame Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden for that. So they're eager to wrap them up.

RUSSERT: If either are captured alive, we will insist that they be turned over to the American authorities?

CHENEY: Yes.

RUSSERT: No international court?

CHENEY: No. We made it very clear we want Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar and their senior leadership. And if they're taken alive we expect to take custody of them.

RUSSERT: And they would be the kind of people who would go before the military tribunals?

CHENEY: That's a decision the president has to make, but obviously they are exactly the kind of people who tribunals were established for.

RUSSERT: The Washington Post reports today there is a new tape of Osama bin Laden where he expresses advanced knowledge of the attack on the World Trade Center and seems to even suggest responsibility. Have you seen that tape or do you know of it?

CHENEY: I have seen it.

RUSSERT: Will you release it to the public?

CHENEY: It's not for me to release. But I've seen pieces of it; I didn't see the whole thing.

RUSSERT: What can you tell us about it?

CHENEY: Well, first of all, it's in Arabic, so I have to rely on what somebody tells me he's saying.

It shows him being interviewed or meeting with another individual, apparently a cleric, talking about the events of September 11. And it's pretty clear, as it's described to me, that he does, in fact, display significant knowledge of what happened, and there's no doubt about his responsibility for the attack on September 11.

Now, we've known that all along. There's been some dispute in some quarters about it, but this is one more piece of evidence confirming his responsibility for what happened on 9-11.

RUSSERT: Would it be helpful to put that out, so people in the Arab world, the Muslim world can see it in his own words?

CHENEY: I don't know whether it would or not. Somebody who's more knowledgeable than I am would have to figure that out. We've not been eager to give the guy any extra television time than he can obtain for himself. But I think we'd probably rely on the experts as to whether or not it'd be a good idea for us to release it.

RUSSERT: If Omar and Osama bin Laden are captured, will the United States then leave Afghanistan?

CHENEY: Leave in terms of our military forces? Certainly the military operation would be pretty well wrapped up at that point, but we've had some other missions that we wanted to accomplish. We clearly are interested not only in those two individuals, but also their senior leadership. So I would want to say that that had been dealt with.

We also are aggressively searching out a number of sites where they had operations to see whether or not there's any evidence that they had obtained weapons of mass destruction.

Beyond that, we feel we have a continuing obligation and responsibility to support the interim government that's now being stood up, to help with humanitarian relief.

So I would expect we'll have a continuing role there but not as any occupying military force.

RUSSERT: We will not be part of a multinational peace force?

CHENEY: We might provide some support for it. The president will have to make those decisions.

But, again, the thing to emphasize here is that we're not eager to have the United States come in and become an occupying power in Afghanistan. That's not our purpose. We're not there for that reason.

At the same time, we want to see to it that what is left behind gives the Afghan people the opportunity to develop a strong representative government, a government that can guarantee that, in the future, no terrorist will once again find sanctuary or safe harbor in Afghanistan.

RUSSERT: Sounds like we're talking years.

CHENEY: Well, years of involvement and, I think, in terms of non-governmental organizations, perhaps AID, working through the United Nations, peacekeepers perhaps for a short period of time.

But that's really got to be worked out with the interim government. As soon as you've got an interim government stood up in Afghanistan, they're going to be responsible in part for deciding what kind of additional assistance they need, do they need outside help, and, if so, what might be done to provide it.

RUSSERT: Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared before the Senate this week and had some interesting things to say. And let me show you and our viewers on the board: ``To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies.''

Who has been aiding terrorists or giving ammunition to the enemies?

CHENEY: Well, you'd have to direct that question specifically to Attorney General Ashcroft.

The point's been made--and I think with some justification--that the response, if you will, to, for example, establishing military tribunals on times got a little bit hysterical. People alleging, for example, that the military was going to be able to haul people off in the dark of night and subject them to summary executions. Now, that's never been intended. That's not in the executive order.

What we're doing here has ample historic precedent, and we are in fact safeguarding the basic fundamental values and liberties with that establishment.

So I think it would help if we'd get the rhetoric level down and people look at the facts and consider what's in fact anticipated here.

RUSSERT: If someone said these were kangaroo courts or Bush's dictatorial power or Soviet-style abomination...

CHENEY: I would say that's...

RUSSERT: ... or try 'em, fry 'em, betraying our principles, is that aiding the terrorists?

CHENEY: Well, it's certainly--I don't know if it's aiding the terrorists, but it's certainly misrepresenting what the administration's about here.

RUSSERT: That's William Safire.

CHENEY: Well, I disagree with Bill. Bill and I have talked about his column.

RUSSERT: But in fact aren't we in Afghanistan to protect the First Amendment?

CHENEY: We're in Afghanistan for the stated purposes, Tim, in terms of routing out terrorism and...

RUSSERT: Our way of life, as well.

CHENEY: But we are also involved here, with respect to the establishment of these military tribunals, in trying to establish venues to bring terrorists to justice, but also to protect the United States against further attack.

Now, the military tribunal is a very important proposition. And Bill Safire is an old friend of mine, and I frequently agree with him. I just think he's dead wrong in this case.

If you look at what the president's order directed here, he will be the one who decides whether or not anybody goes to a tribunal. He also has made it clear that they're to have a full and a fair trial. He's also made it clear they're to be represented by competent counsel, they're to be treated humanely. All of that's in the executive order.

Now, there are ample reasons to go this route. For example, when we go into the normal criminal-court proceedings, and have intelligence information that we might want to use in trying to obtain a conviction, that information becomes public. And what's happened in the past, unfortunately, is the terrorists have gone to school on us, they've watched the trials, for example, from earlier terrorist activities, and learned how to operate to make it tougher for us to be able to find out what they're doing.

There are serious security problems involved. The judge who handled the first World Trade Center bombing case is still under 24-hour-a-day security, some eight years after the attack.

So, all of those problems can be avoided with a military tribunal. It'll be used only for people who are suspected of being foreign terrorists. No American citizen's going to be subjected to that. And, as I say, we will safeguard, within reason, the rights of the accused.

RUSSERT: But you can oppose that concept without being disloyal or unpatriotic?

CHENEY: Oh, I think so. I would not suggest otherwise.

RUSSERT: John Walker, a young American who was found with an AK-47 in Afghanistan--and let me go through some of the comments that have been made about him, and himself as well.

This was first put out by Robert Young Pelton (ph), a author who found him: ``John Walker, 20 years old, is a member of Ansar, or the Helpers, the Arab-speaking fighters funded and supported by Osama bin Laden.''

Then this from Newsweek: ``Walker described himself as a jihadi, a fighter of holy wars, and said he had received combat training at a camp in Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden appeared several times.''

And then this, his own words: ``I came in contact with many people who are connected with the Taliban. My heart became attached to them.''

And this: ``When the USS Cole was bombed, John seemed to have a more casual view. He suggested the U.S. ship should have never been there in the first place, and that, by docking in the Islamic country, had committed an act of war. The bombing, John implied, was a justified response.''

And this, coming up, from our next one, we can show, please. U.S. News: ``In the back courtyard, some were being interrogated by two American CIA agents. One of the agents, known as `Mike,' asked a captive why he came to Afghanistan. The answer was short and direct, `We are here to kill you.' With that, the prisoner leapt at his questioner, beat, kicked and bit him to death. That sparked an all-out revolt. For three days, some 500 imprisoned Talibs, including Walker, bent on fighting to death, barricaded themselves inside the September 11 fortress and battled it out.''

And Walker went on to say that he supported the attack of September 11 on the United States.

Based on that, is he a traitor?

CHENEY: Well, Tim, you're asking me to pass judgment on a particular individual here, based on these press accounts.

I have trouble, and I think like many Americans do, understanding why somebody who grew up in this country would ultimately find themselves in Afghanistan, fighting with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda.

But I don't know all the facts. We don't know all the facts, as a government.

He has been held in military custody in Afghanistan. Once, I think, we're through debriefing him, he will be turned over to civilian authorities. And as an American citizen, he's entitled to certain rights, and he'll be handled accordingly.

Somebody will have to make a decision as to whether or not he needs to be brought to trial, what the charge might be...

RUSSERT: Who makes that decision?

CHENEY: Well, I think eventually it will probably be made by the Justice Department. But I'm not an attorney, and let me reserve judgment on that until the lawyers have had a chance to look at it.

RUSSERT: There are reports that he's at Camp Rhino in the custody of the United States Marines, in effect a prisoner of war. Is that fair?

CHENEY: Well, he's clearly in custody. The Marines have him at this point. He is being accorded all of the rights of the Geneva Convention. But as I say, as an American citizen and--he, I expect will in fact be turned over to the civilian authorities.

RUSSERT: They say he is providing some information that may be helpful. If he in fact does that--is he doing that?

CHENEY: Some of the information he has provided, I'm told, has been useful.

RUSSERT: If he does more of that, will that be taken into consideration in terms of leniency?

CHENEY: That's not a judgment for me to make.

RUSSERT: How could someone, 20 years old from America, infiltrate Al Qaeda, be in the presence of Osama bin Laden, so successfully, and our CIA couldn't?

CHENEY: I'm not sure. Needless to say, I'm surprised to find an American in that setting, especially a 20-year-old whose gone off and joined the Taliban. But I don't know all the specifics of how he got included within the organization or what he had to do to be accepted. Those are matters that, you know, are yet to be investigated.

RUSSERT: Are there other Americans over there?

CHENEY: There have been reports that there were two other Taliban fighters who claimed U.S. citizenship. At this point I can't confirm that. Just reports that supposedly the Northern Alliance had captured two additional individuals who claimed citizenship.

Now it may well be, for example, that they were, were born here but grew up in a different part of the world, we simply don't know.

RUSSERT: There's no way that John Walker's an agent for us?

CHENEY: I have not heard that.

RUSSERT: Let me turn to Iraq. When you were last on this program, September 16, five days after the attack on our country, I asked you whether there was any evidence that Iraq was involved in the attack and you said no.

Since that time, a couple of articles have appeared which I want to get you to react to. The first: The Czech interior minister said today that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the September 11 terrorists attacks on the United States, just five months before the synchronized hijackings and mass killings were carried out.

And this from James Woolsey, former CIA director: ``We know that at Salman Pak, in the southern edge of Baghdad, five different eye witnesses--three Iraqi defectors and two American U.N. inspectors--have said, and now there are aerial photographs to show it, a Boeing 707 that was used for training of hijackers, including non-Iraqi hijackers, trained very secretly to take over airplanes with knives.''

And we have photographs. As you can see that little white speck, and there it is. The plane on the ground in Iraq used to train non-Iraqi hijackers.

Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?

CHENEY: Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that's been pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.

Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point. But that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.

RUSSERT: What we do know is that Iraq is harboring terrorists. This was from Jim Hoagland in The Washington Post that George W. Bush said that Abdul Ramini Yazen (ph), who helped bomb the World Trade Center back in 1993, according to Louis Freeh was hiding in his native Iraq. And we'll show that right there on the screen. That's an exact quote.

If they're harboring terrorist, why not go in and get them?

CHENEY: Well, the evidence is pretty conclusive that the Iraqis have indeed harbored terrorists. That wasn't the question you asked the last time we met. You asked about evidence involved in September 11.

RUSSERT: Correct.

CHENEY: Over the years, for example, they've provided a safe harbor for Abu Nadal (ph), worked out of Bagdad for a long time.

The situation, I think, that leads a lot of people to be concerned about Iraq has to do not just with their past activity of harboring terrorist, but also with Saddam Hussein's behavior over the years and with his aggressive pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

When we go back and look at 1981, he was pursuing nukes. The Israelis preempted when they hit the Osirak reactor and shut down the program. In 1991, 10 years later, when we went in, we found evidence of a very aggressive nuclear program.

For the last three years, there have been no inspectors in Iraq, and he has aggressively pursued the development of additional weapons of mass destruction. He's had significant sums of money from smuggling oil that are outside the oil for food program that are available to him to undertake these activities.

And we know, as well, he's had a robust biological weapons and chemical weapons program, and unlike just about anybody else in the world, he's used them. He used those weapons against the Kurds in Iraq and against the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War.

RUSSERT: You were very critical of the Clinton administration for not inspecting for two years. It's been a full year since you've been in office. Why hasn't the Bush administration demanded and gotten inspections?

CHENEY: The president's made it clear, and did the other day in connection with a question he was asked, that he believes that the inspectors ought to go back into Iraq. Of course, Saddam Hussein subsequently rejected that option. We've not yet made a decision about how best to proceed.

But clearly, given the events of September 11, given the vulnerability of the United States that's now been demonstrated, given the increasing linkage, if you will, between terrorist and weapons of mass destruction, we have to be very deliberate in terms of how we proceed to make certain that the United States is not vulnerable to that kind of an attack.

And so, all of those considerations will, I'm sure, influence the president's decision. But he'll ultimately have to make the decision about what kind of policy we best want to pursue with respect to Iraq.

RUSSERT: John McCain, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott, a lot of others have that they have authorized an appropriate amount of money to fund the Iraqi opposition. When will the administration allow that money to be spent?

CHENEY: Some money has already been spent, and I'm sure more will.

RUSSERT: Soon?

CHENEY: Well, I would expect so.

RUSSERT: The Middle East, Yassar Arafat said this morning that the United States should pressure Israel not to use American-provided military equipment to attack Palestinians. What's your response to Mr. Arafat?

CHENEY: Well, the problem we have with Mr. Arafat, the process of negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians began with the commitment by Yasser Arafat and the PLO to renounce violence and to recognize the right of Israel to exist.

What we've seen now in recent months after the breakdown of the Camp David talks last year, and after the rejection by Arafat of what most people thought was a very generous offer from Prime Minister Barak, has been a resumption of a great deal of violence, most of it perpetrated by suicidal attackers operating out of Palestinian-controlled territory against Israeli civilians.

We've seen the attack on the disco. We've seen an attack on a pizza parlor full of women and children; most recently, of course, in a shopping mall.

The fact of the matter is, until Arafat demonstrates that he's serious about controlling suicide attackers from Palestinian territory against the Israelis, there's not going to be any progress.

The people who are suffering most, of course, I think are in fact the Palestinians, the Palestinian people who are led by someone, in this particular case, who is either unwilling or unable to deal with the home grown terrorists that...

RUSSERT: Are his days numbered?

CHENEY: That's not for me to say. Obviously the Palestinian people are responsible for deciding who's going to be their leader and who represents them.

But Hamas terrorist organization, the president took steps this week to clamp down on their funding and financing. It's taken credit for having killed 25 Israeli civillians and wounded over 200 more in the past.

It's not surprising, given that level of violence and those repeated attacks, that the Israelis take steps to defend themselves. They have every right to do so.

RUSSERT: His behavior has pushed back the possibility of a Palestinian state?

CHENEY: I think there's no question about that.

RUSSERT: Will the president bring Arafat and Sharon to Washington and put them together in one room?

CHENEY: We've made it clear that until Mr. Arafat lives up to his commitments, which he is not doing--until he demonstrates that he is in fact prepared to stop the violence that originates in Palestinian-controlled territory, there won't be a meeting.

RUSSERT: Let me move to the home front. Since you were elected in November, 2.5 million Americans have joined the unemployment lines. There are now 8 million Americans out of work. Also, the $5 trillion surplus has shrunk to $2 trillion, which is supposed to be used for Social Security.

In light of all that, will you support a postponement or delay of the president's tax cut in order to provide funding for unemployment compensation for those millions of Americans who are out of work?

CHENEY: The fact is, Tim, we don't have to postpone the tax reduction in order to provide for those who are out of work. We're prepared to do that anyway.

We are moving forward. The president has called for an increase in the number of weeks of eligibility for unemployment insurance, for providing help for the unemployment with respect to health insurance, et cetera. That's going forward.

The tax package we put in place early this year is absolutely essential to the recovery of the economy. Raising taxes in the midst of a recession is probably one of the worst ideas in terms of economic policy. It makes no sense at all.

What we really need now is an additional stimulus package. We need to accelerate those tax cuts, not postpone them. The president's called for accelerating the tax cuts, called for accelerating the depreciation, and encourage business to invest and create jobs, called for additional rebates, for example, for taxpayers who didn't get one earlier this year.

But moving the tax cuts forward and making them deeper, if you will, is an integral part of getting this economy going again.

There's no question that we're in a recession. It started in the middle of 2000. I was on this show with you about a year ago, and I said we might be on the front edge of a recession. And there was a lot of criticism on my comments, but it turned out to be accurate.

RUSSERT: How long is this recession going to last?

CHENEY: It depends on whether or not we get our friends on the other side of the aisle, the Democrats in Congress frankly, to move it. If we move a stimulus bill now before the end of the year, I think we can expect a recovery next year.

The quicker we get started, the better. The quicker we get started, the fewer people are going to loose their jobs and the faster we're going to be able to create the kind of economic growth and prosperity that will guarantee jobs for all Americans.

But Tom Daschle, unfortunately, has decided, I think, in this case to be more of an obstructionist. He's insisted that no bill can move forward unless two-thirds of the Senate Democrats support it. That's an artificially high barrier. What we need, last time I checked, to pass something to the Senate was 51 votes. And that ought to be the test and it ought to be a bipartisan bill.

We're prepared to negotiate and reach an agreement, but so far he's been unable to get anything through the U.S. Senate. And at this stage, as I say, he's set an artificially high barrier that may in fact delay action on a stimulus bill until it's too late.

RUSSERT: David Broder reports this morning's Washington Post that Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, confronted with a deficit, delayed his tax cut as being fiscally responsible. Will George W. Bush follow the lead of his brother?

CHENEY: I think those are different circumstances, Tim. I think, if you think about it, what a state does is much more a matter of fiscal management, whereas what we're talking about at the federal level is really governs the overall shapes and direction of our economy. They're just on a different scale and a different set of problems that a governor has to deal with versus the president.

RUSSERT: Let me show you an ad in South Dakota. You mentioned Senator Tom Daschle, and this was paid for by the Family Research Council out there. Saddam Hussein and Tom Daschle, juxtaposed.

That's a little over the line, isn't it?

CHENEY: Well, I'm not responsible for the ad, and you flashed it so fast, I didn't have a chance to read the copy.

But there is a disagreement with respect to Senator Daschle on energy. The House of Representatives has moved and passed an energy bill last summer. The Senate has not acted. Tom pulled it out of the energy committee so they're not considering in committee an energy bill at this point. The House has passed a stimulus package. The Senate has yet to act. The House just passed trade promotion authority. The Senate has yet to act.

In the energy area, it's extraordinarily important that we move for energy security, energy independence. We're never going to get all the way over to energy independence, but given the volatility of the Middle East and our increasing dependence on that part of the world for oil, it's important we go forward, for example, with things like ANWR.

RUSSERT: It's OK if you have philosophical differences between Democrats and Republicans.

CHENEY: Philosophical differences are fine. What we're seeing though, unfortunately, is that efforts are being made here to artificially erect barriers to Senate action. We saw it in the two-thirds hurdle requirement that's been established on tax stimulus.

We see it on judicial nominations. The Senate Judiciary Committee has simply refused to move forward with a number of confirmations that would let us fill the...

RUSSERT: Pat Leahy says they've confirmed more than the Republicans confirmed with President Clinton.

CHENEY: That's not true. And if you look at the numbers and the actual number of vacancies in the court today, our total federal court system are greater than they were at the beginning of the year. They're not even keeping pace with the retirements and deaths.

RUSSERT: Before you go, a lot of e-mail to me: Where's Dick Cheney been. What does he do all day? Answer.

CHENEY: I work hard. Frequently, when the president's in the White House, I'm elsewhere. But wherever I go, I have my secure video conferencing capabilities, and so I'm plugged in to the regular meetings in the White House...

RUSSERT: And advising him on a daily basis.

CHENEY: On a regular basis, yes.

RUSSERT: This is how Saturday Night Live portrayed Vice President Dick Cheney. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(UNKNOWN): And now from a secret location, here is the vice president of the United States.
(LAUGHTER)

ACTOR PLAYING CHENEY: Hello America, I'm Dick Cheney. As you know, for the past few weeks I've been off in an undisclosed location.
(LAUGHTER)

Well, I'm here tonight to disclose that location: Kandahar, Afghanistan. I'm a one-man, Afghani wrecking crew.
(LAUGHTER)

That Northern Alliance they've been talking about? Pretty much just me.
(LAUGHTER)

Check it out, suckers.
(LAUGHTER)

I got me a bionic ticker. This thing regulates my heartbeat, gives me night vision and renders me completely invisible to radar.
(LAUGHTER)

Check this out. (LAUGHTER)

I brew my own Sanka. You can run, but you can't hide. Thanks to this baby I can achieve a top speed of up to 70 miles an hour.
(LAUGHTER)

And when I find you you got something coming to you, Mr. bin Laden. The beard's going.
(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RUSSERT: And?

CHENEY: Well, Tim, if you have another successful 10 years on Meet the Press, maybe you'll get your own skit on Saturday Night Live.

(LAUGHTER)

RUSSERT: I've been there, unfortunately. It hurts.

CHENEY: All right. OK.

RUSSERT: Would you like to be on the ticket in 2004?

CHENEY: If the president wants me and everything else makes sense, sure.

RUSSERT: Mr. Vice President, we thank you very much for joining us.

CHENEY: Thank you.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Shifting Fronts, Rising Danger: The Afghanistan War Evolves

New York Times
December 9, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/09/international/asia/09STRA.html?pagewanted=all

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 8 - When Afghanistan's new transitional government takes power two weeks from today, it will inherit a capital full of blaring horns, busy markets and a nearly universal yearning for peace.

But real peace will have to wait, for the highly unusual war that has wrested Kabul and now every last Afghan city from the Taliban regime is not over yet. Indeed, the most complex and potentially perilous tasks that the United States has assigned itself still lie ahead.

These include more than the hot pursuit of Osama bin Laden, his Al Qaeda collaborators, and the thousands of Arab and other foreign fighters he drew to Afghanistan.

Even with the fall of Kandahar this weekend, more needs to be done before the Taliban movement can be deemed dead. The task starts with the capture of Mullah Muhammad Omar, but hardly ends there: enough law and order must be imposed to allow medicine and food to flow to an ill and starving population and to prevent a resurgence of violence as the traditional arbiter of power in the land.

From the start, the United States' strategy has been to make the most of an unrelenting and high-tech air campaign while avoiding a major commitment of ground troops. The United States deployed fewer than 2,000 marines and commandos, a smattering of Army infantry and a few hundred soldiers from countries including Britain and Australia.

The brunt of the fighting on the ground was done by Washington's allies of convenience: the anti- Taliban Afghans of the Northern Alliance and of southern tribal factions who took up arms or swapped sides only after the Taliban began to crumble. Even they could not have seized the initiative without the close support of American advisers.

In victory, the indigenous forces, unpolished but seasoned by a generation of upheaval, acted in ways unfamiliar to the American commanders: first mounting cavalry charges into the teeth of tanks, then negotiating terms of surrender in which some went home with their firearms and others entered prison only to rebel in a suicidal last stand. More than a few, it seems, met rough justice at the hands of the triumphant.

As a political and military force, the Taliban is in its death throes. A new Afghan regime has been assembled in talks in Bonn. Kabul, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif are calm. Al Qaeda's terrorist training camps are a ruin.

But there are military actions yet to come, focused on chasing down dispersed Taliban fighters and foreign brigades in hiding. This will be a fight in unfamiliar terrain that is still plagued by outlaws and groups of armed warriors, a war that could prove less predictable and riskier for American and allied troops than the air campaign and proxy ground war of the first stage of the conflict.

"We're entering a very dangerous aspect of this conflict," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said recently. "It is a confused situation in the country. The amount of real estate they have to operate on has continually been reduced. The noose is tightening, but the remaining task is a particularly dirty and unpleasant one."

Certainly, the task of tracking a fugitive Mr. bin Laden in the wilds of Afghanistan and bringing him to justice is a tough assignment for the American military. It is complicated by the prospect of battling the thousands of Arab and other foreign fighters who surround him, unmoved by the $25 million bounty on his head, loyal still to the global jihad he launched from the chaos of Afghanistan.

American and British Special Operations forces are working with a freshly assembled Afghan force that is scouring the mountains around Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, trying to prevent anyone from slipping across the adjacent border with Pakistan.

The isolated enemy's main ally may be Afghanistan's difficult terrain, the cragged heights, tunnels and caves of Tora Bora and the mountains northeast of Kandahar. The remaining Taliban and Al Qaeda warriors seem determined to elude capture and, if cornered, to fight hard. On Friday, they even probed the perimeters of the desert base where Marines have set up an operating base within striking distance of Kandahar.

Another question is what will become of Mullah Omar - also worth $25 million to anyone who helps capture or kill him. He is thought to be in or around Kandahar, although nobody at the Pentagon claims to know for sure.

Even if Mr. bin Laden, his warriors and his Taliban protectors are all killed, captured or dispersed, the problem of stabilizing Afghanistan remains.

The United Nations is rushing to complete plans for an international security force, the first elements of which are expected to arrive in the capital within the next two weeks. But the size and capability of the force is still not clear, and its mandate is limited to Kabul and the immediate area. The United States has made clear that it will not participate.

Soon Afghanistan will be host to two separate foreign forces - the security force designed to reinforce peace, and the American and allied militaries still prosecuting war.

Kandahar Marines on Patrol, Isolating Al Qaeda

Almost as soon as opposition forces entered Kandahar, the Marines whose presence in the nearby desert had ensured the city's fall refocused their attention on locating any members of Mr. bin Laden's Al Qaeda network among those fleeing the city.

Officers out on patrols in armored all- terrain Humvees with heavy weapons, able to call in nearby helicopters to attack anyone who tries to escape were carrying pictures of particular Al Qaeda suspects.

"If the mission has changed, it is that we are looking more for Al Qaeda, instead of Taliban," said Marine Captain Stewart Upton. "We hope the Taliban realizes that if he doesn't drop his arms and raise his hands, he dies." For the most part, he added, any surrendering Taliban fighter would be allowed to "go on his merry way."

Al Qaeda and the foreign fighters are viewed as more dangerous, and would be taken into custody, and perhaps even tried in Afghanistan, Pentagon officials have said.

It won't be easy, though, to tell who is who in the chaos around Kandahar. "One of the difficulties that one has any time you have a whole lot of people all wearing generally the same-looking clothing is the business of identification, friend and foe," said General Tommy Franks, the commander of American troops in the region, noting that his troops would just have to be "cautious" in that regard.

The very presence of more than 1,200 marines at the desert base they call Rhino, within striking distance of Kandahar, had practically guaranteed the eventual fall of the Taliban there. Opposition forces, small but eager to seize power, streamed from all directions toward a city that was effectively under siege, its military occupants unable to flee and subjected to relentless bombing.

A Taliban convoy moving across the desert was quickly destroyed by an airstrike on Nov. 27, soon after the marines' arrival. Over the next few days, they promptly fanned out across the area, blocking roads and keeping the area under constant surveillance. When enemy troops probed the marines' perimeter on Thursday night, shooting flares, they were easily repulsed with mortar fire. Only on Friday, as the defense of Kandahar collapsed, were marines reported to have engaged in a firefight on the ground, killing 7 Taliban.

But the main fighting, on the city's outskirts, was done by Pashtun tribal units, just as in the north with the Northern Alliance.

It is not clear what the marines' role will be in the weeks ahead. After the surrender is complete, they could serve mainly to secure the base for commandos coming in to finish the hunt for Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders and holdouts. They could spread more broadly through the region and expand the search, or even just leave as quickly as they arrived on Nov. 25.

The marines' mission depends in part on how swift or orderly the surrender of Kandahar proves to be. Brief clashes were reported among their Pashtun fighters as they entered the city, and who would now control Kandahar was a decision being considered today by an ad hoc council of tribal elders.

In the surrounding countryside and in the nearby mountains, Special Operations forces had joined in the fighting, the Pentagon said, and troops from Australia and Britain were also playing a role, although their missions were not disclosed.

The most critical thing determining what the marines do next may be how the hunt for Mr. bin Laden proceeds in the mountains to the east.

Tora Bora Afghan Factions in the Mountains

With the fall of Kandahar, the war's immediate focus will shift to the mountains of Tora Bora. General Muhammad Fahim, the new Afghan defense minister, said his government's sources indicated that Mr bin Laden had taken refuge in the area - a forbidding region of caves, tunnels, steep hills and hideouts where Mr. bin Laden operated when he was first chased out of Sudan in 1996.

Certainly, there is good reason for him to be there. First, the terrain offers countless hideaways. This is the region where the Central Intelligence Agency helped the mujahedeen resistance hide from the Soviet army of occupation and stash the weapons they smuggled in from nearby Pakistan.

The Pakistani border also beckons as an escape route now, accessible by mule trails that no army controls. Pulling out a detailed military map, General Fahim pointed out the key passes and byways.

"Even with the snow, the way to Pakistan is open," he said. "The tribes in this region are free. They do not belong to Pakistan and they are not under the control of Afghanistan."

Unless those escape routes are sealed, Al Qaeda's fugitives, who know them well, can slip through the Safed Range into Pakistan's northwest frontier and reenter Afghanistan, perhaps into Paktia and Paktika provinces.

"Bin Laden is constantly changing his location," General Fahim said. "He can cross the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and back again."

The battle of Tora Bora is front and center on the American agenda today. But the battle began not in some Washington war room, but in a courtyard in Jalalabad where a group of elders gathered last weekend for a traditional high council.

They hammered out a simple message and sent a delegation to deliver it to the warlords of Tora Bora, where about 2,000 Al Qaeda fighters were dug in - among them, perhaps, Mr. bin Laden himself.

"To those foreigners living in the mountains of Afghanistan, we say to you: leave our country," the elders said. It was an ultimatum: withdraw, surrender or die. On Monday, the elders gave marching orders to their local commanders.

About 1,000 Pashtun fighters left Jalalabad for Tora Bora at dawn on Tuesday and went to war. The assault was directed by Aleem Shah, a front-line commander for Hazarat Ali, a minister of the new pro-American local government in Jalalabad, the Eastern Shura, which had seized control when the Taliban collapsed. Both men had sheltered at Tora Bora during their war against the Soviets. They know the caves and caverns intimately.

"We are trying to surround them," Commander Shah said as he stood beside three aging Soviet tanks on a ridge less than 2 miles north of the caves, a walkie-talkie to his ear, listening intently when his men shouted reports to him from the mountainsides.

"Half of Tora Bora is under our control," he said Wednesday afternoon. "Upward in the higher ridges is Al Qaeda."

General Franks was less ebullient a few days later. "There certainly is movement by opposition forces in the Tora Bora area," he said on Friday. "But that area is by no means completely secured and searched."

Even so, as the Afghan opposition advances, the Pentagon's airstrikes become more effective. It will also scour the mountainous Arghandab region northeast of Kandahar, where some speculate Al Qaeda leaders and fighters could also be hiding.

"Now that opposition groups are moving their troops toward the complex, we are able to provide air support that they are helping to direct, because they are able to see the caves that are active," said Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday.

In the Tora Bora area, the United States has been stepping up a punishing bombing campaign. But "bombing alone will not be effective" against the caves at Tora Bora, said Mr. Ali's intelligence officer, Sohrab Qadri. He said the site could only be taken by siege. Al Qaeda "will never surrender," Mr. Qadri said. "The only way that remains for them is to be killed," he said, or to die slowly of cold and starvation in the mountains.

Mazar-i-Sharif A Relief Hub Still Threatened

As hundreds of their armed fighters waited outside, three anti-Taliban leaders - the Uzbek general Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Tajik general Atta Mohammed, and the Hazara leader Hajji Mohammed Moheqiq - met this week in the northern crossroads city of Mazar-i-Sharif to talk about consolidating the hold of their Northern Alliance over a broad swath of Afghanistan.

A city of bustling markets and camel trains, Mazar-i-Sharif is expected to serve as the hub for the international relief effort to northern Afghanistan, the region hardest hit by famine.

"The world is concerned about the security threats which are delaying the arrival of aid, so we held this meeting with some urgency," said Mr. Moheqiq. American Special Forces advisers were at the meeting as were newly arrived French military forces, now in charge of security at the nearby airfield.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has secured a promise from Uzbekistan to reopen the Freedom Bridge, which would establish an aid corridor to the north.

At least until today, however, the United Nations deemed the north of Afghanistan too volatile to send in its expatriate staff to coordinate the massive aid effort that is desperately needed.

On Friday, General Franks said that aside from a little looting of food, Mazar-i-Sharif itself, and other cities in the north, were "essentially calm." But he added: "We do not believe that the road between Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif is a very safe road to be using right now."

There are an estimated 1,000 to 2,500 Taliban fighters still at large in areas west and south of Mazar-i-Sharif. This is not the only pocket of Taliban resistance. Another is south of Kunduz, in the direction of Kabul and in the general vicinity of Baghlan, where 800 to 1,000 fighters have massed. A third is the almost due east of Kabul and also has 800 to 1,000 fighters. And the final is southeast of Herat, near the Iranian border, where 300 to 500 fighters remain.

The fighters in these areas do not appear to be under any coherent command. They have small arms but no artillery or tanks. The United States military is watching them closely and continues to send about 10 percent of its daily sorties of attack jets into the skies over these sites in case the troops pop up and start to move. It remains unclear whether the resistance plans to stand and fight, or fade into the mountains for sustained guerrilla war, or simply melt away.

"All we know is there are enough of them to strike with significant force," said one senior military officer. "What we don't know is whether they will wait it out all winter - they're isolated from their commanders, that's for sure. Or will they fight their way out?"

One thing that is clear is that the numbers are sufficient to threaten the lives of Afghan citizens, disrupt aid routes, attack foreign peacekeepers and relief workers and, in essence, undermine any government.

The delivery of aid is not the only worry. Residents in Mazar-i-Sharif remain fearful of a resurgence of violence and are hoping that the international military presence will force factional leaders not to engage in the infighting that has torn the city apart before.

But so far, the three factions - Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras - are cooperating here.

Each of the leaders says he has learned the lesson of the damage they wrought by fighting among themselves, because it allowed the Taliban to rise up and take over here three years ago.

"We have learned from our experiences. It will not happen again," said Mr. Moheqiq in a recent interview.

The leaders insist they are working together to force the Taliban remnants in the town of Balkh, just west of Mazar, to surrender with a mixture of negotiation and show of force.

The alliance's fighters, packed into pickup trucks but also equipped with armored personnel carriers and other heavy arms, have taken up positions around Balkh. Over the past week, there has been just one small skirmish, when some Taliban resisted. For now, the standoff remains.

While they may not be engaged in the bloodletting of the past, the leaders in the north have expressed dissatisfaction with the interim government drawn up this week at the United Nations-sponsored talks in Bonn.

They call the deal was unjust, asserting they had an understanding that they would receive a greater hand in governing Afghanistan.

General Dostum said he was promised the Foreign Ministry for his role in seizing Mazar-i-Sharif and is now threatening to boycott the government. And Haji Moheqiq said that if the issue could not be solved, he also would not take up his post of deputy prime minister in the government.

The uncertain situation in the north may give General Dostum a chance to expand his power base. Pentagon officials say that the Uzbek commander was negotiating with the Taliban at Balkh to swear loyalty to him.

Still, at least one Tajik fighter voiced hope that there would not be a resumption of factional fighting.

"The situation has changed, now we are brothers," said the warrior, Sadruddin, 25, who said he has been fighting since he was 16. "The fighting is over. We are all tired, no one wants to fight anymore,"

But he conceded that, in Afghanistan, such decisions do not rest with the likes of him. "It depends on our leaders," he said.

The Region Neighboring Players in the Great Game

For the past decade, Afghanistan has been an arena for competition among neighboring nations who tried to keep the country divided for their own advantage.

With the hunt for Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders now entering its final phase, most of the neighbors seem a common interest in stable Afghanistan and a broad-based interim Afghan government.

The traditional players of the Great Game, as it has come to be called in Afghanistan, all helped coax the faction leaders gathered in Bonn this week into final agreement. Pakistan, Iran, India and Russia have all pronounced themselves satisifed with the result.

Afghanistan's neighbors will play a critical role in determining the stability of the new regime in Kabul. "They are front-line states for terrorism, narcotics and refugee problems emanating from Afghanistan, and their role in backing the transition will be very important," Christine Rocca, assistant secretary of State for South Asian affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week.

For their part, the leaders of the new transitional government, which is set to take power in Kabul on Dec. 22, insist that they want stability, too.

But there are skeptics. "Frankly, I think the Bonn settlement will break down in a few weeks," said Charles H. Fairbanks Jr., a Central Asia expert at Johns Hopkins University.

A key step is getting an international peacekeeping force in place. The Pentagon had objected to the early deployment of peacekeepers, saying it might interfere with the prosecution of the war.

But the British, French and Germans, who believe an international security force is vital essentially outmaneuvered the Pentagon by arranging for the agreement in Bonn to call for an international force.

At least initially, that force will be considerably smaller than the thousands envisaged by the Europeans last month. It will be stationed in the first instance in Kabul and its surroundings, but might eventually be expanded to protect other areas of the country.

Diplomats have yet to agree on how large the force will be, who will command it and which nations European and Islamic will contribute.

The force is not just intended to protect Kabul but to dilute the domination of the Northern Alliance so that Hamid Karzai, the American-backed southern Pashtun leader chosen to head the government, and his cabinet - which is still dominated by the Northern Alliance but contains a mix of Afghan ethnic and political groups - can establish some hold.

Unsurprisingly, former Northern Alliance have urged that the deployment be as small as possible. General Fahim, the designated defense minister and Northern Alliance commander, indicated that he did not favor the deployment of large numbers of foreign soldiers.

"There is no reason for them to go to all parts of Afghanistan," he said.

The British, in contrast, have been advocating a force to protect not only Kabul and its environs, but also at least a land corridor to Pakistan.

Regardless of his reservations about an international force, General Fahim said that his government had an understanding with the United States that it could keep its forces in Afghanistan as long as the hunt for Mr. bin Laden continued.

General Fahim voiced hope that the Americans, working with Pashtun tribes in the Tora Bora region, would find their man, but stressed that success was not guaranteed.

"The United States is talking with the local commanders and is conducting the operation with them," he said. "We hope they can succeed."

This article was reported and written by John H. Cushman Jr., Carlotta Gall, Eric Schmitt, Thom Shanker and Tim Weiner, with Mr. Gordon.

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U.S. Jets Pound Tora Bora to Clear Way for Afghan Assault

December 9, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Fighting.html

TORA BORA, Afghanistan (AP) -- American bombers pounded the hills and caves of Tora Bora on Sunday, trying to soften al-Qaida defenses for a ground assault by Afghan tribesmen. Pakistani forces moved to seal off escape routes on their side of the border.

In the south, rival tribal leaders worked out differences over the administration of Kandahar, the Taliban's former stronghold, with the former governor returning to his old office. The agreement reduces fears of factional fighting now that the Taliban are gone.

The bombing around this village beneath the spectacular, snow-covered White Mountains in eastern Afghanistan is aimed at rooting out Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida fighters believed holed up around cave hide-outs near the Pakistan border.

A commander of the anti-Taliban forces in Tora Bora said he was certain bin Laden himself was among them, and Vice President Cheney said Sunday that intelligence reports indicate bin Laden is in the area. Others speculate the elusive terror suspect may be hiding north of Kandahar.

``They were eager to send young men on suicide missions, but they appear to be holding up in caves,'' Cheney said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.''

B-52 bombers made repeated passes over the Tora Bora area throughout the day, and huge plumes of smoke rose from the barren hills and ridges. Hundreds of anti-Taliban fighters watched from several miles away as dust filled mountain valleys.

Their commander, Mohammed Zaman, said bombs alone will not dislodge the al-Qaida fighters. He said the ground assault will be difficult, as the Arabs have had years to build up their defenses and restock their caves with weapons and food. He said bin Laden ``has not escaped, and we will do everything possible to make sure he doesn't.''

From the other side of the front line, a 27-year-old Tunisian, Abu Abdullah, claimed weeks U.S. bombing have had little effect, killing only two people and slightly injuring eight.

Contacted by radio from Pakistan, Abdullah said 84 Arab fighters -- mostly from Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt -- were hiding in the mountains. A few had wives and children there, he said. He claimed the fighters had no links to bin Laden and scoffed at the idea that the world's most wanted man was among them.

``I swear by Allah that Osama is not present here,'' he told The Associated Press. ``But now we have no alternative except to embrace death instead of dishonor.''

Just across the border, the Pakistani army won permission from tribal elders -- for the first time ever -- to move several thousand troops to the semi-autonomous border region to cut off possible escape routes, said Malik Inyat Khan, chief of the Kuki Khel tribe. He said they planned to take their positions on Monday.

Cheney said a videotape of bin Laden obtained by U.S. officials in Afghanistan makes clear the al-Qaida leader was behind the terrorist attacks. The Washington Post , quoting unidentified senior government officials, said the tape shows bin Laden praising Allah for the attacks, which he said were more successful than anticipated.

``He does in fact display significant knowledge of what happened and there's no doubt about his responsibility for the attack on September 11,'' Cheney said.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press also reported strong U.S. air attacks Saturday and Sunday against convoys in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province, killing 24 people. The report could not be independently verified. The area includes al-Qaida hide-outs and could be among the destinations of Taliban leaders fleeing Kandahar.

U.S Marines set up roadblocks around Kandahar, searching for wanted leaders, but U.S. officials reported no encounters with hostile groups.

Hamid Karzai, who takes power as Afghanistan's interim leader on Dec. 22, told Fox News on Sunday that he had ``no idea'' where bin Laden was located but said his men were searching.

``He is a criminal,'' Karzai said of bin Laden. ``He has killed thousands of our people. He has ruined our lives. He has done horrible things. If we catch hium he will be given to international justice.''

The whereabouts of the Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, are also unknown since the Taliban abandoned Kandahar on Friday.

The Taliban on Sunday lost the last province of Afghanistan where they held control, when two Taliban officials handed over Zabul province, neighboring Kandahar, to tribal leaders, the Afghan Islamic Press reported.

Karzai -- whose interim government is to replace Taliban rule throughout the country -- entered Kandahar and met with the feuding factions at the bombed-out former residence of Mullah Omar to work out a power-sharing deal.

Former Kandahar governor Gul Agha, who felt shut out of the Taliban surrender deal, said he would return to the post he held until the Taliban kicked him out in 1994. A Karzai-appointed leader, Mullah Naqibullah, would be his assistant, he said. A Karzai spokesman confirmed the agreement.

With the situation resolved in Kandahar, Karzai planned to go to Kabul, the Afghan capital, a spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan's former king hopes to return to his homeland from his exile in Italy on March 21, his grandson said Sunday. The former monarch, Mohammad Zaher Shah, 87, is to play the symbolic role of convening a traditional grand council of Afghan tribes six months from now. That council will set up a two-year transitional government and draw up a constitution. Zaher Shah has lived in Italy since his 1973 ouster.

In other developments:

-- John Walker, an American who fought with the Taliban, was recovering from dehydration and a gunshot wound in the leg at a Marine base in southern Afghanistan but is in good condition, officials said. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Walker has been providing useful information and no final decision has been made on what to do with him.

-- At least seven fighters were killed in Lashkargah, west of Kandahar, where two tribes fought for control after the Taliban's flight, the Afghan Islamic Press reported. Its report could not be independently verified.

-- A U.N. official said the world body was sending experts to Afghanistan to help the new interim administration set up a government, write a constitution and prepare for elections.

In the northern province of Takhar, a northern alliance helicopter crashed, killing all 18 people aboard, including two ethnic Pashtun commanders, AIP reported. There was no word on the cause of the crash.

Elsewhere, a train loaded with 1,000 tons of grain and flour crossed the ``Friendship Bridge,'' the only road connecting Uzbekistan with Afghanistan, after workers reopened the span.

The reopening of the bridge was expected to speed aid to Afghan refugees battling cold, hunger and disease.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press correspondents Kathy Gannon in Kabul, Afghanistan, Christopher Torchia in Quetta, Pakistan and David Martin in southern Afghanistan contributed to this report.

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War on terrorism affects role of EU's future

December 9, 2001
By Louis R. Golino
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011209-93438014.htm

According to U.S. and European political and military analysts, Europe's role in the war on terrorism will profoundly influence the European Union's future international role and the evolution of intra-European and trans-Atlantic relations in the 21st century.

Some analysts argue that the war is re-nationalizing Europe, straining intra-European relations and slowing down the pace of European integration.

Others say it is accelerating European integration and that, over time, it will force European Union member states to overcome obstacles that have prevented the EU from becoming a unified and cohesive political and military power.

For example, Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform in London, said: "The European Union's governments' common line - of unambiguous support for the U.S. - has allowed the EU to emerge as a stronger diplomatic force."

The European Response

After September 11, leading European politicians and EU leaders repeatedly pledged their complete solidarity with the United States and support for U.S.-led military action against the al Qaeda terrorist group and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. However, they were not willing to grant the United States a "blank check" for military action and wanted a role in shaping military strategy.

On the other hand, European public opinion initially was very supportive of U.S. military action against terrorism, with the proviso that the response be targeted on the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks and their supporters. But by October, European support for military action in Afghanistan began to erode substantially, even in the United Kingdom, in large part because of concerns about civilian casualties.

On Sept. 12, the NATO alliance provisionally invoked for the first time in its history the key element of the Washington Treaty that created NATO. Article 5 says that an armed attack on one ally is considered an attack on all.

Once it was determined that the attacks were directed from abroad, they were considered an act covered by Article 5. On Oct. 2, Article 5 was fully invoked.

Furthermore, the United States requested NATO assistance in several responses, among them the deployment of a NATO naval force to the Eastern Mediterranean and five NATO AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) planes to patrol U.S. airspace. This deployment marked the first time NATO assets were used to defend the continental United States.

To reports that the alliance may take the lead role in delivering food aid to Afghan civilians, international aid agencies said they would prefer that neutral civilians, rather than NATO troops, carry out this task.

Europe's military role

During the Kosovo conflict, American and European officials argued frequently over targets and military strategy, which complicated the U.S. and NATO military chains of command. Consequently, the current Bush administration chose not to make this military campaign a NATO-led mission.

The United States declined many initial European offers of military assistance, according to press