------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
FDA Issues Instructions on Antidote
Court rejects bid to halt new UK nuclear fuel plant
North Korea ready to join five more anti-terrorism treaties
Pakistan Ups Probe of Nuke Workers
Pak nuclear experts may have al-Qaeda links
Moscow police nab uranium-peddling gang
Schumer warns of security gap at nation's seaports
Al Qaeda's nuclear agenda verified
Powell hails improving ties, Russia presses for arms reduction
Powell Says Nuclear Deal Is Close
US, Russia Want Strategic Arms Agreement by Mid - 2002
Safety Plan for Calvert Plant Under Study
Worst-Case Scenario: The U.S. Has None

MILITARY
Northern Alliance to keep troops in Kabul
Britain to lead Afghan stabilisation force
Awaiting Judgment in Kabul
Afghan Tribes Report Battles Against 1,000 Al Qaeda Fighters
Taliban Give Way in Final Province Where They Ruled
'Spin' on Boer atrocities
FEDERAL CONTRACTS
Peru Fears Reemergence of Violent Rebels
State Dept. Delegation in Iraq
Israeli Gunships Fire on Hebron Car
Four Palestinian Police Killed In Shooting by Israeli Troops
Israel throws out Palestinian Ramadan truce offer
One bridge too far
When Bombs Are Not Enough
Sudan, Newly Helpful, Remains Wary of U.S.
Receiving Nobel Peace Prize, Annan says humanity is indivisible
U.S. plans to spread special operations
Marines secure grounds of U.S. Embassy in Kabul
Study links Lou Gehrig's disease, Gulf War service

POLICE / PRISONERS
America's new brand of justice?
Back Behind Bars
Former Officer Sentenced in Dog Case
Tape Surfaces With Remarks by bin Laden
Saudi Minister Asserts That bin Laden Is a 'Tool' of Al Qaeda
Customs Dept. Deals With Technology

ENERGY AND OTHER
Action against loggers ends in endangerment irony
Bush proclaims today as Human Rights Day

ACTIVISTS
Venezuelans Protest Chavez Policies: Millions Stay Home
"Alternative Nobel" winners slam US policies



-------- NUCLEAR

FDA Issues Instructions on Antidote

December 10, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-FDA-Nuclear-Preparedness.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government issued instructions Monday for use of a drug that can protect against thyroid cancer in case of a nuclear accident or terrorism.

The Food and Drug Administration began updating the nuclear antidote instructions more than a year ago, but finalized them amid heightened tension following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The new instructions deal with emergencies involving the release of radioactive iodine. This compound, either inhaled or ingested through contaminated food or milk, can cause people to develop thyroid cancer. Children are most at risk, and can be harmed by radiation levels far lower than those that endanger adults.

Indeed, four years after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, children who had lived downwind of the site experienced a 30- to 60-fold increase in thyroid cancer, according to studies FDA cited.

Potassium iodide, or KI, has long been known to reduce that risk and has been used as an antidote after nuclear accidents. But results from Chernobyl showed the FDA that its last dosing instructions for KI, issued in 1982, needed to be updated.

The big change: Instead of one dose for babies and another for all other ages, the FDA now recommends far different doses for children of different ages.

Also, the antidote should be administered to children and pregnant or nursing women when they are exposed to doses of radioactive iodine that are one-fifth the level previously thought harmful, the FDA concluded. In contrast, adults over age 40 wouldn't need the antidote unless they were exposed to a massive dose, and young adults would be treated if contamination was in a mid-range.

Besides other protective measures, such as evacuating people out of danger zones and providing safe food, newborns would need a daily dose of 16 milligrams of KI until exposure was deemed over, the FDA instructions say. Children ages one month to 3 years would get 32 mg; children ages 3 to 18 65 mg; and 130 mg for adults.

On the Net:
Food and Drug Administration guidelines: http://www.fda.gov/cder/guidance/4825fnl.htm

-------- britain

Court rejects bid to halt new UK nuclear fuel plant

Reuters
December 10, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13630/story.htm

LONDON - Environmental groups failed last week to block a controversial new British nuclear fuel processing plant at Sellafield in northwest England, branded by the Irish government as a major threat to health.

Three Appeals Court judges in London upheld an earlier court ruling accepting government plans to open the 470 million pound ($670 million) plant to produce mixed plutonium and uranium oxide fuel, or MOX, to power nuclear plants.

The Sellafield plant is run by the government-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), which from humble beginnings has grown into a global operator with 23,000 employees in 15 countries and annual revenues of some $2.5 billion.

Environmentalists Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace had argued that the government go-ahead for the scheme did not comply with a European Union directive.

They said the directive required EU states to ensure new practices resulting in exposure to ionising radiation were justified by their economic, social or other benefits in relation to the detriment to health they might cause.

Lord Justice Simon Brown said to accept the argument put forward by environmentalists would be "absurd" and would "sacrifice reason on the altar of blind theory".

The case passed quickly through the courts because BNFL wants to start operating the plant by December 20.

Last week night, two men dressed in Santa Claus suits climbed the 75-foot Christmas tree at London's Trafalgar Square and unfurled a banner saying "Stop Sellafield".

The tree is an annual gift from the Norwegian government. The men said they were from Norwegian environmental group Bellona.

The plant at Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, itself has a controversial history.

Just 10 years after its opening, a serious fire at Windscale in 1957 led to a release of large amounts of radioactive energy. Environmentalists say the area around the plant is heavily contaminated with radioactivity.

IRISH OBJECTIONS

Despite the court's decision, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace said they had won a partial victory. "The Court of Appeal's decision means that in future, before any new nuclear project can go ahead, the construction and other capital costs will have to be taken into account when deciding if the practice is economically beneficial," a Greenpeace spokesman said.

The groups said they would consider a final appeal to the House of Lords.

The Irish government, which is also opposed to the Sellafield plant and views it as a major threat to health, has kept a "watching brief" on the case. On Monday, a United Nations court, the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, refused an Irish request for an injunction to halt the plant's start-up.

Ireland is concerned about radioactive discharges from the plant. The subject has caused friction between Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and his British counterpart Tony Blair.

The U.N. tribunal ordered the two governments to cooperate and exchange further information about risks to safety and pollution, which should be presented to it on December 17.

BNFL, which bought U.S. company Westinghouse last year, says on its Web site its core operations not only include reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear reactors, but it has also secured work from decommissioning around the world.

-------- korea

North Korea ready to join five more anti-terrorism treaties

Monday December 10
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011210/1/22wn1.html

North Korea has told a visiting Swedish delegation that the Stalinist country is ready to join five more anti-terrorism treaties.

Under pressure following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the North signed two treaties in November against funding terrorism and hostage taking.

It is also willing to sign five other conventions related mainly to fighting terrorist bombings and protecting nuclear materials, Yonbap news agency said.

The North's intention was expressed by Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun in talks with a Swedish delegation led by Ambassador Borje Liunggren, it said.

Liunggren stopped in Seoul last week to brief South Korean officials on his trip to Pyongyang December 1-4.

Government officials declined to confirm the report. But the South's ruling Millennium Democratic Party issued a statement welcoming the North's reported move.

"Correspondingly, we will pay keen attention to the North's future moves," the statement said, urging the North to step up efforts to meet the international community's expectations.

Washington has welcomed the North's previous move to sign anti-terrorism treaties but has refused to drop the North from a list of states it says is guilty of backing terrorism.

Pyongyang sees the US blacklist as the most serious obstacle in its efforts to fix a shattered economy by attracting foreign capital and improve relations with Washington.

Since September 11, the North has demanded Washington change its "hostile" policy toward the communist state.

US-North Korean ties have been tense since President George W. Bush took office in January and suspended dialogue amid a review of US policy toward Pyongyang.

In June Bush offered to resume talks, urging the North to reduce conventional forces and halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

On November 26, Bush called on North Korea to permit foreign inspectors to verify that it is not producing weapons of mass destruction, and warned Pyongyang to halt foreign missile sales.

But the North has rejected Washington's calls for dialogue and inspection.

The Korean peninsula is the world's last Cold War frontier with an uneasy truce in place since the 1950-53 Korean War.

-------- pakistan

Pakistan Ups Probe of Nuke Workers

By Zahid Hussain
Associated Press Writer
Monday, December 10, 2001; 12:16 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18239-2001Dec10?language=printer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- 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.

---

Pak nuclear experts may have al-Qaeda links

MONDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2001
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=775225283

NEW DELHI: The United States is seeking to question two Pakistani nuclear scientists, hid away in Myanmar by the Pakistani government, over their al-Qaeda links, the New York Times has reported.

One of the reasons for CIA director George J Tenet's visit to Pakistan last weekend was to tighten the screws on the Pakistan government to hand over the two scientists for questioning, the paper said quoting White House officials.

According to the paper, the US move follows fresh intelligence reports that the two nuclear experts, Suleiman Asad and Muhammed Ali Mukhtar, with long experience at two of Pakistan's most secret nuclear installations may have had links with Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists.

Two other Pakistani nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudry Abdul Majeed, were detained and questioned by Pakistan following US pressure to investigate their links with the al-Qaeda and Taliban.

However, the duo were not nuclear weapons experts and could not have contributed any worthwhile knowledge to the Islamic terrorists, officials told the Times.

Asad and Mukhtar, on the other hand, were direclty involved with Pakistani nuclear weapons programme and their links to the Taliban or al-Qaeda were of more concern to the US.

Pakistan has resisted US efforts to interrogate their scientists and engineers, for fear that the intelligence reports may be a ploy by Washington to learn details of Pakistan's nuclear programme, Pakistani officials told the Times.

According to the report, Asad and Mukhtar were hid away from American eyes and hands by Gen. Musharraf himself. Indian intelligence officials had reported earlier that Musharraf 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 they were in Myanmar for a research project and "we don't want to interrupt them" by returning them to Pakistan for questioning.

Pakistan has, expectedly, tried to play down the US concern over the links of its nuclear scientists to Islamic terror organisations.

So far, the Bush administration does not believe al-Qaeda has a nuclear weapon, despite its clear desire to obtain one, the paper said quoting American officials. 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."

-------- russia

Moscow police nab uranium-peddling gang

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
December 10, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011210-1902416.htm

MOSCOW - Police arrested seven gang members who were trying to sell a kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, of uranium 235 for $30,000, a Moscow police source told Itar-Tass news agency last week.

Six members of the gang from Balachikha, east of Moscow, were arrested in a cafe Tuesday about a dozen miles from the capital. A seventh gang member who had the uranium 235 in his possession was arrested after the other members were questioned.

Uranium 235, which is highly radioactive, is used in the manufacture of atomic bombs and also functions as fuel.

Russian police gave no indication whether the uranium seized was highly enriched, somewhat enriched or in raw mineral form. They also did not give any details about their inquiries so as not to compromise their investigation, the source told Itar-Tass.

President Bush warned leaders from central and eastern Europe last month that suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was seeking to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Trafficking in radioactive material has proliferated since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the slackening of controls over nuclear installations. In Istanbul last month, police seized more than a kilo of uranium - apparently sourced from Russia - and arrested two Turks who had been trying to peddle it for $750,000.

The National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington warned in May that "terrorist groups or dishonest countries have more opportunities to get access to Russian plutonium or highly enriched uranium than was realized until now."

-------- terrorism

Schumer warns of security gap at nation's seaports

Monday, December 10, 2001
By RICHARD PYLE
The Associated Press
http://www.bergen.com/region/schumer200112104.htm

NEW YORK -- While stiffening rules for air and rail travel and studying actions to close immigration loopholes, the United States has done almost nothing to shore up its seaports -- a "gaping hole in national security," a lawmaker said Sunday.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said inadequate regulations and lax enforcement at the nation's 361 ports, which handle about 400 ships a day, are an invitation to terrorists to wreak new havoc, including nuclear, chemical, or biological attacks.

"Approximately 11 to 16 of those ships, and about 12,000 of the 600,000 shipping containers that arrive in the United States every day -- about 2 percent -- are inspected for potential terrorist threats," Schumer said. "That means terrorists have a 98 percent chance of smuggling weapons -- not just guns, but weapons of mass destruction -- through our ports."

He said terrorists bent on inflicting wholesale destruction are "smart" and "know the places that are unprotected, most vulnerable."

"While the war overseas is being conducted brilliantly," Schumer said, "the war on terrorism at home lags."

In a news conference at New York's Hudson River passenger terminal -- shut down since the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center -- Schumer urged Congress to adopt legislation that he said would offer significant protections for U.S. ports.

He said that if port traffic volume doubles over the next 20 years, as expected, the risk also will double, and ports will need massive federal support to improve security.

"They can't do it themselves," he said. "They need aid -- a large federal undertaking here in New York and across the nation."

As a major first step, Schumer said, ports should be equipped with X-ray equipment to screen every incoming cargo container, whether by ship or truck at land entry points, for nuclear or biological materials.

He said that alone would cost $5 billion -- "a lot of money, but nothing compared to the damage that would occur if, God forbid, one of these attacks succeeded."

Alluding to fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group, Schumer said "our best intelligence" now indicates that terrorists do not have the high-grade uranium needed to make a crude nuclear device, "but give them a few years and they very well might."

He cited press reports that NATO has identified as many as 20 ships that Bin Laden could use to deliver dangerous cargo and the arrest in Canada of a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist who had stowed away in a Toronto-bound shipping container.

The Senate bill, sponsored by Sens. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., and Bob Graham, D-Fla., would cost nearly $1 billion between 2002 and 2006, plus $3.3 billion in loans to be repaid to the federal government.

Its provisions include 1,500 new Customs inspectors and agents; improved port infrastructure security; tougher training standards, rules of access and credentials; criminal background checks, and a database on ship, passenger, and cargo traffic to identify potential threats.

The $5 billion cited by Schumer for X-ray equipment is not included in the bill, which is due for a Senate vote this week.

Citing a 2000 study by the Interagency Commission on Crime and Security at U.S. Seaports that described port security as "poor to fair," Schumer said tightened rules should also apply to cruise ships, to land ports of entry served by thousands of trucks daily, and to the nation's 68 nuclear power plants that are located on major waterways.

"We're in a new world where all of us are vulnerable, and it's about time we started to look at every weak pressure point in our society and tighten them up," Schumer said.

Dan Maynard, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs area bridges, tunnels, and transit hubs, said the agency already has made changes since Sept. 11, creating a port security committee, conducting a vulnerability assessment, beefing up some physical security, and requiring criminal background checks on waterfront workers.

However, Maynard said that to be effective, security requires international cooperation.

"Interdicting a container laden with a weapon of mass destruction through inspection of the container here on U.S. soil is too late," he said. "Our goal should be to prevent the weapon from ever making it to the United States."

The Port Authority, which built the World Trade Center and owned it until this past summer, shut down all port operations for two days after the Sept. 11 attacks by hijacked jetliners.

Cargo operations have since resumed, with stepped-up Coast Guard inspections of incoming ships.

----

Al Qaeda's nuclear agenda verified

By Arnaud de Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 10, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011210-31849396.htm

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani intelligence officers were assisting Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization to develop the ability to build a "dirty" nuclear device, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence agencies have concluded.

Intelligence officers in Washington and Islamabad, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they are now convinced that al Qaeda was attempting to put together a "nuclear device in the dirty bomb category."

Documents uncovered in Kabul and the interrogation of nuclear scientists who were frequent visitors to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan - ostensibly to perform humanitarian work - have produced conclusive evidence of the fact, the officers said.

One Pakistani general who has seen the evidence described the device as a "dirty nuclear weapon," meaning one in which radioactive materials are wrapped around conventional explosives. Such a device can contaminate an area of several square blocks with radiation.

The general said he also believes bin Laden obtained such materials on Russia's nuclear black market. The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna is aware of 175 cases of trafficking in nuclear materials since 1993, including 18 that involved highly enriched uranium and plutonium pellets the size of a silver dollar.

There are 18 million potential delivery vehicles that could be used to smuggle a nuclear device into the United States. That is the number of cargo containers that arrive in the country annually. Of them, only 3 percent are inspected, and bills of lading do not have to be produced until the containers reach their destination, according to current regulations.

Radioactivity is invisible, as was the case in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. There is no way of knowing in advance the impact on health 10 years hence. It is more a weapon of mass disruption than mass destruction.

An unidentified former chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency is believed to be the man who coordinated bin Laden's nuclear ambitions.

One local intelligence source speculated that before September 11, a dirty bomb could have been smuggled out of Afghanistan in a truck all the way to Karachi and then shipped out in a cargo container.

That could be the weapon Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar was referring to when he said, after the U.S. bombing started Oct. 7, that America would soon have to face extinction. Allowing for hyperbole, he may have known what bin Laden was planning next.

Another ex-ISI chief, retired Gen. Hameed Gul, predicted after September 11 that one day there would be a single Islamic state that would stretch from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and Afghanistan and that would have nuclear weapons, as well as control of the Gulf's oil resources.

The general is an ISI legend, and still popular among the agency's present crop of leaders who were his junior officers in the late 1980s. Gen. Gul, a Muslim fundamentalist, is vehemently anti-American. He acts as "strategic adviser" to Pakistan's extremist religious parties, and spent two weeks in Afghanistan just prior to September 11.

Gen. Gul is slowly emerging as the spokesman for the combined opposition of Islamic fundamentalists. In Urdu-language newspapers on Friday, he was quoted as saying: "No one can tell us how to run our nuclear facilities and nuclear programs. This is being done in the interest of Pakistan, not the United States. Taliban will always remain in Afghanistan, and Pakistan will always support them."

He was presumably referring to the Taliban in its guerrilla mode, following the fall of Kandahar.

Gen. Gul's only daughter runs VARAN, the public transportation bus company that enjoys a monopoly in Islamabad and its twin military garrison city of Rawalpindi. Gen. Gul himself lives in "Pindi" in an army compound housing development earmarked for retired generals.

Officially, the Pakistani government has accepted the explanation of three nuclear scientists about their "innocuous" relationship to the Taliban.

Privately, however, some Pakistani officials, working closely with U.S. colleagues, said their activities "cannot be described as innocuous by any stretch of the imagination."

On a brief visit to Islamabad early this month, George Tenet, director of CIA, conferred with President Pervez Musharraf on what was described as the need for "more and better intelligence" from ISI.

The CIA has reportedly submitted a list of six more nuclear scientists whom it wants to probe for suspected links to al Qaeda. Two of them, Dr. Suleiman Asad and Dr. Muhammad Ali Muktar, are now in Burma doing undisclosed research with local scientists. Apparently anxious to avoid further U.S. probes into Pakistan's ultrasecret nuclear weapons program, these two scientists have been advised by the government to remain in Burma until further notice.

Dr. Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmud, former director of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), and Chief Engineer Dr. Chaudry Abdul Majeed have been questioned by a joint FBI-ISI team. According to PAEC sources, the CIA wishes to conduct a separate interrogation based on documents seized in Kabul.

Dr. Mahmud is a close associate of Gen. Gul. They were colleagues when Gen. Gul ran ISI. Dr. Mahmud is one of three scientists who befriended Taliban leaders. He is an expert in enriched uranium and plutonium, having lectured all over Pakistan with odes to the Taliban as "the wave of the future for Pakistan."

Dr. Mahmud and two of his colleagues were detained in late October as a result of U.S. questions about Pakistani "relief" organizations active in Taliban-run Afghanistan, including an agricultural project near Kandahar.

They admitted to meeting with al Qaeda associates of bin Laden and were officially cleared of passing on nuclear secrets. Dr. Mahmud says publicly that plutonium production is not a state secret, and advocates increasing plutonium output to help other Islamic nations build nuclear weapons.

After the start of the U.S. bombing campaign, Gen. Musharraf ordered an immediate redeployment of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal to six new secret locations, including separate storage facilities for uranium and plutonium cores and their detonation mechanisms.

Army colleagues now say privately that Gen. Musharraf was fearful of assassination by extremists who were already accusing him of betraying Islam and selling out to the United States. There were also rumors of a coup by hard-liners in the military. The officer corps is 20 percent fundamentalist, according to a post-September 11 confidential survey by military intelligence separate from ISI.

Pakistan's community of nuclear scientists is held to be "profoundly fundamentalist" and anti-American. They are particularly resentful of U.S. economic and military sanctions against Pakistan as punishment for their country's nuclear weapons program.

The community's guru is Abdul Qadir Khan, the scientist who devised Pakistan's first nuclear weapon. Pakistan now has an estimated 20 such weapons in its arsenal. ISI is still widely distrusted by Western intelligence agencies and by all levels of Pakistani society, from people in the street to top political leaders.

An ISI general who is regional director in one of the tribal areas told an important tribal leader known to this reporter that "after Afghanistan, Pakistan is next on America's list of countries to be conquered, and after Pakistan, Iran will be next. All that war talk about Iraq being next is just a smokescreen."

Gen. Gul has been touring FATA (Federally-Administered Tribal Areas) along the border of Afghanistan with much the same message about Washington's plans for conquest in the region. ISI is undergoing a traumatic shock in the wake of the Taliban's defeat, according to knowledgeable secular political party leaders.

"They have lost thousands of operatives in Afghanistan," said one key politician who asked not to be named. ISI also facilitated the transfer to Afghanistan in the past two months of thousands of young religious school students who had been proselytized by their clerical teachers to volunteer to fight with the Taliban.

Gen. Musharraf had a dangerous precedent in mind: Six years ago, a group of Pakistani army officers was arrested for plotting to kill Army Chief of Staff Gen. Abdul Waheed. He had fired the ISI chief for secretly assisting Muslim rebels in several countries.

• Distributed by United Press International

-------- treaties

Powell hails improving ties, Russia presses for arms reduction

Monday December 10,
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011210/1/22xys.html

US Secretary of State Colin Powell hailed the improvements in ties between Washington and Moscow since September 11 as Russia sought to exploit the closer relationship by pressing for an arms reduction treaty.

"I really believe that our relationship has accelerated since the tragic events of September 11. We have come together to combat this terrible scourge of terrorism," Powell told reporters at the start of talks with his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov.

Ivanov also noted what he called an "extraordinarily intensive dialogue" in recent weeks but insisted that recent progress by Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush in arms reduction talks must be converted into formal treaties.

The Russian foreign minister said the agreement to cut nuclear weapon stockpiles from 7,000 warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200, reached by the two presidents at their summit last month in Crawford, Texas, should be written into a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

"We think it is important to start negotiating with the United States on the strategic arms framework and to agree on the reduction of strategic weapons in the form of a treaty," Ivanov added.

Noting the warmth of the personal relations between Putin and Bush, who have met four times this year, Ivanov told Powell: "We hope that talks will achieve a realisation of existing agreements.

"Russia is interested in the agreements being converted into concrete treaties," he said.

The existing START II treaty envisages a reduction in the number of warheads to 3,500 by 2007.

But Bush last month rejected Russian requests for the new agreement to be formalised in a written arms reduction pact.

Moscow, for its part, has made such a treaty a condition for allowing the US to develop a controversial missile shield that is outlawed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.

Other key issues in Monday's talks were "the stepping up of the anti-terrorist campaign, a post-Taliban settlement in Afghanistan, and a settlement in other crisis spots in the world, including the Middle East, the Balkans and the Persian Gulf Area," Ivanov said.

Later, Putin welcomed Powell for talks at the Kremlin saying that Russia and the United States were collaborating "very effectively" in Afghanistan to help deliver aid supplies.

Putin said Russia was happy to have the opportunity to continue a dialogue which was of interest to both Moscow and Washington.

The Russian leader thanked the United States for helping to carry out "the humanitarian operation in Afghanistan," adding: "Above all, this concerns the efforts at Bagram airport (near Kabul), where our specialists and yours have been working together very effectively."

Powell told the Russian leader it had been an honour and pleasure for the United States to help Russian troops reach Kabul via Bagram, adding that the joint effort was symbolic of "open, transparent and very good" cooperation between the two sides.

----

Powell Says Nuclear Deal Is Close
Verification Measures to Be Discussed at Meeting With Putin

By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 10, 2001; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17762-2001Dec9?language=printer

MOSCOW, Dec. 9 -- A deal between the United States and Russia to sharply reduce nuclear weapons is "just about done," and the two countries are now looking for ways to verify that they abide by the proposed limits, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today.

Powell, who is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, said discussions were focusing on how to apply verification measures included in the earlier START I and START II arms control treaties to the new limits proposed for offensive weapons.

The Bush administration has said it was willing to reach a written agreement extending these measures, such as mutual inspections and technical reconnaissance. Asked by reporters whether this agreement could take the shape of a formal treaty, a senior State Department official said today the administration was not ruling out any option.

At a meeting with Putin in the United States last month, President Bush announced he was prepared to reduce the U.S. stockpile to between 1,700 and 2,200 long-range nuclear warheads. Putin said he was willing to cut his weapons to about a third of their current level, or roughly 2,000 warheads. U.S. officials have been waiting to be informed of the exact total Russia envisions.

"The offensive weapons are just about done. All we have to do is hear a number from them and then talk through the verification and other issues," Powell said on his airplane en route to Moscow, the sixth stop on his tour of European and Central Asian countries. There will be a "big concentration on transparency so both sides know what the other is doing [and on] exchange of information on our various programs."

Powell sounded less optimistic, however, about an imminent breakthrough in talks on the ABM Treaty that could allow the Bush administration to proceed with testing a missile defense system, now barred by the 1972 accord. U.S. officials consider the treaty outmoded, but Putin has called it central to maintaining stability between the nuclear powers.

"There is still this disagreement with respect to our missile defense programs," Powell said. "Increasingly, the ABM Treaty constrains what the president feels we must do in order to get our missile defense systems. We haven't found yet a way to get through that by their accepting the testing we have to do."

While U.S. officials want to scrap the treaty, many in the administration have been willing to reach an interim understanding with Russia that could allow testing to proceed while putting off a final decision about withdrawing from the accord. Powell said he would be seeking "new ideas" in talks with Russian officials about how to permit the Pentagon's test program to move ahead. The United States is eager to proceed in the coming months with tests that could violate the treaty.

Powell's visit to Moscow is his first since 1992 and his first as secretary of state, but his discussions with Russian officials have become almost commonplace. He met this evening with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, their 16th get-together this year and the third just within the last week.

In addition to talks on strategic weapons systems, Powell said he intended to speak with Putin about the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan and the NATO decision last week to integrate Russia more closely into the alliance.

Although missile defense remains one of the administration's top foreign policy priorities, the most noticeable progress in talks with Russia has been in the realm of reducing offensive weapons, which has become Moscow's priority in nuclear talks.

Although Bush has also called for sharp reductions in warheads, U.S. officials have consistently said they want to avoid a new, cumbersome arms control treaty. But in response to Putin's insistence on written commitments, Bush said last month he would be willing to put a new agreement on paper. "We're willing to do this in written form," a senior State Department official repeated today. "Not necessarily a treaty."

Part of that agreement would provide for means to "carry forward" the safeguards included in the earlier arms control treaties, administration officials said.

"What we don't want to lose is the verification and notifications and other provisions of START I and some of the provisions of START II," Powell said. "What we will be discussing is how to bring these features forward and to codify them, formalize them [in] a document in a way that both sides find satisfactory."

In a statement released Friday, the State Department said, "A significant aspect of the START Treaty's regime lies in its use of rigorous, equitable and verifiable methods to monitor its implementation." These include "the right to do on-site inspections and other verification measures." The treaty also calls for "data exchanges and notifications on each side's strategic systems and facilities as well as exchanges of telemetry data from missile flight tests."

The department released the statement to mark the Dec. 5 completion of reductions in offensive nuclear arms required by the START I Treaty, signed 10 years ago. The United States and Russia now have cut the number of strategic warheads to no more than 6,000 each.

----

US, Russia Want Strategic Arms Agreement by Mid - 2002

By REUTERS
New York Times
December 10, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-attack-powell.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and the United States, riding high on a new partnership, said on Monday they hoped to tie up a new strategic arms agreement in time for a visit to Moscow by President Bush in the middle of next year.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who met President Vladimir Putin against a background of unusually warm relations stemming from the common fight against terrorism, said the two sides were closer to agreeing numbers for nuclear warhead cuts.

Appearing with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Powell told a Kremlin news conference: ``Both of our presidents have charged us...to find ways to formalize this agreement at lower levels of strategic offensive numbers and to try to get the work concluded in time for when they meet in Moscow.''

Ivanov said Bush, who held summit talks with Putin at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, last month, was expected to make his first visit to Moscow in the middle of 2002.

Powell later arrived in Berlin for talks with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on the next leg of his tour of countries taking part in the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism. He travels to London and Paris on Tuesday.

The linked issues of U.S. plans to build a missile defense and moves by both Washington and Moscow to cut nuclear warhead stockpiles represent a wrinkle in relations which are otherwise enjoying unprecedented warmth.

Putin himself earlier set the tone for an amicable encounter with Powell by thanking the United States for helping Russian aid missions into Afghanistan during fighting with the Taliban.

Powell said U.S.-Russian cooperation over delivering humanitarian aid to Afghanistan symbolized open and transparent cooperation between the two countries.

ABM PROBLEMS STILL EXIST

Putin was the first world leader to call Bush after the September attacks, pledging support and cooperation. His call gave impetus to closer ties between the old Cold War rivals.

Russia turned words of sympathy into deeds, sharing intelligence with Washington and giving the green light for ex-Soviet Central Asian republics, still close to Moscow, to offer bases and airspace for U.S. forces in the Afghan campaign.

Planned nuclear arms reductions have been running in tandem with U.S. efforts to agree a way in which it can bow out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty which inhibits Pentagon plans to build a missile defense shield against ``rogue'' states.

Ivanov and Powell made clear on Monday they still differed over the future of the ABM accord. Speaking at a news conference with Powell in Berlin later on Monday, Chancellor Schroeder also urged Washington to uphold the framework of disarmament accords.

``We want more contractual disarmament, not less,'' he said, adding that differences on this should not lead to a crisis and disarmament treaties could be modified to fit new circumstances.

Washington says the ABM treaty is a vestige of the Cold War that should be scrapped. Moscow, while partly agreeing with this view, says it is a cornerstone agreement on which other arms accords rest.

The two countries announced on Wednesday that they had slashed their nuclear stockpile to below the level of 6,000 warheads set by the START-1 treaty signed in 1991.

Putin and Bush announced substantial cuts in nuclear arms stockpiles during their Texas summit in 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.

But Moscow wanted these formalized in a treaty whereas Washington wanted a verbal agreement.

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

-------- maryland

Safety Plan for Calvert Plant Under Study

Monday, December 10, 2001
Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18064-2001Dec9?language=printer

The Coast Guard does not expect to develop a safety plan until next year concerning a Tulsa company's proposal to ship liquefied natural gas via foreign tankers to the firm's southern Calvert County plant off the Chesapeake Bay.

Thursday marked the conclusion of a two-day meeting with state and federal officials in Portsmouth, Va., on the Williams Co.'s Cove Point project, which federal regulators are also reconsidering at the urging of Tom Ridge, the homeland security director.

The Coast Guard will now study such issues as whether to require moving safety zones around the tankers and escorts for the vessels when they move into the bay, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Gordon A. Loebl said.

The decisions concerning the Cove Point project will also serve "to create a blueprint" for handling the importation of liquefied natural gas along the eastern seaboard in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Loebl added.

"I think we're willing to take as much time as we need to get it right," Loebl said.

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

Mikulski said in letters sent to the federal energy panel, the Coast Guard, the FBI and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as Ridge, that the project "could create a new vulnerability to terrorism." She also pointed out that the facility is three miles from the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced Nov. 9 -- just two days after Mikulski criticized the commission's original approval -- that it would reconsider the plan. A week later, the commission's staff conducted a closed technical conference, during which interested parties and regulatory agencies discussed "any national security issues" raised after Sept. 11.

-------- us politics

Worst-Case Scenario: The U.S. Has None
Constitutional Crisis, Chaos Foreseen if Top Leaders Killed

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 10, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17786-2001Dec9?language=printer

Imagine the unimaginable: The president, in the White House, the vice president, at the National Observatory, and all Cabinet members, in their respective agency headquarters, are killed in a terrorist attack on downtown Washington. So are all members of Congress, except the few who happen to be out of town.

What happens to the Republic? At the moment, the answer is alarming: chaos. The Sept. 11 attacks and subsequent release of anthrax on Capitol Hill have left many lawmakers and constitutional experts concerned that the federal government does not have adequate succession and continuity plans in place to recover from a catastrophic terrorist attack on Washington.

Current contingencies, designed during the Cold War and based on an intercontinental nuclear strike for which there would be warning, offer limited guidance for the government in the case of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack by terrorists that devastates all three branches.

The Sept. 11 attacks brought the problem to light. Although such an event is highly unlikely, there is no plan for replacing the president, the House of Representatives and the top echelons of the judiciary if virtually the entire federal leadership were to be destroyed.

The changes since Sept. 11 have been mostly logistical. Vice President Cheney is often taken to a "secure undisclosed location." All members of Congress and some top aides have been given BlackBerry devices allowing them to receive immediate, confidential information about a security threat or evacuation plan. The House has ordered the wiring of an alternative meeting place at Fort McNair in the District if the Capitol cannot be used.

But several people who have studied the scenarios said these adjustments fall far short of what is necessary. Current law allows only for special elections in the case of House members, which would take weeks, although senators can be replaced by their state governors.

"We have to realistically think about something more catastrophic," said Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), who has proposed a constitutional amendment allowing governors to appoint new representatives if a large number of lawmakers were killed or incapacitated. "If somebody hits us in a severe and coordinated attack, there will be great confusions and possibly a constitutional crisis."

Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, called current government preparations "utterly irresponsible." He favors a version of Baird's proposal and revisions to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 -- possibly adding state governors into the line of succession. "It's about having a Congress and having a president at a time when you need it most. There are a lot of times when every single person in the line of succession is inside the Beltway, and we live in a time where it's conceivable to lose everybody inside the Beltway."

Long before Sept. 11, the federal government planned for the unimaginable. President Bill Clinton's National Security Council had an aide who handled nothing but continuity-of-government issues, his work shrouded in secrecy. Aides to President Bush say they had been contemplating changes to assure continuity in government even before this fall's attacks. Those involved in the discussions were not permitted to be interviewed, and the White House, citing security concerns, declined to discuss any proposals.

"We continue to take a look at those plans and see what steps need to be taken, need to be changed," a White House spokeswoman said. "A lot of these plans that were fashioned and formed based on the Cold War, while needing to be fine-tuned, are not irrelevant."

The administration last month proposed to Congress an emergency spending procedure that would allow the president, in consultation with congressional leaders, to continue government operations for 30 days at existing funding levels if spending authority expires during a crisis when Congress cannot convene.

The White House dropped the proposal when congressional and administration aides could not agree on the structure of such a mechanism. Congress was willing to give the president such authority if congressional leaders from both parties agreed, but lawmakers said they balked when the White House sought permission to act only after consulting the House speaker.

John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), ruled out constitutional changes such as Baird's proposal. "We've had no discussions on moving any legislation," he said. "We don't think there's any movement toward having a change in the Constitution."

Still, even those who oppose a proposal as lofty as Baird's see need for change. Rep. Victor F. Snyder (D-Ark.) said he objects to the amendment allowing governors to name representatives in a crisis because "we ought to be very cautious about doing away with this important quality that our framers intended of House members being elected." Even if all but a few representatives were killed, "I do not see that the government would cease functioning," he said.

Instead, Snyder wants to encourage states to revise special-election laws to allow them to expedite elections to replace representatives who die.

The government has long had precautions to protect those in line of succession, most visibly the practice of keeping one Cabinet member out of the House chamber for the State of the Union address. But many Cold War practices -- such as building a bunker for lawmakers to meet beneath the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia -- assume there would be warning before an attack.

But if terrorists using the element of surprise were to wipe out the government, "we don't have anything in place that would deal very adequately with that matter," said David E. Kyvig, a constitutional historian at Northern Illinois University. "That could be a cause for chaos."

The framers understood conventional warfare, but not terrorists armed with germs and nuclear devices. "James Madison was not exactly in tune with the nuclear age," Kyvig said.

Among the ideas lawmakers and scholars are pondering:

Rep. James R. Langevin (D-R.I.) proposes an "eCongress" system, a secure computer system for voting and communicating among members of Congress if they could not meet at a single location because of an emergency. He seeks permission from the House Administration Committee to study the possibility.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) proposes changing the presidential succession line so that if the president and vice president were to die, a previously designated congressional leader from the president's party would assume office. Currently, succession goes to the House speaker and Senate president pro tempore, then to members of the Cabinet.

Ornstein favors a variety of reforms: more meeting places for Congress outside Washington, a law designating a court to replace the Supreme Court if the justices are killed and replacing the Senate president pro tempore (usually the oldest member) with the majority leader for purposes of succession. Ornstein would also add governors to the succession, most likely by state population.

Baird, probably the most aggressive lawmaker on the subject, favors alternative meeting places for Congress -- and not merely Fort McNair, which would likely be destroyed by the same nuclear bomb that would destroy the Capitol. Congress could meet in state capitals, he suggested.

Baird's top priority, though, is the quick, temporary replacement of lawmakers killed or incapacitated in a terrorist strike if more than 25 percent of the chamber is affected. Technically, the House could operate with only a few members, because the law requires only a majority of members to be present for a quorum.

But, Baird said, "if we have a House of Representatives that's in the hands of four or five people, we've done a disservice to the framers." More than 30 similar proposals had been offered during the Cold War without success, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Baird said Bush seemed "very interested" in the plan and suggested Baird take it up with Cheney.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Northern Alliance to keep troops in Kabul

Monday December 10, 2001
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011210/1/22wtd.html

The Northern Alliance will keep troops in Kabul even after the deployment of an international security force, top defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Habeel told AFP.

"Of course some of the units of the Northern Alliance will be in Kabul. (Defence Minister) General Fahim is a member of the government and of course his forces will remain here," Habeel said.

Habeel also said the UN-mandated security force will not be allowed to patrol the city.

The international peacekeepers "can only patrol places where the new government will meet. It was agreed that our own forces will keep security in Kabul," he said.

Under the inter-Afghan accord struck in Bonn last week, a UN-mandated international security force is to be deployed in Kabul and its surroundings before spreading progressively to other centres.

The agreement also stipulates the demilitarisation of Kabul, making clear that Afghan forces are to withdraw all military units from the capital and other areas where the multinational force is deployed.

"The participants of the UN Talks on Afghanistan pledge to withdraw all military units from Kabul and other urban centres or other areas in which the UN mandated force is deployed," an annexe to the accord says.

----

Britain to lead Afghan stabilisation force

Monday December 10,
Agence France Presse
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011210/1/22vzi.html

Britain will announce on Tuesday that it is to lead an international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, British media reported.

The Daily Telegraph, citing British defence sources, said the announcement would be made on Tuesday during a visit by US Secretary of State Colin Powell -- three months to the day after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States which led to the US-led war in Afghanistan and prompted the downfall of the Taliban regime.

British newspapers offered varying assessments on what Britain's contribution to the force would look like.

The Daily Telegraph said Britain would contribute 3,000 troops to the force, notably a brigade of three infantry battalions.

The Financial Times, quoting diplomatic sources, said that Washington and Britain were considering setting up an "interim security force for Kabul" to coincide with the start of the new interim government on December 22.

"The force, which would consist of at least 4,000 soldiers, would operate in advance of a multinational peacekeeping force to be sent within three months," the newspaper said.

The Times, also citing defence sources, said that Britain expected to send between 800 and 1,000 troops to lead a multinational peacekeeping force in Afghanistan in the next fortnight.

"The deployment will mean that more than 5,000 British service personnel, most of whom are already in the region, will spend Christmas in Afghanistan," it said.

On Sunday British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said that Britain was prepared to take part in, and possibly lead, an international stabilisation force in Afghanistan.

However, he played down a report which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph that Britain is set to send up to 10,000 troops as part of a 50,000-strong multinational peacekeeping force in the shattered country.

The principle, but not the size or makeup, of an international peacekeeping force was agreed to by all four parties at the inter-Afghan talks in Bonn, Germany on December 5.

Powell said during a visit to Central Asia on Friday that he believed only Germany and Britain had expressed an interest in leading the peacekeeping force.

----

Awaiting Judgment in Kabul
Few Legal Niceties Planned for Prisoners Of Northern Alliance

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 10, 2001; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17661-2001Dec9.html

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 9 -- On the wall of the musty, bathroom-size prison cell he shares with nine other men, Qurbanah Abdul Shar has scrawled the date he arrived: Dec. 3, 2001. He does not know when he will leave.

His jailers call him a foreign guerrilla who infiltrated Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban militia. That's not the way Abdul Shar tells it. Yes, the 28-year-old spice trader came from Pakistan, but only to bring home his younger brother, who did come to fight alongside the Taliban. In fact, to hear them tell it, all of the men in Cell No. 3 are innocent, mistakenly rounded up by anti-Taliban forces when they swept into Kabul last month.

Men in prisons the world over claim they are innocent. But in Cell No. 3, some of them just might be and no one would know the difference.

With the final collapse of the Taliban last week, Afghanistan's new rulers face the challenge of deciding what to do with the vanquished soldiers and the men who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thousands have already melted away into the hills and crevices of this rugged country. Thousands more sit in Afghan dungeons like Cell No. 3, awaiting judgment in a system where guilt is assumed.

"We make decisions about guilty people according to their crimes," said Gen. Mohammed Qasim, the head military investigator at the Northern Alliance's defense ministry. "If we catch someone with lots of evidence and documents, then there is no need for more investigation or to send him to court because it's clear he's guilty. We'll just send him to prison."

Qasim later modified his explanation of the system. All cases for punishment are supposed to go to court, he said, but he portrayed that as a formality. "When we have complete documents and evidence and our investigation is according to the rules, the judge has never rejected our decision," he said. "He'll agree with us."

As attention shifts from carpet bombing to nation building, it may turn out that creating a civil society proves to be a more daunting task than simply tearing down an uncivil one -- and perhaps more critical in a lawless, chaotic country that tolerated the world's most infamous terrorist ring. And in establishing the rule of law, few priorities rank as high as building a judicial system that distinguishes between justice and vengeance.

The United Nations was worried enough about the matter to insist that the Afghan power-sharing accord signed at a conference outside Bonn last week include a requirement that the new interim government set up an independent judiciary and supreme court within the next few months. A judicial commission will "rebuild the domestic justice system in accordance with Islamic principles, international standards, the rule of law and Afghan legal traditions," the agreement stated.

Afghan delegates to the Bonn conference insisted that Islamic principles be mentioned in the power-sharing accord, according to an aide to Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani. But already, various political factions have begun to wrestle over how to balance the four priorities listed in the agreement, particularly the secular and the religious.

Even within the concept of Islamic law, there are multiple interpretations to be reconciled. Ayatollah Mohsini, an ethnic Hazara and Shiite Muslim leader who just returned from five years of exile in Iran, demanded in a speech Saturday at a Kabul mosque that the interim government establish a dual court system: one based on the customs of Sunni Muslims and the other based on those of Shiites.

"We must have for Shiite people their own courts that will decide about crimes," he said. If the country's new, Sunni-dominated leadership does not respect Shiite rules, he added, "we'll have some problems with the Sunni people, and Shiite people won't respect the basic rules in Afghanistan."

For the moment, there are no real rules, basic or otherwise, for Abdul Shar and his fellow inmates at the prison in the ministry of security and intelligence. The courthouse, where military tribunals had been held, closed when the Taliban fled and the Northern Alliance took over Kabul on Nov. 13. Today it remains empty, its doors shut and its garden dry and scraggly. No one knows when it might reopen, and officials at the defense ministry said they have no alternative court working.

Down in Cell No. 3, past the clanging iron doors, 10 men huddle inside, somehow making room for one another in an unforgiving concrete space barely eight square feet. Three hard wooden cots have been crammed into the cell, each one occupied by two or three men sitting stoically. Filthy gray wool blankets have been laid on the floor beneath each cot to squeeze in more prisoners. The men buried underneath the cots disappear into the darkness. There is a narrow barred window, so high that no one can peer out it. Not much light makes its way in, and the single bare bulb flickers on and off.

"We want to be released to go to our houses and see our families," said Khawas, 45, who shares a bunk with Abdul Shar, and who, like many Afghans, uses just one name.

"I'm not a criminal," added cellmate Sheida Ahmad, 37. "They brought me here without any reason."

They all have a story in Cell No. 3, and there are no lawyers available, much less judges, to help sort out which might be true. On their face, the stories all sound plausible enough, judging by what is known about how the Taliban behaved and how the fall of Kabul transpired.

Abdul Shar, for instance, said his 20-year-old brother was lured from Pakistan at the end of September to fight for the Taliban against the "infidel Americans." A month later, Abdul Shar said, he came to Kabul to look for him. "I didn't come here to fight," he said.

He never did find the young man. "I don't know if he's been killed or in prison," he said.

Khawas said he came to Kabul from his home in the southern province of Helmand to see relatives. "If I knew the situation was so bad, I wouldn't have come here," he said. Once he realized how volatile the city had become, he said, he decided to leave. But a stranger sharing his taxi asked him where he was from and concluded he must be with the Taliban because he was from the south; the man ordered the driver to go to a military post so they could turn Khawas in.

Ahmad, a jewelry and electronics trader from Kandahar, said he had no love for the Taliban, noting that its fighters recently killed his brother. That was why he came to Kabul, to collect his brother's car. Seeing Northern Alliance forces entering the city, he said, he stopped to talk.

"I wanted to congratulate them on coming to Kabul," he said. "They asked me, 'Where are you from?' I said, 'I'm from Kandahar.' And they arrested me. I have never been Taliban. . . . What have they done for us that we should support them?"

Several young men in the cell acknowledged that they had fought for the Taliban but not willingly. Each described being press-ganged into service at gunpoint, much as thousands of other Afghans were in recent months.

"I was Talib but they made me by force," said Rahmatullah, 19. "When the Taliban came, they set fire to our house and made us take weapons and be Talibs."

Under Northern Alliance policy, conscripts are not supposed to be punished, let alone civilians who simply lived in Taliban-controlled areas. Authorities maintained they have lived up to that standard.

"The people who said they had to join Taliban, we don't have anything against them," said Abdullah Jan Tawhidi, the alliance's deputy minister of security and intelligence. "They're free. Most of them are free."

He dismissed the possibility that any of the men in Cell No. 3 or elsewhere in his prison might be innocent. "These guys you met are all agents," he said. "We don't say they were all armed and fighting against us. But we have documents saying they were working for the Taliban against us. It's clear that they're lying because the people at the places they were working told us who they were, what they were doing and what their jobs were."

Notably absent in his prison, though, were the foreign Taliban recruits that the Northern Alliance has said it most wants to punish. A morning spent visiting cells turned up only Abdul Shar, the Pakistani who said he came to find his brother; an Arab who spoke no English or Dari; and a man from Singapore who said he enlisted with the Taliban to defend Islam.

Alliance officials said they have not systematically put foreign Taliban members to death so far, although Tawhidi said executions could begin in a matter of weeks after investigations are completed. Near the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, a contingent of foreign fighters staged a bloody uprising at a Northern Alliance prison, apparently because they feared being massacred.

The senior alliance leaders running Kabul until the interim government takes charge Dec. 22 have vowed to avoid abuses such as those that have characterized modern Afghan history. "During the war, for many years, we've always observed human rights and we treat them [captives] like other countries do," said Mohammed Wasil, chief aide to the Northern Alliance military leader, Gen. Mohammed Fahim. "We respect humankind. They have the right to live. They're criminals, but we treat them according to the law."

--------

THE GROUND WAR
Afghan Tribes Report Battles Against 1,000 Al Qaeda Fighters

New York Times
December 10, 2001
By DAVID ROHDE with ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/10/international/10CND-AFGH.html

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 10 - A day after the five-year rule of the Taliban officially came to an end, tribal fighters backed by tanks and American jet fighters reportedly engaged in a fierce ground attack today against about 1,000 Al Qaeda forces and said they had seized a key ridge near a suspected hideout of Osama bin Laden.

The day of conflict began just after dawn, The Associated Press reported from Tora Bora, when B52's and other American warplanes pounded the area's network of caverns and tunnels, near the eastern city of Jalalabad.

After the bombardment Al Qaeda fighters came out of their caves and fired mortars at tribesmen, the agency said.

This was followed by an attack by hundreds of tribal fighters, who were countered by Al Qaeda fighters firing mortars and machine guns.

At sunset the tribesmen said they had captured a ridge on the Milwawa valley next to the Tora Bora valley, the A.P. said.

In the south United States Marine teams moved to within 12 miles of Kandahar, the agency reported, intending to cut off escape routes for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces.

But there was still no sign today of Mr. bin Laden or the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

Hajji Muhammad Zaman, commander of the forces attacking the caves in Tora Bora, told The Associated Press on Sunday that Mr. bin Laden "has not escaped, and we will do everything possible to make sure he doesn't."

In Kabul, the capital, marines secured the grounds of the United States Embassy, which had been closed since 1989 and was burned by Taliban supporters on Sept. 26. It was the first time American troops have been seen in Kabul since the Taliban fled last month.

The Taliban rule, exceptionally harsh even in a land governed for decades by bloodletting, came to an official end Sunday as the last Afghan province slipped from their control. Their fractious opponents, due to start governing in two weeks, agreed to bury some of the many feuds that could jeopardize peace, but the two men most wanted by the United States continued to elude capture.

Hamid Karzai, the designated leader of the interim government scheduled to take power on Dec. 22, rode into the Taliban's former stronghold of Kandahar in an unarmed convoy Sunday, entering the city for the first time since its surrender was announced last Thursday, according to an aide.

Mr. Karzai, who was born in Kandahar in 1957 but fled after the Taliban took control, reportedly used Mullah Omar's bombed-out residence to lead a meeting and broker a deal to end fighting between two rival anti-Taliban groups.

In Washington, officials said new evidence had been found linking Mr. bin Laden to the Sept. 11 attacks. Administration officials confirmed a report in The Washington Post that the United States had obtained a videotape showing Mr. bin Laden giving a detailed description of the attacks. In a casual conversation, Mr. bin Laden marveled at their success, officials said.

"He does, in fact, display significant knowledge of what happened," Vice President Dick Cheney said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press." "And there's no doubt about his responsibility for the attack on Sept. 11."

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation" that members of Mr. bin Laden's Al Qaeda group were fighting for their lives and the clashes were "very fierce."

"We know that the Al Qaeda forces are relatively large in number just because of the ferocity of the fighting," he said.

A spokesman for the Northern Alliance said Mr. bin Laden had taken personal command of the fighting and had dug in with 1,000 loyalists. "Osama himself has taken the command of the fighting," Muhammad Amin told Reuters in Jalalabad.

It was impossible to confirm Mr. Amin's claims or to verify how much territory opposition forces have seized. Afghan commanders say they have gained control of half of the caves, but they have shown none of them to reporters.

Tribal groups that control the Pakistani side of the border near Tora Bora said they had agreed to allow several thousand government troops to enter their semiautonomous region for the first time ever. The troops, along with armed helicopters, will be used to cut off possible escape routes.

In northern Afghanistan, the region worst affected by a four-year drought and resulting famine, hope flickered for tens of thousands of refugees and the aid groups trying to feed and tend to them. The Friendship Bridge between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, closed for years by enmity and fear, opened Sunday and a first shipment of aid came across.

At that ceremony, one of the most powerful warlords of the Northern Alliance, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, dropped his earlier bellicose attitude toward the new government due to take power in Kabul, saying he would not use force to make his influence felt.

"People say General Dostum will again start bloodletting and war," he told Agence France-Presse. "This is not true. We will hold negotiations in Kabul. The rule of law will return."

In southern Afghanistan, the Taliban surrendered their last redoubt, the province of Zabul, adjoining Kandahar.

"The rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan has totally ended," the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said.

Mr. Karzai has been criticized for the chaos around Kandahar, but on Sunday he successfully brokered a deal ending a dispute between two commanders vying for control of the city, the former Kandahar governor, Gul Agha, and Mullah Naqibullah, a former local military commander who Mr. Karzai had appointed governor.

Mr. Naqibullah relinquished his post to Mr. Agha, who has complained that Mullah Naqibullah was too close to the Taliban. Under the agreement, Mr. Agha will serve as governor and Mullah Naqibullah will serve as his assistant until a new government is formed.

"God willing, I will run the administration of Kandahar with the advice of the local people, tribal elders and mujahedeen commanders," Mr. Agha told the A.P.

An aide to Mr. Karzai said he would travel very soon to Kabul.

If the agreement holds in Kandahar, it should increase Mr. Karzai's standing. Over the last several days, officials in Kabul have criticized him for hinting at an amnesty for Mullah Omar and for failing to control the situation in Kandahar. Wahidullah Sabawoon, the Northern Alliance's finance minister and an ethnic Pashtun commander, said Mr. Karzai should have attacked Taliban forces in Kandahar.

Mr. Sabawoon said large numbers of armed Taliban fighters escaped from the city, along with Mullah Omar. But he predicted that the former Taliban leader - whose head, like Mr. bin Laden's, carries a $25 million bounty posted by Washington - could be captured in the mountains around Kandahar if commanders in the area are united.

He said Mullah Omar is probably hiding in the areas controlled by his small clan, like the town of Qalat, 100 miles northeast of Kandahar. "It's not difficult," he said.

Marines stationed at Forward Operating Base Rhino, southwest of Kandahar, continued to expand their patrols and the search for escaping Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders. Military officials said the marines had not engaged any Taliban forces since last Friday, when seven people were killed and three vehicles destroyed.

Pentagon officials said they believed that Mullah Omar was still in the Kandahar area, but the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, allowed that "if he turned up somewhere else I would not be totally surprised."

"I assume Omar is not alone," Mr. Wolfowitz said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"If he travels alone some enterprising Afghan is likely to collect that reward and round him up. If he travels with a large number of body guards, we are on the lookout for a convoy."

American officials said the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, which had been the staging area for hundreds of Special Operations Forces and their helicopters, was leaving the north Arabian Sea for its home port in Japan.

The Kitty Hawk had cleared its decks of its regular air wing for the unusual mission, but with as many as 500 American Special Operations forces now in Afghanistan and many others at bases in neighboring countries like Uzbekistan and Pakistan, the Pentagon decided that the carrier could resume its regular duties.

The Navy continued to query, and even halt and board, vessels in the north Arabian Sea suspected of smuggling Al Qaeda members out of the region, Pentagon officials said.

Four of the estimated 200 ships contacted in the past two weeks have been stopped and searched. No Al Qaeda personnel or other cargo related to the war has been found, a Navy officer said.

In Kabul, United Nations officials said they had briefly suspended the distribution of food to 1.3 million people in the city in what has been called the largest such program ever in Afghanistan. The dispersal was halted so additional sites could be set up, after the 16 locations used for the first round of distributions on Saturday were swamped by needy crowds.

--------

THE GROUND WAR
Taliban Give Way in Final Province Where They Ruled

New York Times
December 10, 2001
By DAVID ROHDE with ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/10/international/asia/10AFGH.html

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 9 - The five-year rule of the Taliban, exceptionally harsh even in a land governed for decades by bloodletting, came to an official end today as the last Afghan province slipped from their control. Their fractious opponents, due to start governing in two weeks, agreed to bury some of the many feuds that could jeopardize peace, but the two men most wanted by the United States continued to elude capture.

American B-52's intensified their bombardment of a complex of caves in eastern Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding, and American marines in the south and the army of neighboring Pakistan tightened the dragnet on the ground. Nonetheless, there was no sign of either the Taliban's leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, or of Mr. bin Laden himself.

Hamid Karzai, the designated leader of the interim government scheduled to take power on Dec. 22, rode into the Taliban's former stronghold of Kandahar in an unarmed convoy today, entering the city for the first time since its surrender was announced last Thursday, according to an aide.

Mr. Karzai, who was born in Kandahar in 1957 but fled after the Taliban took control, reportedly used Mullah Omar's bombed-out residence to lead a meeting and broker a deal to end fighting between two rival anti-Taliban groups.

In Washington, officials said new evidence had been found linking Mr. bin Laden to the Sept. 11 attacks. Administration officials confirmed a report in The Washington Post that the United States had obtained a videotape showing Mr. bin Laden giving a detailed description of the attacks. In a casual conversation, Mr. bin Laden marveled at their success, officials said.

"He does, in fact, display significant knowledge of what happened," Vice President Dick Cheney said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press." "And there's no doubt about his responsibility for the attack on Sept. 11."

Anti-Taliban commanders near the fortified Tora Bora cave complex in eastern Afghanistan said they were preparing for a major ground assault.

Hajji Muhammad Zaman, commander of the forces attacking the caves in Tora Bora, told The Associated Press that Mr. bin Laden "has not escaped, and we will do everything possible to make sure he doesn't."

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation" that members of Mr. bin Laden's Al Qaeda group were fighting for their lives and the clashes were "very fierce."

"We know that the Al Qaeda forces are relatively large in number just because of the ferocity of the fighting," he said.

A spokesman for the Northern Alliance said Mr. bin Laden had taken personal command of the fighting and had dug in with 1,000 loyalists. "Osama himself has taken the command of the fighting," Muhammad Amin told Reuters in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

It was impossible to confirm Mr. Amin's claims or to verify how much territory opposition forces have seized. Afghan commanders say they have gained control of half of the caves, but they have shown none of them to reporters.

Tribal groups who control the Pakistani side of the border near Tora Bora said they had agreed to allow several thousand government troops to enter their semiautonomous region for the first time ever. The troops, along with armed helicopters, will be used to cut off possible escape routes, and will deploy on Monday, Pakistani officials said.

In northern Afghanistan, the region worst affected by a four-year drought and resulting famine, hope flickered for tens of thousands of refugees and the aid groups trying to feed and tend to them. The Friendship Bridge between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, closed for years by enmity and fear, opened today and a first shipment of aid came across.

At that ceremony, one of the most powerful warlords of the Northern Alliance, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, dropped his earlier bellicose attitude toward the new government due to take power in Kabul, saying he would not use force to make his influence felt.

"People say General Dostum will again start bloodletting and war," he told Agence France-Presse. "This is not true. We will hold negotiations in Kabul. The rule of law will return."

In southern Afghanistan, the Taliban surrendered their last redoubt, the province of Zabul, adjoining Kandahar.

"The rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan has totally ended," the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said.

Mr. Karzai has been criticized for the chaos around Kandahar, but today he successfully brokered a deal ending a dispute between two commanders vying for control of the city, the former Kandahar governor, Gul Agha, and Mullah Naqibullah, a former local military commander who Mr. Karzai had appointed governor.

Mr. Naqibullah relinquished his post to Mr. Agha, who has complained that Mullah Naqibullah was too close to the Taliban. Under the agreement, Mr. Agha will serve as governor and Mullah Naqibullah will serve as his assistant until a new government is formed.

"God willing, I will run the administration of Kandahar with the advice of the local people, tribal elders and mujahedeen commanders," Mr. Agha told The A.P.

An aide to Mr. Karzai said he would travel very soon to Kabul.

If the agreement holds in Kandahar, it should boost Mr. Karzai's standing. Over the last several days, officials in Kabul have criticized him for hinting at an amnesty for Mullah Omar and for failing to control the situation in Kandahar. Wahidullah Sabawoon, the Northern Alliance's finance minister and an ethnic Pashtun commander, said Mr. Karzai should have attacked Taliban forces in Kandahar.

Mr. Sabawoon said large numbers of armed Taliban fighters escaped from the city, along with Mullah Omar. But he predicted that the former Taliban leader - whose head, like Mr. bin Laden's, carries a $25 million bounty posted by Washington - could be captured in the mountains around Kandahar if commanders in the area are united.

He said Mullah Omar is probably hiding in the areas controlled by his small clan, like the town of Qalat, 100 miles northeast of Kandahar. "It's not difficult," he said.

Marines stationed at Forward Operating Base Rhino, southwest of Kandahar, continued to expand their patrols and the search for escaping Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders. Military officials said the marines had not engaged any Taliban forces since last Friday, when seven people were killed and three vehicles destroyed.

Pentagon officials said they believed that Mullah Omar was still in the Kandahar area, but the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, allowed that "if he turned up somewhere else I would not be totally surprised."

"I assume Omar is not alone," Mr. Wolfowitz said on CNN's "Late Edition." "If he travels alone some enterprising Afghan is likely to collect that reward and round him up. If he travels with a large number of body guards, we are on the lookout for a convoy."

American officials said the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, which had been the staging area for hundreds of Special Operations Forces and their helicopters, was leaving the north Arabian Sea for its home port in Japan.

The Kitty Hawk had cleared its decks of its regular air wing for the unusual mission, but with as many as 500 American Special Operations forces now in Afghanistan and many others at bases in neighboring countries like Uzbekistan and Pakistan, the Pentagon decided that the carrier could resume its regular duties.

The Navy continued to query, and even halt and board, vessels in the north Arabian Sea suspected of smuggling Al Qaeda members out of the region, Pentagon officials said.

Four of the estimated 200 ships contacted in the past two weeks have been stopped and searched. No Al Qaeda personnel or other cargo related to the war has been found, a Navy officer said.

In Kabul, United Nations officials said they had briefly suspended the distribution of food to 1.3 million people in the city in what has been called the largest such program ever in Afghanistan. The dispersal was halted so additional sites could be set up, after the 16 locations used for the first round of distributions on Saturday were swamped by needy crowds.

-------- britain

'Spin' on Boer atrocities
Letters reveal British effort to cover up true horrors of the first death camps

Paul Harris
Sunday December 9, 2001
The Observer
http://observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,615822,00.html

British officials considered launching a publicity campaign to cover up the true conditions of concentration camps in which thousands of women and children died during the Boer War, new documents have revealed.

An archive of letters and photographs owned by Major Sir Hamilton Goold-Adams, a colonial official in South Africa, has come to light. The documents, to be auctioned this week, contain hitherto unknown confidential letters from Lord Milner, the man charged with sorting out the disastrous South African camps after news of their conditions had been exposed in Britain.

The letters reveal that the black arts of media manipulation were not just a feature of the modern political age. In one letter, Milner appears to suggest that ways of playing down the horror of the camps.

'It is impossible not to see that, however blameless we may be in the matter, we shall not be able to make anybody think so, and I cannot avoid an uncomfortable feeling that there must be some way to make the thing a little less awfully bad if one could only think of it,' he wrote.

In another letter Milner talks about trying to gather as many sympathetic statistics and figures as possible and passing them promptly back to the government to use in a media campaign.

'That's classic Milner - he was well aware of the need to manage public opinion. This is a very interesting archive,' said Dr Iain Smith, a South African history expert at the University of Warwick.

The British Army created the concentration camps as part of a campaign against Boer guerrillas fighting against the takeover of their independent republic. Civilians were herded into the camps from their farms, but the insanitary conditions cost many their lives as hunger and disease ran rampant. Between June 1901 and May 1902, of the 115,000 people in the camps, almost 28,000 died, about 22,000 of them children. The death toll represented about 10 per cent of the Boer population. About 20,000 black people also died in other camps.

'It is an episode that British people very clearly want to forget and brush under the carpet. It was grim and reprehensible,' said Roger Westwood-Brookes, a documents expert at Dominic Winter Book Auctions, the firm that is selling the archive.

Some of the correspondence reveals the horrific death rate the camps caused. One letter, written at the end of 1901, lamented the fact that the death rate among young children in the camps was still not dropping. 'The theory that, all the weakly children being dead, the rate would fall off is not so far borne out by the facts,' Milner wrote. 'The strong ones must be dying now and they will all be dead by the spring of 1903.'

The tragedy was exposed by British campaigner Emily Hobhouse and caused a political scandal. She was labelled a 'turncoat' for her activities by politicians.

Milner had been sent to South Africa to try to improve the situation, but the letters reveal some of the immense logistical problems he faced. Many of the camps were short of supplies because South Africa's railway lines and rolling stock were all taken up with supplying the troops.

One letter from November 1901 showed that officials seemed powerless to stop the rising death rates.

'I thought that we had begun to turn the corner and that after having reached unparalleled heights of mortality in October we should now show a heavy decline. Unfortunately, the figures have risen again alarmingly,' Milner wrote.

The archive has already generated interest from several institutions, including Oxford's Bodleian Library. 'In its entirety this collection is of historical importance. It makes a valuable contribution,' said Ian Shapiro, an expert at Argyle Atkins, which specialises in buying historical documents and is considering bidding.

-------- business

FEDERAL CONTRACTS

By States News Service
Monday, December 10, 2001; Page E09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18008-2001Dec9?language=printer

North American Airlines Contractor Team of Sterling won a $13.01 million contract from the Air Force for long-and short-range international airlift services.

Northrop Grumman of Belcamp, Md., won an $8.93 million contract from the Army for the integration of a replacement airborne reconnaissance low-multifunction system.

Chesapeake Sciences Corp. of Millersville, Md., won an $8.4 million contract from the Navy for engineering development and technical services.

Alphatech of Arlington won a $7.4 million five-year contract from the Army for software-development support using client-servers and Web technologies.

NETSEC of Herndon won a $4.2 million contract from the Justice Department for managed security services and security engineering services.

HNTB Architects Engineers Planners of Washington won a $3 million contract from the Army for architect-engineering services.

Vador Ventures Inc. of Washington won a $1.97 million contract from the Internal Revenue Service for custodial and related services.

Anteon Corp. of Fairfax won a $1.2 million contract from the Army for facilities and equipment maintenance systems.

BTG Inc. of Fairfax won a $1 million contract from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for developing a judiciary multiprocessor application platform.

Imagine One Technology & Management Ltd. of Port Royal, Va., won a $984,244 contract from the Space and Aviation Warfare Systems Center for engineering and technical support services.

Apparel Group LLC of Springfield won an $803,600 contract from the Defense Personnel Support Center for quarter-sleeve brown undershirts for men.

Medical Development International of Lansdowne won a $780,000 contract from the Federal Bureau of Prisons for comprehensive medical services.

National Academy of Public Administration of Washington won a $487,999 contract from the Environmental Protection Agency for program evaluations.

Comptech Corp. of Rockville won a $398,889 contract from the Defense Supply Center for engine generator regulators.

Coastal Material Handling of Suffolk, Va., won a $227,440 contract from the Navy for forklift maintenance.

American Recreation Coalition of Washington won a $150,992 contract from the Federal Highway Administration for a recreational trails program study.

Orbital Sciences Corp. of Germantown won a $140,162 contract from the Navy for digital computers.

ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won a $99,500 contract from the Defense Supply Center for image intensifier housings.

Crane Plumbing of Waynesboro, Va., won a $94,107 contract from the Defense Industrial Supply Center for water closet bowls.

Northrop Grumman Field Support Services Inc. of Linthicum Heights won an $88,287 contract from the Defense Industrial Supply Center for hollow pins.

Allied Technology Group Inc. of Rockville won a $77,349 contract from the Navy for communication, detection and coherent radiation equipment.

Comptech Corp. of Rockville won a $76,148 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for starter parts kits.

American Research Corp. of Radford, Va., won a $75,000 contract from the Navy for trivalent chromium pretreatment for corrosion-control coatings.

Nu-Tek Precision Optical Corp. of Aberdeen, Md., won a $68,940 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for bracket and glass assemblies.

Sauer Compressors USA Inc. of Stevensville, Md., won a $64,093 contract from the Defense Supply Center for compressor parts kits.

Consulting Services & Research Inc. of Washington won a $61,978 contract from the Environmental Protection Agency for meeting and policy analysis support services.

Steven A. Bielamowicz of McLean won a $60,000 contract from the National Cancer Institute for medical services.

Litton Advanced Systems of College Park won a $53,272 contract from the Defense Supply Center for electrical and electronic equipment components.

Argo Turboserve Corp. of Virginia Beach won a $51,024 contract from the Defense Supply Center for power transformers.

The contracts listed were awarded by the federal government to companies and other vendors in Virginia, Maryland and the District. For more information, contact states2001@aol.com or call Myron Struck, managing editor, at 202-628-3100, ext. 266.

-------- drug war

Peru Fears Reemergence of Violent Rebels
Shining Path Movement Aided by Drug Traffickers, Police Allege

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 10, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17720-2001Dec9?language=printer

SANTA LUCIA, Peru -- In the mountains around this jungle town recently weaned from an economy based on illegal drug traffic, the stirrings of a dormant guerrilla organization are raising fears that terrorism is regaining a foothold in Peru's countryside.

A column of rebels from the Shining Path, a radical Maoist movement that terrorized Peru in the 1980s and early 1990s, assaulted the army barracks in nearby Nuevo Progreso in June after harassing neighboring towns for several weeks. Although no one was killed, the attack coincided with what police officials here said has been a spike in drug cultivation in these eastern forests and a surge in guerrilla activity, including a Shining Path ambush in August about 200 miles south of here in which four police officers were killed.

In the last few months, the Shining Path has also begun operations in Peru's cities. Last month, the Interior Ministry announced that it had thwarted a Shining Path plan to attack the U.S. Embassy in Lima. The State Department followed with an advisory warning U.S. citizens to avoid Peru, an acknowledgment that the movement, which had declined rapidly after the arrest almost a decade ago of its ideological founder, Abimael Guzman, was resurfacing as a threat.

National police, helped in this drug-producing region by U.S.-donated helicopters, intelligence and training, said the Shining Path is regrouping with far stronger ties than in the past to the drug trade, particularly the lucrative commerce in opium poppies. The money is helping the group modestly increase its numbers in this largely ungoverned expanse of valleys and jungles called the Upper Huallaga and elsewhere across rural Peru. Integral to the process are Colombian drug traffickers, who police said supply farmers with poppy seeds and start-up credits for planting, and provide the Shining Path with arms to protect their investments.

Despite significant past success against the group, national police and intelligence officers have long believed that remnants of the Shining Path had gone underground to wait for a propitious time to reemerge. Now, as Peru struggles through a time of economic uncertainty and political transition, the group may be doing just that.

"What is certain is that they are trying to capitalize on new strategies to expand the reach of their subversion," said Luis Cruzado, the second-in-command of this police anti-drug post where personnel have increased 50 percent in the past year. "Their [Shining Path] growth has not been very vigorous, but it is at the very least maintaining its size and expanding its presence."

Although the Shining Path had never been removed from the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations, its capacity to topple the Peruvian government largely ended with Guzman's capture in September 1992. The former university professor, known to the Shining Path's roughly 5,000 armed members at the time as President Gonzalo, was arrested two years after then-President Alberto Fujimori took office on a pledge to end the movement. Guzman said Peru's social order had to be destroyed to make way for a new one, a plan that called for killing 10 percent of the civilian population.

Guzman's arrest, which followed a stepped-up five-month urban bombing campaign by the group, led to a peace agreement between the Shining Path and the government. Only a hard-line faction, headed by Oscar Ramirez Durand, refused to sign. Known as Commander Feliciano, Ramirez operated here in the Upper Huallaga for years until his capture in 1999.

President Alejandro Toledo, who took office in July, has condemned the human rights abuses of the disgraced Fujimori government, many stemming from the campaign against the Shining Path, and he has slashed military spending for the coming year. Toledo also has signaled that he was taking the Shining Path seriously, recently announcing plans to open 100 new rural police posts.

According to an internal Interior Ministry analysis dated Dec. 3 of the Shining Path's strategy, the group intends to have its urban militias operating by January, and was behind a "Yankees Out of Afghanistan" graffiti campaign that began in Lima in October. Although the Shining Path does not have the capability to challenge the army, the analysis concludes, "it is able to carry out armed actions with certain political and military repercussions in the city of Lima if the [armed forces] do not remain alert."

But the Toledo administration's recent handling of the plan to attack the U.S. Embassy was clumsy, according to sources familiar with the incident. At a news conference last month, Interior Minister Fernando Rospigliosi announced the arrest of two alleged Shining Path members, who were found with diagrams of the embassy and were allegedly planning an attack for Dec. 3, Guzman's birthday.

The announcement undermined a larger sting operation targeting the group's Lima cell, according to sources familiar with the investigation, which involved U.S. and Peruvian intelligence agencies. The investigation had safe houses and senior leaders under surveillance, but the announcement scuttled the arrests. A few days later, the Shining Path blew up an electricity tower 30 miles from Lima.

"If this happened, it might have been a result of lack of communication or a lack of experience in the job, or both," said Roberto Danino, Peru's appointed prime minister.

Interviews with police and U.S. anti-drug advisers in the Upper Huallaga suggest that it is difficult to determine whether the Shining Path is resurfacing as an ideological movement or a drug gang working for Colombian sponsors, who supply the cash, seeds and technological know-how.

Police officials said that, while the Shining Path made money from the drug trade during its first campaigns, it is bringing in far more today because of its involvement in protecting opium poppies, the key ingredient in heroin. Processed poppies fetch more than twice the price of coca, the key ingredient in cocaine.

There are obstacles to the rebel group's growth. Numbering roughly 600 soldiers, the movement has lost its ideological leadership, and only two commanders have anything approaching national name recognition. They are known by their guerrilla names -- Dalton, who attended the group's first training camp with Guzman, and Artemio, who replaced Feliciano in the Upper Huallaga. But even the movement's limited resurgence is threatening to undermine U.S.-sponsored successes in reducing drug production in this region, once the heart of the world's coca industry.

In the mountains around Santa Lucia, a town of a few thousand peasants where U.S.-supported alternative development projects have helped turn coca fields into palm-oil farms, police destroyed about 60 acres of poppy plants last year. This year they have pulled up five times that amount and destroyed two morphine labs that officials said were likely built by the more sophisticated Colombian drug traffickers.

"It could be because they are looking harder," said a U.S. anti-drug adviser of the spike in poppy seizures, "but in all likelihood it means there is a lot more of it."

Demonstenes Garcia, commander of the police anti-drug base in Tingo Maria south of here, predicted growth in the opium poppy trade in the coming year. In recent months, Garcia's men have seized 25 pounds of processed opium poppy and dozens of pounds of coca base from the nearby Monzon Valley. Nine Colombians have been arrested.

"Because there is so much violence right now in Colombia, Peru has the capacity to be the heroin capital of Latin America," Garcia said. Last year, 70 percent of the heroin seized on the U.S. eastern seaboard came from Latin America, the vast majority from Peru and Colombia.

The Monzon Valley, opening onto the town of Tingo Maria, poses a particular challenge to U.S. anti-drug strategy. In the past year, coca cultivation has jumped 15 percent in this valley alone, to more than 30,000 acres, while poppy cultivation is increasing in the hard-to-reach cloud-shrouded mountain peaks, police said.

Coca farmers have reneged on an agreement, signed by the previous government, to limit coca fields to less than three acres per family pending the arrival of money that would pay them to plant new crops. The Toledo government has not decided how to proceed with the unruly population, which includes a significant Shining Path presence.

"There is no control in this zone," said Gonzalo Mosqueira Roncal, who heads the Interior Ministry's alternative development program. "In other zones, the cultivation is going down. Here it is increasing dramatically. And it is . . . narco-traffickers and the Shining Path. Here they are the same."

-------- iraq

State Dept. Delegation in Iraq

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 10, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a move to rally opposition to President Saddam Hussein, a State Department delegation is in northern Iraq to help pull Kurdish and other anti-government forces together.

The delegation headed by Ryan Crocker, a senior State Department official, is the first to go to northern Iraq since February.

The area has been outside the control of Saddam for a decade, and is considered a prime staging ground for rattling his government.

Last week, a bipartisan group of nine legislators asked President Bush to support Iraqi opposition forces with humanitarian assistance, information gathering and military training.

The lawmakers said in a letter to Bush that U.S. efforts to replace Saddam will not succeed without the help of allies on the ground inside Iraq. They suggested the support should be directed to the London-based Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella organization for all major groups opposed to Saddam.

Ignoring lawmakers' wishes, previous administrations have denied U.S. assistance for the INC to carry out operations inside Iraq.

On Monday, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Crocker and the delegation had arrived in northern Iraq. The group's main purpose, he said, was to demonstrate continued U.S. involvement with the Iraqi opposition.

Reeker said the U.S. officials also intend to mediate between rival Kurdish factions and check on food deliveries under a U.N. program that permits Baghdad to sell oil if revenues are used for food and medicine.

Bush and senior administration officials have raised the possibility of the United States taking its campaign against terrorism to Iraq after the Taliban and the al-Qaida terrorism network are defeated in Afghanistan.

Iraq is one of seven countries branded by the State Department as a sponsor of terrorism. Recently the administration has also stressed Saddam's refusal to permit U.N. inspectors to check for weapons programs.

-------- israel

Israeli Gunships Fire on Hebron Car

By NASSER SHIYOUKHI
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 10, 09:09 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?SLUG=ISRAEL%2dPALESTINIANS

HEBRON, West Bank (AP) - Two Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a car in this Palestinian town Monday, and a Palestinian doctor said a toddler and a 13-year-old boy were killed in the attack. Palestinian officials said the apparent target was a suspected Islamic militant who was seriously wounded.

The Israeli military had no comment. In the past 15 months of fighting, Israel has killed dozens of militants - suspected of plotting bombings and shooting attacks on Israelis - often by firing rockets at their cars.

Monday's helicopter strike came a day after the Israeli Security Cabinet reportedly approved more military strikes against Palestinian targets, including air attacks, incursions into Palestinian territory and targeted killings of suspected militants. The Defense Ministry had no comment.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, meanwhile, dropped plans to attend this week's gathering of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Qatar. Arafat, who was to have left for Doha on Sunday evening, feared Israel would not allow him to return, said Palestinian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Arafat's concerns were confirmed by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher that ``we (Israeli officials) have no objection to him (Arafat) leaving and going to Doha, on condition he doesn't return,'' Egyptian newspapers quoted Mubarak as saying.

In the helicopter attack in Hebron, two Israeli helicopter gunships fired several missiles that damaged at least three cars waiting at a traffic light. One car took a direct hit and was charred and smoking. Two other vehicles were struck by other debris that shattered windows and windshields. Hundreds of people surrounded the cars.

``There were two helicopters in the sky and we heard an explosion,'' said witness Ahmed Qawasmeh, 34. ``Everyone came out of their shops and their cars to see what happened. We heard another explosion and then we ran toward the cars to pick up the people who were hit.''

Dr. Jamil Haslamoun at Ahli Hospital in Hebron identified those killed as 13-year-old Shadi Arafi and a toddler who was still in diapers. Half the younger child's head was missing, said Dr. Haslamoun.

The older boy's father, Ahmed Arafi, said he and his son were riding in a taxi behind the car that was hit by Israeli missiles. ``My son was next to me. I don't know what happened. All I know is that I carried my son into the hospital,'' Arafi said before breaking down in tears.

Palestinian officials said the apparent target of the Israeli strike was Mohammed Ayoub Sidr, 26, an activist in the militant Islamic Jihad group. Sidr suffered burns over large parts of his body, hospital officials said.

Arafat, meanwhile, came under mounting criticism from U.S. leaders for failing to rein in Palestinian militants who have carried out a string of bombing and shooting attacks on Israelis.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that the attacks are ``destroying (Arafat's) authority and credibility,'' while Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that ``until Arafat demonstrates that he is serious about suicide attackers, there won't be progress.''

The United States and Israel have demanded that Arafat do more to stop terrorists; he says he is already cracking down on them and that 180 suspects have been arrested.

American diplomatic efforts hit a rough patch Sunday as U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni told Israeli and Palestinian security officials that if they didn't make real progress in the next 48 hours, he would consider leaving the region, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Israeli said Zinni - who arrived in Israel just two weeks ago, saying he would stay as long as it took to restore calm and restart peace talks - stood up and left talks between the two sides after issuing his ultimatum.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Paul Patin declined to comment, other than to say the United States planned to convene another meeting in a few days.

Zinni met with Sharon on Monday. The Israeli leader told Zinni that he ``attaches great importance to the continuance of his missions to the region,'' said a statement by Sharon's office.

European Union foreign ministers on Monday met Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and top Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath in an effort to halt the violence, but they held out little hope for progress. ``It's a grim situation,'' said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in Brussels, Belgium.

Israeli security sources say they have intelligence warnings that Palestinian militants are planning fresh attacks in northern Israel, where a suicide bomber struck on Sunday, killing himself and lightly injuring 11 bystanders.

Police set up roadblocks around the town of Afula and security forces were on increased alert in the town of Hadera and in the port city of Haifa, the site of yesterday's attack and a bus bombing a week earlier, which killed 15 people.

----

Four Palestinian Police Killed In Shooting by Israeli Troops
Circumstances of Incident at West Bank Checkpoint in Dispute

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 10, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17866-2001Dec9.html

ANABTA, West Bank, Dec. 9 -- Israeli troops killed four Palestinian policemen in their cars this morning, the start of a day of bloodshed that included a suicide bombing in Haifa that killed only the Palestinian who detonated it.

Palestinians said Israeli soldiers also fatally shot a taxi driver trying to enter the sealed-off West Bank city of Jenin, while Israeli officials said an Israeli motorist was seriously wounded in an ambush elsewhere in the West Bank.

The tempo of death and destruction here has anything but abated during the two-week visit of retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the special U.S. envoy who is trying to work out a cease-fire between the Israelis and Palestinians. He met today with Palestinian and Israeli security officials, but there were indications his patience was running out.

A senior Israeli official said Zinni gave the Palestinians a 48-hour ultimatum to curb suicide bombers and stop other violence or he would leave. A U.S. official said there was no ultimatum, but that both sides were pressed to come up with a formula for ending violence within a "few days."

Chances of Zinni's mission succeeding seemed improbable, as neither side appears to trust the other enough to begin working together. The Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority blamed each other for today's events.

"In light of what is happening, we may have to step up our activities," said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Saeb Erekat, the former Palestinian peace negotiator, accused Israel of "trying to destroy" the Palestinian Authority.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell condemned the Haifa bombing.

"Whether it's Hamas [which has claimed responsibility for past attacks] or it's one of the other organizations, they need to understand that this leads nowhere," Powell told reporters on his airplane en route to Moscow. "This does not lead to the end of violence, which will lead to negotiations toward the settlement of the crisis."

Israeli troops entered the West Bank hamlet of Anabta before dawn to round up terrorism suspects. The town is under Palestinian jurisdiction and Israeli army officials said they told Palestinian officials they were coming.

An army spokeswoman said soldiers arrested 25 people in Anabta and a nearby village and uncovered two "labs" that contained explosives and detonators.

An army statement said four Palestinian police in two cars tried to run through a checkpoint and opened fire on the Israelis; they were killed when the soldiers shot back. "It was simple," said the Israeli West Bank commander, Brig. Gen. Gershon Yitzhak. "The police took our cars, ran through our obstacles and started firing at our soldiers." He said the roadblock was made of stones.

An inspection of the vehicles -- a blue Renault minibus and a white Subaru compact car -- suggests that all the windows of each were closed when the police were shot in their seats. Shattered glass clung to the top rubber frames of the windows. Blood covered the seats and floors. There were no signs of an improvised roadblock on or at the side of the road.

Anabta residents said the four policemen were fleeing their temporary offices at the top of the hill because they were afraid of the arriving Israeli troops. Palestinian police offices have been frequent targets of Israeli air and ground attacks. The residents said the Israelis, who were preparing to surround a nearby house and arrest its occupant, Khaled Abdul Dayem, opened fire when the cars passed beneath a street lamp. In response to this account, the Israeli army spokeswoman said the Palestinians shot at the soldiers and rolled up the windows before the troops returned fire.

The spokeswoman had "no information" about the dead taxi driver in Jenin. Israeli troops have ringed the northern West Bank city, which has produced numerous suicide bombers who carried out attacks inside Israel.

Later this morning in Haifa, a Palestinian man carrying a bomb in a bag apparently detonated the bomb prematurely when approached by a police officer at a bus stop. Eleven bystanders were wounded. The bomber's broken body caught fire and police detonated a second explosive device, which was strapped to the man's body. He was apparently going to blow up the second device after the first one attracted rescue workers.

"I could see he was worried in his eyes," said Hannan Malka, the policeman who approached the bomber. "He didn't look like he was supposed to be there. He knew I was going to question him, so he blew himself up in front of my eyes."

No one group claimed responsibility for dispatching the bomber, Nimer Abu Sayfien, who left a note in his home town of Yamoun, saying he wanted to avenge the assassination of Mahmoud Abu Hanoud. Hanoud, a leader of Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, was killed Nov. 23 when Israelis fired on his car from a helicopter gunship.

The bombing in Haifa came one week after a bomber killed himself and 15 passengers on a bus in the same city. That attack followed a double suicide bombing the day before on a busy Jerusalem street that killed 11 young victims. The blasts have put pressure on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to rein in groups that attack civilians in Israel. He has rounded up scores of activists, but Israeli officials say the arrests are purely for show.

Powell called on Arafat to move more vigorously against Hamas to protect his own standing. "Chairman Arafat is capable of doing more than he has done so far and he has to deal with Hamas," Powell said. "Hamas is destroying his authority and credibility. Actions such as this are a direct attack against him as well as a direct attack against Israel and innocent civilians."

Staff writer Alan Sipress in Moscow contributed to this report.

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Israel throws out Palestinian Ramadan truce offer

Monday December 10, 2001
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011210/1/22xwd.html

Israel threw out an offer by hardline Palestinian militants to stop suicide bombings if Israel ends air strikes, as US peace envoy Anthony Zinni gave both sides 48 hours to slash the violence or see him quit.

Israel, which has threatened a "hard" response to Palestinian attacks on Sunday, said the truce offer was not serious and it was determined to keep up the pressure of firepower on Palestinians.

"This announcement shows that these terrorist organisations want to continue their operations in the way that best suits them," a defence ministry official said.

Israeli air and tank operations against Palestinian targets are "purely self-defence" and will continue, he said.

Late Sunday two groups linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, as well as the armed wings of the radical Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, announced in a joint statement an offer to suspend their suicide attacks for seven days until the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

"We are giving our enemy the chance to stop his assassinations, his destruction, his bombings, and we will equally stop our suicide bombings and armed operations in Israel starting midnight December 10 until the end of Ramadan," the statement said.

"But our operations will continue in the Gaza Strip and West Bank if the tanks continue to invade our land and the helicopters do not stop bombing our people.

"We have the right to defend ourselves ... and no one can prevent us from doing this, not even the Americans," it said.

Hours later the groups associated with Fatah -- the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Return Brigades -- denied their involvement in the truce offer.

"The leadership will not announce any alleged truce with the criminal and murderous Zionist enemies," the Fatah-linked groups said in identically-worded statements on Monday.

"Resistance and armed struggle will continue on all fronts," they warned.

Palestinian and Israeli security officials met Sunday, however, in a second bid in four days to find common ground to contain the spiralling violence.

But the US-mediated talks once again failed to yield any results, prompting the US peace envoy to deliver his stern warning.

Zinni said "if there isn't substantial progress in the next 48 hours" he would go back to Washington, ending his two-week-old peace mission, an Israeli official close to the security talks said.

A Palestinian security official stressed the warning to halt violence applied to both sides.

Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer met Zinni later Monday to persuade him to pursue his mission, Israeli officials said.

The secretary general of the Palestinian presidency, Tayyeb Abdel Rahim, late Sunday urged Zinni to stay on, saying the Palestinian Authority "is ready to deploy all the efforts and to cooperate for his mission to succeed."

"It is necessary for the mission to continue ... because its end will mean the victory of extremists on both sides," he added.

The Israeli army reported meanwhile that a mortar shell was fired overnight on a Jewish settlement without causing casualties or damages and said that shots were also fired at soldiers in the West Bank but none were hurt.

And on the Gaza Strip two Israeli tanks and a bulldozer made an incursion into Rafah, on the border with Egypt, destroying three houses, Palestinian security sources said. No gunfire was exchanged.

Meanwhile European Union foreign ministers were due Monday to issue a call in Brussels for the fight for security and the political process to go hand in hand.

Regionally, foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) were meeting Monday in Doha to discuss the upsurge in Mideast violence.

-------- nato

One bridge too far

December 10, 2001
Jan Nowak
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011210-87113876.htm

The future will show if September 11 truly marked the end of an era but already the signs are there. As the clouds of dust over Manhattan fade away, a new reality is emerging. Until now the United States has had only one line of defense - marked by the borders of NATO. But the war against terrorism has clearly opened a second front. In this new war the balance of power is measured by a different yardstick. A small and weak state or a band of terrorists armed with nuclear, bacteriological or chemical weapons can deal a devastating blow to a superpower.

The war against terrorism was quickly joined by Russia, which until now was considered a potential or real adversary. This may prove to be one of the most important of all the changes that followed the tragedy of September 11. Russian President Vladimir Putin raised no objections to an American military presence on the territory of the former Soviet Union, in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Intelligence information and experiences gathered by the Soviets in their occupation of Afghanistan were now shared openly with U.S. government. The Northern Alliance was armed with Russian weapons, paid for by Americans but delivered by Russians.

But the change in Moscow's behavior has gone beyond support in the war against the Taliban. The closing down of the Russian bases in Vietnam and Cuba provides perhaps the most telling evidence of the Kremlin's new policy. Mr. Putin told members of the Duma that the change was necessary because the world has changed. The strong opposition he faced from his own generals and industrial oligarchy demonstrates that this new approach is not just another tactical ploy by Mr. Putin to gain some short-term advantage.

The Bush administration correctly determined that Mr. Putin's new course should be promptly rewarded and encouraged. The Russian leader was received in Washington and Texas with open arms. The United States announced a unilateral reduction of its nuclear arsenal without waiting for reciprocity. Further, the United States has shown its support on such issues crucial to Mr. Putin as admission to the World Trade Organization and reduction of Russian's huge debt burden. And President Bush's decision to abandon the outdated ABM treaty has been postponed.

Then came British Prime Minister Tony Blair's letter offering Russia a radical change in NATO structure. There would be a new NATO-Russia Council consisting of 20 states; 19 NATO members and Russia as an equal participant in the decision-making process. Their offer was followed by a visit to Moscow by NATO Secretary-General Lord George Robertson. After two days of talks in the Kremlin, Mr. Robertson triumphantly announced revolutionary change in the entire structure of the Western security system. The NATO-Russia Council would be joined by Russia as an equal member with the right of veto, though this was imprecisely limited to some issues. Mr. Robertson claimed that his proposal had the support of the United States, Britain and Canada.

In his letter, Mr. Blair called for speed as the key to success. There was no time for debate over his proposal within NATO. The matter could not wait until the NATO summit meeting in November 2002 or even the ministerial meeting of NATO in May.

This haste has a significant downside that has not been sufficiently recognized. It does not provide time for any testing of Mr. Putin's rapprochement with the West. It still seems to be very much a one-man show by the Russian leader, which means it may well not last. As of now, Mr. Putin still has not succeeded in changing the imperialistic mindset of his ruling elite. And we cannot be certain how far the change will go. Assuming that the Russian veto is limited to NATO policy in the war against terrorism, what if one of Russia's clients, such as Serbia, were to harbor terrorists? Can we be sure that in such a case Moscow's veto would not make NATO helpless?

Without question, the present shape of NATO-Russian relations needs to be changed. Moscow should be treated as an equal partner of NATO. But NATO should continue to be a separate body, achieving internal consensus among its members before any talks with Russia.

Even a limited right of veto would c