------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Meeting plots future of EU
Germany OKs Law to Shut Nuclear Plants
India Cites Pakistan Group in Siege
Pakistan-India Relations May Worsen
Hydrogen burst may have occurred at Japan reactor
A Setback for Missile Shield as Booster Rocket Fails Test
Who Will Run Missile Defense?
Withdrawal Gives U.S. More Latitude In Defense Tests
Missile defense - Forward with leadership
Pentagon Scraps Part of Missile Program
Scrapped Treaty May Benefit Russia
Official to Defend ABM Decision
Bush pulls U.S. out of ABM pact
Russia Accepts U.S. ABM Withdrawal
China Leader Wants to Keep ABM Pact
Bush Offers China Talks on Arms as U.S. Pulls Out of ABM Treaty
Bush decision on ABM advances Republican dream
CITIZENS GROUPS WINS HEARING OVER MOX PLANT
NY Nuclear Power Complex Said Safe
300 at Hearing in Westchester Urge Closing of Indian Point
Bush to Sign $343B Defense Bill
House approves bill on defense spending
Powell Doubts New Nuclear Arms Race

MILITARY
Fighters Claim to Find bin Laden Cave
Fierce Defense Seen as a Sign of Terror Leader's Proximity
Bin Laden, on Tape, Boasts of Trade Center Attacks
Army's Anthrax Material Surprises Some Experts
Hot mail
LOCAL BUSINESS
European Union to Send Peacekeeping Force to Afghanistan
India Blames Pakistani Group for Parliament Attack
Arafat Halts Crackdown; Israel Breaks Links to Him
U.S. Extended Presence Agreed to by Pakistan
Wartime message discussion
Bin Laden's tape gets mixed review by networks
U.N. planning multinational Afghan force
Somalia planning
NAVY, EPA TO CLEAN UNEXPLODED ORDINANCE OFF ADAK ISLAND

POLICE / PRISONERS
Bush uses privilege power to bar Hill from probes
Bush Halts Inquiry of FBI and Stirs Up a Firestorm
Ashcroft Announces Leaks Task Force
Area Leaders Want Crisis Coordinator
Videotape Would Be Admissible, Analysts Say
Bring them on
Pentagon releases bin Laden tape
A Moment of Candor From a Manipulator

ENERGY AND OTHER
Asia's environment still under siege
EXXONMOBIL PAYS $11.2 MILLION IN HAZWASTE CASE
Moon power "could plug energy gap"
South Africa Must Dispense AIDS Drug to Pregnant Women
Profits From AIDS Drug Help Samoans

ACTIVISTS
Wartime compensation news conference
Landowner in Okinawa appeals ruling over land lease dispute




-------- NUCLEAR

-------- europe

Meeting plots future of EU

By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 14, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011214-63122263.htm

Europe's army, Europe's constitution, and Europe's role in the global war on terrorism all face critical tests as European Union leaders gather today in the Belgian royal palace of Laeken for a summit designed to chart the future of the 15-nation bloc.

Diplomats predict horse-trading and high principles will dominate the discussions inside the palace today and tomorrow. Yesterday, some 80,000 protesters gathered in the streets of Brussels for the first major anti-globalization rally since the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.

With negotiations going right up to the summit's opening gavel, EU leaders will be asked to declare an EU defense force operational and ready to be deployed by 2003, approve a yearlong convention of ministers and EU parliamentarians to draft a European-wide constitution, and debate a host of contentious institutional reforms to prepare for the addition of up to 12 new Eastern and Central European countries by 2004.

"We are confident we will be ready as a candidate for the EU by 2004," Latvian Foreign Minister Indulis Berzins said in an interview this week. His country is considered one of front-runners for membership.

"The real question is whether the EU will be ready for us," he said.

September 11 promises to play a major role in the talks, with Italy having just ended its lone holdout to the establishment of an EU arrest-warrant program designed to combat international terrorist networks.

EU leaders will also consider a joint border police force and improved judicial cooperation. Several cells of the al Qaeda terrorist network - including one in Hamburg, Germany, that is believed to have plotted the September 11 attacks - operated in EU countries.

But Afghanistan also has affected the debate over building a European defense force by 2003. Europe's minor role in the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan is yet another reminder of the sharp disparity between American war-fighting capabilities and those of the continent.

Conceived as a 60,000-troop rapid deployment force to be used in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, the EU army could be expanded to include special operations forces like those the United States has deployed in its hunt for Osama bin Laden.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told German legislators earlier this week that defeating international terrorism required "not less, but more Europe."

EU leaders are expected to declare the European force operational, even though several recent studies have found that defense budgets of a number of EU countries have not matched their promises to the force.

A reform summit in Nice, France, last year produced only minimal progress amid embarrassing public squabbling. Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, the summit host as holder of the rotating EU presidency through the end of the year, faces many of the same national jealousies and conflicting visions as the Laeken gathering gets under way.

-------- germany

Germany OKs Law to Shut Nuclear Plants

The Associated Press
Friday, December 14, 2001; 2:41 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44623-2001Dec14?language=printer

BERLIN -- The parliament approved a plan Friday to shut down Germany's 19 nuclear power plants within 20 years, the final hurdle for a pledge by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to the environmentalist Greens party.

The law, signed by Schroeder in June, was passed by the lower house of parliament with votes from the coalition government of Schroeder's Social Democrats and the Greens. It does not need approval in the upper house.

The leading opposition party, the conservative Christian Democrats, had argued that eliminating nuclear energy would force Germany to use dirtier power sources.

Germany is the world's largest industrialized nation to forgo the technology willingly.

Eliminating nuclear power has been a pet cause of the Greens, which for years backed protests focused on halting nuclear waste transports. The new legislation will end those transports by mid-2005.

Social Democratic lawmaker Horst Kubatschka called the passage a "great reform" by the governing coalition.

Under the new legislation, the first of the plants will be closed in 2003 and the last in 2021; nuclear waste will be permitted to be stored in the plants for up to 40 years.

The measure includes a ban on the building of new nuclear power plants and regular safety checks until the current ones are taken off-line.

The plants currently provide nearly a third of Germany's electricity.

-------- india / pakistan

India Cites Pakistan Group in Siege

By Nirmala George
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 14, 2001; 7:32 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42800-2001Dec14?language=printer

NEW DELHI, India -- The Indian government on Friday said it had evidence that a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group was to blame for the suicide attack at Parliament that claimed 12 lives.

Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said that India had issued a formal complaint to the Pakistan High Commission claiming it has evidence that the attack on Parliament was the "handiwork" of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba militants.

Accusations over Thursday's attack have heightened tensions between Pakistan and India, both nuclear powers.

The five gunmen drove through a Parliament gate carrying knapsacks of explosives and grenades. They fired AK-47 rifles in a gunbattle that unfolded over 35 minutes on the lawns and front steps of the sprawling colonial-style Parliament complex. One attacker blew himself up. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. All of the attackers were killed.

Singh said the complaint, given to Pakistan High Commissioner Ashraf Jahangir Qazi by Indian Foreign Secretary Chokila Iyer, demanded that Pakistan halt the activities of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and another Pakistan-based Islamic militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The formal demand also called on Islamabad to arrest the leaders of the militant groups and freeze their financial assets.

"I wish to emphasize that these demands are in accordance with necessary international obligations and commitments in countering terrorism," Singh said.

The two groups are among several fighting to separate Kashmir from India. Two-thirds of Kashmir is run by India, while the rest is controlled by India's western neighbor, rival Pakistan. Both claim the entire territory.

The Jaish-e-Mohammed group is accused of carrying out a suicide bombing attack against the Jammu-Kashmir state legislature on Oct. 1. That assault claimed 40 lives.

Yahya Mujahid, spokesman for the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, said in Islamabad: "It's a pack of lies. The attack was sponsored by India itself. The whole drama was staged to malign Kashmir's Islamic groups and to involve Pakistan."

He said, "India wants to use the present international atmosphere against terrorism against Pakistan. No Kashmiri group is involved in attacks on civilians."

Singh would not reveal the evidence India claims to have against the militant organizations.

"There are obvious difficulties in revealing the evidence right now," he said. "The agencies of government have many means of obtaining intelligence."

He said India had consulted with the United States and other countries about the evidence.

India has long accused Pakistan of sponsoring and funding the Islamic militants who are fighting for independence in the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir.

India and Pakistan have gone to war twice over the territory, which both countries claim in its entirety. India has been skeptical of Pakistan's new role as a key ally in the U.S.-led global war on terrorism.

"Pakistan has asserted that it is with the rest of the international community in combatting terrorism and that it does not promote terrorism," Singh said. "We expect that Pakistan will abide with what it says itself."

Asked whether India intended to take action against the militants on Pakistani territory, Singh said: "India has said what it has to say through the voice of the statement of the Cabinet."

On Thursday, the Cabinet issued a pledge to fight terrorism.

"We will liquidate the terrorists and their sponsors, wherever they are, whoever they are," the statement said.

----

Pakistan-India Relations May Worsen

By Beth Duff-Brown
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 14, 2001; 5:21 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42414-2001Dec14?language=printer

NEW DELHI, India -- Relations between India and Pakistan were already dismal before the terrorist attack on India's Parliament building. Now they may be in a downward spiral.

Though few have publicly blamed Pakistan for the suicide attack that claimed 12 lives Thursday, there is concern it will increase tension between the nuclear rivals.

"It can't get worse, short of war," said K.P.S. Gill, one of India's leading anti-terrorism experts.

Predictions were just as grim across the border.

"Relations between the two countries will nose-dive further," said Riffat Hussain, chairman of defense and strategic studies at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. "If they don't accuse Pakistan, they have no one else to blame but themselves."

Gunmen with explosives stormed the red sandstone complex and began firing in what has been called the worst breach of state security since the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee vowed revenge.

"Now the fight against terrorism has reached its last phase. We will fight a decisive battle to the end," Vajpayee told the nation.

Vajpayee and India's senior leaders on Thursday were careful not to even whisper blame against Pakistan, with whom India has fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

But by Friday, many other Indians were pointing straight at Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to the al-Qaida terrorism network blamed for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States.

"For long, we have waited for Pakistan to stop aiding terrorism in this country," said Vijay Kumar Malhotra, a senior leader of Vajpayee's party and member of Parliament. "India should attack and destroy the terrorist camps in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir."

India has long accused Pakistan, today a key U.S. ally in its global war on terrorism, of fomenting terrorism by training and supporting the Islamic militants who have waged a 12-year insurgency in the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir.

The Islamic separatists are fighting for an independent Kashmir or a merger with Muslim Pakistan. Islamabad insists it offers the "freedom fighters" only moral and diplomatic support.

India blamed Pakistan for the suicide attack that killed 40 people at the Kashmir state legislature on Oct. 1. A Pakistan-based militant group claimed credit, then later denied involvement.

Pakistan's military leader, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was quick to condemn the attacks on Thursday.

"I was shocked to learn about the attack earlier today by armed intruders," Musharraf said. "I have been saddened by the loss of life and the injuries suffered by Indian security personnel in the attack."

But two words in Musharraf's statement - calling the attackers "armed intruders" instead of "terrorists" - raised eyebrows and suspicion in New Delhi on Friday.

Pramod Mahajan, India's parliamentary affairs minister, was asked if the attackers were from Pakistan.

"General Musharraf called them 'armed intruders.' He was not even ready to use the word terrorists," Mahajan told Star News TV. "That should be enough to answer your question."

Kanti Bajpai, a professor of disarmament at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said Musharraf made a grave error.

"Musharraf should call them terrorists," he said. "His statement, that's asking for trouble."

Bajpai noted that India blames Pakistan for having supported the Taliban, which harbored the al-Qaida terrorism network blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. He expects India to retaliate against Pakistan.

"They may take their time over it, to show the world that they did it with due process, but I think the chances are pretty high," he said.

J.N. Dixit, a former foreign secretary and high commissioner to Pakistan, said Thursday's strike should be a warning to the United States that its global war on terrorism had failed in India.

Washington had called on both India and Pakistan to use restraint when cross-border shelling increased after the Oct. 1 suicide attack on the Kashmir state legislature.

"Despite the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign, terrorists still remain strong and they have devastating reach," Dixit said. "This spectacular incident ... will result in India having to reconsider the American demand to practice restraint."

Vajpayee told President Bush in a letter that Pakistanis were to blame for the Oct. 1 suicide attack. "There is a limit to the patience of the people of India," he said then.

Bush telephoned Vajpayee Thursday night to offer condolences and FBI and State Department counterterrorism teams to help in an investigation.

-------- japan

Hydrogen burst may have occurred at Japan reactor

Reuters:
14/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13714

TOKYO - Chubu Electric Power Co Inc said yesterday that a hydrogen explosion in a pipe at its Hamaoka nuclear power plant may have caused an accident last month that forced the reactor to shut down.

Chubu Electric, Japan's third largest power utility in terms of electricity sales, found a steam leak from a broken pipe in the 540-megawatt No 1 reactor at the plant in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan last month.

The No.1 reactor has been since shut down since emergency alarms sounded. The plant's No.2 reactor was shut down as a precaution after the accident while a third, which was on maintenance shutdown at the time of the accident, remains off line, leaving only one reactor in operation at the plant.

"There was sudden burning of accumulated hydrogen inside a pipe, which could have caused the pipe to be broken," Chubu Electric said in a statement. The company said it was investigating the reasons for the explosion.

It was immediately unknown whether the hydrogen explosion has caused nuclear accidents in the past in Japan.

Chubu has submitted the interim report on its investigation into the accident to the government, the statement said.

Last month, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, a government agency under Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), classified the steam leak accident a "level one" on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).

The scale goes from zero minus to seven, with seven being the most severe form of nuclear accident.

Japan, heavily reliant on nuclear power, has seen a number of accidents over the past decade that have undermined public support for the country's nuclear programme, which meets a third of the country's electricity needs.

-------- missile defense

A Setback for Missile Shield as Booster Rocket Fails Test

New York Times
December 14, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/international/14TEST.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - A test of a prototype booster rocket for missile defense failed today when the rocket veered off course seconds after liftoff and had to be destroyed over the Pacific Ocean, the Pentagon said.

The three-stage rocket, assembled by Boeing, lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force base north of Los Angeles at 1:15 p.m. today, Eastern Standard Time, but malfunctioned just 30 seconds after launch and was ordered to self-destruct as it swerved off course, officials said.

"The booster fell harmlessly into the Pacific about six miles from Vandenberg," said Bryan G. Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. He said the cause of the malfunction was not yet known.

The booster is being developed to carry antimissile weapons, known as kill vehicles, that can home in on and demolish long-range missile warheads 140 miles above the earth's surface.

Although Boeing successfully tested one of the prototypes in late August, the interceptor booster program has been plagued by problems and delays. The Pentagon had wanted to begin using the new launch system in tests to shoot down target rockets over the Pacific starting early next year. But it has postponed those plans for more than a year because of the program's problems.

As a result, the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which oversees most missile defense testing, announced last summer that it was seeking proposals for alternative booster systems.

"It's one of the minor mysteries of missile defense as to what the problem with this thing is," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity .org, a defense policy Web site. "It was originally considered one of the lowest risk parts of the system, and it has just turned out to have one problem after another."

Boeing officials could not be reached for comment tonight. The company, which is looking to its space and military divisions to compensate for falling revenues in its commercial airline division, is also the lead contractor on the overall missile defense program.

The Boeing booster is intended to be assembled largely from commercially available rocket components, including a motor by Alliant Techsystems and second and third stages built by United Technologies.

The plan is for it to have greater acceleration than the modified Minuteman launch vehicles the Pentagon has been using for missile defense tests, enabling it to catch up to fast-moving intercontinental ballistic missiles heading toward the United States.

The failure today came even as Congress was approving a $3 billion increase, to $8.3 billion, for President Bush's missile defense program.

--------

Who Will Run Missile Defense?

By Philip E. Coyle
Friday, December 14, 2001

President Bush's decision to pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is being called a masterpiece of political timing. Announced while television stations were showing the bin Laden tapes, and with his wartime popularity high, the president's move now puts more pressure on the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization: To justify the president's action it must develop a national missile defense on a foreshortened time scale. Missile defense officials already are asking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to approve a reorganization that would dramatically bolster their ability to act quickly and autonomously, by giving the office -- to be renamed the Missile Defense Agency -- wide-ranging new authority and budgetary power.

The new agency would have the authority to set military requirements for a national missile defense system, conduct tests of the system and assess the test results. Moreover, the new agency would have a strong role in determining whether to deploy its assets to achieve an emergency capability. Combining all these responsibilities in a single agency would represent a significant break with normal acquisition practice and regulation, and would eliminate normal Defense Department oversight for this major acquisition program.

Pentagon officials argue that the changes are necessary to allow greater flexibility in the development program and more consistency in its direction. But any weapons program, and especially one as multifaceted as this, faces risks in bypassing the standard development and acquisition oversight process.

First, military requirements are usually set by a body known as the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, a team of experienced military leaders representing all the services. It is independent of the service or agency developing the program, and when it sets the operational requirements for new systems it bases them on the real military needs of the user -- the war-fighter -- rather than on the needs or perceptions of the contractors, developers or service involved. The oversight council determines the "no kidding" requirements that weapons or systems must meet, and they become the standards against which development is measured as testing proceeds.

Second, testing and assessment are usually accomplished by one or more of the services working with the independent developmental and operational test and evaluation offices in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. These are crucial functions that require independent technical oversight. Modern military systems are highly complex, and the average citizen or member of Congress cannot be expected to know all the details that determine whether a test is adequate, a success or a failure. Congress needs an impartial and independent review of both the adequacy of tests and the interpretation of success or failure.

The proposed reorganization of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization is silent about how independent assessment would be accomplished, saying only that it has yet to be determined. Certainly independent assessment cannot be the responsibility of the developer alone.

Third, the authority to deploy a national missile defense system is a major responsibility with domestic budgetary and international political implications. Again, it should not be left to the developer. During the Clinton administration, a review was held to determine if the missile defense system then under development was ready for deployment. President Clinton correctly came to the conclusion that it was not, and would not be for many years. The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, by contrast, recommended deployment at the time.

Granted, the proposed reorganization gives the responsibility for deciding on emergency or contingency deployment to a new Senior Executive Council, to be chaired by the deputy secretary of defense. But it will be essential for this council to have an independent review of the adequacy of developmental and operational testing, and the ensuing test results.

The draft plan also calls for streamlined decision-making, directing that the deputy secretary of defense ensure that proposed executive decisions on missile defense not take more than 10 days. Ten days is not enough time to analyze the adequacy of a test or its results. Despite eagerness to move forward with missile defense, the Defense Department and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization must ensure time for proper analysis and review.

Usually Congress does not interfere with the internal, and seemingly interminable, reorganizations of the Defense Department. This case is different, because the move could place the responsibilities for setting requirements, development of the system and assessment of tests together in one agency. Congress should look at this closely. If the Pentagon does not establish adequate oversight mechanisms for the new Missile Defense Agency, Congress will have no choice but to establish its own independent oversight team with the proper security clearances and authority to delve into, and understand, what is real and what isn't in development and testing of a missile defense.

The writer is former head of operational test and evaluation at the Pentagon, and currently a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information.

----

Withdrawal Gives U.S. More Latitude In Defense Tests

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 14, 2001; Page A41
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41068-2001Dec13?language=printer

President Bush's move yesterday to withdraw the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty frees the Pentagon to pursue a wide range of missile defense tests involving land-, sea-, air- and space-based weapons.

The development program, drawn up last spring and summer, represents a much more ambitious effort than the Pentagon's previous focus, which was largely on a ground-based interceptor system.

The ground-based system, consisting of missile interceptors designed to collide with enemy warheads in space, remains the most developed prototype so far -- and the only potential national anti-missile weapon that has undergone flight testing. It has scored three hits in five attempts over the past two years.

But those initial tests have been relatively simple and artificial in numerous respects. Many questions persist about the system's effectiveness under combat conditions, particularly against multiple decoys. So Bush administration officials are eager to experiment with other technologies that hold the promise of knocking out missiles in various stages of flight.

For striking enemy missiles during their "boost" phase -- which lasts only a few minutes after launch -- the Pentagon intends to experiment with interceptors fired from Navy ships and lasers mounted on converted Boeing jumbo jets.

For hitting during the "midcourse" phase in space, the Pentagon wants to explore ship-based interceptors as well as land-based ones.

And for attacking during the "terminal" phase, after missiles reenter the atmosphere, the Pentagon plans to look at extending the range of an Army battlefield system known as Theater High Altitude Air Defense, or THAAD, that has been in development for years.

Even more ambitious plans call for renewed experimentation with space-based interceptors, similar to those pursued in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the Brilliant Pebbles program, and with space-based lasers, which are considered a decade away from initial testing.

Although some of these approaches are sure to founder, the idea is to see which are the most encouraging in early trials and then accelerate their development. Ultimately, the Bush administration envisions a "layered" system incorporating a range of weapons.

Freed from the constraints of the ABM Treaty, defense officials expect to begin testing elements of a potential sea-based system next year. The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), the Pentagon agency that oversees the development effort, had requested using a tactical Aegis radar on a Navy ship to track both an interceptor missile and a target missile in the last test of the land-based system, which occurred Dec. 3.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld rejected the request, to avoid violating the ABM Treaty. The BMDO now hopes to incorporate the Aegis radar in upcoming tests.

Similarly, as a result of Bush's decision, the Pentagon can proceed with plans to build a test site in Alaska. For decades, the Pentagon has used the same basic course to test prototype anti-missile systems: launching targets from California and firing interceptors from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.

Adding a facility in Alaska would have been allowed under the ABM Treaty, if the administration had limited its plan to five missile silos on Kodiak Island off the state's southern coast.

But the Pentagon also intends to build a command center and five missile silos at Fort Greely on the mainland, linked to an upgraded radar on Shemya Island. This setup could give the United States a rudimentary but working missile defense system as early as 2004, a possibility that brought the plan into apparent conflict with the treaty.

Democratic lawmakers, arms control advocates, scientists and other critics have questioned whether these treaty-busting moves were necessary to achieve the administration's aim of more rigorous testing. They say the Fort Greely silos and Aegis radar tests could have been delayed to give the United States and Russia time to amend the treaty in order to accommodate many of the Pentagon's development plans.

They contend the White House's real motive for pulling out of the treaty was more political than technological. The Bush administration, they say, has deliberately created needless conflict with the treaty to justify dumping it in a demonstration of American unilateralism and national sovereignty.

Indeed, Rumsfeld directed BMDO planners last spring to design the system they believed the United States should have, regardless of the treaty's constraints. Such an approach, critics say, failed to recognize how much testing still could have been accomplished under the treaty.

Although the 29-year-old treaty bans the deployment of a national missile defense system, it does permit unlimited testing of fixed, land-based antimissile weapons at identified ABM ranges. Moreover, critics note, the Russians had signaled a willingness to loosen treaty limits on experimentation with other weapons.

"The bottom line is that development of a national missile defense could go on for many years without violating the ABM Treaty," Philip Coyle, a former Pentagon weapons test director, and John Rhinelander, a former arms control negotiator, wrote in the fall issue of World Policy Journal.

But administration officials say that just the time and energy that the BMDO devoted to determining what tests and system designs might violate the treaty have slowed development and proved a constant irritant.

"It's difficult to operate when you have to go through a clearance process with each test and each step of the way," a senior defense official said. "It's been like going to the Supreme Court to argue every move."

----

Missile defense - Forward with leadership

December 14, 2001
William R. Hawkins
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20011214-96710820.htm
mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com

The successful test of a prototype anti-missile interceptor Dec. 3 moves the United States another step closer to the creation of a missile defense system. Such a system could shield the country from the most devastating form of attack known to the world today; missiles fired from the far corners of the Earth armed with weapons of mass destruction.

More sophisticated tests, needed to refine the system against the kind of weapons a determined enemy may devise, will run into the limits set by the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1973. Therefore, President George W. Bush has wisely announced the U.S. will withdraw from the treaty.

Attempting to head off such a move, 50 Nobel Laureates recently sent a letter under the banner of the Federation of American Scientists calling on Mr. Bush to trust the old treaty rather than any new technology to protect America from attack. Those who signed the FAS letter were mainly physicists, with a sprinkling of chemists, medical doctors and economists.

Their argument, however, was not based primarily on science. Instead, they argued in terms of military strategy, a tactic that did not play to their strength.

They claimed that "the inherent advantages of the offense exceed the inherent advantages of superior American technology." While true at the moment in regard to missiles, the lack of historians among the signers may explain why they fail to understand how dynamic the see-saw struggle between offense and defense has always been. Sword and shield, gun and armor, cavalry and infantry, radar and stealth. The seeking of military advantage has been one of the most dynamic aspects of human civilization. It is rather brash of these Nobel Laureates to assume that ingenuity reached its peak with the award of their prizes and that no further turns of the wheel can be expected despite the acceleration of technological development.

The FAS writers do know there are threats to American security, but they suffer from a post-September 11 myopia. They call for concentrating on anti-terrorism measures to the neglect of any defense against what they call "a strategically improbable Third World ballistic missile attack." This posits the false "either or" choice that has become common among opponents of missile defense. Osama bin Laden is not America's only adversary. The threats that existed before September 11 are still there and still need to be faced.

America is fortunate that bin Laden chose to locate in Afghanistan, a country without ballistic missiles or weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - or for that matter, even a conventional army of any size. U.S. forces could counterattack with impunity.

Of the seven states identified by the State Department as the principle sponsors of terrorism, five (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and North Korea) do have ballistic missile programs seeking longer-range weapons. The desire to acquire ballistic missiles and WMD is an attempt to guarantee regime survival by providing a deterrent against the kind of action Washington is taking in Afghanistan. It is a capability that gives rogue states the belief that they can sponsor terrorism without fear of the kind of sweeping reprisals that could remove them from power. And given the lesson of Afghanistan, terrorists will seek the protection of more powerful regimes; and those regimes will seek to improve their military capabilities.

The danger is not that some morning a Third World despot will wake up and decide it's a good day to die, and thus launch a "bolt from the blue" missile attack at American cities the way al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The FAS writers are right to consider this to be "improbable."

But the FSA writers are also only knocking down a straw man when they make this argument. The purpose of rogue state missiles is to constrain American action while giving themselves more freedom of action.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld understands this connection. He chaired the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. Among its findings reported in 1998, "the capability to combine ballistic missiles with weapons of mass destruction provides a strategic counter to U.S. conventional and information-based military superiority."

The failure to understand this connection leads the FSA writers to their final and most dangerous conclusion: "abrogation of the ABM treaty would also undermine nonproliferation." What makes proliferation tempting to even poor regimes is the belief that a defenseless America can be intimidated by even a handful of fairly simple weapons.

North Korea demonstrated to the world how useful a missile program can be. President Bill Clinton, clinging to the ABM Treaty and stalling missile defense, made previously unthinkable concessions to Pyongyang. Mr. Clinton's policy was to save the failed communist regime rather than risk a "death ride" attack by missiles that could not be shot down.

The United States cannot continue to provide progressive world leadership if it is vulnerable to an increasing number of radical states hostile to American values and interests. Ensuring the vulnerability of hostile regimes to reprisal and possible overthrow by U.S. and allied forces is crucial to deterring such states from sponsoring terrorist groups or committing other acts of aggression. Missile defenses at both the theater and national levels are vital to maintaining a balance of power favorable to the United States in divided and dangerous world.

William R. Hawkins is senior fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council Educational Foundation.

--------

Pentagon Scraps Part of Missile Program

December 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon canceled on Friday part of the national missile defense program that was as much as 65 percent over budget.

The Navy Area Missile Defense Program was trying to develop a ship-based system to destroy missiles as they approached a target.

Federal law requires the Pentagon to prove that any program that goes more than 25 percent over budget is essential to national security. The Defense Department couldn't do that in this case, said Edward ``Pete'' Aldridge, who is in charge of military programs in development.

The canceled program was one small part of the Bush administration's plans to create a missile defense shield for the United States. Bush announced Thursday that the United States would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which bans such systems.

Testing continues on a major portion of the missile defense program -- a system to destroy intercontinental missiles in space with a ground-launched interceptor rocket. A development test for that system Dec. 3 resulted in the successful destruction of a dummy warhead by an interceptor.

-------- treaties

Scrapped Treaty May Benefit Russia

By Vladimir Isachenkov
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 14, 2001; 3:31 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44852-2001Dec14?language=printer

MOSCOW -- Russia may actually benefit from America's decision to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic missile treaty despite years of protests about abandoning the pact, defense analysts say.

The analysts argue that the U.S. move frees Russia from constraints under other nuclear arms control agreements and could bolster its defense capability rather than erode it.

President Vladimir Putin's low-key response Thursday to President Bush's announcement to leave the pact in six months reflects the sentiment that Russia may ultimately benefit. Putin said the U.S. move was a "mistake," but not a threat to Russia.

"It would have been in U.S. interests to preserve the ABM," said Ivan Safranchuk, director of the Moscow office of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based think tank. "By renouncing it, the United States gives Russia an opportunity to take back some of its earlier concessions."

Putin said earlier this year that U.S. withdrawal from the pact would shatter other arms control agreements and warned that Russia may respond by fitting multiple nuclear warheads onto its single-warhead missiles.

Although Putin did not repeat these statements Thursday, some observers say Russia could later announce itself free from earlier obligations.

"Russia may now withdraw from the START II treaty, freeing itself from the ban on the deployment of missiles with multiple warheads," said Ret. Lt. Gen. Vasily Lata, the former deputy chief of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces. "It would serve Russia's security interests well."

When the Russian parliament ratified the START II arms control treaty in April 2000, it made it conditional on the preservation of the ABM treaty, which prohibits building a national missile defense.

START II, signed in 1993, required both countries to halve the number of their strategic nuclear weapons from the 6,000 warheads each allowed under START I.

Abandoning START II would allow Russia to fit three nuclear warheads to each of its new, single-warhead Topol-M missiles, said Sergei Rogov, head of the Moscow-based U.S.A. and Canada Institute.

"Fitting multiple warheads to missiles would be quite efficient in both an economic and a military sense," Rogov said.

Land-based nuclear missiles make up the core of the Russian strategic forces. With START II in effect, Moscow would have had to deploy a large number of new Topol-M missiles or build nuclear submarines equipped with ballistic missiles to match U.S. arsenals. The cash-strapped government can't afford either option.

Russia has pushed for radical bilateral cuts in nuclear weapons to avoid a losing competition to match U.S. arsenals.

In the new, warmer relationship with Moscow, Bush pledged last month to cut U.S. arsenals by two-thirds to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads.

On Thursday, Putin matched Bush's pledge with his own proposal to cut warheads to between 1,500 and 2,200, but again pushed for the cuts to be written down in a formal treaty - something Bush has opposed.

Most analysts predict that while Russia won't make any sudden moves that might hurt the new friendship with the United States, it will defend its security interests.

"Without officially renouncing the arms control treaties, Russia may say that it no longer considers itself bound by some of their provisions," Rogov said.

----

Official to Defend ABM Decision

By George Gedda
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 14, 2001; 5:45 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45519-2001Dec14?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- A top arms control official will travel to China next week to try to ease Beijing's concerns that the U.S. plan to develop a missile defense system will hurt China's national security, the State Department said Friday.

China is worried that the plan will undercut the deterrent value of China's small nuclear arsenal.

President Bush took another step this week toward carrying out the plan by announcing his intention to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

Chinese officials have said they might respond by building more nuclear missiles.

"We don't believe our deployment of a limited national missile defense should lead Beijing to expand its buildup of strategic nuclear forces," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Boucher said the United States has made it clear to China that "missile defense is not against China's strategic deterrence."

"It's a system that would go after irresponsible rogue states that might threaten the United States," he said.

Boucher did not say who would head the U.S. mission but other officials said it will be Avis Bohlen, an assistant secretary of state.

Bush informed Chinese President Jiang Zemin of the ABM decision by telephone. Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed the issue with Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan.

Chinese state media reported Friday that Jiang urged Bush to preserve the international arms control system.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called Bush's decision a mistake but also said it would not endanger Russia's security.

----

Bush pulls U.S. out of ABM pact

By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 14, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011214-634849.htm

President Bush yesterday announced the United States' withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union, a pact he said prevents America from protecting itself from "terrorist or rogue-state missile attacks."

"Defending the American people is my highest priority as commander in chief, and I cannot and will not allow the United States to remain in a treaty that prevents us from developing effective defenses," Mr. Bush said in a brief White House Rose Garden appearance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Mr. Bush referred to as "my friend," called the U.S. move "mistaken" on state-run Russian television yesterday but said it was not a threat to Russia.

Mr. Putin said his country has the capability to overcome missile defenses, such as the system Mr. Bush wants to develop to protect America from attack by a "rogue" state like Iraq or North Korea.

"Therefore, I fully believe that the decision taken by the president of the United States does not pose a threat to the national security of the Russian Federation," said Mr. Putin, who already had been notified of the decision in a telephone call from Mr. Bush last week.

Mr. Bush's announcement came after months of talks in which Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who visited Moscow this week, failed to convince Russia to permit U.S. development of a missile-defense shield. The development of the shield, a priority for Mr. Bush, would have violated the treaty.

Administration officials said Mr. Putin had sought authority to approve or reject U.S. tests for a national missile-defense shield, but the request was rejected. Instead, the United States has agreed to inform Moscow of steps being taken to advance the missile-shield program.

Signed at the height of the Cold War by President Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the ABM Treaty bans the two countries from deploying nationwide missile-defense systems.

The Bush administration now can begin missile-defense tests in mid-June. In addition, the Defense Department plans to start building a missile-defense command center at Fort Greely, Alaska, in late April or early May.

Mr. Bush notified Chinese President Jiang Zemin of the decision in a phone call yesterday, and had consulted earlier this week with leaders in Britain, France, Germany and Japan, said White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.

China is the most vocal critic of the U.S. withdrawal, predicting the move will spur another arms race. The Chinese government is modernizing its nuclear arsenal and fears a U.S. missile defense could be extended to cover its archrival Taiwan.

Mr. Jiang told the president that "he looked forward to further high-level dialogue" about China's concerns that a U.S. missile defense will spark an offensive arms race, Mr. Fleischer said.

"We've taken note of the relevant reports and express our concern," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said yesterday in Beijing. "China is not in favor of missile-defense systems. China worries about the negative impact."

Despite the U.S. withdrawal, Russia and America have moved forward on reducing nuclear stockpiles. During their four meetings - in the United States, Slovenia, Italy and China - Mr. Putin and Mr. Bush agreed to substantially trim their nations' arsenals.

Mr. Putin said yesterday he remains committed to reducing Russia's nuclear arsenal to between 1,500 and 2,200 warheads. The United States - which has offered to reduce its stockpile to 1,700 - will begin negotiating on the new Russian number soon, Mr. Powell said yesterday.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the agreement to reduce arsenals despite the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty reveals an interesting irony.

"During all the periods of arms control, the numbers of weapons soared. And here we are without an arms control agreement and they're declining by thousands. I think that's not a bad lesson," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, said abandoning the treaty could harm relations with U.S. allies and with Russia and China. He called the withdrawal "a high price to pay for testing that's not required this early" for missile defense.

But Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, praised the move.

"The president's courage moves the United States into the 21st century. He has done what must be done: moved another step forward toward the deployment of a missile-defense system."

Mr. Fleischer, spokesman for Mr. Bush, said it had become clear before Mr. Putin's visit to Washington last month that the United States and Russia would not be able to agree on the issue. He also said the United States gave up on the negotiations because amending the treaty "would have led to incessant wrangling" over U.S. missile-defense tests.

Still, Mr. Bush said that while the United States and Russia must agree to disagree on the ABM Treaty, the U.S. move will be beneficial to both nations.

"The Cold War is long gone. Today, we leave behind one of its last vestiges. We're moving to replace mutually assured destruction with mutual cooperation," the president said in the Rose Garden, flanked by Mr. Powell, Mr. Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

He noted that "one of the [treaty´s] signatories, the Soviet Union, no longer exists, and neither does the hostility that once led both our countries to keep thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, pointed at each other."

He called the mutually assured destruction theory a vestige of "a much different time, in a vastly different world."

"Today, as the events of September the 11th made all too clear, the greatest threats to both our countries come not from each other, or other big powers in the world, but from terrorists who strike without warning, or rogue states who seek weapons of mass destruction."

----

Russia Accepts U.S. ABM Withdrawal

By Deborah Seward
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 14, 2001; 10:03 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43358-2001Dec14?language=printer

MOSCOW -- For months, top Russian officials fumed, issued threats and finally - as with so many post-Cold War strategic realities - accepted America's unilateral decision to scrap the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile treaty.

In a nationwide television address Thursday evening, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that abandoning the 29-year-old treaty was a "mistake" but quickly added that the move would not endanger Russia's security.

Putin's tone was calm and assured in the address that lasted just over three minutes, and he stated clearly that President Bush's announcement in Washington earlier Thursday had not come as a surprise.

The Kremlin has had to absorb a series of blows to its former superpower status since the collapse of the Soviet empire. But President Bush's decision to scrap the ABM treaty marks a break in decades of nuclear arms control, which had a fundamental role in the U.S.-Russia relationship and was something the Kremlin had sought to preserve.

In June, Putin, echoing some of the most hawkish members of the Russian General Staff, told a group of American reporters that ending the ABM treaty would spell the end of the START I and START II nuclear treaties, and he threatened to put multiple nuclear warheads on Russia's rockets in reply.

Six months later, he acknowledged that both Russia and the United States were able to penetrate the other's missile defense systems.

"So, with full certainty, I can say that the decision made by the president of the United States does not threaten Russia's national security," Putin told his countrymen.

On Friday, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, Putin's defense aide, said that "the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty will not create any problems of strategic stability for the next 10-15 years," the Interfax news agency reported.

Putin made it clear that Russia did not intend to scrap START I and START II, which govern the use of offensive nuclear weapons. Instead, he responded to Bush's earlier proposal to cut U.S. nuclear warheads by two-thirds to between 1,700 and 2,200.

The Russian leader said Russia was ready to bring the number of its warheads down to between 1,500 and 2,200.

Putin pushed for these cuts to be written into a formal treaty, something Bush has opposed. Putin sought support for Russia's position in telephone consultations Thursday night with the leaders of India and China.

Brief reports in Chinese state-run media said Chinese President Jiang Zemin urged Bush and Putin to preserve the treaty during a three-way telephone call.

Beijing worries that Bush's plans to develop a missile defense system will undercut the deterrent value of its small nuclear arsenal. Chinese officials have warned that their government might respond by building more nuclear missiles or trying to make its existing missiles more accurate.

"Jiang Zemin briefed Putin and Bush on the Chinese standpoint on this issue, and stressed that under current circumstances, preserving the international arms control and disarmament system is extremely important," said a four-sentence report from the Xinhua News Agency.

Bush's stance was criticized by prominent Russian lawmakers and defense officials alike. However, a consensus was emerging that indicated that even the most vocal critics realized that Russia's security was not at stake.

Still, some commentators warned that the U.S. decision could trigger a new arms race.

Vladimir Lukin, a prominent liberal lawmaker who was post-Soviet Russia's first ambassador to the United States, said the decision would send the wrong signal to ordinary Russians.

"We counted on closer cooperation with the United States. If the United States also wants such cooperation, it must prove that this move is singular, and not part of a larger trend," he said.

----

China Leader Wants to Keep ABM Pact

The Associated Press
Friday, December 14, 2001; 9:05 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43169-2001Dec14?language=printer

BEIJING -- Responding to U.S. plans to scrap the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Chinese President Jiang Zemin urged President Bush in a phone call to preserve the international arms-control system, state media said Friday.

Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin called Jiang on Thursday to brief him on Washington's decision to pull out of the 1972 treaty, state newspapers reported.

Beijing worries that Bush's plans to develop a missile defense system will undercut the deterrent value of its small nuclear arsenal. Chinese officials have warned that their government might respond by building more nuclear missiles or trying to make its existing missiles more accurate.

"Jiang Zemin briefed Putin and Bush on the Chinese standpoint on this issue, and stressed that under current circumstances, preserving the international arms control and disarmament system is extremely important," said the four-sentence report from the Xinhua News Agency.

Jiang received the call from Bush and Putin while on an official visit to Myanmar, according to the report. It appeared in the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily and other newspapers.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said safeguarding arms control regimes and global strategic stability was "the common responsibility of all nations."

"We hope that the U.S. side earnestly considers the opinions of the majority of the world's nations," Zhang said in a written statement faxed to reporters.

--------

Bush Offers China Talks on Arms as U.S. Pulls Out of ABM Treaty

New York Times
December 14, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/international/14MISS.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - President Bush today moved to defuse a potential arms race in Asia by offering Beijing talks to blunt the impact of America's withdrawal from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile treaty, while Russia signaled grudging acceptance of Washington's shift.

In a five-minute appearance in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush fulfilled a major campaign promise by formally announcing the withdrawal, which will free the Pentagon to test and deploy a missile defense system without restrictions.

He argued that his move would at once rid the United States of a relic of the cold war and force the United States and Russia to find a way to replace it.

"I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue-state missile attacks," the president said.

Just hours before, Mr. Bush called President Jiang Zemin of China and offered to hold "high-level strategic talks," senior administration officials said. Mr. Jiang, who had earlier warned that abandoning the ABM treaty would trigger an arms race in Asia, agreed to begin the talks soon, the officials said.

In Moscow, President Vladimir V. Putin called Mr. Bush's decision "an erroneous one." He said that he had repeatedly refused American entreaties for "a common withdrawal" from the treaty and had tried to preserve it.

But Mr. Putin's statement was so mildly worded, and so focused on preserving the relationship he has built with Washington over the last six months, that White House officials insisted that the withdrawal would amount to a blip in American relations with Russia.

Particularly since agreeing to join the war on terrorism, Mr. Putin has seen Washington mute its criticism of Russia's conduct in Chechnya and promote Russia's ties with NATO and its entry into the World Trade Organization. The Russian leader seems eager to preserve those gains while bowing to the inevitable.

Mr. Putin insisted that even after reducing Russia's missile fleet to 1,500 to 2,200 intercontinental missiles - about the range Mr. Bush plans for America's arsenal - he would be able to overwhelm whatever antimissile system the Pentagon deployed.

Mr. Bush took no questions today about how he had reached one of the most momentous presidential decisions in the half-century history of arms control agreements, though it was a move he had telegraphed.

"Defending the American people is my highest priority as commander in chief and I cannot and will not allow the United States to remain in a treaty that prevents us from developing effective defenses," Mr. Bush said. Then he turned and walked briskly back to the Oval Office, saying nothing about the tape of Osama bin Laden that his administration was preparing to release, or the mounting violence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Reaction to Mr. Bush's decision was both swift and predictable. Conservatives in the president's own party rejoiced. In just a year, they have achieved two of their major goals, a tax cut and the abandonment of the ABM treaty. Democrats and supporters of strategic arms treaties were withering in their accusations that the president, in pursuit of an unproven technology, was running the risk of triggering an arms race.

"A year ago, it was widely reported that our intelligence community had concluded that pulling out of ABM would prompt the Chinese to increase their nuclear arsenal tenfold, beyond the modernization they are doing anyway," said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who said he learned of Mr. Bush's decision by reading a newspaper. "And when they build up, so will the Indians, and when the Indians do, so will the Pakistanis. And for what? A system no one is convinced will work."

Mr. Bush's action today closely followed the script he laid out during the presidential campaign.

On Sept. 23, 1999, speaking at The Citadel military academy, Mr. Bush said that to deploy an antimissile system, "we will offer Russia the necessary amendments to the antiballistic missile treaty - an artifact of cold war confrontation." If Russia "refuses the changes we propose," Mr. Bush said, "we will give prompt notice, under the provisions of the treaty, that we can no longer be a party to it."

That notice was delivered today by the United States Embassy in Moscow, after 11 months of discussions.

Mr. Bush called Mr. Jiang today in part to address China's concerns about the decision, officials said. While Russia's nuclear security is little affected by the antimissile program, Beijing possesses only 20 or so nuclear missiles capable of reaching the United States. That means its ability to mount an attack could well be neutralized by an antimissile system, if one is successfully developed.

White House officials refused today to reveal the substance of Mr. Bush's discussion with Mr. Jiang, but senior officials said the offer of talks was intended to make sure that China did not feel that it was being frozen out as Washington builds a "strategic framework" with Russia.

Speaking at the State Department today, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he believed that in the end, the Chinese would "come to the same conclusion that the Russians came to, that this action is not intended against them."

"It is not a threat against their strategic deterrents," he continued. "It will be a system that goes after those irresponsible, rogue states that might come up with a couple of missiles and threaten us."

Mr. Putin's reaction appeared loosely coordinated with the White House; Mr. Bush called him six days ago to warn of an impending announcement, and ever since the two capitals have been exchanging drafts of their statements.

"We have moved beyond the ABM treaty and the Russians, I think it is fair to say, have also moved beyond it," a senior administration official said today.

"They are in another place," the official said, adding that the two "hopefully will never again have to argue about the ABM treaty."

For his part, Mr. Putin made it clear today that he had a wider agenda and that he did not plan to dwell on Mr. Bush's decision. While he failed to persuade Mr. Bush to retain the treaty, he has gotten much of what he needs from Washington. The cooperation between the two capitals has given him a foot in the West's camp, and a voice in decisions made by NATO. Mr. Bush is promising to expand that role, without committing to the entry of Russia into the organization that was organized to contain the Soviet Union.

As one senior administration official said today, "it's not like Putin is going home empty-handed."

By withdrawing from the treaty today, Mr. Bush acted with little precedent. President John Adams terminated treaties with the French in 1798, but by signing an act of Congress. President James Polk did the same in 1846, asking Congress for authority to withdraw from the Oregon Territory Treaty with Britain. The best known case of a unilateral withdrawal by a president came in 1978, when President Jimmy Carter, as part of the American diplomatic recognition of China, ended a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan.

--------

Bush decision on ABM advances Republican dream

Reuters:
14/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13718

WASHINGTON - U.S. President George W. Bush's decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty marks the first time in recent history that the United States has abandoned a major international pact and caps a multiyear campaign by hard-line Republicans to end missile defense curbs.

Bush and his top aides have long indicated such a move was likely if the United States could not reach compromise with Russia, the other major nuclear power who is partner to the 1972 Cold War pact.

But his formal decision, expected to be announced yesterday, is a watershed, with critics fearing it could propel the unraveling of an international arms control regime that has helped keep peace for half a century.

"It's an unfortunate step and an unnecessary one," said Lee Feinstein, an arms control expert who worked in the Clinton administration.

"It's unfortunate because it creates a poor model for other countries because it says it's OK to back out of your commitments," he said in an interview. "It's unnecessary because the administration can pursue the kind of missile defense system it says it wants without taking a precipitous step like this."

The decision puts the United States in odd company. The last country to attempt a withdrawal was North Korea, which threatened to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1993, only to suspend the decision three months later.

It is significant that a Republican president is taking action since recent Republican presidents have essentially built the arms control regime Bush is accused of dismantling.

REPUBLICAN LEGACY

Former President Richard Nixon signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the ABM treaty and the first SALT agreement, curbing nuclear weapons.

Another Republican president, Ronald Reagan, negotiated the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which reduced nuclear arms, while Bush's father did the START II treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Many critics, including opposition Democrats and European allies, are further unnerved because Bush this year also torpedoed international efforts to strengthen a treaty banning biological weapons and a treaty putting limits on fossil fuel emissions.

"This president has assembled a national security staff that disdains these accords and envisions a world where international security is guaranteed through force of arms, not negotiations," said Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Bush, backed by many Republican foreign and defense heavyweights, has made clear since he was a candidate in 2000 that he saw the ABM Treaty as a relic of the Cold War, curtailing development of a defense shield against incoming enemy missiles that has been a Republican dream since Reagan.

The pact rests on the principle of mutually assured destruction - the idea that neither Washington nor Moscow would launch a nuclear attack because of certain massive retaliation.

To assuage fears that U.S. missile defenses would leave Russia's nuclear arsenal vulnerable to attack, Bush agreed with President Vladimir Putin to sharply reduce their stockpiles.

Some top Bush aides have been convinced from the start that withdrawal from the ABM pact was the only acceptable strategy.

But to calm fierce opposition from Russia and the Europeans, the United States tried finding a way with Moscow that would allow the United States to vigorously test and build missile defenses while preserving the broad outlines of the treaty, which Russia insists is a cornerstone of nuclear stability.

Bush officials say they have already had to scale back their missile defense tests to stay within ABM limits.

But critics say Washington should have been able to work a deal with the Russians to keep the program going for years without running afoul of ABM curbs. It will take that long to deploy a credible missile defense system, some say.

The U.S. effort, including talks with Russian leaders in Moscow last week, was unsuccessful though one senior official said, "We tried very hard."

On Wednesday, some critics held out hope that negative reaction to Bush's decision would persuade him to hold further negotiations with Moscow.

But Bush aides said further talks on missile defense were unlikely.

"I don't say it's impossible but ... I don't know what else there is to discuss," a senior U.S. official told Reuters.

Story by Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

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

-------- georgia

CITIZENS GROUPS WINS HEARING OVER MOX PLANT

December 14, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-14-09.html

ATLANTA, Georgia, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has awarded Georgians Against Nuclear Energy (GANE) the right to a public hearing on a proposed facility that would make nuclear reactor fuel from weapons grade plutonium.

The order, issued on December 6, grants a petition filed last summer by the Georgia citizens group.

At issue is a proposal to build a factory to manufacture a new type of reactor fuel from weapons grade plutonium at a U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons facility on the banks of the Savannah River in South Carolina, near Augusta, Georgia.

If built, this would be the first full scale, commercial mixed oxides (MOX) fuel facility in the U.S. The plutonium based MOX fuel to be manufactured at the plant would be burned at four commercial reactors owned by Duke Power in North and South Carolina.

In February, Duke Cogema Stone & Webster (DCS), an international nuclear consortium, submitted a construction proposal to NRC. DCS must obtain a license from the NRC before it can build or operate the MOX factory.

Under federal law, third parties may intervene in the permitting process and request a public hearing by submitting papers describing their concerns, or contentions, about whether public health and safety and the environment will be protected under the proposed permit. The NRC Board found that eight of GANEšs 13 contentions meet the agency's rigorous standards.

In a hearing scheduled to begin in October 2002, GANE will be allowed to raise a range of criticisms of the application, including its failure to protect the public from excessive radiation doses, inadequate provision for high level nuclear waste storage, poor seismic analyses, lack of a cost/benefit analysis in the environmental review, and security.

Chief among GANE's concerns is the design of the MOX factory, which the group says is inadequate to protect against acts of terrorism and sabotage, or to keep the plutonium secure from theft.

"The proposed design fails to meet international standards which require physical protection of nuclear material to be taken into consideration in the early stages of facility design," said GANE's technical advisor, Dr. Edwin Lyman. Dr. Lyman is scientific director of the Nuclear Control Institute (NCI), a Washington, DC based organization that specializes in problems of nuclear proliferation.

-------- new york

NY Nuclear Power Complex Said Safe

By Jim Fitzgerald
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, December 13, 2001; 11:53 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41508-2001Dec13?language=printer

BUCHANAN, N.Y. -- The state's security chief said Thursday that the Indian Point nuclear power complex is so secure it could withstand a hijacked jet slamming into a reactor's containment dome.

The remarks from James Kallstrom, director of the Office of Public Security, came during a news conference to announce the FBI has wrapped up an assessment of the plant in Buchanan, about 35 miles north of Manhattan.

"Everybody should relax," he said. "There are a lot of other issues that are of more concern."

Kallstrom would not release the FBI security report but said he was confident Indian Point was well-protected in a number of scenarios - including a weapons launched from across the Hudson River and a hijacked jet slamming into a containment dome.

Kallstrom said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has studied whether nuclear plants could withstand an impact like the one inflicted Sept. 11 on the World Trade Center.

While emphasizing that he was not a physicist or a structural engineer, he said, "I don't believe a direct hit from a major commercial airplane could penetrate the containment dome here. The good news is this is one of the strongest constructed, designed containment facilities in the United States, if not the world."

But activists at an anti-Indian Point rally Thursday argued that a jetliner crashing into a reactor could contaminate much of the metropolitan area with radiation. They complained the evacuation plan is not sufficient.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky plans to hold state legislative hearings next week to evaluate the evacuation plan.

Jim Steets, spokesman for the plant's owner Entergy Corp., called the FBI report "a ringing endorsement" of its security. The company has agreed to put $3 million toward implementing its recommendations to upgrade security.

--------

300 at Hearing in Westchester Urge Closing of Indian Point

New York Times
December 14, 2001
By ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/nyregion/14NUKE.html?searchpv=nytToday

WHITE PLAINS, Dec. 13 - More than 300 people crowded into a county hearing on emergency procedures at the Indian Point nuclear plant tonight, most of them saying the plant was vulnerable to terrorist attack and should be shut down. The protest came just a few hours after federal and state security officials appeared at the plant to assure the public of its safety.

Before the hearing, a smaller group of protesters held candles and banners on the steps of the Westchester County Center, where the hearing was held, as they listened to speeches by angry local officials, environmental advocates, and other opponents of the plant. The protesters were well behaved, but as they entered the meeting hall where lawmakers were starting their hearing, they delayed proceedings for several minutes by stomping their feet and chanting, "Shut it down!"

Later, there were wild cheers when Vincent Tamagna, a Putnam County legislator, stood at the microphone and said: "When you look at it from a practical standpoint, it's too dangerous, it doesn't belong here, and it would not be built today. Shut it down."

Tonight's events appeared to mark a new phase in the effort to close the plant, which is about 30 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River in Buchanan. Officials of 10 communities closest to the plant have signed a petition urging the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to close it until its safety can be assured. They have been joined by three school boards, four members of Congress and a number of state and local politicians.

The political significance of tonight's meeting was merely symbolic, since the county does not have the power to close the plant. Still, Bill Ryan, a county legislator, said most legislators were likely to vote later in favor of a resolution declaring no confidence in the county's emergency plan, which includes the possible evacuation of people within 10 miles of the plant.

"I think our vote would result in a much closer look by people in Albany and even in the federal government as to whether it's smart to have a plant in such a highly populated area," Mr. Ryan said.

Earlier in the day, James Kallstrom, the director of the state office of public security, appeared at the plant with officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to offer a more reassuring message - that the plant is "an extremely safe place." He said a two-month review by state and federal officials had produced a list of new safety recommendations, many of which are already in effect.

"Everybody should relax about this," he said. "There are a lot of other issues that are of more concern."

Although Mr. Kallstrom did not provide details about the new safety precautions, he said they included more frequent testing of security measures and better coordination among law enforcement agencies. National Guard troops have been standing watch at the plant since Sept. 11, and a Coast Guard boat still patrols the Hudson nearby.

Mr. Kallstrom also had some comforting words about the Indian Point evacuation plan, saying that most of the local officials he had spoken with seemed confident that it would work.

Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, the company that bought the two reactors in the last two years, said, "The endorsement we received today should be helpful in persuading people that the plant is safe." The company has already spent $3 million on security measures recommended by Mr. Kallstrom's team.

Mr. Steets, who attended tonight's rally and hearing, said the actual number of plant opponents was not as large as it might seem. "A lot of the opposition comes from people who always wanted the plant shut down," he said, "and a lot of towns calling for the shutdown did so without considering the consequences."

Although many people in Buchanan support the plant, few if any appeared to be at tonight's meeting. "We haven't organized the way the other side has," Mr. Steets said, "but it may come to that."

State Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, who spoke at tonight's rally and has signed the petition calling for the plant's closing, said he had serious questions about Mr. Kallstrom's comments about security at the plant.

The remarks seem "to have been designed to calm fears rather than investigate problems," he said.

Mr. Brodsky said he hoped to hold hearings on the plant's emergency plans starting next week.

As several of tonight's protesters pointed out, Indian Point received a critical notice from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week, though in an area unrelated to terrorism. Four control room crews failed to pass their annual requalification tests in the last three months, a source of "substantial" safety concerns, the commission said.

On Saturday, the commission sent a group of testers to examine the failing crews itself, and next week it will hold a public meeting with Entergy representatives to discuss performance problems.

-------- us politics

Bush to Sign $343B Defense Bill

By Carolyn Skorneck
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 14, 2001; 10:20 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43438-2001Dec14?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- President Bush will sign the $343 billion defense bill that Congress passed, giving full financing to his missile defense program while providing the largest military pay raise in two decades and setting up a new round of base closures.

An impasse caused by strong opposition to Bush's call for more base closings had delayed the bill for a month. Congress ultimately agreed to one round in 2005, two years later than Bush wanted.

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Friday the administration would have preferred earlier base closings "but the administration supports the legislation passed by the Congress."

The vote in the House on Thursday was 382-40, followed several hours later by a 96-2 vote in the Senate.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who had threatened to recommend a veto if the bill did not include a base-closing round in 2003, would not say Thursday whether the 2005 round in the legislation would allay that threat. "I'm going to have to sleep on that," he told reporters at the Pentagon.

Announcing Friday that Bush will sign the bill, Fleischer told reporters: "The secretary got a good night's sleep."

The defense legislation authorizes spending by the Defense Department and military efforts of the Energy Department for the budget year that began Oct. 1. It contains a $33 billion increase, up 10.6 percent, over 2001 spending, matching Bush's request. A separate appropriations bill must be passed before the money may actually be spent.

In another action Thursday, the Senate unanimously gave final approval by voice vote to the intelligence authorization bill approved Wednesday by the House, sending that to Bush as well.

The intelligence bill places new emphasis on human spy networks and increased analysis of raw data, and calls for an increase of about 8 percent in spending. The actual spending on intelligence has generally been kept secret but has been estimated at about $30 billion for the past few years.

Under the defense bill, military service members would get a minimum 5 percent across-the-board pay raise - a 10 percent increase in some cases - effective Jan. 1. "The most generous pay raise in 20 years" was the assessment of Rep. Bob Stump, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. The bill provides more help with housing costs and a major boost in construction spending, including improvements to family housing.

"Halfway around the globe, thousands of sons and daughters are engaged in a noble cause against the forces of evil and intolerance," said Stump, R-Ariz. He said the bill provides the necessary resources and tools to accomplish that task and ensure they come home safely.

Yet the bill also "has something in it to disappoint virtually everyone involved," said Stump, who opposed base closings. Like other opponents, he opposed shutdowns while the nation is both at war and mired in an economic slump.

Rumsfeld pushed hard for a base-closing round in 2003, saying it could save $3 billion or more a year that could be spent on essential military activities. He criticized the legislation Thursday.

The Pentagon, he said, would be stuck maintaining and protecting up to one-quarter more bases than it needs, diverting dollars and military personnel from accomplishing "something truly important with respect to the war on terrorism, and it's a shame."

On missile defense, Bush would get his full $8.3 billion request, a $3.1 billion increase over 2001. Bush notified Russia Thursday that the United States was pulling out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty because it would impede progress on the program.

Of the $8.3 billion, Bush could use $1.3 billion for anti-terrorism efforts instead if he wants.

The defense bill includes another $7 billion for anti-terrorism spending, a $1 billion increase from 2001.

Regarding base closings, the president, in consultation with congressional leaders, would appoint a nine-member base closing commission in March 2005. That May, the defense secretary would submit a list of facilities to be closed.

It would take seven members to add a facility to that list, but just a simple majority to remove one. The president could approve that list and send it to Congress, or reject it and send it back to the commission. Neither Congress nor the president could make changes to the list.

Previous closing rounds - in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 - led to the closure or realignment of 451 installations, including 97 major ones.

The two votes in the Senate against the bill came from Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Republican John McCain of Arizona. Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., did not vote.

----

House approves bill on defense spending

Around the Nation
December 14, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011214-3048750.htm

The House overcame its objections to base closings to give final passage to a $343.3 billion defense authorization bill yesterday.

The bill includes pay raises for all service members, an increase in anti-terrorism funds and full funding of President Bush's prized missile-defense efforts, for which he is pulling out of a 29-year-old arms-control treaty with Russia.

The bill, approved 382-40, authorizes spending by the Defense Department and military efforts of the Energy Department for the budget year that began Oct. 2. It contains a $33 billion increase from 2001 spending, up 10.6 percent.

----

Powell Doubts New Nuclear Arms Race

December 14, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's decision to abandon a major weapons control agreement with Moscow will not spur a new nuclear arms race, Secretary of State Colin Powell says.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin said Bush's announcement Thursday that he will scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is a mistake. Several senior members of Congress agreed.

``It's a mistake to withdraw from a treaty before you have something to replace it with,'' Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Thursday after Bush made public his long-anticipated decision. ``I would be very concerned that withdrawal from the treaty does fuel an arms race.''

Bush said he concluded the treaty ``hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks.''

Along with Russia, China and some European allies also had sought to dissuade Bush from abandoning the treaty.

Bush notified Chinese President Jiang Zemin before announcing the decision and Powell talked to Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan and Ambassador Yang Jiechi.

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush offered Jiang strategic talks among their advisers. Jiang agreed, but U.S. officials said they did not know how substantial the talks would be.

In Beijing, the state media said Jiang urged Bush to preserve the international arms-control system.

The Chinese leader spoke with both Bush and Putin and ``stressed that under current circumstances, preserving the international arms control and disarmament system is extremely important,'' the Xinhua News Agency said.

The United States will quit the treaty in six months, and during that period do nothing to violate it with missile defense tests outlawed by the Cold War-era pact, a senior U.S. official said.

By the spring, the Bush administration will be ready to begin construction of silos and a testing command center for a futuristic and expensive U.S. anti-missile defense shield near Fairbanks, Alaska.

``I don't see the basis for an arms race in anything that we have done,'' Powell said. ``I see a basis for strategic stability.''

Powell said Russia had offered to make even sharper cutbacks in its arsenal of long-range nuclear weapons than Putin pledged during his talks in Washington with Bush in November.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld will take up with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov the proposal of a cap of some 1,500 to 2,200 warheads apiece, a reduction of about 60 percent from current levels, Powell said.

Rumsfeld and Ivanov are due to meet in Brussels, Belgium, next week.

Putin, in a nationwide television address, repeated Russia's view that the 1972 treaty was a cornerstone of world security.

``This step was not a surprise for us. However, we consider it a mistake,'' Putin said. ``Now, when the world has confronted new threats, we must not allow a legal vacuum in the sphere of strategic stability.''

The administration has ruled out negotiations with Russia on a new arrangement during the six months before the treaty is jettisoned.

Powell said the strong relationship with Russia that the administration has built over the last 11 months ``could take this kind of disagreement.''

The Russians have come to the conclusion ``this action is not intended against them,'' Powell said. ``It will be a system that goes after those irresponsible rogue states that might come up with a couple of missiles and threaten us.''

China worries that a U.S. missile defense would undercut the deterrent value of its small nuclear arsenal. Chinese officials have warned that Beijing might respond by building more nuclear missiles or trying to make its existing missiles more accurate.

China is believed to have about two-dozen nuclear missiles capable of reaching U.S. territory.

In a carefully worded statement, Lord Robertson, the secretary-general of the NATO alliance, said NATO ``welcomes the pledge of the United States of America to develop a new framework of cooperation with Russia'' that includes dramatic reductions in nuclear weapons arsenals.

In Washington, Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., said he doubted the treaty ever served American security interests.

``President Bush's leadership on missile defense and arms control is precisely the same leadership that's winning the war on terrorism,'' Helms said in a statement.

On the other hand, 21 Democratic members of the House, led by Ellen Tauscher of California and Joseph Hoeffel of Pennsylvania, wrote Bush that there was no compelling reason to withdraw from the treaty now. Doing so, they said, injects ``an unnecessary level of uncertainty in our relations with the rest of the world.''


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Fighters Claim to Find bin Laden Cave

The Associated Press
Friday, December 14, 2001; 10:08 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43383-2001Dec14?language=printer

TORA BORA, Afghanistan (AP) - A top Afghan commander claimed today to have located and surrounded a cave in which he believed Osama bin Laden could be hiding: Eastern alliance defense chief Hazrat Ali also said his fighters had surrounded a large number of bin Laden's al-Qaida guerrillas on a mountain ridge in the Tora Bora area - near to the cave. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan's south, scores of U.S. Marines in a land convoy and helicopters took control of the battle-scarred Kandahar airport. It is to become a major arrival point for humanitarian aid that will be desperately needed as the bitter Afghan winter sets in.

--------

THE COMBAT
Fierce Al Qaeda Defense Seen as a Sign of Terror Leader's Proximity

New York Times
December 14, 2001
By JOHN KIFNER with ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/international/14AFGH.html

TORA BORA, Afghanistan, Dec. 13 - American-backed forces believe that they have surrounded Osama bin Laden and the last of his hard- core fighters in a complex of caves between two valleys just south of here, a senior American military official said tonight.

While American officials say they still do not know Mr. bin Laden's exact location and acknowledge that he could still slip out of the country, commanders are increasingly confident that a growing number of American, British and anti-Taliban Afghan ground forces have hemmed in the leader of Al Qaeda.

Troops are focusing on caves and tunnels in an area between the Agam Valley and the Wazir Valley, a forbidding landscape of snow-dusted peaks and ridges that takes in at least several square miles, another senior official said.

The Pentagon's belief that this may be Mr. bin Laden's hiding place is based in part on the fierceness of the Qaeda defense in the area and reported sightings by troops with Hazarat Ali of the Eastern Shura, which took over from the Taliban there.

The whereabouts of the leader of the collapsed Taliban government, Mullah Muhammad Omar, remains a mystery, although military officials were looking at possible sites in Helmand Province, west of Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold in the south.

The hunt for Mr. bin Laden has drawn increasing numbers of allied commandos to the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, more than 100 in all, including specialized Army and Navy teams, military officials said.

Concerned that Al Qaeda fighters may be fleeing into neighboring Pakistan, the American military has doubled the number of commandos working alongside anti-Taliban Afghan forces to about 50 in the last few days, officials said. American Special Forces, or Green Berets, have been acting as liaison troops with the fighters of the Eastern Shura for several days.

With attempts to negotiate a surrender failing in the last few days, the fighting and the searching in this desolate mountain terrain intensified.

In response to questions, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today in Washington that the United States had not rejected a proposed surrender agreement for Al Qaeda fighters on Wednesday, but he also said any settlement must be unconditional.

"This is not a drill where we're making deals," he said.

He said he preferred that Al Qaeda fighters give up, to avoid risking American lives and to provide important intelligence information.

"The first choice clearly is surrender," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It ends it faster. It's less expensive. And we can encourage people to surrender."

"If they surrender, they may come out alive," he continued. "If they don't surrender, they may not. And it's kind of their choice. I, personally, would like to see people surrender. I, personally, would like to see us get our hands on them and be able to interrogate them and find out about the Al Qaeda networks all across the globe. These people know things, and I'd like to know those things."

American bombs rained down on the ridges and peaks in Tora Bora throughout Wednesday night and all day today in the heaviest, steadiest barrages yet. One huge bomb on Wednesday night turned the sky magenta, and under a cold, gray sky today, there were steady bursts of smoke between the mountains followed moments later by the boom of the bombs.

Fighting resumed on the ground, marked by mortar and machine-gun fire, as Afghan tribal troops sought to gain ground - some of it taken before and lost overnight - from Al Qaeda fighters.

The new commandos include members of the elite counterterrorist units Delta Force and Navy Seals, who are also specially trained to snatch terrorist leaders and conduct hit-and-run raids. On Oct. 20, Delta commandos attacked a house in Kandahar used by Mullah Omar.

Marine snipers, who can drop a target from hundreds of yards away, have also been deployed, military officials said.

Scores of British commandos, from either the Special Air Service or Special Boat Service, as well as Central Intelligence Agency officers, have also infiltrated the region, bringing the number of allied troops fighting with anti-Taliban forces to well over 100, military officials said.

American B-52 and B-1 bombers as well as Navy warplanes continued their bombardment of the cave and tunnel complexes today.

Four to six AC-130 gunships, working in tandem with unmanned Predator drones that relay live video feeds to the gunships, are prowling the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, strafing Al Qaeda forces trying to escape, military officials said.

"This is a pitched fight," said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "The focus right now is in the Tora Bora area. There are a couple of main valleys there that we're trying to keep people from escaping."

The mission of the American commandos includes calling in airstrikes in two-man teams equipped with laser pointers and acting as advisers to the local fighters.

C.I.A. operatives are here to question prisoners and examine documents, among other tasks. The snipers could be equipped with special rifles firing heavy .50-caliber slugs, which could immobilize or destroy a vehicle.

The commandos have been glimpsed briefly, traveling the dirt roads in large four-wheel-drive vehicles, mostly with blacked-out windows, ducking their faces or wrapping them in the blanket-like shawls that Afghan men drape around their shoulders and heads here.

American officials vetoed an effort by one local commander, Muhammad Zaman, to broker a surrender arrangement, in addition to continuing their bombing during a supposed cease-fire, a senior Afghan official said tonight.

"They asked for surrender conditions, to turn themselves over to the United Nations and only to their own embassies," the governor of Jalalabad, Hajji Kadir, said at a news conference tonight, describing the Qaeda demands.

"On that condition, the Americans are not satisfied," Mr. Kadir said. "The Americans did not agree, and just because of that the fighting is starting again."

In southern Afghanistan, an advance party of American marines moved into the airport at Kandahar, while anti-Taliban forces continued to root out the last pockets of fighters remaining in and around the city.

But the Taliban's leader, Mullah Omar, appeared to have vanished into the mountains north or west of the city. "Omar is missing," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "Where is Omar?"

Mr. Rumsfeld said the United States would soon start offering rewards for information leading to the capture of senior Taliban leaders, including a $10 million bounty on Mullah Omar. This would be in addition to the $25 million in rewards offered for Mr. bin Laden and other top Qaeda leaders.

A senior military officer said the largest rewards would be reserved for a "fairly small" number of Taliban leaders, while a few dozen other lower-level Taliban leaders would yield bounties in the tens of thousands of dollars. The military is working with the Central Intelligence Agency to draw up a most- wanted list, the officer said.

--------

THE VIDEO
Bin Laden, on Tape, Boasts of Trade Center Attacks

New York Times
December 14, 2001
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/international/14TAPE.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 - The United States released a videotape today showing Osama bin Laden laughing and boasting about the Sept. 11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.

On the videotape, Mr. bin Laden describes how the planes that were flown in suicide missions into the World Trade Center towers did far more damage than he ever imagined they would. "We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower," he said, speaking in Arabic. English subtitles were provided by the United States government. "We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all."

Bush administration officials said that the amateur videotape, which they believe was filmed on Nov. 9 at a guest house in Kandahar, Afghanistan, was proof that Mr. bin Laden was guilty in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Officials said the tape was found in late November in a house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and was turned over to the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials would not say if the United States paid for the tape.

On the tape, Mr. bin Laden, 44, indicated that the men who carried out the plot knew they were on what he called a "martyrdom operation," but did not have details of the mission until the last minute. "We asked each of them to go to America, but they didn't know anything about the operation, not even one letter," Mr. bin Laden said. "But they were trained, and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes."

Here the tape differed from what administration officials said it would show - that some of the men thought they were engaged only in a hijacking and did not know they would die.

"There is information that is on those tapes that, again, shows the world just how evil Osama bin Laden is, and how he claims piety, while leading people to deaths that they very well were not aware of," Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said on Monday.

Mr. bin Laden also said that Mohamed Atta was the leader of the attacks. "Mohamed from the Egyptian family was in charge of the group," he said, meaning the Al Qaeda Egyptian group.

The New York Times verified the translation with two independent interpreters, who found no significant errors but said that an authoritative translation would require an Arabic transcript. It was impossible to tell from the tape, which jumps among several scenes, if anything was edited.

The hourlong tape shows a smiling and relaxed Mr. bin Laden paying a call on a man referred to in the videotape only as "sheik," who frequently flatters Mr. bin Laden about the success of the attacks, while they eat and converse. The man, identified as a Sheik al-Ghamdi from a tribe in Assir Province, appears paralyzed from the waist down, and offers Mr. bin Laden news and praise from religious figures in Saudi Arabia, which in the videotape emerges as a crucial link to the Al Qaeda terror network.

A senior Saudi official tonight identified Sheik al-Ghamdi and described him as a militant cleric. The official said several of the suicide hijackers were members of the sheik's tribe.

The Saudi government moved quickly to condemn Mr. bin Laden and others referred to on the tape.

"The tape displays the cruel and inhumane face of a murderous criminal who has no respect for the sanctity of human life or the principles of his faith," said a statement by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States. "Bin Laden and those he mentions in his tape are deviants and renegades who do not represent the Islamic faith or the Saudi people."

The White House made the tape public after nearly a week of discussion about its contents and in the end gave the task of its formal release to the Department of Defense. The tape was available at 11 a.m., an hour after President Bush renounced the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The groundswell for the release began when The Washington Post first disclosed the existence of the tape on Dec. 9, the same day that Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed some of the tape's contents on NBC's "Meet the Press."

The tension built as the United States indicted Zacarias Moussaoui, the first person to be charged as a conspirator in the Sept. 11 plot, and relentlessly bombed the Tora Bora caves of eastern Afghanistan, where Mr. bin Laden is thought to be hiding.

Administration officials said that the timing of the tape's release was designed neither to draw attention from the ABM Treaty withdrawal, nor to intensify public opinion against Mr. bin Laden as the United States attempts to close in on him.

Mr. Fleischer indicated today that the tape was found by people other than Americans. The Taliban abandoned the city in mid-November. "The manner in which the tape was acquired would suggest that people were leaving the house in a real big hurry and left it behind," he said.

The tape was turned over to the C.I.A., which translated it. The president was informed of its existence on Nov. 29, and saw excerpts at the White House during an intelligence briefing on Nov. 30.

Administration officials said that the president wanted to release the tape as soon as he saw it, but with the caveat that it not compromise intelligence gathering and with the requirement that the C.I.A. double- check its authenticity. By Dec. 7, officials said, the C.I.A. had determined that the tape had not been altered and it was of Mr. bin Laden.

At that point, officials said, the government asked at least two independent interpreters to collaborate on another translation of the videotape and compare it with the one done by the United States government. Pentagon officials said those interpreters were George Michael of the Diplomatic Language Service and Kassem M. Wahba, the Arabic language program coordinator of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Pentagon officials said the two versions were virtually identical.

The C.I.A. ran tests to determine whether the tape had been altered and to determine whether the voice matched Mr. bin Laden's on previous videotapes that he himself had released. In every case, officials said, the matches were identical.

Mr. bin Laden appears in the tape with Ayman al-Zawahiri, his top deputy and the former leader of a faction of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and Slaiman abou-Ghaithc, a spokesman for Mr. bin Laden.

At one point Mr. bin Laden recites poetry and the men discuss their dreams and those of their friends. Mr. bin Laden recounts, for example, the dream of a year ago from a friend who told him, " `We were playing a soccer game against the Americans. When our team showed up in the field, they were all pilots!' He said: `So I wondered if that was a soccer game or a pilot game?' "

He also recounts the moments when he first heard of the Sept. 11 attacks and apparently mentions where he was. But government officials said that that portion of the tape is inaudible. In the tape, Mr. bin Laden gives a full description of listening to the radio as he and others heard the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

"They were overjoyed when the first plane hit the building, so I said to them: be patient," Mr. bin Laden recounted. Then, he told of hearing that the second tower had been hit, as well as the the Pentagon. He made no mention of the fourth plane, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

Intelligence officials said that they were struck by the unprofessional, home-movie quality of the tape and said its purpose was unclear. One said it did not appear the tape was designed for propaganda purposes or that Mr. bin Laden intended it for viewing outside his inner circle.

-------- biological weapons

Army's Anthrax Material Surprises Some Experts

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 14, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40896-2001Dec13?language=printer

Several scientists and biological warfare experts said yesterday they were surprised by the revelation that a U.S. Army installation in Utah has been producing dried preparations of the Ames strain of the anthrax bacterium, the same strain found in letters to Sens. Thomas A. Daschle and Patrick J. Leahy.

Most said they believe the research was justified for defensive purposes. But several expressed dismay that the Army had never mentioned the work publicly before Wednesday even as it spearheaded the biological and chemical analysis of the Senate letters for the FBI -- a potential conflict of interest that some feared could harm the credibility of the investigation.

The Army has refused to say anything about the extent to which the spore preparations in the Senate letters are similar to or different from the ones produced at its Dugway Proving Ground, about 80 miles from Salt Lake City. "We think we don't have anyone who has looked at both the anthrax we worked on in our lab and the sample from the Daschle letter," Army spokesman Chuck Dasey said.

It remained unclear yesterday how much the FBI knew about the Army program. One knowledgeable source suggested that the agency was caught unawares by the revelation. But other senior law enforcement officials said the FBI has known about the Dugway program since shortly after the Daschle letter was discovered, and has already conducted comparisons of the Army material and the letter's spores.

Officials said they have been granted full access to the information they need from Dugway, which runs classified biowarfare research programs. But they declined to reveal the results of their investigation into the Dugway anthrax material.

It remains unclear whether Dugway scientists have the technical capacity to make anthrax spores as dangerous as those found in the letters to Daschle (D-S.D.) and Leahy (D-Vt.). The particles in those letters were extremely small and the formulation very pure, with far more spores per gram than the U.S. offensive bioweapons program had achieved at its pinnacle in the late 1960s. Small size and high purity are crucial if infectious quantities are to become airborne and inhaled to cause the most deadly form of anthrax.

William Patrick, who led the Army's offensive biological weapons program at Fort Detrick until the program ended in 1969, said yesterday that it was he who taught Dugway scientists how to dry deadly bacteria into a fine powdery form in 1998. Until then, Dugway had no means of converting wet batches of the anthrax bacterium, Bacillus anthracis, into the dry powder needed to test new defensive technologies, he said, such as systems that can detect the invisible spores in the air.

Patrick said he taught the method using a harmless species of bacterium related to B. anthracis called B. globigii, after making "a few grams" of the material. Patrick said he believes the technique he gave to Dugway "is probably what they're now applying to the 'hot stuff.' " But he said he thinks that his technique is not capable of making a product of the quality found in the Daschle and Leahy letters. "It was plenty good, but not as good as that," he said. Then again, he said, "maybe they've gone on to something better."

Army officials would not comment yesterday. Dugway, on 800,000 acres in the Utah desert, has a long history of secret research and has been a favorite target of conspiracy theorists, including those who believe that the U.S. government has been hiding information about visits from aliens. In the 1960s, Dugway was embroiled in a controversy when thousands of sheep and other animals died downwind of the facility, showing symptoms of having been exposed to nerve gas. The Army denied any culpability but later compensated owners.

Several biowarfare experts said the government's credibility is at stake as the Army decides how much to reveal about its anthrax program.

"The U.S. government should have been not only more forthcoming about this episode but perhaps more detailed in its annual declarations" to the United Nations about its defensive biological weapons program, said Alan Zelicoff, of the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, who stressed that he does not believe that Dugway has been lax in its security or oversight.

Elisa D. Harris, who until recently was the National Security Council official responsible for U.S. policy on biological weapons and is now a research fellow at the University of Maryland, echoed that sentiment. She was one of several experts who suggested that congressional hearings might be in order.

Yet Harris's secret hope is that the Army will prove to have been the source of the material used in this fall's postal attacks.

"If it turns out that this material did in fact originate in the U.S. program, it's actually a terrific outcome because it means the primary actors we need to be focusing on are national programs and nation-states," she said. "In terms of the bioterror threat, the worst outcome would be that there is a biological Unabomber out there who was able to get vaccinated and get the material and the equipment to process it and then mail it out. That would be a really scary scenario."

Staff writer Joby Warrick contributed to this report.

----

Hot mail

December 14, 2001
Washington Times
Inside the Beltway, John McCaslin
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011214-89145590.htm

The media giant Gannett Co., which publishes 97 newspapers and operates 22 television stations, has started baking incoming mail to its Virginia headquarters.

The company is using a Precision Heat Chamber, or PHC, which inactivates anthraxlike viruses and bacteria through prolonged exposure to dry heat.

"We believe heat is part of the answer to the problem of anthrax in the mail," says Precision Environmental President David Hedman, who says the effectiveness of heat in the decontamination of 13 biological weapons - anthrax and botulism to plague, smallpox and viral hemorrhagic fevers - is documented in the U.S. Army's 2001 Medical Management of Biological Casualties Handbook, or "Blue Book."

To render such biological agents harmless, mail has to be sterilized with dry heat for two hours at a sizzling 320 degrees Fahrenheit.

-------- business

LOCAL BUSINESS

Friday, December 14, 2001; Page E02
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41334-2001Dec13?language=printer

United Defense Industries, an Arlington-based maker of combat vehicles, naval guns and missiles, made one of the largest initial public offerings of stock by a defense company -- raising about $400 million for itself and the D.C.-based Carlyle Group. Carlyle, which bought UDI in 1997 for $850 million, raised $225.15 million from selling an 18 percent stake. About 42 percent of UDI is now in public hands.

-------- europe

European Union to Send Peacekeeping Force to Afghanistan

December 14, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-attack-eu-afghan.html

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium said on Friday the European Union had agreed to establish a multinational peacekeeping force for Afghanistan, but EU partners queued up to dismiss the surprise announcement.

Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, calling the move ``a turning point in the history of the European Union,'' told a news conference the force, in which all 15 EU member states would participate, would number between 3,000 and 4,000.

Britain is ready to lead a force, which will have troops from other EU states but also Muslim nations such as Turkey and Jordan. It said no deal had been struck, no numbers decided and that the force would operate under a U.N. mandate.

``Clearly it is not an EU force,'' a British official said.

German, Austrian, French and Danish officials all denied knowledge of an agreement to send a joint EU force and suggested Michel's statement might be an attempt to put a European gloss on efforts by several member states.

``Even if we wanted to, we could not do it as we are not as far as we need to be with the (defense) structures,'' German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told reporters. ``This is an issue that will be handled in the (U.N.) Security Council.''

Michel portrayed the force as an entirely EU operation.

``The European Union is going to create unanimously a multinational force,'' he said on the first day of an EU summit that marks the end of Belgium's presidency.

``I think this is of capital importance for Europe's security and defense policy. I think you can say it's a turning point in the history of the European Union.''

That drew a sharp British response. ``We are looking at a turning point in the history of Afghanistan,'' the official said.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller was more charitable, calling Michel's statement ``a slip of the tongue.''

Even a Belgian official conceded that the minister had perhaps been ``a little too enthusiastic.''

Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner said it was still not clear who would participate in a U.N. force and a French diplomatic source also said Michel had got it wrong.

``The European role will be to train Afghan troops, not to take part in peacekeeping,'' the source said.

BRITISH TO LEAD

Prime Minister Tony Blair will talk to French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on the margins of the summit about the logistics of the force.

An exclusive meeting between the three leaders before the last EU summit in October drew bitter criticism from smaller member states and European Commission President Romano Prodi.

There is no doubt London will lead the force, which will aim to keep order in and around Kabul.

``The U.N. has indicated they would be happy for us to lead this...We have agreed to lead it in principle,'' Blair's official spokesman told reporters.

Discussions were taking place in London on Friday between military officials from Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey and Jordan. The United States was also sitting in.

A 12-strong British ``scoping'' team will fly to Kabul this weekend to make a recommendation on troop numbers.

U.N. Security Council members neared agreement on Thursday on a resolution authorizing a force but adoption was awaiting a go-ahead from Britain, diplomats said. Security Council authorization is needed to give it international legitimacy.

The United States had hoped for adoption on Friday but a vote is not now likely until Tuesday. An interim Afghan government takes office on December 22, setting a notional but unlikely deadline for forces to be deployed.

``Don't expect an announcement over the weekend,'' the British official said.

-------- india

INTERNATIONAL
India Blames Pakistani Group for Parliament Attack

New York Times
December 14, 2001
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/international/asia/14CND-INDIA.html

NEW DELHI, Dec. 14 - India charged today that members of a Pakistan-based militant group carried out the suicide attack on the Parliament House and demanded that Pakistan put a halt to the group's activities, take its leaders into custody and cut off its financial assets.

Minister of External Affairs Jaswant Singh said Indian intelligence agencies had gathered what he called "entirely credible" evidence that the Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Taiba was responsible for the assault on Parliament by five men on Thursday, in which the attackers and seven others were killed.

He said the evidence was being shared with the United States, which is now closely allied with Pakistan in the war on the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and other countries, but that the evidence would not be made public because of the need to protect India's intelligence gathering methods.

This afternoon India summoned Asraf Jehangir Qazi, Pakistan's senior diplomat here, to the ministry of external affairs where Foreign Secretary Chokila Iyer presented India's formal demands to him in what was described as a "very short" meeting.

Mr. Qazi told her he would deliver the message to his government.

In its formal diplomatic message to Pakistan, India said that the suicide squad's attack on Parliament was an attack "on not just the symbol, but the seat of Indian democracy and on the sovereignty of the Indian people."

The group denied the accusations, and Pakistan sounded a warning that India would pay a heavy price for any "misadventure" after the attack.

"India seems to be making efforts to create tension by blaming Pakistan," a government spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, said. "India will pay heavily if they engage in any misadventure."

A Lashkar spokesman, Yahya Mujahid, described the accusations as baseless and said, "The attack on the Parliament was a drama staged by Indian intelligence agencies to defame the freedom struggle in the Indian-occupied Kashmir."

On Thursday Pakistani officials quickly condemned the attack. But if it emerges that such an assault was carried out by groups that Pakistan has harbored, efforts by the United States to balance support of the two nuclear-armed rivals as it wages war in nearby Afghanistan would be complicated.

India has long accused the Pakistanis, now important allies in the American campaign, of sponsoring terrorists themselves. While Indian officials have sought to assure the United States that they would show restraint in striking at terrorist camps in parts of Kashmir Pakistan controls, they also made clear that such a promise would be reconsidered in the event of another major attack by a group based in Pakistan.

The heavily armed five men drove onto the fortress-like grounds of Parliament House by disguising themselves in a white Ambassador car with a light on the top, typical of vehicles used by members of parliament, officials said.

Guards closed the doors of the Parliament building before the attackers could enter. In a wild, half-hour battle outside, four of the attackers were fatally shot and a fifth, who had explosives strapped to his body, was blown up on the main steps of the grand sandstone building.

A gardener tending a bed of chrysanthemums, a driver and five police and security officers were killed.

The attack was reminiscent of one carried out on Oct. 1 on the legislative assembly in Srinigar, summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which the two countries have fought over for half a century. Pakistani-backed Islamic militants have battled Indian rule there for years.

Responsibility for the Kashmir attack was first taken by Jaish-e-Muhammad, a group based in Pakistan, but it later disavowed the claim.

Relations between India and Pakistan deteriorated sharply afterward, as India accused Pakistan of sponsoring terrorist acts and intensified its effort to root out Pakistani-based militants in Kashmir.

On Thursday an umbrella organization representing militant groups fighting in Kashmir denied any role in the attack on Parliament. But those groups have carried out bold attacks before. Lashkar-e-Taiba took responsibility for an attack on Dec. 22, 1999, on a military installation at the Red Fort in the heart of the capital.

Thursday's attack, however, was the first by any group on the Parliament itself.

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, condemned the attack in New Delhi in a letter to India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, saying he was "saddened by the loss of life."

General Musharraf also denounced the Oct. 1 attack in Kashmir, raising questions about whether the Pakistani leader was in full control of parts of his own military establishment that may be supporting the militants.

There was a rising chorus of condemnation Thursday. President Bush called Mr. Vajpayee to offer the help of F.B.I. and State Department counterterrorism teams. The United States denounced the attack as a "brutal assault on the heart of Indian democracy," a sentiment echoed by British, French and Russian officials.

Addressing the nation on television on Thursday afternoon, Mr. Vajpayee said: "The battle against terrorism has reached its last phase. We will fight a decisive battle to the end."

The tough talk was even tougher an hour later when the cabinet met in emergency session. "We will liquidate the terrorists and their sponsors wherever they are, whoever they are," the ministers said in a resolution.

People who were in the walled Parliament compound when the shooting started later described scenes of chaos and fear.

Cameramen who had expected to cover the usual boisterous drama of democracy here instead found themselves filming a different kind of theater as noon approached.

Gray smoke billowed as grenades exploded. Commandos hunted terrorists from atop the thick walls around parliament. People ran behind the monumental ebony statue of Mohandas K. Gandhi, champion of nonviolence, seated cross-legged across from the main entrance.

Inside the building, reporters for the Press Trust of India found themselves locked into their press room, able to follow the action only by turning on the television.

Jithender Reddy, a member of Parliament who was chatting with a colleague in the hall, said he was nearly trampled when office workers, journalists and politicians stampeded away from a gate as firing erupted.

When the battle exploded just outside the office of Najma Heptulla, presiding officer in the upper house of parliament, guards came to hustle her to a safer office. "Madam, please leave your room," they told her. Only later did she learn that two of her guards had been killed.

"My security guard Yadav chased them," she said. "He didn't even carry a knife. I wish he'd had a gun so he could have killed some of them."

-------- israel

THE OVERVIEW
Arafat Halts Crackdown; Israel Breaks Links to Him

New York Times
December 14, 2001
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/14/international/middleeast/14MIDE.html

JERUSALEM, Dec. 13 - Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority today suspended its stated plan to crack down on extremist groups conducting attacks against Israeli civilians, saying that a relentless Israeli military assault made such police work impossible.

From late Wednesday into the night tonight, Israeli warplanes, helicopters, tanks and bulldozers attacked Palestinian targets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in retaliation for a bomb-and-gun ambush that killed 10 Israelis in the West Bank on Wednesday evening. Calling Mr. Arafat "irrelevant," the Israeli government decided earlier today to break security and diplomatic links with the Palestinian Authority.

The new envoy here from the Bush administra