------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Business
Pakistan Releases 2 Nuke Scientists
N Korea Renews Verbal Attacks on U.S.
Missile Defense System Canceled
Official to Defend ABM Decision
New Freedom for U.S. in Different Kind of Arms Control
Official to Defend ABM Decision
N.R.C. Is Watching Operators at Indian Point Nuclear Plant
Reno, Freeh Out of Wen Ho Lee Probe
Growing Conflict Over Presidential Powers

MILITARY
Tora Bora transmissions may be bin Laden
Marines Plan POW Site in Kandahar
Bin Laden's voice detected
EU agrees on need for peacekeepers
Al Qaeda Resistance Falters Under Heavy Attack
Explosions rock southern China
Bush: Quit Drugs, Join Terrorism Fight
Babies Used in Drug Ring, Officials Say
Group in Pakistan Is Blamed by India for Suicide Raid
'Israeli death squad disarmed men and shot them'
U.S. envoy leaves; Israel unleashes raids
Europe and Arafat
Israelis move into Gaza
Tapes Suggest U.S. Spying Missed Signals
U.S. envoy brokers Sudan cease-fire
U.N. Resolution on Palestinians Vetoed by U.S.
G.I.'s Had Crucial Role in Battle for Kandahar

POLICE / PRISONERS
A few questions for Ashcroft
Two Islamic charity headquarters raided
Study says combine prints of FBI, INS
Trials and Tribulations
For Jailed Writer, Prison Time Is Study in Ethics, Experience
Wis. Sheriffs Changing Jail Screws
Sentence reduced for retarded inmate

ENERGY AND OTHER
Scientist says he will clone humans in U.S. or abroad
Ebola spreading in Gabon 'rapidly'
Freighter heads to Cuba with shipment of food

ACTIVISTS
Phil Berrigan & Susan Crane released
S.Korean activists rally against U.S. plan




-------- NUCLEAR

-------- business

Business

Saturday, December 15, 2001; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46747-2001Dec14?language=printer

Two European companies that manufacture enriched uranium, used to fuel nuclear power plants, should face duties on shipments to the United States, the Commerce Department ruled. Eurodif, a French government-controlled company, and Urenco, which is partly owned by the Dutch, British and German governments, are receiving unfair subsidies from their governments, the Commerce Department said. The recommendation follows a year-long investigation based on a complaint by Bethesda-based USEC, the world's largest enricher of uranium.

General Dynamics won an order with a potential value of more than $2 billion from UAL's Avolar unit for as many as 67 Gulfstream business jets. Avolar bought 24 jets and took options to buy 43 more, General Dynamics said.

-------- india / pakistan

Pakistan Releases 2 Nuke Scientists

By Munir Ahmad
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, December 15, 2001; 12:12 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48332-2001Dec15?language=printer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP)- Two nuclear scientists who had been detained on suspicion of sharing technical information with Osama bin Laden have been freed, government officials and relatives said Saturday.

Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood and Abdul Majid worked for Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission until retiring in 1999. They then managed a charity organization, Tameer-e-Ummah, or "Nation Builder," and made several trips to Afghanistan, where they met bin Laden.

Both denied transferring any nuclear-related information to Afghanistan and said they only ran education programs and helped poor Afghan farmers. Mehmood claimed he talked with bin Laden about plans for the rehabilitation of Afghanistan.

Mehmood, who helped Pakistan become nuclear power in 1998, was picked up on Oct. 23 and was held for weeks until he was released after suffering a mild heart attack during interrogation. After a few days, he was taken to a safe house of Pakistan's main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.

Majid was taken into custody after Mehmood's arrest, and six members of their non-governmental organization also were detained.

Authorities said Mehmood and Majid defied service rules that apply to government scientists even after retirement, and of violating travel restrictions. They have been barred from talking with reporters or making public speeches.

"My father, with all six detained members of his NGO, has been released," Dr. Mohammad Asim, Mehmood's son, told The Associated Press. An Interior Ministry official on Saturday also confirmed the releases.

Pakistan was the closest ally of Afghanistan's now-vanquished Taliban militia until the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, which bin Laden allegedly orchestrated. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf then joined the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism and changed the leadership of the spy agency, which had been close to the Taliban.

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

-------- korea

N Korea Renews Verbal Attacks on U.S.

DECEMBER 15, 2001 08:23 ET (AP)
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?SLUG=AFGHAN-US-RUMSFELD

SEOUL, South Korea - Escalating renewed verbal attacks on the United States, North Korea accused President Bush on Saturday of trying to stifle the communist country and said it was ready to fight a war with the Americans.

``If any enemy comes in attack on the Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea, its army will not allow him to go back alive,'' said Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Party.

North Korea has increased its anti-U.S. rhetoric since Bush warned early this month that Iraq and North Korea would be ``held accountable'' if they developed weapons of mass destruction to carry out terrorism.

North Korea's 1.1-million-member military is the world's fifth largest. It is suspected of having stockpiled weapons-grade plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs.

Bush demands that North Korea allow U.N. experts to inspect the North's nuclear program, and the North has responded with verbal attacks.

Saturday's commentary - carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA, and monitored in Seoul - said U.S.-North Korea relations have worsened to the ``point of explosion.''

North Korea should maintain ``the highest degree of vigilance'' against the United States, it said.

In a separate article carried by KCNA, Minju Joson, another state-run North Korean newspaper, accused the United States of trying to ``spread the 'anti-terror' war now under way in Afghanistan to any part of the world.''

The United States keeps 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea under a mutual defense treaty.

-------- missile defense

Missile Defense System Canceled
Navy Program Woes Cause Bush Setback

By Thomas E. Ricks and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 15, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46345-2001Dec14?language=printer

The Pentagon, in a serious setback for the Bush administration's missile defense plans, yesterday canceled a multibillion-dollar missile defense system being developed by the Navy, citing "poor performance" and 50 percent cost overruns.

The program, which was scheduled to be deployed in two years, was designed to protect Navy ships and ports from attacks by missiles or manned aircraft. Like the land-based Patriot antimissile system, it was intended to provide a last-ditch defense of small, selected areas if other defenses failed.

The surprise move to cancel the program, combined with the failure Thursday of an interceptor rocket that was being tested for use in a land-based missile defense system, called into question whether the United States would be able to develop any missile defense programs on the timetable projected by the Bush administration.

It came one day after President Bush formally notified Russia that the United States would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to clear the way for unrestricted tests of missile defense systems that he hopes ultimately will provide a protective shield over the continental United States.

The timing of the Pentagon announcement prompted criticism that the administration had needlessly rushed to withdraw from the ABM Treaty.

The administration said that one of the main reasons for withdrawing was its desire to test part of a sea-based missile defense system.

The Navy program, called Area Missile Defense, has cost $2.8 billion since the early 1990s. It had been seen as one of the areas of missile defense furthest along in development and as a result likely to be deployed sooner than other systems that are planned to defend against longer-range missiles.

"It's unfortunate we've reached this point," the Pentagon's acquisition chief, Edward C. Aldridge, said in a statement. He said the Pentagon would continue trying to develop a system of knocking down incoming missiles at sea, but he did not say how.

Phil Coyle, former head of the Pentagon's office of weapons testing and evaluation, said the Navy system was the most advanced of various "theater" missile defense systems, which in contrast to national systems are designed to protect battlefields and other relatively small areas. He said that theater defense systems were well ahead of those more complicated national missile defense schemes that intercept missiles in the boost phase and in mid-course.

"And so for one of the shortest-range systems to be canceled is not a good sign," he said.

Joseph Cirincione, a missile defense critic at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, added, "You have to consider this a very serious setback for missile defense programs, because it shows that even the simple stuff is difficult."

Richard Perle, a missile defense advocate who served in the Pentagon during the Reagan administration, said he wasn't upset by the cancellation. "I'm for missile defenses, but I'm not for bad programs," he said. "I'd rather move cautiously."

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an independent consulting firm, said he expected the Navy to renegotiate its contracts with companies working on the Navy Wide Area program, which include Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, L-3 Communications, United Defense and Orbital Sciences.

The Navy program would also have been used to protect warships and amphibious landing forces overseas, such as the ships operating in the Indian Ocean supporting operations by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

In January 1997, the program scored an initial success when it managed to hit a target missile during its first test, said Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, the spokesman for the Defense Department's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. But, he said, "after that, there were numerous problems of integration, and the test schedule kept slipping and slipping and slipping until it became untenable."

Coyle said the Navy program has been struggling with a wide range of technical issues, including the complexity of the computer program to be used on Aegis destroyers, discriminating between real and decoy missiles, search and tracking processors, and the cooling system on the infrared seekers that discern "hot" enemy missiles.

Because other missile defense programs face similar technical issues, the Navy cancellation did not augur well for missile defense in general, Coyle said.

The Navy announcement followed Thursday afternoon's failure of a prototype rocket booster that would be used in mid-course missile defenses.

The booster rocket, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, malfunctioned about 30 seconds into its flight, veered off course and plunged into the Pacific Ocean about one mile off the coast of the base, about 55 miles north of Santa Barbara, Calif.

"It's another setback," Coyle said. "This is supposed to be the easy part, the rocket science part." More difficult parts of the program are supposed to deal with distinguishing between real and decoy missiles.

The cause of the failure is under investigation, the Pentagon said. Thursday's launch was the second test of the three-stage prototype booster, designed and built by Boeing Co.

The first test launch on Aug. 31 was deemed a success by the Defense Department and Boeing.

During that launch, the booster rocket, carrying a mock "kill vehicle" to simulate the weight and mass of an actual missile that would be used in future intercept tests, traveled about 3,000 miles before falling into the Pacific, the Pentagon said.

-------- terrorism

Official to Defend ABM Decision

By George Gedda
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 14, 2001; 5:45 PM

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.

-------- treaties

New Freedom for U.S. in Different Kind of Arms Control

By DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times
December 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/15/international/15MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - When President Bush stepped into the Rose Garden on Thursday morning, he did far more than announce America's exit from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. He buried an entire era of arms control.

Whether it deserved to die, or was killed off prematurely, will be debated endlessly by ideologues and experts who have sharply different views about the wisdom of walking away from accords that some argue have helped prevent nuclear war for almost 30 years.

But the most interesting arguments in Washington, Moscow and Beijing this week are less about the wisdom of what Mr. Bush did than about what comes next. For while nuclear confrontation between superpowers seems more unlikely than ever, the probability of nuclear, biological or chemical calamity delivered by stray missile, cargo ship or mail seems greater than ever.

And that requires a very different kind of arms control, taking forms Mr. Bush has already begun to consider. "Clearly we are not against all arms treaties," the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said several months ago, ticking off a short list of accords Mr. Bush thinks are a good idea, chiefly the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. "But the threats have changed and with them the definition of our interests has to be adjusted."

Gone forever, in the Bush view, is the age in which American negotiators and their Russian counterparts haggled for months or years over multiple warheads and megatonnage, throw-weights and basing modes. Mr. Bush recently recalled how, in years past, watching television news meant "seeing that people would sit at tables for hours and hours and hours trying to reach reduced levels of nuclear armament."

It is a waste of time, the president argues. But the deeper problem for Mr. Bush is that he wants freedom - freedom to test new defensive technologies, freedom to cut America's offensive arsenal to the minimum levels he considers safe for Americans, without regard for what other countries think.

The ABM Treaty was all about constraints, and that is why it became a lightning rod for conservatives and for proponents of missile defenses. They knew there was no way to test, much less deploy, an effective missile defense system without violating its terms. But only when relations with Russia warmed over the past few years did those who supported keeping the old structure in place begin to concede Mr. Bush's point that the treaty is a "relic" born of a bygone era of confrontation.

"The problem isn't Russia and hasn't been for a long time," said James Steinberg, President Bill Clinton's deputy national security adviser. "Everyone hopes that one day Russia and its nuclear arsenal will be viewed the way we view Britain's or France's. But we're not there yet, and so many of the arguments are about what kind of transitional arrangements we need."

President Vladimir V. Putin told the Russian people on television on Thursday that the demise of the ABM Treaty is not likely to change the strategic balance between Russia and the United States. He said he plans to retain 1,500 to 2,200 nuclear missiles - about the numbers Mr. Bush announced last month for the American arsenal - which is enough to overwhelm any missile defenses now on the drawing board.

The mutual reduction is also a significant advantage for Mr. Putin, because Russia cannot afford to sustain a large arsenal. SeniorRussian officials have declared the ABM Treaty "strategically irrelevant."

In short, Russia is the easier part of the equation. The far harder issues - arguably more difficult now that Mr. Bush has shown his willingness to scuttle a treaty - involve keeping the lid on established nuclear powers like China and new nuclear ones like Pakistan. China has complained about the American plans to build missile defenses and warned it would build up its nuclear stockpile in response. It is feared that Pakistan's stockpiles could fall into the hands of disgruntled military officers or Islamic fundamentalists with ties to Al Qaeda.

And then there are concerns about countries like Iraq or North Korea, or nuclear-armed terrorists, who dream of delivering nuclear weapons that arrive with no return address.

The very existence of the ABM Treaty for the past 29 years meant that China did not have to worry that either Washington or Moscow would construct a missile defense system that would neutralize its minimal force of 20 or so intercontinental ballistic missiles. Long before Mr. Bush came to office, China said it planned to "modernize" that force, meaning it would slowly become bigger and more accurate.

But now that Mr. Bush is free to build missile defenses, China is likely to speed up that effort - or so the American intelligence community warned a year ago. "That's the real problem here," said Senator Joseph R. Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "China will speed up. And I just saw the Indian ambassador, who nodded and said that would put pressure for India to do the same. And then, of course, the Pakistanis match the Indians. Pretty soon, you've started another arms race."

Perhaps with that in mind, Mr. Bush called President Jiang Zemin of China on Thursday and offered to start up broad strategic talks. That doesn't mean talks on a treaty, the administration says, but on making sure each country understands the other.

"It's about a lot more than offensive reductions on our part, and on what they have said for a long time will be a build-up on their part," said Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, in an interview today. "It'll be a bit on missile defenses, some on conventional weapons, some about not doing things that heighten tensions with Taiwan."

Pakistan represents a different kind of problem. It has never signed a major nuclear treaty, including the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It has always kept out international inspectors. Pakistani officials say that just as Mr. Bush wants freedom to test his defense systems, they want freedom to test and build their nuclear answer to India's arsenal.

Mr. Armitage said today that the administration's goals with Pakistan were basic. "We're a long way from talking" about the nonproliferation treaty, he said. "We are interested in making sure their nuclear programs are secure, that their materials are properly stored, among other things."

While Mr. Armitage was too diplomatic to say so, those talks have become particularly urgent since the Central Intelligence Agency began identifying Pakistani nuclear scientists of dubious loyalties. And it means that the United States is counting on its ability to pressure Pakistan politically, rather than fitting it into a treaty framework.

Then come Iraq and North Korea, where Mr. Bush demands that nuclear inspectors must be allowed free rein. So far, both countries have refused. And that may set up the true post-arms control, post-Sept. 11 confrontation: Dealing diplomatically, and perhaps militarily, with countries that could supply or launch nuclear weapons long before Mr. Bush's missile defenses are ready.

----

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.

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

-------- new york

N.R.C. Is Watching Operators at Indian Point Nuclear Plant

By MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times
December 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/15/nyregion/15INDI.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said today that it had begun round-the- clock observation of the operators at the Indian Point 2 nuclear plant and that it would continue to do so until it had seen each of five operating teams complete three 12-hour shifts.

The commission is taking the action because when seven groups of operators took their annual requalification exams at different times in the past year, four groups failed.

The commission often conducts round-the-clock surveillance if a plant is restarting after a lengthy safety-related shutdown. A commission spokesman, Neil A. Sheehan, said that in any other circumstances, "It's rare that we would use this kind of coverage."

On Thursday night, more than 300 people attended a hearing by the health committee of the Westchester County Board of Legislators to discuss whether the Indian Point plant, about 30 miles north of New York City in Buchanan, N.Y., is vulnerable to a terrorist attack, and whether the county should withdraw its endorsement of Indian Point's emergency plan. Most of the speakers urged that the plant be shut down until its safety could be guaranteed.

To run the plant continuously, Indian Point 2 uses five platoons of operators. Additional licensed operators, some who are in management and others who fill in for those who are sick or on vacation, make up an extra two teams for testing purposes, so the number of teams tested was seven but the number in normal rotation is only five.

Congresswoman Sue W. Kelly, whose district includes Buchanan, had requested round-the-clock coverage in the control room. The commission responded, in a letter dated Thursday and released today, that it would do that until each of the five teams had worked for three days. Its observers may step out of the control room briefly to observe operators in other parts of the plant, Mr. Sheehan said.

The commission has a resident inspector at the plant, and experts in various specialties visit on occasion.

In a report on Dec. 5, the N.R.C. said that the failure of the teams had "substantial importance to safety" and would result in additional attention by the commission. In Thursday's letter to Ms. Kelly, Richard A. Meserve, the chairman of the N.R.C., said that the failures "have further affected public confidence regarding the training and qualifications of the licensed operators."

The requalification tests were conducted by the new owner of the reactor, Entergy Nuclear, which bought Indian Point 2 from Consolidated Edison on Sept. 6.

Entergy said one reason for the high failure rate is that it has made the test tougher, and that it is now improving operator training. Entergy also has a backlog of repair work to complete at the reactor.

-------- us politics

Reno, Freeh Out of Wen Ho Lee Probe

By Robert Gehrke
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 14, 2001; 5:27 PM

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Former Attorney General Janet Reno and former FBI Director Louis Freeh won't have to explain the government's investigation into suspected espionage involving Wen Ho Lee after a judge ruled Friday such depositions could compromise nuclear security.

Attorneys for the Energy Department's former chief investigator, Notra Trulock, wanted to take depositions from Reno, Freeh and two FBI agents in hopes they would help show Trulock did not focus the investigation on the Taiwanese-born Lee because of his race.

Thomas Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which is representing Trulock, said the Justice Department "doesn't want Freeh and Reno to testify because they have something to hide."

The FBI's mishandling of the Lee case was a major embarrassment for the bureau. A review of the case called it an investigation that "from its very first moments went awry."

Trulcok is suing Lee and two government investigators, claiming accusations they made of racial profiling defamed Trulock.

But U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee on Friday agreed with a magistrate who had found that the deposition request was too broad and nuclear secrets could be divulged.

The attorneys have narrowed their request and it is up to the Justice Department to decide whether to agree to it.

Trulock's attorneys have already interviewed Lee, his wife and former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.

Lee was held in solitary confinement for nine months and indicted on 59 felony counts alleging he transferred nuclear weapons information to portable computer tapes. He was never charged with spying and denied giving information to China.

As the government's case crumbled, Lee pleaded guilty to a felony count of downloading sensitive material.

Lee, who was a nuclear scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, has sued Richardson and the government for defamation.

----

Growing Conflict Over Presidential Powers
Senate Leaders Ask EPA For Clean Air Documents

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 15, 2001; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46209-2001Dec14?language=printer

A Senate committee yesterday directed the Bush administration to turn over documents related to an air pollution policy under development, opening a new front in a growing power struggle between the executive and legislative branches.

In a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said he was "concerned about rumored changes to [regulatory policy] that might undermine its benefits." Jeffords, joined by five committee Democrats, told the EPA to provide "all documents analyzing or discussing the impacts on future emissions under the Clean Air Act that would result" from various changes.

At issue is the administration's soon-to-be-released policy regarding emissions from old coal-fired power plants that have been expanded. In a broader sense, it is the latest effort by Congress to prevent the administration from acting alone and without congressional oversight.

On Thursday, President Bush invoked executive privilege to prevent a House committee from having access to prosecutors' records from a decades-old mob case and the Clinton administration campaign-finance investigation. That provoked bipartisan objections, including a threat to take the administration to court from Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of the Government Reform Committee, who said: "This is not a monarchy."

Also Thursday, Bush informed Russia that the United States would pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, prompting protests from lawmakers who said they were not consulted. "Shutting Congress out of the decision-making process involving agreements among nations is a dangerous and corrosive course of action," said Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), the Senate president pro tempore, who also objected to Bush's decision to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal without using the framework of the START treaties. "It effectively undermines the intent of the framers of our Constitution. Monarchs make treaties. American presidents propose treaties."

Congress is already in a dispute with the administration over energy and environmental policy. Vice President Cheney rejected a "demand letter" from Congress's General Accounting Office for materials related to the development of the administration's energy policy; a decision whether to proceed with legal action is on hold. Earlier, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, threatened to subpoena documents related to the administration's regulatory decisions; the White House allowed Lieberman's staff to view the documents.

Lieberman is also a signer of yesterday's letter from Jeffords. The subject is the "New Source Review," a provision of the Clean Air Act that requires utilities and other big polluters to install the latest technology if they expand older, coal-fired plants. Power producers had found ways to expand output without triggering the requirement to replace emissions technology, until the Clinton administration launched a series of lawsuits to crack down on compliance.

The Bush administration is reexamining the lawsuits and enforcement of the New Source Review, which industry opposes. Congressional officials say environmentalists in the administration, such as Whitman, favor a stringent regulation of new sources of emissions and propose combining the policy with new legislation restricting overall emissions of major pollutants. The congressional officials say others, such as Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Cheney, support more lenient requirements for industry and are not eager to proceed with legislation governing major pollutants.

Jeffords and the committee Democrats fear that the administration will seek to implement its new policy -- possibly one allowing emissions increases for power plants -- without consulting Congress or supporting broader pollutant legislation. "We have a right to know how the EPA is reaching a decision on how it is going to implement one of the most essential clean air programs," said a senior committee aide. "If we do this, it should be done in the context of the legislative process."

An EPA spokesman, Joseph Martyak, said he had not yet seen the request. "We always try to work with the Congress and especially Chairman Jeffords," he said.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Tora Bora transmissions may be bin Laden

December 15, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/15122001-081206-7666r.htm

Encircled in a shrinking defense perimeter under relentless bombing attacks Sunday, trapped al Qaida fighters -- and perhaps their leader Osama bin Laden -- can be heard on intercepted radio transmissions at the Tora Bora mountain battlefront, running low on ammunition and survival time, Eastern Alliance fighters and U.S. sources said.

In the caves freshly abandoned, ground forces are recovering weapons and documents while in Kandahar, to the south, the London newspaper The Observer said its reporters found a detailed set of plans for a bomb attack on London's financial district.

The 80-page notebook in the former Taliban stronghold constitutes "the first hard evidence" that London is an intended al Qaida target, the newspaper said. A Scotland Yard source told the newspaper that anti-terrorist officers would investigate the notebook, written in English.

U.S. officials confirmed for United Press International Saturday that U.S. Special Forces in the Tora Bora region have intercepted conversations between bin Laden and his al Qaida commanders.

Military officials believe bin Laden is among the hundreds of al Qaida fighters pinned down in the region's complex of caves and tunnels.

A U.S. intelligence source who had seen the transcripts described the transmissions as "quarrelsome." He told UPI they appear to catch the Saudi exile being accused by al Qaida commanders of "mishandling them," he said.

The nature of the exchange -- that is, conversation as opposed to mere statements -- decreases chances the transmissions are a ruse as some have suggested, he added.

Saturday's Washington Times said the tapes have been matched with known recordings of bin Laden.

A former senior CIA expert in the eavesdropping technology also confirmed the Tora Bora intercept, explaining the electronic devices work like cutting-edge versions of police scanners. They rapidly "hop-scotch" over frequencies until they fix on a target, which is then taped and forwarded to translators and analysts unless "you happen have a translator on the spot," he said. Such short-range walkie-talkie transmissions are "easier to get than cell phones," he told UPI.

At the battlefront, U.S.-led warplanes on Saturday and early Sunday again pounded al Qaida positions in the Tora Bora region where bin Laden is believed to be hiding. CNN early Sunday local time showed videotape of the smoky plumes of the latest bombs while a correspondent listened on a radio to the reaction of the al Qaida fighters on the ground in the target area. He could hear, he said, accounts of how they are running low on ammunition.

Eastern Alliance defense chief Hazrat Ali told ABC News that his fighters have captured a cave in the Tora Bora mountains where bin Laden was recently hiding. Estimates of the remaining fighting force in the area range from 300 to 1,000 men.

CNN reported Saturday there was talk of a possible surrender of some al Qaida fighters, but added there was no indication that such an event might be imminent.

In other developments, a British military team flew to Kabul on Saturday to prepare the ground for an early deployment of an international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, officials said.

A British Ministry of Defense spokesman told United Press International that the team, led by Maj. Gen. John McColl, commander of the army's 3rd Division, would liaise with U.S. and other coalition military commanders in Afghanistan.

McColl's team consists of about a dozen experts who would examine practical issues related to the deployment of several thousand peacekeepers from the European Union and other Western countries as well as Muslim states.

As for the ongoing military offensive in Afghanistan, more than 180 bombs were dropped in the Tora Bora region on Friday, and even more on Thursday, according to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

He said a "very energetic battle" is still under way, with Afghan troops doing most of the fighting and U.S. Special Forces largely directing air attacks.

Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander of the war, said the Tora Bora area was "contained."

Opposition commanders accompanied by American Special Forces have encircled the two valleys that make up the Tora Bora region, Franks said. They are in a pocket of the White Mountains that backs up to Pakistan and the Khyber Pass.

"It sort of becomes a hammer and an anvil," he said, with the al Qaida force crushed in between

But this particular battle will take time, Franks warned: "This is a reasonably large area, and it has been developed over time as a substantial cave and tunnel, fortress-style complex. And so it's going to take us a while to get through."

The terrorist fighters are running short of food, water and ammunition, Franks said.

"We can wait longer than they can, and we will maintain pressure on this pocket of al Qaida until they are ours," Franks said.

President Bush on Friday called the tape of bin Laden released the day before "a devastating declaration of guilt" for the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

Bush said the decision to release the video -- on which bin Laden said he had calculated casualties in advance and knew that two planes would hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center -- was difficult because he feared putting families of the more than 3,000 people killed through more emotional trauma.

"On the other hand," Bush said, "I knew the tape would be a devastating declaration of guilt" on bin Laden's part. Bush reiterated that he wants bin Laden "dead or alive -- it doesn't matter."

(With reporting by Richard Sale, UPI terrorism correspondent, in New York)

----

Marines Plan POW Site in Kandahar

By DOUG MELLGREN
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 15, 07:27 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7GDK3BO0

CAMP RHINO, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. Marines plan to build a prisoner-of-war camp at Kandahar's airport to house up to 300 al-Qaida fighters they hope will surrender or be captured near Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, a military officer said Saturday.

The officer at Camp Rhino, the Marines' base in the remote Afghan desert, said the military anticipated between 100 and 300 prisoners will be taken in the area, where U.S. airstrikes and eastern alliance fighters have cornered troops of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

``A primary focus is to receive prisoners from Tora Bora and build a site for them,'' said the officer, who is involved in the planning process and spoke only on condition of anonymity. ``It is our interest and the interest of the Western world to capture as many as possible.''

He said prisoners captured in Tora Bora could give information about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, which Washington blames on al-Qaida's leader, bin Laden.

The officer said the Marines plan to move their operations from Camp Rhino to the airport, possibly within weeks. The Kandahar airport, though damaged and austere, will be a vast improvement over Camp Rhino, where blowing sand and dust clog equipment and make life for troops miserable.

The Marines, with the blessing and help of anti-Taliban forces, took control of Kandahar International Airport early Friday without resistance. They were reinforced by troops from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit who doubled the number of troops at the airport, and were flown in by helicopter under the cover of darkness.

The officer said a possible site for the prisoner's compound at the airport, which is still being swept for debris, mines and booby traps, was already identified. He said the Marines also hope to improve the damaged runway so large transport aircraft can land, speeding up troop deployment and possible humanitarian aid flights.

The Marines have said they want to turn over the facility to Afghanistan's interim government as soon a possible and to hire local builders to improve the airport while boosting the local economy.

The Marines have already built a detention compound at Camp Rhino with a shipping container and tents. So far, its only inmate has been John Walker, an American captured while he fought with the Taliban, who was flown to the U.S. Navy ship Peleliu on Friday.

The officer said he had spoken briefly with Walker, who was wounded in the leg. Walker said little, but was dressed in warm civilian clothes borrowed from Marines and was able to sleep on a stretcher in greater comfort that most of the troops at this primitive base, he said.

----

Bin Laden's voice detected

Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011215-68264047.htm

The U.S. has detected the distinctive voice of Osama bin Laden on hand-held radio in the mountains of Tora Bora giving orders to his al Qaeda troops, U.S. officials say....

----

EU agrees on need for peacekeepers

December 15, 2001
By Paul Ames
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011215-89391336.htm

BRUSSELS - European Union leaders agreed yesterday that all 15 of their nations were willing to send troops to Afghanistan as part of an international force to keep peace after the defeat of the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies.

The agreement to contribute as many as 4,000 European troops to the security force, which is awaiting a U.N. mandate, came at the start of a two-day summit.

"This is an important precedent for the EU," said Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, who announced the decision at a news conference.

The speed of the decision underlined increased unity among the Europeans after the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, although leaders stressed their nations were putting units at the service of the international force, rather than launching an EU initiative.

British and French troops are expected to make up the bulk of the contribution, with other nations offering smaller, specialized units.

Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama said his country would offer a C-130 transport plane and a military medical unit. His Swedish counterpart, Anna Lindh, spoke of deploying an intelligence unit.

The force is expected to head to Afghanistan in the next few weeks to support the interim administration taking power in Kabul Dec. 22.

Britain is expected to lead the force and was playing host to talks with top military commanders in London yesterday on its role and composition.

The United States, Turkey, Canada and Jordan attended those talks and were likely to be among non-EU nations participating.

U.S. envoy James F. Dobbins said officials in London have not yet agreed to the composition of the Afghan force, and that British and American officials will be heading to Kabul to look at the situation and decide the appropriate size.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council was discussing the mechanics of setting up the multinational security force, and diplomats said yesterday a resolution authorizing its deployment would not be adopted until next week.

In Brussels, the EU leaders also approved measures setting up unprecedented cooperation among law-enforcement agencies of the 15 nations to tackle terrorism and other serious crimes.

Under the new laws, the European Union will have a single arrest warrant, meaning police in one country will be able to arrest and deport those wanted by another without going through complex extradition procedures.

"They will give Europe the means to effectively combat organized crime and terrorism," said Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres.

--------

Al Qaeda Resistance Falters Under Heavy Attack

December 15, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Fighting.html

TORA BORA, Afghanistan (AP) -- The last major pocket of al-Qaida resistance in Afghanistan appeared to be crumbling Saturday as groups of fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden were captured or fled and others debated over two-way radios whether to surrender.

The fighters, believed to number up to 1,000, have been under relentless attack for weeks by U.S. warplanes and tribal forces of the eastern alliance, aided by U.S. special forces in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan's Tora Bora region.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, during a visit to Yerevan, Armenia, said U.S. and tribal forces were making headway Saturday against al-Qaida fighters.

``It is estimated there are hundreds of Al-Qaida, possible Taliban, in the caves and tunnels, and U.S. and coalition forces are pursuing them. The last report I received says opposition forces are making success,'' Rumsfeld said.

On radio frequencies of the eastern alliance, one fighter said 60 Chechens had fled, leaving behind six wounded and many dead. Of the wounded, he asked his commander, Hazrat Ali: ``What do you want us to do with them?'' Ali said they should be held while he sent in reinforcements.

``Don't give them time! They're taking advantage of time,'' an eastern alliance commander said over the radio.

Top commander Haji Zahir said al-Qaida leaders told him they were ready to surrender, and were holding talks with the eastern alliance on how to do it in an orderly fashion. But after two surrender agreements fell through this week, Zahir remained skeptical.

``We won't accept conditions at all. We just want them to surrender. I told my forces to hold their positions, because I don't believe them,'' he said. ``Our first and last condition is that they surrender.''

Some al-Qaida fighters could be heard debating a surrender over two-way radios. Alliance commander Mohammed Khan said a group of Arabs wanted to surrender but that a group of Chechen fighters was trying to persuade them not to do so.

Earlier, two emissaries approached the front line to announce 300 men wanted to give up, but the men never emerged, said fighter Said Mohammed Pawhalan.

While some al-Qaida fighters tried to surrender, others fled. Khan said three captured Arabs told him 50 al-Qaida leaders left on mules early Saturday bound for the Pakistani border, only a few miles away.

``They are commanders, but not the top commanders. They are escaping one by one or two by two,'' he said.

Pakistan has sent troops and helicopters to seal the border.

Earlier during his journey, Rumsfeld said a group of 50 al-Qaida fighters had surrendered Friday, and that the rest were running out of escape routes. It was not clear whether they were the same group Khan mentioned.

Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander of the war, said he would not know until at least Saturday how many al-Qaida prisoners had been taken or whether any were senior leaders of bin Laden's terrorist network. He said they would be screened by U.S. forces.

A U.S. military official in southern Afghanistan said he expected up to 300 prisoners from the Tora Bora area, and that U.S. Marines were building a prisoner-of-war camp at Kandahar International Airport.

``A primary focus is to receive prisoners from Tora Bora and build a site for them,'' said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``It is our interest and the interest of the Western world to capture as many as possible.'' The Marines said they would transfer the bulk of their forces from Camp Rhino, a desert airstrip, to the airport, which they seized Friday in their largest mobilization in Afghanistan.

The Tora Bora area is the last major pocket of al-Qaida resistance in Afghanistan.

Franks said other holdouts include the vicinity of Shindand in western Afghanistan, and the vicinity of Kandahar.

``In fact, we suspect that there are some pockets of resistance in and around Kandahar itself. Also, northwest of Kandahar, up in Helmand province, we believe that there are some residual Taliban elements,'' he said Friday.

U.S. airstrikes continued Saturday around Tora Bora, including on mountain ridges where bombs had not previously fallen. That could indicate the Americans were attacking fleeing fighters.

Eastern alliance forces battled close to the mouth of a cave which hundreds of al-Qaida fighters were defending, and which Ali said was bin Laden's personal lair. Radio traffic indicated machine-gun fire was coming from the cave. B-52 bombers and fighter jets continued to pound the area.

``I don't know, but I think there is a place inside where Osama is,'' Ali said.

Twelve U.S. special forces fighting with the Afghans came under heavy fire from a machine-gun nest Friday, said an Afghan fighting with them, Khawri. Two Americans were grazed by bullets, but were well enough to walk down the mountain, he said. Franks had no information on American casualties but could not rule it out.

In addition to the al-Qaida near the cave, up to 600 others were believed to be cornered in an eight-square-mile forest nearby, just miles from the Pakistan border.

A large fire bomb fell on the forest Friday evening, sending up a huge and lingering fireball that was visible two miles away. U.S. bombers and AC-130 Spectre gunships circled over the ridge where the suspect cave was located, pounding defensive positions.

Although bin Laden was the focus of the fierce conflict at Tora Bora, some officials say he is more likely holed up in another part of Afghanistan, nearer Kandahar in the south, or may even have left the country.

-------- china

Explosions rock southern China

By Kirk Troy
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
December 15, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/15122001-013618-8133r.htm

BEIJING, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- A series of explosions rocked two cities in China's southern Guangdong province Friday morning, killing two and wounding at least six, according to state-run media.

Police in the region refused to comment on the incidents, which some reports say involved nearly 15 separate blasts.

The explosions shook the port town of Zhanjiang, about 200 miles west of Hong Kong, according to the South China Morning Post and official Chinese state media Saturday.

Reports said just before dawn at least 13 explosions tore through residential areas, hotels and office buildings in the Xiashan district. No one immediately claimed responsibility.

The Beijing Youth Daily reported three explosions in residential areas of Jiangmen, about 140 miles northeast of Zhanjiang.

Explosives are easily available in China and many are manufactured at illegal or makeshift factories. a number of tragic incidents over the past year have led police to crack down on such operations.

(Katherine Arms in Hong Kong contributed.)

-------- drug war

Bush: Quit Drugs, Join Terrorism Fight

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Saturday, December 15, 2001; Page A04
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46662-2001Dec14?language=printer

Citing narcotics trafficking as a source of funding for terrorism, President Bush called on Americans to join the anti-terrorism effort by giving up illegal drugs.

"It's so important for Americans to know that the traffic in drugs finances the work of terror, sustaining terrorists, that terrorists use drug profits to fund their cells to commit acts of murder," Bush said. "If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America."

U.S. officials have accused Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, as well as their hosts, Afghanistan's Taliban rulers, of supporting themselves with illicit drug profits.

With the U.S.-led war forcing the Taliban to flee and an interim coalition government ready to take power Dec. 22, Washington is eager to get rid of opium stockpiles in Afghanistan and to stop farmers from planting more poppies.

"The Taliban were a drug trafficking government," Steven Casteel, assistant administrator for intelligence at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said this month. But he and others noted that the Northern Alliance, which has led the effort on the ground to oust the Taliban, was also involved in the drug trade.

----

Babies Used in Drug Ring, Officials Say

By JODI WILGOREN
New York Times
December 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/15/national/15BABY.html

CHICAGO, Dec. 14 - Federal officials today charged 35 people with running an international cocaine and heroin smuggling ring that used women traveling with infants - some of them "rented" from poor families - to transport drugs in cans of baby formula.

"This operation preyed on the great respect that we as human beings all afford mothers and babies - and betrayed that respect brazenly," Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said in announcing the indictments here this morning. "Renting babies for the purpose of allowing drug dealers to smuggle cocaine is truly a new low."

According to indictments unsealed today, over the last two years female couriers flew on 34 occasions with 20 different infants from Chicago to Panama, where they picked up formula cans injected with liquefied cocaine, and then returned. Others smuggled cocaine into the United States from Jamaica inside rum bottles, the handles of their suitcases or injected into their body cavities.

Most of the drugs were distributed in Chicago and New York, but some were sold in London and Birmingham, England, officials said.

Scott Levine, an assistant United States attorney, said parents in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago were paid $200 to $2,000, plus marijuana in some cases, to send their babies on the trips, which lasted from two days to two weeks. One child, the daughter of Keith Moore, 35, and Marisa Hardy, 22, made six trips, the first when she was 3 weeks old, the indictment says.

"On that trip the baby was crying and looked sickly," Mr. Levine said in an interview. "The baby was crying a lot, so Catrina Martin left her in an empty bathtub and closed the door." On a separate trip, he said, "That same baby was crying so much that the courier, Shanae Reed, left her alone in the hotel room and went out for a beer."

Ms. Martin was arrested in London with the baby and about 18 baby- formula cans containing six kilos of cocaine, Mr. Levine said. Mr. Moore and Ms. Hardy, who are among four Chicago parents charged with loaning or renting their children to the operation, have had their parental rights terminated and the baby, now more than 2 years old, has been adopted.

"These drug dealers used the most depraved way possible in which to import and export their commodity," Mr. Levine said. "There are people who are willing to do anything and come up with any imaginable way of smuggling cocaine and heroin into the United States and out of the United States."

Of the 35 people indicted, three were arraigned today, and four others are in custody on previous charges. Nineteen other people the authorities say were connected to the ring have previously been charged, and all but one of them convicted, over the past two years.

The operation was exposed when a customs inspector in Newark stopped a woman traveling to London in January 1999 and discovered six formula cans filled with liquid cocaine, officials said. Separately, Chicago police also received a call from a frantic mother when her baby failed to return from a smuggling trip after a week.

According to the indictment, Clacy Watson Herrera, who is in custody in Panama, and Byron Watson of Montego Bay, Jamaica, supplied the drugs. They liquefied the cocaine in a blender with hot water, officials said, squirted it with a syringe through holes in the cans made with a hammer and nail, soldered the holes and reattached the baby formula labels.

Each 16-ounce can held up to $700,000 worth of cocaine, which was later turned into crack for sale, the authorities said.

The suspects include parents of the "rented" babies, women who acted as couriers, people who fraudulently obtained free airline tickets and false passports, and those who orchestrated the scheme. One of the ringleaders, officials say, is Selena Johnson, 29, who recruited Mr. Moore and Ms. Hardy's baby. The indictment says that Orville Wilson, 38, a New Yorker, came up with the scheme of having female couriers travel with babies and cans of formula.

A total of 20 kilos of cocaine was seized on four trips. The authorities believe the ring may have made as many as 45 such trips. The suspects face penalties ranging from five years to life in prison, with fines up to $4 million. The charges are all drug- related.

-------- india

INTERNATIONAL
Group in Pakistan Is Blamed by India for Suicide Raid

New York Times
December 15, 2001
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/15/international/15MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

NEW DELHI, Dec. 14 - India today blamed a militant Islamic group that operates openly in Pakistan and Kashmir for a suicide attack on the Indian Parliament that killed seven people, and it demanded that Pakistan halt the group's activities, arrest its leaders and cut off its financial assets.

The deadly shootout at the nerve center of the world's largest democracy on Thursday was potentially dangerous for India and Pakistan - nuclear powers that have gone to war twice in the past 50 years over Kashmir - and for the United States.

Washington has declared zero tolerance of terrorism, but has also relied heavily on Pakistan in its war against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. The question is whether to continue urging restraint by India, or to allow India - as the United States has with Israel - to retaliate for suicide bombings.

India must decide whether to risk a war with Pakistan for the sake of going into the Pakistan-controlled area of Kashmir to strike at the group it blames for the attack.

For its part, Pakistan must decide whether to continue ignoring Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group India blames for the attack. The group's leader recently called for more attacks on India like the one it carried out a year ago on the Red Fort, one of Delhi's most famous sights.

But cracking down now might further inflame Islamic fundamentalists already angry about Pakistan's support of the American campaign against the Taliban.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Army of the Pure, is waging a war to drive India from the predominantly Muslim region of Kashmir, a border area that India considers a state in its union. It dismissed India's accusation today as "nothing less than a lie." Pakistan said India had no proof of the group's involvement and warned India not to strike back.

"India will pay heavily if they engage in any misadventure," said Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for Pakistan's military regime.

For now, India has defined the Parliament attack in terms that appear to leave the country's leaders few choices besides very strong action against the militant group. Political pressure to act quickly and dramatically is already mounting.

Within hours of the attack, the cabinet had vowed to "liquidate the terrorists and their sponsors wherever they are, whoever they are." In the formal diplomatic demand it issued today to Pakistan to shut down the group, India described the assault on Parliament as an attack on "not just the symbol but the seat of Indian democracy."

India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, was beseeched this morning by members of Parliament from his own Hindu nationalist party who want India to destroy training camps for groups such as Lashkar-e- Taiba in Pakistan-held Kashmir.

So far, Bush administration officials seem to be studiously avoiding any public insistence that India restrain itself in this case.

That contrasts with their pleas for Indian restraint after another militant outfit that operates in Pakistan, Jaish-e-Muhmammad, was implicated in the Oct. 1 attack on the Jammu and Kashmir state Legislative Assembly in Srinagar.

This time, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the United States understood that India would take action against "these murderers" who attacked Parliament.

Robert D. Blackwill, the American ambassador to India, today explicitly linked the Sept. 11 attacks with the attack on Thursday. "The tragic event that occurred yesterday and that was perpetrated by terrorists was no different in its objective from the terror attacks in the U.S. on Sept. 11," Mr. Blackwill said.

To Pakistan's chagrin, India has used this most recent attack to reshape the terms of the debate over Kashmir. Pakistan, whose population is overwhelmingly Muslim, has always described the conflict there as a freedom struggle by the Kashmiri people. But India now casts the issue as a facet of the global fight against terrorism.

"It will have to be projected along those lines, that it's a war against terrorism, not an India-Pakistan thing limited to the Kashmir Valley," said one Indian official. "It's an attack on the heartland of our democracy. It's an attack on India."

Jaswant Singh, India's minister of external affairs, said Indian intelligence agencies had gathered "entirely credible" evidence that it was Lashkar-e-Taiba that dispatched a five-man suicide squad with assault rifles, plastic explosives and dozens of grenades to storm Parliament.

Mr. Singh said the evidence of Laskhar's involvement was being shared with the United States and other countries, though it would not be made public to protect India's intelligence gathering.

When asked this morning by reporters when he visited Parliament whether India would attack militants in Pakistan-held Kashmir, Mr. Vajpayee pleaded, "Give some time to the government."

Some Indians, like V.P. Malik, who retired last year after three years as India's army chief, warned that attacking militant camps in Pakistan- held Kashmir could lead to war with Pakistan and would not necessarily achieve the desired military objective. The camps might just spring up elsewhere if Pakistan is supporting the groups. "There is always a possibility of these kinds of actions escalating to war," he said. "So you have to look at the endgame, the political objective."

The United States has so far refrained from putting either of the groups blamed for this week's attack and the earlier assault on Kashmir's legislature on its formal list of terrorist organizations, which would - among other things - forbid them to raise money in the United States.

In Washington, a senior State Department official said today that scrutiny of the two groups would intensify. "They are candidates" for the list, and are likely to land on it if the Indians are right, the official said, conceding the situation showed how hard it is to fight terrorism without fueling further conflict.

"Looking at extremism in other areas associated with Al Qaeda is more complicated. There may have to be two tracks," the official said, declining to explain further.

Gauging the American mood is a major preoccupation for Indian officials. The Indians are asking themselves whether they can better achieve their aim of stopping the violent attacks by groups fighting in Kashmir through military action or by persuading the United States to exert more of its now more formidable influence with Pakistan.

Since the Oct. 1 terrorist attack in Srinagar, the Americans have been pressuring Pakistan to rein in Jaish- e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. A man who answered at a Lashkar-e- Taiba telephone number in Islamabad tonight said the group had moved its offices out of Pakistan to Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

Pakistani officials say the military government asked groups including Lashkar to leave Pakistan proper because of international pressure.

But Lashkar-e-Taiba is not gone from Pakistan. Its leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, had recently spoken at mosques in Lahore and other Pakistani cities about his determination that Pakistan's change of policy toward the Taliban will not mean the end of the war in Kashmir.

In a statement released today, the group's spokesman, Muhammad Yahya Mujahid, accused Indian intelligence agents of engineering the attack on Parliament as part of a conspiracy to discredit the militant groups fighting in Kashmir. "The attack on the Indian Parliament is the game plan of its own intelligence agencies," he said.

-------- israel / palestine

'Israeli death squad disarmed men and shot them'

By Phil Reeves in Salfit, West Bank
15 December 2001
Independent (UK)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=110208

The Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, says some of his government's military strikes against the Palestinians make him "shudder".

Mr Peres would have had good reason to shudder yesterday, had he listened to the testimonies of the residents of Salfit. They described in detail how an Israeli undercover death squad arrived in the West Bank town in a pre-dawn raid and shot two young policemen at close range as they lay unarmed on the ground.

The Israeli soldiers, dressed in black, spoke Arabic so fluently that Iman Herzala ­ who heard them talking in the street outside her house ­ at first wondered whether they were Palestinian forces taking part in a training exercise. But that was before she saw the executions, less than 100 yards from her front door.

Residents had scraped earth over the spot, but yesterday afternoon patches of blood were visible. A low wall bore the marks of several bullets.

Looking hollow-eyed and distressed, Mrs Herzala, 37, who has six children, described the last moments of Dia Nabil Mahmoud, 19, and Abdul Ashour, 22.

They were among seven people to be killed by the Israelis yesterday in raids on more than four communities in the occupied territories as Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, increased his military pressure on the Palestinians. At the same time, Israeli tanks and bulldozers carried out their biggest housing demolition of the intifada at Khan Younis in the Gaza strip, knocking down 35 houses and making 345 people homeless.

Mr Mahmoud ­ a member of Yasser Arafat's Force 17 security force ­ and Mr Ashour, from Palestinian military intelligence, were shot in the early stages of the Israeli raid in which tanks and bulldozers, backed by helicopters, came thundering into the Palestinian-run town of 10,000 near Nablus at around 2am.

Mrs Herzala said: "The two boys came and knocked on my door, and told me that the Israelis were invading the town. I opened the door and asked them to come inside, but they refused and went on walking up the street. The Israeli soldiers came up to them and asked them to put down their weapons ­ they only had one ­ and put their hands behind their backs.

"They put down the gun. The Israelis asked them to lie on the ground, which they did. Then they started shooting them with machine-guns."

She said she watched the scene ­ illuminated by the light of the soldiers' torches ­ by peering out of her front door. At the same time, Khadiji al-Fataj, 61, was looking down at the spot where the execution took place from the window of her home, a few doors from Mrs Herzala's. She said: "I heard soldiers asking the policemen to stop and lie down. One was on one side of the road, and one on the other. I saw them being shot."

Yesterday afternoon, as the women told their stories, Mr Mahmoud's father sat close by the spot, dazed and exhausted. "He was just a child. If you look at his picture, you can see that," he said.

The Israeli armed forces said the Salfit raid was in response to "murderous terrorist attacks" in the area.

The wording of their official explanation was suspiciously vague: Israeli soldiers came on "armed Palestinians who came out of targets for detention. They stormed the terrorists and killed them."

Mr Sharon has moved military operations into a higher gear. Yesterday's operations were aimed at Fatah, the mainstream organisation headed by Yasser Arafat. The six people killed in Salfit were all part of Mr Arafat's security apparatus. Three homes were destroyed, all belonging to Fatah members.

Mr Sharon is bludgeoning the rickety structure of the Palestinian Authority, liquidating its police and attacking the middle-ground pro-Arafat leadership. But there is dissent in the government ranks.

Mr Peres told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that Mr Sharon's decision to shun the Palestinian Authority was short-sighted. Mr Peres reportedly said: "I asked him [Sharon], 'Suppose Arafat disappears, what will happen then?'"

----

U.S. envoy leaves; Israel unleashes raids

December 15, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011215-37831916.htm

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel rounded up dozens of suspected Palestinian militants in the West Bank on Friday in the widest sweep in 15 months of fighting, saying it had to step in where Yasser Arafat failed. Eight Palestinians were killed in gun battles with Israeli troops.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli warplanes dropped two bombs on a Palestinian security compound, injuring seven Palestinians. Israel said it was retaliating for Palestinian mortar fire.

Early Saturday, more than 15 Israeli tanks, accompanied by personnel carriers and jeeps, entered the Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, witnesses said. The troops announced by loudspeaker that the town was under curfew. The army said it was checking the report.

A Palestinian official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said President Bush called Arafat on Friday night and urged him to crack down on Islamic militants. The White House said Bush had not called Arafat.

U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni, who tried and failed to negotiate a truce deal in the past three weeks, left Friday for Jordan and Egypt, and may return to Washington.

Bush said Zinni's job is being made tougher because Arafat is reluctant to round up "killers and people who would derail the peace process." U.S. officials in Jerusalem said Zinni's mission was also complicated by Israel's decision to cut ties with Arafat.

Zinni's mission was accompanied by an upsurge in attacks by Islamic militants on Israelis, followed by Israeli reprisals. Since Zinni's arrival, 63 Palestinians and 44 Israelis have been killed. The Palestinian toll included 29 assailants.

The violence has strained Israel's center-right government. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, a moderate, said in an interview published Friday that it was a mistake to cast Arafat aside. However, Peres said he would not leave the coalition.

Israeli troops raided four West Bank towns and villages on Friday, killing eight Palestinians in gun battles, demolishing two homes and arresting about 50 suspected militants. The Israeli military said some of those detained were suspected of involvement in recent terror attacks. A senior Israeli military commander said it was the largest arrest sweep in 15 months of fighting.

Israel has repeatedly demanded that Arafat crack down on militants.

Government spokesman Arieh Mekel said Israel was no longer waiting for the Palestinian leader to do the job. "We are not telling Arafat anymore to do so. No more. We'll do it ourselves," Mekel said.

The biggest raid Friday was carried out in the Palestinian-ruled village of Salfit, where Israeli troops killed six Palestinian policemen in a gun battle. Army bulldozers also destroyed two houses in the village. After the raid, Israeli tanks drove out of Salfit in a convoy, and soldiers sitting on the armored vehicles flashed victory signs.

In the West Bank town of Hebron, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians from the Islamic Jihad in a gunfight and wounded another, the army said. The army said troops identified and pursued four armed Palestinians, opened fire and killed two.

The latest round of reprisals was triggered by a bombing and shooting attack on an Israeli bus Wednesday carried out by the Islamic militant group Hamas. Ten Israelis were killed and 30 wounded.

In response, Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships have been blasting Palestinian Authority security buildings and police stations for three consecutive nights.

Israel's decision to cut ties with Arafat came early Thursday, in response to the bus attack. The Security Cabinet said Arafat "is no longer relevant to Israel, and Israel will no longer have any connection with him."

Peres, who negotiated interim peace deals with Arafat, said he told Sharon that the decision to shun the Palestinian Authority was shortsighted.

"I asked him (Sharon), 'Suppose Arafat disappears, what will happen then?"' Peres told the Yediot Ahronot daily. "If we chase Arafat out of here, we will get into problems with the Arab world, and Egypt and Jordan will sever ties with us."

Peres also said some of Israel's military strikes against the Palestinians made him "shudder," but that he was ready to admit he was wrong if the reprisals stopped attacks on Israelis by Palestinian militants.

Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rdeneh charged that Israel is trying to sabotage international peace efforts. "This is a comprehensive war against the Palestinian people, its elected leadership and the peace process," he said.

European Union leaders appealed to Israel to resume contacts with Arafat, saying the decision to sever ties undermined peace prospects. The EU said, however, Arafat must dismantle the Hamas and islamic Jihad "terrorist networks."

"Israel needs a partner to negotiate with, both in order to eradicate terrorism and to work towards peace: This partner is the Palestinian Authority and its elected leader, Yasser Arafat," the 15 EU leaders said in a joint statement Friday. "His capacity to combat terrorism must not be weakened," they added.

----

Europe and Arafat

December 15, 2001
Editorial Roundup
Excerpts of editorials from newspapers around the world.
As-Safir
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011215-44800391.htm

BEIRUT - If one is to learn anything from the EU stance, it would be that this position should remove from our minds and calculations two great and dangerous myths:

The first and clearest myth is thinking we can depend on a European position that balances the American position, or one that influences it to our advantage, or to the advantage of what's right and just, or a kind of new cold war, however mild.

The second and deeper myth, is thinking that we can rely on "the international community" and "world conscience" and "the sense of justice and fairness" to compensate for our weakness.

The fall of the second myth should teach us that the "international community" is nothing but a grouping of interests a title for the strong and powerful winners, and we and our partisans are not among them.

Why do we confirm our need for others every day, when they are not in need of us?

----

Israelis move into Gaza

The Associated Press
12/15/2001
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/12/15/israelis-gaza.htm

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israeli troops and tanks searching for militants charged into Palestinian areas at the northern and southern ends of the Gaza Strip before dawn Saturday. Five Palestinians were killed, dozens were injured and several were arrested, Palestinians said.

The Israeli actions were similar to wide-ranging sweeps carried out Friday in the West Bank and Gaza, in which eight Palestinians were killed and about 50 were arrested. They followed a recent upsurge in terror attacks by Islamic militants against Israelis.

In New York, the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution backed by the Palestinians that condemned terror acts and called for an end to the Mideast violence. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, said the measure was aimed at isolating Israel politically.

Saturday's raid began when more than a dozen Israeli tanks, accompanied by armored personnel carriers and jeeps, entered the Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun at the northern tip of Gaza, next to the border with Israel, witnesses said.

The Israeli military, which described the area as a stronghold for militants, announced by loudspeaker that the town was under curfew. The military said its forces came under fire and shot back.

Four Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire in Beit Hanoun, including a 12-year-old boy, according to witnesses and Shifa Hospital in nearby Gaza City. The dead also included a Palestinian police officer whose car was hit.

Four fellow officers in the car were wounded. Overall, about 40 Palestinians were injured in the town, hospital doctors said.

The military said five Palestinians were arrested, while Palestinians put the number at 10.

The Israelis demolished several houses, including one belonging to the founder of the armed wing of the militant group Hamas, Salah Shahed. However, he was not in the area at the time, witnesses said. Also demolished were offices for Palestinian police intelligence and the local headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, witnesses said.

Israeli tanks moved onto the grounds of the Beit Hanoun Secondary Girls' School, putting up tents in the yard and raising an Israeli flag atop one building, witnesses added.

At the southern end of Gaza, a Palestinian militant carrying grenades attempted to cut a fence and enter the Jewish settlement of Gush Katif, but was shot dead by the Israeli military, the army said.

Afterward, Israeli tanks moved into Palestinian territory east of the nearby town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, Palestinians said. One house and several farming fields were destroyed, the Palestinians added.

The daily violence may have put an end to the current round of cease-fire negotiations by U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni.

Zinni, who tried and failed to negotiate a truce deal over the past three weeks, left Friday for Jordan and Egypt, and may go back to Washington. President Bush said Zinni's job was being made tougher because of Arafat's reluctance to round up "killers and people who would derail the peace process."

On Saturday, Palestinian security forces in Gaza shut down the offices of two newspapers, one belonging to Hamas, the other Islamic Jihad. Ghazi Hamad, the editor of Hamas' Al Risaleh newspaper, said he was considering legal action.

U.S. officials in Jerusalem said Zinni's mission was also complicated by Israel's decision this week to cut ties with Arafat.

Zinni's mission was accompanied by an upsurge in attacks by Islamic militants on Israelis, followed by Israeli reprisals. During Zinni time in the region, 63 Palestinians and 44 Israelis have been killed. The Palestinian toll included 29 assailants.

The violence has also strained Israel's center-right government. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, a moderate, said in an interview published Friday that it was a mistake to cast Arafat aside. However, Peres said he would not leave the coalition.

In violence Friday, Israeli troops raided four West Bank towns and villages, killing eight Palestinians in gun battles, demolishing two homes and arresting about 50 suspected militants.

The Israeli military said some of those detained were suspected of involvement in recent terror attacks. A senior Israeli military commander said it was the largest arrest sweep in 15 months of fighting.

The latest round of reprisals was triggered by a bombing and shooting attack on an Israeli bus Wednesday, carried out by the Islamic militant group Hamas. Ten Israelis were killed and 30 wounded in the attack.

-------- spy agencies

Tapes Suggest U.S. Spying Missed Signals

By DAVID JOHNSTON
New York Times
December 15, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/15/politics/15INQU.html

THE INVESTIGATION

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - The Osama bin Laden videotape is raising new questions among intelligence officials about why American authorities failed to uncover the plot of the Sept. 11 attacks before they occurred.

On the tape, Mr. bin Laden said he knew six days in advance of the attacks the precise day and time of the hijackings and knew details, for example that there would multiple aircraft strikes.

At one point, Mr. bin Laden said he had turned on a radio that day to hear news of the attack. Speaking about his followers, he said, "They were overjoyed when the first plane hit the World Trade Center, so I said to them, `Be patient.' "

The comment indicating precise advance knowledge of the attacks suggested that Al Qaeda's communications network, although heavily monitored by American intelligence, succeeded in circumventing the electronic eavesdropping arrayed against Mr. bin Laden and his followers. It also suggested that if Mr. bin Laden could receive information from the hijackers, he was also able to communicate his instructions to them without alerting the authorities.

A senior government official said that the passage on the tape that indicates Mr. bin Laden's prior knowledge of the timing of the attack had led intelligence officials to re- examine information collected in the week before the attacks to determine whether they missed a coded signal sent to Afghanistan from the United States. .

While the videotape released Thursday dispelled any doubt among investigators that Mr. bin Laden was the chief architect of the attacks, it has left unanswered questions that continue to perplex investigators. For example, there is no mention on the tape of the anthrax mailings, which some investigators have suspected might be the work of Al Qaeda.

Moreover, there is nothing on the tape to support the theory that other hijack teams were trained for other attacks on Sept. 11 or later, as investigators suspected. And there is no mention of the missing 20th hijacker or whether Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been indicted as a conspirator in the plot, was meant to be a hijacker.

Speaking at a unidentified location in Afghanistan, apparently last month, Mr. bin Laden revealed detailed knowledge of many operational details of the hijackings. He said that he knew the hijacking teams and how the teams were intentionally kept apart to avoid detection. He referred to Mohamed Atta, the Eygptian leader of the plot, as "Mohamed."

In his conversation with a Saudi sheik, later identified as Shiek al- Ghamdi of a Saudi province where some of the hijackers were recruited, Mr. bin Laden said that he was aware of the suicidal nature of the plot. He said that the hijackers also knew that they were being sent on a "Martyrdom operation" but did not know the precise plan until just before they boarded the doomed flights in Boston, Newark and Dulles Airport, outside of Washington.

One investigator said that the information might explain the report of a witness in Boston who told federal agents that he observed a group of men in a parking garage - who the authorities later concluded were members of a hijacking team - arguing violently just before the flights took off.

-------- sudan

U.S. envoy brokers Sudan cease-fire

World Scene
December 15, 2001
Washington Times
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011215-495144.htm

GENEVA - The Sudanese government and rebels have agreed to extend a cease-fire in a key guerrilla stronghold to let in aid, a U.S. mediator working to end Sudan's 18-year-old civil war said yesterday.

In a statement, U.S. presidential envoy John Danforth said Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) had agreed to the truce extension for the central Nuba mountains region where the U.N. World Food Program has been air-dropping food to thousands displaced by the war.

The SPLM is the political wing of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the main rebel force in Sudan's war, which broadly pits the Muslim government in the north and Christian or animist militias in the south fighting for autonomy. The conflict has cost about 2 million lives.

Both sides agreed to observe "days of tranquillity" to allow polio inoculation campaigns and to a U.S.-led investigation into how to prevent slavery, the statement said.

-------- un

U.N. Resolution on Palestinians Vetoed by U.S.

New York Times
December 15, 2001
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/15/international/15NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, Saturday, Dec. 15 -- The United States used its veto power on the Security Council early this morning to block an Arab-sponsored resolution reaffirming the "essential role'' of the Palestinian Authority in any Mideast peace negotiations.

The final vote on the Council was 12 in favor, including France and Ireland and 2 abstentions, Britain and Norway. The United States cast the only no vote.

The Palestinians and their Arab supporters had asked for an emergency meeting after Israel announced last week that it was severing relations with Yasir Arafat and his Palestinian Authority because of their failure to block terror attacks.

The Palestinian representative at the United Nations, Nasser al-Kidwa, said in his opening address that the severance of contacts effectively undermined all existing arrangements and precluded further negotiations. This, he declared, represented an ``immense danger'' that could ``plunge the whole region into war.''

Anticipating the American charge that the Council meeting ignored the recent suicide attacks, Mr. al-Kidwa said the Palestinians were clear in their condemnation of such acts. In an indirect accusation against the United States, he also asked ``whether this Council is being used by some only when it's useful to them.''

Explaining the veto of the resolution, the American representative, John Negroponte, argued that it ``fails to address the dynamic at work in the region.

``Instead, its purpose is to isolate politically one of the parties to the conflict through an attempt to throw the weight of the Council behind the other party. One of the fundamental flaws of this resolution is that it never mentions the recent acts of terrorism against Israelis or those responsible for them.''

In addition to describing the Palestinian Authority as ``the indispensable and legitimate party for peace,''the proposed resolution demanded an ``immediate cessation of all acts of violence, provocation and destruction.''

-------- us

KANDAHAR
G.I.'s Had Crucial Role in Battle for Kandahar

New York Times
December 15, 2001
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/15/international/15KAND.html?pagewanted=all

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Dec. 14 - On the morning of Dec. 5, Hamid Karzai, who would be named Afghanistan's new interim leader hours later, was meeting with seven of his closest advisers in a house in Shawalit Kowt, at the foot of a hill 18 miles north of here. The men sat on the carpeted floor around Mr. Karzai, who kept thrusting his hands in the air as he mapped out plans to advance on Kandahar, the Taliban's last stronghold.

Sitting to Mr. Karzai's right was an American soldier, a man in his 50's, who was the commander of the 40 or so Green Berets accompanying the Afghan leader, according to a Karzai ally, Hajji Abdul Rahim, who was in the house at the time. Because the American apparently looked a little like the president of the United States, the Afghans had nicknamed him Bush.

Outside, from the top of the hill, the Green Berets were calling in airstrikes against Taliban troops two miles away. The first two hit their targets, Karzai commanders said. But then a 2,000-pound bomb dropped by a B-52 landed near the Americans, and a stone's throw from the house where the meeting was being held.

As the blast blew out the house doors and shook the walls, the American nicknamed Bush moved to protect Mr. Karzai.

"He threw his body over Hamid Karzai and shielded him," Mr. Rahim recalled. Mr. Karzai suffered only minor cuts to his cheek and head from a falling mirror, he said. The American also escaped serious injury.

Almost two weeks since Mr. Karzai's brush with death, Kandahar, the last stronghold, has fallen to the opposition, the Taliban government has collapsed and its supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, has gone into hiding. On Dec. 22, Mr. Karzai will officially take over as interim president in Kabul, and with the relative calm settling over the country for the first time two months, details are emerging of the crucial war in southern Afghanistan and the central role played by the American military.

Recounted for the most part by Karzai commanders and other allies, the fall of the Taliban and the rise of Mr. Karzai is a remarkable collaboration of two initially incongruous military partners: the willful Afghan tribesmen whose ancient enmities turned some encounters with the enemy into summary executions, and the American commandos, with their lavish technology and awesome ordnance, adapting to a new kind of war in a new century.

Unlike the war in the north, which the Northern Alliance was already leading against the Taliban before the start of United States involvement on Oct. 7, the anti-Taliban movement in the south led by Mr. Karzai and other Pashtun leaders would never have succeeded - or even come together - without the United States.

Whether Mr. Karzai, who left here for Kabul on Wednesday, succeeds or fails now in the fractious ethnic politics of greater Afghanistan remains to be seen. But the first chapter of his crucial victory, in the south, appears to have unfolded smoothly, following an American script.

From the day toward the end of October when Mr. Karzai left his exile in Pakistan and entered southern Afghanistan, American advisers accompanied him and his outnumbered forces; they supplied ammunition, food, crucial bombing and money to buy off Taliban officials, several of his commanders said. At the United Nations conference in Bonn, where Afghans met to plan the interim government, Americans also gave diplomatic backing to Mr. Karzai, a little-known figure nationally.

The United States also provided vital support for Gul Agha Shirzai, a warlord who was governor of Kandahar Province before the Taliban and has now reclaimed the position. Even as marines established the biggest American base in Afghanistan, 80 miles southwest of here, Mr. Shirzai and Mr. Karzai pressed on to the city from the southeast and north, cornering most of the Taliban and their foreign supporters in Kandahar.

"If there were no Americans with us," said Muhammad Anwar, 38, a high-ranking commander with Mr. Shirzai, "we could not have captured all of these places, because the Taliban and Al Qaeda were too strong."

Different Theater in South

When the United States began bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7, the military landscape was split geographically and ethnically. In the north, a coalition of ethnic minorities, including Tajiks and Uzbeks, had already been fighting the Taliban government, which was dominated by the Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group and its historic rulers.

The south was different. It was the heartland of the Pashtuns and the Taliban, home to Kandahar, the cradle of the strict Islamic movement, and the headquarters of its leader, Mullah Omar. There was no resistance here, only anti-Taliban Pashtun leaders exiled across the border, in Quetta, Pakistan. Those leaders were disorganized, riven by clan differences and, in many cases, more interested in leading a comfortable and lucrative life in Quetta than in spearheading a dangerous opposition against the Taliban.

The Americans had little intelligence history on southern Afghanistan. But they knew Mr. Karzai, who had served as a funnel for covert American aid to the anti-Soviet mujahedeen in the 1980's. In recent years, he had also visited the United States many times, speaking at conferences and in Congressional hearings against the Taliban and their Qaeda backers. He spoke fluent English and seemed Western in his style, and many of his family members lived in the United States.

Still, Mr. Karzai had no military experience, and he was not well known outside his Pashtun ethnic group. He was only 43, and had taken over the leadership of his Populzai clan just two years ago, when his father was assassinated in Quetta, presumably by the Taliban or their allies. He had not returned to Kandahar, his ancestral home, since the Taliban had permitted him to bury his father here in July 1999.

Looking around Quetta, the Americans also saw Mr. Shirzai, the leader of the Barakzai clan of the Pashtun group. The son of a famed warrior known as the Lion of Kandahar, Mr. Shirzai was nonetheless an unpopular figure, because his rule as governor had been marked by corruption and chaos. Ousted by the Taliban, the former warlord lived in his majestic, sprawling compound in Quetta, the captive, it seemed, of Pakistan's military intelligence, which was one of the Taliban's biggest backers. He spoke no English and seemed uninterested in negotiations, but in the subsequent weeks he proved himself to be a formidable military leader.

By contrast, Mr. Karzai was more of a politician than a field commander. He began making phone calls and sending out messages to rally Pashtun leaders against the Taliban.

In mid-October, Mr. Karzai sent a message to his ally Mr. Rahim in Kotwal, a village about 70 miles north of here and not far from the capital of Uruzgan Province, Tarin Kowt. Mr. Karzai asked to meet him in Quetta, Mr. Rahim said. There, Mr. Karzai told him that he would arrive in Kotwal and wanted to stay in his house. He gave Mr. Rahim money to hire guards and prepare for his arrival.

A few days later, "an American helicopter landed in my village at night, and Hamid Karzai came out," Mr. Rahim said. Mr. Karzai had entered Afghanistan for the first time in more than two years.

Although he and American officials described his mission at the time as a solitary one, he was actually accompanied by American Green Berets at all times, Karzai commanders said.

"From the first day until today, the Americans have been with us," said Neyaz Muhammad, 45, a Karzai commander.

The Americans belonged to the Army's Fifth Special Forces Group, based at Fort Campbell, Ky. Over the next few weeks, they would help Mr. Karzai build a fighting force and organize and equip it, according to some Green Berets who, after being wounded by the errant bomb, were taken to a United States military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, where they spoke to reporters.

Mr. Rahim said Mr. Karzai stayed at his home for 11 days. Then one night, he said, Taliban soldiers staged an assault on his home. Mr. Karzai "ran away with some people into the mountains," Mr. Rahim said.

Two versions of what happened persist.

According to the Pentagon, the attack occurred on Nov. 5. At the time, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said an American helicopter had plucked Mr. Karzai with "a small number of his senior supporters and fighters" and ferried them into Pakistan, so that he could conduct `'consultations," before being taken back to Afghanistan. A senior American military officer said at the time that Mr. Karzai had asked to be extracted from the mountainous region when it be came clear that Taliban forces were closing in on his position.

Both the Americans and Mr. Karzai knew this information would feed Taliban assertions that he was America's puppet. But the Americans had already been criticized for not assisting another Pashtun leader, Abdul Haq, who had entered Afghanistan to rally anti-Taliban support. In late October, he was captured by the Taliban and executed, after placing a final desperate satellite phone call to Robert C. McFarlane, who was national security adviser under President Reagan.

In Quetta, Mr. Karzai's family denied that he had ever left Afghanistan, despite Mr. Rumsfeld's statements.

"Does he want people to think he is an American agent?" Ahmed Karzai, Mr. Karzai's youngest brother and chief spokesman, said.

Shortly afterward, Mr. Karzai returned to the area near Tarin Kowt, and things moved quickly.

In mid-November, according to Karzai commanders and the wounded Green Berets recovering in Germany, Mr. Karzai and his entourage occupied Tarin Kowt and set up a base there.

"We had 18 Americans with us in Tarin Kowt," Mr. Muhammad said. "When we arrived in Shawalit Kowt, the total became 41. They traveled with us, but they had separate vehicles."

Shawalit Kowt is only 18 miles north of here.

On Toward Kandahar

Meanwhile, from the southeast, the forces of Mr. Shirzai were pressing toward Kandahar with considerable help from the Americans.

Unlike Mr. Karzai, Mr. Shirzai already had plenty of men under his command. Still, the Americans assisted from the start, Shirzai commanders said.

Mr. Shirzai's men crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan, at a village called Shinarai, north of the main border crossing of Spinbaldak. At Shinarai, 16 Special Forces soldiers joined them and would follow them all the way to Kandahar, Karzai commanders said.

"They were with us shoulder by shoulder," said Hajji Muhammad Hashim, 36, a mid-level Shirzai commander. "We were very happy. At least two of them spoke Pashto."

The Americans supplied them with arms, food, money and two crucial instruments of this high-tech war: global positioning systems, or G.P.S., and satellite phones. The technology brought in the deadly American air support that allowed Mr. Shirzai's men to move forward.

"If there was no bombing, we couldn't have done anything," Mr. Hashim said. "Every bomb hit its target. Maybe one out of 100 missed."

At night, depending on the intensity of the fighting against the Taliban, more American commandos landed and joined the 16 on the ground, Shirzai commanders said.

"Sometimes we saw more than 100, sometimes 10, sometimes 20," Mr. Hashim said. "But after they finished their activities, they left in their helicopters."

The fighting by Mr. Shirzai's troops was also intense, much more so apparently than the fighting engaged in by Mr. Karzai's men. Late last month, Mr. Shirzai's men, traveling with the 16 Americans, captured the important town of Takhta Pol, about 25 miles southeast of here, cutting the main road between Kandahar and the Pakistani border.

A news report at the time, citing an unidentified Shirzai commander, said the fighting had been so intense that Mr. Shirzai's men summarily executed about 160 Taliban prisoners, many of whom were foreigners, despite protests of American forces at the scene. The Pentagon denied the report.

But interviews with Mr. Shirzai's commanders suggest that the executions occurred, and they may have been in keeping with a policy toward foreign Taliban fighters, though they could not say whether American soldiers were present at the execution.

"When we captured Arabs," a Shirzai commander named Abdullah said, "we killed them. When we captured them, we took them to Gul Agha, and Gul Agha told us to kill all of them."

Afghan Taliban prisoners, by contrast, were disarmed, given money and told to return to their villages.

Another Shirzai commander, Muhammad Amal Khan, 26, confirmed the different policies toward the prisoners. Mr. Khan said more than 100 prisoners, captured in fighting in Takhta Pol and three nearby villages, had been executed. Most were foreigners, he said.

"There was heavy fighting, and they refused to surrender," Mr. Khan said. "We had a lot of injuries. So we decided that because they continued fighting, we have to kill them."

"We made them stand in a big line," he said, "and we shot them with our Kalashnikovs."

Mr. Shirzai's troops, with the 16 American soldiers and American air power, surged forward toward Kandahar's airport, less than 10 miles south of the city, the Afghan's commanders said. They fought for many days, they said, and many of their men were killed in battle, or fell victim to the many land mines dotting the area.

With Mr. Shirzai's troops fighting on the southern flank at the airport, Mr. Karzai's soldiers stationed on the northern flank in Shawalit Kowt, and the marines occupying a base to the southwest, the Taliban were surrounded by the first week of this month.

But it took another event, a diplomatic one in Germany, to make them surrender.

At the United Nations-sponsored conference in Bonn, four Afghan groups had been negotiating for nine days to form a transitional government to rule for six months. But Pashtun leaders here and in Quetta said the negotiators had to adhere to American wishes.

"The Bonn conference was only for show," Haji Attaullah, 70, a Pashtun delegate, said in an interview here. "The decisions had been made before."

Members of a group representing the former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, voted overwhelmingly to choose Abdul Sattar Sirat as head of the new government, Mr. Attaullah said. Mr. Karzai, who has close ties to the king, received no votes.

But all the delegates understood that the Americans wanted Mr. Karzai, he said. So on Dec. 5, they finally chose him.

With his new authority, Mr. Karzai met four senior Taliban officials that same day, Mr. Muhammad said. Mr. Karzai had already been working on a deal by which the Taliban, in return for amnesty, would cede power to Mullah Naqib Ullah, a Pashtun warlord from Kandahar who had friendly relations with the Taliban.

Mr. Karzai sent delegates to Mullah Naqib to cement the deal, said Malik Abdul Khaliq, 57. Mr. Khaliq was a Karzai commander but was sent by Mr. Karzai to Mullah Naqib.

"We are from the same Alokozai tribe," Mr. Khaliq said of himself and Mullah Naqib. "So Hamid Karzai decided I should go with Mullah Naqib, and we agreed."

New Name for Omar's House

The next day, on Thursday, a Taliban delegation, led this time by the defense minister, Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, visited Mr. Karzai in Shawali Kowt and accepted the offer.

On Friday, after the Taliban announced the agreement on the radio, Taliban soldiers began fleeing Kandahar. Mr. Shirzai, unhappy that the agreement might leave him with little, sent his soldiers to occupy the airport and the governor's mansion. About 40 Karzai soldiers entered the city around 11 p.m. and headed for the residence of Mullah Omar.

On Saturday, Mr. Karzai left Shawali Kowt and entered Kandahar to occupy the sprawling residence, said Abdul Rashid, a Karzai commander. Over the next three days, until he left for Kabul, Mr. Karzai spent most of his time receiving guests at Mullah Omar's former house.

He fashioned an agreement that made Mr. Shirzai governor of Kandahar Province but left a section of this city in effect under Mullah Naqib's control. On his single trip just outside the city, he visited his family's village, Karz, and paid his respects at his father's grave, for the first time since his burial in 1999, his commanders said.

As an indication of American influence, Mr. Khaliq joked, Afghans from the various groups in the city had begun referring, among themselves, to the president of the United States as "Mullah Bush."

What's more, Mr. Khaliq said, they had now renamed Mullah Omar's former house.

"We call it Bush house now," he said.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

A few questions for Ashcroft

Clarence Page
December 15, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20011215-94683137.htm

Poor John Ashcroft. The war on terrorism seems to have caused our attorney general to suffer a bit of battle fatigue.

Or maybe he's just plain tired. How wearying it must be to answer pesky questions you would rather not be bothered with.

You could hear it in the prepared statement with which Mr. Ashcroft opened his long-awaited appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee a week ago Thursday. After calling for "honest, reasoned debate, and not fear-mongering," he proceeded to monger fear.

"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil."

In other words, get out of my way. You're either with us or you're with the terrorists.

What? Is there no middle ground for Americans anymore? Have we Americans already reached the sad point at which we no longer can ask questions about how the war is being waged without being accused of aiding the enemy?

In Washington parlance, Mr. Ashcroft was playing the patriotism card, or "pulling an Ollie North," a reference to the former Marine officer and current radio talk show host and syndicated columnist. Mr. North's rock-jawed defiance set a new standard during the Iran-Contra hearings for rolling over Senate inquisitors like John Wayne against the Mouseketeers.

"I feel like I am in a time warp," Rep. Bobby Rush, Illinois Democrat, told me before Mr. Ashcroft's appearance. "So much of what Bush and Ashcroft are saying sounds identical to the language the FBI used 32 years ago."

Mr. Rush was referring to the Dec. 4, 1969, killing of Illinois Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton, 20, a former NAACP youth leader, and Mark Clark, 17, of Peoria, in an after-midnight raid on their Chicago apartment by police assisted by the FBI. Mr. Rush was vice-chairman of the party. Had he been there that night, there's a good chance he wouldn't be around to be in Congress today.

The Illinois Panthers were known mostly for their black berets, free-breakfast programs, a free medical clinic and radical '60s-style rhetoric. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had a flair for grandiose media-tailored statements himself, declared the Black Panther Party to be the No. 1 threat to the nation's security.

As a young newspaper reporter who knew Panther leaders, I thought Hoover's language was as extreme about them as their paranoia was about him. As it turned out, the Panthers had not been paranoid enough.

The fatal raid turned out to be part of Hoover's "COINTELPRO" - for "counterintelligence program" - against the organization, whose politics Hoover did not like.

COINTELPRO quickly ventured beyond surveillance of communists to actual disruption of radical groups like the Black Panthers and moderate groups like Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, all in the name of fighting the great Red Menace, communism.

Federal, state and local law enforcement officials later settled a civil suit filed by the families of Hampton and Clark for $1.85 million. The Black Panther raid also led to a political revolt by black voters away from the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's Democratic machine.

So, when Mr. Rush sounds like he's raising the "phantoms of lost liberties," maybe he is just being paranoid again. I hope. When hope alone is not enough, we ask questions, pesky as they might be.

For example, the Justice Department is reported to be considering loosening the guidelines on investigations of domestic political and religious organizations. Those guidelines were set up in the era after Watergate to prevent investigations of individuals as a consequence of activities otherwise protected under the First Amendment. What changes, we might ask Mr. Ashcroft, is his department contemplating?

If the administration's actions were so "crafted carefully to not only protect America but to respect the Constitution and the rights enshrined therein," as Mr. Ashcroft says, why does the Justice Department keep giving different reasons for its refusal to release the names of the more than 500 noncitizens who are being held in detention?

The FBI theorizes that the recent anthrax letters were the work of domestic terrorists, possibly American citizens. Will Mr. Ashcroft pursue such home-grown terrorists as vigorously as he's been pursuing terrorists from overseas?

And, in the long run, can we ever really know when something as abstract as a "war on terrorism" has ended? Does it ever really end? Does it not require the eternal vigilance that Thomas Jefferson called the price of liberty? When, then, might we get our old civil liberties back?

Just asking.

Clarence Page is a nationally syndicated columnist.

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Two Islamic charity headquarters raided

December 15, 2001
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/15122001-061126-9927r.htm

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 -- Federal agents raided the offices of two Islamic charity groups in Illinois and New Jersey Friday, spending hours carting away records while sending word through the financial system that their assets were now frozen, the Treasury Department acknowledged Friday.

CNN first reported the raids, the first under the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, on offices of the Benevolence International Foundation in Newark, N.J., an organization that calls itself the second largest such group, and the Global Relief Foundation near Chicago.

Orders were issued by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control to freeze both organizations' assets at just that time of year, the end of the month-long Ramadan observance, when most of their contributions arrive.

Officials said Customs, IRS and FBI agents seized financial records after executing search warrants.

The Global Relief Foundation issued a statement Friday strongly denying any link to terrorism and saying it would fully cooperate with the investigation.

"We are in the business of helping innocent civilians and take every precaution to ensure our aid does not go to support or subsidize any nefarious activity," the statement said.

"Just as we would call the police if our collection box or computer equipment were being stolen, we would certainly alert the authorities if we had reason to believe the intended humanitarian purpose of our aid were being subverted to harm innocent lives."

The statement said it has already had to shut down its worldwide humanitarian operations.

The Patriot Act, which President Bush signed into law in October, grants sweeping new powers for intelligence-gathering and surveillance.

The Global Relief Organization raised more than $5 million last year for charities in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

The Global Relief Organization had already filed lawsuits a month ago against ABC, The New York Times and some other large media outlets, claiming that it has been unfairly portrayed as linked to terror organizations..

Earlier this month, President Bush authorized the Treasury Department to freeze the assets and accounts of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The government said that organization, based in Richardson, Texas, acts as a front to finance the militant wing of the Palestinian group Hamas.

Federal agents and local officers raided the foundation's Texas headquarters, seizing assets and records and executing what an FBI agent described as a "blocking order."

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Study says combine prints of FBI, INS

December 15, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011215-2866954.htm

The FBI and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service need to integrate their fingerprint identification systems more quickly in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General said yesterday.

"In light of the events of September 11, the need for linkage is even more critical than ever," Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said in a report. It acknowledged that any integration of the two separate systems "remains years away."

The INS and FBI operate separate fingerprint systems that do not share information on apprehended aliens or individuals wanted or suspected of committing crimes. Three recent Justice Department studies have concluded that integration of the two systems - known as IDENT and IAFIS - is technically and operationally possible.

IDENT, operated by the INS, is an automated two-print system used to identify and track aliens apprehended trying to enter the United States illegally. The system electronically compares an alien's fingerprints to those of aliens who are recidivists, convicted or suspected of committing serious crimes, previously deported or aliens who may be inadmissible for security-related reasons.

The report noted that the IDENT system must process a high volume of fingerprint checks in no more than a few minutes so INS employees can quickly decide whether to detain an alien.

IAFIS, maintained by the FBI, is an automated ten-print system that relies on rolled fingerprints rather than the flat, pressed prints used by IDENT. It contains more than 40 million 10-print fingerprint records in its criminal master file and is connected electronically with all 50 states and several federal agencies.

The report said the IAFIS response time for criminal fingerprints submitted electronically is two hours. While IAFIS was built to handle a large volume of fingerprint checks against a large database, it requires ten rolled prints to search latent fingerprints found at crime scenes.

"Our primary finding in this follow-up review is that the department and its components have moved slowly toward integration of the two fingerprint systems," said Mr. Fine, adding that the need to integrate the systems because of possible future terrorism events was "critical."

The IG's report, requested by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, and Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, recommended that INS continue to use IDENT while proceeding with integration of the two systems.

In addition, the report supports deployment of IDENT workstations to additional INS sites pending its full integration with IAFIS. IDENT is the only fingerprint identification system currently available to the INS that allows a rapid check of aliens seeking entry into the United States legally or illegally.

The department's Justice Management Division, which is coordinating the project, is field testing the first stage of an integrated system to gauge its operational impact and to test the system's performance. The report said INS anticipates significant increases in its staffing and detention expenses when the two systems are integrated to handle the growing number of criminal aliens who would be identified and need to be detained.

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Trials and Tribulations

New York Times
December 15, 2001
By BILL KELLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/15/opinion/15KELL.html?searchpv=nytToday

John Ashcroft may talk like an ayatollah, but this week he acted like an attorney general. He dispatched the first indicted suspect in the 9/11 attacks not to a secret military tribunal but to one of those civilian courts he seems to regard as criminal-coddling, secret-spilling, procedure-clogged terrorist pulpits.

In theory, which is where the conversation has taken place so far, I can argue either side of the debate over where to prosecute suspected terrorists. What's gotten surprisingly short shrift in the discussion, though, is real-world experience. If listening to civil libertarians and hard-liners rattle their principles at one another has made your head ache, I direct your attention to the Old Federal Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, a few blocks from the scene of the Sept. 11 crime.

New York has the most copious record prosecuting terrorists of any jurisdiction in the land. Over the past eight years the U.S. attorney, Mary Jo White, has successfully prosecuted 26 jihad conspirators, in six major trials and some minor ones. They include a charismatic, hate-preaching Egyptian sheik with a large cult following and several associates of Osama bin Laden. The parade of justice has continued, under heightened security but unabated, since the Sept. 11 attacks. Five weeks after the twin towers fell, four bin Laden associates were trooped into a courtroom and sentenced to life without parole for the U.S. embassy bombings. Another fairly senior Al Qaeda suspect in the East Africa bombings is about to come to trial. These cases are not theoretical, although some of what you may have heard about them qualifies as fiction.

Advocates of military tribunals warn that in federal courts, prosecutors might be forced to disclose informants or investigative methods, compromising the intelligence-gathering that, in this war, is the single most important pre-emptive weapon against people who would like nothing better than to ignite a nuclear weapon next to your child's day care center.

Senator Orrin Hatch declared in a hearing last week that during the trials of the culprits in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, architectural plans came out that helped the terrorists who destroyed the towers the next time around. This charge does not stand up in a light breeze. No information about the buildings was introduced in evidence that was not readily available in public records.

Mr. Ashcroft's favorite illustration of the perils of public trials is the Qaeda training manual captured from the computer of alleged conspirators in England and introduced into the public record in the embassy bombing trial. The manual is, indeed, a frightening and fascinating demonstration of how well our enemies have studied our vulnerabilities. Its introduction in the trial was not, however, a breach of security. Mr. bin Laden's people knew what was in the manual (they wrote it) and they knew we had it (the bust in England was public). If you're interested, by the way, key chapters of this dangerous document are now available on the Department of Justice Web site.

Neither the Justice Department nor prosecutors in New York could recall for me a single specific instance when national security was actually compromised during the trials in New York. This is partly because there are elaborate federal rules for protecting sensitive material from disclosure. Judges can order documents or witness identities held back from the discovery process, which normally obliges prosecutors to tell defendants what they know. New York judges have applied these rules in favor of national security.

Prosecutors have often faced a harrowing choice between blowing sources and holding back evidence. They invariably hold back evidence. That makes it harder to get a conviction, but evidently not by much: the conviction rate in these trials is 100 percent, 15 percentage points better than the military tribunals the U.S. conducted in Germany and Japan after World War II. That record tends to confirm the feeling of many reporters who covered the New York trials, that prosecutors - aided by flexible conspiracy laws and judges and juries favorably disposed - have a clear advantage.

One thing that has seriously worried some prosecutors in New York is that, in civilian trials of high- ranking terrorists, the questions prosecutors don't ask might tip terror strategists to our blind spots. Ah, the infidels have not asked about the plot to poison the reservoirs - let's go ahead with it. Some prosecutors, though not all, feel this is a persuasive reason to use military tribunals for senior terrorists who have an overall view of what different cells are up to.

Isn't it dangerous to try these guys? Sure it is. Even before Sept. 11 there were fears that terrorist leaders could threaten judges, jurors or witnesses, disrupt trials, take hostages, exact reprisals, even terrify juries into acquitting. These fears are not unreasonable, but they are unrealized.

In the New York trials, extraordinary security prevailed, significantly more elaborate than in trials of drug cartel members, for example. The jurors were anonymous in most cases; neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys, not even the judges, knew their names. Those who were afraid to serve were excused - and many did beg off, pleading fear of reprisals. Jurors gathered each day and were bused to court by federal marshals following varying routes. Key witnesses went into federal protection programs, as they do in mafia and drug gang trials. Judge Kevin T. Duffy, who has presided at several trials, has 24-hour security that will probably last the rest of his life. (He declined to come to the phone to discuss whether this constitutes an unacceptable burden of office.)

Al Qaeda's top leaders represent a threat of a different order, with kamikaze pilots and possibly worse horrors at their disposal. If the government felt that trying them in the city presented unacceptable hazards, a change of venue to someplace secure, even a military base, would be possible. In any case, why would trying terrorists in military tribunals make reprisals less likely? Wouldn't the martyr effect be even greater?

The worry that terrorists will use the courts as platforms for inspirational grandstanding ("Osama TV" was Mr. Ashcroft's phrase) seems pretty groundless. The New York trials were not televised. As Robert E. Precht, who defended one of the original World Trade Center plotters, pointed out, defendants who choose to make the witness stand a soapbox subject themselves to damning cross-examinations. Those who persist in disrupting the court get sent to a holding room to watch their trials on closed-circuit TV.

The trials in New York were not easy or neat. The longest trials took nearly six months, in part because prosecutors had to assemble complex cases while safeguarding classified information. On the other hand, these methodical prosecutions built up a storehouse of expertise about terrorist networks. That's why Ms. White urged the Justice Department to let those 9/11 suspects designated for federal courts be tried in New York, where the investigators, prosecutors and judges are geared for it. (The first case went instead to Alexandria, Va., because it's more amenable to the death penalty. Ms. White's team will be assisting.)

In principle, there are valid grounds for trying some accused terrorists in military courts. We've done it before in wartime, and the sky didn't fall. Some thoughtful liberals have endorsed military trials, on the condition that they include safeguards to keep them from becoming Soviet-style show courts: limited use, open trials, a presumption of innocence, a vigorous defense, independent judicial review. Many more critics will lower their spears if the administration incorporates these legal protections.

But think of each such tribunal as a missed opportunity. For all the burden, these cases left participants with a sense of patriotic accomplishment not unlike that of rescue workers at ground zero. You hear it not just from victorious prosecutors but from defeated defense lawyers and jurors.

"I found myself getting rather corny about doing my civic duty," said Christopher Lofting, who was jury foreman this summer in the trial of an Algerian conspirator in the plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport during the millennium celebration. A devout Bush supporter who subsequently watched the