------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Real Men Don't Proliferate
Mossad Chief: Iran Developing Nukes
N. Korea Rejects Nuke Inspection
Missile Defensiveness
Navy Missile Defense Plan Is Canceled by the Pentagon
Top Russian Official Warns of Arms Legal Vacuum
U.S. finds suspected chemical, radioactive material
Eastern Alliance commanders believe al Qaeda fleeing
ABM Treaty May Be History, But Deterrence Doctrine Lives
MILITARY
The Sky Has Its Limits
Tora Bora Attack Advances in Tough Fighting
Tora Bora al-Qaida Positions Captured
U.S. returning to a nightmare called Somalia
Orchestrated chaos in Zimbabwe
U.S. Reviews Bans in Central Asia
Capitol Hill Anthrax Matches Army's Stocks
Allied rifts fuels fears on British troops' mission
Chemical Plants Are Feared as Targets
China, in Harsh Crackdown, Executes Muslim Separatists
Dozens Die in Colombia Drug Struggle
Drug Seizures Have Surged at the Borders
EU Leaders Convene to Design 'Global Superpower'
France's military in crisis, says report
Arafat Calls for End to Bombings
Pakistan Faces Increased U.S. Pressure to Curb Militants
U.S. set to pump up 'spin' machine
The feds' psychic spies
Official: CIA uses anthrax, but no link to letters
The Coldest Warrior
U.S. Vetoes Mideast Resolution
POLICE / PRISONERS
Ashcroft creates interagency force on security leaks
Justice channels $5 billion to states' safety
Policy reasons for a military tribunal
500 Officers to Be Issued High-Powered Weapons Used by Elite Unit
Bin Laden videotape was result of a sting
Bin Laden reported in Iran
ACTIVISTS
Greenpeace Storms Aussie Reactor
-------
How the Feds Stole Christmas
By Gary Krist
Sunday, December 16, 2001; Page B05
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46699-2001Dec14.html
"The federal government is the Scrooge of the season."
-- D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton
The American people liked Christmas a lot --
But the Federal Government clearly did NOT!
The feds hated Christmas! They did -- every one!
They hated the chaos, the crowds and the fun.
"It's wartime!" they cried. "We have to be wary.
The prospect of Christmas is simply too scary."
(For they saw in the season's delightful excesses
The makings of untold security messes.)
"Those tourists will come to D.C. on their jaunts
And want to see all of our usual haunts.
They'll fly in from places like Flint or Peru
And expect to see Congress, the Archives, the Zoo.
"But how to distinguish, amid all the revels,
The innocent tourists from terrorist devils?
We've got to be hard-nosed -- too bad if they frown!
We've got to take action to lock up the town!"
So those Grinches did issue an edict to close
All tours of the White House to regular Joes.
"No visits allowed -- not sooner, not later --
For you never know who is part of al Qaeda."
This order, however, was only the latest
Of numerous acts to defeat those who hate us.
For one Grinch named Ashcroft already had taken
Draconian steps that left liberals shaken.
"It's crucial," said he, "to adopt zealous measures
In order to safeguard our national treasures."
So he'd rounded up suspects -- and not just a few:
If your face fit his profile, well, boo-hoo for you.
But that wasn't all; no, these Grinches had more.
For they saw in this issue a wide-open door.
Why, they even made plans, in their fright and their fury,
To try certain people without any jury!
And so, under pretext of just being cautious,
They did things the Founders would surely find nauseous.
"We've done it," they crooned, "We've killed off their spirit.
They once loved their freedom, but now they all fear it!"
"Yes, Christmas is spoiled, and Hanukkah, too.
But with things as they are, who will dare to say boo?
For when people are scared, they seize any solution,
Despite all their laws and their old Constitution."
But we know the rest; sure, we've all read our Seuss.
We know that our people won't brook such abuse.
We know they'll give voice to their freedom of speech
And cry out their demand: equal justice for each.
And the Grinches, of course, will take heed and reform.
Their cold little hearts will grow ample and warm.
For that's how it works in a holiday tale:
The world's finer nature will always prevail.
Ah --
But there we'd be wrong, for in this case, alas,
The heartwarming ending may not come to pass.
The American people, it seems, quite approve!
The polls show support for each Grinch-worthy move.
So the Grinches have triumphed! The '50s are back!
And here's what we've learned from this terror attack:
That life is no kid's book with uplifting plot;
Our freedoms are precious -- except when they're not.
-- Gary Krist is a Washington writer.
His latest novel is "Chaos Theory" (Random House).
-------- NUCLEAR
Real Men Don't Proliferate
By Mary McGrory
Sunday, December 16, 2001; Page B01
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46714-2001Dec14?language=printer
It was a wonderful week for national missile defense. George W. Bush triumphantly announced he was taking a powder from the ABM Treaty that inhibits his progress to Star Wars. It was a terrible week for non-proliferation legislation, which had, in the Senate, another of its near-death experiences.
The goal in both enterprises, of course, is to protect us fromattack, either nuclear or biological. They couldn't be more different in concept -- and cost. The president's beloved NMD, with all the bells and whistles, could bring in a bill in the neighborhood of $130 billion to $150 billion. Full funding of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program would come to $40 billion, according to former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who with Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) created the program calculated to bring Russian nuclear storage out of the used-car lot class.
Bush gave lip service to Nunn-Lugar in the campaign, but in the White House has not put his money where his mouth is. The president cut $40 million and later $73 million for bright ideas such as relocating unemployed and hungry Russian scientists to commercial ventures. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) points out that the Russians need our help to manage their enriched uranium supply. "These are materials which could be made into bombs in terrorist hands."
Nunn, who still enjoys an enormous reputation among his erstwhile colleagues, complains that we have never taken seriously enough the warning of a special task force created late in the Clinton administration. It was headed by two impeccably conventional figures, former Senate majority leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) and former Clinton White House counsel Lloyd Cutler. Their conclusion: Unsecured Russian weapons, materials and know-how comprise "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the U.S."
The Bush administration seems to regard the unglamorous Nunn-Lugar effort the way it regards conservation -- as something sissy. Real men drill -- they drill for oil in Alaska; they drill holes in Alaska to accommodate the hardware required for the Star Wars system.
Recently Biden mesmerized a Democratic caucus lunch with an account of a Russian biological weapons stockpile that was inspected by Nunn and Lugar. It looked like a chicken coop. Its only security was a padlock, Biden said.
But two days later, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to cut $46 million in Nunn-Lugar funds. Lugar hastily rounded up a high-level protest, recruiting Chairman Biden, Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to importune the members to remember we are in a war against terrorism, and a cut in funds could send a wrong signal. It worked.
Bush's announcement came at a particularly hectic moment. The movie of the week was a home video of bin Laden gloating over Sept. 11. The president didn't claim that NMD would have stopped our worst domestic tragedy. He only says that if these fiends get hold of missiles, we can handle them. We can, that is, if the contraption works. That's a big if, and an expensive one, but nobody seems to want to contradict George Bush these days.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bush's new best friend, for instance, seemed extremely subdued. He said the decision to withdraw was "a mistake," but indicated it was one he could live with. Other Russian notables grumbled some, but not too convincingly, rumbling on about Putin's naivete in thinking that George Bush would make his life easier. Even the Chinese were quite polite in the end. After all, Uncle Sam is a good customer.
Nunn was ever the good soldier, sober and correct and presenting the positive view. The ABM Treaty allows a six-month grace period between notice of withdrawal and an actual departure. He expressed the hope that the interlude might be used by both sides to negotiate an agreement whereby Bush could press on without actually violating the treaty. Fat chance.
The reality check came from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, an unabashed, career-long Star Warrior. "I personally think," he said at his Thursday matinee, "that people ought to be relieved that this is behind us. It has been kind of a sticking point."
Over the past three months, we've had lots of time to think about what might have stopped the tragedy of Sept. 11. Air marshals on flights would have been a deterrent. The only thing we know for certain that could have stopped the carnage were locked cockpits. What we may need more than all the sensors and lasers and other high-tech paraphernalia is a tough and reasonable approach to Russia's starving scientists. We should be fashioning blood-curdling warnings that if they so much as look at terrorists who want to buy their talents, we'll stop at nothing to stop them.
-------- iran
Mossad Chief: Iran Developing Nukes
December 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Mossad-Chief.html and
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20011216/wl/israel_mossad_chief_1.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- The head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency said Sunday that Iran is pursuing development of nuclear and other non-conventional weapons but is sending occasional hints that it could someday reconcile with Israel.
``There are Iranians in high-standing positions of influence that are saying that if there is an Israeli-Palestinian agreement ... Iran will not stand in the way of that agreement,'' Ephraim Halevy said in a rare public speech. ``There are even covert messages of the possibility of reconciliation.''
``These are lone chords at the moment, and they are in no way joining to form a melody,'' Halevy added at a Tel Aviv conference on security. he didn't provide additional details.
However, he also stressed that Iran was attempting to develop nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, as well as expanding its long-range missile program.
Iran and Israel have been bitter enemies for years, with Iran providing support for the militant Islamic group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah fought for years against Israeli troops in south Lebanon.
Israel pulled its forces out of Lebanon last year, but Hezbollah still wages sporadic attacks over a disputed patch of territory along the border.
Halevy also described the U.S.-led campaign against international terrorism as an unprecedented development because of its focus on an organization -- Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network -- rather than a sovereign state.
The campaign eventually could lead some countries, such as Iran and Syria, to end their support of radical groups accused of carrying out terrorism, Halevy said.
Halevy said that after the war in Afghanistan, international pressure could mount on Syrian President Bashar Assad to ``bite the bullet,'' and crack down on radical groups.
The British-born Halevy is only the second Mossad chief to be identified by name. Until recent years, Israel's military censor prohibited publication of the Mossad chief's name or photograph.
Halevy spoke at a security conference last December in what was billed as the first ever public speech by the head of the Israeli intelligence agency.
-------- korea
N. Korea Rejects Nuke Inspection
DECEMBER 16, 03:26 ET
http://wire.ap.org/?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7GE7S2O0
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea on Sunday rejected U.S. demands for an inspection of its alleged nuclear weapons program and refused to participate in talks on its missile development.
``There is neither condition nor need for the Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea to accept the 'nuclear inspection,''' said Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Party.
``The same is the case with the 'missile issue,''' it added.
North Korea has increased anti-U.S. rhetoric since President Bush warned this month that it and Iraq would be ``held accountable'' if they developed weapons of mass destruction to carry out terrorism.
Bush has demanded that the North allow U.N. experts to inspect its nuclear program. The North is believed to have stockpiled enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs.
The U.S. president has also expressed frustration over the North's silence to his proposal in June to resume dialogue and discuss the communist country's missile program and conventional arms.
``The U.S. is going to use the dialogue with the DPRK as a lever to pressure and an opportunity to find a pretext for military provocation,'' said Rodong. The report was carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA, which was monitored in Seoul.
The North has accused the United States of preparing to make it the next target after Afghanistan in the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign.
North Korea is on a U.S. list of countries sponsoring terrorism. It maintains a 1.1 million-member military, the world's fifth largest.
The United States keeps 37,000 troops in South Korea to deter North Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. That war ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.
-------- missile defense
Missile Defensiveness
Scuttling the ABM Treaty Won't End This Argument
By Bradley Graham
Sunday, December 16, 2001; Page B04
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46778-2001Dec14?language=printer
By formally moving last week to withdraw the United States from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, President Bush has opened the way to more aggressive testing of assorted technologies for defending the nation against long-range missile attack.
But he has not silenced arguments over whether such systems are feasible, affordable or necessary. Bush's unilateral action is unsettling to critics at home and abroad who do not share his enthusiasm for jumping to a new strategic framework free of Cold War-style arms control accords. Bringing them along will be a challenge. The president and his team will have to come up with the answers to questions about how this new world order is supposed to function, and why other countries should feel reassured by America's new direction.
With the removal of the ABM Treaty freeing the administration to invest billions of dollars -- not to mention a major chunk of presidential political capital -- in fresh experimentation the stakes are higher than ever: Either Bush and his fellow missile defense enthusiasts will win big, or they will fail spectacularly.
That the United States and the world should again be arguing over national missile defense ought to come as no surprise. Missile defense is one of the great phoenixes of U.S. national security policy: It keeps rising from the ashes of Washington debates.
No sooner had the idea started to soar again under Bush this year than it seemed to falterafter the attacks of Sept. 11. Critics argued that the terrorists' reliance on low-tech hijackings rather than high-tech missiles proved Bush had been concentrating on the wrong threat. But Bush last week invoked the September tragedy as all the more reason to proceed with missile defense. In a speech at The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, Bush urged his audience to consider this: If terrorists could do the horrendous damage they did just by hijacking a few commercial airliners, imagine what might happen if they ever got their hands on long-range, nuclear-tipped missiles.
Such is the nature of the enduring controversy over missile defense. Each side will look at the same event and interpret it to its own ends. It is a dynamic that has been at work since the first major public debate on the issue in the 1960s, long before Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" initiative.
The Bush administration's ambitious testing program includes a provision for realizing at least a rudimentary antimissile system by the next presidential election in 2004. The successful test earlier this month of a prototype land-based interceptor, which hit a mock enemy warhead over the central Pacific, has only reinforced the administration's drive.
But many scientists, arms control advocates and Democratic lawmakers remain either wary of oropposed to the project, questioning whether a national antimissile system can ever work reliably and be built affordably -- and whether enough of a threat exists to warrant such a weapon. Even if Russia and our NATO allies end up grudgingly accepting U.S. abandonment of the ABM Treaty, critics fear other adverse consequences. It will, they warn, spur China to add to plans to build up its offensive weapons. It will undermine U.S. attempts to persuade other nations to abide by their international commitments. And it will undercut the credibility of international nonproliferation policies by appearing to presuppose their failure.
For Bush himself, the idea of an antimissile shield is tied less to the thought of ever needing to useit and more to allowing America to act abroad without fear of subjecting Americans at home to attack. "You can't be an internationalist if you allow yourself to be blackmailed," the president told me in an interview last summer. "If you believe, like I believe, that our values are so good and we can spread those values in a way that hopefully is not arrogant -- in a humble way -- if you believe that's important, which I do, then the corollary is: How do you make sure you're able to do that without somebody saying, 'If you move, if you act, if you decide to get involved, we'll blow you up'?"
What is it about missile defense that has made it so controversial for so long? That question often ran through my mind during a year and a half of researching and writing a book on why an issue -- dismissed by many after the demise of the Soviet Union as a relic of the Cold War -- came surging back in the final years of the Clinton administration andassumed its place as a high-priority objective of the Bush administration.
Part of the answer lies in the gravity of what is at stake -- namely, survival in an age of nuclear weapons. Since the 1960s, the United States has observed a strategic doctrine that relies on a balance of mutual nuclear terror to forestall a first strike. Called "mutual assured destruction," this doctrine is credited with having prevented nuclear war between Washington and Moscow for four decades. So understandably, there is a reluctance among many to tamper with success.
Additionally, there is no scientific certainty as to whether an antimissile system capable of defending the entire United States can be devised. Scientists appear as divided on this questionas politicians. Cost is also a big factorin the controversy. Missile defense promises to be very, very expensive, with rough estimates ranging from $30 billion for a basic land-based system to well over $100 billion for an advanced, multi-layered architecture.
But ultimately, the passions aroused by missile defense cannot be explained simply by differences over deterrence theory, scientific capabilities or budgetary trade-offs. The issue has taken on a transcendent, symbolic significance. It has become a litmus test in the debate between the political left and right over the best approach to keeping America militarily strong and secure -- whether, in broad terms, the defense of the nation is better served by arms advances or arms control, by military buildups or diplomatic building blocks, by unilateral initiatives or compromise accords.
When framed in this way, the argument tends to arouse the fervor of clashes over theology, with religious terms often invoked. Proponents talk of the "morality" of erecting a national defense. Opponents speak of the "sanctity" of the ABM Treaty.
The Sept. 11 tragedy has not only provided new debating points for both sides. It also has changed some basic realities.
On the one hand, the administration has found it easier to get more money for its aggressive research and testing program. Democrats who had moved previously to cut the administration's $8.3 billion request for missile defense and attach conditions to ensure that testing would remain within terms of the ABM Treaty have been inclined to avoid a partisan wrangle and let Bush's initiative proceed, at least for now. Bush's own elevated popularity also has given him more political leeway for moves such as dismantling the ABM Treaty.
On the other hand, missile defense has lost some of its prominence as the administration's dominant military project. It is now forced to share the stage with the new war on terrorism at home and overseas, and the threat of long-range missile attack seems to many people much more remote than the possibility of another hijacked airplane or envelope stuffed with anthrax.
No Third World country can yet threaten the U.S. homeland with an ICBM. Even those given the greatest chance of doing so soonest -- North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya -- are relying on facilities and technologies that are primitive by U.S. standards. And the leading threat case, North Korea, has shown a willingness to drop its whole effort in return for financial assistance from the United States. Nevertheless, the trend is worrisome. Even if North Korea could be taken out of the picture, other emerging Third World missile states still may prove determined to acquire substantial capabilities, if only because of the political leverage accompanying possession of such weapons.
One question often asked is whether a hostile Third World state, even if it came to possess an ICBM, would actually fire it at the United States, given the likelihood of subsequent annihilation by U.S. missiles. But it may not have to shoot to have an effect. Simply the ability to launch a long-range missile may well influence how future U.S. administrations respond to that country or to regional crises that might bring the United States into conflict with it.
Bush is not putting forward a definite architecture or exact timetable for development. Rather, he has embarked on a set of experiments to see which of several alternatives -- land-, sea-, air- or space-based systems aimed at midcourse or boost-phase intercept -- will prove most workable. Additionally, Bush team members have indicated that even if something does not ensure 100 percent effectiveness, they may be willing to put it in the field, believing some weapon is better than none and that improvements will come over time.
This approach offers some promise of finding an optimum design. But the cost of all this experimenting is sure to be substantial, jeopardizing other military projects more popular with senior military commanders. When I asked Bush what his own criteria will be for deciding what kind of antimissile system to build, he replied, "Here are the criteria: Does it work? Is it cost effective? And how does it fit into the priorities of the United States?"
All good questions: In fact, just the ones that critics and proponents have been arguing about for more than 40 years. Now that Bush is doing away with the ABM Treaty, he will have to provide answers. He and other missile defense enthusiasts will no longer be able to blame treaty constraints for foiling development. They will have to demonstrate that their new strategic framework will indeed increase global security. They will have to provide reassurance that their real aim is indeed limited to guarding against Third World missile attack, not gaining strategic advantage over Russia and China. They will have to keep the Europeans from feeling estranged, and prove that a U.S. antimissile system will not undermine other international efforts at countering proliferation.
In short, they will have to show that missile de- fense can work not only technically and financially, but politically.
Bradley Graham covers military affairs for The Post. He is the author of "Hit to Kill: The New Battle over Shielding America from Missile Attack" (Public Affairs).
--------
Navy Missile Defense Plan Is Canceled by the Pentagon
New York Times
December 16, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/16/politics/16NAVY.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - The Pentagon has canceled a Navy program intended to shoot down short- range ballistic missiles, a decision that military officials said today was the first in a series of changes that the Bush administration is likely to make in its missile defense programs.
The Navy program, which would have put interceptors on ships at sea, was killed because it had gone more than 50 percent over budget and had fallen more than two years behind schedule, the officials said. It was known as the Navy Area Missile Defense program.
Under rules set by Congress, to save the program the Pentagon would have had to certify that it was essential to national security, that its costs could be brought under control and that no alternatives existed. Senior military officials decided that they could not make that case.
"It's unfortunate we've reached this point, but certification was impossible," Edward C. Aldridge, the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said in a statement.
The program's failure underscores the technological challenges in building a defensive shield capable of protecting the entire nation from long-range missiles, a top military priority of President Bush. Intended to protect ships, ports and amphibious operations from short-range missiles, the Navy program was viewed as one of the less technically difficult anti-missile programs in the Pentagon's missile defense arsenal. "If the easy things are this difficult," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.com, a military policy Web site, "the difficult things are going to be extraordinarily difficult." Mr. Pike has long been a critic of the Pentagon's missile defense programs.
But the cancellation of the program also indicates that the Bush administration's missile defense priorities may be shifting, particularly now that the president has announced his intention to withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibited the development of ship-based defenses against long-range missiles.
By canceling the Navy Area program, which cost $2.3 billion over the past decade, the Pentagon will be able to spend more money on developing ship-based defenses against long-range missiles, programs that had been severely constricted by the ABM treaty, officials said. Those programs are intended to shoot down long-range missiles either high in the atmosphere or just after launch.
The decision came under attack from missile defense advocates who said that the Pentagon needed to be developing protection against both long- and short-range missiles.
"This is a seriously flawed decision," said Frank Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative military policy group. "Everybody understands we have to have missile protection for our carrier battle groups and marines and other forward elements. This is not a way to find resources."
The major problem with the Navy program was that ship-based targeting computers were not working well enough with the Aegis radar systems on missile cruisers.
Those radars were designed to track airplanes, which are larger, slower and generally easier to follow than missiles. The Navy was experimenting with computer systems that would have enabled a ship to collate data from many sensors, including satellites, airplanes and other ships.
Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said that the Pentagon still intended to develop sea-based defenses against short- range missiles. But he said the program would first have to be reorganized.
-------- russia
Top Russian Official Warns of Arms Legal Vacuum
December 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-russia.html?searchpv=reuters
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A top Russian official said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that Moscow and Washington had to work hard to draft agreements to fill the legal vacuum created by the U.S. intention to withdraw from the ABM treaty.
Igor Sergeyev, President Vladimir Putin's adviser on strategic issues, said world stability depended on both sides coming to an agreement on a new framework for relations setting limits to the anti-missile system Washington wanted to build.
``The most dangerous thing now is the legal vacuum in which we now find ourselves up until what I think will be June 13 under the six months' notice period,'' Sergeyev told RTR state television.
``In this period until the United States withdraws from the treaty, I believe both sides should do their utmost to replace ABM, to lay out matters, to draw up a new framework for relations with the United States and come up with concrete elements to safeguard stability throughout the world...''
Sergeyev, a former defense minister, said agreements would have to establish ``agreed approaches to offensive and defensive systems. I believe limits to anti-missile systems must be set down so that we understand that they are truly set down.''
Russia had long opposed President Bush's contention that ABM was outmoded and had to be abandoned to take account of missile threats from ``rogue states'' like Iran, Iraq and North Korea,
Putin described Bush's announcement last week as a mistake, but said it would not affect Russian security and renewed proposals to cut Moscow's strategic nuclear arms arsenal.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has since described the move as a purely political decision.
In his interview, recorded on Saturday, Sergeyev said U.S. planners could not say what form the missile shield would take, but it was safe to assume it would involve the use of space.
That, he said, meant that negotiators would have difficulty ''producing a framework for imposing limits.''
Yevgeny Primakov, former Russian prime minister and foreign minister, told the same television program that the U.S. move was ``a serious error'' which failed to take account of Russia's support for the U.S. anti-terror operation in Afghanistan.
``The events of September 11 created a new situation which should have been put to good use and assessed once again,'' Primakov said. ``This is going along an old path.''
Primakov said Russia would now be fully entitled to revise its commitments to fulfil other international arms pacts, including the START-2 treaty on reducing strategic arsenals.
``I don't think we should be in any hurry to do this,'' he said. ``But in any event, they are pushing us toward retaliatory measures of some sort. And that is not reasonable.
-------- terrorism
U.S. finds suspected chemical, radioactive material in Afghanistan
Drudge Report
12/16/2001 (dpa)
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash3.htm
Islamabad - U.S. troops fighting terrorism in Afghanistan have found suspected radioactive and chemical material near their operation base in southern Kandahar city, the American broadcaster CNN reported Sunday. A CNN correspondent accompanying U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld on his visit to the region reported that the discovery was made about 5.5 kilometres east of Kandahar, the spiritual centre of the vanquished Taliban which gave santuary to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group.
Meanwhile, American warplanes continued to bomb the Tora Bora area in eastern Afghanistan where al-Qaeda's foreign fighters have been pinned down.
Bin Laden is believed to be among them as his voice had been picked up over radio by U.S. special forces operating on the ground along with their Afghan allies.
---
[Here's the CNN story - et]
Eastern Alliance commanders believe al Qaeda fleeing
December 17, 2001
CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/12/16/ret.afghan.attacks/index.html
... The area surrounding the perimeter of airport is heavily mined. Clearing the mines and unexploded ordnance is a huge problem for the military, which wants to make the airport operational.
Near Camp Rhino, the U.S. military gathered significant intelligence from a suspected al Qaeda biological, chemical and nuclear weapons site, Rumsfeld said. The intelligence material was taken from a site called Tarnak Farms, about 3.5 miles (5.5 km) east of the Marine desert base in southern Afghanistan.
Rumsfeld said a good deal of material documentation and other items were found at the location. The site -- believed to be used for research -- was on a list of 25 or 30 sites that have been systematically reviewed by American forces as they came available in Afghanistan. The material is being examined for chemical, biological and radiation content.
"The take was large and significant, and we might find something interesting," Rumsfeld said.
-------- treaties
ABM Treaty May Be History, But Deterrence Doctrine Lives
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 16, 2001; Page A37
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49643-2001Dec15?language=printer
At the confirmation hearings for Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs John R. Bolton, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) had these words of advice about the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty:
"John, I want you to take that ABM Treaty and dump it in the same place we dumped our ABM Treaty co-signer, the Soviet Union, and that is to say, on the ash heap of history," Helms said with a chuckle.
Less than nine months later, the ABM Treaty is, indeed, destined for the ash heap of history. On Thursday, President Bush formally announced that the United States would withdraw from the landmark agreement to allow ambitious testing of missile defenses.
Yet, many arms control experts say the doctrine of nuclear deterrence, or mutually assured destruction, that the treaty enshrined remains alive and well. It has even been a centerpiece of the Bush administration's efforts to win Russian acceptance of missile defense tests; officials in Washington have repeatedly assured their counterparts in Moscow that U.S. missile defenses will not be able to block a full-scale Russian nuclear strike.
The United States has about 5,950 strategic nuclear warheads capable of striking Russia, and Russia has about 5,800 strategic nuclear warheads capable of hitting the United States. Because military planners on each side fear the other might strike, some of those weapons are always on alert, capable of being fired within minutes -- and that does not appear likely to change anytime soon.
Even though both countries have promised to reduce their arsenals and Bush spoke last week about replacing mutually assured destruction with "mutual cooperation," the militaries on both sides remain under orders to maintain the threat of annihilation.
"Our force is configured to hold Russian nuclear and economic targets at risk," said Joseph Cirincione, director of the nuclear nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Even while we're talking to President [Vladimir] Putin, we're targeting his office. It's a fact of life."
The nuclear balance of terror has been remarkably stable. Even at the height of the Cold War, Russia and America tried to avoid coming to direct blows. Now, as some American critics of the Bush administration's missile defense plan argue that it won't work, some Russian critics of the plan worry that it might.
Russian military planners fear that fewer than 100 of Moscow's warheads would be able to survive an American first strike and that a leap forward in missile defense technology might enable the United States to defend itself against that rump nuclear force, according to Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington think tank.
"So they look to the future and the day when the U.S. might deploy a couple of hundred interceptors or so, and they do worry that their weakened nuclear force would be neutralized by even a thin U.S. system," Blair said.
Moreover, Russia's array of satellites and radars designed to warn of a nuclear attack is aging and losing reliability.
"This probably adds to the almost daily instability," said John Rhinelander, a lawyer who helped negotiate the ABM Treaty under President Richard M. Nixon. "The Russian early warning system is full of holes, and Russia will keep large numbers of ICBMs on hair-trigger alert. And I don't see how we'll improve that situation if we keep throwing sand in their face."
Some arms experts also argue that pulling out of the ABM Treaty could encourage Russian hard-liners who want to renounce parts of the START II agreement. Under that pact, Russia is supposed to eliminate 100 SS-18 missiles, with 10 warheads each, and to reduce the number of warheads on each of its 100 SS-19 missiles from six to one by 2007. Some Russian officials have suggested they might keep the multiple warheads to improve the chances of overwhelming any U.S. defenses.
Putin might have been better off if he had reached a deal with the Clinton administration, something senior Clinton administration officials tried to impress upon him. But the Russian president, believing either that he had a better chance of a deal with Bush or that Bush would kill any deal made with Clinton, held out.
"What did the United States have to do to the ABM Treaty to make sure that we were dealing with new [missile] threats? The answer is: There's a whole lot you can do without breaching the ABM Treaty," said Strobe Talbott, who tried to negotiate modifications in the ABM Treaty while serving as Clinton's deputy secretary of state. "The other question is: Do you think that bilateral negotiated agreements between the United States and Russia with the force of law are still useful or not? The Clinton administration felt they were very useful."
The Bush administration places higher priority on developing a layered missile defense system. Even Colin L. Powell, regarded as the Bush official most reluctant to withdraw unilaterally from the treaty, stood behind Bush in May 2000 when the then-presidential candidate said he would pull out of the ABM Treaty if Russia did not allow missile defense tests.
More generally, the Bush administration tends to view global treaties with suspicion. Perhaps nothing indicated that better than the choice of Bolton to lead negotiations on arms control.
Bolton summarized his philosophy in an article last fall in the University of Chicago Journal of International Law that divided the policy world into "Americanists" and "globalists." He said globalists -- "each tightly clutching a favorite new treaty or multilateralist proposal" -- want to bind the United States in a web of agreements on everything from arms to the environment to human rights, while Americanists seek to preserve U.S. sovereignty and policy flexibility.
"Every time America is forced to bend its knee to international pressure," wrote Bolton, who has traveled to Moscow eight times this year for ABM talks, "it sets a significant, and detrimental, precedent for all of the others."
Far better, he has argued in congressional testimony and speeches, would be an approach that relies on informal agreements, glorified handshakes between leaders like Bush and Putin. He has said that arms control accords became floors, rather than ceilings, on numbers of nuclear weapons.
Yet the Bush administration has bowed to the need for some written agreements. Although the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said new targets for levels of strategic nuclear weapons would be set informally, Powell is now negotiating a formal, written agreement with verification measures.
-------- MILITARY
The Sky Has Its Limits
Why Bombs Defeat Armies More Effectively Than Cities
By Stephen Budiansky
Sunday, December 16, 2001; Page B03
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46692-2001Dec14?language=printer
Last week, when President Bush was in Charleston, S.C., speaking to cadets at The Citadel about the future of our military, he singled out the revolutionary technologies that have proved their worth in Afghanistan. He also drew a link to another great transforming conflict in America's military history -- World War II -- noting that by the end of that war, "no one would ever again doubt the value of strategic air power."
Many commentators have similarly interpreted the stunningly successful use of air power in Afghanistan -- as well as in the Persian Gulf War and in Serbia -- as a technological vindication of traditional theories of strategic bombing. But that is a dangerous misreading of history. Air power has achieved these recent successes not just through a revolution in technology, but through a revolution in thinking that in many ways has stood the original concept of strategic bombing on its head. And a good thing, too. For despite what the president said, strategic bombing during World War II (and again in Korea and Vietnam) manifestly failed to achieve the results its champions claimed it would. The lessons from the Gulf War and Serbia suggest that pursuing these failed theories with modern precision-guided weaponry works no better. Success there came from a change in approach.
Classic strategic bombing theory went through many evolutions and variations, but a constant from World War I right through the nuclear age was the belief that attacking enemy armies in the field from the air was a wasteful diversion of effort -- a "false objective," as air power pioneer Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell boldly asserted in 1930. The real objective, Mitchell said, was the enemy's will to resist, and the way to attack that was to strike not at his troops in the battlefield but at his "vital centers." The notion that an aerial assault could deliver the decisive blow had captured the imaginations of air power enthusiasts even before the Wright Brothers first flew, and it continued to underpin official U.S. Air Force doctrine throughout most of the 20th century.
Air power theorists did not always agree on what constituted a "vital center." Some emphasized attacking civilian "morale," with direct strikes against the populace or by disrupting electric power and transportation; others advocated sowing chaos by cutting communication links and destroying government offices; others urged attacks on key war industries. But all believed that direct assault on enemy centers of power would contribute decisively to victory. The enemy government would swiftly be paralyzed, be forced to surrender by an angry and demoralized populace, or perhaps even be overthrown: Strategic bombing, the theorists maintained, inevitably hastens strategic collapse.
Throughout the last century, much of the debate over the effectiveness of strategic bombing focused not on whether these ideas were fundamentally sound, but on technical arguments over how well they could be implemented. The debate was frequently fueled by exaggerated claims of precision and subsequent evidence that raids had done far less damage than at first believed. (In World War II, it was not uncommon for bombers to miss their target by miles.)
Yet strategic bombing in the end failed not just because of the difficulties of precisely targeting factories and government ministries with enough dumb bombs; it failed because the theories that lay at the heart of strategic bombing were often simply wrong. Civilian populations do not revolt under bombing (witness the citizens of London during World War II); urban infrastructure and transportation systems contain great redundancy and resilience; and totalitarian governments in particular can divert vast sectors of the economy to war purposes to make up for bombing losses. Carrying out a World War II-style strategic bombing plan using 21st-century smart bombs would still probably fail to achieve the collapse of an enemy regime.
The U.S. Air Force has not adjusted easily. In fact, the initial strike plan drawn up by Air Force planners for the Gulf War focused exclusively on classic strategic targets -- government ministries, bridges, communications centers and the like. Air power skeptics who question whether hitting (however precisely) empty buildings in Baghdad or Belgrade had any appreciable effect on the final outcome in either war have a point.
But the Gulf War also saw a new and hugely effective use of air power -- to strike directly at the enemy's military forces. Before that war, U.S. military doctrine included plans for air strikes to support ground fighting and (like artillery) "prepare the battlefield" just in advance of a ground attack. But these plans also predicted horrific loss rates for aircraft, and they never anticipated a large, independent air campaign that would precede or even substitute for the jobs traditionally left to ground forces. A sharp dividing line between tactical and strategic air power persisted in military thought up to the 1980s: Independent air campaigns were strategic, and went after things like factories and power plants and seats of government, while tactical operations directly supported troops engaged in combat.
The Gulf War erased that line. The independent air campaign that preceded the ground war destroyed 40 percent of Iraq's tanks and 47 percent of its artillery and killed probably tens of thousands of Iraqi troops. Air Force Historian Richard P. Hallion quotes one Air Force planner who said this was not "preparing the battlefield," it was "destroying the battlefield." Even more important, according to Air Force Gen. Charles Horner, chief air power planner in the Gulf War, was the withering effect that air strikes had on the morale of the remaining Iraqi troops -- who surrendered in droves the minute they had the chance. (Interestingly, time and again experience has shown that while civilian morale is not easily crushed by aerial bombardment, the morale of troops under bombardment frequently breaks.)
The use of air power in Afghanistan has been focused even more directly on enemy forces. The "strategic" targets that have been hit have largely been air defense sites, a necessary first step to any air operation. Beyond that, the overwhelming weight of American air power has been directed against Taliban armor and troops, and against al Qaeda hideouts. It is no mystery why the Taliban crumbled so swiftly: Its army was pinned down and pulverized. The spectacle of B-52s, the quintessential strategic bomber of yore, being called in to provide direct air support against enemy troop positions is striking testimony to the change in thinking and organization that has taken place.
As Bush suggested last week, new technologies such as precision and stealth have certainly been vital in this revolution, as have been the use of unmanned aircraft to locate targets in real time and special forces on the ground equipped with lasers to direct strikes. They permit aircraft to knock out enemy air defenses swiftly and accurately and to attack battlefield targets -- historically the most dangerous environment for aircraft to operate in -- from a safe distance and with great effect, with a single bomb destroying a tank. The real breakthrough has come in applying these new technologies not to the failed theory of strategic collapse, but to where military conflict is always decided: the battlefield.
Stephen Budiansky, a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, is writing a book about the history of air power.
-------- afghanistan
Tora Bora Attack Advances in Tough Fighting
New York Times
December 16, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/16/international/asia/16STRA.html
TORA BORA, Afghanistan, Dec. 15 - Even as American forces and their Afghan allies close in on Al Qaeda fighters in the mountains here, the forbidding terrain and the stubbornness of some of the foreign followers of Osama bin Laden are making the struggle for Tora Bora the most complex battle of the war.
Unlike the earlier string of victories, the goal is not to capture a city. It is to capture or kill up to 1,000 hardened fighters in one of the country's most rugged regions. Ultimately, it is also to apprehend or kill one of the most elusive of quarries, Mr. bin Laden and his top Al Qaeda lieutenants.
American forces have heard what they believe was Mr. bin Laden giving orders over short-range radio in the Tora Bora area in the last week, a government official said today in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said the voice on the radio was identified through comparisons with Mr. bin Laden's voice from several videotapes. [Page B2.]
As the United States conducts the endgame of the war, its military, along with the British and Afghan allies, clearly has the initiative as well as the overwhelming advantage in firepower, as is clear from the thunderous explosions that reverberate through the hills as American warplanes pound the ridges here.
The American bombs are falling deeper in the mountains now, a sign that groups of Al Qaeda fighters are retreating from ridge to ridge as local Afghan fighters and the American and British fighting with them move to cut them off.
For the first time, Al Qaeda fighters have been taken prisoner, another indication that the foe's resistance is weakening. Anticipating a victory, United States Marines are even building a jail for up to 300 prisoners from Tora Bora at their base south of Kandahar.
But the United States is chasing an array of foes, including some who seem desperate to fight to the end and others who seem equally anxious to flee. The region it is trying to seal also abuts the border with Pakistan, a frontier that has previously been porous and uncontrolled but that the Pakistanis are now striving to police.
Just how unpredictable this battle could be was illustrated today when reporters were told to be on hand for the surrender of 300 Arab and Chechen fighters, a development that would have marked a major breakthrough.
Hours later, a pickup truck of Kalashnikov-wielding fighters and Khan Muhammad, a local Afghan commander, drove down the hill and was besieged by the press. The Arab fighters, he insisted, were prepared to surrender, but the Chechens were determined to fight on.
"The fighting could last a few days more, or it could last a month," he said. "It all depends on whether they want to surrender."
There were also reports that some Qaeda fighters were trying to slip across the nearby border to Parachinar, Pakistan. According to a report from an Arab prisoner that circulated here today and could not not be independently confirmed, some 50 Arabs were already on the way, riding mules.
The difficulties of the mission ahead seem to have been aptly summed up by Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the head of the United States Central Command, who said on Friday: "Steady progress. Very dangerous work. And we have a lot left to do."
Tora Bora is approached on a jarring three-hour drive up a rocky road from Jalalabad. Local Afghan commanders drive up the road each day from their villages south of the city along with Western men masked in Afghan garb or draped in hooded parkas, a largely unsuccessful effort to disguise American and British commandos from the prying eyes of the international news media.
The region, Afghan and American officials say, is the last redoubt for Mr. bin Laden and the hundreds of foreign fighters who fled with him, though nobody can say for certain that he is still there. There are other pockets of resistance in Afghanistan, but none that seems to have such a concentration of Mr. bin Laden's followers.
Tora Bora is a region of mountains, valleys, ravines and man- made caves and tunnels. In defense, or perhaps to let some compatriots escape, Al Qaeda fighters have taken positions on the steep ridges.
"They are high mountains," observed Hajji Abdul Qadir, the governor of the local Nangarhar Province. "You cannot say this will take two or three days."
But as Al Qaeda fighters occupy the ridges, the American commandos have called in airstrikes to blast Mr. bin Laden's troops off the high ground and back into the valleys where the American-backed Afghans and American and British commandos can engage them. American firepower is being used to neutralize Al Qaeda's use of terrain.
Taking full advantage of their air superiority and the lack of sophisticated air defenses, the Americans are using a wide and deadly repertoire: B-52's, B-1's, Navy jets, Predator drones and AC-130 Special Operations gunships.
Last night, the drone of the AC-130 gunship could be heard over the mountains, sending streams of fire at Al Qaeda die-hards and dispersing flares to trick any heat-seeking missile Mr. bin Laden's fighters might have. Then an airstrike seemed to set the very hills on fire, perhaps by hitting a weapons depot.
The destructive potential of the American airstrikes is evident on a devastated ridge on the way to a hilltop command post, now occupied by the local Afghan fighters allied with Washington.
Al Qaeda and other foreign fighters had occupied the ridge and used it to shell the road below. Now it is a ghostly region where the trees are merely splintered fragments, small bits of clothing are spread about like confetti and the metal remains of cluster bombs litter the ground.
Much of the recent success in pushing Al Qaeda fighters back seems attributable to the growing number of American and British Special Operations forces, who have called in airstrikes and readied small teams of commandos to apprehend Al Qaeda leaders.
In addition to American and British troops, three groups of tribal fighters are maneuvering in the valleys and on the hillsides.
They are led by Hajji Zahir, the son of the governor of the province; Hazarat Ali, who is in charge of the province's security; and Muhammad Zaman, the local defense minister.
The officials are moving their forces to isolate pockets of resistance and to advance on Al Qaeda's caves. They also claim to have closed the escape route to Pakistan, but that is impossible to verify. They acknowledge that they have no contact with the Pakistani forces that are supposedly controlling the routes on the other side of the frontier.
"If you look at a detailed map of this terrain, what you find is that rather than being terribly horizontal, the terrain gets to be rather vertical," General Franks said. "While these forces may be moving only one or two kilometers in a given day, that is a substantial distance, based on how much they're moving up or down."
Afghan commanders have also given conflicting estimates of the number of Al Qaeda fighters. On Thursday night, Hajji Qadir projected the number at 400 to 1,000. The next day, an Afghan commander reported that 120 to 180 Arab fighters were cut off. That estimate left unclear whether the estimate of foreign fighters had been revised downward, whether hundreds had been killed or whether many had already fled.
By all accounts, the Arab and Chechen fighters have put up the stiffest resistance. Sayad Razaq, a local Afghan soldier, said foreign fighters were continuing to hold out in the village of Surfi, on a mountain ridge. The village seemed to be the bull's- eye for many of the airstrikes today.
On Friday afternoon, the news media received an indication of how determined Al Qaeda die-hards can be. Halim Shah Qadiri was excitedly relaying the news of a new surrender negotiation through his field radio. A group of Arab and other foreign fighters had decided to surrender unconditionally, he said.
As chief of communications for one of the Afghan bands fighting Al Qaeda, Mr. Qadiri was trying to get the details from fellow commanders deep inside the mountains when gunfire echoed through the valley. As journalists waited eagerly for the details of the victory, a spray of machine-gun fire zipped by overhead, prompting the Afghan fighters and the reporters to scramble behind a mud and timber shack that passes for a command post.
----
Tora Bora al-Qaida Positions Captured
DECEMBER 16, 2001
AP
http://wire.ap.org/?SLUG=AFGHAN%2dFIGHTING
TORA BORA, Afghanistan - Tribal fighters said they took the last al-Qaida positions here Sunday, killing more than 200 fighters and capturing 25 but finding no sign of Osama bin Laden. In the south, three U.S. Marines were injured in an explosion at Kandahar's airport.
Also Sunday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld landed at Bagram airfield in the first visit by a top U.S. government official to Afghanistan since the U.S.-led campaign began. Rumsfeld was to meet the new interim prime minister of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.
After weeks of fighting and relentless U.S. bombing in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan, commanders declared victory in an all-out assault on the al-Qaida fighters loyal to bin Laden.
``This is the last day of al-Qaida in Afghanistan,'' said Mohammed Zaman, the eastern alliance defense chief. ``There is no more need for American bombing. Our men have the situation under control.''
Smiling eastern alliance forces chanted ``Al-Qaida is finished! Al-Qaida is finished!'' U.S. planes continued to circle the area but had not dropped bombs for two hours.
The Tora Bora region was the last major pocket of al-Qaida resistance in the country. Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander of the war, said Friday that other holdouts include the Shindand area in western Afghanistan, Helmand province northwest of Kandahar, and the Kandahar vicinity itself.
Zaman said he had no information on the whereabouts of bin Laden, who many in these forested mountains believe was with the fighters. U.S. officials said they picked up his voice last week on short-range radio in the area.
A cave where alliance commanders had thought bin Laden might be hiding was the last al-Qaida holdout.
``There were only six people. One was killed by our forces and the others were captured,'' said another alliance commander, Hazrat Ali. ``A few days before today I had information he was here, but now I don't know where he is.''
Zaman said several hundred routed al-Qaida men might be on the run toward the border with Pakistan, only miles south of the caves and tunnels of Tora Bora. He and Ali said their forces were pursuing the fleeing fighters.
``Anyone who paves the way for al-Qaida forces to live in the White Mountains will be given capital punishment,'' Ali said, adding that his fighters were searching the area ``meter by meter'' and would bury the al-Qaida dead Monday.
Meanwhile, four of 13 armed Arabs holed up in a Kandahar hospital escaped early Sunday, apparently with the blessing of their guards, said the hospital's head nurse, Ghulam Mohammed Afghan.
The guards are loyal to tribal leader Mullah Naqibullah, a fierce rival of Agha, the governor. Afghan predicted a battle if Agha's men tried to seal off the hospital.
U.S. Marines have been setting up a prisoner-of-war camp at their new base at Kandahar airport for captured al-Qaida fighters.
Marine Capt. David Romley said three Marines were wounded Sunday, one seriously, when one stepped on a land mine at the airport, where they have been checking for mines and booby traps.
Across Afghanistan, civilians and fighters alike poured into mosques for Eid al-Fitr, Islam's most festive holiday, and mullahs leading their prayers appealed for peace.
The assault in the White Mountains began at midday Sunday, with tribal fighters marching up two parallel valleys to launch an assault from both sides of the mountain ridge where al-Qaida fighters were hiding.
Al-Qaida's only way out was to retreat through dense forest, but B-52s pounded the woods with incendiary bombs Sunday, and flames leaped from the trees. The bombing appeared to stop as the eastern alliance moved up the mountain.
Many of the al-Qaida fighters had claimed they were ready to surrender, but alliance commanders were skeptical when they failed to emerge from the mountains.
``They refused to surrender, so now we must fight,'' Mohammed Aman Khairi said.
There had been several unconfirmed sightings around Tora Bora of bin Laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
A U.S. official said in Washington on Saturday that American forces in the area picked up his voice on short-range radio last week. But Afghan commanders knew nothing of the radio transmission.
``The Pentagon has their way of knowing things. I have no new information on Osama,'' said commander Atiqullah Rachan.
Before the assault, eastern alliance fighters emerged from the mountains in surrounding villages, their hair matted with dust, to stack their Kalashnikov rifles outside mud-walled mosques and celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the feast marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
In Kandahar, the Taliban's former stronghold, celebratory gunfire filled the city and pink flares shot through the sky as residents visited relatives with gifts of new turbans, money, clothing and dried fruit. Even gunmen standing guard outside the compound of Gov. Gul Agha sported spotless new shoes.
One group of unaccompanied women and girls, some holding hands, walked down a road in shiny red, embroidered dresses. Under the Taliban, females could face severe punishment for leaving their homes without a male escort.
Many people gathered to pray at the tile- and marble-inlaid Khalqa Sharif Mosque, which houses the mausoleum of Ahmad Shah Durrani, the 18th century founder of Afghanistan, and 500 more prayed at the Eid Mosque in the capital Kabul.
``People of Afghanistan, you are a great nation, but now we must unite and live like brothers, and rebuild our country,'' the mullah, Abdul Jalil, told the crowd.
``I prayed to God to bring peace to our people,'' said eastern alliance commander Haji Qadir, who attended celebrations at a mosque in Jalalabad.
Rumsfeld said U.S. military forces have taken samples from an abandoned al-Qaida training camp southwest of Kandahar near the Marines' Camp Rhino that are being tested for traces of chemical and biological weapons material. Rumsfeld said the discovery was very interesting, but he did not describe what was found.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press writers Christopher Torchia in Kandahar, Afghanistan and Laura King in Kabul, Afghanistan contributed to this report.
-------- africa
U.S. returning to a nightmare called Somalia
Simon Reeve,
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, December 16, 2001
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/12/16/MN115486.DTL
During the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1993, as the sun blazed over the dusty streets of the ancient city of Mogadishu, 140 elite Army special operations forces soldiers descended from the sky into the lawless capital of Somalia to hunt for two senior warlords fomenting chaos in the east African state.
The mission was supposed to take less than an hour. But by the next morning,
when the group was finally rescued after a ferocious battle, 18 Army Rangers had been killed and more than 70 wounded. At least 500 Somalis were dead and 1, 000 injured. It was the longest sustained firefight involving U.S. forces since the Vietnam War.
Memories of the mission are about to be rekindled with the Dec. 28 release of the Hollywood movie "Black Hawk Down," journalist Mark Bowden's book documenting the affair. The film transforms a military debacle into an uplifting paean to individual heroism, while virtually ignoring the wider ramifications of the battle.
In reality, the Somalia escapade was a disaster, not only for the lives lost on that day, but also for the impression of an American foreign policy that knew only how to cut and run. Such a perception directly fueled the ambitions of Osama bin Laden and the growth of a terrorist organization that was to wreak even greater havoc on Americans in the years to come.
Thousands of American deaths later, the United States looks set to return to Somalia, in part to settle accounts. Identifying Somalia as a terrorist base for bin Laden's al Qaeda and other extremist organizations, U.S. reconnaissance planes last week reportedly began surveying targets from the sky, while military and CIA agents contacted potential allies both inside Somalia and in neighboring Ethiopia.
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the purpose of the visits was to "observe, survey possible escape routes, possible sanctuaries" for members of the al Qaeda terrorist network who may attempt to flee Afghanistan.
In addition, senior U.S. and British officials met last week with Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi amid speculation that Kenya would be used as a staging ground for attacks on Somalia.
"People mention Somalia for obvious reasons. It's a country virtually without a government, a country that has a certain al Qaeda presence already," Wolfowitz told a Pentagon news conference Monday.
Somalia, of course, does not have nearly the importance of Afghanistan as a base of terrorist operations. But the two countries have some telling similarities.
Both were left to rot after the United States was done with them. Victorious in its proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the United States was humiliated when corpses of American soldiers were dragged through the streets of Somalia.
Wracked by tribal conflict -- just as Afghanistan was before the Taliban took over -- Somalia now rivals Afghanistan for the kind of lawless chaos in which groups like bin Laden's thrive. "Somalia has completely collapsed as a functioning state," according to a British Foreign Office report written after Sept. 11.
And with thousands of people being killed as clans battle for control of the country (just as rival ethnic groups fought over Afghanistan), local Islamic militants exploit a ruined nation's desire for security and unity to grasp power -- just as the Taliban did in Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden saw the opportunity early on. In the early 1990s, the Saudi exile began sending money and weapons to a Somali group called al-Itihaad al- Islamiya (Unity of Islam), followed by men who trained and fought alongside the Somali militants who aimed to turn the country into a radical Islamic republic.
Even before the Mogadishu fiasco, Somalia was a focus of al Qaeda activities. In December 1992, al Qaeda operatives placed a bomb in a hotel in Yemen, where U.S. troops were staying on their way to Somalia as part of then- President George Bush's Operation Rescue Hope humanitarian mission. The bomb exploded just after the soldiers had left on Dec. 29, blowing two Austrian tourists to pieces.
The bin Laden operatives returning to Somalia from Yemen included Mohammed Atef, @cq a top bin Laden lieutenant who was reportedly killed recently in Afghanistan, and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, @cq one of four men sentenced to life in prison for the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. According to U.S. investigators, the two provided further "military training and assistance to Somali tribes."
Whether bin Laden was actually involved in the 1993 Mogadishu attack is the subject of much dispute. Bin Laden has bragged that Somalia was his "greatest victory. . . . It is true that my companions fought with (deceased Somali warlord Mohamed) Farah Aidid's @cq forces against the U.S. troops in Somalia. .
. . My associates killed the Americans. We are not ashamed of our jihad."
An FBI document, revealed in an indictment against bin Laden in connection with the East African embassy bombings, suggests that at least some of Aidid's men were "trained by al Qaeda (and by trainers trained by al Qaeda)."
But others, especially local Somalis, dismiss bin Laden's claims of direct involvement, insisting, according to one account, "that they never heard of bin Laden until he began boasting about Somalia years later."
What is clear is that bin Laden and his followers felt greatly emboldened by the rout of Americans in Mogadishu.
"The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat -- dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat," bin Laden said later.
After the U.S. withdrawal, he focused even more of his energies on the world's only purported superpower. The devastating assaults on the East African embassies, the destroyer Cole and the horrific events of Sept. 11 were among the results.
Bin Laden also maintained his interest in Somalia. Foreign intelligence operatives working in the country saw more than a dozen al Qaeda Arab fighters at one temporary camp in the mid-1990s.
Furthermore, say U.S. intelligence officials, members of the al-Itihaad organization worked with al Qaeda operatives in planning the 1998 East Africa bombing attacks, which killed 224 people.
The officials claim that al-Itihaad helped al Qaeda establish a militia training camp on Ras Kamboni Island, near the border with Kenya, and built its own near the port of Bosasso @cq in the northeast.
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, these camps were dismantled and their alumni vanished. U.S. intelligence officials believe hundreds of fighters training at Ras Kamboni @cq sailed out into the open sea heading toward the relative safety of Yemeni tribal areas to the north.
While the current Bush administration has placed al-Itihaad on its list of terrorist organizations, some observers warn that the reality is more complex. Al-Itihaad, they say, is also a genuine social movement and has different factions.
"Al-Itihaad operates differently in different parts of Somalia," Ted Dagne of the Congressional Research Service told a Washington, D.C., symposium on terrorism last month. "We should be navigating this very carefully."
But few doubt that the group's power has grown, politically and financially.
Besides expanding its hold on southern Somalia, U.S. intelligence sources say,
al-Itihaad exerts considerable influence over Al Barakaat, @cq a Somali-based business conglomerate and money transfer organization described by U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill as one of the "financiers of terror."
Treasury agents, after the Bush administration accused Al Barakaat of moving funds for al Qaeda, have moved to shut the organization down, raiding branches in Minneapolis, Seattle, Boston and Ohio, investigating two more Al Barakaat offices in Virginia and preventing the firm from operating outside Somalia.
Administration officials also believe that the owner of Al Barakaat, Ahmed Nur Ali Jimale, has been a friend and supporter of Osama bin Laden since the 1980s, when both fought in Afghanistan against Soviet invaders, and that bin Laden provided seed money that helped found Al Barakaat in 1989.
Jimale vehemently denies the claims. "This is all lies," he has said. "We are people who are hard-working and have nothing to do with terrorists."
As its financial wing prospered, at least prior to Sept. 11, so did al- Itihaad's military forces. The group itself boasts of having about 70,000 armed supporters, a claim some observers believe is exaggerated. Also debatable is the continuing involvement of al Qaeda in the group's affairs, which some intelligence agents believe has declined since the U.S. attacks in Afghanistan.
However, as of last summer, at least eight al Qaeda operatives were reported to be in Somalia training militants, according to intelligence estimates.
One report obtained by British intelligence officials suggests that even after Sept. 11, several thousand Somalis were receiving military training in southwestern Somalia under the command of two senior al Qaeda operatives, an Iraqi and an Afghan.
According to opposition groups in Somalia, more al Qaeda forces have been moving to Somalia in the wake of the U.S. attacks in Afghanistan.
"Al Qaeda terrorists who escaped from Afghanistan are already trickling back into Somalia," Hussein Aideed, co-chairman of the opposition Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council, told a press conference in Ethiopia last week.
While this, too, might be an exaggerated view from local sources who would very much like the West to help extirpate groups like al-Itihaad, the Bush administration appears to take the links seriously. "We have research and data that would definitely point to a connection," said Walter Kansteiner, assistant secretary of state for African affairs,
Even without al Qaeda, some experts believe Somali groups such as al- Itihaad could follow its example and send "sleeper" agents abroad while initiating attacks on U.S. targets in Africa and further afield.
Said one U.S. intelligence source: "I can see five years down the line we will be having the same problem with Somalia that we're now having with Afghanistan. It's precisely the same type of situation."
Simon Reeve, an investigative journalist in London, is the author of the "The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism."
----
Orchestrated chaos in Zimbabwe
Urs Kreuter
December 16, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20011216-12235597.htm
Following the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, U.S. policymakers have been paying increasing attention to destabilizing influences around the world. Greater interest is being shown in developments in less prominent countries, such as Zimbabwe, and legislative action is being proposed to counteract destruction by aging and despotic leaders whose actions affect neighboring countries.
The "Zimbabwe Democratic and Economic Recovery Act of 2001" unanimously passed the Senate on Aug. 1 and gained increasing support in the House despite the attempts of a Washington-based lobbying team hired by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for $7 million to derail it. The act passed the House in a 396-to-11 vote on Dec. 4 with full support of the Congressional Black Caucus.
The bill reflects growing concern over the collapse of law and order and the blatant transgression of human rights in Zimbabwe. If violence continues and free and fair presidential elections are not held early next year as scheduled, the act would authorize the U.S. government to impose travel restrictions and to freeze the external accounts of those responsible for the breakdown of the rule of law and for politically motivated violence.
Conversely, if the country's ruling party, ZANU-PF, creates conditions for fair elections and it introduces an equitable and transparent land reform program, the act would provide $26 million for land purchases, and it would promote investment and reduce some of Zimbabwe's debt.
Economic and government mismanagement have led the once popular Mr. Mugabe and ZANU-PF increasingly to lose voter support. Seventy-five percent of the population now lives in poverty and the country is on the brink of famine. The economic decay has been driven partly by Zimbabwe's military support for the Congo governments' war against rebel groups. This support is being provided in exchange for vast mineral and timber concessions to Zimbabwe's political and military leaders, and has depleted Zimbabwe's foreign currency reserves and jeopardized critical imports, especially fuel and food.
To retain power, Mr. Mugabe tried to install himself as lifelong president last year but his ambitions were thwarted in a constitutional referendum. Subsequently, the loss of support for the ruling party resulted in the opposition Movement for Democratic Reform (MDC) winning 57 out of 120 seats in parliamentary elections, despite widespread voter intimidation by ZANU-PF. In his continuing efforts to retain power, Mr. Mugabe has obtained economic support and arms from Col. Moammar Gadhafi of Libya in exchange for numerous properties in Zimbabwe, including a 32-room "Operations Headquarters." Following Col. Gadhafi's announcement at the June meeting of the Organization of African Unity that "all 'whites' should be driven off the land in Zimbabwe and South Africa," there has been an influx of Libyans into Zimbabwe.
The extent of the ZANU PF's violent intimidation became clear on Oct. 30 when a U.S. District Court ruled that ZANU-PF is liable for murdering and torturing its political opponents in the runup to elections. The five Zimbabwean plaintiffs in the case had requested a hearing in the U.S. to seek justice for their murdered relatives. ZANU-PF has also been accused of attempting to assassinate the leader of the opposition party and of bombing the MDC offices.
The commercial agricultural sector has come under increasing attack because of ZANU-PF's contention that the predominantly white farming community is financing the opposition. Government-sponsored occupations of farms started ostensibly to provide land for landless black people even though thousands of acres of land purchased under internationally sponsored "resettlement" programs remain unoccupied. Land seizures and harassment of farmers and their employees have continued despite the Abuja (Nigeria) accord in early September in which the Zimbabwe government agreed to stop land occupations. Last week ZANU-PF banned about 25 percent of Zimbabwe's 4,000 commercial farmers from planting crops and ordered them to leave their homes within three months.
Initially, the Zimbabwe Supreme Court ruled these land seizures to be unconstitutional. Mr. Mugabe recently replaced the chief justice of this court, and last week it ruled that the government should continue to "redistribute" white farms to black Zimbabweans. This ruling has serious consequences for the country. Apart from being the bedrock of Zimbabwe's economy, the commercial agricultural sector employs about 320,000 people, who together with their families number almost 2 million. Zimbabwe is on the brink of famine because of ZANU-PF's policy of land seizures and planting restrictions and because of the depletion of foreign currency.
Since Zimbabwe is centrally located in southern Africa, increasing chaos within its borders is affecting the region as a whole. Botswana's President Festus Mogae recently criticized Mr. Mugabe and his government for failing to deal with land resettlement peacefully, and for dragging the entire southern Africa economy down with his violent approach. One effect is the 40 percent drop in value of the South African currency since June.
To promote peace and stability in southern Africa, it is important that the U.S. send a clear message to Mr. Mugabe and ZANU-PF that America will not tolerate violent suppression of the rights of Zimbabweans. The Zimbabwe Democratic and Economic Recovery Act will provide the kind of signal needed.
Urs P. Kreuter is an adjunct fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a professor at Texas A&M University and grew up in Zimbabwe.
-------- asia
U.S. Reviews Bans in Central Asia
Rumsfeld Expects End to Sanctions on Azerbaijan, Armenia
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 16, 2001; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49563-2001Dec15?language=printer
BAKU, Azerbaijan, Dec. 15 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia today that he expected the United States to lift sanctions against them next week, paving the way for the resumption of U.S. military ties.
Rumsfeld's comments came during a whirlwind, one-day tour of three former Soviet republics designed to bolster relations with allies in the war against terrorism.
Congress enacted sanctions against Azerbaijan prohibiting military relations between the two countries in 1992, under intense lobbying by Armenian Americans angry about Azerbaijan's embargo against neighboring Armenia. At the time the two countries were engaged in a fierce conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave populated by ethnic Armenians, who are Christians, but located in Azerbaijan, which is predominantly Muslim. Successive U.S. administrations have imposed sanctions on Armenia, as well.
In his first stop today in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital on the Caspian Sea, Rumsfeld told President Heydar Aliyev that he had hoped to announce the sanctions had already been lifted. He said he now expected that to happen next week. He delivered the same message in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, to President Robert Kocharian.
The Bush administration began pushing hard to have the sanctions waived after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when Armenia and Azerbaijan quickly granted overflight rights to U.S. warplanes involved in the fighting in Afghanistan and offered other military assistance.
"Both countries recognize, since Sept. 11, the threat of terrorism, the changed circumstance," Rumsfeld said. "They also believe that closer military ties with the U.S. will allow them to modernize their militaries."
Rumsfeld's day ended in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, where President Eduard Shevardnadze endorsed President Bush's decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in six months. Bush informed Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday of his intention to withdraw so that his administration can pursue its ambitious program for testing and deploying new forms of ballistic missile defenses, which the treaty prohibits.
"Six months ago, I publicly expressed my support and my positive attitude toward the missile defense initiative," Shevardnadze said. "Although President Putin expressed his dissatisfaction with the unilateral decision of the United States to withdraw, he then went on and spoke about . . . further improvement of the relationship between the United States and Russia."
Rumsfeld plans to visit U.S. troops in Central Asia on Sunday before flying to Brussels for three days of talks at NATO headquarters. Those talks will include a session with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov about how to begin fashioning a new security relationship without the ABM Treaty as its cornerstone.
Azerbaijan is a country clearly seen by the Bush administration as a potential ally and major new source of oil outside the Middle East. In Baku, Rumsfeld assured Aliyev and Azerbaijani Defense Minister Safar Abiyev that agreement had been reached in Congress to waive the nine-year-old sanctions.
"The sooner . . . you do it, the better it is," President Aliyev told Rumsfeld during a joint news conference. "Everything is in your hands. We are just waiting for you. Hopefully it will be waived very soon."
The sanctions contained in the 1992 Freedom Support Act ban military assistance to Azerbaijan until the president certifies that the country has ceased offensive operations and blockades in Nagorno-Karabakh. While the law applies only to Azerbaijan, the same sanctions have been placed as a matter of policy on Armenia.
The waiver would authorize the president to lift the sanctions if he can certify to Congress that military cooperation with Azerbaijan is needed to fight the war on terrorism and secure borders in the region. The waiver could not continue if U.S. military assistance was used to upset the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process or to attack Armenia. Officials said identical terms would apply to Armenia as a condition of renewed military ties with Washington.
Nagorno-Karabakh, backed by Armenia, waged a 1988-1994 war in which Armenian forces won control of the area and some adjacent regions of Azerbaijan. The conflict has led to the deaths of more than 30,000 people and driven 1 million from their homes. Sporadic killing continues despite a cease-fire.
Azerbaijanis are adamant that the disputed region remain part of their country. Armenians insist that the region is a historic part of Armenia and became part of Azerbaijan when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin redrew the boundaries in the 1920s.
-------- biological weapons
Capitol Hill Anthrax Matches Army's Stocks
5 Labs Can Trace Spores to Ft. Detrick
By Rick Weiss and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 16, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49502-2001Dec15.html
Genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to Capitol Hill are identical to stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the U.S. Army since 1980, according to scientists familiar with the most recent tests.
Although many laboratories possess the Ames strain of anthrax involved in this fall's bioterrorist attacks, only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters, the scientists said. And all those labs can trace back their samples to a single U.S. military source: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md.
"That means the original source [of the terrorist material] had to have been USAMRIID," said one of the scientists.
Those matching samples are at Fort Detrick; the Dugway Proving Ground military research facility in Utah; a British military lab called Porton Down; and microbial depositories at Louisiana State University (LSU) and Northern Arizona University. Northern Arizona University received its sample from LSU, which received its sample from Porton Down. Dugway and Porton Down got their samples directly from USAMRIID.
In another development yesterday, government health officials said they planned to recommend that about 3,000 people who were exposed to anthrax, including hundreds of Washington postal and Capitol Hill workers, be offered an experimental vaccine as a precaution in case antibiotic treatment alone failed to protect them from getting sick.
The FBI's investigation into the anthrax attacks is increasingly focusing on whether U.S. government bioweapons research programs, including one conducted by the CIA, may have been the source of deadly anthrax powder sent through the mail, according to sources with knowledge of the probe. The results of the genetic tests strengthen that possibility. The FBI is focusing on a contractor that worked with the CIA, one source said.
But it remains unknown which lab may have lost control of the material that apparently ended up in terrorist hands. One of the two scientists familiar with the genetic testing, who has been advising the government on the anthrax scare, said investigators still know little about security at Porton Down, though they have no reason to suppose it has been inadequate. Of the domestic labs, Dugway has attracted the most attention from the FBI, he said.
Dugway is also the only facility known in recent years to have processed anthrax spores into the powdery form that is most easily inhaled.
Scientists have known for some time that bacteria used in the terrorist attacks belong to the Ames strain, a variant of the anthrax bacterium, Bacillus anthracis, that was first isolated from a cow in Iowa and has been under study by military scientists for decades. But the Ames strain comes in various subtypes that can be distinguished from one another by detailed tests on the microbe's genes.
The genetic fingerprinting finding was made by a research team led by geneticist Paul Keim at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, which has been comparing the Ames strain bacteria found in the Senate letters to other Ames strain samples retrieved from nature and from various university and government laboratories.
"That's good detective work in the sense of determining the origins; this will narrow the search for the people who had access to the strain," said Jennie Hunter-Cevera, a microbiologist and president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute.
Other experts were cautious, noting that it is possible that the exact subtype of the Ames strain could have originated elsewhere -- perhaps even isolated from animals or soil in the wild.
"It's an important finding but it's not one of those things that says, 'Aha!' " said Richard Spertzel, a former director of the U.N. biological weapons team in Iraq.
The scientists are still planning to do genetic testing on anthrax bacteria from the Defense Research Establishment Suffield, a Canadian military research facility, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, a government contractor doing research on anthrax vaccines. Those are the only other facilities known to have received samples from USAMRIID.
The researchers also plan to test samples obtained from nature, and from other university labs known to have the Ames strain to see if any others match. But of the few such samples that have been tested so far none has matched the spores used by the terrorists. In addition, the researchers want to examine other characteristics of the samples, such as proteins, carbohydrates and other substances in the material.
"If there's also a telltale piece or trace of nutrients or chemicals that show the process, that's even better. You start adding the pieces and go from tentative to confirmative," Hunter-Cevera said.
The CIA's biowarfare program, which was designed to find ways to defend against bioterrorists, involved the use of small amounts of Ames strain, an agency spokesman said yesterday. The CIA declined to say where its Ames strain material came from. The spokesman said, however, that the CIA's anthrax was not milled into the volatile power form found in the letters and that none of it is missing.
Nevertheless, the FBI has turned its attention to learning more about the CIA's work with anthrax, which investigators were told about by the agency within the past few weeks, government officials said. The CIA has tried to develop defenses against a vaccine-resistant strain of anthrax reportedly developed by the Russians several years ago.
While the CIA has had small amounts of Ames strain anthrax in its labs to "compare and contrast with other strains," a spokesman said, the agency did not "grow, create or produce the Ames strain." The anthrax contained in the letters under investigation "absolutely did not" come from CIA labs, the spokesman said.
He also said that the FBI is fully aware of the CIA's work with anthrax and suggested investigators were satisfied with the information they had been provided. Law enforcement sources, however, said the FBI remains extremely interested in the CIA's work with anthrax, with one official calling it the best lead they have at this point. The sources said FBI investigators do not yet know much about the CIA program.
Both law enforcement and intelligence officials said the CIA is cooperating with the FBI probe.
Investigators are considering a wide range of possible motives for the anthrax attacks, including vengeance of some sort, profiteering by someone involved in the anthrax cleanup business, or perhaps an effort by someone to cast blame on Iraq, which has an extensive bioweapons arsenal. Whoever sent the letters could have a strong scientific background, officials said, but they also believe the material could have been stolen and mailed by someone without such expertise.
A law enforcement source said the FBI did not initially include the CIA on its list of labs working with anthrax because the agency was not among 91 labs registered with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to transfer anthrax specimens. But as investigators interviewed workers at those known labs, they learned of the CIA's work, and in the past few weeks posed questions about it to the agency.
CIA scientists worked with other government agencies and outside contractors in the defensive biowarfare program, the agency spokesman said. The agency said most of its defensive work involves simulants, not active biological agents.
"Everything we have done is appropriate and necessary and consistent with our treaty obligations," he said, adding that congressional oversight committees, along with the National Security Council staff, has been kept abreast of the CIA lab work. "One of our missions is to learn about potential biological warfare threats," he said, adding that research can involve "anthrax and other biological agents."
Staff writer Joby Warrick contributed to this report.
-------- britain
Allied rifts fuels fears on British troops' mission
Gaby Hinsliff, Laeken and Kamal Ahmed
Sunday December 16, 2001
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1501,619550,00.html
The military and diplomatic mission to secure Afghanistan and begin planning for the 'wider war' against terrorism looked increasingly precarious last night after America and Britain appeared to be odds over the way forward.
Tony Blair signalled last night that the full deployment of British-led peace-keeping troops in Afghanistan could be delayed as he admitted that the mission would be 'tricky and difficult'. American backing for the force is still being hammered out.
The stabilisation force was expected to be in place by Saturday, when power is formally transferred to the interim government in Kabul, to prevent an upsurge of violence at a potentially explosive time.
But while the UK has troops on 48-hour standby for the mission, with an advance guard of Royal Marines likely to begin moving in early this week, British sources said other nations making up the international force may not be ready by then.
Under the latest scenario the British could now lead a 'symbolic' military presence in Kabul by next weekend, with the rest of up to 4,000 troops offered to the coalition being deployed later this month.
Downing Street has been working frantically to secure guarantees from the Americans of military protection for the peace-keeping troops, who are likely to be natural targets for disaffected Afghan warlords. Officials said that the US attitude was now the main stumbling block.
Senior government sources have also revealed that the next stages of the war, phases two and three, could lead to a significant divergence between Washington and London. America is planning military action against three targets - Somalia, Yemen and Sudan. Although the source said that the British Government was relaxed about the developments, he said there was growing concern over plans to target Iraq during the third phase.
Military action would threaten the international coalition against terrorism, the source said. He also indicated that Bush was taking a more unilateralist position as the war against terrorism progressed.
Blair said yesterday that he was confident that the military question-marks hanging over the mission would be resolved. 'It is very clear we need in this situation to have a unified and strong coalition, we need the mandate of the United Nations, and we need the agreement of people locally in Afghanistan,' Blair said at the close of the European Union summit in Laeken, near Brussels.
'We will achieve all those things, but there are details that need to be bolted down. Before we went into military action in Afghanistan several weeks passed. When you are sending your troops into battle, or into what is on any basis a tricky and difficult peacekeeping operation, it would not be responsible for us to do that without making sure our troops are protected.'
Although the Prime Minister has not spoken personally to George Bush this weekend, officials in Brussels spent much of their time setting up phone calls to Washington. Blair also discussed the peacekeeping mission with Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and France's President Jacques Chirac.
The fact that the Americans sent representatives to yesterday's peace-keeping conference in London is seen as a hopeful sign. Downing Street has made clear that troops will only be committed when their safety is assured.
'We are not going to go in and let people take pot-shots at us,' said one Minister.
'We are working with that date (22 December) in the front of our minds and we will do what we can. Whether they could be deployed in time to meet that deadline we don't know, but there is no question of deploying the whole force at that point,' said one official source. 'It will effectively build up after that.'
Major-General John McColl, general officer commanding the 3rd Division, was sent to Bagram yesterday to hold talks with Afghan warlords whose co-operation will be vital. He is due to return late tonight to brief Downing Street on the degree of resistance, if any, that can be expected.
Troops, including up to 300 Royal Marines, could then begin moving in early next week. Britain is likely to impose a time limit to avoid an open-ended commitment to the region that would put further strain on the overstretched Ministry of Defence.
-------- chemical weapons
Chemical Plants Are Feared as Targets
Views Differ on Ways To Avert Catastrophe
By James V. Grimaldi and Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 16, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47114-2001Dec15.html
The out-of-town pilot who landed at the Copperhill, Tenn., airport called himself "Mo" and asked a lot of questions. He was particularly interested in a chemical plant he had just flown over: What kind of chemicals are in those massive storage tanks?
Danny Whitener, a salvage-car dealer, said he remembers that day in March as clearly as he remembers the pilot's face. Today, he believes -- and has told the FBI -- that the man was Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
Whitener, 48, said he told the pilot that the tanks were empty. But Whitener was dead wrong. In fact, as much as 250 tons of sulfur dioxide remained in the tanks of the Intertrade Holdings specialty chemical plant. If those chemicals had been released, as many as 60,000 people who live within reach of the ensuing vapor cloud could have faced death or serious injury, according to the plant's worst-case estimate.
"Lord have mercy, once you drive a plane into it, I don't know anything in the world that could sustain that!" said Jim Hedrick, co-owner of Growth Management Services Inc., which owns and manages the plant.
Whether Atta was actually in eastern Tennessee -- the FBI said it has received two reports that he was but hasn't confirmed them -- may never be known, but the potential for catastrophe remains.
Since Sept. 11, federal officials have quietly warned the chemical industry that terrorist-launched attacks could turn hazardous-materials plants into weapons of mass destruction.
District officials were so concerned about the threat that, six weeks after the September attacks, they quickly substituted a safer chemical for the deadly chlorine gas stored in 90-ton rail cars at the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant. A rupture of just one rail car could have put 1.7 million people at risk in the Washington area.
At least 123 plants each keep amounts of toxic chemicals that, if released, could form deadly vapor clouds that would put more than 1 million people in danger, according to an Environmental Protection Agency analysis. More than 700 plants could put at least 100,000 people at risk, and more than 3,000 facilities have at least 10,000 people nearby.
Yet there is no federal counterterrorism security standard for chemical plants or refineries. And there is no way to assure citizens that chemical and oil companies are taking adequate precautions. Instead, the EPA is counting on the industry to take the necessary precautions voluntarily, no matter the cost.
"Certainly, the industry has a very powerful incentive to do the right thing," said Bob Bostock, assistant EPA administrator for homeland security. "It ought to be their worst nightmare that their facility would be target of a terrorist act because they did not meet their responsibility to the community."
The American Chemistry Council, an Arlington-based trade group that represents firms such as Dow Chemical Co., E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. and ExxonMobil Corp., said its members have increased security and stepped up employee background checks since Sept. 11. "Our industry has gotten the message and is working hard to make sure that our facilities are safer than ever before," said Fred Webber, the council's president.
But labor union officials, citizen groups and conservationists say that the changes are superficial and inconsistent and leave plants vulnerable to attack, particularly thousands of smaller and medium-sized plants.
"The line was that voluntary initiatives were enough," said Paul Orum, coordinator of the Working Group on Community Right-to-Know. "The line I heard was that a worst-case release or explosion was so unlikely that it wasn't worth planning for. After Sept. 11, it's clear that it is."
The Justice Department in 2000 was supposed to have produced a report about the vulnerability of plants and transported chemicals; a watered-down version is more than a year overdue. A Justice Department official blamed the delays on funding disputes.
Still, in assessing the general terrorist risk to plants, the Justice Department determined last year that the threat was "both real and credible" and could be more serious than attacks on nuclear power plants, which undergo regular security assessments by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"The ubiquitousness of industrial facilities possessing toxic chemicals and their proximity to population centers also make them attractive targets," the Justice Department concluded.
The FBI was so concerned about chemical plants in the aftermath of Sept. 11 that the facilities were among the first to be shown lists of suspected terrorists, government and industry officials said. One senior EPA official said he remains concerned that members of "sleeper" terrorist cells might be working in chemical plants.
A review of selected EPA documents describes dozens of deadly possibilities:
• A suburban California chemical plant routinely loads chlorine into 90-ton railroad cars that, if ruptured, could poison more than 4 million people in Orange and Los Angeles counties, depending on wind speed, direction and the ambient temperature.
• A Philadelphia refinery keeps 400,000 pounds of hydrogen fluoride that could asphyxiate nearly 4 million nearby residents.
• A South Kearny, N.J., chemical company's 180,000 pounds of chlorine or sulfur dioxide could form a cloud that could threaten 12 million people.
• The West Virginia sister plant of the infamous Union Carbide Corp. factory in Bhopal, India, keeps up to 200,000 pounds of methyl isocyanate that could emit a toxic fog over 60,000 people near Charleston.
• The Atofina Chemicals Inc. plant outside Detroit projects that a rupture of one of its 90-ton rail cars of chlorine could endanger 3 million people.
Required by the EPA to report these worst-case scenarios to the government, the companies say current safety practices make a catastrophe unlikely. But while a post-Sept. 11 presentation by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to defense, intelligence, law enforcement and industry officials agreed, it also warned that "terrorists can make the 'unlikely' happen."
The American Chemistry Council said many plants have increased worker identification checks, hired additional guards and fortified perimeter security since Sept. 11. The council recently published voluntary site-security guidelines.
Since the September attacks, the EPA has convened a series of closed-door meetings and seminars with industry leaders, urging them to fortify their plants. But the agency is evaluating whether its enforcement powers cover plant security. The agency said it has made no effort to check whether plants have made the voluntary security improvements that are claimed.
"There is quite a bit of work to do," said Jim Mackris, chief of the EPA's Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Office. But there are limits on the EPA, he added, and much depends on the companies and their concerns about civil and criminal liability, insurance costs and public relations.
"If you blow up, you probably are going to lose some customers, going to lose some workers and going to lose some reputation," Mackris said.
'The Wake-Up Call'
Evidence of al Qaeda's interest in chemical attacks is well known -- copies of U.S. chemical trade publications were found in an Osama bin Laden hideout last week.
But al Qaeda terrorists are not alone in considering attacks on chemical plants and refineries. Such plots have involved anti-government militia members in the United States and Chechen rebels in Russia.
Two years ago, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested two alleged militia members over a plot to blow up in Elk Grove, Calif., two 12 million-gallon liquid propane tanks and four 60,000-gallon high-pressure propane tanks, located about one mile from a residential subdivision in suburban Sacramento.
"To me, that should have been the wake-up call to the industry," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jodi Rafkin said.
A 1998 report by the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the American Chemistry Council's predecessor, acknowledged the threat. "Put in the right place, bombs can deliver the equivalent destructive power of a weapon of mass destruction," the study concluded.
A Texas A&M University study released in October documented 16,060 sudden, dangerous chemical releases in 1998 that caused 61 deaths and 4,002 injuries. "From the point of view of the terrorist, any chemical is a target," said Sam Mannan, the study's lead researcher.
In Louisiana, EPA reports from 50 companies documented 32 spills, fires, explosions and toxic gas releases between 1993 and 2000. The state in 1999 averaged 1,831 pounds of released toxic chemicals for each industry employee, nearly five times the national average.
The Louisiana Chemical Association, the chemical plants' trade organization, said in a statement that "security has been heightened" at the sites since Sept. 11, but it did not describe the new measures "for obvious reasons."
'Big Vulnerabilities'
For more than 1 1/2 years, the EPA and other federal agencies have employed a variety of methods to encourage, goad, warn and prod chemical plants to bolster security.
A February 2000 EPA bulletin warned about "today's increased concern about terrorism and sabotage" and urged "all companies, big and small," to have "some measure of site security in place to minimize crime and to protect company assets."
At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, chem/bio national security program manager Ronald Koopman said he has repeatedly warned companies that they were unprepared for terrorist attacks.
"We would say, 'We see these big vulnerabilities and they make us nervous,' " Koopman said. "And they would say back to us, 'What's the real threat?' And we would say, 'We don't know.' The vulnerabilities are much more dangerous now. . . . It has scared me for some time."
A report published in 1999 by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found serious shortcomings at more than two dozen plants in two communities, which they did not name but which sources said were Las Vegas and the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia.
"Security at chemical plants ranged from fair to very poor," the agency found. "Most security gaps were the result of complacency and lack of awareness of the threat."
Plant security officials were "very pessimistic about their ability to deter sabotage by employees, yet none of them had implemented simple background checks for key employees such as chemical process operators," the report said.
Security around loading docks, ship docks, trains and trucks ranged from "poor to non-existent," the report said. Chemical barge terminals along rivers were freely accessible, and rail and truck links "had no security beyond staging areas."
Meanwhile, "railcars containing cyanide compounds, flammable liquid pesticides, liquefied petroleum gases, chlorine, acids and butadiene were parked alongside residential areas," the report said.
The American Chemistry Council criticized the report for discussing only two communities, saying that they were "not representative of the rest of the country or of the entire chemical industry."
Justice Department Inertia
Despite its stated concern for safety, the industry strongly opposes recently introduced legislation requiring plants to assess the risks of attacks and to propose remedies.
"Additional regulations, stronger enforcement -- that isn't going to do the trick," the council's Webber said. "What you need is the industry stepping up on its own, preventing the worst from happening."
With the goal of preventing terrorist attacks, the industry since Sept. 11 has prodded the EPA and other federal agencies to remove from the Internet data on hazardous materials and chemical plant vulnerabilities.
The trade-off between plant security and the public's right to know about risks to neighborhoods first surfaced in 1999, when Congress agreed to restrict the Internet availability of the EPA's "worst-case scenarios" for individual plants.
In return, lawmakers required the Justice Department to prepare a report assessing the plants' vulnerability "to criminal and terrorist activity." An interim report was to be completed in a year.
To date, no report has been produced. The problem is funding. The study was supposed to cost $500,000, to be paid for from existing funds. Last year, however, Justice Department officials said a full report would cost $7 million, requiring a separate appropriation. Congress in late 2000 appropriated $600,000 for a scaled-back study that would merely develop "a methodology" for assessing plant vulnerability. The interim report is promised by Dec. 21.
Community right-to-know advocates say the combination of Justice Department inertia and the new restrictions on public information take the pressure off industry.
"Part of the reason" security improved, said Stuart Greenberg, of the Cleveland-based Environmental Health Watch, "was that they didn't want to be in the newspaper as the 'top ten' this or that."
'Inherent Safety'
Since Sept. 11, plants and refineries have increased ID checks, tightened access, hired more security guards, replaced broken fences and cameras, reduced inventories of hazardous chemicals and enlisted the help of local police departments.
"We started looking at ourselves as a target, probably for the first time," said Jeff Jakonczuk, environmental health and safety manager at General Chemical Corp. in Richmond, Calif. "We realized that even though we had security practices in place, they didn't address terrorism very well."
But "the kinds of security changes that have been made are superficial," said Rick Engler of the New Jersey Work Environment Council, a watchdog group representing more than 50 union locals.
Many critics warn that the recently tightened security fails to address the issue of "inherent safety" -- changing processes or substituting chemicals to minimize the use of dangerous substances.
Proponents of inherent safety say that it is the best way to avert catastrophes.
"The week after September 11th, we had a meeting on plant security," said Greenberg in Cleveland. "We had a big regional wastewater treatment plant, and we said, 'Isn't it great, they don't have to worry because they switched from chlorine to sodium hypochlorite [bleach] to purify their water?" The District's Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant made the same switch.
Northern California's Contra Costa County, with 45 large refineries and chemical plants, has an ordinance requiring chemical companies to research inherent safety processes and to explain to local officials when they decide not to use them. Without an enforcement mechanism in place, however, the ordinance's effect is in dispute. A recent local study documented 25 major accidents in the county in 1999 and 2000, resulting in four worker deaths and 16 injuries.
Proponents also say that inherent safety provides a permanent solution, while beefed-up security can be temporary.
For example, at the East Coast's largest refinery, Phillips Petroleum Co.'s Bayway Refinery in Linden, N.J., the U.S. Coast Guard, after the Sept. 11 attacks, refused to renew the waiver of a safety regulation requiring one supervisor to be on the dock for every ship unloading dangerous chemicals. The reason was "national security," said Coast Guard congressional liaison Cmdr. Karl Schultz in a letter to Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-N.J.), Linden's congressman.
But Coast Guard Rear Adm. Richard Bennis, the port captain of New York and New Jersey, renewed the waiver after several additional security measures were implemented. Bayway Refinery spokesman Mike Karlovich said security has been heightened to protect the refinery and docks, and he blamed the Teamsters union for exaggerating the threats "to try and scare our neighbors" to further "their labor agenda."
Curt E. Greder, president of Teamsters Local No. 877 in Linden, said companies have lost an opportunity. "We're angry, we're nervous, just like every other American," said Greder, a refinery employee. "We work inside a bomb. Right now, it is not the greatest place to work."
Database editor Sarah Cohen and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
-------- china
INTERNATIONAL
China, in Harsh Crackdown, Executes Muslim Separatists
New York Times
December 16, 2001
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/16/international/asia/16CHIN.html?pagewanted=all
HOTAN, China - A crowd gathered in a sports stadium beneath a blue morning sky here in October to watch court officials sentence a man to death, a scene that has been played out hundreds of times across China this year as part of the Communist Party's latest drive against crime.
But this rally was different. The man, Metrozi Mettohti, 34, was given the death penalty for trying to "split the country" and for storing weapons as part of a persistent and occasionally violent separatist movement among China's Uighurs, the Turkic- speaking ethnic group of nine million people, most of them Muslims, concentrated along the country's far western border.
Six other men were given jail terms of up to 12 years that day for separatist activities, said local residents and activists abroad. According to one account, Mr. Mettohti shouted "Long live Eastern Turkestan!" - the name of the country separatists would like to create - before being gagged.
After the rally, local people say, he was put in the back of a truck, driven to a village outside of town and shot in the back of the head. The execution could not be officially verified.
The fragile, fertile strip between China's rugged western mountains and its vast western desert is the only place in the country where people are regularly put to death for political offenses. The country's current anticrime drive, coupled with a renewed focus on Islamic militancy in the wake of the American-led war on terrorism, has only increased the pace of the executions, Uighurs say.
"The government gives very little information about the people who are executed, and news of executions isn't published outside the places where they occur," said a young Uighur man in Hotan, speaking in the privacy of a car in a region where most everyone is jittery when talking to outsiders.
"Have you heard of `hazat?' " he said, using the Uighur word for jihad, or Islamic holy war. But he was startled when he saw the word written in a reporter's notebook and insisted that his cellphone number be torn from the same page.
Then he thought better of discussing politics at all, and with good reason. His brother had been released just days earlier after nearly a decade in jail for publishing separatist tracts. "The secret police are everywhere," the young man said. "You never know who they are."
Most of the Uighurs condemned to death here are charged with murder or with otherwise causing deaths, but some, like Mr. Mettohti, are being executed for lesser transgressions.
The Chinese government says the executions are meant to keep the separatist threat in check, arguing that Beijing is battling Islamic terrorists not unlike those the United States is fighting in Afghanistan, just a few hundred miles away.
But Uighurs say that the number of executions is incommensurate with the threat posed by separatists and that many innocent people have been swept up in the crackdown. Some of those charged with separatism are simply frustrated young men demanding their rights, they say, adding that the war against terrorism war has given Beijing the political cover to pursue policies that are meant to erode their cultural identity.
At least 25 Uighurs have been executed this year and scores more are waiting on death row, say people who track these executions in the local news media. They say the number is probably much higher because the government in August stopped publicizing most of the executions, which Uighurs say are part of a larger effort to suppress legitimate dissent and accelerate the ethnic group's assimilation into the country's larger Han Chinese population.
This sparsely populated area's oases once watered camels and fortified travelers with raisins, mutton and bread while they paused between mountains and desert on the fabled Silk Road. The Uighurs' local economy is still made up of such stuff.
Though called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region today, its autonomy is largely symbolic because all major policy decisions are made by the Communist Party and almost all of the region's senior party posts are held by ethnic Chinese. Though Uighurs accounted for more than 90 percent of the region's population when the party came to power in 1949, they account for less than half now.
Hopes for an independent homeland increased after the breakup of the Soviet Union, when a cluster of new, independent Turkic countries appeared on China's western border. But a quick Chinese crackdown dashed those hopes. By the late 1990's, the separatist movement had turned increasingly violent, culminating in a series of bombings and clashes with the police in 1996 and 1997.
The Uighurs are at the eastern end of a swath of Turkic-speaking Central Asia that stretches from the Bosporus to the western edge of the Mongolian steppes and includes 120 million people.
For centuries, the area was ruled by various khans until the Qing dynasty took control here in the mid- 18th century. The Qing court consolidated its hold on the region in the mid-19th century with the help of China's legendary General Zuo Zongtang (better known in the West as General Tso, for whom a popular chicken dish is named). He renamed the area Xinjiang, or New Territory.
Today, Xinjiang is China's largest province, accounting for one-sixth of the country's land and much of its valuable natural resources, most notably oil.
Despite centuries of Chinese rule, though, the Uighurs have maintained a vibrant culture, with writers and musicians continuing to produce popular works - some now banned by the government - in the Turkic language.
They re-established contact with the Muslim world in the 1980's as the country opened up again. Some Uighurs were allowed to travel to Mecca for the hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage, and many young Uighurs who made the trip brought back a renewed sense of their religious and cultural identity.
How many Uighur separatists are operating in Xinjiang today is impossible to estimate. China says several hundred Uighurs have received training from the Afghan Taliban, and several Uighurs are among the Taliban fighters who have been captured in Afghanistan in the last few weeks. But the number of serious separatists inside China is still believed to be small.
"This is mostly social and civil unrest by disorganized, disgruntled, fairly impulsive young men, not a widespread movement," said Dru C. Gladney, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Hawaii who follows developments in Xinjiang.
The unrest of the late 1990's resulted in a surge of executions. Amnesty International reported that at least 190 people, an average of nearly two a week, were put to death in Xinjiang from January 1997 to April 1999.
Several of the executions this year have taken place in Yili, known as Yining in Chinese, where a Uighur demonstration protesting China's restrictive policies erupted into a riot in February 1997. At least nine people died in the melee, scores of Uighurs were arrested and many of them were sentenced to death or long prison terms.
As recently as Oct. 15, two Uighurs were executed in Yili for their roles in the riots, according to local press reports. Three other Uighurs were given the death penalty with a two- year suspension and six more were sentenced to jail terms, two for life.
The repression has deepened Uighur resentment of the Chinese, but has also eroded sympathy for the separatists. In Kashgar, an ancient Silk Road market town, talk of the political tensions are nervously dismissed by most people, many of whom say the desire for independence remains, but the hope for it is gone.
"We just want to make money and live in peace," said a young Uighur businessman in Kashgar. "The separatists have brought pressure on everyone."
The anticrime campaign is not likely to stop the periodic violence.
In September, local Uighurs say, a gun battle on the road from Kashgar to the Pakistan border left one policeman and two Uighurs dead. A third Uighur involved in the incident was caught and is expected to be executed soon.
The government has called for an intensification of the crackdown in Xinjiang.
China's vast state security apparatus monitors tens of thousands of people whose allegiance to the Communist Party is suspect. While the majority of Chinese enjoy a level of freedom today unprecedented in the 52 years since the Communist Party took control, the party is unforgiving and unrelenting in its pursuit of anyone who challenges its rule.
In Uch Turfan, or Wushi, a county seat in a crook of the snowy-peaked Heavenly Mountains, which separate China from Kyrgyzstan, armed guards patrol bridges and children scatter in panic when a strange car stops near them.
The town has been a center of anti- Chinese sentiment since the mid-18th century, when Qing troops were sent here to quell a Uighur uprising.
According to Uighur legend, seven girls retreated to a rocky mount at one end of town and resisted the troops for days until they were killed by cannon fire. Access to their tomb atop the mount is now blocked by a locked gate.
Local residents, most of whom are reluctant to speak to foreigners, say 28 Uighurs were sentenced at a rally outside the town's movie theater on Nov. 11. Among them was a man who had translated the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights into the Uighur language and distributed it to others. He was reportedly given a 20-year jail term.
Most of the others were also charged with political activities and two were executed immediately after the rally. Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the East Turkestan Information Center, based in Sweden, said the men were political activists, but an Uch Turfan court official, reached by telephone, insisted that the men had been executed for murders unrelated to politics.
China acknowledges that its prisons hold nearly 2,000 political prisoners, most serving sentences for endangering state security, according to China's Justice Department.
But those numbers do not include people locked up in the country's reform-through-labor camps, to which the Public Secu