NUCLEAR
Lord Carver, Critic of Nuclear Weapons, Dies at 86
EU leaders commit to nuclear power monitoring
Bulgaria N-plant gets ready to close old reactors
Turkey delighted with EU developments
German Nuclear Phase Out Law Approved
N.Korean nuclear engineers in South
N. Korea Techs Study S. Korea Reactors
Audit Chamber says Russia facing nuclear-waste crisis
Russian Military Won't Act on ABM
Rumsfeld: Russia Relations Improving
Russia to Build Nuclear Reactors
We're ready to modify ABM treaty: Putin
U.S. holds talks with China over ABM
Nuclear Arms Talks Planned
Nuclear Sites Ill-Prepared for Attacks, Group Says
IBM designing supercomputer for complicated biological issues
Georgia citizens win right to challenge reactor fuel factory
New arms race with Russia not likely, say Powell, Rice
MILITARY
Al Qaeda ships tracked in Mediterranean
A hidden war cost
Al Qaeda routed from Tora Bora caves
U.S. Embassy Reopens in Afghanistan
Inside the Taliban's Torture Chambers
'Demilitarization' proviso killed in victory for gun-rights groups
Anthrax Likely Came From U.S. Source
FEDERAL CONTRACTS
Happy New Year. Bye
Pressure on Arafat yields call for peace
Peres: Deal with Palestinians possible
Palestinian Militants Vow to Attack Israel
Pakistan spy agency linked to attack
U.S. Talks to Pakistan on Terror
Priest Asks India-Pakistan Restraint
Defense Bill Authorizes Continued Vieques Bombing
Condemning bin Laden [Saudi Arabia]
Today in DC
POLICE / PRISONERS
Homeland defense - of the Constitution
A Senior Line of Homeland Defense
National ID Card Gaining Support
Falun Gong practitioner beaten to death
Commandos Attempt Coup in Haiti
Key LAPD Figure Pleads Guilty
Christians terrorized by Laskar Jihad
Success spurs cooperation
ENERGY AND OTHER
Winds over European waters harnessed for electricity
Bonneville to double wind-powered electricity
Japanese Prime Minister Test Drives Fuel Cell Cars
Link detected between dirty air, birth defects
ACTIVISTS
Greenpeace, Japanese Whalers Clash
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
Lord Carver, Critic of Nuclear Weapons, Dies at 86
December 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/17/obituaries/17CARV.html?searchpv=nytToday
LONDON, Dec. 16 (AP) - Field Marshal Lord Carver, who rose to become Britain's top military officer and was a persistent critic of nuclear weapons, died Dec. 9 at home in Wickham, southern England, his family said. He was 86.
He began moving up the ranks with a commission in the Royal Tank Corps in 1935 and went on to become chief of the defense staff - equivalent to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - from 1973 to 1976.
He was chief of staff in Kenya in 1954 during the Mau Mau rebellion, which led to Kenya's independence from Britain in 1963. He commanded United Nations peacekeeping forces in Cyprus in 1964 but later criticized them as impeding progress toward a political settlement. He was also Britain's resident commissioner in 1977-78 in Rhodesia, then a British colony and now Zimbabwe.
As a member of the House of Lords, he opposed Britain's decision to buy Trident submarines with nuclear-armed missiles.
In a House of Lords debate on Britain's nuclear weapons in 1997, he tartly asked a government minister "who is supposed to be deterred by the deterrent to which she referred, and from doing what?"
Lord Carver, whose given name was Michael, was a member of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, created by the Australian government, which released a report in 1996 outlining a plan for nuclear disarmament.
"The destructiveness of nuclear weapons is so great, and their use so catastrophic, that they have no military utility against a comparably equipped opponent other than the belief that they deter such an opponent from using his nuclear weapons," he said at the time.
"Therefore, their elimination would remove that justification for their retention," he said. "Their use against a nonnuclear opponent is politically and morally indefensible."
He was also a critic of NATO. In a Lords debate in December, he urged abolition of the NATO command, saying it existed only to camouflage the reality that the United States commands the allied forces.
NATO, Lord Carver said, was "manned by inflated allied staffs, most of whom have nothing significant to do, and every expansion of NATO makes that worse."
He is survived by his wife, two sons and two daughters.
-------- europe
EU leaders commit to nuclear power monitoring
EU: December 17, 2001
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13730/newsDate/17-Dec-2001/story.htm
BRUSSELS - European Union leaders committed themselves on the weekend to swapping information on nuclear safety in a move which could smooth EU enlargement to eastern European states operating ageing Russian reactors.
"The European Council is committed to a high level of nuclear safety throughout the Union. It stresses the need to monitor safety and security of nuclear power stations," leaders said in conclusions to a two-day summit meeting.
"It asks for regular reports from member states' atomic energy experts who will maintain close contact with the European Commission," the statement added. Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel described the declaration as an important first and a triumph for Vienna, which has attacked a decision by the neighbouring Czech Republic to start a reactor at Temelin near the two countries' border.
Bulgaria and Lithuania also operate reactors similar to one which exploded in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, in the world's worst ever civil nuclear accident.
Ireland, which is in dispute with the United Kingdom over a reprocessing plant at Sellafield in north western England, also welcomed the conclusions, Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said.
Schuessel noted the decision was taken in the shadow of the Brussels Atomium - an atom shaped monument to the nuclear age built in 1958 for the city's world fair.
Diplomats said France, Europe's biggest user of nuclear power, fought to tone down earlier drafts of the conclusions which called on the EU executive European Commission to propose common nuclear safety standards.
----
Bulgaria N-plant gets ready to close old reactors
BULGARIA: December 17, 2001
REUTERS
Story by Anna Mudeva
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13734/newsDate/17-Dec-2001/story.htm
SOFIA - Bulgaria's Kozloduy nuclear power plant, seen as thorny issue in the country's entry talks with the European Union, said it had launched preparations to close its two oldest 440-megawatt reactors by end-2002.
The plant is also modernising another two 440 MW reactors to convince the EU that they could be closed later than the Union's deadline of 2006, Kozloduy's Executive Director Yordan Kostadinov told Reuters.
Last year, Sofia bowed to EU's pressure and agreed to shut down the two older reactors before 2003.
But Bulgaria, which is the main power exporter in the Balkans, faces tough talks with the EU next year on the earlier closure of the other two reactors as it seeks to run them to 2008 and 2010. Their operational life is until 2010 and 2012.
"The decommissioning of the two (older) reactors will be carried out not later than end-2002 as agreed with the European Commission," Kostadinov said in written answers to Reuters' questions.
"We have already launched organisational and technical preparations for the closure. We will take into account all safety requirements and the effect of a simultaneous closure of the two reactors in the middle of the winter."
The Soviet-designed 3,760 MW plant has another two 1,000 MW recators and supplies some 44 percent of Bulgaria's power.
Kostadinov said the decommissioning of the two old reactors and their preparation for a safe storage would take five years. The storage and the destruction will take another 35 years.
He said the money needed for full closure and destruction amounted to some 75 percent of the funds needed to build a new reactor but he did not mention any figure.
Some 100 million euros ($90.17 million) were raised by an internationally backed fund set up by the European Commission in 1999, to support the decommissioning process.
Bulgaria opened the energy chapter in its pre-accession talks with the EU in November and hopes to close it in 2003.
----
[Does anyone know how many U.S. nuclear weapons are based in Turkey under NATO agreement? In Europe? Please mailto:nucnews@yahoo.com - et]
Turkey delighted with EU developments
World Scene
December 17, 2001
Washington Times
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011217-801902.htm
ISTANBUL - Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said yesterday that he was delighted that Turkey had been put on an equal footing with other candidate countries for the next wave of European Union enlargement.
"It's the first time that a declaration by the European Union has made such concrete references to our chances for membership," Mr. Ecevit said in a statement, according to Anatolia news agency.
In the Laeken declaration, made at its summit in Belgium on Saturday, the EU said Turkey had made progress towards complying with the political criteria established for accession, in particular through the recent amendment of its constitution.
-------- germany
German Nuclear Phase Out Law Approved
December 17, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-17-02.html
BERLIN, Germany, Germany's controversial plan to abolish nuclear power passed its last major legislative hurdle on Friday with approval in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament.
The Bundesrat, the upper house in which Germany's states are represented, has still to scrutinize the law but has no power of veto.
Center-right opposition parties again pledged to reverse the law if they win next year's general election. The ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Greens led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the so called Red/Green coalition, has worked towards the phase out since it took power in 1998.
Siemens Boiling Water Reactor at Gundremmingen (Photo courtesy Siemens)
One of the coalition government's signature environmental policies, the nuclear phase out has been driven by the Greens, with tortuous negotiations resulting in a deal with the nuclear industry in June.
The German government and leading energy companies on June 11 signed a formal agreement to phase out nuclear power. At the core of the agreement is a limit on the amount of power that can be produced by each of Germany's existing nuclear plants.
The draft law approved by the Bundestag Friday provides legislative backing for the June agreement, under which reactors can each operate for up to 32 years and generate a set amount of electricity.
Output quotas can be transferred from older to newer plant but not vice versa. Based on an average 32 year life for each reactor, Germany's newest nuclear power plant will have to close around 2021.
German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin (Photo courtesy IISD/Linkages)
The draft law includes a ban on new nuclear power stations. From from July 1, 2005, spent nuclear fuel reprocessing would be prohibited and transport of nuclear materials to and from reprocessing plants also banned. Power stations are to be subject to more stringent safety checks.
Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, a Green, welcomed the vote as marking the end of "disastrous" old energy policies, but opposition party environment spokesperson Klaus Lippold warned that he was "rejoicing too soon."
Environmental groups complained that nuclear power station operating permits should have been immediately withdrawn after the September 11 terrorist plane strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They warn that the German government is ignoring the threat of terrorist attack.
Latest opinion polls predict another victory for Chancellor Schroeder and his nuclear phase out policies in the next national election scheduled for autumn 2002.
{Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk}
-------- korea
N.Korean nuclear engineers in South
By Jong-Heon Lee
UPI Correspondent
December 17, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/17122001-030840-7713r.htm
SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 17 (UPI) -- A group of North Korean nuclear officials and engineers have traveled to South Korea to survey the country's nuclear facilities, government officials here said Monday.
The visit was made in accordance with a training protocol signed between North Korea and a U.S.-led international consortium, which is building safe nuclear reactors in the communist country, said the official at the Unification Ministry.
"The North Koreans who arrived here Sunday will make a two-week tour of nuclear facilities to learn about safe operation of the two light-water reactors under construction in the North," he said.
They will look around nuclear reactors in Ulchin on the eastern coast, which are standard models for the light-water reactors the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization is building in North Korea, the official said. The 20-member North Koran delegation was led by Kim Hee Mun, the minister-level official in charge of the nuclear reactor project.
Under a 1994 deal, the United States and its allies agreed to give North Korea two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors in return for Pyongyang's pledge to put on hold its Soviet-designed weapon-grade plutonium producing graphite-moderated reactors. The KEDO, a U.S.-led consortium set up to implement the $4.6 billion reactor project, includes South Korea, Japan and the European Union.
In early this month, Charles Kartment, executive director of the consortium, and Kim signed agreements on the quality guarantees of two nuclear reactors. The agreement stipulates the rights and responsibilities of North Korea and KEDO in taking part in quality inspections of the reactors under construction. Kartman, a former U.S. special envoy in dealing with North Korea, visited North Korea for his first visit to the country this year.
The North Koreans' visit came amid a new round of tensions between North Korea and the United States in the wake of Pyongyang's rejection of Washington's demand to allow foreign inspectors to verify that it is not producing weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear and biochemical arms.
Escalating verbal attacks, North Korea accused the United States Monday of trying to stifle the communist country, warning it was "ready to fight a war with the Americans." "If any enemy comes in attack on the Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea, its army will not allow him to go back alive," the North's state-run press said.
The 1994 Agreed Framework obliges North Korea to open its atomic facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, before critical reactor equipment is installed. The IAEA and North Korea held talks last week over wider inspections of the country's key nuclear facilities.
--------
N. Korea Techs Study S. Korea Reactors
December 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear-Plant.html?searchpv=aponline
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Twenty North Korean nuclear experts began a two-week tour of South Korean nuclear power plants on Monday -- a visit that comes while Pyongyang has stepped up its anti-U.S., anti-South Korean rhetoric.
The visit is part of a U.S. agreement to build nuclear power plants and train workers in the North. But it coincides with North Korean statements attacking the United States for demanding inspections of its suspected nuclear program, among other issues.
Officials said the North Koreans, led by Kim Hui-moon, a Cabinet-level official, flew to Seoul from Beijing on Sunday and were taken by car on Monday to the east coast village of Ulchin, where four French-built nuclear reactors are operating.
They were the first North Koreans to visit South Korea since official dialogue between the two Koreas was halted in mid-November amid a breakdown in Cabinet-level talks.
``They are here for education and training,'' said Lim Ui-do, a South Korean official assigned to the U.S.-led international consortium that is building two modern nuclear power plants in North Korea.
The two Western-designed reactors are a reward for the communist regime's freeze of its suspected nuclear weapons program under a 1994 accord with the United States.
As part of the accord, the American-led Korean Peninsula Energy Development Program is required to train hundreds of North Koreans who will operate the two reactors.
Consortium officials say that the completion of the two reactors in North Korea, originally set for 2003, will have to be delayed for several years because of funding and other problems.
The 20 North Koreans were the first to be sent to South Korea for training. By the end of next year, 290 more North Koreans are scheduled to be trained at South Korean facilities, officials said.
When finished, the U.S.-designed light-water reactors will replace the North's Soviet-designed, graphite-moderated reactors, which experts say produce greater amounts of weapons-grade plutonium.
The Korean Peninsula was divided in 1945. Today, they share the world's most heavily armed border.
About 37,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. The war ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty, and the North and South are still technically at war.
On Sunday, North Korea said it was not afraid to go to war with the United States, accusing Washington of trying to make it the next target after Afghanistan in the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign.
-------- russia
Audit Chamber says Russia facing nuclear-waste crisis
Monday, December 17, 2001
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/12/12172001/ap_russia_45896.asp
MOSCOW--Russia is facing a crisis in the storage and disposal of nuclear waste, the country's Audit Chamber said Friday.
Over the past 50 years, Russia has accumulated waste with a combined radioactivity of more than 6 billion curies that it does not have the capacity to store and dispose of, the parliamentary watchdog said in a press release. That is about 120 times the radiation released in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, it said.
The Audit Chamber said the country's system of nuclear storage facilities was on the verge of collapse due to a lack of government attention, funding and legislation.
"Most of the storage facilities are nearly full, and the equipment is in need of urgent modernization and repair," the chamber said.
It said a 1996-2000 government program for nuclear waste disposal received only 10.7 percent of the necessary funding.
The Audit Chamber will send a report of its investigation to both houses of parliament, the Cabinet, the Nuclear Energy Ministry and the Finance Ministry, it said.
----
Russian Military Won't Act on ABM
By Judith Ingram
Associated Press Writer
Monday, December 17, 2001; 11:56 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54722-2001Dec17?language=printer
MOSCOW -- Russia's defense minister said Monday that the military will not take any major steps in response to President Bush's announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
"The Russian Defense Ministry will not take any drastic direct or indirect steps," the Interfax news agency quoted Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov as saying.
The statement was the latest signal that Russia will grudgingly accept the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 treaty, which top Kremlin officials have repeatedly called the cornerstone of international security.
Bush gave six month's notice on Thursday that the United States will abandon the pact in order to pursue plans for a national missile defense, which is prohibited under the treaty.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the decision a "mistake" but said it was no surprise - after months of negotiations on the issue - and stressed it would not endanger Russia.
Ivanov reiterated that the U.S. withdrawal would not affect Russia's security. In a statement that appeared aimed to back up that assertion, Ivanov said that Russia had plans to develop its Strategic Missile Forces "which were drafted long before" the U.S. decision.
Ivanov also repeated that Russia plans to compensate for the U.S. withdrawal by negotiating deep and specific strategic arms cuts. Bush's decision "creates a certain vacuum from the point of view of strategic stability," Ivanov said. "We hope this vacuum will be filled, in particular, with a Russian-American treaty on radical cuts of strategic offensive armaments under strict international control and verification."
Russian calls to push ahead with nuclear weapons cuts despite the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty mark a major shift from earlier this year.
In June, Putin warned a U.S. withdrawal would spell the end of the START treaties limiting offensive nuclear weapons, and threatened to respond by putting multiple nuclear warheads on existing Russian missiles.
But in his televised response to Bush's decision, Putin said Russia did not intend to scrap START I and START II.
Instead, he responded to Bush's proposal to cut U.S. nuclear warheads by two-thirds, to between 1,700 and 2,200, saying Russia was ready to bring the number of its warheads down to between 1,500 and 2,200.
In an interview published in Britain's Financial Times newspaper Monday, Putin said that the abrogation of the ABM treaty gave Russia the theoretical right to fit its missiles with multiple warheads.
"But this is not to say we will actually do that," he was quoted as saying. "Because in the foreseeable future there is no point, no sense for Russia to do that."
While Russia is confident the size of its nuclear arsenal means U.S. plans for a missile defense will not weaken its security, China is worried the system would undercut the deterrent value of its small arsenal.
A top U.S. diplomat met with Chinese officials Monday in an attempt to ease concerns over the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty, an official at the American Embassy in Beijing said.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity and declined to say who led the mission. State Department officials in Washington earlier said it would be led by Avis Bohlen, an assistant secretary of state.
China's Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the talks.
But an editorial on the English-language Web site of the Communist Party's official People's Daily newspaper accused the U.S. administration of turning a "deaf ear to the just voice of the international community."
U.S. officials say the purpose of a missile shield would be to defend against attacks by terrorists or unpredictable nations that are seeking to develop nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.
----
Rumsfeld: Russia Relations Improving
By Sally Buzbee
Associated Press Writer
Monday, December 17, 2001; 12:04 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54772-2001Dec17?language=printer
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday the relationship between the United States and Russia continues to improve despite President Bush's announcement he is pulling out of an anti-missile defense treaty.
Rumsfeld said leaders of the two countries nevertheless will have to talk about "the importance of transparency and predictability, which both countries recognize ... as important for our respective populations to feel comfortable as we make that dramatic change."
In Moscow, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov also signaled Russian acceptance of Bush's decision. "The Russian Defense Ministry will not take any drastic direct or indirect steps" in response to the U.S. announcement, the Interfax news agency quoted Ivanov as saying.
Rumsfeld was to confer Monday with Ivanov before a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels.
Russia has said it was disappointed by Bush's announcement last week that the United States will pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. But President Vladimir Putin also said the move does not threaten Russia.
In a statement that appeared aimed to back up that assertion, Ivanov said Monday that Russia had plans to develop its Strategic Missile Forces "which were drafted long before" the U.S. decision. The statement was released before his scheduled meeting with Rumsfeld.
Bush announced the decision to pull out of the treaty because he wants to develop a national missile defense system.
Bush tried to strike a deal with Putin to allow the United States to expand testing for such a system. But Russia, which can't afford a national missile defense, has said it views the ABM pact as the basis of all nuclear-reduction treaties.
Rumsfeld has robustly defended the decision. He told the leaders of former Soviet republics he visited over the weekend that the U.S. decision would not create an arms race but help stabilize the world.
Secretary of State Colin Powell also said Sunday that good relations with Russia will continue despite the ABM pullout decision.
Russia and the United States have announced plans to cut their nuclear warhead stockpiles significantly. The United States says it will reduce its number of warheads to 2,000 or fewer from the current 6,000. Russia has made a similar pledge.
Rumsfeld said he would explain the basis of the president's decision to Ivanov, and that he also expected the two to discuss terrorism.
Russia has worked closely with the United States on fighting terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks, and Putin has made clear he expects that close relationship to continue.
Over the weekend, the defense secretary visited American troops inside Afghanistan, and with Hamid Karzai, prime minister of the country's new interim government.
Rebuilding Afghanistan into a stable nation won't be easy, Rumsfeld said on the trip, the first by a top U.S. official to the country newly freed from the rule of the Taliban. But the United States wants "to be as helpful as we can."
Rumsfeld told U.S troops their task is to ensure terrorists face punishment for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
There's no way to know how long it will take to finish the job and find Osama bin Laden, he said.
In Kabul, meanwhile, the U.S. flag was raised over the American Embassy Monday, making the reopening of the post that was abandoned almost 13 years ago. "We are here, and we are here to say," said special envoy James F. Dobbins.
At Bagram airfield near Kabul on Sunday, Karzai told Rumsfeld the U.S. military had boosted an opposition incapacitated by years of war.
"The way you provided help for us was the opportunity that we wanted," Karzai said.
An international security force of between 3,000 and 5,000 troops from various countries will enter the Afghan capital of Kabul sometime after Saturday, the day Karzai takes office, Rumsfeld said.
The United States will provide support, including intelligence, airlift support and a rapid reaction force in case of trouble. There are "rumblings" that a similar security force for one or two other Afghan cities is under consideration, he said.
--------
Russia to Build Nuclear Reactors
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 17, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55268-2001Dec17?language=printer
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia will build at least four nuclear reactors at home and others in China, Iran, India and ex-Soviet republics as part of an ambitious plan to revive the atomic industry after the Chernobyl disaster, the nation's top nuclear power official said Monday.
``Russia's nuclear power industry is now coming through what can be called the post-Chernobyl renaissance,'' Nuclear Power Minister Alexander Rumyantsev said at a news conference.
A reactor at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, at that time a part of the Soviet Union, exploded in 1986, contaminating a huge area and sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe. The world's worst nuclear accident is believed to have killed some 8,000 people in the explosion and aftermath.
The catastrophe long stalled plans to build new nuclear reactors. But nuclear fears have gradually faded, and blackouts and electricity shortages in the post-Soviet turmoil have raised interest in building new power plants.
In March, Russia launched its first nuclear reactor since the Chernobyl catastrophe, at the southern Rostov plant.
Rostov's 1,000-megawatt reactor is of the VVER-1000 type using pressurized water to cool its fuel rods instead of the less-stable graphite used in RBMK reactors such as the one that exploded at Chernobyl.
International industry trade groups and environmental watchdogs acknowledge the VVER-1000 model is the safest of Russia's reactors, but they say it is less reliable than modern Western counterparts.
Next year, Russia will launch another nuclear reactor near the western city of Kursk, this one of the modernized RBMK type, Rumyantsev said.
In 2003, Russia will put into service another VVER-type reactor at the Kalinin plant, and will launch a second reactor of that type in Rostov in 2005. In 2009 a new fast-neutron reactor will be launched at the northern Beloyarsk plant, Rumyantsev said.
The nuclear ministry is considering plans to complete another two nuclear reactors in Ukraine, unfinished since Soviet times, and another one in the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakstan, Rumyantsev said.
The ministry has also signed contracts to build nuclear power plants in China, India and Iran. The United States has long pushed Moscow to abandon its $800 million deal with Tehran, voicing concern that Iran could use the technology to develop nuclear weapons.
Moscow has dismissed the U.S. warnings, saying that the reactor at Bushehr can be used only for civilian purposes and will be under international control.
Rumyantsev said the Bushehr reactor would be finished by 2005 and reaffirmed that the project posed no risks for nuclear weapons proliferation.
``It fully corresponds to all requirements of the international law and Russia's international obligations,'' he said.
On other issues, Rumyantsev said:
-- Russia remains unable to reach an agreement with the European Union nations willing to provide aid for dismantling Russia's decommissioned nuclear submarines. Russia can't accept the EU's demand that Russia accept full legal responsibility for all nuclear risks, offer more breaks and give Western officials unlimited access to all dismantling sites;
-- Despite much-publicized plans to accept spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing and storage, Russia has so far failed to wedge itself into the market dominated by Britain and France.
-------- treaties
We're ready to modify ABM treaty: Putin
Monday December 17, 2001
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011217/1/24u0c.html
Russia is prepared to modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) to avoid a unilateral withdrawal by Washington, President Vladimir Putin said in an interview.
"We were prepared for certain modifications of the treaty," Putin told the Financial Times in an interview given at the Kremlin just hours after the US announcement that it was pulling out of the treaty with Russia.
US President George W. Bush announced that the United States was pulling out of the treaty in order to deploy a missile defense system.
Despite opposition from Russia, China and key US allies to abandoning the cornerstone of Cold War arms control efforts, Bush said he had given Moscow the six months' formal notice the accord requires for withdrawal.
"We asked to be given the specific parameters that stood in the way of US desires to develop defensive systems. We were fully prepared to discuss (them). But nothing specific was given to us," Putin said in the interview.
"We heard only insistent requests for bilateral withdrawal from the treaty. To this day I fail to understand that insistence," he told the British paper.
He stressed that Moscow was responding to the US move in a "very calm, very constructive way".
President Bush "always does what he says, and in that respect he is a reliable partner," the Russian leader added.
On the matter of Moscow's bid for a full say in NATO affairs, Putin said he remained sanguine: "All disappointments and frustrations are born out of undue expectations".
In public statements last Thursday, Putin described the US decision to scrap the ABM treaty as a "mistake", while proposing a reduction in nuclear arms on the part of the Cold War rivals.
But Washington and Moscow cannot agree on the methods of reducing their nuclear stockpiles. The United States wants to do it by an informal accord, while Russia wants a properly drawn up treaty.
"We believe the accords we reach should be translated into legal treaty form. They should be transparent, they should be verifiable," he told the Financial Times.
Asked whether the ABM issue had harmed bilateral relations Putin replied: "If relations between Russia and the West, Russia and NATO, Russia and the US continue to develop in the spirit of partnership and even of alliance, then no harm will be done."
----
U.S. holds talks with China over ABM
By Kirk Troy
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
December 17, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/17122001-050931-2662r.htm
BEIJING, Dec. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. arms control specialists held talks with Chinese authorities Monday following President George W. Bush's announcement last week that Washington would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, a U.S. embassy spokesman said.
The U.S. officials came at the invitation of the Chinese government as a follow up to their president's announcement on ABM treaty withdrawal, a U.S. embassy spokesman said.
The American team, headed by the Assistant Secretary for Arms Control Avis Bohlen, met with officials at China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday morning and was expected to depart shortly thereafter.
As word of the official withdrawal became public last week, Beijing quickly responded with its opposition to the move, but the response has been fairly muted in comparison to earlier statements.
"China is not in favor of missile defense systems. China worries about the negative impact," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said and called for a "strategic dialogue" on the issue.
China has previously been outspoken in its opposition to U.S. plans to build a National Missile Defense system, but now seems resigned to the reality that Washington will proceed with research and testing.
Beijing's main concern is that NMD would negate its small nuclear arsenal of around two dozen missiles and has hinted that it would be forced to produce more if Washington proceeds with the plan.
China has also voiced concern over the possibility of a future Theater Missile Defense system that could be deployed in to protect U.S. allies Japan and South Korea from any threat. But Beijing fears the prospect of such a shield including Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province that must eventually reunite with the mainland.
Bush had reportedly spoken with Chinese President Jiang Zemin last Friday to inform him personally of the decision and the two agreed to hold this week's talks.
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Nuclear Arms Talks Planned
December 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Russia.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The United States and Russia will begin talks next month on how and when to make historic cuts in their strategic nuclear arms, despite continued disagreement over an anti-missile treaty, their defense chiefs said Monday.
Russia still believes it is a mistake for America to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, Russia's defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, said after a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
The American decision makes it imperative that the two nations move forward with the massive cuts in strategic nuclear weapons arsenals that each side has previously announced, Ivanov said.
In January, the countries will begin technical discussions on both the levels and a timetable for those cuts, Ivanov said.
President Bush has proposed cutting U.S. nuclear warheads by about two-thirds, to between 1,700 and 2,200, from the current 6,000. Russia says it will bring its warheads down to between 1,500 and 2,200.
Bush announced last week that the United States will pull out in six months from the 1972 treaty so that it can test and build a missile defense system to protect against terrorists and rogue nations.
Russia was not surprised by the move -- after months of negotiations trying to prevent it -- and has no fears for its own security, Ivanov said, echoing comments made earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Instead, Russia worries America's decision could prompt other nations to decide they, too, can pull out of any international agreements they don't like, the Russian defense minister said.
Other countries might think, ``logically, that if one country won't abide, why should we?'' Ivanov said.
Nevertheless, he said the two nations are closer than ever, cooperating in the fight against terrorism and other issues at an ``unprecedented'' level. He told reporters who asked about the U.S. decision on the ABM treaty that the issue never came up during his talks with Rumsfeld, which will continue Tuesday.
Earlier, Rumsfeld said the two nations must focus on ``transparency and predictability, which both countries recognize ... as important for our respective populations to feel comfortable as we make that dramatic change.'' He called Monday's talks ``excellent.''
Russia has apparently accepted the U.S. move because it believes the size of its nuclear arsenal means the American plans for a missile defense will not weaken its security.
China, which also had tried to persuade Bush not to scrap the treaty, remains worried, however, that a U.S. missile defense system would ruin the deterrent value of its smaller arsenal.
Assistant Secretary of State Avis Bohlen, at a meeting Monday with Chinese officials in Beijing, told them the Bush administration plans a limited missile defense system not directed against China, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.
``We felt the discussions were productive. Both sides indicated they're ready to continue their dialogue on these issues,'' Boucher said.
Bush had tried to strike a deal with Putin to allow the United States to expand testing for a missile defense system without ending the treaty. But Russia, which can't afford a national missile defense, has said it views the ABM pact as the basis of all nuclear-reduction treaties.
In a statement aimed at backing up the assertion that Russia faces no threat from America's decision, Ivanov said before his meeting with Rumsfeld that his country had plans to develop its Strategic Missile Forces ``which were drafted long before'' the U.S. decision.
Russia's decision to proceed with the talks to cut offensive nuclear weapons are a shift from earlier this year. Putin and Bush met this fall at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, agreeing to disagree on the ABM but also to push ahead with the offensive weapons cuts.
Just last June, Putin had warned that a U.S. withdrawal would mean the end of the START treaties limiting offensive nuclear weapons, and he also threatened to respond by putting multiple nuclear warheads on existing Russian missiles.
But in his televised response to Bush's decision, Putin said Russia did not intend to scrap START I and START II.
Rumsfeld has robustly defended the ABM decision. He told the leaders of former Soviet republics he visited over the weekend that the U.S. decision would not create a new arms race but help stabilize the world.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
DOMESTIC SECURITY
Nuclear Sites Ill-Prepared for Attacks, Group Says
New York Times
December 17, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/17/national/17SECU.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - The security drills created by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ensure that reactor security guards can repel terrorists involve mock attacks by only three intruders, assisted by one confederate inside the plant, according to a nuclear safety group.
Even against such limited challenges, crews at nearly half the reactors have scored poorly on the drills, according to documents assembled by the group, the Committee to Bridge the Gap, based in California.
In an article in the January issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (http://www.thebulletin.org), Daniel Hirsch, the president of Bridge the Gap, contends that the drills are unrealistic, especially in light of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, which involved 19 hijackers operating in four well-coordinated teams.
"The N.R.C. and the industry seem to be stuck in a time warp of a quarter of a century ago, and are simply hoping that the problem goes away," Mr. Hirsch said. He called for upgrading the level of assumed threat that is the basis for designing protections of nuclear power plants.
Federal regulations call for plants to be prepared to deal with "a determined violent external assault, attack by stealth or deceptive actions of several persons." The attackers are to be assumed to have light weapons, a four-wheel-drive vehicle and help from a knowledgeable accomplice in the plant.
But the regulations do not call for protections against attackers with aircraft or boats, even though many plants are on lakes, rivers or seashores or are in zones where flying is not tightly restricted.
The regulations require a minimum of five guards on duty at plants - enough to outnumber the attackers, by their calculations. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's documents call this a matter of "conservatism," and the agency has said that the threat of a larger attack is "not credible."
Commission officials have said that the meaning of "several" attackers in their regulations is secret, but a 1976 policy paper identifies it as three. The number was made public in a 1982 decision about licensing the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon reactors.
At the regulatory commission, William M. Beecher, the director of public affairs, said he could not confirm that the number was three. "We cannot discuss safeguards information," Mr. Beecher said. "Regardless of what's in the public record, I can't break security."
In 1977, the regulatory commission found that "on the basis of intelligence and other relevant information available to the N.R.C., there are no known groups in this country having the combination of motivation, skill and resources to attack either a fuel facility or a nuclear power reactor." At the time, the agency said it would review the issue in the future.
Mr. Hirsch said the current regulations were obsolete long before Sept. 11. He cited an attack planned by the radical environmental group Earth First in 1986 against the three- reactor Palo Verde nuclear complex, in Arizona. The group tried to cut power lines leading to the plant. Had it succeeded, instruments controlling the reactors could have lost power.
Mr. Hirsch's group has tried repeatedly to get the commission to toughen its security standards. The agency did tighten its rule setting safeguards against truck bombs in 1993. That was a reaction to the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center's parking garage and an incident in which a former mental patient sped past the guard shack at the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania and crashed his station wagon into the plant.
Mr. Hirsch said the commission had taken its action extremely late, ignoring a previous series of huge truck bomb attacks abroad.
But Mr. Beecher said that the commission was conducting a "top to bottom review" of security and that many states had called out state troopers or the National Guard to help secure the reactors.
-------- california
[Livermore Lab] - IBM designing supercomputer for complicated biological issues
By Fred Reed
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 17, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/businesstimes/20011217-32841942.htm
Most of us remember Deep Blue, the chess-playing supercomputer from IBM that beat Gary Kasparov, the world chess champion. Having a taste for really massive computers, I called IBM and asked whether they were doing anything these days in the supercomputer line.
Yes, they say. They are putting together a couple of real monsters. I talked about them with Bob Germain, a manager at the company's Computational Biology Center. A physicist by training, he is now a de facto molecular biologist.
"Computational biology" is a curious phrase for anyone who studied biology more than a decade ago. Aren't biologists supposed to put bugs in bottles and dissect things? Why, you might ask, do they need the world's most humongous computer?
We'll get to that.
IBM is working with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, says Mr. Germain, on a machine called Blue Gene/L which, says IBM, will have more computational power than the 500 biggest computers in existence today. It will go live in about 2004. (In another column we will worry about how it works.) IBM says it will run at 200 teraflops - i.e., in a second it will do 200,000,000,000,000 calculations. Its bigger brother, also in the Blue Gene family and due out roughly in 2006, will be five times as fast.
This is fast beyond belief.
Which brings up a journalistic problem: How do you make a machine like that mean anything to people (like me) who are not computational physicists? Computers are so insanely fast these days, and get faster so fast, that the numbers numb the mind. What are these machines good for? What can you do with them?
Let's take a swing at the answer.
The bigger of the two machines is intended for the study of certain problems in molecular biology, specifically the folding of proteins. Much of the behavior of the body at the cellular level is managed by enzymes.These are protein molecules that control chemical reactions, which we are all a bundle of. No reactions, no us.
Enzymes work largely because of their physical shapes: An enzyme molecule may have a depression like a slot, for example, and something that it needs to stick to has a projection, so they fit together, which allows them to do whatever they are supposed to do. It's a bit like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. So the shape of enzymes is important.
Now a protein, which enzymes are, is a very long chain of amino acids stuck together like beads on a string. Different amino acids in different orders give you different proteins. But the strings of acids don't just flop around in cells like pieces of rope.Because the acids have different electrical charges and such, the strings crumple and fold into particular shapes.
This folding has practical consequences, explains Mr. Germaine. "A single wrong amino acid in a protein can cause disease by causing the protein to fold the wrong way."He gave cystic fibrosis as an example.
In short, the body is crucially dependent on protein chemistry.So a whole lot of scientists want to understand how proteins fold and why.
As it turns out, the amount of computation necessary to simulate the folding of a fair-sized protein is enormous.Comparatively simple examples can keep a fast machine running for months.According to Mr. Germaine, even Blue Gene won't handle all of the protein problems scientists would like to throw at it. But, he says, it will come much closer than anyone has come before.
This is part of a bigger picture.A lot of scientists believe that the life sciences are about to grow explosively, if they aren't already doing it.The reason, they say, is that humanity is finally learning enough about how living things work to do useful things.
To cure a disease caused by problems within cells - cystic fibrosis, cancer, Alzheimer's, sickle-cell anemia and so on - you have to understand how cells work. Until then, somebody said, you are like someone trying to repair an engine without knowing what pistons are for. When the general level of understanding is good enough, problems that were hard become easy.
We're about there - or so many believe. In large part progress occurs because instrumentation keeps getting better: the laboratory gadgetry that lets scientists look into cells.Oddly enough, huge computers are now biological instruments.
So that's why this particular supercomputer is important.
-------- georgia
Georgia citizens win right to challenge reactor fuel factory
Monday, December 17, 2001
By Environmental News Network
http://enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/12/12172001/georgia_45891.asp
The request of a Decatur, Georgia citizens group to legally oppose the construction of a proposed reactor fuel factory on the banks of the Savannah River in South Carolina has been approved by the federal agency responsible for the U.S. nuclear industry.
An Atomic Safety and Licensing Board of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has awarded Georgians Against Nuclear Energy (GANE) the right to a public evidentiary hearing to investigate unresolved issues concerning a controversial proposal to manufacture reactor fuel from weapons grade plutonium.
The order, issued on Dec. 6, granted a petition filed last summer by the Georgia citizens group. At issue is a proposal to build a factory to manufacture a new type of reactor fuel from weapons grade plutonium at a U.S. Department of Energy Savannah River nuclear weapons facility near Augusta, Georgia.
If built, this would be the first full scale, commercial facility to make fuel from mixed uranium and plutonium oxide (MOX) in the United States. The MOX fuel to be manufactured at the plant would be burned at four commercial reactors owned by Duke Power in North and South Carolina.
In February, a "Construction Authorization Request" was submitted to the regulatory commission by Duke Cogema Stone & Webster (DCS), an international nuclear consortium that includes the U.S. subsidiary of the French state owned nuclear reprocessing company Cogema.
Chief among GANE's concerns that the design and operation of the proposed MOX factory will be inadequate to protect against acts of terrorism and insider sabotage, or to keep the plutonium secure from theft. GANE will be allowed to press its contention that seeks preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement that addresses the potential impacts of a successful terrorist attack.
"DCS has made no attempt to address the potential consequences of malevolent acts such as terrorism and insider sabotage," says Glenn Carroll, coordinator of GANE's intervention.
GANE is concerned that the the facility will not protect the public from excessive radiation doses, that there is inadequate provision for high-level nuclear waste storage, that the seismic analysis for earthquake risk is poorly prepared, and that the environmental review lacks a cost/benefit analysis.
Duke Cogema Stone & Webster must obtain a license from the NRC before it can build or operate the proposed MOX facility. Under federal law, third parties may intervene in the permitting process and request a public hearing by submitting "contentions" that describe their concerns about whether public health and safety and the environment will be protected under the proposed permit.
The NRC Board found that eight of GANE's 13 contentions meet the agency¹s rigorous pleading standards. In a hearing currently scheduled to begin in October 2002, GANE will be allowed to litigate a range of criticisms of the application.
"The proposed design fails to meet international standards which require physical protection of nuclear material to be taken into consideration in the early stages of facility design," said GANE's technical advisor, Dr. Edwin Lyman. Dr. Lyman is scientific director of Nuclear Control Institute (NCI), a Washington, DC-based organization which specializes in problems of nuclear proliferation.
In its decision, the NRC Board scolded DCS and the NRC technical staff for trying to downplay the importance of the issue, calling it "axiomatic" that weapons grade material control and accounting and physical protection systems are "most important systems and systems of first rank."
Even after the events of Sept. 11, DCS and the NRC's technical staff continued to insist that terrorist attacks are not foreseeable and there is no need to examine the issue.
The NRC Board sided with GANE, stating that "it can no longer be argued that terrorist attacks of heretofore unimagined scope and sophistication against previously unimaginable targets are not reasonably foreseeable."
GANE and NCI have also jointly filed a Petition to Suspend the MOX proceeding with the NRC Commissioners asking them to stop the MOX review process while the NRC rethinks its regulations concerning nuclear security in response to the September tragedies.
The controversial proposal to construct a MOX factory had its origin in a Russia-U.S. non-proliferation agreement to dispose of surplus weapons grade plutonium. GANE opposes MOX manufacture and advocates immobilizing plutonium in a glass matrix made from 35,000,000 gallons of high-level liquid waste which threaten an aquifer recharge area beneath the Savannah River Site.
The Savannah River Site, owned by the U.S. Department of Energy, covers more than 310 square miles and borders 27 miles of the Savannah River in southwestern South Carolina on the Georgia border.
-------- us nuc politics
New arms race with Russia not likely, say Powell, Rice
From combined dispatches
Washington Times
December 17, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011217-92561647.htm
President Bush's top foreign policy advisers yesterday rejected arguments that U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty will alienate Russia and lead to a new arms race.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said that Mr. Bush had gone out of his way to establish ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that withdrawing from the Cold-War-era treaty will not disrupt that relationship.
"Guess what? Both we and the Russians see that we have mutual interests that will keep us working closely together," Mr. Powell said on "Fox News Sunday."
Mr. Powell said he had met 16 times this year with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.
"This simply did not cause the rupture, because the president spent the time to build a broad relationship with Russia," Miss Rice said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "Even though there is a disagreement here, we'll survive. That's quite an achievement."
The national security adviser noted that the Russian president has said a U.S. withdrawal from the treaty "doesn't threaten Russian security."
Mr. Bush announced Thursday that the United States would withdraw from the 1972 treaty - signed with the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991 - that bans national defense systems against incoming missiles. The U.S. has begun research and testing to develop such a defense.
Miss Rice and Mr. Powell pointed to Mr. Bush's promise to reduce the U.S. arsenal to 1,700-to-2,200 nuclear warheads, and Mr. Putin's pledge of similar cuts.
"The Russians have agreed with us last week that we're not going to have an arms race," Mr. Powell said.
"There's not going to be an arms race," Miss Rice said. "Sorry to disappoint those who've been predicting an arms race."
"This is not a crisis in our relationship with the Russians," Mr. Powell said.
-------- MILITARY
Al Qaeda ships tracked in Mediterranean
December 17, 2001
By David Rising
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011217-37402840.htm
BERLIN - Acting on intelligence gathered by American and allied agencies, the United States is tracking ships in the Mediterranean that have left ports in Africa and may be involved in smuggling goods to finance terrorist groups, according to a senior U.S. military officer in Europe.
Authorities are now working through technical and legal issues to decide if the ships, which are also suspected of carrying supplies to make weapons of mass destruction, should be boarded at sea or inspected when they try to dock, said the officer, who has been taking part in high-level daily intelligence briefings in Europe.
The ships are being tracked by the U.S. 6th Fleet naval forces, which operate in the Mediterranean, and other assets including satellites and AWACS aircraft. They are currently in areas ranging from North Africa to the Middle East, and most are suspected of being owned by - or carrying economic cargo to benefit - Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, the officer said on the condition of anonymity.
"It's beyond just simply monitoring," he said. "It's posing real issues of possible to probable interdiction."
The officer would not be more specific about location or cargo.
Navy Capt. Gordon Hume, spokesman for U.S. Naval Forces Europe, which commands the 6th Fleet, said he could neither confirm nor deny the operation.
U.S. agencies have pieced together information about the ships with the help of the intelligence services of many countries spurred into a new spirit of cooperation since September 11.
Before the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, American agencies shared intelligence with one another but also often pursued leads independently. There was also a great reluctance to share information with other countries, even close allies.
Now, representatives from CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency meet daily at U.S. headquarters across Europe, which have video or telephone links to one another, and share information they have gathered, according to the officer, who has been involved in many of the meetings. American agents are providing more detailed information to allies, who reciprocate with their own intelligence.
According to the Bundesnachrichendienst, the German equivalent of the CIA, about 300 intelligence agencies worldwide are cooperating in the hunt for international terrorists. To cope with the increased flow of information, the United States has increased its number of analysts in Europe sixfold since September 11, and they now number in the hundreds, the American officer said.
"Because of this enhanced coordination between agencies we're tracking more effectively the financial aspects of transnational terrorism so that we're better able to watch it from where the money flows and where the goods flow to whose hands they end up in," the officer said.
Bill Harlow, a spokesman for the CIA based in Langley, said the flow of intelligence between both American and international agencies has vastly expanded since the September 11 attacks. He would not comment on the tracking of the ships or other results of the information.
"As you recall, the president talked about how we would be asking for the support of governments worldwide in the fight against terror," Mr. Harlow said. "Any government that has information about terrorism, we would be asking them that it be shared with us [and] the sharing has increased dramatically in recent months."
In the case of the ships, the information came from African, Middle Eastern and the former Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe that had intelligence sources at the docks watching cargo being loaded. They then passed the information to U.S. authorities through their own agencies, the officer said.
Intelligence sources provided information that al Qaeda owns or controls some two dozen ships, said two defense officials in Washington who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Several vessels have been boarded since the program began in November, and another 200 either contacted by radio or other signal and asked to identify themselves and their cargos.
-------- afghanistan
A hidden war cost
December 17, 2001
U.N. Report,
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011217-32890975.htm
Clearing Afghanistan of land mines and other unexploded ordnance will cost at least a half-billion dollars and take years, according to participants at an international conference on rebuilding the country.
The United Nations estimates there may be between 5 million and 10 million land mines in Afghan villages, forests, farmland and pastures - the lethal legacy of two decades of civil war. As humanitarian aid coordinator Martin Barber told reporters a month ago, the accounting for unexploded ordnance is so imprecise that one could take a best guess "and then add a zero."
Last week's conference for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and others interested in the reconstruction of Afghanistan called on donors and governments to contribute to land mine-clearance efforts.
"Based on more than a decade of practical experience, it is roughly estimated that elimination of the land-mine problem in Afghanistan would cost $500 - $600 million," said a statement issued by the 27 NGOs at the Tokyo conference.
Complicating matters is that U.S. warplanes have been dropping cluster bombs, each containing many bomblets, over Afghanistan. Scores of the smaller bombs do not explode on impact, lying on the surface or sinking into the mud to remain a deadly hazard.
The U.S. Defense Department insists its use of the heavily criticized cluster bombs is justified. Washington said last week it will double its contribution to de-mining efforts in Afghanistan to $7 million next year.
Japan, which has already committed itself to funding Afghan reconstruction and peacekeeping efforts, will apparently take a lead in the land-mine clearance as well. Two weeks ago, Tokyo passed a new law allowing Japanese Self-Defense Forces to participate in U.N. peacekeeping missions in specific functions, such as de-mining.
•Betsy Pisik can be reached by e-mail at UNear@aol.com
---
Al Qaeda routed from Tora Bora caves
By Willis Witter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 17, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011217-71606496.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -Afghan ground forces claimed yesterday to have nearly won the war by routing al Qaeda fighters from their mountain lairs in Eastern Afghanistan, but Osama bin Laden's whereabouts remained unknown.
"This is the last day for al Qaeda in Afghanistan," said Mohammed Zaman, the top military commander for Jalalabad and the Tora Bora area whose cave complexes have been bombed for weeks by U.S. jets as Mr. Zaman's forces advanced on the ground.
Mr. Zaman told reporters in Tora Bora that bin Laden had fled, and that his fighters would complete a cleanup operation to wipe out any remaining al Qaeda fighters.
After capturing the last of a network of cave hideouts in the snow-capped White Mountains around Tora Bora, local forces said they had killed about 200 al Qaeda fighters and captured another 25.
"Tomorrow we will show you the prisoners and their weapons. We think [the fighting] will all be soon over," said Hazrat Ali, another senior commander. Mr. Ali said that bin Laden was not among those captured or found dead.
"A few days before today I had information he was here, but now I don't know where he is," said Mr. Ali.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the hunt for bin Laden would continue until he is caught.
"But let there be no doubt in anyone's mind that the president is determined that however long it takes one day, one week, one month, two years, we will get him. Let's be patient and just not give up," Mr. Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, meanwhile, became the most senior official to visit Afghanistan since the war began, meeting the country's designated leader, Hamid Karzai, at Bagram airport north of Kabul.
He told the U.S. troops in Afghanistan that it was their mission to find and destroy those responsible for the terrorist attacks on the United States.
"That is in fact your assignment," he said.
The World Trade Center "is still burning as we sit here, they're still bringing bodies out. Fortunately, the caves and tunnels at Tora Bora are also burning," he added.
During the visit, Mr. Rumsfeld was cautioned that the fighting in Tora Bora was far from over.
Estimates of the number of fleeing al Qaeda fighters range from several hundred to 2,000. The only possible escape route would take them through forested valleys and snow-covered mountain passes leading toward the Pakistan border about 30 miles away.
The United States has bombed suspected bin Laden and al Qaeda hideouts almost around the clock for the past nine weeks in an attempt to kill or help local fighters capture the man and destroy his terror organization.
Al Qaeda is composed primarily of foreign fighters, especially from Pakistan, the Arab world and Chechnya, who were drawn to Afghanistan by bin Laden's message that God wants Muslims to kill Westerners.
Pakistan has deployed an estimated total of 10,000 soldiers along a 100-mile stretch of border leading west from the Torkham border crossing between Islamabad and Kabul, according to local tribal officials.
The numbers are much higher than those publicly acknowledged by the Pakistani government. In addition, thousands of local police and border forces are on the lookout for fleeing al Qaeda members.
The troop deployment followed an unprecedented agreement between the government of President Pervez Musharraf and tribal leaders to let federal troops into zones that until now have been off limits to Islamabad.
"The tribesmen have realized that if they give these people sanctuary then the U.S. will bomb them, too," said Abdul Lateef Afridi, a former member of parliament from the area who lost his job when Gen. Musharraf took over in a 1999 coup.
Mr. Afridi said the Pakistan army had established tent camps and were using them as bases to patrol all along the border.
In the past two days, Pakistan has detained more than 30 non-Afghan fighters attempting to flee Tora Bora.
The so-called "Arabs," fighters from the Arabian peninsula and North Africa, as well as hundreds of Muslims from Chechnya, pose a special problem for both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many, like Saudi-born bin Laden, are fugitives from their nations and have few places left to hide. Pakistani tribal elders said yesterday the fugitives would not be welcome in their territory.
"This is not like the city. Even if someone from Peshawar [Pakistan] came, everyone would know. There is no place to hide," said Sheraz Khan, an elder in the Afridi tribe that dominates the stretch of border facing Tora Bora.
The Tora Bora region was the last major pocket of al Qaeda resistance in Afghanistan. Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander of the war, said on Friday that other holdouts include the Shindand area in western Afghanistan, Helmand province northwest of Kandahar and the Kandahar vicinity itself.
In Kandahar yesterday, where U.S. Marines have taken control of the airport as a base for future operations, three servicemen were injured when one of them stepped on a land mine.
The injuries were not considered life-threatening but one Marine lost a leg.
This article is based in part on wire service reports.
---
IN KABUL
U.S. Embassy Reopens in Afghanistan
December 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-US-Raising-the-Flag.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Raising the same flag that had been lowered at the U.S. Embassy almost 13 years ago, an honor guard of U.S. Marines snapped out crisp salutes Monday, and a U.S. envoy pledged deep American involvement in Afghanistan's struggle to rebuild.
``We are here, and we are here to stay,'' James F. Dobbins, the special U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, vowed at the flag-raising held under gray, rain-heavy skies in the dilapidated front courtyard of the embassy, shuttered since 1989.
Looking on were several top representatives of the interim Afghan government that will take power Saturday. Some of the Afghan guests waved tiny paper American flags.
While the ``Star-Spangled Banner'' played, a little tinnily, over a portable sound system, a four-man honor guard bore forward the flag that had been stored since the last American diplomats left Kabul on Jan. 31, 1989.
After running it up the flagpole, the Marines and other U.S. troops -- some of them wearing local Afghan dress, with scarves and rough wool sweaters -- saluted.
Dobbins called it a turning point in the American role in Afghanistan.
``It's a historic return of the United States -- diplomatically, politically and economically -- to a place that we and others in the international community have too long neglected,'' he said.
For now, the embassy building will be used as a liaison office, housing a small group of American diplomats. A charge d'affaires will be appointed in coming weeks, and then an ambassador. In the meantime, Dobbins said, ``I declare this mission open for business.''
The embassy was one of many diplomatic outposts in the capital being rushed into service. Turkey, NATO's only Muslim member state, also reopened its embassy Monday.
Like Kabul itself, the embassy bore silent witness to years of upheaval in Afghanistan -- the Soviet invasion, the bloody civil war that left much of the capital in ruins, the repressive Taliban era and the American-led air assault.
The embassy was far from immune to the turbulence around it. The last U.S. ambassador, Adolph Dubs, was kidnapped by Islamic militants in 1979. He was killed by cross fire in a botched rescue attempt by Afghan security agents.
For the next decade, the embassy stayed open without an ambassador. After the last staffers left in 1989, Afghan custodians -- who were honored at Monday's ceremony -- kept watch over the compound.
``It was our duty,'' said white-bearded Nawab Ali, 62, who ferried in salaries when he could for fellow Afghan guards, at one point slipping across the Pakistani frontier by donkey.
``I have waited for this day to come,'' he said with a broad smile.
On Sept. 26, with Taliban police looking on, protesters attacked the embassy in a carefully choreographed display of anti-American sentiment, ripping down the U.S. seal, setting vehicles ablaze and burning a guardhouse. During the U.S.-led airstrikes that began Oct. 7, a few Taliban broke into the compound and camped out in the embassy's bomb shelter, caretakers said.
Dobbins, an architect of the U.N.-brokered agreement setting up Afghanistan's interim government, has long experience in troubled venues like Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo. He said he would make frequent visits to Kabul until a permanent ambassador is appointed.
The re-establishment of an American diplomatic presence in Kabul is laden with symbolic significance -- but is also seen as an important practical move to help keep the transfer of power on track.
The new post-Taliban government is headed by Pashtun tribal leader Hamid Karzai, and key Cabinet posts are held by members of the northern alliance, which seized most of Afghanistan from the Taliban, aided by the U.S. air offensive.
An international peacekeeping force is expected to be deployed soon. The United States will not take part in peacekeeping patrols, but will provide logistic, intelligence and transport help, Dobbins said.
After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, Afghanistan plunged into civil war, and then fell under the rule of the Taliban, who sheltered Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.
Dobbins said Afghans had paid a heavy price over the years. ``On Sept. 11, the United States also paid a price, and that's something no one wants to see repeated,'' he said.
During the ceremony, a moment of silence was observed to honor innocent victims of the war in Afghanistan, together with the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Along with the American flag that was raised, another flag that had flown over the charge d'affaire's residence was preserved -- together with a note, dated Jan. 31, from the last detachment of Marines to serve here.
``Marines,'' said its simple salutation. Signed by Gunnery Sgt. James M. Black, the note asked that the flag be cared for -- ``For those of us that were here, it means a lot,'' Black wrote.
``Semper fi,'' he added. ``We Kabul Marines endured, as I'm sure you will.'
----
Inside the Taliban's Torture Chambers
Men Held by Militia as Spies Detail Routine Brutality, Large Role of Foreigners
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 17, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52586-2001Dec16?language=printer
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Abdullah was a handsome young man, simple in dress with a strong jaw he had barely started to shave. His only character flaw, his friends and family remember, was that he had little respect for authority.
The Taliban arrested the 23-year-old on Nov. 28, a week before the militia abandoned Kandahar, and accused him of being a spy for the United States. Taliban fighters and their foreign supporters interrogated him and beat him to death. That evening, they hanged his corpse from a large metal tripod and put the structure in Kandahar's main crossing, Martyr's Square. It stayed there for almost a day.
Abdullah's crime, according to a Kandahar radio report at the time, was that he was found with a satellite phone. That phone, authorities said, indicated that he was working as a spotter for U.S. warplanes seeking targets in what was then the Taliban's spiritual stronghold.
Abdullah was the last man known to be executed by a movement that is now in tatters. A look into the circumstances surrounding his death -- and into the imprisonment and treatment of other alleged spies -- illustrates the extent to which foreigners controlled the Taliban security services and the use of gruesome torture as an everyday practice.
Abdullah was hanged as a warning to the extensive network of Afghans who were working in Kandahar to unseat the Taliban authorities. Trained in Pakistan to use satellite phones, team members working alone took enormous risks and provided crucial help in a war that forced the Taliban from power.
But family members and other people here say Abdullah was in fact innocent of the espionage charges. By their account, his main crimes were insulting Arab members of the al Qaeda network in Kandahar and being from a family known to oppose the Taliban.
The brutality with which Abdullah was executed backfired on the Taliban, only helping to strengthen the resolve of target spotters, people here say. "When we heard about his death, it just made us more committed to getting rid of this government because this boy wasn't doing anything," said Abdul Ali, who worked as a spotter. "I said it was really time to finish this cruelty. I decided to work harder."
Ali, who was recently appointed manager of the radio and TV operations in Kandahar, said he was trained to use a satellite phone at the house in Quetta, Pakistan, of Hamid Karzai, the head of the interim Afghan government that will take power on Saturday. Women smuggled satellite phones into Kandahar under their burqas, the flowing head-to-toe veils that the Taliban forced them to wear.
Ali said that under rules laid down by his trainers, whom he described as Americans, he was not to call from the same place twice. He was asked to casually assess bomb damage after he called in a strike. And he was not told the identities of the other spotters, so that he could not hand over useful intelligence if captured.
But "I did find out about Abdullah," he said. "I am sure that he was not involved."
Abdullah's problems began, according to friends and family, when he and his uncle and father, former commanders in the fight against the Soviet occupation, moved into a Kandahar neighborhood called Haji Arab. It was inhabited by the Taliban and the mostly Arab force that controlled the country's security services.
"Abdullah would say things against the Arabs, that they were foreigners in Afghanistan, that they were hurting the country, that they should leave," said Amir Rabbani, a neighbor and friend. "The Arabs would listen and stare at him. They were not happy."
Several days before he was arrested, Abdullah got into a fight with an Arab gunman who threatened to kill him, said a family member who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of retribution.
"Abdullah walked by an Arab house where the U.S. had bombed and killed Arab fighters," the relative said. "He said out loud that he was happy. The Arab almost killed him there."
On Nov. 28, Taliban fighters and Arabs came to Abdullah's house, the relative said. Sources close to the Taliban said they beat him to death that night. Later the relative saw Abdullah's corpse hanging in Martyr's Square.
Former Taliban security officials said Abdullah was interrogated by, among others, Sayf al-Adl, an Egyptian member of the al Qaeda network who is wanted in Egypt on terrorism-related charges. Al-Adl's name also surfaced in interviews with four foreigners who had been incarcerated in Kandahar's prison during the Taliban's reign.
The men -- a Russian, a Syrian, a Saudi and a Saudi-born stateless man -- said al-Adl and Muhammad Atef, a close aide of bin Laden's killed in U.S. bombings in November, had interrogated them and authorized their torture.
The Russian, Arat Nasemovich Bakhitov, 24, said he had been suspended from a ceiling by his wrists for eight days during interrogation.
He was sentenced as a spy in February 2000 after he was found traveling on a fake Tajik passport. Bakhitov said he had fled Russia because, at the time, he had been active in a campaign to gain more rights for his native Tatarstan, a semiautonomous region with a majority Muslim population.
He said that before the Taliban officials took him to Kandahar, they held him in solitary confinement in Kabul for months. His only clothing was a shalwar kameez, the knee-length tunic and pantaloons worn by men in these parts. "I did not see the sun for a half a year," he said. "I ate only bread and washed my face with ice."
In Kabul and in Kandahar, he said, Taliban fighters and their foreign supporters, most of them Arab, would come to his room to torture him. They would gather his arms around his folded knees, tie them together and then run a stake through the hole created by the crook of his elbow and the back of his knees.
"They would lift me up in the air and just beat me," he said. "I knew if I admitted I was a spy they would kill me."
"What I wanted to do most at that time was die," he said. "Nothing else. Now it's over and I thank God. But I can't believe I am alive."
After the Taliban fell, Bakhitov and other foreigners accused of espionage were released. They are still living in a fly-infested compound at the Kandahar Central Jail because they have no place to go.
He recently called his mother and spoke with her for the first time since his arrest.
"The first thing she asked was whether I was fasting," he said, referring to the holy month of Ramadan during which Muslims traditionally fast during daylight hours. "We haven't talked in years and she asks me if I am fasting. I love her but she's crazy."
One of his cellmates, Sadiq Ahmed Turkestani, the Saudi-born stateless man, said he also was interrogated by al-Adl in Khost, a city in Paktia province where the al Qaeda network operated several training camps and where many of the families of foreign fighters lived.
Turkestani, whose family was originally from Xinjiang, China, said he traveled to Khost in early 1997 with an Iraqi friend because they wanted to smuggle electronics equipment. The Taliban arrested them there and accused them of spying. The Iraqi, he said, was killed when an Arab hit him below the ear with a rifle butt.
"The Taliban took me and handed me over to the Arabs," he said. "They took me to a camp. The Arabs said, 'If you tell us the truth, we will help you.' Their first question was, 'What's your rank? What's your real name? And what about weapons training?' "
"I said, 'I don't know what you're talking about,' so they brought a funnel and put it tightly over my neck and began to fill it up with very cold water, like I was going to drown," he said.
Beatings continued for almost a year, he said, and al-Adl was present on numerous occasions. In 1998, Turkestani was transferred to the Kandahar jail. Beating continued there, he said.
The jail has five wings. Three of them were dedicated to political prisoners, an indication of the repressive nature of Taliban rule. Prisoners starved to death, Turkestani said, especially those in the political wings.
Salay Mohammed, the new warden of the Kandahar Central Jail, confirmed that the Taliban and their foreign backers tortured people regularly. He has direct knowledge -- he was a prisoner of the Taliban for 25 days.
He said the old warden, Wali Jan, had, like many other senior Taliban officials, disappeared when the militia gave up the city.
Mohammed was instrumental in the recent release of 1,800 political prisoners from the jail. "It was one of the happiest days of my life to see those men leave the jail with their smiling faces," he said.
"We were happy, too," said Bakhitov, the Russian. "Everybody was doing their tradition dances. Me? I don't know those dances so I did hip-hop and -- how you say? -- break dance?"
-------- arms sales
'Demilitarization' proviso killed in victory for gun-rights groups
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 17, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011217-91342768.htm
Gun-rights groups and buyers of surplus military equipment won a victory this past week when the final defense authorization bill passed without a provision they feared would have made them turn in surplus guns, planes, jeeps and radios to the government to be rendered inoperable.
The section, which was in the Senate version of the bill, would have made it illegal for anyone to possess "significant military equipment" formerly owned by the military unless it had been demilitarized according to regulations set out by the Defense Department. Demilitarization means making the equipment inoperable.
The bill that passed the House didn't have the provision, and when House and Senate negotiators met to work out differences between the two versions the provision was dropped - but not before it caused panic among museums, who said they would have to turn over exhibits like tanks and radios, among suppliers who make their living buying and selling surplus equipment, and among gun-rights groups, some of which saw the provision as a back-door gun grab.
A Pentagon spokesman said the goal was to address situations in which the Defense Department has sold surplus equipment like computers, only to discover that the computers still contained classified materials.
But Charles H. Cunningham, the National Rifle Association's lobbyist on Capitol Hill, said several reports from the General Accounting Office have found those problems could be addressed without such a sweeping provision.
It's the second year the demilitarization clause has appeared in the bill. It was stricken in the House-Senate conference last year, too.
"Perhaps the Department of Defense will finally get the message now that this section was stricken in the conference committee again this year," Mr. Cunningham said, noting that last year lawmakers specifically instructed the secretary of defense to come up with a solution that "will not affect legitimate owners of former military equipment."
Still, opponents say they expect the Defense Logistics Agency, based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, to push for the language next year anyway.
"DLA seems pretty persistent in trying to force this down contractors' throats," said John Fausti, executive director of the National Association of Aircraft and Communication Suppliers Inc., whose members purchase and resell surplus aircraft and parts from the military. The association wrote a letter telling House and Senate negotiators their industry would be crippled if the section remained in the bill.
Both chambers approved the compromise bill on Thursday, with the House voting 382-40 and the Senate voting 96-2.
Negotiations had been held up for weeks over whether to form another commission, which President Bush had called for, to recommend a round of military base closings. In the end negotiators agreed to another round, but pushed the starting date back to 2005, rather than the president's target of 2003.
-------- biological weapons
Anthrax Likely Came From U.S. Source
December 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Anthrax.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Anthrax spores that contaminated U.S. mail in October were apparently produced in the United States, the White House said Monday.
Press secretary Ari Fleischer said the evidence is not conclusive but it is increasingly ``looking like it was a domestic source.''
He said officials still did not know who delivered the anthrax.
Later, President Bush said the government is mystified by the case. ``We're still looking on that. We've all got different feelings about it. We're gathering as much information. As soon as we make definitive conclusions we'll share it with the American people,'' he said.
Army officials are doubtful that potentially deadly anthrax in letters mailed to Congress originated at a military medical research center, even though spores in both places were a genetic match.
The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease obtained its supply from the Agriculture Department and shared it with five labs in the United States, Canada and Britain, spokesman Chuck Dasey said Sunday.
He was reacting to a report in The Washington Post that the genetic makeup of the anthrax used in the letters mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., matched the anthrax in the Army's stockpile.
``I'm not sure it tells us anything about who the perpetrator is,'' Dasey said.
``You can't say it all came from USAMRIID. We got it from another lab in the first place and so presumably USAMRIID is not the only lab that got it from the Department of Agriculture.''
On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, technicians worked Monday to pump chlorine dioxide gas into portions of the ventilation system of the Hart Senate Office Building to kill anthrax spores still lingering there.
The Environmental Protection Agency workers also were using the liquid form of chlorine dioxide in Daschle's office, which had been fumigated with the gas earlier.
The Hart building has remained closed since Oct. 17, two days after an anthrax-filled letter was received in Daschle's office. The EPA reported Friday that traces of anthrax remained after its initial fumigation efforts.
In related developments:
--Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson is expected to decide this week whether an anthrax vaccine should be offered on a voluntary basis for up to 3,000 people who had high levels of exposure to the bacteria in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Florida, New York and New Jersey.
Other options include handing out another 30 days' supply of antibiotics, on top of the basic 60-day dose, or advising people to be monitored closely.
--The Post also reported Sunday that the FBI was looking at various government programs, including a contractor who worked for the CIA, as a possible source of the anthrax used in the attacks.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield confirmed Sunday that the agency had some anthrax it used in its mission ``to learn about potential biological warfare threats.'' But he said the CIA did not mill any of its samples into powdered form and that none of its supply is missing.
An FBI spokeswoman declined comment on the report.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 18 cases of anthrax infection nationwide -- 11 cases of inhalation anthrax and seven through the skin -- since the anthrax-by-mail attacks began in October. Five people have died, all from inhalation anthrax.
-------- business
FEDERAL CONTRACTS
States News Service
Monday, December 17, 2001; Page E09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52482-2001Dec16?language=printer
Bell-Boeing Joint Program Office of Patuxent River, Md., won a $15 million contract from the Navy for manufacturing MV-22 aircraft.
Science Applications International Corp. of Arlington won a $6.71 million contract from the Navy for systems engineering, production, post-production and program support services for Tomahawk missile systems.
BAE Systems of Gaithersburg won a $5.29 million contract from the Army for 288 radio receivers, 40 electrical chassis and 20 installation kits.
Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. of Newport News, Va., won a $1.16 million contract from the Navy for centrifugal pump units and other replacement parts.
Bolton Offutt Donovan Inc. of Baltimore won a $625,000 contract from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. of Newport News, Va., won a $475,954 contract from the Navy for motor controllers and similar replacement parts.
Kone Inc. of Ashland won a $419,520 contract from the Department Veterans Affairs Department for elevator maintenance.
FDGM Inc. of Chesapeake, Va., won a $334,960 contract from the Defense Supply Center for industrial fluid coolers.
McDonald & Eudy Printers Inc. of Temple Hills won a $267,256 contract from the Government Printing Office for printing newsletters.
Shivaan Corp. of Laurel won a $256,750 contract from the Justice Department for vibration radio mounts.
D.K. Nunnally Co. of Newport News, Va., won a $195,727 contract from the Navy for elevator upgrades.
Jo-Kell Inc. of Chesapeake won a $183,931 contract from the Navy for contact holders.
Comptech Corp. of Rockville won a $167,458 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for sleeve spacers.
Mettler Toledo of Midlothian, Va., won a $125,000 contract from the General Services Administration for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products.
Waldorf Copy & Printing of Waldorf won a $121,327 contract from the Government Printing Office for printing services.
S&S Graphics Inc. of Laurel won a $114,424 contract from the Government Printing Office for printing services.
McDonald & Eudy Printers Inc. of Temple Hills won a $103,434 contract from the Government Printing Office for printing services.
Exxon Mobil of Fairfax won a $99,330 contract from the Defense Industrial Supply Center for electrical insulating oil.
Mechanical Resources Inc. of Newport News, Va., won an $89,535 contract from the Navy for annual pool maintenance services.
Nurad Technologies Inc. of Baltimore won an $85,538 contract from the Defense Supply Center for antennas.
Jo-Kell Inc. of Chesapeake, Va., won an $83,775 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for holder and latch assemblies.
Radian Inc. of Alexandria won an $82,467 contract from the Defense Supply Center for multimedia filter assemblies.
Goodway Graphics Inc. of Springfield won a $75,471 contract from the Government Printing Office for printing services.
Rapid Mat LLC of Washington won a $74,700 contract from the Defense Industrial Supply Center for fiberglass training-mat assemblies.
Dela Technology Corp. of Rockville won a $74,685 contract from the Defense Supply Center for electrical fluid pressure connector assemblies.
Gray Graphics Corp. of Capitol Heights won a $67,867 contract from the Government Printing Office for printing services.
Intelligent Enterprise Solutions of Bethesda won a $67,585 contract from the Air Force for asynchronous transfer mode switches and peripheral component interconnects.
Charles Nelson of Christiansburg, Va., won a $60,774 contract from the Agriculture Department for updating a soil survey.
DRS Technical Services of Chesapeake, Va., won a $59,098 contract from the Navy for electrical discriminators.
The contracts listed were awarded by the federal government to companies and other vendors in Virginia, Maryland and the District. For more information, contact states2001@aol.com or call Myron Struck, managing editor, at 202-628-3100, ext. 266.
-------- drug war
Happy New Year. Bye
December 17, 2001
U.N. Report,
By Betsy Pisik HE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011217-32890975.htm
U.N. drug control chief Pino Arlacchi announced to his board of directors Wednesday that he will vacate his office on Dec. 31, saying he wants to give his still-unnamed successor a smoother transition.
But Mr. Arlacchi's contract as the executive director of the U.N. Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention runs through the end of June, and U.N. officials in New York and Vienna, where the drug office is based, say that the former Italian senator will continue to draw a paycheck for the next six months.
"His contract will be honored," said Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The base pay for a U.N. undersecretary general is about $167,000 a year, plus cost-of-living adjustments, a housing allowance, supplements for dependants and other add-ons.
U.N. officials describe the arrangement as something of a golden handshake, offered to Mr. Arlacchi to ease the sting of his being forced from a job to which he so publicly clung. A U.N. official in Vienna defended the arrangement, saying Mr. Arlacchi is leaving his office, but not the United Nations.
"Of course he is at the disposal of the secretary-general until that time" when the contract expires, he said.
A former Italian senator and famed Mafia foe, Mr. Arlacchi was hired five years ago to run the drug and crime control office, which is the organization's focal point for fighting organized crime rings. Mr. Arlacchi was criticized in a series of investigations by the U.N. watchdog agency.
Over the past two years, wary donor nations have earmarked most of their contributions for specific purposes, potentially crippling the agency by limiting its ability to set its own agenda, according to internal oversight reports.
In a final note of irony, the disgruntled ex-employee whose criticism of Mr. Arlacchi led to the latter's disgrace - and who was excoriated himself for allowing his detailed resignation letter to be published on a pro-drug Web site - resurfaced at U.N. headquarters this month.
Michael von der Schulenberg, an expert on Central Asia and the opium trade, has a short-term contract to work with Lakhdar Brahimi's Afghanistan team, which is part of the peacekeeping department.
It has not been announced who will succeed Mr. Arlacchi in Vienna. The smart money is on an interim appointment for British physician and drug expert Hamid Ghodse, Iran-born chairman of the U.N. International Narcotics Control Board.
-------- israel / palestine
Pressure on Arafat yields call for peace
December 17, 2001
By Dan Ephron
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011217-45655200.htm
JERUSALEM - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, under heavy pressure from Israel and much of the world to crack down on militants, made a rare televised address to his people yesterday, calling on them to halt all attacks against Israelis and vowing to punish the perpetrators.
Mr. Arafat, reading from a speech and occasionally looking straight into the camera, had harsh words for Israel, calling on it to stop its "brutal war" against the Palestinians.
His remarks drew skepticism from Israel and some optimism from the United States, though a White House spokesman said the Palestinian leader must match his words with deeds.
"I today reiterate [a call for] the complete and immediate cessation of all military activities. I renew the call to completely halt activities, especially suicide attacks which we have condemned and always condemned," Mr. Arafat said in a speech aired in the evening, as celebrations marking the end of Ramadan got under way.
"We will punish all planners and executors and we will hunt down the violators firmly," he said, framed by a blown-up photograph of Jerusalem's disputed al-Aqsa mosque.
Signaling his concern at the growing popularity of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, militant groups responsible for a wave of suicide bombings against Israel, Mr. Arafat said all Palestinians must line up behind one central authority - his elected administration.
Though Mr. Arafat, 72, has made similar remarks during nearly 15 months of fighting with Israel, Palestinians said this was his most forceful and unequivocal call for an end to the violence.
To what extent hard-liners in the West Bank and Gaza were ready to respond remained uncertain, analysts said.
"I don't remember him saying things in such a decisive way. In fact, I don't remember him addressing his people at all like this in a very long time," said Abdullah Hourani, a Palestinian strategic analyst who watched the speech at his home in Gaza.
Mr. Arafat's address follows two weeks of particularly bloody clashes, including Palestinian attacks that killed 44 Israelis and a wide military offensive by the Jewish state that has caused a similar number of Palestinian casualties.
After Palestinians ambushed a bus in the West Bank last week, Israel announced it was severing all ties with Mr. Arafat, who had been an off-and-on peace partner since 1993. Israel also smashed his helicopters and encircled his Ramallah headquarters with tanks, making his travel in the West Bank and Gaza virtually impossible.
Mr. Hourani said the Israeli measures coupled with a surge in international pressure alarmed Mr. Arafat and prompted the speech.
Mr. Arafat has declared a state of emergency in the West Bank and Gaza and yesterday began closing offices of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, both fundamentalist opposition groups. Newspapers printed by the groups were also shut down.
But the measures appeared to leave little impression on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has demanded Mr. Arafat arrest Islamic militants and smash their infrastructure.
"When Arafat wants to control the situation, he can control it. When he wants to take action, he can take action," said Mr. Sharon's media adviser, Raanan Gissin, rejecting the claim that the Palestinian leader was hamstrung by the extremists.
In Washington, a statement released by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called Mr. Arafat's plea to his people "constructive" but said the United States was waiting to see concrete action against the militants.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell yesterday blamed Palestinian violence for U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni's departure from the region after three weeks of efforts to arrange a cease-fire.
"We sent Gen. Zinni over to try to get that dialogue going, and all of that was blown up by these terrorist organizations on the Palestinian side," Mr. Powell said.
Fresh violence stalled early progress in the peace process made by Gen. Zinni, who was told Saturday to return to Washington, Mr. Powell said.
"Hamas, a terrorist organization, started killing innocent civilians with car bombs in Jerusalem, Haifa and elsewhere. And they attacked this process; they attacked innocent Israelis," Mr. Powell said on "Fox News Sunday." "But even more fundamentally and troubling, they attacked Yasser Arafat and his authority to lead the Palestinian people toward a cease-fire and a process of peace."
Nonetheless, Mr. Powell said Gen. Zinni would return to the region "when circumstances suggest that there is a real reason for him to go back," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
There was no immediate reaction from Hamas, whose popularity has soared since fighting erupted in September of last year, to either the Powell statements or Mr. Arafat's speech.
The group rejects any conciliation with Israel and for years has been critical of Mr. Arafat's administration for its willingness to engage in peace talks with the Jewish state.
Members of the group have clashed with Palestinian security men several times in recent months but Hamas has rejected calls to topple Mr. Arafat.
Joseph Alpher, an Israeli political analyst, said it was no longer clear if Mr. Arafat - the icon of the Palestinian liberation movement - had the stature in the West Bank and Gaza to rein in the militants.
"He's saying all the right things. But there's a general sense that either he's incapable of enforcing these directives or he doesn't want to, and we've long lost our ability to figure out which it is," Mr. Alpher said.
----
Peres: Deal with Palestinians possible
December 17, 2001
By Joshua Brilliant
United Press International
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/17122001-064737-1984r.htm
HERZLIYA, Israel, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Monday he believed Israel and the Palestinians could reach an agreement and would not have to take long to do it.
Peres raised the prospect in an address to the Herzliya Conference, a forum mainly comprising past and present senior defense and intelligence experts, organized by the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.
The Palestinians are demanding an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 war lines, East Jerusalem as their capital, and a Right of Return for their refugees.
"We can reach borders that would be (tantamount to the lines of) 1967 with corrections," Peres said.
He did not believe the time was ripe for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement on Jerusalem or the refugee issue, but said those issues could be deferred.
The status quo in Jerusalem is better than one can describe in any paper, he argued. The Old City is divided into quarters -- Christian, Armenian, Moslem and a Jewish. "I won't say it's a paradise there, but there is no catastrophe," he said.
The ancient, holy Mosque of al-Aksa, on what Jews call the Temple Mount, is in Muslim hands. "We don't go in, don't intervene," he said. It is under Palestinian rule partly because the Jewish religion bars Jews from setting foot on the site there due to its holiness.
Israeli policemen are there to prevent Muslim worshippers from invading West Jerusalem, Peres said.
"In practice it is a reasonable situation," he added.
However, Israel would have to tell the Palestinians they ought to "forget" about a return of refugees.
"We cannot compromise on this matter, unequivocally, there is no room for negotiations," he stressed.
There were two non-Muslim states in the area, he continued, Lebanon and Israel. Lebanon ceased being a Christian state because it lost its Christian majority. Israel should not allow a situation in which it would meet a similar fate, he argued.
"We have to establish a Palestinian state, to divide the country. Because if we won't do it, we will lose ... the Jewish majority and by that the Jewish state," he warned.
Peres said that by now only 51 percent of the people living in historical Palestine -- between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River -- are Jews. Some 49 percent are non-Jews.
The foreign minister suggested Israel offer the Palestinians independence. "We should stop being their ruler, holding them by their economic neck, stop ordering them, treat their sense of dignity more seriously," he said.
Peres' proposals come amid an increase in violence. The foreign minister suggested the time for major change is precisely when the crisis reaches unbearable proportions. Then everybody agrees it is impossible to continue with the present situation, he said.
These proposals came on a day when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat urged more U.S. support to the peace process and that President George W. Bush implement the pledges he made before the U.N. General Assembly in November.
Arafat called again on the Israeli government to immediately stop the building of new settlements and stop what he described as "the crimes of settlers and the uprooting of our precious olive trees."
He urged both the Israelis and the Palestinians to end the violence and get back to the negotiating table.
"Returning back to the negotiation table is good for the sake of their (Israeli) children and our children," Arafat told reporters after another meeting with a delegation of Israeli Arabs, who came from Israel to show solidarity with him.
Arafat, Peres and the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for their peace negotiations. Rabin was assassinated a year later by a right-wing Israeli extremist.
(With reporting by Saud Abu Ramadan in Gaza.)
----
Palestinian Militants Vow to Attack Israel
December 17, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-mideast-militants-attacks.html
GAZA (Reuters) - Militant Palestinian groups defied a call by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to halt suicide bombings and armed attacks against Israel Monday by vowing to continue fighting the Jewish state.
The Islamic Hamas movement and the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) issued separate statements rejecting Arafat's Sunday night plea to lay down their arms and halt attacks against Israel.
``It's an unjust formula that can't be accepted,'' Hamas said in a statement in which it defended suicide bombings as ``the only weapon to preserve Palestinian rights.''
The PFLP's Abu Ali Mustafa armed brigades said they would continue ``armed resistance.'' ``Operations will continue as long as the occupation exists,'' the group said.
Both Hamas and the PFLP are on the U.S. list of terror groups. Arafat has outlawed the military wings of Hamas, the PFLP and other militant groups after intense U.S. and Israeli pressure.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan spy agency linked to attack
World Scene
December 17, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011217-801902.htm and http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51591-2001Dec16?language=printer
NEW DELHI - Indian police yesterday accused Pakistan's main intelligence service of being connected to the bloody suicide attack on the Indian parliament, as hostility between the nuclear-armed enemies intensified.
New Delhi Police Commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma said the link had come to light during questioning of persons about Thursday's attack, which Indian officials have blamed on Pakistan-based guerrillas fighting India's rule over much of Kashmir.
"The things which have come to notice clearly show that ISI was connected with this, and if ISI is connected with it then Pakistan must know of it," he told reporters, referring to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
----
U.S. Talks to Pakistan on Terror
The Associated Press
Monday, December 17, 2001; 6:24 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56483-2001Dec17?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- The United States has expressed concern to Pakistan about terrorist activities carried out by Pakistan-based groups against India, the State Department said Monday.
"We made clear that we believe that all countries are responsible for addressing terrorist activities within their borders and we'll continue our discussions with Pakistan in that context," spokesman Richard Boucher said.
India blames Pakistan for a suicide attack last Thursday against the Indian Parliament that killed 13 people, including the five attackers.
India is considering a military and a political response. One option is the bombing of terrorist training camps it says are scattered across Pakistan.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday a very tense situation exists between the two South Asian nuclear powers.
He said he was concerned that an escalation of the rhetoric could be followed by action, with the possibility of the situation spinning out of control.
Of particular concern to the United States are the Pakistan-based Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad organizations, both of which, Boucher said, have participated in terrorist activities.
He noted that neither has as yet been formally designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization. Such a designation means that U.S. citizens are barred from providing funding to them.
----
Priest Asks India-Pakistan Restraint
By Qaiser Mirza
Associated Press Writer
Monday, December 17, 2001; 3:29 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53165-2001Dec17?language=printer
SRINAGAR, India -- At prayers commemorating the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, a priest at Kashmir's main mosque appealed Monday for dialogue between India and Pakistan and warned that clouds of war are gathering.
Priest Ghulam Mohmad Bhatt referred to the heated rhetoric between the countries after India accused Pakistan of being behind Thursday's terrorist attack on India's Parliament.
Both nuclear powers have placed their troops on alert.
India has said the perpetrators were members of two groups that also fight in Kashmir, which has been torn by separatist violence.
"The clouds of war are hovering. There will be destruction by bullets and the threat of nuclear war is there," Bhatt said. "We appeal to both countries that they should initiate a serious dialogue."
Many in the crowd of more than 50,000 responded by chanting, "Independence, we want independence." Others sat silently.
Pakistan and India, which both tested nuclear weapons in 1998, have claimed all of Kashmir since they became independent from Britain in 1947, and have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan territory.
India accuses Pakistan of supporting the Islamic militants fighting to separate Kashmir from India. The 12-year insurgency has cost more than 30,000 lives.
Pakistan says it supports the goals of the militants, who are based on its territory, but denies it gives them material aid.
Pakistan's government has denied India's allegations of complicity in the assault on India's Parliament, which left eight people dead along with the five attackers.
-------- puerto rico
Defense Bill Authorizes Continued Vieques Bombing
By Cat Lazaroff
December 17, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/2001L-12-17-06.html
WASHINGTON, DC, A planned referendum on the future of Navy training on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques will be canceled by the 2002 Defense Authorization bill reported by the U.S. House and Senate this week. The measure, which maintains live fire training on the island indefinitely, was denounced by the protest groups who have risked arrest to block the Navy's exercises.
The USS Normandy fires its five inch guns at the training range on Vieques, Puerto Rico, on June 26, 2000 (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Defense)
The U.S. House and Senate have delivered a $343.3 billion compromise bill (S 1438) which is expected to bring a quick signature from President George W. Bush. The legislation, which boosts military spending in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, also includes language that returns control over the future of military training on Vieques to the Navy.
Members of the community organization Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques (CRDV) denounced the decision.
"The decision that Congress justifies with the 11 September terrorist attacks and the war on terrorism, will provoke more deaths and sickness from military contamination for our people," said Nilda Medina of the CRDV.
The Navy calls Vieques the "crown jewel" of its Atlantic training sites, saying exercises there are vital to national defense because they combine sea, land and air maneuvers that cannot be done elsewhere.
A RIM-7, NATO Sea Sparrow missile is fired from the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp during a missile training exercise, August 1999 near the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. (U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 3rd Class Brett Dawson)
Training was halted in April 1999 after a stray bomb fired by an F-16 fighter killed base security guard David Sanes Rodriquez and injured four other Puerto Ricans. For almost three years, hundreds of protesters camped out on the island's bombing ranges.
Training resumed last year, after former President Bill Clinton and former Puerto Rican Governor Pedro Rossello agreed to hold a public referendum that would decide the future of the island.
The agreement gave the residents of Vieques three years to hold a referendum to decide whether they want the bombing to continue on the island. If the islanders agreed to allow continued bombing, they stood to receive $40 million in aid from the United States.
But the agreement was not well received by many Puerto Ricans, and Governor Rosello lost his seat to Sila María Calderón in January 2001.
Governor of Puerto Rico Sila Calderon (Photo courtesy Office of the Governor)
"The people of Puerto Rico want an immediate halt to the naval exercises," Calderón said at her inauguration. "Sixty years of a menace to the health and security of our people is unacceptable for any civilized and peaceful society."
The planned referendum has been delayed several times. In June, President Bush said he would support ending Navy training on Vieques, and recommended that the referendum not be held. Congress included language canceling the referendum at the urging of the Bush administration.
Under the Defense bill, the Secretary of the Navy is authorized to close the training facilities at Vieques only after certifying that a training site or sites will be available to provide an equivalent or superior level of training compared to Vieques. The Navy Secretary must receive written certifications from three top officers in the Navy and Marine Corps that alternative training sites have been found before the Navy will leave Vieques.
If the Navy does shut down its training, the land will not be returned to the people of Vieques, as proposed by the previous administration. Instead, it will be transferred to the Department of the Interior, and could be reopened in the future "in case of national emergency."
Representative Bob Stump (Photo courtesy Office of the Representative)
House Armed Services Committee Chair Bob Stump said the bill "places the decision process on the thorny issue of Navy training on the island Vieques back where it belongs - in the hands of Navy officials and out of the political realm."
The bill leaves open the question of a deadline for the Navy's departure from the island. In June, President Bush said he would authorize a halt to training on Vieques by 2003.
"My attitude is that the Navy ought to find somewhere else to conduct its exercises - for a lot of reasons," Bush said. "One, there's been some harm done to people in the past. Secondly, these are our friends and neighbors, and they don't want us there."
In 1938, the Navy began using Vieques, which lies off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, for military practices. In 1947, the Navy began expropriating land on the island, about 16 miles long and four miles wide, eventually confiscating two-thirds of it for military installations and a target range.
The Navy now controls the eastern and western ends of the island, while the island's population of 9,400 lives in the middle section of the island. Live fire shelling occurs on the eastern tip of Vieques, 11 miles from the main town.
Vieques man amid craters left by missiles like the one in front of him. (Photo courtesy Vieques Libre)
Medical tests have shown that Vieques residents have a higher than normal rate of heart damage that may be related to sudden loud noises. Local fishers say they cannot make a living in peace, and the tourism potential of the island cannot be developed as long as the military exercises continue.
The island and offshore sea floor are littered with unexploded ordnance and leaking containers of toxic chemicals.
"They have poisoned our land, air and water, and even the flora and fauna show signs of contamination," said Myrna Pagán, member of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. "They are killing us a little at a time."
Thousands of Vieques residents, Puerto Ricans and other U.S. citizens have signed letters asking President Bush to issue an executive order immediately halting the Vieques exercises. Protesters continue to be arrested at the bombing range; on December 12, Vieques Mayor Damaso Serrano was released from federal prison after four months behind bars for his participation in the protests.
-------- saudi arabia
Condemning bin Laden [Saudi Arabia]
December 17, 2001
Embassy Row, News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
by James Morrison
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011217-83165316.htm
Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan denounced Osama bin Laden as a "murderous criminal" after seeing the tape of the Saudi-born terrorist gloating about the September 11 attacks.
The ambassador, the dean of the Washington diplomatic corps, also condemned bin Laden for using Islam to justify his terrorism.
He was the first Saudi official to comment on the broadcast of the tape of bin Laden bragging about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"The tape displays the cruel and inhumane face of a murderous criminal who has no respect for the sanctity of human life or the principles of his faith," Prince Bandar said in a statement released last week.
"Bin Laden and those he mentions in his tape are deviants and renegades who do not represent the Islamic faith or the Saudi people."
Bin Laden, who was stripped of his Saudi citizenship years ago, appears on the tape with a Saudi man identified as Sheikh Sulaiman.
Prince Bandar said, "We reject and condemn in the strongest terms possible their attitudes and their actions. We hope that the perpetrators of this horrific crime will soon be brought to justice and severely punished."
-------- venezuela
Today in DC: Gen. Lucas Rincon, chief of the armed forces of Venezuela
December 17, 2001
Embassy Row, News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
by James Morrison
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011217-83165316.htm
Gen. Lucas Rincon, chief of the armed forces of Venezuela, who speaks at the Interamerican Defense College. Tomorrow he meets Rogelio Pardo, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere issues, and Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Homeland defense - of the Constitution
Nat Hentoff
Washington Times
December 17, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011217-4489416.htm
According to the polls many years ago, there was little national support for either the civil rights or anti-Vietnam-war movements. But, through teach-ins, newspaper ads, and other ways of awakening the citizenry and Congress, those campaigns prevailed.
The odds against similar organized national opposition to the Bush administration's weakening of the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, are much longer than they were in the 1960s. Not only do polls show overwhelming public support for the diminishing of civil liberties; but Congress - except for a few vocal constitutionalists - is not going to vigorously exercise its oversight powers over Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Justice Department.
As Democrat John Dingell, a longtime, influential member of the House, told the Dec. 5 New York Times, "I hear a lot of members saying they're concerned, but not many willing to say it publicly."
There is insistent public opposition from civil libertarians, both on the left and the right; but the attorney general's often unilateral, scorched-earth approach to the Bill of Rights takes on new dimensions so frequently that his critics have been able to react only so far. There hasn't been time to organize pressure nationwide so that Congress will awaken to the separation of powers that is at the core of our system of governance.
A new addition to Mr. Ashcroft's war on both terrorism and our Constitution is his plan - under the expanded surveillance powers in the USA Patriot Act - to reintroduce a current version of COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Operation). From 1956 to 1971, the FBI not only monitored religious and political groups purportedly linked to communist operations, but the bureau also infiltrated and disrupted these organizations.
Among the FBI's targets were anti-war, civil-rights and black- nationalist groups, along with various liberal organizations that opposed certain government foreign policies. The Communist Party itself was, of course, included. But, as a reporter throughout that period, I can attest that many of the COINTELPRO probes were directed at entirely lawful groups and individuals without any ties to communism.
Finally, in 1975, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee) began to hold hearings and otherwise investigate COINTELPRO. The committee concluded that this FBI operation was "a sophisticated and vigilante program aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence."
The Church Committee (named for Idaho Sen. Frank Church, its chairman) added: "The American people need to be reassured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order."
But a Dec. 3 Wall Street Journal story, headlined "Justice Department Considers Stepping Up Monitoring of Religious, Political Groups," reported that the FBI will, under this proposal, no longer be held to "Justice Department regulations requiring agents to show probable cause that a crime was afoot before spying on political or religious organizations." Those regulations were put in place after the Church Committee exposed the FBI's disgraced COINTELPRO record.
On a Dec. 2 episode of ABC's "This Week," Mr. Ashcroft not only did not deny the advent of a new COINTELPRO, but stoutl