------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Japan firm to stop MOX processing at COGEMA unit
Russia to Get More U.S. Help on Weapons Safeguards
Russian senate OKs cooperation with Iran
Russian Arms Researcher Called Spy
US to Help Russia on Nuclear Control
Russian Parliament Delays ABM Vote
NRC OKs power uprates for four Exelon nuclear units
Electrical Snag Causes Power Plant Shutdown
Hard Questions for Movement to Shut Indian Point

MILITARY
Re Quote of the Day: "Triage"
U.S. begins bombing Taliban targets again
Russia's Putin boasts of rising arms sales
Accusations of Chinese-made ammunition in Afghanistan are baseless
Former secretary involved in scandal dies
China says resistance is not terrorism
A Transfer Of Power In Colombia
Afghan Official Pledges to Wipe Out Country's Drug Trade
France Halts Mass Refugee Flight Through Tunnel to Britain
Old Strategy on Iraq Sparks New Debate
Japan to build US military airport on coral reef
Bin Laden May Be in Pakistan
Pakistan would retaliate to Indian threat, rules out nuclear war
Russian warplanes...
A War That's Commanded At a Distance
U.S. Putting Off Plan to Use G.I.'s in Afghan Caves

POLICE / PRISONERS
2001 Deadly Year for Police
Berenson's transfer sparks prison riot
Kenyan police fire at rioters
Funds to Test DNA Of Convicts Diverted To ID Sept. 11 Victims
U.N. Halted Probe of Officers' Alleged Role in Sex Trafficking
Thirteen executed in northern China for robbery, murder
New Videotape Features Pale Bin Laden
Connecting terrorism's dots
U.S. to Take Detainees to Cuban Base

ENERGY AND OTHER
Japan bets on fuel cells for tech-toy power
Bangladesh bans polythene bags, promotes jute
Human Rights Cases Begin to Flood Into Belgian Courts

ACTIVISTS
Critics of tribunals too hasty




-------- NUCLEAR

-------- japan

Japan firm to stop MOX processing at COGEMA unit

REUTERS JAPAN:
December 27, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13852/newsDate/27-Dec-2001/story.htm

TOKYO - Japan's second-largest power utility said yesterday it had asked its French supplier of MOX fuel to stop processing the controversial blend of uranium and plutonium because its safety could not be confirmed.

Kansai Electric Power Co Inc said COMMOX, an affiliate of state-run French nuclear agency COGEMA, had been asked to stop processing MOX fuel for the Japanese firm.

Kansai said the Japanese government had not been able to confirm if the MOX fuel produced at the French firm, which has been processing MOX for Kansai Electric since November 1999, was safe.

Officials at the power utility said the move could prompt a delay in the firm's plan to use the MOX fuel, as well as leaving the power utility with a loss of about six billion yen ($45.84 million).

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has stepped up quality inspections of MOX fuel in the wake of a data falsification incident involving British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) last year.

BNFL agreed last year to take back the fuel after Kansai Electric discovered accompanying data had been falsified.

"The government did not agree with our opinion that the fuel (produced at COMMOX) would have no safety problems," an official of the power utility told a news conference.

Kansai has not yet decided on possible future supply contracts.

No Japanese power plant has used MOX, despite industry plans to begin loading the fuel in 1999, partly due to strong anti-nuclear sentiment among the public.

The revelation that MOX data from BNFL had been falsified coincided with Japan's worst nuclear accident. In September 1999, an accident at a uranium reprocessing plant operated by JCO Co Ltd in Tokaimura, about 140 km (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo, killed two workers and exposed hundreds of residents to radiation.

The power industry, however, has said it will not abandon plans to use the controversial fuel.

Japanese power utilities still plan to load the MOX fuel at 16 to 18 nuclear reactors by 2010.

-------- russia

Russia to Get More U.S. Help on Weapons Safeguards

By Patricia Wilson,
Thursday December 27
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-russia-usa.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011227/pl/arms_russia_usa_dc_5.html

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - The United States will boost efforts to help Russia and other former Soviet republics guard nuclear material, dismantle arms and redirect the talents of weapons scientists, the White House said on Thursday.

With the nuclear, biological and chemical threat taking on new meaning since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, a review ordered by President Bush (news - web sites) of more than 30 cooperative nonproliferation programs worth a total of $750 million found that most were well focused and ably managed.

It earmarked several for expansion, including two run by the Energy Department -- one that helps Russia secure and consolidate weapons-grade nuclear material and a second that assists in the disposal of surplus plutonium.

``The president has made clear repeatedly that his administration is committed to strong, effective cooperation with Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union to reduce weapons of mass destruction and prevent their proliferation,'' the White House said in a written statement.

The statement made no mention of funding and said some programs would be ``adjusted, focused or reexamined.'' Bush said on Dec. 11 he would request an overall increase ``to support this vital mission.''

Earlier this year, a bipartisan task force reported on the need to secure Russian weapons, materials, and know-how, declaring it ``the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States,'' and calling for a four-fold funding hike.

The joint nonproliferation effort began more than a decade ago when Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia joined Republican Sen. Richard Lugar (news - bio - voting record) of Indiana in forging a program to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to help destroy their nuclear arsenals.

When the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, it left a legacy of 30,000 nuclear warheads and enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium for many more, as well as chemical and biological weapons and thousands of scientists who knew how to make them.

The Bush administration review of what initially was called the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act but now is referred to simply as Nunn-Lugar found that most U.S. programs were ''focused on priority tasks.''

``PEACEFUL SCIENCE''

It recommended expanding the work of the International Science and Technology Center, an inter-governmental organization including the European Union (news - web sites), Japan and Russia that promotes nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The center also provides weapons scientists from Russia and the former Soviet republics with ``opportunities to redirect their scientific talents to peaceful science.''

The review recommended accelerating construction of a chemical-weapons destruction facility at Shchuch'ye in Russia; examining a less-costly and more-effective approach to plutonium disposition; and speeding up the installation of nuclear detection equipment at Russian border posts.

``The decisions from the administration's review will be implemented vigorously in accordance with the president's clear direction,'' the White House statement said.

The United States had worked with Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus to recover and destroy 423 ballistic missiles, 383 ballistic-missile launchers, 85 bombers, 483 long-range air-launched cruise missiles, 352 submarine missile launchers, 209 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and 19 strategic missile submarines, Nunn said recently.

In addition, 194 nuclear test tunnels had been sealed, and more than 5,500 warheads on strategic systems aimed at the United States had been deactivated.

----

Russian senate OKs cooperation with Iran

World Scene
Washington Times
December 27, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011227-29737160.htm

MOSCOW - Russia's upper house of parliament yesterday unanimously ratified a partnership treaty with Iran that includes cooperating in developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

The Duma, or lower house, ratified the treaty last week in a near-unanimous vote.

The United States has repeatedly expressed concern about military links between the two countries, particularly regarding Russia's construction of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant.

--------

Russian Arms Researcher Called Spy

December 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Spy-Trial.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- A Russian arms control researcher being tried for espionage told the court in a closed-door trial Thursday that the charges against him were absurd, his lawyer said.

Igor Sutyagin, a scholar at Moscow's prestigious USA and Canada Institute, was arrested in October 1999 on suspicion of passing information on the development of new-generation submarines and the combat-readiness of Russia's nuclear weapons and missile attack warning systems to a British company allegedly set up as a cover for the CIA.

Prosecutors are seeking a 14-year sentence for Sutyagin in a high-security prison.

Sutyagin has pleaded innocent, saying the analyses he wrote were all based on open sources. On Thursday, he told the court in Kaluga, about 100 miles south of Moscow, that the espionage charges were ``absurd'' and requested full acquittal, defense lawyer Vladimir Vasiltsov said.

The court did not issue a verdict Thursday, and instead ordered prosecutors to investigate the case further.

Judge Alexander Gusev said Sutyagin would remain in jail. Vasiltsov said he would appeal the decision to keep Sutyagin behind bars.

Vasiltsov called the court's decision to send the case back to prosecutors an acknowledgment of ``the groundlessness of the charges.''

Sutyagin claims he never had access to classified information and has maintained that reading publicly available material cannot be considered a crime.

Sutyagin's trial is one of a number of recent alleged espionage and treason cases that human rights advocates say are intended to discourage Russian researchers from maintaining contacts with foreigners.

Alexei Simonov, head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, which monitors rights abuses, said the prosecution was trying to prove Sutyagin ``sold his brains to American imperialists.'' If that can be considered a crime, ``then thought in this country is not free,'' he said.

On Tuesday, military journalist Grigory Pasko was sentenced to four years in prison for illegally attending a meeting of top military brass and possessing notes he made there. The court said he intended to pass the information onto Japanese media.

--------

US to Help Russia on Nuclear Control

December 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia-Proliferation.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House said Thursday it would expand programs to help Russia keep nuclear weapons material under control and to speed up installation of detection devices at U.S. and Russian border posts.

The results of a Bush administration review reflect rising concern that terrorists might acquire nuclear material from loosely managed Russian stockpiles, then smuggle it out of Russia and into the United States for terror attacks.

Some analysts have questioned whether Russian officials know exactly how many nuclear weapons and how much weapons-grade material are stored in Russia.

More than 30 U.S. programs, with a combined budget of about $750 million, were reviewed, and a summary of the conclusions was released by the White House. Most of the programs were found to work well, the statement said.

However, the review proposed that the State Department and Energy Department find a less costly and more efficient way to help Russia dispose of excess plutonium, a key element of nuclear weapons.

The current program was expected to cost about $2 billion by the time it is completed several years from now.

The project to end Russian production of weapons-grade plutonium will be transferred to the Energy Department from the Defense Department and several programs to help Russia shutter nuclear weapons factories and install nuclear detection devices at border posts will be merged.

At the same time, programs to find jobs for Russian nuclear weapons scientists are to be expanded. The aim is to limit any incentive to sell dangerous material to suspect groups or nations.

And the United States will work with Russia to destroy tons of nerve gas at Shchuch'ye.

The decisions from the administration's review will be implemented vigorously, the statement said.

In a separate development, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said the results of a review of U.S. nuclear weapons programs would be announced next week.

He said it would lay the groundwork for a new approach to strategic deterrence -- one that will include ``truly deep reductions'' in U.S. arsenals combined with deployment of an anti-missile defense capable of protecting the United States, allies and friends from attack.

-------- treaties

Russian Parliament Delays ABM Vote

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 27, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US-Nuclear.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30618-2001Dec27?language=printer

MOSCOW (AP) -- Parliament put off a vote Thursday on a resolution condemning Washington's withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The nonbinding resolution also would urge President Vladimir Putin to hold ``urgent'' consultations with lawmakers on how Russia should respond and says the government should draw up proposals for developing Russia's nuclear forces.

The vote was postponed until sometime next month when the State Duma, the lower house, decided to cut short its work and adjourn for a short vacation.

The draft resolution says the U.S. action ``effectively ruins the existing, highly efficient system of treaties ensuring global stability, and creates real conditions for a new round of the arms race.''

Putin reacted calmly when President Bush gave six-months' notice Dec. 13 that Washington is withdrawing from the ABM treaty so it can pursue development of a missile-defense system.

Putin called the move a mistake but said it was not a threat to Russia. The low-key response contrasted sharply with years of vociferous Russian protests against the U.S. missile defense plan, which conflicts with the treaty.

In a poll of 1,500 Russians over the weekend by the respected All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion, 43 percent of respondents said they disapproved of the U.S. move, while 31 percent reacted neutrally. Eight percent viewed it positively, the Interfax news agency said. No margin of error was given.

Some analysts have said the U.S. decision frees Russia from the constraints of other nuclear arms control agreements, in particular the START II arms reduction treaty's ban on fitting multiple warheads on missiles.

When the Russian parliament ratified START II, it made that conditional on the preservation of the ABM treaty.

Putin agrees the START II ban is affected but has said his government has no plans to take advantage of that ``in the close, foreseeable future.''

Bush said last month the United States would reduce its nuclear forces to 1,700-2,200 warheads, and Putin promised to cut Russia's arsenal to as low as 1,500 warheads.

Interfax said Thursday that U.S. and Russian officials were expected to meet in Washington in mid-January to discuss specific numbers and deadlines for the cuts.

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

-------- illinois

NRC OKs power uprates for four Exelon nuclear units

REUTERS USA:
December 27, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13842/newsDate/27-Dec-2001/story.htm

SAN FRANCISCO - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said yesterday it had approved a request by Exelon Generating Co. to increase the generating capacity of four of its nuclear units at two sites in Illinois.

Exelon Generating Co. is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. , the owner of the largest fleet of U.S. nuclear power plants.

The power uprates at Dresden 2 and 3, located near Morris, Illinois, will increase the power of each reactor by 17 percent to about 912 megawatts (MW) of electricity per unit, the NRC said in a statement.

The power uprates at Quad Cities 1 and 2, located near Moline, Illinois, will increase the power of each reactor by 17.8 percent, or to about 912 MW of electricity per unit.

The application for the increases was submitted to the NRC in December 2000.

According to the statement, Exelon intends to implement the power uprate immediately for Dresden Unit 2, while uprates for the three other reactors will be implemented during scheduled outages in 2002 and 2003.

The NRC staff determined that the licensee could safely increase the power output of the reactors with modifications to plant equipment and use of new fuel, it added.

-------- new york

Electrical Snag Causes Power Plant Shutdown

New York Times
December 27, 2001
By ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/27/nyregion/27PLAN.html

One of two reactors at the Indian Point nuclear plant in Buchanan, N.Y., shut down yesterday morning after an electrical connection to the plant's turbine unexpectedly switched off, officials said.

The shutdown occurred automatically about 7:20 a.m. at the plant, about 30 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River, said Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, the plant's owner. There was no release of radiation, he added.

Neil A. Sheehan, a spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said, "The plant is designed to shut down when there are any fluctuations in the power flowing into the grid."

He added that the electrical problem appeared to have originated with circuit breakers in a switch yard next to the plant, though an investigation was continuing.

"The safety systems operated the way they're supposed to, and the control room operators did what they are trained to do," Mr. Sheehan said.

It is too soon to say when the plant will start running again, Mr. Steets said.

The type of electrical problem that caused the shutdown is relatively rare at nuclear plants, but it has happened before, Mr. Sheehan said. August 1999 was the last time a similar accident took place at Indian Point. That accident was more serious, because the safety systems did not respond properly and some alarms in the plant's control room stopped working.

Indian Point 2, where the shutdown occurred yesterday, was criticized by federal officials earlier this month after four of seven control room crews failed to pass their annual qualification exams. Spokesmen for Entergy and the N.R.C. said the failures had occurred largely because Entergy, which bought the reactor from Con Edison in September for $528 million, had made the exams more rigorous as part of an effort to increase performance standards.

Some residents have also been critical of Indian Point 2 since February 2000, when a more serious accident occurred in which a steam generator tube ruptured and some radiation leaked. The reactor was closed for almost a year, though Con Edison said the amount of radiation released was too small to be a threat to public health.

Since Sept. 11, a number of elected officials and civic advocates have argued that the plant is vulnerable to terrorist attack and should be shut down.

Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a frequent critic of the plant, said yesterday: "This is just another chapter in a long saga of continual breakdowns at the plant and reassurances that it is O.K. The public is deeply skeptical of the plant's safety."

--------

NEWS ANALYSIS
Hard Questions for Movement to Shut Indian Point

New York Times
December 27, 2001
By ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/27/nyregion/27NUKE.html

Since Sept. 11, an unusually broad coalition of elected officials, civic and environmental groups and homeowners across New York City's northern suburbs has come together over a temptingly simple demand: close the Indian Point nuclear power plant.

Frightened by the possibility of a catastrophic terrorist attack on the nuclear complex 30 miles north of Manhattan, critics are saying with increasing intensity that it is time for the plant to be shut down.

But even as opposition continues to grow, the movement's leaders are confronting some hard questions. What are the options for closing the plant? Do they provide any promising avenues for opponents to follow? Would closing the plant eliminate the security issues there?

And if Indian Point is closed, how will the region's energy needs and electricity rates be affected?

None of the answers give easy comfort to those who think Indian Point's risks far outweigh its benefits to the region.

Indian Point's opponents have raised the possibility of a terrorist attack on the plant that would send deadly plumes of radiation into the densely populated area, a release that could imperil areas as far away as Manhattan. They have said Westchester County's emergency plan, which includes the possible evacuation of people up to 10 miles downwind of the plant, would never work.

At a public hearing on Dec. 20, the president of one of the bus companies whose drivers are supposed to pick up children in the evacuation zone called the plan "a fairy tale," saying the drivers would not go. Others have said the roads in the area - jammed at rush hour even on ordinary days - would be clogged with panicking families.

Many opponents believe that the plant, which is in Buchanan, N.Y., would be forced to shut down if Westchester officials, who are responsible for maintaining the emergency plan, decided to withdraw from it. A number of county legislators said they would vote for a withdrawal, and no nuclear plant can maintain its license without a federally approved emergency plan. But federal officials have said the plant is safe, and they have no intention of closing it. The federal government can declare that the emergency provisions are adequate even in the absence of county or state participation. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, officials in Rockland County, just across the Hudson from Westchester, did withdraw from the emergency plan at Indian Point, and state officials simply created a substitute plan for Rockland.

Partly as a result of that incident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission developed the so-called realism rule in the early 1980's, stating that the commission could independently determine that a plant owner's emergency plans were sufficient.

"If a state or county decides to withdraw in whole or in part from the emergency plan, the realism rule says we believe they will in fact do everything required for the safety of their citizens," said Edwin F. Fox, a senior emergency planning specialist at the commission. Some opponents of Indian Point say that despite these rules, federal officials will not ignore the movement if it continues to grow.

"The N.R.C. may be the only agency with final authority over the plant, but what it would do in a changed political climate is not clear," said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, who convened the Dec. 20 hearings on the Indian Point emergency plan and is a leader of the movement to close the plant.

Neil A. Sheehan, a spokesman for the N.R.C., said the agency judged plants on the basis of science, not politics. It has periodically closed reactors with persistent technical problems, and it shut down one of Indian Point's two reactors for almost a year in early 2000 after an accident involving a steam generator tube. That reactor, Indian Point 2, drew more criticism in recent weeks after four of seven control-room crews failed their annual requalification tests. But N.R.C. and Entergy representatives said the reactor was making substantial improvements after Entergy acquired it from its old owner, Con Edison, in September.

There is no indication that Entergy is daunted by the opposition. The company has already spent about $3 million on new security measures since Sept. 11, and it intends to run the two reactors at least until their current licenses run out, in 2013 and 2015, said Jim Steets, an Entergy spokesman. There would then be an opportunity to renew the licenses for up to 20 years.

If politicians did try to force a closure, the nuclear industry would not go down without a fight. "You can't take away an asset like that and not reimburse the company," said Maureen Koetz, the director of environmental programs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group. "I think it would require a lot of legal force." Entergy paid $528 million for Indian Point 2 earlier this year, and $967 million for Indian Point 3 and another reactor elsewhere in the state last year.

Entergy also employs 1,500 people full time at the plant, and they would probably make their voices heard if the movement to close Indian Point got closer to success, Mr. Steets said.

In any case, the history of political opposition to nuclear plants suggests that it is not easy to get to that point. There have been a number of popular referendums to close nuclear plants, and only one has succeeded, against the Rancho Seco plant in Sacramento in 1989. That plant was publicly owned, and polls taken after the closing suggested that the voters' decision was influenced more by concerns about management than by worries about nuclear safety.

That was before Sept. 11, when the threat of a suicide attack made all of the nation's 83 nuclear reactor sites seem far more vulnerable. Opponents say Indian Point, whose two reactors and three pools of spent fuel are in the most densely populated area around any nuclear plant in the country, should be shut down until better security measures can be developed, if not permanently.

But it is not clear how much safer a shutdown would make the plant. The large amounts of spent nuclear fuel stored at the site would remain there even if it was closed because there is still no federally approved repository for nuclear waste, N.R.C. officials said. Moving the fuel out of the pools where it is currently stored to a dry cask storage system - a change advocated by those who favor a shutdown - would make it safer from an attack, said David Lochbaum, a former nuclear engineer and spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists. But that change could be made without shutting down the reactors.

Another obstacle to closing the plant is that it provides 7 to 8 percent of the electricity consumed in New York State, and is an important power source in New York City, said Carol E. Murphy, a spokeswoman for the New York Independent System Operator, the nonprofit company that controls the state's electricity grid.

If the plant were to shut down tomorrow, there would probably be power shortages and certainly an increase in wholesale electricity prices this summer in the New York region, probably by about 20 percent, said Gavin J. Donohue, the executive director of the Independent Power Producers of New York, an industry association. For the average rate payer with a monthly bill of $100 during the summer, that would mean an increase of $6 to $7.

But Ashok Gupta, the senior energy economist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which favors closing the plant, said that estimate excludes conservation improvements and a number of new power plants that are being planned in the region. If those changes are added to the picture, they could compensate for the loss of the plant by this summer, and certainly within two or three years, Mr. Gupta said.

Other analysts say newer plants will worsen air pollution in the area, unlike Indian Point, which does not contribute in significant ways to air pollution. And the prospect of new smog-generating plants or higher electricity rates in low-income areas like the Bronx has already become an issue as the Indian Point opponents seek to expand their movement into the city.

"We believe that any closure must first deal with alternative generation of electricity that will be needed to make up for a shutdown, and until those concerns are dealt with in an equitable manner, we could not fully support a shutdown," said Timothy Logan, the energy coordinator at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, a group that works on environmental issues in low-income communities.

Acknowledging the region's energy needs, many of those who favor a shutdown say they would like to convert Indian Point into a natural gas plant. But converting Indian Point to natural gas would itself be a difficult process. The old plant would have to be decommissioned first, and the new plant would require a larger supply of gas than is now possible using an existing pipeline running through the site, Mr. Steets said.

Converting the plant could inflame further controversy because the most likely source for a larger supply of natural gas would be the Millennium Pipeline, a proposed 422- mile high-pressure natural gas line that would run underground from Lake Erie to Mount Vernon. That proposal has itself been drawing protests over the past year from Westchester residents who say it poses serious environmental risks.


-------- MILITARY

Re Quote of the Day: "Triage"

"So what you have is a bunch of caves. They're being triaged and put in priority order...." ["U.S. begins bombing Taliban targets again" below]

["Triage" in medicine means deciding that a person is untreatable. War is so grotesque. et]

-------- afghanistan

U.S. begins bombing Taliban targets again

By Pamela Hess,
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL,
December 27, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/27122001-041153-8915r.htm

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- After three days of relative quiet in Afghanistan, U.S. planes bombed a compound near Ghazni believed to be the hiding place of senior Taliban leaders Wednesday around 4:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, according to Pentagon officials.

"We had very good indications it was inhabited by Taliban leadership," said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a Pentagon briefing Thursday. "It was strictly a command-and-control type target."

B-52 bombers and AC-130s nearly destroyed the isolated Tori Khel walled compound, according to before-and-after pictures.

The U.S. holds 37 prisoners at a Marine camp in Kandahar and another eight aboard the USS Peleliu, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States is making arrangements to transfer Taliban and al Qaida prisoners to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"I would characterize Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as the least worst place we could have selected. It has disadvantages. Its disadvantages, however, seem to be modest relative to the alternatives," Rumsfeld said.

The military complex is heavily fortified and well removed from the population of Cuba. It offers a comfortable distance from groups that may protest or try to disrupt the jailing, according to Pentagon sources.

The Defense Department has not released information about any of the prisoners except American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh and a 26-year-old Australian fighter. Afghan opposition forces are holding thousands of prisoners and they are being interrogated by U.S. military personnel, CIA officers and FBI agents.

There are no plans to hold the controversial military tribunals in Cuba, Rumsfeld said.

In Afghanistan, the hunt continues for more prisoners and intelligence in the mountains around Tora Bora -- a mission the Pentagon hopes to convince Afghan fighters to largely carry out.

"Obviously, there are many ways to incentivize the opposition groups, and it may be that cold-weather clothing is more important than money and so forth. But all that is being worked to solicit their cooperation in this endeavor," said Myers.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denied this was a change from an earlier plan said to be under consideration -- sending 500 Marines and Army soldiers into the mountains to join the search.

"The stuff you're reading about in the paper ... that's all newspaper talk -- just flat out," said Rumsfeld. "Look, from the very beginning, we said that we were going to have the Afghan forces that were in that region work the problem. To the extent they needed additional help, we would try to get Afghan forces from other regions of the country. And to the extent they needed additional help, we would use U.S. forces."

Rumsfeld told reporters last Friday that he anticipated "hundreds" more soldiers -- both U.S. and Afghan -- would be needed for the job.

"Whatever is needed will be sent. And it won't be just U.S., it'll be coalition forces," Rumsfeld said last week. "So what you have is a bunch of caves. They're being triaged and put in priority order. Then the Afghan forces and coalition forces are going into those caves and looking for information and evidence and people and weapons and determining -- trying to determine what we can do to deal with terrorists all across the globe."

The inducements are intended to diminish the need for more U.S. troops in Tora Bora. Approximately 50 Special Forces soldiers are believed to be in the area already with Afghan soldiers. A Pentagon official said the United States would rather not put more soldiers at risk if Afghan fighters can be convinced to do the work.

The United States already has been providing money, food, supplies and weapons to Afghan fighters, many of whom abandoned the fight last week after al Qaida troops stopped resisting and fled under heavy air bombardment.

"Bribes, is one way of saying it," the official told United Press International Thursday. "That's the way you do business in many parts of the world."

Suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden is thought by many to be either hiding or dead in the labyrinth of caves, where al Qaida fighters battled Eastern Alliance forces of anti-Taliban fighters for more than a week.

But the spokesman for the Afghan defense minister said Thursday that bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan.

Rumsfeld refused to comment on the reports.

"I've stopped chasing (the reports). We do know, of certain knowledge, that he is either in Afghanistan or in some other country or dead. And we know of certain knowledge that we don't know which of those happens to be the case," he said.

Myers returned on Monday from a trip to visit U.S. troops in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other points in central Asia. He carried with him around 13,000 Christmas cookies baked by people in Washington, D.C., and delivered with notes of encouragement from many members of Congress and government officials from 30 different countries.

"They were exquisite cookies," Myers said. "I mean, people really put their heart into them."

-------- arms sales

Russia's Putin boasts of rising arms sales

World Scene
Washington Times
December 27, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011227-29737160.htm

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Russian arms exports leaped almost 20 percent to $4.4 billion in 2001, but insisted defense industries needed a radical overhaul to guarantee long-term success.

He also told his Security Council that Russia should look beforehand at what effect arms sales had on its foreign policy.

He appeared to be referring to Iran, China and India, whose purchases of Russian tanks, warplanes and missiles cause increasing concern to the United States.

"The results are not bad, $4.4 billion of foreign currency revenue for this year, which is considerably more than last year," Mr. Putin said in remarks carried on national television.

----

Accusations of Chinese-made ammunition in Afghanistan are baseless

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
December 27, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011227-16198510.htm

In response to your Dec. 21 Inside the Ring column, in which it is alleged that Chinese-made ammunition has been found in Afghanistan, let me say it is well-known that the Chinese government opposes any form of terrorism. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, China has followed through on this position in both words and deeds.

China has enhanced dialogue and cooperation with the United States and the international community in the fight against terrorism, and its effort has won international acclaim as well as the praise of U.S. officials. On a recent visit to China, U.S. Ambassador-at-large Francis Taylor, President Bush's coordinator for counterterrorism activities, spoke highly of China for its cooperation in rooting out Osama bin Laden's terror network.

I have no idea on what basis the unnamed U.S. official in your article claims that Chinese-made ammunition has been found in Afghanistan. One thing is clear, however: Since the United Nations adopted resolutions on a weapons embargo against Afghanistan, China consistently has been abiding by those Security Council resolutions.

It is not the first time you have made such baseless allegations about China's support for and connection with the Taliban. Newsworthiness aside, now that the international community is uniting in the fight against terrorism, the motive behind your repeated claims is dubious.

XIE FENG Press counselor and spokesman Chinese Embassy Washington

-------- business

Former secretary involved in scandal dies

Around the Nation
Washington Times
December 27, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011227-72400927.htm

Former Pentagon official Melvyn R. Paisley, a decorated World War II pilot who was involved in a major defense-procurement scandal in the 1980s, has died of cancer.

Mr. Paisley, 77, had lived with the disease since being diagnosed in the early 1980s, said his wife, Vicki. They lived in McLean. He died on Dec. 19.

In 1991, Mr. Paisley, a former assistant Navy secretary, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery as part of Operation Ill Wind - an investigation of attempts by defense contractors to buy influence or get sensitive information about competitors' bids to help win lucrative military contracts.

Mr. Paisley was sentenced to four years in prison. He was the highest-ranking Defense Department official convicted during the 71/2-year operation that investigated corporate executives, defense consultants and government officials.

-------- china

China says resistance is not terrorism

World Scene
Washington Times
December 27, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011227-29737160.htm

CAIRO - Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said yesterday that his country refuses to equate terrorism with Arab resistance to foreign occupation, after a meeting with his Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Maher.

"China is opposed to all equation between terrorism and just resistance of the Arab countries to external aggression," Mr. Tang told reporters, in an allusion to Israel's occupation of Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian land.

-------- colombia

A Transfer Of Power In Colombia
Paramilitary's Rise Unintended Outcome Of U.S. Assistance

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 27, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28444-2001Dec26?language=printer

PARAISO, Colombia -- It is hard to imagine a place more misnamed than this village in northern Colombia's San Lucas Range. Paradise has had a difficult year.

Months ago, President Andres Pastrana sent the army into Paraiso and the surrounding region to create a safe haven for peace talks with Colombia's second-largest guerrilla force. It was a politically risky move. Pastrana's orders to the army were unusual: Leave the guerrillas mostly alone, but focus on driving the right-wing paramilitary forces out of southern Bolivar province, where they had massed to block the peace plan.

The army did not carry out Pastrana's orders. Instead, it appeared to work in tandem with the paramilitary forces to drive the guerrillas deep into the jungle-covered mountains. Three times since then, paramilitary forces have burned Paraiso to the ground. On Dec. 9, after crossing the clear stream west of town and ransacking stores and destroying the health clinic, they killed four men with machetes and left the warning that anyone caught trying to rebuild the ruined village would die the same way.

The destruction of Paraiso is another sign of the rising power this year of rightist paramilitary forces in Colombia, a development that is altering the strategic balance in the country after four decades of civil war. Although the paramilitary force is listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization, Western diplomats following the conflict describe its growing reach as an unintended byproduct of a U.S. program to strengthen Colombia's armed forces, which frequently work alongside the paramilitary groups. The paramilitary forces, once a collection of armed groups sponsored by wealthy landowners, have become a national movement and the most potent new dimension in Colombia's civil war.

During Operation Bolivar, diplomats said they petitioned U.S. officials in Bogota to threaten to withhold U.S. aid from the Colombian armed forces unless Pastrana's orders were carried out. But that message was clouded by differences of opinion in Congress and the Bush administration over the value of creating a safe haven for a Marxist-led guerrilla group and was never delivered, according to Western diplomats here working to end the war.

"We all should do more to use both moral and material pressure to curb paramilitary violence, which is the most rapidly growing cause of civilian suffering," said Jan Egeland, the U.N. secretary general's special envoy for peace in Colombia who is leaving at the end of the year. "What happened in Bolivar shows that the killers can go on and on and on killing innocent civilians and not face any consequences."

The nature of U.S. involvement in Colombia's war has been an unresolved question since Congress approved a $1.3 billion, mostly military aid package last year. The helicopters, military training and herbicide spraying included in the package were to be narrowly focused on Colombia's drug trade, keeping the U.S. outside the fight against the rebels. But because the drug trade is so intertwined with the civil war, the United States has assumed a central role not only in counter-narcotics strategy but also in the far more complicated issues of war and peace.

So far this year, aerial herbicide spraying has killed more than 180,000 acres of coca, the key ingredient in the production of cocaine. A U.S. official here said "that is tons and tons of cocaine that has been kept off our streets." But a development program designed to coax small farmers to grow legal crops as an alternative to coca has been slow in arriving, so much of the coca has been replanted in the same locations.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have hailed the success of three U.S.-trained anti-drug battalions in the Colombian army that have destroyed hundreds of processing labs. By summer, the number of spray planes in use will rise from 10 to 25, and more than a dozen U.S.-donated Black Hawk helicopters will be deployed, prompting the U.S. official to predict that "we will then be killing coca faster than they are able to replant."

The money and diplomatic support have been felt most squarely by the 130,000-member military, which has seen its prestige and hardware upgraded by the stepped-up U.S. involvement. However, the military's rising fortunes and the increased pressure on the country's oldest guerrilla movements -- major targets of the anti-narcotics campaign -- have proven to be a boon for the paramilitary groups.

The shifting balance has even allowed the paramilitary forces to take over some coca areas once dominated by the guerrillas. Drug profits are helping them pay troop salaries, buy arms and recruit members from the growing pool of unemployed Colombians.

Rising Popular Support

During the past year, the main paramilitary organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, has deepened its territorial gains with a right-of-center political agenda. According to its leaders, AUC ranks have grown from 8,000 to 14,000 combatants. Once backed mostly by wealthy business and ranching interests and former military leaders, it now enjoys increasing support among rich and poor Colombians, public opinion polls show.

The AUC is also the country's leading author of civilian massacres, according to Colombia's Defense Ministry. More than 1,000 civilians have been killed this year by the AUC, compared with 18 in 1995, according to the Defense Ministry, and its strategy of depriving guerrillas of supplies and intelligence has helped cause the displacement of 2 million people.

The AUC's principal guerrilla adversary is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which coalesced in 1964 from a group of rural protection squads, and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, which is more ideologically Marxist than the FARC but is weaker militarily. The FARC, which has an estimated 18,000 members, derives significant financial support from taxing the drug trade in areas it controls. Both groups, like the AUC, are on the State Department list of terrorist organizations.

While U.S. officials describe their aid package as "a plan to get dope off of our streets," Pastrana continues to view Plan Colombia -- a $7.5 billion initiative that primarily invests in social development projects -- principally as a peace plan designed to deprive the FARC of its drug-fueled war financing. Since taking office promising to end the war, Pastrana has chosen a controversial approach to peace negotiations, one that places tracts of land under guerrilla control to create venues for those talks.

His decision in late 1998 to give the FARC a Switzerland-size patch of southern jungle as a step toward peace negotiations has, so far, yielded little more than a prisoner exchange agreement and mounting friction between his government and Washington as public support for the process fades.

Drug Trade and War

The overlapping relationship between the civil war and the campaign against drugs is starkly evident in the southern province of Putumayo. In villages such as El Tigre, paramilitary forces have taken control of territory vacated by retreating guerrillas pressured by the anti-drug offensive.

One recent evening in El Tigre, 50 paramilitary recruits were working, in plain sight, through a month-long military training course. At the beginning of the year here in western Putumayo, where the U.S.-trained anti-drug brigade has been most active, the FARC controlled these coca-filled valleys. Today Commander Enrique, the AUC leader in western Putumayo, sleeps in the same complex of wood-plank houses in which the FARC village militia lived.

Enrique said that whereas the FARC charged a $200 tax per kilo of coca base, his men take $50. The FARC has hit herbicide spray planes with 180 rounds of ammunition this year and has shot down one helicopter; the AUC does not fire on aircraft.

Throughout the year, the AUC has increasingly relied on drug proceeds to fund its expansion, according to Colombia's national police and U.S. officials. But the leader of the AUC, Carlos Castaño, has ordered his troops to get out of the drug business in hopes of gaining U.S. support for political recognition from the Pastrana government.

In tailoring the AUC's political objectives with those of the United States and the Colombian army, Castaño has made it more difficult for U.S. officials to convince senior Colombian military leaders that paramilitary forces are their enemies. In southern Bolivar province, the army and paramilitary forces have openly colluded this year in ways that have confounded Pastrana's peace efforts, according to diplomatic sources.

During much of February and March, a military campaign swept along a stretch of coca fields and farmland in southern Bolivar to create a promised demilitarized zone for negotiations with the ELN, the second-largest leftist insurgency. More than 3,000 soldiers arrived between the San Lucas mountain range and the Magdalena River, and U.S.-backed herbicide spraying began on 30,000 acres of coca in the hills 200 miles north of Bogota.

In the view of many diplomats working on the peace process, this was probably Pastrana's last chance to show that his strategy could succeed. He told the army's Fifth Brigade, the unit responsible for the region, to drive out paramilitary forces who were gathering to block creation of a zone they believed would provide the ELN with a strategic, government-sanctioned foothold and arriving FARC troops a new area of protected influence.

The army began by attacking San Blas, an AUC base. Weapons and drug-processing equipment were seized, but no senior paramilitary commanders were arrested and the group suffered no casualties. "It was clear . . . that the bad guys knew the army was coming," a Western diplomat in Bogota said.

Then the operation turned into a rout of the guerrillas as the army and paramilitary forces united and chased the surprised rebels deep into the hills. By the time Pastrana ordered the army out less than two months later, paramilitary forces had taken vast stretches of land and occupied towns once used by the guerrillas as supply stops. The demilitarized zone was dead, and a series of villages were under siege, abandoned or in ruins.

As Operation Bolivar unfolded, the new Republican administration in Washington backed by Republican leaders in Congress began to weigh in on Pastrana's peace efforts, officials said. The State Department position on the peace talks had long been that it was a domestic matter best left to Pastrana. Privately, however, that position was changing.

During a visit to Washington, Pastrana was told by Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, that he opposed giving the guerrillas a safe haven for peace talks, according to people at the meeting.

A short time later, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Anne Patterson, who had reiterated U.S. support for Pastrana's approach in an interview with the newspaper El Espectador, was told by Roger Noriega, then senior professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that neither he nor his boss, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), then committee chairman, favored a second guerrilla safe haven. Noriega told her not to declare such support again, according to people at the meeting. Noriega is now the U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States.

"U.S. policy has always been that there should be no negotiations with terrorists, and when you see it happening you wonder why something is going against U.S. policy," said a Republican congressional staff member. "When Patterson jumped in to endorse the idea, that's when the rubber hit the road up here."

Controlling the Zone

Today, as the army remains on the northern and southern edges of Bolivar, the paramilitary forces run the villages between the mountains and the river while a mixed guerrilla force patrols the hill towns. Travel along the area's mostly deserted roads turns up armed members of both the paramilitary and two major guerrilla groups, but no presence of the armed forces.

"When the army came in, we left," said Commander Carlos, a 12-year AUC veteran who joined after serving in the military. "So they didn't hit us much -- more the guerrillas. And now we're doing the army's job here."

Gen. Martin Orlando Carreño, who for two years has commanded the army's Fifth Brigade with high-profile dash, denied turning a blind eye to paramilitary forces in the region and said "no brigade has done more to attack them." U.S. officials share his assessment that the zone "fizzled" not because of collusion with paramilitary forces but because "the government couldn't control the area."

But Carreño acknowledged that he was angry when Pastrana ordered his men out of the zone, and he said another few weeks of combat would have driven all groups from the area. Since then, Carreño said, he has been working with U.S. officials to move up the delivery of helicopters and intelligence support, currently scheduled for 2003, to his troubled region.

"It ended without our controlling the zone, without either group controlling it, and without peace," said Carreño, who has been promoted to commander of the Second Division.

In recent months, several U.S. delegations have visited Colombia to meet with senior military officials about ties to the paramilitary groups. Charges of human rights abuses leveled against the Colombian army have declined sharply in recent years, but U.S. officials and foreign diplomats are concerned that the paramilitary forces are becoming an auxiliary force of the regular army.

"I got a variety of opinions about cooperation between the military and the AUC, but it is clear to me that certainly at the higher ranks there is an understanding that human rights abuses and a successful counter-guerrilla strategy do not go together," said Lorne W. Craner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, who met here last week with senior military officials about new human rights restrictions on aid to Colombia pending before Congress. "I think the U.S. is doing the right things to try to make things better here."

In Paradise, though, all seems lost. One recent morning, three visiting ELN guerrillas, the butcher, the canteen owner and a few shopkeepers chatted amid the ruins. The rest of the 500 former residents now live on farms in the hills to the east.

Several witnesses said Commander Carlos led the most recent paramilitary attack on the town, coordinating the killing of four men that included a 19-year-old farmer named Eberto Pardo. But all agree there is no one nearby to call for help.

"There is no way to stay," said Cesar Pardo, Eberto's cousin. "They will be back to kill the rest of us."

-------- drug war

Afghan Official Pledges to Wipe Out Country's Drug Trade

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 27, 2001; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28173-2001Dec26.html

KABUL, Dec. 26 -- Afghanistan's foreign minister today said that his country's new provisional government would wipe out drug production and trafficking within its borders, a formidable task for the world's largest producer of opium poppies.

"To eradicate terrorism and al Qaeda was considered a very remote possibility, too," said Abdullah, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. "I think our people will overcome other challenges, like drug cultivation and drug trafficking."

In its last year in power in Afghanistan, the Taliban choked off most poppy cultivation. But U.S. and other drug enforcement authorities are concerned that Afghan farmers, whose other crops have been decimated by years of drought, already have sown large amounts of poppy seeds for harvesting next spring.

Abdullah said the interim government is forming a high-level commission to handle the issue, and that he expects it to receive international help.

Speaking at his first news conference since the government took office on Saturday, Abdullah also said that U.S. military forces would remain welcome in Afghanistan for as long as it takes for the "eradication of terrorism in Afghanistan completely." He said his government believes that pockets of al Qaeda fighters remain in the south, and also mentioned the eastern province of Paktia.

"We don't want to see the job half done," said Abdullah, who was one of the primary spokesmen for the Northern Alliance, the collection of regional militia groups that united to drive the Taliban from power, with support from U.S. airstrikes.

Abdullah said it was unlikely that the Afghan government would lose tolerance for the continuing U.S. military presence, which includes warplanes flying overhead and U.S. Marines and Special Forces troops on the ground.

Those forces are continuing the search for Osama bin Laden, the man the United States believes is responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, and other leaders of his al Qaeda terrorist network, who may be hiding in Afghanistan's eastern mountains near the Pakistani border.

"It took much less time than people outside of Afghanistan were anticipating" to defeat the Taliban and get al Qaeda on the run, he said. "I don't see any reason for believing that the next phase [rooting out remaining terrorists] will take much longer than the first."

Abdullah shed little light on continuing questions of U.S. warplanes' destruction of a convoy of 10 to 12 vehicles last week in Paktia. U.S. military officials have said those killed were Taliban leaders. But there are persistent reports from local people that the dead were tribal elders on their way to the new government's inaugural ceremony.

Abdullah said he did not know the facts. He said Afghan and U.S. military officials continue to meet to discuss the issue, but that he was unaware of the substance of those discussions. He said the matter was not discussed today at the second cabinet meeting called by the interim government's leader, Hamid Karzai.

"It is an incident which has attracted too much attention," Abdullah said, dismissing speculation that his fledgling government might be intentionally playing down the incident to avoid an uncomfortable confrontation with the United States.

"Of course we will be interested in it if innocent lives were lost," he said. "It will be a totally different situation once this fact is established."

Abdullah also said he supports the idea of creating a "truth commission" to investigate war crimes and other crimes against humanity. He said that Taliban officials were committing such crimes as recently as a few months ago, and that any of those Taliban members trying to join other political parties to begin pushing their extremist agenda again would be caught and punished. He quoted an Afghan proverb: "No matter what you wear, we recognize you."

He said he was unsure whether such a tribunal could effectively investigate or prosecute crimes committed decades ago during factional fighting in Afghanistan. "I don't know how far we can go," he said.

Abdullah said enormous problems face Afghanistan's new government, which is meant to govern for six months until a loya jirga, or national council of tribal leaders, convenes. The national council would then choose a government that would hold office for up to two years, pending the holding of democratic elections, according to the terms of the agreement worked out by Afghan parties earlier this month in U.N.- and U.S.-backed negotiations held near Bonn.

In the education sector alone, he said, "tens of thousands of students, thousands of teachers and hundreds of schools" are in need of immediate attention.

Abdullah supported Karzai's recent appointment of Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, one of the country's most powerful warlords, to the key post of deputy defense minister. Abdullah said the inclusion of Dostum, despite his reputation for ruthlessness, was part of the new government's effort to move from "war to peace, reconciliation and compromise."

He noted that Dostum was a key military leader in the defeat of the Taliban. "I think we all have to live with the realities on the ground in Afghanistan," he said.

-------- europe

France Halts Mass Refugee Flight Through Tunnel to Britain

Associated Press
Thursday, December 27, 2001; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28534-2001Dec26?language=printer

SANGATTE, France, Dec. 26 -- An attempt by hundreds of refugees living in a cramped Red Cross center in northern France to enter the Channel Tunnel and walk to Britain ended early today with arrests and tear gas.

The incident shut down train traffic Tuesday night and highlighted the plight of about 1,300 Iraqi Kurds, Afghans, Iranians and other refugees held in this village, vowing to keep trying to reach Britain, where they believe relatively liberal asylum laws will allow them to establish homes, get jobs and live in peace.

Every night, dozens of refugees who live in mobile homes and tents at the center attempt the dangerous crossing, trying to jump on trains or navigate the tunnel on foot. Most are caught, but some succeed.

In all, about 550 refugees from the Red Cross center attempted the crossing in two waves beginning Tuesday night.

"We decided to form two groups, A and B," said Ahmed, a 23-year-old Afghan. "We thought we could cross all together by foot. We had almost managed, but at the very end the police stopped us."

Both Eurotunnel and the Red Cross accused the refugees of staging a media event.

"This is a well-constructed media operation," Alain Bertrand, an executive with Eurotunnel, told France-Info radio. "They knew very well that they would never make it to England. This is an attack, a strike to attract public opinion."

The melee began Tuesday at 9:15 p.m., when about 150 refugees broke through electronic barriers around the tunnel. Overwhelmed security forces called in French police, who tracked down the refugees and arrested 129 of them about one-quarter of the way through the tunnel. One of them broke a thigh bone, regional officials said.

Just before 1 a.m., a new group of about 400 -- "Group B," according to the refugees -- tried to storm the same entrance. Riot police used tear gas to repel them.

About 50 refugees remained in custody this evening, police said. The rest were returned to the center.

Eurotunnel said it intercepted about 18,500 refugees trying to cross the tunnel in the first half of this year.

-------- iraq

Old Strategy on Iraq Sparks New Debate
Backers Say Plan Proven in Afghanistan

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 27, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28378-2001Dec26?language=printer

Three years ago, the man who is now White House counterterrorism chief drew up a plan for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It was never implemented, but from today's perspective, the strategy devised by retired Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing for toppling a tyrannical regime has a familiar ring to it.

As presented to congressional leaders in a secret session in the summer of 1998, the Downing plan included several elements that have proved remarkably successful in Afghanistan. A former U.S. Special Forces commander, Downing believed that victory would be achieved through a potent combination of U.S.-backed insurgents, massive enemy defections, elite special operations units and U.S. air power.

Dismissed by Clinton administration officials as a recipe for a second Bay of Pigs, the Downing plan has become highly topical since the Sept. 11 terror attacks and his own subsequent elevation to a key White House position. The general's ideas have become a lightning rod for a new debate in the Bush administration over what to do with Saddam Hussein, a durable and ruthless dictator who is widely believed to be developing weapons of mass destruction.

Supporters, who are believed to include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and other important political appointees, argue that the Afghan war has demonstrated the feasibility of the Downing plan, or something similar to it, and that the moment for moving against Hussein is fast approaching.

Opponents, including much of the State Department, CIA and professional military, say that the plan greatly overestimates the strength of the Iraqi opposition, and particularly the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based umbrella group that has established itself as a quasi government in exile.

In its original version, Downing's plan envisaged an initial commitment of no more than 5,000 or 6,000 "crack troops" to defeat a demoralized Iraqi army of a half-million men, assuming that U.S. warplanes were available to destroy enemy troop concentrations. But more recently, Pentagon estimates of what it will take to remove Hussein from power are being sharply increased, according to administration and Iraqi opposition sources.

Bush administration officials opposed to an attack on Iraq have stressed the differences with Afghanistan. "They're two different countries with different regimes, two different military capabilities," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said recently. "They are so significantly different that you can't take the Afghan model and immediately apply it to Iraq."

Military analysts point out that the Iraqi army is nearly 20 times the size of the Taliban force, with 10 times as many tanks. The Iraqi opposition has less experience fighting the regime than Afghanistan's Northern Alliance. Most worrying of all, unlike the Taliban, Hussein may well have chemical and biological weapons, or even a crude nuclear device.

Stephen J. Hadley, the White House deputy national security adviser, said in an interview that the administration had done some "planning and thinking" about Iraq in the spring and early summer, but the activity hit "a pause," partly because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He said the president and his closest national security advisers were preoccupied with the hunt for Osama bin Laden and had not addressed the Iraqi question "in any systematic way."

"We have a lot of business on our plate," he said.

Nonetheless, the Bush administration has embraced the idea of regime change in Iraq much more publicly than the Clinton administration did. The key question facing President Bush when he eventually turns his attention back to Iraq is whether this goal can be achieved at an acceptable political, military and diplomatic cost.

Earlier attempts to overthrow Hussein were dismal failures. According to Iraqi National Congress President Ahmed Chalabi, there have been half a dozen U.S.-supported coup attempts or insurrections in Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, all of them ruthlessly crushed by Hussein's internal security forces. "Every Iraqi officer has drawn a lesson from all this: If you associate yourself with a U.S. effort to get rid of Saddam Hussein, you will be either arrested or killed," Chalabi said.

Popular uprisings against Hussein have fared little better. A Shiite uprising in southern Iraq in 1991, a few weeks after the end of the war, was put down by tanks and artillery.

A 1995 Kurdish insurrection in the north, half-heartedly backed by the CIA and instigated by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), was crushed by Hussein in 1996. He played one Kurdish faction off against another, executing more than 100 Chalabi supporters and effectively expelling the INC from Iraq.

Chalabi blamed his defeat on inadequate support from the United States. A former banker educated at the University of Chicago, he lobbied Congress to pass what eventually became known as the Iraq Liberation Act, a 1998 law that allocated $97 million to the training of anti-Hussein guerrilla groups. In the process, Chalabi antagonized the Clinton administration, but won the support of many conservatives, including Wolfowitz and his future boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Both Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz signed a February 1998 letter to President Clinton calling on the U.S. to support an Iraqi insurrection. Others who signed the letter and are now in the Bush administration include White House adviser Zalmay Khalilzad, Defense Department officials Douglas J. Feith and Dov S. Zakheim, and State Department officials Richard L. Armitage, John R. Bolton and Paula Dobriansky. (According to a State Department source, Armitage has lined up behind Powell as a skeptic of the Iraqi National Congress plan.)

Lending military respectability to Chalabi's ideas was Downing, a retired four-star general who played a key role in overthrowing Panama's Manuel Noriega in 1989 and ran insurgency operations in Iraq in 1991 as the head of the Joint Special Operations Command. In the words of an INC official, Downing agreed to put Chalabi's ideas into "Pentagonese."

Downing was assisted by a former CIA agent, Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, who ran the U.S.-backed contras who fought the leftist Sandanista regime in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration. Together, the two men drew up a plan to train some 200 Iraqi National Congress fighters, who would train another 5,000 men to be inserted into southern Iraq from Kuwait, where they would seize a deserted air base near the city of Basra. According to Clarridge, the logistical support operation for Chalabi's fighters would have been "outsourced" to mercenaries, including retired U.S. Special Forces members.

"The idea from the beginning was to encourage defections of Iraqi units," recalled Clarridge, who was indicted for lying to Congress in connection with the Iran-contra scandal but pardoned by President George Bush just before the end of his administration. "You need to create a nucleus, something for people to defect to. If they could take Basra [Iraq's second-largest city and major port], it would all be over."

Even though it became the basis for the Iraq Liberation Act, the Downing plan was savaged by much of the U.S. military establishment, including officers of Central Command, or Centcom, which would bear responsibility for military operations against Iraq. Last year, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, then Centcom's commander, derided the plan as a prescription for a "Bay of Goats" dreamed up by "some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London." In testimony to Congress, Zinni said he had counted 91 different Iraqi opposition groups, not one of which had "the viability to overthrow Saddam."

Richard Perle, an assistant defense secretary during the Reagan administration andintellectual force behind the anti-Hussein campaign, called Zinni's comments "outrageous."

Perle said, "It is not easy to get allies [for such an operation] when you have the Centcom commander saying it can't work." He argued that the Afghan military campaign shows that it will be virtually impossible for Hussein to mass his forces without getting hit by U.S. warplanes.

Iraq "is like a hornet's nest," says Michael Rubin, a scholar from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who has traveled widely in Kurdish-controlled sectors of northern Iraq. "And when you are dealing with a hornet's nest, you must either get rid of it or leave it alone. The worst thing you can do is hit it once or twice with a stick, stir up all the hornets, and then walk away."

Which, he added, is precisely what the United States has been doing for much of the past decade.

The hornet's nest analogy refers in part to the country's complicated ethnic makeup. The Kurds, who account for roughly 25 percent of the population, now control the northern 10 percent of Iraq, with only minimal interference from Hussein's security forces. The Shiites, who are strongest in southern Iraq, make up more than 50 percent of the population.

Traditionally, Iraq has been ruled from the center, by minority Sunni Muslim clans, with a population share of just 20 percent. (Hussein is a Sunni from the town of Tikrit, on the Tigris River north of Baghdad.) The United States has been very reluctant to interfere with this governing formula, which helps explain why, up until recently, the preferred U.S. option for getting rid of Hussein was through a coup d'etat among his ruling circle rather than a Shiite or Kurdish insurrection.

If the insurrectionary route is chosen, the problem becomes which faction to back. As an umbrella group claiming to represent many opposition groups, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has enjoyed great support on Capitol Hill because of its moderate, pro-Western views, but many U.S. officials doubt that Chalabi has much influence inside Iraq.

While the Kurds can field the strongest fighting force against Hussein -- up to 70,000 men,they have been let down and betrayed so many times in the past that they are unlikely to join a new rebellion without "cast-iron guarantees of success," in the words of a Kurdish official. Prior to a Washington-brokered peace agreement in 1998, rival Kurdish factions spent much of their energy fighting each other.

The most active opposition force in southern Iraq is an Iranian-backed guerrilla group, the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Since the draining of the marshes of southern Iraq by the Hussein regime, the Supreme Council has switched its focus from liberating territory to a low-level urban insurrection, including bombings and occasional mortar attacks. The group has refused financial support from the United States on the grounds that it does not want to be viewed as "American puppets."

"The Afghan model can be applied in Iraq, there is no difficulty about that," said Hamid Bayati, the group's London representative. He added, however, that Washington should work through the United Nations to cloak its actions in Iraq in "international legitimacy." A serious U.S.-backed insurrection will succeed, he said, but there is great skepticism about half-hearted measures.

Similar reservations are evident among Iraq's neighbors, whose logistical support would be essential to any successful U.S. effort to overthrow Hussein. Advocates of the Downing plan said they believe they can count on at least tacit support from Turkey and Iran, and possibly Saudi Arabia. But the only country that seems willing to sign up in advance for such an operation is Kuwait, which was liberated from Iraqi occupation by U.S. forces in 1991.

-------- japan

Japan to build US military airport on coral reef

REUTERS JAPAN:
December 28, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13860/story.htm

TOKYO - Japan approved yesterday a controversial plan to build an airport for the U.S. military on a coral reef off the southern subtropical island of Okinawa.

The decision could spark a furious backlash by conservationists who say the project threatens the environment while also enraging local residents who want the U.S. military to leave the island.

The new airport off Nago City, where the 2001 Group of Eight summit was held, would contain a Marine helicopter base that Washington agreed in 1996 to move from its Futenma air station in central Okinawa to Nago because of complaints of noise pollution.

Nago residents, in a December 1997 referendum, opposed the relocation.

Okinawa's prefectural government and Nago City authorities had insisted U.S. military use of the new facility be limited to 15 years - a limit that Okinawans demanded during campaign to end more than five decades of U.S. military presence.

Washington has suggested 15 years is an unacceptably short period.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said yesterday's decision was a "best possible option at the moment".

The central Japanese government subsequently put pressure on the city mayor to allow its construction, including the promise of economic assistance to Okinawa, the poorest region in Japan.

Nago mayor Tateo Kishimoto urged the central government to accept the demand for a 15-year limit made by the local governments and citizens.

"We must not allow for the construction of the airport without resolving the issue," he told reporters. "We want the central government to consider seriously and make a final decision promptly."

Okinawa has less than one percent of Japan's total land mass but is home to 26,000 of the 48,000 U.S. military in the country, sparking local resentment that flared after the 1995 rape of a Japanese schoolgirl by three U.S. servicemen.

In the latest high-profile incident, U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant Timothy Woodland, 24, was charged with raping the woman in June.

But in a court hearing in September, Woodland pleaded not guilty, saying it was consensual.

-------- pakistan

Bin Laden May Be in Pakistan

December 27, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Bin-Laden.html

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Osama bin Laden is believed to be in a border area of Pakistan with ``friends'' of a Pakistani Islamic party leader, an official in Afghanistan's new interim government said Thursday.

But interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai said his government did not know bin Laden's whereabouts.

``Wherever he is, he should be arrested and brought to international justice,'' Karzai, visiting a Kabul hospital, told Associated Press Television News when he was asked about the report.

A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim said the people bin Laden was with were associates of Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman, leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party. The spokesman, Mohammad Abeel, did not elaborate or divulge the source of his information.

An official with Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam denied the report. The party is sympathetic to Afghanistan's deposed Taliban militia. Its main support base is parts of Pakistan's North West Frontier and Baluchistan provinces, both of which border Afghanistan.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam helped orchestrate some of the largest pro-Taliban protests in Pakistan after U.S. airstrikes began in Afghanistan in October. Rehman has been imprisoned since the United States began its bombardment of Afghanistan in early October.

In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States has no information that would either confirm or deny Abeel's report.

Riaz Durrani, central information secretary for Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, rejected the report about bin Laden as ``baseless.''

``We support the Taliban, but never had any connection with Osama bin Laden,'' he said. ``Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman is under detention for the last three months. How can he or his party do this?''

He added: ``It is part of an international conspiracy to attack Pakistan under the pretext of action against religious organizations.''

Another well-known figure in Pakistan religious politics, Fazal ur-Rehman Khalil, is a leader of Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, which follows the same school of thought as Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam but is more militant and is fighting for Indian Kashmir's merger with Pakistan.

His group also is connected with the Taliban. Attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful Thursday night, because he has been in hiding since October to avoid arrest. Harkat ul-Mujahedeen has been banned and classified by the United States as a terrorist organization.

Last week in China, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said he was ``reasonably sure'' that bin Laden had not escaped to Pakistan and said there was a ``great possibility'' the al-Qaida leader was dead.

``He's not in Pakistan, of that we are reasonably sure. But we can't be 100 percent sure. We have sealed the borders between Afghanistan and Pakistan,'' Musharraf said.

--------

Pakistan would retaliate to Indian threat, rules out nuclear war

Thursday December 27, 9:19 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011227/1/27o2w.html

Pakistan said it could retaliate in "all conceivable ways" to any Indian escalation of their dispute but described a nuclear war as unthinkable.

"We hope better sense prevails and India does not escalate ... we have the capacity to react or retaliate in all conceivable ways," said military spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi.

But answering a later question at a press conference, he added: "One gets surprised how some people straightaway jump to a nuclear situation.

"I'm sure India and Pakistan are responsible nations, it's something I don't think anyone can realistically even think of. These (nuclear weapons) are deterrents which are not meant to be more than that," Qureshi added.

Military tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours have been rising since India accused Pakistani intelligence of supporting the December 13 attack on its parliament which killed 14 people, including the five attackers.

Qureshi said Pakistan had taken safeguards against any attack but added: "We hope that better sense prevails. If it is brinkmanship, it is hoped that escalation will be avoided."

India said Thursday its troops on the border with Pakistan would be fully deployed and battle-ready within three days.

Amid renewed appeals for restraint from the international community, New Delhi's Defence Minister George Fernandes described the situation on the border as "grave" but said diplomatic efforts should be given time to work.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's cabinet committee on security met later Thursday to consider such steps as withdrawing Pakistan's most-favoured-nation status and banning its international carrier from Indian airspace.

Efforts by the international community to cool things down took a new twist Wednesday when the United States added the two Pakistani-based militant groups blamed by India for carrying out the parliament attack -- Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad -- to the State Department's terrorist blacklist. India demands that Pakistan curb the group's activities, freeze their assets and arrest their leaders.

Pakistan has already frozen the assets of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and arrested the head of Jaish-e-Mohammad, Maulana Masood Azhar.

Just hours after the US announcement, Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar described both groups as "illegal and unconstitutional armies."

India welcomed the branding of Lashkar and Jaish as terrorists but said the real test would be Pakistan's actions.

"Pakistan is yet to take meaningful action against the terrorist groups that operate on its soil," foreign ministry spokeswoman Nirupama Rao said.

Qureshi reiterated that India should share with Pakistan its evidence of the groups' involvement in the parliament attack.

"If there is evidence and it shared with us we will take action against any group or individual that is based in Pakistan and is involved in any act of terrorism." he said.

Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said President Pervez Musharraf would be willing to meet Vajpayee for talks during a regional summit from January 4-6.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit will be held in Kathmandu.

-------- russia

FOR THE RECORD: Russian warplanes...

WORLD In Brief
Thursday, December 27, 2001; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28535-2001Dec26?language=printer

Russian warplanes struck rebel positions in isolated mountain regions of Chechnya, and seven Russian soldiers and two policemen were reported killed in rebel attacks.

-------- us

A War That's Commanded At a Distance
Some Criticize Keeping Headquarters in Tampa

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 27, 2001; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28078-2001Dec26?language=printer

One of the most unconventional aspects of the U.S. war in Afghanistan is that its commander usually has been on the other side of the planet.

There is some disquiet in the military, especially in the Air Force and Army, about Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks's decision to keep his headquarters at the boxy Central Command building in Tampa, overlooking the languid waters of Hillsborough Bay. Critics say Franks should have followed the example of his predecessor at Central Command, Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who moved to Saudi Arabia to direct the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Yet many in the military argue that Franks reacted properly to advances in communications and information technology, and that he has handled the war well, in part by keeping his distance from it.

In an e-mail interview, Franks explained his approach to what he termed "truly a different war."

Keeping the command post in Florida has been "very effective in our view because of technology assists, which provide 24/7 situational awareness," he wrote. These communication leaps, he added, "have permitted us to provide intent and guidance without doing the tactical work of subordinate commanders."

Franks also said that since the war began, he has spent more than 25 percent of his time in or around Afghanistan, a higher portion than the critics may realize. "I'll leave it to others to judge effectiveness," he wrote.

Despite his success over the last three months, some officers involved in the fighting say that Franks has been unnecessarily distant. Air Force officers have been especially outspoken in denouncing what they see as micromanagement of target selection by Franks's staff in Florida.

But the tensions extend well beyond there. "Good ideas or initiatives from hundreds or thousands of miles away are not always good ideas to those who must execute them on the ground and air," said an Army officer involved in the war.

The debate is important because, as Franks indicated in his e-mail comments, a new American way of war seems to be emerging, built around high-speed communications that control long-range strikes using precise munitions, which themselves rely heavily on new information technologies.

Franks's long-range command could become a model for future wars, a retired general observed. "Franks's choices in this war will probably influence the way future CinCs do their business," he said, using the U.S. military's jargon for its regional commanders in chief.

The traditionalist view is that Franks should have been near the action. "There is an argument to be made that a commander's presence on the ground is all-important, because you can make decisions quickly, and also boost morale," said retired Col. James McDonough, a former director of the Army's elite School of Advanced Military Studies.

"I don't think Franks could have been in Afghanistan, but he could have been closer," agreed an Army colonel on active duty. "Military commanders have to inspire as well as manage. They have to be seen."

This is especially true when there are setbacks, the colonel added. "When things come apart -- and inevitably they do -- you need to be there."

"My instincts are that he should be forward," said another Army colonel, noting that the same advances in technology that allow Franks to operate in Tampa would allow him to stay in touch with the Pentagon and Central Command from the field. Even in remote locations or aboard ship, he said, "we have the communications technology to link him."

Retired Air Force Gen. Charles Horner, who commanded the air campaign in the Gulf War, said simply: "I would have been forward."

Others say the critiques fail to take into account changes in technology, and also perhaps in the nature of generalship.

Some critics cite Gen. George S. Patton, the World War II hero known for taking great pains to command from the front, as the model of leadership. But Patton's biographer Carlo D'Este, a retired Army officer, said the tank commander was responding to the circumstances of his war. "Communications have put Franks where he can stay at home," he said. "This is the war of the future -- a whole new ballgame."

Several experts agreed, mainly citing the flood of combat information that can be instantaneously transmitted around the globe.

"Our information and our ability to see the battlefield as a result of things like the Predator [unmanned reconnaissance aircraft] and the communications off the battlefield have radically changed everything we know," said a Senate aide involved in military affairs. The result, he said, is that Franks can sit in his headquarters in Tampa and watch on screens "things you couldn't have seen even 10 years ago by actually being on the ground."

Michael Vickers, a former Special Forces officer who is an expert on military reform, concluded that "Franks belonged in Tampa."

Changes in the way the U.S. military fights dictate parallel changes in the way it is commanded, Vickers argued. Today, he said, U.S. military power is becoming more "decentralized, dispersed, stealthy and extended-range." Rather than fight with mass armies on battlefields, he noted, the United States now uses a few Special Forces troops to call in devastating air power. So, he said, the nature of command must adjust.

Other military experts also argued that being a top general is no longer a battlefield task in which a commander's presence is required to lead and motivate troops.

"This isn't a bayonet charge up a hill," one colonel said. "War has changed and is always changing. Napoleon stood on the hill at Rossomme and directed his corps. Wellington stood on the opposite hill, Mount Saint Jean, and directed every battalion. The days when the strategic-level commander fought battles with his own eyes are gone."

An Army general agreed. "Simpletons argue that the commander must be at the front," he said.

Franks correctly understood his role to be more strategic than tactical, this officer added. "Generals need to be architects of institutional systems and allocators of resources," he said. "I actually think Franks did that rather well."

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Burnette was even more blunt, saying the colonels who criticize Franks are out of their depth. "The problem with some colonels is that they have never commanded above brigade level and haven't a clue about the role a CinC must play," he said. He added that he believes Franks has done "a great job" and that it is offensive when some people are "taking this kind of cheap shot at him."

But an Army colonel doggedly countered that it is appropriate to argue with success. "We've been lucky thus far" with long-range command structures, he said, but "we won't always be so lucky in the future."

--------

THE MILITARY
U.S. Putting Off Plan to Use G.I.'s in Afghan Caves

New York Times
December 27, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON with ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/27/international/asia/27MILI.html

JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 26 - The United States military is revising a risky plan for American troops to search the caves of Tora Bora for traces of Osama bin Laden and other fighters of Al Qaeda, and is offering incentives to get Afghan forces to take the lead, American officials said today.

Just last Friday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he was ordering hundreds more troops to join Afghan militia in the hunt for Mr. bin Laden and other Qaeda leaders, in the hope of uncovering intelligence on terror attacks in the works. Officials said then that the plan was to send in about 500 marines and possibly Army troops, and the units began to prepare for the mission.

The Tora Bora region is a wild and remote area that contains mines, unexploded bombs and pockets of Al Qaeda fighters. Besides that risk, the mission would have required the building and maintenance of a substantial base to house the marines and other troops in an area where anti-American sentiment lingers.

This troop deployment, which had been expected to begin as early as this week, is now on hold. Instead, American officials are pressing Afghan commanders in the Jalalabad region to probe the rugged area. Washington is offering incentives like weapons, money and winter clothing, American officials say.

"It is a matter of finding the right mix of incentives to get them to play a more active role," a senior military official in Washington said. "If we are successful, they will do it."

But if the Afghan militia balk at committing the number of troops that American commanders believe are necessary to comb the area, additional American forces would probably be sent in, a military official in Washington said today. A leading option this week is to send an expanded complement of Special Operations forces, instead of marines or regular Army troops.

Special Operations forces are accustomed to working with the Afghan groups and would be less obtrusive than several hundred members of the Marines or Army. About 50 Special Operations troops from the United States have been working here for several weeks, either alongside or independent of the Afghan militia.

But the plans are still in flux. The rejiggering of the operation to hunt down Mr. bin Laden, the key suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and the delay in carrying that out raise the question whether the Bush administration has a clear idea about how to track him down and wind up the war in Afghanistan.

Officials at the United States Central Command in Tampa, Fla., where Gen. Tommy R. Franks has his headquarters, today tried to play down the perception that the hunt for Mr. bin Laden was undergoing anything but the normal adjustments of military plans.

"We've not moved any marines into Tora Bora, but that remains an option," said Col. Rick Thomas, a Central Command spokesman. "We will continue to monitor the situation in Tora Bora and the progress of the coalition forces."

Throughout the campaign, the Pentagon's preference has been for the Afghans to take the lead. Officials said today that that was an important factor in revising the plan.

Last week, American officials expressed concern when Afghan commanders in this area all but declared the military campaign over. General Franks, the commander of the American-led operation in Afghanistan, requested the American ground reinforcements largely because he worried that the Afghan allies might not have the ability, and especially not the will, to establish control over the cave-riddled Tora Bora region, military officials said.

But now American officials say the Afghans may be persuaded to press on after all if the rewards are sweet enough. "We're still trying to get them to do the cave work," a senior military official said. "If they don't, we'll have to go to Plan B."

There may be other factors at work as well. The Pentagon may want to limit the presence of American forces in Nangarhar Province, where fundamentalist Islamic sentiment runs high and where Mr. bin Laden and his Arab fighters once made their home. Americans are less welcome in this conservative region than in Kabul, the capital.

Unlike Special Operations forces who operate in small teams, any large Marine or Army force would need to be housed at a base built and maintained in a hostile area. As a result, military officials would have to be concerned both about casualties among troops searching caves for Al Qaeda fighters and among other support troops, who might be prime targets for attack.

Hajji Zaman, one of the main Afghan commanders involved in the battle for Tora Bora, said in an interview this week that American troops were not needed. "There is no need for them to come here," Commander Zaman said. "Nobody needs it. We have already finished the job there and done our duty."

Still another consideration is that the marines who were expected to rush here seem to have their hands full building a prison camp at the Kandahar International Airport. The memories of the uprising at the Qala Jangi fort near Mazar-i-Sharif, where some 230 prisoners and one C.I.A. officer died, are fresh. So the marines want to make sure that their detention center is secure, a task which makes it difficult to undertake another challenging mission.

That does not mean that other forces are not available. Another Marine Expeditionary Unit comprising 2,200 troops is expected to arrive in the northern Arabian Sea in the next several weeks, joining the two already in place. New Army forces could also be flown in to help guard the prisoners or carry out other missions.

In Afghanistan today, American warplanes returned from their missions with bombs still tucked under their wings because of a lack of targets. That repeated a pattern that has become common for much of the last week.

There has been speculation that Mr. bin Laden may have been killed in the air attacks on Tora Bora. But without a thorough search of the region, it is impossible to confirm his death or escape. Many other Qaeda leaders also remain unaccounted for.

American Special Operations forces and Central Intelligence Agency operatives are still prowling the area. But Tora Bora is a large and dangerous region, not all of which has been successfully cleared of remnants of Al Qaeda forces. So additional forces, either American or Afghan, would be needed.

Last week, the Americans concluded that they would have to carry out this task themselves. But then American officials concluded that hey might be able to persuade Hazarat Ali, a United States-backed Afghan commander, to take on the job.

"If we can convince Ali to start working the caves in a more aggressive manner, we might not have to go in," the American official said. "We are talking about things that matter to him like weapons and money. He is thinking about it."

For more than a week, Marine commanders in Afghanistan have drawn up plans for storming the caves of Tora Bora, relying primarily on marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, most of whom remain at their desert airstrip southwest of Kandahar, according to officers at the Kandahar airport.

[As of Thursday, there were 17 detainees being held there, but work has continued to expand the camp. It now has a capacity of more than 200. The detainees so far have been held inside a corrugated-tin shed.

[Work continued today on new guard towers, at the corners of the compound, looming over the prison yard. Dozens of detainees are expected in the days and weeks ahead, tying down the more than 1,600 marines and other American and allied forces operating there, officers said.]

The marines from the 15th Expeditionary Unit are expected to begin returning to their three ships in the northern Arabian Sea within days, having reached the end of the optimal 30-day deployment cycle. Their makeshift base outside Kandahar is expected to be closed by the end of the week.

"We're just going to turn the lights out and leave," said a spokesman, Maj. Christopher W. Hughes.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

2001 Deadly Year for Police

DECEMBER 27, 22:35 ET
http://wire.ap.org/?FRONTID=HOME&SITE=DCTMS&enter=Go

WASHINGTON (AP) - The fall of the World Trade Center made 2001 the deadliest year for law enforcement in almost three decades.

About 230 federal, state and local officers were killed in the line of duty this year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Seventy-one of them lost their lives after terrorists rammed planes into the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and caused them to collapse.

``The incredible bravery and selfless sacrifice our officers displayed that day was no different than every other day of the year in communities across America,'' said Craig Floyd, chairman of the Memorial Fund.

The death toll for law enforcement officers is the highest since 1974, which was the deadliest year ever for police. About 270 police were killed in 1974.

The early 1970s saw high death rates because police departments were not yet equipped with bulletproof vests and violent crime was soaring.

The police department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, based in New Jersey, lost 37 officers in the Sept. 11 attacks. The New York City Police Department lost 23 officers.

By state, New Jersey suffered the most deaths in 2001, losing 41 officers. Next came New York with 31, Texas with 20 and California with 12.

On the Net: Memorial fund: http://www.nleomf.com/

----

Berenson's transfer sparks prison riot

World Scene
Washington Times
December 27, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011227-29737160.htm

LIMA, Peru - Peruvian authorities yesterday said they had thrown a tear-gas canister last week to quell a riot in a Lima prison sparked by the transfer of American prisoner Lori Berenson, who is serving a sentence on terrorism charges.

Miss Berenson, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June, was transferred Friday from a Lima prison to one in northern Peru for security reasons.

Miss Berenson's attorney, Jose Luis Sandoval, said she suffered injuries to her arms and feet, and fainted when tear gas was thrown. Her father, Mark Berenson, said she was sexually abused during the transfer.

The Peruvian Justice Ministry denied the charges.

----

Kenyan police fire at rioters

Briefly
Washington Times
December 27, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011227-73441475.htm

Kenyan police used live ammunition yesterday to fire at rioters in a fourth day of running battles in the coastal city of Mombasa, killing one man and injuring several, officials and witnesses said.

Tourists arriving at Moi International Airport were escorted through the stone-throwing mobs by armed police to their hotels along the Indian Ocean coast.

----

Funds to Test DNA Of Convicts Diverted To ID Sept. 11 Victims

From News Services and Staff Reports
Thursday, December 27, 2001; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28063-2001Dec26?language=printer

Money that was to be used for DNA testing of criminals went instead to help identify Sept. 11 attack victims, the Justice Department said yesterday.

About $750,000 in grant money would have tested criminals and reexamined evidence to determine whether their convictions could be affirmed. The money went instead for DNA testing of the terrorism victims and additional research on identifying mass casualties, spokesman Charles Miller said.

The department's research arm, the National Institute of Justice, had been drafting rules for the grants when the Sept. 11 attacks changed the focus, Miller said.

After several major studies suggested that DNA is more reliable in many cases than eyewitness testimony, then-Attorney General Janet Reno expressed interest in greater use of DNA tests of convicted people.

Advocates for the use of stepped-up DNA testing of convicts lamented the Justice Department announcement.

"What a travesty," said Seattle lawyer Irwin Schwartz, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, whose group has pressed for increased spending.

"Almost 100 people will have been released from prison soon who DNA evidence showed were innocent, and it's been an uphill battle because of the lack of funds to do testing," he said. "Even the $750,000 was a drop in the bucket, and it's sad the Justice Department won't even use this amount. We should be as interested in freeing the innocent as convicting the guilty."

----

U.N. Halted Probe of Officers' Alleged Role in Sex Trafficking
Lack of Support From Above, in Field Impeded Investigators

By Colum Lynch
The Washington Post
Thursday, December 27, 2001; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28267-2001Dec26?language=printer

UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations quashed an investigation earlier this year into whether U.N. police were directly involved in the enslavement of Eastern European women in Bosnian brothels, according to U.N. officials and internal documents.

The decision to halt the investigation came when the U.N. Mission in Bosnia was reeling from the disclosure that several of its police officers had been dismissed for sexual misconduct.

David Lamb, a former Philadelphia police officer who served as a U.N. human rights investigator in Bosnia until April, said that in February he began to look into allegations against six Romanian, Fijian and Pakistani officers stationed in the town of Bijeljina.

The most serious charges, he said, were that two Romanian policemen had recruited Romanian women, purchased false documents for them and then sold the women to Bosnian brothel owners.

Within weeks, Lamb said, his preliminary inquiry found more than enough evidence to justify a full-scale criminal investigation. But Lamb and his colleagues said they also faced physical threats and were repeatedly stymied in their inquiries by their superiors, including a senior Ukrainian police officer who ordered an end to the investigation of the Romanians' conduct.

"I have to say there were credible witnesses, but I found a real reluctance on the part of the United Nations . . . leadership to investigate these allegations," Lamb said.

U.N. officials respond that they are committed to combating trafficking in women, but that a U.N. oversight team concluded there was insufficient evidence of systematic police involvement in the sex trade. They say it is difficult to penetrate the murky underworld of the Balkans and note that the responsibility for prosecuting U.N. police officers belongs to their home countries, not the United Nations.

According to some human rights advocates and former U.N. employees, the episode demonstrates the unwillingness or inability of the U.N.'s International Police Task Force (IPTF) in Bosnia to discipline its 1,600 officers from 48 countries.

The Washington Post reported in May that in the five years since international police officers were sent to help restore order in Bosnia, the U.N. police mission has faced numerous charges of misconduct, corruption and sexual impropriety. But in nearly every case, U.N. officials handled the allegations quietly by sending the officers home, often without a full investigation.

Two Americans also have filed whistleblower lawsuits alleging that they were fired by DynCorp, a private contractor that selects U.S. police to serve in Bosnia, because they had complained that fellow officers were patronizing brothels and purchasing women. DynCorp denied that the workers were fired for that reason.

But Lamb's investigation involved the most serious allegations yet: that some members of the IPTF directly participated in trafficking in women for forced prostitution.

Illicit Trade

Each year, thousands of Eastern European women, primarily from Ukraine, Moldova and Romania, are drawn to Bosnia with offers of employment as dancers, waitresses, bartenders or prostitutes. In some cases, their passports are taken, and they are sold to local brothel owners, according to human rights workers.

"Many of them think they are on their way to Italy to work as waitresses," said Martina Vandenberg, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who has investigated the Bosnian sex trade. "Some know that they will work as sex workers, but have no idea that they will be bought and sold as chattel and forced to work essentially as slaves." Vandenberg said local brothel owners and Bosnian war profiteers turned from smuggling arms to trafficking in women after the end of the Bosnia war in 1995 and have established links to organized crime across Europe.

While the U.N. mission in Bosnia has taken an increasingly tough line against local brothel owners over the past two years, Vandenberg said it has not been "forthcoming when asked about cases of IPTF officers involved in trafficking, either as clients or as traffickers. That lack of transparency has sent a message that there is impunity for this."

U.N. officials respond that the IPTF has conducted dozens of raids against Bosnian brothels and has rescued more than 350 women who had been forced to serve as prostitutes.

After being criticized for ignoring allegations of involvement by U.N. police and peacekeepers, Jacques Klein, the U.N. secretary general's special representative to Bosnia, instructed his police commissioner in June to "ensure that each case is investigated."

ButKlein also argued in a letter to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that it would be a mistake to focus on the role of U.N. personnel as customers of brothels.

"Placing undue and unfair emphasis on U.N. peacekeepers diverts attention away from those ultimately responsible for trafficking. The focus of our efforts should be on corrupt government officials and members of organized crime who perpetrate the trade and allow it to flourish," he wrote.

When asked by a reporter this summer whether the United Nations had looked into allegations involving Romanian police officers, Klein and other U.N. officials in Bosnia denied any knowledge of an investigation. "I have absolutely no evidence, no record, and I'm unaware of any internal investigation into any alleged misconduct involving a Romanian police monitor," Klein said.

But, after weeks of denials, U.N. spokesmen in New York and Bosnia acknowledged that the Romanians had been the subject of internal U.N. inquiries. Confidential U.N. documents and interviews revealed that Romanian officers had been investigated by Lamb, then by a Canadian officer, by the Romanian government and finally by the Office of Internal Oversight, the U.N.'s chief anti-corruption unit.

Lamb outlined his findings in e-mails and a memo to the regional U.N. headquarters in Sarajevo. In an e-mail sent March 28 to five U.N. officers, he identified a Romanian, Constantin Dumitrescu, as one of five U.N. police officers who "were in some way linked to allegations of involvement in prostitution and women trafficking."

Lamb said his findings were based largely on interviews with Bosnian police sources and women who had fled from brothels and were awaiting deportation to their homelands.

The women said a Romanian officer and his wife were involved in the recruitment and sale of women, working out of a brothel near the Bosnian town of Zvornik. Lamb said investigators initially thought the officer was Dumitrescu, but further investigation shifted suspicion to a second Romanian officer, Julian Boros.

The United Nations has denied requests for interviews with Dumitrescu and Boros.

Threats

Another internal memo, written March 18 by one of Lamb's investigators, Pablo Badie of Argentina, said Boros admitted buying working documents from the Romanian embassy for two women but warned him to halt the inquiry.

"Stop immediately anything against Romanians," Boros told Badie, according to the memo. "Do not mess with me, neither with my colleague Dumitrescu. I'll not tell you more, but I think you can guess what can happen."

Rosario Ioanna, a Canadian officer, was assigned by the U.N. police's internal affairs bureau to follow up on the findings of Lamb and Badie. The confidential internal affairs report alleges that the Romanian officers sought to impede Ioanna's investigation, to remove four trafficking victims from police custody and to intimidate them during questioning.

Ioanna and Badie obtained a list from a trafficking victim of about 10 other Romanian officers who were patronizing brothels. Ioanna described a meeting at a Bijeljina cafe with two informants, identified in U.N. documents as Mr. S and Mr. P, who charged that Romanian officers served both as traffickers and as informers for local brothel owners.

In return for tipping off the brothels about police raids, one of the Romanians "was given a farm vehicle to work his farmland back in his country," the two informants told Ioanna, according to a March 19 report for the U.N. internal affairs Discipline and Internal Investigation Section.

Ioanna also told colleagues that the U.N.'s local brass had sought to shut down his investigation and let the Romanian government decide whether its officers were guilty. The U.N.'s Ukrainian police chief of staff, Oleh Savchenko, ordered him to ignore the Romanians and to limit his investigation to less serious charges of sexual misconduct -- primarily soliciting prostitutes -- against five policemen from Fiji and Pakistan, according to Lamb and two other people familiar with Ioanna's account.

The relatively minor accusations against four of the five officers, including the Pakistani station commander, were "substantiated" and the officers were sent home, according to a U.N. report. The fifth officer left the mission.

But the more serious charges languished.

Retaliation

In the meantime, some of the officers under investigation accused Ioanna and Badie of having sexual relations with local translators. A preliminary internal inquiry into the investigators' activities found no wrongdoing, according to U.N. officials.

Lamb believes the accusations were retaliation of a crude but common variety.

"This is the third case that I am aware of in which human rights officers have found themselves under fire for reporting or investigating IPTF involvement in prostitution/women trafficking," he wrote in an e-mail March 8 to Donald Haney, an IPTF officer who was conducting the inquiry.

Neither Savchenko nor Ioanna responded to requests for comment. Attempts to reach Badie in Bosnia and through his family in Argentina were unsuccessful.

The Office of Internal Oversight sent two investigators from New York to Bosnia on June 26 to conduct a preliminary inquiry into wider allegations of U.N. police involvement in sexual trafficking. The inquiry was requested by Mary Robinson, the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights, and other senior U.N. officials to determine whether a formal investigation was warranted.

The investigators never contacted Lamb. Nor did they speak with U.N. police whistleblowers, such as Kathryn Bolkovac, an American officer who has accused U.N. police of complicity in sexual trafficking and is suing DynCorp. The company denied that Bolkovac was dismissed for pursuing the allegations.

Most importantly, the women who had initially made the allegations -- the key witnesses -- had left Bosnia.

On July 6, the oversight team reported that there were insufficient grounds to move ahead with a full-blown criminal investigation, according to the U.N.'s chief spokesman, Fred Eckhard.

"There will be no investigation," Eckhard said. "They did not find any evidence of systematic or organized involvement in human trafficking. They did make a number of recommendations of how the U.N. police could strengthen their role in combating human trafficking."

Marius Dragolea, chargé d'affaires at Romania's mission to the United Nations, said a team from Romania's Interior Ministry also went to Bosnia in June to investigate rumors of Romanian police involvement in sexual trafficking. He said it concluded the allegations were unfounded.

"If these allegations were unhappily proved to be right, all those involved would be punished," Dragolea said. "Up to now, we have no evidence . . . of illegal activities concerning Romanian police. This is a conclusion also reached by the leadership of the IPTF."

-------- death penalty

Thirteen executed in northern China for robbery, murder

Thursday December 27, 8:43 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011227/1/27nxy.html

At least 13 convicted criminals were executed in China and a spate of others sentenced to death as China began in earnest its annual end of the year judicial purge.

In northeastern Heilongjiang, Jiang Yingku, a former city prosecutor in Zhaodong city, was executed along with four of his gang members following conviction for the murder of 21 people in a string of violent robberies from 1993 to 2001, Xinhua news agency said.

The "mafia gang" operated out of a legitimate business set up by Jiang, who also coerced city police officials into illegally securing the company large business loans, the report said.

Jiang was convicted of murdering at least three accomplices in an effort to keep them quiet, while five other officials who "tried to get in his way," it said.

Meanwhile, in the northern Chinese city of Xian Wednesday, Xu Xipeng and seven others were executed for a string of robberies and killings that included the May 8 murder of a Xian city government secretary, the local Huashang Daily said on its website.

The gang was convicted on November 22 of more than 50 armed robberies since 2000 that resulted in the murder of three people, it said.

China traditionally executes and sentences a large number of criminals around public holidays like New Year's and the Chinese Lunar New Year, but this year the execution rate is expected to be higher due to an ongoing "strike hard campaign against crime" that began in April.

In Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, 10 criminals were sentenced to death for a series of rapes and murders, the Shanxi Evening News reported Thursday.

Among those receiving the capital punishment was Ma Sijun, who was convicted of raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl last May, as well as raping his brother's wife in March, the report said.

In a separate case, the Beijing Evening News reported that Yang Ning, a former accountant at Air China, was sentenced to death Thursday for embezzling some 26 million yuan (3 million dollars) in the early 1990s.

Yang stole the money by using fake receipts and false accounts between 1992 and 1995. His actions were not discovered until 1996 and he was only arrested last year after four years on the run, the report said.

The Intermediate Court of Shenzhen, on Tuesday sentenced a Hong Kong drug lord and his four associate to death after convicting them of making and selling more than 31 tonnes of methamphetamine hydrochloride, popularly known as "ice".

Also on Tuesday, two men involved in a killing spree that left 14 people dead in a small Chinese village were sentenced to death in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, while on Monday two 16-year-old twin sisters were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering their parents by spiking their rice porridge with rat poison in southern Guizhou province.

Western diplomats in Beijing who have monitored Chinese press reports say as many as 2,000 convicted criminals have been executed in the campaign from April to July.

Rights group Amnesty International said more people have been put to death in China during the crackdown than were executed in the rest of the world combined during the past three years.

Chinese authorities do not issue official statistics on the number of executions.

-------- terrorism

New Videotape Features Pale Bin Laden
Al Qaeda Leader's Message Was Made in Early December, U.S. Officials Say

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 27, 2001; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27581-2001Dec26?language=printer

The Qatar-based television network al-Jazeera yesterday broadcast a five-minute excerpt of a videotape of Osama bin Laden that U.S. officials said indicated the al Qaeda leader was alive as of early December.

U.S. intelligence analysts, who were taken by surprise by the tape's appearance, put the apparent date of its recording "around the first or second week of December, because of the time frame of events mentioned by bin Laden," one senior administration official said.

On the tape, bin Laden refers to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon as occurring "three months ago." He also says that "almost" two months have passed since the first U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, which occurred Oct. 7.

The tape therefore suggests that he was alive in early December, when Taliban forces were being forced to flee their stronghold of Kandahar and just as heavy bombing began in the Tora Bora area, where bin Laden is believed to have been hiding.

In introducing the tape, an al-Jazeera announcer said it shows "that bin Laden was still alive until approximately two weeks ago."

The tape comes at a time when it is unclear whether bin Laden is hiding in Afghanistan, managed to escape the country or was killed in U.S. bombing.

Ibrahim Helal, al-Jazeera's editor in chief, told reporters that his station received the tape "a couple days ago" from an anonymous sender through an air courier service from Pakistan. Helal said the station, which broadcasts in Arabic to the Middle East, would show the entire 33-minute tape today.

In the excerpt, bin Laden appears in a camouflage uniform with a rifle at his side before a brown backdrop. U.S. intelligence analysts noted "he had a pasty complexion which indicated he had not much sleep," a senior U.S. official said. "It was in striking contrast to his looks on other tapes," the official said, referring to a tape of bin Laden that was broadcast Oct. 7, as the U.S. bombing started, and another, about a month later, when he was dining in a Kandahar home with a visiting sheik. The latter, a homemade videotape, was released Dec. 13 by the Bush administration.

In the new tape, he condemns the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan after describing the Sept. 11 attacks as "blessed strikes against world infidelity and the head of infidelity, namely America."

U.S. analysts described it as "another example of bin Laden's well-worn, anti-Western rhetoric," according to the senior official. In Crawford, Tex., where President Bush is vacationing at his ranch, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters the new tape "is nothing more than the same kind of terrorist propaganda we have heard before."

The bombing in Afghanistan, bin Laden declares, makes it "clear that the West in general, led by America, bears an unspeakable crusader grudge against Islam."

He says airstrikes have "wiped out" villages "without any guilt" and caused "millions" to flee the country in cold weather and "live in tents in Pakistan."

He also compares America's use of seven-ton bombs in Afghanistan to the two tons of explosives that al Qaeda members used in 1998 to blow up the U.S. embassy in Nairobi. That attack, which killed more than 240 people, mostly Kenyans, was carried out, bin Laden says, by "youths. . . . may God accept them as martyrs."

"America said that this was a terrorist strike with a weapon of mass destruction," while the United States uses even larger bombs "with the purpose of terrorizing people only and making them scared of hosting Arabs," he says.

Compared to the U.S. bombing, bin Laden adds, "our terrorism against America is benign."

----

Connecting terrorism's dots

Arnaud de Borchgrave
December 27, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20011227-79790204.htm

In an attempt to avoid embarrassing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, and to pre-empt any Indian campaign to extend the war against terrorism to cover terrorist training camps in Pakistan, the White House announced Dec. 20 it was blocking the assets of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) which it described as "a Kashmiri terrorist organization that has conducted a number of operations against Indian troops and civilian targets in Kashmir since 1993."

That was once over very lightly. If truth be known, the facts behind LET are identical to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda's organization. The terrorists are interchangeable between both organizations. They were all trained in al Qaeda's camps and some of bin Laden's Afghan Arabs have already found refuge among LET's ranks in Kashmir. The White House's new formulation calls LET "a stateless sponsor of terrorism." But LET is also Pakistan-based and Pakistan-sanctioned.

LET's ranks consist of Pakistanis, Afghans, and Arabs led by Pakistani cadres. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency oversees LET's terrorist operations. Headquartered at Muridke outside Lahore, LET holds annual conclaves that are attended by serving and retired officers of ISI and the regular army, political leaders, and retired scientists of Pakistan's nuclear establishment. LET's terrorists are "freedom fighters" dedicated to "the liberation of Indian-occupied Kashmir." Its political cover is called Marka-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad (MDI), a fiercely anti-U.S. pseudo-religious, extremist organization.

LET's last big meeting was held in Muridke April 13-15 and was att