NUCLEAR
UK Police Investigate Nuclear 'Guinea Pig' Claim
Weapons of mass destruction - going nuclear in Iraq
Getting Iran Right
Bush Pledges More Aid For Russian Arms Cuts
U.S. to accelerate aid in destroying weapons
U.S. Drops Threat to Cut Aid to Russia for Disarming
Russian Court Delays Researcher's Spy Case
Man to Plead Guilty in Nuclear Case
Fugitive Physicist Pleads Guilty
Bush Proposes Tighter Border Controls
Al Qaeda Probed Nuclear Weapons Use
NRC Mulls Reissue of Nuclear Plant Status Report
Bush OKs Intelligence, Defense Bills
MILITARY
Afghan jailers beat confessions from men
U.S. bombs leave wasteland
Debate Over U.S. Raid on Convoy
Interim Afghan Government Wants Bombing to End
Warlords Call for Foreign Intervention in Somalia
China says report in Times is 'groundless'
U.S. man admits nuke-linked sale to Israel
Southeast Asia Nations Draft Accord
Croatia back in chaos?
Yugoslav army chief to stay
India and Pakistan Exchange Shelling in Kashmir
Fighting in Indonesia kills 16 this week
Israeli Soldiers Kill Palestinian Suicide Bomber
Sinking Renews Debate on Japan's Military
Attacks bring old foes together
Pakistan dims hopes for diffusing standoff
India and Pakistan Exchange Sanctions
U.S. Anti-Terror Effort
Warlords Call for Foreign Intervention in Somalia
U.S. Navy Base in Cuba Has Tradition
Green Beret lessons
Bush Says bin Laden Will Not Escape
POLICE / PRISONERS
Police officer killed in training exercise
London targets radicals
Pyongyang to grant amnesty to prison laborers
Terrorism Tribunal Rights Are Expanded
Oklahoma tops Texas in executions for 2001
In Shift, Chinese Carry Out Executions by Lethal Injection
Exclusive: Terror plot on US carrier foiled
Xinjiang 'terrorists' have Chinese names
Terror Cells Slip Through Europe's Grasp
ENERGY AND OTHER
Oil has the kick
ACTIVISTS
S-1766, PRICE ANDERSON ACT- TAKE ACTION NOW
Stun grenades used on West Bank
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
UK Police Investigate Nuclear 'Guinea Pig' Claim
December 28, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-britain-nuclear.html
LONDON (Reuters) - British police said on Friday they were investigating a complaint that military personnel were intentionally exposed by the government to deadly levels of radiation during nuclear tests on Pacific islands in the 1950s.
``I can confirm that the Met specialist crime group is carrying out a preliminary assessment of information received by them in August 2001,'' a spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police Service in reply to a question about the nuclear tests.
He declined to give further details or estimate when the investigations might be completed.
A police source said the investigation was prompted by the widow of a Royal Air Force pilot, Squadron Leader Eric Denson, who had been ordered to fly his plane several times through the mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb detonated on Christmas Island in the Pacific in 1958.
``The claim is that he...clearly in effect was being used as a human guinea pig,'' Shirley Denson's lawyer Alan Care told BBC radio.
Newspapers said Denson fell ill after the flight and became depressed, and committed suicide in 1976 after three attempts.
Several thousand British service personnel took part in the nuclear tests at Christmas Island and other Pacific atolls in the 1950s.
Protective equipment was scarce as full knowledge of the deadly effects of radiation sickness was only slowly coming to light after the nuclear bombs dropped by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
In the 20 years after the British tests many of the participants began complaining of illnesses they said were related to the radiation exposure.
-------- depleted uranium
Weapons of mass destruction - going nuclear in Iraq
By Ramzi Kysia,
December 28, 2001
Jordan Times
http://www.jordantimes.com/Thu/region/region1.htm
BAGHDAD - Dr Alim Abdul-Hamid's office at Al Mustanseriya Medical College in Baghdad is decorated in bright, cheerful colours, but what he has to say is anything but cheerful. Formerly Dean of Basra Medical College, Abdul-Hamid has had plenty of first-hand experience with Iraq's unprecedented plague of cancers and birth defects. "We have seen cases of breast cancer among women in their 20s. In their 20s!," says Abdul-Hamid. "This is really tragic, because, you know, in America, probably when you come across a case of breast cancer in a woman in her late 30s, you would consider that this is a young age for cancer, while we see cases of breast cancer in the 20s. There are increased incidences of colon cancer, thyroid cancer, in addition to, of course, leukaemias and lymphomas."
What's the source of this epidemic? According to Abdul-Hamid the problem is depleted uranium. Depleted uranium, or "DU", is an extremely dense, heavy metal, and a waste product of atomic bomb production. It has a half-life of over 4 billion years. It contains trace amounts of plutonium and is 60 per cent as radioactive as naturally occurring uranium. The US military uses it as ballast in their missiles, and they use it to coat shells and pellets. Because of its density, it is armour piercing - so it is used as an anti-tank weapon. DU is also aerosolising. When a shell coated with DU hits, it burns, releasing uranium oxide dust. This dust then rises in the air, is carried by the winds, and contaminates the entire surrounding environment.
The Pentagon admits to dropping 320 tonnes of DU in Iraq. The environmental organisation Greenpeace puts the estimate at over 800 tonnes. Hospitals throughout Iraq have reported as much as a 10-fold increase in overall cancer rates and birth defects over the last 11 years.
Abdul-Hamid points to an epidemiological study he headed in Basra, demonstrating the connection between DU and cancer in Iraq. The study looked at five factors: biological plausibility, strength of association, incidence rate, increased incidences of cancer among younger children, and the dose-response relationship. According to Abdul-Hamid, all these factors point to a strong, casual link between DU exposure and cancer in Iraq.
To test the biological plausibility of their hypothesis, the team of scientists studied the types of cancer being reported, most notably leukaemias, and explored their relationship to DU. The results strongly indicate a radioactive, rather than chemical, contaminant. Explains Abdul-Hamid: "Leukaemia is known to be related to radiation. We don't have evidence that leukaemia is related to chemicals."
Additionally, if the source of the epidemic were chemical, there would have been a sharp spike in cancer rates following the Gulf war, followed by rapid decreases as the source of the contamination disappeared. In contrast, with radiation the strength of association increases as time passes. The fact that cancer rates are still increasing at an exponential rate in Iraq strongly implies a radioactive source.
This increase is enormous. According to the study, malignancies and leukaemias among children under the age of 15 have more than tripled since 1990. Whereas in 1990 young children accounted for only 13 per cent of cancer cases, today over 56 per cent of all cancer in Iraq occurs among children under the age of 5. Abdul-Hamid explains that it isn't just direct exposure of the children to the radiation still present in the environment; it's also the cumulative exposure of their parents over time. This cumulative exposure does permanent damage to parental genes, damage which is then passed on to their children.
Finally, pointing to a map of Basra, Abdul-Hamid highlights the dose-response relationship between DU and cancers. "If we look at the map of Basra, southern Iraq, and monitor the incidences in different districts over time, we can come out with a very important conclusion. And that is that areas which have got the higher level of background radiation have higher levels of cancers." These factors overwhelmingly point to DU as the source of Iraq's current cancer plague.
Iraqi doctors aren't the only ones complaining about DU. US veterans are upset as well. DU may be a leading cause of the unprecedented levels of illnesses effecting Gulf war veterans. "The Pentagon claims that there are no significant health effects from exposure to depleted uranium, but their own research and documents show that this is not true," says Charles Sheehan-Miles, a Gulf war veteran and former president of the National Gulf War Resource Centre. Almost 25 per cent of US soldiers who fought in the Gulf war are currently receiving disability benefits from the US Veteran's Administration. This is twice the rate of disabilities as among Vietnam veterans.
Unfortunately, DU remains an integral part of the American military arsenal. According to Sheehan-Miles, "Depleted uranium, like landmines and cluster bombs, is a weapon with effects far beyond the battlefield, with innocents and children as the frequent victims. I resent this. As a former American soldier, I was trained to protect the innocent, not to kill them."
As the United States gears up for a new "Desert Storm" against Iraq, using weapons like DU, that is a lesson that more American soldiers, and the politicians who command them, should be reminded of.
The writer is a Muslim-American peace activist, and serves on the board of directors for the Education for Peace in Iraq Centre (www.saveageneration.org). He is currently in Iraq as part of a Voices in the Wilderness (www.vitw.org) peace delegation trying to end the war . He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.
-------- iran
Getting Iran Right
Improved ties could lead to cooperation on many shared priorities.
By John Newhouse and Thomas R. Pickering
Washington Post
Friday, December 28, 2001; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32732-2001Dec27?language=printer
Some big opportunities were left in the wake of Sept. 11. Take Iran, which pledged assistance in search-and-rescue operations for any downed American pilots on its soil, authorized the transit of humanitarian assistance and cooperated in the formation of the new Afghan government. The turmoil that has long agitated U.S.-Iranian relations could begin to give way, if only gradually, to a balanced and productive relationship between two societies that have more in common than either cares to admit.
Iran could become a stabilizing influence in a congenitally unstable region. It has attributes unique to the region: rudimentary but real politics based on free elections; a legitimate government; a history and culture all its own; and uncontested borders fixed by that experience, rather than imposed by other governments. Iran has had its revolution and never come close to imploding. Support for the hard-line Islamist clerics who came to power in that revolution has dwindled. Iran is a largely moderate and pro-American society.
Iran and the United States have enemies in common. They also have serious differences -- political and economic. Overcoming these won't be easy. The United States wants a dialogue but won't modify its position on diplomatic relations unless Iran agrees to (1) end its opposition to the peace process in the Middle East, (2) close off financial and other support of organizations involved in terrorist attacks against Israel and (3) pin down its pledge to forgo development of nuclear weapons.
Iran wants to be treated by the United States as a normal country and a respectable player within the international system. It urgently needs help with economic development. It confronts a demographic imbalance and must create employment for the disproportionate number of young people. Iran wants relations with this country because they will allow freer access to international capital markets. It also wants the United States to stop discouraging World Bank loans. And it wants to speed settlement of past monetary claims.
Above all, Iran needs Western investment in its oil and natural gas fields, along with Western management. In exploiting new oil fields, it wants to work with American companies instead of being limited to their European competitors. But U.S. sanctions forbid all such ventures even though the prohibitions are actually not enforceable against non-American oil companies, and U.S. companies are thereby being denied a level playing field.
Iran's 66 million people inhabit a dangerous and strategically pivotal neighborhood where weapons of mass destruction are being developed by deeply unstable states. Its immediate neighbor and enemy on one side is Iraq, an aspirant nuclear power. On the other side is Pakistan, which along with India now possesses nuclear weapons.
Before Sept. 11, an initiative designed to rebuild a normal relationship with Iran would have started with exchanges on the less sensitive issues. Now it may be possible to take a much longer first step, one designed to narrow, if not settle, differences over security. The U.N. Security Council could impel movement by adopting a resolution that would guarantee Iran's security against unprovoked aggression from an external force, thereby directly connecting the United States and Russia and other permanent members of the council to that effort. A lot would be required of Iran in return for so broad a guarantee, including a cessation of support for groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Hezbollah and of opposition to the peace process. Iran would have to sign a protocol designed to ensure detection of covert efforts to develop nuclear weapons, with provision for adequate transparency and monitoring.
This package might be acceptable to the government of President Mohammad Khatami. But Khatami is pitted against the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his forces -- the real power on intelligence, security and military matters. President Khatami draws strength from his broadly based popularity and the steadily growing support for his moderate and creative approach both to domestic and regional issues and to external relations.
The society is insisting on improved economic performance, and equates access to markets and investment capital with regional stability. Khatami's government has improved relations with neighboring states and has developed good and productive relations with West European countries. All this conforms as well to the interests of the hard-line mullahs, for whom survivability of the Islamist regime is the first priority. They see the need to reengage the world and gave up trying to export revolution a long time ago. But the hard-liners still use American policy to justify their antagonistic approach to matters of importance to both countries and to excuse the underperforming economy.
The case for revising U.S. policy and encouraging the healthy trends underway in Iran is self-evident. Among other steps, the United States should, as progress in security matters develops, relax its sanctions against trade and investment in Iran; remove the prohibition on importation of Iranian oil; and assist Iran in its application to join the World Trade Organization.
Hard-liners in Tehran will resist change of this kind but won't be able to do so indefinitely if the change moves forward at a measured but steady pace. Moreover, improved U.S.-Iranian relations would further isolate Iraq within the region and hence should appeal to all sides, including the hard-liners. The era into which we've moved will be increasingly geo-commercial. The political-military issues that dominated most of the last century will be less on the center stage. Friendly and productive relations between Iran and the United States can and should evolve.
John Newhouse is a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information. Thomas R. Pickering was undersecretary of state for political affairs from 1997 to 2000.
-------- russia
Bush Pledges More Aid For Russian Arms Cuts
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 28, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32003-2001Dec27?language=printer
CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 27 -- President Bush pledged more money today to help Russia round up and destroy nuclear and chemical weapons, abandoning the skepticism he had expressed when he ordered a review of the U.S. assistance nine months ago.
In a statement issued while vacationing at his ranch here, Bush said most of the $750 million the United States spent on 30 such programs this year appears to be worthwhile. He called for cutbacks in a few programs, such as a costly effort to dispose of excess plutonium. But he urged additional spending and accelerated efforts on others, including construction of an incinerator to destroy Russian nerve agents.
White House officials said the administration would propose an overall increase in the aid when Bush submits his budget next year, and they depicted the decision as a milestone in the increasing cooperation between the United States and Russia. "Most U.S. programs to assist Russia in threat reduction and nonproliferation work well, are focused on priority tasks and are well managed," a White House statement said.
Foreign policy specialists said the announcement reflected the warming of relations with Russia and the administration's heightened concern about the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Lawrence J. Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration who is director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the Bush administration had been "saying one thing and doing another" -- declaring support for cooperation with Russia while proposing cuts in nonproliferation assistance.
"Now, they realize these are important programs that could keep nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists," Korb said. "If these terrorists get hold of nuclear weapons, it will make September 11th look like a day at the beach."
Democrats on Capitol Hill said programs that had appeared likely to be cut under the administration's budget now appear likely to be given more money. They said the announcement was another example of Bush criticizing the policies of President Bill Clinton and then later adopting them.
"When all was said and done, they realized there were good reasons for the past policies," said a Democratic Senate aide who specializes in arms control.
Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), a leader in the 10-year-old cooperative threat reduction program, also described Bush's action as "good news."
The National Security Council began reviewing the programs in March. Bush said at a news conference at the time that it was in the nation's interest to "work with Russia to dismantle its nuclear arsenal." But he also said he had an obligation to the taxpayers "to make sure that any money that is being spent is being spent in an effective way."
Some administration officials had wanted, for example, to eliminate the Energy Department's Nuclear Cities Initiative, which aims to foster partnerships with U.S. companies and to spur investment in Russian communities long dependent on weapons factories. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had called such a cutback "absolutely foolhardy."
In today's statement, the White House said the Nuclear Cities Initiative would be consolidated into a related program and "restructured to focus more effectively on projects to help Russia reduce its nuclear warhead complex." But it stopped short of canceling the program.
Bush also said the Pentagon would accelerate a project to build a facility at Shchuchye, in Russia's Kurgan region, to incinerate tons of deadly nerve agents. The high-tech incinerator is the first major effort by the Russians to destroy chemical stockpiles, an effort they concede is decades behind schedule.
The House Armed Services Committee had for several years held up money for the facility, arguing that Russia had not fully disclosed its chemical weapons stocks or shouldered its share of financing. But earlier this year, the House withdrew its objection. With the Senate, it approved the project under certain conditions, including contributions from other countries and certification that Russia has revealed its chemical stockpiles.
With those provisions, Congress approved $35 million this month to get the project started. Russia has allocated $50 million for infrastructure work, such as building access roads and clearing land, according to congressional sources.
The administration also said today that it wants to accelerate cooperation with Russia to install equipment at border posts to detect nuclear materials. And the White House statement called in general terms, without citing budgetary figures, for expanding Energy Department programs to improve the security of Russia's warheads and nuclear materials.
Congress had already guaranteed an increase in that funding by providing an extra $286 million for nonproliferation programs in a supplemental appropriations bill this month. Of that amount, $120 million is for programs to upgrade protection and accounting for nuclear materials across the former Soviet Union.
Bush's announcement called for the expansion of the International Science and Technology Center, a joint U.S.-Japanese-European effort to help Russian weapons scientists switch to civilian work.
But the president also called for the restructuring of some programs. The White House statement said, for example, that the State and Energy departments will "examine alternative approaches" to a joint project to dispose of 34 metric tons of excess Russian weapons-grade plutonium, "with the aim of making the program less costly and more effective."
Some administration officials had urged cancellation of the plutonium disposition project, which has faced sharply increased costs -- estimated at more than $2 billion -- and disagreements over how to render the material harmless. But today's announcement said "the administration remains committed to the agreement with Russia to dispose of excess plutonium," although it is searching for an effective way to carry it out.
Bush had hinted at the outcome of the review during a speech this month on defense policy. In that Dec. 11 address at the Citadel in South Carolina, he called Russia "a crucial partner" in the effort to keep dangerous technologies out of the hands of terrorists and said the two nations "will expand efforts to provide peaceful employment for scientists who formerly worked in Soviet weapons facilities."
Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
----
U.S. to accelerate aid in destroying weapons
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 28, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011228-71479774.htm
CRAWFORD, Texas - The Bush administration yesterday announced plans to accelerate construction of a chemical-weapons destruction plant in Russia and examine ways to cut costly inefficiencies in the disposal of plutonium in the former Soviet republic.
Also yesterday, the president signed a proclamation granting permanent normal trade relations status with China.
The moves on Russian-arms destruction come two weeks after President Bush notified Russia that the United States would unilaterally withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Although critics said the withdrawal would spark a new arms race between Russia and the United States, both sides have instead decided to slash their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds.
In an effort to speed this process, the Bush administration yesterday announced it had completed a detailed review of Washington's assistance to Moscow in dismantling the nuclear stockpiles of the Cold War era.
The United States currently spends $750 million a year to administer more than 30 programs aimed at helping Russia achieve "nonproliferation and threat reduction."
While most of the programs were found to be efficient and well-focused, the White House said several will be "restructured to focus more effectively on projects to help Russia reduce its nuclear-warhead complex."
Also, the Defense Department will turn over to the Department of Energy a program aimed at ending Russian production of weapons-grade plutonium.
Two days before announcing his withdrawal from the ABM pact, Mr. Bush emphasized the importance of helping Russia scale back its weapons programs.
"Together, we must keep the world's most dangerous technologies out of the hands of the world's most dangerous people," Mr. Bush said during a Dec. 11 speech at The Citadel in South Carolina. "A crucial partner in this effort is Russia - a nation we are helping to dismantle strategic weapons, reduce nuclear material and increase security at nuclear sites."
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago, one of Washington's biggest concerns has been the prospect of rogue nations hiring displaced Soviet scientists with expertise in weapons of mass destruction. Yesterday, the White House announced plans to expand a program that redirects these scientists to more honorable employers.
That fulfills a promise made by Mr. Bush during his Citadel remarks on U.S.-Russian relations.
"Our two countries will expand efforts to provide peaceful employment for scientists who formerly worked in Soviet weapons facilities," Mr. Bush said.
"The United States will also work with Russia to build a facility to destroy tons of nerve agent," he added. "I'll request an overall increase in funding to support this vital mission."
Under a program administered by the Pentagon, construction of the plant in Shchuch'ye, Russia, will be accelerated "at no increased expense," the White House said yesterday. It did not provide specifics of costs or construction timetables.
The administration has also decided to expand a Department of Energy program aimed at increasing the "transparency" of Russia's inventory of warheads and fissile material.
Mr. Bush yesterday called the granting of normal trade status for China, effective Jan. 1, "the final step in normalization of U.S.-China trade relations and welcoming China into a global, rules-based trading system."
China formally became a member of the World Trade Organization on Dec. 11. Last year, Congress granted permanent normal trade status to Beijing on the condition that China join the WTO.
The president yesterday also terminated the 1974 Jackson-Vanik law that withholds normal trade relations with communist states that restrict emigration.
Mr. Bush spent much of yesterday relaxing at his ranch here on the first full day of his longest vacation since the September 11 terrorist attacks. The president, who arrived here from Camp David on Wednesday, began yesterday with a three-mile run and later cleared some brush around his 1,600-acre ranch.
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U.S. Drops Threat to Cut Aid to Russia for Disarming
New York Times
December 28, 2001
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/28/international/28NUKE.html
CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 27 - After nearly a year of threatening to end programs aimed at helping Russia stop the spread of nuclear weapons, the White House announced today that it remained committed to an effort to help Russia dispose of hundreds of tons of military plutonium.
The Bush administration, its concerns about the availability of nuclear weapons heightened since Sept. 11, said it would also continue a program to reduce the dependence of some Russian cities on nuclear weapons development and to provide alternative jobs for nuclear scientists.
In addition, the White House said that the Pentagon would seek to speed up the Cooperative Threat Reduction project to construct a chemical weapons destruction facility at Shchuchye, 1,000 miles southeast of Moscow, allowing for its earlier completion.
The announcement marked the culmination of the Bush administration's yearlong review of Clinton-era programs, designed to work with Russia to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and essentially left all of them intact. Early in the administration, Bush administration officials criticized many of the programs as expensive and ill conceived, and had threatened to eliminate them or greatly reduce their funding.
"I think it shows a fairly profound evolution of Bush administration views over the past year," said Rose Gottemoeller, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a senior Energy Department official during the Clinton administration. "They raised huge expectations early in the administration that they were going to slash and burn. I think they began to see the national security implications, and then after Sept. 11 it became untenable to cut the programs radically."
The administration released the announcement in a brief e-mail to reporters from the White House office in Crawford, Texas, where President Bush is vacationing on his ranch. Officials on the National Security Council oversaw the yearlong review of the programs.
The e-mail included only a short statement from Mr. Bush, taken from a speech he gave on Dec. 11 at The Citadel, the military college in Charleston, S.C. In that speech, Mr. Bush said that "together, we must keep the world's most dangerous technologies out of the hands of the world's most dangerous people. A crucial partner in this effort is Russia - a nation we are helping to dismantle strategic weapons, reduce nuclear material, and increase security at nuclear sites."
The White House review covered 30 programs with a combined annual budget of $750 million. Arms control advocates consider them a cornerstone of America's scientific and military relationship with Russia. The programs involve mostly the Pentagon, the Energy Department and the State Department, and pay for the dismantling of weapons facilities and the strengthening of security at sites where nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are stored.
Bush administration officials have said that their review, parts of which were made public by senior officials over the summer, does not endorse the Clinton approach. Rather, they say, the administration is trying to make the programs more cost-efficient and better-managed.
To that end, the administration has said it will pursue a less expensive approach in its effort to help Russia dispose of plutonium. The administration favors using plutonium in reactors as "mixed oxide fuel," as opposed to a more expensive method that mixes plutonium with glass and nuclear waste materials.
In addition, the White House has sought more financing from Russia and European nations to help build the chemical weapons destruction facility at Shchuchye. Critics said the original program was too costly and was not moving forward, and that Russia had not put up enough of its own money for the project.
Under the Bush review, the program to provide alternative jobs for nuclear scientists, called the Nuclear Cities Initiative, will be consolidated with another program, called Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention. The combined program will be restructured, the announcement from the White House said, "to focus more effectively on projects to help Russia reduce its nuclear warhead complex."
The Nuclear Cities Initiative was started in 1998 to help create nonmilitary work for Russia's 122,000 nuclear scientists and to help Russia downsize geographically and economically isolated nuclear cities, where 760,000 people live.
The aim of the program was to prevent nuclear scientists from leaving for Iraq, Iran and other would-be nuclear powers.
-------- spies
Russian Court Delays Researcher's Spy Case
Rights Groups Have Derided Charges
By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 28, 2001; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32770-2001Dec27?language=printer
MOSCOW, Dec. 27 -- A judge today delayed issuing a verdict in the espionage case of Igor Sutyagin, saying the prosecution's case was too vague and must be reinvestigated, according to Sutyagin's attorney, Anna Stavitskaya.
The decision means that Sutyagin, 37, an arms control researcher at the prestigious Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, will remain there indefinitely while the new investigation is conducted.
Sutyagin, who already has spent two years in prison, is accused of betraying secrets about Russia's nuclear submarines, nuclear weapons and early warning systems.
Prosecutors claim that the London-based firm Alternative Futures, which hired Sutyagin as a part-time consultant, was a front for the CIA. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) identified one of the firm's founders, Sean Kidd, and an employee, Nadya Lock, as career U.S. intelligence agents, the Russian Interfax news agency said today.
Tonight, in an apparent attempt to rebut the judge's criticism, the FSB gave Interfax a videotape in which Sutyagin admitted that he suspected both Kidd and Lock had ties to a foreign intelligence service, the news agency reported. Sutyagin told the FSB agents he realized he was acting against his country's interests and nearly decided to cut off contacts but was persuaded otherwise, Interfax said.
Human rights activists and some Western observers contend the case against Sutyagin is bogus and, together with several other treason cases now underway, suggests a disturbing rise in the influence of Russia's security services.
On Tuesday, military journalist Grigory Pasko was sentenced to four years in prison for treason in a case that has been ridiculed even by some of President Vladimir Putin's political allies. Pasko was convicted on charges of collecting secret information about the Pacific Fleet with the intention of giving it to Japanese journalists. He has appealed.
The judge in Sutyagin's case in Kaluga, a town 100 miles south of Moscow, determined that prosecutors had failed to identify precisely which state secrets Sutyagin had revealed that were harmful to Russia's security, said Vladimir Vasiltsov, one of Sutyagin's attorneys.
The judge also said investigators failed to look into Sutyagin's contention that he used only public information, the attorney said. He added that the investigators never translated or studied numerous English-language texts on which Sutyagin relied.
Vasiltsov said Sutyagin will appeal the decision to keep him in custody. He said he and Sutyagin's other attorneys need to study the rest of the judge's findings before their client can decide whether to appeal them.
Vasiltsov said he fears that Sutyagin may spend another year in jail on accusations that the prosecution failed to prove in court. "It's outrageous," he said.
----
Man to Plead Guilty in Nuclear Case
By Andrew Bridges
Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 28, 2001; 12:04 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32994-2001Dec28?language=printer
LOS ANGELES -- A man accused 16 years ago of illegally exporting potential nuclear triggers to Israel will plead guilty Friday to two charges in federal court, his attorney said.
Richard Smyth, 72, a former electronics supplier, will plead guilty to two of 30 counts contained in his indictment, his attorney James D. Riddet said Thursday. He had previously pleaded innocent to all charges.
The remaining counts will be dismissed as part of a plea agreement.
The original indictment involved the alleged export of about $60,000 worth of krytrons, two-inch triggering devices that can be used in nuclear weapons.
Smyth intends to plead guilty to a single count each of illegal shipments and preparing false documentation for the export of roughly 800 of the tubelike devices. Authorities said they were sent to Heli Corp. in Israel between January 1980 and December 1982.
Krytrons may not be exported without a license or written approval from the State Department.
Smyth faces a maximum of seven years under sentencing guidelines. Riddet said he would ask that Smyth, who has been held since July, be sentenced to time already served.
Smyth fled the United States after pleading innocent in 1985. He was extradited from Spain last month, and re-entered his innocent plea Nov. 26. He is being held without bail.
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Fugitive Physicist Pleads Guilty
December 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Triggers.html
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A physicist who dodged authorities for 16 years pleaded guilty Friday to two federal counts involving the export of potential nuclear triggers to Israel in 1982.
Richard Kelly Smyth entered his pleas before U.S. District Judge Pamela Riemer as part of a deal with federal prosecutors, who agreed to drop 28 other counts.
Smyth, 72, was first accused of the crimes in 1985 but fled to Spain. He was arrested in July and later extradited.
Defense attorney James D. Riddet refused to comment on Smyth's motive for exporting the devices to Heli Corp. but said he would address the issue during his sentencing, scheduled for Feb. 28. Until then, Smyth will be held in federal custody without bail.
The original 30-count indictment involved the alleged export of krytrons, two-inch devices that can be used in nuclear weapons or photocopying machines. A license or approval from the U.S. State Department must be obtained to ship them.
Smyth pleaded guilty to making false statements or false documents by signing or approving invoices to send the material to Israel in November and December 1982. He also pleaded guilty to exporting the devices without a license.
Smyth has been in federal custody without bail since July. His lawyer asked that he be sentenced to time already served. Smyth faces a maximum seven year sentence.
-------- terrorism
Bush Proposes Tighter Border Controls
By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Friday, December 28, 2001; 3:52 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33532-2001Dec28?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- Reflecting concern that terrorists might obtain nuclear material from loosely managed stockpiles, the Bush administration says it will expand programs to help Russia keep the material under control.
Some analysts have questioned whether Russian officials know exactly how many nuclear weapons and how much weapons-grade material are stored in their country.
A Bush administration review suggests terrorists might acquire nuclear material and smuggle it into the United States for terror attacks.
More than 30 U.S. programs, with a combined budget of about $750 million, were reviewed, and a summary of the conclusions was released Thursday 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.
--------
Report: Al Qaeda Probed Nuclear Weapons Use
December 28, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-britain-weapons.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was investigating the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons against the West and had conducted experiments on animals, a British newspaper reported on Saturday.
The Times said this had emerged from detailed examination of documents it discovered in abandoned al Qaeda houses in the Afghan capital Kabul after it fell to Northern Alliance forces on November 13.
The documents, which had been translated, proved al Qaeda was studying how to produce botulin poison in batches strong enough to kill 2,000 people, the paper said.
The hundreds of pages of photocopied, handwritten and printed matter were in a mixture of Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Mandarin, Russian and English.
Samples were photographed and sent to British-based professional translators with scientific qualifications, and to experts in the field of weapons of mass destruction.
The newspaper said they confirmed al Qaeda cells were examining materials to make a low-grade, ``dirty'' nuclear device.
The organization would not have been able to make a large-scale missile or nuclear device from the documents found, but it was ready to use such weapons if it could get them, the Times said.
One section described how chemical weapons were tested on rabbits. The animals died when subjected to cyanide and sodium.
The documents also showed al Qaeda was training units to assassinate Middle Eastern leaders sympathetic to the West.
The newspaper said documents discovered by British and U.S. agents in the Afghan cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad suggested that 40 Britons were given training at al Qaeda camps.
The United States is hunting for bin Laden, its prime suspect for the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
NRC Mulls Reissue of Nuclear Plant Status Report
December 28, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-utilities-nrc-report.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - After withdrawing data from its Web site for security reasons after the Sept. 11 attack, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said on Thursday it still has not decided whether to reissue its daily plant status report.
The NRC report listed the daily operating status of the nation's nuclear power reactors.
``We're still evaluating. It's a Catch 22. Our concern is a security issue. We're trying to balance that with the public's right to know,'' said Victor Dricks of the NRC Office of Public Affairs in Rockville, Maryland.
``We understand the plant status report is sorely missed ... not just by the trade press but by John Q. Citizen who likes to log onto the Web site and find out if the plant he lives near is up or down,'' Dricks said.
Wholesale electricity traders use the report, along with other data, to determine whether the price of spot power will rise or fall.
Nuclear power, which accounts for about 20 percent of all energy consumed in the United States, is one of the cheapest means of generating electricity.
When a nuclear power plant is shut, the regional grid operator, which dispatches the cheapest units available to meet the daily demand, has to turn on several smaller, more expensive fossil plants that burn oil or natural gas to generate electricity.
Shortly after the terror attacks in New York and Washington, the NRC and other federal agencies removed data from Web sites to evaluate whether that information could be used to harm the public.
Over the past few weeks, the NRC redesigned its Web site, www.nrc.gov, but did not reissue the plant status report or a related document, the daily events report, which lists safety-related events at the plants.
WHY OPERATORS WON'T HELP
In the wholesale power market information is king.
Those with knowledge of what will happen tomorrow can make a lot of money buying and selling electricity. To the power trader, electricity is a commodity, similar to oil, grain or gold. It rises and falls in value based on the law of supply and demand.
An electricity trader with nuclear plants has an advantage over other traders because he or she knows when the reactors will shut for work and how long they will be off line.
With this knowledge, traders with nuclear plants can buy power supplies at lower cost before prices rise when the reactor shuts.
To maintain the competitive edge, many nuclear operators, including the federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authoritywhich operates nuclear plants in the Southeast, refuse to discuss the operating status of their reactors.
``We can't force the utility to give you the information. We don't have that authority. We try to exercise whatever leverage we have to get (the operators) to be more forthcoming about (their plants) in the interest of building public confidence in nuclear power,'' the NRC's Dricks said.
``If they want to withhold the information, I'm not sure there's much we can do,'' Dricks explained, especially since the NRC itself has yet to decide what information the agency wants to make public on its Web site.
NEW YORK'S INDIAN POINT
But people who live near a nuclear reactor often care more about safety. They want to know whether the plant they live near is operating and when it is not operating.
Wednesday morning, unit 2 at the Indian Point nuclear station in New York tripped off line.
An official at Entergy Nuclear, a unit of energy giant Entergy Corp. of New Orleans which operates the station, would not discuss the outage for competitive reasons.
The company, however, did tell the NRC and Westchester County, where the plant is located, about the shutdown.
Despite rumors of the outage in the New York electricity market, news of the outage did not surface until Wednesday afternoon when Westchester Executive Andrew Spano issued a statement informing county residents of the shutdown.
In his statement, Spano said the plant, which is located about 35 miles north of New York City in the town of Buchanan, shut at about 0720 EST Wednesday morning.
He then told the public what they really wanted to know, that ``there were no safety issues associated with the shutdown'' and ``there was no risk of radioactive release.''
Some people who live near Indian Point are concerned about the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe in the heavily populated area following a string of safety-related shutdowns at the plant over the past few years, including a radioactive steam leak that shut unit 2 for most of last year.
``We're trying to resolve this the best we can,'' the NRC's Dricks said. ``We have to balance the public's right to know with security sensitivity.''
-------- us politics
Bush OKs Intelligence, Defense Bills
By SCOTT LINDLAW,
Associated Press Writer
Friday December 28 6:44 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20011228/pl/bush_bill_signings_2.html
CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) - President Bush signed a bill Friday to raise intelligence spending but warned Congress he won't turn over documents that he thinks could compromise national security.
The president also signed a $343 billion defense bill that gives what he wanted for his missile defense program, provides the largest military pay raises in two decades and sets up a new round of base closures.
Bases will be closed in 2005, two years later than Bush had wanted. He said in a written statement that he regretted the postponement.
In signing the intelligence bill, Bush objected to a provision that he said ``purports to require'' the administration to file written reports to congressional committees on intelligence failures.
He said in a separate statement that he reserved the authority to ``withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, the national security, the deliberative processes of the executive (branch) or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties.''
He said his intent was to ``protect intelligence sources and methods and other exceptionally sensitive matters'' and did not rule out providing verbal briefings to congressional panels.
The intelligence bill places new emphasis on traditional human spy networks in combating terrorism.
It would increase spending by 8 percent, compared with the 7 percent increase Bush sought. Besides focusing new attention and money on spies, the new law aims to increase the portion of collected data to be analyzed and turned into useful information.
Intelligence spending levels generally are kept secret. In 1998, the CIA revealed in response to a lawsuit filed by the Federation of American Scientists that spending totaled $26.6 billion in 1997 and $26.7 billion in 1998, the federation's Steven Aftergood said. Since then, it's been estimated at about $30 billion a year.
The new law sets out four intelligence priorities:
-Revitalizing the National Security Agency, which gathers and analyzes information from broadcasts, computers and other electronic communication. It shifts the agency's focus from intercepting broadcasts to tapping fiber-optic communication lines.
-Correcting deficiencies in human spy networks.
-Increasing the percentage of data collected that is converted into useful intelligence.
-Financing a research and development initiative, which will reverse declining investment in these areas.
The law also facilitates getting roving wiretaps by amending a law that requires agents to tap individual instruments at a given location. Modern communications have brought to widespread use moving targets such as cellular phones, with locations that keep changing. Under the law, if an agent is unaware of a target's location, it does not have to be listed.
The defense legislation Bush signed authorizes spending for the budget year that began Oct. 1 for the Defense Department and military programs of the Energy Department. It contains a $33 billion increase, up 10.6 percent, over 2001 spending, which matches Bush's request. A separate appropriations bill must be passed before the money can be spent.
Military service members would get pay raises of 5 percent to 10 percent, effective next Tuesday.
The bill provides more help with housing costs and a major boost in construction spending, including improvements to family housing.
On missile defense, Bush would get his full $8.3 billion request, a $3.1 billion increase over 2001.
Bush also signed off on plans to create a national museum to recognize the contributions of black Americans. The law creates a presidential commission to handle planning and logistics for a National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan jailers beat confessions from men
Concern for 3,000 detainees yet to be seen and put on Red Cross roll
Rory Carroll in Kabul
Friday December 28, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,625210,00.html
Afghanistan's new authorities are brutalising Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners to soften them up before handing them over to American forces. Guards admitted yesterday to the Guardian that they routinely tortured inmates during interrogations to extract information, which was given to American officials trying to identify suspects to be prosecuted in the US.
Beatings were an efficient and time-honoured method of persuading people to talk, they said.
Conditions in Afghanistan's dozens of jails vary from comfortable to atrocious and the Red Cross is investigating claims that 43 Taliban prisoners died from suffocation while being taken to a jail in the north, Shibarghan, 100 miles west of the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
A week ago, a US spokesman in Pakistan said that American forces and their Afghan allies were holding about 7,000 Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners in various jails, including fortresses, a desert compound, an aircraft hangar and a warship. Most had been caught in the past month.
Talking to the Guardian, the governor of Kabul's so-called third directorate jail, Abdul Qayum, said of those held in his institution: "At first we use Islamic and humanitarian behaviour towards them to get confessions, and if that doesn't work then we use physical force."
Mr Qayum, whose jail answers to the national security ministry, declined to say exactly what violence was inflicted on the inmates, whom he said numbered between 40 and 50. After conferring with a colleague who had just visited the cells, he cancelled our planned tour.
There was nothing shocking in the admission of violence, said Mr Qayum, because it was well known that British jailers used nails on inmates. He offered no source for this information.
His prisoners, caught in Kabul six weeks ago and suspected of being low-ranking Arab and Pakistani members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, would be probably handed over to the United Nations or the US, he said.
That they possessed guns but not passports or identity documents was proof of al-Qaida membership and confessions were needed to clinch their guilt, said Mr Qayum. They had been visited by the Red Cross, he added.
According to the humanitarian agency, Kabul had 22 detention centres, including cells beneath police stations and private houses. Northern Alliance soldiers and policemen said most had been emptied in the past fortnight and the captives moved to undisclosed locations in the Panjshir valley, one of the anti-Taliban heartlands.
Aghai Gul, a Northern Alliance soldier commanding a checkpoint at Kotali Hihana, on the northern outskirts of Kabul, said that all his prisoners had also been moved, but it emerged one was left.
Locked in a metal container behind the checkpoint was Mohammed Rahim, 40, pale from four weeks without sunlight. Arrested in Kabul on suspicion of being a Pakistani who helped the Taliban, he had been given enough food, water and blankets but complained of being kicked, punched and thrashed with a stick.
"They beat me so much they had to take me to the hospital, then they took me here. I'm still sick but they won't bring me a doctor." Mr Gul admitted Mr Rahim had been thrashed. "Of course we beat him; sometimes it is the only way to get the truth out of them."
Such maltreatment is mild compared to the torture and slaughter of each other's prisoners perpetrated by Taliban and Northern Alliance troops in recent years. Aid workers who have visited prisoners in the past month have said violence has tended to subside after initial questioning.
But the Red Cross is concerned that it has been able to register only 4,000 of the 7,000 prisoners which the US says it and its Afghan allies have in custody.
Afghanistan's new government appears to be hastening the transfer of prisoners to US forces, which are in turn speeding up construction of improvised jails in their military bases and navy warships.
Twenty bound and hooded Arab fighters were delivered yesterday on a C-130 aircraft to American marines at the southern city of Kandahar. Reports said that this raised to at least 45 the number of alleged al-Qaida members in US custody.
A number of these suspects have been sifted from the 3,000 inmates being screened at the Shibarghan jail in the north, a cold, overcrowded place said to be serving one meal a day. Abdul Rashid Dostam, the Uzbek strongman who is now deputy defence minister in the interim government in Kabul, has said all foreign prisoners would be handed over to US forces.
What will happen to them is uncertain. Washington calls them "detainees", not "prisoners of war", a term enshrined in international conventions that spell out what rights and treatment such people must be accorded.
----
U.S. bombs leave wasteland
Fierce attacks anger villagers, raise questions
By Paul Salopek,
Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent
December 28, 2001
http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0112280295dec28.story
MADOO, Afghanistan -- Dusty mounds of rubble sit where buildings once stood.
Sad artifacts of daily life are scattered across a wasteland of crater-gouged earth--buckets, shoes, shredded clothing. And there is the bruised smell of death: a nauseating reminder that 55 farmers and their livestock lie buried in the ruins of a U.S. air strike with one of the highest civilian casualty tolls in Afghanistan.
"American soldiers came after the bombing and asked if any Al Qaeda had lived here," said villager Paira Gul, naming the terrorist group headed by Osama bin Laden.
"Is that an Al Qaeda?" Gul asked, pointing to a child's severed foot he had excavated minutes earlier from a smashed house.
"Tell me," he said, his voice choking with fury, "is that what an Al Qaeda looks like?"
Four weeks after U.S. planes demolished Madoo, and a week after the bombing of a suspected Al Qaeda convoy that may have been carrying tribal elders, such questions are starting to haunt the waning days of the U.S.-led war against terrorism in Afghanistan, and meaningful answers may be a long time coming.
The Pentagon has yet to disclose the civilian toll from its hundreds of air strikes in Afghanistan, much less offer an explanation of how or why its bombs may have gone awry in a campaign that has targeted Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in towns, mountains, farms and on highways.
Indeed, even as the war appears to be winding down, information on the accidental victims of U.S. attacks remains so sparse that media tallies range wildly from scores to thousands.
Military experts say this is to be expected in a battlefield as remote and a conflict as secretive as the anti-terror campaign in Afghanistan.
Yet for many ordinary Afghans living in the affected areas, including even some pro-American commanders, the continuing silence from Washington is beginning to smack of indifference to civilian casualties.
Fierce operation
Perhaps nowhere is that perception more angrily held than in the rugged foothills of Tora Bora, where U.S. forces unleashed their latest and most ferocious operation to kill bin Laden--apparently at any cost, villagers here say.
According to death tolls gathered from elders in four communities in the area in recent days, at least 87 farmers and anti-Taliban soldiers appear to have died in intense U.S. air strikes on Tora Bora, the cave-riddled mountain stronghold of bin Laden.
At the time of the attacks, commander Haji Muhammad Zaman, a staunch U.S. ally in the Tora Bora offensive, branded the alleged mistakes "a crime against humanity."
For its part, the Pentagon at first categorically denied the bombing reports. An unnamed Pentagon source told reporters earlier this month that the attacks "never happened." More recently, however, the U.S. military has softened that view.
"It is certainly possible that there were civilian casualties who were not Taliban and Al Qaeda that we're not aware of" in Tora Bora, said Col. Rick Thomas, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, the headquarters of the Afghan campaign.
"We have used precision-guided missiles to target specific military targets, to minimize civilian casualties," Thomas said. "Anytime we have information where it looks like there were civilian casualties, we have attempted to investigate that."
Villagers say that uniformed U.S. soldiers did appear at some of the bombed sites but they mainly seemed interested in the whereabouts of Al Qaeda troops.
Yet the bomb destruction visible today and interviews with survivors make it clear that U.S. planes indeed killed either civilians or friendly forces at four locations in Tora Bora between Nov. 29 and Dec. 1.
Confusion appears to have led to the deaths of 12 pro-American Afghan fighters in the village of Land Khel, local people say. Their commander made the mistake of collecting abandoned Al Qaeda trucks in his compound, which drew a swift and fatal response from patrolling U.S. jets.
The targeting of a suspected Al Qaeda member named Gulab Khan in the village Agam Bazaar instead killed 14 of his family members, including women and children, neighbors say. Khan wasn't home at the time of the attack.
Meanwhile, the bloodiest civilian toll of all may have come from a feverish American attempt to kill bin Laden and a close Afghan associate named Merajuddin.
"We believe the Americans were always a few hours behind them, dropping bombs on villages they just left," said Habib Rahman, a village elder in the Zamar Khel district, where a huge bomb fell on the house of a man named Akal Khan, killing four family members, including two women.
"The people say Osama rode a horse through that night, and the American bombs fell afterward," Rahman said. "Then he rode off toward Madoo."
True or not, this is the only story local residents have to explain the carnage at Madoo.
Volleys of missiles
In four waves beginning in the predawn hours of Dec. 1, U.S. jets launched volleys of missiles and dropped guided bombs that obliterated the entire hamlet of 15 houses.
Twenty-five days later, three ragged men--the only male survivors of the attack--were still picking through the debris, searching for the body parts of their families.
"I swear to almighty Allah that we are not Al Qaeda or Taliban, we are farmers," said Abdul Hadi, whose wrinkled face and unkempt beard were covered with dust from digging. "We do not know why this happened to us. Only Allah knows."
Then Hadi carefully bundled up a hand from his nephew Khalid's home, where seven of his relatives died, and took it into the rocky hills for burial.
----
DISPUTED ATTACK
Debate Over U.S. Raid on Convoy Exposes Fluid Loyalties in Area Shaken by War
New York Times
December 28, 2001
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/28/international/asia/28CONV.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 27 - The tribal council of Paktia Province convened a news conference today at which its members insisted that the American airstrike last week on a convoy in Paktia was a mistake. Contrary to American claims, they said, the convoy contained no Al Qaeda members, but rather tribal elders en route to Kabul to pay homage to the country's new leader, Hamid Karzai.
"A spy told them they were Taliban," the group's spokesman, Abdul Hakim Munib, said, suggesting that false information was fed to the Americans to provoke the attack, which the elders said killed 15 convoy passengers and 50 people in surrounding villages.
Further statements indicated a more complicated reality.
Had anyone in the convoy been Taliban members at any time? Mr. Munib was asked.
"I myself was a deputy minister for communications, border and transport under the Taliban regime," he answered, adding: "They were with Taliban. I was with Taliban." He gestured at the assembled elders: "All the people you are seeing here were with Taliban."
The American attack on the convoy has laid bare the complex and fluid allegiances that shape life in Paktia. The Taliban came, Pashtun tribal leaders joined with them, and now the Taliban are gone. And so it is that a former Taliban deputy minister is now in Kabul to pay his respects to the government that came to power fighting it.
But negotiating such changes is not a simple matter, and Paktia is, in some ways, feeling the fall of the Taliban harder than most. The Americans have been bombing because the province has long harbored Al Qaeda bases. The Taliban's defeat has intensified tribal rivalries. And then came the attack on the convoy, which the Pentagon continues to say was a legitimate target.
In Washington today, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "We have nothing to indicate anything other than what we said before, and that that convoy was, again, leadership that was involved in this war on terrorism."
All this is enough to have made Paktia, which borders Pakistan, a focus of the new government's concern. Tribal rivalries have simmered for decades in Paktia, said Abdulhalesh Fazar, a Pashtun minister in the government. The secret to peace, he said this week, is carefully calibrating the balance of power so that no one tribe is dominant.
"If one tries to bully the others, the others will take up arms," he said. "It needs very precise and careful policies and compromise."
The balance is off enough now to have Kabul worried, Mr. Fazar said. That morning, he had met with 45 tribal leaders to try to make peace. The Taliban had been a unifying factor for groups with very different motives: fundamentalist ideologues, people on the payroll of Al Qaeda, those who believed the Taliban essentially represented Pashtuns. Now that umbrella is gone, he said, and these people were throwing sharp elbows.
To be Taliban in Paktia meant something different than to be Taliban in Kabul, the capital, or Herat, in the Persian-speaking west. In Afghanistan's cities, the Taliban movement and its rules were ruthlessly imposed on a resistant population. But provincial villages and towns were more receptive, because it was village life and tribal law that Taliban rule was meant to propagate.
Such nuances pose something of a challenge for Mr. Karzai, a Pashtun from Kandahar. As the Pashtuns of Paktia see it, Mr. Karzai is one of them, which is why they came to him this week to ask him to stop American bombing in Paktia. For Mr. Karzai, born of and respectful of tribal structures, the lines between the old and new Afghanistan, between Taliban connections and tribal relations, are inevitably blurred.
The convoy that came under American attack may have contained some former Taliban members, but it was clearly welcome in Kabul. When it was rerouted along the way by what some here called a rival tribal faction onto a dangerous back road, members of the convoy tried to reach Mr. Karzai for assurances they would not be bombed, Mr. Munib said. They also used their satellite telephones to call American officials, he said, although he did not know which officials.
While Mr. Karzai is Pashtun, the military structure is mostly Tajik, and some soldiers in Kabul see people like the Pashtun elders as the enemy. The elders say that as they have come into Kabul, soldiers have harassed and even detained them for wearing turbans, accusing them of being Taliban arriving to cause trouble.
Of greater concern for the central government, as well as the American military and thus the people of Paktia, is the degree to which the province was, and remains, a haven for Al Qaeda.
Until very recently, terrorists - specifically Al Qaeda - had bases in Paktia, to which they had been invited by the province's most powerful Taliban official, Jalaluddin Haqani.
The elders insisted that all the camps were closed when the Northern Alliance took Kabul, but reports of a surviving Al Qaeda presence in the province continue to surface.
Some of those reports come from Amanullah Zadran, a powerful tribal leader from Paktia and the government's new minister of borders. He says that four of the men from the convoy who were killed were Arabs. And he has said repeatedly that 350 Al Qaeda members remain in Paktia. At a meeting with tribal elders this week, he ordered them to surrender Al Qaeda members. He pulled a list from his pocket and began to read names of clerics and ordinary men who he said were harboring Al Qaeda members.
"Please, if you're hiding Arabs, get rid of them, or your house will be bombed," he thundered.
"No, no, no," the elders protested. "The Arabs are gone."
"I know they are there," Mr. Zadran said. "I have been informed you are hiding them here and there."
"We will search every village," an elder promised, "and come tell you if we have Arabs."
Mr. Zadran may be sincere, but some question his motives, saying that his brother, Badshadkhan Zadran, is trying to consolidate power in Paktia and that it was he who called in the airstrike on the convoy.
All of this intrigue - the arguments in Paktia over who was entitled to make the trip to Kabul to see Mr. Karzai reportedly went on for days - may have some people longing for the more orderly days of the Taliban. Which may be why today Mr. Munib was singing the new government's praises in one breath, and in the next, saying that the Taliban had saved the country from disintegration. He and some of the men killed in the airstrike on the convoy had disagreed with the Taliban only in their support for terrorism, he said. "Mullah Omar would not listen to our wants," he said regretfully, of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, as if wishing he could turn back the clock.
--------
Interim Afghan Government Wants Bombing to End
December 28, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-attack.html
WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan gave its clearest sign yet Friday that it wanted the war on terrorism to move elsewhere, demanding a quick end to U.S. bombing and insisting Osama bin Laden had fled to Pakistan.
Washington also risked fading resolve from its crucial ally Pakistan, whose attention has turned to a worsening crisis with India over the disputed Kashmir province.
The United States pulled diplomatic strings and urged the nuclear rivals to step back from a standoff triggered by a December 13 suicide attack on India's parliament.
Bin Laden, pursued for allegedly plotting the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities that killed more than 3,200 people, stayed out of America's clutches but taunted his adversary by video.
``The end of the United States is imminent,'' he said in the tape aired in full for the first time Thursday on Qatar's al-Jazeera television.
Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said bin Laden had escaped to Pakistan with nearly all his al Qaeda fighters to seek shelter with allies there, rendering further U.S. bombing pointless.
``Their remaining forces are few in number and may be annihilated in a maximum of three days. Once this is done there is no need for continuation of the bombing,'' ministry spokesman Mohammad Habeel told Reuters. ``We demand America stop its bombing of Afghanistan after this goal is achieved.''
In its first air strike in three days, Washington said Thursday its planes had destroyed a compound used by the Taliban southwest of Kabul, but a Pakistan-based news agency said 25 villagers were killed by bombs in the same vicinity.
RUSE
In Pakistan, Maulana Fazalur Rehman, head of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam party who helped create the Taliban, denied Kabul's claim that he was protecting bin Laden and branded it a ruse to divert the U.S. campaign away from Afghanistan.
Pakistan's government faced unrest when it put Rehman under house arrest as the U.S. bombing began on October 7, but now has graver problems to deal with over Kashmir -- a dispute which has twice sparked war with arch-foe India.
Secretary of State Colin Powell -- whose government has branded the two groups India says attacked its parliament as terrorists -- worked the phones to defuse a crisis which could hamper the hunt for bin Laden and destabilize a whole region.
Washington fears Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf could move forces away from the Afghan to the Indian border, making it easier for bin Laden or his followers to escape.
The Americans say they are remain unconvinced that anyone really knows where bin Laden is or if he is alive or dead.
``We hear six, seven, eight, 10, 12 conflicting reports every day. I've stopped chasing them,'' Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.
ALIVE AND WELL
Right on cue, another report cropped up in a U.S. newspaper.
``Osama is alive, healthy, and safe,'' said Qari Ahmadullah, the vanquished Afghan Taliban's chief of intelligence.
He said the world's most wanted man had been near the border with Pakistan and that he was in close contact with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar who had protected him.
In his latest video, probably shot in early December, the millionaire militant bin Laden appeared tired but defiant.
He called the September attacks blessed and urged Muslims to wage military and economic holy war against a fragile America.
``It is very important to concentrate on hitting the American economy with every available tool...the economy is the base of its military power,'' said a gaunt, hollow-eyed bin Laden, dressed in a camouflage jacket with a rifle beside him.
Any of his followers caught by U.S. forces are likely to be sent to the U.S. navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which is to serve as a detention center.
U.S. military tribunals that may then try international terror suspects will require unanimity to impose the death penalty, according to draft procedures reported in The Washington Post.
U.S. forces are currently holding 45 prisoners.
In New York, Rudolph Giuliani, hailed worldwide for his leadership of the city, bade farewell to his job as mayor by urging construction of a ``soaring, beautiful'' memorial at the site of the World Trade Center destroyed in the attacks.
``This place has to be sanctified,'' he said.
-------- africa
Warlords Call for Foreign Intervention in Somalia
BY TSEGAYE TADESSE
Friday, December 28, 2001.
http://www.bayarea.com/rc/world/docs/1716917l.htm
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Three Somali warlords called for international military intervention in Somalia on Friday, saying radical Islamic groups al Qaeda and al-Itihad had several bases in the Horn of Africa country.
Somalia's transitional government has strongly denied the presence of terrorist cells, and diplomats have warned that opposition warlords may use the U.S. war on terror to try and damage their opponents.
At a news conference in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, warlords Hassan Mohammed Nur Shatigudud, General Abdullahi Nur Gabyow and Hussein Aideed said foreign intervention was needed to stop extremist groups going underground.
``Al Qaeda and al-Itihad terrorist groups have got three major bases inside and around Mogadishu alone. The southern port city of Kismayu and Bosasso and the surrounding areas are their strongholds,'' Gabyow said.
``I myself can mobilize up to 50,000 of my militia and fight alongside any international force which would come to Somalia to help eradicate the terrorist group destroying our country.''
Somalia has been without central government since the 1991 overthrow of military dictator Mohammed Siad Barre and has been named as one of the countries the United States could target once it widens its war on terror beyond Afghanistan.
Soon after the September 11 suicide hijack attacks on the United States, Washington named the Somali al-Itihad al-Islamiya movement in a list of groups linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Since then, international pressure for a single authority in Somalia has increased on the basis that a divided, anarchic Somalia could prove the perfect haven for terrorists.
WARLORDS USE WAR ON TERROR
But diplomats have warned that militia chiefs, who flourished in the chaos of civil war and control large parts of Somalia, have seized on the U.S. anti-terror campaign as their own route back to power.
They hope that accusing the Transitional National Government (TNG) of supporting terrorists will convince Washington to intervene and destroy their enemy on their behalf, the diplomats say.
The TNG, set up by a conference of clan elders last year, controls only parts of the capital Mogadishu and pockets of the rest of the country and has been trying to get the warlords on side since its inception.
On Monday it signed an agreement with some of the warlords in the Kenyan town of Nakuru calling for an ``all-inclusive government'' under which all clans would share power to be set up in Mogadishu within a month.
But several other warlords, including Aideed, Gabyow and Shatigudud, rejected the deal, casting doubt on its viability.
Although some members of the Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council (SRRC) -- a loose coalition of opposition warlords -- signed the new pact, other senior SRRC members said the group did not recognize the delegation sent to Kenya.
Since the deal was signed, rival militias have fought running battles in Mogadishu, killing at least 13 people.
According to Gabyow, the fighting pitted the militias of warlord Muse Sudi Yalahow, who did not sign the Nakuru deal, against supporters of Osman Hassan Ali Atto, who did. He said the situation on Friday was calm.
-------- arms sales
China says report in Times is 'groundless'
World Scene
Washington Times
December 28, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011228-28311706.htm
China denied that it provided weapons to al Qaeda after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Referring to a report in The Washington Times of Dec. 21 on the subject, the People's Daily quoted a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman as saying the report was "a sheer fabrication with ulterior motives" and "groundless."
The spokeswoman, Zhang Qiyue, also "reiterated that China opposes terrorism of all forms and its stance is definite and consistent," the daily said.
China also denied an Aug. 6 report in The Times that said China continued to supply missile parts to Pakistan.
The daily also made a personal attack on Times reporter Bill Gertz, author of the two reports, calling him "a Cold War mentality deeply-rooted person."
----
U.S. man admits nuke-linked sale to Israel
By Hil Anderson
12/28/2001
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=28122001-080648-7543r
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- A former engineer admitted in federal court Friday that he smuggled 50 electronic devices to Israel that could be used for a number of applications, including triggering nuclear bombs.
Richard Kelly Smyth, who spent the past 16 years living in Spain as a fugitive, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles to a 1985 charge that he illegally exported a shipment of krytrons to Israel in 1982 without the appropriate U.S. licenses.
Smyth's guilty plea to one count of violating the Arms Export Control Act and one count of making a false statement to the Customs Service was expected to land him in federal prison for up to seven years when he is sentenced Feb. 28.
The U.S. Attorney's office described krytrons as "small devices that transfer precise bursts of energy."
"The devices can be used in nuclear weapons, in other military applications and in civilian products such as photocopying machines," the prosecutors said in a release.
At the time the 30-count indictment was issued, the Israeli government maintained that it had purchased the krytrons sent by Smyth's Orange County firm from Heli Trading Corp., an Israeli vendor, for purely conventional research purposes and not for use in nuclear weapons.
Tel Aviv also said it was not aware of U.S. export restrictions, however U.S. prosecutors said Smyth had been well aware of them. The Los Angeles Times said Friday that the plea agreement requires Smyth to answer any lingering questions U.S. investigators may have about his dealings in krytrons.
Among the questions on investigators' minds may be just how Smyth managed to get to Spain without the passport he had been forced to surrender shortly before his 1985 trial was scheduled to begin.
The Times said Smyth and his wife, Emilie, apparently lived quietly in southern Spain without attempting to conceal their identities. Spanish authorities arrested Smyth last summer after he attempted to open a bank account in Malaga and an Interpol check revealed the U.S. arrest warrant.
-------- asia
Southeast Asia Nations Draft Accord
By ADAM BROWN
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 28, 2001 09:45 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7GM8B1G0
MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines agreed Friday on a draft accord to fight terrorism and border crime, including measures to create joint rapid response forces.
The United States has offered to help countries in Southeast Asia act against militant groups, saying it fears Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror group seeks to turn the area into a hub for operations.
Deputy foreign ministers of the three countries, all grappling with Muslim extremist violence, ended a two-day conference in Manila Friday to finalize the accord. Brunei and Thailand sent observers to the meeting.
The draft document calls for a system to determine how the countries' can collaborate to confront terrorism, arms trafficking and other crimes. Foreign ministers of the three countries are to debate and possibly sign the document in their annual meeting in Phuket, Thailand early next year.
The United States has provided equipment, intelligence and military advisers to help the Philippines in its fight against the Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic separatist group that has been linked to al-Qaida.
Muslim extremists are also thought to operate in other parts of Southeast Asia, including Indonesia and Malaysia.
Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Lauro Baja said the countries also tentatively agreed to draft and distribute among each other a list of terrorism suspects to watch out for.
Piracy and drugs and arms smuggling are rampant in the three countries' border areas, generating funds that could be used to finance further terrorism. Smuggled arms have also found their way into the three countries.
Such security cooperation would benefit the Philippines partly because of its weak military and its ongoing battle to destroy Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, who are holding an American couple and a Filipino nurse hostage on southern Basilan island.
Philippine officials, who drafted the accord, hope other Southeast Asian countries will later join the anti-terrorism effort spearheaded by the three countries, which are founding members of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
-------- balkans
Croatia back in chaos?
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [re: Croatia; Armenia/Azerbaijan]
December 28, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011228-26484738.htm#2
I read with interest Jeffrey T. Kuhner's Dec. 26 Op-Ed column on Croatia and its difficult road to democracy, "Not yet Bush of the Balkans." Mr. Kuhner is right in critically assessing the pervasive Balkanesque cronyism and corruption in Croatian politics. Yet he briefly and only sketchily mentions the large-scale massacres and removal of thousands of Croat civilians and competent professionals by the former Yugoslav communist security apparatus, which is still partially alive in Croatia.
One's view of what happened in ex-communist Yugoslavia - and later in the late President Franjo Tudjman's Croatia - depends on the observer's vested interests, his ethnic prejudices and his historical perspectives. One thing remains certain, though: Croatia lacks solid elements of civil society and ignores the Western rules of meritocracy.
Similar to other post-communist countries in the region, modern Croatia is deeply infected by the legacy of communist mendacity and double-dealing and the spiral of silence and civic fear. Waffling empty Western-imported cliches about human rights and market democracy, the revamped Croatian diplomacy shows amazing signs of provincialism and incompetence. What a would-be democratic Croatia needs is a solid dose of re-education and decommunization.
Undoubtedly, a staggering number of Mr. Tudjman's officials were recycled communists who briefly put on display a feigned Croat patriotism. Was not the current President Stipe Mesic also Mr. Tudjman's pal until their fateful split in 1994?
These remarks may seem of minor importance, but what is worrisome is the present ungovernability of Croatia. Mr. Mesic and Prime Minister Ivica Racan may have good intentions about the country's future. Yet, good intentions do not suffice to make a good politician or make a country safe for entry into the rich men's club of the European Union or NATO.
Furthermore, the coalition government - at bureaucratic loggerheads with Mr. Mesic - has an unsavory international reputation as a coalition of five swingers making poorly mimicked passes at the European Union. Apparently, this is because of a naive effort to extract a certificate of good democratic behavior or some putative charity from credulous EU and U.S. taxpayers. With mutual mudslinging within this motley crew of four diverse parties, a question remains: Is Croatia a governable entity?
Mr. Tudjman did his best to bring Croat ex-communists and anti-communists together. His motto was "reconciliation." The present Croatian government is doing exactly the opposite; it is unstitching the country and driving a wedge between expatriate and homeland Croats, between the former communists and the right-wing opposition figures, and between the politically correct and politically incorrect.
Outside of regurgitating - in broken English and in the old wooden communist lingo - slogans such as "free market" or "necessity for economic transition," the present political class in Croatia is a carbon copy of the late "homo sovieticus" universe - albeit with the mandatory and feigned liberal veneer.
Forty-five years of communist and Titoist terror brought about negative selection and depleted the Croatian society of honest, law-abiding and professional Croatian politicians - irrespective of their ideological creed. Hence, the country is gripped by paralysis and slated for long-term instability.
Slowly, but surely, Croatia is pushing its way back into a still unnamed and unknown chaos.
TOMISLAV SUNIC Novi Zagreb, Croatia
--
History sheds different light on U.S. sanctions against Azerbaijan
Allow me to make several points regarding your Dec. 23 editorial "The importance of Armenia and Azerbaijan."
As you state, Americans are not very knowledgeable about realities in the region. This is especially true with regard to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as to the consequences of Armenian aggression against my country. It is an internationally established fact that Armenia has occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, turning almost a million of my compatriots into refugees and internally displaced persons. Yet even experts writing on these issues sometimes present a distorted picture of the situation, be it intentionally or involuntarily.
Lack of knowledge is the main reason why the powerful Armenian lobby has succeeded in misrepresenting the cessation of normal trade relations, quite natural between two warring parties, as a blockade. Thus, it misled the U.S. Congress into adding insult to injury and passing Section 907 of the 1992 Freedom Support Act, containing sanctions against Azerbaijan. Despite the opposition of successive U.S. administrations to 907, it was only after September 11 that U.S. policy on this matter was reconsidered.
As far as Armenia's "admirable restraint" and "gracious response to the relaxation of U.S. sanctions against Azerbaijan" are concerned, I would like to set the record straight. After September 11, the president of Armenia himself went on record viciously opposing any modification of Section 907. At the same time, a high-ranking Armenian delegation was dispatched to Washington to enforce this position.
We do welcome the Bush administration's engagement in the process of peaceful settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, and the congressional decision to provide the president with authority to waive 907 is an important step toward making this engagement truly unbiased. That is precisely the sort of U.S. involvement in world affairs that is needed to counter the aggressive separatism that, merged with international terrorism, threatens to destroy our values and way of life.
Finally, with respect to both Armenian-Azerbaijani and Turkish-Armenian relations, I believe the only way to settle these kinds of disputes is to look to the future, not appeal to what took place or is claimed to have taken place in the past.
HAFIZ PASHAYEV Ambassador Embassy of Azerbaijan Washington
----
Yugoslav army chief to stay
December 28, 2001
Agence France-Press
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011228-84163832.htm
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - President Vojislav Kostunica said yesterday he had refused the resignation of the Yugoslav army's chief of staff, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, despite pressure from his coalition partners and the international community.
"He offered to withdraw, but I asked him to stay because of [army] reforms, which he has initiated and created," Mr. Kostunica told reporters.
Gen. Pavkovic, a top Yugoslav general named to the post by former strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who is awaiting trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague on charges relating to the wars in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia in the 1990s, has kept his position ever since.
He led the third army that controlled Kosovo during the war in the southern Serbian province, which has been under U.N. administration since June 1999.
Mr. Kostunica's partners in his ruling coalition have demanded that Gen. Pavkovic be removed.
Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic said "it will be impossible for Yugoslavia to join NATO's Partnership for Peace program as long as Pavkovic is the army chief of staff," Beta news agency reported.
Some international officials have indicated that Gen. Pavkovic should not keep the post, linking him to atrocities committed in Kosovo during the Milosevic era.
Meanwhile, Mr. Kostunica yesterday called for talks with Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova about the future of the Serbian province.
Mr. Kostunica said he already had invited Mr. Rugova for talks after taking office in October last year following Mr. Milosevic's ouster, but added, "Now I can renew this call, convinced that this is the best solution."
The U.N. mission and the NATO-led peacekeepers "will not stay forever in Kosovo," Mr. Kostunica told a press conference.
But "Serbs and Albanians will and that is why the solution [for Kosovo] should be found in their mutual accord, no matter how painstaking the road is," he added.
Mr. Rugova, whose Democratic League of Kosovo won the largest number of seats in parliamentary elections Nov. 17, is the only candidate for the post of Kosovo president.
-------- india
INTERNATIONAL
India and Pakistan Exchange Shelling in Kashmir
December 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Pakistan.html
NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- Indian and Pakistani troops shelled each other in disputed Kashmir overnight, and the Indian army ordered the evacuation Friday of some 20,000 villagers from the border, raising fears of war.
Pakistan told the United States that the possibility of war with India may reduce its ability to support the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, senior military and diplomatic officials said. Pakistan may have to move soldiers to the Indian frontier from the Afghan border, where they are currently hunting followers of Osama bin Laden, the officials said.
President Bush said Friday that his administration was ``working actively to bring some calm in the region, to hopefully convince both sides to stop the escalation of force.''
The two nuclear-armed neighbors on Thursday exchanged diplomatic and economic sanctions seen as the toughest since they last fought a war in 1971. Tensions have surged since a Dec. 13 suicide attack on India's parliament that left nine Indians and five attackers dead. India accuses Pakistan of supporting the attack and demands it crack down on two Islamic militant groups. Pakistan denied the charges.
Speaking at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bush praised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying he had arrested militants and was ``responding forcefully.'' He added, ``I hope India takes note of that.''
Pakistan, a key ally for the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, told Washington through official channels on Friday that it may need to move troops from the Afghan to the Indian border, a senior Pakistani diplomatic official said. A senior army official confirmed the report. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity and did not say how many troops might be transferred
Islamabad warned that India's build-up of troops at the border could make a confrontation inevitable. ``The Indian government is putting itself into a corner where it would be difficult for them to now back off,'' said Gen. Rashid Quereshi, spokesman for Pakistan's military-led government.
Bush said Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to both sides Friday, urging restraint. The State Department urged the leaders of the two countries to come to an understanding at a South Asia summit in Nepal on Jan. 4-6.
Among the sanctions each country imposed was a ban on overflights by the other's planes. India's Foreign Ministry said Friday the government would make an exception to its ban to allow Musharraf to fly through its airspace to attend the Nepal summit.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is also to attend the summit, but India has not said if the two leaders will meet.
The armies fired mortars at each other for five hours Thursday night in the Poonch sector along the cease-fire line that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, an Indian army official said on condition of anonymity. The exchanges died down Friday morning, he said. There was no immediate comment from Pakistan.
The Indian army told some 20,000 people in more than 40 villages in Kashmir to leave their homes within 36 hours, officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Friday. The army had already warned about 10,000 people in 24 villages near the Pakistani border to move.
Villagers in Indian-ruled Kashmir fled their homes with cots and clothes, saying they fear India and Pakistan will go to war for the fourth time since they became independent from Britain and were separated in 1947.
``The war is about to break out,'' said Sumitra Devi, an elderly woman sheltering with her sons and grandsons at a dilapidated school at Koota in Jammu-Kashmir state.
Devi's house was demolished in the 1971 war with Pakistan, and she said she was already packed Thursday when soldiers came to her village, Mangoo Chak, and told people to evacuate.
Tens of thousands of soldiers, squadrons of fighter jets, artillery and ballistic missiles face each other along the 1,100-mile border. Both sides say they don't want war, but each says it is ready.
In the mutual sanctions announced Thursday, India and Pakistan each ordered half the other's embassy staffs sent home, as well as the overflight ban.
Since Indian planes already avoided Pakistani airspace, the flight ban -- due to come into effect Tuesday -- hurts Pakistan more. Pakistan International Airlines said Friday it would cancel 12 flights a week to India and reroute 13 others to Asian destinations because they use Indian airspace. No details on the economic cost were available.
Like two of the neighbors' wars, the current tensions have their roots in Kashmir, a mostly Muslim province divided between Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan but claimed by both.
India accuses Pakistan of fomenting violence in its part of Kashmir, where Islamic guerrillas have waged a separatist war that has killed tens of thousands of people since 1989. Pakistan denies the charge and calls it an indigenous struggle.
India demands Pakistan shut down and extradite the leaders of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, two militant groups fighting in Kashmir that it accuses in the Parliament attack. Pakistan says it will take action against the anyone whose involvement in the attack is proven.
Pakistan has frozen assets of the groups and arrested members of Jaish-e-Mohammed, but India has said the moves are only cosmetic.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Munir Ahmad in Lahore, Pakistan, and Binoo Joshi in Koota, Jammu-Kashmir contributed to this report.
-------- indonesia
Fighting in Indonesia kills 16 this week
Briefly
Washington Times
December 28, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011228-728138.htm
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Fighting in Indonesia's rebellious Aceh province has left at least 16 persons dead this week, officials said yesterday.
Lt. Col. Supartodi said his troops shot dead four rebels during an ambush in Beungga village in eastern Aceh on Monday. Abu Razak, a guerrilla spokesman, confirmed the deaths in a telephone interview.
Government troops also killed eight insurgents in clashes Tuesday and Wednesday, said Maj. Zaenal Mutaqin, a military spokesman.
The separatists, however, said those victims were civilians forced by military officers to guide them in searches for rebel bases.
Yesterday, a government official and three rebels were killed in separate clashes in northern Aceh, Maj. Mutaqin said.
At least 1,300 people have died from violence in the oil- and gas-rich province on the northern tip of Sumatra island this year.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Soldiers Kill Palestinian Suicide Bomber
December 28, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A Palestinian suicide bomber tried to carry out an attack in Gaza on Friday, the Israeli military said, the first such attempt since Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called for an end to attacks earlier this month.
Meanwhile, in a sign of easing tension in the West Bank, Israel lifted its blockade around Bethlehem as a Christmas gesture early Friday, but kept a ban on Arafat entering the biblical town despite international protests.
The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which has not promised to abide by Arafat's call for a cease-fire, took responsibility for Friday's bombing attempt in a fax sent to The Associated Press in Beirut.
The Israeli military said the Palestinian attacker, carrying an assault rifle and an anti-tank missile, approached Israeli forces near the Netzarim junction in central Gaza. Soldiers shot and killed him, and found that he was wearing an explosives belt that did not detonate. Palestinian security officials had no comment.
On Dec. 16, Arafat called for an end to attacks against Israelis, saying he has always denounced suicide bombings. In response, the militant Hamas announced it was suspending suicide attacks in Israel but would continue targeting Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza.
In its statement Friday, Jihad vowed to ``continue with Jihad (holy war) and resistance, using all means and in any part of our nation Palestine, until the occupation ends.''
The body of Tsion Ohana, an Israeli missing for 11 days, was found Friday in a West Bank cave, police said. Israel's West Bank police commander, Shahar Ayalon, said three Palestinians were directly involved in the killing, and it was apparently a criminal and not a terrorist assault. He said the Palestinians sold Ohana's car the day of the killing.
Around Bethlehem Friday, Israeli soldiers opened roadblocks, allowing Palestinians to enter and leave freely for the first time in weeks, witnesses said. However, they were not allowed to enter Jerusalem, a few miles away. Palestinians without special permits are still banned from the city.
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said that Israel was lifting the blockade around Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, to ease access to holy sites during the Christmas season.
The roadblocks have choked off West Bank Palestinian towns through most of the 15 months of Palestinian-Israeli fighting.
The Israelis say the restrictions are necessary to keep militant attackers out of Israel, and tightened the closures earlier this month after a series of Palestinian suicide bomb attacks. Palestinians charge that the restrictions, which have ruined their economy, are collective punishment and pressure.
On Wednesday, Israeli troops lifted the blockade around Jericho, a Palestinian town in the Jordan River valley.
Though restrictions around Bethlehem were lifted, Israel said Arafat would still not be allowed to visit the town.
Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said Arafat would not be permitted to take part in Orthodox Christmas observances in Bethlehem on Jan. 6. Israel banned Arafat from Latin Christmas celebrations this week, setting off a wave of international criticism.
Arafat has been marooned at his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah since an Israeli air strike destroyed his helicopters on Dec. 3 in response to the suicide bombings.
Gissin said he would not be allowed to leave Ramallah until he arrests the assassins of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, gunned down in Jerusalem on Oct. 17.
In 15 months of violence, 851 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and 242 on the Israeli side.
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon assured critics in his right-wing Likud Party that he, and not moderate Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, will manage future peace negotiations with the Palestinians. ``When the day comes for peace talks, I will run them,'' Sharon said.
Peres has been holding informal talks with Palestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qureia, a key negotiator. They have been discussing a framework for a possible peace deal in which Israel's recognition of a Palestinian state would be a first step, officials on both sides said.
The two sides remain far apart on the dimensions of such a state and hopes for progress are slim, but Sharon has nonetheless come under fire from his hard-line constituents for not stopping the Peres-Qureia contacts.
Asked about the talks in an interview on Fox TV broadcast Friday, Arafat said, ``We are ready to be very positive if they offer something concrete.''
Sharon insisted that there can be no peace negotiations before all violence stops. But he added, ``The contacts can continue on a specific issue to aid us in reaching an end to terrorism and to a cease-fire.''
-------- japan
Sinking Renews Debate on Japan's Military
Critics Doubt Legality of Stopping, Firing at Suspected North Korean Vessel
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 28, 2001; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32771-2001Dec27?language=printer
TOKYO, Dec. 27 -- Opposition politicians and military analysts are questioning whether the Japanese coast guard acted properly in trying to stop a suspected North Korean boat and repeatedly firing on it outside Japan's territorial waters Saturday. The ship exploded and sank, and its estimated 15 crew members died.
North Korea has denied the ship was its property and the Japanese government has been thrown on the defensive by questions as to why the vessel was tracked for more than a day before it went down in waters inside Chinese jurisdiction.
In addition, some critics in Japan are questioning whether the coast guard had the jurisdiction to use force to interdict the ship, and why none of its crewmen was picked up alive.
"It is extremely doubtful if use of weapons on the open sea is within Japanese policy," Sekisuke Nakanishi, a Social Democratic Party official, said in demanding parliamentary hearings on the incident. "The shooting was outside Japan's territorial waters and outside the authority of the coast guard law."
The incident, which won initial public approval, has become the focus of debate over the governing party's desire to expand Japan's military powers. This fall, the government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi sent Japanese naval vessels to the Indian Ocean to aid the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan and got new anti-terrorism legislation passed. Critics have suggested that with the suspect ship, the government was too quick to show its willingness to use military force.
"The problems begin when we do not act on legal frameworks, but on political decisions," said retired vice admiral Kazuo Sakairi, a former chief of staff of the Japanese navy and now an adjunct fellow at the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We have to remember our history" in which the military led Japan into World War II, he said.
Koizumi said the incident proved the need for easing the strict rules on the use of weapons by Japanese forces, and has called for changes in laws that have bound those forces since the war. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda this week criticized the rules that restrict Japanese forces to defensive use of firepower.
"If we don't suffer casualties when we are shot at, does this mean we can't do anything?" he said.
The unidentified ship sank after an exchange of gunfire Saturday night, more than 29 hours after it was sighted by a patrol plane. At first sighting, the ship was outside of Japan's territorial waters but within a 200-mile boundary claimed by Japan as its Exclusive Economic Zone .
Tokyo has suggested the ship was a North Korean spy ship or was smuggling drugs, citing debris that had Korean writing and a profile that fit other North Korean ships. But the government has acknowledged the proof is inconclusive and the ship's identity still is undetermined.
After four days of silence, North Korea said Wednesday the claim was "sheer rumor." The official Korean Central News Agency said the sinking of the ship was "nothing but brutal piracy and unpardonable terrorism" committed by "samurais of Japan in defiance of international laws."
Japanese authorities said the coast guard attempted to stop the ship, which by some accounts resembled a fishing vessel, to determine if it was fishing in the Japanese exclusive economic zone. Maritime law allows Japan to enforce its fishing regulations in that zone, they said.
When the ship refused to stop and would not identify itself, a chase began that took it out of the Japanese zone and into waters claimed by China as its exclusive economic zone. During the chase, the coast guard said it fired more than 500 rounds it called "warning shots," but said some hit the hull of the fleeing ship.
Around 10 p.m., as the vessel was hemmed by four Japanese coast guard ships, crewmen on the vessel opened fire with small arms and at one point in the exchange allegedly fired hand-held rockets. Three Japanese sailors were slightly wounded. The Japanese ships opened fire with machine guns and an explosion sank the ship.
Authorities say they do not know if the explosion was caused by the gunfire, or if the ship was deliberately scuttled to avoid capture, a known North Korean practice. Crewmen were seen in the water, but the coast guard retrieved only two bodies.
"I have a big question about the failure to rescue those crewmen, or if they were considered suspects, the failure to arrest them alive," said Gabriel Nakamori, an independent military analyst. "I think the coast guard did not do enough to try."
Japanese authorities have suggested the crewmen may have poisoned themselves to avoid capture, another practice said to be standard for North Korean infiltrators. The Japanese government is considering performing autopsies on the two bodies it has retrieved.
Koro Bessho, an aide to Koizumi, said Japan was "following legal procedures" when it pursued the ship. "There is a right to pursuit," he said. "It didn't listen to calls to halt. The Japanese authorities chasing had a right to physically make it stop."
But Nakanishi, the member of parliament from the opposition party, said: "The legal basis that allows shooting on a ship in the open sea is extremely vague." New powers requested by Koizumi and approved in November by parliament allow Japanese ships to use firepower, but only within the country's territorial waters, he said.
Sakairi, the retired vice admiral, said Japan has adopted a tougher policy following an incursion by two suspected North Korean spy vessels in 1999. Those ships outraced Japanese patrol boats, causing considerable consternation in Japan. "It's clear that since the 1999 incident, Japan has changed her attitude and said it will never happen again without a punishing blow," he said.
Yoichi Toda, a coast guard spokesman, said the force has "police authority" to stop boats to investigate suspected crimes, including smuggling of drugs or humans. "Because the other party is committing a crime by not answering questions, we are allowed to use weapons," he said. "This is Japanese law. As to international law, it's not written anywhere, so it's not a problem."
Richard J. McLaughlin, a maritime law specialist at the University of Mississippi School of Law, said countries have "a legal right to try to prevent [intruders] from fishing" in their exclusive economic zones, but he said there "is no customary rule or international law" describing what force, if any, can be taken in the enforcement.
-------- nato
Attacks bring old foes together
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 28, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011228-114920.htm
NATO, having spent most of the past five decades trying to contain Russia as a military threat, now finds itself struggling to contain its own enthusiasm for Russia as a partner.
Pivoting on the terrorist attacks of a single morning in September, relations between Russia and the West have undergone a profound transformation marked by unprecedented diplomatic gestures, close cooperation in the war in Afghanistan and intense discussions on an expansion of Moscow's role in the 19-nation NATO alliance.
The year began with a string of confrontations over spies, missile treaties and human rights between the incoming Bush administration and the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It ends with Mr. Putin spending the night at Mr. Bush's Texas ranch while providing crucial diplomatic cover and logistical support for the U.S.-led military force in the hills of Afghanistan.
The shift represents, in the words of the Texas-based Stratfor private intelligence service, "the most consistent reversal of Russian foreign policy since the Soviet breakup, if not the 1917 [Bolshevik] revolution."
With much of the world's attention focused on the military campaign in Afghanistan, NATO officials in Brussels have been contemplating a major upgrade in relations with Russia - the country the alliance was formed to combat 52 years ago.
"In the past, we were divided by fences, walls, ideologies and weapons," NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said in an interview with the Russian newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta last month. "Today, the threat to the Russian people is similar to the threats that the peoples of the NATO countries are dealing with.
"International terrorism has been transformed into global terrorism," said Mr. Robertson. "Why should we solve the problems separately?"
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow, who formerly served as U.S. representative to NATO, said: "I believe that the NATO allies, as they tackle new threats such as terrorism, will be increasingly prepared to engage Russia as a full and equal partner. This would mean working with Russia from the earliest stage - that is, before NATO members have taken their own decision."
For his part, Mr. Putin insists he is "not asking for any indulgence" as he seeks a greater role for Russia in NATO's decision-making councils.
"We are simply drawing the attention of our partners to the simple fact that it is in their interests to treat Russia as an equal partner," he said in an interview with the London-based Financial Times earlier this month.
"The earlier our partners come to understand this logic, the better it will be both for ourselves and for our partners. And in pursuing these policies, we do not at any time prejudice the national security interests of Russia," Mr. Putin maintained.
Even the Bush administration's decision earlier this month to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty - widely predicted by arms-control advocates and nervous European governments to sour relations with Moscow - has been taken largely in stride by the Kremlin.
Mr. Putin called the ABM decision "a mistake," but added: "We have no intention of raising any anti-American hysteria."
New challenge for NATO
The changed landscape presents a major navigational challenge for NATO, which faces several major decisions in the coming year.
In May, foreign ministers of the 19-nation alliance will meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, to consider whether to endorse proposals to give Moscow a more formal role in NATO councils in such key areas as counterterrorism, nonproliferation, European missile defense and civil emergencies.
Since 1997, Russia-NATO relations have been managed through the so-called "Joint Permanent Council," but the Kremlin has long complained the JPC gives it only a limited, reactive role to positions already adopted by NATO members. Relations plummeted after NATO's 1999 air war in Kosovo, a campaign bitterly opposed by the government of President Boris Yeltsin.
The proposed new NATO body, building on a proposal by British Prime Minister Tony Blair last month, would give Moscow a much greater say on certain issues, although NATO officials were quick to insist that Russia would not join NATO or take part in the alliance's integrated military command.
And NATO leaders will gather in Prague in November for a critical summit whose high point is expected to be the issuing of invitations to up to 10 Eastern and Central European states to join the alliance. Those invited are now widely expected to include the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, a move that has long been bitterly opposed by leading Kremlin strategists.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov revealed last week that NATO will be opening a military liaison office in Russia in May.
Chill turns warm
The warmth of Russia-NATO relations at the end of the year is in distinct contrast to the chill at the beginning, when pointed disagreements between Moscow and the new Republican administration led many to speculate about a revival of old Cold War animosities.
Mr. Bush came to power criticizing the Clinton administration's dealings with Moscow, saying during the campaign that Mr. Clinton had relied too heavily on his personal relationship with former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and overlooked many Russian failings.
The State Department bluntly criticized Russia's military campaign in the breakaway republic of Chechnya and slammed Moscow for muzzling critics in the press.
New National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, the administration's top Russia expert, said in an interview in January that Russia "constitutes a threat to the West in general" and to the United States' "European allies in particular."
Mr. Bush's staunch backing for a defensive missile shield not only upset Russian military strategists. His oft-stated intention to junk the ABM deal and downgrade Russia's role in U.S. military foreign policy struck at deep-seated fears in the Kremlin about Russia's loss of superpower status with the collapse of the Soviet empire.
Relations took a nose dive in February when U.S. investigators charged FBI official Robert Hanssen with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia for more than a decade. The Bush administration expelled 50 Russian diplomats in protest and Mr. Putin answered in kind, the largest such tit-for-tat expulsions since the Cold War.
Mr. Putin, for his part, railed against a "unipolar" - meaning U.S.-dominated - world in a series of trips to European and Asian capitals. In July, amid much pomp and ceremony, Mr. Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin signed a "friendship and cooperation treaty" with distinct anti-Washington undertones.
The atmosphere improved somewhat when Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin appeared to establish a personal rapport at their first face-to-face meeting in Slovenia in June.
"I was able to get a sense of his soul," Mr. Bush said in remarks that startled his own advisers. Mr. Putin "is a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country."
Prophetically, Mr. Putin at the Slovenia joint press conference produced a recently declassified Soviet letter, written in 1954, inquiring about membership in NATO. The request, Mr. Putin noted, was summarily dismissed by France, Britain and the United States at the time as "completely unrealistic."
But it was the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that provided the true turning point.
Crisis brings change
President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell have repeatedly noted that Mr. Putin was the first world leader to call the American president after the hijacked planes slammed into their targets September 11.
Mr. Putin offered Russian support for the United States and said he was calling off an ongoing military exercise to avoid any confusion in the chaotic aftermath of the attacks. He offered intelligence and security assistance to the emerging U.S.-led counterterrorism effort.
Perhaps most critically, the Russian president overruled his own defense minister and said Moscow would not object to the use of former Soviet states in Central Asia such as Uzbekistan as a staging ground for the U.S. military campaign. Russian strategists have long viewed those states as part of the country's natural sphere of influence.
The support has not been cost-free for the West.
In addition to contemplating a larger role for Russia in NATO, Western nations have toned down criticisms of Mr. Putin's internal rule, notably in Chechnya, which Russian officials insist is an integral part of the militant Islamist threat posed by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on a visit to Moscow shortly after the September 11 attacks: "Regarding Chechnya, there will be and must be a more differentiated evaluation in world opinion."
The Bush administration has also pledged to work to expand the market for Russian goods here and back Moscow's bid to join the World Trade Organization.
Speed or haste?
The warming of relations has come so quickly that there are voices both in Russia and the West who fear things have gone too fast.
In Moscow, leading analysts say Mr. Putin has decisively cast his fate with the West and faces grave political dangers if his offers are not reciprocated.
"Putin has clearly made a long-term decision to westernize Russia," wrote defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer in the Moscow Times earlier this month. "If this pro-Western drive is rejected, will there be another chance?"
Sergei Rogov, director of the Moscow-based USA and Canada Institute, argued Russia has a right to expect a lot in return for its actions since September 11.
"I don't think it is an overestimation to say that Russia's assistance - political, military, technical and intelligence - to the U.S. war against bin Laden is no less important than the support provided by all the NATO countries taken together, Britain excepted," Mr. Rogov said in a recent interview.
"We should use this opportunity to formalize the breakthrough achieved at the top political level in practical agreements and treaties, in new mechanisms of collaboration," he said.
But U.S. officials have been quick to say that enhanced NATO-Russia relations will not undermine the alliance's ability to act in its own interests.
NATO's 19 members "will retain [their] prerogative to act independently on any issue," Mr. Powell said in Brussels earlier this month, even as the decision to create a more powerful new joint council with Russia was being made.
But suspicions run deep among the Central and Eastern European nations that have been clamoring for years to join NATO, in large part because of their long-standing distrust of Moscow.
"One must be very cautious in these matters," said Martin Palous, the Czech Republic ambassador to the United States. "National interests will always remain on the map."
He recalled the compromises made when the United States and Britain enlisted Stalin as an ally in the fight to defeat Hitler.
"No historical analogy is ever exact," Mr. Palous said, "but our predecessors made their mistakes in assembling previous grand coalitions to fight a particular evil and we should not repeat those mistakes."
Latvian Foreign Minister Indulis Berzins said he hopes his country can join NATO next year and hopes that NATO will be worth joining. An effective Russian veto over key security decisions could jeopardize that, he said.
"We want to be part of a strong NATO, not just a place where people talk and talk," he said.
Veteran U.S. strategists such as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski have also warned of the danger to NATO of allowing Russia a major role in the alliance.
Even the modest, circumscribed role seen for Russia in NATO councils could prove dangerous, Mr. Kissinger recently wrote.
"NATO is, and remains, basically a military alliance, part of whose purpose is the protection of Europe against Russian invasion," according to Mr. Kissinger. "To couple NATO expansion with even partial Russian membership in NATO is, in a sense, merging two incompatible courses of action."
For now, both sides insist that NATO can improve ties with Moscow without undermining its core functions - what's been called the "bear's nose under the tent" trap.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in Brussels earlier this month: "Nobody, and I am speaking of the Russian position in particular, intends to create a new format with a view to torpedoing joint action."
The Pentagon has been more skeptical of the idea, but appears ready to move ahead with its old enemy.
Saying he could not predict how the relationship would evolve, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last week in Brussels: "Our goal should be to find concrete ways for NATO to work together with Russia where our interests coincide while preserving NATO's ability to work independently."
He added: "No country should be treated as a de facto member of the alliance or given privileges that are otherwise denied to NATO aspirants."
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan dims hopes for diffusing standoff
12/28/2001
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=28122001-021735-9571r
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- The chief military spokesman for Islamabad on Friday dimmed hopes for a peaceful way out of Pakistan's latest standoff with neighboring India, saying he doubted whether the beefed-up Indian forces eyeballing the Pakistani army at the border would "back off."
"A certain momentum is established by these deployments and these continued concentration of forces close to the borders," Gen. Rashid Quereshi said. "It seems that the Indian government is putting itself into a corner where I think it is going to be difficult for them to now back off."
Quereshi spoke to reporters as tensions continued to mount along India and Pakistan's shared frontier, where both countries over the last 15 days have increased an already large number of forces in the area in anticipation of military clashes.
The military buildup by both sides at the borde