------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Reactor project in N. Korea to be delayed by 6 yrs
Missile Defense: The Untold Story
U.K. report: Al Qaida worked on nuke bomb
Scientists confirm bin Laden weapons tests

MILITARY
Kabul Asks U.S. to End Bombing
U.S. Forces Facing Long Afghan Stay, President Asserts
'Dirty War' Figure Faces Extradition
18 Indian troops killed in landmine mishap
Bin Laden search, al-Qaeda interrogation shifts to Pakistan
India, Pakistan fire along borders
Pakistan Moves Against Groups Named by India
'New' U.S. War: Commandos, Airstrikes and Allies on the Ground

POLICE / PRISONERS
US tribunals to allow hearsay in terrorist trials
Pakistani Police Make Weapons Seizure
Argentines Protest Banking Limits

ENERGY AND OTHER
IMF to re-examine policy on bailouts

ACTIVISTS
Mideast Peace Activists Join Forces



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- korea

Reactor project in N. Korea to be delayed by 6 yrs: paper

From: "Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@EARTHLINK.NET>
Sat, 29 Dec 2001
Kyodo News

TOKYO, Dec. 29 - Construction work on two light-water reactors in North Korea will be delayed for around six years and will be completed in 2009 at the earliest, a Japanese daily reported Saturday, quoting Japanese government sources close to the project.

Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), a New York-based international consortium established to carry out the project, informally conveyed the delay to North Korea, but Pyongyang has expressed strong opposition to it and has demanded compensation, the Tokyo Shimbun quoted the sources as saying.

The first reactor was initially planned to be completed by 2003 and the second the following year under the $4.6 billion project, based on a 1994 pact between North Korea and the United States.

Under the agreement, Pyongyang agreed to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear development program, suspected of being used for nuclear weapons production, in return for the reactors.

According to the Tokyo Shimbun, North Korea also expressed its intention to restart its nuclear development program which it had frozen.

Japan was set to contribute $1 billion for the construction of the reactors, but with the delay in the KEDO project, it is expected that Japan's financial contribution will increase, according to the paper.

Coordination over the financing will be difficult for Japan, however, following a recent incident in which an unidentified ship, most likely a North Korean spy vessel, sank in the East China Sea after a shoot-out with Japanese patrol boats, according to the paper.

The delay in the project is due to North Korea's withdrawal of its workers involved in the construction of the reactors after the KEDO rejected demands to raise the workers' pay, the paper added.

-------- missile defense

Missile Defense: The Untold Story

New York Times
December 29, 2001
By BILL KELLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/29/opinion/29KELL.html

In the nearly 40-year fight over building weapons to shoot down incoming missiles, the proponents have generally fallen into two camps, the dreamers and the schemers.

When the idea of missile defense had its most celebrated moment under President Reagan, the dreamers - including the president and the renowned nuclear scientist Edward Teller - seemed convinced that we could be made invulnerable against nuclear weapons. The more cynical camp - including the national security adviser, Robert McFarlane, and the military assistant to the secretary of defense, Colin Powell - saw an impregnable defense as a pipe dream, but also a useful bargaining chip. It wouldn't stop a nuclear strike, but it would worry the Soviet military planners, and make it easier to drive a favorable deal in arms control talks.

That time around, the schemers had it right. The impermeable superdome was a technological fantasy, and one that could have bankrupted the national treasury. Even if it had worked, it would have been dangerous, because it would have encouraged the illusion that we could win a nuclear war. The prospect of an American missile defense system did, however, help goad the Soviets into mutual cuts in our nuclear arsenals.

Now, too, there are dreamers and schemers. The dreamers, possibly including the president, embrace missile defense at face value, as something that will make us safer in our beds. Such a system, they assert, will protect us against a terrorist with a ballistic missile, an accidental launch from the aging Russian arsenal, or a rogue state bent on demolishing an American city. The public debate so far has been almost entirely about this dream of missile defense, which - because it aims to stop a small flock of missiles rather than Russia's thousands - is technologically more plausible than what President Reagan had in mind.

The schemer agenda, on the other hand, is about nuclear strategy, a forbidding subject framed in arcane and speculative language that tends to scare off laymen. But let's see if we amateurs can get our heads around it.

The concept at the heart of nuclear strategy is deterrence, which means that our ability to obliterate the enemy prevents him from doing something rash. It is generally accepted that our nuclear strength deterred the Soviet Union from raining nuclear warheads on America. But preventing Armageddon was not the main purpose of our nuclear forces. The foremost purpose was to stop the Soviet Union from sending its superior non-nuclear armies into Western Europe. By deliberately leaving open the possibility that we would go nuclear if Soviet tanks crossed the Fulda Gap into West Germany, we deterred the Soviets from beginning a conventional war in Europe. Would we in fact have risked decimating the planet to save Europe? Maybe not, but the Soviets could never be sure.

The schemers in the current debate fear that any nation with a few nuclear weapons can do to us what we did to the Soviets - deter us from projecting our vastly superior conventional forces into the world. This could mean Iraq or North Korea or Iran, but it most importantly means China. The real logic of missile defense, to these advocates, is not to defend but to protect our freedom to attack.

There was a funny misfire of a debate about deterrence earlier this year. President Bush, arguing the need for missile defense, suggested that a rogue state might not be restrained by the fear of nuclear annihilation, the way the Soviet Union was. Critics pounced gleefully: wouldn't North Korea or Iraq be deterred from launching an unprovoked attack, just as the Soviet Union was, by the certain knowledge that we could reduce them to molten rubble? Well, sure they would. Unless we happened to have our tank divisions parked at the outskirts of their capital, prepared to move in. Under those circumstances, even a semi-rational megalomaniac like Saddam Hussein might just decide to launch whatever he had. Or, more to the point, we couldn't be quite sure he wouldn't. If Saddam had possessed a nuclear missile in 1991, could we have persuaded such a broad coalition to drive him from Kuwait? Or, if the Taliban had a single missile capable of pulverizing Washington, would we have been so quick to go into Afghanistan?

You won't hear President Bush saying so, but the scenario that preoccupies many of those in and around the Pentagon is this one: Taiwan decides to risk a climactic break with mainland China. The mainland responds with a military tantrum. America would like to defend the island democracy against the Communist giant - but we are backed down by hints that Beijing cares enough about this issue to launch nuclear missiles. American voters may or may not support a conventional war for Taiwanese independence; they're much less likely to support one that risks the obliteration of our cities. Ah, but if we have an insurance policy, a battery of anti-missile weapons sufficient (in theory) to neutralize China's two dozen nuclear missiles, we would feel freer to go to war over Taiwan.

"The logic of missile defense is to make the stakes of power projection compatible with the risks of power projection," says Keith B. Payne, a deterrence theory expert and an ardent supporter of missile defense. Missile defense, in other words, is not about defense. It's about offense.

This debate about missile defense is one we're not having. The schemer rationale exists mostly between the lines. It is implicit in documents no mere citizen reads, like the Quadrennial Defense Review, and encoded in speeches. There is little frank discussion of it in publications for non-specialists. (One exception is the right- wing National Review, whose editor, Richard Lowry, has articulated the force projection rationale clearly.)

Why is everyone being so coy about this?

For one thing, the dreamers' just-plain-defense argument is easier to grasp, and much easier to market. In principle it's hard to argue that a system that could shoot down a rogue missile or two would be a bad thing to have. Even liberals are buying into it. Their reservations are framed almost entirely as variations on: Is it worth the cost? Can we afford the money to make the thing work? Is it a better value than the alternatives? Is it worth the political angst of withdrawing from the ABM treaty?

Personally, if missile defense is about defense, I can imagine better ways to spend $100 billion. Defending our porous seaports against a nuclear device in a tugboat or shipping container seems like a more urgent investment. And if we're really worried about an accidental launch from a decaying Russian missile command center, we might revive a bright idea the physicist Sherman Frankel developed a decade ago - retrofitting nuclear missiles, ours and theirs, with devices so they could be disarmed and destroyed after a mistaken launch. (Incredibly, civilian rockets have post-launch destruct devices, but not nuclear missiles.) But after Sept. 11, the public is less likely to quibble over priorities and cost-benefit analysis. If it makes us feel safe, the mood is, buy it.

The schemers' agenda, on the other hand, makes a more complicated and uncomfortable debate, because it raises the question of whether missile defense might, in fact, make the world less safe. "Force projection" has an unpleasant, bellicose ring to it. It also drives the Chinese up the wall. There are already plenty of hawks in China who believe we have a long- range strategy to "contain" it - and the force projection rationale tends to suggest they are right.

Arguing that we need missile defense to assure we can take the battle to the nuclear-armed bad guys opens up two ticklish lines of discussion.

One is whether missile defense makes it likelier we will get into a war that is not essential to our national interests, or that we will move more easily from containing bad regimes to ousting them, and whether as part of such a conflict we may find ourselves playing nuclear chicken.

The other is whether missile defense might lead to a new arms-building competition. If it is true that China cares enough about Taiwan to threaten nuclear war - that is, if China's ability to deter us with nuclear weapons really matters to Chinese leaders - then it stands to reason they will work hard to protect their deterrent. However they do that, by manufacturing more missiles or putting multiple warheads on each launcher or by a shift in strategy, a Chinese buildup may well influence the behavior of China's wary nuclear neighbor India. What India does in turn alarms its nuclear neighbor Pakistan. If you're following the news, you know that India and Pakistan are at this moment on the verge of war.

Strategic planners have a technical expression for this kind of discussion. It's called a can of worms.

-------- terrorism

U.K. report: Al Qaida worked on nuke bomb

December 29, 2001
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/29122001-082604-9294r.htm

LONDON, Dec. 29 -- Scientists studying seized documents have concluded that accused terrorist leader Osama bin Laden's al Qaida organization has tried to develop a range of weapons that include a "dirty" nuclear bomb, The Times newspaper in London reported Saturday.

The publication said the scientists had learned that al Qaida also was working on a way to produce botulin poison in batches strong enough to kill 2,000 people at a time and on chemical weapons "that would kill thousands of people."

The Times report said the "unnerving revelations" were the conclusions scientists reached after examination of documents that the newspaper's own reporters had found in abandoned al Qaida houses in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, last month.

It said hundreds of pages of photocopied, handwritten and printed material in a mixture of Arabic, Urdu, Persia, Mandarin, Russian and English had been sent to British-based professional translators with scientific qualifications and to experts in the field of weapons of mass destruction.

The scientists said the documents confirmed that al Qaida cells were examining materials for use in making a low-grade, "dirty" nuclear device and that they had an "understanding" of bomb-related electronic circuitry to make it work, the report said.

One scientist, British nuclear consultant John Large, told the newspaper that while the organization could not have made a large-scale missile or nuclear device, "it was obviously prepared to consider the use of such weapons, so that if it could not manufacture such for itself then, given the opportunity, it would acquire such for use."

The Times said that "among other atrocities, al Qaida was studying how to produce botulin in batches strong enough to kill 2,000 people" and that the documents discussed how to create an explosion using 500 kilograms of TNT.

"Similarly," the report said, "al Qaida's plans were drawn up with large-scale production in mind. Each recipe contained a step-by-step guide explaining how to produce batches that would kill thousands of people."

The Times said the documents showed that bin Laden's experts "had gone so far as to manufacture and test certain types of chemical weapons on rabbits, including cyanide gas, which was used by (Iraqi leader) Saddam Hussein to kill hundreds of Kurds ... in 1988."

The newspaper said the "breadth and detail of al Qaida's aspirations have taken the security services by surprise," and it quoted one intelligence expert as saying that "what we can see is the work of different, potentially self-replicating cells, united only by an ideal."

"They will be far more difficult to extinguish than a centrally organized terrorist force," the intelligence source said.

----

Scientists confirm bin Laden weapons tests

BY ANTHONY LOYD, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT OF THE YEAR,
SATURDAY DECEMBER 29 2001
The Times (UK)
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001570019-2001603346,00.html

OSAMA BIN LADEN and his terrorist organisation were not only investigating the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons against the West, they had conducted preliminary experiments on animals.

These unnerving revelations are the conclusion of detailed examination of documents discovered by The Times in abandoned al-Qaeda houses in Kabul last month.

The documents, which have been translated in full, prove that among other atrocities, al-Qaeda was studying how to produce botulin poison in batches strong enough to kill 2,000 people.

The hundreds of pages of photocopied, handwritten and printed matter were in a mixture of Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Mandarin, Russian and English. They came from a number of al-Qaeda houses in the Afghan capital a day after it fell to Northern Alliance forces on November 13.

Samples were photographed and sent to British-based professional translators with scientific qualifications, and to experts in the field of weapons of mass destruction, including John Large, a British nuclear consultant.

They confirm that al-Qaeda cells were examining materials to make a low-grade, "dirty" nuclear device; they had an understanding of bomb-related electronic circuitry to a level that matched, and in some areas exceeded, that of the Provisional IRA's experts; they were investigating "supergun" theories; and they were training terrorist units to assassinate Middle Eastern leaders sympathetic to the West.

According to Mr Large, while the organisation would not have been able to make a large-scale missile or nuclear device from the documents found, "it was obviously prepared to consider the use of such weapons, so that if it could not manufacture such for itself then, given the opportunity, it would acquire such for use".

Among the documents obtained by The Times pertaining to nuclear physics was a chart showing a portion of a periodic table dealing solely with radioactive materials. "It contains all the elements you would need if constructing a 'dirty' domb. This type of table is only of interest to a nuclear scientist," Mr Large said.

The experts' reports reinforce claims by the British and American Governments that bin Laden had been looking into ways of making a nuclear bomb. On November 9, President Bush said of al-Qaeda: "They are seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons." Days later, after the discovery of the documents in Kabul, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, dispatched specialist units to Afghanistan to conduct their own studies.

Subsequently, American intelligence services learnt that earlier this year a member of al-Qaeda had left Afghanistan after flourishing a canister containing what he claimed was radioactive material at a meeting attended by bin Laden.

The breadth and detail of al-Qaeda's aspirations have taken the security services by surprise. At one point the documents discuss creating an explosion using 500kg of TNT - almost twice the amount that killed two people in the London Docklands bomb in 1996. Similarly, al-Qaeda's plans for chemical weapons were drawn up with large-scale production in mind: each recipe contained a step-by-step guide explaining how to produce batches that would kill thousands of people.

Many of the pages had the feel of teachers' handouts, such as photocopies explaining how a device or chemical could best be put to terrible effect. Others asked questions about terror techniques that they themselves used. Only time will tell what they have been able to learn.

The experts concluded that in the field of chemical and biological warfare, al-Qaeda's studies were so far crude, but that their intent was clear. Although the dispersal of chemical and biological weapons was difficult, they said, some of the terrorists' literature about their manufacture was easily available in public libraries.

However, they observed that the documents showed that al-Qaeda had gone so far as to manufacture and test certain types of chemical weapons on rabbits, including cyanide gas, which was used by Saddam Hussein to kill hundreds of Kurds in Halabja in 1988.

As disturbing as the substance of these findings is their context. The documents did not come from a single source of expertise. They included material produced by men of several nationalities at different stages of education, varying from recruit to degree level student and professor, and were being reproduced for wide distribution. They were the work of a variety of autonomous cells, who conducted their own experiments, without collusion.

"Rather than being assured by al-Qaeda's diversity, in fact this proves a huge problem to the Western security forces," one intelligence expert said. "What we can see is the work of different, potentially self-replicating cells, united only by an ideal. They will be far more difficult to extinguish than a centrally organised terrorist force."

Another source revealed that although the public in the West may be encouraged by the success of the war in Afghanistan, intelligence agencies estimate that as many as 70,000 recruits may have passed through al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in the past six years before dispersing to countries that include the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Russia.

"Even were bin Laden to be killed or captured soon," the source added, "he is only a figurehead, and the worst may yet be far from over."


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Kabul Asks U.S. to End Bombing
But Bush Vows to Continue War

Compiled by Our Staff From Dispatches AP, Reuters
Saturday, December 29, 2001
http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=43258

KABUL Afghan officials on Friday said the war on terrorism in Afghanistan had been won and urged the United States to quickly end its bombing campaign, but the Bush administration said the military campaign would continue until Osama bin Laden is killed or brought to American justice.

Appearing at a news conference with General Tommy Franks, who is in charge of the military campaign, President George W. Bush said the U.S. military would stay in Afghanistan for as long as it takes to rid the nation of Qaida terrorists and to ensure political stability.

"The world must know that this administration will not blink in the face of danger and will not tire when it comes to completing the missions that we said we would do," Mr. Bush said, bracing Americans for a long struggle.

Mr. Bush, who was vacationing at his ranch in Texas, said Mr. bin Laden would not escape.

"He is not escaping us," he said. "This is a guy who three months ago was in control of a country. Now he's maybe in control of a cave."

The Afghan defense minister, Mohammed Fahim, said in Kabul that Mr. bin Laden had most likely crossed the Pakistan border in Peshawar.

"Osama is out of our control," Mr. Fahim told reporters. "To a large extent it depends on Pakistan. America can pursue him with the help of the Pakistani government."

Pressure has been growing in Afghanistan for a halt to the American bombing, and Mr. Fahim said there would be no need for bombing once a few remaining border areas had been cleared of final resistance. Earlier, his spokesman said that suppressing that resistance would take no more than three days, after which the bombing must stop.

The United States, though, said it had received no request to stop the bombing, and declined to make such a promise.

"We have very seldom ruled out anything," a Pentagon spokeswoman said. "We will do what it takes to achieve what it is we're trying to achieve."

Washington said Thursday that, in the first strike in three days, its planes had destroyed a compound used by members of the former ruling Taliban southwest of Kabul. A Pakistan-based press agency said 25 villagers had been killed by bombs in the same vicinity.

In Pakistan, Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman, head of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e- Islam party, which helped create the Taliban, denied Kabul's claim that he was protecting Mr. bin Laden and called it a ruse to divert the U.S. campaign.

Mr. Bush's news conference, held on a clear, windy, winter day just outside his home near Crawford, Texas, followed two days in which Mr. bin Laden had held the media spotlight with a newly released videotape.

The president dismissed the tape as terrorist propaganda.

"I didn't watch it all," Mr. Bush said. "I saw snippets of it on TV. Who knows when it was made."

In the video, Mr. bin Laden called the September attacks blessed and urged Muslims to wage military and economic holy war against America.

"It is very important to concentrate on hitting the American economy with every available tool," he said, adding: "The economy is the base of its military power." Gaunt and hollow-eyed Mr. bin Laden was dressed in a camouflage jacket with a rifle beside him.

Asked if he feared that Mr. bin Laden's terrorist network was still targeting Americans, Mr. Bush said: "I hope 2002 is a year of peace, but I'm also realistic. I know full well that bin Laden and his cronies would like to harm America again."

The president said he did not know whether Mr. bin Laden was still in control of the Qaida terrorist network.

"If he's alive he's on the run, and you don't need to worry about whether or not we're going to get him, because we are," Mr. Bush said. "It's just a matter of time. I mean, I've read reports where he's dyed his hair red. It's not going to stop us from finding him."

In Kabul, Mr. Fahim, who has been defense minister since the interim administration of Hamid Karzai was sworn in on Saturday with a six-month mandate, said Afghanistan had reached agreement on Friday on the terms of operation of an international security force.

He earlier conferred with Major General John McColl, British commander of the UN-mandated international force.

"Now, around 3,000 people are supposed to come," Mr. Fahim said. "Around 1,000 are for security and the rest will be for logistical and humanitarian purposes."

General McColl said he was pleased with the deal that had been reached.

"It was very helpful, very supportive," he said.

He declined to comment on details of the talks.

Meanwhile, 25 more prisoners arrived at the U.S. base set up by Marines in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, a Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, said Friday. That brought the number of captured Qaida and Taliban figures in U.S. custody there to 62 and overall to 70.

Eight, including an American, John Walker Lindh, were being held on a navy amphibious assault ship, the Peleliu, in the Arabian Sea.

Speaking at the press conference with Mr. Bush, General Franks said his helicopter entourage might have been fired on Saturday as he traveled in Afghanistan to attend the inauguration of the new government of Mr. Karzai.

"I didn't see it happen," he said, adding that pockets of Taliban fighters are still at large in the country. The Pentagon has said no one was hurt in the apparent attack.

Ms. Clarke said earlier Friday that the Pentagon had given the go-ahead for work to begin at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to ready a facility for some prisoners after they are removed from Afghanistan.

The Guantanamo base, which the United States has held since 1903, is highly secure. The Cuban military prohibits access to areas around the base, and the U.S. military patrols its side from behind tall fences topped with razor wire.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday that the military had made no plans to hold tribunals at Guantanamo.

The new prisoners in U.S. custody were from among hundreds held by Pakistan. Afghan fighters hold about 7,000 more who were captured as they took one city after another and wrested control of the country from the former radical Islamic rulers and the Qaida terrorist network.

CIA and FBI agents are among those who have been interrogating prisoners to learn Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts, trying to determine which ones should be brought to trial and trying to get information about other terrorists or planned terrorist attacks.

--------

THE AFGHANISTAN MISSION
U.S. Forces Facing Long Afghan Stay, President Asserts

New York Times
December 29, 2001
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/29/international/29PREX.html

CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 28 - President Bush said today that he expected American troops to remain in Afghanistan for "quite a long period of time" to flush out remaining Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters and to interrogate, fingerprint and process more than 6,000 prisoners of war.

The United States mission will not be complete, Mr. Bush added, until Afghanistan is a stable country.

"I mean, there's a lot to do," Mr. Bush said in a 21-minute question- and-answer session with reporters at his ranch, with Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of the Afghan campaign, at his side. "And the American people just must understand when I said that we need to be patient, that I meant it."

Mr. Bush gave no hint of any timetable for the withdrawal of American forces.

The comments were the president's most explicit affirmation to date of the American commitment to Afghanistan, and were strikingly at odds with the scornful view that Mr. Bush expressed as a presidential candidate toward the "nation building" that he said distracted the Clinton administration.

Mr. Bush said again today that the United States would bring Osama bin Laden to justice either "dead or alive." The president conceded that he did not know Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts, including whether he had escaped to Pakistan or "whether he's in a cave with the door shut or a cave with the door open."

Mr. Bush dismissed the videotape that aired this week of Mr. bin Laden, saying first that he had not watched it at all, then saying in the next sentence that he had seen "snippets" on television. "Who knows when it was made?" the president asked.

In the wide-ranging, outdoor news conference that touched on Argentina, the Enron Corporation, John Walker and the man the president called "the shoe bomber," Mr. Bush also said that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had urged India and Pakistan today to use restraint in an escalating military buildup on the border with Kashmir.

The president added that India should take note that Pakistan had arrested 50 high-ranking members of two Islamic militant groups.

The president arrived for the outdoor news conference under a crisp blue sky driving a white pickup truck with General Franks and a presidential dog, Spot, as passengers. Mr. Bush, dressed in jeans and cowboy boots, seemed relaxed after three days of rest on his ranch, but appeared irritated when the subject turned to what he called unauthorized disclosures to newspapers about the procedures for military tribunals. "Evidently somebody in our government wanted to show off to his family or her family in between Christmas and New Year's by leaking information in the press that he or she thought would be helpful to the government," Mr. Bush said.

At another point, Mr. Bush brushed off a question about whether the events of 2001 had changed him. "Talk to my wife," he said, then added, "I don't spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, except when I comb my hair."

Mr. Bush also said that Mr. Walker, the American who fought with the Taliban, had made a "terrible decision" to work with the enemy, but that Mr. Walker was "well-berthed" - in custody on an American warship. In other subjects, the president said that Argentina, which has declared that it would default on its debts, had to "get her fiscal house in order," although Mr. Bush was not specific about what it should do.

The president said bluntly and almost brusquely that he had had no contact in the last six weeks with officials of the bankrupt Enron Corporation, including the chairman, Kenneth L. Lay, a friend and major campaign contributor to Mr. Bush. But when asked if the government should do something to help some Enron employees from losing their retirement savings, Mr. Bush was more expansive.

"There will be a lot of government inquiry into Enron and what took place there," he said. "I'm deeply concerned about the citizens of Houston who worked for Enron, who lost life savings." Mr. Bush added that it was "very troubling" to read about those "who had their Enron stock locked up in their 401(k) plans and then saw their savings dissipate."

Mr. Bush spent much of news conference repeating some of his favorite lines about Mr. bin Laden. "I mean, this is a guy who three months ago was in control of a country," the president said. "Now maybe he's in control of a cave."

But one thing was certain, the president said: "If he's alive, he's on the run. And you don't need to worry about whether or not we're going to get him, because we are. And it's just a matter of time. I mean, you know, I've read reports where he dyed his hair red. That's not going to stop us from finding him."

Mr. Bush also said that he was upset that an Arab-American armed Secret Service agent had been removed from an American Airlines flight on Tuesday night after the plane's captain was not satisfied with the agent's credentials. "I talked to the man this morning," Mr. Bush said. "I told him how proud I was that he was by my side. He's here on the ranch, and he's guarding me." The president added that "there's an inquiry going on as to specifically what took place. But if he was treated that way because of his ethnicity, that will make me madder than heck."

Mr. Bush said that he was considering making appointments of nominees held up by the Senate, but that he was at the moment focused on the war. Under the Constitution, presidents may bypass the confirmation process by installing nominees when the Senate is in recess. The appointments then extend through the next Congressional session.

At issue are the appointments of Otto J. Reich, Mr. Bush's nominee for assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, and Eugene Scalia, the nominee for Labor Department solicitor. Both nominations have been held up by the Senate for months. "This Scalia man got out of committee," Mr. Bush said, but was never given a vote on the floor of the Senate. "He's a good fellow, he ought to be approved."

Mr. Scalia is a Washington labor lawyer and the son of Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court. Labor unions have lobbied against the appointment in large part because of Mr. Scalia's opposition to a Clinton administration ergonomics regulation intended to enhance workplace safety. Mr. Scalia once called the regulation "quackery" and "junk science."

Mr. Bush said he was spending his vacation clearing brush, running, fishing, reading and holding video conferences with his national security team. He also took care of some legislative business today, signing into law one bill that increased spending on intelligence operations and another that provided $343 billion for defense.

The president said that he was up today at 5 a.m., when he "spent a little quality time with the first lady," and that he planned to take General Franks, who was just back from Afghanistan, on a tour of the ranch. "But if Tommy weren't here, I'd be working down there, a little chain-saw work, clearing some brush, burning some brush," Mr. Bush said. "We're making great progress in one of our - one of the bottom areas that was heretofore relatively inaccessible. One of these days I'll take you down there. It's a beautiful place. It's a bodark grove. Bodark tree is a native tree, real hard wood that grows these giant green, kind of apple-looking things."

Mr. Bush said that he and the first lady had planted a 10-inch oak near the side of his house that was a gift from his senior staff, and that he planned to spend tonight watching a University of Texas football game. His plans for New Year's Eve included "probably going to bed early."

-------- argentina

'Dirty War' Figure Faces Extradition

WORLD In Brief
Saturday, December 29, 2001
Reuters
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37252-2001Dec28?language=printer

BUENOS AIRES -- Argentina has arrested an infamous navy officer from the 1976-83 military dictatorship at the request of Sweden, which wants to try him for the 1977 death of a Swedish girl, a court said.

Alfredo Astiz, dubbed the "Blond Angel," was a member of a death squad operating out of the Navy School for Mechanics, a clandestine camp in Buenos Aires where many of the 30,000 people who disappeared in the "dirty war" against leftists met their end. He also is wanted by Italy and Spain, and he has been condemned in absentia by France to life in prison for killing two nuns.

Argentina has been reluctant to extradite "dirty war" criminals, arguing that in 1985 its courts tried and sentenced the organizers. But many officers such as Astiz were freed or pardoned.

-------- landmines

18 Indian troops killed in landmine mishap

December 29, 2001
By Harbaksh Nanda
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/29122001-043214-1747r.htm

NEW DELHI, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- At least 18 Indian soldiers were killed while handling landmines along the India-Pakistan border, the Press Trust of India reported.

Defense officials say the soldiers were taking part in an exercise and being trained how to defuse the landmines when one of the explosive device blasted accidentally near the Longewala border post.

However, defense ministry sources say the soldiers were laying mines along the border to deter any Pakistani tanks.

The blast could be heard up to several kilometers causing panic among villagers. At least 12 soldiers were wounded in the mishap.

Both India and Pakistan have deployed thousands of soldiers on either side of the border and two arch foes appear ever closer to a military conflict.

India blames two Pakistan-based rebel groups for the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament on December 13 although Islamabad has disbanded the two groups following pressure from Washington. India says Pakistan's action is "too late and too little."

-------- pakistan / india

Bin Laden search, al-Qaeda interrogation shifts to Pakistan

Saturday December 29, 9:05 PM
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011229/1/282jr.html

Suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden has fled to the Pakistani city of Peshawar, an Afghan official said, as US agents in Pakistan interrogated members of his al-Qaeda group over its worldwide activities.

The Afghan defence ministry source said the world's most wanted man was now based in Peshawar, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Afghan border, but was constantly on the move to elude capture.

It was the second such claim in two days from the ministry, which has also urged the United States to halt bombing in the country. The ministry says the last few al-Qaeda fighters are almost wiped out.

On Thursday defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Habeel said bin Laden crossed from the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan into Pakistan about a week ago, after the defeat of the fundamentalist Taliban regime which sheltered him.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said Saturday in Islamabad he had "no information whatsoever that Osama bin Laden has come to Pakistan."

Some officials of Kabul's interim government, especially those from the former Northern Alliance opposition army, bear grudges against Pakistan which for years was the leading supporter of the now-defunct Taliban regime.

One Western diplomat said reports that bin Laden had crossed the border came from "sources hostile to Pakistan" and coincided with heightened Indian pressure on Pakistan to act against "terror groups".

There have been dozens of conflicting reports about bin Laden's whereabouts, especially since US-backed Afghan forces began driving his al-Qaeda forces from their Tora Bora mountain stronghold this month.

Mounting tensions between Pakistan and India may hamper that task by forcing the deployment of some of the thousands of Pakistani troops currently watching its western border for fleeing al-Qaeda fighters.

US agents are questioning al-Qaeda members detained in Pakistan about the worldwide activities of the terror group, a Pakistani security official said Saturday.

Islamabad's Dawn newspaper said the US team questioning the 139 fighters is from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It said two French Muslims were among the detainees at the prison in North-West Frontier province.

The US bombing campaign has reportedly claimed more civilian casualties over the past week.

The bombing of a convoy last week which tribal elders said killed 65 civilians, and a raid on a village where residents said 40 were killed, have both raised controversy.

But US President George W. Bush has said US forces would operate in Afghanistan as long as necessary.

Also Saturday Afghanistan's defence ministry said it had given verbal consent for international peacekeeping troops to be deployed in Kandahar, the former stronghold of the ousted Taliban regime.

The next major contingent of troops will be sent to the southern city as well as to Kabul, a ministry official told AFP.

----

India, Pakistan fire along borders

December 29, 2001
By Neelesh Misra
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/default-20011229235351.htm

NEW DELHI, India - As India and Pakistan shot at each other and spoke of war, weeping friends and relatives on both sides bid farewell yesterday before the two nations sever their land and air links for the first time in 30 years.

Warning that an Indian troop buildup at the border was pushing the countries into confrontation, Pakistan told the United States it may need to further reinforce its side of the frontier by moving troops now helping the U.S. hunt for Osama bin Laden, Pakistani officials said.

President Bush said yesterday his administration was "working actively to bring some calm in the region, to hopefully convince both sides to stop the escalation of force." He said India should "take note" of steps by Pakistan to crack down on Islamic militants.

The South Asian rivals - both of which have nuclear weapons - have been threatening a new war since a Dec. 13 attack by gunmen on India's Parliament. New Delhi says Pakistan sponsored the attack and demands it arrest and extradite the leaders of two militant groups India says conducted the operation. Pakistan denies the charge.

The Indian army ordered evacuations of 20,000 people from more than 40 border villages in the Indian-held part of Kashmir, and traded shells overnight with Pakistani border forces, officials said yesterday. Soldiers also laid mines outside the villages.

Retaliatory firing by Pakistani troops killed a 3-year-old in an Indian border village, police said. The firing ended two days of relative calm.

The two nations on Thursday ordered each other's 110-person embassy staffs cut in half and banned overflights as of next Tuesday. On that day, India will also close bus and train links, and private cars will also be barred from crossing the border - closing transport links for the first time since the 1971 war.

The halt to transportation links is a haunting reminder of past wars and a psychological blow for millions on both sides connected by blood or friendship.

Men and women wept, desperately embraced relatives and tried to hold hands through the iron window grills of the cars as the Samjhauta Express, the only train between the two nations, pulled out of the Old Delhi station, carrying people home before the deadline.

At the Lahore station in Pakistan, an Indian woman, Amina Begum, stood tightly holding the hand of her brother Tanveer Ahmad, a Pakistani. Both wept.

Separated in their childhood, they had met after 53 years. "I had come here to stay for two months, but now I'm going back just after seven days," Ms. Begum said as she boarded the train. "Now I don't think he will be able to see me even at my death."

A spokesman for Pakistan's military-government said India's troop buildup at the border was making a confrontation inevitable. "The Indian government is putting itself into a corner where it would be difficult for them to now back off," Gen. Rashid Quereshi said in Islamabad.

Pakistan told the United States yesterday through official channels that it may have to move troops from its western Afghan border to the eastern frontier with India, a senior diplomatic official and a senior army official said. Those troops are currently patrolling the Afghan border, hunting for fleeing members of bin Laden's al-Qaida terror group.

Speaking at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Mr. Bush said Secretary of State Colin Powell had spoken to both sides, urging restraint. He praised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying he had arrested 50 "extreme terrorists."

Mr. Powell called Mr. Musharraf and Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh yesterday and urged both to resolve their differences through dialogue, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.

Mr. Reeker also reaffirmed the U.S. view that the leaders should use an upcoming meeting of South Asian leaders in Nepal to discuss their differences.

India has said Pakistan has only taken "cosmetic" steps against two Islamic militant groups New Delhi says conducted the Parliament attack - Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Pakistan has frozen the groups' assets and arrested some members but demands proof of their involvement. The Parliament attack left nine Indians and the five attackers dead.

Indian Home Minister Lal K. Advani said India was ready for a decisive battle "irrespective of the support we get from other countries in this war against terrorism."

The United States, European nations, China and the United Nations have urged Mr. Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to meet at a Jan. 4-6 gathering of South Asian leaders in Nepal. India said that will not happen, though both leaders are attending.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. Two of those wars - in 1947 and 1965 - were fought over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir. Many in both countries feared the prospect of a fourth.

"I want India to be tough, I want Pakistan to be taught a lesson for promoting terrorism. But war - I don't know, I still remember the blackouts of 1971 and the sirens and the jets flying overhead," said Radha Rastogi, a woman in India's northern city of Lucknow.

Though cargo can still be moved by train across the border, the closing of transportation links was likely to hurt the countries' $280 million in official trade annually. Another $1 billion worth goods illegally cross the border every year.

"We are feeling tense now," said Shafiqur Rahman Rao, a Pakistani marble exporter at a trade fair in Calcutta, India. "We don't want war at any cost."

The transport links are among the few concrete results of peace efforts in the countries' long rivalry. Vajpayee launched the New Delhi-Lahore bus service in February 1999, riding into Pakistan himself in what was seen as a path-breaking peace gesture between the neighbors.

The twice-weekly train service started in 1976 after a peace deal ended the 1971 war.

--------

Pakistan Moves Against Groups Named by India

New York Times
December 29, 2001
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/29/international/asia/29STAN.html?pagewanted=all

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 28 - In a step aimed at defusing the threat of war with India, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has ordered the arrest of about 50 leading members of two Islamic militant groups accused by India of mounting an attack on India's Parliament two weeks ago, Western diplomats in Pakistan said today.

General Musharraf's move followed days of mounting tension along the 1,800-mile frontier between the two countries, with army divisions, missile batteries and air force squadrons on both sides moving into battle formations along the border.

India's leaders have warned that India was being pushed into war by Pakistan's failure to punish the Pakistan-backed militants whom India has blamed for the Dec. 13 suicide attack, which left 14 people dead, including the 5 attackers.

They dismissed General Musharraf's earlier steps against the two groups as "entirely cosmetic" and inadequate to stop the drift toward war. Tonight, India was silent on the Pakistani arrests, which became known shortly before midnight.

Just as the Western diplomats were telling reporters about them at a Christmas dinner given by General Musharraf in Islamabad and saying they constituted a potential breakthrough in the crisis, President Bush alluded to them at a news conference at his ranch in Crawford, Tex.

Mr. Bush implied that the United States, after a week of intensive diplomacy aimed at heading off a war between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, hoped that the arrests would be enough to cause India to pull back from the brink of conflict.

"I'm pleased to note that President Musharraf has announced the arrest of 50 extremists or terrorists," he said. "And I hope that India takes note of that, that the president is responding forcefully and actively to bring those who would harm others to justice."

Perhaps because it was unwilling to be seen as bowing to Indian pressure, Pakistan made no announcement of its crackdown on the two groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish- e-Muhammad, known in English as the Army of the Pure and the Army of Muhammad.

The two groups, espousing the "holy war" vision shared with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, have increasingly dominated the armed struggle conducted by Pakistan- backed groups in the Indian-ruled part of the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Pakistani officials refused to say tonight which leaders had been arrested, or even to confirm the arrests officially. General Musharraf, speaking to reporters after the dinner at his official residence, was elusive. Asked what further actions Pakistan had taken, or planned, against militants involved in the Kashmir confrontation, he replied: "We understand our responsibility. We know what we have to do."

The general added an appeal to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, saying he was ready for talks with the Indian leader at a regional summit meeting in Nepal next week, a proposal India has already rebuffed. "But you can't clap with one hand," he said. "We don't want war; we want peace. He must show willingness on his side, and there will be willingness on our side."

Diplomats in Islamabad said intensive telephone diplomacy by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, including new calls to General Musharraf and Mr. Vajpayee on Friday, had helped persuade the general to order the arrests and show India that Pakistan was going at least part of the way to meeting India's demands.

Those demands have centered on action by Pakistan to shut down both militant groups, to arrest their leaders, and to hand them over to India for trial. Pakistan's position, repeated by senior officials today, has been that India has failed to prove that the groups were involved in the Dec. 13 attack, and that India seized on the incident, in the climate of Mr. Bush's war on terrorism, to gain a decisive victory over Pakistan in the 50-year- old conflict over Kashmir.

At his news conference, Mr. Bush stopped short of saying the arrests had fended off the risk of war, saying instead that the United States was working to lower tensions, and that more effort lay ahead.

"My government and my administration is working actively to bring some calm in the region to hopefully convince both sides to stop the escalation of force," he said. Although he had not personally phoned the Indian and Pakistani leaders, he said, "I will if need be."

A key issue for India is likely to be whether those arrested by Pakistan include Hafez Saeed, an Islamic theologian who founded and led Lashkar-e-Taiba until he resigned this week.

His resignation was accompanied by a flurry of other moves by Lashkar. Among them was an announcement that its military operations, which are said to have included sending fighters to train at Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, would be restricted to a base in the Pakistan- ruled part of Kashmir, and that its central committee would be composed in the future entirely of Kashmiris.

The group also announced that its military activities would be severed from the vast educational and preaching network set up by Mr. Saeed, which includes nearly 150 madrasas, or Islamic religious schools, across Pakistan. According to Western intelligence reports, the schools have served as a channel for "holy war" recruits from poor families in this nation of 140 million Muslims, and from abroad, including Arabs who have fought in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

In the last two or three years, India has repeatedly claimed to have killed Arab and other foreign Muslims fighting for Lashkar in the Indian-ruled part of Kashmir.

Earlier this week, in its initial response to India's demands for a crackdown, Pakistan froze the bank accounts of Lashkar, an action it had previously taken against Jaish-e-Muhammad. It also arrested the Jaish leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, after briefly detaining him for questioning last Friday.

Those actions came after Mr. Bush last week froze Lashkar's bank accounts in the United States. This week, the State Department added Lashkar and Jaish to its official list of terrorist organizations.

Pakistan's response in the face of the Indian and American demands for action, - hesitant at first, reflected the political quandary that has faced General Musharraf.

Senior Pakistani officials attending tonight's dinner said the 58-year- old Pakistani leader understood quickly after Sept. 11 that the American war on terrorism - and Pakistan's agreement to support it by opening its airspace and air bases for use in the air war in Afghanistan - would require a crackdown on the two groups.

Under prodding from the United States, the officials said, General Musharraf had made a radical shift, transforming his country in a matter of weeks from a haven for Islamic militancy to America's most important regional ally in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. As protests by Islamic militant groups mounted, General Musharraf had curbed them, then arrested several of the most powerful militant leaders and placed them in detention at remote locations.

But until the crisis with India, the officials said, the general had built a fire wall around the militant groups leading what Pakistan calls "the freedom struggle" in Kashmir. Both Pakistan and predominately Hindu India Pakistan have claimed the Himalayan border region in a dispute born with their independence in 1947.

Although they shared much with Al Qaeda - in their terror tactics, their embrace of holy war, and their use of Arab fighters - the groups fighting for the Kashmir cause could expect protection because of the powerful place the struggle has in Pakistan's political consciousness. Nowhere was this more marked than in Pakistan's Army, which has always considered the dispute over Kashmir - trigger of two of the three wars between the two nations - to be a sacred cause.

An aide to General Musharraf said the Parliament attack had presented him with a tougher challenge than the one he faced on Sept. 11. While he was committed to curbing Islamic militancy here, the aide said, India's warlike posture since the Dec. 13 attack had forced him to a "nearly impossible" choice, between the strong pro-Kashmir sentiment in the army and the country, and the threat of war with India. The result was the succession of hesitant actions that led to the arrests that became known today.

"Moving against Lashkar and Jaish was never an `if', it was only a `when,' " the aide said. "Until India threatened war over the issue, the Americans accepted that we would have to move carefully on any issue involving Kashmir. But the attack in New Delhi accelerated the agenda. Something that might have been accomplished in weeks suddenly had to be tackled in days, and that too under threats from India, which made it the worst possible circumstance for General Musharraf."

One senior army officer said harder choices lay ahead, on how Pakistan's role in the struggle in Indian- held Kashmir would be reconfigured. The most likely outcome, he said, would be that all of the dozen or more groups challenging Indian rule in Kashmir would be required to "indigenize," ridding their ranks of foreign fighters. The officer said Pakistan was also likely to tighten oversight of the groups - a role it has publicly denied - to exclude future attacks like the one on Parliament.

But whether India is prepared to back away from war and tolerate the existence of the groups in any form remains to be seen, as does how their continued presence will square with an American policy to root out international terrorist groups and punish the nations that harbor them.

At the dinner, the first ever given by a Pakistani leader to celebrate Christmas, General Musharaff promised the guests - mainly diplomats, foreign relief officials and bishops from Pakistan's Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches - that Pakistan would continue to move against Islamic militancy, an increasingly prominent theme in his speeches. Describing Islam as "a religion of peace," he said it had been damaged in Pakistan by "misguided elements who spread hatred and violence not only between religions, but between ourselves as Muslims."

"It is we Muslims who have to change this perception," he said. "In my own small way, I wish to spread the image of a tolerant, forgiving Islam. I would like to root out any intolerance and violence from this society. I am sure that if we are really determined, and really bold, we can change the situation. Pakistan is passing through a difficult stage, with the tensions on the border, and I would ask you all again to pray for peace and tranquillity, in Pakistan and the world."

-------- us

MILITARY STRATEGY
'New' U.S. War: Commandos, Airstrikes and Allies on the Ground

New York Times
December 29, 2001
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/29/international/29STRA.html?pagewanted=all

JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 28 - The military campaign in Afghanistan was a striking success for a new style of warfare, in which American commandos took center stage and played a vital role in organizing the Afghan resistance and directing punishing airstrikes.

The novel strategy enabled the United States to topple the Taliban, install a friendly government and ensure that Al Qaeda could no longer use Afghanistan as a base for terrorism.

Those ends were achieved with a small number of American ground troops, with little political backlash in the Muslim world about an "occupying" Western army and with a very limited loss of American lives.

Having brought important gains at modest cost, this is an approach the Pentagon may be tempted to repeat as it plans military campaigns against Iraq or terrorist organizations around the world.

But the American strategy also had a decided drawback: the decision to let proxy forces bear the brunt of the ground fighting may have allowed many Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, and possibly Osama bin Laden himself, to escape.

Their elusiveness, so far, denies the United States an important goal, which President Bush enunciated one week after the attacks on New York and Washington when he said he wanted Mr. bin Laden brought to justice, whether he was captured "dead or alive."

When it came to capturing the Taliban stronghold in Kandahar, the Pentagon allowed its Afghan allies to take the lead. But the Taliban's surrender failed to yield Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, or other top figures.

Later, in Tora Bora, the United States again relied on its Afghan proxies, mainly fighters commanded by Hazarat Ali, and the Pakistani soldiers who patrolled the border. Washington did not dispatch an American ground force to cut off Al Qaeda's escape routes, and hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters managed to slip across the border, according to reports from Pakistan.

After the battle of Tora Bora, the Pentagon considered sending in hundreds of ground troops when it appeared that Afghan forces might be unable or unwilling to scour the area for Al Qaeda leaders. But American officials remain reluctant to do so, and now hope that incentives like money and winter clothing will encourage more Afghan cooperation.

If so, that would still leave the matter in the hands of Afghans who are not fully motivated to search caves in cold weather for Al Qaeda leaders who in many cases have fled, sometimes with help.

According to new United States intelligence, some low-level militia commanders have smuggled Arab fighters, perhaps dozens, out of Afghanistan for up to $5,000 a head. One defense official said that a handful of midlevel commanders were running the network, but that Commander Ali had stopped it.

American military officials insist they will eventually catch their main quarry: Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders. It may also turn out that Mr. bin Laden and his top aides were killed in the thunderous bombing of Tora Bora, though without precise information on his whereabouts such a development would be no more than a result of a lucky hit.

"In a perfect world, we would have liked the forces of Hazarat Ali and the Pakistan forces to have been a little more efficient in stopping the flow," said a senior American military official. "But nothing is perfect. It did not work out that way, but it was not without some success. Sooner or later we will get them."

While final judgments must await a clearer determination of Mr. bin Laden's fate and those of his aides, some experts say it was a mistake to be so heavily dependent on Afghan proxies and not to involve American ground troops in the final and potentially decisive chapter of the war at Tora Bora.

With many leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban still at large, the war that began in early October with around-the-clock bombing raids now appears to be sputtering to a vague and potentially inconclusive end.

"Did we really do everything we could to nail these guys as they ran away?" asked Eliot A. Cohen, a professor of strategic studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. "I don't understand why we didn't have light conventional forces to intercept them as they fled."

A Novel War Elusive Enemy, Wavering Friends

President Bush has called the battle against terrorism the first war of the 21st century. From the start, the conflict in Afghanistan was a most unorthodox war.

The goal was not just to destroy Al Qaeda's terrorist network in Afghanistan. It was also to upend the Taliban government, which sheltered Al Qaeda, and thus send a message to governments around the world that there is a heavy price for supporting terrorists.

In military terms, the enemy was ill equipped.

Though the Taliban was effective against the opposition Northern Alliance before the American intervention, and though some Qaeda troops who fought alongside the Taliban were schooled in terrorist tactics, the Taliban had only a primitive air-defense system, a far cry from the stiff defenses the United States faced in Yugoslavia, or in Iraq during the Persian Gulf war.

Taliban troops rode to the front in pickup trucks laden with Kalashnikovs.

Neither they nor their Qaeda allies had any experience with modern American airpower and they did relatively little to conceal themselves, not realizing how accurate the airstrikes were.

Their fighters' formative experience came in battling the Soviet military and its blunderbuss use of force, and in the relentless civil wars of Afghanistan.

Another weakness of the Taliban and Al Qaeda was that their fighters were largely cut off from external support.

The mujahedeen who resisted the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980's had weapons and other matériel funneled through Pakistan by the Central Intelligence Agency.

But this time, after Washington prevailed on President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to turn against the Taliban, Mullah Omar's forces found themselves largely isolated. One of the few sources of external support were the thousands of fundamentalist students from the religious schools of Pakistan who crossed into Afghanistan; many had no military experience and little training.

Politically, the Taliban were vulnerable as well.

Their base of support was in the south, in Kandahar, and they extended their reach to the north with intimation and fear. As a result, much of their control was brittle.

"This was the most incompetent adversary the United States has fought since the Barbary pirates" in the early 1800's, said Wesley K. Clark, a retired general who led the NATO alliance during the Kosovo war in Yugoslavia. "They had no understanding of U.S. military capability."

Still, the war was anything but simple.

The Pentagon had to contend with a shortage of military bases in the region. Pakistan did not welcome the arrival of large numbers of American troops. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, to the north, were firmly within the Russian sphere of influence.

There was also the problem of forbidding terrain, a population with a deep suspicion of foreign forces and an anti-Taliban resistance that was not a coherent insurgency, but an array of bickering and ethnically diverse factions.

These factors shaped much of the American military planning. With only limited access to bases near Afghanistan, the air campaign had to rely primarily on long-range Air Force bombers operating from Diego Garcia, a British island in the Indian Ocean, and from the United States, and on Navy warplanes from aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean.

Anxious about stirring up deep-seated resentments about the intervention of foreign forces, and fearful of becoming ensnared in an Afghan quagmire, regular Army troops were used to defend airfields in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Marines established a forward base in Afghanistan but were largely kept out of the fray.

Faced with a new and unexpected war, the Bush administration took time to find a formula that worked.

The administration initially feared that open alignment with the Tajik- and Uzbek- dominated Northern Alliance would upset Pakistan as well as the Pashtun tribes in southern Afghanistan.

Taliban and Al Qaeda frontline troops facing the alliance fighters were spared the full brunt of American airpower while the administration debated internally over what to do.

But the surprising tenacity of the Taliban and Al Qaeda defenders and fears that the war could drag on well into 2002 finally led Washington to put aside those reservations. It also led to a new strategy.

The New Strategy Wooden Saddles, Lasers and Laptops

Special Operations forces are a standard part of the Pentagon's repertory, but they played a far more important role in Afghanistan than in previous campaigns.

The basic idea was for American commandos to help arm the Afghan resistance, assist them in planning their attacks and support them by calling in airstrikes, which involved some of the most advanced weapons the Pentagon has.

The use of Special Operations forces enabled the American bombing to shift from fixed targets like airfields and command posts to mobile targets like enemy troops and to defensive positions that were difficult to discern from the air.

The Afghan resistance groups were to do the main fighting on the ground. The British pitched in with Special Air Service commandos and a small number of cruise missile strikes, but by and large there was not much of a Western military coalition, giving the Pentagon enormous leeway in deciding the strategy.

"New and old techniques were brought together," a senior American official said. "It involved Special Forces riding on horses and slogging on foot. And it involved high- tech weapons, sensors and surveillance. Those parts had to work together.

"You had some of this in Vietnam. Special Forces called in air strikes against the Vietcong, but you did not have this as the centerpiece of your effort. What was new here was that Special Ops and air power were married together and the opposition forces were occupying the ground."

There was a panoply of commandos. Army Green Berets organized weapons shipments to the disparate Northern Alliance factions and whatever Pashtun resistance could be organized in the south. The Special Forces rode with Afghans on horseback (using wooden saddles until leather ones were airlifted in) and traveled by pickup truck to help the Afghans to plan their attacks.

The Green Berets called in airstrikes, using radios and laptop computers to transmit bombing coordinates to American pilots, and laser designators to pinpoint other targets. Air Force Special Tactics units performed a similar role.

Navy Seals, hiding in the countryside, carried out long-range reconnaissance. The C.I.A. also deployed its Special Operations Group, a small unit that worked with the Afghan resistance and conducted operations in both northern and southern Afghanistan.

The arrangement was a marked improvement from the last war: the NATO campaign to force the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo.

In that battle, no Special Operations forces were deployed in the province, leaving the Americans without spotters to call in airstrikes.

There was an important synergy in Afghanistan between the air and ground campaign. With their attacks, the Afghan resistance forced the Taliban and Al Qaeda to take up defensive positions, which were highly vulnerable to airstrikes.

The air raids, in turn, accounted for most of the Taliban and Al Qaeda casualties and enabled the Afghan resistance to move forward.

The results are clear on the highway that runs from Bagram, a much-fought-over air base built by the Soviet Union, south to Kabul. The burnt-out hulks of Taliban armor frame the road, testimony to the precision bombing of the Americans and the Taliban's failure to understand the need to conceal their heavy weapons from American warplanes.

Effects of the bombing are also felt in the bleak hospital ward in Jalalabad where wounded Arabs, who were lured to Afghanistan by Mr. bin Laden, are being kept as prisoners.

Abdul Wakil, a young translator at the hospital, said the Arabs often speak of how accurately the Americans were able to hit their positions as Al Qaeda volunteers tried to hold out with little food and no real way at striking back at the planes.

He said they often have nightmares about the bombing, an indication that it broke the morale of many of Mr. bin Laden's men. Many were never prepared for this kind of war.

Significantly, the Special Operations forces played a far more important role than the more heavily equipped and better publicized regular forces.

Despite their firepower, regular ground troops, like the Army 10th Mountain Division and the Marines, played a minor role.

Troops from the 10th Mountain Division were deployed in Uzbekistan and later a small number went to Bagram and the airfield at Mazar-i-Sharif. As the war entered its second month, marines established a forward base south of Kandahar, a site code- named Rhino, and eventually deployed forces at the Kandahar airport. Cobra attack helicopters were deployed, along with light armored vehicles.

The marines may have made their main contribution by increasing the psychological pressure on the Taliban and by emboldening the Pashtuns and other tribes in the south in the siege of Kandahar. The marines' combat role was largely limited to a single attack in which Marine Cobra helicopters and Navy jets blasted a Taliban convoy.

The marines' primary task now is to build a jail for Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners who have been captured by the Afghan resistance and Special Operations forces.

Unknown Battles On Tirin Kot Road, Tactics Worked

Many of the victories by the American-led coalition are unsung because the operations of American and British commandos are generally classified and because the Pentagon kept the news media well away from the action. What is known about them illustrates the military potential of the American approach.

A glimmer of the fighting was provided by Capt. Jason Amerine of the Army 5th Special Forces Group. His men were deployed with troops commanded by Hamid Karzai, the Pashtun leader who was sworn in last weekend as chairman of the transitional Afghan government.

Three of Captain Amerine's men were killed by an errant American bomb, and Captain Amerine spoke of the fighting to ensure that his 12-man Green Beret A-team was remembered for the mission it carried out, not just for the accident.

Those were the only three American military deaths during combat. (Two G.I.'s were killed in the crash of a search-and-rescue helicopter in Pakistan. A C.I.A. operative died during a prison uprising near Mazar-i- Sharif. Four Americans died in truck, ship or helicopter accidents, and a soldier from the 10th Mountain Division died from a noncombat gunshot in Uzbekistan, possibly a suicide.)

The Nov. 17 battle began when Mr. Karzai decided to move his forces to Tirin Kot, the capital of Oruzgan Province and a town in the Taliban heartland. Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, was born in the area.

Seeing that the Taliban's days seemed to be numbered, the townspeople of Tirin Kot had deposed the local Taliban leaders. Mr. Karzai wanted to move his field headquarters to the town, to protect it from retribution from Mullah Omar's forces in Kandahar and to use it as a base to recruit new fighters.

Just hours after Captain Amerine and Mr. Karzai reached the town, however, the Taliban tried to retake it. The assault involved a force of 500 soldiers, Taliban troops as well as Arab and other foreign fighters, who piled into an armada of 80 pickup trucks and other battered vehicles. They were racing from Kandahar, 50 miles to the south.

Taking positions on a ridge outside the town, the Americans began calling in airstrikes on the vehicles. Captain Amerine's team was confident that airpower could do the job, but Mr. Karzai's forces had less experience with precision bombing. Worried that the bombing would not be effective, they began to retreat. That left Captain Amerine's men no choice but to commandeer four cars and follow.

Captain Amerine was concerned that he would have to evacuate Mr. Karzai, whom the Americans were already counting as a future friendly leader. But if the Americans left, Captain Amerine feared the townspeople in Tirin Kot would be slaughtered in a round of reprisal killings by the Taliban.

So the Americans helped the Afghans set up new defensive positions near the town and resumed calling in airstrikes. Like Mr. Karzai's men, the Taliban underestimated the lethal power of the bombing and pressed ahead. "It was kind of strange, because they just kept coming into the valley and we just kept bombing them," Captain Amerine said.

Then the Taliban jumped off their vehicles and tried to outflank the American and Afghan defenses. But Mr. Karzai's fighters sprayed them with automatic weapons fire to beat them back. "The first couple of hours I had my doubts as to whether we'd be able to hold the town and hold the valley," Captain Amerine said.

"It actually went through my mind that we might need to start thinking about getting Hamid Karzai out of there for his own safety. But through the successes of the airstrikes and through my soldiers' really taking charge and getting the anti-Taliban fighters situated, we were able to pretty quickly take charge of the situation and we were able to turn the balance and start causing the Taliban to retreat."

The combination of Special Operations forces, Afghan proxies and American airpower was to prove itself.

"In Afghanistan the Special Operations forces and airpower are a combination that the defense intellectuals are going to have to digest over the coming months and years," said Robert Andrews, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict.

Working with local forces, he said, "the Special Operations forces dramatically increased the effectiveness of the air campaign, and on the ground, they turned the Northern Alliance into a conquering army."

Tora Bora Forbidding Caves, Offer Final Test

But there were some situations that could not be so easily handled by this trinity of Special Operations, airpower and Afghan allies on the ground.

The foreign Taliban fighters were dedicated battlers, but their allies in the Taliban preferred negotiated surrenders and back- room amnesties to last stands.

As the American proxies wheeled and dealed, many of the Taliban's top leaders slipped away, possibly with the acquiescence of the anti-Taliban Afghans.

The list of the missing include Mullah Omar, who is high on the American's wanted list but who, along with many other top Taliban officials, managed to evade the siege of Kandahar.

Tora Bora was another case where the strategy appears to have produced something less than a complete victory.

The problem was that the area is vast and wild, and borders Pakistan. Sealing it off was more than the Afghan resistance could do, even when they were aided by about 100 Special Operations forces and backed up by Pakistan troops on their side of the border.

"Even with the snow, the way to Pakistan is open," Gen. Muhammad Fahim, now the defense minister of the Afghan government, warned as the battle unfolded. "Bin Laden is constantly changing his location. He can cross the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and go back again."

Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, three anti-Taliban forces from the Eastern Shura, which is centered on Jalalabad, mounted the assault on Tora Bora. Two contingents were led by Hajji Muhammad Zaman and Hajji Zahir. The third group had the main responsibility - blocking Al Qaeda fighters seeking an escape to Pakistan - and was under the command of Hazarat Ali.

Once again, the mix of the American air strikes and the largely Afghan ground assault was on display. As the Eastern Shura troops maneuvered through the valleys, Al Qaeda forces climbed the ridges in search of defensive high ground, only to make themselves vulnerable to American air strikes.

In one 24-hour period, said Gen. Tommy R. Franks, chief of the United States Central Command, American warplanes and Afghan artillery "put literally hundreds of pieces of ordinance, bombs and artillery shells into these bunkers and cave complexes."

The attacks sent columns of smoke into the sky and thunderous blasts echoing through the valley below. Al Qaeda's dead numbered in the hundreds and many appeared to have been killed by the airstrikes. A visit to one bombed-out Al Qaeda camp found bits of clothing scattered in the trees and the empty casings of American cluster bombs.

Hazhar Gul, 30, who served under Commander Ali, said the American strikes played a critical role in helping his forces advance. "We asked the Americans to bomb them and they were right on target," he said.

Still, there was only so much that bombing could do. Many Al Qaeda fighters were determined to fight to the end.

Hamid Kahn, a commander under Hajji Zahir, said some Arab fighters rigged themselves with explosives, preferring to blow themselves up rather than be handed over to the Americans. And while some Al Qaeda fighters tried to mount a defense, others took the opportunity to escape.

Afghan fighters said they did their best but it was not possible to seal all the escape routes. "There are many mountains and a big forest beyond them," said Gul Karim, a deputy to Commander Ali. "There are many paths, and it was not possible to block all of them."

As the battle drew to a close, it was apparent that the Afghans and Americans had overlapping but different objectives. Commanders Zaman and Ali came down the mountain, announced they had seized the high ground, chased Al Qaeda fighters from the Nangarhar Province and all but declared victory.

But seizing Tora Bora was not the Americans' goal; trapping Al Qaeda leaders and their fighters was.

Three senior Al Qaeda officials, including Muhammad Atef, the terrorist network's chief of military operations, are believed to have been killed by American bombs during the war. But at Tora Bora, several hundred Al Qaeda fighters may have crossed the border, according to reports from Pakistan.

A senior American military official defended the strategy. Throughout the military campaign, he said, the United States did not want to seen as an occupying army, as the Soviet Union was in its failed 10-year intervention.

"We wanted to avoid the perception of being yet another foreign conqueror who had come to take ground in Afghanistan," he said. "We did not send troops in there for the same reason we did not bring in the U.S. Army to roll across Afghanistan."

But it is also true that in a climatic fight with the United States' nemesis, the military did not use all of its capabilities. One retired American officer said the deployment of helicopter-borne and light infantry troops might have enabled Washington to "tighten the noose about bin Laden."

Indeed, if Mr. bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda leaders remain at large, the Bush administration's decision not to use ground troops in Tora Bora may loom as one of the most debated aspects of the war.

"I would agree that had we been more aggressive, we might have obtained our objective of getting the leadership," said Michael Vickers, a former Green Beret, C.I.A. officer and director of strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

"But one thing I would say in defense of the strategy is that the Taliban are really fugitives. It is the same with Al Qaeda's forces in Afghanistan.

"They have been stripped of their security and do not have the support they had before. We may not have 100 percent, but we may have 95 percent. The real test will be what happens in the month ahead."

With the Taliban out of power, Mr. Karzai at the helm of a new government, terrorist camps destroyed and Qaeda leaders on the run, American commanders had much to be proud off. American casualties were kept to a minimum, which despite Pentagon assurances about being prepared to accept losses, still appears to be a priority.

But with many Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders unaccounted for, the war lacks the closure the American public had expected.

President Bush once declared that the United States was in "hot pursuit" of Mr. bin Laden. As the war entered its twilight, a senior United States official was more cautious, saying, "The trail has gone cold."


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

US tribunals to allow hearsay in terrorist trials

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
29 December 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=112012

Hearsay and other evidence not normally permitted in criminal courts would be allowed in the military tribunals being set up by the United States to try senior members of al-Qa'ida and the Taliban.

The military judges - senior uniformed officers - would allow any evidence that a "reasonable person" would find useful. Under such a standard, the recently recovered videotape showing Osama bin Laden gloating about the terror attacks of 11 September would almost certainly be permitted.

In addition, the panel of judges would only require a two-thirds majority for a guilty verdict, though a unanimous decision would be required for a death sentence.

Since President George Bush issued a military order on 13 November, which established the tribunals, there has been controversy over safeguards for those being tried. Some critics said the original proposals would result in widespread violation of civil rights.

Mr Bush told reporters yesterday at his ranch in Texas: "Whatever the procedures are for military tribunals, our system will be more fair than the system of bin Laden and the Taliban. The prisoners that we capture will be given a heck of a lot better chance in court than those citizens of ours who were in the World Trade Centre or the Pentagon were given by Mr bin Laden."

The American Civil Liberties Union said the establishment of the tribunals - which have not been held since just after the Second World War and whose establishment would be unprecedented without Congress having declared a state of war - showed that Mr Bush was "unwilling to abide by the checks and balances that are so central to our democracy".

The latest details of the draft proposals, which were reported yesterday, show the administration has made a series of amendments, including the right to an appeal. One official said that after a five-member panel had issued the verdict and sentence, the decision would then be reviewed by a three-member group.

This appeal panel would listen to arguments from defence and prosecution lawyers and then make a recommendation to the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Mr Bush would have the final word.

While the tribunal would appoint a defence lawyer, the suspect would have the right to request his own attorney.

"These procedures show that we will conduct the military commissions in a very full and fair way and that we're going to follow a high standard of justice," one administration official told The New York Times.

American soldiers are detaining increasing numbers of Taliban and al-Qa'ida prisoners in Afghanistan, though it has not been fully decided which of them will come before the tribunals. There has been speculation that John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban fighter who is currently being held on a US warship in the Indian Ocean, could be placed before such a tribunal.

Mr Bush said Mr Lindh made a bad decision when he chose to join the Taliban. "He was working with the enemy," he said. "We'll see how the courts deal with that."

• The number of identified World Trade Centre victims has sharply increased in the past two weeks because of the increased use of DNA tests and the finding of more bodies. The city medical examiner's office has been identifying up to 16 victims daily. Until now, the number of new identifications was sometimes one or two a day. On Thursday, the number of dead and missing from the attack, including those on the two hijacked jets, stood at 2,939

----

Pakistani Police Make Weapons Seizure

DECEMBER 29, 10:49 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?SLUG=PAKISTAN%2dWEAPONS%2dSEIZURE

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani police have made the country's largest-ever seizure of arms and ammunition, allegedly smuggled from neighboring Afghanistan, a senior police official said Saturday.

The weapons, found buried in an empty house on the outskirts of Quetta on Friday, could have been used for terrorist attacks, Balochistan province police chief Shoaib Suddle said. Two suspects have been detained in the case.

Suddle said police recovered 124 submachine guns, 248 rifles, one recoilless rifle, two mortars, 342 mortar bombs, rockets and almost 30,000 rounds of ammunition.

Police and troops in Quetta have recently arrested dozens of foreign nationals on suspicion of links with Afghanistan's now-defunct Taliban movement and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

``We are doing our level best to arrest fleeing foreign fighters,'' Suddle said.

----

Argentines Protest Banking Limits

WORLD In Brief
Associated Press
Saturday, December 29, 2001; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37252-2001Dec28?language=printer

BUENOS AIRES -- Police used tear gas today to disperse thousands of Argentines banging pots and pans in front of the Government House to protest a month-old limit on cash withdrawals from banks.

The protest began after cash-hungry citizens flooded banks by the thousands yesterday, forming long lines and shouting for their money after the government eased a five-day banking holiday.

But a deep economic crisis continued to fuel anger and tension among depositors as the government fine-tuned emergency plans to roll out a new currency that is leaving many Argentines skeptical.

Interim President Adolfo Rodriguez Saa moved to finalize a congressional bill authorizing creation of the argentino, a new currency he says will breathe new life into an economy suffocating under four years of recession.

Scheduled to debut Jan. 15, the argentino will circulate alongside the peso and the U.S. dollar as Argentina looks for a way out of its cash crunch. But many Argentines fear the free-floating currency, backed by little more than a pledge of state support, will quickly depreciate.


-------- OTHER

-------- imf / world bank

IMF to re-examine policy on bailouts

December 29, 2001
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washingtontimes.com/business/20011229-15851682.htm

The violent protests that brought down Argentina's government last week may force the International Monetary Fund to re-examine its multibillion-dollar rescue packages.

The IMF and its major shareholder, the United States, are beginning to look at new options after loans and belt-tightening measures failed to revive South America's second-largest economy.

Policy-makers also are considering whether the Washington-based lending agency's warnings about the deteriorating situation in Argentina were strong enough.

Did it wait too long to call a halt to lending that clearly was not pulling the country out of a four-year recession and an 18 percent joblessness rate? And what happens the next time a government goes bankrupt and can't pay its debts?

Allan H. Meltzer, chairman of an advisory panel that delivered a highly critical report on the IMF and its sister institution, the World Bank, said the Argentine crisis should give the IMF a "greater sense of realism on what it can and cannot do."

He said the lending institution needs to do a better job of crisis prevention by getting governments "to make economic reforms up front and provide incentives to stay on course" so that bailouts become unnecessary.

C. Fred Bergsten, head of the International Institute of Economics, a Washington think tank, said there will be some soul searching at the IMF over how it handled loans to Argentina.

"The IMF is often accused of being too tough in its economic prescriptions, but in this case it was too soft," he said, in going ahead with an $8 billion installment to Argentina in August that "clearly was a mistake." Last December, the IMF provided the government with $14 billion.

President Bush said yesterday in Crawford, Texas, that the United States is "willing to offer technical assistance through the IMF" to help Argentina develop "a plan that sustains economic growth.

He said he had discussed the Argentine situation in recent calls to the leaders of Mexico, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil.

The interim government of Adolfo Rodriguez Saa took office in Buenos Aires Sunday and promptly announced the suspension of payments on around $50 billion in debt held by foreigners - the biggest government default ever.

The interim government, which will remain in power until elections are held in early March, also announced plans Wednesday to create a "third currency," which some analysts regard as the first step toward a devaluation of the peso, pegged one-to-one with the dollar.

On Thursday, Mr. Rodriguez Saa told the Argentine television station America that he hoped to start "necessary" talks with the IMF in January.

Mr. Rodriguez Saa said he had spoken by telephone Thursday with the IMF's No. 2 official, Anne Krueger, and asked her for the organization's understanding and patience.

He said the decision to suspend debt payments "does not signal a break with the world, but a request for understanding from the world."

Critics of the IMF say it pushed Argentina over the edge Dec. 5 by denying it a $1.26 billion loan installment after budget targets were not met by the fallen government of President Fernando de la Rua, who resigned last week after violent protests over his economic policies.

His government kept asking the country's 36 million people for short-term sacrifices in exchange for promises of long-term stability.

After Mr. de la Rua left office, Peru's Finance Minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said, "The IMF is partly to blame because it didn't sound the alarm in time and then took a tough stance at a moment when things got extremely difficult."

There was also criticism of the Bush administration for remaining on the sidelines and letting the IMF take the lead in the crisis. The Clinton administration was actively engaged in managing bailouts in the 1990s for Mexico, Russia and Asian countries.

Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill has said it was up to the Argentine government, working with the IMF, to come up with sound economic policies. "It's not something that can be imposed from outside," he said.

Last week, the IMF's chief spokesman, Thomas Dawson, said discussions with Argentina over a stalled $22 billion loan package would resume with a new government.

He also made it clear that no new money would be released until Buenos Aires adopted acceptable economic policies.

"Our aim has been to help Argentina develop - on their own - a program that can be sustained both economically and politically, and that remains our goal," he said.


-------- activists

Mideast Peace Activists Join Forces

By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 29, 2001; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37253-2001Dec28?language=printer

JERUSALEM, Dec. 28 -- More than 700 Israelis and Palestinians packed into a Jerusalem hotel today in a rare display of support for peace, creating a new coalition seeking an end to violence and a return to negotiations.

The coalition is made up of familiar faces from the Israeli peace movement, including members of the opposition Labor Party and the left-wing Meretz party. The Palestinians brought an unexpectedly broad range of representatives, including leaders who have opposed negotiations with Israel.

After 15 months of renewed violence, Israelis say in public opinion polls that they strongly back the hard-line approach of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The peace movement, meanwhile, has lost much of its public support as the 1993 Oslo accords have come to be seen as a failure. Today's rally was small compared with those of earlier years, but in the current atmosphere of violence and retribution it offered an unusual tableau of Palestinians and Israelis shaking hands, hugging and sharing a stage to promote a common cause.

The rally marked the creation of the Israeli-Palestinian Coalition, which announced a declaration of principles calling for "a cessation of violence," "the return to negotiation" and "the adoption of a two-state solution," referring to Israel and a Palestinian state.

The unofficial leader on the Palestinian side of the coalition is Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestine Liberation Organization's commissioner for Jerusalem affairs and the new president of Al-Quds University. Nusseibeh is a leading moderate.

Nusseibeh expressed surprise at some of the more militant Palestinians who showed up. The most dramatic moment of the evening came when a group of Bedouin leaders from Jachalin, who have had many land disputes with the Israeli government, filed onto the stage, lending their support to the coalition. Also surprising, Nusseibeh said, was the presence of two members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a militant group that denounced Nusseibeh only a month ago.

"We talked to them, but I am shocked they actually came," Nusseibeh said. "This shows it's not just me talking."

Also today, two members of the militant Islamic Jihad group attacked an Israeli army patrol in the Gaza Strip in a failed suicide mission. Troops killed one assailant and found remnants of an explosives belt near his body.

Meanwhile, Israel lifted a blockade of Bethlehem, the second West Bank town where travel restrictions were eased this week in response to a recent decrease in violence. Palestinian attacks on Israelis have decreased since Dec. 16, when Yasser Arafat called for an end to such attacks.

Special correspondent Eetta Prince-Gibson contributed to this report.


-------

------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)

------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!