------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Airports in Europe
India, Pakistan Rattle Their Nukes
Pakistan Freezes Accounts of Two Nuclear Scientists
Russian lawmakers delay ABM rebuke
Upgrades made in program to compensate sick nuclear workers
Crumbling Hopes for Democracy
Presidential Disclosure
The Family That Preys Together

MILITARY
Taliban Leaders' Camp Bombed
Hunt for bin Laden Loses Steam
Deal Reached on Peacekeeping in Afghanistan
Northern Prison Sealed Off
Displacement continues long after guns went silent
US missile shortage delays Iraq strike
India Builds Up Forces as Bush Urges Calm
Chronology of US Strikes Against Iraq
19 soldiers killed in mine blast at Indo-Pak border
Musharraf: India's Buildup Problematic
Russia to tear down spy station in Cuba
MI5 blunders over bomber
Vengeance Did Not Deliver Justice
Gulf War and Illness
The Costs of War

POLICE / PRISONERS
Insecure security
Court Finds Death Penalty Is Misused in Kansas
The making of a human timebomb
Digging Up Congo's Dirty Gems
Many Say U.S. Planned for Terror but Failed to Take Action
China amends law to fight terrorism
Caution: This Weapon May Backfire

ENERGY AND OTHER
With Ignorance as the Fuel, AIDS Speeds Across China
China passes first law codifying 1-child policy

ACTIVISTS
DAVID MCTAGGART, B. 1932 The Radical Do-Gooder
Photo: Pakistani children
A HOPI ELDER SPEAKS



-------- NUCLEAR


-------- depleted uranium

Airports in Europe

From: "Piotr Bein" <piotr.bein@imag.net>
Sunday, December 30, 2001 3:04 AM

About the airports in Europe.

In 1997-1998 I was writing a report about the DU contamination in Amsterdam for the parliamentary commission. (in Dutch) There was a lot of publicity in The Netherlands about the burnt DU from the El-Al Boeing which crashed in Amsterdam the 4th of October 1992. This publicity ended in a parliamentary inquiry in January-March 1999. I was first called by a Boeing 747 technician in Amsterdam who claimed the newest 747 's could contain DU balance weights because 'there is no difference between DU and Tungsten and the weight are stored in the same storage: interchange happens because there are no prescriptions to use exact the same weights in the same planes' In older planes could also be tungsten by accident. Normally in a 747, he told me, there is about 1500 kilo's of depleted uranium in the wing- and tailsection which is the same amount Loewenstein mentioned in 'Uranium Battlefields Home and Abroad' (The Dutch government claimed there were only 150 kilo's and it was impossible to burn. With measurements using a Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry machine in Canada I found out there were considerable amounts of DU with traces of U236 in the neighbourhood of the crash spot in a central heting filter and in the hanger where the parts of the EL-AL Boeing were investigated.) I received from this technician the phone number of someone who drives the lorry between the maintenace hall and the storage of the balance weights. This man confirmed never to consider the difference between tungsten and du: he only grabs the corresponding types fitting in the wings or in the tail section. He was not even aware the difference between tungsten and depleted uranium.

To confirm this story I called the technical maintenance department of the Frankfurt airport and London Heathrow. I did not call Le Bourget because my French is not sufficient. Frankfurt and London confirmed they did not distinguish between tungsten and depleted uranium. I wrote a letter to the parliamentary commission about my findings. During the Inquiry the commission never used my letter and report because the 'experts' they questioned all agreed: Depleted Uranium is not hazardous for the health of people. These experts had all links with the nuclear industry. Of course this was a great disappointment for me and a few others.

With regards, Hans de Jonge

-------- india / pakistan

India, Pakistan Rattle Their Nukes

by Eric Margolis
Sunday, December 30, 2001
Toronto Sun
From: Carol Moore <carol@carolmoore.net>

For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis of October, 1962, two nuclear-armed powers, India and Pakistan, are in a direct military confrontation that could lead to a massive conventional war - and even to full-scale nuclear conflict.

The armed forces of both old foes are on high alert and deploying to forward positions. India and Pakistan say their nuclear-armed missiles are ready to strike.

When War at the Top of the World, my book on Afghanistan and the Kashmir conflict first came out in 1999 (2000 in the U.S., U.K., and India), people asked, "Who cares about that region?" I sought to explain, usually in vain, that this little-known part of the globe was about to erupt. A nuclear war between India and Pakistan, according to CIA studies, would kill two million people immediately, and injure 100 million. Equally apocalyptic, a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, and attacks on one another's nuclear power reactors, would send a cloud of radioactive dust around the planet.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the divided mountain state of Kashmir, the majority of whose 11 million inhabitants are Muslims. For the past 12 years, a score of Muslim insurgent groups have waged a fierce guerrilla war against some 600,000 Indian soldiers and paramilitary troops in Indian Kashmir. India calls the Muslim insurgents "Pakistani-supported terrorists," a position lately adopted by the United States. Pakistan calls them legitimate "freedom fighters" battling for the independence of Kashmir. India rejects UN demands for a plebiscite to determine Kashmir's future.

The Kashmir insurgency has been an extremely dirty war. Some 50,000 have died, mainly civilians. Indian forces have resorted to brutal reprisals, arson, torture, murder of suspects, and gang rape of Muslim women. Kashmir insurgents have slaughtered Hindus, causing 250,000 to flee the Jammu region, and assassinated many state officials. Indian forces disguised as Kashmiri mujahedeen have even attacked Sikhs in an effort to turn them against Muslims.

India has long threatened to attack Pakistan, which it accuses of arming and supporting the Kashmiri mujahedeen. In fact, Pakistani intelligence, ISI, has quietly backed some - but not all - of the militant groups, as well as Sikh separatists and Christian insurgents in India's eastern hill states. India, in turn, stirs up sectarian violence inside Pakistan.

The Last Straw

For India, the last straw came just before Christmas, when as yet unidentified militants attacked India's parliament building in New Delhi. This assault followed attacks against Delhi's trademark Red Fort and against the Kashmir parliament in Srinagar. India accused two new Pakistan-based Kashmiri insurgent groups - Lashkar-e-Toyiba and Jash-e-Mohammed - of staging the attacks with Pakistani backing. Interestingly, according to my information, neither of these extreme groups are run by Pakistani intelligence. But Pakistan was plunged into confrontation with an outraged India.

The attack on parliament in Delhi was an intolerable outrage. India's cautious prime minister, Atal Vajpayee, is under intense pressure to strike Pakistan - or at least the bases of insurgents in the Pakistani portion of divided Kashmir. Hindu fundamentalists, led by Home Minister L.K. Advani and Defence Minister George Fernandes, are beating the war drums. Even India's usually conservative generals are itching to teach Pakistan a lesson.

Pakistan is issuing its own threats and massing troops. The confrontation with India is a boon for Pakistan's military strongman, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, diverting public anger over Pakistan's recent debacle in Afghanistan and its unpopular new role as an American base. Unfortunately for Pakistan, Musharraf retired or sidelined the army's best generals under U.S. pressure just before the confrontation with India.

India is moving troops, armour and aircraft to forward attack positions along its 1,000-mile border with Pakistan. India's three powerful armour-heavy "strike corps" are poised to sever Pakistan's vulnerable waist in the Bahawalpur-Rahimyar Khan sectors. India's increasingly potent navy is ready to blockade Karachi, Pakistan's main port and entry point for oil.

Advantage India

India's 1.2-million man armed forces, with 3,400 tanks and 738 combat aircraft, outnumber and outgun Pakistan's 620,000 troops, 2,300 tanks and 353 warplanes. India's arsenal is mostly modern Russian equipment, while Pakistan's is obsolescent. Equally important, Pakistan's limited industrial base allows only a short war, while India's much larger economy can sustain a long conflict.

The U.S. is leading frantic diplomatic efforts to prevent war. But passions are running very high. The most likely war scenario: Indian commando and air attacks on insurgent bases in Pakistani Kashmir which could escalate to full-scale war. Pakistan probably cannot halt a massive Indian invasion without using tactical nuclear weapons. This, in turn, could trigger nuclear strikes against military and civilian targets. I hope both nations will pull back from the brink, but a false report, or another raid, could set off a huge, devastating war with unimaginable consequences.

Last week Sun columnist Peter Worthington's long-simmering jealousy again burst into the open. He launched a long, vitriolic denunciation of me, using out-of-context quotes and distortions. I'm sorry he's not taken seriously, isn't on U.S. national TV and is not read abroad. Being inconsequential must pain him deeply. He has my sympathies.

----

Pakistan Freezes Accounts of Two Nuclear Scientists

December 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear-Scientists.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's military-led government has frozen the accounts of two nuclear scientists suspected of links with Osama bin Laden, a central bank spokesman said Sunday.

Assets of Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood and Abdul Majid, who worked for Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission until retiring in 1999, have been frozen by the State Bank of Pakistan, spokesman Syed Wasimuddin said by telephone from Karachi.

The bank also froze accounts of wealthy industrialist Mohammed Tufail, he said. All three were on the board of directors of Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, or Nation Builder, an Islamic charity declared a terrorist group by the United States on Dec. 20.

President Bush ordered the group's assets frozen along with those of Mehmood, Majid and Tufail.

On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council followed the U.S. move and ordered a freeze on the assets of the group and the three men.

Gen. Rashid Quereshi, spokesman for Pakistan's military-led government, said the charity's assets already had been frozen. He gave no details on what other measures the government plans against the group and its leaders.

After their retirement, the two scientists made several trips to Afghanistan, where they met bin Laden. But both have denied transferring any nuclear-related information to bin Laden's al-Qaida group and said they only ran education programs and helped poor Afghan farmers.

They claimed they talked with bin Laden about plans for the rehabilitation of Afghanistan.

Mehmood was picked up on Oct. 23 and was held for weeks, but was released after suffering a mild heart attack during interrogation. After a few days, he was taken to a safe house of Pakistan's main spy agency. In mid-December, the government freed both men.

Authorities said Mehmood and Majid defied service rules that apply to government scientists even after retirement, and of violating travel restrictions. They have been barred from talking with reporters or making public speeches.

-------- russia

Russian lawmakers delay ABM rebuke

Briefly
Washington Times
December 30, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011230-807836.htm

MOSCOW - The Russian parliament has put off a vote on a resolution condemning Washington's withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

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

The vote was postponed until sometime next month when the State Duma, the lower house, decided to take a holiday break.

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

-------- tennessee

Upgrades made in program to compensate sick nuclear workers

By Nancy Zuckerbrod,
Associated Press
Knox News Sentiniel,
12-30-01, Associated Press Wire
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_924476,00.html

WASHINGTON - Sitting in his office on a recent December day, Shelby Hallmark felt a little like Santa Claus. As the head of the federal agency that sends out compensation checks for sick Cold War-era nuclear weapons workers and their families, Hallmark and others were busy trying to get as many checks as possible in the mail by Christmas.

"There's a lot of moving stories about people who've gotten sick and died. There's a genuine sense that this is a real important public service," Hallmark said of the Labor Department program that got up and running in August.

Congress passed a law last year calling for the program. It provides medical care and $150,000 to sick workers or their families if the workers were exposed to cancer-causing radiation or silica or beryllium, which are linked to lung diseases.

As of Dec. 20, the Labor Department had received more than 16,200 claims and had written checks to more than 800 people.

"Shocked was the first thing I felt," Georgia Herron of Knoxville said about receiving her check this month.

"It's just so strange because it's been all those years," said Herron, who has suffered from kidney and breast cancer. "I lost half my body, but I never dreamed this would happen."

Initially, some workers found the process of filing claims frustrating, said Glenn Bell, a worker at the Oak Ridge reservation.

For example, he said claims officers repeatedly asked workers to resubmit information and did not understand the complexities of beryllium disease.

Hallmark admits his staff had a learning curve but says progress has been made.

"We're feeling pretty good as we end the year that we've done a credible job," he said.

Workers and their families fought for decades to get the government to admit they were put in harm's way during the effort to build atomic weapons. Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson made the admission two years ago, and Congress subsequently approved the entitlement program.

People who worked at uranium plants in Oak Ridge, Paducah, Ky.; and Piketon, Ohio, have been among the first to receive payments.

The compensation law did not provide payments to workers exposed to toxic chemicals at the nuclear facilities; however it did require the Energy Department to make it easier for those people to pursue claims through state worker compensation programs.

But worker advocates dislike proposed Energy Department regulations that do not set a standard for determining which workers should qualify for compensation but defer to state laws.

Some lawmakers also weren't pleased. They inserted language in a defense bill this year, warning the Energy Department not to put up barriers that would make it difficult for people to get compensated.

"Congress has laid down a political marker," said Richard Miller, a policy analyst with the Washington-based Government Accountability Project who lobbied for the initial legislation. "It said do not erect obstacles that we did not call for in the act."

The defense bill also included a provision that eliminates a requirement that surviving children of deceased workers had to be under 18, or dependents, when their parent died to collect benefits.

"A lot of our surviving children were above the age of 18 when the parents passed away. The initial legislation cut out a majority of those surviving children," said Leon Owens, president of a local workers' union at the Paducah plant.

"Fixing that I think is really going to help us," agreed Hallmark. He said 90 percent of the letters he received about the program were complaints about the age criteria.

This year's defense bill also raised the cap on fees to attorneys who help with contested claims, and it established a more relaxed criteria for determining who suffers from silicosis, a scarring of the lungs.

Legislation passed earlier in the year also added kidney cancer to the list of diseases that automatically qualify sick workers at the uranium plants and Alaska's Amchitka Island for compensation. Kidney cancer had inadvertently been left off the list when the bill was drafted last year.

"This thing had birthing pains in its first year, but vigilant congressional oversight and congressional fine tuning has kept this thing on track," Miller said.

"It's off to a good start, but we still have a long way to go," Bell said, adding that the emphasis should now be on establishing a stronger program for workers exposed to toxic chemicals. "To me, it is not fair and not right to pay me because I have the right disease and exclude somebody that was working next to me."

-------- us politics

Crumbling Hopes for Democracy

Sunday, December 30, 2001
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37236-2001Dec28?language=printer

Secretary of State Colin Powell recently made a low-profile stopover in Tashkent, Uzbekistan [news story, Dec. 9]. Secretary Powell's visit came at the end of a week when the leading Uzbek political opposition figure was arrested in Prague under suspicious circumstances and President Islam Karimov worked to have the Uzbek parliament declare him "president for life." Uzbekistan may now be an ally of the United States, but President Karimov is a brutal and repressive "pocket dictator."

Whatever the substance of Secretary Powell's visit may have been, the message it sent to other Central Asian nations (such as Kazahkstan and Kyrgyzstan, whose leaders also have absolutist tendencies) is unmistakable: If you play ball with the United States in Afghanistan we will look the other way as a decade of democratization efforts is ground to dust.

JOSEPH WALWIK
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

---

Presidential Disclosure

Sunday, December 30, 2001; Page B06
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37234-2001Dec28?language=printer

Alberto Gonzales' characterization of President Bush's move "to further implement" the 1978 Presidential Records Act [op-ed, Dec. 20] is highly suspect, in light of Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to cooperate with the General Accounting Office's inquiry into his energy meeting notes. It is interesting to note that the end of the 12-year period of presumed non-disclosure for former president George H. W. Bush, which can now be extended under the new executive order, just happens to coincide with the end of the current President Bush's first term.

Giving President Bush, and presumably future presidents, veto power over the release of past presidential records is a troubling conflict of interest and a step backward for those who support transparency in government.

MATTHEW A. SAUNDERS
Washington

----

The Family That Preys Together

by Jack Colhoun
From: Tom and Flo <ftully@rcn.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 22:36:17 -0500

GEORGE JR.'S BCCI CONNECTION

"This is an incredible deal, unbelievable for this small company," energy analyst Charles Strain told Forbes magazine, describing the oil production sharing agreement the Harken Energy Corporation signed in January 1990 with Bahrain.

Under the terms of the deal, Harken was given the exclusive right to explore for gas and oil off the shores of the Gulf island nation. If gas or oil were found in waters near two of the world's largest gas and oil fields, Harken would have exclusive marketing and transportation rights for the energy resources. Truly an "incredible deal" for a company that had never drilled an offshore well.

Strain failed to point out, however, the one fact that puts the Harken deal in focus: George Bush, Jr., the eldest son of George and Barbara Bush of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, is a member of Harken's board of directors, a consultant, and a stockholder in the Texas-based company. In light of this connection, the deal makes more sense. The involvement of Junior-George Walker Bush's childhood nickname-with Harken is a walking conflict of interest. His relationship to President Bush, rather than any business acumen, made him a valuable asset for Harken, the Republican Party benefactors, Middle East oil sheikhs and covert operators who played a part in Harken's Bahrain deal.

In fact, Junior's track record as an oilman is pretty dismal. He began his career in Midland, Texas, in the mid-1970s when he founded Arbusto Energy, Inc. When oil prices dropped in the early 1980s, Arbusto fell upon hard times. Junior was only rescued from business failure when his company was purchased by Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation, a small oil firm owned by William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds. As part of the September 1984 deal, Bush became Spectrum 7's president and was given a 13.6 percent share in the company's stock. Oil prices stayed low and within two years, Spectrum 7 was in trouble.

In the six months before Spectrum 7 was acquired by Harken in 1986, it had lost $400,000. In the buyout deal, George "Jr." and his partners were given more than $2 million worth of Harken stock for the 180-well operation. Made a director and hired as a "consultant" to Harken, Junior received another $600,000 of Harken stock, and has been paid between $42,000 and $120,000 a year since 1986.

Junior's value to Harken soon became apparent when the company needed an infusion of cash in the spring of 1987. Junior and other Harken officials met with Jackson Stephens, head of Stephens, Inc., a large investment bank in Little Rock, Arkansas (Stephens made a $100,000 contribution to the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980 and gave another $100,000 to the Bush dinner committee in 1990.)

In 1987, Stephens made arrangements with Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) to provide $25 million to Harken in return for a stock interest in Harken. As part of the Stephens-brokered deal, Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh, a Saudi real estate tycoon and financier, joined Harken's board as a major investor. *5 Stephens, UBS, and Bakhsh each have ties to the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

It was Stephens who suggested in the late 1970s that BCCI purchase what became First American Bankshares in Washington, D.C. BCCI later acquired First American's predecessor, Financial General Bankshares. At the time of the Harken investment, UBS was a joint-venture partner with BCCI in a bank in Geneva, Switzerland. Bakhsh has been an investment partner in Saudi Arabia with Gaith Pharoan, identified by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board as a "front man" for BCCI's secret acquisitions of U.S. banks.

Stephens, Inc. played a role in the Harken deal with Bahrain as well. Former Stephens bankers David and Mike Edwards contacted Michael Ameen, the former chief of Mobil Oil's Middle East operations, when Bahrain broke off 1989 talks with Amoco for a gas and oil exploration contract. The Edwardses recommended Harken for the job and urged Ameen to get in touch with Bahrain, which he did.

"In the midst of Harken's talks with Bahrain, Ameen- simultaneously working as a State Department consultant-briefed the incoming U.S. ambassador in Bahrain, Charles Hostler," the Wall Street Journal noted, adding that Hostler, a San Diego real estate investor, was a $100,000 contributor to the Republican Party. Hostler claimed he never discussed Harken with the Bahrainis.

Harken lacked sufficient financing to explore off the coast of Bahrain so it brought in Bass Enterprises Production Company of Fort Worth, Texas, as a partner. The Bass family contributed more than $200,000 to the Republican Party in the late 1980s and early 1990s. *9 On June 22, 1990, George Jr. sold two-thirds of his Harken stock for $848,560-a cool 200 percent profit. The move was well timed. One week after Junior sold his stock, Harken announced a $23.2 million loss in quarterly earnings and Harken stock dropped sharply, losing 60 percent of its value over the next six months. On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops moved into Kuwait and 541,000 U.S. forces were deployed to the Gulf.

"There is substantial evidence to suggest that Bush knew Harken was in dire straits in the weeks before he sold the $848,560 of Harken stock," asserted U.S. News & World Report. The magazine noted Harken appointed Junior to a "fairness committee" to study possible economic restructuring of the company. Junior worked closely with financial advisers from Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Company, who concluded "only drastic action could save Harken." George "Jr." also violated Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations which require "insider" stock deals to be reported promptly, in Bush's case by July 10, 1990. He didn't file the stock sale with the SEC until the first week of March 1991.

Meanwhile, a cloak-and-dagger aura surrounds Junior's business dealings. James Bath, a Texas entrepreneur who invested $50,000 in Arbusto Energy, may be a business cutout for the CIA. Bath also acted as an investment "adviser" to Saudi Arabian oil sheikhs, linked to the outlaw BCCI, which also has ties to the CIA. Bill White, a former Bath partner, claims that Bath has "national security" connections. White, a United States Naval Academy graduate and former fighter pilot, charges that Bath developed a network of off-shore companies to camouflage the movement of money and aircraft between Texas and the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.

Alan Quasha, a Harken director and former chair of the company, is the son of attorney William Quasha, who defended figures in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal in Australia. Closed in 1980, Nugan Hand was not only tied to drug-money laundering and U.S. intelligence and mi- litary circles, but also to the CIA's covert backing for a "constitutional coup" in Australia that caused the fall of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

The Harken deal with Bahrain raises another troubling question: Did the Bahrainis and the BCCI-linked Saudi oil sheikhs use the production sharing agreement with Harken to curry favor with the Bush administration and influence U.S. policy in the Middle East? Talat Othman's sudden rise to prominence in Bush administration foreign policy circles is a case in point. Othman, who sits on the Harken board as Sheikh Bakhsh's representative, didn't have access to President Bush before Harken's Bahrain agreement. "But since August 1990, the Palestinian-born Chicago investor has attended three White House meetings with President Bush to discuss Middle East policy," the Wall Street Journal pointed out. "His name was added by the White House to a select list of 15 Arab-Americans chosen to meet with President Bush, [then White House Chief of Staff John] Sununu and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft in the White House two days after Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait."

PRESCOTT'S BIG ASIAN ADVENTURE

Prescott Bush, Jr., the president's older brother, also has a knack for nailing down "incredible deal[s]." Prescott took advantage of his brother's first presidential visit abroad in February 1989 to schedule a business trip to the same countries-China, Japan and South Korea. Prescott arrived in Tokyo February 14, 1989, ten days before President Bush's stop in Japan, to drum up business for Prescott Bush Resources Ltd., a real estate and development consulting company. Prescott said he was dealing with four Japanese companies wanting to do business in the U.S.

From Japan, Prescott went to China, where he had a joint partnership with Akoi Corporation to develop an $18 million golf course and resort near Shanghai. Prescott had introduced the Tokyo-based Akoi to Chinese officials in 1988. With a 30 percent stake in the project, Prescott used his China connections to pave the way for capital-rich Akoi. Akoi had run into business obstacles in China because of lingering Chinese resentment over Japan's brutal occupation of China in the 1930s and 1940s. Some of Prescott's most controversial business deals have been with Asset Management International Financing & Settlement Ltd., a Wall Street investment firm which has been in bankruptcy proceedings since fall 1991. Prescott was hired by Asset Management, which paid him a $250,000 fee for consulting in its joint venture with China to set up its internal communications network. Asset Management enlisted Prescott's services soon after President Bush imposed economic sanctions in June 1989 in response to Beijing's brutal crackdown on anti-government demonstrators in Tienanmen Square.

Under the sanctions, United States export licenses were suspended for $300 million worth of Hughes Aircraft satellites, a key component of Asset Management's joint venture with the Chinese government. The satellites would beam television programming to broadcasters in China and provide telecommunications links for the country's far-flung provinces. In November 1989, Congress passed additional sanctions specifically barring the export of U.S. satellites to China unless the president found the sale "in the national interest."

On December 19, 1989, President Bush lifted the sanctions that blocked the satellite deal, citing "the national interest." Two months earlier, the Bush administration had granted Hughes Aircraft "preliminary licenses" to exchange data with Chinese officials to ensure that the satellites met the technical specifications of the Long March rockets which would launch them into space.

Meanwhile, Prescott was hard at work in the summer of 1989 as middleman in the takeover of Asset Management by West Tsusho, a Tokyo-based investment firm linked to one of Japan's biggest mob syndicates. Prescott, as head of Prescott Bush & Co., received a $250,000 "finder's fee" from West Tsusho when the deal was closed and was promised an annual retainer of $250,000 over the next three years as a "consultant." Asset Management, however, went bankrupt in March 1991. In May 1992, West Tsusho filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against Prescott claiming that he reneged on his promise to protect the mob-linked firm's $5 million investment in Asset Management.

According to Japanese police, West Tsusho is controlled by the Inagawakai branch of the Yakuza, the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia crime syndicate. By the mid-1980s, the Yakuza were buying up real estate and investments in Japan and overseas to launder their ill-gotten profits from drug sales, prostitution, gambling and extortion. Yakuza's annual income is estimated at $10 billion. Like George Jr., Prescott combined business with secret operations. He offered his services to the covert operations of the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980, and later to the Reagan administration. A September 3, 1980, letter from Prescott to James Baker indicates Prescott was part of the Reagan-Bush campaign's secret surveillance of the Carter administration's efforts to obtain release of U.S. hostages held in Iran. Prior to inauguration, the Reagan-Bush campaign recruited retired military and intelligence officers to monitor activities of the CIA, the Defense Department, the National Security Council, the State Department, and the White House. This operation later became known as the "October Surprise." "Herb Cohen-the guy that offered help on the Iranian hostage situation-called me yesterday afternoon," Prescott wrote in a letter designated "PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL." "Herb has a couple of reliable sources on the National Security Council, about whom the [Carter] administration does not know, who can keep him posted on developments."

Prescott continued, "He cannot come out now and say that Carter is going to do something on Iran in October because he said everything is a contingency plan that is loose and fluid from day to day.... Herb says, however, that if he and others in the administration who really care about the country and cannot stand to see Carter playing politics with the hostages, see Carter making a move to politicize the release of the hostages, he and they will come out at that time and expose him."

Prescott's covert associations continued while his younger brother was vice president. He appears to have aided the Reagan administration's clandestine support of the Nicaraguan Contras. In the 1980s, he served on the advisory board of Americares, the U.S.-based relief organization with ties to prominent right-wing Republicans and the intelligence community. Bush's other son, Marvin, also helped the family's pet charity and accompanied a flight of medical supplies to Nicaragua three days after Chamorro's inauguration. An undisclosed amount of the $680,000 in Americares aid to Honduras was delivered to Nicaraguan Miskito Indian guerrillas. Based in Honduras, they were aligned with the CIA-funded Contras, according to Roberto Ale- jos, a Guatemalan sugar and coffee grower who coordinated the Americares project in Honduras. In 1960, Alejos had permitted the CIA to use his plantations to train right-wing Cubans in preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

In 1985 and 1986, after Congress cut off U.S. aid to the Contras, Americares donated more than $100,000 worth of newsprint to the pro-Contra newspaper La Prensa in Managua. Americares supplied $291,383 in food and medicine and $5,750 in cash to Mario Calero, New Orleans-based quartermaster and arms purchaser for the Contras, and brother of Contra leader Adolfo Calero. In this same period, groups associated with Lt. Col. Oliver North's off-the-shelf Contra arms network provided covert support for La Prensa.

Jeb: Liaison to Anti-Castro Right

George Herbert Walker Bush's second eldest son, John Ellis or Jeb, was also linked to clandestine schemes in support of the Contras. Soon after congressional prohibition in late 1984, Jeb helped put a right-wing Guatemalan politician, Dr. Mario Castejon, in touch with Oliver North. Jeb acted as the Reagan administration's unofficial link with the Contras and Nicaraguan exiles in Miami.

Jeb was contacted in February 1985 by a friend of Castejon, who gave him a letter from Castejon to be passed on to then Vice President Bush. In his letter Castejon, a pediatrician and later an unsuccessful National Conservative Party presidential candidate, requested a meeting with George Bush to discuss a proposed medical aid project for the Contras. Jeb forwarded the letter to his father. In a March 3, 1985, letter, Vice President Bush expressed interest in Castejon's proposal to create an international medical brigade.

"I might suggest, if you are willing, that you consider meeting with Lt. Colonel Oliver North of the President's National Security Council Staff at a time that would be convenient for you," Bush wrote. "My staff has been in contact with Lt. Col. North concerning your projects and I know that he would be most happy to see you. You may feel free to make arrangements to see Lt. Colonel North, if you wish, by corresponding directly with him at the White House or by contacting Philip Hughes of my staff."

Castejon later met with North in the White House, where he also saw President Ronald Reagan. When Castejon returned to Washington for a second visit, he was introduced to members of North's secret Contra support network, including retired Maj. Gen. John Sing- laub and Contra leader Adolfo Calero. Castejon also met with a group of doctors working with Rob Owen, North's liaison with the Contras.

"He [Castejon] was offering us a pipeline into Guatemala," said Henry Whaley, a former arms dealer who said he was asked by his intelligence community connections to help Castejon. Whaley was optimistic about opening a new shipping route to the Contras through Guatemala. "If you can move Band-Aids," he reportedly said, "you can move bullets." With Castejon, Whaley prepared a proposal to the State Department for the purchase of medical supplies for the Contras from the Department's newly established Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office. The document included requests for mobile field hospitals and light aircraft to evacuate wounded Contra guerrillas. Congress approved $27 million in "humanitarian" aid to the Contras in 1985. The Castejon proposal was hand-delivered to TGS International Limited in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. Whaley said he sent the report to TGS so it would be "quietly" forwarded to the CIA. TGS International is owned by Ted Shackley, who was CIA Associate Deputy Director of Operations when Bush Sr. headed the Agency in 1976-77.

Jeb had another Contra connection in his involvement with Miguel Recarey, Jr., a right-wing Cuban who headed the International Medical Centers (IMC) in Miami. In 1985 and 1986, Recarey and his associates gave more than $25,000 in contributions to political action committees controlled by then Vice President Bush. In 1986, Recarey hired Jeb, a real estate developer, to find a new headquarters for IMC. Jeb was paid a $75,000 fee, even though he never located a new building.

In September 1984, two months after IMC's $2,000 contribution to the Dade County Republican Party, which was headed by Jeb, the vice president's son contacted several top HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) officials on behalf of IMC. "Contrary to rumors, [Recarey] was a good community citizen and a good supporter of the Republican Party," one official of the HHC remembered Jeb telling him in late 1984. Jeb successfully sought an HHS waiver of a rule so that IMC could receive more than 50 percent of its income from Medicare.30

Leon Weinstein, an HHS Medicare fraud inspector, worked on an audit of IMC in 1986; he has charged that IMC used Medicare funds to treat wounded Contras at its hospital. *31 The transaction was arranged by IMC official José Basulto, a right-wing Cuban trained by the CIA, who arranged for Contras to receive treatment in Miami. Basulto was praised for his commitment by Felix Rodriguez: "He has been active for a decade in supporting the Nicaraguan freedom fighters ever since the Sandinistas took power, and is constantly organizing Contra support among Miami's Cuban community. He has even been to Contra camps in Central America, helping to dispense humanitarian aid." At the same time as Recarey was providing medical assistance to the Contras, he was embezzling Medicare funds. IMC, one of the largest health maintenance organizations in the United States, received $30 million a month for its Medicare patients, clearing $1 billion in federal monies from 1981 to 1987. While he headed IMC, Recarey's personal wealth jumped from $1 million to $100 million, U.S. investigators believe.

"IMC is the classic case of embezzlement of government funds," according to Robert Teich, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Office on Labor Racketeering in Miami. Reich described IMC's skimming Medicare funds as a "bust-out" where money was "drained out the back door." A Florida state investigator concluded in a 1982 report that some federal funds IMC received "are being put in banks outside the country."

Recarey's links to the Mafia also raised eyebrows in Washington. "As far back as the 1960s, he had ties with reputed racketeers who had operated out of pre-Castro Cuba and who later forged an anti-Castro alliance with the CIA," the Wall Street Journal reported. The Journal added that the late Santos Trafficante, Jr., the Mafia boss of Florida, "helped out when Recarey needed business financing." Trafficante, a major drug trafficker, joined a failed CIA effort to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro in the early 1960s.

Recarey's access to Republican circles was probably one reason he was able to rip-off U.S. tax dollars for so long. He hired former Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger, the public relations firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, which was close to the Reagan White House, and attorney John Sears, a former Reagan campaign manager, to look out for his interests in Washington. Recarey fled the United States in 1987 to avoid a federal indictment for racketeering and defrauding the U.S. government. The Bush administration has made no effort to extradite him from Venezuela where he is currently living.

JEB LINKED TO SMUGGLERS AND THIEVES

Jeb Bush has also been linked to Leonel Martinez, a Miami-based right-wing Cuban-American drug trafficker. Martinez, who was linked to Contra dissident Eden Pastora, was involved in efforts to smuggle more than 3,000 pounds of cocaine into Miami in 1985-86. He was arrested in 1989 and later convicted for bringing 300 kilos of cocaine into the U.S. He also reportedly arranged for the delivery of two helicopters, arms, ammunition, and clothing to Pasto- ra's Costa Rica-based Contras.

Federal prosecutors in Miami have a photograph of Jeb and Martinez shaking hands but won't release the photo to the public. Whether Jeb was aware of Martinez's drug trafficking activities is not known, but it is known that Leonel and his wife Margarita made a $2,200 contribution to the Dade County Republican Party four months after Jeb became the chair of the local GOP.

It is also known that Martinez wrote $5,000 checks to then Vice President Bush's Fund for America's Future in both December 1985 and July 1986 and made a $2,000 contribution to the Bush for President campaign in October 1987.

Martinez's construction company gave $6,000 in October 1986 to Bob Martinez (no relation), the GOP candidate for governor in Florida; he was governor from 1987 to 1991. At that time, Vice President Bush was serving as head of the South Florida Drug Task Force and later as chair of the National Narcotics Interdiction System, both set up to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S. While Bush was drug czar, the volume of cocaine smuggled into the U.S. tripled. President Bush later appointed Bob Martinez in 1991 head of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy- the drug czar to succeed the controversial William Bennett.

JEB GETS IN ON THE BCCI ACTION

In 1988, Jeb was mentioned in a deposition taken by a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee, chaired by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), which was investigating drug money laundering operations in the U.S.

"I saw Jeb Bush two or three times over there with [Abdur] Sakhia," stated Aziz Rehman, a junior BCCI-Miami official in the 1980s. "This was all part of the bank's trying to cultivate public officials and prominent individuals." *38 Rehman said BCCI's practice was to "bribe" government officials in the United States.

"Jeb Bush, V.P. George Bush's son," Sakhia noted in a 1986 BCCI document, was a "name…to be remembered."

Most of Rehman's testimony focused on his role in BCCI-Miami's money laundering operation. Rehman said it was his job, in the mid-1980s, to chauffeur and entertain BCCI-Miami's big clients when they came to the city from the Caribbean and Latin America. Rehman described how he deposited large amounts of cash for these clients, ranging from $100,000 to $2 million, in other Miami banks at which BCCI-Miami had accounts. To disguise the money trail, BCCI transferred the cash electronically from Miami to BCCI banks in Panama and the Grand Cayman Islands.

Jeb's name also shows up in a September 1987 BCCI document written by Amjad Awan, then a senior BCCI-Miami official. The memorandum planned a BCCI breakfast meeting with a senior level delegation from the People's Republic of China and high Florida state government officials, including Secretary of Commerce Jeb Bush. Among the Chinese delegation was Ge Zhong Xue, Deputy Division Chief of the Ministry of Public Security, a top police official.

Meanwhile, Jeb and his business partner Armando Codina profited handsomely when the Bush administration bailed out Broward Federal Savings and Loan in Sunrise, Florida, which went belly up in 1988. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) absorbed $285 million in bad loans, including a $4.6 million loan by the Bush-Codina partnership. According to the deal struck by federal regulators, the Bush-Codina partnership wrote a check for $505,000 to the FDIC, and the government paid off the remaining $4.1 million of the loan for an office building on which Jeb and Codina defaulted. As a result of the bailout, the Bush-Codina partnership retained possession of its office building at 1390 Brickell Avenue in Miami's posh financial district.

Currently, Jeb is involved in a number of joint ventures with Codina, a Miami real estate developer who is also a leader of the right-wing Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). The Brickell Avenue office building is owned by IntrAmerica Investments. Jeb was listed in business documents in 1985 and in 1986 as the president of IntrAmerica Investments, and the building is managed by one of Jeb's real estate companies. Codina owns 80 percent of the building, while Jeb owns the remaining 20 percent.

Jeb has acted as the Reagan and Bush administration's liaison with the politically influential Cuban exile community in South Florida. Jorge Mas Canosa, president of CANF, succinctly described Jeb's role as the ultra-right Cuban-American community's liaison with the White House: "He is one of us."

Jeb Asks Dad To Free Terrorist

As a link to that powerful and wealthy South Florida community, Jeb has been a tireless supporter of some of the most reactionary Cuban-American political causes -from promoting CANF projects like Radio and TV Marti & acute;, to lobbying for the release of anti-Castro terrorist Orlando Bosch from a Miami jail. TV propaganda broadcasts into Cuba, considered by legal experts a violation of the International Telecommunications Convention, are fully subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Anti-Castro terrorist Orlando Bosch was paroled in 1990 after Jeb lobbied the Bush administration for his release from prison in Miami. Bosch had been jailed in 1988 for jumping bail on a 1968 conviction for shooting a bazooka at a Polish freighter in the Miami harbor. He is better known as the mastermind of the explosion of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados on October 5, 1976, in which 73 passengers were killed. A U.S. District Court judge revealed in 1988 that secret U.S. documents concluded Bosch was a leader of the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), which was responsible for more than 50 anti-Castro bombings in Cuba and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. The Cuban government filed an order for his extradi- ction in May 1992.

"Tell Him...The Vice President's Son" Called

"There was no conflict of interest," third Bush son Neil told reporters after the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) in Washington issued a notice of intent in January 1990 to hold a hearing on the failure of Silverado Banking Savings and Loan. Neil had been a member of Silverado's board of directors from 1985 to 1988. *45 Federal regulators shut down Silverado shortly after George Bush was elected president in 1988. The federal bailout cost U.S. taxpayers $1 billion.

Neil was responding to charges made in an OTS report that he had "breached his fiduciary duty" to Silverado by engaging in unethical business deals while a board member of the Denver savings and loan. The report documented that Neil personally profited from questionable Silverado loans to his business partners, Ken Good and Bill Walters. Good and Walters later defaulted on $132 million in loans to Silverado, leaving the taxpayers to pick up the tab.

The OTS report alleged that Neil failed to disclose his business connections to Good and Walters when he voted to approve a $900,000 line of credit to Good International, Inc. Neil got Silverado to write a letter of recommendation to authorities in Argentina, where Good International, in partnership with Neil's JNB Exploration Company, was exploring for gas and oil. Good also gave the President's third son a $100,000 loan to invest in the commodities market, which Bush was never required to repay.

Neil failed to inform Silverado that Walters had contributed $150,000 to the initial capitalization of JNB Exploration, or that Walters' Cherry Creek National Bank in Denver extended a $1.5 million line of credit to JNB Exploration. Neil put up a paltry $100 in start-up funds in 1983 when he founded JNB Exploration, but over the next five years was paid $550,000 in salary drawn from the Cherry Creek National Bank line of credit. Neil brought few business skills to his job at JNB Exploration but he was adept at cashing in on his family name. "Tell him Neil Bush called," Neil once told the secretary of a wealthy Denver oil entrepreneur. "You know, the vice president's son."

"Neil knew people because of his name," acknowledged Evans Nash, one of Neil's partners at JNB Exploration. "He's the one that got us going. He's the one that made it happen for us."

When Neil left JNB Exploration in 1989, the company had yet to discover a profitable gas or oil well.

Neil: The Sensitive One

Neil's business partners also included shady characters with ties to the world of covert operations. In 1985, Good received an $86 million loan from the Dallas Western Savings Association, which was tied to Robert Corson, a Texas developer and reputed CIA operative, and Herman Beebe, Sr., a convicted Mafia associate of Louisiana mob boss Carlos Marcello.

Neil profited from the Western Savings loan to Good, because the loan helped Good buy Gulfstream Land and Development, a Florida real estate company. Good made Neil a board member of one of Gulfstream's subsidiaries in 1988. Bush was paid $100,000 a year to attend occasional Gulfstream board meetings before it went out of business in 1990.

Investigative reporter Pete Brewton identified Corson as a CIA operative in a long Houston Post series on CIA links to organized crime and failed savings and loans. "One former CIA operative told the Post that Corson frequently acted as `a mule' for the agency, meaning he would carry large sums of money from country to country," Brewton wrote.

Corson's Vision Banc Savings in Kingsville, Texas, loaned about $20 million to Mike Atkinson, a Corson associate, for a Florida land deal put together by Lawrence Freeman. Freeman, who laundered money for Santos Trafficante, Jr., was also tied to veteran CIA operative Paul Helliwell. In the Bahamas, Helliwell set up Castle Bank and Trust Ltd., which was the CIA's primary financial front in Latin America and the Caribbean during the 1960s and 1970s. Castle laundered funds for the Agency's covert operations against Cuba.

Walters had ties to Richard Rossmiller, a Beebe associate. In the mid-1970s, Walters was a part-owner with Rossmiller, of Peoples State Bank in Marshall, Texas, at the same time as Rossmiller was doing business with Beebe.

Wayne Reeder, another Beebe associate, a big borrower from Silverado, defaulted on a $14 million loan. Reeder was involved in an unsuccessful arms deal with the Contras. Reeder accompanied his partner, John Nichols, in 1981 to a weapons demonstration attended by Contra leaders Eden Pastora and Raul Arana, both of whom were interested in buying military equipment from Nichols.

"Among the equipment were night vision goggles ... and light machine guns," according to the book, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans. "Nichols ... had a plan in the early 1980s to build a munitions plant on the Cabezon Indian Reservation near Palm Springs, California, in partnership with Wackenhut, the Florida security firm. [But] the plan fell through." There was another Silverado-Contra connection, however, that didn't fall through. E. Trine Starnes, Jr., the third largest Silverado borrower, was a major donor to the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty (NEPL), directed by Carl "Spitz" Channell, which was a part of Oliver North's Contra funding and arms support network. A NEPL document, "Top 25 Contributors as of October 3, 1986," showed Starnes contributed $30,000 to NEPL's Central America Freedom Program. Starnes closed a deal with Silverado on September 30, 1986, for three business loans totaling $77.5 million, on which Starnes later defaulted.

The Central America Freedom Program was a propaganda effort in conjunction with the Reagan administration's campaign in 1986 to win congressional support for resuming arms aid to the Contras. When the administration wooed potential NEPL donors, Starnes was invited to a January 30, 1986, White House briefing, which included Reagan, National Security Adviser John Poindexter, White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams. Congress resumed U.S. arms aid to the Contras in mid-1986.

In a final ironic Silverado-Contra connection, NEPL banked at the Palmer National Bank in Washington, a bank with ties to Vice President Bush and Herman Beebe. Palmer National was also linked to North's Contra arms network.

Palmer National was established in 1983 by Stefan Halper and Harvey McClean, Jr., two former aides in Bush's unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1980. Halper, who had links to the intelligence community, became deputy director of the State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in the Reagan administration. McClean was a Beebe associate. Beebe supplied the majority of the capitalization for the start-up of Palmer National.

"Palmer National lent money to individuals and organizations that were involved in covert aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels," Brewton wrote in the Houston Post. "Money was channeled through Palmer National to a Swiss bank account used by . . . North to provide military assistance to the Contras."

Bushed Out

George Herbert Walker Bush is the first former CIA director to serve as president. The implications for U.S. politics of Bush's move from CIA headquarters to the White House are profound and chilling, but seldom the subject of mainstream political discussion. The corruption of the Bush family, however, is a good introduction.

The Bushes' shadowy business partners come straight out of the world in which the CIA thrives-the netherworld of secret wars and covert operators, drug runners, mafiosi and crooked entrepreneurs out to make a fast buck. What Bush family members lack in business acumen, they make up for by cashing in on their blood ties to the former Director of Central Intelligence who became president. In return for throwing business their way, the Bushes give their partners political access, legitimacy, and perhaps protection. The big loser in the deal is the democratic process.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Taliban Leaders' Camp Bombed
U.S. Says Strikes Will Continue Despite Afghan Objections

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 30, 2001; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40013-2001Dec29?language=printer

Two B-1B bombers attacked a suspected Taliban leadership compound near the Afghan city of Gardez south of Kabul as the number of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners in U.S. custody doubled to 125 at a detention facility in Kandahar, defense officials said yesterday.

The airstrike signaled a willingness by U.S. commanders to continue attacking suspected Taliban leaders even as some in Afghanistan's new interim government have begun questioning how long such air attacks should continue, weeks after the Islamic militia fell from power in Afghanistan.

The attack, the second on a suspected Taliban compound in three days, took place 10 miles from Gardez late Friday in Afghanistan as the pair of heavy bombers dropped satellite-guided, 2,000-pound bombs on the compound, said Marine Corps Maj. Brad Lowell, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa.

The Afghan Islamic Press reported that the attack took place in the village of Shekhan, west of Gardez. On Wednesday, U.S. warplanes attacked and destroyed another suspected Taliban leadership compound near Ghazni. Gardez is 45 miles from Kabul, and Ghazni is about 80 miles from the Afghan capital.

Lowell said he had no information about how many Taliban commanders may have been inside either compound. "We don't get into that body count-type reporting of bomb damage assessment," he said. "If there's personnel in there, they've had every opportunity to surrender at this point."

One senior defense official in Washington made it clear that such attacks would continue. "As we say every day, the Taliban no longer runs the government, which is a good thing, but there are still Taliban leadership out there that we want to get," the official said. "We've been looking for them, and when we find them, we'll attack."

More than 60 new Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners arrived yesterday in Kandahar from a prison in Shibergan in northern Afghanistan. U.S. forces, heavily armed and wearing bulletproof vests, sealed off the Shibergan prison so the prisoners could be loaded onto a convoy of six vehicles for the long drive south to Kandahar. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross were inside the prison registering detainees before they were loaded onto the U.S. convoy.

About 3,000 prisoners, including 900 foreigners, are being held at Shibergan. The prison is west of Mazar-e Sharif, where hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda members staged a violent prison riot last month before they were subdued by U.S. airstrikes and Afghan opposition forces.

With yesterday's arrivals, the number of prisoners at a makeshift facility constructed by U.S. Marines at the Kandahar airport reached 125. Inside the facility, the prisoners are bound, blindfolded and separated from each other by concertina wire.

Lowell said the total number of prisoners in U.S. custody has reached 136. Eight others,_including American John Walker,_are being held on the amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu in the Indian Ocean, he said, two others are being held at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul and one is incarcerated at Mazar-e Sharif.

"If we're holding them, they are important to us," Lowell said.

The United States will not necessarily try all of those in U.S. custody, the senior defense official said. "Some we would want prosecuted, some would be handed back to their countries of origin for appropriate disposition," the official said. "But it's too soon to make those sorts of judgments."

The Kandahar detention facility and others being built in Afghanistan, the official said, have been designed to hold many more prisoners, depending on the number deemed to possess intelligence that could be useful in the global war against al Qaeda and the hunt for its leader, Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden.

Those prisoners taken into custody by the U.S. military, the official said, have been selected on the basis of "who they might be, what people think they might have done, what information they might be able to provide in terms of going after the leadership. . . . They're useful for one reason or another."

In the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan, meanwhile, Afghan forces assisted by U.S. Army Green Berets continued searching abandoned cave and tunnel complexes for Taliban and al Qaeda leaders or any intelligence they may have left behind.

"They're clearing areas there, and they're collecting intelligence," Lowell said. "We've gathered significant information from our efforts, not only in Tora Bora, but other areas as well."

Lowell said that 50 to 70 U.S. warplanes continue flying daily sorties over Afghanistan, waiting for "targets of opportunity," such as the suspected Taliban compound near Gardez, to emerge. B-1B and B-52 bombers flying from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia rotate sorties so that bombers are in the air and on call for missions in Afghanistan 24 hours a day.

B-1B bombers can carry 24 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions, which work in all weather conditions and are guided by signals from Global Positioning System satellites to within 10 feet of their programmed coordinates.

----

NEW PRIORITIES
Hunt for bin Laden Loses Steam as Winter Grips Afghan Caves

New York Times
December 30, 2001
By ERIC SCHMITT with MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/30/international/asia/30MILI.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 - The American- backed effort to comb the caves of Tora Bora for signs of Osama bin Laden, his fighters and intelligence on terrorist attacks that might be in the works has made little progress and seems to be fading as a top priority, American and Afghan officials said today.

More than 50 American Special Operations troops remain in the region, but they are not searching any caves themselves, military officials said. The Afghan militia members carrying out that task are relatively few in number, poorly clothed for scouring the rugged terrain in increasingly harsh winter weather and unenthusiastic about the mission.

What was a high priority for the Bush administration in recent weeks seems now to have lost much of its impetus.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared on Dec. 21 that there was "a sense of urgency" to clear the hundreds of caves as quickly as possible in the hopes of uncovering documents that could lead to the arrest of Al Qaeda members worldwide or tip off a new terrorist attack. He said that "hundreds more" American ground forces would be sent to join the hunt.

But on Thursday, six days later, Mr. Rumsfeld said that the material recovered so far from the caves had only "relatively modest" intelligence value. The Pentagon, for now, has also shelved plans to send several hundred marines and Army troops to Tora Bora. Instead, the military is offering money and warm clothing to Afghan militia members to get the job done, accepting their methodical pace as a price worth paying to avoid sending in more American forces.

"If it's a little slower, that's O.K., we can live with that," said Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, a senior military spokesman.

Pentagon officials confirmed that the Special Forces soldiers were focused on examining materials recovered from the caves and positioning themselves to call in daily airstrikes. Bombing has largely ceased since Dec. 18, but American warplanes still fly 50 to 60 missions a day over Afghanistan, prepared to strike if ground spotters call targets in.

Americans are "not leading the way into caves or joining anti-Taliban forces searching the caves," said Col. Rick Thomas, a spokesman for the United States Central Command in Tampa, Fla. "Generally, the people doing that are Afghans."

The Pentagon is still considering sending more Special Operations forces to Tora Bora if the number of Afghan militia members falls short or if important new discoveries emerge from the caves.

The administration's slackening pace also seems to reflect a fresh assessment of Mr. Laden's whereabouts - or lack of intelligence about the his location.

Just two weeks ago, Pentagon officials made a drumbeat of pronouncements that Mr. bin Laden was probably hiding in a mountain cave in Tora Bora. With his trail growing cold and reports that he may have fled to Pakistan, American officials seem to be in no hurry to speed up the search or to use heavy equipment to open caves sealed by American bombing.

"It's still an ongoing effort, but I'm not hearing much out of there," said an American official who closely follows classified intelligence reports on the war. "The question of who might be there or who's dead remains an open question, but I haven't seen any live Al Qaeda guys turned up there."

Troops under the control of Hazarat Ali, an American-backed Afghan commander in Tora Bora, have been searching the caves, retrieving Pakistani and other foreign passports, documents and other information, passing them up to Commander Ali, said one of his deputies, Gul Karim.

But the militia ranks have dwindled far below the number who fought Al Qaeda. With many Afghans in Tora Bora now saying they consider the war over and feel it is time to go home, Mr. Karim said Commander Ali's forces there now numbered only about 200, compared with about 1,000 during the heat of the battle. The number of fighters allied with two other regional commanders is even lower and has also decreased sharply, he said.

They are less motivated to track down Mr. bin Laden, and the documents they find are not all getting directly to American forces. Caves have been looted for profit. Some of the fighters of the Eastern Shura, a regional alliance, have tried to sell documents to journalists and American military forces. Some documents appear genuine, among them bomb-making manuals in Arabic, which have an asking price of $5,000. Others are worthless, like United Nations vehicle documents - part of a cache of papers that one midlevel Afghan commander insisted was worth $200,000.

Since the United States has made a principal aim of the war the capture or death of Mr. bin Laden, his disappearance has become politicized, with regional rivals casting his whereabouts in a way most favorable to their interests.

The Afghan proxies were unenthusiastic about engaging in a manhunt from the start. After Al Qaeda forces fled, Commander Ali and another militia commander, Hajji Zaman, declared victory and boasted that their war aims had been completed. The goal, they said, was to drive the foe from Nangarhar Province and free Afghanistan from Arab and other fighters of Al Qaeda, not to trap them on Afghan soil so they could be hunted down.

Winter has further eroded their interest in cave-hunting. Tora Bora and its surroundings are a vast, wild place that fighters cannot fully explore without spending one or more nights isolated in the bone-chilling cold.

To entice more of the Afghan militia to join the search, the United States has dangled offers of weapons, ammunition, cash and cold- weather gear. Most of the Afghan fighters wear sneakers or shoddy boots and lightweight outer garb, maybe a sweater, with a blanket- coat over their shoulders.

"It may be that cold-weather clothing is more important than money," said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "All that is being worked to solicit their cooperation in this endeavor."

Throughout the campaign, Army Special Forces soldiers have worked closely with the anti-Taliban militia, providing them arms, coordinating battle strategy and calling in airstrikes. Other Special Operations forces, including commandos and long-range snipers, have worked independently in the region to cut off escaping fighters.

On Dec. 21, Mr. Rumsfeld described a coalition effort, involving Americans, Afghans and maybe some British commandos, to scour the subterranean Tora Bora complex.

"What you have is a bunch of caves," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "They're being triaged and put in priority order. Then the Afghan forces and coalition forces are going into those caves and looking for information and evidence and people and weapons."

"We have felt a sense of urgency from the beginning," Mr. Rumsfeld continued. "The faster we do this job and the more information we can get and the more we can disseminate that intelligence information to people around the world and the more people that get arrested and the more bank accounts that get closed, the better off we are."

But Mr. Karim said he had not seen the Americans actively exploring Tora Bora. "We are searching the caves," he said. "The Americans are still waiting. They are at their base."

American military officials say the local militias know the terrain the best, Moreover, throughout the military campaign, the United States has not wanted to be seen as an occupying army, as the Soviet Union was in its failed 10-year intervention.

"We don't want to be perceived as wanting any piece of their country," Admiral Quigley said.

Afghan officials, including former Northern Alliance commanders who despise Pakistan for its support of the Taliban, said this week that Mr. bin Laden had probably fled to Pakistan and insisted that he was no longer on Afghan territory that they control.

But Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, has said Mr. bin Laden may be dead in Afghanistan, perhaps crushed in a cave in a thunderous American airstrike.

General Musharraf wants to dispel the notion that Mr. bin Laden slipped past thousands of Pakistani soldiers stationed along the Afghanistan border and that he is getting aid and comfort from Islamic militants in Pakistan. Nor does he want to give the United States reason to hunt him in Pakistan.

These conflicting assessments are likely to continue until the bin Laden mystery is resolved. "If we don't have specific information on where he is, then obviously any search on the surface may not seem intense, but it is," said Colonel Thomas of the Central Command.

That may not be easy, even if it turns out that Mr. bin Laden has been killed in a bombed-out cave in Tora Bora, which would be the best outcome for the administration at this point, officials said.

"It will be a question mark until we decide whether we want to go in and dig these bunkers and caves out," said Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of the military operation in Afghanistan. "And in some cases, we may well do that."

--------

Deal Reached on Peacekeeping in Afghanistan

December 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghanistan.html

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The new Afghan government has reached an agreement with international peacekeepers on how they will function in the coming months, the country's interim foreign minister said Sunday.

Dr. Abdullah, who uses only one name, said that multinational troops would be allowed to operate in various Afghan cities, working with Afghan authorities to provide security. But he would not provide further specifics about the deal, which followed long and complicated negotiations both with the peacekeepers and among different factions of the Afghan leadership.

Abdullah also said Sunday that U.S. airstrikes would be needed ``as long as terrorist cells are in Afghanistan.''

The first deployment of peacekeepers -- British Royal Marines -- arrived days before the Dec. 22 inauguration of a six-month administration. But discussions had bogged down over how many more troops will come and what their duties will be.

Some within Afghanistan's interim Cabinet wanted as many as 5,000 peacekeepers with a visible, pro-active role. Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, however, thought international troops should be limited to 1,000 and perform peacekeeping duties with a low profile.

Though peacekeepers will be stationed initially in Kabul, the government also welcomes them in other cities, Abdullah said. Several countries, including two Muslim nations, already have committed troops and resources.

One sticking point may be the continued presence in Kabul of armed Afghan fighters. Under the agreement reached in Germany that empowered the temporary government, those soldiers are allowed only outside the capital.

However, Abdullah said ``Afghan soldiers will be based in military bases in and around Kabul.''

While Abdullah said U.S. airstrikes still are necessary, other ministers in the week-old Cabinet have said the bombing campaign, which helped defeat the Taliban and sent many al-Qaida fighters running, should stop to avoid more civilian casualties.

``Certainly we are concerned about that,'' Abdullah said. But bombing ``should continue as long as it takes.''

Some Taliban leaders are in custody, he said, but ``quite a few have disguised themselves and gone elsewhere.''

He said Osama bin Laden may still be in the country -- another incentive for foreign help in cleaning up the mess left by the former Taliban rulers. U.S. forces continue patrolling Afghanistan's rugged mountains, looking for the suspected terrorist and his followers.

On Sunday, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said bin Laden probably is not dead.

``The latest intelligence we had indicates that the high probabilities are that bin Laden is still alive,'' Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said on CNN's ``Late Edition.'' ``Where he is, is a question mark. The trail has gone cold as to whether he's still in the caves of Tora Bora or, in fact, has slipped out into Pakistan.''

Speculation has run wild about bin Laden's whereabouts. Fahim said Saturday that bin Laden was believed to have gone to Pakistan. Abdullah says that may be false.

``We do not have the exactly clear information about Osama,'' Abdullah said, ``but he might be inside Afghanistan.''

Abdullah said he favors an Afghan war-crimes tribunal that would investigate abuses by the Taliban's repressive five-year regime. But he acknowledged prosecuting such cases would be difficult and time-consuming.

``It will take years and years,'' Abdullah said. ``It's not a matter of days to draw up a list of war criminals.''

He said the tribunal's mandate should not cover the period before the Taliban took power. Many members of the new government were involved in the ill-fated administration that ruled Afghanistan from 1992-96, when factional fighting flattened entire neighborhoods and killed an estimated 50,000 people.

In other developments:

-- U.S. Army soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division will replace Marines at a base in southern Afghanistan, a Pentagon spokesman said Sunday. The Marines will hand over responsibility for overseeing a group of suspected Taliban and al-Qaida detainees at the Kandahar base that grew to 139 on Sunday.

-- Four Afghan soldiers were killed at Qul-e-Urdu, the main military base in Herat, during an accidental explosion that occurred as they stacked boxes of ammunition. An unknown number of people were injured, said Naseer Ahmed, a spokesman for local warlord Ismail Khan. ``The explosion was very strong. It broke windows and caused some damage,'' he said.

-- Pakistan's military-led government has frozen the accounts of Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood and Abdul Majid, two nuclear scientists suspected of links with bin Laden, a central bank spokesman said Sunday.

--------

TALIBAN
Northern Prison Sealed Off as Americans Pick Inmates for Interrogation in South

New York Times
December 30, 2001
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/30/international/30PRIS.html

SHIBARGHAN, Afghanistan, Dec. 29 - United States Special Operations forces today sealed off the enormous overcrowded prison here that holds more than 3,000 Taliban prisoners, as they screened several dozen for transport to American-run detention sites in southern Afghanistan.

The prison at Shibarghan holds some of the foreign Taliban fighters who were involved in a prisoner uprising last month in Qala Jangi and emerged from a basement after six days of fighting long after all the prisoners were thought to have been killed. Officials said there were also several Afghan Taliban commanders among the prisoners who could provide important information about Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.

"We took some prisoners yesterday and will take some more today," said Maj. Joseph Fenty, who is overseeing the operation. "This may not be the last day we do this."

His unit of some 20 to 30 men is temporarily based in tents at the Shibarghan airstrip.

"They are of value to us for intelligence, and we are doing them a big favor," Major Fenty said.

"This place is very overcrowded, and they will receive better medical care, feeding and living quarters, and so their personal safety increases."

The overcrowded and unsanitary conditions of Shibarghan prison are increasingly alarming to foreign aid officials. Some 3,500 prisoners are crammed into cells built to house 800. Last week one prisoner died and dozens, possibly hundreds, have come down with dysentery. On Thursday, half a dozen men too weak to walk, one screaming with pain, were carried out of their cells to a clinic where medics set up intravenous drips.

Many inmates were sick or wounded when they arrived a month ago, and endured a terrible journey during which some prisoners died from injuries or asphyxiation. There are reports that some prisoners had been fired upon while tied up and shut inside metal shipping containers.

Today's operation certainly ran more smoothly. Men of the United States Army's 10th Mountain Division in desert camouflage uniforms and full combat gear were guarding the mud-walled prison. Their commander and a number of marines were inside the compound, searching and questioning prisoners and passing them through a medical examination.

After the disaster at Qala Jangi last month, when prisoners rushed their guards and seized their guns, killing a Central Intelligence Agency officer who was questioning prisoners, security was tight. Prisoners were being searched in one area, then given a medical examination in another, before being taken to a third area for questioning, Major Fenty said.

"I am assuring them we are going to take care of them and that where we are taking them is far better, and that seems to be reassuring them," he said of the prisoners.

Asked whether the prisoners had made any requests, Major Fenty said: "They are rather quiet. We are asking them the questions."

By afternoon his troops had brought an unknown number of prisoners out of the prison in a sealed truck and ferried them to the town's airport where a plane stood waiting on the runway.

The troops also moved a number of prisoners from the prison on Friday, as well as 10 prisoners from the secure wing of the military hospital, doctors at the hospital said, among them Arabs and men from the Caucasus and Central Asia. "We have taken some foreigners and we are looking at some Afghans," the major said.

The prisoners would be taken to detention sites built recently at Camp Rhino and at the Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan.

In Washington today, Pentagon officials said that there were now 136 Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees in custody, including 125 at the Kandahar airport.

The other detainees are eight aboard the amphibious assault ship Peleliu, two at the Bagram air base north of Kabul, and one at Mazar-i- Sharif.

The prison warden at Shibarghan, Gen. Jurabek, said he was sure the prisoners would provide intelligence of great interest to American investigators.

"I have been gathering information from them for a long time, and there are some serious Al Qaeda members among them," the general said.

These prisoners included an Afghan Taliban commander who served as deputy to Mullah Fazel, the leader of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, he said, as well as men who were trained for international terrorism.

-------- balkans

Displacement continues long after guns went silent

By Joshua Kucera
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 30, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011230-76906696.htm

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia - Desimir Kojic would be happy to leave Banja Luka if he could.

Mr. Kojic, a Serb from Sisak, Croatia, had gone on a 10-day trip to Vienna when Croats began attacking Serbs in Croatia in 1991. On his return, Mr. Kojic found that a Croat - a man he'd known for 20 years - had broken into his apartment and taken it over.

"They hated me because of my nationality," he said. So he fled to Bosnia's Serbian community and is still here six years after the Dayton accords ended the 1992-95 war.

"According to the Dayton agreement, I have the right to live wherever I want - in Croatia, San Francisco or Kandahar," he said. He's still trying to get his apartment back in Sisak, "but there's no chance."

Mr. Kojic is one of an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Serbs from Croatia living in Banja Luka, the capital of Republika Srpska, the Serbian half of Bosnia.

Many of them live in homes vacated by Muslims and Croats who fled during the war, while the latter live in formerly Serbian houses in the Muslim-Croat Federation.

Since the war ended, perhaps the biggest task for international and Bosnian authorities is to help people move back into their own homes. Muslims, Croats and Serbs fled en masse from areas where they were minorities.

But for one family to regain its home usually means kicking out another family of a different ethnic group. And its original home is also usually being lived in, and so on.

"And eventually, there's always someone at the end of this chain whose house was destroyed," said a foreign official in Banja Luka.

As a result, only about 37 percent of the roughly quarter-million or so people who want to return to their pre-war homes in Bosnia have been able to do so. The figures are especially low in the Republika Srpska, where only 27 percent of displaced people have returned.

Part of that is due to the fact that Croatian Serbs face enormous obstacles to getting their homes back. But much of the blame, many of those working on refugee issues say, belongs to Republika Srpska itself.

The R.S. authorities are accused of using a variety of methods to ensure that Muslims and Croats don't come back. By refusing to evict Serbs who have occupied Muslim and Croat apartments, the government created a logjam for the entire return process, foreign officials charge.

Antonieta Sremac, a Croat, got her apartment in downtown Banja Luka back last year. But not before the R.S. government told the 63-year-old retiree that the occupants, who were Serbs, couldn't be kicked out because they had nowhere else to go. After some sleuthing, and months of renting another apartment, she produced photos of a vacation house they owned on the outskirts of Banja Luka.

Most refugees in Croatia, though, aren't as lucky as she. "Most of them are old and don't have the means to come back and look for their flats," she said. And neither the Croatian nor the R.S. governments do anything to help, she said.

The R.S. government's priorities have drawn fire from international officials.

"The distribution of flats to collective center residents and building materials to families of soldiers killed in battle does not meet Republika Srpska's legal obligations to refugees and displaced persons under the property laws, and diverts resources from programs that would," said Robert M. Beecroft, head of the Office of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission here.

Recently, the foreign groups have tightened the screws on the R.S. government. "[The government] doesn't want to accept it, so you've got to start banging some heads," said Ilija Todorovic, a protection officer with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "Now, more and more people are considering going back because they're going to get evicted."

Although Mr. Kojic isn't displacing anyone - he's renting the house he's staying in from a Serb who lives in Germany - he concedes that "it's difficult for Muslims and Croats to come back, because [the government] doesn't know what to do with us Serbs."

The R.S. government has a Ministry of Refugees and Displaced Persons, but it suffers a perennial budget crisis. Nine months into this year, the ministry had gotten just over half the money it was allocated in the budget - the most underfunded ministry in the country, despite ministry spokesman Vojin Mijatovic's claim that "this is the most important job in the R.S."

The government is accused of dragging its feet on returns for political reasons. The nationalist Serbian Democratic Party, though not in power, pulls many strings here to maintain its voter base. People displaced from their homes are more likely to be embittered and vote for the nationalists.

"If you integrate them locally rather than sending them back, you guarantee yourself a voter," said Mr. Todorovic of the UNHCR.

-------- business

US missile shortage delays Iraq strike

By Sean Rayment
30/12/2001
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/12/30/wirq30.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/12/30/ixnewstop.html

A SHORTAGE of cruise missiles has thrown plans for a full-scale strike on Iraq into disarray.

America's supply of the air launched version, one of the US air force's most sophisticated and deadly weapons, has become so depleted that military chiefs are pressing Boeing, the manufacturers, to speed up their production.

Even so, the first of the new batch of missiles ordered last year is not expected for months, and it may take longer to rebuild stocks to a level that would make such an attack viable.

Strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 and Kosovo two years ago virtually exhausted the US supply. The number of conventional [non-nuclear] air launched cruise missiles left within the inventory is believed to be fewer than 30.

The £900,000 missiles are a vital tactical weapon because of their ability to destroy targets from up to 800 miles without warning.

The news came as President Bush pledged to maintain the war on terrorism in 2002. "Above all, this coming year will require our sustained commitment to the war against terrorism," he said in his weekly radio address. "We cannot know how long this struggle will last. But it can end only one way: in victory for America and the cause of freedom."

The US joint chiefs are known to be considering a number of plans to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime. The military is thought to be pushing for a full-scale invasion of the country in a campaign similar to Operation Desert Storm, but this would require months of planning and the movement of hundreds of thousand of troops.

Fundamental to any plan is the use of overwhelming air power. Unless Iraq's air defence system was destroyed by cruise missiles, as in the Gulf war, the chances of heavy US casualties would be high.

Other options open to America include the use of Tomahawk cruise missiles, 85 of which have been fired against Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. The Tomahawks can be launched from ships or submarines but lack the range for every target in Iraq, a fact that Saddam recognises.

It is also likely that the US Navy would not want its stock of Tomahawks diminished, potentially creating the nightmare scenario of the world's only military superpower being without a viable long-range missile force.

Rob Hewson, the editor of Jane's Air Launched Weapons, said American bombers would not be sent in until hostile air defence and communications systems had been all but destroyed by cruise missiles.

He said: "The Pentagon will not want to be in a position to launch another full-scale attack against Iraq without a full armoury of cruise missiles.

Iraq has one of the largest armed forces in the world. It has a very capable air defence system and the US wouldn't want to launch an attack against it without destroying most of its air defence first.

"The only real option as far as Iraq is concerned is to sit tight and replenish stocks." A Pentagon spokesman admitted that cruise missile stocks had been virtually exhausted after the strikes on Afghanistan, Sudan and Kosovo.

When asked whether the shortfall would delay any future large-scale military operation, he said: "The military chiefs are aware of the situation and measures are in place to fix it."

The Pentagon has also given the go-ahead for a more sophisticated version of the "Daisy Cutter" bomb which has been used in Afghanistan. The BLU118/B was first dropped on December 14 in the Nevada desert. The devices creates a pressure wave capable of destroying caves and killing troops in the open.

-------- india

INTERNATIONAL
India Builds Up Forces as Bush Urges Calm

New York Times
December 30, 2001
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/30/international/asia/30INDI.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 29 - With India rushing troops to the border of Pakistan, President Bush called the leaders of both nations today to try to avert a war. According to the White House, he urged Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the military leader of Pakistan, to do more to rein in terrorists.

In New Delhi, India's prime minister strongly suggested that India was prepared for war if diplomacy failed.

Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Bush, in a call made from his ranch in Crawford, Tex., urged General Musharraf to "take additional strong and decisive measures to eliminate the extremists who seek to harm India, undermine Pakistan, provoke a war," the Associated Press reported.

In his call to the Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, Mr. Bush pledged to work with India against terrorism, Mr. McClellan said. And he called the recent deadly attack against the Indian Parliament "a strike against democracy."

The president also called the British prime minister, Tony Blair, to discuss developments in South Asia. Mr. Blair plans to visit the region within days.

India has accused Pakistan of complicity in an attack by five gunmen on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi on Dec. 13. Fourteen people, including the attackers, died in the assault.

Officials with Pakistan's military intelligence agency gave figures today intended to show that India had moved 23 more army divisions with at least 150,000 additional combat troops into what Pakistan described as strike positions along the border in recent days, bringing Pakistan's estimate of India's border force to about one million. Pakistan also said that India had deployed 600 combat aircraft.

"The situation is growing dangerously tense," Pakistan's foreign minister, Abdul Sattar, said at a news conference in Islamabad. "India has massed its forces close to the borders with Pakistan and the Line of Control in Kashmir. This massive Indian military buildup gravely threatens peace in South Asia."

Mr. Sattar appealed to the United States, Britain and other nations to put pressure on India to avoid a conflict, and he warned that there was a grave risk of war breaking out inadvertently, given the intensity of the border confrontation.

The military intelligence officers added what amounted to a warning to the United States. Unless Washington can persuade India to reverse its buildup quickly, they said, Pakistan will be forced to augment its own reinforcements on the border by recalling troops from its western border with Afghanistan, where they are hunting for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda terrorists.

On Friday, Mr. Bush confirmed reports that Pakistan had arrested 50 "extremists or terrorists" linked to the two groups accused by India in the attack on Parliament. Mr. Bush praised General Musharraf for "responding forcefully and actively to bring those who would harm others to justice."

But today, Mr. Vajpayee spoke out defiantly against what he called Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism against India. In effect, he brushed off President Bush's request that India give Pakistan credit for ordering the arrests of individuals linked to the two Islamic militant groups accused in the attacks, Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. The groups, Army of the Pure and Army of Muhammad, have operated openly in Pakistan with the support of that nation's military establishment.

"Our objective is to put an end to Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and the rest of the country," Mr. Vajpayee said today at a convention of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

A spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign Office said today that the arrests had been made under the Maintenance of Public Order law, which allows the government to arrest anyone without a specific charge.

A spokeswoman for India's Ministry of External Affairs said today that Pakistan had provided India with neither confirmation that the arrests had been made nor with any specific information about who had been detained and on what charges. "Obviously we need more information," said Nirupama Rao, the spokeswoman. "We'll have to assess it independently and only then react."

It seemed unlikely that India would be satisfied with arrests on vague charges. "They should be rounded up on charges of terrorism," Mrs. Rao said.

Since the Dec. 13 attack on its Parliament, India has undertaken the largest mobilization of its army since it last went to war with Pakistan 30 years ago. It has requisitioned trains to station large numbers of troops along the full length of its 1,800-mile-long border with Pakistan and positioned missiles, tanks and jet fighters close to it as well. More than a dozen Indian soldiers laying land mines along the border were killed Friday night in an explosion that a military spokesman said was an accident.

Senior military intelligence officers in Islamabad described India's military buildup as the largest ever along Pakistan's border.

They gave figures suggesting that India's reinforcements of infantry and armored divisions, as well as fighters and bombers, were several times greater than the deployments made by New Delhi the last time the two nations came close to full-scale war. That was two summers ago, when Pakistani troops and militia seized Himalayan heights in the Kargil area of Indian-ruled Kashmir.

The officers said that a naval task force consisting of India's only aircraft carrier, the Vikrant, six other ships and two submarines had moved toward Pakistani waters in the Arabian Sea, placing Indian naval aircraft within easy striking distance of Karachi.

They said a larger naval buildup appeared to have been deterred by the presence farther west in the Arabian Sea of American naval forces taking part in military operations in Afghanistan.

The most threatening ground deployments, for Pakistan, appeared to be in the southern desert, where India's Rajasthan and Gujarat provinces abut the southern half of Pakistan's Punjab Province and Sindh.

The Pakistani officers said that in the two weeks since Dec. 16, three days after the attack on the Parliament, the three divisions of troops that India normally maintains in the southern sector had been augmented by seven more divisions.

They said the Indian units were now in "offensive" positions and included three armored divisions, five infantry divisions, two divisions of mechanized infantry, two additional armored brigades and one additional mechanized infantry brigade.

India has followed a similar pattern with air deployments, the officers said, with the new concentrations mainly along Pakistan's frontier in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and in the southern desert areas, again threatening Karachi and other major cities in Pakistan's cotton belt.

In the north, the officers said, India has deployed 146 additional combat aircraft. In the south, they said, the buildup involves 235 more planes.

By contrast, the officers said, the Indian military buildup in 1999 involved the deployment of only three additional army divisions, compared with the seven new divisions moved into attack positions in the last two weeks. That conflict flared for several weeks, with at least 2,000 men killed on the two sides.

-------- iraq

Chronology of US Strikes Against Iraq

December 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq-Chronology.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41658-2001Dec30?language=printer

Some of the most significant strikes by allied forces against Iraq since the Persian Gulf War:

--Oct. 13, 2001: Allied warplanes attacked military installations in southern Iraq in response to continued threats to U.S. and British pilots patrolling the northern and southern no-fly zones, officials said.

--Aug. 30, 2001: U.S. fighter jets attack an Iraqi radar site at Basra airport, which in the past had been used to coordinate Iraqi air defense targeting of U.S. and British aircraft, officials said.

--Aug. 29, 2001: One day after an unmanned Air Force reconnaissance aircraft was inexplicably lost in southern Iraq, allied forces hit two targets which provide support for Iraqi air defense fighter aircraft, according to one U.S. official.

--Aug. 10, 2001: Dozens of allied aircraft bomb a military communications center, a surface-to-air missile launching site and long-range radar in southern Iraq in response to increasing threats by Iraqi air defenses, the Pentagon said.

--Aug. 7, 2001: Air defense sites in northern Iraq are struck by the U.S. Air Force after surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery are fired by Iraq, the military said. Just days before, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Iraq had rebuilt air defenses near Baghdad which had been targeted in heavy allied attacks in February.

--July 25, 2001: An Iraqi anti-aircraft missile narrowly misses an Air Force U-2 spy plane.

--May 18, 2001: In an act of self-defense, allied forces target a surface-to-air missile complex, including radars and launchers, near Al-Amarah, about 180 miles southeast of Baghdad, according to the military.

--Feb. 16, 2001: After President George W. Bush's first military order, U.S. and British warplanes bomb surveillance radars and sites linking command and control to Iraqi surface-to-air missile batteries around Baghdad. It was the largest strike -- and the first outside the ``no fly'' zone in southern Iraq -- in more than two years.

--April 4, 2000: Allied aircraft target four Iraqi military sites, including one at Nasiriyah, 17 miles southeast of Baghdad.

--Feb. 24, 1999: Air Force and Navy aircraft attack two Iraqi surface-to-air missile sites near Al Iskandariyah, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, in response to anti-aircraft artillery fire and an Iraqi aircraft violation of southern no-fly zone.

--Feb. 10, 1999: U.S. and British warplanes fire at two air defense sites in Iraq after three waves of Iraqi fighter jets violate southern ``no-fly'' zone.

--Dec. 16, 1998: Weapons inspectors withdrawn from Iraq. Hours later, four days of U.S.-British air and missile strikes begin, pounding Baghdad.

--June 30, 1998: A U.S. F-16 fighter fires a missile at an Iraqi surface-to-air missile battery in southern Iraq after Iraqi radar locks on four British patrol planes.

--November 1996: Two U.S. F-16 pilots fire missiles at Iraqi radar sites near the 32nd parallel in the southern no-fly zone.

--Sept. 11, 1996: Responding to Iraqi missile fire at two F-16s in the northern ``no-fly'' zone, the U.S. responds by sending more bombers, stealth fighters and another aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf region. Iraq accuses Kuwait of an ``act of war'' for allowing U.S. jets into Kuwait.

--Sept. 3-4, 1996: U.S. ships and airplanes fire scores of cruise missiles at Iraqi anti-missile sites to punish the Iraqi military for venturing into the Kurdish ``safe haven'' in northern Iraq.

--April 14, 1994: Allied planes enforcing ``no-fly'' zone shoot down two U.S. helicopters carrying a U.N. relief mission, mistaking them for Iraqi helicopters. Twenty-six people are killed, including 15 Americans.

--June 27, 1993: U.S. warships fire 24 cruise missiles at intelligence headquarters in Baghdad in retaliation for what the United States calls a plot to assassinate President George H. W. Bush.

--Jan. 7, 1993: After Baghdad refuses to remove missiles that United States says it has moved into southern Iraq, allied warplanes and warships attack missile sites and a nuclear facility near Baghdad.

--Aug. 27, 1992: Backed by Britain and France, the U.S. declares ``no-fly'' zone over southern Iraq to protect Shiite Muslim rebels. The U.S. and some allies begin air patrols.

--April 1991: The United States, France and Britain declare 19,000-square-mile area of northern Iraq ``safe haven'' for Kurds and impose ``no-fly'' zone north of 36th parallel.

--Feb. 26, 1991: U.S.-led coalition forces Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. Baghdad accepts cease-fire two days later.

-------- landmines

19 soldiers killed in mine blast at Indo-Pak border

December 31, 2001,
Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=2016293935

AISALMER: Nineteen Army jawans were killed in a blast during training exercises on the Indo-Pakistan border, official reports reaching the district headquarters here said Saturday.

The reports said the mishap occurred on Friday at around 7.30 pm on the border between Longewal and Sadewala, killing the jawans on spot.

"The mines exploded accidentally, causing the deaths," Jaisalmer district collector Kuldip Ranka said. "The injured have been shifted to the military hospital."

Fifteen soldiers were killed on the spot while four died later in hospital, he said.

The jawans were being trained in defusing land mines when the accident occurred. The noise of the blast was heard up to a few kilometers away causing panic in border villages.

Defence sources, however, refused to give any details of the mishap and the casualty figures.

-------- pakistan

Musharraf: India's Buildup Problematic

December 30, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-India.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Sunday that neighboring India's military buildup and bluster are tying his hands in dealing with the Islamic extremism that New Delhi blames for a deadly attack on its Parliament.

Musharraf, who has portrayed himself as a liberal, is finding himself under increasing pressure to crack down on fundamentalists operating in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. He already has arrested dozens of militants and frozen the bank accounts of the two militant Islamic groups India says orchestrated the Dec. 13 Parliament attack, but says he needs evidence from India to do more.

Lalit Mansingh, India's ambassador to the United States, told ``Fox News Sunday'' that the moves were ``too little, too late ... because we want to have Pakistan take decisive action to shut down the terrorist groups within that country.''

``We do expect further attacks. And we're not going to sit back and wait for them,'' Mansingh said, trying to equate India's actions with the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

On Monday, Pakistan confirmed it had made the most significant arrest since the Parliament attack -- that of Hafiz Saeed, who was until last week the outspoken leader of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, one of the two groups named by India.

Saeed was arrested Sunday night in Islamabad, where he had gone for a meeting. He was charged with making inflammatory speeches and inciting people to violence, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported Monday, quoting official sources in the government.

India's reaction to the arrest was not immediately available Monday morning.

The situation was relatively quiet near the border Sunday although some people continued to evacuate, fearing that the escalating war of words and the advance deployment of troops and ordnance could spark open conflict. Indian security officials in Kashmir said the insurgents have carried out few attacks in recent days.

``The militants are temporarily in hibernation,'' R.S. Bhullar, deputy inspector-general of India's Border Security Force, told The Associated Press. ``Due to the pressure on Pakistan, the terrorists' mentors might have advised them not to take action.''

However, police said gunmen forced their way into a home Saturday night in Kantha, a remote village in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, and fatally shot a Hindu woman, two of her sons, and a visiting relative.

Small arms fire was reported early Sunday on the frontier near Jammu, the winter capital of the Indian state, but such skirmishes are common and military officials described the situation as calm.

Cross-border firing in Kashmir escalated in the wake of the Parliament assault that killed 14, including the five attackers, and at least 20,000 people have fled their homes or been evacuated on the Indian side alone.

Hindu-dominated India accuses overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan of fomenting violence in its Muslim-majority state of Kashmir, where Islamic guerrillas are fighting for independence or merger with Pakistan. The other part of Kashmir is in Pakistan, which says it gives only political support to the militants.

At home and in the international community, Musharraf is walking a tightrope. If he acts quickly against Pakistan's guerrilla groups, he runs the risk of their aligning against him and threatening his government. If he doesn't, he continues to anger India and annoy the United States, which is pressing hard on its new ally in Islamabad to squash terrorism.

Musharraf has said he wants to stop religious violence and establish Pakistan as a moderate and liberal Muslim nation. He met Sunday with leaders of most mainstream political parties as part of his efforts to build a consensus and support.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee held similar meetings as the nuclear neighbors sought ways to back down from their latest crisis without losing face.

``I want to eradicate militancy, extremism and intolerance from Pakistani society,'' the state-run news agency quoted Musharraf as saying. ``I would like to eradicate all kinds of terrorism from the soil of Pakistan ... and avoid this extremism and intolerance in our society.

``The tension created by India on our borders, in fact, is creating obstacles and hurdles, and it is slowing down the process.''

Musharraf said he has received calls calling for restraint from President Bush, French President Jacques Chirac, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi and other world leaders.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush on Saturday urged Musharraf ``to take additional strong and decisive measures to eliminate the extremists who seek to harm India, undermine Pakistan, provoke a war between India and Pakistan and destabilize the international coalition against terrorism.''

Musharraf told Sunday's meeting that Pakistan wants peace and de-escalation but its forces would strike back hard if attacked.

``We only hope that sanity prevails,'' Musharraf said.

Both countries tested nuclear weapons in 1998, raising the stakes in their long-standing rivalry, but both have said there is no possibility that the current squabble will escalate into a nuclear war.

In an interview published Sunday in The Hindustan Times newspaper, India's hawkish Defense Minister George Fernandes starkly warned that if one were to break out, ``Pakistan would be finished. We could take a strike, survive and then hit back.''

In New Delhi, Vajpayee won support from senior leaders of 11 political parties, including eight opposition groups. He met with them to consolidate political consensus amid the face-off with Pakistan.

``Nobody from the government side suggested any military aggression,'' Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan said.

-------- spy agencies

Russia to tear down spy station in Cuba

December 30, 2001
Agence France-Presse
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011230-70518876.htm

MOSCOW - Russia next month will start dismantling a key electronic listening post it has maintained in Cuba for almost 40 years to spy on the United States, the Defense Ministry said yesterday.

As Russian and Cuban officials held farewell ceremonies near Havana, Russian military officials were quoted as saying work to dismantle the Lourdes electronic spying outpost would begin around Jan. 15.

A final Russian military pullout from Cuba will mark the end of a contentious Cold War drama in which Moscow sent troops and equipment across the world in the 1960s to the doorstep of the United States to shore up its new communist ally.

President Vladimir Putin announced in October that the base - Russia's largest covert military outpost abroad - would be closed for financial reasons.

Some 1,500 Russian technicians and military personnel and their families work and live on the base, set up in 1964 near Havana two years after the Cuban missile crisis.

The Russian Interfax news agency quoted the Russian Defense Ministry as saying three Russian Antonov-124 transport aircraft would fly to the Caribbean island to bring back the equipment. The dismantling operation was expected to be completed by the end of January.

The decision to shut down the facility upset Cuban President Fidel Castro, who said he was in "total disagreement."

But President Bush applauded Moscow's decision. The base has long irked Washington.

Despite agreeing to abandon the base, Russia has reaffirmed its support for a U.N. resolution urging all countries to refuse to comply with a 41-year-old trade embargo against Cuba.

The Russian Foreign Ministry last month labeled the U.S.-backed blockade "a vestige of the Cold War that in no way corresponds to 21st century realities."

Only the United States, Israel and the Marshall Islands voted against the U.N. resolution, which was adopted for the 10th straight year. Latvia, Nicaragua and the Federated States of Micronesia abstained.

Cuba served as one of Moscow's most important allies in the Western Hemisphere during the Cold War, although economic relations between the two have cooled significantly since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

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MI5 blunders over bomber

Nick Paton Walsh, Kamal Ahmed and Paul Harris
Sunday December 30, 2001
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,1373,625833,00.html

British security services knew of links between shoe bomber Richard Reid and one 11 September hijack suspect late last year, but failed to track Reid before he tried to blow up an airliner, according to US intelligence reports.

The Observer can reveal that MI5 agents intercepted phone calls between Reid and the suspect, Zacarias Moussaoui, which directly linked Bromley-born Reid to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda net work, but did not realise their implication until it was too late. This was condemned last night as a serious breakdown in intelligence.

Oliver Letwin, the Tory shadowing Home Secretary David Blunkett, said: 'One would expect action to have been taken earlier. The Home Secretary will need to give a convincing explanation of the reasons for the delay.'

The calls, made between the pair in Britain and monitored by MI5, ended abruptly when Moussaoui left Britain for Pakistan on 9 December last year to attend an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

Investigators suspect Reid, who met Moussaoui in London in the mid-Nineties and had been to Pakistan before, followed him to Afghanistan. Moussaoui returned to London last February. Reid reappeared in Britain last summer.

Scotland Yard was not informed of the security risk that Reid posed. MI5 had had Moussaoui under surveillance in the UK in the months before he left for Pakistan. He was then arrested by US authorities in August.

However, Reid was not followed or picked up for questioning in Britain. Investigators are now scouring records of flights between London and Pakistan to see whether Reid and Moussaoui travelled separately or together, and if any other suspect flew with them. Reid has fervently denied being part of a terrorist network or going to Afghanistan, although American sources insist he is linked to al-Qaeda.

The Yard says Reid has not been a 'regular resident' in the UK since 1998, and he has admitted spending much of his time at an'Islamic school' in Pakistan. He stopped regular visits to the Brixton mosque in mid-1998, and is thought to have travelled back and forth between London and Pakistan between then and the bombing attempt.

His last visit to Pakistan was in August when he contacted the British consulate about a possible passport renewal, Foreign Office sources said.

Al-Qaeda soldiers, interrogated in Kandahar by the CIA, say Reid was a recruit in one of group's camps in southern Afghanistan, and US intelligence sources confirm this. Moussaoui and Reid 'went to the same training camp in Afghanistan where Reid has explosives training' said a US intelligence official.

The revelation that Reid acted with the backing of a sophisticated terrorist network linked to al-Qaeda comes as intelligence documents have also revealed that bin Laden has been given detailed advice on making a 'hybrid' nuclear device.

The advice came from Dr Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood, formerly the nuclear director of the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission, say Western intelligence services.

They say he was bin Laden's 'nuclear secretary' who directly helped the terrorist leader in his pursuit of a nuclear capability. The documents say Mahmood has now admitted giving him designs for devices.

Sources said that bin Laden was developing a hybrid nuclear 'gun and implosion device'. Although the documents say he has access to radioactive material, they conclude that it is unlikely he has enoughto explode a nuclear bomb.

The US papers add that Mahmood met bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar in 2001 and provided information about the infrastructure needed for a nuclear weapons programme and the effects of these devices.

Senior Government officials now admit that bin Laden is further ahead with a development programme than was initially thought.

The advanced plans for a nuclear device and the failure to stop Reid compound growing fears of the power and sophistication of al-Qaeda and the seeming inability of the intelligence services to combat it.

Reid appeared in a Boston court on Friday on charges relating to his attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight with a bomb in his shoes.

Additional reporting: Burhan Wazir

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Vengeance Did Not Deliver Justice

By Stephen B. Ives Jr.
Sunday, December 30, 2001; Page B02
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37269-2001Dec28?language=printer

The president has declared that the United States is free to try terrorist leaders in U.S. military courts abroad. The proposal brings memories of just such a trial, held in similar circumstances more than half a century ago, that still stands as a sobering reminder ofinjustices perpetrated in the name of "victor's justice."

Those pressing for military tribunals today should recall the fate of Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of Japanese forces in the Philippines, who was railroaded to the gallows in Manila in February 1946 after a trial that mocked our standards of judicial fairness. The case does not prove that all military tribunals are unfair. But it does highlight their susceptibility to abuse, especially at the end of a war, when the winners are eager for revenge and scapegoats are readily available.

Yamashita, known as the "Tiger of Malaya" for his lightning capture of Singapore from the rear, was one of a very few Japanese senior officers well known in the United States. He was in U.S. custody after having surrendered on the main Philippine island of Luzon on Sept. 3, 1945 and was therefore on hand for a quick, high-profile indictment designed to punish someone for the horrific atrocities committed by Japanese forces during the war. The entire process of his trial was marked by pressure from Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan and the liberator of the Philippines, who intervened repeatedly to urge a speedy conviction. The actual trial began less than eight weeks after Japan's surrender and well before organization of the more formal Tokyo War Trials Commission.

As the responsible Japanese Order of Battle officer in the G-2 section of the U.S. Sixth Army -- a job that entailed identifying enemy military units and analyzing their movements and continuing fighting capability -- I had followed the Japanese military on Luzon full-time since well before our landing in January 1945. I was troubled that Yamashita was to be held responsible for actions I knew he could not possibly have known of or prevented. Moreover, I knew of nothing that reflected dishonorably on him; he had simply carried out his assignment in a capable way and at the end of the war had cooperated fully with the United States in such matters as the surrender of the remnants of his command.

Before the trial, I told my commanding officer in Japan that I felt I should offer to help Yamashita's defense team. He advised me strongly not to do so, saying that the conviction was already settled, that there was nothing I could do about it and that I would only get myself in trouble. To my continuing regret, I accepted his advice.

What followed was a predictable travesty of justice. I wasn't there to see it, but I followed the trial closely from reports and have since researched the details in sources ranging from J.A. Reel's 1949 "The Trial of General Yamashita" (Reel was one of Yamashita's U.S. Army-appointed lawyers) and the U.S. Supreme Court opinions in "In re Yamashita, 327 U.S. 1" (1946) to John Dower's "Embracing Defeat" and James Webb's historical novel "The Emperor's General" (both 1999).

The trial was conducted by a court composed of five generals hastily sent from Washington for that purpose. None had any serious combat command experience. The chairman had spent the war as chief of the Sixth Service Command, covering Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. None of them was in a position to appreciate the problems that Yamashita had faced as a field commander. And none had any legal experience, despite rules requiring some.

Yamashita was charged with violations of "the laws of war" by failing "to control . . . members of his command . . . permitting them to commit brutal atrocities" (my emphasis). Hundreds of witnesses described beatings, rapes and group killings, mainly of Filipino civilians, but without evidence of Yamashita's approval or even knowledge. In fact, Yamashita's name was rarely mentioned during most of the trial.

The trial evidence even failed to establish that the atrocities were carried out by military personnel under Yamashita's control or, in key cases, under his command. Nor was there any recognition of the orders that he had issued specifically to prevent them. What constituted his "permitting" the acts was not made clear. The theory was simply that he was in command and must suffer for whatever any of his people did -- a theory that would make Gen. William Westmoreland a criminal responsible for the excesses of Lt. William Calley at My Lai during the Vietnam War. The principle was quite different later at Nuremberg, after World War II, where the prosecution took pains to tie each of the defendants at least to knowledge of the atrocities or the Nazi policies that sired them.

Most of the atrocities described to the tribunal were committed during the bloody battle for Manila in February-March 1945. Before that fight, Yamashita had ordered all forces under him to withdraw from the city. The Japanese army units did withdraw to the mountains to the east, but the Japanese navy flatly refused to obey, citing prior naval directives and the fact that the only power that Tokyo had given Yamashita over naval forces was limited to "tactical" matters. The naval forces that committed the atrocities in Manila were patently under neither his control nor his command. The other atrocities cited were perpetrated late in the campaign by army forces in southern Luzon, long after Yamashita had retreated with most of his army into the mountains of the northern part of the island. The southern forces were isolated, often stragglers, and completely out of touch with Yamashita's headquarters, more than 150 U.S.-occupied miles to the north.

Despite these facts, the trial continued relentlessly toward conviction. Many observers at the time were convinced that Yamashita would never get a fair trial. A British correspondent reported, "Yamashita's trial continued today -- but it isn't a trial. I doubt that it is even a hearing. Yesterday his name was mentioned once. Today, it wasn't brought up at all." Newsweek reported that "in the opinion of probably every correspondent covering the trial, the military commission came into the courtroom the first day with the decision already in its collective pocket."

The court's effort to finish quickly was clear from the start. Yamashita's appointed American lawyers had only three weeks from presentation of the charges against him to consult with their client and prepare for a trial in which the prosecution offered hundreds of witnesses. The defense had no access to the Army's investigative reports, which might have revealed exculpatory materials. On the Friday preceding the Monday opening of trial, the court permitted the prosecutors to add 59 new specifications to the 64 that had been filed only three weeks before, but with no time extension for the defense to investigate them. The trial was held six days a week, including some evening sessions. At one point the court agreed to provide the defense a short continuance, but it soon reversed that decision and refused all further requests for delays.

The judges clearly did not understand the adversary trial process. They admitted the rankest hearsay. When the defense did have a chance to rebut, much of the hearsay proved wrong. After initially deciding that affidavits were not admissible, the court soon reversed that decision as well, evidently because the prosecution needed these untested statements. Cross-examination was cut "as a means of saving time." At the end of the trial, the judges announced that they would render their decision in 46 hours; they met that schedule.

After the sentencing, Yamashita's counsel asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. In a 6-to-2 decision, it refused, saying that the trial's mode of conduct was not reviewable by courts, but only by military authorities. Justices Frank Murphy and Wiley Rutledge filed ringing dissents that rehearsed with great specificity the tribunal's failure to provide a fair trial and rebutted the theory on which Yamashita was tried. Murphy concluded: "By this flexible method a victorious nation may convict and execute any and all leaders of a vanquished foe, depending on the prevailing degree of vengeance and the absence of any objective judicial review."

MacArthur approved the sentence and Yamashita's hanging without even waiting to read the Supreme Court decision.

It is clear that the military tribunal rammed through a conviction at MacArthur's prodding, the desire for a high-profile conviction in connection with Japanese wartime atrocities outweighing regard for even elementary rules of fairness. One motive was surely vengeance, but it seems clearthat the conviction was primarily designed to reduce pressure to try the Emperor. Either way, this prior objective led the U.S. military to reach a political, rather thanlegal, decision (although, unlike the tribunals now under consideration, Yamashita's trial was public and gave him, if only within the military hierarchy, a right of appeal).

The Yamashita case is a cautionary tale against the wisdom of victors holding military trials when their people are crying out for revenge. We can't undo what happened. But by drawing attention to this miscarriage of justice, we can perhaps prevent its repetition. The star-chamber atmosphere of secret military tribunals does not represent the legal tradition that has long been at the heart of our society. To the extent that America has earned the world's respect, its sense of fairness and justice has played a big part. Let's not bring that into question now.

Stephen Ives Jr. received the Bronze Star for his work analyzing Japanese forces on Luzon in 1945. He later practiced law in Providence, R.I., and Washington, and also served in senior positions at USAID.

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Gulf War and Illness

Sunday, December 30, 2001; Page B06
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37238-2001Dec28?language=printer

"VA Links Gulf War, Lou Gehrig's Disease" [news story, Dec. 11] erroneously said that Lou Gehrig's disease -- also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS -- is the first disorder for which a "likely link" with military service in the Gulf War has been established by Veterans Affairs Department.

Many researchers, including the VA's own deputy undersecretary for health and its chief epidemiologist, have published studies documenting that Gulf War veterans are two or more times as likely as nondeployed veterans of the same era to have chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia or multiple chemical sensitivity.

These findings have been replicated by independent researchers and are not refuted by anyone. The VA has initiated research programs into treatme