------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Nuclear Weapons - Abolish or Perish
Nukes Beget Nukes: Away with Bombs
The Russell-Einstein Manifesto
BEYOND NUCLEAR MADNESS
Nuclear Burma
'Decimating' Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is unrealistic
Calvert Board Hopes For a Smoother 2002 Changes
Taleban in Texas in 1997 for talks on gas pipeline
More Balance, Please
Resist the Unilateral Route
Shrink Not From Superpowerdom
Flex Your Muscles, Softly

MILITARY
On the Wish Lists
Scientists Working on 'Odor Bomb'
Vietnam vet calls security in Kabul extremely shaky
Taliban spokesman now in U.S. custody
U.S. Captures a Top Trainer for Al Qaeda
Afghan City, Free of Taliban, Returns to Rule of the Thieves
UGANDA Turn Off Your Tunnel Vision
Gabon Sealed Off to Contain Ebola
Editorial criticizing suit against gun manufacturers misses mark
Anthrax Missteps Offer Guide to Fight Next Bioterror Battle
Smallpox Protection
Suspected paramilitary killed by own bomb
India Says It Shot Down Spy Plane
Summit Ends Without Talks Between India and Pakistan
US fears Iraq radar can see stealth plane
U.S. suspends funding for Iraqi opposition
If Hussein Is Next, Experts Say, Do It Fast
Israel Describes Weapons Seizure
PA denies link to seized ship, weapons
Israel Says Ship With Weapons Was Loaded in Iran
19 killed in accidental landmine blast
India shoots down unmanned plane
Pakistan Denies Plane Lost, Indian Plane Crashed
Facts Altered in Anti-Terror Effort
Hard times for Russian military
Singapore Arrests Militants With Links to Al Qaeda
U.N. Police Officer Arrested
U.S. basing planes in United Arab Emirates
Unfinished Business in Proxy War

POLICE
China death penalty for Bible smuggling
China Indicts Man For Bible Deliveries
Teenage pilot leaves suicide note

ENERGY AND OTHER
MEXICO Get a Grip, So We Can Talk
Culpable Executives
Blue Planet: Cambodia's logging halt
Cloned Pig Organs Easier to Transplant
CANADA Help More Than Afghan Women
Don't cry over free enterprise, Argentina



-------- NUCLEAR

Nuclear Weapons - Abolish or Perish

by Andreas Toupadakis
Sunday, January 6, 2002
by Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0106-06.htm

"We could take a strike, survive and then hit back. Pakistan would be finished." George Fernandes, Defense Minister of India.

As the new year finds humanity confused and in fear because of the acts of illegal terrorists, some of the world's leaders are taking steps to terrorize humanity even further.

There is a need to speak and act because besides our leaders, perhaps most of the citizens of the world still think of national defense and national interests. If the very few remaining wise world leaders do not succeed in convincing the rest to adopt a world policy of nonviolence, soon our world as we have known it for thousands of years will be no more.

Retired Air Force General Lee Butler, former Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Strategic Command, from an address to the National Press Club, February 1998: "I was responsible for war plans with more than 12,000 targets, many to be struck with repeated nuclear blows, some to the point of complete absurdity. ... And in the end, I came away from it all with profound misgivings and with a set of deeply unsettling judgments: that from the earliest days of the nuclear era, the risks and consequences of nuclear war have never been properly weighed by those who brandished it; that the stakes engage not just the survival of the antagonists, but the fate of humankind. ... Their effects transcend time and place, poisoning the Earth and deforming its inhabitants for generation upon generation. They leave us wholly without defense, expunge all hope for meaningful survival. They hold in their sway not just the fate of nations but the very meaning of civilization. ... At worst it invokes death on a scale rivaling the power of the creator. ... It is time to reassert the primacy of individual conscience, the voice of reason, and the rightful interests of humanity." General Lee Butler's address to the National Press Club in February 1998 can be found at: http://www.noetic.org/Ions/publications/review_archives/46/issue46_38.ht ml. Unfortunately General Lee Butler spoke in this way after he retired.

Former President Jimmy Carter, also after he retired, said, "I think it can be said that the world is facing a nuclear crisis. Unfortunately, US policy has had a good deal to do with creating it. ... I believe that the general public would be extremely concerned if these facts were widely known, but so far such issues have not been on the agenda in presidential debates."

The complete article Mr. Jimmy Carter wrote on February 23, 2000 can be found at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/23/008l-022300-idx.html

Today we desperately need leaders to take a stand for world peace while they are discharging their duties, not after they retire.

Unfortunately today many people still speak of war as a method to resolve disputes. But they should be reminded of Einstein's words, words that alas! most of our leaders have ignored:

"For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world."

Einstein says that there is no defense, no protection, for a world having nuclear weapons or in general, weapons of mass destruction, unless people understand the enormous danger, and unless they insist. Insist on what? Unless they insist on not just the abolition of weapons of mass murder but also the abolition of war. How? By talking to the leaders in well-ventilated and comfortable rooms? No! What then? By sending petitions and appeals, writing manifestos, books and articles, and traveling around the world giving lectures? No! By refusing to serve in the army? Now you have started talking! By refusing to pay taxes and therefore being jailed? Now you are talking! By massive global demonstrations many weeks if not months or years long, besides all the other acts were mentioned before? Now you are really talking! Now there is some hope for world survival. Word survival will not come raped in a silver box. It will come only by voluntary suffering. Why do we keep denying it? Until when we will keep denying it?

But how many people will protest and call these views extreme? How extreme is the reality of the possibility that we are ready to destroy all that we see around us and ourselves forever? Was Bertrand Russell an extremist? He wrote the Russell-Einstein manifesto that every citizen of the world should be aware of. People can read it at: http://www.wagingpeace.org/doc/russel_einstein_manifesto.html

Russell stated in 1955 and many prominent scientists agreed: "The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them."

Senator Alan Cranston, after he retired, writes in 1999: "One super bomb could now loose more destructive energy than all that has been released from all weapons fired in all wars in all history. The power of self-extinction is now in our uncertain hands. ... It is more likely now than it was during the more stable days of the Cold War that weapons of mass destruction will be used." You can read his letter at: http://www.gsinstitute.org/news_arch/cranston.html

Former Secretary of Defense William Perry says, "It isn't a question of whether, but of where and when." General Charles Horner, who commanded Allied Air Forces in the Gulf War, says he expects that a nuclear weapon will be exploded in some city in the next 10 years. These weapons have cost U.S. taxpayers over $5 trillion so far. They presently cost $37 billion a year - diverting money from other needs. Is it worthy of our nation to base its security on terror, on the threat to annihilate millions of innocent humans, on the threat of genocide? Is our policy of Mutual Assured Destruction - a policy that puts the human race at risk of extinction- worthy of civilization?

After we have become aware of these facts, should we still advocate war to solve our problems today? Why do we support leaders who advocate war? It seems that our leaders do not know the facts, or they do but they think that everything will be fine. If they think that everything will be fine by following the course we follow today in world affairs, they need to be awakened soon by the people of the earth to the fact that they live in a great illusion.

The truth is that when people are talking about war these days, they are talking about the end of life on earth at any moment, even by accident, but they do not really know it. People that talk aggressively about war usually belong to the army or they work for weapons. However, most people of the earth's population are like little children playing on a playground. A dozen prominent doctors have diagnosed their mother with terminal cancer, and she will live no more than two months. She is in the hospital and her husband knows her condition. When their father goes to the playground to get the kids, they ask him, "When will mommy come home? Is she okay?" He looks into their eyes, feels sorry for them, and says, "She will be back soon; she will be fine." He has lied to them. Only a miracle will spare him from falsehood.

Some advocates of the New World Order are saying, "Do not worry, we are in control. Weapons of mass destruction will never be used." But most people deny the fact that insiders speak of "when," while outsiders speak of "if." Which should we believe? We do not want to believe the insiders, but my destiny was such that I became an insider for a while. Now, therefore, I speak as an insider, as many others, and say that if we continue on the same path we are now on, it is just a matter of a short time until we see what people have been afraid of for thousands of years.

Therefore the question is are we going to change our direction? Are we going to make the right choice and abolish war itself, since nuclear knowledge can never go away as long as there are human beings on earth? No, we are not going to make the right choice as long as people are not informed. And people are not going to become informed as long as there are people in power that believe in one world government, believe that they are better than others, and somehow believe that they belong to a race which God has destined to govern and subdue. The lovers of the empire have become prisoners of the imperial designs of the empire.

No, we are not going to make the right choice as long as the people of the earth, you and I, do not bow down before something infinitely greater than ourselves. Because when we are deprived of the infinitely great, we cannot go on living, and we will die of despair by just pushing the button.

We can hope only if we adopt complete nonviolence, if we adopt the nonviolence of the strong, not the nonviolence of the weak. The nonviolence of the weak is to wait until everybody agrees to abolish weapons of mass destruction. Most likely that will never happen. We must advocate the nonviolence of the strong, i.e. the unconditional and voluntary unilateral abolition of weapons of mass destruction. That requires trusting that the opponent will do likewise and at the same time, risking even your whole nation for your love to save the whole world. That faith and voluntary sacrifice by the leaders and the people of a nation requires surrendering to the infinitely great; it requires faith in the most fundamental principle that keeps the world still turning. That principle is that your brother is the same as you.

The unilateral abolition of nuclear weapons has already started taking place. I am aware of one ex-Soviet state that has done just that. See at: http://www.gn.apc.org/cndyorks/news/articles/nukesdestroyed.htm

The advocates of the doctrine of deterrence will argue that Ukraine's abolition of nuclear weapons was not purely voluntary but out of necessity because the collapse of the Soviet Union and its financial needs. That is true, but it still does not answer the question: While Russia, the United States, Britain, China, and France gave security guarantees to Ukrainian officials and foreign governments gave financial assistance to assist their disarmament, who will provide wisdom to the officials of the strong to do likewise? While they assist the weak to disarm, they themselves continue to build up, their armaments. Who will make them see their folly?

I can say, therefore, with confidence that only a miracle will spare our leaders from falsehood. Do you believe in miracles? If you do not believe, and because now you know the facts, you are most likely in despair. But you need not be in despair. We need to act all together and act soon. Only our selfless acts can make the miracle happen.

Andreas Toupadakis, Ph.D. Former Research Scientist Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories January 6, 2002 atoupadakis@prodigy.net

Andreas Toupadakis Biography I was born in Greece on the beautiful island of Crete, in Rethymno, and I received my primary education while living in the mountainous village of Argiroupoli near the coast. To get an idea of how I lived the first eight years of my life, you can read a little story I wrote about it, which I think you will like at: http://www.swans.com/library/art7/atoup005.html

After receiving my B.S. from the Aristotelian University in Thessaloniki, I began graduate school in the U.S. I received my Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the University of Michigan in 1990, and I have lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. I did research as a chemist in industry, academia, and two USA national laboratories. I also taught at several colleges and universities in the USA and in Greece.

My resignation from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on January 31, 2000 received media coverage in many places, especially in the US, Japan, and Greece. In protest, I followed my conscience and resigned from a high-salaried permanent position rather than devote my knowledge and energy to the further development of nuclear weapons. Since then, I have been speaking on peace and environmental issues at universities, colleges, and various conferences.

I spoke at the 2000 World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I saw first hand what most of us do not realize about nuclear weapons. I cried. When will our leaders cry? If you are interested in what I am trying to say to people about our future you can read some of my articles below.

I often remind people of Gandhi's words, "Be the change you want to see in the world;" of Plato's words, "Science without virtue is immoral;" and of Socrates', "Know yourself."

---

Nukes Beget Nukes: Away with Bombs

By Alan Cranston
Tuesday, November 16, 1999
San Francisco Examiner
http://www.gsinstitute.org/news_arch/cranston.html

Los Altos Hills--Shortly after atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I met Albert Einstein. He warned if the bomb were developed further, and ever used all-out, the human race could be exterminated.

The bomb has been developed further. One super bomb could now let loose more destructive energy than all that has been released from all weapons fired in all wars in all history.

The power of self-extinction is now in our uncertain hands.

The leaders responsible for America's defense warn that the only significant threat today to the security and survival of the U.S. is nuclear proliferation. Their Alice in Wonderland position seems to be that the danger lies in nations that do not possess nuclear weapons, not in those that do.

Actually, nuclear weapons beget nuclear weapons.

The threat of a Hitler bomb begot the American bomb. The American arsenal begot the Soviet arsenal. The U.S. and Soviet arsenals led to the British, French and Chinese arsenals. These led to bombs of Israel, India and Pakistan.

What next?

The U.S. Senate's recent rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the Russian Duma's failure to ratify START II, suggest the two nations with the largest nuclear arsenals intend to hang onto them forever.

This is a prescription for more begetting.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty was a bargain. The 180 nations without nuclear weapons pledged not to acquire them-and they haven't. The five nations that had nuclear weapons when the treaty was negotiated decades ago-China, France, the Soviet Union (Russia), the United Kingdom and the United States-pledged to get rid of them-but they haven't.

The 180 are losing patience. Some may withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, advising the U.S. and the other nuclear nations: "If you need these weapons so badly, maybe we need them too."

Today's rogue states and terrorists seek the bomb. And there's grave danger that "loose nukes" can be bought or stolen in Russia, where command, control and custody are deteriorating.

Russian chaos could cause an accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch that could provoke a U.S.-Russian holocaust. By no means immune from error, too, are U.S. missiles and warheads, the computers that direct their use, and the human beings who command the computers.

It is more likely now than it was during the more stable days of the Cold War that weapons of mass destruction will be used. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry says, "It isn't a question of whether, but of where and when." Gen. Charles Horner, who commanded Allied Air Forces in the Gulf War, says he expects that a nuclear weapon will be exploded in some city in the next 10 years. Former Ambassador Robert Galluci, who negotiated on nuclear weapons with Iraq and North Korea, agrees and predicts it will be an American city. Galucci described how it could happen:

"One of these (rogue) governments fabricates a couple of nuclear weapons and gives them to a terrorist group created for this purpose. The group brings one of these bombs into Baltimore by boat, and drives another one up to Pittsburgh. Then the message comes to the White House. 'Adjust your policy in the Middle East, or on Tuesday you lose Baltimore, and on Wednesday you lose Pittsburgh.' Tuesday comes, and we lose Baltimore.

"What does the U.S. do?"

More and more American leaders-among them many generals and admirals-are coming to believe that the only way to eliminate the threat of a nuclear holocaust is to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Among them are Gen. Colin Powell and Gen. Lee Butler, former commander-in-chief of the Strategic Air Command.

These weapons have cost U.S. taxpayers over $5 trillion so far. They presently cost $37 billion a year-diverting money from other needs.

I urge those who have not yet embraced the goal of abolition to think all this over, and with great care. The stakes are immense-all life.

Is it worthy of our nation to base its security on terror, on the threat to annihilate millions of innocent humans, on the threat of genocide?

Is our policy of Mutual Assured Destruction-a policy that puts the human race at risk of extinction-worthy of civilization?

Is it wise?

"We cannot at once hold sacred the miracle of existence and hold sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it," says Butler. "Deterrence...at best is a gamble no mortal should pretend to make. At worst it invokes death on a scale rivaling the power of the creator."

Examiner contributor Alan Cranston represented California in the U.S. Senate from1969 to 1993.

---

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Issued in London,
9 July 1955
http://www.wagingpeace.org/doc/russel_einstein_manifesto.html

In the tragic situation which confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction, and to discuss a resolution in the spirit of the appended draft.

We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings, members of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt. The world is full of conflicts; and, overshadowing all minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between Communism and anti- Communism.

Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one or more of these issues; but we want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings and consider yourselves only as members of a biological species which has had a remarkable history, and whose disappearance none of us can desire.

We shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it.

We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?

The general public, and even many men in positions of authority, have not realized what would be involved in a war with nuclear bombs. The general public still thinks in terms of the obliteration of cities. It is understood that the new bombs are more powerful than the old, and that, while one A-bomb could obliterate Hiroshima, one H-bomb could obliterate the largest cities, such as London, New York, and Moscow.

No doubt in an H-bomb war great cities would be obliterated. But this is one of the minor disasters that would have to be faced. If everybody in London, New York, and Moscow were exterminated, the world might, in the course of a few centuries, recover from the blow. But we now know, especially since the Bikini test, that nuclear bombs can gradually spread destruction over a very much wider area than had been supposed.

It is stated on very good authority that a bomb can now be manufactured which will be 2,500 times as powerful as that which destroyed Hiroshima. Such a bomb, if exploded near the ground or under water, sends radio-active particles into the upper air. They sink gradually and reach the surface of the earth in the form of a deadly dust or rain. It was this dust which infected the Japanese fishermen and their catch of fish.

No one knows how widely such lethal radio- active particles might be diffused, but the best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.

Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science and by authorities in military strategy. None of them will say that the worst results are certain. What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure that they will not be realized. We have not yet found that the views of experts on this question depend in any degree upon their politics or prejudices. They depend only, so far as our researches have revealed, upon the extent of the particular expert's knowledge. We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy.

Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.

The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty. But what perhaps impedes understanding of the situation more than anything else is that the term "mankind" feels vague and abstract. People scarcely realize in imagination that the danger is to themselves and their children and their grandchildren, and not only to a dimly apprehended humanity. They can scarcely bring themselves to grasp that they, individually, and those whom they love are in imminent danger of perishing agonizingly. And so they hope that perhaps war may be allowed to continue provided modern weapons are prohibited.

This hope is illusory. Whatever agreements not to use H-bombs had been reached in time of peace, they would no longer be considered binding in time of war, and both sides would set to work to manufacture H-bombs as soon as war broke out, for, if one side manufactured the bombs and the other did not, the side that manufactured them would inevitably be victorious.

Although an agreement to renounce nuclear weapons as part of a general reduction of armaments would not afford an ultimate solution, it would serve certain important purposes. First: any agreement between East and West is to the good in so far as it tends to diminish tension. Second: the abolition of thermo-nuclear weapons, if each side believed that the other had carried it out sincerely, would lessen the fear of a sudden attack in the style of Pearl Harbour, which at present keeps both sides in a state of nervous apprehension. We should, therefore, welcome such an agreement though only as a first step.

Most of us are not neutral in feeling, but, as human beings, we have to remember that, if the issues between East and West are to be decided in any manner that can give any possible satisfaction to anybody, whether Communist or anti-Communist, whether Asian or European or American, whether White or Black, then these issues must not be decided by war. We should wish this to be understood, both in the East and in the West.

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

Resolution

We invite this Congress, and through it the scientists of the world and the general public, to subscribe to the following resolution:

"In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the Governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them."

Max Born, Perry W. Bridgman, Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Herman J. Muller, Linus Pauling, Cecil F. Powell, Joseph Rotblat, Bertrand Russell, Hideki Yukawa

---

BEYOND NUCLEAR MADNESS

By Lee Butler
NOETIC SCIENCES REVIEW # 46, PAGE 38 SUMMER 1998
http://www.noetic.org/Ions/publications/review_archives/46/issue46_38.html

For thirty years I was intimately involved with nuclear weapons. I was among the most avid of the keepers of the faith in them, and for that I make no apology. Like my contemporaries, I was moved by fears and fired by beliefs that date back to the earliest days of the Atomic Era. For us, nuclear weapons were the savior that brought an implacable foe to his knees in 1945 and held another at bay for nearly a half-century. We believed that superior technology brought strategic advantage, that greater numbers meant stronger security, and that the ends of containment justified whatever means were necessary to achieve them.

Two years ago I became engaged in the debate for the abolition of nuclear weapons, joining hundreds of other retired generals, admirals, present and former heads of state from a host of nations. I am persuaded that in every corner of the planet the tide of public sentiment is now running strongly in favor of diminishing the role of such weapons-that nuclear arsenals can and should be sharply reduced, that high alert postures are a dangerous anachronism, that first use policies are an affront to democratic values, and that proliferation of nuclear weapons is a clear and present danger. Indeed, I am convinced that most people are well out in front of their governments in shaking off the grip of the Cold War and reaching for opportunities that emerge in its wake.

Conversely, it is evident that for many, nuclear weapons retain an aura of utility and of legitimacy that justifies their existence well into the future. The persistence of this view lies at the core of the concern that touches my soul. This enduring belief, and the fears that underlie it, perpetuates Cold War policies and practices that make no strategic sense, entailing enormous costs, and exposing all humanity to unconscionable dangers. I find that intolerable.

Yet these powerful, deeply rooted beliefs cannot and should not be lightly dismissed or discounted. Strong arguments can be made on their behalf. Throughout my professional military career, I shared them, I professed them, and I put them into operational practice.

When I was commissioned as an officer in the United States Air Force, the Cold War was heating to a fever pitch. I knew the moment I entered the nuclear arena I had been thrust into a world beset with tidal forces, towering egos, maddening contradictions, alien constructs, and insane risks. Its arcane vocabulary

[[give some examples here?]] and apocalyptic calculus defied comprehension. Its stage was global and its antagonists locked in a deadly spiral of deepening rivalry. It was in every respect a modern-day holy war, a cosmic struggle between the forces of light and darkness.

I participated in the elaboration of basing schemes that bordered on the comical and force levels that in retrospect defied reason. I was responsible for war plans with over 12,000 targets, many struck with repeated nuclear blows, some to the point of complete absurdity. I became steeped in the art of intelligence estimates, the psychology of negotiations, the interplay of the strategist, and the demanding skills of the air crew and missiler. I have been a party to their history, shared their triumphs and tragedies, witnessed heroic sacrifice and catastrophic failure of both men and machines.

And in the end, I came away from it all with profound misgivings and with a set of deeply unsettling judgments: That from the earliest days of the nuclear era, the risks and consequences of nuclear war have never been properly weighed by those who brandished it. That the stakes engage not just the survival of the antagonists, but the fate of humankind. That the likely consequences have no politically, militarily, or morally acceptable justification. And therefore, that the threat to use nuclear weapons is indefensible.

Why were we so willing to tolerate the risks of the nuclear age? For all of my years as a nuclear strategist, operational commander, and public spokesman, I explained, justified, and sustained America's massive nuclear arsenal as a function, a necessity, and a consequence of deterrence. Bound up in this singular term, this familiar touchstone of security dating back to antiquity, was the intellectually comforting and deceptively simple justification for taking the most extreme risks and the expenditure of trillions of dollars. It was our shield and by extension our sword.

But now, I see it differently-not in some blinding revelation, but at the end of a journey, in an age of deliverance from the consuming tensions of the Cold War. How is it that we subscribed to a strategy that required near perfect understanding of an enemy from whom we were deeply alienated and largely isolated? How could we pretend to understand the motivations and intentions of the Soviet leadership absent any substantial personal association? Why did we imagine a nation that had survived successive invasions and mind numbing losses would accede to a strategy premised on fear of nuclear war?

Deterrence in the Cold War setting was fatally flawed at the most fundamental level of human psychology in its projection of Western reason through the crazed lens of a paranoid foe. While we clung to the notion that nuclear war could be reliably deterred, Soviet leaders saw the matter diferently. Their historical experience gave them the conviction that such a war might be thrust upon them and, if so, must not be lost. Driven by that fear, they took Herculean measures to fight and survive no matter the odds or the costs. Deterrence was a dialogue of the blind with the deaf. In the final analysis, it was largely a bargain we in the West made with ourselves.

Deterrence is flawed equally in that the consequences of its failure are intolerable. History teaches that nations can survive and even prosper in the aftermath of unconditional defeat. Not so in a nuclear era. Nuclear weapons give no quarter. Their effects transcend time and place, poisoning the Earth and deforming its inhabitants for generation upon generation. They leave us wholly without defense, expunge all hope for meaningful survival. They hold in their sway not just the fate of nations but the very meaning of civilization.

Deterrence is a slippery conceptual slope. It is not stable, nor is it static. Its wiles cannot be contained. It is both master and slave. It seduces the scientist yet bends to his creation. It serves the ends of evil as well as those of noble intent. It holds guilty the innocent as well as the culpable. At best it is a gamble no mortal should pretend to make. At worst it invokes death on a scale rivaling the power of the creator.

At the end of my journey I hear voices long ignored, the warnings muffled by the still lingering animosities of the Cold War. I see with painful clarity how, from the very beginning, we deprived ourselves of the objective scrutiny and searching debate essential to adequate comprehension and responsible oversight.

Vitally important decisions were routinely taken without adequate understanding, assertions too often prevailed over analysis, requirements took on organizational biases, technological opportunity and corporate profit drove force levels and capability, and political opportunism intruded on calculations of military necessity. The narrow concerns of a multitude of powerful interests intruded on the rightful role of key policy makers, constraining their latitude for decision. Many were simply denied access to critical information essential to the proper exercise of their office.

Only now are the dimensions, costs, and risks of these nuclear nether worlds coming to light. What must now be better understood are the causes, the mindsets, and the belief systems that brought them into existence. They must be challenged, they must be refuted, but most important, they must be let go. We have no greater responsibility than to bring the nuclear era to a close.

We cannot at once keep sacred the miracle of existence and hold sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it.

It is time to reassert the primacy of individual conscience, the voice of reason, and the rightful interests of humanity

-------- burma

Nuclear Burma

Sunday, January 6, 2002; Page B06
Washington Times
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64837-2002Jan4.html

SO NOW Burma is going nuclear. The Southeast Asian nation also known as Myanmar, one of the poorest in the world, has purchased a 10-megawatt "research reactor" from Russia. Groundbreaking is scheduled for this month at "a secret location near the town of Magwe," reports the Far East Economic Review. The news coincides with reports that two Pakistani nuclear scientists, wanted for questioning in their own country for reported connections to Islamic extremists, found refuge in Burma. None of this means, necessarily, that the thuggish generals who run Burma have aspirations for a nuclear arsenal. Maybe, like dictators throughout the atomic age, they see nuclear power as a glorification of their otherwise unsung rule.

More interesting perhaps is the seller's motivation. Put differently, is there nothing the Russian Atomic Ministry won't stoop to? Most civilized governments shun the Burmese regime. Democratic leaders who had to fight their own dictatorships, such as South Korea's Kim Dae Jung and the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel, tend to be the most supportive of Burma's beleaguered democrats. But even governments less inclined to act on the basis of morals or ethics find the odiousness of Burma's dictators too pungent to ignore -- which leaves the "engagers" in a kind of isolation of their own.

Leader of those engagers and arms suppliers, not surprisingly, is China. The Burmese junta's corruption and its history of massacring peaceful pro-democracy students must be comforting to Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who recently toured Burma. He said the nation "must be allowed to choose its own development path suited to its own conditions" -- the usual words of dictators who do not allow their own people to choose anything. Then we have Japan, ever eager for commercial advantage, and some U.S. and European clothing importers and energy companies, such as Unocal. These, at least, show occasional signs of embarrassment at the assistance they render the world's leading practitioner of forced labor. And then there is Russia, selling MiG-29 fighters as well as nuclear technology and demonstrating, yet again, its less than full embrace of the democratic values it claims now to cherish.

By aligning themselves with the junta, the governments of Russia and China may gain commercially in the short term, but they are unlikely to reap long-term strategic advantage. Burma's economy is imploding. The regime is so fearful of its own people that it recently banned a Norwegian postal stamp honoring Aung San Suu Kyi, the rightful leader of Burma who remains under house arrest a decade after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The junta puts people in jail for owning fax or copying machines. That is a leadership without much prospect, and when it falls, and the nuclear reactor is rusting, most Burmese people are likely to remember who stood with them and who sided with their oppressors.

-------- india / pakistan

[To reply, mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]

'Decimating' Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is unrealistic

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Washington Times
January 6, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020105-30670848.htm#3

Mohammed Ayoob is correct in pointing out that Kashmir and terrorism are the two political issues at the center of Indo-Pakistan relations ("South Asia's nuclear dangers," Op-ed, Jan. 4). However, he ends up presenting completely unrealistic methods of dealing with the situation.

Mr. Ayoob almost virtually ignores the significant contribution made by Pakistan in the successful campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Recycling New Delhi's official position, he denigrates President Pervez Musharraf's far-reaching steps to curb extremism in his country as "cosmetic" and goes on to suggest the use of sanctions against Pakistan. Like India, Mr. Ayoob is unable to see the real import of these steps due to his animus towards Pakistan.

His suggestion to "forcefully decimate" Pakistan's nuclear capability is downright irresponsible. Why should the United States do that? To give India a complete monopoly of power over South Asia so that it can further twist the arm of its smaller neighbors? Pakistanis see their country's nuclear capability as a guarantee, of sorts, to live in dignity and honor with India. The backlash evoked by even the suggestion of "decimating" Pakistan's nuclear assets could be unimaginable. And it would cut across all sections of Pakistani society.

It is heartening that policy-making in Washington is in the hands of more sensible people.

NADIA NAQVI Alexandria

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

-------- maryland

Calvert Board Hopes For a Smoother 2002 Changes in Lusby, Zoning Laws Ahead

By Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 6, 2002; Page SM03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64791-2002Jan4?language=printer

... In October, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the Cove Point natural gas plant project, despite residents' and lawmakers' concerns that allowing large foreign fuel tankers in the vicinity could open the door to a terrorist attack involving the nearby Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant.

Then, in November, the regulators decided to reconsider their approval after Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) publicly criticized FERC's decision and asked that the plan be reconsidered in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

But in December, after a special technical conference on the security risks, the regulators reaffirmed their initial approval. Now the Coast Guard will complete a shipping safety plan concerning the tankers.

-------- us politics

Taleban in Texas in 1997 for talks on gas pipeline
The 1,300km pipeline will carry gas across Afghanistan's harsh terrain

Sun, 06 Jan 2002
From: Tom Tully <ftully@rcn.com>
Published by BBC
http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/west_asia/newsid_37000/37021.stm

A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan.

A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.

Unocal says it has agreements both with Turkmenistan to sell its gas and with Pakistan to buy it.

The Afghan economy has been devasted by 20 years of civil war But, despite the civil war in Afghanistan, Unocal has been in competition with an Argentinian firm, Bridas, to actually construct the pipeline.

Last month, the Argentinian firm, Bridas, announced that it was close to signing a two-billion dollar deal to build the pipeline, which would carry gas 1,300 kilometres from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, across Afghanistan.

In May, Taleban-controlled radio in Kabul said a visiting delegation from an Argentinian company had announced that pipeline construction would start "soon".

Kabul The radio has reported several visits to Kabul by Unocal and Bridas company officials over the past few months.

A BBC regional correspondent says the proposal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea.

With the various Afghan factions still at war, the project has looked from the outside distinctly unpromising.

Last month the Taleban Minister of Information and Culture, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said the Taleban had held talks with both American and Argentine-led consortia over transit rights but that no final agreement had yet been reached. He said an official team from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan should meet to ensure each country benefited from any deal.

However, Unocal clearly believes it is still in with a chance - to the extent that it has already begun training potential staff.

It has commissioned the University of Nebraska to teach Afghan men the technical skills needed for pipeline construction. Nearly 140 people were enrolled last month in Kandahar and Unocal also plans to hold training courses for women in administrative skills.

Women face working restrictions under Taleban rule Although the Taleban authorities only allow women to work in the health sector, organisers of the training say they haven't so far raised any objections.

The BBC regional correspondent says the Afghan economy has been devastated by 20 years of civil war. A deal to go ahead with the pipeline project could give it a desperately-needed boost.

But peace must be established first -- and that for the moment still seems a distant prospect.

---

More Balance, Please

By Zubeida Mustafa
Editorial from PAKISTAN
Sunday, January 6, 2002; Page B03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64908-2002Jan4?language=printer

Being the world's only superpower is hardly a coveted position, especially when that country's people find themselves wondering, "Why do they hate us?" -- as many on the streets of Quetta and even here in Karachi certainly do.

The fact is that power carries responsibility -- and has an immense propensity to corrupt. Can the United States honestly claim to be behaving like a responsible superpower in this unipolar world? It doesn't look like it from here.

Pakistan, which has had an enigmatic love-hate relationship with America for decades, could produce a lengthy wish list if the fairy from Washington were to come our way. Pakistanis have long felt uncomfortable with America's swings between disengagement bordering on isolationism and active military intervention, as in Afghanistan. We want neither.

The United States must instead devise a balanced political role for itself in this region. It must show statesmanship, sagacity and evenhandedness. Pakistan's main concern has been its relations with India, heightened by the dispute over Kashmir -- a dispute that can best be resolved at the negotiating table. But the two adversaries have not been able to come together. The distrust and bitterness of decades blind them to their own needs.

The United States could have become a mediator and perhaps helped bring some resolution to this standoff. Even today, skillful political intervention could still neutralize the hard-liners on both sides who are driving their governments into a frenzy. What better strategy to prevent the proliferation of conflict and instability?

If, however, the United States seeks to manipulate the situation to promote its own narrow interests, as it has done in the past, then it can achieve nothing.

While Washington works to promote peace, we expect it to address the issue of global poverty as well. With increased globalization has come an appalling growth of deprivation and inequality in Pakistan. The prescriptions of the aid-giving agencies have left more than one-third of the population below the poverty line. More will soon go under.

America's response has been to focus on loans, which make a supplicant out of Pakistan as its dependence on foreign funds grows. The solution really lies in trade and investment. Let America work toward opening up its markets for our goods. Trade will bring prosperity. And prosperity will bring stability.

Wouldn't that be the best insurance against terrorism, which is item number one on America's own agenda?

Zubeida Mustafa is an assistant editor of Dawn, Pakistan's largest English-language newspaper.

----

Resist the Unilateral Route

By Yutaka Mataebara;
Editorial from JAPAN
Sunday, January 6, 2002; Page B03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64910-2002Jan4?language=printer

Something must be wrong with the way the United States exercises its power. Too many people, in too many countries, see U.S. foreign policy as lacking universal principles that resonate with the rest of the world. It seems to them that an America projecting its power in pursuit of its own interests will only end up destabilizing a globalizing world.

Certainly, the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism has shown what can be achieved by an organized multilateral effort to combat a global problem. The world, including Japan, has been impressed by America's show of high-tech military power in Afghanistan.

The war against terrorism, however, is one of very few recent instances in which the United States has worked together with a sizable number of other countries. It has, for example, pulled out of the Kyoto protocol on climate change, boycotted a meeting to put the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty into effect and spurned a draft agreement to update the Biological Weapons Convention.

There is a frustratingly long list of global problems crying out for solution. It includes chronic poverty in developing countries and two issues that are of particular concern to Japanese: environmental pollution and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In these and other areas, effective U.S. leadership -- underpinned by universal principles of democracy, human rights and environmental protection -- is badly needed.

The administration of President George W. Bush has taken to unilateral thinking on these world issues. This represents more than just an about-face in America's basic foreign policy. In discontinuing Washington's principal international commitments, the Bush administration has behaved the way only dictatorial states usually do.

This has caused many nations to lose confidence in Washington. Notable in this connection are the results of a 24-nation poll conducted late last year by the International Herald Tribune with the Pew Research Center: U.S. policy and action was given as the main cause of international terrorism by 18 percent of Americans vs. 58 percent of foreigners. The United States should resume its exploration of multilateral or multinational ways to cope with global problems.

Yutaka Mataebara is editor in chief of the Japan Times, a national English-language daily newspaper.

----

Shrink Not From Superpowerdom

By Hugo Young,
Editorial from BRITAIN
Sunday, January 6, 2002; Page B02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64904-2002Jan4?language=printer

The United States has far more power than any other country in the world, but now shrinks from being a world power. Her purpose in 2002 should be to resolve this truly fateful paradox. She needs the help of friends and allies who must make better sense of their own ambivalence -- between demand for American presence and action, and distaste for it when it happens. But at bottom, the challenge is to Washington: how to define the global interest, which nobody else can so effectively advance, in terms that extend beyond the national interest of bully Uncle Sam.

The Afghan war highlights the choices. Plainly it's possible to invade and bomb one of the world's feeblest countries and succeed in a vital cause. This may even mark the beginning of the end of al Qaeda. But what next? Moving on to Somalia, Sudan, then Yemen and even Iraq might do something to clinch the anti-terrorist assault. But unless the superpower peers toward a wider horizon, how permanently will the world order have changed for the better?

The static out of Washington does not signal much cause for confidence for many of us here. For a brief moment, it looked as though the crime perpetrated by Osama bin Laden would persuade President Bush to rethink the defiant unilateralism his campaign had proposed as the leitmotif for American foreign policy. But the Afghan triumph seems only to encourage the simplicities of the Republican right. Its talk grows harsher and appears to scorn, even more deeply than a year ago, the complexities of global crises, not to mention the prudent generosity of outlook demanded of the sole surviving Great Power.

The Afghan experience requires a wiser response. War and bombing are not enough. Vast inequalities; the need for a development strategy; the imperative of Mideast peace; the onset of environmental self-destruction; the fundamentals of democracy and human rights: These are world concerns and should be America's.

Ending terrorism is a good cause but surely doesn't set the limit of American idealism or, on any but the shortest-term view, self-interest. As the superpower, the United States is super-responsible. She is both a perpetrator and, as 9-11 showed, a victim. Can she rise to the 21st century challenge of a world that turns out not to fit Jesse Helms's blueprint? Or must she shrink into the homeland, guarded by the daisy-cutter, the dollar and missile defense?

Hugo Young is the political columnist for London's Guardian newspaper.

----

Flex Your Muscles, Softly

By Josef Joffe,
Editorial FROM GERMANY
Sunday, January 6, 2002; Page B02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64890-2002Jan4?language=printer

On Christmas Day 1991, a seemingly prosaic exchange of flags over the Kremlin marked the end of an empire and an era. The United States was the one and only Mr. Big. It has taken 10 years, though, forthis awesome transformation to sink in. The war in Afghanistan has made the point in all its baldness.

Yes, Washington cobbled together a coalition, but more for window dressing than for war fighting. While the British offered valuable help right away, the French and the Germans took their time. But it did not matter; Washington could do very well without Paris or Bonn, thank you very much.

As we looked on (more or less), friends and foes of the United States realized that none of us, whether singly or in combination, could have mustered the sheer mass and firepower that obliterated the Taliban regime and routed al Qaeda in the space of a few weeks.

What are the implications for American policy? The good news first. Unlike the Clintonistas, who never felt comfortable with America's clout, the Bushies have delivered a threefold lesson.

First, when sufficiently riled, Americans will shrug off the "body bag syndrome." Second, when Washington is sufficiently determined, others will follow -- not simply reliable European allies like Germany, but even Russia and China, even those Middle East potentates who are allegedly quaking hostages of the "Arab street." Third, as Al Capone said in one "Untouchables" episode: "You can get further with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word."

Vast military power, in other words, can achieve vast political objectives, like harnessing much of the world to the global fight against terrorism -- and winning.

What is the downside? George W. and Donald Rumsfeld might overlearn the lessons of Afghanistan, as their predecessors overlearned those of Vietnam. Now they might believe that the rest of the world is indeed no more than window dressing -- useful, but dispensable. But History (with a capital H) offers yet another lesson: The international system abhors excessive power; too much of it provokes "ganging up" on whoever is No. 1.

Of course, there was ganging up before Afghanistan, when the Europeans went after the Bush administration for its refusal to ratify the Kyoto climate convention, the land mine ban and the complete nuclear test ban.

America has always done best when it pursued its interests by heeding and serving those of others -- when it built international institutions like the Marshall Plan and NATO, when it upheld the integrity of the global free trade system through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and its successor, the World Trade Organization.

The Bush administration has paid little attention to the rest of the world in the past 12 months, and Afghanistan seems to prove it right. But the free ride won't last, History whispers. "Ganging up" will replace "going along" unless the United States recalls what true leadership (and greatness) are all about: power softened by responsiveness and responsibility.

Josef Joffe is editor of the German weekly Die Zeit.


-------- MILITARY

On the Wish Lists

Sunday, January 6, 2002
by WILLIAM D. HARTUNG
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64832-2002Jan4?language=printer

The Post's poll of public attitudes in the wake of Sept. 11 [front page, Jan. 1] noted that most Americans feel that the war on terrorism is "worth the expense," even though more than two-thirds of the respondents expect it to "shortchange other needed programs." These results might be different if more Americans knew that much of the funding authorized in the name of fighting terrorism is being set aside for pork-barrel projects with little or no relationship to anti-terror efforts.

Congress has signed off on more than $50 billion in additional Pentagon spending since Sept. 11. The war in Afghanistan has absorbed only a fraction of this new funding, roughly $1 billion per month.

Some new allocations -- such as $250 million in added funds for unmanned aerial vehicles that have been used extensively in Afghanistan -- are relevant to the fight against terrorism. But most of the new funds will go to finance projects long on the wish lists of the military services, key members of Congress and weapons contractors long before Sept. 11: the 70-ton Crusader artillery system; three new fighter plane programs; heavy destroyers, and nuclear attack submarines that cost more than $1 billion each. Most of these systems are ill-suited to the "new kind of war" against terror networks that the administration claims it wants to be prepared to fight.

Before the public can make an informed decision about whether the war on terrorism is worth the expense, there needs to be a thorough debate about the relevance of these new Pentagon expenditures to the actual tasks involved in preventing and responding to terrorism.

WILLIAM D. HARTUNG
New York

--------

Scientists Working on 'Odor Bomb'

January 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Odor-Bomb.html

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A group of scientists are experimenting with the worst smells imaginable to help the military develop an ``odor bomb'' so foul it could clear crowds.

``What they would be interested in is something to keep people out of certain areas,'' said Pamela Dalton, a researcher at the Philadelphia-based Monell Chemical Senses Center. ``We are going for odors that every culture has experienced and the experience is negative.''

The Pentagon asked Monell to help develop the stinky but non-lethal weapon. The center's work on putrid odors was reported in the Jan. 7 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.

About 50 Monell researchers are probing human pheromones, inquiring about food cravings or sniffing body odors. Dalton's job is to investigate what odors offend people.

``Whether people are born with preferences for odors or whether it is learned, we don't know,'' said Dalton.

Researchers have looked for odors that produced a negative reaction in all cultures, such as human waste, rotting animal flesh and garbage.

They focused on biological odors, believing they were most likely to be recognized, Dalton said.

Dalton cautioned that the military could be a long way from developing such an offensive weapon, and that scientists are still trying to work out some bugs.

``How do you contain these odors until you are ready to use them?'' she asked.

-------- afghanistan

Vietnam vet calls security in Kabul extremely shaky

By Richard S. Ehrlich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 6, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020106-6652022.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan - Security is dangerously lax at U.N. compounds, Baghran Air Base and other facilities, according to a U.S. Vietnam War veteran from the former CIA-backed Phoenix Program who now runs a professional security service.

"The enemy, in this case the Taliban, have certainly now mixed in and assimilated in with the local population," John Muller, president of MPA Security Services, said in an interview.

"The U.S. has just recently dropped bombs on the town [Kabul] and there were some accidents of course, so there are probably some very frustrated natives out there that could do something.

"They could possibly be a threat to foreigners."

Mr. Muller was shocked to discover a security threat on Thursday at Baghran Air Base, 42 miles north of Kabul, where U.S. and British forces are based.

"At Baghran Air Base, we found a Russian helicopter was flown by a local [Afghan] pilot from the new army and he was doing stunts next to parked cars and U.N. people.

"It turned out, in this instance, when he stepped out of the helicopter and people asked why he acted like that, he said, 'I hate foreigners.'

"There are always idiots and misfits and people on substance abuse who don't like our presence here," said Mr. Muller, 52.

Asked if Taleban or al Qaeda fighters may have infiltrated Kabul to study the international community's security, Mr. Muller replied: "Absolutely, absolutely.

"There are certainly people physically surveilling.

"If you don't take your security seriously and take some precautions - very, very sensible precautions - it could flame up real quick."

Mr. Muller has 33 years of security experience starting with the CIA-backed Phoenix Program in South Vietnam, which used Vietnamese to provide security for administrative staff and to identify Viet Cong sympathizers.

He stressed, however, a Phoenix-style strategy would not be advisable against the Taliban, al Qaeda or suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

"The problem with the Phoenix Program is sometimes it was abused. The locals would pinpoint people who were not agents and they settled family scores that way. So that's not the perfect solution at all."

Mr. Muller's MPA Security Services is headquartered in Bangkok.

"We have over 3,000 guards there. We offer electronic security systems, VIP protection, countersurveillance protection and almost any kind of security services that you would want."

In Kabul, "I notice at all installations that I've gone to, access was easy to gain. Very, very easy."

He recommended electronic systems such as closed-circuit cameras, computer-locked access doors, alarms and motion sensors, plus color-coded identification cards, vehicle checks, searches and other basic security procedures.

"There is probably a market for maybe 300, 400 guards in this town serving the Red Cross, CARE, World Vision, all of the U.N. agencies, embassies that set up here and airlines - airline security is one of our big ones," he said.

----

Taliban spokesman now in U.S. custody

January 6, 2002
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/06012002-062325-5544r.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 6 -- U.S. forces Saturday took custody of the frequent spokesman for the Taliban from Pakistani authorities as the body of the first American soldier to die from hostile fire completed the first leg of the trip back home.

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, 34, gave the Taliban its public face when he acted as spokesman and had been detained by Pakistan. Although now held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, his exact location is not being disclosed.

He is being questioned about the still missing Mullah Mohammed Omar and al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, officials said.

The body of a U.S. Special Forces soldier Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman arrived Saturday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The 31-year-old San Antonio, Texas native was the first U.S. soldier killed by hostile fire.

In the United States Saturday, President Bush marked the 90-day anniversary of Afghan military action, calling the progress made since its beginning as "incredible."

The president told a town hall meeting in Ontario, Calif. Saturday the message has been clear, "Don't mess with America."

London's Sunday Times reported President Clinton had three occasions during his administration to capture bin Laden but failed to do so mostly because of anticipated legal difficulties.

In a report that generally repeated already disclosed information, the Times said that Sudan had offered to turn over bin Laden, that a Pakistani-American millionaire offered to act as intermediary if a Gulf state turned over the reputed terrorist leader and that finally, a still mysterious offer to help was made by the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia.

By one account, the newspaper said, Saudi Arabia offered to help place a tracking device in the luggage of bin Laden's mother who wanted to visit her son.

CNN reported Sunday that German police arrested a suspected al Qaeda member Saturday at a hotel in Moenchengladbach, in western Germany. Police did not disclose the man's identity, only saying he was in his 40s and was using the name of an Italian.

U.S. military officials said an al Qaida leader that had organized the group's terrorist training camps is also in U.S. custody at Kandahar's airport. Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi had been among the terrorist group's dozen most senior officials.

Afghan authorities are questioning Rayes Abdul Wahid, a Taliban commander who gave himself up, CNN reported.

CNN also reported a number of helicopters carrying Marines lifted off Sunday from the U.S. base near Kandahar to an undisclosed location.

The bombing runs by B-52s have been under way since late last week in eastern Afghanistan, apparently based on sightings of activity near a previously bombed training camp.

Early Friday, U.S. warplanes bombed the Zawar Kili al Qaida terrorist camp near Gardez, just three miles from the Pakistan border, for the second time in less than 24 hours, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told reporters. Air Force bombers, Navy fighters and an AC-130 gunship pounded the camp on Thursday with more than 100 one-ton bombs.

The camp -- a compound including a leadership headquarters, a training facility and a cave complex -- is a place where al Qaida is historically known to regroup, Clarke said.

The United States now has 273 detainees -- 250 with U.S. Marines and Army soldiers at Kandahar International Airport, 14 at the Bagram air base north of Kabul, eight on the Marine ship USS Bataan and one in Mazar-i-Sharif.

CIA and military officers are still in the process of interviewing thousands of prisoners held by Afghan fighters.

----

U.S. Captures a Top Trainer for Al Qaeda

New York Times
January 6, 2002
By ERIC SCHMITT with ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/06/international/asia/06DETA.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 - The United States has taken custody of one of Osama bin Laden's top paramilitary trainers, the most senior member of Al Qaeda seized in the three-month war in Afghanistan, American officials said today.

The capture marks a potential intelligence boon for American officials in their hunt for Mr. bin Laden and their quest to thwart future terrorist activities.

Officials identified the man as Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by Pakistani officials as he tried to flee from Afghanistan. He was turned over to the American military in the last few days, an American official said.

Mr. Libi, a Libyan, is being held at a military detention center at the Kandahar airport and could soon be flown to the amphibious ship Bataan in the northern Arabian Sea, military officials said. The Bataan is holding eight other high-profile prisoners, including John Walker Lindh, the 20- year-old Californian found fighting with the Taliban.

Mr. Libi was responsible for paramilitary training at a bin Laden camp in Afghanistan known as Al Khaldan, one of Al Qaeda's largest.

The United States has also taken custody of the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef. He was flown to the Bataan today for questioning, and he will be detained there.

The two seizures represent a rare success in tracking down senior Al Qaeda or Taliban leaders.

But American officials are expressing increasing confidence that they are homing in on terrorist leaders after interrogating thousands of Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners, and recovering reams of documents and computer disks from terrorist safe houses across the country.

Military and other government investigators are interrogating a total of 307 Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners at three sites in Afghanistan and on the Bataan. The first group of detainees is scheduled to be flown under heavy guard later this month to a secure jail being built at the United States Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"The information we have gotten has been very fruitful in many cases, and we think we have thwarted attacks, and has led to, if not arrests, to surveillance of terrorist leadership," Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week.

Still Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of the allied operation in Afghanistan, said Friday that he did not know the whereabouts of Mr. bin Laden or Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader. The latest capture "is potentially important," an American official said of the capture. "We've never captured a guy of this level before."

Mr. Libi, whose capture was first reported by NBC News on Friday evening, is a close associate of Abu Zubaydah, one of Mr. bin Laden's confidants. Mr. Zubaydah is believed to have taken over as Al Qaeda's top military strategist after the death of Muhammad Atef in an American airstrike in Afghanistan in November.

Federal and military investigators in Kandahar and aboard the Bataan are expected to question Mullah Zaeef and Mr. Libi, who was one of 12 Al Qaeda figures on the original list of individuals and organizations whose assets were frozen by President Bush on Sept. 26 in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Mullah Zaeef had become the international face of the Taliban in recent months through his defiant, televised news conferences. He was detained in Pakistan after his request for asylum was denied. Apparently out of political sensitivity, the Pakistanis did not state that the ambassador was being turned over to the Americans. Instead, a spokesman said, he was returned to Afghanistan because "he didn't any longer have a valid visa to stay."

The spokesman, Aziz Ahmed Khan, would not say when or where Mullah Zaeef crossed the border or who received him on the other side. The spokesman's remarks were a sign of the delicate position of the Pakistani government as it joined the American-led campaign to crush an Islamic movement that Pakistan had helped to create, and which many Pakistanis supported.

--------

INTERNATIONAL
Afghan City, Free of Taliban, Returns to Rule of the Thieves

New York Times
January 6, 2002
By C. J. CHIVERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/06/international/asia/06GRAF.html

JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Jan. 5 - The middleman with the dark sunglasses and beard met the Afghan soldiers at the gate and was allowed access inside the provincial security station. He reappeared minutes later with a bag containing two videotapes, an Albanian passport, a Moroccan identification card and nine computer disks.

He set the prices: $1,600 for the videotapes, $400 each for the passport or identification card, and $400 for each disk. All were terrorist materials taken from Al Qaeda caves in nearby Tora Bora, he said, or from terrorist houses in the city. He said they were being offered for sale by a local intelligence chief, who would have to remain hidden for now.

"If you buy all of these today, then he will have the very important passports to sell," said the middleman, who identified himself as Dr. Kamran, a surgeon who works for Jalalabad's senior warlord, Hajji Hazarat Ali. "Two passports of jihad men from Saudi Arabia. They can be yours, too."

When Dr. Kamran found no takers, he returned to the station and came out empty-handed. "Maybe tomorrow?" he asked, with a conspiratorial smile.

This is Jalalabad, a city in the hands of thugs and crooks.

The city - Afghanistan's first stop on the Grand Trunk Road, which links the nation to India - had been a smuggler's den for centuries, providing shelter and like-minded company for the bandits, traders and thieves who traveled the soaring mountain passes nearby. But in recent years, as the Taliban enforced their severe brand of Islamic law with public executions or dismemberment for criminals, crime declined.

Now the Taliban are gone, and the city and the surrounding Nangarhar Province is run once again by warlords and guerrillas, whose enterprising rackets have almost instantly turned the place into Afghanistan's version of Shakedown Street, the land where almost everything is corrupt.

Markets here sell bootlegged copies of Hollywood releases ("The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" is already available), pucks of brown hashish and in one shop the skull of a snow leopard, one of the world's most endangered cats. The corruption runs unchecked through what counts as local government, which is essentially a group of ill-tempered guerrilla brigades.

The guerrillas welcome outsiders with threats and extortion, steal food from aid convoys and simultaneously insist that they are helping Green Berets gather intelligence materials in the mountains while trying to sell the same items on the street. "Everywhere people are trying to sell these Al Qaeda things," said Abdul Ghaffar, 44, the city's newly appointed interim mayor. "Some of it is real, some of it is fake. It is all a great shame."

Green Berets continue to work with the Eastern Shura. But it is not clear whether they are paying the guerrillas for their assistance.

Not all of Afghanistan is so corrupt. In several northern provinces, ethnic Tajik generals have tried to craft a responsible government and are sending signals that they want a society based on fairness, tolerance and rights. In Jalalabad, however, the unsettling games begin from the moment visitors arrive.

Upon crossing the city line, new visitors are informed that they must reside in hotels controlled by the Eastern Shura, the loose coalition of three warlords who rule the province. And visitors at the Spin Ghar Hotel, run by Mr. Ali, the region's most powerful general, are not allowed to leave the grounds unless they use a driver selected by Mr. Ali. The charge is $100 to $150 a day, even if the drive is only 100 yards.

Similarly, Mr. Ali recently circulated a note in his hotel that contained a veiled threat: it warned visitors that they must also hire his translators, or else their safety could not be assured. Those charges also begin at $100 a day, and rise as high as $250. (Two exceptions were made this week for journalists who arrived with their own Afghan drivers and translators, but then the local bosses demanded 25 to 50 percent kickbacks from the Afghans already in the journalists' employ.)

New rules are introduced almost daily. For instance, once inside the Spin Ghar Hotel, visitors cannot change residences, as was made clear last week when a New York Times translator who had tried to help an Associated Press photographer move into a rival hotel was struck in the head with a rifle butt.

Mr. Ali, who properly bears the title of provincial security commander, now and then appears to speak. On Thursday, for instance, he said he did not know who was stealing the rice from the local Red Crescent Society, even though the sacks were somehow being used to feed his own troops in their garrisons throughout the city.

With something like comic timing, eight sacks bearing the Red Crescent logo showed up Friday at his hotel, where the security commander is now in the position of charging his Western guests to eat the food his men have seized from the poor.

"All of our soldiers are the same - robbers," said one sorrowful hotel employee, who was ordered by the soldiers to carry the big sacks into the hotel kitchen.

The corruption also continues in the neighborhoods and countryside, where soldiers flagrantly steal. Atiqullah Mohmand, the local program director for the United Nations refugee agency, said he kept his personal car several provinces away, in Logar, because it would not last here.

"If I came into the city with it, I would have to watch the armed men get in and drive it away," he said.

Mr. Mohmand has enough problems already: a band of local soldiers has moved into the United Nations compound, living like bored and listless squatters among the relief agency's staff.

The guerrillas also try to sell access to news. In one case late last month, a commander at Tora Bora sent notice to network television crews that they could interview wounded prisoners, if only they would pay $5,000. "It seems to be an increasing problem," said Ned Colt, a correspondent for NBC News, which declined the offer on ethical grounds. "To do much in this area, the soldiers want you to pay."

NBC News left the province today.

In another case last week, a group of guerrillas on the road to the ridgeline near Tora Bora demanded $1,000 to let vehicles pass.

"You've got these mujahedeen on the roads around here using their power and guns to demand money or denying you access to information," said Jacob Sutton, 47, an Associated Press television cameraman who politely declined to pay the toll and turned his truck around. "I personally resent this blatant corruption, and I can't help thinking this is an eye- opener for how this country has been run in the past. And it does not bode well for the future."

The examples go on and on. One CNN crew member left his tent at Tora Bora and returned to find an Eastern Shura soldier wearing his leather jacket. In another, a photographer for The New York Times had two digital camera disks stolen by soldiers, one of whom later made the rounds in the photographer's hotel, offering to sell them back for $500 each, an offer that was declined each time.

Tensions have escalated as journalists have departed, in disgust or for other assignments, shrinking the supply of fresh dollars and making each Westerner an even richer target for shakedowns and threats. The scene today as a CNN team left for Pakistan was particularly menacing.

As the crew packed its gear, the hotel management summoned a group of about 50 armed soldiers, who gathered outside the door or took posts on the steps. Then the hotel manager began to list his demands before the team could exit: in addition to paying the hotel bill, plus one extra night for each guest, CNN would have to leave behind a color television, a refrigerator, a satellite dish and an encoder.

Ingrid Formanek, the CNN producer, negotiated with the manager for more than hour, and was finally allowed to leave for the price of the extra night and the television set. No stranger to the peculiarities of corporate accounting in a war zone, she managed to extract a signed receipt from the manager that even included a $220 charge for "pure extortion."

She was furious. "It's thuggery," she said. "It's everyone for themselves and God against all."

The thuggery had not yet ended. CNN had left behind two large boxes of dried and canned food for the team of Afghans who had assisted their news gathering in the mountains. As the Afghans tried to leave with their reward, Eastern Shura soldiers stole that, too.

-------- africa

UGANDA Turn Off Your Tunnel Vision

By Mahmood Mamdani
Sunday, January 6, 2002; Page B03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64907-2002Jan4?language=printer

The Pentagon's search for al Qaeda members in Somalia is the latest indication that Sept. 11 could have an adverse effect on U.S. relations with African nations. To understand why, think back to 1975, when the United States was defeated in Indochina and the Portuguese empire collapsed in Africa. The same events that Africans celebrated as ushering in the end of European colonialism opened a new phase in the Cold War: There was a shift not only in the Cold War's center of gravity from Indochina to southern Africa, but also in the methods of waging it. Official America harnessed, even cultivated, terrorism in the struggle against movements it saw as Soviet proxies. Yes, I do mean "terrorism," which Washington supports when it backs groups for whom the preferred method of operation is destroying the infrastructure of civilian life.

The post-Vietnam embrace of terrorism did not end with the Cold War. Right up until Sept. 11, America counseled African governments to "reconcile" with terrorist groups. Since then, that has given way to a demand for justice. But just as reconciliation became a code word for impunity, the danger now is that "justice" will mean bloody revenge. Reconciliation became a strategy to undermine newly won state independence; the campaign against terrorism risks demonizing dissent.

I was a young lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in 1975, and I remember well the U.S. approach to southern Africa then and in the years that followed. Faced with the possibility of a decisive victory in Angola by the MPLA, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, which it saw as a Soviet proxy, Washington encouraged South Africa to intervene militarily in support of UNITA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. But South African military assistance only tarnished UNITA with the brush of apartheid and weakened it. Preoccupied with how to bring South Africa out of political isolation to contain movements such as the MPLA, the Reagan administration announced a major policy shift: "constructive engagement" with the apartheid regime.

The American embrace of terrorism was global -- in Angola; in Mozambique, where it supported RENAMO, the Mozambique National Resistance; in Nicaragua (the contras); and in Afghanistan (the mujaheddin). Terrorism distinguished itself from guerrilla war by making civilians its preferred target. What official America today calls collateral damage was not an unfortunate byproduct of war; it was the very point of terrorism. And the point of collateral damage was never military, always political.

When South Africa curtailed assistance to UNITA in 1991, U.S. aid was stepped up. The hope was that terrorism would deliver a political victory in Angola, as it had indeed in Nicaragua. The logic was simple: If the level of collateral damage could be made unacceptably high, the people would surely vote the terrorists into power.

Even after the Cold War, the tolerance for terror remained high. The callous Western response to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was no exception. Nor was Jan. 6, 1999, when Revolutionary United Front gunmen maimed and raped their way across Freetown, Sierra Leone, killing more than 5,000 civilians in a day. The U.S. response was to pressure the government to share power with the rebels.

If the Cold War was an umbrella under which America sheltered right-wing dictators in power and embraced terrorists out of power, the danger is now the temptation to view Africa while preoccupied with a single overriding concern -- this time terrorism -- and to once again ignore African realities.

Mahmood Mamdani, a native of Uganda, is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University.

----

Gabon Sealed Off to Contain Ebola

By SERGE MABIKA
Associated Press Writer
JANUARY 06, 10:11 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?PACKAGEID=ebola&SLUG=AFRICA-EBOLA

LIBREVILLE, Gabon (AP) - Gabon's government was stepping up efforts to contain an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, restricting access to an entire province affected by the disease.

Security and defense forces were helping local officials control movement in and out of the northeastern frontier province of Ogooue Ivindo, where the virus has already killed 17 people, government spokesman Andre Mba Obame said late Friday on state TV.

Authorities had previously controlled access to several affected villages in Ogooue Ivindo - a remote, thinly populated region inhabited by pygmies and other tribes who hunt in the vast rain forests of the Western Africa country.

There were no reports, however, that the disease was spreading.

Medical officials confirmed 20 Ebola cases in Gabon, of whom 17 have died since the outbreak began in October. Twelve other cases, including six fatalities, were identified in the neighboring Republic of Congo.

Gabon had already sealed off its border with the Republic of Congo, allowing only medical specialists dealing with the crisis to cross. Authorities in the Republic of Congo had also cordoned off a 125-mile region on their side of the border.

The World Health Organization said medical experts were monitoring 147 people in Gabon and 95 in the Republic of Congo who may have had contact with those infected with the disease.

Obame announced the creation of a special committee to deal with the crisis. He said it would be under the supervision of the prime minister and would include the ministers of health, defense, transport and the interior. He gave no other details.

Ebola is one of the most deadly viral diseases known, killing 50 to 90 percent of those who become infected. But the disease usually kills its victims faster than it can spread, burning out before it can reach too far.

The virus is passed through contact with bodily fluids, causing fever, diarrhea, vomiting and heavy bleeding.

-------- arms sales

Editorial criticizing suit against gun manufacturers misses mark

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Washington Times
January 6, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020105-30670848.htm#3

Your Jan. 3 editorial, "Jurisnuisance," takes the Illinois Appellate Court - and me personally - to task for the court's Dec. 31 decision that my clients have a valid cause of action in public nuisance against the manufacturers of handguns used by juveniles to murder my clients' sons and daughter on the streets of Chicago. Your vituperative outburst is based on so many misconceptions or outright falsehoods that it is difficult to catalog them all, but I shall endeavor to try.

First, the appellate court has not "decided [the lawsuit] in favor of gun-control groups and money-grubbing trial lawyers." Indeed, the court has not "decided" the lawsuit at all. It simply held that we have alleged the required elements of a public nuisance cause of action sufficiently that we should be permitted to proceed to the next stage of the case, discovery, or the gathering of proof for submission to a jury to make the ultimate decision.

Also, the plaintiffs in this case are not "gun-control groups" but, rather, the parents of murdered young people.

Furthermore, these plaintiffs are not represented by "money-grubbing trial lawyers." My law firm, Katten Muchin Zavis, and I, as well as our co-counsel from two other distinguished legal organizations, are rendering all of our service on this case pro bono publico, or free of charge in the public interest. Thus, at no time, contrary to your baseless canard, will I or any of my co-counsel be "spending the money he and his ilk wheedle into their pockets by pursuing gun manufacturers." There is no "cashing in as jurisprudence" here.

Finally, for at least two reasons, our allegation that the defendant handgun manufacturers "set in motion a chain of events with the foreseeable result being the death of our clients" is not "like saying Chevrolet, by selling its Corvette sports car, 'set in motion a chain of events with the foreseeable result' that someone might cause a fatal accident." First, our complaint - quoted liberally in the appellate court's opinion, which the author of the editorial obviously did not read - alleges that the defendant handgun manufacturers have intentionally established and maintained specific marketing and distribution practices that are designed to make handguns both attractive and accessible to criminally oriented young people in the city of Chicago. I am not aware of any such intentional conduct being attributed to Chevrolet or any other automobile manufacturer.

Second, at the oral argument in this case, one of the appellate court justices specifically rejected the handgun manufacturers' analogy to automobiles being misused by drunken drivers or others as instruments of death. The justice observed: "But, counsel, your clients' products are designed to kill people. Doesn't that impose on them a greater responsibility to take care in how those products are distributed?" Ditto for your analogy to "a TV ... tossed into someone's bubble bath" as a "potentially deadly weapon."

Next time, before you cavalierly misstate facts and impugn individuals' integrity, do your homework.

JONATHAN K. BAUM Chicago

-------- biological weapons

THE GERM WAR
Anthrax Missteps Offer Guide to Fight Next Bioterror Battle

New York Times
January 6, 2002
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN and GINA KOLATA
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/06/health/policy/06ANTH.html?pagewanted=all

On Saturday, Sept. 8, employees of Inova Fairfax Hospital in northern Virginia rehearsed their response to a mock terrorist attack that would overwhelm the medical system with hundreds or thousands of victims. The drill went well.

"You say, `Here's the scenario: We have 160 victims, how do we triage them, where will they go, how will they be handled?' " said Dr. Thom Mayer, the chairman of the hospital's emergency department.

But just a month later, Inova Fairfax treated real victims of bioterrorism - two postal workers with inhalation anthrax, who showed up in its emergency room a day apart. Only then, Dr. Mayer said, did the staff discover that no part of the elaborate rehearsal had resembled a real attack.

Now, with no new cases since mid-November, health officials inside and outside the federal government have begun an autopsy of the anthrax outbreak that killed 5 people, infected at least 13 more and terrified large segments of the population over two months. What did health officials do right? What went wrong? What was a matter of luck? And how can they learn from the luck?

While it is too early to glean a set of precise lessons for a future bioterror attack - particularly since no suspect has yet been charged in this one - the officials acknowledge that the handling of the outbreak was marked by a catalog of miscalculations, missteps and misunderstandings about bioterrorism in general and anthrax in particular. Among them were these:

¶Medical scientists thought they knew anthrax. But they now say they overestimated the death rate for those infected and had no idea how many spores a person must inhale to develop the disease.

¶Procedures for communicating about unfolding events proved inadequate to reassure a frightened public.

¶Federal, state and local governments were unprepared for the close collaboration required in an investigation that combined the medical and the criminal.

¶Laboratories were unexpectedly swamped with samples that had to be tested for anthrax spores.

Underlying the government's response to the outbreak, experts say, was a misunderstanding of the difference between the goals of terrorism and the goals of warfare.

As Dr. Craig Smith, an infectious disease expert at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Ga., put it, warfare seeks to conquer territories and capture cities; terrorism seeks to "hurt a few people and to scare a lot of people in order to make a point."

That is why the terrorism drills, which assumed that the attacks would involve a cloud of anthrax pumped into a building or sprayed over a stadium, turned out to be so far off the mark. Dr. Smith, the only infectious disease expert who accompanied troops in the Persian Gulf war, is a member of the bioterrorism task force at the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He said he and his fellow members were as much to blame as anyone for that misperception.

Another terrorism expert, Jeffrey Hunker, dean of the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University, said: "We're coming out of a cold war mentality that says that the big threat we have to face is the Soviet Union unleashing biological or nuclear weapons. By saying we were preparing for mass attacks, you are saying we were preparing for war."

The goal now is to build a system that can respond quickly, and flexibly, because there is no reason to believe that the next bioterrorism attack will resemble this one. That, experts say, requires careful thought and deliberation, not just throwing money at the problem to correct yesterday's mistakes.

"There is just so much to do that we have not sat down to look at this outbreak day by day and say, `What did we decide on Day X and what was done and what might have been done, how could you have been doing it earlier?' " said Dr. D. A. Henderson, the director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness and chief adviser on bioterrorism to the health and human services secretary, Tommy G. Thompson. "We plan to do that and sort it out and figure out what we might have done differently."

Communication `Baffled' Officials, Mixed Messages

In late September, Secretary Thompson told television viewers that the government was prepared to deal with any kind of bio terrorism attack.

Days later, he announced that Robert Stevens, a photograph editor at a supermarket tabloid published in Boca Raton, Fla., had inhalation anthrax. It was, he said, an isolated case. Anthrax happens naturally, he said, and there was no evidence of terrorism. He hinted that Mr. Stevens might have become infected by drinking water from a stream, although experts said such a means of transmission had never been documented.

Yet the doctor who had just diagnosed inhalation anthrax in Mr. Stevens had a very different view. Dr. Larry M. Bush, an infectious disease expert and chief of staff at J.F.K Memorial Medical Center in Atlantis, Fla., said that when he realized what Mr. Stevens had, he knew immediately what it meant.

Mr. Stevens worked in an office, in a state where no anthrax had been reported in years. And inhalation anthrax was virtually unknown in the United States; almost all of the very few cases had occurred in workers exposed to airborne spores - by working with hides of infected animals, for example. Dr. Bush interviewed Mr. Stevens's wife, who said her husband opened letters all day, and concluded that the anthrax had come through the postal system. Dr. Bush said he told local health officials, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his suspicions.

When Dr. Bush heard Mr. Thompson suggest that the infection might have occurred naturally, he was thunderstruck.

"I thought: `Wow. His first statement is wrong. Why did he say that?' " Dr. Bush said. "It was a major disservice. He should have said: `We have a case of anthrax. It is very concerning. I don't have the details, but we will investigate it as potential bioterrorism.' "

Meanwhile, at the Health and Human Services Department in Washington, officials were perplexed by Mr. Stevens's illness. Could he have become infected in some unorthodox way?

Government officials acknowledge that they found it hard to imagine a case in which a terrorist aimed airborne anthrax at just one person. "Everything we knew about the disease just did not fit with what was going on," Dr. Henderson said. "We were totally baffled."

As for health officials' initial response, Dr. Henderson said they often play down the seriousness of an outbreak to avoid frightening the public. But he added that he himself was critical of the practice. "It is not reassuring," he said.

Still, James Adams, a terrorism expert who is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said he could sympathize with government officials. "It's the worst political problem," Mr. Adams said. The truth of the matter, he added, is: "We have no solution. Therefore, we can't bear to tell you about it."

But it was soon becoming impossible to play down the events. Reporters clamored for information. The requests "just really buried us in a way that we had not anticipated," Dr. Henderson said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency responsible for investigating diseases, kept silent.

"Early on we were under the Federal Emergency Management Act and the decisions were made that C.D.C. should not be a locus of communications, in part because it was a criminal investigation and we were not really clear what the appropriate message was to put out," said Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, acting deputy at the agency's infectious disease center. "Soon thereafter it became clear that C.D.C. was desperately needed as a spokesperson for this outbreak, but by that time we were in a reactive state."

Mr. Thompson later held news conferences about the anthrax outbreak, assisted by government scientists. But his initial remarks left a lasting impression of overconfidence.

A basic principle of sound public health management is to have scientists inform and interpret what has happened promptly. But when communication was most critical early in the outbreak, no government scientist consistently delivered the clear message many people said was needed.

In describing the general problem, Dr. John F. Eisold, the Capitol physician, said that "the message was clearly a medical message, and you have got to have medical people talking about medical facts and not nonmedical people prescribing antibiotics."

Federal health officials were confused and disorganized. "We felt very strongly about the need to be available and to communicate, and there was just no way in the world you could," Dr. Henderson said. "We were just paralyzed." Meanwhile, the information vacuum was being filled by "experts" who came forward, some with questionable qualifications.

Another problem was the disease control agency's usual way of working. It "has traditionally been a very deliberative body, scientific in nature, that makes good policy decisions agonizingly over time," said Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, the secretary of the Maryland Health Department and president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Ordinarily, once epidemiologists understand the nature of a particular microbe and the way it is transmitted, they can develop effective public health responses. But the rush of new information about anthrax and the postal system meant that the agency had little time to be deliberative. Dr. Benjamin said that meant "a new paradigm" for the agency; Dr. Gerberding of the disease control centers agreed and said the lesson had now been learned.

The Warnings `A Weird Disease' And Its Nuances

Anthrax "is a weird disease," Dr. Henderson said. Before the attacks, he said, he did not appreciate many of its nuances. He and others writing a primer on anthrax in The Journal of the American Medical Association in 1999 relied primarily on reports of 18 patients who developed anthrax in the United States, a limited amount of information on a 1979 outbreak in Sverdlovsk, in the former Soviet Union, and a limited amount of research in the laboratory and with animals.

Scientists knew that anthrax spores could lie dormant in soil for decades and then cause disease. They also knew that inhalation anthrax occurred when spores entered the lungs and were swept into lymph nodes in the mediastinum, in the middle of the chest, where they germinated and pumped out toxins. But scientists still had much to learn.

Few scientists had ever considered how dangerous anthrax spores might be if they were sent through the mail. But in retrospect, it is clear that there were clues.

In Canada, military scientists investigated the question as a result of a hoax - a letter said to contain anthrax that forced the government to close a building in Ottawa last January.

That led Dr. Bill Kournikakis and his team at the Defense Research Establishment in Alberta to conduct an experiment. They used a harmless microbe to mimic how spores might disperse in an office or mailroom if an envelope containing anthrax were opened.

Their conclusion was chilling: a person could inhale a lethal dose of spores within seconds of opening an envelope. Those who remained in an affected room for more than 10 minutes could inhale far more than a lethal dose, depending on their location and the air flow.

In early October, when American epidemiologists linked the spread of anthrax to the postal system, Dr. Kournikakis said he sent the report to the disease control centers. But it went unread in the blizzard of e-mail messages that arrived at the agency, and it was not until three weeks later that officials learned of the study through other channels.

A similar warning had come in 1999, from William C. Patrick III, a government germ warfare expert, in a report for a government contractor exploring what might happen if an anthrax letter was opened. Finely milled spores, he wrote, could easily contaminate an office.

Medical experts also misjudged the difficulty doctors would have in diagnosing inhalation anthrax, assuming that a sophisticated surveillance system was needed to detect an attack. But Dr. Bush, the Florida infectious disease expert, says he knew immediately what was wrong with Mr. Stevens, the first patient with inhalation anthrax. He saw Mr. Stevens on the morning of Oct. 2. By 2 p.m., he was convinced.

"I had four pieces of information, all consistent with anthrax and not consistent with other organisms on my short list," Dr. Bush said. He called the local health department, telling officials there that he thought he had a victim of bioterrorism. And he sent samples of the bacteria to a state reference laboratory for further tests. By 8:30 the next morning, all three tests had come back positive.

Medical textbooks say that inhalation anthrax starts with mild, flulike symptoms that are hard to recognize, and that by the time it progresses to its severe phase, it is easy to diagnose but virtually impossible to cure. But the two postal workers who came to the emergency room at Inova Fairfax in October did not have textbook symptoms. The first patient did not even seem very ill, but a CT scan of his chest showed telltale signs of anthrax. The second patient complained of the worst headache of his life. But he did not have the classic signs of inhalation anthrax - bacteria in his spinal fluid and abnormalities in a chest scan. Doctors learned he had anthrax only when they examined his blood and saw the characteristic boxcar-shaped anthrax bacteria.

Both patients recovered with aggressive treatment - another surprise, considering how deadly the advanced stage of the disease was assumed to be. But that expectation was based on what scientists knew about the 1979 outbreak in Sverdlovsk, which was caused by a plume of spores accidentally released from a bioweapons factory.

Now, Dr. Henderson said, scientists realize they misread scientific papers, never appreciating that many more Soviets may have had the disease and survived. It is unclear how effective antibiotics were in Sverdlovsk, he said, because no one is sure how many people were given antibiotics and for how long they took them.

The anthrax attacks also pointed to another scientific mystery: how many spores does it take to infect someone? Could one spore cause a fatal disease? The two most recent deaths, of two women who were not postal workers - Kathy T. Nguyen in the Bronx and Ottilie W. Lundgren in Oxford, Conn. - raise the question, because no spores were found in their homes and the source of their infection is unknown.

Dr. Henderson and others now say that the outbreak illustrates an important lesson: the temptation to draw firm conclusions from a small database should be resisted, even if it is the only information available.

"There is a lot of feeling that we didn't know what we were doing as scientists in giving advice," he said. "But, sorry, we haven't had a lot of anthrax around to know just how it's going to behave."

The Collaboration`Layers and Levels' Of Teamwork

Teamwork is essential in any epidemiologic investigation. But, Dr. Gerberding of the disease control agency said, "In retrospect, we were certainly not prepared for layers and levels of collaboration" among a vast array of government agencies and professional organizations "that would be required to be efficient and successful" in the anthrax outbreak.

The agency quickly deployed hundreds of workers and created an operations center, installing banks of telephones so epidemiologists could relay information from colleagues in the field to top officials at its headquarters in Atlanta and then on to the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House. Even so, calls from state and local health officials and departments and doctors across the country flooded the lines.

And responsibilities for health matters were fragmented. "We were very much aware that we had no jurisdiction over federal facilities whether it was the V.A. or the post office," said Dr. Matthew L. Cartter, an official of the Connecticut Health Department. He urged local, state and federal agencies to work out a memorandum of understanding to clarify lines of jurisdiction before another outbreak.

In New York City, the Health Department had prepared itself for inhalation anthrax in recent years, building liaisons between hospitals and specialists in infectious disease, pulmonary disease and emergency room care. But health officials overlooked dermatologists and surgeons, who treated the first anthrax cases - the skin form. "Very few dermatologists had ever heard of us or knew how to reach us," said Dr. Marcelle Layton, an assistant commissioner in the department's communicable disease bureau.

Anthrax also challenged health officials and law enforcement agencies to work together. And each group had something to learn. For F.B.I. agents, it was how to obtain evidence without contaminating the scene of a medical investigation. For epidemiologists, it was how to collect specimens without disturbing the chain of custody in a criminal case.

"It's a different mind-set, of using epidemiology to reconstruct the circumstances of the exposure that resulted in disease," said Dr. Bradley A. Perkins, a top anthrax investigator at the federal disease centers. Law enforcement officials "immediately recognized the value of that in prosecuting the criminal case," he said.

The TestingSamples Deluge The Laboratories

On Oct. 15, a letter stuffed with anthrax spores was opened at the office of Senator Tom Daschle. The next day, 2,500 people who had potentially been exposed lined up for nasal swabs. Many were terrified. "People thought each spore was plutonium," said Dr. Eisold, the Capitol physician.

But although the nasal swabbing continued wherever anthrax spores showed up, epidemiologists soon discovered that it was of little use in detecting illness. Its main role was in helping determine where and how far spores had spread.

Soon officials in every state were hit with an avalanche of samples to test - from nasal swabs, from suspicious letters, from swabs of offices and rooms, from clothing, from soil. "You could never have prepared for the volume that you had to process," said Dr. Lou Turner, the director of the North Carolina Laboratory of Public Health.

The disease control agency regards environmental microbiology as one of its strengths, Dr. Gerberding said, but it soon learned that the discipline had a long way to go when it came to anthrax - in particular, sampling the air for spores, disinfecting an area and monitoring it for spores and particles that might escape when envelopes are put under mechanical pressure.

The agency believed that it was prepared for a real anthrax outbreak. It had created a network of laboratories to aid in rapidly detecting microbes. Although the network worked well, the assumption had been that the labs would mostly test specimens from sick patients. Instead, most tests were for spores in the environment - and for hoaxes. The agency had to expand lab space and open a new lab at its headquarters just to test more than 5,500 specimens for spores.

Some health officials complained about the data coming back from testing labs. Does a negative report mean that the laboratory used only a quick screening test, or that it also performed a culture? Such details are important, particularly for laboratory reports that will be evaluated by law enforcement officials and others who would not understand what tests were done, health officials said.

A new problem has emerged: how to return the variety of items - rugs, envelopes, china, even a 50-gallon drum - that were tested and found not to be contaminated.

"We have to figure out how to get rid of all this, which is still evidence and still in the chain of custody," said Dr. Elizabeth Franko, the director of the Georgia Public Health Laboratory. "Either law enforcement needs to come get it, or they need to sign off and say it is trash and they do not want it back."

The anthrax attack was much less horrific than it might have been. But medical and terrorism experts say that situation is due in large part to luck. Considering the size of the postal system, relatively few people were infected. And unlike smallpox, among other possible terrorist weapons, anthrax is not spread from person to person.

In deconstructing the response, Dr. Hunker, the terrorism expert, said, it will be important to investigate what role luck played, to avoid having to rely on it in the future.

The backbone of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's response to health emergencies is a corps of epidemiologists known as the Epidemic Intelligence Service. Forensic epidemiology has not been part of their training. But now it has to be, Dr. Gerberding said.

And experts caution that the anthrax outbreak may not be over.

"We still do not know who put anthrax in the mail, we still do not know if they used all they had, and we still do not know how to make all the mail safe," said Dr. John O. Agwunobi, the Florida secretary of health. "So the question becomes how quickly can we apply what we have learned so far to the next event."

----

Smallpox Protection

Sunday, January 6, 2002; Page B06
Washington Times
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64833-2002Jan4?language=printer

A Dec. 26 front-page article, "Some Want Smallpox Shots Now," quoted D. A. Henderson, the director of the federal Office of Health Preparedness, saying that the smallpox virus is "hard to get a hold of, hard to work with and hard to disseminate."

This is radically different from his prior statements about smallpox. In 1998 Dr. Henderson wrote, "Even groups with modest finances and basic training in biology and engineering could develop, should they wish, an effective [smallpox] weapon at little cost."

We have a right to choose to receive smallpox vaccine protection for ourselves and our children. The Bush administration must make certain we are receiving accurate information upon which to base our health care decisions when nearly 300 million lives are at stake.

MARJORIE BARNETT
Silver Spring

-------- britain

Suspected paramilitary killed by own bomb

Briefly
Washington Times
January 6, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020106-658622.htm

BELFAST - A suspected Protestant paramilitary who was found dead in Northern Ireland was apparently killed when a pipe bomb he was working on exploded in his face, police said Friday, reviving fears of a new flare-up of sectarian violence.

William Campbell, 19, died instantly in the explosion Thursday night in the town of Coleraine, northwest of Belfast, a police spokesman said.

Police have linked Mr. Campbell to the Ulster Defense Association (UDA), one of the main paramilitary loyalist factions, which broke its cease-fire last autumn and opposes the peace process.

Mr. Campbell's body was found in the Heights neighborhood close to the abandoned house that served as a bomb-making station for the paramilitary group.

Soldiers dismissed after New Year's brawl

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Four British soldiers were dismissed from peacekeeping duty in Bosnia after a New Year's Eve brawl in a cafe in the northern town of Gradiska, reports said.

"We can confirm that an incident did take place on New Year's Eve in Gradiska," said Lt. Toby Strong, a spokesman for the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR).

Local media reported that the four British soldiers serving in SFOR were drunk when they attacked a man in a Gradiska cafe, called the "British house."

The four later halted traffic in the town and pointed a rifle at passers-by and policemen who tried to take them to a station.

-------- india/pakistan

India Says It Shot Down Spy Plane

January 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Pakistan-Spy-Plane.html

JAMMU, India (AP) -- The Indian military said it shot down a small, unmanned Pakistani spy aircraft that intruded into Indian air space in disputed Kashmir on Sunday. Pakistani officials denied this.

The drone, which takes aerial photographs, was flying nearly 2.5 miles inside Indian territory in the Poonch sector along the India-Pakistan border when troops fired at it, an Indian army official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Poonch is about 150 miles northwest of Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu-Kashmir state. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars in a bid to settle rival claims to the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley.

The shootdown came amid a massive buildup of troops along the border by the nuclear-armed countries. The Indian army spokesman said that after the drone was hit, heavy mortar and artillery fire by both sides erupted.

Pakistan denied the spy plane allegation.

``No Pakistani spy plane has been shot down by India in the Himalayan region of Kashmir,'' a senior military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Pakistan's state-run news agency, the Associated Press of Pakistan, reported that ``an aerial vehicle of India crashed in the Jammu sector and the military officials of India are indulging in baseless propaganda to hide this loss.''

The Indian army spokesman said it is very rare in ``peacetime'' that Pakistani unmanned aerial vehicles are spotted. The last episode was in 1999, after an 11-week armed conflict in the Kargil sector of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

In New Delhi, an Indian defense analyst said he didn't think Sunday's shootdown would lead to war.

``While an increase in armament usage is predictable after this incident, I don't think it would lead to a higher level of military hostilities because it was an unmanned plane and no lives were involved,'' said C. Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses.

``It was perhaps a probe by the Pakistanis ... to test India's resolve on how it would respond to any form of intrusion,'' he said.

The army spokesman said that the aircraft was seen going down and soldiers were scouring the mountainous area to locate the debris. He said it was also possible that a part of the debris could have fallen inside Pakistan.

An Indian air force plane fired at the drone and then received fire from Pakistani anti-aircraft guns, he said, adding that the Indian plane was not hit. He said it wasn't clear whether it was fire from the plane or from the ground that brought down the drone.

Eyewitnesses said the appearance of the drone caused panic among Poonch residents, who thought war had broken out.

Since a Dec. 13 terrorist assault on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, India and Pakistan have amassed thousands of troops along their 1,100-mile border, and are in a state of high alert.

India blames Pakistan's spy agency of sponsoring the attack on Parliament that killed 14 people, including five assailants allegedly tied to Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups. Pakistan has denied the allegations, demanding proof.

The United States, Britain and other nations have urged India and Pakistan to negotiate over New Delhi's demands that Islamabad crack down on those groups.

The shootdown came hours after Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee spoke privately on the final day of a summit of South Asian leaders in Nepal. Though Musharraf called for dialogue, Vajpayee said there would be no talks until Islamabad made greater efforts to halt the Pakistan-based Islamic militants fighting in Indian Kashmir.

Indian troops in 1999 shot down an unmanned Pakistani surveillance plane over the western state of Gujarat. This was just after the Kargil conflict, which was triggered by anti-India guerrillas from Pakistan occupying strategic mountain ridges in the Kargil sector of the disputed border.

--------

Summit Ends Without Talks Between India and Pakistan

January 6, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/WIRE-INDIA.html

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) -- India's prime minister reciprocated a goodwill gesture from the president of rival Pakistan, stepping forward Sunday to shake his adversary's hand and end an icy two-day summit of South Asian leaders on a warm note.

Tensions remained high in the disputed region of Kashmir, where the Indian military said it shot down a small, unmanned Pakistani spy plane on Sunday. Pakistan claimed the aircraft was India's own.

Despite two handshakes and some informal interaction, the Indian and Pakistani leaders left the conference in Nepal without holding talks to improve relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors, as international leaders had hoped.

Later, in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said Pakistan needs to condemn all types of terrorism to pave the way for negotiations.

``There must be a complete rejection of the types of terrorist actions carried out on the first of October and the 13th of December,'' Blair said, referring to attacks on the Jammu-Kashmir state legislature and the Indian Parliament, both blamed on Pakistan-based militants.

``There is no halfway house for that,'' said Blair, who plans to meet Monday with Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

The Pakistani president said the war alert status of the two armies along their 1,100-mile border had not heightened during the summit but did not appear to have eased, either. ``We must remove the dangerous standoff between India and Pakistan,'' he said.

An Indian army official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a Pakistani unmanned aircraft, which takes aerial photographs, was flying nearly 2.5 miles inside Indian territory along the India-Pakistan border when troops shot it down Sunday.

Pakistani military officials said no Pakistani spy plane had been shot down and suggested the aircraft might have been a child's toy. Later, Pakistan's state-run news agency reported that ``an aerial vehicle of India crashed in the Jammu sector and the military officials of India are indulging in baseless propaganda to hide this loss.''

The claims about the shootdown came hours after the end of the seven-nation summit.

Musharraf said that he and Vajpayee had chatted informally during the summit but that they had no one-on-one meeting.

Vajpayee confirmed he spoke with Musharraf, telling reporters: ``It was a courtesy call. There was no significant discussion.''

Meeting for the first time since the attack on the Indian Parliament that India has blamed on Pakistan, Vajpayee and Musharraf -- who last held talks at a July summit that ended in acrimony over the disputed Kashmir region -- performed a delicate dance for the cameras in Katmandu.

Musharraf made a show of shaking Vajpayee's hand Saturday after calling for India and Pakistan to embark on ``a journey of peace, harmony and progress'' together.

Vajpayee grudgingly accepted Musharraf's hand but later pointedly walked past the Pakistani president after urging him to follow up on his gesture by cracking down harder on Pakistan-based militants India has blamed for the parliament raid and other attacks.

Vajpayee also rebuffed Musharraf's offer of talks to end the dispute that has brought their nations to the brink of a war both say they do not want. But on Sunday, Vajpayee initiated a handshake, which Musharraf followed with a salute.

Musharraf offered a prayer of peace Sunday. ``If there is no durable peace, there will be little progress,'' he said in closing summit remarks.

Since the Parliament attack, India and Pakistan have amassed thousands of troops along their frontier, cut off airspace rights, slashed their embassy staffs and halted all passenger air, train and bus service across the border.

The Indian army said Pakistani soldiers fired rockets and mortar shells Saturday across the cease-fire line that divides Kashmir, the Himalayan region over which the nations have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947.

On the Pakistani side, police and witnesses said at least one villager was killed and three were wounded in cross-border firing late Saturday.

Islamic militants, some based in Pakistan, have been fighting Indian forces and carrying out attacks in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir for 12 years, hoping to end Indian rule. The attacks and fighting have killed tens of thousands of soldiers, rebels and civilians.

India has accused the militants of staging terrorist attacks elsewhere on its soil. It blamed two Pakistan-based groups for the Parliament attack, which killed 14 people including the five assailants, and claimed they were backed by Pakistan's intelligence service. Pakistan denied it.

Police said Sunday that Pakistani security forces arrested 42 Muslim militants in an overnight sweep in eastern Punjab province, raising the number of detainees held in a crackdown against groups that oppose Indian rule Kashmir to more than 300.

India is pressing for more. After Musharraf shook his hand Saturday, Vajpayee said the Pakistani leader ``must follow the gesture by not permitting any activity in Pakistan or any territory in its control today which enables terrorists to perpetuate mindless violence in India.''

Musharraf, whose government supports the cause of Kashmiri separatists but denies India's claim that it trains and funds the militants, said the global campaign against terrorism must maintain a distinction between ``legitimate resistances and freedom struggles ... and acts of terrorism.''

-------- iraq

US fears Iraq radar can see stealth plane

By Sean Rayment
06/01/2002
The Telegraph
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$HPYBPSIAABWZVQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2002/01/06/wafg206.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/01/06/ixnewstop.html

UNITED STATES defence chiefs may have to review their strategy for phase 2 of the war after it emerged that Baghdad could have acquired a radar system capable of detecting America's multi-billion-pound fleet of stealth bombers.

The radar is believed to be the same Czech-built type used by Serb forces to shoot down a US F117 Nighthawk stealth bomber and seriously damage another during the war in Kosovo in 1999.

US intelligence chiefs believe that Iraqi generals attempted to buy a system for £176 million from the Czech Republic in 1997 but the deal collapsed after it was exposed by the CIA.

The Telegraph, however, has learnt that after the closure of the Czech defence company Tesla-Pardubice in 1998, two of its Tamara radar systems, which Iraq wanted to acquire, "disappeared", and might have been acquired by rogue arms traders working for Baghdad.

A former employee of the company said last night: "Tesla-Pardubice closed in 1998. It had two radar systems that had not been sold but they have disappeared. Nobody knows where they are."

Rob Hewson, the editor of Jane's Air Launched Weapons, said the weight of circumstantial evidence indicated that Iraq had probably acquired a radar system capable of "seeing" stealth bombers.

He said: "The Pentagon is faced with the prospect that Iraq may have a system that can see stealth bombers and they are very, very worried."

The disclosure is likely to affect the next stages of the war against terrorism and influence whether the US decides to carry out a full-scale attack against Saddam Hussein's regime.

Last week it emerged that stocks of US air-launched cruise missiles had been virtually exhausted after attacks on Kosovo and Sudan, further hampering Pentagon plans for an attack against Iraq.

The B2 stealth bomber and the F117 stealth fighter both played vital roles in the Kosovan and Afghan wars and, together with the mass use of cruise missiles, they are part of a crucial first phase of US attack plans.