------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
The Irradiation of Mail Can Also Zap the Contents
First State Accepts Pills for Radiation
Sellafield terror threat warning
Terror attack on Sellafield 'would wipe out the north
British Energy restarts Hinkley plant
Bulgaria seeks delayed closure of nuclear plant reactors
Abraham got thousands from nuke biz
Nuke companies have a lot to gain
Report upgrades China's threat as a nuclear power
Afghan environmental assessment may cover depleted uranium
Deals to prevent Chernobyl-style disaster collapse
India Takes Tough Line Ahead of Musharraf Speech
India Says Nation 'Ready for War'
Russia Passes on Missile Defense
Lockheed, Boeing Head Missile Shield Drive
Russia Rejects U.S. Plan to Store Warheads
U.S. Alters Estimate Of Threats Non-Missile Attacks Likelier
Nevada Nuclear Waste Site Chosen
Abraham backs Yucca as nuke-waste site
Fight Over Nuke Dump in Nevada
Nevada Site Urged for Nuclear Dump
Richardson Denies Race Role in Probe
Lee Says Nuclear 'Jewels' Were Junk
N-waste battle worth fighting
Investigator for EPA sues Whitman over job

MILITARY
U.N. to limit sanctions for Afghanistan
Afghans Defend Taliban Releases
U.S. Analyzes Afghan Intelligence
Choppers for Colombia
U.S. stops short of linking
Japan renounces militarism forever
U.N. to Request $2B for Afghans
China counters U.S. influence
Britain to set up agency to counter bioterrorism
Belfast hit by another night of rioting
Burma announces nuclear plans
Lockheed Martin to Cut Jobs
Afghan Prisoners Arrive in Cuba
DEA breaks apart 2 major drugs rings
Alarm in Peru
A Blunt-Speaking General Says India Is Ready for War
Israel destroys Gaza airport runway
The Shipping News
Palestinians Arrest Trio Accused in Arms Shipment
Pakistan wants its airbases back
U.S. Military Begins Shift From Bases In Pakistan
Pentagon plumber
Russia lifts cordon on Chechen city
Lee Says Nuclear 'Jewels' Were Junk
Air Force Targeting Technology on Display
Lessons learned
Bush signs bill to give military 'down payment'

POLICE / PRISONERS
Analysis: Military tribunals
Court votes to limit deportation law
Weapons ban ruled unconstitutional
Laid-off workers get nod for security jobs
Capitol Cop Charged in Anthrax Hoax
Three Christians sentenced to death
High Court to Rule on Challenge to Death Penalties in 9 States
Grand jury indicts JDL members in plot
Bin Laden's terror mastermind identified
Terrorists taken to Guantanamo
Container flight

ENERGY AND OTHER
Irish green light for world's biggest offshore wind farm
Bush Plan Would Double 'Brownfields' Cleanup Funds
Bush Approves $1.2 Billion Industry Cleanup Bill
Canadian organic farmers sue Monsanto on GM crops



-------- NUCLEAR

The Irradiation of Mail Can Also Zap the Contents

New York Times
January 11, 2002
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/11/business/11MAIL.html

Attempts by the United States Postal Service to make mail safer by zapping it with radiation have hit a snag: the process tends to destroy computer chips and to damage other delicate items including food, pharmaceuticals, clothing, contact lenses - and even the paper mail itself. "The irradiation process, as I understand it, generates heat, and that's the killer," said Bob Anderson, a spokesman for the Postal Service, in response to questions about the problem.

That, of course, was the original idea: killing anthrax spores like the ones that were mailed to Congressional offices and to news media companies. In response, the Postal Service began to put mail to federal recipients and to some media companies through sterilizing machines.

The Postal Service is currently trucking mail to be sanitized to temporary processing centers in Ohio and New Jersey, and has bought eight irradiation machines from the Titan Corporation (news/quote) of La Jolla, Calif., for $5 million each. The machinery exposes the mail to potent beams of electrons - a technology that, on a less intense level, can be used to sanitize food.

But something powerful enough to destroy hardy anthrax spores plays havoc with less hardy objects. Staff members in federal offices in Washington say that paper mail deteriorates under the treatment and that photographs are ruined: the mail, some of which has been delayed for months because of the anthrax worries, is "much like letters that were set aside and buried under a pile in someone's garage for three years," a Congressional aide said. Some of the mail in New Jersey has caught fire.

This week the CompactFlash Association, which represents makers of memory cards used in digital cameras, personal computers and portable music players, warned that the beams "will not only cause loss of data stored on the cards, but the cards will no longer be operable."

A spokesman for the association, Bill Frank, said other chips are also affected. "We've done some tests and this destroys the stuff," he said.

Bill Calder, a spokesman for the chip maker Intel (news/quote), confirmed that many kinds of chips were at risk. "They're not wrong to say semiconductors could potentially be damaged," he said.

That is not much of a problem right now, said Mr. Anderson of the Postal Service, because the scope of the federal mail-sanitizing program is currently limited to federal offices and some media companies. "It's really a nonissue, because Aunt Millie is not going to get her mail irradiated," he said, adding that the attacks were focused and so "our response is targeted" as well.

Mr. Anderson said the Postal Service had called together a working group from affected industries - including shippers of high-technology goods, drugs, clothing and food - to test products and try to establish procedures for identifying mail that can be damaged by the beams, and to help those companies avoid the process.

"We don't want to fry the mail," Mr. Anderson said. "That doesn't serve our customers." He said that the goal of the Postal Service was to deliver the mail "as safely and as economically as possible."

A spokesman for Titan, Wil Williams, said the company had made the destructive potential of its technology clear to the Postal Service. The mass mailing and catalog companies, he said, already use presorting procedures that generally keep their mail from going through the sterilizing system.

Paper tested by his company was not damaged, Mr. Williams said, but he added that the intense effort to sanitize so much mail could lead to varying results. "Every new process that we're doing that comes along, you have to take the nicks out of it and make it efficient," he said.

Ultimately, the problems with mail-sanitizing technology may be diminishing in importance because of another mail technology, said David Carle, a spokesman for Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. "Senator Leahy and his staff," he said, "noticed that a threshold was crossed in April of last year, when for the first time e-mail surpassed postal mail in volume. That process has been accelerated since the anthrax problem."

-------- accidents

First State Accepts Pills for Radiation
Others May Follow Massachusetts Lead

By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 11, 2002; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28152-2002Jan10?language=printer

The state of Massachusetts this week requested supplies of an anti-radiation pill to protect residents of 17 towns near three nuclear-power plants, becoming the first state to initiate a formal stockpiling program after the federal government agreed to pay the costs.

Vermont's health commissioner, Jan Carney, said yesterday that her state would do the same after getting citizen input on the details of its plans. Ohio is scheduling public meetings for the same purpose, and many other states, including New York, are discussing the idea.

The state actions suggest that a 22-year stalemate on the issue of stockpiling a drug called potassium iodide -- a standoff that pitted citizen activists against the nuclear-power industry -- has finally been broken as a consequence of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Knowing that Osama bin Laden has spoken longingly of his desire to blow up the nation's nuclear plants, officials in many states are deciding to take no chances.

"I think what September 11 taught us was that things you've never expected could happen, happened," Carney said yesterday. "And they happened very rapidly."

Her sentiments were echoed by Roseanne Pawelec, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. "The climate changed," she said. "It would be irresponsible for this department not to respond to the heightened concern."

Potassium iodide pills, if administered within a few hours of a nuclear emergency, can protect the thyroid gland, which is acutely sensitive to damage from radioactive fallout. The World Health Organization and physician groups recommend broad stockpiling of the drug in homes and emergency shelters near nuclear plants.

But the electricity industry in this country has long opposed such stockpiling. Industry experts say the drugs could provide a false sense of security, leading the public to ignore requests to evacuate or take shelter during a nuclear emergency. Some, however, believe the industry also wants to avoid stockpiling because it would give people the idea that nuclear plants are unsafe.

Virtually all U.S. states maintain small stockpiles that could be used to protect their emergency workers and immobile populations such as nursing-home residents. But historically, only four states -- Alabama, Arizona, Maine and Tennessee -- maintained broader public stockpiles.

That, it would appear, is about to change.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a letter to states on Dec. 20 giving details of a policy under which it will pay for the pills for states that want them. The states are beginning to respond. So far, no state has formally said no, and it appears that many are leaning toward accepting the federal offer.

Separately, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has just bought about 1.6 million doses of potassium iodide and intends to buy at least 6 million more this year, but it's not clear how quickly those could be distributed. They would likely be most useful in a disaster that went on for days, as did the two most important ones to date -- Three Mile Island, in 1979, and Chernobyl, in 1986.

In a letter dated Tuesday, Massachusetts Health Commissioner Howard Koh formally invoked the new NRC policy to request pills to protect about 330,000 residents in 17 towns near the Pilgrim, Seabrook and Vermont Yankee nuclear plants. The state is still working out details of its plans, but may distribute pills in advance for residents to keep in their homes. It also plans large stockpiles in schools.

Koh's action is a victory, in part, for the Massachusetts delegation to Congress. Led by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D), the delegation has been pressing for a more aggressive national policy on potassium iodide, but was embarrassed that its own state government was resisting. The delegation urged Koh to embrace the drug in a Dec. 12 letter.

Vermont -- a state led by a doctor, Gov. Howard Dean (D) -- embraced the idea of stockpiling in November but has not formally responded to the NRC offer as it continues to work out details of its program. Public hearings are likely in the next several weeks. Both New York and Ohio are leaning toward public hearings, as well.

-------- britain

Sellafield terror threat warning
Highly radioactive material is stored at Sellafield

Friday, 11 January, 2002
From: "Andrew Hund" <axh69@po.cwru.edu>

A terrorist attack on the Sellafield nuclear plant would lay most of Northern England to waste, according to a new report.

We know of no specific threat to the Sellafield site.

British Nuclear Fuels

An area hundreds of miles square could be made uninhabitable by radioactive fallout, warns the US-based academic behind the report.

But the findings, which have been handed to the Commons defence committee, were branded "alarmist" by Sellafield's operator British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL).

According to the report's author, Gordon Thompson of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the buildings could not withstand an impact from a passenger jet.

The main threat, it is claimed, comes from a part of the Sellafield plant storing high level radioactive waste, which dates back to the 1950s.

The highly radioactive material in the buildings has to be constantly cooled and stirred to prevent a chain reaction, Dr Thompson claims.

'No secret'

A spokesman for British Nuclear Fuels said Dr Thompson was a "well known opponent of the nuclear industry" who had "never had his claims about the releases from these buildings independently verified."

He said it was "no secret" that highly radioactive material was stored at Sellafield but BNFL was in the process of reducing its stocks.

Security at the plant was paramount but there was no evidence that terrorists were planning an attack.

"We know of no specific threat to the Sellafield site," he told BBC News Online.

Irish opposition

Nevertheless, Dr Thompson's report is likely to fuel the arguments of the Irish government, which is bitterly opposed to plans to build a new reprocessing plant at Sellafield.

The Dublin administration had wanted the UK to block the £470m mixed-oxide (Mox) fuel development just across the sea, claiming it would break international laws on sea pollution.

It also claimed the BNFL plant posed safety and security risks, which have been heightened since 11 September.

But a United Nations maritime tribunal rejected the challenge to the plant, which will turn useless plutonium and uranium into a powerful energy source.

Safety assurances

Last week, John Clarke, BNFL's head of environment, health, safety and quality at Sellafield, attempted to reassure the Irish at a special conference on security.

Dealing with the storage of highly active liquid (HAL) waste, Mr Clarke said: "We have now considered what the full impact of a deliberate commercial aircraft crash and the fire that would ensue would be on the HAL facility."

He said BNFL had re-examined its safety arrangements and was satisfied that storage facilities would remain intact.

"Our emergency arrangements would work to mitigate the offsite impact of any radiological release that might result from such an attack," said Mr Clarke.

Sabotage threat

Dr Thompson also claims Sellafield is vulnerable to sabotage of the cooling equipment which keeps the material stable.

One scenario could see a large-scale release of radioactive waste into the Irish Sea, making fishing waters in Western Scotland unusable.

But his concerns were dismissed as unfounded by BNFL.

The Ministry of Defence is understood to have plans in place to deal with terrorist action at Sellafield.

It has declined to comment on security matters.

----

Terror attack on Sellafield 'would wipe out the north

The Guardian
January 10, 2002
PAUL BROWN AND RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR

A terrorist attack on Sellafield could render the north of England uninhabitable and release 100 times the radioactivity produced by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986, the House of Commons defence committee was told yesterday. The most vulnerable part of the facilities at Sellafield, dating back to the 1950s, contain giant tanks of high level radioactive waste which has to be constantly cooled and stirred to prevent a chain reaction.

Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said he believed documents from both the nuclear industry and the government showed neither had ever attempted a thorough analysis of the threat or the options for reducing it.

Dr Thompson, who was based in Britain for 10 years and gave evidence at the 1977 Windscale inquiry into reprocessing at Sellafield, and at the Sizewell inquiry, is an expert on the potential fallout from a nuclear accident or act of terrorism.

As well as the threat of a bomb, missile or hijacked plane hitting Sellafield, Dr Thompson raises the possibility of a rogue worker or terrorist infiltrator at Sellafield sabotaging the cooling equipment which prevents the stored waste from boiling and causing a massive radioactive release.

Dr Thompson's report, sent this week in response to the committee's call for new evidence after a report it published last month, is likely to further alarm the Irish government, which has repeatedly protested about danger from the high level waste tanks at Sellafield.

The problem is that the plant which is supposed to turn this liquid waste into more manageable and less dangerous glass blocks has never worked properly and a backlog cannot be cleared for 15 years.

Among the possibilities Dr Thompson raised was a vast release of liquid waste into the Irish sea. That would contaminate fisheries and travel north on currents, making fishing in western Scotland impossible.

Anywhere downwind of Sellafield during the releases would be rendered uninhabitable probably for generations and people caught in the fall-out would have a greatly increased chance of getting cancer.

Depending on the direction of the wind, cities including Newcastle, Edinburgh and Leeds would be well within fallout range, as would be Dublin.

Dr Thompson said: "A civilian nuclear facility is a potential radiological weapon if the facility contains a large amount of radioactive material that can be released into the environment.

"A notable example of a potential radiological weapon for an enemy of the UK is the B215 facility at Sellafield. This facility houses 21 steel tanks and associated equipment in above ground concrete cells. The tanks contain high level radioactive waste in the form of self-heating, acidic liquid that requires continuous cooling and agitation."

He said these tanks contained 2,400 kilograms of caesium-137, the main cause of off-site radiation exposure from the Chernobyl accident.

The total amount released from Chernobyl was 27kg, almost 100 times less than the potential release from the facility at Sellafield.

Dr Thompson said the buildings designed in the 1950s could not withstand a crash from an airliner.

The Commons defence committee in its report said that "attention has particularly focused on perceived vulnerability of nuclear installations.

But the Ministry of Defence said yesterday that a "quick response procedure was in place to cover the whole of the country in the event of a hijack attack.

The task of shooting down a hijacked commercial airliner has been assigned to RAF Tornado F3 fighters based at Coningsby, Lincolnshire.

----

British Energy restarts Hinkley plant

REUTERS UK:
January 11, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13994/story.htm

LONDON - British Energy has restarted the 650-megawatt unit seven at its Hinkley Point B nuclear power station in England, a spokesman said on Thursday.

"The plant is back, it was only ever going to be short outage," he told Reuters. He declined to comment further.

The unit went offline on Tuesday because of a problem with turbines.

At British Energy's Dungeness B station in England two 550-megawatt reactors remained offline for refuelling.

The Dungeness reactor 21 went off on Sunday and reactor 22 went down early on Wednesday, according to data from the National Grid .

-------- bulgaria

Bulgaria seeks delayed closure of nuclear plant reactors

Reuters BULGARIA:
January 11, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13995/story.htm

SOFIA - Bulgaria will fight to delay the closure of two of the older reactors at its Kozloduy nuclear power plant beyond the European Union deadline of 2006, Energy Minister Milko Kovachev said on Thursday.

"Our position is clear and it says that we will decommission the two reactors (number three and four) by 2008 and 2010 respectively and we will defend this position," Kovachev told Reuters.

Bulgaria, which hopes to join the EU, bowed to the union's pressure in 2000 and agreed to shut down Kozloduy's first two oldest 440-megawatt reactors, number one and two, before 2003.

But Bulgaria, which is the main power exporter in the Balkans, faces tough talks with the EU this year on a final agreement on the closure of the other two 440 MW reactors. Their operational life is until 2010 and 2012.

In its report last year on Bulgaria's accession talks progress, the EU said that permament closure of reactors three and four should take place in 2006 at the latest. "An earlier closure of the reactors will affect the whole region because Bulgaria now covers 50 percent of the power deficit in the region," Kovachev said.

"Bulgarian exports are not only important for the country itself but it is also an extremely important stabilising regional factor," he said.

Last year Bulgaria exported seven billion kilowatt hours of power, up from 5.6 billion kWt in 2000 due to an increased demand from its neighbours.

Bulgaria's main power buyers last year were Turkey with 3.8 billion kWh, followed by Greece, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia and the Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro.

The Soviet-designed 3,760 MW Kozloduy plant, which has two other 1,000 MW recators, supplies some 44 percent of Bulgaria's power a year. It produced 19 billion kWh last year, its highest output for 10 years.

Last month Kozloduy officials said they had launched preparations to close its two oldest reactors by end-2002 and were modernising the other two older reactors to convince the EU that they could be closed later than 2006.

Bulgaria opened the energy chapter in its pre-accession talks with the EU in November and hopes to close it in 2003.

-------- business

Abraham got thousands from nuke biz
Energy secretary: 'Sound science' drove Nevada choice

By William Spain,
CBS.MarketWatch.com
Jan. 11, 2002
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?print=1&guid={B27941DE-751C-4038-A1B6-1D9C12A75B63}&siteid=mktw

LAS VEGAS (CBS.MW) -- Although Enron's large contributions to key legislators and members of the Bush administration apparently were not enough to pull its financial fat out of the fire, one group of major energy-business political donors just hit the jackpot.

While it will be at least a decade -- if then -- before radioactive waste begins pouring into Nevada's Yucca Mountain, the Department of Energy's decision to recommend the site is a big victory for the nuclear power industry.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Thursday he plans to formally recommend the Silver State site as a new federal repository for nuclear waste -- delighting plant operators and infuriating Nevada businesses, politicians and environmentalists. See story

Transporting all of its radioactive byproducts to one central location and storing it there -- both at taxpayer expense -- has long been at the top of the nuclear industry's wish list. Currently, most nuclear waste generated from commercial plants is stored on-site, a cost shouldered by the operators.

The Nuclear Energy Institute wasted no time in hailing Abraham's decision: "Safely transporting nuclear waste from 35 states to one secure, specifically designed federal disposal facility underground is the best solution to protect our environment and our national security," said Joe Colvin, president of the trade group.

Companies backed Senate bid

Abraham received thousands of dollars in contributions from the industry in his campaign for reelection to the U.S. Senate from Michigan in 2000. In addition to NEI's $4,000, private nuclear-plant operators DTE Energy (DTE: news, chart, profile), with $5,000, Exelon (EXC: news, chart, profile), at $2,000, Constellation (CEG: news, chart, profile), $2,000, and FirstEnergy (FE: news, chart, profile), also $2,000, ponied up for his failed bid.

Abraham also accepted at least $9,500 from energy-trading company Enron (ENE: news, chart, profile) between February of 1999 and October 2000.

Although Attorney General John Ashcroft recently recused himself from involvement in the criminal probe of Enron because he had accepted over $50,000 of the company's money in the past, Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, insisted that Abraham has no such conflict.

Abraham based his decision solely on "sound science and compelling interests [of] national security and environmental protection," he said.

While the nuclear industry has given to both major parties, the GOP has long received the lion's share of the booty. For instance, the Center for Responsive Politics said that in the last election cycle Republican candidates got more than two-thirds of the $335,000 given by NEI and nearly three quarters of $819,000 contributed by leading nuclear operator Exelon.

The next call in the ongoing battle will be made by the White House, which is on record as being in favor of both expanded nuclear power and the establishment of a central repository for nuclear waste.

If, as expected, the Bush administration approves the site, Nevada's governor or state legislature gets a chance to veto the decision, which will stop the project until and unless Congress overrides it.

Furious members of the state's congressional delegation, including Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid, have vowed to do whatever it takes to keep the Yucca from opening. And, even should they fail, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican, has vowed a court battle.

William Spain is a reporter for CBS.MarketWatch.com in Chicago.

----

Nuke companies have a lot to gain

January 11, 2002
By Benjamin Grove <grove@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2002/jan/11/512876848.html

WASHINGTON -- Nuclear power companies may see noticeable long-term stock gains after Thursday's announcement by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham that Yucca Mountain is "scientifically sound and suitable" for a national nuclear waste dump, analysts said.

But stocks have not immediately spiked at the news because savvy investors are familiar with the political, legal, regulatory and waste transportation hurdles that remain for the proposed nuclear waste repository, said David Schanzer, utilities analyst for Janney, Montgomery and Scott.

"I would certainly think that over a period of time, if Yucca Mountain approaches being more of a reality, if in fact it materializes, it will be a beneficial aspect for some companies," Schanzer said.

Schanzer said that if the Yucca project continues to meet important milestones it could even pave the way for new nuclear plants to be constructed in the United States as early as 2006 -- the first new plants commissioned since the late 1970s.

Nuclear power companies on Thursday welcomed the announcement as solid financial news, Prudential Financial Services associate analyst Mike Catanzaro said.

"It provides a real boost to the industry and shows that the administration is behind nuclear power," Catanzaro said. "It answered a big question around the nuclear industry -- what to do with the waste."

Catanzaro predicted President Bush would give the site the green light and that Congress would act quickly mid-year to override official objections filed by of Nevada. "I don't think Congress is as nuclear-phobic as it once was," he said.

Aides to the Senate's leading Yucca advocate, Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, declined to say what strategy pro-Yucca lawmakers would use in the narrowly divided Senate to override an official Nevada objection.

But in a written statement, Murkowski said, "Now more than ever the case for Yucca Mountain is clear. Nuclear waste is best kept in a secure, central facility where we can concentrate all of our resources to keep it safe. Without such a repository, waste today is instead kept at sites scattered across the country on our shores and in the midst of our communities."

After two decades of Energy Department research at Yucca, Abraham's action was "the right scientific thing to do," said Joe Colvin, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute. NEI is the top pro-Yucca lobby and nuclear industry trade group in Washington and for years has prodded presidents and lawmakers to complete Yucca.

"Scientific consensus supports disposal of this material in a facility that provides multiple layers of protection for the public and the environment," Colvin said.

By law, the federal government was supposed to haul waste away from the power plants by 1998. But delays have plagued the Yucca project and plants continue to store waste on-site at great expense.

The Prairie Island nuclear plant in Minnesota is a good example.

The plant produces about 20 percent of the state's electricity. But the plant's waste storage pool is full, and plant operator Xcel Energy is now storing overflow in 14 dry cask containers. State law limits such on-site storage and the plant may be forced to shut down by 2007 if waste cannot be shipped to another state.

"Utilities have had to make significant accommodations to continue running their plants," Prairie Island director of nuclear assets Scott Northard said.

Constellation Energy, which operates two reactors in Maryland, also has filled its waste pools, plus about 60 percent of its dry-cask storage. Ratepayers have paid twice to store waste -- once into a fund to pay for Yucca Mountain and an additional $25 million for the high-security dry-cask bunkers on the plant property, said Constellation spokesman Karl Neddenien.

Abraham's action was "a major milestone in developing a permanent solution to our existing problems," Neddenien said.

-------- china

Report upgrades China's threat as a nuclear power

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-29075650.htm

China easily could put multiple warheads on its current missile force but would face problems adding more than one warhead on its three new mobile ICBMs, according to a new intelligence report.

The National Intelligence Council's estimate of future missile threats, made public Wednesday, said China "has had the capability to develop and deploy a multiple re-entry system for many years, including a MIRV system." MIRV stands for multiple, independently targeted re-entry vehicle - the term for modern multi-warhead missiles.

The current force of some 20 CSS-4 long-range missiles currently has large single warheads and could be upgraded with multiple warheads "in a few years," the report said.

According to the report, China's intercontinental ballistic missile force over the next 15 years will range from 75 to 100 warheads "deployed primarily against the United States."

Chinese Embassy spokesman Xie Feng said he did not know the basis for the CIA report.

"The purpose of China developing nuclear weapons is simply for self-defense," he said.

Mr. Xie said China has a policy of not being the first to use nuclear weapons and of not using nuclear arms against non-nuclear states.

"It is a fact known to all that China has the smallest arsenal of all nuclear powers," he said.

Adding more warheads to the new single-warhead Dong Feng-31, a longer-range version of the DF-31 and the submarine-based JL-2, would be harder. The report said the Chinese would face technical hurdles and additional costs for boosting the number of deployed strategic warheads.

"MIRVing and missile defense countermeasures would be factors in the ultimate size of the force," the report said.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi dismissed the CIA report on China's strategic warhead buildup as "baseless speculation."

"China will increase its defense power based on its own needs," Mr. Sun said.

Richard Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military with the Jamestown Foundation, said the government's estimates appear too low.

"The estimate of 75 to 100 warheads to be aimed at the United States by 2015 may be an underestimate, if the People's Liberation Army builds more than four new ballistic missile submarines," Mr. Fisher said in an interview. "Some reports estimate that the PLA may build up to six of these submarines. If that's the case, the overall number could actually turn out to be larger."

Mr. Fisher said the report also indicates that China plans to extend the range of its new DF-31 rather than produce a different DF-41 missile. He said China has been having problems developing the DF-41 and may have abandoned the program.

Mr. Fisher said a glaring omission of the report is the failure to mention China's progress in developing a land-attack cruise missile.

Combined with the large number of new Chinese missiles of varying ranges, "this adds up to a rather substantial, PLA Asia theater missile threat that is much larger than the report suggests," Mr. Fisher said.

CIA analyses of China came under fire last year from a panel of outside specialists who concluded that CIA China analysts harbored an "institutional predisposition" to play down Chinese military developments as nonthreatening.

Details of Chinese missile developments were part of a report outlining long-range missile developments in China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and India.

The report also said North Korea is a growing long-range missile threat, with hundreds of short- and medium-range missiles and continued work on long-range Taepo Dong missiles that "will enable the North to target the United States."

North Korea defended its missile program yesterday. The state-run news agency said the program is a "self-defense measure."

"If our country is a 'rogue state' for its development of missiles as a self-defense measure, what is the United States, which has a number of missiles and a stockpile of about 20,000 nuclear warheads?" the Korean Central Broadcasting Station asked.

"It is the very United States which is launching military terror attacks on our republic."


-------- depleted uranium

Afghan environmental assessment may cover depleted uranium

The Age ENEVA, AFP
Saturday January 12, 12:16 AM
From: uranium@t-online.de

The UN's environmental agency was examining ways to assess the environmental impact of the conflict in Afghanistan, which may include a survey of the use of depleted uranium (DU) in munitions, a spokesman said today.

"We're thinking along the lines of what we did in Kosovo, which did include depleted uranium," UN Environment Program (UNEP) spokesman Michael Williams told journalists.

"More broadly I think UNEP believes a post-conflict environmental assessment in Afghanistan would be a good idea; we're discussing internally how best to do this in the context of the UN-wide effort," he added.

There is no evidence that US forces used bombs or shells containing DU during air raids on targets in Afghanistan.

Williams said the issue would be considered by UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer ahead of a meeting about human rights and the environment in Geneva next week.

"As I understand, bombing was still continuing last week. I think some humanitarian and other issues are going to come first before environmental ones."

Low-grade depleted uranium is used to harden some types of anti-tank or bunker-busting munitions and spreads a toxic dust on impact. There has also been controversy over its potential long-term effects on health following its use in Iraq during the Gulf War in 1991.

-------- europe

Deals to prevent Chernobyl-style disaster collapse

Fred Pearce,
New Scientist,
January 11, 2002
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991782

Western Europe's efforts to prevent another Chernobyl-style nuclear disaster among its eastern neighbours are foundering. Two deals under which the European Union promised to finance technical help on safety in return for early reactor closures have collapsed.

Bulgaria has just announced a four-year delay in shutting two old Soviet nuclear reactors built in 1980 and 1982 at the country's Kozloduy nuclear power plant. Meanwhile Armenian ministers have told New Scientist that its Metsamor nuclear plant, operating in an earthquake zone west of the capital Yerevan, will not shut in 2004 as promised.

Back in 1993, Bulgarian agreed a deal with the EU under which the two Chernobyl-type VVER reactors at Kozloduy would shut in 1998. The EU offered 24 million Euros of technical assistance in return. When this promise was not kept, a new closure date of 2006 was set, this time in return for a further 200 million Euros for technical modernisation, safety projects and decommissioning.

But now energy minister Milko Kovachev, speaking ahead of a safety assessment by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, says the reactors can carry on "until 2008 and 2010 respectively". The EU, which is currently considering an application by Bulgaria to join the union, may not agree.

Earthquake risk

Soviet engineers shut Armenia's Metsamor plant in 1989 because of safety fears following an earthquake. After independence, Armenia restarted one of the reactors in 1995 to cope with massive energy shortages. But three years later, in return for cash to finance safety improvements, Armenia promised the EU that it would close the reactor by the end of 2004.

Now, in a recent interview with New Scientist, deputy energy minister Areg Galstyan insists that there will be no closure without new energy supplies being in place first - for which Armenia has no money. "It could continue until 2013," he said.

Galstyan said the plant was shut in 1989 for "psychological" reasons, to assuage public fear. "There was no need to shut it," he stated.

Meanwhile, the plant director Suren Azatyan says that in the past five years, he has complied with international requests for safety improvements. These have included building a second supply of water for the reactors' cooling system in case the first is damaged by an earthquake.

But the EU's advisers, ENCONET Consulting of Vienna, report other safety concerns. There is no rigorous safety assessment of the plant, it says. Waste management is "based on an unsuitable design" and storage capacity for liquid waste is "practically exhausted", with much of it "stored in improper (corroded) containers on the roof".

-------- india / pakistan

India Takes Tough Line Ahead of Musharraf Speech

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 11, 2002; 12:39 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31056-2002Jan11?language=printer

NEW DELHI, Jan. 11 - India's army chief said today his forces were "fully ready" for war with neighboring Pakistan and that India's massive deployment of troops and military equipment along the border "is for real."

Diplomats and analysts here said that Gen. Sunderajan Padmanabhan's unusually bellicose comments, along with new information about India's military movements, suggested that this country was seriously girding for war, even as Pakistan's president prepared to deliver a televised address on Saturday to outline new actions to address India's concerns about terrorism.

Military analysts estimate that India has as many as a half-million soldiers massed along its 1,100-mile border with Pakistan in the largest mobilization of forces since 1971, when the two countries fought their last full-scale war. India also has been furiously laying land mines along the border, requisitioning huge fuel stockpiles, readying short-range ballistic missile batteries and taking other steps that are consistent with preparations for war, officials and diplomats said.

"We don't play soldiers on the border," Padmanabhan said in a rare news conference today. "What I'm doing is for real. I have not gone to do an exercise. I have to be ready for war to defend my country."

Although India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons, a fact that has led some to conclude that they would not become embroiled in a full-scale conventional war, Padmanabhan suggested that India would not be deterred by Pakistan's arsenal. He insisted India would not be the first to use nuclear weapons, but he warned that it would engage in massive retaliation should Pakistan launch a nuclear attack.

"Nuclear weapons are not meant for war-fighting," the general said. But, if India is the victim of a nuclear attack, he said "the perpetrator of that particular outrage shall be punished so severely that their continuance in any fray will be doubtful."

India's military buildup, which has been reciprocated by Pakistan, was sparked by anassault on India's Parliament on Dec. 13 that killed 14 people, including the attackers. India blames Pakistan-based Muslim militants who are fighting to end Indian rule in Kashmir, a Himalayan region claimed by both countries. Indian leaders, who contend Pakistan's military and intelligence agency have backed the militants, said they were considering military action if Pakistan does not cease its support for the extremists.

In a bid to defuse tensions, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, plans to deliver a speech on Saturday night to detail new steps his government will take to rein in the militants, officials in Pakistan said. Although Pakistani authorities have detained several hundred suspected militants during the past two weeks, the United States, Britain and other countries have urged Musharraf to expand his crackdown.

Indian officials have said publicly they remain hopeful that Musharraf would take stern measures, but in private, they have expressed doubts that his announcement would meet their expectations. Political and military analysts here said Padmanabhan's comments may have been designed to reiterate the Indian point of view before the speech.

"The Indians are sending out a clear message that they mean business," said Brahma Chellaney, a professor of security studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. "They want to show that this is not just huffing and bluffing."

Despite widespread support on India's streets for a war, government leaders have said they would prefer to resolve their disagreements with Pakistan through peaceful means. As a consequence, some analysts and diplomats maintain the deployment of troops is more of a negotiating tactic to get the United States to lean on Musharraf than a prelude to military strikes.

To a degree, that strategy appears to have worked. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has been in almost daily contact with leaders of both countries, urging them to stand down. He also is planning to visit the region next week.

U.S. officials have expressed concern that the escalating tensions is resulting in a redeployment of Pakistani soldiers stationed along the border with Afghanistan, which could disrupt efforts to capture members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network attempting to flee into Pakistan from Afghanistan.

But even if Musharraf makes a dramatic concession, some officials and diplomats said India's troops likely will not be withdrawn quickly, raising the possibility of a long-term showdown. "You've got thousands upon thousands of land mines that have been laid, heavy artillery that has been moved in, hundreds of new bunkers that have been built," said a Western diplomat familiar with Indian military movements. "This is not the sort of mobilization that can be withdrawn quickly."

In Kashmir, six militants were killed in gunfights with security forces today, the Press Trust of India reported. A grenade was fired at a security vehicle near the high court in Srinigar, the state's summer capital, causing no injuries, the agency said.

----

India Says Nation 'Ready for War'

By NIRMALA GEORGE
Associated Press Writer
JANUARY 11
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7GVFHQG0

NEW DELHI, India (AP) - In a tough warning from India's military, the army chief said Friday that his country is ``ready for war'' and threatened massive retaliation if Pakistan struck with nuclear weapons.

Gen. Sunderajan Padmanabhan said the buildup of Indian and Pakistani troops at the border had brought the two countries ``quite close to an actual war.'' But he repeated India's policy that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict.

The Pakistani Foreign Ministry insisted Islamabad ``wants peace and is ready for talks with India any time, any place and anywhere.'' But ministry spokesman Mohammed Aziz Khan warned Thursday that the danger of skirmishes escalating into full war ``cannot be ruled out.'' Pakistan has said repeatedly it would not use nuclear weapons.

The Indian army chief's comments came as Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, prepared to announce comprehensive measures against religious violence and extremism.

Musharraf will detail the measures in a speech Saturday, a senior government official said on condition of anonymity. The official news agency said Musharraf will speak in a televised address at 7:30 p.m. (9:30 a.m. EST Saturday).

New Delhi has demanded Islamabad crack down on Pakistan-based Islamic militants battling India's rule over part of Kashmir. The two countries have stood on the brink of war since a Dec. 13 attack on India's Parliament that India blames on the militants.

With both countries massing tens of thousands of troops on their borders, where there are almost daily exchanges of fire, the United States and other countries have urged them to open dialogue.

Secretary of State Colin Powell was to arrive in New Delhi on Jan. 18, after a stop in Pakistan, an Indian official said Friday. Powell has made almost daily phone calls to the two governments, encouraging talks rather than war.

President Bush assured India's home minister, Lal K. Advani, on Thursday that the United States will press Pakistan for tougher action against militants.

``We are not preparing for war, but what we know is that a war has been inflicted on us'' by militants backed by Pakistan, Advani, a top adviser on security issues to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, told the PBS NewsHour.

But the head of India's army issued one of the strongest statements yet by the military.

``Yes, we are fully ready,'' Padmanabhan told journalists when asked if India was ready for a conventional war.

He said an assault on Islamic militant camps India says are located in the Pakistan-held part of Kashmir could be ``viable.''

``We can achieve the desired results provided we know where the camps are and we have the right weapons,'' to attack without too many civilian casualties, he said.

Padmanabhan called the situation at the border ``serious.'' India planning military exercises in two border states this month, but the general underlined that the broader build-up of troops at the border was no practice run.

``This (deployment) we are doing for real. We have not gone for exercises. We are ready for war,'' he said.

``When two forces are opposite each other you are quite close to an actual war, but an actual war doesn't happen like that,'' he said. ``It is governments that have to set about the business of war.''

He reiterated India's declared policy of no first-strike with nuclear weapons. But any country that launches a nuclear strike against India ``shall be punished, and so severely that their continuation thereafter in any form of fray will be doubtful,'' he said.

India is going ahead with military exercises this month in the border states of Rajasthan and Punjab. Padmanabhan said the maneuvers are meant to prepare us for any eventuality.''

India accuses Pakistan's spy agency of backing two Islamic militant groups in the attack on Parliament, which left nine Indians and the five assailants dead. Pakistan denies the claim.

Indian police brought the bodies of the five assailants to an Islamic cemetery in New Delhi for burial on Friday. India says the five were Pakistani citizens, but Pakistan says they are not its nationals and refused to take the bodies.

In Kashmir, six militants and a civilian were killed in gunfights Friday between the guerrillas and Indian security troops, Press Trust of India reported. A grenade was fired at a security vehicle near the high court in Srinigar in Kashmir, causing no injuries, the agency said.

India has long accused Pakistan of waging a ``proxy war'' against it by allowing Islamic militant groups to recruit, raise funds and train in camps on its soil and in the portion of the disputed Kashmir region that Pakistan controls.

Pakistan denies giving military or financial support to the militants, saying it only gives them political backing in their cause - the battle against India's rule in two-thirds of Kashmir, the Himalayan territory divided between the two countries.

Kashmir, which both nations claim, has been at the center of two of the three wars fought by India and Pakistan since 1947.

Pakistan has arrested some 300 militants since the Parliament attack. But India says camps still exist in Pakistan's part of Kashmir and militants continue to operate.

-------- missile defense

Russia Passes on Missile Defense

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 11, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US-Missile-Defense.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32271-2002Jan11?language=printer

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia is the only country in the world to have a shield against ballistic missiles over its capital, but it has shown no intention of matching the U.S. plan to build a nationwide missile defense system, analysts say.

A senior U.S. State Department official said Thursday that the Bush administration would welcome Russia's development of its own anti-missile technology for protection against regional threats. He added that the United States would be willing to cooperate with Russia in an anti-missile venture.

There was no official Russian reaction to the statement Friday. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said he was aware of the statement, but declined to comment.

Analysts said Russia and the United States were unlikely to pool their efforts because the U.S. statement appeared to be an attempt to improve the two countries' relationship rather than a practical proposal.

Some saw the U.S. offer as an attempt to mend the diplomatic damage inflicted by the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and differences over upcoming nuclear arms control talks.

``It was intended to sweeten the pill for the Russians after recent Pentagon statements,'' said Yevgeny Volk, the head of the Heritage Foundation's Moscow office. ``It's an attempt to show that Russia and the United States are still partners.''

Other analysts pointed out that Russia sees little sense in building such a system.

``Russia has no enemy to protect against and can't afford such a system anyway,'' said retired Lt.-Gen. Vasily Lata, the former deputy chief of staff of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces.

Lata, who is now a consultant to the PIR-Center, an independent think tank, said that the Soviet Union had conducted research to develop missile defense system components in parallel with President Reagan's Star Wars plans in the 1980s.

``The research was dropped after we saw that such a system would be too costly and inefficient,'' Lata said. Soviet and then Russian designers concentrated instead on developing countermeasures to missile defenses as a cheaper and more effective option, he said.

The Soviet Union deployed the A-35 anti-ballistic missile system, consisting of radars and 64 missile interceptors, around Moscow in 1974. In later years, that system was continually modified to enhance its ability to intercept ballistic missiles with independently-targeted multiple warheads. The latest version, the A-135, which includes both long- and medium-range missile interceptors, was put on duty in 1994.

Moscow's missile defense system complied with the ABM Treaty, which allows both the United States and Russia to protect a single site with no more than 100 interceptors. The United States had a similar system to protect missile fields in North Dakota in the 1970s but shut it down.

President Bush last month warned Russia that in six months, the United States would withdraw from the ABM treaty, which bars a nationwide missile shield of the kind the U.S. administration wants to deploy.

Bush's statement followed several years of heated arguments with Moscow, which tried to prevent the United States from scrapping the treaty.

Last year, Russia proposed to create a joint missile defense system with Western European countries -- a move seen as an attempt to rally European opposition to the U.S. missile defense plan.

The Russian military said the proposed system could use Russia's S-300 and S-400 long-range air defense missiles, which have a limited capability to intercept missile warheads on close approach along with aircraft. Russia revealed few other specific details of its proposal, which has quietly been shelved.

--------

Lockheed, Boeing Head Missile Shield Drive

January 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-arms-missiles-usa.html

WASHINGTON - Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co. are set to co-lead a new industry-wide team in the multibillion-dollar U.S. drive to build missile shields, industry officials said on Friday.

As co-heads of the so-called national team being shaped by the Pentagon, the companies, respectively the No. 1 and 2 biggest U.S. military contractors, would have key roles in meshing more effectively the dozen or so existing missile defense programs.

Boeing, the Chicago-based aerospace giant, would take the lead in defining the architecture of a planned multi-layered shield that could involve systems based on land, ships, in space and on modified Boeing 747 aircraft, industry executives familiar with the plan said.

A second group, led by Lockheed, of Bethesda, Maryland, would put the overlapping systems to work through integrated battle- management and command and control software, they said.

President Bush signed into law Thursday a $317.2 billion defense funding bill that includes $8 billion for missile defense development to meet what he has argued is the growing threat of intercontinental ballistic missile attack from North Korea, Iran, Iraq or other ``rogue'' states.

Contract negotiations to finalize the new roles are still under way, with an official announcement expected in the next month, said the Wall Street Journal, the first to report the planned new industry lineup.

The Boeing-led group, formally known as systems engineering and integration, and Lockheed's battle management group each would be made up of 100 to 150 engineers and program managers from six major companies developing missile shields for the U.S. homeland as well as for U.S.-deployed forces overseas, plus friends and allies, an industry executive familiar with the planning said.

The other companies, each represented in both groups, are Raytheon Co., TRW Inc., General Dynamics Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp., the executive said.

'A WORK IN PROGRESS'

A Lockheed spokesman, Pete Harrigan, said it would be ''premature to comment pending an announcement by the government.'' Boeing spokeswoman Monica Aloisio said the reorganization was still ``a work in progress.''

Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of the Pentagon's newly renamed Missile Defense Agency, plans to wrap up his decisions on the new team within the next 30 to 60 days, said Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a Pentagon spokesman.

For Lockheed, the new job marks a step up in the program managed by the Missile Defense Agency, known until last week as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. The government, not the companies, retains ultimate responsibility for deciding which architecture to implement and how the system will work, an industry official familiar with the situation added.

Until now, Lockheed had had a major role in seven of the existing missile defense programs, but no responsibility for cutting across them, Harrigan said.

Boeing already serves as prime contractor and systems integration role for the largest program, a ground-based system that the Bush administration hopes to start operating in rudimentary form in Alaska by 2004.

Lehner said the national team's goal was to build a single command and control network for the disparate systems under development as part of Bush's layered approach to missile defense, which outlines a broad research and testing effort, with flexibility to use whichever anti-missile weapons prove most effective.

-------- russia

INTERNATIONAL
Russia Rejects U.S. Plan to Store Warheads

New York Times
January 11, 2002
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/11/international/europe/11RUSS.html

MOSCOW, Jan. 10 - Russia today strongly criticized Bush administration plans to store rather than destroy decommissioned nuclear warheads, suggesting that such plans would undermine the credibility of any new arms control accord aimed at eliminating thousands of nuclear weapons.

The spokesman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, Aleksandr Yakovenko, said in a short but pointed statement, "We hold that Russian- American agreements on further reductions of the nuclear arsenals must be, first, radical - down to 1,500-2,200 warheads; second, verifiable; and third, irreversible so that strategic defensive arms will be reduced not only `on paper.' "

The Russian statement followed the results of a "nuclear posture review" by the Bush administration that provided the first details of how Mr. Bush plans to reduce the American nuclear arsenal over the next decade to 1,700 to 2,200 "operationally deployed" weapons.

An assistant secretary of defense, J. D. Crouch, told a Pentagon briefing that the United States would hold in reserve a substantial number of warheads as a "responsive capability." "There have been no final decisions made at this point on what the size of our responsive capability would be," he said, "and also there have been no final decisions made on the overall size of the active stockpile and the inactive stockpile. Those things will shift over time."

A number of arms control experts said the United States reserve of nuclear weapons currently numbers several thousand warheads beyond the 6,000 in active service. Russia maintains a much smaller reserve, officials here say. Moreover, that reserve is expected to shrink more rapidly as Moscow diverts more of its resources to upgrading its conventional military forces.

The testiness of the tone of Russia's statement today indicated the depth of feeling here that Washington is seeking to orchestrate a long- term advantage in nuclear weaponry, especially after Mr. Bush's decision last month to withdraw from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. That was the first such decision in the history of nuclear arms control.

"What reduction can we talk about if the United States can go back to the Start I level in just a couple of hours?" asked Aleksei Pikayev, director of an arms control institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "It looks more like swindling," he added.

Though Mr. Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin have set virtually identical goals for cutting the nuclear arsenals to around 2,000 warheads each, Russian officials have been openly advertising their concern over whether the United States is committed to enforcing those reductions by destroying nuclear weapons.

Mr. Crouch was conspicuously vague on that point on Wednesday. "What we will end up with," he said, "is a situation where some weapons will move off and stay in the responsive capability of the United States, others will be earmarked for destruction and will be put in the queue for destruction, and others will remain in the inactive stockpile."

United States and Russian negotiators are to meet next week in Washington for talks on an arms control accord that could be signed when President Bush visits Moscow next summer. Last month, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, said they had been instructed by both presidents to "codify" a significant reduction in offensive nuclear weapons in preparation for the Moscow summit talks. Secretary Powell said this could take the form of a treaty, but there appears to be substantial resistance within the administration to entering into such a treaty with Russia.

In a visit to Finland last September, Mr. Putin said that though Russia had proposed that both sides reduce their arsenals to 1,500 warheads each, "this would only be possible when both sides take more action to promote trust. We are well aware that nuclear warheads can easily be removed from missiles and stored and then put back if necessary."

For the last three decades, the focus of arms control negotiations has been to set the limits on "launchers" - missiles and bombers equipped with nuclear warheads - without trying to regulate the numbers of warheads.

But the end of the cold war has made it possible to plan for the most dramatic reductions in nuclear weaponry ever, and, therefore, the status of each nuclear weapon looms larger in arms control accounting.

Mr. Bush and his senior advisers have sought to capitalize on the historic importance of the president's decision to make the deepest reductions in the nuclear arsenal to date. But until the administration offers a more detailed explanation of how many nuclear warheads it intends to hold in reserve, several experts say, it is difficult to determine whether Mr. Bush is rearranging the status quo.

-------- terrorism

U.S. Alters Estimate Of Threats Non-Missile Attacks Likelier, CIA Says

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28446-2002Jan10?language=printer

The United States is more likely to suffer a nuclear, chemical or biological attack from terrorists using ships, trucks or airplanes than one by a foreign country using long-range missiles, according to a new U.S. intelligence estimate.

While stating that the threat to the United States from a missile with a mass-destruction warhead is "higher" than it was two years ago, the National Intelligence Estimate says for the first time that "U.S. territory is more likely to be attacked" with weapons of mass destruction by countries or terrorist groups using "ships, trucks, airplanes or other means."

The new estimate reveals the extent to which the Sept. 11 attacks have altered the thinking of U.S. intelligence agencies about the threat posed not only by terrorist groups but also by nontraditional weapons. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, it says, "have caused the intelligence community to focus significantly more resources on the threat from terrorism, and we are obtaining more information on potential terrorist actions."

In the last publicly released National Intelligence Estimate, in September 1999, the report only mentioned in passing that "several other means to deliver weapons of mass destruction to the United States have probably been devised, some more reliable than ICBMs."

The new report, released yesterday, represents the current assessment of the CIA and 10 other agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community of the latest intelligence on ballistic missile developments and threats against the United States or its forces overseas.

The new estimate could affect the debate over the Bush administration's $8 billion increase this year in spending on missile defense research to meet what it has argued is the growing threat of an intercontinental ballistic missile attack from North Korea, Iran, Iraq or other "rogue" states.

In their report, the intelligence agencies note several reasons why they now judge a non-missile attack more likely than one from an intercontinental ballistic missile. Topping the list is that delivery systems such as a truck, plane or boat "are less expensive than developing and producing ICBMs." Unlike missiles, non-missile systems "can be covertly developed and employed" with the source being "masked in an attempt to evade retaliation," the estimate says.

For smaller countries or non-state groups, the non-missile approach is more accurate than a missile, because testing and manufacturing reliable missile components takes years, the report says. It adds that nontraditional weapons have another advantage in that they "would avoid missile defenses," if the United States had any deployed.

A classified version of the intelligence estimate was sent yesterday to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which has required the report every year since 1999; an unclassified version was made public for the first time since 1999.

The new report updates several areas that drew more emphasis in the version made public three years ago.

Between now and 2015, North Korea, Iran and "possibly" Iraq will remain the most likely threat of launching a missile attack "barring significant changes in their political orientations," it says. It disclosed that one intelligence agency, which it did not identify, dissents from the idea that Iran could develop an ICBM before 2015.

North Korea, it notes, has said it would voluntarily delay flight testing its long-range Taepo Dong-2 missile until 2003, "provided that negotiations with the U.S. proceed."

On Iraq, the intelligence agencies were unanimous that President Saddam Hussein "could test different ICBM concepts before 2015 if U.N. prohibitions were eliminated in the next few years." But "most agencies" say such a move by Iraq is unlikely.

Iran, according to the estimate, has one of the largest ballistic missile inventories in the Middle East, mostly short- and medium-range in size. The intelligence agencies agree that Tehran "does not yet have a nuclear weapon . . . [but] could have one by the end of the decade," with one agency saying it would take longer.

In discussing Iran and Iraq, the estimate says that both countries are building missiles because of hostile relations with neighboring countries. The report does not mention Israel, which possesses nuclear weapons and various ranges of ballistic missiles.

Russia's nuclear arsenal "will decline to less than 2,000 warheads by 2015, with or without arms control," according to the estimate, "unless Moscow significantly increases funding for its strategic forces." It puts Moscow's current warhead count at "only 4,000," with 3,000 warheads on 700 ICBMs and 900 on 200 submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

Dealing with a major concern of some arms control experts, the report says that "an unauthorized or accidental launch of a Russian strategic missile is highly unlikely" if "all procedural and technical safeguards [are] in place."

China's modernization program is ongoing and by 2015 "most of China's strategic missile force will be mobile," and more difficult to target. Today, two-thirds of Beijing's 30, aging, liquid-fueled, silo-based, single-warhead ICBMs are aimed at the United States, with the remainder targeted at Russia and Asian countries, primarily India, it says.

Over the next 15 years, the report says its expects the Chinese warhead total to range "from about 75 to 100" deployed "primarily" against the United States. It notes that China continues to emphasize and increase its ballistic missile force deployed against Taiwan.

India and Pakistan continue to develop short- and medium-range missiles to deter each other, with India also viewing them "as a hedge in a confrontation with China," the report says.

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

-------- nevada

Nevada Nuclear Waste Site Chosen
Battle Looms Over Energy Secretary's Decision on Yucca Mountain

By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 11, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26791-2002Jan10.html

The Energy Department yesterday cleared the way for construction of a huge, centralized site for nuclear waste storage 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, touching off a major election year battle that ultimately will have to be settled by Congress.

In a letter to Nevada officials, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said he concluded that the project in the Nevada desert beneath Yucca Mountain is "scientifically sound and suitable" as a repository, and would meet "compelling national interests" by consolidating nuclear waste to "enhance protection against terrorist attacks." He said he would recommend within 30 days that President Bush authorize construction.

The move pits the administration and its allies in the nuclear power and manufacturing industries against the Nevada political establishment, environmental groups and Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who has vowed to block the massive project as long as he is in power.

"This decision stinks," said Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican, who learned of it in a phone call from Abraham yesterday afternoon.

If Bush formally approves the project and Guinn vetoes it -- a scenario that many anticipate -- the two chambers of Congress must decide later this year by simple majority vote whether to override the veto. There is considerable support for the project in the Republican-controlled House; its prospects in the Senate, with 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans and independent Sen. James M. Jeffords (Vt.), are far from certain.

White House spokesperson Claire Buchan said the president would withhold judgment until he receives Abraham's recommendation. But she added that "the secretary has approached this evaluation based on sound science, and it's very important that we find a safe repository for nuclear waste."

Until recently, the Bush administration had embraced theproject -- which some have estimated will cost $50 billion -- as a way of expanding nuclear power by providing a place for waste. But after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, some industry officials have pleaded for fast action to relieve them of responsibility for nuclear waste stored in cooling pools in 31 states, which they say could become targets for terrorists.

Nevada officials and environmentalists assert that there is overwhelming scientific evidence that the government cannot safely store 77,000 tons of radioactive waste beneath Yucca Mountain, as it proposes, without groundwater being contaminated by long-term leaching. They also say the Energy Department has virtually ignored the risks of transporting the deadly waste through 43 states, within one mile of 50 million Americans, providing another target for terrorists.

Last November, the General Accounting Office urged the administration to indefinitely postpone a decision on whether to go forward with construction beneath Yucca Mountain, which Congress and the Energy Department have considered for the past two decades as the only candidate for storage of all nuclear waste generated in the United States.

According to a draft GAO report,the Energy Department is unlikely to achieve its goal of opening a repository at Yucca Mountain by 2010 and has no reliable estimate of when, and at what cost, it could be opened. The government has already spent $6.8 billion in preliminary planning and development.

The site, which still faces a myriad of legal challenges from Nevada, also must be approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would license the underground storage of up to 77,000 tons of waste. More than 40,000 tons of waste already have accumulated at the plants, and 2,000 tons are being added each year.

While the president is virtually certain to uphold Abraham's decision, Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), a leading opponent, urged Bush to "cut through the bureaucratic pseudoscience, see this project for the sham that it is, and do the right thing for America and Nevada by changing course."

Both sides have spent millions of dollars lobbying and advertising for and against the project. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, retained former New Hampshire governor John H. Sununu (R) and former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) to lobby for it.

The Nevada governor's Agency for Nuclear Projects and the Nevada gambling industry are planning to launch a multimillion-dollar media and grass-roots campaign soon to warn states of the dangers of nuclear waste transport.

"If this goes through, some communities along major corridors, including St. Louis and Omaha, might see shipments every hour on the hour for the next 38 years," said Robert R. Loux, executive director of the governor's nuclear projects agency, which receives federal funding to provide scientific oversight of the project.

The project's tortuous history dates back to the 1950s, when the federal government promised to assume responsibility for disposing of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. One of the first regions suggested was the Nevada desert, where the government owned most of the land, secure roads were available and the workforce was experienced at handling radioactive material.

Nearly 10 other sites were considered, including Hanford, Wash., and Deaf SmithCounty, Tex., but in the face of widespread opposition, Congress in 1987 ordered the Energy Department to consider only Yucca Mountain.

Nevada residents believed they had been singled out because they lacked the political clout of other states. But with Reid and Daschle strongly fighting the plan, the opposition has become considerably more formidable.

----

Abraham backs Yucca as nuke-waste site

By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-99680308.htm

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham yesterday said he will recommend the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada for the nation's only nuclear-waste repository.

"The science behind this project is sound, and the site is technically suitable for this purpose," Mr. Abraham said. "There are compelling national interests that require us to complete the siting process and move forward with the development of a repository, as Congress mandated almost 20 years ago."

Mr. Abraham formally notified Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn that he will recommend that President Bush approve the site, the first of many hurdles and timelines the contentious project faces. The law requires the energy secretary to give 30 days' notice to the governor of Nevada before making the formal recommendation to Mr. Bush.

If Mr. Bush considers Yucca Mountain a suitable location for a repository, he then will recommend the site to Congress.

However, Nevada is expected to reject the proposal and has 60 days to do so after the president makes his recommendation. That shifts the decision to Congress, which can override Nevada's veto with a simple majority vote in both the House and Senate. The timetable could put the measure in front of Congress before the August recess, an Energy Department spokesman said.

A spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, said the measure "will move expeditiously" through the House. Democrats control the Senate, but the measure can be brought up for a vote by any senator. Congress has 90 days in consecutive session to override any Nevada veto.

Electric utility customers have paid a tax since 1983 to build the facility "with little to show for it," Mr. Hastert said.

The target date for opening Yucca Mountain - 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas - is 2010. The facility will house spent fuel from nuclear power plants, which provide electricity.

The opening of the facility has been blocked by "left-wing political grandstanding" and has "prevented the government from moving forward on a centralized, safe storage location for nuclear waste sooner than today," Mr. Hastert said.

"Secretary Abraham's sound decision will finally enable us to take a necessary step forward and get something back on the billions of dollars invested over the years for our families, our environment and the future use of a safe and viable energy source," Mr. Hastert said.

In light of increased homeland security, Mr. Hastert said, it is "common sense" to store nuclear waste in the deep geological desert cavern. Nuclear waste is being temporarily stored where it is manufactured, at more than 100 power plants scattered across the United States.

Combined, the nuclear waste would fill a football field 10 feet deep, said Pete Jeffries, Mr. Hastert's spokesman.

Sen. Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat and assistant majority leader, is the leading critic of the Yucca Mountain project.

Mr. Reid said the site is "unsuitable," the recommendation "premature" and yesterday's decision by the Department of Energy "hasty and dangerous."

Mr. Reid urged Mr. Bush to "cut through the bureaucratic pseudoscience, see this project for the sham that it is and do the right thing for America and Nevada by changing course."

"DOE has wasted $8 billion on Yucca Mountain and has virtually nothing to show for it. Now they want taxpayers to spend another $50 billion to develop a dump they can't prove to be safe," Mr. Reid said.

The announcement was praised by the bipartisan Yucca Mountain Initiative, sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Former Republican Gov. John Sununu of New Hampshire and former Democratic Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York, who are co-chairmen of the initiative, issued a joint statement calling the action "an appropriate response to issues emanating in light of September 11."

"Today's action by the secretary triggers a decisive step forward towards meeting our generation's responsibility for the stewardship of used nuclear fuel and defense waste," the statement said.

----

Fight Over Nuke Dump in Nevada

By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Friday, January 11, 2002; 8:08 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30419-2002Jan11?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department's embrace of Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the nation's future nuclear waste dump is being hailed as a breakthrough by the nuclear industry and its supporters.

But it will be far from the last word, even if President Bush, as expected, gives the project the green light.

The next real battle ground likely will be in Congress, where the Nevada congressional delegation vows to continue to fight.

The Nevadans are likely to get help from Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who called the endorsement of Yucca Mountain "unfortunate and premature." South Dakota, like Nevada, has no nuclear power plants.

But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., acknowledged in an interview that "it's going to be a tough deal" to overturn Bush if he goes along with Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who said Thursday he was recommending Yucca Mountain.

"Nothing has been easy on this thing," said Reid, who is No. 2 in the Senate leadership and has fought against Yucca Mountain for years.

He hopes that he will be able to sway senators to Nevada's side by emphasizing that approval of Yucca Mountain will mean thousands of shipments over the interstate highways and rail lines through urban centers like Chicago and St. Louis and across 45 states.

"This is about more than Nevada," he insists.

Abraham said he would tell Bush that the Yucca Mountain site 90 miles from the glitter and lights of Las Vegas is a "scientifically sound and suitable" place to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste.

The government has spent the past dozen years studying Yucca Mountain, which is adjacent to the Nevada Test Site, where nuclear bombs were detonated during the Cold War. So far the studies have cost more than $6.8 billion.

But thanks to a law passed 20 years ago, Nevada's chances to bar the waste shipments may not yet be dead. It allows Nevada to veto the president, although in turn Congress may override the state's objection and let the project proceed anyway.

"This is not the final step," declared Nevada Sen. John Ensign, a Republican, openly miffed Thursday that his GOP colleagues in the administration had turned on his state. "There is still a lot of fight left in this team. The battle is far from over."

He said Bush could cost Republicans two of Nevada's three congressional seats in Nevada and threaten the GOP's narrow majority in the House if he approves the Yucca Mountain site.

"We will use every argument - scientific, fiscal argument as well as every political argument with the White House," Ensign said.

While Ensign and other Nevada politicians talked of additional lawsuits and trying to persuade Bush to go against his own advisers, the real fight over nuclear waste is likely to play out in Congress. Many lawmakers have a personal stake since their states now have the waste destined to go to Yucca Mountain.

And if past votes on the issue are any barometer, the Nevadans may be in for still another bruising. It was 15 years ago in Congress that Nevada got into the mess it's in today.

It was then that Congress - by a better than 2-to-1 margin in both the House and Senate - declared that only Yucca Mountain was to be considered as the nation's nuclear waste repository, eliminating two other potential sites in Washington state and Texas. Several other regions of the country had been fenced off for consideration earlier.

Nevada politicians said the vote was largely because lawmakers didn't want the waste in their state. The same sentiment is likely to surface this time around.

But today, there are more than 40,000 tons of highly radioactive reactor waste piling up at nuclear power plants in 31 states, with the amount growing by 2,000 tons annually. If Yucca Mountain is approved it all heads to Nevada; if Nevada prevails, Congress must begin from scratch in its search for a burial place.

No state has more reactors than Illinois, so House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., was quick Thursday to heap praise on Abraham. The energy secretary's "sound decision will finally enable us to take a necessary step forward" on addressing the waste problem, said Hastert.

A broad coalition of industry groups has launched a program, spearheaded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to press for approval of the Yucca Mountain waste facility. Environmentalist and anti-nuclear groups have vowed to fight the project.

The industry group is co-chaired by former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, a conservative Republican, and former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who said she joined because the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks convinced her nuclear wastes should be consolidated at one place.

-------

NATIONAL
Nevada Site Urged for Nuclear Dump

New York Times
January 11, 2002
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/11/national/11NUKE.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 - After spending 14 years and $4.5 billion on studies, the Energy Department said today that it would recommend that Yucca Mountain, a barren volcanic structure about 90 miles from Las Vegas, be used to bury thousands of tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste from power plants and nuclear weapons factories.

The department has been trying for decades to find a place to dispose of the waste piling up at its bomb factories and civilian power plants, and today's decision is only one step in a tortuous process with an outcome that is still uncertain.

But it is the first time that the department has said publicly that it can make a scientific case that the waste can be secured at Yucca Mountain.

The project faces substantial technical, legal and political challenges, and could be derailed by either house of Congress, the courts or engineering problems.

Since Congress chose the site in 1987 as a prime candidate for the burial of wastes, Nevada officials and environmental groups have questioned the ability of engineers to reliably predict that it will not leak significantly for 10,000 years, as government rules require.

The energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, added a twist to the debate today, saying, "We should consolidate the nuclear wastes to enhance protection against terrorist attacks by moving them to one underground location that is far from population centers."

The project is expected to cost more than $40 billion.

If President Bush approves, and no other problems block preparation, the earliest that waste could be stored in the mountain is 2010, officials said. But the suitability of the site is still far from clear to some scientists, and it faces the intense opposition of the Nevada Congressional delegation, including Senator Harry Reid, the deputy majority leader.

A simple majority in either house could block the project, although Mr. Reid and John Ensign, the Republican senator from Nevada, said that would be difficult.

Mr. Reid called the recommendation "audacious," saying scientific work is not complete. He pointed out that the General Accounting Office last month said there were 293 issues still to be studied before the Energy Department would be ready to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to open a repository. "They should just cool it till they're ready," Mr. Reid said.

But Mr. Abraham said today that he believed that "the science behind this project is sound and that the site is technically suitable for this purpose."

But the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, said a recommendation now would be "unfortunate and premature." Mr. Ensign, who has also vowed to fight the project, said that the Energy Department seemed "hell-bent on making Yucca Mountain the repository," no matter what scientific studies showed.

Putting the waste in Nevada has one advantage for the 49 other states: it means the hot potato went somewhere else. And there is pressure from some state governments to solve the problem, as 103 operating power reactors around the country are running out of storage space or spending money to extend their storage capacity. While the nuclear industry is not near building new reactors, many plant owners are seeking 20-year extensions on their 40-year operating permits.

John H. Sununu, the former White House chief of staff and former governor of New Hampshire (which was once considered for a burial site) and Geraldine A. Ferraro, the former congresswoman from New York, said in a joint statement that Secretary Abraham's decision was "a decisive step forward towards meeting our generation's responsibility for the stewardship of used nuclear fuel and defense waste." Mr. Sununu and Ms. Ferraro are members of a committee assembled by the United States Chamber of Commerce to push for the opening of the Yucca site.

Mr. Abraham's announcement took the form of a 30-day advance notice to the governor of Nevada, as required under the nuclear waste law, that the department will recommend the site to the president.

Disposal of nuclear waste has been a festering problem for the civilian power industry for years, but has drawn more attention since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most of the spent fuel is stored in giant steel- lined pools, which were intended to hold only a few years of their reactor's output, but now have decades of fuel. They are built to withstand earthquake, tornado and other threats, but if they were drained in a terrorist attack, experts say that they could burn and spread vast amounts of radiation.

But in the decades-long argument over what to do with nuclear waste, even the terrorist argument cuts both ways, depending on who is providing the analysis. Some opponents of nuclear power say that the waste is not safe where it is, at power plants around the country, but would be even more at risk on trucks and trains en route to Nevada.

The mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar B. Goodman, said he would oppose the use of Yucca by rallying the mayors of cities along the transportation routes. He said that there were 109 cities with populations of at least 100,000 on those routes, and 52 million people living within half a mile of the routes.

The federal effort to find a place to put wastes began in the 1960's. In 1982, Congress promised to have a repository open by January 1998, and the Energy Department signed contracts with the reactor owners to take their wastes, beginning at that time, in exchange for a payment of a tenth of a cent per kilowatt hour generated by nuclear power plants.

Since then the government has collected about $17 billion, but it will be 2010 at least before Yucca could open, even if it remains the chosen site. The utilities are suing for breach of contract, often backed up by their state regulators, who say ratepayers have paid for disposal but received nothing in return.

Some opponents say that by driving hard at Yucca Mountain, the department may have taken a years- long detour down a blind alley.

At the Institute for Environment and Energy Research, Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear scientist who specializes in studying the Energy Department, said that he favored a repository, but that the chemical conditions at Yucca Mountain were certain to cause corrosion in the containers and the spread of radioactive materials. Scientists agree that the most likely way that the materials would spread is by leaking into the water that flows down inside the mountain and then moves underground beneath the desert.

In fact, the Energy Department, as it has learned more about the characteristics of the rock, has placed more reliance on the packaging it plans to develop for the waste, and less on the rock itself. This has led opponents to assert that the project is no longer, as the law requires, a "geologic repository," but a man- made one.

Another problem is that the department recently belatedly concluded that a law firm, Winston & Strawn, that has done much of the groundwork for preparing an application to license the Yucca site had a conflict of interest, because it was also a lobbyist for the nuclear industry at the time.

If the choice survives the Congress, the Energy Department will have to submit an application for a license to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must hold hearings and decide whether Yucca can contain the wastes for 10,000 years, under rules written last year by the Environmental Protection Agency.

-------- new mexico

Richardson Denies Race Role in Probe

By Robert Gehrke
Associated Press Writer
Friday, January 11, 2002; 12:47 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31641-2002Jan11?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- Ethnicity was not a factor in his firing of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee or the decision to investigate Lee for suspected possible security breaches, former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said in a recent deposition.

Lee was already the sole target of the investigation at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the New Mexico home to some of the nation's most sensitive nuclear programs, by the time Richardson came to the Energy Department.

But Richardson, who is now campaigning for governor of New Mexico, agreed there were numerous reasons to focus on the Taiwanese-born Lee apart from his ethnicity, including his contact with Chinese nuclear scientists during trips to China, his access to nuclear testing data and his failure of a lie detector test.

The deposition, taken Dec. 20, was made public after a review by government security officials to ensure classified information was not divulged.

Former Los Alamos intelligence chief Notra Trulock is suing Lee and two government security officials for defamation because of their statements that racial profiling led Trulock to focus the investigation on Lee.

Richardson's testimony contradicts Lee's statements in his own deposition and in recent interviews in which he claims he was a scapegoat and wouldn't have been prosecuted if he was white.

"Secretary Richardson confirms that Wen Ho Lee was not selected for investigation because he was Chinese. You can't get more definitive testimony than that of the secretary of the department," said Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, the conservative group representing Trulock.

Richardson says he is especially sensitive to issues of ethnicity because of his own Hispanic heritage.

Klayman said Friday that Richardson's videotaped deposition will be key evidence in the trial scheduled to start Feb. 19.

Richardson approved Lee's firing on March 8, 1999, after FBI agents found copies classified documents in Lee's Los Alamos office that had classification markings blotted out or cut off. Classified information was also found on Lee's computer.

In an NBC News interview, Lee said the documents he was accused of mishandling were not vital to America's nuclear programs. "Some of them are garbage," he said.

Lee was indicted on 59 felony counts of transferring nuclear weapons data to unsecure computers. He was not charged with spying, but was held in solitary confinement for nine months before the case crumbled.

In September 2000, he pleaded guilty to one count of downloading sensitive material and was released from jail.

The judge in the case apologized to Lee and then-President Clinton said his imprisonment "just can't be justified."

Former Los Alamos counterintelligence chief Robert Vrooman and Trulock's predecessor, Charles Washington, both said Lee's race was the reason he was targeted.

A recently declassified Justice Department report criticized the Energy Department's focus on Lee and the shoddy investigation by DOE and the FBI, but disputed Vrooman and Washington's claims of profiling.

The initial investigation "had many serious problems. Racism was not one of them," the report said.

Lee has sued Richardson and the government for defaming him by leaking information to the media that portrayed Lee as being a spy.

---

Lee Says Nuclear 'Jewels' Were Junk

By Richard Benke
Associated Press Writer
Friday, January 11, 2002; 4:33 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32861-2002Jan11?language=printer

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- In a new memoir, former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee says the nuclear "crown jewels" he was accused of mishandling were really the "crown junk" and were not vital to national security.

The files he downloaded were old, with much of the information already public and very little of it classified, Lee says in "My Country Versus Me," published by Hyperion. In an early copy of the book obtained by The Associated Press, he says he copied the material onto tapes because he had lost files before and did not trust the computer system.

He describes himself as a loyal "Cold Warrior" for the United States, yet says the FBI threatened him with execution "like the Rosenbergs" if he did not confess to giving nuclear secrets to China.

"I want to share through this book how I fell into a trap," Lee says, "one slippery step at a time, not even realizing what was happening until it was too late."

Lee, a Taiwanese-born naturalized citizen, was arrested in December 1999 and indicted on 59 felony counts alleging he transferred nuclear weapons information to portable computer tapes. He was held in solitary confinement for nine months, though never charged with spying.

As the government's case crumbled, Lee pleaded guilty to a felony count of downloading sensitive material, and was set free. The FBI's mishandling of the case was a major embarrassment for the bureau.

While Lee was behind bars, one senior scientist called the files "the crown jewels."

Lee says the downloaded tapes were all work-related, routine and contained in a secure area at Los Alamos National Laboratory

"In fact, the 'crown jewels' are largely the crown junk," he says. "This is the biggest nuclear weapons secret that LANL and the government have to hide."

Lee says he copied the files - needed to design computer simulations for nuclear explosions - so he could have backup copies.

"In 1993, I lost several files as a result of a computer system conversion at the lab," he says. "One of the codes I lost was about nuclear reactor safety. ... This was an important code, and it was gone."

A call to the U.S. attorney's office in Albuquerque on Friday was not immediately returned.

Lee, who has been a U.S. citizen since 1974 and spent 20 years doing top-secret work at the lab, is suing the government for defamation and claims he was targeted because he is ethnic Chinese.

"Had I not been Chinese," he says, "I never would have been accused of espionage and threatened with execution. ... Now I know that political whimsy can destroy the contributions of a life's work."

In a recent deposition made public Friday, former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said that ethnicity was not a factor in his firing of Lee or the decision to investigate him for possible security breaches.

While in solitary at the Santa Fe County Jail, he says, he was kept shackled and handcuffed during exercise periods with a soccer ball. The 62-year-old colon cancer survivor says he had difficulty getting the special diet he needed and lost weight.

"How will I ever forget this nightmare?" he asks.

Lee said he was threatened with execution in March 1999, when he was interrogated by FBI agents: "They told me that unless I confessed to giving nuclear secrets to China, I might be executed, like the Rosenbergs." Julius and Ethel Rosenberg went to the electric chair in 1953 for giving atomic secrets to the Soviets.

The accusation of espionage, leaked to news media, was never formally lodged against Lee. Prosecutors conceded the evidence was insufficient.

Lee speculates that at least some of his troubles might have been averted if he had not thrown away his data tapes.

Demoted from the lab's top-secret X Division after the espionage leaks, Lee says he was confronted with the problem of what to do with the classified data he was no longer entitled to possess. He deleted files with help from the lab help desk, he says, and threw the computer tapes into a lab trash bin.

The unaccounted-for tapes triggered near-frenzy at the FBI, which insisted on proof they had not been turned over to a foreign government. Except for giving his word, Lee could not provide that proof. Agents searched for days at the Los Alamos County landfill for the tapes.

Lee says even today, his wife, Sylvia, "still has nightmares about being awakened by the FBI." The Lees plan to stay in Los Alamos. Lee says he has his garden, favorite fishing spots and a safe, secure environment.

"The main reason for us to stay here is the warmth of our neighbors, our friends and the real community we are part of," he says.

-------- utah

N-waste battle worth fighting

Deseret News editorial
Friday, January 11, 2002
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,365007040,00.html

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's much-anticipated environmental impact statement regarding a spent-nuclear-fuel waste dump on Goshute tribal lands is surrounded by controversy.

That's not surprising, as seemingly everything related to the attempt by Private Fuel Storage to store thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste in above-ground containers in Utah's West Desert is mired in controversy.

What the NRC deems sensitive information has been deleted from the otherwise public documents because of public safety and terrorism threats, according to NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner. That has the opponents of the storage plan concerned. So does the study's conclusion that there would be little impact on the environment.

But that's all window dressing to the main issue, which is this: Utah should not be a dumping ground for nuclear waste generated outside its borders. Period.

Private Fuel Storage is a consortium of nuclear power utilities that are determined to ship nuclear waste from the East and Midwest to Utah. And it's a lot of waste -10.4 million spent fuel rods. PFS has worked out an agreement with the Goshutes to store the waste at a so-called temporary site on Goshute tribal lands. Though the tribe will receive a considerable amount of money, not all Goshutes support it.

They, like Utah officials, don't want to become the home for 40,000 tons of spent fuel rods. Supposedly, it would just be "temporary," but even the temporary lease covers a 40- to 50-year period.

As this page has noted repeatedly, once the nuclear waste has been shipped to Utah, the impetus to find a permanent storage site would be greatly diminished. Yucca Mountain, Nev., has frequently been mentioned as a permanent site. Not surprisingly, Nevada's congressional delegation and Nevada's residents don't want that dubious honor.

That's why we have consistently advocated that the Legislature and the governor take all legal means necessary to make it as difficult as possible for PFS or any other entity to transport nuclear waste to Utah.

Until there can be agreement on a permanent site, the waste should stay where it's generated. Minnesota waste should stay in Minnesota; Ohio waste in Ohio; and so on.

Utah has plenty of waste without adding 40,000 tons more, especially if it is of the most hazardous kind. The bottom line is, it shouldn't have to.

-------- us politics

Investigator for EPA sues Whitman over job

By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-29002479.htm

The independent investigator at the Environmental Protection Agency is suing Administrator Christie Whitman to block her from eliminating his job.

Ombudsman Robert J. Martin said the move to dissolve his position came after he exposed a financial conflict of interest between Mrs. Whitman's husband and polluters at two cleanup sites.

Mr. Martin and the Government Accountability Project yesterday asked for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to prevent the transfer of his duties to the inspector general's office.

They also asked that Mr. Martin's files be protected to complete the investigation of the Shattuck Superfund site in Colorado and the Marjol Battery cleanup in Pennsylvania.

According to an agency memo, Mr. Martin will be assigned to an "unclassified position," which effectively dissolves the position of national ombudsman.

"This is far worse than a gag order. It is an effective death sentence for the concept of an independent citizens watchdog at EPA," said Tom Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project (GAP).

"The interests of Mrs. Whitman's husband have defeated the public interest, to the extent of condemning Denver, Colorado, and Shroop, Pennsylvania, citizens to centuries of toxic poisons in their city's back yard," Mr. Devine said.

An EPA spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.

The decision to merge the EPA inspector general's office with the independent office was announced in November by Mrs. Whitman.

She said then that her decision was based on a General Accounting Office report and that it would increase accountability and record keeping.

John Whitman is the managing partner of a venture capital firm controlled by Citicorp, a subsidiary of Citigroup, a diversified financial corporation.

Additionally, Citigroup stocks valued between $100,000 and $250,000 are listed in Mrs. Whitman's financial disclosure statement, said Martin E. Andersen, GAP spokesman.

Citigroup is responsible for the original botched cleanup of the Colorado site and will pay only one-fifth of the $35 million cost. A Citigroup financial partner also is responsible for the cleanup at a waste site in Pennsylvania containing lead contamination, Mr. Andersen said.

Sen. Wayne Allard, Colorado Republican, also has asked Mrs. Whitman to delay the transfer, which is scheduled for Monday.

"The negative results of this decision must be considered - Congress must have time to fully analyze the repercussions of this move before it occurs," Mr. Allard said in a letter Wednesday.

Congress is considering legislation on the organizational structure of the ombudsman office.

"It seems to me that any transfer of the ombudsman until Congress has an opportunity to discuss the legislation is premature," Mr. Allard said.

Mr. Martin also announced this week that his office is investigating the EPA's evaluation of environmental conditions endured by rescue and cleanup crews at the World Trade Center.

Mrs. Whitman assured workers and nearby residents of the safety of air and water at the site. However, published reports say many workers are suffering from respiratory problems.

According to GAP, one of the largest insurance companies handling medical claims for workers and residents at ground zero is Travelers Insurance, also owned by Citigroup.

This is not the first time Mr. Whitman's business dealings have crossed paths with his wife's political career.

When Mrs. Whitman was governor of New Jersey, the state awarded a $1.6 million grant to an Internet company, Mail.com, which Mr. Whitman directed, according the Star-Ledger newspaper in Newark.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

U.N. to limit sanctions for Afghanistan

By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020111-74448947.htm

NEW YORK - The U.N. Security Council is rewriting its diplomatic, arms and air embargoes against Afghanistan so that they will apply only to the ousted Taliban regime and its al Qaeda terrorist allies. Sanctions grounding Ariana, the national airline of Afghanistan, could be lifted as early as today.

"The idea of lifting the sanctions on Ariana is important because the Taliban is out of power and we don't see the need" to keep it grounded, said a U.S. official yesterday.

The existing sanctions, which expire on Jan. 19, barred countries from providing arms or intelligence to Afghanistan and instructed them to close their embassies in Kabul. Financial dealings were also proscribed under U.N. resolutions passed in 1999 and 2000.

Afghanistan's national airline, Ariana, was grounded in a 1999 attempt to force the Taliban rulers to turn over Osama bin Laden, then indicted for ordering the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa.

Now that the Taliban is out of power, diplomats say, they want to end the sanctions so the new U.N.-sponsored transitional administration can begin rebuilding the country.

Experts have been working all week to redraft the sanctions so that they will instead apply to the Taliban, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network and its supporters wherever they may be.

"The most important thing for the U.S. government is that whatever sanctions regime we come up with we can still go after al Qaeda and Taliban forces and assets wherever they are in the world," said a U.S. official. "That is our concern, and it's as simple as that."

Although there is unanimous agreement to ease the sanctions against Afghanistan, the council as of yesterday had not reached agreement about how, exactly, to do it.

France and Russia, with Chinese support, want to throw out the old sanctions and replace them with a new arms and financing embargo focused on the Taliban and the al Qaeda network.

The British prefer to amend the existing program, saying that creating a whole new regime could compromise the continuity of sanctions, particularly in the case of frozen assets.

"If we scrap the old sanctions and [write] a new regime, there will be a dangerous gap in many nations," said a British envoy. "You don't want to see all those assets disappear the morning of [Jan.] 20th."

The matter is also complicated by differences over the duration of the new sanctions. China, France and Russia favor making the program subject to renewal after 12 months.

But London and Washington are resisting expiration dates, saying the sanctions against the Taliban and al Qaeda should never be allowed to lapse.

Nonetheless, Western diplomats yesterday said the differences were "bridgeable" and not likely to derail efforts to free Afghanistan of the outdated embargoes.

----

Afghans Defend Taliban Releases None in Group of 7 On U.S. Wanted List

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 11, 2002; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28264-2002Jan10.html

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Jan. 10 -- Of the seven former Taliban officials who were released after surrendering to Afghanistan's new government, only one was a former cabinet minister and none was on the list of Taliban figures wanted by the United States, Afghan officials said today.

The only cabinet minister in the group was former justice minister Nooruddin Turabi, who met with officials in the southern city of Kandahar more than a week ago, said Yusuf Pashtun, an adviser to the governor of Kandahar, Gul Agha Shirzai. Other Afghan officials confirmed the report.

Obaidullah, a junior official who surrendered, was not the Taliban defense minister with the same name, Pashtun said. The defense minister was known to be close to Osama bin Laden and reportedly approved the establishment of al Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Reports this week that the defense official had surrendered and was released caused consternation in Washington.

"It's not the same Obaidullah," Pashtun said today.

Pashtun identified the other officials who surrendered as Abdul Salam Rakati, the Taliban corps commander for eastern Afghanistan, another deputy minister and two junior commanders. He did not identify the seventh person.

All of the former Taliban officials asked for amnesty, but their requests were denied, Pashtun and other officials said. The former Taliban officials were told the new government had not prepared any charges against them but were warned they could be called to answer any charge that an Afghan citizen brought against them.

After surrendering their weapons and such government property as cars, the former officials were released on the condition that they keep the new government informed of their whereabouts, Kandahar government officials said.

Pashtun said none of the officials was on the list of Taliban members wanted by the United States. Turabi and the former defense minister Obaidullah, however, are on the U.S. Central Command's list of what it considers to be the 27 most important Taliban leaders.

Pashtun said the seven Taliban officials who were released were invited to "help their country" by gathering intelligence on the whereabouts of other, more senior Taliban officials. Asked whether the targets included Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader who has not been accounted for since Kandahar fell on Dec. 7, Pashtun said he "could be one."

"Many of the Taliban feel they were betrayed by Omar," he said. In the final weeks the Taliban was in power, Omar kept subordinates "in the dark" and routinely dismissed their advice, Pashtun said.

Pashtun indicated that at least some of the former Taliban officials had agreed to help gather intelligence, but the deal fell apart when word of their surrender was leaked this week. He said former officials living in Pakistan telephoned him after hearing their names in the media.

Today's account appeared to be an attempt to rebut allegations that the provincial government in Kandahar had deliberately allowed wanted men to escape. Pashtun and other officials acknowledged they contributed to the confusion by incorrectly forwarding the defense minister's name.

The incident also caused friction between Gul Agha's provincial government in Kandahar and the national administration that the interim leader, Hamid Karzai, is trying to put in place in Kabul, the Afghan capital. Officials in Kandahar said that Karzai was not told about the surrenders when they occurred because of poor telecommunications.

But Pashtun and another official said that U.S. Special Forces in Kandahar were aware of the surrender as they have now described it, and that a U.S. commander approved the release of the former officials. A U.S. official confirmed that account.

Several Kandahar residents said they wanted to see such senior Taliban officials as Turabi arrested. His justice ministry operated the Taliban's feared religious police and carried out public executions and amputations.

"They're cruel," said Norrula, a rickshaw driver. "After punishment, they should be freed. But they should be punished."

Abdul Hamid, 45, disagreed. "They should be freed because they are Afghans," the businessman said. "They made a mistake, but it's okay now."

--------

U.S. Analyzes Afghan Intelligence

January 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-US-Military.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States is closely studying intelligence from terrorist bases and prisoners in Afghanistan for clues that could pre-empt terrorist acts potentially more deadly than those on Sept. 11, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday.

Capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and his top al-Qaida lieutenants is still a high priority, Rumsfeld said, but ``equally or more important'' is stopping any terror attack plans already in the works.

Although al-Qaida leaders no longer can operate effectively inside Afghanistan, U.S. officials have believed since before the military campaign began Oct. 7 that al-Qaida cells in other parts of the world have attack plans that could be implemented even in bin Laden's absence.

Rumsfeld would not elaborate on the Singapore government's announcement Friday that it had stopped a plot by terrorists linked to al-Qaida to blow up Western embassies, U.S. Navy vessels, a shuttle bus carrying American military members and the offices of U.S. companies. Singapore said a videotape and other al-Qaida materials seized in Afghanistan helped thwart the plans.

Asked whether other countries have arrested suspected terrorists on the basis of intelligence collected in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said: ``I'm reasonably sure there are, although I can't name one.'' Other U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said several countries besides Singapore had used information gathered in Afghanistan to break up al-Qaida cells. They would not elaborate. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the videotape given to the Singaporean government was not the first indication that American forces were under threat there.

Rumsfeld said prisoners from the al-Qaida terror network and Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban militia told U.S. interrogators that two senior Taliban leaders who the United States thought were still at large were killed weeks ago by American bombs. He raised the possibility that this was ``disinformation'' from the prisoners.

In all, no more than 15 senior al-Qaida and Taliban figures have been captured or killed, Rumsfeld said. The number of prisoners now under U.S. control in Afghanistan stands at 445, Myers said.

Rumsfeld gave no indication that the U.S. military was moving closer to finding bin Laden or other senior leaders of al-Qaida or the Taliban. He said the manhunt would continue, and in the meantime the interrogation of prisoners and the capture of documents was providing vast amounts of new information.

He said the information is being gleaned from ``an enormous number of documents and videotapes and computer disks and hard drives and laptops and portable phones and address books and the like.''

``It is a great urgency that we access all of the intelligence information that we can,'' he told a Pentagon news conference. He said a ``multidimensional picture'' of al-Qaida's global network was coming into view as a result of insights from intelligence, some of which he said are ``brand new.''

``If you think about the Sept. 11 event here and in New York, and the value of that information, and to the extent we can put this thing together even a day, or two, or five days faster by putting great effort on it, we may very well prevent a terrorist attack involving not thousands but more than thousands,'' he added.

One aspect of the intelligence-gathering effort, he said, is examination of facilities in Afghanistan where al-Qaida may have been attempting to develop or produce chemical, biological or radiological weapons. Thus far, the examination has produced no evidence that al-Qaida succeeded.

Other officials said the U.S. government has learned a great deal more about al-Qaida.

``My impression is that they've learned a lot,'' said Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who just returned from a trip to Afghanistan. ``They're putting that information to very good use. The entire operation in Afghanistan has been intelligence-driven.''

Myers said the focus of U.S. military action in Afghanistan now is a large al-Qaida base near Khost in the country's eastern part. U.S. warplanes have attacked the base six times in recent days and destroyed vast amounts of munitions and weaponry. Myers said 44 bombs were dropped by nine U.S. warplanes over a 7 1/2-hour period Thursday.

Rumsfeld said U.S. officials have been consulting with the Pakistani government on how to manage an unexpected problem in the basing of American aircraft and troops in western Pakistan. Because Pakistan has mobilized more of its forces in response to rising tensions with India, it needs some of the space occupied at those bases by U.S. forces.

Also under discussion is whether or how U.S. warplanes could continue flying over Pakistani airspace in the event that war with India broke out, Rumsfeld said.

Associated Press writer John J. Lumpkin contributed to this report.

-------- arms sales

Choppers for Colombia

January 11, 2002
Embassy Row
James Morrison
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020111-83951820.htm

The U.S. ambassador to Colombia this week handed over 14 Black Hawk helicopters to Colombia to help in combating drug-trafficking rebels.

Ambassador Anne Patterson said the helicopters will be used against drug crops in area controlled by Marxist guerrillas.

"We will continue to work together to liberate Colombia, the region and the hemisphere from narcotics," Mrs. Patterson said at a ceremony at Colombia's Tloemaida Army Base with Colombian President Andres Pastrana.

Mrs. Patterson said U.S. assistance last year helped Colombian counternarcotics troops destroy 1,400 jungle labs that turned coca leaves into coca paste, 84 labs that processed the paste into cocaine and nearly 60 tons of cocaine.

Mr. Pastrana also praised the helicopters as the latest weapon in Colombia's drug war.

"We will fight and work together, and together we will defeat our common enemy," he said.

----

U.S. stops short of linking
Arafat to arms shipment

Friday January 11, 4:12 PM
By Elaine Monaghan
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-83154.html

WASHINGTON - The United States on Thursday stopped short of linking Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to an arms shipment intercepted by Israel in the Red Sea last week and said it would continue its Middle East peacemaking mission.

"The information we are receiving and developing on our own make it clear that there are linkages to the Palestinian Authority. I have not seen information that yet links it directly to Chairman Arafat," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters.

"There's a lot of smoke but no smoking gun," a senior State Department official said when asked why Powell said there was no evidence of Arafat's involvement when a senior U.S. official had said on Wednesday he must have known about the cache.

The incident has cast a cloud over U.S. attempts to turn the relative calm in Israeli-Palestinian violence into a permanent cease-fire and restart peace talks.

Later on Thursday, Israel said it was suspending ties with Arafat's Palestinian Authority until the Palestinians arrest those who organized the arms shipment.

A U.S. State Department official said the United States would not follow suit.

"We remain committed to a restoration of calm and an end to violence and terror. ... We are continuing to work with the parties to try to achieve this," he said.

'WON'T DISENGAGE'

President George W. Bush said earlier on Thursday that U.S. mediator Gen. Anthony Zinni would return to his role in the region at the appropriate time.

"We won't disengage from the Middle East. We will stay involved in the Middle East peace process or trying to get to the peace process," Bush said.

"Mr. Arafat must renounce terror, must reject those who would disrupt the peace process through terror, and must work hard to get to the peace table," Bush added.

It was clear Arafat would still have to explain Palestinian Authority involvement in the cache worth up to $10 million, including Katyusha rockets that can hit targets 12 miles (20 km) away and explosives that could make suicide bombs.

The senior U.S. official said after a briefing by Israeli intelligence on Wednesday that the "case is very compelling" that senior Palestinian officials including Arafat were involved.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Arafat of ordering the arms but the Palestinian Authority denied any link and has ordered an investigation into the cache, which officials say could have sparked a major escalation in the conflict.

Powell said he had spoken to Arafat on Wednesday and that U.S. Consul-General in Jerusalem Ron Schlicher would talk to Palestinian authorities on Thursday "to make it clear to them that this is a very serious matter."

He added: "They have to give it their immediate attention. They have to conduct whatever inquiries or investigations are necessary to get to the bottom of this matter."

FIND THE CULPRITS

Powell said he was glad the Israelis had intercepted the shipment and the culprits had to be found.

"We are deeply disturbed by the arrival of this ship in the region and the fact that it could have completed its mission and offloaded weapons that would have been put to the worst kind of use against Israel and others in the region," he said.

The senior U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity on Wednesday did not say Arafat initiated the shipment.

But he said it was clear that arranging for it involved "decisions and actions of such a nature that one would assume they would have to have been made at the highest level."

"From the information provided by the Israelis, we would strongly suspect that Arafat knew about the shipment," the official added.

Israel seized the boat containing arms in the Red Sea about 300 miles (500 km) from its shores.

It said the ship was carrying 50 tonnes of Iranian-supplied munitions to Gaza on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in violation of the Oslo accords of 1993.

Egyptian Ambassador to the United States Nabil Fahmy told reporters more details were needed before conclusions could be drawn about the arms shipment.

"The only way forward is to get back to the negotiating table," he added.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush had spoken to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak earlier.

"The president said that he will continue General Zinni's mission to help the parties achieve a cease-fire ... and the president also, however, registered his deep concern about the arms shipment intercepted last week," he told a news briefing.

Zinni returned home on Monday. The State Department said he would go back to the region in one or two weeks.

-------- asia

Japan renounces militarism forever

Briefly
January 11, 2002
Washington Times
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020111-580752.htm

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Japan will never return to the militarist rule that led it to ruin in World War II, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said yesterday during a Southeast Asian tour.

"Japan will never again walk the path of a military power," Mr. Koizumi told Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed in talks here, according to a Japanese government official.

"I want to clarify that Japan's security role lies within the framework of the constitution," which bans Tokyo from waging war, Mr. Koizumi said.

Fears of Japan turning more belligerent have grown under Mr. Koizumi, who outraged many in Asia in August when he visited a shrine to Japan's war dead, which venerates several war criminals.

----

U.N. to Request $2B for Afghans

By HANS GREIMEL
Associated Press Writer
JANUARY 11, 07:55 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7GVE1F80

TOKYO (AP) - Donor countries attending a Tokyo summit this month could be asked to contribute more than $2 billion to begin rebuilding Afghanistan, a U.N. official said Friday.

The aid plea will be the focus of the Jan. 21-22 conference, where countries are expected to commit money to help Afghanistan recover from decades of war, United Nations Development Program official Yasumitsu Doken said.

He cited an estimate prepared by development agencies.

The $2 billion price tag covers the first 2 1/2 years of reconstruction. It includes $170 million-$200 million for land mine removal and $230 million-$290 million for health care.

The Bush administration has said it intends to contribute $400 million for the first year of reconstruction.

The actual aid request presented in Tokyo could be higher, however, because initial estimates don't cover costs for rebuilding national security, the justice system, financial institutions or the private sector.

A final appraisal is being assembled by the U.N. Development Program, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. It should be ready early next week, Doken said.

``It's still very much in a preparation stage,'' Doken said.

Envoys from 60 countries were invited to attend the Tokyo Afghanistan Reconstruction Conference co-hosted by Japan, the United States, the European Union and Saudi Arabia.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and a delegation from the interim Afghan administration, led by Prime Minister Hamid Karzai, are expected to attend.

A Japanese Foreign Ministry official declined to comment Friday on Japan's plans, saying the finalized aid solicitation would have to be reviewed first. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Tokyo conference will concentrate on the first stages of Afghanistan's recovery. But the United Nations hopes participants also will commit to longer-term aid, Doken said.

Early estimates suggest Afghanistan will need $10 billion-$20 billion in reconstruction aid over the next 10 years, Doken said.

U.N. officials have likened the Afghan undertaking to the five-year, $6.5 billion reconstruction of war-ravaged Mozambique.

Yet, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said Afghans must run the recovery program and decide their priorities, unlike many previous reconstruction efforts where the international community took charge.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has tried to raise Japan's international profile by making it a key player in Afghan reconstruction and by hosting the inaugural aid summit.

----

China counters U.S. influence

By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020111-32547046.htm

China has moved in recent days to reassert its diplomatic and military clout in Central Asia in an effort to reclaim influence in the region seriously undercut by the U.S.-led war on global terrorism.

The foreign ministers of China, Russia and four Central Asian states met in Beijing on Monday, calling for a neutral Afghanistan and saying the global war on terrorism proclaimed by President Bush should not be "expanded arbitrarily."

The meeting of the six, grouped under the recently formed Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), was the first gathering of the regional countries since the September 11 attacks on the United States. The SCO was in a large part a Chinese initiative intended to address Islamic fundamentalism in the region while increasing China's influence with its neighbors to the west.

China also has tried to play a major behind-the-scenes role in the standoff between Pakistan, its traditional ally, and India, its longtime rival. China clearly wants to avoid nuclear war on its border but also has been eager to counter what it sees as a growing effort by both states to move closer to Washington.

"If you consider how the world looks to the Chinese leadership on September 10 compared to today, you'd have to say they perceive their strategic position has eroded substantially," said David M. Lampton, director of China studies at Johns Hopkins Nitze School of International Studies.

Virtually every one of China's significant neighbors - many of whom are traditional rivals for influence throughout East and South Asia - have moved to improve ties with the United States since September 11.

"Japan is using the crisis to enlarge its security role, Russia is moving closer to the West, India is trying to improve its relationship with Washington and so is Pakistan," said Mr. Lampton. "The ancient Chinese fear has always been encirclement by its enemies, and virtually everything that happened since September has reinforced that."

China has offered qualified support for the U.S. anti-terrorism effort to date as it deals with its own Muslim separatists seeking an independent state in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang.

China's official press last weekend for the first time detailed the scope of the challenge as it announced the arrests of 166 "violent terrorists" in Xinjiang over the last three months of 2001. Newly released government statistics revealed that Xinjiang authorities had dealt with more than 1,000 outbreaks of violence over the past decade, the first acknowledgment by the government of the scale of the resistance.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in an interview with The Washington Times on Tuesday, praised China's efforts both in the terrorism fight and in the India-Pakistan dispute.

Despite the Beijing leadership's traditional closeness to Islamabad, "they're not trying to be the spoiler" in the crisis, Mr. Powell said.

Coincidentally, Zhu Rongji arrives in India Sunday for a previously scheduled six-day visit, the first in a decade by a Chinese prime minister.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi this week tried to temper efforts by Pakistan to enlist its giant ally in the confrontation with New Delhi.

Asked about a Pakistani government statement that Beijing would support Pakistan in "all eventualities," Mr. Sun replied, "The friendly, cooperative relations between China and Pakistan are aimed at promoting bilateral ties and not against a third country."

But China yesterday gave a subtle reminder of its ability to shape the conflict. Defense officials in Pakistan revealed they had received 10 new F-7 PG fighter aircraft from China, with another 30 more to be delivered this year. Pakistani officials insisted the deal was unrelated to the military standoff with India.

Beijing's support for the global campaign against terrorism and the war in Afghanistan has been tempered by mounting unease over the massive U.S. military buildup in Central Asia and China's loss of influence in the region.

Even the six-nation SCO - which includes Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, in addition to China and Russia - lost much of the diplomatic cachet it possessed before September 11, when many saw it as an emerging force and vehicle for China's economic and security ambitions in Central Asia.

Many of the SCO members, courted by Washington as front-line states in the war against Afghanistan, have preferred to boost bilateral ties with the United States rather than invest resources in the fledgling organization strongly favored by Beijing.

"Since the war in Afghanistan, the SCO has not played the role it intended to," Zhu Feng, director of Beijing University's international security program, told Reuters news service. It reflected official disappointment over the organization's lack of clout.

The Texas-based private intelligence service Stratfor noted that the new U.S. military alliances in the shooting war in Afghanistan have been a major setback for China's interests.

Before the war began, "Central Asia was a testing ground for Chinese and Russian cooperation and competition," according to a recent Stratfor analysis. But the region's future "is now being shaped by Russian and U.S. involvement, with China on the sidelines."

Even China acknowledged that much work lay ahead, although the six SCO foreign ministers agreed Monday to go forward with plans to open a new regional anti-terrorism center in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek.

"The SCO still needs more work to be done to improve its internal construction," senior Foreign Ministry official Zhou Li told reporters on Wednesday. "Cooperation among members is only at the very beginning."

Mr. Lampton said domestic political concerns have been a major reason China's neighbors have proved more nimble than Beijing in shaping the post-September 11 world to their advantage.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi have been able to transform their security stance while having strong political support at home for their moves.

In China, by contrast, Mr. Jiang was already under fire at home before September 11 for being too conciliatory toward Washington, on issues ranging from the U.S. surveillance plane forced down in China last spring to the concessions Beijing accepted to join the World Trade Organization.

With China facing a transition to a new generation of leaders over the next year, there is no political figure with the clout or the political base at home to force through such a major shift in relations with the United States, Mr. Lampton said.

-------- biological weapons

Britain to set up agency to counter bioterrorism

Friday January 11, 8:34 PM
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020111/1/2acr6.html

Britain is to set up a national agency to counter the threat of chemical and biological weapons, radiation and the alarming spread of infectious diseases, the British press reported.

The national infection control and health protection agency will provide scientific expertise to combat bio-terrorism, such as the anthrax spores sent throught the post in the United States, The Guardian reported.

It will also co-ordinate treatments for diseases like malaria and tuberculosis -- which are spiralling because of travel to countries where they are endemic -- as well as new infections such as new variant CJD and flu viruses.

One in 15 British people dies of an infectious disease, according to recent public health laboratory service figures (PHLS), quoted by the paper on Friday.

The PHLS is one of four organisations which will be merged to produce the new agency.

The others are the national radiological protection board, the centre for applied microbiology and research, and the national focus for chemical incidents.

Threat of biological and chemical attack is not the only reason for the initiative, according to government chief medical officer Liam Donaldson.

"When we get outbreaks of disease, we often don't know what's caused them," Donaldson said, at the launch of a strategy document for infectious diseases.

Methods for investigating bacterial infections or environmental pollution are very similar, The Guardian said.

The launch comes as concern grows about the worldwide spread of infectious diseases.

About 30 new diseases have been identified since the 1970s, the paper said, adding that although HIV/AIDS was unknown until the early 1980s, now 40 million people have the virus.

"That is comparable with any of the infectious disease scourges of the middle ages," Donaldson said.

"They can emerge from nowhere. That's why we have to have our protective mechanisms and surveillance very well developed," he added.

-------- britain

Belfast hit by another night of rioting

January 11, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/11012002-055143-9725r.htm

BELFAST, Northern Ireland, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- British troops and police kept a tense vigil in parts of northern Belfast Friday after a second night of violence that left 31 police officers and three soldiers injured.

Police clashed with rival Catholic and Protestant gangs armed with petrol bombs and missiles. In some of the confrontations, hundreds of nationalist and loyalist youths from the two communities attacked army and police with petrol bombs, fireworks and bottles, a spokesman said.

One of the three soldiers injured in the attack was hit in the face with an acid bomb, police said.

Dozens of cars were burned by rioters and there was extensive damage to other property.

Despite the continuing violence, a Catholic girls primary school that was the target of a Protestant blockade Wednesday reopened under a heavy security guard. The chairman of the board of governors at Holy Cross girls primary school, the Rev. Aidan Troy, told news media the decision to reopen the school had been taken in the "interests of staff and pupils."

He said, "The board has come to the conclusion, hopefully rightly, that the sooner we get the children back into a settled situation the better."

He said he hoped the reopening of the school would have "a calming effect on the whole situation here."

However, he added, it was up to parents to decide if they wanted to send their children to school. There was no immediate confirmation of the parents' response or attendance Friday.

The rioting is the latest flare-up in a festering stand-off between the Catholics and Protestants that resulted last year in school children being targeted in sporadic incidents.

The Protestants staged protests outside the school for about 12 weeks last year, shouting at children as they arrived or tried to leave the premises. Security forces set up a security cordon to enable children to attend classes, until mediation by community leaders in December led to a suspension of the protests.

It was not immediately clear what caused the latest resumption of protests, but community leaders condemned the riot and called it the latest setback to Northern Ireland's peace process.

Assistant chief constable Alan McQuillan told reporters the riot on Wednesday started after a confrontation between two women outside Holy Cross girls primary school.

He said the disturbances were "sustained and heavily orchestrated" and although the trouble was spontaneous, members of paramilitary groups appeared to be involved in the riot.

Police sources said men with mobile phones appeared to be directing the violence. In one area affected by the riot, police discovered a stockpile of petrol bombs and a container of petrol.

British Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid, the senior minister in charge of the province, said he "utterly condemned" the violence and joined other political leaders in appeals for calm.

Analysts said Northern Ireland's peace stalemate had been eased somewhat after the Irish Republican Army announced plans for a decommissioning of its weapons. But they said the latest riots could rekindle discontent over the slow progress on paramilitary disarmament, one of the key terms for Catholic-Protestant reconciliation under a 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

-------- burma

Burma announces nuclear plans
Win Aung (L): Project is in its initial stages

By BBC Burma analyst
Larry Jagan in Bangkok
Friday, 11 January, 2002, 15:07 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1755000/1755462.stm

Burma has announced it plans to join the nuclear club.

The Burmese Foreign Minister, Win Aung, told the BBC his country was committed to developing a nuclear research facility for medical purposes and possibly to generate nuclear power.

But it would be some time before a nuclear reactor was actually built in Burma he said.

In recent weeks there have been numerous reports that Russia has signed a deal with Burma to supply a reactor.

The Burmese authorities have admitted more than 200 technicians have received nuclear training in Moscow in the last 12 months.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna has officially asked Moscow to provide details of any deal they have done with Rangoon.

Safety standards

Win Aung said no deal had yet been signed but initial research had been done and Burma is keen to explore the use of nuclear energy. He said many other countries in the world are using nuclear power.

Given Burma's chronic energy shortage, there is little wonder they might want to experiment with nuclear power.

IAEA officials said Rangoon told them last September of plans to acquire a nuclear research reactor and asked for help to secure one.

Two months later the IAEA sent an inspection team to Burma to assess the country's preparedness to use and maintain a nuclear reactor safely. The team concluded that the safety standards in place were well below the minimum the body would regard as acceptable.

Burma has yet to respond to the IAEA report, but nuclear officials in Vienna fear this means that Burma plans to proceed with their nuclear ambitions without the necessary attention to safety.

Asian concern

But nuclear experts say that even if the military government wanted to build a nuclear reactor, it is likely to be several years before this happens.

In the meantime many countries, especially in the Asian region, will be concerned about the prospect of a nuclear Burma.

Diplomats in Rangoon say authorities have trouble maintain existing electricity generators let alone a nuclear reactor.

-------- business

Lockheed Martin to Cut Jobs
Aerospace Firm to Trim 700 Positions in Denver

By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 11, 2002; Page E11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28269-2002Jan10?language=printer

Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp., one of the country's largest defense contractors, said yesterday it would eliminate 700 positions, or 10 percent of the workforce in its Denver subsidiary, which is completing several space projects and some secret government work.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co., the rocket and satellite development unit, said the positions will be eliminated gradually during the year. Most job losses will come through attrition and by moving employees to other jobs within the company, a spokesman said.

In the end, the company expects to lay off only 200 employees, spokeswoman Joan Underwood said. That figure could change, however, as the company competes for new contracts. "We knew this was coming, and this was a natural adjustment to the cycle of these programs," she said.

Most of the positions are in manufacturing, various aspects of engineering and other support positions, she said.

The layoffs mark the transition of several large projects at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. The company is completing development of the Atlas V, a rocket used to launch several types of satellites, including weather and communications vehicles. The program is moving into the production stage, and the first rocket is expected to be launched in May. The Titan IV, the next-generation rocket is considered among of the most powerful in the country, is also close to completion and will be delivered to Cape Canaveral in April.

Lockheed officials also said they were completing a "classified program" in Denver that they could not detail.

Last year, the astronautics company conducted a similar round of workforce reductions, saying it would eliminate 650 positions as it consolidated operations. Only about 100 of those employees were actually laid off; most left through attrition, a spokesman said.

In New York Stock Exchange trading, Lockheed Martin shares rose 79 cents, to $47.97.

-------- cuba

Afghan Prisoners Arrive in Cuba

New York Times
January 11, 2002
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/11/international/11CND-PRIS.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 - A military cargo plane carrying 20 heavily guarded Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners arrived at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, this afternoon in the first wave of hundreds of detainees who will be held there.

The plane touched down a few minutes before 2 p.m., Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing. Mr. Rumsfeld said one prisoner had to be sedated for the flight as a security precaution. The plane was met by a contingent of American troops and a group of light armored vehicles.

The Pentagon provided few details about the flight from a Marine Corps base in southern Afghanistan, but senior military officials said more than 40 specially trained military police officers guarded the prisoners.

The prisoners, their hands and feet shackled and their heads covered by hoods, had been loaded single file onto the plane at Kandahar Airport. Pentagon officials had said that some prisoners might be sedated during the more-than-20-hour flight.

At Guantánamo, the prisoners will undergo extensive questioning. "They will be treated in the right way," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "not as prisoners of war, because they are not, but as unlawful combatants."

A Pentagon official said this week that the United States did not consider the detainees prisoners of war, but that they were still being afforded the protections under the Geneva Convention guidelines.

At Guantánamo Bay, the prisoners will be housed in a makeshift detention center known as Camp X-Ray, where they will be locked in 6-by-8-foot cages made of concrete and chain-link fence to await intensive interrogation and, possibly, trial before military tribunals.

Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed suggestions that the hoods and shackles somehow amounted to cruelty, calling the precautions "not in any way inappropriate" in view of the demonstrated dangerousness of the cargo.

As workers prepared the camp in Cuba for as many as 2,000 prisoners, search crews in Pakistan continued to comb the wreckage of a Marine Corps tanker plane that crashed on Wednesday in southwest Pakistan. Seven marines died in the fiery accident.

Mr. Rumsfeld said Thursday that there was no evidence that the crash had been caused by hostile fire.

Pentagon officials also said Thursday that the United States was preparing to send a force of more than 100 soldiers, many of them Special Operations forces, to the Philippines to help train Filipino troops to fight Muslim militants from the Abu Sayyaf group.

Though the American forces are expected to be involved initially in advising and training Filipino counterterrorist units, senior American military officials have said they could become involved in direct military action if the Philippine government requested it.

Amnesty International issued a statement on Thursday saying that sedating prisoners or shackling them for an entire flight would violate international standards prohibiting "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment. Mr. Rumsfeld said the Pentagon had closely studied violent uprisings by Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners held in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif and in Pakistan.

About 20 minutes after the plane lifted off from the base at Kandahar Airport on Thursday, marines came under small-arms fire near one of the runways. No one was injured and the identify of the snipers remained unknown hours afterward, military officials said.

Military officials also said John Walker Lindh, the American who was captured with Taliban forces near Mazar-i-Sharif, was not among the prisoners transferred. Mr. Walker is still being held aboard the assault ship Bataan in the Arabian Sea, the officials said.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today that the count of Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees had now reached 445. The number keeps rising as American military and intelligence officials continue interviewing thousands of prisoners held by anti-Taliban militias.

Camp X-Ray has cells for about 100 detainees, and will soon be expanded to hold 220. During the next few months, military work crews will build permanent facilities for as many as 2,000 prisoners.

Mr. Rumsfeld declined to discuss details Thursday about the growing American involvement in the Philippines, where Abu Sayyaf guerrillas have been battling government troops in the southern island of Basilan. The rebels, who have been linked to Al Qaeda in the past, are holding two American hostages for ransom.

But this week Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz said that American Special Operations forces might become involved in "direct support of Philippine military operations," though he added that the government seemed "anxious" to do the job itself.

"There's no question that we believe that if they could clear the Abu Sayyaf group out of Basilan Island, that would be a small blow against the extended Al Qaeda network," Mr. Wolfowitz said.

In November President Bush promised to give the Philippines a $100 million antiterrorism aid package that would include weapons, training and shared intelligence. Since then the United States has sent an array of equipment to the Philippine military, including a C-130 cargo plane, 30,000 M-16 rifles and 8 UH-1 Huey helicopters.

In eastern Afghanistan, American B-1 and B-52 bombers dropped precision-guided weapons on the sprawling Al Qaeda training camp at Zhawar Kili near the Pakistan border Thursday for the sixth time in just over a week.

Senior military officials have said they are increasingly concerned that there are other equally sophisticated and well-fortified underground complexes elsewhere in Afghanistan that could become guerrilla bases for remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces.

At the Pentagon on Thursday Mr. Bush signed a $318 billion military spending bill for the 2002 fiscal year.

"Today more than ever we also owe those in uniform the resources they need to maintain a very high state of readiness," Mr. Bush said. "Our enemies rely upon surprise and deception. They used to rely upon the fact that they thought we were soft. I don't think they think that way anymore."

-------- drug war

DEA breaks apart 2 major drugs rings

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-12599426.htm

Federal agents yesterday shut down two major drug-trafficking rings operated by Middle Eastern men in a sweeping coast-to-coast investigation that targeted more than 100 suspected smugglers in a nationwide methamphetamine conspiracy.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents took the suspected smugglers into custody in raids from Los Angeles to Wilmington, Del., as part of Operation Mountain Express, a continuing undercover drug investigation that has disrupted the flow of pseudoephedrine to clandestine laboratories in California.

Pseudoephedrine, a common over-the-counter cold medication, is the key ingredient in the production of methamphetamine. Fifty-four persons were taken into custody as agents swept through a dozen cities in California, Arizona, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Delaware. Another 67 persons had already been arrested as part of the 12-month undercover operation.

DEA agents served 49 search warrants, confiscated 96 automobiles, seized $360,000 in cash, closed down nine large-scale methamphetamine laboratories, took possession of three luxury homes and shut down four businesses - including car dealerships in Detroit and Chicago run by the suspected smugglers.

"We have dismantled two nationwide criminal networks that were trafficking multiton amounts of pseudoephedrine to methamphetamine producers in the United States," said DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson.

"I believe we are making progress on the methamphetamine problem in our nation our strategy is working."

DEA agents, working with U.S. Customs Service officers, targeted - for the first time - bulk suppliers of pseudoephedrine from Canada, from whom the suspected smugglers obtained and then transported multiton quantities of pseudoephedrine into this country. The drug was then sold either directly or through brokers to Mexican nationals operating meth labs in the United States.

Mr. Hutchinson said the bulk supplies of pseudoephedrine were transported into the United States aboard tractor trailers across the border at Detroit, housed partly in Chicago and then shipped aboard tractor-trailers to methamphetamine labs in California. Some of the trucks, he said, were disguised as FedEx and U.S. Mail trucks.

He said that while the majority of the traffickers are of Middle Eastern descent and they sent some of their illicit profits to the Middle East, there was no specific information that they were tied to international terrorists or to groups that support terrorism.

But, he said, the DEA was "continuing to follow the money trail" to make sure.

DEA officials said most of those arrested were in this country on visas and were mainly from Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Kuwait and Mexico.

Mr. Hutchinson also said one of the reasons the suspected smugglers went to Canada to buy pseudoephedrine is because the drug is not regulated in that country - making it lawful to "load up a semi-trailer truckload in Canada of pseudoephedrine."

He said that during 2000, Canada imported 55 metric tons of pseudoephedrine and that during Operation Mountain Express, the DEA seized 16 metric tons coming into the United States -more than a quarter of all the pseudoephedrine Canada had imported.

"We are hopeful this operation will move forward legislation in Canada that will regulate pseudoephedrine that is such a problem in the United States," he said.

Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner, who attended the news conference, noted that during the past nine months customs inspectors at the U.S.-Canada border seized 110 million pseudoephedrine tablets - about 60,000 pounds - bound for the United States.

"This case indicates that Canada has become the major source of pseudoephedrine used for the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine in the United States, meth that is then sold on the streets and towns and rural areas across the United States illegally," Mr. Bonner said. "And meth is a particularly nasty and pernicious and addictive drug."

Commonly known as "meth," "speed," "crank" or "ice," methamphetamine is described by the DEA as one of the most dangerous drugs on the street today. In the past several years, its use has spread eastward, fueled by drug-trafficking rings with headquarters in Mexico and backed financially by other organizations in the acquisition of precursor chemicals.

A pound of methamphetamine usually sells on the street for about $12,000.

The first phase of the Mountain Express operation ended in August 2000 when DEA agents arrested 140 persons in eight cities. They also seized $8 million in cash, 10 metric tons of pseudoephedrine tablets, 83 pounds of finished methamphetamine, two pseudoephedrine extraction labs, one methamphetamine lab and 136 pounds of chemical solvents and reagents.

----

Alarm in Peru

January 11, 2002
Washington Times
Embassy Row James Morrison
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020111-83951820.htm

Ambassador Allan Wagner this week again urged Congress to renew a special trade pact for South America's Andean nations or risk an upsurge in narco-terrorism in that region.

"Drugs and terrorism go hand in hand, and we are experiencing in the Andean region a resurgence in terrorism and the threat of an increase in [cocaine production] if we do not create jobs to fulfill social demands," he said in an interview with Reuters news agency.

Mr. Wagner in December raised similar concerns in an interview with Embassy Row.

The ambassador urged the Senate to renew and expand the Andean Trade Preferences Act, which has passed the House. When the act expired on Dec. 4, imports from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru were subject to a 21 percent U.S. tariff.

Mr. Wagner repeated his warnings that the fragile democratic governments in the region could fall unless they produce jobs for an increasingly restive population.

"Our governments have to be able to produce results. If democracy doesn't deliver, our people will again become frustrated and protectionism will rise," he said.

-------- india

A Blunt-Speaking General Says India Is Ready for War

New York Times
January 11, 2002
By CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/11/international/11CND-INDIA.html

NEW DELHI, Jan. 11 - In remarks that seemed to surprise India's own political leadership for their baldness, the army chief declared today that the military was fully prepared for a large-scale conventional war with Pakistan and was also ready to deliver a devastating nuclear strike should Pakistan use its nuclear arsenal first.

"If we go to war, jolly good!" Gen. S. Padmanabhan exclaimed.

Asked how India would respond if attacked with a nuclear weapon, he assured a packed news conference that "the perpetrator of that particular outrage shall be punished so severely that their continuation thereafter in any form of fray will be doubtful."

In answer to another question, he said, "We are ready for a second strike, yes," and added that India had sufficient nuclear weapons. "Take it from me, we have enough."

A senior Indian official was quick to say that the general's pithy, bellicose remarks were not cleared or sanctioned by the prime minister's office.

Their delivery on the eve of a crucial speech by Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan could make it more difficult for the Pakistani president to offer a commitment to shut down militant Islamic groups battling India in Kashmir.

A senior Western diplomat, who has been pleading with India to give General Musharraf credit for arresting some of the leaders of these groups, groaned in dismay when they heard about the Indian general's comments.

"This is going to make it much more difficult for Musharraf to be forthcoming and conciliatory tomorrow night," said the diplomat, who added that India's army chief "shouldn't be allowed to give a press conference at all at such a moment of acute tension," adding, "The more you talk of war the less freedom of movement you give the other side."

India has mounted a huge military buildup since a Dec. 13 assault on Parliament for which India has blamed two militant groups it said were acting at the behest of Pakistan's military intelligence agency. India has shifted ballistic missiles, tanks, jet fighters and hundreds of thousands of troops to its border with Pakistan.

Responding to the Indian Army chief's remarks, a spokesman for Pakistan's military regime said this evening that Pakistan was militarily prepared "in case the enemy undertakes a misadventure," but refused to rebut the Indian general further.

"Responsible military men do not talk of war lightly and we are responsible soldiers," the Pakistani spokesman said.

The comments by India's army chief seemed to catch India's elected leaders off-guard. The prime minister's office requested a transcript of the briefing and had not cleared comments the general made about a nuclear riposte, Indian officials said.

A senior official pointedly noted that in India "civilian control of the military is supreme" and said General Padmanabahn should not have talked about India's heightened state of nuclear readiness - though the official also confirmed that the statements were generally accurate.

Asked if the timing of the army chief's comments might complicate General Musharraf's efforts to make concessions to India, the Indian official said, "I hope not."

General Padmanabhan, who earned a reputation as a tough, aggressive commander in Kashmir, zestfully answered a barrage of questions. "Any number of questions, I am ready," he said. "I am quite enjoying it."

While he reiterated India's commitment not to use nuclear weapons first, he said that if Pakistan - which has made no such commitment - struck Indian armed forces, ships at sea or economic or human targets, it would pay heavily.

The government, he said, would decide if and when India goes to war, but he gave the clear impression of a man itching for a fight.

Since the mid-1990's Pakistan has waged a proxy war with India through Islamic militants in Kashmir, a Himalayan territory both countries claim. Those militants kill Indian soldiers in guerrilla attacks on virtually a daily basis.

"I am a man of peace," General Padmanabahn said. "But if there is a war, they will find out this man can bite."

Like India's civilian leaders, the general also said today that Pakistan's efforts so far to arrest militant leaders and freeze their assets were largely cosmetic and had not reduced the level of violence in Kashmir.

In the past year, he said, the violence has been at its highest. "The number of kills has correspondingly jumped," he said, explaining that the army, which killed 1,400 militants a year in the past, killed more than 2,000 last year, 70 percent of them Pakistanis.

"In fact, the month average from June onwards is 200 terrorists killed a month," he said. "These are frightfully high figures and yet the termites start coming again and again from new holes."

General Padmanabahn shared a few vignettes that suggested the scale of India's military buildup, as well as its human costs. "I was talking to one of my field commanders the other day," he related with a smile, "and he said, `This place is so full of troops I have no privacy.' "

The general also told about one of the worst dangers now facing his troops: land-mine accidents. Indian soldiers are planting mines all along the border to prevent Pakistani incursions. One soldier stepped just inside a mine field, tripping a wire.

"I lost a number of good men," the general said. "But this is an accident. Accidents will happen when you play around with mines."

Reporters repeatedly tried to draw the general out on what strategy the military might pursue in the event of a war. He gave no definitive answers, but he did offer some clues.

Asked if India might strike militant training camps in Pakistan-controlled parts of Kashmir, he replied that such an option was viable. "If possibly we know the location of the camp well, we possess the arms to reach those camps and if we can believe that civilians will not be killed unnecessarily, then we can destroy them," he said.

A bit later, when asked if India might begin an offensive on other parts of the international border with Pakistan, he threw the question back at the journalist.

"This is the devilish military mind again," he said. "What would you do sir?"

"I would like to get that answer from you, sir," the journalist replied.

"We'll see," the general answered. "When the time comes, decision will be taken."

Some defense analysts here have contended that the Indians and Pakistanis will not go to war because of the substantial number of American troops deployed at airbases in Pakistan. The general acknowledged that this situation might be inhibiting, as well as giving the Americans a reason to discourage fighting.

"On the other hand," he said, "when two wild bulls decide to fight in a jungle, they carry on regardless."

-------- israel / palestine

Israel destroys Gaza airport runway

By Saud Abu Ramadan
United Press International
January 10, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/10012002-091338-3376r.htm

GAZA, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Israeli army armored vehicles and bulldozers early Friday destroyed the runway at the Gaza International Airport owned by the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian eyewitnesses and security sources reported.

The $60 million runway, which was built in 1999, had been used by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in flying to other parts of the world as recently as a few months ago, although the airport itself was shut down by Israel about 15 months ago when the intifada began.

The airport facility had been a source of pride for the Palestinians in providing access to the outside world.

Palestinian witnesses said about 21 vehicles drove into the Palestinian-controlled area east of Rafah town in the southern Gaza Strip early Friday as Israel continued its campaign of retaliation for a Palestinian raid that killed four Israeli soldiers on Wednesday.

A militant wing of Hamas had claimed responsibility for the raid, in which two Palestinian militants also were killed, but Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said that his administration considers "the Palestinian Authority fully responsible for what happened."

The Palestinian Authority condemned the Hamas raid, saying, "It gives Sharon the excuse to resume his aggression and collective punishments on our people."

Palestinian eyewitnesses said more than 10 bulldozers tore up the 3.5-kilometer-long (2.2-mile-long) airport runway, beginning at 2 a.m. local time Friday.

On Thursday, the Israeli army destroyed more than 70 Palestinian homes on the border between Rafah town and Egypt, leaving at least 120 families homeless, according to Palestinian residents and PA officials.

The Israel Defense Forces spokesman said Israeli forces destroyed buildings that had provided cover for attackers against Israeli troops. The IDF spokesman also said they suspected that the structures provided cover for tunnels used for arms smuggling.

Sharon said Wednesday that his government would reconsider its policy against the Palestinian Authority in light of Wednesday's attack and the capture of an estimated 50 tons of arms and explosives on a ship in the Red Sea last week.

The vessel, the Karine A, said to be owned by an Iraqi national, was seized by an Israeli boarding party Jan. 3. Its cargo included Katyusha rockets, mortar bombs, anti-tank weapons and C-4 explosives. Israel said the arms were meant for the Palestinian Authority, and fingered Iran as the supplier. Iran has denied that allegation.

Sharon has accused Arafat of being personally implicated in the smuggling plot.

Under the terms of various Middle East peace agreements, Palestinian security forces are only allowed light weapons, which the Israelis are supposed to supply them with.

Arafat has denied that he or the Palestinian Authority were involved in the ship smuggling incident. Arafat announced Monday that he was establishing a commission to investigate the Israeli allegations and urged the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations to join an international inquiry into the incident.

If evidence turned up involvement by a Palestinian official, that official would be prosecuted, Arafat said.

In interviews arranged Monday by the Israeli authorities, ship captain Omar Akawi, speaking from an Israeli prison, said he received the weapons off Iran's coast and was supposed to deliver them to smaller vessels off the Egyptian coast.

He said one of the men who loaded the deadly cargo was known to him as a member of the Lebanese Islamic guerrilla movement, Hezbollah. The United States has long said that Iran funds and arms Hezbollah.

Akawi, 44, identified himself as a longtime member of Arafat's own Fatah movement, and said he was acting under orders from a man he said was a Palestinian official.

----

The Shipping News

By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com
Friday, January 11, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30212-2002Jan11?language=printer

The seizure of a weapons-laden ship by Israeli commandos at dawn on Jan. 3, is another fascinating example of how different sides in the Middle East can look at the same thing and see entirely different realities.

In the ship, the Karine A, the Israeli government sees a veritable smoking gun of Palestinian bad faith: 50 tons of heavy weaponry, including explosives and long-range missiles, destined for the Palestinian Authority which says its seeks peaceful co-existence with the Jewish state. The Palestinians deny any connection to the ship, a position that U.S. officials say they find hard to believe.

In the same ship, the Arab world sees an Israeli propaganda ploy, timed to coincide with Yasser Arafat's meeting with a U.S. envoy, to discredit the already weak Palestinians, to rescue prime minister Ariel Sharon from domestic political troubles, and perhaps to justify military action beyond its orders.

As the region's pundits illustrate, the Karine A has become a potent symbol of the escalating struggle between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel: Beyond Terrorism

The Jerusalem Post called it "Arafat's Ship of Death."

"The most obvious significance of this enormous weapons cache is that Arafat's real intention is not only to escalate terrorist attacks (over two tons of explosives were found on the ship) but to move beyond terrorism. As military leaders and analysts have pointed out, the only purpose of the relatively long-range weaponry captured is to threaten Israeli population centers."

For columnist Yoel Marcus, writing in the liberal Ha'aretz, the seizure of the ship was "a PR tool squeezed like a lemon" by the Sharon government.

"For a moment, it felt like good old Israel again: the Israel of Operation Entebbe, a mission comparable in planning and derring-do; the Israel that blew up Iraq's nuclear reactor, for which the world is still offering a prayer of thanks; the Israel preparing for a sortie to Iran, or possibly another to Iraq."

In the ship's cargo, Marcus saw two scenarios for the future of the confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians, neither of them particularly cheerful.

"One school of thought favors the Lebanon model, i.e., the creation of a frightening tit for tat: four kinds of anti-armor devices to knock out our tanks; and missiles and rockets capable of reaching every city in Israel in retaliation for air force operations. The object is to wear down Israeli society and bring about a unilateral withdrawal from the territories. Just like the Hezbollah did to us [in southern Lebanon]."

"The other school of thought favors the Bosnia model, i.e., pushing the situation downhill to the point where an international military force intercedes to prevent an Israeli invasion of the territories - a move that [former prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu talks about openly, and is not beyond Sharon either."

The Gulf: On Guard for Deception

For Jordanian cartoonist Abu Majoub Hajjaj, published by arabia.com, a Saudi-backed news site based in the United Arab Emirates, the ship was an irresistible image of the regional politics. He portrayed Sharon as a haloed mermaid riding proudly on the prow of the "Ship of Smuggled Weapons."

For Palestinian cartoonist Abu al Abed Boukhari, also published in arabia.com, the Karine A was Sharon's "miracle ship" that the Israeli prime minister was navigating between lands labelled the "Palestinian Authority" and "the region."

Gulf Today, a Web news site based in Dubai, declared itself "On Guard for Deception."

"The timing of the so-called seizure of an arms shipment while the American Middle East troubleshooter Anthony Zinni was in the region was intended to sabotage and undermine the peace efforts. Obviously Sharon does not want any progress in the peace process. It is for the US and EU to guard against Israeli deception so that peace will not be allowed to be sabotaged."

Saudi Arabia: Political Bankruptcy

Al-Sharq al-Awsat, an influential, Saudi-owned daily in London, commented skeptically on "Israel's Great Victory."

"It appears that the Israelis have adopted some of our habits, which have cost us a high price in our struggle with Israel. At the head of these habits is exaggeration to the extent that nobody in the world believes us any more, and we even stopped believing ourselves."

While the Israeli's allegations about the ship's origins and destination is gaining credibility in Washington, writer Ahmad Al-Rab'I suggested few would believe the story.

"The story of the kidnapped ship is a sign of political bankruptcy and a way of lying that nobody will believe. Even Washington, whose support for Israel knows no boundaries, questioned Israel's story."

Lebanon: Groundwork for Aggression

Like some Israeli commentators, the Daily Star, an independent Christian daily in Beirut, saw polemics over the ship as a harbinger of wider war.

"the more troubling aspect of this incident is that the Israelis call it 'proof' that it faces a multilateral conspiracy of state-sponsored terrorism. .... Whenever Israel increases the volume of its perpetual claims to 'victim' status, it is often laying the groundwork for a new round of armed aggression."

The paper expressed skepticism about Israeli efforts to "link the shipment with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, the Iraqi government (because the ship is registered there), the Iranian government (because it claims the weapons came from there), and Hizbullah (because it claims shadowy militant Imad Mughnieh was also involved).... That makes for a long list of targets for possible Israeli attacks, but it is also a lot for anyone to swallow"

The Daily Star concluded the whole incident was being blown out of proportion.

"Even if the weapons were destined for the Palestinians and had gotten through, they amount to a tiny and obsolete stockpile ­ especially next to an Israeli arsenal that is bursting at the seams with the best killing machines that US aid money buy. "

Jordan: Cunning propaganda machine

The editors of the Jordan Times withheld judgment--but not suspicion.

"Given our inability to investigate the Israeli charges first-hand, we can only trust our decades-long experience of how deceiving and cunning Tel Aviv's propaganda machine can be."

But a commentary by Tariq Masarwah in Al-Ra'y, an Arabic-language, government-owned daily in Amman, said "the mere denunciation of [the ship seizure] as an intelligence ploy is a naive and stupid stand."

Masarwah argued that "this incident will help fuel the frenzy of war on terrorism in the United States, Europe, and the region and will direct the West's hostility at all the forces that confront Israel -- the Palestinians, Hizballah, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.

Masarwah speculated that Israel was seeking to "separate Syria from Lebanon and pressure the latter into banning Hizballah on the grounds that it is a terrorist force, saying that if Lebanon fails to do so, the Israeli army will be ready to intervene."

Whether Israel will use the weapons ship to justify military action beyond its borders remains to be seen but it difficult to dispute Masarwah's conclusion: "The issue of the vessel Karine A has not taken its course yet."

Washington Post staff writer Nora Boustany provided translations for this column

----

Palestinians Arrest Trio Accused in Arms Shipment

January 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/11WIRE-MIDE.html

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinian Authority said on Friday it arrested three of its own security officers accused by Israel of involvement in an attempt to smuggle a shipload of weapons seized by Israeli commandos last week.

Police made the arrests, which followed stepped-up U.S. pressure on Yasser Arafat, as Palestinian security sources and witnesses reported fresh Israeli military incursions into the Gaza Strip on Friday night.

They said Israeli tanks and bulldozers, which had begun tearing up the runway at the international airport in the Gaza Strip before dawn in retaliation for a deadly Palestinian raid, had returned under cover of darkness to continue demolition.

The latest violence threatened to derail renewed U.S. efforts to end more than 15 months of bloodshed.

An internal panel appointed by the Palestinian Authority to investigate the arms shipment said three men -- a major-general in the security apparatus and two naval police officers -- were called for questioning and then taken into custody.

The announcement was made shortly after Secretary of State Colin Powell backed Israel's demand that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat arrest those responsible for the alleged smuggling plot.

Israel had accused Arafat and the Palestinian Authority of being behind the shipment, which it said was bound for Palestinian areas in violation of interim peace accords when it was intercepted in the Red Sea. The Palestinians had denied the allegations.

``The (investigative) committee decided to detain all those whose names were mentioned in this case, for further investigation,'' the statement said.

``President Yasser Arafat has ratified the decision and the committee asked the Israeli side to give the information they have concerning this issue.''

Israeli government spokesman Raanan Gissin said: ``If indeed they arrested the men -- a real arrest and not just house arrest -- and are going to conduct a real interrogation so that the full story comes out, then that is welcome.''

Palestinian security sources identified the suspects as Major-General Fuad al-Shobaki, director-general of finance for all the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus; Fathi al-Razen, deputy commander of Palestinian naval police; and Adel al-Mughrabi, a high-ranking officer in the naval police.

RUNWAY DEMOLITION RESUMES

Palestinian officials condemned Israel for ripping up the runway at the Gaza international airport, one of the key symbols of Palestinian aspirations to statehood.

But the Israeli demolition work resumed after dark on Friday as tanks and bulldozers returned to the airport, Palestinian witnesses and security sources said. The Israeli army declined comment.

``This new aggression (by Israel) will lead to an explosion, more violence and tension,'' Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rdainah said earlier on Friday.

The incursion was in apparent retaliation for a raid by Hamas militants on Wednesday that killed four Israeli soldiers in southern Israel.

The airport has been out of commission since an uprising against Israeli occupation started in September 2000. The runway was undergoing repairs after Israeli forces ripped it up on December 4 in response to suicide bombings.

Powell refrained from criticising Israel's action. ``It's a response the Israelis have taken as result of this latest provocation and I have no comment,'' he told news agencies.

The army also said it cut off a main road in southern Gaza and that special forces arrested eight Palestinians wanted for arms smuggling in Rafah, a town on Gaza's border with Egypt, and detained a Hamas militant and two gunmen in the West Bank.

VIOLENCE IN DIVIDED HEBRON

Just hours after the pre-dawn airport incursion, Israeli troops wounded a Palestinian man near the tomb of the biblical patriarchs, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews, in the divided West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian hospital sources said.

Israeli military sources confirmed the incident and said the 45-year-old man had been shot while trying to wrest away the rifle of a soldier guarding a Jewish settlement in the city.

Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said the army carried out the latest arrests because Arafat had not done enough to rein in militants.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Thursday he would not resume contacts with the Palestinians until they arrested people involved in the arms shipment. But he said Israeli-Palestinian ''security cooperation'' would not be affected.

``For the Israeli government to demand that those responsible be brought to justice is a very reasonable demand if Mr. Arafat can determine who they are,'' Powell said on Friday.

``It must be politically conceivable for Mr. Arafat to do this (make the arrests) because the kind of thing we saw on that ship is inconsistent with the Oslo accord,'' he added.

The United States has said it has seen compelling evidence that the Palestinian Authority had a role in the smuggling but nothing to prove that Arafat knew of it.

At least 803 Palestinians and 238 Israelis have been killed since the uprising against Israeli occupation began.

-------- pakistan

Pakistan wants its airbases back
Pasni and Jacobabad now in joint use of Pak-US air forces

By Kamran Khan,
Friday January 11, 2002
Shawaal 26,1422 A.H.
Editor: Shaheen Sehbai
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/jan2002-daily/11-01-2002/main/main2.htm

KARACHI: As the tension peaked on the borders coupled with Indian Air Force decision to move its ground attack and fighter squadrons to forward bases late last month, Pakistan quickly moved elements of its air force into the air bases at Jacobabad and Pasni to co-share the facilities with the United States forces, ending about three month long exclusive use of these airports by the US military, well placed Pakistani officials said.

The United States authorities are still allowed exclusive use of the airstrips at Dalbandin and Al-Shamsi in Balochistan. Army and Air Force special operations teams of the US military, besides troops from 101st Airborne division, are currently posted at four Pakistani bases to conduct combat, search and rescue operations inside Afghanistan.

Officials said Jacobabad and Pasni are two of the many operational bases used by Pakistan Air Force (PAF) in all emergencies and the recent Indian military mobilisation forced Pakistani military leaders to requisition both airports from the US Central Command, a decision that triggered urgent top-level military consultations between the Pakistani and the US military commanders.

"It was such an emergency situation that Pakistan Air Force was ordered to move straight into the airports while the discussions with the US officials on this subject were held later," said a senior official. He added: "The US military was not delighted but it had no doubt that Pakistan required both bases to meet the war-like situation with India."

Pakistani officials said the PAF needed an exclusive use of both facilities, but it agreed to let some important elements of the US forces stay and co-share most of the facilities at Jacobabad and Pasni airbases with PAF after the military leaders of the two countries held extensive behind-the-scene discussions.

The co-sharing of all the facilities at the Jacobabad and Pasni airports was the centrepiece of sensitive discussion held between the US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers and his counterpart General Mohammad Aziz Khan and the Joint Staff Headquarters in Rawalpindi late last month, officials said.

Before reaching Rawalpindi, officials said, for a hurriedly arranged meeting with General Aziz Khan while President General Pervez Musharraf was visiting China, General Richard Myers had made an unpublicised visit to the Jacobabad airport where he met the US officers and inspected the facility.

Pakistani officials have underlined that they were forced to reclaim the two airports mainly because of the Indian preparations for war with Pakistan, a development independently confirmed by the Pentagon. Just one month before the military build-up on the borders, officials said, Pakistan was so comfortable with the United States military presence in the country that it had allowed extended stay of the US military in Pakistan by giving permission to the US central command to improve infrastructure at the Jacobabad airport, a project that would have cost several million dollars to the US military.

A US-sponsored multi-million dollar construction and repairs work was in progress when the Pakistan Air Force moved some of its resources to the Jacobabad and Pasni airports 10 days ago. Pakistani officials noted that the Indian military build-up strained the US political and military objectives in Afghanistan as it forced Pakistan not only to restrict the US military activities out of Jacobabad and Pasni, it also prompted Pakistani authorities to move a big chunk of its troops from the provinces of NWFP and Balochistan to its eastern borders.

Dalbandin airstrip, though not used for commercial purposes, offers extensive Boeing compatible runway, besides reasonable parking and related services. Dalbandin airport had been raised in late eighties with Saudi financial assistance, as Saudi and other Gulf states princes frequent this desert Balochistan town during bird hunting seasons.

Troops presence in the provinces bordering Afghanistan and relaxed situation at borders with India before December 13 had allowed Pakistan Army to carry out an active anti-terrorist operation against fleeing Al-Qaeda supporters in the tribal areas of the NWFP. During the same period Pakistan Army commissioned its Special Services Group (SSG) to raid suspected al-Qaeda hideouts in the tribal areas.

While most military analysts are attributing Pakistan's decision to demand extensive use of Jacobabad and Pasni airports and thinning out of the troops from the borders with Afghanistan to country's military operational requirements, some military analysts have guessed that Pakistan moved a little faster than required to reclaim facilities from the US forces to express its uneasiness to a decision by the US central command to relocate its aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, a move by the US military that provided hostile Indian navy a vacant corridor in the sea to make an approach to Pakistani waters.

"In the present state of relationship we wouldn't expect the US military to make a move to Indian advantage," a military analyst said. This analyst shares perception in a small quarter of military thinkers in Pakistan that the US has not yet used its leverage with India to discourage the military build-up despite knowing fully well that the Musharraf administration was committed to strike out all forms of religious extremism from Pakistan.

Before Pakistan's decision to co-share Jacobabad and Pasni airports with the US forces 10 days ago, several hundred US armymen were housed in 42 aircraft hangars at the Jacobabad airport, 300 miles northeast of Karachi, where the US military had installed its own radar equipment at a premises that was used as air traffic control facility by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

The coastal town of Pasni, 180 miles west of Karachi, where more than a dozen US military helicopters were seen parked at the airport last week, is providing the nearest ground facility to a large US naval flotilla now stationed in the Arabian Sea for aerial raids against Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials say that the PAF may want to use the Pasni airport, in case of war with India, to interdict Indian naval and commercial activity in the India Ocean. While the Pakistani air force presence may restrict to some extent the US military activities out of Jacobabad and Pasni airports, the US central command would still have an exclusive access to Dalbandin airbase, 170 miles southwest of Quetta and only 20 miles away from Afghan border which served as a forward base for the US forces for special operations in southern Afghanistan.

----

U.S. Military Begins Shift From Bases In Pakistan
Tensions With India Lend Urgency to Move

By Kamran Khan and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 11, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28620-2002Jan10.html

The Pakistani government, faced with a fresh confrontation with neighboring India, has quietly been discussing with the United States how long the U.S. military plans to remain at the four Pakistani air bases that have been key components of the war in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said yesterday.

Spurred by the Pakistani concerns, the U.S. military has stepped up its efforts to shift its operations elsewhere. The Pentagon is focusing on preparing the large U.S.-built airport outside the Afghan city of Kandahar for a high volume of operations. It also is moving quickly to shift air operations from Pakistan to other locations, such as newly obtained bases in the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, officials said.

Pakistani officials said their government at first indicated that it wanted the United States to give up two of the four bases that it has been using to fight the war.

A three-star U.S. general confirmed that account, saying, "There's been some talk of that." But he also said the U.S. need for the bases is waning. "As we continue to improve the capabilities of the airport at Kandahar, staging from other bases in Pakistan might be less of a requirement for us," he said. "In other words, we could fly from other places directly into Kandahar."

A senior Pakistani military official said that late last month, as tensions between India and Pakistan escalated, Pakistan notified the United States that the bases that it was using in Jacobabad and Pasni might be needed to put the Pakistani air force on a war footing.

Accounts differ about what moves the Pakistani military made about that time. The senior Pakistani military official said the two bases in question were partially reclaimed, before formal notice had been given to the United States. "It was such an emergency situation that the Pakistan air force was ordered to move straight into the airports while the discussions with the U.S. officials on this subject were held later," the official said. "We are now co-sharing the two air bases with American forces."

One reason for that hurried move, he said, was that Pakistani officials realized they had incorrectly assumed that the U.S. military presence in Pakistan would force India to restrain its military mobilization.

But Asad Hayauddin, a spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, denied that any Pakistani military aircraft were moved. Rather, he said, his government notified the United States late in December that if hostilities broke out with India, the Pakistani military planned to move forces onto some of the bases currently being used by U.S. forces.

Tension between the South Asian neighbors reached a new peak last month after India accused two Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups of carrying out a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament on Dec. 13. In the wake of that assault, in which the five gunmen and nine other people died, both nations mobilized their militaries.

According to a Pakistani official, the Pakistan military originally argued that it would need to evict the U.S. forces altogether from the bases in Jacobabad and Pasni, but after extensive negotiations between senior officials, it agreed to let some U.S. forces remain there.

The official said the agreement came after discussions last month between Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Mohammad Aziz Khan. A spokesman for the Joint Chiefs said he had no information about such a discussion.

The United States has deployed Special Operations teams, Marine combat search-and-rescue teams, support aircraft and units of the 101st Airborne Division to four bases in Pakistan.

Pakistani military officials said they plan to share the bases in Jacobabad and Pasni, but let the U.S. military retain exclusive use of the less-developed airfields in Dalbandin and Shamsi.

At the Jacobabad base, located 300 miles northeast of Karachi, the U.S. military has done extensive construction and repair work and installed its own radar equipment. In the coastal town of Pasni, 180 miles west of Karachi, more than a dozen U.S. military helicopters were seen parked last week. Pakistani officials said if there is war with India, their air force might want to use the Pasni airport to interdict Indian naval activity.

The two bases that are of less interest to the Pakistani military are in the province of Balochistan, near Afghanistan. The Dalbandin airfield, 170 miles southwest of Quetta, has been used as a forward refueling base for U.S. Special Operations helicopters flying into Afghanistan. The smaller Shamsi airstrip is believed to be used by only a few Special Operations units.

U.S. officials have generally expressed satisfaction with Pakistan for permitting them to use those bases, despite some restrictions. For example, one U.S. general noted yesterday that Marines at one base were told to stay inside during daylight hours. Also, Pentagon officials said, Pakistan has placed restrictions on flight hours, telling the United States to fly helicopters only at night.

"The Pakistanis have been really supportive," another U.S. general said yesterday. "They haven't said no to the things we've asked for." He said the United States has made a point of minimizing its "footprint" in Pakistan from the start.

Now that control of the major Afghan cities has been seized from the Taliban, he said, the U.S. military has more alternatives than it did at the outset of the war in October. Then, there were few choices available but to base some troops and planes in Pakistan. "The landscape has changed dramatically," he said. "In October, who thought we'd be in Kandahar in January?"

Asked for comment on the shifting U.S. military posture in the region, Victoria Clarke, spokeswoman for the Pentagon, said, "There's always been a desire to have as many options as possible. That includes working on the Kandahar airport and getting bases elsewhere in the region." She added that the Pentagon believes "Pakistan has been very helpful in our efforts in Afghanistan and in the war on terrorism in general."

Likewise, the senior Pakistani military official said that despite the danger of war with India, "we are committed to keep our support for the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism to the maximum levels."

Khan reported from Karachi, Pakistan.

-------- propaganda wars

Pentagon plumber

January 11, 2002
Washington Times
Inside the Ring,
by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-93289104.htm

President Nixon created the infamous "plumbers" unit back in the 1970s to try to plug leaks of information.

Now, in an effort to control news coverage of defense issues, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is following suit.

He is on a "personal campaign" to prevent the news media from finding out inside information, said his spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke. Mrs. Clarke told a Brookings Institution forum on Wednesday the anti-leak effort is producing results.

"The amount of leakage and the amount of inappropriate backgrounding and leaking of classified information and information that should never have gone out has dropped considerably," she said.

"That is because Secretary Rumsfeld has made it a personal campaign that he would reduce the amount of leaking of classified information by people in government and he would reduce the amount of inappropriate backgrounding of classified information."

Mrs. Clarke said, "You have a fair number of people, not a lot, but you have a fair number of people who are going through a bit of a culture shock. There is not quite the flood of information that there has been in the past, and I will fully tell you that I believe a lot of that information was inappropriate."

Here's one he missed: Pentagon officials tell us Mr. Rumsfeld was flabbergasted recently when presented with a military plan to house al Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using minimal security controls. "You've got to be kidding," Mr. Rumsfeld said in dismissing the plan and calling for much tighter controls over the hardened terrorists.

Press coverage

We talked to an Army officer and specialist in unconventional warfare (working with an indigenous force to defeat an enemy) about how the press was covering operations by Army Special Forces, better known as the Green Berets.

Here's what he said:

"They are missing the subtle aspect of Unconventional Warfare and war through surrogates. Air power is very effective, but isn't sufficient to turn conflicts. With covert operators from Special Forces and CIA (sometimes hard to make a distinction), air power is directed and evaluated. Fear is spread throughout the enemy population because they never know when, where, or how they will meet their death. Every shadow and noise is cause for fear.

"Tribes that haven't worked in concert for years are suddenly engaging in coordinated attacks that make them effective fighting forces. Did air power effect this action? I would sooner guess that covert operators are cajoling, bribing, and threatening these tribes to work towards our end. This is war through surrogates. Few realize that tens or hundreds of such operators can shape a battlefield, war or country. The introduction of thousands of conventional troops could cause more problems than they might solve.

"The bottom line is that small numbers of American forces can bring about great changes without the risks associated with the massive infusion of conventional forces. Sometimes the actions of these unconventional forces are unseen, fostering incorrect assumptions and conclusions."

-------- russia / chechnya

Russia lifts cordon on Chechen city

World Scene
Washington Times
January 11, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020111-83099899.htm

MOSCOW - Russian troops lifted their blockade of Chechnya's third-largest city yesterday after a roundup of suspected rebels that prompted clashes and protests by residents over abuses by servicemen, news reports said. Only a few women and children had been allowed in or out of Argun since Sunday. The town over the past week saw some of the heaviest fighting in Chechnya in months, with heavy Russian shelling in an effort to flush out militants believed hiding there. Russian officials said Wednesday the operation had been completed, but the cordon was lifted only yesterday, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. Pro-Moscow Chechen officials and other residents who had been barred from entering were allowed back.

-------- spy agencies

Lee Says Nuclear 'Jewels' Were Junk

January 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Wen-Ho-Lee-Book.html

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- In a new memoir, former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee says the nuclear ``crown jewels'' he was accused of mishandling were really the ``crown junk'' and were not vital to national security.

The files he downloaded were old, with much of the information already public and very little of it classified, Lee says in ``My Country Versus Me,'' published by Hyperion. In an early copy of the book obtained by The Associated Press, he says he copied the material onto tapes because he had lost files before and did not trust the computer system.

He describes himself as a loyal ``Cold Warrior'' for the United States, yet says the FBI threatened him with execution ``like the Rosenbergs'' if he did not confess to giving nuclear secrets to China.

``I want to share through this book how I fell into a trap,'' Lee says, ``one slippery step at a time, not even realizing what was happening until it was too late.''

Lee, a Taiwanese-born naturalized citizen, was arrested in December 1999 and indicted on 59 felony counts alleging he transferred nuclear weapons information to portable computer tapes. He was held in solitary confinement for nine months, though never charged with spying.

As the government's case crumbled, Lee pleaded guilty to a felony count of downloading sensitive material, and was set free. The FBI's mishandling of the case was a major embarrassment for the bureau.

While Lee was behind bars, one senior scientist called the files ``the crown jewels.''

Lee says the downloaded tapes were all work-related, routine and contained in a secure area at Los Alamos National Laboratory

``In fact, the 'crown jewels' are largely the crown junk,'' he says. ``This is the biggest nuclear weapons secret that LANL and the government have to hide.''

Lee says he copied the files -- needed to design computer simulations for nuclear explosions -- so he could have backup copies.

``In 1993, I lost several files as a result of a computer system conversion at the lab,'' he says. ``One of the codes I lost was about nuclear reactor safety. ... This was an important code, and it was gone.''

A call to the U.S. attorney's office in Albuquerque on Friday was not immediately returned.

Lee, who has been a U.S. citizen since 1974 and spent 20 years doing top-secret work at the lab, is suing the government for defamation and claims he was targeted because he is ethnic Chinese.

``Had I not been Chinese,'' he says, ``I never would have been accused of espionage and threatened with execution. ... Now I know that political whimsy can destroy the contributions of a life's work.''

In a recent deposition made public Friday, former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said that ethnicity was not a factor in his firing of Lee or the decision to investigate him for possible security breaches.

While in solitary at the Santa Fe County Jail, he says, he was kept shackled and handcuffed during exercise periods with a soccer ball. The 62-year-old colon cancer survivor says he had difficulty getting the special diet he needed and lost weight.

``How will I ever forget this nightmare?'' he asks.

Lee said he was threatened with execution in March 1999, when he was interrogated by FBI agents: ``They told me that unless I confessed to giving nuclear secrets to China, I might be executed, like the Rosenbergs.'' Julius and Ethel Rosenberg went to the electric chair in 1953 for giving atomic secrets to the Soviets.

The accusation of espionage, leaked to news media, was never formally lodged against Lee. Prosecutors conceded the evidence was insufficient.

Lee speculates that at least some of his troubles might have been averted if he had not thrown away his data tapes.

Demoted from the lab's top-secret X Division after the espionage leaks, Lee says he was confronted with the problem of what to do with the classified data he was no longer entitled to possess. He deleted files with help from the lab help desk, he says, and threw the computer tapes into a lab trash bin.

The unaccounted-for tapes triggered near-frenzy at the FBI, which insisted on proof they had not been turned over to a foreign government. Except for giving his word, Lee could not provide that proof. Agents searched for days at the Los Alamos County landfill for the tapes.

Lee says even today, his wife, Sylvia, ``still has nightmares about being awakened by the FBI.'' The Lees plan to stay in Los Alamos. Lee says he has his garden, favorite fishing spots and a safe, secure environment.

``The main reason for us to stay here is the warmth of our neighbors, our friends and the real community we are part of,'' he says.

-------- us

Air Force Targeting Technology on Display

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 11, 2002; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28802-2002Jan10?language=printer

Add the Air Force's new Litening II targeting pod to the list of technology upgrades on display in Afghanistan, enabling F-16 pilots to fire laser-guided bombs by locking directly onto a "laser spot" placed on a target by troops on the ground.

The first-generation Lantirn pod that debuted on Air Force fighters a decade ago in Operation Desert Storm has its own laser designator for identifying targets and guiding laser-seeking bombs, but Lantirn cannot employ laser-guided bombs using laser designations by ground forces.

Air Force fighters have played only a limited role in Afghanistan, flying all the way from Kuwait to augment carrier-based Navy strike aircraft. And only older model F-16s flown by National Guard and reserve units rotating through Kuwait -- and seeing limited action in Afghanistan -- have been upgraded with the Litening II pods, which cost about $1.3 million apiece.

But the Litening II pods, manufactured by Northrop Grumman Corp., have demonstrated the effectiveness of "laser spot" tracking in Afghanistan, where laser designation of targets by Special Forces troops on the ground has been a critical factor in the air war's success.

"This is a key attribute of the pod," Col. Dana T. Atkins, deputy director of operational requirements on the Air Force staff, said of Litening II. "It eliminates the potential of misidentifying targets and, in the case of close proximity to friendly forces and discrete infrastructure, eliminates potential for collateral damage, fratricide and unintended casualties."

Litening II, Atkins said, is also able to acquire targets from as high as 40,000 feet -- 15,000 feet higher than the Lantirn pod. And the Air Force is now purchasing 24 Litening II-plus pods that have greater range with infrared capability.

An even more sophisticated system, the Advanced Targeting Pod (ATP), now entering production, features both "laser spot" tracking and the ability to generate the coordinates of ground targets and to feed them directly into "smart" munitions guided by signals from Global Positioning System satellites. Lockheed Martin Corp. manufactures both the Lantirn and the ATP.

With the ATP, soldiers on the ground would no longer have to radio a target's coordinates to a pilot in order to trigger an attack by a GPS-guided bomb, and the pilot would not have to manually enter those coordinates into the weapon's guidance system. The new advanced pod can acquire targets from as high as 50,000 feet.

"This is a unique, transformational capability," said Atkins, himself a former F-16 pilot and squadron commander. "We're being asked by not only our national leadership, but by our public, to be very precise. And this gives us that really precise capability."

FASTER, FASTER: As the war in Afghanistan continues and potential terrorist engagements loom in places such as Somalia, Sudan and the Philippines, the Army is eager to get its new light armored vehicle into service. Built by a General Dynamics-General Motors partnership, each LAV-III weighs about 19 tons -- compared with the 70-ton weight of the M1A2 Abrams tank -- and can carry 11 soldiers from the Army's new medium-weight Interim Brigade Combat Teams.

"We're talking to the president of General Dynamics, now seeing if we can move that schedule up a couple of months," said Gen. John M. Keane, the Army's vice chief of staff. "My appeal to them was to go to more of a war footing, a round-the-clock schedule. But given the realities of production schedules and subcontractors and the rest of it, the most we would ever be able to get out of that is a couple or three months."

Commanders at Fort Lewis in Washington state, where the first two new combat brigades are being formed, now expect to see the first LAV-IIIs roll off the production line in March.

SPECIAL FORCES: In another move triggered by the war in Afghanistan -- and the starring role played there by Army Special Forces troops -- Keane said the Army is making sure that all five of its Special Forces groups are operating at 100 percent strength, not just over 80 percent, as they were at the start of the war.

"So those officers and noncommissioned officers on other assignments throughout the Army who have Special Forces qualifications, who may be teaching or recruiting or doing other Army business, we're bringing those officers and NCOs back to those organizations," Keane said.

----

Lessons learned

January 11, 2002
Washington Times
Inside the Ring,
by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-93289104.htm

We already know that lessons learned in Afghanistan have convinced the Pentagon to buy more smart munitions and unmanned vehicles, and consider buying more heavy bombers.

We now hear the new fiscal 2003 budget will include money for more special operations AC-130 gunships. Gen. Tommy Franks, the war commander, has used the hovering battleships to blast terrorist targets from Tora Bora to Kandahar. With few air defenses to worry about, the plane's highly accurate cannons can kill people and destroy vehicles as targets emerge.

Sources say the Pentagon will buy four to eight of the converted C-130 aircraft, adding to Air Force Special Operations inventory of 21 AC-130s.

Gen. James Jones, the Marine Corps commandant, was so impressed by the gunships he is thinking of buying a Marine version.

Rummy's lessons

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has learned lessons from the last three major conflicts - Vietnam, Persian Gulf and Kosovo - in his management of public statements.

Vietnam: Mr. Rumsfeld refuses to estimate the number of enemy dead - numbers released with great confidence by military briefers in Vietnam.

Persian Gulf: Mr. Rumsfeld shies away from discussing the hunt for Osama bin Laden and, unlike other senior officials, never speculates on his whereabouts.

Military analysts contend the previous Bush administration focused too much on Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, leaving a feeling of unfulfillment when the war ended and Saddam stayed in power.

Kosovo: Mr. Rumsfeld refuses to estimate the number of destroyed armored vehicles and other military equipment.

During the air war over Kosovo, NATO gave running totals of the number of tanks and artillery pieces destroyed. Reporters later tried to disprove the estimates.

Mr. Rumsfeld also refused to rule out the introduction of large number of ground troops in Afghanistan, even though the idea was debated and rejected.

In Kosovo, President Clinton ruled out a ground invasion. Analysts contended the announcement sent the wrong signal to Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who held out for 78 days.

----

Bush signs bill to give military 'down payment'

ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-41643425.htm

President Bush signed a defense spending bill yesterday that he said is a down payment on his pledge to give the nation's military "every tool, every weapon and every advantage you need" to fight terrorism.

Mr. Bush went to the Pentagon, which still bears scars from the hijacked jet that hit it, and signed legislation that sets aside $317.2 billion for Defense Department operations in the budget year that began Oct. 1. The bill also earmarks an additional $20 billion for the military campaign in Afghanistan and for recovery from the September attacks.

"Since September 11, the skill, the daring and the courage of our men and women in uniform is now clear to all," Mr. Bush said. "It's clear to your fellow Americans, and it's clear to those who try to hide in caves."

Mr. Bush was referring to those responsible for the attacks, now sought by American soldiers in the hills of Afghanistan. Mr. Bush rallied the military, saying its current campaign is noble, just and a salvation for the Afghan populace newly liberated from the oppressive rule of the Taliban.

"You're delivering justice - not revenge, but justice - to agents of terror. And you're making this nation proud," Mr. Bush said. He urged the crowd, "Stay on course. Find the enemy."

Congress approved the defense appropriations last month, after weeks of butting heads with Mr. Bush over how to use federal resources to combat terrorism. The president is expected to seek billions of dollars more for domestic security in the 2003 budget he will submit to Congress next month.

"I look forward to working for next year's budget, with the priorities of winning this war and defending our homeland," Mr. Bush said. "I'm confident the spirit that prevailed in late fall will spill over this year as we continue to remember the great goals that face this nation."

But for now, Mr. Bush said, the new bill "makes a down payment on an essential commitment" to bolster the U.S. military and equip it for a protracted battle against terrorism.

"Our military must have every resource, every tool, every weapon and every advantage you need for the missions to come," Mr. Bush said. "We can never pay our men and women in uniform on a scale that matches the magnitude of their sacrifice. But this bill reflects our respect for your selfless service."

Also yesterday, Mr. Bush cautioned Iranian officials not to harbor al Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan and not to try to destabilize the country's new government. If the warning is ignored, he said, the U.S.-led coalition "will deal with them in diplomatic ways, initially."

Until now, the United States has quietly praised longtime foe Iran for its help in the war on international terror. Iranians and Americans have worked together to fight the Taliban and to create Afghanistan's new government.

Now, however, Iran is moving to safeguard its traditional influence in western Afghanistan, apparently unnerved by growing U.S. military influence on almost all sides, analysts said.

Iran denied reports yesterday that some al Qaeda fighters were in Iran. An official called Mr. Bush's warning "baseless" and said Iran wants neighboring Afghanistan to be stable and independent.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Analysis: Military tribunals
Opponents of secrecy cite the Nuremberg trials

By BBC News Online
Richard Allen Greene
Friday, 11 January, 2002, 11:06 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1701000/1701789.stm

Few White House proposals in the war on terror have caused as much controversy as President George W Bush's order to try suspected terrorists in military tribunals rather than the regular court system.

Now, some 20 suspected al-Qaeda and Taleban members are being taken from Afghanistan to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where they face interrogation and possibly a military tribunal.

Opponents of military tribunals argue that such courts would violate guarantees provided by the constitution; that they would be bad for Washington's image internationally; and that the president may not even have the legal authority to create military tribunals.

Defenders of the plan say that military courts are not only necessary in time of war but that there is precedent for them under two of the country's greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

There are a number of important differences between military tribunals and civilian courts.

Many of the protections afforded to defendants in civilian courts - such as protection against self-incrimination; right to the defence of one's choice; and to be told of the prosecution' charges and evidence - do not necessarily apply in military tribunals;

convictions in civilian courts must be unanimous, while the military tribunals proposed by Mr Bush would be able to convict by a two-thirds majority;

different rules of evidence apply, with lower standards for admission in military tribunals;

defendants are not guaranteed the right to appeal against convictions in military tribunals;

civilian trials must be open to the public, while military tribunals can be held in secret.

There is another key difference between the two types of trials: legally, military tribunals are not courts - they are military commissions, which is why different standards apply.

The case in favour

Defenders of military tribunals argue that the United States is at war with terrorists, and that in times of war, enemy aliens are never afforded the protections of the US legal system.

Enemies have been tried by military courts since before the founding of the US - George Washington used them during the Revolutionary War, and the practice continued throughout World War II.

Advocates of military justice argue that the US is not carrying out a law-enforcement operation in Afghanistan, but a military one.

For the armed forces to seize an enemy and turn him over to the court system would be unprecedented and absurd, they say.

They argue that history shows that military tribunals can act fairly, as in the case of the Hunter Commission, the tribunal that convicted the conspirators behind the Lincoln assassination.

And they say the Supreme Court has ruled in favour of the use of tribunals in a key World War II case concerning German saboteurs caught in the US.

John Dean, a Nixon-era White House counsel, points out that the Bush order to try suspected terrorists in military tribunals actually guarantees defendants more rights than would normally be the case in such trials.

"President Bush's order makes clear that he wants due process and the right to counsel for terrorists," he argued in a November column for online legal publication FindLaw.

Like other defenders of the plan, Mr Dean says that secret trials can be justified by the need to protect the intelligence sources that may provide prosecution evidence.

And he says that secret tribunals would provide protection for people involved in the case - whereas jurors in a civilian trial of terrorists, for example, might be forced to go into hiding after the trial for fear of revenge attacks.

The case against

Opponents of military tribunals list as many reasons to avoid them as defenders do to promote them.

Some legal experts argue that Mr Bush does not have the authority to establish them.

The Lincoln and Roosevelt-era military tribunals took place in time of war, they point out, but Congress has not officially declared war in this case, so the president cannot assume wartime powers.

Presidential war powers are invariably an issue for heated debate during times of US military conflict, especially as Congress has not declared war since 1942.

Advocates of military tribunals say congressional authorisation for Mr Bush to use all necessary force against those he decides "committed or aided the terrorist attacks" is the equivalent of a declaration of war.

They also argue that secret trials would be bad public relations for the United States.

Human rights lawyer Joanne Mariner argues that the "outcome of military proceedings will enjoy none of the legitimacy of results reached in normal civilian trials.

"Rather than being stigmatised as terrorists, defendants... may be seen as political prisoners - victims, not perpetrators."

Some European countries have made it clear that they will not extradite suspects to the US unless they have a guarantee the defendants will not face a military tribunal.

One Spanish prosecutor was categorical in his opposition: "No country in Europe could extradite detainees to the United States if there were any chance they could be put before these military tribunals."

The US has itself condemned military tribunals of its citizens in other countries, such as that of Lori Berenson, who was convicted of aiding terrorists in Peru.

Finally, the secrecy aspect of military courts concerns not only opponents, but even defenders such as Mr Dean.

In the case of the German saboteurs, the secrecy of the trial enabled the FBI and Justice Department to hide the fact that the convictions rested on the evidence of an informer among the infiltrators.

Six of the eight Germans were electrocuted on the day of their conviction, while the prosecution reneged on a deal to pardon the informant - who was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He served six years before being pardoned by President Harry Truman and being deported.

Those who argue for public trials point to the example of the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

Those trials, they say, showed the world the evil the Nazis had done.

Entering similar evidence of terrorist evil into the historical record would help convict them in the all-important court of public opinion, as well as in whatever court eventually tries them.

----

Court votes to limit deportation law

Around the Nation
Washington Times
January 11, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-25207036.htm

SAN FRANCISCO - The government cannot lock up without bail legal immigrants awaiting deportation hearings, a U.S. Court of Appeals said Wednesday when declaring unconstitutional a law that permitted the practice.

The ruling potentially affects thousands of legal immigrants who have been held without bail while immigration authorities attempt to deport them for criminal convictions. It does not apply to post-September 11 measures, under which more than 1,000 immigrants have been held for questioning.

----

Weapons ban ruled unconstitutional

Around the Nation
Washington Times
January 11, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-25207036.htm

CINCINNATI - A state judge yesterday blocked police from enforcing Ohio's decades-old ban on concealed weapons, ruling the law violated the state constitution.

Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman said the law effectively barred people from protecting themselves. Attorneys for the city of Cincinnati, the county and state said they would appeal the order.

----

Laid-off workers get nod for security jobs

By Tom Ramstack
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/business/20020111-29317840.htm

Laid-off airline industry workers and veterans will be given preference among applicants for the 30,000 new aviation-security jobs the federal government plans to fill in the next few months, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said yesterday.

Mr. Mineta joined Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans as speakers at a highly publicized job fair yesterday at the Washington Convention Center.

Mr. Mineta said many of the nation's current economic and unemployment problems followed "in the wake of the cowardly attacks of September 11." Since then, about 100,000 airline industry employees have been laid off.

The job fair yesterday was one of many job fairs across the United States the Transportation Department is using to recruit aviation-security personnel. However, many of the employers at the job fair were looking for workers unrelated to aviation security.

They included the telecommunications company Nextel Communications Inc., the construction company Cianbro, temporary help agency Kelly Services Inc., Embassy Suites hotels, the FBI, and the District of Columbia Office of Personnel.

Mike Culpepper, who staffed the booth for USA Jobs, an agency that helps place workers in federal jobs, said many of the job seekers asked about positions as medical personnel, truck drivers and sky marshals.

Most of the jobs pay wages ranging from $10 to $15 per hour. One of the highest salaries offered was from the technology and management firm TeAM Inc., which was willing to pay a senior systems engineer as much as $105,000 per year.

The new Transportation Security Administration has about 28,000 of openings for airport screeners. The other openings are for sky marshals and management staff.

The screeners will have starting salaries of more than $25,000 per year, which is a big increase over the roughly $16,000 per year average for private security firm screeners.

"The new agency will be directly responsible for creating a new transportation security force," Mr. Mineta said.

It begins the hiring and training "immediately," he said.

He denied that hiring such a large work force in a short period of time could lead to unqualified employees.

"The screening force will be a highly skilled and highly trained work force," Mr. Mineta said.

To avoid mistakes, the U.S. Transportation Department plans to rely on close supervision and training to ensure screeners do an adequate job of protecting the nation's airlines from terrorists.

The Transportation Department is scheduled to take over airport and airline security from private contractors on Feb. 17.

In addition to discussing jobs, the presidential Cabinet secretaries tried to drum up support for the Bush administration's economic stimulus proposals.

"The president is committed and has shown he is concerned about displaced workers," Mrs. Chao said.

The Labor Department sponsored the job fair yesterday based in part on the success of a similar job fair at the Washington Convention Center last July, she said.

A contributing reason was that the September 11 attack "devastated" the Washington economy, she said.

She referred primarily to layoffs among hospitality, tourism and airline industry workers in the Washington area.

Mr. Evans mentioned the economic stimulus proposals pending in Congress when he said, "The Senate needs to come back and act."

Among job seekers making a tour of employers' booths at the convention center was Elida Cruz, a 20-year-old University of the District of Columbia sophomore majoring in administration of justice. She hopes to become a probation officer but yesterday was searching for any kind of job in criminal justice.

Since September 11, she said she might be more interested in an airport screener job than before the attack.

"It just opened my eyes to see what an easy target we are," she said.

Another job seeker, who was merely seeing what options were available, was a Washington-based airport screener for Argenbright Security, the nation's largest airport-security firm.

He refused to give his name, but said, "I think when the government takes over, it's a good thing. There are too many people in management with green cards."

He was referring to foreign nationals who have Immigration and Naturalization Service permits to work in the United States.

Under the new Transportation Security Administration, only American citizens will be allowed to work as aviation-security agents.

The job fair included training seminars on how to find jobs or improve job skills.

One of the seminar leaders was Robert Tuch, who told job seekers how to advance their careers by improving their computer skills. He is a program specialist for Green Thumb, a job-placement agency.

"It looks to me here like predominantly younger workers," Mr. Tuch said of the job seekers. "I think generally they're optimistic."

----

Capitol Cop Charged in Anthrax Hoax

January 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Anthrax-Capitol-Police.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. Capitol Police officer was indicted Friday on charges of orchestrating an anthrax hoax.

The U.S. attorney's office said James J. Pickett was accused of making false statements and obstructing fellow members of the police force.

Prosecutors contend that on Nov. 7, Pickett left white powder at a police security station with an anonymous note saying to ``please inhale'' and claiming it was a ``Capitol Police training exercize.'' The note added, ``I hope you pass!''

If convicted, Pickett, 35, could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The Hart Senate Office Building remains closed because of a genuine anthrax-laced letter that arrived at Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office in October.

The Ford House Office Building has been closed several nights this week while efforts continue to kill more spores from a mailroom where anthrax was found.

-------- death penalty

Three Christians sentenced to death

By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020111-3473630.htm

China is cracking down harder than ever on its Christians, sentencing three persons to death in late December for Bible smuggling, operating an unauthorized church and "rape and hooliganism."

However, some China analysts say the rape charges against Gong Shengliang, 46, founder of South China Church in the Hubei Province 600 miles east of Beijing, were elicited from several women under torture.

Mr. Gong's niece, Li Ying, 46, another church leader, also was sentenced to death. Her sentence, which came with a two-year reprieve, may be commuted to life imprisonment.

The other death sentence, also delivered late last month, was handed to Li Guangqiang, a Hong Kong resident who has been jailed since May for importing 16,280 Bibles to an underground Christian group called the Shouters. He also is accused of arranging to have another 16,800 Bibles shipped later.

Mr. Li is not believed to be a member of the Shouters but only someone helping to deliver the Bibles on behalf of another Christian group based in Anaheim, Calif.

President Bush was said Monday to be "troubled" by the sentences, which are the first death sentences under the country's new anti-sect provisions, passed by a National Peoples Congress committee in 1999. This law was aimed chiefly at the Falun Gong.

The American government has protested Mr. Li's arrest, but Chinese officials have informed the U.S. Embassy in Beijing that Mr. Li's case is being handled according to Chinese law. Calls to the Chinese Embassy in Washington for comment went unreturned.

On Wednesday, Rep. Tom Lantos, California Democrat, said he had approached Chinese officials about releasing the Christians. "We call upon China as a member of the international community to meet international standards on freedom of religious expression and freedom of conscience," he said. "These are standards embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"The negative impact globally for punishing people for importing Bibles, at least in the Christian world, is so powerful that it is counterproductive," said Mr. Lantos, who is Jewish.

But the Chinese are not in a bargaining mood, said Carol Hamrin, a former China analyst at the State Department who teaches Asian studies at George Mason University.

"The Chinese have become more and more concerned how they are going to manage the growing social tensions there and the growing differences between the haves and have-nots," she said in an interview Wednesday. "This will escalate now they've joined the World Trade Organization. As long as they can keep people isolated from each other, they feel they can manage the country."

But religious groups such as the Shouters and Mr. Gong's 50,000-member church, which have not registered with the government, are threats to Beijing.

"They are going after groups that are getting large in numbers or crossing provincial lines," Mrs. Hamrin said. "When these unregistered church movements get foreign support, like Bibles, training and media coverage, the government feels it really has to crack down on them. So they use the charges of being a sect as a mechanism.

"In Leninist ideology, there are no diverse interest groups, as the Communist party should represent all interests."

She and Mickey Spiegel, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, both have sources saying testimony against Mr. Gong was extracted through torture. He was arrested months ago, but his secret three-day trial was not held until Dec. 18.

The Committee for Investigation on Persecution of Religion in China said the attorney for Mr. Gong told the prisoner little could be done because of political pressure.

"I have a family to take care of," the lawyer is said to have told him. "I have a little daughter who needs me." Numerous members of Mr. Gong's church were arrested along with their leader, the committee says. Two members are said to have died under torture, one a mother of a 5-year-old girl.

Rape accusations have been leveled against founders of two religious groups, both of whom were executed in 1995 and 1999. Some China watchers fear this may become a common accusation against church leaders as well.

What drives the government to distraction, Miss Spiegel said, is that many of the unregistered churches are decentralized and have elders instead of clergy. To be licensed by the government, a church must have a pastor.

"The Chinese government has basically no control over them and sees them as very threatening," she says. "Many of the members are hard-working Chinese farmers, and they worship in a way the Chinese government does not like. But they harm no one."

--------

NATIONAL
High Court to Rule on Challenge to Death Penalties in 9 States

New York Times
January 11, 2002
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/11/national/12CND-SCOT.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 - The Supreme Court agreed today to decide a potentially far-reaching challenge to the constitutionality of the death penalty laws in nine states where judges rather than juries make the crucial finding of whether a murder was committed with sufficiently "aggravating circumstances" to warrant a sentence of death.

Close to 800 death sentences in the nine states are potentially in question, depending on how the high court treats the retroactivity of a ruling in the defendants' favor. The case is from Arizona, where 128 people are on death row, and the court's decision will also apply to these states with similar laws: Florida, which has the country's third biggest death row with 385 inmates, along with Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Montana and Nebraska.

In the 29 other states that have the death penalty, as well as in the federal system, juries determine whether aggravating circumstances exist and weigh those against any mitigating circumstances.

In accepting an appeal from an Arizona death row inmate, Timothy S. Ring, convicted in 1994 of the murder of an armored truck driver during a robbery, the Supreme Court significantly expanded its continuing re-examination of the respective roles of judges and juries in criminal sentencing.

The new case is a logical if not inevitable outgrowth of the court's ruling in Apprendi v. New Jersey, in June 2000, which invalidated New Jersey's hate-crime law on the ground that it called upon the judge to make the central finding of motive that converted an ordinary crime into a hate crime that carried a longer sentence. Under the constitutional guarantees of due process and trial by jury, the court said, such a finding must be made by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Apprendi decision sent shock waves through the criminal justice system, calling into question a common approach to sentencing on the federal as well as the state level. Before granting the case today, Ring v. Arizona, No. 01-488, the court had already accepted two Apprendi-related cases for decision during the current term.

In one, Harris v. United States, No. 00-10666, the question is whether a fact that increases a mandatory minimum sentence - in this instance, whether a defendant was "brandishing" rather than just carrying a gun - must be found by the jury rather than the judge. The other case, United States v. Cotton, No. 01-687, raises the question of whether an automatic reversal is warranted for certain federal sentences that were imposed before the Apprendi decision but violated its requirement that factors that could increase a sentence must be charged in the indictment.

Although the most immediate impact of the Cotton decision will be on federal drug cases, in which the precise quantity of drugs was not charged in the indictment before the Apprendi decision, it could also have implications for the majority of death penalty states where juries make the finding of aggravating circumstances. In those states, as well as under the federal death penalty law, the potential aggravating factors - like an especially heinous and cruel murder, or one committed for pecuniary gain - are not charged in the indictment but are left for a separate sentencing hearing after conviction.

The host of questions raised by the Apprendi decision that are now reaching the court underscores Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's warning in her dissenting opinion in that case that its implications "could be colossal."

The Harris case will be argued in March, with the Cotton case and the new case to be argued in April. The justices accepted four new cases today, filling out the remainder of the decision calendar for the current term.

-------- terrorism

Grand jury indicts JDL members in plot

Around the Nation
Washington Times
January 11, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-25207036.htm

LOS ANGELES - The chairman and a member of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) were indicted yesterday on charges of conspiring to bomb a mosque and the office of an Arab-American congressman.

The indictment by a federal grand jury accuses JDL Chairman Irv Rubin, 56, and Earl Krugel, 59, of recruiting another person to plant the bombs.

Mr. Rubin and Mr. Krugel were arrested on Dec. 11. They are accused of planning to bomb King Fahd Mosque in Culver City and the office of Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican.

----

Bin Laden's terror mastermind identified

BY DANIEL MCGRORY,
The Times (UK)
FRIDAY JANUARY 11 2002
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2002018867,00.html

INVESTIGATORS believe that they have identified the terrorist mastermind picked by Osama bin Laden to carry out future attacks on the West.

Abu Zubeida, who was the group's director of external affairs, trained most of al-Qaeda's surviving terrorists and, now that several key figures have been killed in the US-led bombing raids, he has been entrusted with keeping the network going.

After thousands of hours of questioning al-Qaeda suspects captured in Afghanistan, Europe and the US, intelligence chiefs have identified Zubeida as the chief strategist behind the group's most notorious terrorist strikes.

He has cultivated close links with terrorist cells abroad, which is why it is thought that al-Qaeda made sure that he was safely smuggled out of Afghanistan.

Using one of his many disguises, Zubeida is thought to have slipped away from his hideout weeks ago, taking with him the secret of where al-Qaeda is hiding its surviving terrorists.

While others in al-Qaeda's high command never risked leaving their adopted base in Afghanistan, the elusive figure of Zubeida would use his various fake identities to travel abroad, including making a trip to Europe last year. One report suggests that he slipped through Iran before US and British Forces closed in on al-Qaeda's last hideouts.

What makes this manhunt so difficult is that Zubeida uses more than 40 aliases and has documents to match each bogus identity. Biographical details about him are vague. He is reported to be in his mid-thirties and is described as a tall, sullen figure.

Nobody is even sure where he came from, with Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the Gaza Strip variously given as his birthplace. There are no recent photographs of him and, surprisingly, his name does not appear on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

He has amassed a collection of passports, from Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt among others, and has travelled to Asia, Africa and even to Bosnia, cultivating links with his former terrorist students.

He poses as a businessman, or a honey salesman. Since September 11 his name has cropped up time and again in the evidence of al-Qaeda suspects and intelligence investigations.

He first came to prominence by organising the synchronised bomb attacks on the US Embassies in East Africa in 1998 which killed 224 people.

An intelligence file sent to the US State Department days before the suicide hijackers struck also named Zubeida as the architect of the bomb attack on the USS Cole in Aden in October 2000, when 17 sailors were killed.

Detectives who have questioned suspects held in Paris, Italy and Spain say that Zubeida was given the job of co-ordinating bomb attacks on targets in Europe, including the US Embassy in Paris. Only now have security experts under President Clinton disclosed that they tried to kidnap the elusive Zubeida in Sudan in March 2000, but he escaped again.

One of eight men held in jail as suspected Islamic terrorists under controversial new emergency laws has agreed to be sent to Morocco rather than face an indefinite stay in a British prison.

Djamel Ajouaou has had to leave behind his British wife and four-month-old daughter. The Moroccan-born transalator, who had lived in Britain for ten years, was taken to Heathrow airport by Scotland Yard detectives, who escorted him on the flight.

----

Terrorists taken to Guantanamo

By Rowan Scarborough,
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 11, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-17916105.htm

Captured remnants of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda army of terrorists and the Taliban militia began a 24-hour journey yesterday from their once-hospitable base in Afghanistan to a makeshift U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

TV network cameras recorded the dead-of-night transfer of the first 20 al Qaeda and Taliban members shipped to U.S.-controlled territory - the naval base on Cuba's southeastern shore.

Restrained and under heavy armed guard, the prisoners boarded an Air Force C-17 at Kandahar's U.S.-run airport. The captives were to stop at an undisclosed U.S. base as the cargo jet refuels, then arrive at Guantanamo sometime today for induction into a prison called Camp X-Ray.

"These are people who are willing to sacrifice their lives at the expense of ours," said Marine Corps Capt. Riccoh Player, a Pentagon spokesman. "Is it unreasonable to handcuff and shackle these folks? I don't think so."

After the C-17 went airborne, Marines exchanged gunfire with forces outside the airport. "It was a pocket of resistance probing the lines there," a military official said.

The brief exchange, in which no Marine was wounded, underscored that al Qaeda allies remain active in Afghanistan three weeks after a multiethnic, interim government replaced the Taliban in Kabul.

The Caribbean's balmy year-round climate will allow the military to keep the detainees in outside cells.

But Cuba will be no vacation. The Taliban and the al Qaeda, who ran bin Laden's terrorist training camps and helped keep the radical Taliban in power, will find minimal living conditions as the United States continues interrogations begun in Kandahar. The United States blames bin Laden and his al Qaeda network for the September 11 attacks on America.

President Bush has vowed to stamp out the global terror network, and officials view these first detainees as windows into how the group works.

The military is taking extraordinary security precautions, mindful that bin Laden's warriors are much like the terrorists he sends overseas: murderous and suicidal. Each prisoner is shackled and secured to his seat while guarded by detachments of Army or Air Force military police.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon that he insisted the military study the Taliban-al Qaeda uprising at Mazar-e-Sharif and other incidents to learn how best to secure this extremely explosive prison population.

"They're fully aware that these are dangerous individuals," he said.

The Bush administration is evaluating each detainee's role in al Qaeda, whether to charge them criminally and whether to try them in a civilian court or in a more restrictive military tribunal.

The detainees already have been photographed, fingerprinted, identified and questioned while in Afghanistan. In Cuba, they will be grilled again as new intelligence surfaces.

"The truth is that at some point you get what you think you can get from a given individual," the defense secretary said, "but you know in the back of your mind that you may discover some intelligence material or a laptop or an address book in a house in Kabul that would connect this person. So you know that after you've gone through the first interrogation, it's best to wait a bit and see what other kinds of information comes up from other people, from computers, from various other types of intelligence gathering."

At "Gitmo," as sailors affectionately call the base at Fidel Castro's back door, the detainees will be held in fenced compounds fortified by razor wire and patrolled by military police and Marines. Spotlights will continuously highlight their small chain-link cells. The camp can now hold 100 prisoners. A more permanent facility now under construction will increase capacity to 2,000.

With the 20 en route to Cuba, 331 detainees are now being held in Kandahar and one, American Taliban member John Walker, at sea on an amphibious ship that carries Marines.

U.S. Central Command, which is running the campaign in Afghanistan, has not decided how many of the 331 will go to Cuba. Walker's fate is being decided by the U.S. Justice Department and likely President Bush himself.

Anti-Taliban forces are thought to hold thousands of Taliban militia members.

The United States does not hold any top-level al Qaeda or Taliban members. Apparently, the highest bin Laden associate in custody is one of his terror camp directors turned over by Pakistan last week. On Sunday, American commandos captured two al Qaeda fighters of interest to interrogators and turned them over to authorities in Kandahar.

The Pentagon to date has declined to identify any of the detainees or describe their functions. Spokesmen have said information gathered from them and physical evidence such as computer hard drives and cell phones have allowed them to foil planned terror attacks. The intelligence gathering alone could go on for more than a year in Afghanistan.

"You don't hurry through this," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "When you're talking about defending against terrorist actions against this country and our friends and allies around the world, you take your time and you try to do it right. And that's what we're doing."

Pentagon officials dismissed assertions made yesterday by the new governor of Kandahar that his forces accepted the surrenders of former Taliban Cabinet members and then released them back into Afghan society.

Mr. Rumsfeld has made it clear it wants the interim rulers to turn over to the United States any significant Taliban or al Qaeda members. The Pentagon fear is that remaining Taliban fighters will attempt to regroup and challenge the eventual elected rulers and that al Qaeda members will flee to another country to set up terror cells.

----

Container flight

January 11, 2002
Washington Times
Inside the Ring,
by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020111-93289104.htm

U.S. intelligence officials said evidence that al Qaeda terrorists were fleeing Afghanistan by sea has been obtained.

A recent search of a foreign freighter by the U.S. Navy revealed that a group of al Qaeda fighters had been hiding inside a shipping container, officials told us. Inside the container, searchers found materials and equipment linked to the terrorist group, but not the terrorists themselves. The group apparently escaped from the large metal container a short time before the ship was searched.

The discovery prompted an increase in surveillance of ships, as well as trucks carrying shipping containers leaving Afghanistan for Pakistani ports.

Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Staff, told reporters recently that U.S. forces in Southwest Asia have probed "hundreds" of ships. "We have done permissive boardings [but] we've not come up with anybody that we're looking for," Adm. Stufflebeem said.

When ship crews cooperate with U.S. searchers, "the information we're getting prevents us from having to go aboard the ship," he said.

"The pressure is constant. It's not going to change," Adm. Stufflebeem said.

Al Qaeda, led by millionaire Osama bin Laden, has access to scores of tramp freighters operated by business fronts for the terror group.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Irish green light for world's biggest offshore wind farm

DUBLIN (AFP)
Jan 11, 2002
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/020111111910.ux8q2rhf.html

Ireland's government has given the go-ahead to build the world's biggest offshore wind farm on a sandbank in the Irish Sea, south of Dublin, Marine minister Frank Fahey said on Friday.

The 630-million-euro (562-million-dollar) development will produce 10 percent of the country's electricity needs when completed.

Fahey said the development by the Irish Eirtricity consortium would have "three times the combined capacity of all offshore wind farms currently in production in the world."

The state will receive up to 1.9 million euros a year from Eirtricity in rentals and royalties for use of the sandbank.

"It is a very big power station. It will allow the development of a 200-turbine, 520-megawatts (MW) wind farm providing electricity from the cleanest energy in the world," Fahey said.

An environmental impact statement has been carried out on the development and Fahey issued a foreshore licence for the project -- which is effectively planning permission at sea.

Fahey said there had been wide public consultation on the plan and no objections. Eight submissions had been received, all of them in favour.

Construction of the development, about seven kilometres (four miles) off Arklow, County Wicklow, is to begin in the spring, with the first phase, involving 60 megawatts, expected to be generating power by the autumn.

The sandbank, known as the Arklow Bank, runs north-south along the coast and measures about 27 kilometers by 2.5 kilometers with water depths of between five and 25 metres.

Phase one will replace 330 million euros of imported fossil fuels and the social benefit of avoided pollution is estimated at 25 million euros.

Fahey said the turbines, which will rise 80 metres from the sea, would be visible from the coast in clear weather.

"Given that it is pretty well offshore, it shouldn't be a major impact on the scenic amenity or on tourism," he said.

"Otherwise it is all positive. Wind energy is clean. We will be able to reduce our levels of carbon dioxide by some 13.5 million tonnes. In the context of our Kyoto targets, it will have a major impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

The Kyoto Protocol was drawn up in December 1997 as a blueprint for reducing "greenhouse gases" -- the carbon-based pollutants from burning fossil fuels that are blamed for global warming.

-------- environment

Bush Plan Would Double 'Brownfields' Cleanup Funds

WASHINGTON IN BRIEF Friday, January 11, 2002; Page A05

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28768-2002Jan10?language=printer

The Bush administration will propose doubling spending next year on cleaning up abandoned industrial sites in urban areas, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday.

Christine Todd Whitman said the administration's proposal for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 seeks $102 million more than the $98 million Congress appropriated this year for brownfields cleanup.

"This is something Congress was trying to get for 10 years," Whitman told the Associated Press. "

Congress in December approved a five-year program awarding as much as $250 million a year to state and local governments and Indian tribes for cleaning up 450,000 polluted industrial sites, including $50 million annually for administrative costs. President Bush plans to sign that legislation into law during a visit today to Conshohocken, Pa.

--------

POLITICS
Bush Approves $1.2 Billion Industry Cleanup Bill

January 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Brownfields.html

CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. (AP) -- President Bush praised Democratic and Republican cooperation Friday as he signed an environmental cleanup bill that he said proves Congress can step away from political fights and ``do what's right for America first.''

Bush made a whirlwind morning visit to Conshohocken to sign into law a five-year plan to provide up to $250 million a year to states, local governments and Indian tribes to clean up polluted industrial sites known as brownfields.

The legislation also helps protect cities and businesses from lawsuits as they seek to develop brownfield sites. Many had shied away, fearing they would be held responsible for toxic waste cleanup.

Bush signed the bill inside the Millennium Corporate Center, a technology complex beside the Schuylkill River where a steel plant once stood. Before redevelopment, the 30-acre area was closed off by chain-link fences and littered with stacks of old tires, scrap metal and other industrial trash.

``American cities have many such eyesores,'' Bush said. ``These areas once supported manufacturing and commerce, and now lie empty, adding nothing of value to the community and sometimes only causing problems. ... When a business develops a brownfield, it turns a stagnant plot of land into a productive neighborhood.''

Friday's trip was the seventh time Bush has visited Pennsylvania since he took office a year ago. It was his second journey away from Washington this week for a bill signing; Tuesday, the president went to Ohio to sign education legislation into law.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president has chosen to sign bills away from the White House to demonstrate ``how the things that take place in Washington touch real people's lives in their communities and at home.''

``Not everything is Washington-based,'' Fleischer said.

Bush said the brownfields package, in the works for 10 years, was passed because Republicans and Democrats decided to set aside their differences.

``It shows what can happen when people say, `I'm proud of my political party, but I'm more proud of my country, and I'm in Washington, D.C., to do what's right for America first,''' Bush said.

``It is the best of Washington when people decide to cooperate, not bicker.''

House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., said he holds Republicans at fault for disputes that left the brownfields bill in limbo for seven years. Like Bush, he said he hopes that passage is a harbinger of future cooperation on environmental legislation.

``They finally adopted a more conciliatory approach, and they were able to find success,'' Gephardt said. ``This is a great example of bipartisan cooperation ... one that shows true progress on environmental matters that we hope can be repeated throughout the new year.''

Bush said he also plans to double spending next year on brownfields cleanup. Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said Bush's 2003 budget proposal will seek $102 million more than the $98 million Congress appropriated this year.

After raising the spending level to $200 million, Whitman said, the administration may propose spending $250 million in fiscal 2004.

So far the government has handed out $2 million of the $98 million available this year. Ten recipients, ranging from nonprofit groups to local governments such as the District of Columbia, are getting $200,000 each in a brownfields job training pilot program.

The EPA has received more than 100 applications from states and other entities seeking money to assess the extent of pollution on individual brownfield sites. Thirty-two of those will be awarded money.

On the Net: EPA: http://www.epa.gov/brownfields
Trust for Public Land: http://www.tpl.org

-------- genetics

Canadian organic farmers sue Monsanto on GM crops

CANADA: January 11, 2002
REUTERS
Story by Kanina Holmes
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13999/story.htm

WINNIPEG, Manitoba - A group of Canadian organic farmers launched a lawsuit against biotech giants Monsanto Co. and Aventis SA on Thursday seeking compensation for damages caused by genetically modified canola they say is blowing into their fields.

"Organic farmers in Saskatchewan have said that the time has come for this legal challenge and we're here today to let the world know that," Marc Loiselle, a board member of the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate (SOD), a group representing organic producers in the province, told a news conference.

"We claim that the two companies, Monsanto and Aventis, are responsible for GE (genetically engineered) contamination on multiple grounds and we're confident that this will be proven in the court of law," Loiselle told reporters in Saskatoon.

Two organic farmers filed the class action lawsuit in Saskatoon court on behalf of all organic farmers in the province, the heart of Canada's bread basket. The legal action is also aimed at halting plans to introduce transgenic wheat in the region.

There are about 1,000 organic growers in Saskatchewan, whose farms represent about 1 million acres (405,700 hectares). SOD alleges that genetically engineered crops threaten the environment and their industry.

"Any kind of science, whatever it is, if it's infringing on our rights, they don't have a right to do it, said Arnold Taylor, an organic grower and president of SOD.

The amount of compensation being sought has yet to be determined, but Taylor estimates it will be "in the millions."

Organizations that certify crops as organic have zero tolerance for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the seed supply. They also prohibit organic farmers from applying most crop chemicals. Instead, organic farmers rely on crop rotation, which includes the staggered planting of canola and wheat, to control weeds.

SWITCH TO TRANSGENIC CANOLA

Many farmers across Western Canada have switched to transgenic canola since GM varieties were introduced in Canada in the mid 1990s, citing better weed control and yields. Today, about 60 percent of the canola grown in Saskatchewan is genetically modified to resist weeds.

Canola, the Canadian variant of rapeseed, is used mainly to produce processed food ingredients, cooking oils, and livestock feed. Canada is the world's largest canola exporter.

Organic producers say that pollen from GM canola, which is patented by Monsanto and Aventis, is blowing on to their fields, contaminating their crops and their seed supply, and driving away premium-paying customers, most of whom are in Europe.

"They're trying to make these companies pay for their losses that were sustained by them from having removed a crop, an entire crop from their selection of crops," Terry Zakreski, the farmers' lawyer told Reuters, noting that this is believed to be the first lawsuit of its kind in Canada.

"They want to stop them from introducing another crop that could economically destroy them if it's allowed to happen," said Zakreski.

Agricultural sciences company, Monsanto, which produces Roundup Ready canola, one of the most widely grown GM varieties, has recently conducted field trials across Western Canada to develop genetically modified Roundup Ready wheat.

The plants are genetically modified to be unaffected when the herbicide Roundup in used on the fields to control weeds.

"To me it's just a matter of continuing to give farmers choice in terms of what they grow. And farmers make choices whether they grow organic or conventional or transgenic, and they make those choices based on what works for them on their farm," said Monsanto Canada spokeswoman Trish Jordan.

Monsanto has said that it will not commercially release GM wheat until concerns about segregation and market acceptance are addressed.

SOD announced its intention to sue the biotech companies last year, but said new legislation in Saskatchewan permitting class action lawsuits paved the way for Thursday's announcement.


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