------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
FedEx shipment from Sweden has radiation leak
Uranium spill at Australian mine appears contained
Conservationists, legislators say uranium mine should close
UN Nuclear Agency Officials in N.Korea
Russian Defense to Get New Missile
U.S., Russian Officials Discuss Deep Nuclear Cuts
The battle of Yucca Mountain
Sununu could not have been more insulting, and ignorant

MILITARY
Russian Delegation Opens Talks in D.C.
Cold, Hunger Prey on Latest Wave of Afghan Refugees
U.S. forces destroy huge al Qaeda base
Day 100: another raid in the bombing war without end
U.S. Forces Search for More Al Qaeda Complexes
Bombing Halted For Residual Taliban
U.S. urges Israel to defer arms sales to India
US supports Phalcon sale to India by Israel
BioPort gets anthrax vaccine OK
Colombians in rebel zone nervous as army masses
Envoys get rebels back to peace talks
U.N. negotiator arrives in Iraq, seeks new deal
Israel sends in its death squads and more bulldozers
U.S. helped Israel track weapons ship
Key Militia Leader Dies in Bomb Blast in the West Bank
NATO searches 4,200 ships in bid to track Osama
Tensions high as Pakistan crackdown targets militants
Pakistan arrests more militants
Pakistani cleric warns of Islamic revolution
1,430 Being Held in Pakistan as Part of Terror Crackdown
Media and War, Appearance and Reality
No 'need to know'
Paying for the peace dividend
America the humble
32 dead in clash during mass rally in southern Philippines
U.S. book claims bin Laden met Iran intelligence officer
U.N. chief to attend Tokyo meeting on Afghanistan
War Wrap
U.S. Expands Military Ties Worldwide
U.S. Embassy In Yemen Threatened
Levin: U.S. Should Mull Saudi Bases

POLICE / PRISONERS
High Court Clarifies Border Powers
Delays Cited In Charging Detainees
CIA: Bin Laden Escaped Afghanistan
UPI hears ...
White powder sent to McDonald's restaurants in Sydney

ENERGY AND OTHER
Australia state, CitiPower in A$40 mln green deal
Arsenic found contaminating Bangladeshi crops
Bush team alters rules on wetlands
Justice gets aggressive in prosecuting federal environmental crimes
Peru mining town looks beyond environmental mess
U.S. study finds gene may cut short human life
Defectors tell of human rights violations

ACTIVISTS
Russia slams U.S. diplomats it says joined protest
"Bin Laden pierced their hearts with his message" - Galloway



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- accidents

FedEx shipment from Sweden has radiation leak

Reuters:
15/1/2002
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=14037

MEMPHIS - A leak occurred in a radioactive shipment that travelled from Sweden through Memphis to New Orleans from December 27 to December 31 via FedEx, a company spokeswoman said yesterday.

Despite the leak, no one appears to have been harmed, said Sandra Munoz, a FedEx spokeswoman at its Memphis headquarters. The leak was first noticed when the container was delivered to its final destination in New Orleans.

The cause of the leak is now under investigation by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, Munoz said.

Studsvik AB, a Swedish nuclear technology firm, shipped two steel containers of iridium-192.

This is an industrial radiation source used for such purposes as x-raying machinery.

The containers went to Stockholm's Arlanda airport, and a FedEx plane flew them to the cargo company's hub operation at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, Munoz said.

Both shipments arrived in Memphis on December 28, and one container was flown on to California.

That container has not had any problems, FedEx said. The second container went to New Orleans, and the recipient, Source Production and Equipment Co, went to pick up the container and discovered the leak.

The container went to Source Production's facility in St Rose, Louisiana, near New Orleans, FedEx said. It was then placed behind a lead and concrete shield, where it remains today to prevent further exposure.

-------- australia

Uranium spill at Australian mine appears contained

Reuters:
15/1/2002
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=14029

SYDNEY - A spill of thousands of litres of radioactive solution at an Australian uranium mine was being contained and an initial inspection indicated workers and the environment were not in danger, authorities said yesterday.

South Australia state's acting minister for minerals and energy, Rob Lucas, said the initial findings of the South Australia Radiation Protection Branch indicated there had been no risk to workers, the public or the environment.

He said most of the spill - totalling around 60,000 litres of uranium solution - was contained within the mine's evaporation ponds after the incident. The accident happened on Friday but was not made public till the weekend.

"The mine is not currently in production mode and will not recommence until approvals are given," Lucas said in a statement.

The leak spilled onto a 400 square metre site at the outback Beverley mine 600 km (370 miles) north of Adelaide when a plastic elbow pipe ruptured during routine maintenance work, the mine's operator, Heathgate Resources Ltd said.

About 70 workers at the remote mine site are flown in typically for two-week work stints. The closest community to the mine is an Aboriginal settlement some 60 km (37 miles) away, Heathgate vice president Stephen Middleton told Reuters.

Middleton said Heathgate's U.S.-based parent, General Atomic, would keep the mine idle until at least the end of this week while the site was cleaned up and further inspections into the cause of the incident were completed.

"The loss of any production is secondary to ensuring the integrity of the mining operation," Middleton said.

Heathgate captures uranium contained in sand by injecting oxygen to create an "in situ" leaching solution that is dried, leaving talc-like uranium, or yellowcake.

The mine is designed to yield about 1,000 tonnes of the hazardous material a year, used to run nuclear power plants in the United States and Japan.

Middleton said the spillage was highly diluted and had largely evaporated or soaked into the ground.

The Australian Conservation Foundation, an environmental group opposed to in situ uranium mining, said any move to restart the mine prior to any independent assessment of the accident would be unacceptable.

"At a minimum, mining at Beverley must be halted until there has been a detailed and independent assessment of what went wrong and what the impacts are," said a nuclear campaigner for the foundation, Dave Sweeney.

----

Conservationists, legislators say uranium mine should close after radioactive leak

Tuesday, January 15, 2002
By Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/01/01152002/ap_46130.asp

CANBERRA, Australia - Conservationists and legislators on Sunday said a uranium mine should be temporarily closed after 60,000 liters (15,600 gallons) of radioactive fluid leaked from a pipe at the site in South Australia state.

The leak, at the Beverley mine 600 kilometers (372 miles) north of the state capital Adelaide, occurred Friday, but was not revealed publicly until Saturday night.

A spokesman for mine operator, Heathgate Resources, said the liquid comprised salty ground water, sulfuric acid, uranium, and oxygen and was "naturally radioactive."

The spill had been contained in a drain surrounding the plant, spokesman Stephen Middleton said. "There was no spillage beyond the immediate plant area. There's been no impact on the environment and no impact on worker's safety," he said.

Sandra Cake, deputy leader of the Australian Democrats party in the state legislature, said the leak had to be taken seriously because the mine was "very, very close" to a major underground water catchment area known as the Great Artesian Basin. "It matters a great deal and we should not allow this mine to continue operating when we do not know that things are safe," Cake told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

The Australian Conservation Foundation said the mine should not resume operation until a full public inquiry had been completed.

The Foundation spokesman said the technique used at the mine, known as in situ leach or ISL and involving pumping acid underground, was not approved in any other OECD country and had caused serious pollution in eastern Europe. "At a minimum, mining at Beverley must be halted until there has been a detailed and independent assessment of what went wrong and what the impacts are," he said.

South Australia's acting Minerals and Energy Minister Rob Lucas on Saturday night said there would be a full inquiry.

South Australia's chief inspector of mines was to visit the site Monday with inspectors from the government's radiation protection branch, he said.

-------- korea

UN Nuclear Agency Officials in N.Korea

By Vanessa Gera
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, January 15, 2002; 6:58 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47467-2002Jan15?language=printer

VIENNA, Austria -- A team of international experts from the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency arrived in North Korea on Tuesday to visit nuclear facilities, a spokeswoman said.

Three senior inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and were scheduled to continue on to nuclear facilities in the Nyongbyon area, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

It is the first official visit by agency representatives at the Nyongbyon complex's isotope production laboratory, an installation which North Korean leaders say is used to develop nuclear materials for medical and industrial purposes.

In November, the North Korean government agreed to allow agency officials to visit the site, insisting however that the technical experts only visit and not carry out an inspection.

North Korea was a member of the IAEA until 1994, when it chose to pull out. Since that time, it has been under pressure to resume normal relations with the group and allow inspections of its nuclear facilities.

Agency officials view the North Korean decision to allow international officials to visit the site as a gesture toward normalizing relations with the organization.

Nuclear experts fear that the North Korean government could be diverting peaceful nuclear materials into a clandestine weapons program.

"This is a small but welcome step toward a return to full-fledged inspections required under North Korea's safeguards agreement," the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said in a statement.

Since 1993, the group has been unable to verify whether North Korea's nuclear inventory corresponds to what it declared to have in 1992.

The agency has said that even if North Korea allowed full-fledged inspections, it would take the group three to four years to verify that all nuclear materials have been declared to the agency.

Although no longer a member of the U.N. nuclear agency, North Korea has allowed some of the group's officials to be stationed permanently at Nyongbyon. The officials monitor an agreement that freezes certain facilities that could be used to divert weapons-grade materials.

The three nuclear experts are scheduled to finish their visit of the North Korean facilities on Saturday, Fleming said.

-------- russia

Russian Defense to Get New Missile

January 15, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-New-Missile.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- A new Russian missile that can target stealth aircraft and intermediate-range ballistic missiles will be ready for operation late this year or in early 2003, a news agency reported Tuesday.

The Interfax-Military News Agency said that tests of the air defense missile, the S-400 Triumph, will take place soon, according to an unidentified spokesman for the air defense troops.

The spokesman didn't say how many missiles would be deployed or where.

Russia's air force chief Col. Gen. Anatoly Kornukov initially said the first examples of the S-400 would enter duty in late 2001. He said the missile's deployment had taken longer than planned because of funding shortages and technical problems.

Details on the new missile have been scarce, but Russian military observers have said it can hit targets up to 250 miles away and engage stealth aircraft. The latest versions of its predecessor, the S-300, have a a range of 124 miles.

While the S-300 can shoot down short-range missiles, the S-400 can engage intermediate range ballistic missiles that have a range of 2,170 miles, according to an official Russian arms catalog.

When Russia proposed last year to create a joint missile defense system with Western European countries, Russian military officials mentioned both the S-300 and S-400 as possible components. The proposal, seen largely as an attempt to rally European criticism against the U.S. missile defense plan, has been short on detail and was quietly shelved.

The Interfax-Military News Agency also reported that the Russian military plans to upgrade the existing S-300 missiles to the higher S-300 PMU2 Favorite standard. A new short-range air defense missile, the Pantsyr, will also become operational this year, it said.

Russia's air defense troops will receive new radars in Russia's far north, northeast, central Siberia and the Far East, the report said. It added that more than 50 percent of air defense units took part in live firing exercises last year compared to 20 percent in 1997 and 40 percent in 2000.

-------- treaties

U.S., Russian Officials Discuss Deep Nuclear Cuts

January 15, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-russia-usa.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and Russian defense officials on Tuesday began a two-day planning meeting on joint nuclear arms cuts, with a spotlight on U.S. plans to store -- not destroy -- many of its thousands of warheads.

U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith met privately with Russia's first deputy chief of staff, Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, and they then joined their delegations in a third-floor conference room at U.S. military headquarters.

No details of the initial round of planning were expected before they were completed late on Wednesday. But Russia was expected to repeat objections to U.S. storage of perhaps hundreds of strategic warheads now on missiles and bombs.

Both countries have pledged to reduce by about two-thirds their currently deployed Cold War strategic nuclear arsenals of more than 6,000 warheads each over the coming decade.

But Assistant Defense Secretary J.D. Crouch told reporters last week the United States planned to store at least some of the removed warheads for possible emergency redeployment.

The Russian Foreign Ministry quickly urged Washington to fulfill pledges to proceed with real cuts, saying, ``That means strategic nuclear weapons must be cut not only 'on paper'.''

``We are certainly not trying to mislead anybody,'' Crouch said when pressed by reporters on why all of the U.S. warheads to be taken off of missiles and aircraft would not be destroyed.

``We think it is a major step in the right direction that we are able to move those (deployed) forces down to significantly lower levels. And we also think it is a prudent thing to have, in a very uncertain period, some responsive capability.''

FIRST OF SEVERAL ROUNDS THIS YEAR

Baluyevsky was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency before departing Moscow as saying the bilateral talks would be followed by other rounds in the coming months ahead of an expected visit by President Bush to Moscow at mid-year for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Bush has vowed to cut the deployed U.S. arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads, while Putin has said he plans cuts to between 1,500 and 2,200.

Putin, at a 2001 summit with Bush in Texas, raised questions about what the United States planned to do with the warheads that it removed from missiles and bombers.

A senior U.S. diplomat expressed confidence ahead of the Pentagon meeting that a deal would be reached with Russia that could quell fears about the U.S. plans.

``The Russians have fired their opening salvo on the issue but I think we'll be able to wrestle it to the ground,'' the diplomat told reporters on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Pentagon talks, which follow a December 2001 meeting in Brussels between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov, were another sign of the warming security relationship between the former Cold War foes.

Also on the agenda for the talks was the U.S. plan to develop a strategic missile defense over objections from Russia and China. Bush announced last month that Washington would withdraw in six months from the 1972 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty, which prohibits such defenses.

Bush says new threats have emerged from ``rogue states'' including Iran, Iraq and North Korea and the Sept. 11 attacks on America have further fueled arguments for a strong defense.

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

-------- nevada

The battle of Yucca Mountain

EDITORIAL
January 15, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020115-72458440.htm

Another act in the radioactive drama of Yucca Mountain began last week. As expected, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham gave a glowing review to developing the mountain (located somewhere near "Nowhere, Nevada") as a storage facility for high-level nuclear waste. This provoked a heated response from Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, who complained, "This decision stinks."

The governor and the administration will probably be exchanging a few more unfriendly lines, since President Bush is expected to approve the project, and Mr. Guinn is expected to veto it. Since Congress has ultimate authority in that case, and since Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has already vowed to kill the project, the sequence would set the stage for (sigh) another election-year confrontation between the administration and Senate Democrats.

All of this is entirely predictable. In the first place, taxpayers have already fronted nearly $7 billion for the project's development. While (predictably) no one, including the Energy Department, is certain how much the final project will cost, it could rise to $50 billion. That's serious money, even by Beltway standards.

However, so is the problem that the repository has been designed to solve, namely, the continuing buildup of high-level nuclear waste. Each year, about 2,000 tons of excess plutonium, spent nuclear fuel and other high level radioactive waste are added to the already existent 40,000 tons. That waste is currently being stored at 131 different sites in 39 states around the country. However, those sites are running out of room - the Nuclear Energy Institute estimates that by 2010, when (hopefully), the curtain will officially lift on the repository at Yucca Mountain, nearly 80 percent of nuclear power plants will have exhausted their storage capacities.

Such short-sighted storage has scripted a tragedy in-waiting. Mr. Abraham correctly cited national security as a primary reason for moving forward with the Yucca repository, since by explosively releasing containment, a terrorist could turn any one of those storage sites into a "dirty" radioactive bomb. A consolidated repository at Yucca would fulfill the solution offered by Mark Twain's Puddn'head Wilson, "Put all your eggs in one basket and - watch that basket."

Moreover, if a terrorist did somehow penetrate security at the Yucca repository, he would face the problem of having to penetrate a mountain to cause a radioactive problem. Such a drama would play out a long way away from any significant population centers, but near the Nevada Test Site, where numerous explosive nuclear dramas have already run.

It can only be hoped that Senate Democrats decide to respond with a chorus of "Ayes" at the denouement of the decision on the Yucca repository later this year.

----

Sununu could not have been more insulting, and ignorant

Tuesday, January 15, 2002
Las Vegas Review-Journal
COLUMN: John L. Smith
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2002/Jan-15-Tue-2002/news/17868509.html

Hey, that was quick.

Even in the long, twisted political history of Yucca Mountain, where politicians and nuclear pitchmen have often melted down, rarely has a man managed so swiftly to sound like a moron and alienate himself from an entire state population in fewer than 100 words.

Talk about efficiency.

Barely a day after Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced his endorsement of Yucca as a high-level nuclear waste dump site over the vociferous objections of lowly Nevada, pro-nuke lobbyist John Sununu chimed in and managed to question our state's patriotic heart while insulting generations of residents.

"If I were advising Nevada long term, I would suggest they do whatever they have to do politically in a way that doesn't create resentment in the country," Sununu told a Review-Journal reporter. "If Nevada is not willing to do its part in what is part of a national plan for homeland security ... maybe Americans ought to vacation somewhere else."

Believe it or not, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually pays Sununu to open his mouth on this issue.

What will he do for his next trick, desecrate our state flag? Pluck a mountain bluebird? Gun down a desert bighorn?

If Nevada is not willing to do its part?

Nevada Test Site workers and their families, please rise and introduce yourself to Mr. Sensitivity. You toiled for decades during the heart of the Cold War to ensure the United States stayed ahead of the atomic weapons race. You were there for 928 nuclear bomb tests. You made certain America won the world's most dangerous game.

And you paid the price. Many, who were later diagnosed with cancer, suffered for their loyalty. Many more of the downwinders afflicted by radioactive fallout paid our Cold War debts with their lives.

Nevadans are only now beginning to understand the level of contamination present in the groundwater around the test site.

If Nevada is not willing to do its part?

Nellis Air Force Base has been doing more than its share of heavy lifting in its more than 50 years, training the best fighter pilots on the planet and making sure the United States maintained its air superiority.

There's tiny Indian Springs with its proud history of military service, and the Fallon Naval Air Station. At Fallon, the presence of a leukemia cluster in the rural farming community has been linked by some to fuel emissions from the air base.

From Wendover, where the crew of the Enola Gay prepared for its atomic mission, to Hawthorne's vast ammunition storage facility, Nevada has played an integral role in the defense of this nation for generations.

Sununu's remarks not only insulted Nevadans but potentially residents of every state along the nuclear waste transportation route. That's 43 in all.

Ironically, his observation might have provided a boost to Nevada's flagging spirits following Abraham's announcement. On Monday, Mayor Oscar Goodman and Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera announced they were sending a letter to President Bush critical of Abraham and the site selection process.

At Nellis, U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign blasted Sununu's fighting words. He provided them with further confirmation that those forcing nuclear waste down our throats are only too happy to take cheap shots.

"The Department of Energy for 20 years has been trying to sell Nevada on the (idea of accepting) nuclear waste, there's lots of good things in it for you. Nevadans have not agreed," Reid said. "There's a small group of people that would prostitute the state of Nevada. I have said and will continue to say, we are not in the business of being whores and, therefore, we are not going to talk about price."

If it were really a matter of national security, Reid noted, perhaps as governor of New Hampshire Sununu should have embraced a nuclear waste storage site in that state.

"He did everything he could, and he was successful, at keeping nuclear waste out of New Hampshire," he said. "So he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth."

And they actually pay Sununu to speak.

John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@lvrj.com or call him at 383-0295.


-------- MILITARY

Russian Delegation Opens Talks in D.C.

By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Tuesday, January 15, 2002; 3:32 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46912-2002Jan15?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- A Russian military delegation is holding two days of talks with top Pentagon officials on cooperating against new terrorism threats and creating a new military relationship overall.

The two sides will look for ways to shield themselves against a terrorist attack, especially from so-called rogue states, a senior Bush administration official told The Associated Press.

On the agenda are prospective joint military exercises with the American and Russian troops, based on the concept that the United States and Russia have long ceased being adversaries and are now friends, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Still, there are areas of difference, including Russian technology sales to Iran, the official said. Iran is believed to be engaged in a program to develop nuclear weapons and American officials fear that Russian technology could give the program a boost.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks heightened Russia's interest in countering terrorism and cooperating with the United States against it, the official said.

The two countries are not in a hostile relationship and have met several times in Washington and Moscow since the onset of the Bush administration a year ago to plot joint efforts. The official said Russia clearly was interested in working with the United States on joint improvements in security that could produce an understanding when President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold talks next spring in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Last week another senior U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States would be willing to help Russia in an anti-missile venture and provide technology for such a program.

The Bush administration is embarked on an ambitious program to develop a shield against a missile attack from such states as Iran and North Korea, as well as terrorist cells, and Bush is withdrawing the United States from a 1972 treaty with Moscow that barred the kind of missile defense tests now in the offing.

At the same time the two sides are committed to major reductions in the arsenals of strategic offensive nuclear weapons.

At their November meetings in Washington and in Texas, Bush pledged to cut back to 1,700 to 2,200 long-range warheads from the current U.S. level of about 7,000. Putin said Russia, which has about 6,000 strategic warheads, would respond in kind.

However, the Russian leader suggested that mutual reductions be incorporated into a treaty. Bush, who has voiced skepticism about such binding agreements, did not go along with that suggestion.

But since their meetings, senior U.S. officials have expressed a willingness to "put something on paper" if Russia insisted on it.

The Russian delegation is headed by Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the no. 2 official in the Russian military establishment. Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, heads the U.S. group.

-------- afghanistan

Cold, Hunger Prey on Latest Wave of Afghan Refugees

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 15, 2002; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45495-2002Jan14.html

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan -- The children cough constantly from the cold, and their hands are as black and parched as elephant skin. Their parents huddle in patched quilt tents, warming tea and bread that will be their families' only food for the day.

They are the newest refugees from war and drought in Afghanistan -- some from southern deserts who have lost their flocks of sheep to thirst, others from northern cities who fear persecution by ethnic militias in the wake of the ruling Taliban's collapse, and still others who have fled U.S. bombing around the nearby city of Kandahar.

According to U.N. refugee officials, some 7,000 Afghans have reached the Pakistani border in the past several weeks, begging for relief. But Pakistani authorities will not allow them to enter established U.N. camps that already house more than 70,000 refugees.

So they wait, stranded in a desert no man's land where the winter wind whips sand and grit through their flimsy shelters. U.N. agencies have distributed water and high-protein biscuits, but two children have died from cold in the past week, officials said.

"We ran away from the drought after all our sheep died. Then the bombs started falling around Kandahar, so we ran away again," said Abdul Haque, 26, a nomadic shepherd who shares one ragged tent with three families. "Now we have nothing, not even firewood. When we try to get help, the Pakistani police beat us with sticks, even the old women and children."

Ghulam Nabi, 28, said he and his family fled northern Faryab province last month after Taliban forces were defeated and the region was occupied by the Northern Alliance, a coalition of ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara militia groups. An ethnic Pashtun and a supporter of the new Afghan interim government led by Hamid Karzai, Nabi said his fellow Pashtuns fear the anti-Taliban militias that have long been their rivals in the north.

"Many of my people want to flee from the danger up north, but they are surrounded," said Nabi, whose family occupies another tent. "The new government respects Pashtun rights and we want it to protect us, but there is no stability or safety for us."

The refugees' plight reflects a broader problem of insecurity and uncertainty along the Afghan-Pakistani border in the wake of the Taliban's collapse. To a large extent, the Spin Boldak border area has fallen into a precarious power vacuum, with the newly appointed provincial government's authority weak, relations with Pakistani officials tense and gunmen from local militias and tribes vying for control. Before Saturday, the new government and its troops had been unable to establish full control here, and there were widespread reports of looting and extortion by gunmen operating around Spin Boldak, a busy trading post and one of two official crossing points between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Traders in Spin Boldak's automotive bazaar, a maze of shops surrounded by piles of sand-covered axles, tires and other spare parts, said the community had been terrorized until several days ago, with unidentified gunmen roaming the lanes and stealing. Travelers from Pakistan to Afghanistan also reported that gunmen had been extorting huge bribes at the border.

But last week, Gul Agha Shirzai, the new governor of Kandahar province, traveled to Spin Boldak to persuade local militia leaders to abandon their roadblocks and surrender their weapons. U.S. troops temporarily sealed the border while conducting two days of search patrols with Gul Agha's troops to confiscate weapons and stolen vehicles in the area.

On Sunday, the bazaar was calm, and the only visible men with guns were uniformed troops from Gul Agha's forces, who waved foreign travelers through a series of checkpoints with polite salutes. Several Western-looking men in Afghan dress, evidently members of the U.S. Special Forces, watched discreetly near several checkpoints.

"There was a lot of trouble here until two days ago. There were men with guns everywhere, and we didn't know whether they were thieves or soldiers," said Gul Mohammed, 27, a car-parts trader. Mohammed and several other traders, sipping tea with a visitor in a shop crammed with fan belts and engine parts, said their businesses had thrived under the security provided by the Taliban regime, but that they would prefer stable and peaceful rule under the new government.

They also said they did not resent the presence of U.S. forces in the area, as long as they helped maintain security and respected Afghan cultural and religious traditions. Several said they feared that once the U.S. forces left, the region could lapse into the violent warlordism that reigned here in the chaotic period before the Taliban seized power in 1996.

"In those days, every tribe wanted to have its own power. The Taliban didn't respect the people, but they did bring peace and security, and our business was very good," said Mohammed. "We are not sad they have gone, but we still do not know who has power here. If the new government cannot keep peace and our trade collapses, then we will be unhappy the Taliban have gone."

For the refugees stranded in the ragged tent city just over a sandy ridge from the bazaar, the future remains even less certain. Many said they could not survive if they returned to their drought-devastated lands, or that they had no money to make the trip back home. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has appealed to Pakistan to allow them into U.N. camps across the border, but so far, only extremely sick or pregnant refugees have been allowed to cross.

"My wife just gave birth, and she and the baby are sick," said one grizzled nomad surrounded by his older children, all with chafed cheeks and blackened hands. "I tried to see a doctor, but I was beaten back by the police. I have nothing, and I don't know what to do."

----

U.S. forces destroy huge al Qaeda base

By Rowan Scarborough,
THE WASHINGTON TIMES,
January 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020115-72679572.htm

The Pentagon declared victory yesterday in the battle of Zawar Kili, saying its forces had cleansed the huge terror complex of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda fighters, destroyed 60 buildings and closed 50 cave hide-outs.

"We have leveled the remaining structures that were found on the surface, and we have closed all the caves that we would intend not be reoccupied," Navy Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told reporters at the Pentagon. "So I guess the best way to term it is: It's now time to go look elsewhere."

Adm. Stufflebeem spoke on the 100th day of the war in Afghanistan as bombers completed what could be the last major strike on Zawar Kili. U.S. Central Command, which is running the war, began intensive airstrikes on Zawar Kili two weeks ago, after surveillance detected al Qaeda terrorists trying to regroup at what apparently was bin Laden's largest base.

As the bombing intensified, and Army Special Forces soldiers got a ground-level view, the United States discovered that what seemed like a terror camp near Khost on the Pakistani border was more like a major military facility. The target list expanded, and heavy Air Force bombers and Navy jet fighters launched more than a half-dozen attacks, dropping scores of 2,000-pound bombs.

The destruction of Zawar Kili eliminates the last major al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan and denies bin Laden's terrorists one more hiding place. In mid-December, U.S. air raids, and anti-Taliban warriors, cleared out Tora Bora, north of Khowst, a complex of caves and bunkers then believed to hold the last major al Qaeda concentration.

The Pentagon last week harbored a faint hope that it may have killed bin Laden himself at Zawar Kili. Intelligence indicated elements of his security detail regrouped there. But officials later said they do not believe the man held responsible for the September 11 attacks on America was there.

Officials say they believe he continues to hide out along Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan, a generally lawless region that is home to tribes friendly to the Taliban.

In shutting down Zawar Kili's 3-mile long, 3-mile wide swath of caves and buildings, the United States has destroyed a multipurpose operations center.

It served as a garrison for some of bin Laden's 4,000-man Arab army, a recruit training station for would-be terrorists and a communication hub to stay in contact with his worldwide empire.

"We have evidence that he actually housed people there for a period of time, kind of like a base camp," said Marine Corps Maj. Brad Lowell, a Central Command spokesman.

Adm. Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon learned more about Zawar Kili once Green Berets observed it from close range.

Soldiers found equipment as large as tanks and artillery pieces, along with the basics: ammunition, rifles and grenades. The cache was destroyed by detonation and airstrikes.

"It previously had been struck," the spokesman said, referring to raids conducted closer to the war's Oct. 7 start date. "What was not known was how extensive a complex it was, until we actually were on the ground and physically looking inside these caves."

Hundreds of al Qaeda fled Tora Bora in mid-December and made their way south into Pakistan, where government troops detained them. Adm. Stufflebeem said he believes those al Qaeda who remain on the loose in Afghanistan probably intend to stay there. This means U.S. special-operations forces and surveillance systems must continue to track them down to meet President Bush's stated goal of destroying al Qaeda.

"We're actively looking for and being very attentive to any collection of al Qaeda fighters or pro-Taliban people, whether singly or together," he said. "We'll go wherever they are to find them and to root them out."

For the second consecutive briefing, reporters peppered the Pentagon with questions about the well-being of the first 20 al Qaeda fighters shipped Friday from Afghanistan to a makeshift prison at the U.S. Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Some of these fighters were among those who staged a bloody prison uprising last November in Mazar-e-Sharif that claimed the life of CIA officer Johnny "Mike" Spann.

"You're talking about people who are incredibly dangerous, incredibly dangerous, who are willing to blow themselves up or do anything possible to hurt and kill others." said Victoria Clarke, spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "They are receiving culturally appropriate meals every day. They are getting showers every day. They are getting medical treatment if they need medical treatment. They are given an opportunity to exercise."

An additional 30 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters arrived in Cuba yesterday.

The United States, which gained reams of intelligence in searches of al Qaeda compounds in Afghanistan, plans to interrogate prisoners at the U.S. naval base.

----

Day 100: another raid in the bombing war without end
The Taliban may have vanished but the conflict is far from over for many in Afghanistan

Suzanne Goldenberg in Zhawar
Tuesday January 15, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,633637,00.html

The rocket screeches low overhead, and the world stands still for a second before US munitions slam into an Afghan mud hut and the mountains shudder in a sickening explosion. It is a direct hit on this abandoned training camp of the Taliban and al-Qaida, a moment of pure terror for the Afghans of these neighbouring mountain hamlets.

In darkness and in light, for 10 long days, US bombers have prowled above the winter clouds, pulverising the slate and lava rock of Zhawar. The villagers gauge the danger by the engine noise. When the low whirr rises to a grinding roar, it's time to take cover.

"All the mountains are shaking," says Khali Gul from Kaskai, a small hamlet a few hundred metres from the Americans' target. "We are very afraid of these planes. We just want this to stop."

In the capital, Kabul, delegations come and go. Aid workers draw up charts for reconstruction; diplomats leave their calling cards with the interim government. As America's war on terror entered its 100th day yesterday, the world speculated on its next venue: will it be Somalia or Sudan; Yemen or Iraq?

Here, in the mountains of Zhawar, there is only war. US warplanes are destroying, day after day, one of the last redoubts of the Taliban. Overnight, the bombing was so heavy the windows shook in Khost, a town 22 miles from America's latest theatre of war.

Fifteen people were killed two days ago in Shudiaki village, says Noorz Ali, rattling down the dried-up river bed in a pick-up truck piled with a wheelbarrow, a brass basin, and four baby goats - the pitiable sum of his belongings as he joins the exodus for the safety of the plains.

"The village is completely flattened. My house was destroyed, and my neighbours were killed," he says. "There were so many bombs I lost count. The dead remain there in the village. Everybody else has left."

Like all the other villagers, he swears there are no Taliban or al-Qaida in Zhawar anymore. They bundled into their four-wheel drives and vanished into the mountains.

It is impossible to verify Mr Ali's story, or other accounts of civilian casualties as the American bombing of Afghanistan enters its fourth month. Mr Ali's village lies on a ridge behind the Zhawar camp, and the extensive network of caves dug into the sides of the gorge below. The bombing is too intense for any exploration, and the area is too remote, accessible only by four-wheel drive jolting along through the mountains.

Every vehicle is a target for the American bombers as they hunt down the stragglers of the Taliban and al-Qaida, and the warplanes begin to circle over our pick-up truck - the vehicle of choice for Afghanistan's old rulers. Apart from the growling of the bombers, and the thunder of rockets, there is silence.

The isolation was crucial to the establishment of the Zhawar caves and training camps in the early 1980s. Two decades later, it allows the US bombardment of the base - and the calamity that has befallen the civilian hamlets clinging to the mountain tops - to go largely unremarked, and unlamented. For those outside this small corner of the world, the Afghan war is over.

Afghans say the bombing began 10 days ago when 20 special US forces descended on the district capital of Khost. They emerge at dusk, night vision goggles strapped over furled woollen Afghan caps, and assault rifles smothered in blankets in a vain attempt at disguise to meet the local tribal chieftain of Khost who is their patron and protector.

By day, they hunker down in a two-storey building the colour of egg yolk. The locals call it mechanik ; it's the vocational high school. We send up our business cards. The Americans send down a polite refusal, fat printed letters written in a careful hand. "Be safe," the note ends.

In the hills around Zhawar, it's a difficult proposition. The men sent their women and children down to Khost several days ago, but stayed to guard their herds. At night, they sleep in bunkers above their mud and chaff houses. By day, they squat beneath the parched acacia trees that provide what little cover there is on these barren mountains.

"What can we do? Where can we go?" asked Khalil Jan, a shepherd squatting by the road.

"Everyday, the Americans are dropping bombs. Last night there were six and this morning there were five. We are very afraid of the bombs, and we are very angry at the Americans. There is no reason for this. The camps are empty, but still the Americans are dropping their bombs."

A generation ago the CIA helped anti-Soviet rebels tunnel through the mountains to create the camp: an impenetrable system of connecting caves that served as arms depot, training camp, and safe haven.

When that stage of Afghanistan's war ended, Jalaluddin Haqqani, the powerful local warlord threw his lot in with the Taliban. He has since vanished but his men may still be in Zhawar deep inside the caves.

There is little left of the camp, and little evidence of the Taliban or al-Qaida. A machine-gun barrel pokes through the detritus of a destroyed mud and chaff house in the centre of a drill ground. The ruins of eight sentry posts dot the surrounding ridge.

The tailfin of an American rocket emerges from the dirt. There are scorch marks on the dirt track nearby, and there is the lasting rancour of the Afghan villagers whose war seems never-ending.

"I've been upset and angry for the last 22 years," says Khali Gul. "First the Russians started bombing. Then came the mojahedin, and now the Americans. We are a very unlucky people." Hidden campaign

January 7 Two air strikes on Zhawar Kili. A navy F-14 drops two guided bombs on a building believed to be part of a terrorist training complex. Later in the day a navy F-18 drops two bombs on a bunker.

January 10 Nine bombers and tactical aircraft drop guided bombs on buildings, caves and tunnels in Zhawar Kili

January 11-13 : Continued bombing of Zhawar Kili using B-52 and B-1 long range bombers, and Navy F-18 strike aircraft

January 14 Heaviest bombing of the week, according to reports from Zhawar Kili. The Pentagon says it is trying to destroy caves to prevent al-Qaida or the Taliban using them to regroup. A spokesman says the operations at the camp are complete, and the campaign will shift to cave and bunker complexes elsewhere

----

U.S. Forces Search for More Al Qaeda Complexes

January 15, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/15/international/15WIRE-AFGHAN.html

WASHINGTON -- U.S. troops will soon search several Afghan locations where intelligence sources say al-Qaida terrorists have hidden complexes, after finding one hiding place Tuesday right outside the airport used by Marines for more than a month.

Warplanes for a week and a half have been hitting an extensive collection of buildings and caves in the eastern part of the country near the village of Zawar. And Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem said Monday they'll "probably look for another complex."

The military already is aware of several specific areas it wants to begin with, a defense official said Tuesday on condition of anonymity. The Pentagon has intelligence indicating there may be Taliban or al-Qaida -- or their weapons -- hidden at what he called a handful of places.

He declined to name the places.

Airstrikes have flattened 60 buildings and sealed about 50 caves in the Zawar Kili area near the Pakistan border, Stufflebeem said Monday. U.S. warplanes have struck the former al-Qaida base almost daily since last Wednesday.

"We're coming to a conclusion in this particular complex, and we'll probably look for another complex," Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference.

As he spoke, Marines near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar were working on new discovery -- only 500 yards from their airport base.

Marine Capt. Dan Greenwood said that patrols spotted seven men who appeared to be armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers heading toward an abandoned mud-walled house outside the base perimeter Monday evening, Afghan time.

They sent out a patrol Tuesday morning. The men were not found, but a cache of ammunition was. U.S. demolitions experts blew up a nearby bunker made of rock.

Officials said that although the find was extremely small, particularly compared to the Zawar complex, it illustrates the continuing danger of U.S. work in Afghanistan.

The same area was used by gunmen Thursday to launch an attack while a C-17 transport plane took off with the first batch of 20 prisoners from bin Laden's al-Qaida network and the ousted Taliban regime, heading from a detention center to a high-security jail at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Stufflebeem said that by the time Marines responded Thursday, the gunman were gone. An official said Tuesday that it's now believed them slipped into the tunnels after firing.

The base at the Kandahar airport is the site of the main detention center for al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners from the war. Officials said 483 were in U.S. custody -- 433 in Afghanistan, the 50 in Cuba and American John Walker Lindh on the amphibious attack ship USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea.

Also, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke Tuesday clarified the circumstances last week in which a prisoner was sedated for the transfer, saying he was in pain because of an injury.

Responding to suggestions that chaining and sedating prisoners might be a violation of their civil rights, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said only one of the 20 had been sedated, leaving the impression it was to prevent him from doing anything dangerous, and in light of two deadly uprising prisoners had staged last month while in Pakistani and Afghan custody.

Thirty more al-Qaida prisoners arrived Monday afternoon at the jail at Guantanamo.

Meanwhile, a U.S. intelligence official said Monday that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is believed still in Afghanistan or in Pakistan. Bin Laden is thought to have fled the Tora Bora region in early December, and coalition forces have not known his whereabouts since.

--------

Bombing Halted For Residual Taliban

New York Times
January 15, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghanistan.html

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- U.S. warplanes halted their fierce bombing of a mountain riddled with suspected terrorist dens on Tuesday as American Marines scoured the outskirts of their largest Afghan base for armed Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts.

U.S. officials in Washington said the military was considering new targets in its hunt for die-hard supporters of bin Laden and his Taliban allies now that the camp had been eradicated, with 50 caves sealed and every building flattened.

An official said the Pentagon has intelligence indicating Taliban or al-Qaida -- or their weapons -- may be hidden at what he called a handful of places. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to name the places.

``We keep discovering additional caves and additional tunnels and additional caches of weapons and intelligence information ... Very, very sizable arsenals are being discovered,'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on Tuesday. ``Tanks and artillery pieces and surface-to-air missiles and small arms and all kinds of things. They've been in the process of destroying a great deal of it in different locations.''

In the southern city of Kandahar, where U.S.-led coalition forces have established their major post, an active threat remained from remaining enemy fighters. Front-line troops believed their opponents were planning an attack.

U.S. Marine Capt. Dan Greenwood said patrols spotted seven men who appeared to be armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers heading toward an abandoned mud house outside the base perimeter around sunset Monday.

The same area was used by gunmen last week to launch an attack while a C-17 transport plane took off with the first batch of 20 prisoners heading for a high-security jail at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

To head off other attacks, the troops blew up a house and a network of tunnels, while bulldozers leveled other mud ruins. Foot patrols searched under cover of light-armored vehicles armed with machine guns.

Meanwhile, civilians in the Zawar area of eastern Afghanistan began returning to their homes, many of them blasted to rubble by a week of heavy U.S. airstrikes targeting a complex of mountain caves where terrorists were believed to be hiding.

In Saidgi, the Pakistani town across the border from Zawar, refugees who fled the bombings said many of the destroyed buildings were their homes. Abdullah Gorbaz, 52, said at least 12 civilians were killed and cattle herds were devastated.

Separately, U.N. aid officials implored Pakistan to let more than 13,000 Afghan refugees into a border camp so they can receive aid. They have massed in the past few days on a wind-swept plain near Kili Faiso camp, just across the border into Pakistan, and many are sleeping in the open in bitter cold.

In the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, Gen. Rashid Dostum, one of Afghanistan's principal warlords, pledged to support to the interim government. He also promised to get armed men off the streets and said he would work with rival militia leaders.

The conciliatory words seemed to represent a major shift for Dostum, who had declared his opposition to the proposed provisional government of Hamid Karzai and said the country could not be ruled without his support.

But Dostum also said Afghanistan would need to give power to regional leaders while it rebuilds from 22 years of war. The comment by the ethnic Uzbek appeared to underline the intense ethnic rivalries that threaten Afghanistan's long-term prospects for unity.

Ordinary Afghans worry the United States and the United Nations will withdraw and the factions who make up the interim government will return to their warring ways. Many of the same groups who rule today in Afghanistan ruled between 1992 and 1996, when entire neighborhoods were flattened and at least 50,000 people, many of them civilians, were killed in the cross fire.

In other developments:

-- In Fort Campbell, Ky., 15 servicemen wounded in the war on terrorism in Afghanistan were awarded Purple Hearts.

-- The Bush administration will not seek the death penalty for John Walker Lindh, the American captured fighting with the Taliban. He will be charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens. He will be tried in a civilian court and could face life in prison. After weeks of deliberations, the Bush administration opted against a military trial or charges that would carry the death penalty.

-- The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to lift an international flight ban on Afghanistan's airline imposed to pressure the country's former Taliban rulers to hand over Osama bin Laden for trial.

-- Rebuilding Afghanistan will cost $15 billion over the next 10 years, and World Bank President James Wolfensohn says it is crucial to get money flowing quickly so the interim government can hire civil servants and start functioning.

-- American troops captured seven new prisoners, defense officials said Tuesday. It was not immediately clear if the seven captured since Monday were al-Qaida or Taliban.

-- Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-NY., said in a visit to Kabul that the United States should be part of the international peacekeeping mission, as well as carrying out a military operation. The mission is currently composed of soldiers from Britain, Turkey, Germany, Holland, France and Austria. ``If we are serious about security we have to play a role,'' said Hinchey.

-------- arms sales

U.S. urges Israel to defer arms sales to India

By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
Tuesday January 15
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-83856.html

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has urged Israel to defer selling weapons technology to India in light of the current crisis with Pakistan, a senior U.S. official said on Monday.

He told Reuters the message was delivered to Israeli officials last week and "I think Israel is listening."

"There are some military sales questions that the Israelis have raised that posed problems for us and we've told them about that," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"These are sales they want to make to the Indians where we've basically said this is not the right time to be selling to either side anything, frankly," he said. "We've made it very clear to them. This is not the time to do it."

After the establishment of full diplomatic ties in 1992, the two countries -- bound in part by concerns about Islamic extremism -- have strengthened defence cooperation, with India buying sophisticated defence equipment from Israel.

The senior U.S. official said one area of American concern involves the Arrow-2 anti-tactical ballistic missile defence system, a joint U.S.-Israeli project for which Washington provided a majority of the development funding.

The Israelis "have talked (with the Indians) about a number of things. Some they have sold and some they haven't. The Arrow anti-missile system is one," the official said.

Among other concerns, he said, the Arrow sale may violate the Missile Technology Control Regime, an informal international agreement aimed at preventing the spread of most missiles to unstable regions.

"Other sales they (Israelis) want to make don't involve that but do involve the question of why anybody would sell anything -- either to the Indians or the Pakistanis -- other than chewing gum," the official said.

The United States in 2001 led Israel to believe that it would not oppose Israel's proposed sale of three Phalcon airborne warning and control system (AWACS) planes to India, said an Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But that sale, estimated at $1 billion, is also on "temporary hold" because of the military confrontation brewing between India and Pakistan, he said.

The Phalcon planes are produced by Israel and therefore do not require U.S. approval. However, because America is a close ally, Israel prefers to have U.S. support, the Israeli official said.

Previously Washington pressured Israel to cancel a similar Phalcon deal with China.

"There have been talks between Israel and India on the Phalcon radar system. We understood they (Americans) were not opposed to it but in the current situation, it's on hold because no one wants to inflame tensions in the current situation," the Israeli official said.

India and Pakistan -- nuclear rivals on the South Asian subcontinent -- have mounted their biggest military buildup since their independence from Britain in 1947, triggered by an attack on India's parliament last month.

----

[India has a different story...]

US supports Phalcon sale to India by Israel: Reeker

PTI Washington,
January 16
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/160102/dLFOR10.asp

The United States has said it supports the sale of Phalcon Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and Arrow anti-missile system to India but was considering the system's capability and timing.

"I will say in response to some of the recent press reports I saw regarding, for instance, transfer of a Phalcon radar to India, that we actually support the transfer of that. We are discussing with the Government of Israel on the capabilities and timing related to that," State Department Spokesman Phil Reeker said on Tuesday.

Reeker did not totally deny that the US may advise Israel to consider the timing of the transfer while India and Pakistan were on the brink of war by saying, "I think certainly we always encourage other countries, including Israel, to take into account the impact of their weapons sales."

Meanwhile, the undersecretary for arms control and international security, John Bolton has left for Israel to hold talks on what Reeker said were "regular US-Israel consultations on non-proliferation matters."

"And, while we have these consultations, I am not aware of any particular time frame. The established timing and, as I said, capabilities are subjects that we would have in terms of consultations, and that may be part of what Bolton raises while he is out there (in Israel)."

-------- biological weapons

BioPort gets anthrax vaccine OK

1/15/2002
UPI
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=15012002-122507-6202r

LANSING, Mich., Jan. 15 -- BioPort Corp. could begin shipping anthrax vaccines to the military within a few weeks now that the Food and Drug Administration has given conditional approval.

The production would be the first since 1998, when the former Michigan Biologics Products Institute was sold by the state and renovations on the production facility began.

The military, which owns all supplies of the vaccine in the United States, plans to vaccinate all 2.4 million U.S. soldiers against anthrax for fear several nations, including Iraq, have developed a weapons-grade version of the deadly bacteria.

The government recently approved the use of 10,000 doses of vaccine made recently by BioPort for people exposed to the pathogen from anthrax letters sent to members of Congress.

Health and Human Services estimated some 3,000 congressional staff, postal workers and others are eligible to receive the vaccine, along with additional antibiotics because they were exposed to large numbers of anthrax spores.

While only animal studies are available, there is concern among medical experts antibiotic treatment alone is not enough to kill all anthrax spores in a person's system and that some spores can remain and cause infection after antibiotic treatment ends.

BioPort is the only company with a contract to produce the anthrax vaccine and the military has spent at least $126 million to acquire the doses.

The FDA prohibited any new vaccine from being produced at the facility until BioPort fixed dozens of problems, some involving the quality of the vaccine. A few relatively minor problems, mostly involving record keeping, remain unresolved and the company must satisfy the FDA those problems are being fixed before the conditional status will be lifted.

The 10,000 doses HHS purchased from the military were test doses made after BioPort's renovations were complete but before FDA's approval of the facility. They meet all FDA requirements.

"It's a very significant milestone for the company," BioPort spokeswoman Brennen Root told Tuesday's Lansing State Journal. "Some people say this is the finish line. We look at it as the beginning for our company's future."

The FDA completed its final inspection of BioPort's facility Dec. 19, citing seven deficiencies, some of which were fixed immediately.

The holdup now involves the Spokane, Wash., company, Hollister-Stier Laboratories, which will be packaging the vaccine. The FDA found six deficiencies at that operation.

About 500,000 troops already have received one dose of the vaccine. Anthrax vaccination involves a series of six injections given over an 18-month period.

In September 1998, BioPort bought the assets of the former Michigan Biologic Products Institute. The company has its headquarters in Lansing and develops and manufactures vaccines and plasma derivatives. The U.S. government is the company's only customer for the anthrax vaccine.

Anthrax is an infectious disease that normally afflicts animals, especially cattle and sheep. The spores can be produced in a dry form, which when inhaled by humans can cause respiratory failure and death within a week.

Since anthrax is odorless, colorless and tasteless, those who have been exposed may be unaware of the exposure and therefore unable to seek treatment in a timely manner. For treatment to be effective, it has to be started within 24 hours of exposure.

-------- colombia

Colombians in rebel zone nervous as army masses

By Phil Stewart
Tuesday January 15
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-83743.html

SAN VICENTE, Colombia - As the deadline neared for an end to Colombian rebel control of a protected enclave after nightfall on Monday, residents feared the arrival of brutal paramilitary forces and diplomats from across the globe made last-ditch efforts to resurrect failed peace talks.

With soldiers and tanks massed to sweep into the Switzerland-sized guerrilla zone, some of the thousands of civilians fled while others stayed glued to television sets in dusty restaurants and supply stores watching preparations for the military advance.

U.N. peace envoy James LeMoyne met diplomats from 10 nations who came to the zone to meet the Marxist-inspired rebels, whose talks with the government broke off last week. But he admitted agreement would be difficult.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials FARC, said it would retreat peacefully from the towns of the largely poor southern Colombian enclave that it has ruled since peace negotiations began three years ago.

The rebels were already retreating from the zone's five dusty towns for the surrounding jungle ahead of the 9:30 p.m. deadline laid down by President Andres Pastrana.

The president had granted the FARC control of the 16,000 square miles (42,000 sq km) of sparsely populated cattle country and jungle in late 1998 to lure them into talks in what looks to be remembered as a failed experiment to strike peace.

The negotiations to end a 38-year-old guerrilla war that has claimed 40,000 lives in the past decade never made much progress and the president declared talks dead last week.

Pastrana said the rebels refused to discuss important issues such as a cease-fire and wasted time complaining about military controls around their safe haven.

War has raged unchecked outside the enclave throughout the talks. In fresh combat, FARC rebels attacked a police station in the small town of San Jose de Alban near the border with Ecuador, killing nine officers.

CIVILIANS FEAR PARAMILITARY REPRISALS

Residents of the enclave were nervous -- and frightened of possible reprisals from far-right paramilitary outlaws they feared would brand them leftist collaborators.

"It's all over," said Mateo, sitting in a bakery in the enclave's biggest town of San Vicente.

"There's no way to save the negotiations. It's too late," he added, watching black-and-white television images of troops polishing their weapons.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for measures to protect the zone's 120,000 civilians, whose security the government said it would guarantee.

LeMoyne said government peace negotiator Camilo Gomez would be called to the negotiating table if progress was made.

"We hope that if we advance, that obviously the two sides could speak directly to each other again," LeMoyne said.

Gomez, branded a liar by Latin America's largest and oldest rebel force after a meeting on Wednesday, flew into the enclave but said he had no plans to meet with rebel leaders.

He said he had come to prepare the enclave's return to government rule. While not dismissing the possibility of a last minute deal, he said any concessions must come from the FARC.

"The FARC have to decide, it is they who must meet the president's (demands)," Gomez said.

ARMY BUILDUP ON ENCLAVE BORDERS

Meanwhile, the army continued moving a contingent of 12,000 soldiers, including 4,500 rapid deployment troops, to the zone's borders, where they awaited orders.

The army estimates that just under a third of the guerrilla force's 17,000 members are inside the zone, and major cities throughout Colombia have hiked security to prevent reprisals nationwide when the military takes the zone.

On Saturday, the 47-year-old Pastrana told the rebels they must make a major last-minute peace gesture, such as a concrete commitment to a cease-fire or an end to kidnapping, if they wished to avert the army advance.

With growing public cynicism about the negotiations, Pastrana was under pressure to obtain concrete gestures from the rebels, who want to create a socialist state. The army and many government officials accuse them of using the zone to hold hundreds of kidnap victims for ransom and as a base to run a cocaine smuggling business.

Talks had been paralysed for three months over rebel complaints that civilians entering their enclave were harassed by the army and that military overflights were a security risk.

The president, who steps down in August, has devoted his term in office to striking a deal with the FARC and many analysts were stunned by his decision to call off talks.

Now Colombia faces a likely upsurge in rebel violence just as it prepares for presidential elections in May.

----

Envoys get rebels back to peace talks

By Andrew Selsky
ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 15, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020115-1056958.htm

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia - The government and main leftist rebel group agreed yesterday to resume peace talks, diplomats and a U.N. envoy said, overcoming an impasse that had threatened to plunge the country into a new round of fighting.

France's ambassador to Colombia, Daniel Parfait, read a statement saying the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had dropped its objections to returning to peace talks that were paralyzed since October.

He said President Andres Pastrana had signed off on the agreement, reached with the help of a U.N. envoy, Catholic Church delegates and ambassadors from 10 countries.

The government had earlier set a deadline of 9:30 p.m. EST for rebels to agree to resume the peace process or troops would move to retake their safe haven in southern Colombia.

Colombians had been bracing for fighting, as troops in recent days amassed around the zone, which Mr. Pastrana ceded to the FARC in 1998 just before the outset of peace talks.

The accord held out new hope for cease-fire talks envisioned before the breakdown in the peace process late last year. The accord was reached with the help of the foreign diplomats and days of mediation by U.N. envoy James LeMoyne.

"Now is a defining moment, more than any other time during this process," Mr. Pastrana said in a televised speech to the nation last night.

"The FARC should make no mistake. During these days we have all witnessed what a country wants and the country is speaking clearly: All Colombians, without exception, without differences, are embracing institutions and backing the government, and making it clear how far we are willing to go to recover peace," he said.

The agreement came after Mr. Parfait and nine other foreign envoys met with rebels in an 11th-hour attempt to salvage the peace process.

Rebel negotiator Raul Reyes confirmed that the FARC was satisfied that military controls placed around the Switzerland-sized zone were not endangering the peace talks.

Mr. LeMoyne said the agreement had the full backing of the United Nations. He exchanged handshakes and hugs with rebel leaders after the accord was announced.

Mr. LeMoyne also went over jubilantly to a group that had gathered at the negotiating compound in this southern village to urge on the negotiators. He raised a small girl in his arms and gave her a kiss.

"This is great," said one of the peace protesters, Valdemar Moreno, a rancher from the nearby town of San Vicente del Caguan.

However, Mr. Moreno's sister Amparo Bohorquez cast a note of caution. "The negotiators now have to sign agreements that will protect the human rights of the civilian population and a cease-fire," she said. The deal capped a nerve-racking day in which Colombians awoke to find that the peace process, believed to have collapsed the day before, had a chance of being rescued.

Yesterday the diplomats from France, Canada, Sweden, Cuba, Norway, Spain, Mexico, Italy, Switzerland and Venezuela announced they were flying into rebel territory to try to broker a last-ditch accord.

In agreeing to come back to the negotiations, the guerrillas appeared to be meeting all of the president's demands for restarting the process. That, in turn, allows the FARC to hold on to the rebel enclave in Colombia's southern plains.

-------- iraq

U.N. negotiator arrives in Iraq, seeks new deal

World Scene
Washington Times
January 15, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020115-89653024.htm

BAGHDAD - A senior U.N. official arrived in Iraq yesterday for talks on the troubled "oil-for-food" humanitarian program.

Benon Sevan, executive director of the program and a U.N. undersecretary-general, will stay three weeks in Iraq to discuss the program with U.N. and Iraqi government officials during his first trip to Baghdad since August 2000.

The oil-for-food program allows Iraq to sell oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods for Iraqis enduring 11-year-old U.N. sanctions imposed after Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The U.N. Security Council has approved in principle a "cash component" from Iraq's oil revenues so it can pay workers to upgrade its battered oil industry equipment.

-------- israel / palestine

Israel sends in its death squads and more bulldozers

By Phil Reeves in east Jerusalem
15 January 2002
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=114509

Israel's Government, undeterred by a barrage of criticism for illegal destruction of scores of homes inhabited by Gaza refugees, dispatched its bulldozers on another wrecking mission, this time to flatten Arab houses in occupied east Jerusalem.

As the giant machines reduced to dust the dreams of more Palestinian families on a scrubby hillside below Mount Scopus, Israel's death squads notched up another killing of a militant in the northern West Bank. Raed-al-Karmi, from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades was killed in a bomb blast outside his West Bank hide-out. Guerrillas from his group struck back soon afterwards, killing one Israeli and wounding another in a roadside shooting near a West Bank settlement.

The destruction of nine homes in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Issawiyeh yesterday was done on the orders of Jerusalem's municipal authorities. But all demolition orders pass through Israel's Ministry of Interior - which supplied scores of armed border police to supervise the wrecking mission - and through the office of the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon.

He declined to intervene, defying Israeli liberals who have condemned his role in last week's destruction of 60 homes in Rafah, southern Gaza, which made hundreds of poverty-stricken Palestinians homeless at the height of winter.

Yesterday's demolitions were committed, as is usually the case, on the official pretext that the homes were built without permits, which are routinely denied to Palestinians wanting to build in east Jerusalem, occupied by Israeli in 1967 and later illegally annexed. It was part of Israel's long-term strategy of limiting the number of Arabs in the city, who make up about 30 per cent of the 600,000 population.

The destroyed houses overlook a bypass road being built to connect Israeli settlements on Jerusalem's eastern flank, part of a matrix of Jewish suburbs built to give Israel control over the metropolis.

Unlike the smashed homes in Gaza, most of the houses flattened yesterday were unoccupied. This did nothing to assuage the misery of Basim Ellayan, 43, a financial consultant who sank his $50,000 (£35,000) savings into building a family home, now in ruins. "I worked more than 20 years to collect the money for this house," he said yesterday, as he stood by the wreckage. "Then they come and destroy everything in a minute."

Anger among Palestinians of Jerusalem was deeper still in the West Bank town of Tulkarm, where crowds screaming, "Revenge" took to the streets to follow a stretcher carrying the corpse of a fugitive militia leader, killed by a bomb hidden in a wall close to his hide-out.

Israel refused to confirm that its forces assassinated Mr Karmi, 28, a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a paramilitary group affiliated with the mainstream Fatah organisation. But it had all the hallmarks. He was high on Israel's wanted list, and had openly boasted of killing Israelis.

The Israeli government issued a statement saying he was responsible for numerous attacks, including the murder of two Tel Aviv restaurateurs last year. The army has tried to kill him before: in September, he narrowly escaped when Israeli helicopters fired missiles at his car, killing two fellow guerrillas.

His killing blew another hole in Mr Arafat's ceasefire order, issued a month ago. An al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades statement said last night: "The hoax of the so-called ceasefire is cancelled, cancelled, cancelled." Then came the fatal shooting of an Israeli near the West Bank settlement of Shavei Shomron.

That supplied Mr Sharon with another reason to press ahead with his long campaign to corrode Palestinian claims to built a nation in all of the West Bank and Gaza; to present Mr Arafat as a weapons-smuggling Iranian-allied terrorist leader; and steadily to consolidate Israel's hold on the lion's share of the occupied territories.

At least 804 Palestinians and 239 Israelis have been killed since the uprising began 15 months ago.

----

U.S. helped Israel track weapons ship

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020115-76931312.htm

U.S. intelligence agencies helped Israel track down a Palestinian ship that tried to smuggle a large supply of weapons obtained from Iran, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The intelligence assistance was considered vital in Israeli military efforts to pinpoint the exact vessel carrying the arms, which was captured in a daring commando raid earlier this month, said officials familiar with the effort.

"Our assistance was crucial," said one U.S. intelligence official.

The ship, the Karine A, was raided by Israeli commandos in the Red Sea on Jan. 3. A large cache of Iranian weapons was found, including small arms, mortars, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and explosives.

Many of the weapons were identified as coming from Iranian production facilities, the intelligence officials said.

According to the officials, Israel approached the CIA last month with a request for help in locating a vessel it believed was carrying arms destined for the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli intelligence at one point thought they had found the vessel in the Persian Gulf port of Dubai, but that ship was not the one later captured with the arms.

U.S. intelligence agencies, using various high-tech intelligence-gathering means, were able to identify the Karine A after it loaded the weapons near Iran's Kish Island, some 300 miles north of the major Iranian naval port of Bandar Abbas.

The discovery of the Palestinian weapons ship is a major success for U.S. military intelligence, which has sought to improve its monitoring of weapons shipments by sea since the early 1990s. In 1992, the Navy lost track of a North Korean ship, the Dae Hung Ho, as it delivered a shipment of missile parts to Iran.

The official Iranian radio, Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, said last week that the weapon shipment was a "false propaganda claim" of the Israeli government.

Kish Island is a resort area about 11 miles from the Iranian coast. The Islamic government in Tehran has declared it an economic free zone.

The Israeli government has said the weapons shipment reveals new links between the Iranian government and the Palestinian Authority. Previously, Iranian government support to terrorists in the region had been limited to groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

"This shows there has been a strategic shift in the actions of the Iranian regime," said Kenneth Timmerman, a private analyst who specializes in Iranian military affairs.

"Previously, Iran had been standoffish to Arafat. Now, by delivering such a large amount of weapons, including new types of weapons, they are tilting toward Arafat in this effort to sabotage the peace process," Mr. Timmerman said in an interview.

According to the Israeli government, among the weapons found were 211 anti-tank mines, 735 hand grenades and 62 122mm Katyusha rockets, which have a range of 12 miles.

The ship also carried large numbers of AK-47 assault rifles and blocks of high-powered plastic explosive.

The weapons were packed in 80 submersible containers designed to float a few feet below the surface of the water. Officials said the plan for the weapons containers was to drop them overboard and smuggle them into the Gaza Strip from the Mediterranean.

The captain of the ship, Omar Akawi, told reporters in Israel earlier this month that he was delivering the weapons to the Palestinian Authority and was in radio contact with Abdel Mughrabi, a weapons procurement official for the Palestinian Authority.

Mr. Akawi, a naval adviser to the Palestinian Authority, said he expected to receive orders canceling the arms smuggling operation after Dec. 16, when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat announced in a speech that he was halting military operations by the Palestinians. No order was issued.

Mr. Akawi told reporters he was instructed to pick up the weapons in the Persian Gulf "near the Iranian border," according to an interview on Israeli television.

A smaller boat then arrived, and the weapons were loaded on the ship. The Karine A captain said he recognized one of the men loading the weapons as a member of the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.

The ship was seized by the Israelis in the Red Sea, about 300 miles from the Israeli port of Elat at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, and taken to Elat.

Its cargo was estimated to be worth $10 million.

In an interview with The Washington Times last week, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell did not indicate that he was aware of the intelligence operations.

Mr. Powell said the Palestinian-Iranian arms smuggling is a "deeply disturbing problem."

"By the way, just as a former soldier, let me compliment the Israelis on a neat piece of work," said Mr. Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"It is deeply troubling to see the kinds of weapons that were being introduced into this volatile area," Mr. Powell said in the Jan. 8 interview. "And I think there is a heavy burden on Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to explain what they know about this and get to the bottom of this, because this is an escalation."

Mr. Powell said the United States had seen "some evidence and information" about the shipment and was awaiting more from a delegation of Israeli government officials who briefed U.S. policy-makers on Jan. 9.

"But this kind of action is condemnable, and I do condemn it," Mr. Powell said. "It's a new element that complicates an already complicated situation."

--------

Key Militia Leader Dies in Bomb Blast in the West Bank

New York Times
January 15, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/15/international/middleeast/15MIDE.html

TULKARM, West Bank, Jan. 14 - Israel calls Raed al-Karmi a terrorist, but here Palestinian children wear pictures of him on cords around their necks. Grown men sing a song praising him as "the Promise."

Today, the strained cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians appeared in danger of giving way after Mr. Karmi, the 27-year-old leader of a local Palestinian militia, was killed by a bomb hidden beside a cemetery wall near his house.

Within hours, Palestinian gunmen ambushed Israeli soldiers near a West Bank settlement a few miles east of here, the Israeli Army said. A 19-year-old Israeli soldier was killed and an officer was moderately wounded. Mr. Karmi's group, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was avenging his death.

Mr. Karmi's comrades called his killing an Israeli assassination and a provocation to violence. The Israeli Army remained silent about the matter, as it has after the many mysterious deaths of Palestinian militants.

While the government did not claim responsibility for Mr. Karmi's death, the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon released a detailed statement this afternoon calling him a "leading extremist of a murderous Tanzim cell" and describing what it said were his attacks on Israelis. Tanzim is a militia affiliated with Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction.

Israeli forces said they had tried to kill Mr. Karmi on Sept. 6, in retaliation for what they said were his attacks on Israeli citizens and to pre- empt future attacks. They pulverized his sport utility vehicle with rockets fired from helicopters. Two others in the S.U.V. were killed, but Mr. Karmi leaped out and sprinted away just in time, thus burnishing his legend.

In an interview that day, Mr. Karmi, bandaged and in hiding, vowed to continue his attacks. "I will continue killing Israeli soldiers and settlers - not civilians," he said. He was making a distinction between Israelis in the West Bank and those on the other side of the border, which Israel erased when it swept into the West Bank in the 1967 war.

It is a distinction with no significance to the government, which considered Mr. Karmi a terrorist and said it wanted him jailed.

Among other attacks, he was wanted for kidnapping and killing two restaurateurs from Tel Aviv who stopped here to dine last January. Mr. Karmi admitted taking part in that attack but insisted that the men were undercover soldiers. He said he and three others killed them in retaliation for Israel's killing of a Palestinian leader from Tulkarm.

Here in Tulkarm, the man everyone called Raed was a folk hero, respected for his fighting skills, valued for his loyalty and sense of humor, trusted even to resolve traffic disputes. He was an example of a new generation of local Palestinian leaders who command fiercer loyalty in their home bases than Mr. Arafat does.

Mr. Karmi, a slender man who wore wire-rimmed glasses, was married and had a four-month-old daughter named Palestine.

One of the biggest West Bank cities, Tulkarm sits just east of the boundary with Israel, from which it is cut off by Israeli checkpoints. Most roads leading into the city from the checkpoints have also been blocked by piles of dirt and stones plowed up by Israeli forces.

In a living room near the spot where their leader died, Mr. Karmi's comrades and friends gathered over cigarettes and tea this afternoon to remember him. The group leafed through an album of photographs of family and men with guns to select a picture for Mr. Karmi's "martyr poster." Such posters of Palestinians killed in fighting with Israel plaster the walls of Tulkarm.

Mr. Karmi's brigades consider themselves freedom fighters. Unlike members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, they said, they have no interest in suicide attacks, and they insisted their goal was only to drive Israelis out of the West Bank. They said they had obeyed the cease-fire ordered by Mr. Arafat, and Tulkarm has indeed been quiet in recent weeks.

One 30-year-old said Mr. Karmi "used to say something I will never forget: `We are a bridge to the president,' " Mr. Arafat. That meant that they should respect his orders.

But Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade issued a statement saying his killing had "canceled" Mr. Arafat's cease- fire. Others who gathered in the living room here predicted violence.

"This is the biggest provocation you could have in Tulkarm," said a 33-year-old man. "The assassination of Raed is an assassination of the cease-fire."

The man said that about four days ago, he had told Mr. Karmi, a close friend with whom he served time in Israeli prisons after the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, that he had missed his chance to become a martyr. "I told him, `You lost your chance,' " the man recalled saying. " `There is a cease-fire now.' " Mr. Karmi laughed, he said.

The government said the Palestinian Authority, which has limited power to govern Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, had claimed to have imprisoned Mr. Karmi. He was briefly held, his friends said, and the Palestinian Authority tried to persuade him to go to a prison in Ramallah. From their description, it seemed that the offer was intended more to protect Mr. Karmi than to punish him.

He refused to go. One of his comrades said, "When they tried to arrest him, he said: `I am a fish and Tulkarm is my sea. If I leave Tulkarm I will die.' "

Up the road, men gathered near the bloody spot on the asphalt where the blast caught Mr. Karmi at about 11 this morning. Shrapnel tore the bark of a nearby olive tree and broke windows 50 feet away.

Azzam Abdel Hadi, a 30-year-old taxi driver, proudly displayed a recent photograph of his 19-month-old daughter with Mr. Karmi, M-16 in hand. "All of us loved him," he said. "He never brought fear to us. We were proud."

Nessim al-Farr, who is 12, offered a couple of lines from a song about Mr. Karmi recorded by a local artist: "Raed al-Karmi, the son of revolutionaries, your determination should not end in a day or night."

Abdel Hamid, 15, picked up the verse: "You are the Promise. God in the sky protects you."

Many of the boys and some of the men were wearing necklaces bearing photographs of Mr. Karmi or others they call martyrs. They were the work of a 40-year-old Tulkarm artist who gave his name as Badr. He also sells key chains made from olive wood that he plasters with similar pictures.

He used to sell such items expressing sentiments about romance, Badr said in his basement workshop, "but since the intifada, people are directed toward nationalism instead of love."

Even before today, Badr said, likenesses of Mr. Karmi outsold all his other offerings, most of which go for a little more than a dollar. The Palestinian Authority will not permit him to sell items showing Osama bin Laden, he said, but that does not much matter. "People don't ask for bin Laden," he said. "They ask for Raed Karmi."

-------- nato

NATO searches 4,200 ships in bid to track Osama

AFP Rome,
January 15
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/160102/dLFOR06.asp

NATO naval patrols have searched more than 4,200 vessels in the eastern Mediterranean since October in a bid to track down members of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organisation, the alliance said Tuesday.

But nothing suspicious has been uncovered during the searches of the merchant vessels, which have also focused on rooting out logistical support for the extremists, said a spokesman for NATO's Naples-based Southern Command, Captain Mark Oden.

The eight-frigate force in Operation Active Endeavour has been under the control of British Rear-Admiral Angus Sommerville since Sunday.

The fleet, part of NATO's permanent Mediterranean force, is comprised of ships from Britain, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and United States.

Oden said they replaced part of the permanent Atlantic fleet, which had been in the sector since October 6 as part of the response to the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, for which bin Laden and his followers are the chief suspects.

-------- pakistan / india / kashmir

Tensions high as Pakistan crackdown targets militants

By Robert Birsel
Tuesday January 15
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-83731.html

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan said on Monday it had detained more than 1,000 people in its biggest ever crackdown on Islamic militants as it sought to avert war with arch-rival India.

Tension on the two countries' heavily fortified border remained high. Pakistani officials said Indian forces opened fire with small arms and mortars across a ceasefire line on five villages in the Pakistan-controlled part of the Kashmir region.

Both countries have launched the biggest military build-up on their border since independence from Britain in 1947, triggered by an attack on India's parliament last month which India blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri rebels.

A Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman told a news briefing Islamabad wanted to revive deadlocked peace talks with New Delhi but stressed it would not lower its guard on the border until India pulled back its forces to peacetime positions.

Pakistani military ruler General Pervez Musharraf inspected an army post on Monday to inspect "steps taken to face the situation created by the concentration of Indian forces", state-run radio said. It did not disclose the post's location.

But in a sign that fear of war between Muslim Pakistan and mostly Hindu India might be ebbing, the Karachi stock market closed almost four percent higher.

The mass detentions took place before and after a speech by Musharraf on Saturday in which he delivered a delicately balanced message to assuage Indian anger without appearing to give in to his giant neighbour.

HISTORIC ADDRESS

In his historic address, Musharraf said sectarian violence must end and Pakistan could not be used as a springboard for militant attacks in other countries. He also banned five militant groups including the two India blamed for the parliament attack.

But Musharraf, who does not want to be seen to be bowing to Indian pressure, said Pakistan would offer diplomatic and political support to what it sees as the Kashmiri people's legitimate struggle for self-determination.

India gave his speech a guarded welcome, saying it wanted to see action and an end to what it calls "cross-border terrorism" before it would pull forces back from the border.

A Pakistani Interior Ministry official said 1,100 activists from five banned Islamic groups had been detained since Saturday and about 390 of their offices shut and sealed.

"We have detained almost all activists from banned groups, but their leadership has gone underground...We will manage them also," said the official, who declined to be identified.

Most detainees are being held under a British colonial-era maintenance of public order law enabling detention without charge for up to three months.

The five groups targeted in the crackdown were the Sunni group Sipha-e-Sahaba, the Shi'ite Tehrik-e-Jafria Party, the pro-Taliban Tehrik-e-Nifaz-Shariat Mohammadi and pro-Kashmiri groups Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Police in the southwestern province of Baluchistan said they detained six senior members of Islamic parties including the Jamiat-e-Ulemae-Islam and Jamat-e-Islami who police said were planning to stage a protest against the detentions on Friday.

WARNING FROM CLERIC

A prominent Pakistani Muslim cleric said the sweeping crackdown was sowing the seeds of Islamic revolution.

"This government is paving the way for Islamic revolution by creating hurdles for Islamic parties," said Maulana Abdul Aziz, imam of Islamabad's Red Mosque.

An estimated one million troops are now facing each other across the border following the bloody December 13 attack on the Indian parliament that India blames on the Jaish and Lashkar.

India demands Pakistan also extradite the leaders of the two groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. Musharraf said no Pakistanis could be handed to India.

Lashkar-e-Taiba spokesman Abdullah Sayyaf told Reuters the group was in the process of shifting its militant operations out of Pakistan when 350 members were taken into custody.

"We had already announced to shift Lashkar from Pakistan to Indian-held Kashmir. We were in the middle of our shifting when the government cracked down on us," he said.

Other banned groups, which joined two others outlawed last August, reacted with dismay. Some said they would change the names of their groups in a bid to skirt the legal dragnet.

But the Interior Ministry said later on Monday the banned groups would not be allowed to operate under new names. The ministry also said newspapers might be prosecuted if they published statements in support of the banned groups.

Lashkar's Sayyaf said various groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir were discussing a joint strategy against the ban.

"The crackdown or ban will only increase our problems but can not slow our struggle against Indian occupation in Kashmir," he said.

----

Pakistan arrests more militants

By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 15, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020115-826775.htm

... India yesterday praised Pakistan's crackdown on suspected terrorists but said it will not remove its troops until Pakistan shows it can halt the infiltration of extremists into Indian territory.

"The mobilization is complete, and any effort at de-escalation can come only, I repeat only, if and when the cross-border terrorism is effectively stopped," Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes told reporters in New Delhi....

----

Pakistani cleric warns of Islamic revolution

Tuesday January 15, 8:37 AM
By Zeeshan Haider
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-83798.html

ISLAMABAD - A prominent Pakistani Muslim cleric said on Monday President Pervez Musharraf's sweeping crackdown on religious extremism was sowing the seeds of Islamic revolution.

Maulana Abdul Aziz, imam of Islamabad's main Red Mosque, said while there had been no immediate backlash to Musharraf's crackdown, announced on a Saturday, a reaction was brewing.

"This government is paving the way for Islamic revolution by creating hurdles for the Islamic parties," Aziz told Reuters in an interview at his home next to the Red Mosque.

"There may not be instant reaction but they will respond once dust is settled," the fiery preacher said of Musharraf's decision to ban five militant Muslim groups, including two fighting Indian forces in its part of disputed Kashmir.

"We are just watching the situation but the silence will not last for long," Aziz said, adding he believed Mascara launched his crackdown because of U.S. pressure.

"The timing of this announcement by the president has raised suspicion in the minds of religious people. It is being done under U.S. pressure," he said.

Musharraf also imposed restrictions on Islamic schools, or madrassas, which have long been seen as a breeding ground for militancy. New madrassas can not be built without permission and all of them have to register and be brought into the mainstream education system.

He imposed restrictions on mosques and denounced religious scholars who he said preached sectarian hatred and violence.

Aziz, who opposed Musharraf's decision to abandon support for Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers and support the U.S.-led war on terrorism, dismissed the government's justification.

"If they were terrorists groups, then why were they allowed to operate for such a long time?" he asked, adding the move would weaken the separatist movement in Indian-ruled Kashmir.

"We have lost Afghanistan and it seems we are now losing Kashmir," he said of the banning of the two Kashmiri militant groups blamed for the December 13 attack on the Indian parliament. "This will affect the freedom movement in Kashmir."

Musharraf's crackdown followed a big buildup of Indian forces on Pakistan's border in the wake of the parliament attack, which India blamed on the two Kashmiri groups banned on the weekend.

The United States had called on Pakistan to get tough with militants to help defuse the standoff with nuclear rival India.

"GOOD DECISION"

A teacher at a madrassa in Islamabad said he had no problems with the new restrictions.

"It is a good decision by the government that madrassas will not be opened without permission. We fully support it," teacher Kaleem Mortaza told Reuters at his school.

Mortaza said he would register his madrassa with the government. As he spoke his students in a nearby classroom were reciting verses of the Muslim holy book, the Koran.

One new student, the eight-year-old son of a shoe-shiner said he did hot know why his parents took him out of a state school and sent him to the madrassa last week.

But Mortaza had an answer. "The parents send their children here to serve Islam and the holy Koran. They join our mission to propagate the teachings of Koran throughout the world," he says.

"I have memorised the Koran in two years. Now I am teaching these children to memorize Koran and after graduation from here they will open more madrassas to do the same," he said.

The number of madrassas mushroomed during the 11-year military rule of President Zia-ul-Haq when front-line state Pakistan became embroiled in the U.S.-backed war against the Soviet 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan.

Madrassas, mainly in Northwest Frontier Province and western Baluchistan provinces, produced numerous recruits for Afghanistan's hardline Taliban movement which erupted on to the scene in 1994 and took power two years later.

----

1,430 Being Held in Pakistan as Part of Terror Crackdown

New York Times
January 15, 2002
By ERIK ECKHOLM with CELIA W. DUGGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/15/international/asia/15STAN.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 14 - The Pakistani government has rounded up 1,430 people across the country in recent days and sealed 390 offices of militant groups as part of a widening crackdown on extremists ordered by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a senior police official said today.

Most of the detentions have occurred since Saturday, when General Musharraf, in a televised speech, pledged to Pakistan and the world that he would purge the society of spreading extremism and prevent Pakistan from being used as a base for international terrorism.

For the first time, the arrests were to include militants inside the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir, said the official, speaking by telephone from the southern city of Karachi. The disputed Himalayan region is divided between India and Pakistan, and India has threatened war unless Pakistan clamps down on militants that it says are waging an insurgency from the Pakistani side.

The Pakistani authorities have identified a total of 3,000 people, including its Kashmiri sector, they want to detain, the official said, adding that both India and the United States should clearly see that General Musharraf was serious about his pledges.

"We've picked up both leaders and rank-and-file members of the militant groups," the police official said.

But even as General Musharraf expanded his crackdown, India's defense minister, George Fernandes, said today that India, which has mounted a huge military buildup along the border, remained poised for war if Pakistan did not act quickly enough.

"Any efforts at de-escalation can come only - I repeat, only - if and when cross-border terrorism is effectively stopped," Mr. Fernandes declared at a news conference in New Delhi. He added that General Musharraf "has to do it fast particularly because troops from both sides are on the front lines."

The remarks signaled that India would keep up its pressure on Pakistan as the Bush administration engaged in intensive diplomacy to scale down tensions between the nuclear rivals.

Both India and Pakistan are awaiting a visit this week by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, and Mr. Fernandes is going to the United States this week to meet with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

While the American government does not want to become a mediator in the Kashmir dispute, it fears the consequences of a war between India and Pakistan, and does not want resources and attention diverted from its own global campaign to crush the terror network of Osama bin Laden.

In frequent phone calls, President Bush and Secretary Powell have urged General Musharraf to forge ahead with curbs on extremists and urged the Indian government to ease off its threat of attack.

At the same time, India is pressing its own diplomatic offensive in discussions with Prime Minister Zhu Rongji of China, who today began a long-planned state visit to India.

China has been a close ally of Pakistan but faces its own problem with Muslim extremists. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India said in a speech at a banquet tonight that India and China had agreed to cooperate against terrorism.

While India has demanded a speedy crackdown from Pakistan on the militants that have bled Indian forces with a 12-year insurgency in Kashmir, those rounded up by Pakistan so far are divided evenly between people devoted to the Kashmir struggle and members of extreme Islamic groups that are blamed for hundreds of sectarian assassinations in recent years inside Pakistan, the Pakistani police official said.

Some of the detainees have been involved in both the Kashmir fighting as well as the violence in Pakistan, officials said.

The Pakistani police official said the targets of the arrests in Kashmir would include members of two groups, recently banned, that India holds responsible for an attack on Parliament in December that set off the current tensions and the buildup of military forces along the border.

India also charges that those two groups, the Army of the Pure and the Army of Muhammad, were responsible for a car bomb at the state assembly in Kashmir that killed 40 people in October.

As his sweep for extremists proceeds, General Musharraf appears to enjoy wide public support. But conservative clerics and leaders of banned Islamic groups say that he is courting unrest and that he has to walk a careful line on the Kashmir question because most citizens and the military feel deeply committed to the "liberation" of Kashmir, which is predominantly Muslim.

Mullah Abdul Aziz, imam of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, warned today of a counterreaction by angry Muslims. "This government is paving the way for Islamic revolution by creating hurdles for the Islamic parties," he told Reuters.

But General Musharraf is banking on public disgust with sectarian violence, and the prospect that Pakistan could be isolated internationally and branded as a sponsor of terrorism. "We are not targeting Islamic political figures, but Islamic militant figures," the police official said.

Some leaders of banned groups have escaped arrest and issued statements of defiance, saying that their organizations will continue underground or under new names and that the holy war in Kashmir will not be deterred.

The sweeps have raised civil liberties issues, because suspects are usually held under the Maintenance of Public Order ordinance, which allows police to detain people for 30 days simply by declaring them a threat to public order. Eventually, many detainees will probably be charged with possession of illegal weapons, officials said.

Lists of suspects were drawn up by provincial police departments, civil intelligence bureaus and the military's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. The authorities said they decided to move quickly, without formal charges, because they feared that many suspects would disappear.

General Musharraf had started a drive against Islamic extremists last year, but he did not take stringent action. The effort took on new urgency after Sept. 11, when Pakistan joined the coalition to destroy its former allies, the Taliban government of Afghanistan.

Now, during a military confrontation with India and under pressure from the United States and other Western nations, General Musharraf appears to have started a more far- reaching crackdown.

Even so, skepticism of the general runs deep among the Indian political leaders, who are likely to judge his actions by whether they have a discernible effect in ending the bloodletting that has made Kashmir one of India's top security concerns.

Mr. Fernandes, the Indian defense minister, said there was still no strong evidence that General Musharraf was serious about fulfilling his commitments. Asked about the arrest of hundreds of militants in Pakistan over the last two days, Mr. Fernandes said India had been provided with no official information about who has been arrested or what groups they represent.

"We have yet to get any concrete reports on that," he said. "At the moment we only know what's been in the press."

This afternoon, Mr. Fernandes used the same kind of language that the prime minister, Mr. Vajpayee, and other senior officials have used since the attack on Parliament. With unanimity, they have depicted the current showdown as India's final battle against terrorism.

"There is no way that India can accept such acts of terrorism anymore," Mr. Fernandes said. "Let me tell you that the thought of having to receive around 20 bodies of soldiers every week - brave men slain in terrorist attacks - has steeled our resolve to end this. India would like to make it clear that India has had enough and shall have no more of it."

-------- propaganda wars

Media and War, Appearance and Reality

January 15, 2001
http://www.stratfor.com/home/0201151930a.htm

Summary

Coverage of the "war on terrorism" has reversed the traditional role between the press and the military. Abandoning the hypercritical coverage of the past, the media have become cheerleaders -- allowing the conflict in Afghanistan to become synonymous with the war at large and portraying that war as an unalloyed success. The reversal of roles between media and military creates public expectations that can affect the prosecution of the war.

Analysis

The U.S. Department of Defense recently issued a report stating that the "war on terrorism" could last as long as six years on a global scale. Obviously no one, including the Defense Department, can predict anything that far into the future. A forecast of that sort is not intended as a precise benchmark. Rather, it is intended to say that the war is only just beginning and that victory, while attainable, will take a very long time.

In a sense, the Defense Department is simply providing a benchmark in terms of its own rhythm of life. For example, U.S. defense undergoes what's called a "Quadrennial Review" (QR) -- a complete review of everything from strategy to weapons -- every four years. A QR was completed just prior to Sept. 11, and the next one will take place in 2005. Defense officials are saying here that the war will not be over by the time of the next QR and that the next QR will still be focused on the war. Second, most serious budgeting takes place in less than a five-year horizon. The Defense Department is saying that all budgeting now and for the next couple of years will be focused on the war.

All of this is in keeping with what the Bush administration, the Defense Department and the armed services have been saying since Sept. 11. The war is going to be long and hard -- and though its outcome will be certain, the enemy is intelligent, dedicated and resilient. The war in Afghanistan is merely the prelude for other military actions, and even in Afghanistan, it is far from over. Thus, this Defense Department report is entirely in keeping with what the administration has been saying on its own.

In a paradox worthy of careful study, however, the mass media have been far more exuberant about progress in the war. The media have to a great extent disregarded the constant drumbeat of caution sounded by everyone from U.S. President George W. Bush to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Adm. John Stufflebeem. Instead, they have spoken of the stunning victory of U.S. arms in Afghanistan and a new war-fighting paradigm in which air power, a few good men and the natives sweep away America's enemy, and they have generally engaged in an ongoing orgy of congratulatory coverage.

The coverage of this war represents a new phase in American war journalism. In World War II, Korea and certainly Vietnam, the military's public affairs officers were charged with painting as positive a picture of events as possible. The media were institutionally dubious and suspicious. Among the myths of World War II was the notion that the media were far more positive in their coverage than they were in Vietnam. That was true to the extent that the media were as committed to the strategic goals of the war as the military in World War II, while in Vietnam, the media ultimately became critics of the war itself.

But the coverage of specific battles, specific commanders and specific incidents in World War II was not only skeptical but also brutal. The most senior commanders worked diligently to keep reporters on their side because they knew how ready the press was to cast doubt on the competence of commanders. The media were committed to victory -- in contrast to Vietnam -- but they had no problem asking whether a given commander or campaign was likely to contribute to that victory.

The media and military have now completely reversed roles. Anyone who listens to or reads the various briefings is struck by the tone of long-term confidence mixed with near-term concern. Anyone who watches TV coverage in particular, but who also reads much of the newspaper reporting, is struck by how that tone of caution is disregarded.

One of the reasons for this has been the media's obsession with Afghanistan. Although it was, of course, the first major campaign of the war, it was far from the only operation. Throughout Europe, Asia and the United States, intelligence operations were under way that almost daily yielded an arrest here, a group captured there and so on. This war to disrupt the al Qaeda network was certainly as important, if not more so, than the war in Afghanistan, but it was a difficult war to cover. Afghanistan, by contrast, was relatively easy to cover. It had a geographical focus. There were air strikes to report and deploying troops to film. The media allowed a segment of the war, Afghanistan, to become identified with the war itself.

But even here, the media could not cope with the subtleties of the war. The press interpreted events in Afghanistan as an overwhelming victory for the United States. It was certainly a victory but a qualified one and far from final, either in Afghanistan or in the war in general.

The United States' primary war aim was stopping al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base of operations and, in particular, preventing al Qaeda from controlling its international network from Afghanistan. That goal was achieved. Another goal was the capture or liquidation of senior personnel in Afghanistan, preventing them from exfiltrating the country and setting up operations elsewhere. That goal does not appear to have been achieved.

A very secondary goal was dislodging the Taliban from state power and destroying them as a fighting force. It should be recalled that this was not even a war goal in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. Washington was prepared to leave the Taliban regime in place if it surrendered al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to the United States. It was only after the Taliban refused this demand that their destruction became a war goal -- not as an end in itself, but as a means to achieve the primary end: al Qaeda's defeat.

The Taliban's withdrawal from the major cities and surrender of state power was not the same as their destruction as a fighting force. This was a point made over and over by the Defense Department. The vast majority of the Taliban had not been killed or captured; most had escaped with their weapons. The military has consistently expressed concerns that the new government and the warlords who control Afghanistan now were not really committed to liquidating al Qaeda, let alone the Taliban, and that many of them were reaching agreements with individual Taliban members or leaders. The real issue is whether the Taliban might regroup over the winter, forge alliances with various warlords as they have in the past and re-emerge as a force.

The media, in general, presented the Taliban's pre-Ramadan withdrawal from state power and the cities as the end of the Taliban. That certainly wasn't what the Bush administration was saying. The military was well aware of the importance of its victory but also of its limits. The U.S. military was aware that the few thousand troops it had on the ground were enough to conduct raids on al Qaeda facilities and to support native forces but not enough to crush the Taliban or to impose a Pax Americana on Afghanistan. They were also painfully aware of the limits of their intelligence and their dependence on local sources for intelligence, which meant frequently dubious information.

Most important, they knew that both al Qaeda and the Taliban were receiving support and sanctuary across the border in Pakistan and that, as in Vietnam, cross-border operations were fraught with political implications.

For the media, once the Taliban abandoned the cities, the war in Afghanistan was simply over. In the following weeks, each unconfirmed sighting of Osama bin Laden, which however dubious, reasonably triggered a search operation by U.S. forces, led to completely unfounded reports that he was cornered and about to be captured. Regardless of the fact that this was not at all what either U.S. Central Command or the Defense Department was saying, regardless of all of the careful caveats and warnings, the media simply could not distinguish between raw intelligence being checked out and bin Laden's capture.

In other words, the Defense Department and the media have "flipped" their roles. The military's public affairs officers, normally cheerleaders, have taken the role of scolding nannies, reminding the media that the war is going to be long and hard; the media has taken the role of cheerleader, creating a picture of a war filled with stunning and replicable victories.

It is the expectation of replicable victories that is the most interesting. Afghanistan is a work in progress. We do not know whether the interim government led by Hamid Karzai can create a nation out of the warlords. We do not know whether the Taliban will re-form or what role they will play in the future of Afghanistan. We do not know what will happen across the border in Pakistan. We don't even know if al Qaeda will be permitted to resume operations in Afghanistan under the protection of some warlord. We do not know the final outcome even in Afghanistan. Therefore, the idea that what has happened there is replicable begs the question of whether there has been success in Afghanistan.

Whether Afghanistan is replicable depends on three things: Does any other country in the world have conditions like Afghanistan? Is the outcome in Afghanistan satisfactory? And what of the endless countries like Singapore, where al Qaeda is present, but in which nothing that has happened in Afghanistan is even vaguely relevant.

Why have traditionally hypercritical media moved into a position where they are, on the whole, even more enthusiastic about the course of the war than the media's traditional enemy, the military? Why have the media tended to disregard the cautionary notes in favor of triumphalism? This is not a trivial question since, in some ways, from a military standpoint, raising false expectations is more dangerous than negativism.

There are several reasons for this:

The media simply do not understand the war. The number of correspondents who have served in the military is trivial; the number who have been involved in or studied intelligence is even fewer. They are superb at doing human-interest stories on a war -- give them a refugee family, and they are good for a week. But understanding the decision-making within, say, the Taliban, and understanding what it is trying to achieve is simply beyond them.

The media confuse demons with morons. The media demonized bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban. If they were devils, they were also stupid. The idea that the Taliban had a war plan and that they were executing it when they withdrew from the cities was simply beyond most of the media. The media are highly emotional, particularly when covering a major topic they don't really understand.

The media are highly dependent on experts. Because reporters themselves know very little about the subject, they have a great deal of difficulty identifying who an expert is. Any retired officer above the rank of lieutenant colonel is an expert. These officers are dedicated team players, even in retirement. All are positive about how well their particular service is doing.

Sept. 11 was partly an attack on New York, the media capital of the world. It created a particular mind-set within the media, one that took the war very personally. Reporters have a personal need to feel that the war has been brought under control, and they see every action as bringing them closer to safety.

There are undoubtedly other and better explanations. The "why" is in many ways less important than that it is happening. The media are portraying victories where the military is portraying ongoing campaigns. This can affect the situation profoundly. The media shape public opinion. On the one hand, the war-fighters are working to prepare the public for an extended conflict. On the other hand, the media are presenting the war as a set of dramatic victories.

In a sense, the media are doing the opposite of what they did in Vietnam, while at the same time potentially creating an identical situation: The public expects a quick end to the war and turns restive when it doesn't arrive in time for the evening news.

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[Another shot across the bow. Response - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com.et]

No 'need to know'

January 15, 2002
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.,
president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for
The Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20020115-23698180.htm

A "need to know" is one of the most time-tested principles of information security. According to this principle, if you don't have such a need, you should not be given access to classified or other sensitive data.

Even if you think you have a "need to know," moreover, unless appropriate background checks have been performed - establishing that you can be trusted to treat such information confidentially - and the requisite security clearances (known in the government as "tickets") issued, you do not qualify. In sum, the basic rule has been: No tickets, no access.

That, at least, was the general practice until the Clinton administration came to office, empowering a number of individuals who were critical of governmental secrecy in general and the so-called "abuse" of classification procedures in particular. Madeleine Albright, Tobi Goti, Hazel O'Leary, Anthony Lake, Morton Halperin and John Podesta were among the senior officials who, during the Clinton years in one way or another, pursued a different approach.

For example, former Secretary of State Albright, and her department's intelligence chief, Mrs. Goti, believed "sharing" sensitive U.S. intelligence with other nations would demonstrate the validity of American charges about their involvement in proliferation. The predictable result was confirmed in a front-page article The Washington Post on Sunday about Russian-Iranian missile cooperation over the past decade: The recipients of such information were generally more interested in ascertaining - and terminating - the ways in which it was obtained than in ending their proliferation activities. All too often, putting them "in the know" meant that, thereafter, we would be kept in the dark, having lost irreplaceable intelligence collection "sources and methods."

Then there was the security-wrecking operation engaged in by former Energy Secretary O'Leary and the anti-nuclear activists she chose to staff key jobs in her department. For instance, she blithely ended the nuclear weapons laboratories' traditional practice of giving different colored badges to lab personnel based on their "need to know" and levels of security clearance. Her rationale? It would be discriminatory to those (notably, Chinese, Russian, Iranian and other foreign nationals) who had neither. We may never fully know how much damage was done as a direct or indirect result of the climate of insecurity and dysfunctionality created in the nuclear weapons complex by O'Leary and Company.

An even more ominous legacy, however, may be that resulting from the compulsory declassification requirements promulgated by President Clinton at the urging of his then-National Security Adviser Tony Lake, Mort Halperin (at the time one of his chief lieutenants on the NSC staff) and John Podesta, w