------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Frequent spills plague Australian uranium mines
Novoste Revs Disappoint, Shares Drop
Independent Review Questions Approval of Yucca Mountain
Indian Point Crews Hone Skills Under New Owner
Bush Visit to China Won't Hurt Taiwan, U.S. Says
U.S. Says Arafat Missed Opportunity for Statehood
Are Bush, Republicans really "Pro-Competition?" Yeah, Right!

MILITARY
U.S. Forces Storm Afghan Hospital
Karzai Encourages U.S. Peacekeepers
After Green Beret Operation, Townspeople Have Questions
Munitions Depot Explodes
Russians help bioterror defense
China tells Iraq does not support war on terror
Woman Detonates Explosives in Israel
Religious Radicals Facing Backlash in Pakistan
American Reporter Held Captive in Pakistan
Pro-Chechen Radio Could Lose License
Study: Fewer Facts in Media Coverage
Russian Officers Are Killed in Helicopter Crash in Chechnya
Greenville sub hits Marine ship
US Soldiers Hurt in Copter Landing
Pentagon Says It Didn't Kill Innocents

POLICE / PRISONERS
Detainees Are Not P.O.W.'s, Cheney and Rumsfeld Declare
Police Shift Focus to Terror With Spymaster and a Marine
Cheney Supports Domestic Antiterrorist Military Command

ENERGY AND OTHER
Shell adds Texas wind farm to U.S. power portfolio
Cheney Is Set to Battle Congress to Keep His Enron Papers Secret
Cheney Refuses Records' Release Energy Showdown With GAO Looms
EPA Plans Watershed Protection Program

ACTIVISTS
500 people demonstrated in Grozny
Australia Children Make Suicide Pact
Some Asylum Seekers End Hunger Strike
Haitians Ransack Warehouses
Aborigines swipe Aussie coat of arms to recover emu
Israeli peace rally calls for Peres to quit



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- accidents

Frequent spills plague Australian uranium mines

AUSTRALIA: January 28, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14247/story.htm

SYDNEY - Hundreds of thousands of litres of potentially harmful uranium solution spilled in the Australian outback since December is alarming environmentalists, although the companies responsible insist the accidents pose no threats.

Mining house WMC Ltd confirmed on Friday it had told South Australia state government officials that more than 420,000 litres of mining slurry containing uranium accidentally spilled from a tank at its Olympic Dam mine on December 12.

The spill - which would fill almost a third of an Olympic size swimming pool - was one of seven such incidents last year at the mine, 500 km (310 miles) north of Adelaide.

Uranium exposure has been linked to a variety of cancers and other life-threatening medical problems.

But a WMC spokesman said the low uranium content of the solution, 0.1 percent, rendered the spill harmless.

"It was mainly a copper stream, and was contained," the spokesman told Reuters. "And besides, the spilled material was returned to the mine's process circuit."

Environmental groups assert that any spill is dangerous and that mining companies are benefiting from weak regulations on how to handle accidents.

"It may be within legal constraints but like any exposure, it is is an unnecessary health hazard," said David Noonan of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

"How is it possible to lose track of 420,000 litres of uranium slurry, equivalent to eight tonnes of uranium?"

ELECTION LOOMING

The South Australian state government - which is heading into a tight election on February 9 - agrees spills are occurring with alarming frequency.

State officials recently ordered urgent changes to rules on reporting leaks after revelations that another mine, owned by U.S. firm General Atomics, recorded 24 spills over two years.

The General Atomics spills came to light after 62,000 litres of radioactive uranium solution spewed from a ruptured pipe at the Beverley mine in remote South Australia on January 12.

Officials from the Beverley mine maintain the spills posed no dangers to employees or an Aboriginal settlement 60 km (37 miles) away, but agreed to store any contaminated soil in sealed drums until it can be disposed of safely.

Critics of the way miners notify the public of accidents said they fear that after the state election, the fresh push to raise reporting standards may fade away.

WMC's Yeels doubts news of the latest spills would have even been brought to the attention of local media in a non-election year.

"We'd like to be able to say that these spills will never occur, but that is not the case," Yeels said.

Uranium mining has long been a political hot potato in Australia. In 1996, the newly-elected conservative government repealed the "three-mines only" policy of its Labor predecessor, put in place to appease environment groups.

There are currently three mines operating in Australia, with around a half dozen more proposed. A mountain of uranium accumulated during the Cold War has taken years to whittle down, reducing the need for fresh supply.

But with stockpiles held by operators of the world's 440 commercial nuclear reactors falling, demand for yellowcake was set to rise, commodities analysts said.

Australia has no nuclear industry of its own, exporting its uranium to North America, Asia and Europe.

-------- nuc medicine

Novoste Revs Disappoint, Shares Drop

January 28, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-health-novoste-earns.html

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Novoste Corp. on Monday announced a voluntary recall of a radioactive device used to treat clogged coronary arteries and fourth-quarter revenues that fell below expectations, pushing its shares down by nearly 18 percent.

The medical device company disclosed in a federal filing earlier on Monday that it has started a voluntary recall of 50 of its Beta-Cath devices because of improper prescription labeling.

The Norcross, Georgia-based company also reported revenues in the quarter of $22.4 million, sharply higher than the $3.2 million a year ago, but below expectations of $23 million to $25 million.

Shares of Novoste fell $2.109 to $9.12, a drop of 18.78 percent, on the Nasdaq on Monday morning.

``We're not pleased with the recall but we think the stock is down more because they slightly missed the range of revenues,'' said analyst Ryan Rauch of Adams, Harkness & Hill.

For the fourth quarter, Novoste reported net income of $2.7 million, or 16 cents a share, compared with a loss of $10 million, or 63 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding charges, the company reported a profit of 23 cents a share.

Analysts polled by research firm Thomson Financial/First call had expected earnings for the quarter of 14 cents to 25 cents, with a mean estimate of 22 cents.

Bob Hopkins, an analyst with CS First Boston, said of the quarter, ``It was an in-line quarter to maybe slightly below on our revenue expectation.''

He characterized the recall as ``the least of their worries,'' referring to the recent departure of the company's chief executive and a rising competitive threat from companies developing medicine-coated stents and similar technologies.

The fourth-quarter results included $1.2 million in one-time charges consisting of $760,000 in restructuring expenses related to severance payments, relocation expenses and other costs of consolidating its operations outside the United States. The charges also included a $440,000 write-down of an equity investment in a start-up company.

``The Beta-Cath System has been placed in nearly 340 hospitals in the U.S., and we expect this number to continue to grow throughout 2002,'' said Thomas Weldon, chairman and interim chief executive of the company, in a statement accompanying the earnings results.

Weldon, a company co-founder and former chief executive, replaced William Hawkins, who left earlier this month to join medical device giant Medtronic Inc. as president of its vascular division.

Novoste's shares fell sharply in late December on the announcement of Weldon's departure.

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

-------- nevada

Independent Review Questions Approval of Yucca Mountain

By Cat Lazaroff,
January 28, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-28-07.html

WASHINGTON, DC - Scientific uncertainties make it impossible to ensure that a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada would remain safe for the thousands of years necessary to protect the environment, suggests a review by the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.

Yucca Mountain, Nevada (Four photos courtesy DOE)

While the board (NWTRB) has found "no individual technical or scientific factor has been identified that would automatically eliminate Yucca Mountain from consideration as the site of a permanent repository" for the nation's nuclear waste, the review found a variety of problems with the studies that aim to ensure the safety of the site.

The NWTRB study questions the adequacy of the computer models used to project how the site's natural features, including geological and hydrologic formations, will protect the stored wastes. The report also raises concerns about how well casks designed to contain the wastes for the 10,000 years required by lawmakers will hold up to the potential tests of time, natural and manmade disasters.

"Gaps in data and basic understanding cause important uncertainties in the concepts and assumptions on which the DOE's performance estimates are now based," NWTRB concludes. "Because of these uncertainties, the Board has limited confidence in current performance estimates generated by the DOE's performance assessment model."

"The Board's view is that the technical basis for the DOE's repository performance estimates is weak to moderate at this time," the NWTRB concluded.

Geologist studies cores from Yucca Mountain to determine its ability to contain radioactive waste.

However, "the Board makes no judgment on the question of whether the Yucca Mountain site should be recommended or approved for repository development," the report says.

The Department of Energy (DOE) says the NWTRB report provides "valuable independent confirmation of a critical conclusion" reached by the DOE after 24 years and $4 billion of research: that Yucca Mountain would make a suitable repository. Earlier this month, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced that the agency intends to recommend to President George W. Bush that the Yucca Mountain site is scientifically sound and suitable to hold radioactive waste.

Yucca Mountain is the only site now under consideration as a permanent repository for high level radioactive wastes, including spent fuel from the nation's 103 nuclear power plants. Nevada itself has no nuclear reactors.

The NWTRB says that "eliminating all uncertainty associated with estimates of repository performance would never be possible at any repository site." Therefore, government officials and policymakers will have to determine "how much scientific uncertainty is acceptable," the board wrote.

The Board recommended that the DOE "continue a vigorous, well integrated scientific investigation to increase its fundamental understanding of the potential behavior of the repository system."

Under Secretary of Energy Robert Card said Thursday that the DOE is committed to reducing uncertainties about the safety of the Yucca Mountain site by using estimates of its performance projecting thousands of years in the future.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham

"The [Energy] Secretary is committed to ensuring the safety of citizens of Nevada and of the nation, a timely recommendation on a repository, and an ongoing course of research that would last so long as the repository is in its operating and monitoring period," Card said, noting that research could continue "as much as 100-300 years after its opening."

Card pointed out that the NWTRB did not disagree with the DOE that a repository at Yucca Mountain "would be safe throughout its operating and monitoring period, hundreds of years into the future." Card said there is no legitimate scientific organization that disagrees on this issue.

If President Bush decides to recommend the site, the state of Nevada will have the opportunity to disapprove the recommendation. If Nevada disagrees with Bush's recommendation, Congress will be responsible for designating a repository site for development.

"The Board's review of the 24 years of scientific study at Yucca Mountain is important, as is the decision on whether or not to address the country's nuclear waste problem at this time," Card said, "given the impacts to national security, environmental protection, and continued clean up of nuclear waste."

Spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste is now scattered across 131 sites in 39 states, Card noted.

Yucca Mountain looking west into Crater Flat with volcanic cones in the background

Many Nevada officials oppose the planned repository. On January 24, the city of Las Vegas and Clark County, Nevada filed court documents charging that DOE approval of the Yucca Mountain site will cause "immediate and irreparable harm" to Las Vegas.

"Today's legal action represents our continued commitment to working with the governor and other elected officials as we pursue every option to keep Nevada from becoming the nation's nuclear waste dump," wrote Clark County Commission chair Dario Herrera in a written statement.

The petition, filed in a federal appeals court, asks the court to delay the DOE's official recommendation that the site be approved. By law, Energy Secretary Richardson must wait until February 10 to recommend the site - 30 days after he gave official notice to Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn of his intentions.

The state of Nevada filed a lawsuit on December 17, 2001 to halt the Yucca Mountain Project The state alleges that Energy Department's ground rules for judging whether the site is suitable for nuclear waste storage are contrary to what Congress intended.

Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn (Photo courtesy Office of the Governor)

If President Bush does approve a nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain, Governor Guinn plans to continue his opposition.

"I can veto a decision by the President of the United States, and then within 90 days it has to go to both houses of Congress, the Senate and the House, and they have to overrule with at least a simple majority veto," Guinn said earlier this month.

More information about the Yucca Mountain Project is online at: http://www.ymp.gov

-------- new york

Indian Point Crews Hone Skills Under New Owner

New York Times
January 28, 2002
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/28/nyregion/28NUKE.html

BUCHANAN, N.Y., Jan. 25 - As part of a nuclear accident drill, a control room crew at the Indian Point 2 power plant was facing a huge, simulated leak, bigger than any ever experienced at an American reactor.

As a supervisor rattled off orders to the rest of the crew, the operators seemed to be making progress in stabilizing the plant. Already, the subordinates had verified that the reactor had shut down properly, that three emergency pumps were running and that several valves were in the right position.

"Verify that the R.C.S. pressure is less than 660," said Gary Norton, the supervisor, referring to the reactor coolant system, as four other operators tended to various duties in the control room simulator.

Then a trainer interrupted. "Gary, who are you talking to?" the trainer asked. "Start over."

So, almost like a child's game of mother may I?, Mr. Norton started again. "Mike, verify that the R.C.S. pressure is less than 660," he said to Michael Ruh, one of the reactor operators. Mr. Ruh replied, "I understand that you want me to verify that R.C.S. pressure is less than 660." Mr. Norton, following the demanding and somewhat awkward control room etiquette, replied appropriately, "That's correct."

Practicing a new way to talk was part of an unusual, intensive four-week training session instituted by Indian Point 2's new owner, the Entergy Corporation, as part of its effort to turn around the plant's performance. Mr. Norton's group, Crew Alpha, was the first crew to begin the intensive training and was halfway through the course.

Four of seven crews at Indian Point failed their annual requalification tests last year, and more than 20 percent of the operators failed individual tests. (Alpha crew had some errors, but passed.) Entergy officials counted four errors in the plant's operation in the last few years, including one in which operators ran the reactor above maximum power for a few minutes on Aug. 31.

Entergy officials say that they have a lot of work to do, but that the operators, all of them hired and trained by the previous owner, the Consolidated Edison Company of New York, generally know what they need to do. What they need to work on are "soft skills," including teamwork, coordination and consistency in following procedures, Entergy executives say.

The plant is under a microscope, partly because the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have returned public attention to the hazards of nuclear power. As a result, life inside the fence that surrounds the nuclear plant has changed somewhat.

People inside cannot order lunch from the deli just outside the gate because the state troopers and guardsmen won't let the deliveryman in. Tony Venditti, one of the operators in Alpha crew, said that when the starter on his old Corolla gave out recently in the parking lot, it took two hours for the tow-truck driver from a neighborhood gas station to clear security. The security department had to issue the driver a picture ID before he could get in. All the trees on a slope overlooking the reactors have been cut down to improve the defenders' lines of sight, and the Coast Guard patrols the Hudson River side.

But the new owners are focusing heavily on a more traditional problem: the plant's performance. Entergy brought in instructors from Indian Point 3 - which it bought in November 2000 from the New York Power Authority - and from elsewhere to teach the sessions.

They saw signs of progress by today, the end of the second week. At one point an accident drill was stopped, and after a discussion of the progress made, an instructor asked if the operator was satisfied.

"I'm happy," said the trainee.

The instructor, Ronald Stotts, responded with a hint of a smile, "I understand that you're happy."

The trainee shot back, "That's correct."

Some exchanges are even more odd. In the drills, when the supervisor wants to address the whole group, he raises his right hand and says, "Brief!" All turn to face him and raise their hands, until they look like a classroom of third graders, eager to be called on.

When the supervisor makes eye contact with each person, he lowers his hand and begins speaking. The technique assures that everyone, quite literally, is on the same page; they work from a loose-leaf binder five inches thick that gives procedures for every sequence of malfunctions that engineers can think of.

The binder contains a "fault tree," a predefined structure for decisions and actions. The beginning, a chapter called E-0, designating the starting point of an emergency, orders actions that do not rely on knowing exactly what happened. The operators, however, must quickly jump to more specific procedures.

The trainers quiz the operators on the titles of each chapter and subchapter, and tell them to list the sections in which they would find instructions that concern a specific pump or valve, and to list all the conditions in the reactor that might call for certain procedures. The operators keep an index in their heads, a concordance to the operating bible.

The training puts a heavy emphasis on analytical skills, with each member of Crew Alpha quizzed on why each item in a procedure is there.

Indian Point 2 has about 55 operators. In the early days of nuclear power, the machines were billed by some proponents as idiot-proof; in fact, at Three Mile Island, which experienced a meltdown in March 1979, the plant might have done better had the operators done less. But in the last few years, operators have been recognized as a crucial component to safe operation.

Each operator represents a substantial investment by the plant owner. Initial training takes 13 months, and operators get six weeks a year of refresher training; executives point out to operators that most airline captains receive only one week a year. Training each reactor operator costs about $250 an hour, Entergy estimates.

Reactor operators are generally paid $110,000 to $120,000 a year, including overtime. Senior reactor operators, who are considered management, receive $125,000 or more, including a $14,000 bonus for maintaining their licenses.

But Entergy plans to spend more, to raise the number of operators to about 70, because company executives believe that having a few extra would improve operations and make shutdowns rarer and shorter. The plant's output sells for about $1 million a day.

"Salaries are cheap if you can keep the place running," said Paul W. Rubin, who became operations manager at Indian Point 2 after Entergy bought it from Con Edison last Sept. 6.

Passing the license test is like getting permission to fly a one-of-a-kind airplane. Indian Point 2 and 3 look like twins separated at birth, but they are different enough that licenses are not transferable. An operator at one would, at the moment, have to take 13 months to learn to run the other. Now that what managers jokingly call the "Berlin Wall" between them has come down, with common ownership, Entergy is considering training any new hires for a dual license, but managers are not sure this would be cost-effective.

At the moment, though, management's focus is on trying to inculcate a mixture of caution and confidence in the operators. The reactor will have to operate more hours of the year, top executives of Entergy say, with fewer breakdowns and fewer errors. But the operators also must not hesitate to shut the plant down if they are not sure about its safety. "You don't cut corners to make the schedule," Fred Dacimo, the vice president of Entergy in charge of Indian Point, said in a tough pep talk to the Alpha crew. "You make the schedule by flawless execution."

Quoting from an industry group, he said that when a control room operator puts his hand on the lever to pull out the control rods and start the chain reaction, "he has more potential power in his hands than the NASA engineer who ignites the booster rockets in a space shuttle for launch."

But he added: "For the guy who pushes the button that launches the space shuttle, there's light, there's sound, the whole place goes vroom. We tend not to see that, but it's there. Our job as nuclear professionals is never to lose sight of that."

-------- us politics

Bush Visit to China Won't Hurt Taiwan, U.S. Says

January 28, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-taiwan-usa.html

TAIPEI (Reuters) - The head of U.S. relations with Taiwan on Monday assured the jittery island President Bush's visit to China next month would not hurt Taiwan's interests.

Many in the diplomatically isolated island fear the U.S-led campaign against terrorism after the September 11 attacks and Bush's February 21-22 visit would draw Washington and Beijing closer at Taipei's expense.

``Let me assure you as categorically as I can: it will not happen,'' Richard Bush, chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, which handles Washington's unofficial ties with Taipei, said in a speech.

``I, of course, cannot rule out the possibility that there will be an attempt to exercise that kind of leverage. But I can categorically rule out that any such attempt will be successful,'' said Bush, who is not related to the president.

President Bush plans to visit Japan, South Korea and China to discuss the U.S.-led war on terrorism, economic recovery and other issues.

Bush and his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin were also likely to discuss relations with Taiwan, U.S. plans to develop a missile defense shield to protect against any long-range attack by rogue nations and China's nuclear ambitions.

Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian met Richard Bush on Monday and said he hoped the visit would help cross-Strait ties.

Chen urged Washington to play the role of a ``stabilizer, balancer, and facilitator'' in Taiwan-China ties and pledged to better relations with good will and sincerity.

Chen said there was a difference between Washington's ``one China'' policy and Beijing's ``one China'' principle, which states Taiwan and the mainland are part of a single country.

``There is a big gap between 'peaceful resolution' and 'peaceful unification','' Chen told Richard Bush in comments issued by the presidential office.

U.S. URGES TALKS, BUT WON'T MEDIATE

Bush said a lack of dialogue could lead to ``some kind of conflict as the result of accident or miscalculation'' but the United States would not serve as a mediator.

``Our one-China policy in no way dictates for Taipei or Beijing how substantively cross-Strait differences should be resolved,'' Bush said in his speech.

``The United States favors and encourages dialogue, but has no intention of serving as a mediator in this dispute, or of pressuring Taiwan to negotiate.''

Chen, in his first reaction to China's softened stance toward his pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), said any steps and talks that are conducive to stability of bilateral relations are welcome.

Chen said Beijing's overtures showed China appeared to be willing to ``respect and recognize'' political reality in Taiwan.

Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen said on Thursday only a few DPP members were separatists and invited the rest to visit China in an ``appropriate status.'' He also called for renewed dialogue and stronger economic ties across the Taiwan Strait.

The Taiwan government and Chen's DPP have cautiously welcomed Qian's comments but said it was too early to say whether it represented a policy shift.

Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province that must return to the fold and has vowed to invade if the self-governing island declares independence or drags its feet on unification talks.

The United States switched recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, but remains the island's main arms supplier and trading partner.

President Bush offered to sell Taiwan submarines and destroyers in the biggest U.S. arms package for the island since 1992, when Washington sold it 150 F-16 jet fighters.

----

U.S. Says Arafat Missed Opportunity for Statehood

January 28, 2002
By Randall Mikkelsen
Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=politicsnews&StoryID=551228

WASHINGTON - The United States blamed Yasser Arafat for a "missed opportunity" for Palestinian statehood on Monday and President Bush called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to express his disappointment in the Palestinian leader.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters the question of whether the United States still believed in the possibility of a Palestinian state was "very complicated," but Arafat had missed an opportunity by pursuing violence and weapons.

"The president ... is committed, at the end of a vision, at the end of the process, to the creation of a Palestinian state. ... And that's just another example of the missed opportunity that Yasser Arafat had and let go," Fleischer said.

"So much could have been done, and yet the opportunity was missed because the Palestinian Authority engaged, in violation of the Oslo accords, on the path of violence and the pursuit of acquiring weapons, as opposed to a path of peace and working with Israel to achieve peace," he said.

Bush on Monday telephoned Mubarak -- one of Arafat's closest allies -- to express his disappointment in Arafat and stress a need for him to crack down on terror.

The call reflects an increasingly tough line taken by the United States following the interception by Israel of an arms shipment Washington is convinced was destined for the Palestinians, in violation of the 1993 Oslo peace accords.

"I made this very clear to my friend Hosni Mubarak, that ridding the Middle East of terror is going to make it more likely that there'd be peace and stability in the region," Bush said in an appearance with Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai.

Mubarak is a key player in the Middle East peace process, which has been shattered by Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Bush said Arafat must renounce terror and arrest those responsible for Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets.

He reiterated his dismay in the arms shipment. Arafat denied involvement in the shipment, which Israel intercepted Jan. 3 aboard the ship Karine A, but Washington is skeptical.

"When the ship showed up with weapons obviously aimed at terrorizing that part of the world, I expressed my severe disappointment, because I was led to believe that he (Arafat) was willing to join us in the fight in terror. I took him for his word," Bush said.

ARABS BACK ARAFAT

Earlier on Monday, Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian cabinet minister, said the Bush team's criticism of Arafat would make the situation worse and called on Washington to resume mediation.

On Friday, Islam's main world body, the Islamic Conference Organization's Jerusalem Committee, urged the international community to help end Israel's "arbitrary and violent acts" against the Palestinians, including a blockade on Arafat.

Israel has kept Arafat blocked in the West Bank city of Ramallah for two months to pressure him to end the 17-month uprising.

"Israel's aggressive acts do not allow any more the silence of the international community," Morocco's King Mohammed said at the meeting in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh. "What's happening in the Middle East has direct repercussions on peace and stability in the whole world."

----

Are Bush, Republicans really "Pro-Competition?" Yeah, Right!

1/28/02
The Angry Liberal
http://www.theangryliberal.com/01-28-02.htm

During the 1980s, America was becoming more health conscious. By the end of the decade, the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain had a problem: Fried foods are unhealthy, aren't they? One of the silliest portions of the chicken chain's strategy to combat this perception was the following: Change the name of the chain from "Kentucky Fried Chicken" to "KFC." After all, fried chicken purchased from a place called "KFC" is healthier than fried chicken purchased from "Kentucky Fried Chicken," right? Recently, I have heard several conservative commentators mention a similar repackaging plan for Republicans who want to get tough with the Enron folks during the many hearings on the hill schedule.

As conservatives scramble to distance themselves from the Enron scandal (I hear the little flag lapel pins are being replaced with buttons that say, "Kenneth Who?"), they face a dilemma. How can they persecute a dirty corporation without appearing"anti-business" to all of the other dirty corporations that slather the Republicans with campaign cash? It seems that, as with KFC, this all boils down to a perception problem. According to the conservatives, it is possible for Bush and the Republicans to go after the bad guys at Enron, not because they are "Anti-Business," but because they are "Pro-Competition."

I love this! Now, that belongs on a button! George W. Bush and the Republicans are now "Pro-Competition?" I say to you, my friends, that there is no party and no person in American more afraid of competition than the Republicans and George W. Bush.

To expose the Republican Party's fear of competition, one needs to look no further than campaign finance reform legislation. This is unbelievably simple: Republicans are against campaign finance reform because in a forum in which issues are fairly debated, they lose, and I mean lose huge. The only way they stay in power is by using the boat loads of cash from the business interests they represent to drown out the Democrats. Why risk discussing the tax giveaway to the rich that just blew our nation's tax surplus when we can scream about killing babies instead? Why get sucked into an argument on the merits of health care reform when we can holler about taking away guns? (Hello, Chuck? People are worried about a 7.2% increase in health care costs in 2000. Fire up a bunch of them nasty NRA television ads.) Now that a majority of house members has pried the Shays-Meehan Bill from the trembling hands of Dennis Hastert, America has a chance to begin to level the political playing field. I will enjoy watching terrified "Pro-Competition" Republicans working behind the scenes to kill the progress of this bill. "Pro-Competition," my ass.

I can't even discuss the notion of George W. Bush being "Pro-Competition" without the veins in my neck bulging. Regardless, here I go, bulging veins be damned. As a child, an uninterested George W. Bush had what could charitably be described as a lackluster scholastic career. Yet he winds up going to the prestigious Philips Andover Academy in Massachusetts, Yale, and Harvard. How can somebody so utterly unqualified to attend these institutions get accepted? Simple. LACK OF REAL COMPETITION. Dubya's famous dad and his connections circumvented the competition and made it happen. In 1968, when Bush is twelve days away from losing his draft deferment, he decides to sit out Vietnam (sacrifice is for suckers, kids) by getting his name on the waiting list at the Texas Air National Guard. The wait to enter the Guard at the time was a year and a half. Despite this, Bush is accepted the same day he applies. How could this happen? Simple. LACK OF REAL COMPETITION. Next, Bush enrolls in flight school. His scores on the pilot aptitude test: 25%. Yet he is enrolled anyway, ahead of many who scored better. How could this possibly happen? LACK OF (well, you know).

Later, when Bush decides to seek his fortune in the oil business, he heads up several companies that lose nearly all of their stockholders' investments, and yet Dubya winds up rich. How? (All together, now!). Next, Bush, on the world's longest winning streak, is contacted by Dad's close friend and commissioner of baseball Peter Ueberroth and is offered part ownership of the Texas Rangers. Two of the other owners are none other than William DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds, the owners of the oil company that purchased Bush's losing company and made him rich. Why would Ueberroth ask Bush, a CEO who never once headed up a successful company, to buy the Rangers? (Let 'em hear you outside!)

Finally, after outspending Al Gore by more than $60 million (Bush had raised more than $193 million from the Ken Lays and Enrons of the world, compared to Gore's $133 million, which included federal matching funds), Bush loses the 2000 Presidential Election popular vote by better than 500,000 votes and was in danger of a recount in Florida that could have cost him the election. Yet by relying on antiquated electoral voting system, a state campaign co-chair in charge of the Florida election, and a decision by Dad's (and Dad's old boss's) appointees on the Supreme Court, the second-place finisher enters the White House. How could this travesty of Democracy happen, you ask? One guess.

In short, I hope the Republicans adopt the nifty new slogan of "Pro-Competition." The Democrats should be able to beat them bloody with it. As for our "president," had Bush grown up in a world that was "Pro-Competition," he would currently be assistant manager of a Kentucky Fried Chicken somewhere (Oops! I meant "KFC").

I wonder if KFC requires employees to pass a drug test?


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

U.S. Forces Storm Afghan Hospital

January 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghanistan.html

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- With grenades and volleys of automatic fire, Afghan troops and U.S. special forces soldiers wearing ``I Love New York'' buttons and Yankees caps stormed a hospital Monday and killed six al-Qaida fighters who had been holed up there for two months.

U.S. and Afghan troops surrounded Kandahar's Mir Wais Hospital before dawn and traded fire with the Arab fighters inside for hours until -- just after the noon call to Islamic prayers -- American troops barked, ``Stand clear!'' and they and the Afghans hurled grenades through the hospital windows to launch a final assault.

A series of 20 explosions sent out showers of glass from the hospital, already burning from the morning's fighting, and the pop-pops of pistol shots and rattle of automatic weapons fire followed as troops went in.

Afghan and American forces said all six Arabs holed up in a second-floor ward were killed. There were no casualties among the Americans or the Afghans fighting alongside them.

``These Arabs fought to the death,'' said a U.S. soldier, who identified himself only as Maj. Chris and described the battle as ``a very hard gunfight.''

The dramatic raid ended the long stand-off with the al-Qaida gunmen, who had been left at the hospital by their Taliban allies before the Taliban surrendered Kandahar in early December. After tribal Afghan forces took control of the city, the gunmen -- who had brought weapons and explosives with them -- refused to submit, threatening to kill themselves and others if anyone tried to take them into custody.

In Washington ahead of talks Monday with President Bush, Afghan leader Hamid Karzai said he would welcome U.S. participation in the multinational peacekeeping force in his nation and an expansion of the force outside the capital, Kabul.

``If we need them at any time to be there in the rest of the country, we will ask for it,'' Karzai told NBC's ``Today'' show. ``And if the United States can be there as part of that multinational force, it's welcome.''

The Bush administration has said U.S. troops will not join the peacekeepers -- a stance the White House reiterated Monday -- though the military has said American forces will remain in the country to continue their mission against the remnants of the Taliban and the al-Qaida terror network.

Karzai, the first Afghan leader to visit Washington in 39 years, attended a flag-raising ceremony at the Afghan Embassy, which is being renovated after being closed for years. During his talks with Bush, he was expected to discuss the role of U.S. troops and seek a continuing U.S. commitment to help restore the peace in his country.

The siege at Mir Wais hospital began when Afghan authorities issued an ultimatum to the al-Qaida fighters to surrender at around 3:40 a.m. as U.S. and Afghan troops moved into place around the facility. The gunmen refused the ultimatum and there was a burst of gunfire and loud explosions. The Associated Press witnessed the morning's standoff and the final assault from a rooftop.

``Early in the morning, the American soldiers came,'' said Najabullah, an Afghan commander. ``The Arabs saw them, and they started fighting.'' He said the gunmen had thrown grenades. A fire broke out, and black smoke poured from the hospital wing.

Special forces troops, heavily armed and with the antennas of back-mounted satellite phones dangling over their heads, took up positions with the Afghans.

For nine hours, they moved into position. Sharpshooters crouched in crannies of the walled compound and crept along the ledge of the second-floor ward where the al-Qaida men were holed up.

After the noon call to prayer, the final assault was launched. Most of the U.S. troops wore ``I Love New York'' buttons and New York Yankees caps in homage to the Sept. 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center towers.

``Up to the last minute, we told every man to surrender,'' Chris, the special forces officer, said. ``But none of them listened.''

Afghan commanders said three of the Arabs were killed by grenades and three others in the assault, some of them hiding under beds. Afghan commander Lali Saliki, who was among those who stormed the ward, said he saw one surviving fighter groping for a gun and shot him. ``He was starting to shoot us,'' Saliki said.

In the aftermath of the battle, the bloodied ward was littered with limbs blown off by the grenades, with bodies under a bed and laying about the floor. Pale, thin fighters lay dead, in sweaters and uniforms, half covered under blankets thrown over them. Mattresses appeared soaked in blood.

Chris called the operation ``100-percent Afghan'' and said the Americans acted only as advisers. But figures in the jackets and khakis worn by special forces were visible in the thick of the action. An Associated Press reporter saw at least one throwing explosives.

The al-Qaida fighters were the last of 10 or so wounded and ill fighters who barricaded themselves in the hospital. On Jan. 8, one fighter tried to escape and blew himself up with a grenade as Afghan guards surrounded him. Two other men were also said to have escaped, but that was never confirmed.

In December, two gunmen were captured when soldiers used the only doctor the men trusted to trick them. The gunmen were handed over to U.S. forces.

Meanwhile, a delegation of distraught villagers trekked to Kandahar to complain to Afghan authorities Sunday that U.S. Army special forces killed innocent people in a nighttime raid four days earlier.

The Pentagon said U.S. troops attacked a Taliban arms depot north of Kandahar, killing about 15 people, capturing 27 others and destroying a large cache of weapons.

But the leaders from the remote town of Khas Uruzgan claimed U.S. forces made a mistake, bombing their town hall and clinic, and killing and arresting men loyal to Karzai.

In other developments:

-- Marjan the lion, who was blinded by a grenade in the mid-1990s and came to symbolize Afghanistan's suffering during 23 years of war, was buried at Kabul's zoo. He was found dead of apparent old age in his cage on Saturday.

-- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ruled out granting prisoner-of-war status to suspected al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists held in a makeshift prison at a U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

--------

Karzai Encourages U.S. Peacekeepers

January 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Afghanistan.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Afghan leader Hamid Karzai said Monday he would welcome U.S. participation in the multinational peacekeeping force in his nation and that most Afghans would like to see the security forces expand outside Kabul, the capital.

The White House reaffirmed President Bush's position that U.S. forces will not take part in the peacekeeping mission.

``The president's philosophy is that the United States should not be overly deployed in peacekeeping around the world. The purpose of the troops should be to fight wars,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

At a ceremony outside Afghanistan's embassy in Washington -- which is undergoing renovation after being closed for years -- Karzai thanked the United States for its help and called it a thrilling moment as the nation's black-red-and-green flag was raised once again.

``Let's hope that this flag will be there forever, and that the partnership between the American and Afghan people will be forever,'' the prime minister said.

Appearing on NBC's ``Today'' show, Karzai appealed for a broad mandate for the peacekeeping mission. ``The people I've met over the past month, ... almost all of them have asked me to ask the international security forces to go to the other parts of the country,'' he said.

``If we need them at any time to be there in the rest of the country, we will ask for it,'' he said. ``And if the United States can be there as part of that multinational force, it's welcome.''

Afghan officials said he was expected to touch on that and other issues Monday in a visit with Bush at the White House to seek a continuing U.S. commitment to help restore the peace in his country.

Karzai arrived here Sunday afternoon, the first Afghan leader to visit Washington in 39 years.

Before leaving for the United States, Karzai told Afghan television that he would use the trip to push for expansion of the multinational peacekeeping force into the rest of Afghanistan. Afghan officials believe troops are needed in the countryside to deal with regional warlords and armed gangs. They also have indicated they want American troops to participate.

On Sunday, the Afghan prime minister stood before thousands of Afghan-Americans, alternating between his country's two main languages, Pashtu and Dari, rarely displaying his mastery of English.

During his 75-minute appearance, including 30 minutes of answering questions, Karzai never mentioned the U.S. role in making possible his improbable rise to power five weeks ago, ending more than five years of Taliban rule. He will be a guest of honor when Bush delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

The scene Sunday night was a basketball gymnasium at Georgetown University. Above him as he spoke were an American flag and a Christian cross, symbolic of Georgetown's Roman Catholic affiliation.

His audience reflected the hope that the changed circumstances have given their homeland, frequently interrupting Karzai's words with applause and laughter.

``From difficult times, we will live in positive times, productive times,'' Karzai said.

Near the end of his appearance, Karzai said in response to a question that he could favor the punishment, prescribed under Islamic law, of cutting the hands off thieves.

He acknowledged that he is not an expert on the issue and that the law is subject to differing interpretations. He added he would favor such punishment only when Afghanistan ceases to be a poverty-stricken country.

Karzai also called on audience members to return to Afghanistan so they can lend their skills to the task of national reconstruction.

``Without your cooperation, we're not going to make it,'' he said.

And in a message to youthful Afghan-Americans that drew laughter, he said: ``You are the future of our country. Study hard, work hard, make money and bring it to Afghanistan.''

Almost exactly a week earlier, Karzai had spoken to a gathering in Japan, appealing to donor countries at an Afghan reconstruction conference to be generous. They pledged $1.8 billion the first year and $4.5 billion over five years. In the aftermath of that conference, he said, ``our responsibility is starting. We have to say to these people (donors) that we are going to deliver.''

Earlier, Karzai attended a prayer service at a mosque in northern Virginia. There were hundreds of Afghan-Americans present, no less enthusiastic about their country's changed political outlook than were his listeners at Georgetown hours later.

Seated on a gold-and-green carpet, the gathering listened intently as Karzai spelled out his message in Afghanistan's two languages.

Before Karzai spoke, the assemblage prayed to Allah for the success of the democratic process on which their homeland is now embarked.

--------

U.S. RAID
After Green Beret Operation, Townspeople Have Questions About Bound Bodies

New York Times
January 28, 2002
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/28/international/asia/28AFGH.html

ORUZGAN, Afghanistan, Jan. 27 - No American had visited this mountain-ringed town recently, residents said today, until early Thursday, when helicopters dangling Humvees descended from the sky and spilled shouting, shooting Special Operations forces into two small compounds, a mile and a half apart. Two hours later, 21 local soldiers were dead and 27 others had been captured and taken away.

At daybreak, when neighbors and a few who escaped the carnage ventured back to inspect the damage, they said they found the charred bodies of more than a dozen men who had been shot and burned in the rooms of one of the compounds.

Townspeople said they had also found two bodies outside the compound, their hands tied behind them with strips of tough white plastic.

The Pentagon defends the raid as an appropriate military action. "We take great care to ensure we are engaging confirmed Taliban or Al Qaeda facilities," Maj. Bill Harrison, a spokesman for the United States Central Command in Tampa, Fla., said today. "As a result of this mission, we detained 27 individuals, and believe that our forces engaged the intended target."

But in dozens of interviews this weekend, residents in this town about 100 miles north of Kandahar in central Afghanistan said the two-hour raid before dawn, which ended with an American plane firing at the compound, was an error.

The compound where the most people died is a former grade school that was briefly used by the Taliban late in the war, the townspeople say. More recently, it has been used as a weapons depot for a local disarmament drive.

At the scene, Ahmad Shah, a wizened farmer whose house is 100 yards from the school, said he had helped move one of the two bound bodies. He said "I never had seen anything like" the binding, adding, "It was very strong, and we couldn't open it and finally had to cut it off."

All the dead have now been buried, so their bodies were not available for examination.

During the raid, Mr. Shah said he heard people in the compound shouting: "For God's sake, do not kill us! We surrender!"

All the officials and local commanders interviewed in the area, including the provincial governor, insist that Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters are no longer in the area, which has been quiet since the interim government took power in Kabul on Dec. 22. The local people expressed surprise that if the United States was worried about an arms depot, it did not first come to check out the situation, especially considering the absence of fighting in the area.

Many of the people interviewed here said they suspected that the United States had been misled by false intelligence information deliberately spread by one of the two factions in town that were vying to control weapons left behind by departing Taliban. The weapons had been collected to put them under the control of the interim government, as part of a campaign also being carried out elsewhere in the country.

Many people here suspect that in their infighting, one side or the other gave a false tip to the American forces in order to destroy its rival, only to have the Pentagon act against both compounds. Throughout the war, the Pentagon has solicited local intelligence, but much of the information is unreliable.

But the Pentagon says it has other ways of getting information, including U-2 planes and spy satellite reconnaissance photos, Predator drones and RC-135 planes that collect electronic transmissions. In this case, Major Harrison declined to say what intelligence the American forces had relied on.

The people here say there was no notice given to the people in either compound that they were under any threat. No American intelligence personnel visited the compounds before the raid, people who were in them say.

People in the town, describing the dispute between the factions, said it had been created by a recent change in governors, both of whom were appointed by Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai. It rested on who is the rightful district government chief and who has the right to collect weapons.

Each group had amassed a sizable arsenal during a government-ordered disarmament program, and in the dispute over who is truly in charge, neither side has been willing to turn over its weapons.

Sayeed Muhammad, 25, a soldier who had been posted for a month at the school, said he had wakened to the sound of gunfire shattering the windows and door of the room in which he and 11 other men were sleeping.

"There was only one gun in the room," Mr. Muhammad said, picking at a bloody bandage on his foot during an interview tonight. He said Shah Muhammad, a cousin, had grabbed the gun and started shooting from the door.

Sayeed Muhammad said the gun, an AK-47, had only four bullets. Many of the men in the room were killed almost immediately, he said.

"I jumped through the back window and felt something hit my foot as I did," he said. Outside, he said, he was blinded by the light of a big vehicle parked 50 yards away. "I ran for the gate, and I don't know how I made it out alive," he said.

Mr. Muhammad, who wears a black turban that is customary in this area and which the Taliban adopted, said there had been no Taliban or Al Qaeda in the compound. "We were working for the governor of the province and for Hamid Karzai," he said.

Jan Muhammad Khan, who was recently appointed governor of Oruzgan Province by Mr. Karzai, said in an interview on Saturday that the men in the compound had been working for him. While the Pentagon has said the raid was directed at a munitions store, Mr. Khan disputed that, saying the men at the compound had been collecting weapons left behind by departing Taliban.

Sayeed Muhammad said he had watched from a nearby mosque as the gunfire and shouting died down and a helicopter landed atop the schoolhouse, apparently to retrieve the American troops. Within minutes of the helicopter's departure, Mr. Muhammad said, a large plane fired what he believed were rockets into the compound.

The Pentagon says the munitions at the school were destroyed by fire from an AC-130U, a flying warship, but neither room in the school used to store weapons was seriously damaged. Both still held mortar rounds and cannon shells. Residents said looters had taken lighter weapons, including hundreds of AK-47's.

In the compound, two letters on Taliban letterhead were retrieved from the room where the charred bodies of compound's two commanders were found. One urges an unidentified district government chief to return AK-47's seized from someone described as "our friend." The other discusses a prisoner exchange. Neither is dated.

Among other papers retrieved from the room was a letter calling for support of the loya jirga, a tribal congress that is to meet this year.

Neighbors of the school, as well as Mr. Muhammad and another soldier who escaped from the compound, said the school had been used by local Taliban officials during their last weeks in power.

Without being told of the Taliban letters, Mr. Muhammad was asked if the Taliban had left anything behind. He pointed to the room in which the letters were found and said the Taliban had left some papers there.

When shown the letters, Mr. Muhammad and the other soldier said they predated their commanders' presence in the compound.

At dawn, people who live near the schoolhouse recalled, they had gathered in the courtyard to collect the dead, 19 in that compound.

Obiad Ullah, 37, said he had found a man named Abdul Rauf lying on a pile of stones that morning. Mr. Rauf's body was covered with blood, and his hands were bound behind him with a plastic strip.

Mr. Shah, the farmer who lives near the school, said he had found the other dead man, Shah Muhammad, lying face down near the compound's gate. One of his thigh bones was protruding from his leg, and half of one foot was missing, this witness said. His hands, too, were bound behind his body.

The 27 who were captured came from the other compound, where two people were reported killed. Muhammad Yunas, one of two men claiming to be Oruzgan's district government chief, who controlled that compound, said that after the soldiers and their captives were gone, gunfire and rockets rained from the sky, destroying the ammunition dump.

Mr. Yunas said he had found a piece of paper showing an American flag on the windshield of one of the compound's destroyed trucks. Large letters on the paper read, "God Bless America," and in one corner, someone had written: "Have a nice day. From Damage, Inc."

-------- africa

AFRICA Munitions Depot Explodes

WORLD In Brief
Monday, January 28, 2002
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47185-2002Jan27?language=printer

LAGOS, Nigeria -- A series of large explosions at a munitions depot rocked the northern part of Nigeria's commercial capital, military officials said, sending fireballs and plumes of smoke into the sky, shattering windows and causing panicked residents to flee the streets.

State and military officials said on national television that the blasts were accidental and not due to military unrest, and appealed for calm.

"Let me assure you that it has no political connotation at all," base commander Brig. Gen. John Anda said. "This is an old ammunition depot, which has high-caliber bombs in there."

Residents were evacuated from the area, he said. There was no immediate word on casualties.

-------- biological weapons

Russians help bioterror defense

January 28, 2002
By Judith Ingram and Sergei Shargorodsky
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020128-84172963.htm

OBOLENSK, Russia - The Soviet Union once ran a mammoth program to develop biological weapons for possible use against its enemies in the West. Today, some of the top scientists from that program are working with their old foes to build defenses against bioterrorism.

Western governments may harbor suspicions about secret programs still being pursued in Russia, and there are worries about former Soviet bioweapons experts being lured to work for states like Iraq, yet Russia and the West are now allies in the war against terrorism, and the emphasis is on cooperation.

One of the cogs in the Soviet bioweapons program was the State Research Center for Applied Microbiology in Obolensk, about 50 miles south of Moscow.

It has one of the world's biggest collections of anthrax, working with about 30 live strains and perhaps 10 times as many variants. It is one of the premier repositories of expertise on anthrax and other pathogens, and has become a key collaborator with scientists in the United States.

The researchers at the institute are already working on genetically altered antibodies that could block the anthrax toxin, a project financed by the European Union, and are involved in a program to exchange strains with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta (on the Internet at http://www.cdc.gov). In November, Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Bush signed an unprecedented agreement to encourage collaborative biodefense research.

"Today, our center is in demand in Russia, the United States and Europe for the very reason it was created: to develop methods of prompt detection of biological agents, elaboration of identification methods, preventive measures and treatment," said Vladimir Volkov, the institute's first deputy director.

Mr. Volkov and other scientists at Obolensk skirt the other reason the institute was founded: to develop ever more deadly germs for warfare. Soviet researchers at Obolensk and other institutes experimented with about 50 biological agents, including anthrax, smallpox and plague.

Western governments are concerned that former Soviet scientists could now sell their expertise to some of the dozen states believed to be conducting illicit bioweapons programs.

At least 7,000 former Soviet scientists, the vast majority of them in Russia, are considered to be of "critical proliferation risk," said Amy Smithson, an expert on chemical and biological weapons control at the Henry Stimson Center in Washington (on the Internet at http://www.stimson.org).

Those scientists are believed to have sufficient knowledge as to be potentially able to advance the biological weapons programs of such countries as Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Libya.

There is also some concern about four biological institutes in the Russian Ministry of Defense that foreign inspectors have never been allowed to enter. One is being transferred to the Ministry of Education, suggesting it will soon be opened, but U.S. officials say privately they are concerned that some elements of a small-scale, offensive biological weapons program might be continuing in Russia.

"They don't seem to be as transparent or open about all their activities as you would expect them to be. So the question is, is something going on that shouldn't be?" said Michael Moodie, president of the nongovernmental Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Washington.

Moscow long hid its program. After the Soviet Union signed a 1972 treaty banning the development, production and stockpiling of biological weapons, its government initiated the world's largest biological weapons effort.

Part of the program, including the Obolensk institute, was hidden under a nominally civilian but secret front called Biopreparat, which worked both on weapons and on biological agents employed for peaceful uses, such as medicines and pesticides.

Two top Biopreparat officials, the late Nikolai Pasechnik and Kanatjan Alibekov, now named Ken Alibek, defected to the West. They revealed the huge dimensions and scientific advances of the Soviet Union's germ weapons program, including development of super-resistant strains that could overcome existing Western vaccines and antidotes.

Inspectors from the United States and Britain were able to confirm some of the defectors' testimony in trips negotiated with the government of then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and the program apparently began winding down in the late 1980s.

In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin announced an end to the Soviet biological warfare program and cut off government funds. Entire biological weapons facilities such as the testing ground on Vozrozhdeniye Island in the Aral Sea were abandoned while others tried, often unsuccessfully, to convert to civilian work. Many scientists lost their jobs, and some were courted by foreign states.

"When we talk about these rogue states being familiar with biological weapons, that may be due to some participation of ours," said Igor Domaradskij, who was a deputy director at Obolensk for five years in the mid-1980s.

Mr. Domaradskij said he personally did not know any former Soviet scientists who had gone abroad in search of laboratory work, but he did know of some who had taught there.

"I know that in the mid-'90s several quite prominent scientists - genetic scientists whom I do not want to name - prepared personnel for Iran," he said. "But I think that ended several years ago."

Western nations have tried to encourage former Russian bioweapons specialists to stay home through programs such as the nine-year-old International Science and Technology Center (on the Internet at http://www.istc.ru), which finances research for "peaceful science" and matches scientists in the former Soviet Union with foreign partners.

Randall Beatty, deputy executive director of the center in Moscow, thinks the program has reached about half the scientists of top proliferation concern.

"We know for a fact that a number who had been receiving e-mails from Iran or Iraq or Pakistan are now very sensitive and cut off all communication with these organizations ... because they want to be eligible to participate in programs like the ISTC," Mr. Beatty said.

However, a Pentagon official said Iran's agents continue to try recruiting scientists from second-tier facilities. "That effort has not stopped," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The ISTC has 35 research projects under way at Obolensk, where it began cooperation programs in 1997, and it has devoted more than $4 million in salary supplements and other support to the institute.

ISTC grants add $20 to $35 a day to scientists' salaries, which this past year was on average the equivalent of only $83 a month at Obolensk. Work with the ISTC and other foreign partners has helped bring back several former Obolensk researchers who had left in search of better pay, Mr. Volkov said.

The ISTC spends about a quarter to a third of its $75 million yearly grant budget on work in the biotechnology field in the former Soviet Union, most of it focused on public health problems such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and AIDS.

Miss Smithson, the arms-control expert, said the money should be doubled or tripled at a minimum.

"There isn't sufficient funding in the program yet to keep even the critical proliferation risk bioweaponeers gainfully and peacefully engaged and to help them adjust their skills and add skills that would enable them to become self-sufficient in the commercial marketplace," she said.

Obolensk, which in its prime employed more than 3,000 people, now has just over 1,000, half of them in research and the rest in production. Entire multistory buildings on the institute's 622-acre grounds stand empty, while others have been revamped for commercial activities: a plant for making agar, an organic medium for laboratory cultures, and another to manufacture human insulin.

Both projects are a big step up from Obolensk's previous attempts to generate revenue, including a now-defunct ketchup-making plant.

Mr. Volkov and other scientists see the emphasis on cooperation as some vindication of the decades of work they put in as Biopreparat researchers. While few say they aspired to do bioweapons work, and some toiled for years in ignorance of the ultimate goal of their research, they are proud of the scientific contributions they made.

"The people sitting here are prepared to use their brains for these goals," Mr. Volkov said. "If they're forced to make kefir, they'll make kefir, but then they can't be used for countering terrorism."

Some of the scientists have remained in basic research, including Nikolai Staritzyn, one of the world's top anthrax experts.

Mr. Staritzyn and a fellow Obolensk scientist, Andrei Pomerantsev, provoked suspicions of continued Russian military bioweapons programs when they published a 1997 article summing up the results of their work on introducing genetic changes into anthrax, making it resistant to existing antibiotics.

Mr. Staritzyn said that with 30,000 natural breeding grounds in Russia where infected livestock are buried, their research was meant to address the mutability of anthrax that occurs in nature.

-------- iraq

China tells Iraq does not support war on terror

Tuesday January 29, 2:06 AM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-86519.html

BEIJING - Chinese Vice-Premier Qian Qichen told Iraqi counterpart Tareq Aziz on Monday China does not support the expansion of military action in the war on terrorism, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Qian's comment marked an apparent shift from previous Chinese statements which said Beijing was opposed to the "wanton" expansion of military action in the war on terrorism.

"China does not support the expansion of anti-terror military action," Xinhua quoted Qian as saying. "At the same time it hopes that Iraq will cooperate with the U.N. to avoid new and complicated situations which might emerge."

U.S. President George W. Bush has told Iraqi President Saddam Hussein he would face the consequences if U.N. inspectors were not allowed to return to Baghdad, triggering speculation Washington could target Iraq in its war on terrorism following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The United States has threatened to use force against Iraq if it refuses to allow the return of United Nations arms inspectors who left Iraq in 1998 complaining they were being prevented from performing their duties.

The dispatch of inspectors, intended to determine whether Baghdad held chemical and biological weapons, was part of U.N. actions against Iraq undertaken after the 1991 Gulf War.

The action, authorised by U.N. Security Council resolution 681, also included economic sanctions against Iraq.

Aziz, who arrived in China on Sunday after a trip to Russia where he sought support in Iraq's confrontation with the United States, said he hoped China would "play a more active role in settling the Iraqi issue in a just and rational way", Xinhua said.

BACK TO RUSSIA

Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji told Aziz China was willing to continue its efforts to help solve problems that have been plaguing Iraq since the Gulf War, Xinhua said.

"China has been advocating that the remaining issues from the 1991 Gulf War, including sanctions against Iraq, should be settled fairly and justly, and at an early date, on the basis of the related resolutions of the United Nations Security Council," Xinhua quoted Zhu as saying.

"China also maintains that Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity should be respected by the international community," Zhu said.

Zhu added he hoped Iraq would improve its relations with the U.N. and neighbouring countries to "create conditions for an early lifting of sanctions against it", Xinhua said.

Xinhua gave no further details of Aziz's trip. China's Foreign Ministry and the Iraqi embassy declined to give details of his schedule.

Russia's Itar-Tass news agency quoted Aziz as saying he would go back to Moscow for more talks on his way from China.

Tass linked Aziz's trip to fresh Russian-U.S. consultations on sanctions beginning on February 6 in Geneva, where they will try to agree a list of goods allowed into Iraq without U.N. approval.

The United States wants "smart sanctions" which would cut the list of goods requiring U.N. approval before reaching Iraq while tightening controls over imports deemed usable for military purposes.

Following talks with Aziz on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Moscow was opposed to any U.S. military operation against Iraq and it wanted sanctions against Baghdad to be lifted.

Qian said China "sympathised deeply with the Iraqi suffering caused by the long standing sanctions," Xinhua said.

-------- israel / palestine

Woman Detonates Explosives in Israel

By Greg Myre
Associated Press Writer
Monday, January 28, 2002; 4:59 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47803-2002Jan28?language=printer

JERUSALEM -- A Palestinian woman launched a bomb attack Sunday on a busy Jerusalem street, killing herself and an 81-year-old Israeli man and wounding at least a dozen people. She was believed to be the first female suicide bomber since fighting began 16 months ago.

Israeli police were hesitant to call her a suicide bomber, saying it wasn't clear if the woman intended to kill herself or if the bomb exploded prematurely as she walked along Jaffa Street, the main commercial strip in west Jerusalem.

On Monday, meanwhile, a Palestinian was shot dead in the Ramat-Gan suburb of Tel Aviv after running down and injuring an Israeli policeman,officials said. Three civilians were hospitalized from shock, ambulance officials said. Israeli officials believe the same man earlier ran a car through an army roadblock outside the West Bank city of Qalqilya, moderately injuring a soldier.

In Lebanon, the Al-Manar television station run by the militant Hezbollah movement said the Jerusalem bomber was Shinaz Amuri, a female student at Al-Najah University in the West Bank town of Nablus.

Israel accused Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat of "encouraging terrorism" and said it was prepared to respond to the bombing - the third major attack in an Israeli city in a week.

The blast next to a shoe shop blew out shop windows, set a store on fire and left victims sprawled on the pavement amid shards of glass, pieces of fruit, shoes and storefront mannequins.

"It sounded like half the street exploded," said Hama Gidon, a clothing store worker who was slightly injured. "All the mannequins went flying and I did too. People were falling, glass was flying everywhere."

More than 100 people were treated on the spot or taken to hospitals, though most suffered only from shock. Three people were seriously hurt and nine had moderate injuries, officials said.

Mark Sokolow, a U.S. citizen from Woodmere, N.Y., who survived the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, was slightly hurt in Sunday's explosion along with his wife and two daughters.

"I heard a loud whoosh, like a bang, and I kind of saw things flying around a little bit, and then I realized I was able to get up and walk around," Sokolow told Israeli television.

Sokolow said he was on the 38th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower on Sept. 11 when a hijacked airliner hit the north tower. His office was evacuated and he escaped before the south tower was hit.

Up until now, only the radical Islamic Jihad and Hamas have sent suicide bombers into Israel, but Islamic law forbids women from committing suicide for any cause. Therefore, Israeli security sources, quoted anonymously in the Maariv daily, said they suspected the bomber might have come from a secular movement.

The paper said Israeli security is rethinking its profile of potential suicide bombers. Until recently, most were young, single, uneducated Palestinians. "Lately we are seeing older, married men and now a woman," the paper wrote.

Palestinian women have taken a larger part in public life in the West Bank and Gaza than in some other Muslim societies, but they have gradually receded into the background during the current conflict as men have taken the roles of military commanders. Only one woman serves in the Palestinian Cabinet - Intissar al-Wazir, widow of the legendary Palestinian fighter Abu Jihad, killed in a 1988 raid in Tunis, Tunisia, widely attributed to the Israeli secret service.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack, but Israel said it held Arafat ultimately responsible.

Arafat is "encouraging terrorism, he's sending (attackers) to Jerusalem," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "We will continue to systematically dismantle the terrorist infrastructure."

The Palestinian leadership, meanwhile, "strongly condemned the suicide attack" and called on President Bush to send Mideast envoy Anthony Zinni back to the region. However, Bush has been sharply critical of Arafat, and Vice President Dick Cheney suggested on "Fox News Sunday" that Zinni will not return soon.

"At this stage, we need to see some positive signs that his return would do some good. And that means we've got to see some positive results out of Arafat," Cheney said.

Arafat must "make a 100 percent good-faith effort to put an end to terrorism," he said. "So far he hasn't done that."

The Palestinian leadership on Saturday called for a halt to all attacks against Israel. However, several Palestinian groups have said recently that they would no longer observe a cease-fire declared by Arafat in December.

Israel has dismissed the Palestinian cease-fire calls as meaningless and says Arafat has simultaneously been encouraging militants.

In a speech Saturday, Arafat said Palestinians were "facing a military crisis, but despite all this, no one has complained of the suffering. They have said, 'God is great, and jihad, jihad, jihad.'"

"Jihad" is an Arabic word that can be translated as "resistance," "struggle," or "holy war," and the context was not clear in Arafat's statement.

Just south of Jerusalem on Sunday, an angry Palestinian crowd stormed a prison in Bethlehem and freed seven prisoners belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two groups that have carried out past suicide bombings, Palestinian security officials said.

Palestinian security officers did not want to use force with the crowd and did not try to stop them, a Palestinian security official said.

Jaffa Street is a Jerusalem landmark lined with shops, and the narrow sidewalks are clogged with pedestrians, particularly in the middle of the day. The streets were full Sunday, the first day of Israel's work week.

The attack came two days after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and wounded 24 people in a pedestrian mall in Tel Aviv. That bombing followed Israel's killing of a senior Islamic militant in a targeted missile strike in the Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, a Palestinian gunman opened fire with an automatic rifle on Jaffa Street only a few yards from the site of Sunday's attack. The gunman killed two women and injured more than a dozen people before he was shot dead by police. Some shops had their windows shot out Tuesday and had just replaced the glass when it was shattered again.

In August, a suicide bomber killed 15 people in a Jaffa Street pizzeria just across the street from Sunday's blast. Some workers at the Sbarro pizza restaurant were treated Sunday for shock, witnesses said.

Palestinian militants have carried out more than 30 suicide bombings during the current Mideast conflict. On Friday, a bomber wounded two dozen people in an attack in Tel Aviv.

Palestinians say Israel undermined a month of relative calm, from mid-December to mid-January, by resuming targeted killings of Palestinian militants. Israel says it acted because Arafat wasn't doing enough to crack down on the militants.

-------- pakistan

Religious Radicals Facing Backlash in Pakistan
Families Bitter Over Fate of Recruits to Taliban Cause;
Young Men Were 'Betrayed by the Mullahs'

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 28, 2002; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46916-2002Jan27?language=printer

CHAKDARA, Pakistan -- The trucks rumbled through this dusty town in late October with a harvest of men reaped from the fervor of the countryside. Others rushed from shops and fields to clamber aboard, eager to trade the poverty of their lives for the honor of being a hero -- or martyr -- in Afghanistan's holy war.

Some say 5,000 joined the caravan; others say twice that. Wives and fathers sent them willingly. Ata Ur Rahman, 28, was among them.

Three months later, Rahman is languishing in a squalid jail in Afghanistan while his family laments its enthusiasm. "He was betrayed by the mullahs who took him," spat his younger brother, Sayed Ur Rahman.

Their anger reflects a widespread disillusionment with religious leaders who rallied Pakistanis to the side of the Taliban, and a souring of the Islamic militancy that had produced volunteers for the cause and threatened to undermine the Pakistani government's support for the United States.

Interviews with people in villages and cities, and with analysts, officials, mullahs and journalists indicate that the Taliban's lopsided defeat in Afghanistan and the abandonment of its Pakistani followers -- scores of whom were rounded up following the Taliban's collapse -- have dealt a blow to religious radicals here, who have lost much of their public support.

"The Taliban lost their credibility when they didn't stand and die for their cause. They just fled and left the foreigners there to die. People here who lost youngsters in Afghanistan feel misled," said Shireen Mazari, head of the Institute of Strategic Studies, a think tank in the capital, Islamabad.

"There is a lot of anger. The people who went just were sent in chaos," agreed Ahmad Shah, the imam, or religious leader, of a tiny farming village in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province.

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has seized on this shift in mood to crack down on Muslim radicalism in his country, a move that observers here say would have been much more difficult a few months ago. His campaign still faces troublesome opposition from a strong minority of strident mullahs and their followers.

Some here argue that radical Islam never had a large following in Pakistan, as shown by the low turnouts at anti-government demonstrations in October. They say the influence of mullahs has been exaggerated by 25 years of government policy that gave religious figures disproportionate power.

But they agree that a decade-long souring of relations with the United States and the lure of a bold Islamic cause in Afghanistan produced a sympathetic swell of support here for the Taliban. And the mosques' call to jihad, or holy war, was a clarion for volunteers from the poor countryside and tribal areas of Pakistan.

"In the early days of the war, there was a tremendous movement to Islam. The liberals were looking for caves to hide in," chortled Hamid Gul, a conservative former Pakistani intelligence chief who had directed clandestine support to the Taliban to help bring it to power in the 1990s.

But the enthusiasm for the movement waned when the Taliban and its Pakistani supporters were defeated, he acknowledged in an interview.

"It became clear that the Americans were so ruthless, they would spare nothing" in their bombardment, he said. "The movement that was picking up in the world suddenly collapsed."

That movement was most visible here in the recruitment caravans organized by Sufi Mohammad, a religious party leader who drew much of his support from hardscrabble villages tucked in creases of the mountains rising in northern Pakistan beyond this town.

The government tried -- halfheartedly, complained the Americans -- to stop Sufi Mohammad's trucks full of fired-up volunteers from crossing into Afghanistan in the early weeks of the war. But thousands breached the porous border with him. A smaller number of volunteers -- no one knows how much smaller -- have limped back into Pakistan, leaving behind the dead and captured.

Sufi Mohammad was arrested at the border. The government says he will be charged with entering Afghanistan illegally; others say he sought arrest to avoid being lynched by angry families of his former followers.

"Sufi Mohammad let down the people," said Khisda Rahman, 35, in Chakdara. "He took all these guys and now they are dead or in prison. But he ran away and came back. People are asking why he didn't sacrifice himself."

When Sufi Mohammad organized the convoys that passed through Chakdara, "the whole town was celebrating," Rahman said. "Now they are sad they did. They will never follow him again."

In Gulibagh, a tiny village of 80 mud houses surrounded by vegetable and wheat fields, the father of Abdul Saleem, 23, said he learned of the death of his son from a newspaper. After sneaking away from home to join the jihad, the young man was killed by a missile strike on a bus full of volunteers.

Abdul Saleem's identity card shows a baby-faced man with a fringe of a beard. A few weeks after he left home, his parents got a letter from him: "I have completed my training and I am now going to the front line," he said. On the folded, lined school paper, he had written: "We will be buried in the mountains and ice will be my dress."

"We didn't know he went," said his father, Ziarat Gul, 60, a man with a creased face and rough hands from a life of prodding the earth for succor. "We are religious people and we think he has gone for a good cause. But if you ask me my feelings on the death of a son -- if you are a father, you can imagine. There are no words."

"It wasn't a proper jihad. It was a mess," scoffed Qari Saqib Shah, a teacher at a nearby religious school. Shah's 21-year-old nephew was killed -- not gloriously in battle, but riding with other volunteers in a bus that was struck by a missile near Mazar-e Sharif, he said. "People went to Afghanistan with no proper training, no strategy, no supplies, no food, not even proper accommodations."

But there still is a "seething discontent, an anger at America" in Pakistan, said Khurshid Ahmad, a leader of the Jamiat-i-Islami religious party.

This claim is key to understanding the appeal of the Taliban cause for a broader spectrum of Pakistanis, even those who would not volunteer to fight or even embrace the austere brand of Islam practiced by the Taliban, argues Najam Sethi, editor of Friday Times, a weekly paper based in Lahore.

"The people are not terribly pro-Taliban, but they are anti-American," he said. "People feel Americans abandoned Pakistan, and we became the most sanctioned country in the world. So they hoped the Americans would find themselves in another Vietnam," and cheered the Taliban.

With the Taliban defeated, that attitude has been replaced by "a heavy dose of realism," he said. "The people quickly retreated into their cynical sense, saying, 'Oh yes, America is a superpower and it was foolish to go up against the superpower.' "

The success of Musharraf's crackdown on radical mosques and religious schools, say observers here, will depend on the ebb and flow of anti-Americanism, religious fervor, moderation and realism.

"Somebody had to teach the United States a lesson," said Abdul Aziz, the mullah of a mosque in the center of Islamabad who said he still preaches in support of the Taliban. "America is the main terrorist. They look down on everyone else."

But an imam at a mosque not far away brushes aside a question about continued support for the movement in Afghanistan.

"That issue should be forgotten," said Qazi Zain Ul Abideen. "The Taliban government is dead and buried. Islam says we should not speak ill of the dead."

Musharraf insists he is tapping the majority vein of moderation in Pakistan by pursuing his crackdown.

"Whatever extremists are here are a very small minority," agreed Khalid Ulmar, an army officer-turned-historian. "All religions have their extremists, but this is not an extremist country. I can listen to Jennifer Lopez and still be a Muslim."

Mazari, the head of the think tank, said Musharraf cleverly resisted ordering a heavy-handed clampdown on the October demonstrations called by religious groups opposed to his decision to support the U.S. war campaign.

"Musharraf allowed the demonstrations to go ahead, and the low turnout showed the people didn't support" the extremists, she said. "The numbers in the demonstrations just went down and down, and then petered out."

Many here said Musharraf correctly judged that Pakistanis were weary of both the international complications brought to Pakistan by radical Islam and the deadly gunplay that has often accompanied disputes between radical factions in the country.

"Musharraf is right that people were sick of all this violence," Sethi said. "They are sick and tired of being portrayed in the Western media as a 'goner' country, with all the negative images of a radical, fundamentalist country."

"People say, yes, well look what happened to Afghanistan," he said. "We don't want that."

----

JOURNALISTS
American Reporter Held Captive in Pakistan, a Message Says

New York Times
January 28, 2002
By ERIK ECKHOLM with FELICITY BARRINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/28/international/asia/28REPO.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 27 - Daniel Pearl, a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, has been kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan, according to an e-mail message sent today to news organizations. The message accuses Mr. Pearl of being a C.I.A. agent and sets several conditions for his release.

Among the conditions are demands for the repatriation of Pakistani prisoners taken from Afghanistan to Cuba and for the release of the F-16 fighter jets that Pakistan bought from the United States in the 1980's. The fighter jets were not delivered after Congress in 1990 cut off aid and military sales to Pakistan in response to the country's moves to develop nuclear weapons.

Two of the pictures sent with the e- mail message show Mr. Pearl in wrist and ankle shackles. In one, a gun is pointed at his head. Another shows a Thursday issue of the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.

The e-mail message arrived early today at various in-boxes at The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, and at news organizations in Pakistan. It was sent under the name "kidnapperguy" via Hotmail, Microsoft's free e-mail service.

Both Journal executives and the Central Intelligence Agency issued statements denying that Mr. Pearl, 38, had any past or present relationship with the agency. The Journal statement said, in part, "Mr. Pearl, as are all Wall Street Journal reporters, is solely a journalist and has written regularly on a variety of subjects during his 12 years on our staff."

Mr. Pearl, who had been doing research on Richard C. Reid, the shoe-bomb suspect, has been missing since Wednesday afternoon. His wife, Mariane, who is pregnant, told the local police that Mr. Pearl was on his way to interview a leader of a local splinter group of the Army of Muhammad, a banned Islamic militant organization.

Pakistani law enforcement officials said today that Mr. Pearl left for the appointment without his translator or local assistant. They believe this meant that he was contacted by someone who spoke English and told him to come alone.

A taxi driver who told police that he left Mr. Pearl at the Metropole Hotel is the last person known to have seen him.

Steven Goldstein, a spokesman for The Journal, said tonight that the newspaper's executives were proceeding on the assumption that the photographs were authentic, although no final determination of their validity has been made.

And a senior State Department official in Washington raised the possibility of a hoax, saying today, "At this point we can't evaluate whether it's a hoax or real. I don't think we know how much of this is based on reality."

The four-paragraph e-mail message threatened the kidnapping of other Americans, saying, "If the Americans keep our countrymen in better conditions we will better the conditions of Mr. Pearl and all other Americans that we capture."

The message also demanded that the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, now in United States custody, be returned to Pakistani custody, and that any Pakistani nationals detained in the United States during the domestic anti-terrorism campaign get access to lawyers and to their families.

A Justice Department spokesman in Washington said today that 177 Pakistanis were among the 460 people currently detained in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials would not confirm whether any were among the captives at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Dan Nelson, the Justice Department spokesman, added, "They have a right to counsel, to contact the consulates from their country of origin, and we provide them with access to telephones."

The e-mail message began, "The National movement for the restoration of Pakistani sovereignty has captured C.I.A. officer Daniel Pearl who has posing as a journalist of the Wall Street Journal."

The English-language text of the e- mail message noted that Mr. Pearl was being held "in very inhuman circumstances quite similar infact to the way that Pakistanis and nationals of other sovereign countries are being kept in Cuba by the American Army."

Text in Urdu attached to the e-mail message and translated by The New York Times began, "A national movement to restore the dignity of Pakistan has been launched."

The demand related to the F-16's was made only in the Urdu text. Both the English and Urdu texts avoid the references commonly used by militant Islamic groups in Pakistan, most notably the mention of God.

Mr. Pearl has worked for The Journal since 1990, based in Atlanta, Washington and Paris and, for the last two years, Bombay.

-------- propaganda wars

Pro-Chechen Radio Could Lose License

By Vladimir Isachenkov
Associated Press Writer
Monday, January 28, 2002; 11:31 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49151-2002Jan28?language=printer

MOSCOW -- A Kremlin spokesman warned the U.S.-funded Radio Liberty on Monday that officials will closely monitor its coverage of the war in Chechnya and may take away its license if they see a pro-rebel bias.

In an interview with the daily Gazeta published Monday, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's top spokesman for Chechnya, said the government has a "guarded" attitude toward Radio Liberty's plan to broadcast in the Chechen language because of its past coverage of Chechnya, which he said was biased and had justified separatist actions.

"We will pay special attention to what Radio Liberty will be saying," Yastrzhembsky said on Echo of Moscow radio. "Every state must defend its interests."

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a private, nonprofit corporation that receives funding from the U.S. government. Radio Free Europe broadcasts in Eastern Europe, while Radio Liberty operates in Russia.

The corporation was established in 1949 to spread uncensored news to countries behind the Iron Curtain and to promote democratic values and institutions. Its head office is in Prague, Czech Republic.

Most of Russia's media toe the Kremlin's line on Chechnya, where Russian forces are fighting rebels, and refrain from reporting abuses against civilians documented by human rights groups. Radio Liberty's broadcasts in Chechen would bring uncensored news about the conflict to the Chechens, who have virtually no access to independent print media.

Andrei Sharyi, head of Radio Liberty's Russian service, dismissed the accusations of pro-rebel bias and said in a telephone interview that the station was focusing on "human rights violations and war against civilians" in Chechnya.

The United States and other Western countries have acknowledged that rebels in Chechnya have links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network, and toned down their criticism of the war in Chechnya after the Sept. 11 terror attacks when Russia cast firm support for the U.S.-led coalition.

Yastrzhembsky in particular referred to the case of Radio Liberty's reporter, Andrei Babitsky, whose reporting from the rebel side angered the Kremlin and led to his arrest by federal authorities in Chechnya in early 2000. Babitsky was handed over to alleged Chechen rebels - who he claimed were linked to Russian security services - and spent several weeks in captivity.

Yastrzhembsky said the government would closely follow Radio Liberty's broadcasts and "if we see that it contains calls for inciting religious, national ethnic strife and justification or propaganda of terrorism ... we will act in line with the law."

The law envisages a government warning first, and, "after a second violation, the annulment of its broadcasting license in Russia and the closure of its bureau," Yastrzhembsky said. He added that such a scenario would be "highly undesirable."

Despite claims that the main rebel forces in Chechnya have been defeated, Russian troops suffer daily losses in raids and mine explosions. On Sunday, a Russian helicopter carrying 14 people, including two top Interior Ministry officials, crashed in northern Chechnya.

Yastrzhembsky and other officials insisted that the helicopter went down because of an accident. However, an official with the Moscow-appointed civilian administration for Chechnya said on condition of anonymity that investigators had found some fragments of the helicopter that suggested it was hit by a shoulder-fired missile.

Russian troops pulled out after the first, botched 1994-1996 war that left Chechnya with de-facto independence. Russia launched the second campaign in 1999 after rebels raided neighboring Dagestan, and a series of apartment-house bombings in which about 300 Russians died that were blamed on the separatists.

--------

Study: Fewer Facts in Media Coverage

January 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Afghan-Media-Coverage.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- News coverage immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks was based on solid sources and ``just the facts,'' but media standards have since slipped, a journalism think tank says.

Researchers for the Project for Excellence in Journalism examined 2,496 television, magazine and newspaper stories from mid-September, mid-November and mid-December.

Every assertion in the stories was categorized as either fact, analysis that could be attributed to reporting, or unattributed opinion or speculation.

The researchers analyzed stories from four newspapers -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Fresno Bee -- as well as Time and Newsweek. The survey also covered a variety of national TV programs.

``The news media reacted to the terrorist attacks of September 11 with great care about not getting ahead of the facts,'' the report said. Three-fourths of the coverage was strictly factual and just 25 percent was involved some level of interpretation.

By December, however, when the war in Afghanistan was well under way, the share of factual coverage overall had fallen to 63 percent -- a level ``lower than those seen in the middle of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal,'' according to the study. Analysis, speculation and outright opinion picked up the slack.

The researchers identified a stark difference between newspaper and magazine stories and television reports: 82 percent of print accounts were factual, compared to 57 percent of what was on TV.

The study said government restrictions imposed on journalists could be a cause for the decline in factual reporting. Researchers also cited newsroom cutbacks and the competitive, 24-hour pace of journalism.

The study also concluded that coverage has heavily favored U.S. positions. About half of the relevant stories contained only viewpoints in line with American or Bush administration policy. Television news was measurably less likely than print stories to include criticism of the administration, the study found.

The report was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

-------- russia / chechnya

Russian Officers Are Killed in Helicopter Crash in Chechnya

New York Times
January 28, 2002
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/28/international/europe/28CHEC.html

MOSCOW, Jan. 27 - A Russian military helicopter carrying two generals, three senior officers and their security detail exploded in midair today and crashed in Chechnya, the second time in four months that Moscow has suffered a major loss of top commanders in the rebellious territory.

As many as 14 passengers and crew members were killed, Russian military officials said tonight. Among the dead were the deputy interior minister, Gen. Mikhail Rudchenko, who oversaw Interior Ministry forces in Russia's southern administrative region that includes Chechnya, and his deputy, Gen. Nikolai Goridov.

The crash occurred as more than 1,000 Chechen refugees rallied at a tent city across Chechnya's border in Ingushetia to express their support for the Chechen president, Aslan Maskhadov, who leads the territory's rebellion from mountain hideouts.

Moscow has refused to negotiate with Mr. Maskhadov, though the United States and other Western nations have urged Russia to seek a political settlement to the longstanding conflict that has killed more than 3,500 Russian soldiers and many more Chechen fighters and civilians in the fighting that began in 1999.

The cause of the crash today had not been officially determined, but the Chechen rebel command said it had shot down the helicopter with a Russian-made Igla missile, a shoulder-fired antiaircraft weapon that has been sold abroad.

If the rebel claim is confirmed, the loss of high-ranking officers represents a significant setback for Russia's armed forces. On Sept. 17, Chechen rebels shot down an MI-8 transport helicopter carrying a high-ranking delegation of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, including two generals and eight colonels. Combined, the leadership losses indicate that Chechen rebels have inflicted at least as many casualties on the Russian military command as Russian troops have managed against rebel field commanders.

The helicopter that crashed today was flying about 40 miles northeast of the Chechen capital, Grozny, at 11:30 a.m. when it exploded near the Terek River town of Shelkovskaya. An Interfax news agency report from the town quoted an official of the village administration as saying that the preliminary conclusion of investigators at the crash site indicated that the helicopter was struck by a surface-to-air missile.

"The exact reason for the explosion of the helicopter has not yet been established," Maj. Gen. Sergei Babkin, director of Federal Security Service forces in Chechnya, told reporters this afternoon.

Three colonels of Interior Ministry forces were also identified among the dead: Yuri Orlenko, Yuri Stepanenko and Aleksandr Trofimenko.

The general staff helicopter shot down in September had just taken off from a landing site at Minutka Square in the center of the destroyed capital. It was carrying a commission of officers dispatched to determine whether some security measures could be relaxed there. Among the dead was Lt. Gen. Anatoly Pozdnyakov, an aide to the chief of staff, Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin. General Kvashnin barely escaped a missile attack on his own helicopter a year earlier when he flew to Chechnya to inspect troops.

After the September attack, Gen. Valeri P. Baranov, commander of Russian forces in the Northern Caucasus, warned on Russian television that Chechen rebels were wielding a dangerous new weapon.

"I would like to tell those who gave the rebels such devices that we will soon find them and find out from which state they are coming from," he said, adding, "These launchers could be used not only against our helicopters in Chechnya, but also against aircraft and helicopters anywhere in Russia."

In recent months, Russian officials have characterized the Chechen rebels as beleaguered and near collapse. But the latest two attacks, if confirmed, indicate that the rebels have developed a new guerrilla tactic to threaten Russian commanders who travel from base to base around Chechnya by helicopter to avoid road ambushes and land mines.

The attacks also indicate that Chechen rebels, who receive funding and support from Islamic militant organizations like Osama bin Laden's Qaeda network, may have gained access to a potent antiaircraft missile system similar to the American- made Stinger missiles that Afghans used to shoot down Russian helicopters during the Soviet military campaign.

-------- us

Greenville sub hits Marine ship

1/28/2002
UPI
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=28012002-125812-9785r

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 -- The notorious USS Greenville attack submarine collided with the USS Ogden in the Arabian Sea, puncturing a diesel fuel tank below the Ogden's waterline, according to Pentagon officials.

There were no injuries in the 9:55 a.m. Sunday accident, the Pentagon said.

The Greenville, which last year accidentally rammed and sunk a Japanese fishing boat off Hawaii and killed nine people, was meeting with the Ogden to transfer two crewmembers who would be returning to home to attend funerals, according to Joint Staff spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem.

The skippers of the ships arranged the meeting time and place. The process for transfer involves a rigid hull inflatable boat from the surface vessel approaching the submarine, also on the surface and picking up the passengers.

While maneuvering the two ships, the starboard rear portion of the Ogden and the rear port side of the Greenville -- the diving or control plane -- collided.

The Ogden, a troop transport ship, remained on station in the Arabian Sea. Its ruptured diesel tank was emptied. The Greenville steamed on the surface toward Diego Garcia.

"What went wrong, we don't know," Stufflebeem said.

Last year, about 10 miles off Hawaii, the Greenville conducted an emergency surfacing drill with about a dozen civilian guests on board, some of whom were at the controls when the maneuver was conducted. The submarine hit the Ehime Maru, killing nine Japanese citizens and sinking the ship.

--------

US Soldiers Hurt in Copter Landing

January 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Helicopter.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Army helicopter made a hard landing in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, and soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were injured, a senior defense official said.

Initial reports from the scene, near the town of Khost, indicated no one was killed, the official said.

The CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter was carrying members of the 101st Airborne to a U.S. Marine Corps encampment near Khost, the official said. The 101st soldiers are replacing the Marines, who have been using the outpost in their search for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

Thirty to 35 soldiers typically would be aboard in such a circumstance, he said.

The injured soldiers were taken to a medical facility at Baghram airport north of Kabul, the Afghan capital.

It was the latest in a series of U.S. military aircraft accidents in and around Afghanistan. The most deadly was the crash of a Marine Corps KC-130 refueling aircraft in Pakistan on Jan. 9 in which seven Marines were killed. On Jan. 20, a CH-53E Super Stallion crashed south of Baghram, killing two of the seven Marines aboard.

--------

Pentagon Says It Didn't Kill Innocents

January 28, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-US-Military.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pentagon officials on Monday disputed claims that U.S. special forces mistakenly killed innocents during a midnight raid on two compounds in a mountainous part of Afghanistan last week.

Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, the deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said intelligence clues indicated that the compounds were being used by the al-Qaida terrorist network or their Taliban supporters.

``This had the clear indications of being a legitimate military target based on the indicators that we had been observing over time,'' Stufflebeem told a Pentagon news conference. Groups of stolen United Nations vehicles had been seen moving in and out of one compound late at night, he said.

This matched the operating methods of the al-Qaida and Taliban, Stufflebeem said, and gave the compound the appearance of a ``meeting house'' that was protected and guarded much like other compounds where Taliban and al-Qaida have gathered elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Local Afghans have protested to authorities in Kandahar, about 60 miles south of the target area, that no al-Qaida or Taliban fighters were in the area and that those killed were loyal to Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, who was meeting in Washington Monday with President Bush.

Some have speculated that U.S. military officials were given a false tip on the identity of those using the compounds -- a tactic Afghan factions have used in the past to hurt their rivals. Pentagon officials said, however, that the intelligence information on which they based the decision to launch the raid did not come from Afghan locals.

Stufflebeem said U.S. special forces soldiers were sent to the compounds under the cover of darkness to investigate who was using the facilities. When they broke into the compounds they were fired upon, he said, and so they fired back. He said 27 people from the compounds were taken prisoner and 15 or 16 were killed.

Initial interrogations of the 27 prisoners have not established their affiliations, he said.

One U.S. special forces soldier was wounded in the ankle in the raid.

Stufflebeem said there was a large cache of ammunition at the site, but not a large number of weapons. An AC-130 gunship blew up the ammunition stores.

Stufflebeem was asked about assertions by locals that, at the request of the Karzai government, they had been collecting ammunition and weapons from the area and stockpiling them in these compounds.

``In the realm of possible, that could be an explanation for what this was and why it was there,'' he said. ``But what it does not explain are the traditional Taliban and al-Qaida modus operandi of moving in the groups of vehicles that they do, at the times that they did, and guarded in a way that it was. Nor does it explain why the U.S. forces were fired upon to the extent that they were.''

In other military developments, Stufflebeem said Afghan forces had turned over to U.S. forces another 22 al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners, bringing to 324 the number in U.S. custody inside Afghanistan.

Another 158 prisoners are held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Rumsfeld last week temporarily halted the transfer of prisoners to Guantanamo Bay, allowing more time for construction of additional cells. Since then, 60 new cells have become available and another 60 will be ready within days. Officials said prisoner transfers are likely to resume by this weekend.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

CAPTIVES
Detainees Are Not P.O.W.'s, Cheney and Rumsfeld Declare

New York Times
January 28, 2002
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/28/international/28DETA.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 - Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that the war captives in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would not be designated as prisoners of war, regardless of what decision the administration made on Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's request for a review of how the Geneva Convention on captives' rights might apply.

Secretary Powell agrees that the captives should not be given prisoner of war status, but he has asked the administration to reconsider whether to adhere to the Geneva Convention governing treatment of prisoners in wartime, adopted in 1949.

Mr. Cheney said the convention did not apply to those captives because they were not conventional soldiers, but terrorists operating outside internationally accepted norms.

Reflecting a debate within the administration, Mr. Cheney told Fox News this morning that the question was whether the prisoners should be treated within the confines of the convention or outside it. He prefers the latter course because it would allow flexibility in interrogation.

"There's another school of thought that says the Geneva Convention does not apply to terrorist attacks," Mr. Cheney said. "It was set up to deal with a war between sovereign states. It's got provisions for dealing with civil war. But in a case where you have nonstate actors out to kill civilians, then there's a serious question whether or not the Geneva Convention even applies.

"The bottom line is that the legal issue is being debated between the lawyers. It will go to the president. He'll make a decision."

"The detainees are being treated humanely," he said, adding: "These are the worst of a very bad lot. They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans, innocent Americans, if they can, and they are perfectly prepared to die in the effort."

The convention says that if there is doubt about prisoners' status, "such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."

Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him today to Guantánamo, "There is no ambiguity in this case."

"They are not P.O.W.'s," he said before touring the United States naval base at Guantánamo, where 158 prisoners from Afghanistan are being held. "They will not be determined to be P.O.W.'s."

Mr. Rumsfeld said he was touring the detention center, known as Camp X-Ray, not so much to inspect the conditions as to buck up the troops who are guarding the prisoners, whom he called "among the most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth."

Officials at the camp told reporters that the prisoners were already beginning to organize themselves, with some emerging as leaders.

Later, on CNN's "Late Edition," Mr. Cheney discussed the legal debate within the administration and suggested that the State Department's view, that the captives should be treated within the confines of the Geneva Convention, would be rejected. "There is a category under the Geneva Convention for unlawful combatants, and one argument, the State Department argument, is they ought to be treated within the Geneva Convention but under that convention deemed unlawful combatants and therefore not - they don't extend to the rights of a prisoner of war," he said. "The other argument is the Geneva Convention doesn't apply in the case of terrorism, and that leads you down a different track from a legal standpoint.

"The ultimate result is they will be treated humanely, but they are not going to be accorded the treatment you would accord, for example, the Iraqis that we captured in the gulf war, who were treated - a prisoner of war, for example, has to give only name, rank and serial number.

"These are bad people. I mean, they've already been screened before they get to Guantánamo. They may well have information about future terrorist attacks against the United States. We need that information. We need to be able to interrogate them and extract from them whatever information they have."

--------

Police Shift Focus to Terror With Spymaster and a Marine

New York Times
January 28, 2002
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/28/nyregion/28KELL.html

In his first month on the job, Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly created two new senior positions in the Police Department and filled them with men who have not a lick of experience policing New York City. But the two new deputy commissioners have a combined 70 years of experience sneaking spies into foreign countries, landing soldiers on foreign shores and navigating the bureaucratic back alleys in Washington where policy and politics intersect.

And that, Mr. Kelly has decided, is experience that has become as valuable to the nation's largest police force as are the strategies that brought homicide and robbery rates down or the police management skills now needed in a budget crisis to maintain those declines in crime while holding overtime in check.

Driven by the compelling realities of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, the unprecedented appointments are a sign that Mr. Kelly has set out to reshape the department and its culture, seeking to create what some police officials are calling a model for the 21st-century law enforcement agency. The goal of the changes, simply put, is to meet the singular challenge of seeking to prevent - while at the same time preparing for - future terrorist attacks.

"This is really a quantum leap. This is a big change," Mr. Kelly said in a recent interview. "And the reason for it is the world has changed, and we've brought on two consummate professionals in an area that heretofore, quite frankly, we didn't necessarily think we needed help in."

By creating the two new positions, deputy commissioner for counterterrorism and deputy commissioner for intelligence, Mr. Kelly said, he is hoping to institutionalize the changes, because he does not think the threats facing the city will recede anytime soon. "The days when you could just focus on crime and quality-of-life-violation suppression are over," he said. "Not that we're going to back away from that; that's a core mission of the organization. But now you have this whole other area that has to be focused on. We're going to be involved in that for a long, long time."

And by naming a retired Marine Corps general to oversee counterterrorism efforts and a former C.I.A. spymaster to head the department's intelligence division, Mr. Kelly has signaled a desire not only to strengthen police antiterrorism initiatives, but also to forge closer ties with federal authorities in New York and Washington. In creating the new posts, Mr. Kelly said, he drew on his own experience in Washington, where he served as deputy treasury secretary for law enforcement and as United States Customs commissioner, as well as a member of the executive committee of Interpol.

He acknowledged that he had selected the two men - David Cohen as deputy commissioner for intelligence and Gen. Frank Libutti as deputy commissioner for counterterrorism - in part because, just by picking up the phone, they can get things done in Washington.

It was just that sort of deficiency that drew Mr. Kelly's predecessor, Bernard B. Kerik, to Washington last month, where he testified at a Congressional hearing about the need for better communications between local police and the F.B.I. Mr. Kerik's concerns, he told a Senate subcommittee, were prompted by tensions between some Police Department and F.B.I. officials after the F.B.I. failed to notify the police promptly about a report of an anthrax laced- letter in the weeks after Sept. 11. While the substance in the letter turned out to be harmless, the incident strained already frayed nerves at a difficult time between two agencies that have worked together closely in New York for more than 20 years despite some recurring struggles.

Mr. Kelly said he has had several discussions in the last six weeks with the senior F.B.I. official in New York, Barry W. Mawn, about creating the new Police Department positions and about strengthening the F.B.I.- N.Y.P.D. Joint Terrorist Task Force, which investigates terrorists and terrorist attacks. "This is all about working collaboratively with the bureau," he said of the department changes, adding that he planned to add more investigators to the Joint Task Force, a move Mr. Mawn said he hoped to match.

Mr. Cohen, who with General Libutti joined Mr. Kelly at the recent interview, said that his conversations with F.B.I. officials in New York, with whom he said he has worked well in the past, made it clear to him that they understood that strengthening the Police Department was to everyone's advantage.

Mr. Mawn applauded the creation of the two new Police Department positions and the two men Mr. Kelly has chosen to fill them, saying that he too had begun an evaluation of his office since Sept. 11 and thought the changes would help the two agencies better protect the city.

Jerome H. Skolnick, a New York University Law School professor who is a widely recognized expert in policing, also praised Mr. Kelly's changes. He said they reflected the unique responsibilities of the New York department in policing the city after the attack on the World Trade Center. "We've lived for years with what might be called normal crime. It goes up and it goes down," he said. "But what happened on Sept. 11 is unprecedented."

Mr. Cohen, a 35-year veteran of the C.I.A., spent the two years before his retirement in 1997 overseeing the agency's espionage operations around the world. Before that, much of his career was dedicated to supervising the collection and analysis of intelligence, focusing on issues from the threat of terrorism, to international organized crime and the proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. From 1995 until 1997 he was also responsible for maintaining the C.I.A.'s relationships with foreign intelligence and security services.

He said that his new responsibilities would range from keeping track of foreign intelligence on terrorists to keeping officers who are on street patrol better informed so the department can take advantage of its 40,000 sets of eyes and ears to watch and listen for new threats.

As an example, he cited the recent arrests of several people accused of being members of a reputed Al Qaeda cell in Singapore, saying that knowledge of the way the terrorists were believed to have communicated and the techniques and cameras they supposedly used to case their targets could be useful to patrol officers so they could watch out for similar behavior.

General Libutti, who will oversee training, preparation and security, said he hoped the work that he and Mr. Cohen are setting out to do would make New York City unwelcome to terrorists - in military jargon, "a hard target" - without making it unpleasant for New Yorkers or unwelcome to others.

"When the bad guy drives up to the border of New York City," he said, he wants that person to think that "New York City is too difficult."

-------- terrorism

DOMESTIC DEFENSE
Cheney Supports Domestic Antiterrorist Military Command

New York Times
January 28, 2002
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/28/national/28COMM.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 - Vice President Dick Cheney today endorsed creating a new domestic defense command within the Pentagon to coordinate the military's response to terrorist attacks in the United States.

The plan would call for assigning a four-star officer to oversee all military personnel involved in protecting the nation's coastlines and airspace, as well as providing support to local authorities in the event of a terrorist attack, military officials said.

Those roles are now divided among many offices, including the Army, the National Guard and the Reserve, the Coast Guard and the Air Force. Unifying activities under a single chain of command would tighten security and speed reaction to attacks, advocates say.

"It's very important to have integrity in the chain of command, to have a unified command, you know, who's in charge, who's got command of the troops, who can give the orders to make things happen," Mr. Cheney said the ABC program "This Week."

"Establishing a U.S. CINC," he added, using the Pentagon's acronym for commander-in-chief, "I think is a good idea."

Military officials said the proposal, which was described in The Washington Post today, is still being reviewed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. But they said the concept has broad support among the armed services.

Though no decisions have been made on who would run the proposed new command, one name widely circulated in the Pentagon has been Gen. John M. Keane, the Army vice chief of staff.

The proposal is part of a broader blueprint for reorganizing the Unified Command Plan, other elements of which could deal with changing the geographic responsibilities of other combatant commands, military officials said.

The military has nine unified commands, including five with responsibility over specific regions: Latin America, Europe and Africa, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, the Pacific and North America and space.

Other commands oversee transportation, the nuclear arsenal and special operations forces. The ninth command develops joint fighting strategies involving all the armed services.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, with headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, now oversees the defense of the nation's skies, while the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., is in charge of protecting the coasts. Those responsibilities would presumably come under the proposed new command, military officials said, though details have not been worked out.

The proposed command would also probably oversee the military's response to terrorist attacks, from dispatching medics and mortuary technicians to using helicopters and trucks to deliver supplies or move victims. The armed services also have special teams trained to respond to attacks involving chemical, biological and radiological weapons.

The idea of having a discrete domestic military command is not new; the Clinton administration also considered it. But it has been opposed by civil libertarians from the political left and right who contend that expanding the military's role in domestic affairs will lead to civil rights abuses.

Asked about those concerns today, Mr. Cheney replied, "The problem we've got now, of course, changed dramatically on Sept. 11 with the terrorist attack on New York and the Pentagon."

"When you marry up that vulnerability," Mr. Cheney continued, "with the possible use of weapons of mass destruction, of a nuclear or a biological or a chemical weapon of some kind, then you have the kind of impact on the United States that clearly is going to require military involvement to deal with the consequences of that sort of an attack."


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

Shell adds Texas wind farm to U.S. power portfolio

REUTERS USA:
January 28, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14238/story.htm

HOUSTON - Shell WindEnergy Inc., seeking to boost its wind power portfolio, said Thursday it acquired an 80 megawatt wind power facility on the north Texas plains from Cielo Wind Power LLC.

Terms of the deal for the Llano Estacado Wind Ranch near Amarillo were not disclosed. Shell WindEnergy is a unit of Shell Renewables, itself a subsidiary of energy giant Royal Dutch, Shell Group .

The facility, built last year by Austin, Texas-based Cielo at a cost of about $30 million, can generate enough electricity to power 30,000 homes, or roughly 0.1 percent of the 65,000 MW of installed generation on the Texas power grid. There are currently about 1,170 megawatts of installed wind generation in Texas, which ranks second among U.S. states in terms of wind power behind North Dakota.

The Llano Estacado facility consists of 80 226-foot (70 meter) high white, tubular steel towers, each topped by a turbine whose rotor carries three 90-foot (28-meter) blades.

The deal with Cielo includes Shell taking over a 15-year contract to sell electricity from the facility to Southwestern Public Service Co., a unit of Xcel Energy, an agreement that paved the way for construction of the facility.

Xcel Energy , based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is one of the nation's biggest electricity and natural gas utilities, serving some 3.2 million power and 1.7 gas customers in the West and Midwest.

Shell WindEnergy said the deal, its second acquisition in North America, is part of a continued effort to build a portfolio of wind power stations.

The company's first venture into the U.S. wind power business came just two months ago, when it bought the 50 megawatt Rock River I wind farm in Wyoming.

"We intend to explore additional opportunities in this important and growing area and will remain focused on the many attractive options the U.S. market presents for expanding Shell's wind energy portfolio," David Jones, director of Shell Windenergy Inc., said in a statement.

The company said it is currently developing wind power projects totaling 1,000 megawatts in the U.S. and Europe.

-------- energy

Cheney Is Set to Battle Congress to Keep His Enron Papers Secret

New York Times
January 28, 2002
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/28/business/28CHEN.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 - Vice President Dick Cheney said today that the White House was prepared to go to court to fight the release of documents demanded by Congress as part of the investigation into any influence the Enron Corporation (news/quote) had in formulating the Bush administration's energy policy.

Mr. Cheney said that the General Accounting Office, the agency demanding the documents, was overstepping its authority and that he had a right to keep the documents secret to preserve his ability to get "unvarnished" advice from outside consultants.

David M. Walker, the head of the General Accounting Office, responded this evening in an interview that it was now "highly likely" that he would file a lawsuit against the Bush administration if Mr. Cheney did not turn over the documents by the end of this week. Of the vice president's assertion that the agency was overstepping its bounds, Mr. Walker, the comptroller general of the United States, replied, "Talk is cheap."

It would be the first time that the accounting office, the investigative arm of Congress, sued another government department for not cooperating with an inquiry.

In interviews on the ABC program "This Week" and "Fox News Sunday," Mr. Cheney said that it was the right of the president and vice president to keep secret meetings like those that Mr. Cheney and his energy task force had over the last year with Enron executives as the administration devised its energy policy.

"What I object to," Mr. Cheney said on "Fox News Sunday," "and what the president's objected to, and what we've told G.A.O. we won't do, is make it impossible for me or future vice presidents to ever have a conversation in confidence with anybody without having, ultimately, to tell a member of Congress what we talked about and what was said."

At issue is how much Enron, a major contributor to the Republican Party, influenced the Bush energy plan, which eases environmental rules, opens public land to drilling and provides tax incentives to energy companies for exploration. Enron and the White House have acknowledged that Enron executives met five times with Mr. Cheney or members of his staff about energy last year, and documents from the meetings could show whether the administration policy mirrored any specific recommendations of Enron's.

A lawsuit would increase pressure on Mr. Cheney, who is under criticism from Democrats for his relationship with Enron, the giant energy trading company that filed for bankruptcy protection and that has ties to officials in the Bush administration.

"Now, the fact is, Enron didn't get any special deals," Mr. Cheney said on ABC. "Enron's been treated appropriately by this administration."

Mr. Cheney also said that turning over the documents would be detrimental to the presidency.

"We've seen it in cases like this before, where it's demanded that presidents cough up and compromise on important principles," Mr. Cheney said. As a result, he said, "we are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years."

Some Republican strategists have begun to worry that Mr. Cheney's stance is contributing to perceptions that the White House has something to hide on the issue. The New York Times/CBS News Poll published today showed that a majority of Republicans believed that the administration had not been forthcoming about its dealings with Enron.

Mr. Walker, a member of the Reagan and first Bush administrations, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1998 to a 15-year term as comptroller general, said that he did not agree with Mr. Cheney's position that he was allowed to keep the meetings secret because of his position as vice president.

"This is not about the vice president's constitutional position," Mr. Walker said. "It's about his capacity as chairman of the national energy policy development group. From Day 1, this has not had anything to do with the constitutional position of the vice president. I know they want to present it that way because they think people will be more sympathetic, but that's not factually accurate."

Mr. Walker said that it was his view that the White House had put Mr. Cheney in charge of energy policy for that very reason - to claim executive privilege and avoid oversight of the group by Congress. "But that's a loophole big enough to drive a truck through," Mr. Walker said.

Mr. Walker also took issue with an assertion by Mr. Cheney that the accounting office was pursuing the information only because of the political heat generated by the Enron scandal. In the ABC interview, Mr. Cheney said that the accounting office first pursued the documents last summer but then relented under the administration's stance that the information was privileged.

"The G.A.O. sort of backed off," Mr. Cheney said. "They in effect said, `Well, maybe we aren't going to pursue it at this point.' What's re- energized it now is the question of Enron, and some efforts by my Democratic friends on the Hill to try to create a political issue out of what's really a corporate issue."

At least 10 Congressional committees are investigating the Enron debacle.

Mr. Walker responded that Mr. Cheney's statement was "absolutely false" and said that the accounting office had been prepared to go to court in September, before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon occurred. He decided, he said, to wait until the crisis had abated before pursuing the matter.

An administration official said today that it was likely that any court fight over the documents would take years, and that the White House was convinced it had a strong case.

White House officials continue to say that the Enron debacle is a financial scandal, not a political one, and point out that the president's approval ratings remain high, above 80 percent. White House officials also say that even if Mr. Cheney turns over the documents, this will only whet the Democrats' appetite.

----

Cheney Refuses Records' Release Energy Showdown With GAO Looms

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 28, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46856-2002Jan27?language=printer

Vice President Cheney yesterday said he would not give congressional investigators records from the administration's energy policy development, inviting what legal experts say would be the highest profile court fight between Congress and an administration since Watergate.

Cheney framed his forceful rejection of the demand for information in broad constitutional terms, professing a desire to restore presidential power to a level not seen in decades. "I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job," he said. The vice president said it was "wrong" for past administrations to have acquiesced to congressional demands.

"We are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years," Cheney said on the ABC News program "This Week," one of two appearances he made yesterday. Cheney said the dispute "probably will get resolved in court."

The showdown between the Bush administration and the investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office, follows a nine-month effort by Congress to see whether campaign contributors disproportionately influenced White House energy proposals. The matter has gained new prominence because of the collapse and numerous investigations of energy trader Enron Corp., which has ties to the administration.

U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker, who heads the GAO, had said he would begin legal proceedings this week if the administration did not provide the information. "I've said it will be this week, and I intend to deliver on that," Walker said in an interview yesterday. Unless the administration reverses course, Walker said, he will notify congressional leaders, possibly as soon as Wednesday, of plans to file suit. Walker said he was "surprised" and "discouraged" by Cheney's vehemence.

Cheney attributed the threatened lawsuit to efforts to exploit the Enron collapse by Democrats, particularly Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee. Cheney said the GAO "backed off" its effort in August.

"Now what's happened is we've come back around. As a result of the Enron corporate collapse, some of the Democrats on the Hill are trying to re-energize this and try to turn it into some kind of political debate with respect to Enron," Cheney said on "Fox News Sunday." "But what's really at stake here is the ability of the president and the vice president to solicit advice from anybody they want in confidence -- get good, solid, unvarnished advice without having to make it available to a member of Congress."

Walker, who had been a delegate to a Republican National Convention and an official in the Reagan administration, said it was not a partisan inquiry, noting that Sen. Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.), Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and other GOP lawmakers want the White House to release the information. He said the GAO was "headed to court in September" and delayed its action because "it was not prudent to divert the administration's attention" after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.

Walker said the GAO was seeking information from Cheney not in his constitutional role as vice president but as chairman of the interagency energy task force, which solicited information from executives and others outside the government. The task force has said it met with Enron representatives six times. The GAO is seeking to learn who met with the task force and what they wanted.

The administration's willingness to enter a high-profile legal battle with Congress surprised even some legal experts sympathetic to protecting executive power. Bruce Fein, a lawyer who served in the Nixon and Reagan Justice Departments, said there is "a possibility" the administration could convince a court that the GAO is not entitled to the information, but he said it would be "a pyrrhic victory."

A victory in court would only prompt congressional committees to issue subpoenas for the information, Fein said, and "the damage to the public perception of their honesty is going to be irreparable. The people would say there's another coverup."

In the last such legal battle, President Richard Nixon in 1974 won a case against a Senate committee that was seeking information related to campaign contributions and executive actions. But Fein said the current case, because it involves conflict-of-interest allegations, would be more like a 1927 case in which Congress won a lawsuit against a Harding administration official who was accused of covering up information in the Teapot Dome scandal.

The Bush administration already faces a public relations problem on the Enron situation. Sixty-seven percent of Americans surveyed late last week believe the administration is either hiding something or lying about its relationship with Enron, up from 53 percent the week before, according to a CBS-New York Times poll released Saturday.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) called Cheney's decision not to release the records "unfortunate." On CBS's "Face the Nation," Daschle said: "The General Accounting Office is on solid ground in demanding that these records be turned over. The American people have a right to know what the facts are."

White House aides have, in recent days, left open the possibility that their position on the task-force records could change, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. sounded more conciliatory yesterday than Cheney did. But Cheney said the Enron scandal did not justify investigating the administration.

"There's no evidence to indicate anybody did anything wrong in the administration," he said. "This issue of Enron isn't about the administration. What it's really about is whether or not laws were broken or laws need to be changed with respect to the functioning of a major corporation."

-------- environment

EPA Plans Watershed Protection Program

By John Heilprin
Associated Press
Monday, January 28, 2002; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47114-2002Jan27?language=printer

The Bush administration will ask Congress for $21 million for fiscal 2003 to create a new program within the Environmental Protection Agency aimed at restoring pollution-damaged streams and rivers.

With the new program, the agency plans to choose 10 watersheds that deserve more protection through grants to states, tribes and local communities, EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said last week.

"The biggest challenges we face in water now is from nonpoint source pollution and the best way to address that is a watershed-based approach," Whitman said in an interview.

She announced the program during a visit to the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge near Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Unlike pollution leaking from industrial and sewage treatment plants, nonpoint source pollution comes from many sources. Rainfall or melted snow moving on the ground picks up natural and man-made pollutants, such as fertilizers, toxic chemicals from urban runoff and acid drainage from abandoned mines.

Some of the watershed problems include loss of habitats, an overload of nutrients, pathogens and the introduction of nonnative species.

If the new program is approved, Whitman said, EPA officials would work closely with governors, tribal officials and local representatives to expand watershed-protection training and education.

Congress now appropriates money to protect specific watersheds such as the Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco Bay, Long Island Sound and the Great Lakes.

"The existing funding for watershed protection has been unorganized and spread unevenly," said Tom Schueler, executive director of the Ellicott City-based Center for Watershed Protection.


-------- activists

500 people demonstrated in Grozny

January 28, 2002
AP
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020128-39499480.htm

....About 500 people demonstrated in Grozny to protest Russian operations in which people are detained and interrogated about possible links to rebels. They also demanded starting talks on a peaceful settlement of the war in Chechnya.

Russian soldiers watched the rally, which lasted about two hours, but made no attempt to disperse the demonstrators.

----

Australia Children Make Suicide Pact

By Mike Corder
Associated Press Writer
Monday, January 28, 2002; 12:44 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47310-2002Jan28?language=printer

WOOMERA, Australia -- A group of 11 children being held in an immigration detention center in the remote Australian Outback have made a pact to commit suicide unless they are released, a lawyer representing protesting detainees said Monday.

Rob McDonald said the children, from 14 to 17 years old and without parents or guardians at the Woomera detention facility, had informed them of their plan during a meeting late Sunday. Four other children pulled out of the pact, McDonald said.

"Their condition is very stressed, very wound up, they are wanting an immediate response from (the immigration department) and they are getting more and more agitated to act," he said. "They're talking about jumping on to razor wire, harming themselves with sharp implements or ingesting some sort of fluid."

He said the four who pulled out did so because they believed the plan would hurt their applications for asylum.

He said some of the children who are seeking asylum in Australia had been granted temporary protection visas, but were still waiting to be released from the center, a former missile testing base on a hot, dusty plain about 1,120 miles west of Sydney.

"These guys feel this is the only thing they can do to get out of the facility," McDonald said.

About 370 detainees are on a hunger strike at Woomera, including some children, according to refugee lawyers, but the government has put the total number at 259. Most are Afghans, and dozens have sewed their lips together.

The protesters are demanding that the government speed up their asylum claims and move them out of Woomera.

More refugees are also joining the action at other detention centers across Australia. Sixteen of the immigrants are refusing food at the Port Hedland detention center in the north of Western Australia state, while another four have joined the protest at Curtin camp, also in Western Australia, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs said Monday.

However, 22 detainees at Melbourne's Maribyrnong detention center abandoned their hunger strike Monday after five days without food, refugee advocates said.

"They felt the protest was the only thing they could do to show support for the detainees at Woomera," said Judy McVey, spokeswoman for the Refugee Action Collective. "But it's different at Maribyrnong. ... It's not like the concentration camps around the rest of the country."

About 175 of the protesting detainees at Woomera have not eaten for nearly two weeks. They are growing increasingly weak as dehydration and temperatures up to 104 degrees take their toll, lawyers representing them said.

Two sympathizers were arrested early Monday when they entered the grounds of the Woomera camp as part of a national 48-hour hunger strike organized by human rights groups and refugee advocates.

Shortly before entering the center, Peter Lawrence and Tracey Bretag told reporters they wanted to get a message to the detainees that there were people that supported them.

"We're going to try and get through, I don't know what that means," Bretag said, holding a sign that said, "You are not alone."

Bretag was later charged with failing to obey the directions of a federal officer. Lawrence was not charged.

Their arrest followed demonstrations Sunday at immigrant detention centers in Melbourne, Sydney and Port Hedland.

Police arrested four people at Port Hedland, including a 12-year-old girl, for unlawful assembly. The girl was later released with a warning, but the others were charged and were to appear in court Tuesday.

Opposition Labor Party leader Simon Crean called for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock to step aside and let an independent committee take over the detention centers.

"What we need is some middle broker at the moment to come up with a compromise solution and I think the independent body is the appropriate one to do that," Crean said Monday.

The Catholic Church later backed his call.

However, Prime Minister John Howard has refused calls to soften the government's policy of detaining all illegal immigrants in camps like the one at Woomera until their asylum applications are processed, which can take up to three years.

"I wish this hunger strike were not taking place but ... I want to make it perfectly clear that the government will not be altering its current policy," Howard said in Sydney.

About 3,000 illegal immigrants, mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and southern Asia are currently in detention in Australia.

That situation likely will be discussed during Howard's weeklong visit to New York beginning Tuesday. He is scheduled to address the World Economic Forum and meet with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

----

Some Asylum Seekers End Hunger Strike

By Emma Tinkler
Associated Press Writer
Monday, January 28, 2002; 6:54 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48113-2002Jan28?language=printer

SYDNEY, Australia -- Groups of asylum seekers being held in Australian detention centers agreed Monday to remove stitches from their lips and to abandon a five-day hunger strike.

Also, four children pulled out of what their lawyer said was a suicide pact between mostly Afghan children without parents or guardians at the remote Woomera detention center in the Australian Outback.

Yet refugees at other detention centers across Australia joined the hunger strikes, with 16 immigrants at the Port Hedland detention center and four at the Curtin camp in Western Australia state refusing food, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs said Monday.

About 370 detainees are on hunger strike at Woomera, including some children, according to refugee lawyers, but the government said the total is 259. Most are Afghans, and dozens have sewed their lips together.

The protesters want the government to speed up their asylum claims and move them out of Woomera.

Late Monday, the detainees said some people would remove stitches from their lips out of respect for the Immigration Detention Advisory Group, which is trying to solve the crisis.

Also, 22 detainees at Melbourne's Maribyrnong detention center abandoned their hunger strike Monday after five days without food, refugee advocates said.

"They felt the protest was the only thing they could do to show support for the detainees at Woomera," said Judy McVey, spokeswoman for the Refugee Action Collective, who added that Maribyrnong is "not like the concentration camps around the rest of the country."

About 175 Woomera detainees have not eaten for nearly two weeks. They grow increasingly weak as dehydration and temperatures up to 104 take their toll.

Eleven mostly Afghan children at Woomera have made a pact to commit suicide unless they are released, a lawyer representing them said Monday.

"Their condition is very stressed, very wound up, they are wanting an immediate response from (the Immigration Department) and they are getting more and more agitated to act," lawyer Rob McDonald said.

"They're talking about jumping onto razor wire, harming themselves with sharp implements or ingesting some sort of fluid," he said of the children, who are between the ages of 14 and 17.

Four other children pulled out of the deal because they believed the plan would negatively influence their applications for asylum, McDonald said.

McDonald said some of the children had been granted temporary protection visas, but were still waiting to be released from the center, a former missile testing base on a hot, dusty plain 1,120 miles west of Sydney.

Two sympathizers were arrested early Monday when they entered Woomera during a national 48-hour hunger strike organized by human rights groups and refugee advocates.

Peter Lawrence and Tracey Bretag said they wanted to tell the detainees that people supported them.

"We're going to try and get through, I don't know what that means," Bretag said, holding a sign that said, "You are not alone."

Bretag was later charged with failing to obey the directions of a federal officer. Lawrence was not charged.

Their arrest followed Sunday demonstrations at detention centers in Melbourne, Sydney and Port Hedland.

Three people were arrested at Port Hedland for unlawful assembly and will appear in court Tuesday.

Opposition Labor Party leader Simon Crean called for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock to let an independent committee take over the detention centers. The Catholic Church supported that call.

However, Prime Minister John Howard has refused to soften the policy of detaining all illegal immigrants until their asylum applications are processed - which can take three years.

About 3,000 illegal immigrants, mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and southern Asia are detained in Australia.

"I want to make it perfectly clear that the government will not be altering its current policy," Howard said.

The situation likely will be discussed during Howard's weeklong visit to New York beginning Tuesday. He is scheduled to address the World Economic Forum and meet with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

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Haitians Ransack Warehouses

WORLD In Brief
Monday, January 28, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47185-2002Jan27?language=printer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Police fired bullets into the air and tear gas at hundreds of poor Haitians who ransacked warehouses and demanded rice under a program that critics say is illegally subsidized and benefits some governing party officials financially and politically.

Protesters had poured out of the Cite Soleil seaside slum and surrounded hundreds of trucks and official state vehicles loaded with rice.

Police were unable to control the crowds who were demanding a share of the so-called Rice for Peace.

A nonprofit arm of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas Party has been importing the rice from Asia and the United States free of taxes and customs duties. Party officials say the program is a legitimate way to bring down living costs, but some lawmakers from within the party are accusing officials of profiting from the program.

Associated Press

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Aborigines swipe Aussie coat of arms to recover emu

Monday January 28,
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-86455.html
Photo: http://sg.yimg.com/xp/reuters/20020128/940458014.jpg

SYDNEY - Aboriginal elders have ripped the Australian coat of arms off the country's old federal parliament building, saying they were offended by the use of what they consider sacred symbols -- the kangaroo and the emu.

Australian Federal Police said on Monday they were trying to negotiate with the Aborigines, who took the iron shield down on Sunday while celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra.

"(We're) still conducting inquiries," a police official said.

But Aboriginal leaders said they would only talk to the government.

"We're just taking what's ours back," Kevin Buzzacott told the Australian Associated Press. "These animals don't belong on the coat of arms, they're being misused and abused, so it was removed."

Channel Nine television reported that the Aborigines were threatening to take their coat of arms swiping action to other government buildings in the capital.

Beginning as a simple beach umbrella but soon growing into a small tent village, complete with ceremonial fire, the Aboriginal embassy was established in 1972 to pressure for land rights two centuries after British colonisation.

It was repeatedly torn down by police in violent clashes and faded away by 1975. But in 1992 it was revived to draw attention to the sovereignty claims of Australia's 300,000 indigenous people.

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Israeli peace rally calls for Peres to quit
Labor Party criticized for 'acting as smoke screen' for Sharon's hard-line policies

Dina Shiloh
San Francisco Chronicle
Monday, January 28, 2002
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/01/28/MN69537.DTL

Tel Aviv -- More than 500 demonstrators gathered in front of the Israeli Defense Ministry on Saturday night, angrily denouncing their government's role in fueling the spiral of violence with the Palestinians.

What was most unusual about the protest was one of its main targets -- Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, a longtime dove who has yoked his reputation and that of his left-leaning Labor Party to the policies of hard-line Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"I've come out tonight because I've finally realized we have to get rid of this government. Peres is just a fig leaf for it; he has to go," said Yaron Persol, struggling to make his voice heard over chants of "Peres, get out of the government! Peres, go home!"

The demonstrators cited two events that roused them to take to the streets:

-- Israel's recent assassination of Hamas activist Raed Karmi during a cease-fire, which even Deputy Defense Minister Dalia Rabin-Philosoff called "bad timing."

The protesters said the assassination had led to renewed terrorism inside Israel, including suicide bombings at a party in Hadera and on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that have killed nine Israelis, including yesterday's blast in central Jerusalem.

-- The razing of Palestinian houses in Gaza last week, which left hundreds homeless. Although the Israeli Army initially claimed the houses were not occupied, it later admitted they were.

The turnout on Saturday night surprised organizers.

"There are people here who I have not seen since the days of the (right- wing) government of Benjamin Netanyahu," said Moria Shlomot, the spokeswoman for Peace Now. "People have been so passive because they felt there was a national unity government, and they had to be supportive of it and give it a chance. But now they realize Peres and Labor are just acting as a smoke screen for Sharon."

There is a growing feeling among Israelis on the left that Peres -- a former prime minister, Nobel Peace Prize winner and architect of the Oslo accords -- should no longer participate in the government.

STIRRING COMMENTARY

In a country where newspapers play a large role informing public opinion, an emotional public letter to Peres written by an influential journalist and calling on him to resign created a stir when it was published Friday.

"Shimon, the government of which you are a senior member . . . is a government of crime. It is no longer possible to absolve you," commentator Gideon Levy wrote in the newspaper Ha'aretz.

Levy's letter was discussed widely over the weekend -- on the radio, on TV talk shows and in private conversations.

"When Levy said Peres has to go, he expressed something I've been thinking privately for a few weeks now," said Michael Oren, a former Labor Party activist who now says he is "incredibly disillusioned" with the party.

Levy said in an interview: "I was Shimon's aide for four years. I respect him very much, and that is why I wrote this. . . .

"The sky will not fall if he goes, the occupation will not end right away; but there is a big difference between a national unity government and a right- wing government. . . . It will be the beginning of the end of this government, because it will no longer be legitimized by the Labor Party."

SCENARIO COULD GET WORSE

But if Peres were to leave, there is no guarantee that the situation will automatically improve.

"He has allowed Sharon to do a 'good cop, bad cop' routine, but at the moment, if Peres goes, I don't think Sharon will feel under international pressure to change his policies," said Hirsh Goodman of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

"Sharon could not be tighter ideologically with (President) Bush. And if the government falls, it's possible that Netanyahu will make a comeback and bring an even more right-wing government to power."

Some left-wing lawmakers urge new elections, saying that would clarify things once and for all.

"The left is very confused today; they don't know what to believe," said Zahava Gal-On, a member of the Knesset from the Meretz Party. "They are told the only response to terror is more revenge assassinations.

"If the government falls, and we have elections, at least the issues will be clear: vote for more of this terror and revenge, or vote for the left, who want to actually negotiate a peace deal."

Many Israelis are also deeply concerned that Sharon may permanently reoccupy the Palestinian towns from which Israel withdrew after signing the Oslo accords in 1993. The army is currently positioned in almost all major Palestinian towns, including Nablus and Tulkarm. Yasser Arafat is more or less a prisoner, under house arrest in Ramallah.

LITTLE SUPPORT FOR OCCUPATION

Although the polls show that Sharon has the support of 57 percent of the public, the same polls reveal that there is very little support for permanently moving back into Palestinian towns and cities. Israeli soldiers, and their families, do not want to go down that road again.

As defense minister in the 1980s, Sharon was responsible for the disastrous incursion into Lebanon that led to the deaths of hundreds of Israeli solders. Israelis have not forgotten the war that is often called "Israel's Vietnam."

A large ad signed by 53 reserve combat soldiers and army officers placed in all Israeli newspapers late last week revealed cracks in soldiers' willingness to serve in the occupied territories.

"We hereby declare that we shall continue to serve the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves the defense of the State of Israel," it said.

"The mission of occupation and repression does not serve this goal -- and we refuse to participate in it. We understand today that the price of occupation is the loss of humanity of the IDF, and corruption of Israeli society in general."

The letter is a significant expression of dissent among Israelis, for whom the army is an almost holy institution. But more is needed to constitute a sea change in public opinion, Goodman said.

"The only way out of this dance of death between Israelis and Palestinians is a big, grassroots protest movement on both sides," he said. "We're just seeing little flickers of life right now."


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