------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Complaints With Irradiated Mail
China Vents Anger at US Threat Label
Depleted Uranium weapons and hazards in Afghanistan
Iraq Stands Firm on Demand for UN Inspections
State of the Union speech
Fire at Nuclear Plant in Japan
North Korea Cancels Trip by 4 Experts From the U.S.
Eighty states back code of conduct for ballistic missile programmes
Inquiry on Antimissile Contract Is Sought
Bush Hears Arguments Against Nevada Nuclear Waste Dump

MILITARY
Musharraf, Karzai agree major oil pipeline in co-operation pact
Karzai frees 350 Taliban soldiers
From Victims of U.S. Bombs, Forgiveness
High Taliban Aide Is in U.S. Custody at Kandahar Base
Taliban Leaders Regrouping, Says Afghan Minister
State of Emergency in Liberia
Nigerian troops patrol city after riots
Offer to sell diesel subs to Taiwan missing a manufacturer
India looks to US for weapons after delay in Russian deals
China Vents Anger at US Threat Label
Philippine Arrest Offers Clues to Web Of Asian Terrorists
Workers Handling Government Mail Report Symptoms
Northern Irish police treat blast as guerrilla attack
Cheney Firm's Offshoot Settles Fraud Charges
Defense Department Included In Effort to Save Enron Data
Colombian Rebels Met By a New, Unarmed Foe
Colombia under siege
Drug war informant schemes trounce rights
Two militants killed as Kashmir mosque siege ends
Pakistani Says India Suspect in Abduction
Military court convicts three Israeli soldiers
The Great Game
Arafat? 'Hang him,' Cheney tells Israelis
Defectors say people starve while elite eat
Piece by Piece, Air Force Flies In a Presence
Footprints in Steppes of Central Asia
Pakistan, U.S. Boost Military Ties
Pakistan, U.S. sign defense agreement
Journalists Say Russia Meddling at Radio Outlet
Rebel ambushes leave five Russians dead
What U.S. newspapers are saying
U.N. plans scrutiny of ravaged Afghan environment
U.N. drops 'Killing Fields' tribunal
China has Tibetan NGO excluded from Johannesburg summit
Cambodia stunned by UN withdrawal of Khmer Rouge trial
Navy Debuts New Transport Helicopter
Alarm bells ring over US overseas military spending

POLICE / PRISONERS
New devices for national security
Senate appears ready to toughen border laws
Rumsfeld assails POW critics
US denial of POW status to Afghan fighters provokes outcry
Agency Differs With U.S. Over P.O.W.'s
Va. Moves To Limit Executions

ENERGY AND OTHER
Settlement reins in Forest Service
Llama dung may help clean polluted water
FDA Warns of Potent Drugs Found in 2 Herbal Products
The Panic Spreads

ACTIVISTS
Argentines protest against "government of thieves"
Argentine Urges Political Reform
Freed Mexican Vows To Clear His Name
Beijing mayor served lawsuit by Falungong members in US
URGENT ACTION!



-------- NUCLEAR

Complaints With Irradiated Mail

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 9, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Irradiated-Mail.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- At least 87 suburban postal workers who handled irradiated mail have reported health problems including nausea, headaches and breathing problems, union leaders say.

Postal officials are using irradiation to protect against anthrax contamination.

At least 87 of about 750 workers at the Gaithersburg, Md., postal facility have reported problems, said Tammy Thompson, president of the Montgomery County local of the postal workers union.

``The employees are experiencing nosebleeds, runny noses, runny eyes, extreme headaches, nausea,'' Thompson told The Washington Post for a story published Saturday.

A few have missed several days of work or have filed workers' compensation claims.

The postal union complaints come about two days after physicians on Capitol Hill said 73 Senate staffers had similar symptoms.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Postal Service are investigating the safety of the treated mail.

Government investigators say the symptoms are minor and that new precautions have eliminated observable levels of harmful gases likely caused by the irradiation.

An anthrax-tainted letter was found in Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office in the Hart Senate office building last October. As a precaution, mail destined for federal offices in Washington is now sanitized with radiation at postal facilities in Ohio and New Jersey.

The mail is then sorted at a postal station in Washington and sent to area postal facilities, including the one in Gaithersburg.

-------- china

China Vents Anger at US Threat Label

February 9, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-US-Threat.html

BEIJING (AP) -- China reacted angrily to the U.S. intelligence chief's including it in a list of global threats to the United States, calling the description ``unreasonable, irresponsible and unacceptable.''

Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan called on Washington to work harder on building friendly relations with Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.

Kong was reacting to CIA Director George Tenet's testimony to the U.S. Congress on Friday about security threats to the United States. China was one of the countries Tenet singled out.

Tenet called China a leading supplier of nuclear and missile technology to countries hostile to America.

``Tenet's statement ... is unreasonable, irresponsible and unacceptable,'' Xinhua quoted Kong as saying.

``An improvement in bilateral relations would be in the interest of both nations, but it does require effort from both sides,'' Kong was quoted as saying.


-------- depleted uranium

Depleted Uranium weapons and hazards in Afghanistan - synopsis

Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002
From: "Dai Williams" <eosuk@btinternet.com>

This is a synopsis of the DU Report written for wider circulation.

-Depleted Uranium weapons in 2001-2002 Occupational, Public and Environmental Health Issues

-Mystery Metal Nightmare in Afghanistan?

-Collected studies and public domain sources compiled by Dai Williams

-Context and issues

This research started in January 2001 when first reports of the UNEP Balkans Depleted Uranium (DU) survey included strange anomalies - too little evidence and too much radiation from "dirty DU" contaminated with U236 and Plutonium.

These investigations question one of the best kept military secrets of the last decade. The facts about DU weapons are well known to military experts and arms manufacturers in the US, UK and at least 30 other countries.

But how much do politicians know about them? What have aid agencies been told? And why have the media stayed silent about new weapons in the Afghan war?

The conclusions have immediate implications for the health, safety and welfare of civilians, troops and aid workers in Afghanistan.

They question the role of Governments, UN agencies and the validity of official research studies concerning DU weapons and health hazards.

They raise serious questions about the global proliferation of DU in military and civilian applications and its suspected widespread use in Afghanistan.

They have fundamental implications for the classification of DU munitions as weapons of indiscriminate effect.

First confirmation of DU contamination & missiles "One site registered an increased level of radioactivity but it appeared to be a result of depleted uranium in some warheads and not from any nuclear or radiological weapon of mass destruction," Rumsfeld said. [Reuters 16 January 2001, see page 120 of the report]

Recommendations include Identification and verifiable disclosure of the secret "dense metal" used in US and allied guided weapon warheads and sub-munitions is needed urgently. Known and suspected DU weapons are identified in Part 3 and in Table 4 in Part 5.

[Note: This mystery "dense metal" is believed to be Depleted Uranium, alloyed with other metals. It is used in at least three different types of hard-target warheads, ammunition and sub-munitions. It is mentioned frequently in a US Air Force planning document in 1997 quoted in "Tip of the Iceberg" (see Part 1) and in weapon descriptions, but is never identified.]

Immediate risk assessments of potential DU contamination in Afghanistan are needed, plus relevant health and safety precautions for the population and expatriates, including aid workers and the UN peacekeeping force.

Urgent and rigorous environmental assessments and health monitoring are needed by UN agencies (UNEP, WHO) and aid organisations in Afghanistan.

International vigilance from many countries is needed to ensure that DU risk and casualty assessments are not delayed or compromised by military or political interference as happened after the Balkans War.

Initial distribution of the report

The prime concern of this project is to minimise potential DU exposure risks for personnel in Afghanistan. It has been sent to UN agencies in Geneva for consideration in their plans for post-conflict support in Afghanistan. These include the UNEP-PCAU, WHO, UNHCR and WFP. It is also being sent to medical aid (ICRC, MSF) and de-mining organisations for consideration in their operations.

A copy will be sent to the UK Government to repeat questions and warnings first sent to them in October, and to MPs who have raised some of these questions in the UK Parliament. These questions and answers to date are listed in full in Part 2 of the report.

The Internet version will make the report available to all employers including armed forces, occupational health professionals, environmental and other researchers with responsibilities or concerns for people living and working in Afghanistan.

Further action

The 7 DU scenarios in the report range from no use of DU by either side, through varying levels of use by Al Qaeda, Taliban and / or US and allied forces. Scenario 1 - no use of DU therefore no potential hazards - closed down with Donald Rumsfeld's comment on 16 January (see above).

The author hopes that only small amounts of DU contamination will have occurred, or that contamination by larger weapons may be localised in regions like Tora Bora. Unfortunately past and recent US and UK government statements about the health hazards, properties and use of DU and suspected DU weapons are clearly unreliable (see Part 4). This undermines the credibility of any re-assurances they offer in reply to this report without rigorous and independent investigations both of conditions in Afghanistan and the weapons systems involved.

Employers and aid organisations would be prudent to make risk assessments for all the scenarios including the worst case that 500-1000+ tons of DU have been dispersed in up to 50 locations including urban areas.

The report has implications for the suspected use of Depleted Uranium in a wider range of weapons than previously known about, during and since the Gulf War in 1991. This will require investigation of the systems concerned and their potential health effects on civilians and troops involved in Iraq, Bosnia and the Balkans War (1999). Previous health and environmental studies have only investigated DU contamination from anti-tank ammunition. This will be important for veterans groups.

The report is immediately relevant to the Parliaments of all countries that have committed military or civilian personnel to Afghanistan during the bombing or for the UN peacekeeping operation. It seems likely that some of these Governments are aware of the risks involved e.g. the report that Bulgaria has committed a team of 20 radiation de-contamination personnel to the peacekeeping force (see page 104). Why has this not been discussed in the Parliaments or media of any of the countries concerned?

If the more serious scenarios prove correct the new Afghan Government will require a permanent environmental monitoring programme in regions found to be contaminated with DU. This is likely to spread through airborne dust and water supplies in the summer, starting in April-May as temperatures rise, contaminated snow melts and summer winds develop.

The new UNEP PCAU (Post Conflict Assessment Unit) will require vastly greater resources than were made available to the UNEP Balkans Task Force in 2000. Its initial results are needed BEFORE summer weather conditions develop to evaluate hazards to local communities and expatriates. A parallel health monitoring study is also urgently required by WHO - assuming the IAEA does not veto such action. The potential implications for communities in Afghanistan and refugees returning are being considered by UNHCR.

The report urges clearness between the military, political and health and safety aspects of DU weapons (see Part 5). The immediate priority is for health and safety precautions and assessments in Afghanistan, whether or not governments or the military are willing to disclose the identity of DU weapons and their use there and elsewhere. These precautions are now being considered by organisations operating in Afghanistan.

The support of medical and humanitarian organisations, and of parliaments may be vital to ensure independent UN risk assessments. These need immediate action, without delay or deception by allied forces or the arms or nuclear industries, to establish the extent of DU contamination, casualties and people at risk.

This report also has immediate implications for any other bombing campaigns planned by the US Government e.g. in Iraq or Somalia. If any of the guided weapons identified in the report do contain Depleted Uranium warheads, their use in Afghanistan or any other country will contravene Articles 35 and 55 of the First Protocol additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. This calls into question the US Government's frequent allegations about other countries having weapons of mass destruction if they themselves are using weapons of indiscriminate effect.

On 17 October 2001 Bill HR 3155 The Depleted Uranium Munitions Suspension and Study Act was submitted to the US Congress (see page 138). This report adds urgency to that proposed legislation and the need for similar action in many other countries and the UN.

Dai Williams, 9 February 2002.

Note: The PDF version is available in separate files for each Part, designed for printing and on-line viewing for web links at: http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm

Author Dai Williams, M.Sc C.Psychol, Independent DU researcher
Publisher Eos Life-Work, Woking, Surrey, UK
Email eosuk@btinternet.com
Website http://www.eoslifework.co.uk (Community projects section)
ISBN 0 953208 3 6 (Hard Copy); 0 953208 3 7 (Digital format)

-------- iraq

Iraq Stands Firm on Demand for UN Inspections

China Daily
February 9, 2002
http://210.77.134.148/pls/wcm/Show_Text?info_id=26847&p_qry=nuclear

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein called on Turkey to oppose US threats against Iraq, rejecting a request from Ankara to allow international arms inspectors back into the country in a letter made public Friday. Writing to Turkish Prime Minister Turc Bulent Ecevit, Saddam again denied that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction or had any intention of producing them. Ecevit had written to the Iraqi leader amid growing concerns in Ankara that Turkey's southern neighbor will be the next target of the US "war on terrorism". "Iraq is among the first countries to want our region to be rid of weapons of mass destruction," Saddam replied in his letter, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, "We expect Turkey to respect the rules of good neighborliness and the principles of international law .... and oppose US threats by adopting a wise and balanced stance." The settlement of the Iraqi question "must not stem from obedience to American arrogance but in the framework of the law," he said. Washington "must first abandon its aggressive policy characterized by the embargo, permanent military aggression against the north and south (of Iraq) and interference in its internal affairs."

Otherwise, Saddam said, "there will be no global solution ... America can at any moment create false pretexts or use its influence on the inspection teams to commit aggression" against Iraq. "We think therefore that the countries of the region must face up to this policy and not submit to it." Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem said earlier, "We think accepting the arms inspectors will be a step forward and will reduce tensions... "We hope this issue will be resolved peacefully but at the end of the day each country outlines its own policies and there is not much we can do on this issue." He repeated that Turkey and Iraq's other neighbors were ready to engage in a joint effort to have UN economic sanctions on Baghdad lifted once it agreed to the return of the arms inspectors.

The United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990. UN inspectors went there after Baghdad's defeat in 1991 to dismantle its banned nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. But Iraq withdrew its cooperation and they left the country on the eve of a joint US-British military strike in December 1998. Fears that Iraq would be the next target in the US military campaign escalated after US President George W. Bush accused Iraq, Iran and North Korea last week of forming an "axis of evil".

Speculation was fuelled further by news that US Vice President Dick Cheney will visit Israel, Britain, Turkey and eight Middle Eastern Arab countries in mid-March to discuss global efforts to combat terrorism. In his letter to Saddam, Ecevit wrote, "Iraq is facing a new threat. We are making extensive efforts to prevent this threat. "However for our efforts to bear fruit it is necessary for Iraq to take some concrete steps rapidly and, most of all, lift at once all obstructions in the way of UN arms inspections."

Baghdad has consistently refused to allow the return of the arms inspectors, rejecting a 1999 UN resolution to lift the sanctions if it did so. If Washington decides to strike Iraq it will almost certainly need Turkey's support, just as it did in the Gulf War when US jets used bases in southern Turkey to launch bombing raids on Baghdad. But Turkey fears that instability in Iraq could deepen its already dire economic problems and lead to the emergence of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq. The area has evaded Baghdad's control since the end of the Gulf War in 1991 and Ankara fears a Kurdish state there could fan fresh separatist sentiment among its own Kurdish population, which in 1999 scaled down a violent 15-year campaign for self-rule in southeast Turkey.

-------- japan

State of the Union speech

February 9, 2002
Editorial Roundup
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020209-21455740.htm

Excerpts of editorials from newspapers around the world:

Asahi Shimbun - TOKYO - President George W. Bush's State of the Union address was couched in the worryingly tough, hard-line rhetoric that hearkened back to the Cold War era. Labeling Iraq, Iran and North Korea "the world's most dangerous regimes," Bush harshly accused these countries and "their terrorist allies" of constituting "an axis of evil."

His public denouncement has dashed any hope for better U.S. ties with these countries.

Bush was right in insisting that the war against terrorism must go on.

The essential mission is to demolish the al Qaeda terrorism network and its global reach. If the United States, as the only superpower, overestimates the capabilities of its military machine and recklessly expands the battle lines, the delicate international coalition against terrorism will deteriorate rapidly. Bush should take to heart this precarious nature of the situation.

In his speech, Bush was lobbying for a sharp increase in defense spending, which he advocates, saying it would represent the biggest increase in military spending in 20 years. Such remarks represent the world's most powerful leader's alarming belief in military might.

--------

Fire at Nuclear Plant in Japan

February 9, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Nuclear.html

TOKYO (AP) -- Two workers were exposed to a small amount of radiation and suffered minor burns Saturday when a fire broke out at a nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan, a plant official said.

The fire, in the basement of a reactor at Onagawa Nuclear Power Station, began when two workers accidentally punctured a spray can that set alight a plastic sheet during an inspection, said Atsushi Ishii, spokesman for Tohoku Electric Power Co., which runs the plant.

The flames were put out before they could spread and there was no danger of radioactivity spilling outside the building, Ishii said. All three plant reactors were operating normally, he said.

The two workers suffered minor burns on their faces and hands and were exposed to a small amount of radioactive dust that landed on their faces, plant spokesman Kazumi Sasaki said. But they quickly wiped it off with a wet cloth and the exposure was negligible, he said.

Six other workers inside the reactor room were unaffected, Sasaki said.

The amount of radioactivity in the area was slightly higher at the time because of the inspection, Sasaki said.

Sasaki declined to detail the inspection but said the spray tested the surface condition of metal parts.

Fueled by uranium, the Onagawa plant began operating in July 1995. It straddles Onagawa and Oshika cities in Miyagi state and is located about 230 miles northeast of Tokyo.

Tsugio Suda, an Oshika city official, said monitors in the area indicated no abnormally high radioactivity levels.

Resource-poor Japan depends on nuclear power for about 30 percent of its electricity needs. Recent accidents and cover-ups, however, have made many Japanese uneasy about nuclear power.

Japan's worst nuclear accident killed two workers and exposed hundreds of others to radiation at Tokaimura, 70 miles northeast of Tokyo, in September 1999.

-------- korea

KOREA
North Korea Cancels Trip by 4 Experts From the U.S.

By MICHAEL R. GORDON
New York Times
February 9, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/09/international/asia/09KORE.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - Reacting to President Bush's charge in his State of the Union address that it was part of an "axis of evil," North Korea today backed away from an initiative it had quietly begun for opening a dialogue with influential American experts.

In recent months, North Korea had encouraged a visit by former American ambassadors to South Korea. The move was widely seen as North Korea's way to keep up its channels of communication with the United States despite its frosty relationship with the Bush administration.

But today North Korea's Mission to the United Nations informed the group that the visit was off.

"I am sure it happened because of the State of the Union address," said William H. Gleysteen, one of the four former ambassadors who was to make the trip. "They probably found it very offensive."

Stephen Bosworth, the dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., and another of the former ambassadors, agreed that North Korea canceled the trip because it "did not want to send a modestly positive signal right now."

Mr. Bush's address and his repeated denunciations of North Korea have ignited an intense debate about the best way to discourage North Korea's missile sales, limit its military potential and defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Even before the speech, the administration had taken a particularly tough stand toward North Korea. While the Clinton administration had tried to negotiate a deal that would have ended North Korea's missile sales and production, the Bush administration broadened the list of demands to include the speeding up of nuclear inspections and conventional arms.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has emphasized his willingness to begin talks at any time. But North Korea has reacted negatively to the stiffened American demands.

The White House insists that the "axis of evil" language was needed to put North Korea on notice that Washington would not tolerate the expansion of its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. But the tough oratory has created serious political problems for South Korea, which Mr. Bush is scheduled to visit on Feb. 19.

The tense relations between North Korea and the United States have been a major worry for South Korea's president, Kim Dae Jung, whose "sunshine policy" has encouraged closer ties with North Korea. Mr. Bush's address has also drawn a sharply negative reaction from much of the South Korean public.

Against this backdrop, the scheduled visit by the four former ambassadors had attracted enormous interest in South Korea, where it was seen a potentially hopeful sign. In addition to Mr. Gleysteen and Mr. Bosworth, the group was to have included the former ambassadors Donald Gregg and Richard Walker. Robert Scalapino, a Korea expert and professor emeritus at the University of California, had played a major role in organizing the trip and was also scheduled to go.

Mr. Scalapino said in a telephone interview that North Korean officials quietly proposed the visit in recent months. The State Department was aware of the visit, but the former ambassadors were not carrying a message from the Bush administration or negotiating on its behalf.

But today, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Pak Gil Yon, indicated that he had received instructions from Pyongyang canceling the trip. He did not link the cancellation to the State of the Union address, but Mr. Scalapino said it was clear that it was the reason.

-------- missile defense

Eighty states back code of conduct for ballistic missile programmes

Saturday February 9,
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020208/1/2g4h4.html

France said more than 80 countries backed a draft international code of conduct against ballistic missile proliferation following a two-day Paris conference.

"The meeting was a success and gave rise to a constructive debate," a foreign ministry spokesman, Francois Rivasseau said.

All the participants "acknowledge that missile proliferation is a problem" and that "a multilateral approach can contribute to resolving this problem," he said.

Eighty-six countries -- including Iran, Israel, Russia, the United States and nuclear rivals India and Pakistan -- were represented at the conference to discuss the French proposal.

The text, which would have the force of a political engagement rather than an international treaty, calls for each signatory to describe its ballistic missile programme once per year and notify the others of each missile test.

Already essentially agreed to by western nations, including the United States, the text is to have certain technical amendments added from the Paris debate.

France then hopes to present it for final approval at a conference Spain has offered to host, and finally organise a signing ceremony in The Hague towards the end of the year.

A French official admitted it had been "a gamble" trying assemble the representatives of so many countries, especially rivals such as India and Pakistan which have been stepping up missile programmes in recent weeks.

Iraq and North Korea -- two countries described by US President George W. Bush's as part of an "axis of evil" -- were among the few countries in sensitive regions that were not represented at the talks.

The delegates from the United States -- which is forging ahead to build a 60-billion-dollar defence system to knock down ballistic missiles from "rogue" states -- did not contribute to the debate when it started Thursday and was simply noting the comments of other delegates, the French official said.

--------

Inquiry on Antimissile Contract Is Sought

New York Times
February 9, 2002
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/09/politics/09WEAP.html

Saying the competition to build the top weapon for the nation's antimissile effort was apparently decided not on technical merit but in the fallout over an incident of industrial spying, a California congressman is calling for an investigation into how the contract was awarded.

The issue is important because some experts see the winning design, by the Raytheon Company, as technically weak. After two misses and three hits in costly flight tests, the prototype weapon is at the heart of the Bush administration's plan to erect an antimissile shield, whose cost was recently estimated at up to $238 billion.

Representative Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California, asked the General Accounting Office last week to investigate a competition between the Boeing Company and Raytheon to build the weapon, called a kill vehicle. It is meant to fly into space atop an interceptor rocket and smash apart enemy warheads by force of impact.

In a letter to the accounting office, the investigative arm of Congress, on Monday, Mr. Berman said Raytheon won the contract for the weapon in December 1998, after an internal Raytheon document about its weapon had been found in Boeing's hands. Mr. Berman's letter was provided to The New York Times by Congressional officials.

Such spying breaks Pentagon regulations. Boeing quit the contest, Mr. Berman said, because it apparently feared that Raytheon would sue if Boeing tried to win the contract with purloined secrets. Mr. Berman said he learned of the incident from Congressional investigators who were pursuing a different antimissile case.

"It is unimaginable that a decision of this magnitude with such enormous implications for our national security could have been made to protect the legal and financial interests of one contractor," Mr. Berman wrote David M. Walker, head of the General Accounting Office.

Lt. Col. Richard Lehner of the Air Force, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, said Boeing withdrew for other reasons. The company had an institutional conflict, Colonel Lehner said, because a larger Boeing team oversaw the whole antimissile effort and the kill-vehicle competition.

A spokeswoman for Boeing, Monica Aloisio, said the company would not comment on the accusations about the document. A spokeswoman for Raytheon, Colleen Niccum, said the company won by virtue of the superiority of its design and added that the prototype had proved increasingly adept in flight tests.

An early favorite in the competition, the Boeing design featured a supercooled telescope that could see deep into space to find enemy targets. The Raytheon telescope was less powerful but also less risky, because it required less cooling. And it had an extra sensor.

The main arena was dueling flight tests, which cost $100 million each. Boeing's was in June 1997 and Ray theon's in January 1998. Neither sought to intercept a warhead. Instead, both prototype weapons simply flew past mock targets in space, trying to distinguish incoming warheads from decoys. The results were kept secret, though Pentagon officials said both designs performed well.

Plans for an interception contest were scrapped when the Pentagon suddenly announced in December 1998 that Raytheon had won the contract.

Mr. Berman, ranking member of the House Ethics Committee and of a House Judiciary subcommittee, said he had learned about the incident from Congressional investigators who were examining a different antimissile case at his request. That case involves Dr. Nira Schwartz, a senior engineer for a Boeing antimissile subcontractor, who accused her company, TRW, of faking computer work meant to help the Boeing kill vehicle distinguish warheads from decoys. TRW says it did nothing wrong.

In his letter to the accounting office, Mr. Berman said he had been told that the Boeing team had found the Raytheon document "under a chair in a conference room," where it was inadvertently left.

A similar account appears in "Hit to Kill" (Public Affairs, 2001) by Bradley Graham, a military affairs reporter for The Washington Post. The book says that Boeing found the 72-page Raytheon document in July 1998 and assiduously exploited it and that the "grave ethical violation" caused Raytheon to win the contest by default.

In his letter to the accounting office, Mr. Berman said the incident "could end up costing the American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, given the performance problems associated with the Raytheon kill vehicle."

The episode, Mr. Berman added, would be more disturbing if investigators find that Pentagon officials "were aware of these circumstances and took no action."

He said the Congressional investigators advising him had said that the incident fell outside the scope of their current inquiry and that his purpose in writing was to make sure "this troubling information does not get lost." The letter also went to the chairmen and ranking members of the House Committees on the Judiciary, Government Reform and National Security.

A spokesman for the G.A.O., Jeff Nelligan, said it would consult with Mr. Berman on his request.

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

-------- nevada

Bush Hears Arguments Against Nevada Nuclear Waste Dump

February 8, 2002
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/feb2002/2002L-02-08-02.html

WASHINGTON, DC, A bipartisan group of top elected Nevada officials made their case against the Yucca Mountain geologic nuclear waste repository to President George W. Bush in the Oval Office Thursday afternoon.

President George W. Bush in the Oval Office (Photo by Eric Draper courtesy The White House)

Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn and Senator John Ensign, both Republicans, and Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat, met for 25 minutes with the President and several of his top advisors.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who was not present at the meeting, has notified Nevada that on February 10 "based on sound science and compelling national interest" he will recommend to President Bush that the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas is scientifically suitable to receive the nation's high level nuclear waste. The waste must be safely contained for at least 10,000 years.

In the Oval Office, the governor spoke first, outlining Nevada's lawsuit in federal court against Energy Department science, sources said. Senator Ensign briefed the President on possible alternatives to entombing the waste in casks, such as transmutation, that are being ignored by the Energy Department.

Senator Reid made the case against transporting nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel now stored at 131 sites in 39 states by road and rail to Nevada, in view of terrorist threats.

During their meeting, the President gave no indication whether he would approve a recommendation or not, according to Governor Guinn.

But the President's budget proposal to Congress, released Monday, says, "Should the site be formally designated this year, current plans call for the repository to open in 2010. The Budget provides sufficient funding that deadline."

"If the site is designated," the Budget states, "the Administration will seek additional funding to begin construction of essential transportation facilities and infrastructure within Nevada, and provide a long-term management and financing plan for the entire licensing and construction effort. The Administration is committed to ensuring the environmentally sound and safe disposal of the nation's radioactive waste."

Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn on Capitol Hill (Photo courtesy U.S. House of Representatives)

Governor Guinn said Bush promised him during the election campaign that his Yucca Mountain decision would rest on sound science. But several independent assessments released in the past 30 days have said that scientific testing at Yucca Mountain shows problems with the containment of the radioactive waste.

In the White House meeting, and in a letter to Secretary Abraham on Monday, Governor Guinn pointed out that a January 24 report from the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (TRB) concluded that the technical basis for DOE's repository performance estimates at Yucca Mountain is "weak to moderate at this time."

The review board is an independent agency tasked with assessment of the suitability of Yucca Mountain.

"Contentious meetings between the TRB and DOE [Department of Energy] in Nevada last week only further underscored the lack of any credible evidence supporting the suitability of Yucca Mountain for nuclear waste disposal," Guinn wrote.

"We wouldn't dream of settling for weak to moderate techniques from a surgeon trying to save someone's life or a pilot trying to land a plane," Senator Reid said. "I can't believe that the administration would settle for weak to moderate science as the basis for this decision. I once again call on President Bush to keep his word that he will let sound science prevail in the designation on a nuclear waste repository."

"When we talk about one of the deadliest materials on our planet, sound science should mean strong science not weak science," Senator Ensign said.

Another report critical of burying high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain was issued December 21, 2002 by the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative branch of Congress. This report said Secretary Abraham's recommendation to the President "may be premature," and questioned "the prudence and practicality of making such a recommendation at this time."

With his letter to Secretary Abraham, Governor Guinn enclosed a "critically important" sworn affidavit by Dr. John Bartlett, who previously ran DOE's Yucca Mountain project as director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

Dr. Bartlett concluded that the Yucca Mountain site is "unsuitable for nuclear waste disposal," the governor wrote. "Even more troubling, he attests that DOE has itself reached this conclusion. He attended the recent TRB meetings in Nevada and observed further indications along these lines."

In his affidavit, Dr. Bartlett says the DOE has "strayed from the mandates of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act," and from its original scientific mission, by abandoning geologic isolation at Yucca Mountain in favor of manufactured contrivances. "Given Dr. Bartlett's stature and experience in this field, it is hard to imagine a more powerful indictment of the actual science at Yucca Mountain," Guinn wrote.

Guinn urged Secretary Abraham not to recommend Yucca Mountain to the President at this time, but "to join with Nevada in requesting the court to expedite review of the merits of our case, and to be guided by the court's decision."

Meanwhile, the state of Nevada has notified the Energy Department that it will cut off water to the Yucca Mountain site on April 9. In a letter to Scott Wade, an Energy Department environment, safety and health official in North Las Vegas, State Engineer Hugh Ricci denied the DOE's request for an extension of their permit to withdraw water from state aquifers because it is not in the state's interest.

The Energy Department was using the water for site characterization tests, but these ended January 10, when Abraham notified Nevada that he would recommend the site positively to the President in 30 days.

The use of Nevada water to build the Yucca Mountain repository, if it is eventually approved, is now the subject of a series of court actions and appeals before U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt.

If the President makes a recommendation to the Congress, Nevada has 60 days to disapprove the site. Governor Guinn has announced his intention to disapprove Yucca Mountain. If disapproved, the Congress has 90 days of continuous session to enact legislation overriding a disapproval.

If the Congress overrides the state's disapproval, the secretary is required to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) within 90 days after the site recommendation is effective. These time frames provide about 150 to 240 days, or about five to eight months, from the time the President recommends the site until DOE submits a license application.

The General Accounting Office report questions the ability of the Energy Department to submit an acceptable application to the NRC within the time frames established by law. The DOE will need several years to resolve 293 specific technical issues, the GAO said, including how water would flow through the repository area to the underlying groundwater and the durability of waste containers to last for thousands of years.

In February 2001, DOE hired Bechtel SAIC Company, LLC (Bechtel), to manage the Yucca Mountain site assessment program and required the contractor to reassess the remaining technical work and the estimated schedule and cost to complete this work.

In September 2001 Bechtel reported that the work required to submit a license application, assuming expected funding levels, would put the DOE in a position to submit a license application in January 2006.

In its December 2001 report, the GAO warned that the Energy Department "is unlikely to achieve its goal of opening a repository at Yucca Mountain by 2010 and currently does not have a reliable estimate of when, and at what cost, such a repository can be opened."

The urgency driving this process is as much financial as it is concerned with public safety. Courts in 18 cases brought by power utilities are currently assessing the amount of damages that the Energy Department owes the nuclear power plant owners for delaying the disposal of their wastes by at least 12 years past a court ordered disposal date of January 31, 1998.

Estimates of the potential damages vary widely, from the DOE's estimate of about $2 billion to the nuclear industry's estimate of $50 billion.

Nuclear power plant owners are currently holding about 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel in temporary storage at 72 plant sites in 36 states. In addition, the DOE estimates that it has over 100 million gallons of highly radioactive waste and 2,500 metric tons of spent fuel from the development of nuclear weapons and from research activities in temporary storage.

Because these wastes contain radioactive elements that remain active for hundreds of thousands of years, the GAO said, the permanent isolation of the wastes is "critical for safeguarding public health, cleaning up DOE's nuclear facilities, and providing a reasonable basis for increasing the number of nuclear power plants."


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Musharraf, Karzai agree major oil pipeline in co-operation pact

AFP / Reuters
February 9, 2002
Irish Times
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2002/0209/448097021FR09KARZAI.html

PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN: The Pakistani President, Gen Pervez Musharraf, and the Afghan interim leader, Mr Hamid Karzai, agreed yesterday that their two countries should develop "mutual brotherly relations" and co-operate "in all spheres of activity" - including a proposed gas pipeline from Central Asia to Pakistan via Afghanistan.

"We have agreed unanimously ... on working together to develop strong brotherly co-operation, brotherly relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan in all spheres of activity," Gen Musharraf said after their talks.

Gen Musharraf said Pakistan will provide $10 million to the Afghan interim government to pay for government outlays. About 200,000 employees of the Afghan government have not been paid a salary for over six months by the ousted Taliban, and the interim Afghan government has maintained that paying them was the most urgent government priority.

Mr Karzai, who arrived in Islamabad earlier yesterday for a one-day visit, said he and Gen Musharraf discussed the proposed Central Asian gas pipeline project "and agreed that it was in the interest of both countries". Pakistan and several multinational companies, including the California-based Unocal Corp and Bridas S.A. of Argentina, have been toying with the idea of constructing a 1,600-km pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to growing natural gas markets in Pakistan and, potentially, India. But the project has failed to materialise because of the civil war in Afghanistan and the reluctance of the financial institutions to finance it.

Gen Musharraf said he told Mr Karzai that Pakistan and Afghanistan are bound together by common geography, faith, history and culture.

"Pakistan is extremely interested in having a peaceful, stable, united, progressive Afghanistan as its brotherly neighbour because it does not only serve the purpose of peace in the region but it also serves the economic interest of this entire region," he said.

Mr Karzai said he and Gen Musharraf "look forward to a tremendously good future. That future can be made certain by respecting each other's territorial integrity and freedom," he said, adding that he was grateful to Gen Musharraf "for wishing the Afghan people the unity, the independence, the progress that Afghans so badly need."

The two leaders also discussed the repatriation of over two million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Mr Karzai thanked Pakistan for having given "a tremendous welcome" to Afghan refugees. "But they have a home to go to, and that home is Afghanistan.

"We would be grateful if our brothers in Pakistan allowed us time to prepare for that, so that our refugees can return home in tranquillity and dignity," he said.

Meanwhile police hunting a former English public schoolboy suspected of kidnapping an American reporter have recovered e-mails from another suspect's computer.

Investigators had hoped to rescue Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl before Gen Musharraf left last night for talks with President Bush in Washington.

----

Karzai frees 350 Taliban soldiers

AFP
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 09, 2002
Times of India
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=439738

KABUL: Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai on Saturday pardoned 350 captured Taliban soldiers, saying they were "innocent" and part of a general amnesty that allowed foot-soldiers to go free.

The soldiers, all Afghans, were paraded before a ceremony outside the presidential palace in Kabul where Karzai warned them not to take up arms again and to find jobs.

----

From Victims of U.S. Bombs, Forgiveness

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47952-2002Feb8?language=printer

KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb. 8 -- The small patches of blood on the wall have turned brown, as if merely splatter from the mud courtyard. The shrapnel gashes in the trees have begun to close. And the broken bodies of four young children have been carted away to be buried in simple graves with simple wooden markers.

Ghlam Hazrat lost a son, two daughters and a nephew when a U.S. airstrike on a Taliban ammunition depot showered the surrounding area with deadly ordnance. The loss of his 7-year-old son Nematullah, in particular, still overwhelms him. "Even now, I go crazy when I think about him," he said. "I can't think straight."

Yet when it comes time to assign blame, the 45-year-old farmer who no longer smiles does not point a finger at the Americans who dropped the bombs on his impoverished neighborhood on the outskirts of Kabul. "I'm not angry at the Americans. It's not their fault," Hazrat said. "It was Mullah Mohammad Omar and his friends' fault. They're the ones to blame."

While Washington debates its culpability for civilian casualties in the U.S. war on terrorism and Omar's radical Taliban movement, Kabul has proven remarkably forgiving of military attacks that have mistakenly killed innocent people. Afghan political leaders eager to cement good relations with the West for the difficult days of reconstruction ahead have brushed off the issue as largely insignificant. And even many of the ordinary Afghans who have suffered most as a result of what the Pentagon calls "collateral damage" express little bitterness toward the foreigners who visited it upon them.

"People don't have any complaints about America," said Qara Big Izid Yar, president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, a Red Cross affiliate that aids victims of U.S. bombing. "They're very happy that the Americans attacked the Taliban and al Qaeda. They understand mistakes. They know the American people. They know [the Americans] don't want to hurt the Afghan people."

That sentiment is by no means universal. Especially in southern Afghanistan, where anti-American feeling flourishes in some communities, local leaders and relatives of bombing victims have reacted angrily to both U.S. airstrikes and a Special Forces raid that they say targeted the wrong people. Their fury has only been inflamed by initial U.S. insistence, despite local testimony to the contrary, that no mistakes had been made.

But there is no sense of broad outrage here in the capital, and the quiescent response of the interim government has made it easier for U.S. forces to avoid acknowledging mistakes.

Afghan government officials appear determined not to let the matter interfere with their relationship with the United States, discussing it only when asked by journalists. When Hamid Karzai, the leader of the interim government, told The Washington Post this week that two recent U.S. raids killed innocent people, he was quick to absolve Americans of responsibility, saying they had apologized and, in at least one case, had been tricked into thinking their targets were Taliban leaders.

Only after Karzai's comments did the Defense Department concede that a Special Forces assault in Oruzgan province in southern Afghanistan last month hit "friendly" forces by mistake. Twenty-seven prisoners captured in that operation were finally released as a result.

Afghan leaders profess not to be bothered by the issue.

"I believe if we count realistically and not be influenced by outside propaganda, the civilian casualties have indeed been minimal," Interior Minister Yonus Qanooni said at a news conference this week. "Of course, we regret the loss of any lives. But the outcome of the campaign is a significant and great message for the people."

Privately, some Afghan officials scorn the "Rambo"-like actions of their U.S. allies, as one put it, and assert that if Washington consulted them more there would be fewer problems. But they discourage attention to the matter. "You should not worry about Oruzgan," advised Said Hussein Ashraq Hussaini, the chief political officer in the Interior Ministry. "There is not any conflict about what's happening in Oruzgan. It's not so important."

The sentiment, however, goes beyond government officials with diplomatic concerns and billions of dollars in international assistance at stake -- and whose administration came to power after a civil war won with the help of U.S. air power. Interviews with victims of U.S. bombing in northern and western cities such as Kabul and Herat found Afghans willing to excuse American military lapses. In parts of the country most opposed to Taliban rule, the trade-off is often judged worth the price.

In the relatively wealthy section of Kabul known as Wazir Akhbar Khan, U.S. planes hit a house occupied by the Taliban, but the explosion ripped through the house next door as well. Today the upper floor is charred, the windows long since blown out, parts of the wall crumbled on the ground. No one was hurt, but the family of seven lost their home.

"Everything we had in our house -- the teapots and glasses, the windows, the curtains, the mattresses, the cupboards, everything that could burn -- we lost," said Nasratullah, 14, who like many Afghans uses one name. "It's the Taliban's fault, because they tried to live among civilian houses and they caused the planes to come here and bomb our house."

For others, though, anger remains closer to the surface. Hashmatullah, a 15-year-old living in the Proj-e-Jadid area just outside the city, vividly remembers the early morning that his older brother was killed by bricks blown through the sky by a U.S. bomb that apparently missed a nearby Taliban military base.

"I am angry at America because they killed my brother," he said. "You must tell them that they bombed and killed civilians."

U.S. officials have offered no help to many victims of accidental bombings. Although Karzai said Americans have apologized for their mistakes, they have not apologized to Hashmatullah or many other victims. "No one has come to help," he said.

But in a country that has seen 23 years of nonstop warfare, deaths of innocents are often endured with stoicism. However horrific, the civilian casualties of the past few months barely scratch the surface in a capital that was shelled every day by its own people during long battles between rival factions. The civil war of the 1990s left tens of thousands dead and many more homeless in Kabul alone.

Ghlam Hazrat, who lost the four children outside his house in the Qargha area, had seen plenty of misery before that miserable day in November. "We lost two or three of my relatives during jihad," he said, referring to the 1980s war against Soviet invaders. "I lost many of my friends during jihad. I was with 40 friends in Parman province. Of them, only five or six remain alive."

Hazrat, who was injured by rocket shrapnel during the civil war, pulled up his robe to show guests the scars that still hurt in cold weather. He was also jailed and beaten by the Taliban. From that complex perspective, Hazrat sees some benefit in the U.S. bombardment.

"All the people of Afghanistan are happy that the U.S. will bring peace to Afghanistan and will help provide food and other aid," he said, "and therefore they're happy and don't complain about rockets."

Few families lost more members than that of Mohammed Sarwer, 60, a former soldier who woke up one morning last fall, heard a high-pitched sound and was suddenly knocked unconscious by the blast of a U.S. bomb that destroyed his house. Sarwer survived, but eight relatives perished, including his wife and four nephews.

"They made a mistake," he said of the Americans. "They wanted to bomb that military base" not far away.

Was he angry at America? "A little bit," he said. "I say a little bit because the United States could wipe out our enemies." The Taliban had destroyed his home in the Shomali Plain north of Kabul, imprisoned his son and killed his son-in-law.

Sarwer said he would like to meet the pilot who dropped the bomb on his house. "If he were here in front of me, I'd ask him if it was a mistake or if he intentionally bombed my house," Sarwer said. "If he says it was a mistake, I'll kiss his face and let him go. Yes, I'll forgive him."

--------

High Taliban Aide Is in U.S. Custody at Kandahar Base

New York Times
February 9, 2002
By THOM SHANKER and JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/09/international/asia/09MILI.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - The man who served the Taliban as foreign minister surrendered today to the Afghan authorities in Kandahar, where he was transferred to American custody and was being held tonight in the United States detention compound at the city's airport, military and intelligence officials said.

With his surrender, the official, Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, became the senior member of the fallen government to be captured or killed in the war. The terms of his surrender to the interim government were unclear.

As foreign minister, Mullah Muttawakil was one of the few Taliban officials viewed in Washington as a moderate, and some American officials believe that he wanted improved relations with the United States. Before Sept. 11, he had met intermittently with American officials on the topic.

After the attacks, he held secret discussions with Pakistani officials about the possibility of handing over Osama bin Laden to the Americans, officials in Pakistan have said. Mullah Muttawakil is believed to have viewed Mr. bin Laden's presence in Afghanistan as an obstacle to gaining international acceptance for the Taliban, according to a person close to the Taliban leadership who knows Mullah Muttawakil well.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Mullah Muttawakil broke with the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, over the latter's refusal to accept the recommendations of an Afghan religious council that Mr. bin Laden be forced to leave Afghanistan, according to the person with ties to Mullah Muttawakil.

Mullah Muttawakil is young, perhaps not yet 30, and his father was considered a scholar in Kandahar. He is said to have attended a religious school in Quetta, Pakistan.

Because he was politically moderate and better educated than others in the Taliban leadership, Mullah Omar trusted him to handle the Taliban's intermittent, and often frustrating, diplomatic negotiations with the United States in the last few years.

He was also apparently involved in talks with international oil companies that were interested at one time in building a pipeline to take natural gas out of the Caspian Sea region.

While many senior Taliban leaders are still at large, the United States now has custody of a group of mid- level officials, according to American officials and individuals who have been close to some Taliban leaders. Those being held are said to include Abdul Salaam Zaeef, who served as the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan and who was close to Mullah Omar; Abdul Rahman Zahed, a former senior official in the foreign ministry; a man named Mutmaien, who served as the spokesman for the Taliban's defense ministry in Kandahar; and a deputy defense minister named Wasiq.

The American authorities would like to question all those men about planned terrorist operations and about Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts. They are likely to be considered for trial by military tribunals.

The person who has been close to Mullah Muttawakil said it was possible that he had been on the Pakistani side of the border since the war began, possibly in or near Quetta. It is possible that he decided to return to Afghanistan to surrender rather than turn himself in to the Pakistani authorities, that person suggested. American officials would say only that Mullah Muttawakil surrendered to Afghan forces inside Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Mullah Omar, whom the United States wants more than any other Taliban official, continues to elude capture. George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, said on Wednesday that he believed that Mullah Omar was still alive, but that he was uncertain whether Osama bin Laden was still living.

In the continuing search for clues to the location of Mr. bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, a detachment of more than 50 American troops, mostly drawn from the 101st Airborne Division, landed overnight near Zawar Kili, in Paktia Province, Pentagon officials said today.

Snowstorms delayed the helicopter deployment of the troops, who were sent to the region to gather information after an unmanned Predator drone armed with Hellfire antitank missiles attacked a small group of men Monday at what intelligence officials described as a Qaeda campsite. The officials said they believed that at least one person had been killed in the missile attack.

The people were attacked after pulling up to a camp in at least one truck. They were dressed in flowing robes and seemed to be "paying homage" to one man in the group, government officials said.

At a news briefing today, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld played down speculation that Mr. bin Laden was among the men, and said the Pentagon had no indications either way.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: "The strike was on some individuals. Who is to be determined. That's what they're gathering the intelligence on."

General Myers indicated that the missile might have left little in the way of forensic evidence if it scored a direct hit on individuals not protected by an armored vehicle.

"They're aware that there may not be a lot of evidence," he said. "They may have to gather small evidence and bring it back and see if it could be evaluated."

In a related development, the United States today promised Russia that it would not establish permanent military bases in former Soviet republics near Afghanistan.

A joint statement issued after talks between Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Russia's first deputy foreign minister, said, "The American side emphasized that the U.S. does not seek to establish permanent military bases in Central Asia."

A military base in Uzbekistan is temporary home to troops from the American 10th Mountain Division, and discussions have been under way about basing American jet fighters in Kyrgyzstan. Even so, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of American forces in the region, has repeatedly said the United States is seeking no permanent presence in those nations.

The statement did not rule out continued American military presence as the United States continues its global war on terror, nor did it preclude routine exercises with the independent states of Central Asia.

----

Taliban Leaders Regrouping, Says Afghan Minister

February 9, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack.html

KABUL - Afghan authorities warned on Saturday the vanquished Taliban movement was regrouping outside the country, while hailing the surrender of a senior Taliban figure as a breakthrough in tracking down other fugitive leaders.

Afghan interim Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said some former leaders of the hard-line Islamic Taliban, overthrown as Afghanistan's rulers by the U.S.-led military campaign, were forming new organizations to oppose the government in Kabul.

``The Taliban leaders ... apparently they are running new organizations,'' Abdullah told reporters in the Afghan capital.

``There are two organizations outside Afghanistan,'' he said. ''We do not have details of the organizations or their structure but on the whole it is not acceptable that the Taliban be able to act either outside or inside Afghanistan in any capacity.''

Most Taliban leaders who fled Afghanistan are thought to be in neighboring Pakistan, which had previously given backing to Taliban rule. Abdullah said he received assurances from Pakistani officials on a visit to Islamabad on Friday with Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai that Pakistan would take measures to prevent such activities.

But distrust has lingered between Pakistan and Afghanistan's Northern Alliance group of military factions, which dominates Karzai's government.

Within Afghanistan, U.S. troops continued to track down Taliban officials and remnants of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, blamed by the United States for the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

A team of 50 U.S. troops on Saturday investigated the site of a missile strike in southeastern Afghanistan to try to determine who was killed in the attack, a day after U.S. military authorities announced the surrender of former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil.

Khalid Pashtoon, spokesman for Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha, told Reuters on Saturday that Muttawakil could provide valuable intelligence on the whereabouts of other senior Taliban -- including supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

``Of course he will have important information. He was the foreign minister,'' said Pashtoon, surprised by the sudden detention of Muttawakil by U.S. forces.

MULLAH OMAR'S RIGHT-HAND MAN

Muttawakil was considered Mullah Omar's right-hand man, and Abdullah, the current Afghan foreign minister, said he had been living in the Pakistani city of Quetta with other leaders who had fled Afghanistan. Abdullah was unaware of the circumstances leading to his reappearance, but speculated that Pakistani authorities may have had a hand.

``I don't know how it happened that he finally gave himself up. This might have been with the aid of the Pakistani authorities,'' Abdullah said.

Pakistani authorities in Quetta denied any knowledge of Muttawakil's surrender or handover to U.S. forces, and a senior Kandahar political source, who said Muttawakil was a moderate, thought he may have made a deal in return for his safety.

Other U.S. troops were scouring a remote mountain site struck by a missile fired from a pilotless drone aircraft on Monday at what was believed to be a group of al Qaeda members.

The private Afghan Islamic Press said U.S. troops arrived in the Zawar Khili, 20 miles southwest of Khost and 10 miles from the Pakistani border, on board helicopters and spoke with village elders.

The AIP said the missile hit a group of young civilians, three of whom were killed.

U.S. officials said a man believed killed in the attack was taller than the handful of people with him, leading to speculation the United States may have hit its most wanted man in the war on terrorism -- bin Laden.

In Kabul, about 270 Afghan Taliban prisoners were released in a ceremony at the presidential palace on Saturday night under the watch of Karzai, appointed in December to lead a six-month interim administration.

``We decided some time back we should release everybody who did not have a bad record, who were not terrorists but just ordinary people,'' Karzai said.

Abdullah called again on Saturday for a multinational security force, now operating only in the capital, to be deployed in other cities across Afghanistan, saying it would take time to build a new Afghan army and police force.

``There are still some security risks in Afghanistan which need to be taken care of. The presence of multinational forces in some places in the country will be an assurance,'' he said.

Pakistani investigators said they were putting pressure on the family of leading suspect Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh in the hope it would lead them to U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl, kidnapped in Karachi on Jan. 23.

Afghan authorities have arrested two people in connection with last November's murder of four foreign journalists, including two from Reuters, an Interior Ministry official said.

Hundreds of women gathered in the Afghan capital to reclaim jobs denied to them under Taliban rule. The women were invited by Afghanistan's new Ministry of Women's Affairs to apply for more than 500 jobs as civil servants and teachers.

Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew said 15 suspected Islamic militants with possible links to al Qaeda were detained in December for plotting to bomb various targets, including a U.S. troop bus, U.S. naval vessels and a central commuter rail station, but ``five or eight others'' got away.

-------- africa

State of Emergency in Liberia

Associated Press
WORLD In Brief
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48658-2002Feb8?language=printer

MONROVIA, Liberia -- President Charles Taylor declared a state of emergency following reports of fighting between government and rebel forces on the outskirts of the capital. Officials said thousands of civilians had fled the area.

Taylor did not provide details of the latest clashes in a radio address to the nation, but Information Minister Reginald Goodridge said government forces repelled a rebel attack Thursday on Klay Junction, a town about 25 miles north of Monrovia.

"As president and commander in chief of the armed forces of Liberia, it is my duty to restore peace and security to the people of this country," Taylor said.

Rebels have been waging a low-level insurrection in northern Liberia for more than two years, but it was the first time fighting was reported to have approached the capital, which was ravaged in a civil war between 1989 and 1996.

There were no immediate reports of further clashes.

"Klay is now in the hands of government forces, although this is guerrilla warfare, and one cannot be so certain," Goodridge said.

Journalists have been barred from parts of the country where there is fighting, and Goodridge's claims could not immediately be verified. Humanitarian organizations have said that in at least some of the recent clashes, government forces may have been fighting among themselves.

U.N. officials confirmed there had been shooting Thursday around Klay but did not have any details, World Food Program spokesman Ramin Rafirasme said in Abidjan, in neighboring Ivory Coast.

----

Nigerian troops patrol city after riots

World Scene
Washington Times
February 9, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020209-27744964.htm

KANO, Nigeria - Troops patrolled the tense northern Nigerian city of Kano after Muslim prayers yesterday to prevent any reprisals of the ethnic clashes that left 100 dead in the south.

Fighting erupted over the weekend in the southern city of Lagos, Nigeria's biggest, between local Yorubas and Hausas from the north.

-------- arms sales

Offer to sell diesel subs to Taiwan missing a manufacturer

By David Lerman Washington Bureau
February 9, 2002
http://www.dailypress.com/news/yahoo/dp-27428sy0feb09.story

WASHINGTON -- When the Bush administration announced plans last year to sell Taiwan eight diesel submarines, it overlooked one little problem:

It has no submarines to sell.

U.S. shipbuilders have not produced diesel submarines since the 1950s, when the Navy opted for an all-nuclear submarine fleet.

Initially, military leaders were counting on borrowing a design from Germany or the Netherlands, the two leading manufacturers of diesel subs.

But both nations made clear they have little desire to antagonize China by assisting with an arms sale to Taiwan.

So now, Navy officials are broadening their effort to find a contractor for Taiwan.

In the process, they may trigger the first competition for submarine production among U.S. builders in a decade.

Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Dynamics Corp. are among seven U.S. and international firms that have expressed interest in the project.

And as a search for a viable diesel submarine design continues, the two U.S. builders of nuclear submarines -- Northrop Grumman Newport News and the Electric Boat division of General Dynamics in Groton, Conn. -- are no longer ruled out as potential contractors.

But with so many details yet to be settled, neither the shipbuilders nor defense officials want to talk publicly about how, when or where the submarines would be built.

"I have nothing to say at this time," said David DesRoches, spokesman for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, an arm of the Pentagon that handles foreign military sales.

And skeptics wonder whether a submarine sale to Taiwan will ever get off the ground.

President Bush, who promised to do "whatever it takes" to defend Taiwan, made the offer as part of a huge arms package last year, just weeks after China downed a U.S. spy plane.

Since then, tensions with China have eased, particularly since the United States has focused on waging a war on terrorism. Bush, who will travel to China later this month, has no immediate plans to visit Taiwan and is not expected to address the arms issue.

"I don't know what the point would be of opening this can of worms," said one congressional staffer who studies Asian affairs.

While Navy officials are proceeding with the submarine offer-- fielding preliminary proposals from interested firms -- they are doing so with great reluctance, analysts say.

Some say the Navy is leery of getting U.S. shipbuilders back in the diesel submarine business, thereby offering a cheaper alternative to $2 billion-a-copy nuclear submarines for the U.S. fleet.

"They're terrified," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense policy think tank. "There's an enormous institutional culture within the Navy of being an all-nuclear submarine fleet."

If cheaper diesel subs become available, Pike said, the Navy would have to make the case again for more costly and stealthy nuclear models.

"It would require the Navy to talk a lot more publicly about what submarines do and how they do it," he said. "The Navy just doesn't want to go there."

Beyond the philosophical resistance, Navy officials must iron out a number of logistical issues, such as export control requirements and the transfer of sensitive technology overseas.

In the early stages of the arms offer, many thought the Navy would never permit a U.S. nuclear shipyard to build submarines for Taiwan, for fear of spreading sensitive technological secrets, such as techniques to make subs operate quietly.

The Pentagon's original intent was to let Ingalls Shipbuilding of Mississippi -- a large, non-nuclear shipyard owned by Northrop Grumman -- build the submarines, with the help of a foreign design.

Now, that plan appears less sure. A foreign design may be difficult to obtain legally. And since the arms offer was announced last year, Northrop Grumman bought the Newport News shipyard, giving the company access to nuclear expertise.

Faced with those new dynamics, some observers say, the Navy is no longer dismissing the notion of letting a nuclear yard handle the project.

"For whatever reason, people perceive a shift in government policy," another congressional source said.

Northrop Grumman spokesman Randy Belote declined to say which shipyard his company would use for the diesel sub work, but noted, "The original intent was to have them manufactured in Pascagoula," Mississippi.

The nation's only other nuclear shipyard -- the Electric Boat yard -- also submitted a preliminary proposal to the Navy, said company spokesman Neil Ruenzel.

And Electric Boat might have an edge in diesel submarine work. It recently teamed up with an Australian company, Australian Submarine Corp., which wanted help in upgrading the combat capability of its diesel subs, Ruenzel said.

Politically, Northrop Grumman would appear to be well-positioned in any competition with Electric Boat and its parent company, General Dynamics.

Siding with Northrop would be Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., a staunch fighter for his state's Ingalls Shipbuilding, and Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and longtime defender of the Newport News yard.

Both wield influence with the Bush administration, which would have to approve any arms sale.

But with so many details still uncertain, analysts cautioned, it is not yet clear that the deal would trigger a political fight along the lines of a domestic defense contract. Instead, they said, the issue may come down to more prosaic concerns: Who can produce the first viable design for a diesel submarine in 40 years and who can get it built?

"Having someone on the same team politically doesn't mean they can overcome the technical feasibility and China politics," one staffer said.

What is certain, scholars say, is that Taiwan is eager to buy submarines. The island now has a fleet of only four subs, two of which are considered in decrepit condition.

"That seems to be No. 1 on their hit list," said retired Navy Capt. Bud Cole, a professor at the National War College who recently returned from Taiwan. "It came up continually. I think Taiwan is very anxious to get the subs, but I don't think they know how."

David Lerman can be reached at (202) 824-8224 or by e-mail at dlerman@tribune.co

----

India looks to US for weapons after delay in Russian deals

Saturday February 9, 3:39 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020209/1/2g8i7.html

India said it was looking to acquire more sophisticated weapon systems from the United States a day after failing to clinch a raft of billion-dollar defence deals with Russia.

Defence Minister George Fernandes said India was hoping buy military hardware from the US after both sides agreed to boost cooperation, especially on counter-terrorism initiatives, the Press Trust of India news agency said.

"We have found common ground for restoring mutual cooperation in defence ties after the September 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington," Fernandes said.

"We are looking at acquiring more sophisticated weaponry from the US which other nations are not in a position to produce and deliver at short notice."

His comments came after talks Friday with traditional military ally Russia failed to reach any agreement on several defence deals that could have had far-reaching strategic implications.

But the two sides did pledge to pursue the deals that were not finalised despite two days of intense talks in New Delhi between teams led by Fernandes and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov.

Klebanov and Fernandes hinted at the deadlock on the leasing of several TU-22 long-range strategic bombers, as well as the purchase of the ageing Russian aircraft carrier, Admiral Gorshkov, by India.

"The technical discussions have been completed. The price negotiation is what needs to be done," Fernandes said Friday.

"How much time it will take is too difficult to forecast at this time."

There was also no sign during Klebanov's trip of a widely expected deal on the Indian Navy leasing two Russian nuclear submarines.

Moscow, which had previously leased India a nuclear submarine, is presently pressuring New Delhi to shun Western arms bazaars and instead pick up Russian hardware such as the MiG-AT advanced jet trainer and an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS).

Almost 70 percent of India's defence assets and military hardware is Russian.

But ties between India and the US have been warming rapidly and this week a US delegation of senior commanders from the three wings of the armed forces were in India to follow-up on the Indo-US Defence Policy Group (DPG) meeting in December last year which agreed to boost defence ties.

The US officials met their counterparts in India to prepare the ground for joint army, air force and naval exercises.

"The armies and air forces of both the countries are planning joint exercises as an appreciation of the security environment in our region and various parts of the world," Fernandes said.

Two US warships, the USS Antietam and the USS O'Kane, have already conducted joint maritime exercises with the Indian navy as part of increasing military cooperation. The US and India had strained relations during the Cold War, when New Delhi tilted toward the Soviet Union, and military cooperation all but stopped in the wake of India's nuclear tests in 1998, which prompted a raft of US sanctions.

But relations warmed following former president Bill Clinton's visit in 2000 and the sanctions were lifted last year after India joined the US coalition against terrorism.

----

China Vents Anger at US Threat Label

The Associated Press
Saturday, February 9, 2002; 11:42 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50169-2002Feb9?language=printer

BEIJING -- China reacted angrily to the U.S. intelligence chief's including it in a list of global threats to the United States, calling the description "unreasonable, irresponsible and unacceptable."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan called on Washington to work harder on building friendly relations with Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.

Kong was reacting to CIA Director George Tenet's testimony to the U.S. Congress on Friday about security threats to the United States. China was one of the countries Tenet singled out.

Tenet called China a leading supplier of nuclear and missile technology to countries hostile to America.

"Tenet's statement ... is unreasonable, irresponsible and unacceptable," Xinhua quoted Kong as saying.

"An improvement in bilateral relations would be in the interest of both nations, but it does require effort from both sides," Kong was quoted as saying.

-------- asia

Philippine Arrest Offers Clues to Web Of Asian Terrorists
Suspect in Explosions Linked to Al Qaeda

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48163-2002Feb8?language=printer

MANILA -- The first explosion ripped through a light rail station in the heart of old Manila just as a crowded, midday train was pulling in. A minute later, on the other side of town, another bomb detonated in a park near the U.S. Embassy. Three other blasts followed: at a bus terminal, an airport and a downtown gas station.

As rescue workers counted the dead and wounded in the deadliest terrorist attack in the Philippines in years, a man called police with a message: This was payback for the government's war on Muslim insurgents on the southern island of Mindanao. The date was Dec. 30, 2000, and the caller described himself only as "a freedom fighter."

Now, after more than a year, police have identified him as an Indonesian explosives expert whose arrest here last month could be key to unraveling a sophisticated terrorist organization in Southeast Asia affiliated with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Since early December, police in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have arrested more than three dozen suspected members of the group, known as Jemaah Islamiah. Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, 31, stands out because he operated in all three of those locations as well as in Indonesia, and because he has been willing to describe his activities to investigators in detail.

Al-Ghozi, who was captured Jan. 15 on his way to the airport carrying little more than a few shirts, a portable CD player and a Britney Spears disc, at first refused to cooperate with police and tried to pass himself off as a Philippine dry fish dealer.

But in the following weeks, according to investigators who visit him daily, al-Ghozi slowly began opening up, describing his duties for Jemaah Islamiah, admitting his participation in the Manila bombings and sketching a map showing where he had buried one ton of explosives intended for truck bomb attacks on U.S. targets in Singapore.

His statements, described by police, military and intelligence officers and in a classified interrogation report examined by The Washington Post, paint an unusually detailed picture of the kind of cross-national terrorist that now threatens Southeast Asia, where governments have primarily been fighting domestic insurgencies and militant groups.

[Philippine police lawyers on Friday submitted sworn statements by al-Ghozi to prosecutors who will conduct a preliminary investigation before filing formal charges against him, the Associated Press reported.]

Al-Ghozi moved between Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore without detection for years. He used at least five passports and is fluent in several languages, including three Philippine dialects, intelligence sources said.

In Singapore, even the men who worked closely with him, patiently staking out targets such as the U.S. Embassy and the British High Commission, were unsure of al-Ghozi's identity or nationality. Police there said the men knew al-Ghozi only by his code name, Mike, and his trade, explosives.

"He's very, very intelligent. He speaks softly, and he doesn't get angry. But he is very dedicated," said Fiscal Sy, a prosecutor in Manila who has questioned al-Ghozi. "He's not the type to blurt anything out."

Al-Ghozi's precise role in Jemaah Islamiah remains under investigation. But authorities said they believe he took orders from Faiz bin Abu Bakar Bafana, a businessman who was described as a member of Jemaah Islamiah's regional shura, or ruling council, when he was arrested in Singapore in December. According to police sources, just hours after the explosions in Manila, al-Ghozi used his mobile phone to call Bafana.

He also called Riduan Isamuddin, another alleged member of the regional shura who has been described as al Qaeda's point man in Southeast Asia, the sources said. Known by his alias Hambali, the Indonesian cleric reportedly played host to two men in January 2000 who later went on to hijack the American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

Al-Ghozi has been reluctant to provide information about other members of Jemaah Islamiah, but earlier this week he began identifying people whose numbers he had stored in his two mobile phones.

It is unclear why al-Ghozi is cooperating with authorities, but one law enforcement official said he might be hoping for leniency because his new wife, a Malaysian student in Indonesia, is three or four months pregnant. Officials said he has shown little remorse for helping stage the Manila bombings, which left 22 persons dead and more than 100 injured.

"We asked him once how he felt about seeing the bodies of dead children being pulled out of the rubble," said one investigator. "He said he pitied them. Then we asked, 'Why did you do it then?' He said, 'It's jihad. It's a religious war.' And then he just sat there, not saying anything."

The eldest of four children, al-Ghozi was born on the Indonesian island of Java, and he showed an early interest in prayer and reading the Koran, said his father, Zainuri al-Ghozi, a member of East Java's provincial parliament.

He said his son "became far more religious" after he left home at the age of 12 to attend an Islamic boarding school run by Abubakar Baasyir, a cleric whom Singapore and Malaysian authorities have described as the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah.

"We had very little contact with him," the father said. "He only wrote letters . . . if he needed money. I had no idea what he was doing."

Al-Ghozi graduated in 1989, and continued his Islamic studies on a scholarship in Lahore, Pakistan. It was there in 1992 that two Indonesians recruited him to join the Jemaah Islamiah, according to intelligence sources.

The sources said al-Ghozi told investigators he also traveled to a border camp between Pakistan and Afghanistan for one month of weapons and explosives training in 1993 and again in 1994. A senior police official said the camp is associated with al Qaeda.

After he completed his studies, Jemaah Islamiah assigned al-Ghozi to infiltrate Philippine society, a mission he began in December 1996, intelligence sources said.

"For the first few years, he was here to learn the local languages, establish bank accounts and obtain passports," said Sy, the prosecutor. "The larger objective was to aid in the holy war, which they believed was taking place on multiple fronts, including the Muslim separatist movements in Mindanao."

Intelligence sources said Bafana directed al-Ghozi to establish contacts at Camp Abubakar, a stronghold of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the largest Muslim rebel movement in the Philippines.

But after a month at the camp, al-Ghozi returned to Indonesia. Little is known about his activities during the next year, but in March 1998, he left again for the Philippines and again under orders from Bafana, intelligence sources said.

On that visit, which lasted six months, Al-Ghozi visited Camp Abubakar and several cities scattered across the region, polishing his language skills, making contacts and possibly recruiting followers. He also opened a bank account in the southern city of Zamboanga and obtained his first Philippine passport, intelligence sources said. Al-Ghozi usually stayed in Muslim neighborhoods, and he often befriended people he met at local mosques.

In March 1999, al-Ghozi slipped into the Philippines again. This time, intelligence sources said, his specific mission was to establish a channel to buy explosives. On that trip he met a man identified by police as Mokhlis Yunos, allegedly a demolitions expert with a radical wing of the MILF.

On al-Ghozi's next trip in the fall of 2000, intelligence sources said, Yunos met with al-Ghozi and asked him to finance a series of bombings in Manila.

The sources said al-Ghozi sensed an opportunity to further the cause of local Muslim separatists and to develop a steady source of explosives, and he contacted Bafana, who agreed to send him $5,000. Police said Yunos then contacted a man in the city of Cebu and purchased 110 to 175 pounds of explosives.

Al-Ghozi has denied doing any more than buying the explosives, the sources said. But one senior intelligence officer said there is evidence showing al-Ghozi helped plan the attacks in Manila and built the bombs that were used, with the help of two unidentified Indonesian members of Jemaah Islamiah.

After the explosions, al-Ghozi obtained another passport and slipped away to Malaysia.

Some intelligence officials said they now believe the bombings may have been a test run for a more ambitious plan to build truck bombs and use them to attack a series of U.S. and other Western targets in Singapore.

Over the next several months, al-Ghozi worked closely with Jemaah Islamiah members in Singapore, helping stake out potential targets and ordering them to find a safe place to build truck bombs, Singapore police said.

He also traveled twice to the Philippines to buy explosives, and obtained two more passports, one from the Philippines and the other from Indonesia, intelligence sources said.

During this period, al-Ghozi met or spoke with Bafana several times. In one meeting in Kuta Kinbalo, Malaysia, Bafana ordered him to buy five to seven tons of explosives. Singapore police said the group was seeking a total of 21 tons of explosives -- several times the amount Timothy McVeigh used to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Al-Ghozi arrived on his last trip to the Philippines in November carrying $18,000 provided by Bafana as a down payment for the explosives, intelligence officials said.

The vendor was so impressed by the size of the order that he gave al-Ghozi a discount, cutting the price of TNT from $15 per kilogram to $14 per kilogram, said one intelligence officer. The first ton was shipped to a house in the city of General Santos during the last week of December.

By then, al-Ghozi was running out of money. He also had heard that some of his colleagues in Malaysia and Singapore had been arrested. Worried, he traveled to Manila and purchased a plane ticket to Bangkok.

Philippine police arrested him as he left his hotel for the flight.

Al-Ghozi was evasive when asked if other attacks are planned, investigators said. "He's always talking about programs, and these programs refer to targets," said one official. "When you ask him if there are other programs, he just says there will always be more programs."

Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran contributed to this report from Jakarta, Indonesia.

-------- biological weapons

Workers Handling Government Mail Report Symptoms
Complaints Raise Irradiation Concerns

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48595-2002Feb8?language=printer

At least 87 postal workers handling irradiated government mail in Gaithersburg have reported nausea or eye or breathing problems, union leaders said, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Postal Service continue to investigate the safety of treated mail.

The postal union complaints, coming two days after doctors on Capitol Hill reported that 73 Senate staff members were suffering similar symptoms, reflect the lingering worries over possible side effects caused by the novel treatment used to make mail safe.

Government investigators said that the symptoms are minor and that new precautions have eliminated observable levels of harmful gases probably caused by irradiating the mail.

Nevertheless, medical experts have urged workers to carefully track side effects as part of an ongoing review.

"These are unknowns, so I don't think we can dismiss them as minimal. They have to be explored. They have to put the best science to use and get answers," said Sally Davidow, spokeswoman for the American Postal Workers Union. "If irradiation is causing [symptoms] or something else is causing it, they have to get to the bottom of it and fix it."

All mail bound for federal offices in the District since November has been sent to plants in Lima, Ohio, and Bridgeport, N.J., where it is sanitized with radiation. The mail is then sorted at a postal station on V Street NE and dispatched to area postal facilities, among them the Suburban Processing and Distribution Facility in Gaithersburg.

Postal officials chose irradiation to safeguard against anthrax contamination, after being assured by government scientists that irradiation is "perfectly safe," spokeswoman Deborah Yackley said.

But workers at both facilities have reported headaches and other symptoms since the shipments began. The Postal Service determined in December that unhealthy levels of carbon monoxide, which is produced when plastic is exposed to radiation, were being released when employees at V Street unpacked cardboard boxes and plastic bags containing irradiated mail.

In response, engineers lowered radiation dosages by about 40 percent after concluding that that was sufficient to kill anthrax spores and other biological contaminants.

"Since we've been doing that, we've had literally no complaints from employees at V Street," Yackley said. "And complaints at Suburban . . . were way down."

Tammy Thompson, president of the Montgomery County local of the postal workers union, disagreed. "It has not stopped. Employees are still getting sick on a daily basis" from the mail, she said.

Thompson said 87 of about 750 workers at the Gaithersburg facility have reported problems. A few have missed several days of work or are filing workers' compensation claims.

"The employees are experiencing nosebleeds, runny noses, runny eyes, extreme headaches, nausea," Thompson said. "Some are actually throwing up, and we have been going through this since December."

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is studying the presence at the V Street Station of organic compounds that can cause mild irritation, and contractor URS Corp. is conducting a similar assessment at the Gaithersburg plant, spokesmen for the Postal Service and the CDC agency said.

Several workers in the Office of Personnel Management also reported symptoms in mid-January, but NIOSH reported no raised levels of harmful gases Feb. 1.

"We didn't have a lot of information at hand to weigh in on the decision, whether or not to irradiate mail," said Llelwyn Grant, a CDC spokesman. "Well, we're beginning to look at it now."

-------- britain

Northern Irish police treat blast as guerrilla attack

Saturday February 9, 2:54 AM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-88583.html

BELFAST - An explosion seriously injured a civilian at an army training camp in Northern Ireland on Friday and police said the blast was the work of guerrillas.

"Police are now treating this incident as terrorist-related -- they believe terrorism was involved," a spokesman said.

The blast occurred at about 1200 GMT near a perimeter fence at the training facility at Magilligan, 26 miles (40 km) northeast of Northern Ireland's second city of Londonderry.

A civilian Ministry of Defence worker sustained injuries to his stomach, lower body, and arms and was rushed to hospital, police said.

Magilligan, near Northern Ireland's northern coast, was the scene of a civil rights march in 1969 which degenerated into an ugly standoff between marchers and British soldiers.

The incident occurred just ahead of what became known as "Bloody Sunday" when British paratroopers opened fire on civil rights marchers in Londonderry, killing 13.

Last week was the 30th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

Although most Protestant and Catholic guerrilla groups in the British province are maintaining ceasefires in the uneasy calm which followed 1998's landmark Good Friday peace deal, tension has been high for several months.

Dissident republican guerrillas opposed to the peace accord and intent on achieving a united Ireland have carried out attacks both in the province and in Britain.

-------- business

Cheney Firm's Offshoot Settles Fraud Charges

Associated Press
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48597-2002Feb8?language=printer

SACRAMENTO, Feb. 8 -- A defense contractor once overseen by Vice President Cheney will pay the government $2 million to settle allegations it defrauded the military, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Houston-based Kellogg Brown & Root, an offshoot of the worldwide energy giant Halliburton Co., was accused of inflating contract prices for maintenance and repairs at Fort Ord, a now-shuttered military installation near Monterey, Calif.

The company admitted no liability and denies any wrongdoing, said Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall. The settlement precludes further investigations and penalties, and she said Halliburton anticipates it will continue to be a major military contractor.

Though Hall could provide no immediate contract estimates, she noted that Halliburton holds the services contracts for the U.S. deployment in the Balkans.

Cheney was Halliburton's chairman and chief executive when the alleged fraud occurred, but no evidence surfaced that he knew of it. Democrats made the federal grand jury investigation an issue before the 2000 election.

A Cheney spokeswoman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The suit, filed in Sacramento, alleged the company submitted false claims and made false statements in connection with 224 delivery orders between April 1994 and September 1998.

Under the terms of its contract, the company did not bid against other contractors for maintenance and repair projects, instead presenting the military with fixed costs it said were necessary to perform specific projects.

----

Defense Department Included In Effort to Save Enron Data

By Ellen Nakashima and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48189-2002Feb8?language=printer

The Pentagon's chief lawyer sent a memo Tuesday instructing all Defense Department employees to preserve any documents, correspondence or e-mail related to Enron Corp., drawing the massive agency into the high-profile probe.

General Counsel William J. Haynes II issued the memo in response to a Feb. 1 request from the Justice Department. Justice officials sent virtually identical requests that day to the White House and the Treasury and Commerce departments. It was unclear last night why the Justice Department's request to the Pentagon was not made public when the others were.

CNN first reported the Pentagon memo on Thursday.

The administration's highest-ranking former Enron employee is Army Secretary Thomas E. White, installed last May. At least two other former Enron employees joined the Army secretariat last year.

Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke said last night the memo "is just a legal part of that process. This is not a big deal."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, asked about the general counsel's memo at a press briefing yesterday, replied: "It seems to me that if there was such a letter from the Department of Justice to this department, which I happen not to have seen, and if the general counsel sent out such a letter, it would seem to me to be a perfectly proper, responsible thing to do" to preserve the documents.

White, an Enron executive for 11 years, was vice chairman of Enron Energy Services, which provided energy management services. That unit has been under increased scrutiny for allegedly racking up hundreds of millions of dollars in trading losses and essentially hiding them in another Enron division. Geoffrey Prosch, a former Enron Energy Services director, is now the Army's principal deputy assistant secretary for installations and environment. Dominic Izzo, who worked in international engineering at Enron, is principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army.

White, as Army secretary, has been an advocate for privatization of military utilities. Energy Services, before Enron declared bankruptcy last December, had aggressively sought military contracts to manage utilities at bases.

A spokesman for White last night confirmed that White's office, like all other offices at the Pentagon, had received the memo and was complying with the order to conduct an inventory. "I don't know if he has [Enron-related] documents to preserve," Gen. Larry Gottardi said.

White disclosed in a letter to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) last month that he had 29 phone conversations or meetings with Enron employees between last June and Jan. 16. He called then-Enron Chairman Kenneth L. Lay twice last year, once on Sept. 10 and once on Oct. 22. His second call was returned, but the two men never connected, White said.

He said in the letter that the calls were personal in nature, and "at no time . . . did any one of the Enron employees, to include Ken Lay, ask me to intercede in any way with anyone to the potential benefit of Enron Corporation."

Waxman, ranking minority member on the House Government Reform Committee, has asked to interview White about Enron and related issues. White has not responded, nor has he answered questions posed by The Washington Post regarding his role at Enron.

Izzo, who knew White both at Enron and when they were in the Army in the 1980s, worked on a $3 billion power plant project in Dabhol, India, in which Enron has a 65 percent interest. The Washington Post reported that the White House coordinated a multifront effort last year to help Enron Corp. settle a dispute with the Indian government over the project.

Prosch is a former EES director whose extensive knowledge of Army installations helped the firm pursue military contracts. He is a former garrison commander at Fort Polk, La. His current position involves him in the Army's effort to step up privatization of military utility systems. EES got out of that business last year.

Staff writer Susan Schmidt contributed to this report.

-------- colombia

Colombian Rebels Met By a New, Unarmed Foe
Villagers' Resistance Could Alter War

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48175-2002Feb8?language=printer

PURACE, Colombia -- Jimmy Alberto Guauña Chicangana was going to be the first in his family of Paez Indians to graduate from college. With his law degree, he planned to prosecute criminals and help the poor. A poster of Che Guevara, the Argentine physician and revolutionary commander in Cuba, hung on the wall of his tiny bedroom, homage to his commitment to struggle for social justice.

Guauña was a year and a half away from graduating when he was shot and killed by members of a Marxist insurgency purporting to share his beliefs.

His death was a tragic irony. But beyond that, it was part of something that is helping to redefine rural Colombia's relationship with a nearly four-decade-old guerrilla movement. In the past three months, residents of several towns, including this pretty mountaintop village in southwestern Colombia, have risen up in response to guerrilla attacks -- an unarmed civil resistance to a well-armed insurgency.

These protests, apparently spontaneous, have confounded the guerrillas. In response, the insurgents have designed a political campaign in hopes of winning over this and other villages across the country that have long provided them with recruits, food and intelligence.

Historically, civil resistance in Colombia has been largely ineffective. It is too soon to tell whether these uprisings will fare much better.

But Guauña's death was at the center of what appears to be a new relationship between combatants and civilians, on whom the war falls most harshly. And its lessons could determine whether what happened here remains an aberration or grows into durable resistance by the rural Colombians who for years have been left largely to fend for themselves by a weak central government.

"We've always tried to maintain a neutral position, but this neutrality has become very costly for us," said Gustavo Adolfo Valencia Garcia, the mayor of the Purace-Coconuco municipal district, whose two main towns were attacked simultaneously on Dec. 31. "This is part of a national struggle, and it's a struggle for power. Whichever [armed] group wins, we don't want them here." The drama began in the cool afternoon that day, hours before a costumed procession was to march through this mostly Indian village 225 miles southwest of the capital, Bogota. Guauña and a dozen friends who made up a musical band reveled at a pre-party lunch. Guauña, 21, had made a papier-mache devil's mask to wear. An effigy of the old year in the likeness of the popular, bespectacled town priest slumped in a corner, ready to be burned at midnight to welcome the new year.

At about 5:30, the thud of gunfire reached Guauña's house from the main square about a quarter-mile away. All of Purace heard the guerrilla attack, the first ever on this town, but instead of hiding in fright, the villagers reacted with defiance. Hundreds flowed down green hillsides and up dirt lanes toward the small, sandbagged police station to protect the outnumbered officers.

With his brother and his band, Guauña quickly made his way to the town square, where an austere white church loomed across from the small school he had attended a few years earlier. He was armed with only a flute.

Nonetheless, witnesses said, Guauña was one of the most active members of the resistance over the course of a fluid, five-hour protest. Directing his band, members of the soccer team he founded and other villagers, Guauña helped organize the town to impede the guerrillas' pursuit of the police.

Chaos filled the town square, lit only by burning tires after a power outage. Vladimir, a young guerrilla who said he was not present during the attack but recalled details with a clarity suggesting otherwise, said: "The people were all over us. There was a lot of shooting."

The guerrillas' homemade bombs fell first on the police station, leaving much of it in rubble. A villager stood in front of the ruins waving the Colombian flag, hoping to hold off the guerrillas long enough to let the police escape.

The roughly 18 policemen fled in the face of several hundred guerrillas, who were swarmed by villagers waving white flags and the Colombian tricolor. Guerrillas entered the small clinic across from the church in search of police, eventually dragging out the body of an officer named Richard Nixon Quilindo.

At about 10 p.m., Diego Guauña, 19, saw his older brother slumped near a pile of burning tires. It was only when he approached that he discovered that Jimmy Guauña was wounded. Diego hurried his brother to the clinic, where a nurse said he was near death.

No one in the crowd learned of Jimmy's death until nearly midnight, after the guerrillas had left town. He was the only civilian to die, along with two policemen and three guerrillas.

"They saved us," said the national police commander of Purace, whose headquarters were flattened along with the former Agrarian Bank building, the priest's house and the pool hall. "But we can't count on their help. It's too risky for these people. Next time we'll have to rely on our own luck and capability."

What has happened in Purace and several other villages nationwide with varying degrees of success is a sign of Colombia's worsening war. Gaining intensity and reach, a four-party conflict featuring two guerrilla armies battling a growing paramilitary force and the Colombian military is forcing a battered civilian population to risk taking matters into its own hands.

Over the past five years, the number of civilians who have died in a war dating back to the Communist insurgencies of the 1960s has risen fivefold. In 2001, 2,088 civilians were killed by guerrillas and paramilitary forces, according to numbers compiled by the Colombian army that will be part of the Defense Ministry's annual human rights report. The guerrillas were responsible for 1,060 of the deaths, giving them a slight edge over the paramilitary forces.

While stronger with the help of U.S. military aid, the Colombian armed forces have had little success corralling the guerrillas or the paramilitary group that sometimes works by the army's side. Each irregular army relies on villages like this for logistical support and combatants, so significant rural resistance could severely complicate military operations for both sides.

But the civil defiance, which began emerging late last year in this province of waterfalls, volcanoes and chilly high plains where the country's two largest rivers are born, comes at a critical time for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the largest guerrilla army and the group that attacked this village.

Threatened with the loss of a 16,000-square-mile demilitarized zone that has been the site of peace talks for the past three years, the guerrillas recently agreed to drop their long-held demand that the government scale back an increased military presence around the zone. But the concession, which came under pressure from President Andres Pastrana, has proven controversial within the guerrilla movement. Diplomats and intelligence sources said the FARC's most committed military commanders, who work outside the safe haven, are angry that their negotiators allowed a rare sign of weakness.

So far, though, the 18,000-member FARC appears to have largely tolerated the civilian uprisings. Guauña is the only known civilian casualty. But that could change quickly as the FARC, seeking to restore an image of military strength, ratchets up attacks throughout the country.

The FARC has opened an offensive along two key roads -- one leading from Bogota into the southern province of Meta, and another east from Meta into Casanare province. The governor of Meta, which includes a large chunk of the guerrilla safe haven, called for civil resistance to the campaign.

Last month, about 12 miles west of this village, FARC forces killed four national police officers as part of a wider recent offensive in this province. These villages, tucked inside government-sanctioned reserves for indigenous groups, have long considered themselves outside the conflict and the government's reach. They are governed by their own laws and community norms, but are still protected by state security forces that are the guerrillas' targets.

That independence has always been difficult to sustain because the towns, with slightly more than 1,000 residents each, sit in the middle of a key guerrilla transportation corridor from the Pacific coast to the government-sanctioned safe haven less than 150 miles to the southeast.

As a result, local officials interpreted the New Year's Eve attacks on Purace and Coconuco as part of a new guerrilla effort to preserve territorial control in the face of encroaching paramilitary forces. Graffiti of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the paramilitary group, have appeared on walls in recent months.

Vladimir, a 17-year-old FARC guerrilla who heads a small patrol near the town of Paletara, 20 miles from here, said the civil resistance is the result of the government's "dark politics" of lies against the guerrillas' goals and tactics.

"We understand that these people are confused, not against us. And we are definitely not against these people," he said.

It is difficult for the people of Purace, particularly would-be leaders like Guauña, to draw that conclusion. An average student at the Manuel Maria Mosquera school, Guauña was one of just four of the 15 members of his graduating class to head to the University of Cauca in the provincial capital, Popayan, an hour away.

There he bloomed, according to Cesar Agusto Fernandez, Guauña's grade school teacher, who was pleased when he saw him not long ago speaking passionately about his studies and his planned legal career. "Everyone develops at different times," Fernandez said, "so I wasn't surprised he was becoming a leader."

During vacations, Guauña started Real Juventud, a soccer team to compete in regional championships. He was the team's star sweeper, as he was for his university team. Certificates and trophies decorate the small home where he lived with his father, a peasant whose assets comprise three cattle, and his younger brother and sister. A small cockfighting ring at the back of the house provided entertainment.

"He was our hope," said Diego, with whom Guauña shared a room. Then, recalling the attack, Diego said: "We were not afraid when we heard the noise. We saw many people moving that way."

Many of those people were singing and chanting: "We want peace. Get out, violent ones. This is a place for peace." Oveimar, a local police official and Purace native who did not want his last name used, recalled the swelling songs as "the voice of humanity."

"About 90 percent of the people in this town didn't even know what a guerrilla looked like -- they had never stopped here before," he said. "People just began telling their neighbors: 'I'm going to defend this town. Let's go.' "

No one can explain why their reaction was defiant and not fearful. There had been no advance planning, villagers insisted, only vague warnings of a possible guerrilla attack that Oveimar called "psychological warfare" to frighten towns into submission. Villagers are careful not to exaggerate their success for fear of embarrassing the guerrillas and drawing brutal retaliation.

"The guerrillas had nothing left to do [by the time they left] -- the damage had been done," said Abraham, another police official and Purace native. "The resistance, though, was to show them that they could not stay here. It could have been much worse, with many more deaths."

How Guauña died is not in doubt: A bullet ran clean through his throat. But other important questions that could determine whether Purace and other towns rise up again in the face of guerrilla attacks linger: As an apparent leader in the resistance, was Guauña targeted for reprisal by the guerrillas? Or was it accidental?

No one saw the shooter. And no one has the answers.

"We don't know if it was intentional or a mistake," said Diego, who nonetheless has made up his mind about what he will do if guerrillas attack again. "Next time I will stay in my house."

----

Colombia under siege

EDITORIAL
Washington Times
February 9, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020209-883238.htm

A country in America's back yard is steadily imploding with escalating terrorist attacks. Colombia has come under the siege of the FARC guerrilla group, despite a highly-publicized cease-fire agreement the group recently struck with the government. Alarmingly, the FARC has taken its terrorist, guerrilla tactics into the country's capital, Bogota, which adds a new dimension to the country's four-decade-old conflict that has claimed about 200,000 lives. The FARC has also started aggressively targeting the infrastructure that the country depends on economically and has been aiming directly at the police, one of the more competent defenders of civil order and stability.

The troubles in Colombia are a problem for Americans; the country provides the United States with 80 percent of its cocaine and an increasing share of heroine. The FARC and other Colombian guerrilla and paramilitary groups have become increasingly involved in narco-trafficking, and their agendas therefore collide with U.S. counter-narcotics interests. Given the terrorist tactics favored by these groups, the White House should be ever-vigilant of where this collision will lead. Another threat is the FARC's predilection for spreading its sphere of influence and wealth, and its interest in exporting instability. The Peruvian government has already voiced concern over Colombian narco-terrorists' efforts to reinvigorate once-dreaded guerrilla groups in their country and provide these groups with poppy for heroine production.

And the FARC has ensured that they will continue to be a problem for Colombia and America. On the very day the group signed a cease-fire with the Colombian government, Jan. 15, the FARC launched a bloody offensive. On Jan. 25, Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus blamed the FARC for a bomb put in a downtown restaurant frequented by police officers. Police successfully deactivated bombs found in Bogota, one on a parked bicycle near a police station in northern Bogota and another in a fruit cart in a residential neighborhood on Friday. One day later and about half-a-mile away, eight people were wounded in a grenade attack on a shop. Police said they are sure the FARC was responsible. The next day, rebels killed seven people in the town of Colombia, about 90 miles south of Bogota. The FARC is believed to have been responsible.

The FARC has also targeted Colombia's main water and electricity sources. On Jan. 23, the FARC attacked a major valve at a reservoir 30 minutes from Bogota which, according to Mr. Mockus, jeopardized the capital's water supply. The strike was the first on a major source of water supply. According to reports in the Colombian press, the FARC has dynamited 38 electricity towers in the past three weeks, and 28 municipalities have suffered power outages and electricity rationing as a result of the attacks.

Given this scourge of violence, the White House must press Colombian President Andres Pastrana to acknowledge the narco-trafficking of guerrilla and paramilitary groups. Surely, President Bush doesn't want to see the FARC's blight to spread in the region.

-------- drug war

Drug war informant schemes trounce rights

Washington Times,
February 9, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020209-70336532.htm#4

In his Feb. 4 Commentary column, "Caution with the charges," Paul Craig Roberts cited a recent Dallas police scandal that should serve as a wake-up call.

The Dallas police exercised questionable judgment in paying $200,000 to a confidential informant now accused of buying fake drugs, and this is not an isolated incident.

The combination of informants culled from the criminal underworld and overzealous anti-drug warriors anxious to increase arrest stats has dangerous implications. Whether or not a defendant is actually guilty, the informant profits when a conviction is made. This is a dangerous practice. It lends itself to entrapment and dishonest testimony.

In perhaps the most notorious case, DEA informant Andrew Chambers promised obscene amounts of cash to unsuspecting citizens for (presumably real) drugs, earning him $2.2 million courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. He was ultimately found to have routinely committed perjury.

In an age when Americans are using more prescription drugs than ever, including blatantly recreational drugs such as Viagra, the $50 billion war on some drugs threatens the integrity of the criminal justice system.

ROBERT SHARPE
Program officer
Drug Policy Alliance
Washington

-------- india / pakistan

Two militants killed as Kashmir mosque siege ends

By Sheikh Mushtaq
Saturday February 9, 6:00 PM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-88568.html

SRINAGAR - Security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir shot dead two militants of an outlawed, Pakistan-based group holed up in a mosque to end a tense, 18-hour siege, police said on Saturday.

"Two militants hiding in the mosque were killed in a fierce exchange of fire the preceding (Friday) night," a senior police official told Reuters. "Probably there were only two of them inside."

Security forces had believed three guerrillas had taken refuge in the mosque in the Tutigund area of Kupwara district on Friday when they launched a search operation in the insurgency-racked region.

The police official said the mosque was damaged in the gun battle.

A statement from India's border guards, who were involved in the gun battle, said the militants belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammad, one of two groups blamed by India for a bloody attack on its national parliament in December.

It said the militants were identified as Zafar Khan and Gulam Shakoor and were from Pakistan's Sialkot region.

"Lots of sincere efforts were made with the help of locals including the Imam (cleric) of the mosque to persuade them to surrender but all in vain," the statement said.

It was the second time in the past week Muslim rebels -- fighting Indian rule in the disputed region -- had sought refuge in a mosque in Kashmir.

FAILED NEGOTIATIONS

Security officials had sent some villagers on Friday evening to persuade the militants to surrender but the guerrillas had refused, leading to the gun battle.

The Press Trust of India news agency said the militants held hostage four villagers, including the cleric of the mosque, who went in to negotiate their surrender, and released them after several hours.

On Monday, two members of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant group surrendered to security forces after holding out for 30 hours in a mosque in north Kashmir.

Friday's incident was the eighth time in a year Islamic separatists have used a mosque to escape security forces in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state which is at the centre of a military face-off with nuclear foe Pakistan after the attack on parliament in New Delhi.

Most of the sieges have ended with the militants being killed.

Authorities have in the past appealed to the public not to let guerrillas shelter in mosques which they see as an attempt to force security personnel to attack the shrine and trigger religious hate.

About a dozen militant groups are fighting India's rule in Kashmir, where authorities say about 33,000 people have died in 12 years of rebellion. Separatists put the toll closer to 80,000.

India, which rules 45 percent of disputed Kashmir, accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants. Pakistan, which controls over a third, denies the charge and says it only offers moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmiri separatists.

----

Pakistani Says India Suspect in Abduction
Musharraf Suggests Reporter Was Pawn

By Susan B. Glasser and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48229-2002Feb8?language=printer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 8 -- President Pervez Musharraf said today that Indian intelligence agencies may have had a hand in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, suggesting that the American who disappeared in Karachi last month may have been a pawn in an intelligence "game" being played by Pakistan's enemy.

In his first extensive comments on the Pearl case, Musharraf stopped short of directly blaming India for the abduction but said "it's very much a possibility that it has been done by the Indians, orchestrated by the Indians. That's what we are looking into." Pakistani investigators have recently identified Sheik Omar Saeed, a well-known Islamic radical with ties to militant groups based in Pakistan, as the chief suspect in the kidnapping. Musharraf said "indirect indications" suggest Saeed could have been acting in concert with India.

In an interview with The Washington Post just before leaving on an official visit to the United States, Musharraf lamented the damage done to Pakistan's image by a kidnapping that has brought renewed attention to the question of whether his government can effectively crack down on Islamic extremist groups operating in Pakistan.

"Unfortunately, an incident takes place and you convert this one incident into a sort of a rule, as if all over Pakistan everyone is insecure and nobody should come. It's one sad, unfortunate, regrettable and despicable act," Musharraf said. "I feel so sorry for this Daniel Pearl and his wife -- what a terrible thing. I feel sorry and I feel bad for my country even, because it does create such images, which is not the truth."

India recently dismissed similar allegations of complicity in the Pearl case coming from other officials in Musharraf's military government, including his spokesman. The president today offered no new information to support his statements, which could set off a new round of recriminations between India and Pakistan at a time when tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors are especially high.

Meanwhile, senior Pakistani investigators in Karachi said they had not turned up solid evidence of Indian involvement. "So far the kidnapping seems to be an indigenous plot, unless Omar Sheik appears and confesses to fronting for Indian intelligence," said a senior police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It is ridiculous to expect the kidnapper in Karachi to use the most monitored telephone connection in Karachi to talk to his bosses in New Delhi."

So far, investigators said, the suggestion of an Indian connection revolves around three phone calls to New Delhi placed from the same cell phone that was used to lure Pearl to a restaurant in Karachi on Jan. 23, the last time he was seen in public. Police sources said they have traced the calls, with the help of the FBI, to numbers for an Indian cabinet minister and two members of Parliament. But the sources said they believe those phone calls were made to mislead investigators into concluding that India was involved.

Investigators in Karachi today formally arrested three men suspected of having sent e-mails threatening to kill Pearl. All three are associated with Jaish-i-Muhammad, an Islamic militant group banned by the Pakistani government and included in the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

Since being taken into custody Tuesday, senior police investigators said, two of the three have acknowledged fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and in Kashmir, the volatile Himalayan region claimed by both India and Pakistan. A senior police investigator also revealed today that one of the three, whose first name is Adeel, is a member of the Pakistani police force serving in the Sindh province's police intelligence department.

All three have admitted involvement in sending two e-mails with Pearl's picture to news organizations last week and have identified Saeed as the person behind the kidnapping, the police sources said.

Police have rounded up several of Saeed's relatives in recent days in hopes of pressuring him to release Pearl. Police today also took the unusual step of turning for help to the jailed leader of Jaish-i-Muhammad, Masood Azhar. The sources said they persuaded Azhar to make a call from his prison cell to Saeed requesting Pearl's release. Azhar, the sources said, reached Saeed on a cell phone at an unidentified location in Pakistan but said Saeed denied any involvement in the kidnapping.

Saeed is alleged to have twice staged kidnappings in India in the 1990s designed to coerce Indian officials into agreeing to Azhar's release from an Indian prison. Saeed also wound up in an Indian jail, but in late 1999 he and Azhar were freed in a deal to end the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

In today's interview, Musharraf referred to the two Islamic leaders' time in India when discussing why he believed India might have played a role in the Pearl kidnapping.

Asked how it was possible that men so publicly identified with the fight against India over Kashmir could be secretly working for New Delhi, Musharraf replied: "It does very much make sense to me. It makes sense to me because . . . the leader of Jaish-i-Muhammad was in jail for seven long years in India and he wasn't even tried. . . . How is all this happening in India? And this man [Saeed] was also there."

He added: "We all know intelligence is a very bad game, and they can come out with any kind of game to justify or to organize or orchestrate such kind of activities. These are common activities orchestrated by the intelligence agencies."

But even as he raised the specter of Indian involvement, Musharraf also suggested that "negative fallout" from his vow last month to crack down on Islamic militant groups could have played a role in the kidnapping. And he was critical of Pearl's conduct, suggesting that the 38-year-old reporter had risked too much by pursuing contacts with Pakistan's terrorist underworld.

At the time of his disappearance, Pearl was working on a story about the alleged Pakistani connections of Richard C. Reid, the Briton accused of attempting to blow up an American jetliner with explosives in his sneakers. When Pearl went to the restaurant in Karachi on Jan. 23, he was planning to meet a contact who said he could arrange an interview with a prominent Muslim cleric. Police say they now believe the meeting was a ploy by Saeed and others to trap Pearl.

"According to my information, Mr. Pearl was also trying to get overly involved with people who are maybe dangerous," Musharraf said. "I wonder whether it was because of his overinvolvement that he landed himself into this kind of a problem."

Today's interview with Musharraf at his presidential office here covered a wide range of other topics, including his planned meeting next week with President Bush. Musharraf, one of Bush's key allies in the war in Afghanistan, said he hoped to "reinforce cooperation and friendship between our two countries."

But he also criticized Bush's remarks last week in his State of the Union address that the war on terrorism must now focus on an "axis of evil" that includes two Islamic countries in Pakistan's part of the world: Iran and Iraq. And Musharraf said the extensive U.S. military presence here should end as soon as events in Afghanistan permit.

Saying Bush's remark "evoked a lot of negative response," Musharraf said he would advise the president that "under this present state of turmoil and uncertainty around the world, especially the Islamic world," he should avoid actions that would create "further uncertainty."

Khan reported from Karachi.

-------- israel

Military court convicts three Israeli soldiers

WORLD In Brief
Washington Post
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48658-2002Feb8?language=printer

A military court has convicted three Israeli soldiers of assaulting Palestinians in the first such prosecution since an uprising against Israeli occupation began 16 months ago, military sources said.

------

The Great Game

Uri Avnery
Feb. 9, 2002
From: Joseph Gerson <JGerson@afsc.org>

[Uri Avnery is a leading Israeli journalists who for decades has courageously worked for a just Israeli-Palestinian peace. - jg]

Some weeks ago, something curious happened: Israel discovered that Iran is the Great Satan.

It happened quite suddenly. There was no prior sensational news, no new discovery. As if by the order of a drill-sergeant, the whole Israeli phalanx changed direction. All the politicians, all the generals, all the enlisted media, with the usual complement of professors-for-hire, - all of them discovered overnight that Iran is the immediate, real and terrible danger.

By wondrous coincidence, at exactly the same moment a ship was captured that, allegedly, carried Iranian arms to Arafat. And in Washington Shimon Peres, a man for all seasons and the servant of all masters, accosted every passing diplomat and told him stories about thousands of Iranian missiles that have been given to the Hizbullah. Yes, yes, Hizbullah (included by President Bush in the list of "terrorist organizations") is receiving horrible arms from Iran (included by President Bush in the "Axis of Evil") in order to threaten Israel, the darling of the Congress.

Does this sound mad? Not at all. There is method in this madness.

On the face of it, the matter is easy to explain. America is still in a state of fury after the Twin-Towers outrage. It has won a amazing victory in Afghanistan, hardly sacrificing a single American soldier. Now it stands, furious and drunk with victory, and does not know who to attack next. Iraq? North Korea? Somalia? The Sudan?

President Bush cannot stop now, because such an immense concentration of might cannot be laid off. The more so, as Bin-Laden has not been killed. The economic situation has deteriorated, a giant scandal (Enron) is rocking Washington. The American public should not be left to ponder on this.

So here comes the Israeli leadership and shouts from the roof-tops: Iran is the enemy! Iran must be attacked!

Who has made that decision? When? How? And most importantly - Where? Clearly not in Jerusalem, but in Washington DC. An important component of the US administration has given Israel a sign: Start a massive political offensive in order to pressure the Congress, the media and American public opinion.

Who are these people? And what is their interest? A wider explanation is needed.

The most coveted resource on earth is the giant oil-field in the Caspian Sea region, that competes in scale with the riches of Saudi Arabia. In 2010 it is expected to yield 3.2 billion barrels of crude oil per day, in addition to 4850 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year.

The United States is determined (a) to take possession of it, (b) to eliminate all potential competitors, (c) to safeguard the area politically and militarily, and (d) to clear a way from the oil-fields to the open sea.

This campaign is being led by a group of oil people, to which the Bush family belongs. Together with the arms industry, this group got both George Bush senior and George Bush junior elected. The President is a simple person, his mental world is shallow and his pronouncements are primitive, bordering on caricature, like a second-rate Western. That is good for the masses. But his handlers are very sophisticated people indeed. It's they who guide the administration.

The Twin Towers outrage made their job much easier. Osama Bin Laden did not comprehend that his actions serve American interests. If I were a believer in Conspiracy Theory, I would think that Bin Laden is an American agent. Not being one, I can only wonder at the coincidence.

Bush's "War on Terrorism" constitutes a perfect pretext for the campaign planned by his handlers. Under the cover of this war, America has taken total control over the three small Muslim nations near the oil reserves: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. The whole region is now completely under American political-military domination. All potential competitors - including Russia and China - have been pushed out.

For a long time, the Americans have been arguing among themselves about the best route for piping this oil to the open sea. Routes that may be under Russian influence have been eliminated. The 19th century, deadly British-Russian competition, then called the "Great Game", is still going on between America and Russia.

Until recently, the western route, leading to the Black Sea and Turkey, seemed most feasible, but the Americans did not like it very much, to say the least. Russia is much too near.

The best route leads south, to the Indian Ocean. Iran was not even considered, since it is governed by Islamic fanatics. So there remained the alternative route: from the Caspian Sea, through Afghanistan and the western part of Pakistan (called Beluchistan), to the Indian Ocean. To this end, the Americans conducted, ever so quietly, negotiations with the Taliban regime.

They bore no fruit. Then the "War on Terrorism" was started, the US conquered all of Afghanistan and installed their agents as the new government. The Pakistani dictator, too, was bent to the American will.

If one looks at the map of the big American bases created for the war, one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean.

That would have been the end of the story, but the appetite grows with the eating. The Americans drew two lessons from the Afghani experience: (a) that every country can be subdued by sophisticated bombs, without putting any soldiers in harm's way, and (b) that by military might and money America can install client governments anywhere.

And so a new idea came up in Washington: Why lay a long pipeline around Iran (through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan) if one can lay a much shorter pipeline through Iran itself? One has only to topple the Ayatullah regime and install a new pro-American government. In the past, that seemed impossible. Now, after the Afghani episode, it looks eminently practicable. One has only to prepare American public opinion and to acquire the support of the congress for an attack on Iran.

For this, Israel's good services are needed. It has an enormous influence in the Congress and the media. It works like this: Israeli generals declare every day that Iran is producing weapons of mass-destruction and threatens the Jewish State with a second Holocaust. Sharon announces that the capture of the Iranian arms-ship proves Arafat is a part of the Iranian conspiracy. Peres tells everybody that Iranian missiles threaten the whole world. Every day some newspaper tells its readers that Bin Laden is in Iran or with the Hizbullah in Lebanon.

President Bush knows how to reward those who serve him well. Sharon got a free hand to oppress the Palestinians, imprison Arafat,assassinate militants and enlarge the settlements. It's a simple deal: You deliver the support of the Congress and the media, I deliver the Palestinians on a platter.

This could not happen if America was still in need of allies in Europe and the Arab world. But in Afghanistan, the Americans learned that they don't need anybody anymore. They can spit in the eyes of the pitiful Arab regimes, that are always begging for money, and disregard Europe altogether. Who needs the negligible armies of Britain and Germany, when America alone is mightier then all the armies of the world combined?

The idea of American-Israeli cooperation against Iran is not new for Sharon. On the contrary, in 1981, when he was just appointed Minister of Defense, he offered the Pentagon a daring plan: in the event of Khomeini's demise, the Israeli army would immediately occupy Iran, in order to forestall the Soviet Union. The IDF would turn the country over to the slow-moving Americans, once they arrived. For this purpose, the Pentagon would stockpile in advance the most sophisticated arms in Israel, under American control, to be used in this operation.

The Pentagon did not accept the idea at that time. Now, the cooperation is being established against a different background.

What conclusions should we draw from all this?

First of all, that we shall be located on the frontline of this coming war. Beyond the exchange of curses between the "two Persian Chiefs-of-Staff" (as the joke goes in Israeli command circles, alluding to the fact that Shaul Mofaz was born in Iran), an Iranian reaction to an American assault may hurt us grievously. There are missiles. There are chemical and biological weapons.

Second, that those of us who desire an Israeli-Palestinian peace cannot rely on America. Now everything depends on us alone, the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Our blood is more precious than Caspian Sea oil. At least to us.

----

Arafat? 'Hang him,' Cheney tells Israelis
Official in hot water after revealing remarks by U.S. leaders

February 9, 2002
WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26399

Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin ben Eliezer was forced yesterday to make a formal apology to senior members of the United States government after revealing to the press off-the-cuff comments made by Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in his meetings with them in Washington.

Ben Eliezer told the newspaper Yedioth Aharonot that he was surprised by the tough position senior Bush administration officials, including Cheney, had taken against Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"On the subject, Cheney was more extreme than me," ben Eliezer said. Ben Eliezer also said that when he had discussed Arafat with Rice, she had said that it was a waste of time dealing with him.

Yedioth Aharonot quoted ben Eliezer yesterday as saying: "The vice president told me: 'As far as I am concerned, you can even hang him," with regard to Arafat.

A senior U.S. government official, requesting anonymity, denied Rice or Cheney made the remarks attributed to them by ben Eliezer.

"It's a fantasy," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer of the Arafat quote.

Ben Eliezer said Rice told him there was no point in talking to Arafat any longer. He said similar statements were made by advisers to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"On this subject (of Arafat), Cheney is more extreme than Rehavam Zeevi," said ben Eliezer, referring to Israel's assassinated tourism minister.

The defense minister made personal phone calls of apology to Rice and Cheney. However, Israel's Channel One Television reported yesterday, ben Eliezer did not manage to reach either of the two and spoke only with their aides.

A statement by the defense minister said that he had never attributed such remarks to the vice president.

"I also want to make clear that no White House official told me that it's a waste of time dealing with Arafat," ben Eliezer said, backtracking from his earlier comments.

"There is no difference between what the vice president has said in public or private and what the president said yesterday in the Oval Office concerning our policy on Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority," said White House national security spokesman Sean McCormack in Washington.

President George W. Bush, speaking to reporters after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, "made very clear what he expects of Chairman Arafat, and that is to make a 100-percent effort to end the violence," said McCormack. "The Middle East is too important a region not to stay engaged, and we will remain engaged," the spokesman told reporters.

-------- korea

Defectors say people starve while elite eat

By Joji Sakurai
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 9, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020209-114719.htm

TOKYO - Three North Koreans who fled oppression and famine in their homeland said yesterday that international food aid is not reaching starving individuals and the government is resorting to elaborate schemes to fool U.N. monitors.

The defectors, who are in Tokyo to give testimony at an international conference on human rights in North Korea, said millions of dollars worth of food aid is being stockpiled in mountain military complexes and being used to feed soldiers and the ruling elite.

"Aid hasn't gotten to people in need and it's being redirected to the North Korean military and the people in power," said Lee Young Kuk, a former bodyguard of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

"I know about this because I worked in the security network. It's all a farce," he said during a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan.

Another defector, Lee Jae Kun - a native of South Korea who was trained as a North Korean spy after being abducted by Pyongyang agents - said security officials order villagers to load carts with bags of rice to show U.N. aid monitors.

When the observers leave, the rice is taken away, he said.

"The U.N. is shown lists of what food went where and to whom, but that's all fake," he said.

The defectors, who now live in South Korea, gave a detailed picture of misery in the North: rivers flowing with the bodies of those who starved to death, labor camps where live burials and flayings are common, an atmosphere of paranoia in which relatives denounce each other to the authorities.

Lee Young Kuk said he was sent to the North's harshest political prisoner camp, Yodok, after he was tricked into visiting Pyongyang's embassy in Beijing - thinking it was the South Korean mission - during his first defection attempt.

One inmate accused of stealing salt was tied to a vehicle and dragged for 21/2 miles at high speeds and "became de-skinned," he said in written testimony released yesterday. "We were forced to touch his deformed body, which was tied to a stake to display as an example."

In his comments to reporters he said: "I have watched so many deaths in North Korea I almost lost the concept of human dignity."

The defectors said the flight to freedom contains other horrors.

Jung Choon Hwa said the border between North Korea and China - where defectors flee first before seeking a route to South Korea or elsewhere - is full of human traffickers who sell women into prostitution.

Rapes and beatings are common, she said. But the traffickers are often the only people to turn to as guides.

"The North Korean women must go to the human traffickers because we don't know how to cross the border," she said. "We have to rely on them."

Despite their brutal experiences, the defectors had mixed feelings about President Bush's appraisal of Pyongyang as forming part of an "axis of evil."

"Bush is stepping ahead without looking around," said Lee Jae Kun.

-------- kyrgyzstan

Piece by Piece, Air Force Flies In a Presence
Installation for 3,000 Takes Root at International Airport

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48178-2002Feb8?language=printer

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan -- After scouring Central Asia for a suitable base north of Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force wound up here at Manas International Airport, enamored of its sound infrastructure and long runways.

The downside of base building in Kyrgyzstan only became fully evident one night last month when the temperature dropped to zero and diesel-powered heaters shut down after their fuel turned to gel. The forecast here in Bishkek, Col. Billy Montgomery quipped, "is whatever it was in Moscow three days ago."

Undeterred, Montgomery's team of engineers, technicians and planners is proceeding with a plan to build a 30-acre compound, the equivalent of nearly six city blocks, for 3,000 people that will include a surgical ward, a gym, hot showers and kitchens.

The U.S. military has placed a premium in recent years on being "expeditionary," capable of deploying overseas on a moment's notice, from taking an airfield to building a base. That capability has been tested by the war in Afghanistan, as the Pentagon has moved U.S. forces to bases in Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, three countries with which the Defense Department did not previously enjoy a close relationship.

While security and political concerns complicated the arrival of U.S. forces in Pakistan and Uzbekistan, the ultimate challenge may be building a full-service combat air base in remote Kyrgyzstan, deep in former Soviet territory.

"It's a lot like picking up an Air Force base from the States, putting it in a big case and bringing it over," said Capt. Dennis Scales, a communication specialist busy wiring the base for e-mail.

Permanently basing aircraft here will require a large parts inventory, an emergency fuel bladder capable of containing 2 million pounds of jet fuel, and at least 160 mechanics, including specialists in jet engines. The base also will have logisticians, flight line crews, cooks, police and doctors.

A huge satellite dish has been installed as an uplink for all of the personal computers, servers and telephones necessary for complex air operations. An Internet "morale" tent will soon be online so military personnel can send unlimited e-mail instead of calling home.

The entire compound will be powered by eight to 10 750-kilowatt generators flown in from the United States.

"About two weeks ago at one of our staff meetings I told our men and women what we are doing here is historic," said Brig. Gen. Christopher Kelly, the base commander. "Fourteen years ago, in the middle of my career, this was the heart of the red Soviet empire. You bet it's a little eerie to be here."

And cold. Before last month, Kelly said the most challenging aspect of building the base "has been to try to really determine what should come in next." Then the diesel heaters froze, he said, creating "an additional challenge."

Lt. Col. Rich Houston describes it from the perspective of a tanker pilot turned support services commander who is trying to improve the quality of life for tent city residents. "They live in a tent with 10 other people. If it's 13 degrees outside and your heater goes out, it's 13 degrees in your tent. We try to take the edge off of that," he said.

The base arrives piece by piece in large containers. Some hold tent kits, some modular shower and sink units, some entire kitchens. The Air Force usually uses its own Harvest Falcon and Harvest Eagles kitchen units, depending on the size of the base. But its expeditionary capabilities have been so taxed by the war in Afghanistan that it has had to switch to Army kits, called Force Provider, at Manas.

A Force Provider kitchen designed to feed 550 people, recently assembled, enabled tent city residents to graduate recently from cold MREs -- short for Meal-Ready to Eat -- to what the military calls Unitized Group Rations, or UGRs, which are served hot. There are 10 UGR dinner menus and seven breakfasts. The arrival of Force Provider refrigeration units will enable the kitchen staff to make yet another leap -- from UGRs to fresh foods.

"Our job is to try to bring a little bit of comfort and relaxation to people who are putting in really long days," Houston said.

Capt. Chris Barker, an Air Force contracting officer, was a member of the first four-man team that arrived in Bishkek on Dec. 12, checkbook in hand. He figures he's let 400 to 500 contracts since then, able to negotiate deals for $200,000 or less without approval up the chain of command.

Another early arrival was Tech. Sgt. Doug Austin, a security specialist, who landed Dec. 18 on a C-5 loaded with Humvees and forklifts. He immediately started guarding the giant planes on the tarmac as they unloaded. Since then, 12 C-5s and 15 C-17s laden with cargo have landed.

"I think we all watched the news and wanted to help out," Austin said. "I didn't think Kyrgyzstan was on the list of places we wanted to go. But it's nice to be able to contribute. I just did four years in North Dakota. This is North Dakota with trees."

----

Footprints in Steppes of Central Asia
New Bases Indicate U.S. Presence Will Be Felt After Afghan War

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48200-2002Feb8?language=printer

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan -- In a remote corner of Central Asia in a country that didn't even exist a decade ago, the U.S. Air Force is building a base that within months will be home to 3,000 personnel and nearly two dozen American and allied aircraft.

While the intensity of the war in Afghanistan has slowed, the base going up outside Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, tells a much different story. It embodies what senior U.S. defense officials say is a major commitment to maintain not just air operations over Afghanistan for the foreseeable future but also a robust military presence in the region well after the war.

Just how long the United States plans to remain is anyone's guess. Senior military officials say they have no plans for a permanent American presence. But if the construction here at Manas International Airport is any indication, the Pentagon, rather than searching for an exit strategy for Afghanistan, is focusing on the opposite: establishing a foothold.

"I think it's fair to say there will be a long-term presence here well beyond the end of hostilities," said Air Force Col. Billy Montgomery, commander of a team of engineers, technicians and planners that is proceeding apace with construction of a tent city, surgical ward, gym, hot showers and kitchen facilities at the airport.

Six weeks from now, he said, even a military exchange could be up and running.

The Pentagon's expanded footprint in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia has taken on added urgency as Saudi Arabia expresses unease about the U.S. military presence in the kingdom. It is a sentiment that could force the United States to withdraw from the bases it first occupied in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War 11 years ago, leaving a potentially huge void in the military's ability to operate in the region.

But U.S. officials say the deployment of American forces eastward from the Gulf to the doorstep of China since Sept. 11 also underscores a significant shift in the Bush administration's thinking about the role of the military in projecting American power.

Having come into office expressing concern that the military was being stretched too thin, the administration is now giving the armed forces the ability to conduct anti-terrorist operations on a near-permanent basis across much of the Muslim world. It also is establishing a broader political and security relationship with the republics of Central Asia, a strategic region rich in oil and gas reserves.

"America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the House International Relations Committee on Wednesday.

In addition to Kyrgyzstan, the war has led to basing agreements with Uzbekistan, where about 3,000 Americans are deployed near the Afghan border, and Tajikistan. Discussions are underway with Kazakhstan for use of an airfield there, according to Kassymzhomart Tokaev, the Kazakh foreign minister. The Defense Department also has been using three bases in Pakistan and across the Gulf region, most notably in Oman and Kuwait, which have emerged as major centers of U.S. military operations.

All told, more than 50,000 U.S. military personnel now live and work on ships and bases stretching from Turkey to Oman and eastward to the Manas airport, 19 miles outside of Bishkek and 300 miles from the Chinese border.

"The imperial perimeter is expanding into Central Asia," Thomas Donnelly, deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century, wrote in a recent e-mail circulated among leading military analysts.

Noting the lessons of Bosnia and Kosovo, where the United States still has several thousand troops stationed years after the Balkan wars ended, Donnelly says the Pentagon appears to be moving into Central Asia for the long run. "This commitment strikes me as even greater than the Balkans, in all kinds of ways: farther, nastier neighborhood, closer to China," he wrote. "Setting up shop in Tashkent [the Uzbek capital] and Bishkek is not something I would do without careful consideration."

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz has left little doubt that the United States will maintain a military presence in the region after the war to demonstrate to allies in the anti-terrorism campaign that Washington will reengage its military if terrorists reemerge as a major threat to regional stability. But ultimately, Wolfowitz has said, the bases being built by the Air Force at Manas and by the Army in Uzbekistan "may be more political than actually military."

A one-year Status of Forces agreement negotiated with the Kyrgyz government by the State Department gives the U.S. military broad authority to use the airport for "combat and combat support for operations in support of Operation Enduring Freedom."

Under the agreement, which the Kyrgyz government has said could be extended, the United States pays landing fees and costs. Kyrgyzstan has not been promised any foreign aid, but a U.S. official here said that it would not be unusual if U.S. funding increased substantially in return for permitting the military presence.

"I don't think there's an agreement that says that, but if you look historically at places we've gone into, I think that would be a reasonable assumption," the official said.

Some foreign policy and military analysts contend that maintaining bases in largely Muslim Central and southwestern Asia could backfire by stoking the same kind of resentment that gave rise to Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden after the Gulf War, when the U.S. military remained at bases it created for the campaign against Iraq.

Indeed, at the forefront of the concerns of commanders at the new bases is a terrorist attack. Many point to the lessons learned from the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. airmen.

Capt. Eric Rundquist, who commands a security force of 77 soldiers at Manas that is about to be replaced by a far larger contingent, called Khobar Towers a "watershed event" for the Air Force.

In and around the U.S. compound here, Rundquist uses thermal imaging sensors for surveillance of the tent city, requires stringent identification checks at entrance points to the compound, and has deployed heavy mobile and stationary security around the aircraft. "Seeing a U.S. Air Force aircraft being attacked on the ground is a very strategic event I would just as soon not have to deal with," Rundquist said.

The expanding U.S. deployment into Central Asia is raising eyebrows in Beijing and Moscow, both of which have strategic interests in the region. President Bush plans to visit China next month and Russia this spring.

Russia considers the five former Central Asian Soviet republics to be in its sphere of influence. President Vladimir Putin and Konstantin Totsky, director of Russia's Federal Border Service, have recently said they do not see why the United States should remain in the region after the end of hostilities in Afghanistan.

China, looking to expand its influence, spearheaded creation of a six-nation group of its Central Asian neighbors to fight terrorism and Islamic extremism. Chinese analysts have expressed concern that the United States is seeking to use the war on terrorism to expand its influence in Central Asia and the Pacific.

Mindful of these sensitivities, Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the head of U.S. Central Command who is in charge of the war in Afghanistan, chose to create a coalition base at Manas involving the United States and as many as six allied partners.

The plan is to base six Marine F/A-18s and six French Mirage 2000s here for combat air operations in northern Afghanistan. In addition to the fighters, France and other U.S.-allied nations will base five KC-135 tankers and four C-130 transport planes at Manas that can resupply troops and deliver humanitarian aid in Afghanistan.

The base is already serving as a refueling hub for C-17 transports coming out of Afghanistan, according to Air Force Brig. Gen. Christopher Kelly, commander of the base construction effort.

"It is a way to get air power closer in whatever form that air power needs to be, by being able to project it from a much closer distance than Germany or Kuwait or some of the other places where we're trying to project it from now," Kelly said.

Engineers from Central Command settled on Manas after surveying several other bases in Central Asia. A large former Soviet air base at Kulyab, Tajikistan, less than 100 miles from the Afghan border, was rejected because it was in such poor condition.

Although Manas is 400 miles from Afghanistan, it is a functioning international airport with a long runway originally built for Soviet bombers, navigation aids that are up to commercial standards, good fuel facilities and a large ramp for parking aircraft. Manas also offers abundant space for housing and an ammunition storage depot.

The intent of Franks, according to Lt. Gen. Michael E. Zettler, Air Force deputy chief of staff for installations and logistics, "is to have a base in that part of the world where we can base some forces to help support the war on terrorism. The force structure that we're going to put in there is not fully defined yet, and I think that's pretty reasonable, given that as the war develops and unfolds, if you will, we'll make adjustments."

About 350 military personnel -- mostly from the Air Force -- are here now, but the ranks are expected to grow to 2,000 by March, once the coalition aircraft are based here, and to more than 3,000 by June.

"I don't see anything that we're doing that indicates that we're going to be here for three months," Kelly said. "I see what we're doing and the kind of guidance I'm getting from higher headquarters that indicate that we'll be here for a long period of time. How long, I don't know."

-------- pakistan

Pakistan, U.S. Boost Military Ties

By Munir Ahmad
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, February 9, 2002; 9:58 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49949-2002Feb9?language=printer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP)- Pakistan and United States signed an agreement Saturday to enhance defense cooperation, the government announced here.

The agreement was signed as President Pervez Musharraf was traveling to the United States for a meeting next week with President Bush and other American officials.

Under the agreement, the United States will be able to use Pakistani facilities for joint exercises, training, deployments and other military operations.

The United States would receive food, water, transport facilities, fuel, communications and medical services in support of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The agreement, which provides for reciprocal support in various fields, marks a major step in enhancing military contacts between the two countries. After Pakistan tested nuclear devices in 1998, the United States imposed a variety of sanctions on Pakistan.

Most have been lifted after Pakistan ended its support of the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan and joined the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism.

The agreement was signed by U.S. Maj. Gen., Dennis Jackson, director of logistics for the U.S. Army, and Real Admiral Irfan Ahmad of the Pakistani Ministry of Defense.

Military cooperation is among the topics Musharraf is expected to discuss in Washington. He took power in a 1999 military coup and remains commanding general of the Pakistani armed forces.

The Pakistanis hope to expand cooperation in such areas as military sales and training.

----

Pakistan, U.S. sign defense agreement

By Aamir Shah
2/9/2002
UPI
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=09022002-011132-7639r

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan and the United States on Saturday signed a multimillion-dollar agreement for defense cooperation in logistics support and other services involving Pakistani facilities.

The agreement is a further sign of the increased cooperation between Pakistan and the United States in defense matters, particularly in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

The agreement does not cover military hardware. That subject is expected to be discussed during Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's meeting with President George W. Bush in Washington on Wednesday.

Pakistan is seeking further U.S. assistance to counter India's arms buildup. New Delhi recently signed a defense agreement with Russia.

Under the Pakistan-U.S. agreement signed Saturday, Washington would initially pay around $300 million to $500 million to Pakistan for the logistic support and services it provided to the U.S. forces in the war against terrorism. Further payments are expected for such support and services in the future.

The United States was the largest defense supplier of Pakistan in Cold War era. In 1990 these relations cooled over the issue of Pakistan's nuclear program. In 1998, after Pakistan's nuclear testing, the U.S. government had completely banned military aid to Pakistan, including the supply of spare parts.

Signers of the Pakistan-U.S. Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement on Saturday were Maj. Gen. Dennis Jackson, director of logistics for the U.S. Army, and Rear Adm. Irfan Ahmad, additional secretary in the Pakistan Ministry of Defense.

In other defense matters, the Pakistan Air Force is expected to receive two squadrons of Chinese-made modern multipurpose F-7 MG fighter planes next week, defense sources said. Test flights of the jets were carried out last month, the officials said.

-------- propaganda wars

Journalists Say Russia Meddling at Radio Outlet
State Firm Is Accused Of Trying to Seize Board

By Sharon LaFraniere
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47996-2002Feb8?language=printer

MOSCOW, Feb. 8 -- Three weeks after the state yanked Russia's last independent national news channel off the air, journalists at the country's most influential radio station complained today of underhanded boardroom tactics by a state-controlled shareholder.

Alexei Venediktov, chief editor of Echo Moskvy, said Gazprom-Media, an arm of the state-controlled Gazprom natural gas monopoly, is seizing control of the radio station's board, breaking a verbal promise not to upset the status quo at the pioneering station.

Gazprom engineered a boardroom coup last summer to close down NTV, an independent television network that had been sharply critical of the Kremlin.

"Let them try to squeeze us out," Venediktov said in a telephone interview. "We are not going to take it quietly. We are going to resist."

But Boris Jordan, who heads Gazprom-Media, said the gas giant's subsidiary is only exercising its right as a majority owner to name most of station's directors. He said he had no desire to interfere with Echo Moskvy's management or its editorial content. He added that he knows nothing of any agreement to refrain from changing the station's board.

"The change in the board has nothing to do with changing the management or the editorial policy," Jordan said. "We are very happy with the programming."

The furor over Echo Moskvy is the latest episode in the rough-and-tumble between the Russian government and the media that began when President Vladimir Putin took office. The station, which has a reputation for sober and tough-minded reporting, was part of the media empire that Gazprom seized from a Russian tycoon, Vladimir Gusinsky, after a long battle over Gusinsky's unpaid debts.

Gusinsky now lives in the United States, where he fled what he says is a politically inspired vendetta against him by Russian prosecutors.

Gazprom-Media has controlled 51 percent of Echo Moskvy's shares since last summer. But Echo Moskvy's managers and journalists managed, with Gusinsky, to hold on to six of the nine seats on the board.

Venediktov said he believes Jordan wants more seats for Gazprom-Media in reaction to Venediktov's decision last week to give refuge to 232 journalists from an independent television station, TV-6, that the state shut down last month.

Venediktov said the programs produced by TV-6's journalists -- many of whom once worked at NTV -- cost almost nothing and boosted Echo Moskvy's listeners from 600,000 to 1.3 million in Moscow alone. But he said, "I think they are taking revenge on us for giving them jobs."

Jordan denied there was any connection, saying: "We are very happy that they have invited all the TV-6 people."

The press ministry pulled the plug on TV-6 after a minority shareholder, partly owned by the state, won a court suit alleging that the television channel was unprofitable. TV-6's main owner, Boris Berezovsky, is based in London in order to avoid what he says is a politically inspired criminal investigation.

TV-6's demise provoked little reaction from much of the Russian legislature or the public. In one recent survey, more than half of the Russians polled said they were either perplexed or had no reaction to the station's closure. Nearly 60 percent said they were pleased with the sports shows that the press ministry had substituted for TV-6's programs.

But a conference today attended by Russian journalists, liberal lawmakers and some foreign officials highlighted the alarm that has spread through much of Russia's establishment. Yevgeny Kiselyov, who was general director of both NTV and TV-6, told the participants that free speech has suffered and self-censorship flourished under Putin.

"Fear, a long-forgotten feeling inside us, has appeared," he said.

He cited his own case as an example of the methods at the Kremlin's disposal. In the midst of the struggle over NTV, Kiselyov said, federal prosecutors opened an investigation into his work for a news program that ran five years earlier.

U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow lamented the departure of TV-6, saying "it is hard to understand fully TV-6's closure in solely a business or a financial context."

Richard Wright, head of the European Commission's delegation in Russia, said foreign investors view TV-6's sudden end as a sign that Russia is not a safe place to invest. "What happened with TV-6 will undoubtedly damage Russia's image abroad," he said.

The Kremlin's view is that it supports a free and vibrant media, as long as the owners of media outlets act responsibly and don't try to blackmail the state.

Sergei Yastrzhembsky, a Kremlin spokesman, said today that Russia had suffered from "a bacchanalia of the freedom of speech" when Gusinsky and Berezovsky each controlled a major television network.

"We should have no more problems with that," he said, referring to the two men.

-------- russia / chechnya

[Interesting that the Chechnyans are called "rebels" here. Some Russians are calling them "terrorists." et]

Rebel ambushes leave five Russians dead

Saturday February 9, 8:59 PM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-88687.html

MOSCOW - A spate of rebel ambushes in Russia's breakaway region of Chechnya left five police officers and soldiers dead, the authorities said on Saturday.

Three policemen were killed when a landmine destroyed their vehicle near the village of Gikalo, five km (three miles) south of the regional capital Grozny, Interfax news agency reported.

The blast, which officials said occurred in the past 24 hours, also seriously wounded a fourth officer who was flown to hospital by helicopter.

Separately, two soldiers died in Grozny on Saturday when landmines wrecked their armoured personnel carrier on a main road through the city frequently used by the Russian military.

The surrounding area was cordoned off and house-to-house searches launched, Interfax said, citing sources at military headquarters.

Despite claiming to control the rebel republic, Russian forces remain subject to almost daily sniper attacks and ambushes which have killed more than 3,500 servicemen since Moscow ordered its forces back into Chechnya in October 1999.

----

What U.S. newspapers are saying

Boston Globe
2/9/2002 10:24 AM
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=09022002-095900-6675r

For war crimes and crimes against humanity, there must be a universal standard. Perhaps the most glaring current example of an international failure to uphold a single standard for such crimes is the tactful restraint of the democracies on the subject of Russia's vicious bloodletting in Chechnya.

When the Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic was arraigned before an international tribunal in The Hague for presiding over ethnic cleansing, rape, torture, and mass murders in Bosnia and Kosovo, his trial suggested a norm for the protection of all civilians. The criminal behind the war crimes enjoys no immunity from prosecution because he was a chief of state or a head of government. If double standards are applied to such crimes, then Milosevic's complaint that he is the victim of political persecution may ring true.

Sad to say, Russia's sympathy for Milosevic during his slaughter of civilians in Kosovo forms a fearful symmetry with American and European tolerance of the crimes perpetrated against Chechen civilians by Russian forces under President Vladimir Putin.

Those crimes have continued unchecked since the fall of 1999. The Russian human rights organization Memorial has reported in detail about particular Russian military operations in Chechnya in which large numbers of civilians were taken hostage. Some were used as human shields and then mutilated and murdered. Women were raped and, to the surprise of Memorial, later overcame Chechen cultural constraints and spoke about what was done to them. Other civilians were tortured, robbed, or held for ransom. ...

To its credit, the State Department last month condemned recent Russian operations in Chechnya as ''a continuation of human rights violations,'' citing the ''use of overwhelming force against civilian targets.'' To adhere to a single standard for war crimes, though, the Bush administration should insist that Putin accept international observers in Chechnya who are able to investigate charges of Russian war crimes.

-------- un

[The question isn't raised here, but hopefully will be raised by the United Nations, whether depleted uranium ammunition was used in Afghanistan, as it was in Yugoslavia, Bosnia, and Iraq. See "DU List" at http://prop1.org/nucnews/.]

U.N. plans scrutiny of ravaged Afghan environment

By Joseph B. Verrengia
ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 9, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020209-3670282.htm

As a scarred Afghanistan crawls toward peace, Western scientists plan to examine the desolate landscape, punished by war, drought and more war.

The United Nations is leading the first environmental assessment of Afghanistan in 25 years, a task that will tally damage done to everything from crops and water supplies to endangered animals.

The Geneva-based U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) is still recruiting Western scientists and exiled Afghan researchers willing to take on the risky job. The work won't begin for several weeks.

The environmental review will be the first comprehensive look inside the country since Western scientists last had access in the late 1970s.

It also will be the second such postwar environmental effort led by the United Nations, the first being the 1999 survey of the Balkans after the NATO air campaign. But officials say the Afghan assessment will be a more wide-ranging one.

U.N. officials are negotiating with local warlords and the interim national government to ensure the researchers' safe passage. After a generation of anarchy and five years with little rain, there is almost no firsthand knowledge of environmental conditions. But experts say refugees and videotaped news footage describe a disaster-in-waiting.

"We are ready to go in as soon as there is a green light," said Henrik Slotte of the UNEP. "It is still a very dangerous and difficult place in which to work."

Afghanistan's environment is as complex and untamed as its politics.

To the west, golden sand dunes get less than 3 inches of rain a year. Gale-force winds pummel the city of Herat for 120 days every spring.

To the north and east, the snowcapped Hindu Kush and Pamir mountain belts soar nearly four miles above sea level and flood the central plains with icy spring melts. They rumble with earthquakes and landslides as subterranean continental plates grind in an endless tectonic struggle.

Temperature extremes range from 20 below in the mountains to 120 degrees in the deserts. Lately, war and drought have made conditions unbearable, even by Afghan standards.

Refugees talk of rivers turning to sand, orchards stripped and hillsides eroded, grain fields and pastures gnawed to thorny scrub. Herds of shaggy, black-hooded karakul sheep that provided wool for clothing and carpets were eaten long ago, or have starved.

In the rubble of Kabul, scientific casualties include a gene bank for vital crops, seed banks and collections of native plants, most of the zoo's native species, a dairy research center, and laboratories and archives at the university.

"The groundwork has been laid for an environmental disaster," said University of Massachusetts wildlife biologist Peter Zahler, who has mapped watersheds and done species counts in Central Asia.

"You've got a terribly poor country, and you're doing big damage that will last a long time," he said. "Perhaps even centuries, in some cases."

Nature has been a hidden casualty of war around the world for thousands of years. But the past century of bloody conflicts has been particularly hard on the environment.

Only recently have scientists begun to seriously examine war's effect on ecology.

Six decades after World War II, farmers and road builders in Europe still unearth unexploded bombs. Coral reefs in the Pacific have not yet recovered from amphibious landings.

In Vietnam, U.S. aircraft sprayed 20 million gallons of defoliants to deny cover to communist forces. Thirty years later, the carcinogen dioxin persists. Roughly 1 million people have suffered cancers, birth defects and miscarriages blamed on the spraying.

In tiny Kuwait, Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's messy retreat during the Persian Gulf war necessitated a $700 million cleanup.

The UNEP's 1999 field assessment of the Balkans is the blueprint for what is being planned in Afghanistan.

The damage in Yugoslavia involved more chemical destruction than experts expect to find in Afghanistan. At the destroyed industrial complex near Belgrade, airborne measurements of vinyl chloride, an ingredient used in plastics, were thousands of times over safety limits.

Oil and hundreds of tons of mercury and nitric acid spilled into the Danube river. "Yugoslavia was a highly industrialized country, and we knew there would be major environmental damage," said Mr. Slotte. "[That country] claimed it was nationwide, while NATO claimed the bombing was well-targeted. We found the truth was somewhere in between."

•Forests: Slow-growing woodlands made up just 3 percent of the landscape, and half might be gone now. A timber mafia and merchants have been smuggling wood to neighboring Pakistan. Since 1979, artillery and jets have pounded forests. Refugees have turned to the same woods for survival.

"Imagine 20,000 people wandering around with nothing to eat or burn," Mr. Zahler said. "How long do you think a 400-year-old patch of juniper is going to last?"

•Water: The normal rainfall cycle is two dry years in every five. Some villages haven't seen a soaker since the mid-1990s. Wheat and barley fields are scorched. The water table could take centuries to recharge.

The network of irrigation tunnels, known as karzees, has largely collapsed or been blown up. American aircraft damaged the Kajaki Dam and the hydropower station guarding the Helmand Valley.

Afghanistan's illegal drug trade is based on drought-tolerant poppy fields; officials say irrigation is essential to restoring food crops.

•Wildlife: Landlocked Afghanistan is a melting pot for desert, northern and tropical species. In the late 1990s, desert antelope and gazelle in the Lashkar Gah were indiscriminately hunted. Among endangered species, fewer than 100 snow leopards remain in the mountains. Falcons and other wildlife are smuggled live to wealthy Arab and Pacific Rim customers.

-------

U.N. drops 'Killing Fields' tribunal

By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 9, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020209-90194012.htm

NEW YORK - The United Nations has thrown up its hands and, after more than four years of negotiations, walked away from the creation of a special court to try the perpetrators of Cambodia's "Killing Fields" massacres.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked the U.N. legal department to discontinue its efforts to create a special court, saying a foreign prosecutor and judges could not be bound by Cambodian national law.

"The U.N. concluded that as currently envisaged, the Cambodian court would not guarantee independence, impartiality and objectivity, which is required by the U.N. for it to cooperate with such a court," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

The organization has been working with Phnom Penh since June 1997 to create a special international tribunal that would hear charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated during the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge rule. Executions, overwork, starvation and displacement claimed an estimated 1.7 million lives during the communist revolution and sent countless others over the borders into Thailand and Vietnam.

After years of fruitless discussions with the United Nations, the Cambodian parliament in August passed a law setting up a special national court to prosecute the Khmer Rouge, despite U.N. pleas to wait until a bilateral agreement could be signed.

"It has been the United Nations' consistent position that the organization cannot be bound by a national law," said Hans Corell, the undersecretary-general of the Office of Legal Affairs and a chief negotiator for the Phnom Penh court.

The Cambodian mission to the United Nations was aware of the letter but declined to comment yesterday.

The Cambodian government has long blamed the United Nations for creating unreasonable delays in setting up the court.

"If the U.N. keeps raising this or that problem, this matter will never end," Foreign Minister Hor Nam Hong told Reuters on Jan. 24.

"We want the U.N. to help us try the Khmer Rouge very soon," he said, warning that the former leaders "are so old, they could die before a trial."

Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader known as "Brother No. 1," died in his sleep in 1998 in his hut on the northern border with Thailand, and other high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials have died in similar circumstances.

But despite the pressures of time, the government, which is headed by a former Khmer Rouge member Hun Sen, has remained reluctant to give up control.

"Given the Cambodian government's position in this matter, it is not likely that the parties would resolve it through further negotiations," Mr. Corell said.

"The United Nations has made great efforts to accommodate the concerns of the government, while at the same time protecting the integrity of the chambers and the prosecution."

In June 1997, the organization received a request from Hun Sen and Prince Ranariddh, then co-prime ministers, seeking assistance of the United Nations in bringing to justice persons responsible for the genocide and crimes against humanity during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Mr. Annan appointed an independent group of judicial experts to propose a court that could operate under Cambodian law but still meet international standards of impartiality.

Over the years, U.N. experts visited the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, three times to work out the details. By July 2000, U.N. officials thought they were close to reaching an agreement. But Mr. Corell yesterday noted the "lack of urgency" in the year and a half since.

The failure to create a court for Cambodia stands in contrast to the willingness of the government of Sierra Leone to establish a similar court for its rebel forces, the Revolutionary United Front.

However, the RUF was not able to hold on to power, while Hun Sen and other former Khmer Rouge members are firmly in place in the Cambodian capital.

In the past decade, the United Nations has set up a number of courts to administer justice on a sometimes grand scale.

The U.N. Security Council in 1994 set up tribunals for the Rwandan and Balkan genocide and ordered all nations to comply in efforts to maintain international peace and stability.

The Sierra Leone court is envisioned as a more modest undertaking and will try some two dozen RUF leaders for crimes against humanity. A separate truth and reconciliation commission also will be established to bring closure to a harrowing chapter in that African nation's history.

----

China has Tibetan NGO excluded from Johannesburg summit

Saturday February 9, 10:46 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020209/1/2g6r9.html

Fiercely lobbied by China, UN members voted 93 to 44 to exclude a Tibetan human rights group from the world summit on sustainable development to be held in Johannesburg in August.

The decision was a reversal for the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), which last year scored a diplomatic breakthrough when it was accredited to the UN conference on racism, also held in South Africa.

"The Chinese were determined that should not become a precedent," a diplomat said after two months of lobbying culminated in a vote on a motion effectively denying accreditation to the ICT at Johannesburg.

He noted that when China tried unsuccessfully to bar the ICT from the racism summit in the port city of Durban, the vote was 46-37 in favour of the human rights group.

The huge increase in the number of countries siding with China testified to "an extraordinary campaign," the diplomat said.

China's ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Yingfan, and most of his staff were on hand to ensure there were no last-minute waverers in the vote, which split the UN membership along North-South lines, the diplomat said.

He noted that China submitted a procedural motion not to take action on another motion endorsing the ICT's application, so as not to deter countries which might have refused to vote for a straight ban.

About 2,000 non-governmental organisations have consultative status at the UN, which gives them automatic accreditation at UN conferences, without voting rights, and allows them to lobby conference preparatory committees.

But the commission which decides on who gets such status includes China and other countries with a poor human rights record, and most human rights groups are obliged to apply separately for each conference they wish to attend.

Friday's vote came on the final day of a two-week meeting of the preparatory committee for the Johannesburg summit.

Although the committee is due to meet again twice, its chairman Emil Salim told reporters that the decision was final.

Salim, an Indonesian, refused further comment, saying he accepted the wish of the majority.

But the director of ICT, Bhuchung Tsering, said "today's vote is less a reflection of lack of support for Tibet in the UN than a reflection of China's fierce and powerful lobbying force."

Of its 14 immediate neighbours, only India, which abstained, and Afghanistan, which did not take part, failed to side with China.

Almost every European country, together with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, wanted action on the European Union proposal to accredit the group.

"The fact that 44 of the strongest and most influential democracies voted in support of an issue that China made about Tibet's independence is encouraging," ICT President John Ackerly said.

The US ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, urged member states to vote for the Washington-based group, saying: "we believe that well-established and widely-recognized non-governmental organizations can make useful and positive contributions."

Ackerly said that members of the group planned to attend the Johannesburg conference as members of other non-governmental organisations, adding that "this is quite legal and a common thing for NGOs to do."

He said the summit was "a great place to network" and added that the ICT was likely to take a higher profile in Johannesburg than it would otherwise have done.

----

Cambodia stunned by UN withdrawal of Khmer Rouge trial

Saturday February 9, 2002 AFP 1:34 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020209/1/2g7ro.html

A decision by the United Nations pull out of a planned international trial of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders left Cambodians stunned with disbelief.

Sok An, the Cambodian minister in charge of UN negotiations declined to comment Saturday, saying no official letter had been received by the UN's legal counsel, Hans Corell.

But sources close to the government were bitterly disappointed that the UN had opted out of the trial of the ultra-Maoist leaders blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people during their three-and-a-half year reign.

"It's very surprising and very disappointing, and they made the decision public before notifying the government here," one source told AFP.

One ambassador from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) said the UN and Corell had no right to adopt such a position.

"Cambodia has been steadily climbing the rope of democracy and they would much rather this trial take place on international basis," he said.

"The Cambodian government was very proud of this model and Corell is setting a very bad example. The United Nations is simply a negotiating body and they have no right to do this," he said.

"There were a lot of people involved with getting this going, the United States, Japan, Australia and France, it's very disappointing," he said.

UN negotiations were seen as the final step in staging an international tribunal with a memorandum of understanding to be signed between the UN and Phnom Penh which would outline trial logistics.

Youk Chhang, director of the Independent Documentation Center of Cambodia (D-CAM) criticized the UN and the Cambodian government for failing to provide justice for the victims of the 1975-79 regime.

"I think they failed twice -- in 1979 and now," he said referring to the 1979 Cambodian trial of former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot and his foreign minister Ieng Sary.

Historians sayd that trial -- which sentenced both men to death in absentia -- established moral guilt but was a legal farce.

"The victims had hope that the UN would find justice, but now that hope is fading away," Youk Chhang said. "The UN and the government of Cambodia did not negotiate on legals grounds, it was all political."

Corell said the UN decision meant that any trial of the surviving leaders would lack international legitimacy.

He said legistaltion promulgated by Cambodia on August 10 last year did not guarantee the independence, impartiality and objectivity of a special court which would be set up under Cambodian national law.

"It has been the United Nations' consistent position that the organisation cannot be bound by a national law."

Corell said the decision to break off the negotiations was made by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and did not involve the Security Council.

Trial efforts had focussed on members of the policy body -- the Khmer Rouge Central Committee -- which includes Ta Mok, brother number two Nuon Chea, former prime minister Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Tirith.

Ta Mok, former army chief of staff, and Kang Kek Iue, also known as Duch and who ran the Toul Sleng torture and execution centre are under arrest.

Pol Pot died in April 1998, while the remainder live freely in Cambodia's west.

-------- us

Navy Debuts New Transport Helicopter

By Michelle Morgante
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, February 9, 2002; 12:07 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48789-2002Feb9?language=printer

CORONADO, Calif. -- Sleeker and more powerful than its 1960s-era predecessor, the MH-60S Knighthawk helicopter made its debut Friday as part of the Navy's effort to consolidate its air fleet and improve its combat capability.

Known informally by its model name Sierra, the MH-60S features modern digital display panels to replace the old gauges, and has folding rotors and tail for more efficient storage aboard ships.

The $15 million aircraft also has greater power, fuel capacity, and maneuverability, said Lt. Brian Pummill, who began flying the Knighthawk in June.

"The new one's definitely a Corvette while the old one is like a truck, a hauler," Pummill said.

The Knighthawk Sierra and its sister model, the MH-60R or Romeo, will replace the Navy's current fleet of seven different helicopter models. Its primary missions will be to support carrier battle groups, hauling supplies and personnel. It also will assist with search and rescue operations.

They can also be armed with machine guns and missiles, and use radar and sonar to hunt for submarines and mines.

"It's going to make our force, wherever it is, more lethal and combat capable," said Adm. Vern Clark, chief of Naval operations.

Clark said the Knighthawk, built by Sikorsky with a cockpit designed by Lockheed Martin, is in the testing stage; a schedule for full-scale production has not yet been determined.

During a ceremony before about 400 sailors, officers and guests, two of the new Knighthawks roared overhead with two of the outgoing Sea Hawks.

Training for the Sierra will take place at Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado. Seven Knighthawks are being flown by the station's Helicopter Combat Support Squadron Three, with three more expected to arrive later this month.

----

Alarm bells ring over US overseas military spending

February 9, 2002
By Jim Lobe,
Asia Times
Inter Press Service
http://atimes.com/front/DB09Aa01.html

WASHINGTON - US training of foreign militaries increased steeply during the 1990s and seems poised for rapid expansion in coming months.

The largest increase in defense spending since 1966, proposed to Congress by President George W Bush earlier this week, includes hundreds of million dollars for training programs and joint exercises with militaries overseas, many of which are likely to be kept secret from Congress if the administration has its way.

Bush also asked Congress to increase State Department-funded military aid and training programs by some 13 percent - to about one-fourth of all US foreign aid next year. The increase, which will be funded from money taken mostly from development aid, does not even include the costs of helping build, train, and equip a new national army for Afghanistan, as Bush promised he would do last week. In addition, the Pentagon is proposing funding entirely new anti-terrorist education programs for foreign militaries, including one for US$18 million in Hawaii, discreetly inserted into the 2002 defense bill approved by Congress without debate in December, that will reportedly be used to circumvent a Congressional ban on military training for the Indonesian armed forces.

"It's like the counter-insurgency era all over again," noted one Congressional aide in a reference to the period which culminated in Washington's withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. "Only this time we're going to be fighting 'terrorism' instead of 'communism'," said the aide, whose boss has been skeptical about expanding US military commitments.

In fairness to Bush, the Pentagon had already expanded ties with a record number of foreign militaries under former president Bill Clinton. For example, the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, which is administered by the State Department in the United States, grew more than threefold in just the past eight years - from $22 million in 1994 to $70 million in the current year. Similarly, US Special Operations Forces (SOF) units - the stars of the military campaign in Afghanistan - increased the frequency, range, and number of joint exercises they carried out with foreign forces abroad under the 11-year-old Joint Combined Exercise Training (JCET). In 1992, such exercises included forces from 92 countries; in 1999, the last year for which statistics are available, the number was a record 152, according to a recent study by Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF).

But, with the anti-terrorist war launched after the devastating September 11 attacks, the Bush administration appears determined to take US military training and overseas deployments to an entirely new level. In the wake of the attacks, Washington has offered new counter-terrorism assistance, including training, to a growing list of countries, including some with dubious human-rights records, including Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan - where Washington has already begun building and improving military bases for use in the longer term - as well as Tajikistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Yemen.

The Pentagon is also reportedly cooking up plans for military training in Pakistan, which until the September 11 attacks had been banned from receiving any military aid since 1990.

In addition, US troops have returned in force under the anti-terrorist rubric to the Philippines for the first time since Washington gave up its bases there in 1991. The Pentagon has dispatched some 650 US troops, including more than 150 SOF personnel to the southern Philippines to train Filipino soldiers fighting the Abu Sayyaf, a small rebel band whose ties to al-Qaeda, if any, remain unclear. While officially a "training" mission, armed SOF units will accompany Filipino soldiers in the field. The precise "terms of reference" defining their chain of command remains to be fully agreed upon, according to the latest reports.

SOF units were a key part of US training overseas both in the counter-insurgency period of the 1960s and early 1970s and since 1991 under the JCET program. While some JCET deployments have included civic action, such as landmine clearance, peace-keeping, and health services, their main purpose has been teaching counterinsurgency tactics, including to militaries - such as those of Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Turkey - which were fighting insurgencies at the time that the exercises took place. Some 17,000 foreign troops trained under JCET exercises in 1999, according to the FPIF report.

Under Bush's proposed budget plans, Colombia, which already hosts several hundred US military and intelligence personnel as part of Washington's "drug war", will also receive more training and support. He has asked Congress to approve about some $350 million to train and equip a second anti-drug brigade of 3,000 soldiers in Colombia to add to one trained and equipped over the past two years. In addition, he is asking for $98 million to train and equip a new brigade that will be used to protect Occidental Petroleum Corp's Cano Limon oil pipeline from attacks by left-wing guerrillas. As with other operational training, the package is likely to include US intelligence support.

All of these deployments worry human rights activists, especially those who recall the counterinsurgency era when US forces were not only identified with abusive militaries, but, in some cases, actually taught them many of the tactics that led to some of the periods worst human rights violations.

"Given the pace at which military-to-military relations are being established and ratcheted up in the name of fighting terrorism, it is vital that Congress, the media, and the public reflect on the potential dangers of these commitments," said Lora Lumpe, the FPIF report's author. "If we arm and train abusive forces in the name of fighting terrorism, we are likely to foster, rather than hinder, terrorism," she added.

But even finding about the extent of new US military training commitments and deployments may become increasingly difficult, according to Lumpe, who noted that the administration last year tried hard to kill a Congressionally-mandated annual report on these programs and is expected to try to so again this year. The fact that Washington has committed US forces to combat areas in the Philippines without any Congressional review or consultation marks a troubling precedent, she said.

Reporters here and in the field have also complained about the secrecy surrounding the deployment of SOF units in Afghanistan and, more recently, in Somalia and, according to some reports, in Yemen as well.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

New devices for national security

By Charles Choi and Dee Ann Divis
2/9/2002 2:06 AM
UPI
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=08022002-080636-2547r

WASHINGTON -- Scanners that screen for everything from plastic explosives and biological weapons to deceit on the faces of airline passengers may become tools in securing U.S. borders against terrorism.

Aimed at improving security without slowing down commerce, the new devices will have to contend with the hundreds of millions of people, trucks, shipping containers, airplanes and vehicles that pour over the border every year.

Many of the emerging technologies were supported by Defense Department projects. Among them is face recognition software -- developed with the aid of the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va. -- that eventually could be deployed in the nation's airports. The most widely used facial recognition software today originally was nurtured as a research project at Rockefeller University in New York to aid ONR's neural computation program. The software analyzes the placement and angles of between 12 and 40 facial elements. The arrangement of these elements, like the eyes and nose, remains constant irrespective of the angle from which the face is viewed.

"It captures a face and converts it to a digital code," explained Joseph Atick, president of Visionics in Jersey City, N.J. "You can implement it as checkpoint surveillance in a walkthrough situation or in a physical border -- for instance, requiring drivers to roll down a window of their car as a requirement for entering the country."

A "faceprint" file is only 88 bytes in size, which enables quick cross-referencing.

"In terms of accuracy and being able to handle large databases of photos, it's the best we can do right now," said neural computing program officer Thomas McKenna of ONR, which sponsored the technology.

There are other types of scanners that use such unique physical information -- called biometrics -- to match individual identities.

Retinal scanners map the unique pattern of blood vessels in the retina with a low-energy laser. Iris recognition technology analyzes the colored ring in the eyeball. Like fingerprints, no two retinal blood vessel patterns or irises are alike. Such scanners, when used with databases of retinal or iris prints, have the potential to keep known terrorists and criminals out.

Legislation now under consideration in Congress would mandate that biometrics be used on key travel documents, particularly visas and some passports. Sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., bill S. 1749 would mandate the Department of State begin issuing "tamper-resistant, machine-readable" travel documents with biometric identifiers. The bill also requires aliens entering from countries that have a visa waiver program with the United States to have passports with "standardized biometric identifiers."

Biometric data also has been suggested for inclusion in a national identification card. These cards, perhaps replacing existing driver's licenses, could be used as a form of identification -- for example, when boarding an airplane.

Though there are many variations on this more controversial proposal, the fundamental idea is to have a "smart card," perhaps similar in appearance to a credit card, with a magnetic strip or computer chip that contained key data. Biometrics and other measures, such as an imbedded hologram, would make the cards difficult to counterfeit, say proponents.

Some advocates want to see the card used for commercial transactions as well, just like a credit card.

"The potential is endless and the amount of information that can be stored on the cards is virtually unlimited," explained a spokesman for EDS, a leading supplier of smart cards. "Basically it has a computer ship and you can store any type of information in there -- whether it's biometric information, fingerprints or facial structure. You can even go so far as putting DNA coding on there. It would all depend on what types of information the individual client wanted on the card."

To make the cards viable though, they need to be standardized, say proponents. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is working on legislation to form a biometric technology clearinghouse that might move the process forward.

The organization "would bring together a number of the different agencies that are involved in this in a public private partnership to develop the best possible biometric information to be used on information cards," said a Feinstein spokesman.

"The idea is to have a public private organization so that we can take advantage of what is out there in the private sector," the spokesman told United Press International.

Data from smart cards might someday find its way into yet another system proposed to improve flight security. This system, being suggested by private companies to the government, would use current fraud detection software to try to identify travelers that might have terrorist intent.

HCN Software, leader of one of at least two teams working on the idea, uses software with artificial intelligence algorithms to detect patterns of out-of-synch buying behavior. They collect data from a wide array of banks, combine it with other data like addresses and search for patterns experience has shown indicate possible credit card fraud. The same approach of searching for unusual, risk-indicative patterns, they say, can find possible terrorists.

"We will take reservations data, and apply these algorithms to score them for risk that a passenger is intending to commit a terrorist act," Joseph Sirosh, HNC executive director of research and development told UPI. "If the score is high (the passenger) will be put into a category that is directed to security people for closer screening. This will be screening at the airport ... before the passenger boards the aircraft."

The software would sift reservation information plus publicly available data like addresses and phone numbers -- possibly adding credit card purchases and other restricted information if permission is granted. It could rate the risk of a particular passenger in a matter of seconds of a ticket purchase, said Sirosh -- well in advance of the

flight leaving. Because only computers, and not investigators process the data, privacy is protected, he said.

The neural-network system also actually learns as it operates.

"As they see more and more data (the systems) improve themselves on a constant basis and identify what is abnormal and what is normal and clearly learn to separate the two," explained Sirosh.

The system should be ready for demonstration six to eight months and could be in place at airports in as little as a year thereafter if the government and other interested parties agree. It is not clear yet who would actually operate the system or how much it would cost.

"The Government wants a lot of control," Sirosh noted.

The initial data on terrorism behavior for the HCN system will come from a clinical psychologist who worked on counter-terrorism efforts with the government in the late '80s. Accenture, the other firm reportedly developing such a system, declined comment for this report for security reasons.

Though these measures may aid in the identification of terrorists, they do little to stop bombs or suitcases concealing bioweapons.

Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington are working on low frequency radio wave pulse generators that swiftly and safely detect explosives concealed in luggage, mailboxes or on people. The radio waves momentarily disturb the alignment of atomic nuclei, causing them to emit unique weak radio signals. Sensor coils then detect these signals, which computers analyze to determine the type of material found.

"They've installed the scanners in a small number of airports now," ONR's Audrey Haar told UPI, regarding information she received from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The Defense Department also is looking through more than 12,000 different proposals for new counter-terrorist technologies. The proposals arrived in response to a Pentagon request made in October for new ideas.

"We have them from all sorts of companies, large and small, as well as from individuals and educational institutions," said Maj. Michael Halvig of the U.S. Air Force. "We're not putting a definitive time on when the review process is finished yet ... it will take months probably, one or two, but maybe three or four."

Among these proposals is an acoustic scanner for explosives and radioactive material. The company submitting the idea, Eurotech Ltd., of Fairfax, Va., already has demonstrated the technology for government contractors and U.S. Air Force personnel. The device would screen large volumes of cargo and luggage using sound waves to detect the unique acoustic fingerprints of various materials and help monitor shipping containers from planes, trains, buses and ships.

"This can scan moving objects, such as a truck passing through a weigh station security point," said Don Hahnfeldt, president of Eurotech. "This can also be retrofitted to work with current technologies as well, such as metal detectors at airports."

In several years, thermal sensors also may help detect lies and biological or chemical weapons. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and Honeywell Laboratories in Minneapolis are working with DOD to develop an infrared camera that monitors flashes of heat that develop around the eyes whenever a person lies.

"This kind of technology really is a screening tool that goes along with many other security tools to identify individuals at risk of committing acts of terrorism," said lead researcher James Levine of the Mayo Clinic. The scientists believe the camera may find use at airports and border checkpoints within the next two years.

Researchers at the University of Delaware in Newark are working on a thermal camera-on-a-chip that would be thousands of times faster at identifying possible chemical weapons than existing laboratory-scale infrared sensors. The camera would detect the unique infrared signature given off by every chemical. Because the chip has no moving parts, it would be rugged enough to be deployed in the field to detect airborne or container-bound biological or chemical warfare agents.

"Right now, the camera for this system cost $40,000, and it has a limited range," said analytical chemist Doug Elmore of the University of Delaware. "It sounds like a lot of money, but the camera that we're using probably cost over $1 million 10 years ago. There's good reason to expect the price to go down considerably in coming years."

Installing new technologies and expecting them to analyze every person and container moving through the 301 ports of entry into the United States will prove a challenge, however.

"In fiscal year 2001, 11,186,909 trucks were processed entering the country through both borders; 214,610 vessels; 2,257,608 rail cars; and 5,709,974 sea containers. So that gives you an idea of the volume," said U.S. Customs Service officer Jim Michie.

"It's a task that's going to take a great deal of planning and a great deal of cooperation between this country and Canada as well as Mexico."

----

Senate appears ready to toughen border laws

By August Gribbin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 9, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020209-5396850.htm

The Senate is about to debate a bill that creates tough hurdles for immigrants and visitors seeking to enter the United States, yet few oppose it, and that's atypical.

Immigration legislation is usually contentious and avoided whenever possible because business and ethnic interests "benefit from illegal immigration," and there are "deep divisions" over existing policy, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

"Congress has generally been unwilling to deal with immigration matters," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican.

"What's different now is that is that we didn't have September 11 before," says Angela Kelley, deputy director of the pro-immigration National Immigration Forum.

She echoes the sentiments of many on both sides of the immigration debates when she adds: "The stakes have never been higher than they are now. The threat of illegal Mexican immigration is laughable compared to what we face. The public is demanding that Congress make good."

The current measure, which creates barriers for undocumented visitors as well as terrorists, is called the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2001. It was introduced by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, a proponent of liberal immigration policies, and is co-sponsored by conservative Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, who, his spokesman says, "rarely agrees with Mr. Kennedy about anything."

The proposed legislation covers a huge range of security issues. It deals with information systems, intelligence gathering, visa processing in consulates, staffing at border crossings and more. And many of the bill's provisions concern matters Congress has acted on in recent years but didn't really push.

For instance, Congress told the Immigration and Naturalization Service to increase border control staffing, especially on the northern border. That didn't happen.

And Congress ordered the INS to track the comings and goings of the roughly 29 million foreigners who annually enter the country on temporary visas and to locate the 11 million who do not go home. That didn't happen either. Congress scrapped the program in 2000, four years after it was mandated.

By all accounts, making good in this instance will require a giant effort and lots of money, much of which is proposed in President Bush's homeland security budget. For example, the proposed legislation would:

•Require the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, the INS and its parent, the Department of Justice, to develop a "data system" with "name-matching capacity" that contains individual identifications, plus intelligence information and criminal records. The database would be used to screen people seeking U.S. visas or applying to immigrate.

•Increase the number of Border Patrol officers and raise their pay. It would ensure that Border Patrol and customs agents receive "essential training and cross-training" and learn to use newly authorized high-tech equipment.

•Provide $150 million to the INS to develop and improve the high-tech sensors and other gadgetry used to spot border crossers in remote areas.

•Specify that there must be background checks on aliens seeking admission to the United States from any country designated as a "state sponsor of terrorism." The countries currently designated as terrorism sponsors are Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

•Require the attorney general and secretary of state to issue machine-readable, tamper-resistant entry and exit documents with biometric identifiers. The bill demands that countries participating in the visa-waiver program issue passports with those characteristics. Biometric identifiers are parts of the anatomy, such as fingers, the retina or the face that present unique patterns. The visa-waiver program allows people from Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom and 26 other countries to enter the country for 90-day visits without visas.

•Order that commercial airlines provide specified information about all passengers and crew members before arrival and departure from the United States. The bill provides U.S. inspectors with added time to clear aircraft by removing a 45-minute deadline for making security checks.

Government consultant James R. Edwards, co-author of "Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform," has been tracking the progress of the Kennedy-Kyl bill. He says it is likely to pass because "no one is opposed to it."

"We've lived for years with lax enforcement of immigration regulations as legislators turned a blind eye regarding border security. But September 11 really has caused political conversions," he said.

----

Rumsfeld assails POW critics

By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 9, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020209-100177.htm

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fired back yesterday at critics of President Bush's decision to deny prisoner-of-war status to Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners, describing a continuing outcry as "international hyperventilation."

The State Department, meanwhile, clarified Mr. Bush's decision to apply the Geneva Conventions to Taliban, but not al Qaeda, prisoners, declaring that none of the detainees would receive hearings under the conventions to determine their status.

The president on Thursday reversed an earlier determination that neither Taliban nor al Qaeda prisoners were covered by the Geneva Conventions. However, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and human rights groups renewed their criticism yesterday, saying the decision did not go far enough.

Mr. Rumsfeld, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, said the 186 detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba were being well-treated, regardless of their status.

"Notwithstanding the isolated pockets of international hyperventilation, we do not treat the detainees in any manner other than a manner that is humane," he said.

Officials in Britain, Germany and elsewhere have repeatedly expressed misgivings about the treatment of the detainees, who were photographed while kneeling, wearing masks and in shackles.

Mr. Rumsfeld attacked the press for "misrepresentation" of the photos of the detainees arriving in Cuba and for suggesting that torture could have been used against them.

"The newspaper headlines that yelled, 'Torture! What's next? Electrodes?' and all of this rubbish was so inexcusable that it does make one wonder why we put out any photographs, if that's the way they're going to be treated, so irresponsibly," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Despite a determination that the detainees are not prisoners of war, they will continue to be treated humanely and "receive three appropriate meals a day, medical care, clothing, showers, visits from chaplains, Muslim chaplains as appropriate, and the opportunity to worship freely," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

"We will continue to allow the ICRC to visit each detainee privately, a right that's normally only accorded to individuals who qualify as prisoners of war under the [Third Geneva] Convention."

In his announcement Thursday, Mr. Bush said the Geneva Conventions would be applied to Taliban fighters but not to members of al Qaeda, who are trained for terrorism, fought without uniforms, hid among civilians and participated in or planned attacks on civilians in other countries.

The conventions require that, where there is doubt about a prisoner's status, he should receive a hearing before a "competent tribunal" to determine whether he should be treated as a prisoner of war.

But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday that not even the Taliban prisoners will receive such hearings.

"All these people have been screened several times before they were taken and after they were taken to Guantanamo, and we don't think there's any doubt in these cases," he said.

The ICRC, which monitors compliance with the Geneva Conventions, criticized that position in a formal statement last night.

"There are divergent views between the United States and the ICRC on the procedures which apply on how to determine that the persons detained are not entitled to prisoner of war status," the statement said.

It noted that declaring the detainees prisoners of war would not preclude the United States from prosecuting those prisoners "suspected of having comitted war crimes or any other criminal offense prior to or during the hostilities."

Mr. Bush's decision also was criticized by the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, an international nongovernmental organization that works to support international law that advances human rights.

"The decision by President Bush to apply the Third Geneva Convention to the conflict in Afghanistan, but deny prisoner of war status to Guantanamo Bay detainees is incorrect in law," it said in a statement.

Amnesty International also called for a tribunal to rule on the status of the prisoners, and France said it disagreed with the decision that the Geneva Conventions would not be applied to al Qaeda prisoners.

----

US denial of POW status to Afghan fighters provokes outcry

Saturday February 9, 2002 2:39 AM
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020208/1/2g442.html

President George W. Bush's decision to deny Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters prisoner of war status prompted an outcry as the International Committee of the Red Cross, jurists and campaigners said the decision could only be taken by a court.

Bush announced late on Thursday that the 1949 Geneva Conventions would apply to captured Taliban detainees taken from Afghanistan to a US military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, but not to al-Qaeda fighters.

However, Washington said that neither group would be accorded POW status.

"Anybody captured in a context of an international conflict... is covered by the Third Geneva Convention and therefore is presumed to be a prisoner of war unless a competent tribunal decides otherwise," a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

The ICRC is the internationally-recognised guarantor of the Conventions.

Spokesman Kim Gordon-Bates said the Geneva-based ICRC welcomed all efforts to ensure that war criminals do not benefit from impunity but stressed that a judicial procedure must be followed.

"One doesn't shelter people behind statutes, conventions, you insist on the process to be followed," Gordon-Bates said, adding that no-one was outside the law.

He said the ICRC "had, on first sight, no problem with the fact that some people are refused" the status of POW by a tribunal but said the decisions should be taken on a "case by case" basis.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters the Taliban were ineligible for POW status under the convention because they had not effectively distinguished themselves from the civilian population and had shunned "the laws and customs of war."

The US decision was also criticised by the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, an international non-governmental organisation that works to support international law that advances human rights.

"The decision by president Bush to apply the Third Geneva Convention to the conflict in Afghanistan but deny prisoner of war status to Guantanamo Bay detainees is incorrect in law," it said in a statement.

"President Bush has said this Convention is applicable. That application cannot be selective or partial," ICJ said highlighting the contents of a letter sent to US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The ICJ said captured Taliban fighters were entitled to POW status as members of armed forces, irrespective of non-recognition of the Taliban authorities as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

"That same status may or may not be extended to al-Qaeda fighters but must be determined by a competent tribunal," it added.

The ICRC said that it was awaiting the formal written statement from the White House to weigh the full legal implications of the decision.

The United States' handling of what it originally termed "illegal combatants" has come in for international criticism. New arrivals at the detention centre on Thursday brought their number to 186.

But another 269 prisoners are being detained by the US military in Afghanistan.

Under the Third Geneva Convention, prisoners of war are not bound to answer questions beyond their name, rank, date of birth and serial number, the ICJ pointed out.

But the organisation added that nothing in the same Convention would prevent US authorities from interrogating and prosecuting detainees in Guantanamo Bay for any alleged actions that amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.

----

Agency Differs With U.S. Over P.O.W.'s

New York Times
February 9, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/09/international/asia/09DETA.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - The International Committee of the Red Cross said today that its views were "divergent" with those of the United States on how to decide whether to grant prisoner of war status to the captives from Afghanistan. The committee said it intended to discuss the matter with the United States.

The statement, from the committee's Geneva headquarters tonight, was unusual for its public acknowledgment of a difference with the United States. It came as the Bush administration defended its decision to apply the Geneva Convention to captives from the Taliban but not Al Qaeda and to deny prisoner of war status to both. The United States is holding 186 captives in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and 271 in Afghanistan.

The statement from the committee, the guardian of the Geneva Conventions, said: "There are divergent views between the United States and the I.C.R.C. on the procedures which apply on how to determine that the persons detained are not entitled to prisoner of war status."

Kim Gordon-Bates, a spokesman for the committee, said in a telephone interview that when there is doubt about a person's status, "anybody captured in an international conflict is presumed to be a prisoner of war unless a competent tribunal decides otherwise."

-------- death penalty

Va. Moves To Limit Executions
Senate Approves Shielding Retarded

By Lisa Rein and Brooke A. Masters
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48211-2002Feb8?language=printer

RICHMOND, Feb. 8 -- The Virginia Senate voted unanimously today to bar the execution of mentally retarded people convicted of capital crimes, a highly unusual step for a state legislature that since the 1970s has consistently expanded the reach of the death penalty.

By shielding a mentally retarded person, Virginia would join 18 states, including Maryland, that bar such executions. Twelve states do not have capital punishment.

"There's a growing awareness of the basic humanity of not subjecting these people to the death penalty," said Sen. John S. Edwards (D-Roanoke), a former U.S. attorney and patron of Senate Bill 497.

The House Courts of Justice Committee, which was considering a House version of the bill -- HB 957, introduced by Del. James F. Almand (D-Arlington) -- decided late tonight to delay action on the measure until a death penalty case scheduled to be heard this month by the U.S. Supreme Court is decided.

But House members have expressed support for such a law, and delegates will consider the Senate version before the General Assembly adjourns March 9.

The legislation comes at a crucial time in the debate over executing the mentally retarded, defined by Edwards's bill as people with an IQ lower than 70 who are limited in key life skills. On Feb. 20, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a Virginia inmate's argument that such executions violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The high court last took up the issue in 1989, ruling that community standards did not ban capital punishment for the retarded, because at the time only two states prohibited such executions.

The change since then "is absolutely remarkable," said Wayne Smith, director of the Washington-based Justice Project, which lobbies for changes in capital punishment laws.

Legal experts said it is not clear what the Supreme Court will do with the Virginia case of Daryl R. Atkins if the bill becomes law. Last summer, the high court dropped a North Carolina case that it was going to use to decide the issue, because that state banned execution of the retarded.

But Virginia's legislation would not take effect until next year, well after the high court is expected to rule on the Atkins case. Senators said today that even if the court upholds the death penalty for the retarded, it is time Virginia set its own moral standard.

"There's virtually no support among the population for imposing the death penalty on the retarded, and our laws should reflect that feeling," said Sen. William C. Mims (R-Loudoun), who, like Edwards, supports capital punishment.

The Senate bill would allow a judge to decide whether a defendant meets the definition of mentally retarded. Once the law took effect, an inmate already on death row would have 120 days to petition a judge to reverse the sentence.

Since capital punishment was restored in 1976, Virginia has executed at least one person with an IQ below 70. There is one inmate on death row now besides Atkins, William Burns, with an IQ below 70.

The office of Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore (R), which had not lobbied extensively on the issue, has now come out strongly against the bill's definition of "mentally retarded."

"The attorney general opposes executing the mentally retarded. . . . But setting an arbitrary IQ number does not do that," said Tim Murtaugh, Kilgore's spokesman. "Atkins knew fully well what he was doing. Simply because he has a low IQ number does not change that."

Ellen Qualls, spokeswoman for Gov. Mark R. Warner (D), said the governor "is opposed to executing the retarded" but is not sure the Senate's approach is the "right vehicle."

House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith (R-Salem) and several other conservatives on the House Courts of Justice Committee said they still had concerns that some people who would be defined as retarded under the proposal might deserve to be executed.

Also today, the House gave preliminary approval to bills to restrict abortions by requiring minors to receive a parent's consent and making it a crime to partially deliver a fetus for the purpose of killing it. Final votes are set for Saturday.

Del. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun), sponsor of the parental consent bill, HB 601, called abortion "the only significant medical procedure which does not require the consent of a parent."

Delegates briefly debated HB 1154, which attempts to restrict the procedure opponents refer to as a "partial-birth abortion." The General Assembly passed a ban on such abortions in 1998, but a year later, a federal court in Alexandria struck it down, because it did not provide an exception to protect the health of the woman.

The bill's sponsor, Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William), successfully introduced an amendment on the floor today to narrowly restrict that health exemption to include a threat only to the woman's life or of "serious bodily injury."

Warner has said he would oppose efforts to further restrict abortion rights, with the exception of a late-term ban.

In other action, the Senate voted 37 to 3 for a bill that would establish an offense of aggressive driving for drivers who weave, tailgate or otherwise drive dangerously with an intent to harass or intimidate others. SB 522, sponsored by Mims, would make aggressive driving a misdemeanor.

The House also voted 52 to 46 to allow public schools to post the Ten Commandments and excerpts from historical documents. That bill will go to the Senate.

Both chambers gave final approval to bills to allow Virginia to prosecute someone for raping a spouse, even if the couple are living together and the victim is not physically harmed. The change is contained in bills that would broaden laws against domestic violence.

Staff writer Michael D. Shear contributed to this report.


-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Settlement reins in Forest Service

2/8/2002
UPI
Reported by Joe Grossman in Santa Cruz, Calif.)
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=08022002-073724-3874r

MISSOULA, Mont. -- In a major victory for environmental groups, the U.S. Forest Service agreed to slash the size of a timber sale in Bitterroot National Forest after a court-ordered mediation process.

The Forest Service had planned to proceed without allowing for the public appeals process required by law for timber sales. Federal Judge Donald Malloy rejected the plan, issued a preliminary injunction and ordered court-supervised mediation.

Following forest fires in 1.6 million acre Bitterroot in the summer of 2000, the Forest Service proposed a salvage sale of about 200 million board feet on 80,000 acres in burned areas that would have been among the largest sales in the nation's history.

After public hearings and scientific testimony, the Forest Service reduced the proposed sale to 175 million board feet on 41,000 acres. But at that point, Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey said there would be no appeals process.

The environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service.

The agreement reached Thursday under the supervision of federal Judge Michael Hogan reduced the sale to 55 million board feet on 14,000 acres. One key issue was the preservation of 17,000 acres designated roadless. Almost all of those acres will be protected under the agreement. The deal also saves habitat crucial for bull trout and cutthroat trout.

Friends of the Bitterroot, The Ecology Center, Center for Biological Diversity, and Sierra Club had joined to protest the proposed logging. As part of the mediation process, Rey and Forest Service chief Dale Bosworth were ordered to attend the sessions.

The Forest Service has held open the possibility it may attempt to promote timber sales on some of the areas excluded by the decision. Deputy forester for the Forest Service's northern region, Kathy McAllister, said, "Bitterroot recovery projects that will not be implemented under the agreement may be considered later, following new Environmental Policy Act evaluation."

Forest Service said officials have said the agency views the salvage process as restorative.

"All along we have felt that restoring the resources and communities of the Bitterroot was the primary concern," McAllister said. "We are extremely satisfied that restoration activities will proceed."

The Forest Service view is not held by the groups that brought the suit. Sierra Club president Jennifer Ferenstein told United Press International: "An area that has been burned is even more fragile and sensitive. Because soils are exposed they are much more likely to erode and go into fish bearing streams. From a wildlife perspective, the most valuable trees are the large trees left standing after a fire."

The need to build roads for logging trucks also would cause further erosion and the Sierra Club has generally been opposed to logging on burned land, she said.

Ferenstein was critical of Rey.

"Mark Rey comes from a background of the timber industry ... Now he's in a position of power and he wanted to test the waters and see whether or not he could put forward massive, massive projects without public participation," she said.

Tim Preso of Earthjustice, the attorney who represented American Wildlands, Pacific Rivers Council and The Wilderness Society, said: "This agreement demonstrates that when the public is provided with an opportunity to express its concerns to the Forest Service we can find a solution that's good for the forest."

Representatives from several groups admitted the logging allowed under the settlement would damage some wildlands and admitted the deal, though welcome, was not perfect.

"This does not zero-out damage from salvage logging to the forest. We have crafted a project that is lighter on the land, more sensitive to fragile burned forests, and allows larger portions of the landscape to recover on their own," said Rob Ament of American Wildlands.

"At least we spared the most important unroaded areas and important trout streams, for now," said Jon Rhodes of the Center for Biological Diversity.

----

Llama dung may help clean polluted water

2/9/2002
UPI
Reported by Charles Choi in New York.
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=06022002-121852-5898r

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, England, -- British researchers say llama droppings may soon help villagers in the Andes fight water pollution from silver and tin mines.

The scientists say their time-tested method, already in use in England with horse and cow manure, can empower small, local groups to create "bioreactors" from bacteria in the dung to purify the extremely acidic water from abandoned mines.

"We're doing this to try and give help to people who would otherwise be stuck with an environmental nightmare," said lead researcher Paul Younger, a hydrogeochemical engineer at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. "We're hoping this will help provide low-cost solutions that can really empower local communities to take the environment into their own hands."

The bioreactors are simply ponds that contain limestone gravel buried under a layer of compost with manure in it. Bacteria living in the bioreactors use dissolved sulphate -- which is always found in mine water in abundance -- as an energy source, much the same way humans use oxygen.

This microbial activity produces sulphide molecules that trap and precipitate out dissolved metals. The limestone helps the bacteria neutralize the acidic mine water while the compost serves as the bacteria's food source.

The bioreactor technique developed by Younger was originally designed to help former coal and iron mining communities in northeast England. It has proven so successful that the researchers are now trying to customize it for similar problems in other countries -- in this case, Bolivia.

"From the day I took up my first university post," Younger explained, "I instinctively sought opportunities to place my technological insights and skills at the disposal of grass roots organizations and individuals who are striving to take control of their own destinies, to the long-term benefit of the ecosystems on which we all ultimately depend."

Damage from an abandoned mine named Mina Milluni in the Andes is seriously polluting the main water supply of Bolivia's capital, La Paz. Mina Milluni closed abruptly in 1985 as a consequence of the global slump in tin prices which occurred that year.

"The former mining company has neither the financial resources nor the legal responsibility to remediate the polluted drainage," Younger said. "The problem will continue indefinitely unless some local champions decide to find solutions of their own."

While the city's waterworks efficiently cleans the water, some of it is used untreated by impoverished local residents for domestic and agricultural purposes. Younger is working with Bolivian engineers to see if bioreactors can help, but the natural obstacles are considerable. The mine lies well above sea level, so at night temperatures dip below freezing for much of the year, impairing water flow into the bioreactors.

Bioreactors in Britain also depend on cows or horses for manure, animals that do not do well in the thin air of the Andes.

However, any herbivorous mammal appears to do the trick, and llama droppings do just as well than cow manure, if not better, Younger told UPI.

The researchers experimented with four small llama-based bioreactors for a five-month period in 2000. A continuous flow of acid drainage was filtered through the tanks between June and November, the coldest time of the year in the Bolivian Andes.

The findings from the experiment were extremely encouraging, Younger said. The bacteria generate enough heat to counteract freezing, and the llama droppings promoted bacterial activity as hoped, making the water significantly less acid. The water entering the bioreactors was roughly as acidic as vinegar, or pH 3.2, and upon leaving was about pH 6.3, less acidic than rainwater.

"That's good -- that's exactly what you hope to hear," said Bob Kleinmann, director of the environmental science and technology division for the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh. "That gives hope for the system."

Younger and his colleagues are trying to find funding to support the Bolivian engineers to develop larger bioreactors.

-------- health

FDA Warns of Potent Drugs Found in 2 Herbal Products

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48086-2002Feb8?language=printer

Federal health officials warned consumers yesterday to immediately stop using two herbal treatments for the prostate and the immune system after California state investigators found that the products contained powerful prescription drugs.

One of the products, PC SPES, has been the subject of articles in authoritative medical journals because of its possible effectiveness as a treatment for prostate cancer. Investigators from the California Department of Health Services' Food and Drug Branch found that PC SPES had been contaminated with warfarin, a prescription anti-coagulant known by the trade name Coumadin. The second product, SPES, is a herbal treatment for bolstering the immune system. State investigators found that SPES had been contaminated with alprazolam, a habit-forming prescription tranquilizer sold under the trade name Xanax.

The Food and Drug Administration posted the California state warning on its Medwatch Web site to alert consumers and has opened an investigation into the two products, both made by BotanicLab Inc. of Brea, Calif.

"At this point, this issue is actively under investigation," said Victor Raczkowski, acting director of the FDA's Division of Gastrointestinal and Coagulation Drug Products. "What we're doing is to warn consumers not to consume either product."

BotanicLab spokesman John Sonego said the company has voluntarily issued a national recall on both products. It recalled SPES on Jan. 28 after independent tests confirmed the presence of alprazolam. "We believe the contamination occurred with one of our suppliers in China," Sonego said. "We are taking the necessary steps to resolve the problem."

Sonego said, however, that the warfarin in PC SPES is "an entirely different matter," in that independent tests paid for by the company found a naturally occurring blood thinner, known as phyto coumarin, in the supplement. He suggested that coumarin may have mimicked warfarin in the state's investigation, but that the company decided to issue a recall anyway.

State food and drug scientist Ray Wilson said officials began investigating BotanicLab after "receiving reports" that PC SPES contained diethylstilbestrol, or DES, a synthetic estrogen. Estrogenic drugs are commonly used in the treatment of prostate cancer.

BotanicLab denies that PC SPES is contaminated with DES, and California health officials did not find any during their investigation, nor did the FDA in earlier testing. But the California team did find warfarin and alprazolam in the two supplements, Wilson said.

On Thursday, lawyers filed national class action lawsuits in Los Angeles on behalf of three California prostate cancer patients, charging that BotanicLab systematically adulterated its products with prescription drugs to enhance their effects.

-------- imf / world bank / wto / economics

The Panic Spreads

Benjamin Fulford,
Forbes Global,
posted online 2/9/02
http://www.forbes.com/global/2002/0218/022.html

You can no longer safely shrug off Japan's economic crisis. It just might drag the world into a depression.

The world--including even the previously sanguine Japanese--is now catching on to the fact that Japan's 12-year slump has deteriorated into a full-blown crisis, threatening a wild global ride. Falloffs in various indicators in the world's second-largest economy resemble the plunge of such countries as the U.S. into the Great Depression of the 1930s.

What about the theory that Japan is so rich a nation that it can buy its way out of a financial collapse? After all, it is said, the huge debt overhang from the country's rotten banking system and the actuarial deceit of its postal- and insurer-based retirement systems is just a case of Japan owing itself. This is not Russia or Argentina or Thailand.

No, it's not Russia or Argentina. In fact, it is potentially something far worse.

"Japan is 42 times bigger than Thailand," says Kenneth Courtis (who is interviewed on page 58), vice chairman for Goldman Sachs in Asia, referring to the country dubbed the epicenter of the 1997 Asian crisis. That bout cut world output by $300 billion in a year. Japan represents the "largest economic crisis since the 1930s," says Courtis.

"The world is heading for a once-in-a-century economic crisis," says Ryoji Musha, a strategist for Deutsche Bank in Japan.

How so? Consider the notion that, with perhaps $11 trillion in savings, the Japanese have enough wealth to cope. It sounds as if they do--until you realize that the total on- and off-balance-sheet claims on the household, corporate and government sectors in Japan are about $30 trillion, according to estimates by Goldman Sachs. That sum is six times Japan's $5 trillion GDP. (The total of U.S. public and private debt is $19 trillion, two times GDP.)

Those ratios in Japan are being made worse month by month, year by year, by deflation, which at perhaps 4% annually in Japan (measured in consumer prices) is the most pronounced in the world. Deflation aggravated the Depression in the U.S. in the 1930s. And it can spread. Cheap Toyotas are already putting pressure on U.S. auto prices. What if Japan devalued the yen, taking it from 133 to the dollar to 140 or 150 These Toyotas would then be even cheaper for U.S. customers. Robert Jay Pelosky, the chief global strategist for Morgan Stanley, says: "This would send a price shock into the U.S. and Europe at a time when we [the U.S. and Europe] are flirting with deflation."

At the same time Japan faces a debt bomb at home, it is also the world's largest creditor. If its banks were panicked into calling in overseas loans, by, say, a run on deposits, an economic contraction would sweep America and the globe.


-------- activists

Argentines protest against "government of thieves"

By Brian Winter
Saturday February 9, 7:16 PM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-88682.html

BUENOS AIRES - Thousands of Argentines took to the streets in the early morning hours on Saturday, banging pots and pans in the latest peaceful protest against a "government of thieves" unable to end a chaotic recession in its fourth year.

Members of the decaying middle class, frustrated by the long slump that has seen their bank deposits frozen and slashed in value and even resulted in insulin shortages, converged on the plaza in front of the presidential palace.

The protests appeared to fizzle out after several hours. Police did not immediately report any incidents of violence.

In a new chapter in a long summer of social unrest that helped topple two presidents in December, many Argentines demanded the complete renewal of the political system, from the president to the Supreme Court, and called on banks to return their deposits intact.

"We've been raped by politicians, banks and judges," read one giant homemade banner held up by protesters as they streamed down Buenos Aires' elegant avenues after midnight.

Many economists say Argentina's problems result in part from decades of government corruption and overspending. In January new President Eduardo Duhalde yielded to months of crisis and defaulted on part of the $141 billion public debt and devalued the peso currency.

With unemployment estimated over 20 percent, entire industries closing their doors and the international community so far unwilling to offer financial aid, most believe the once-prosperous country of 36 million people will spiral further into chaos this year.

The government has frozen some bank deposits to prevent a disastrous run amid the confidence crisis, which has suffocated consumer spending and enraged savers.

"People are starving. There are 14 million poor, the hospitals are out of supplies, pharmacies are closing and these corrupt politicians we have keep robbing us," one protester told local television. "This thing is near its end."

Violent protests that left 27 dead forced Fernando de la Rua to resign as president on December 20 just halfway through his four-year term. Duhalde was appointed by Congress to finish his term until 2003.

The devaluation has led the peso to lose about half its value against the dollar on markets and many Argentines fear it could fall further when a week-long ban on foreign exchange trade ends next Monday.

"This devaluation is going to lead us to disaster," said another protester, carrying a small child on his shoulders as many families participated in the march. "It's just more money that will go toward this government of thieves."

---

Argentine Urges Political Reform
Duhalde Tries to Mollify Protesters Amid Economic Crisis

By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48660-2002Feb8?language=printer

BUENOS AIRES, Feb. 8 -- In a bid to co-opt the mass protests by Argentines outraged over politicians' mismanagement of the economy, President Eduardo Duhalde tonight sought to rally the nation behind a plan to change the political system in a host of ways, including a possible shift to a parliamentary form of government.

Speaking on national television, Duhalde said he empathized with the fury toward the "political class" that has swept Argentina in the past two months as the economy has begun to implode since the government defaulted on its $142 billion debt and devalued the peso.

"We have to go back to the authentic values of our society: commitment and honor," Duhalde said, "and we have to put an end to the decadence that has disgraced politicians."

Argentina needs "a second republic" and "profound" changes to its constitution, Duhalde said. He said the nation should consider switching to a parliamentary system from the current presidential system in which the executive branch is separate from the Congress. He also vowed to press for a 25 percent reduction in the number of elected legislators at the federal, provincial and local levels; the elimination of slush funds controlled by government ministries; and a limit of 30 days on political campaigns.

The odds that Argentines will be assuaged by Duhalde's call for political change, however, do not appear promising. Most of the proposals he set forth in his speech had been made public or leaked to the media in recent days, and even as he spoke, pot-banging protesters were mobilizing for nationwide demonstrations.

"Thieves, you are robbing our future," read one sign at a protest here of several thousand people. One woman, who gave her name only as Christina, said, "I wasn't convinced by anything he [Duhalde] said."

Similar protests occur daily as Argentines vent their frustration about the disastrous turn in the country's economic fortunes that have wiped out thousands of jobs and threaten to deprive millions of middle-class Argentines of much of their savings.

"There's a substantive side to constitutional reform, but there's another side to this that might be called a publicity stunt, or a form of diverting attention," said Carlos Escude, a political scientist at Torcuato Di Tella University. "Leaving aside the fact that most people do feel we need constitutional reform, I doubt if people will go out and cheer considering the fact that the people who will be reforming the constitution are the very politicians who have lost all credibility."

One reform backed by many political experts would involve scrapping the electoral system for legislators, which makes them beholden to party bosses and unaccountable to voters. Instead of being elected to represent single districts, they run on party slates and win seats depending on the number of votes their party wins in each province.

Duhalde hinted that he would seek to change this system somewhat, by giving independent candidates the opportunity to run.

Special correspondent Brian Byrnes contributed to this report.

----

Freed Mexican Vows To Clear His Name

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 9, 2002; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47961-2002Feb8?language=printer

MEXICO CITY, Feb. 8 -- Newly released from prison on orders from President Vicente Fox, Gen. Jose Francisco Gallardo pledged today to keep fighting to clear his name and to seek punishment for the Mexican military officials who ordered what human rights groups call his unjust eight-year imprisonment.

"A democratic state should be a state that repairs damages done to any person's human rights," said Gallardo, 55, wearing a crisp gray business suit at a midday news conference.

Fox gave in to years of domestic and international pressure from rights groups and ordered Gallardo's release Thursday evening, reducing his 28-year sentence to time served. But Fox did not pardon Gallardo or clear his record as Gallardo had wanted. Fox also did not announce any plans to investigate Gallardo's case further, to determine whether his rights were violated or if he is entitled to reparations. As a result, human rights groups called Gallardo's release a half-measure.

"This is not enough," said Christian Rojas, head of Amnesty International's Mexico office, who joined Gallardo at the news conference. While praising Fox for freeing Gallardo, he added that Fox needs to "eliminate the roots" of judicial abuse.

"It's a half-victory," said Roderic Camp, a specialist on the Mexican military at Claremont McKenna College in California. "It represents some progress in the sense that the civilian authorities were able to persuade the military authorities to do this. But it doesn't mean anything at all for internal military policies."

As Gallardo spoke with reporters, his daughter, Jessica, 8, sat on his lap. She was born three weeks before he was imprisoned in November 1993 on charges that he defamed the military by suggesting in a published article that it needed an independent ombudsman to investigate wrongdoing by soldiers.

Gallardo, a former Olympic athlete and once Mexico's youngest brigadier general, was later convicted in a military court on theft and corruption charges that rights groups say were fabricated. They said his real crime was publicly challenging the leaders of Mexico's secretive and closed military.

In a round of media appearances that began with a pre-dawn radio show, Gallardo repeatedly expressed gratitude to Fox for his freedom. But he said Fox has not gone far enough to address the causes of human rights abuses, especially by the military.

Gallardo noted that, under Fox, Mexico is beginning to investigate some of the darkest chapters of its recent past, including a 1968 massacre of student protesters and the disappearances and presumed murders of hundreds of anti-government activists in the 1970s and 1980s. Soldiers were involved in those cases and in many other cases of torture, illegal imprisonment and other human rights abuses.

"Now more than ever," Mexico needs a military ombudsman to force the "opening and democratization of the military," Gallardo said. Gallardo's arguments have been endorsed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), which said Gallardo was being unjustly punished and issued a report in 1997 urging Mexico to release him. The commission also recommended that those responsible be identified and punished and that Gallardo receive reparations.

Gallardo said he would press that position on Feb. 19 in Costa Rica, at a hearing on his case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the OAS body that hears recommendations from the human rights commission.

Gallardo's release was timed partly to prevent the government from being criticized by Gallardo's family and human rights groups at the hearing. At a news conference announcing Gallardo's release, Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda said he hoped the hearing would no longer be necessary.

But Gallardo said the hearing is needed to keep up international pressure on Fox to fulfill the commission's recommendations. An OAS official in Washington said court officials have not yet considered whether to cancel it.

----

Beijing mayor served lawsuit by Falungong members in US

Saturday February 9, 3:44 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020209/1/2g8iv.html

The mayor of Beijing, Liu Qi, has been slapped with a lawsuit by six Falungong members claiming they were physically abused during a protest in the Chinese capital, a spokeswoman for the spiritual group.

The papers, handed down by a US district court, were served to Liu on Thursday at San Francisco airport shortly before he boarded a flight to Salt Lake City, said Sherry Zhang of the Falun Dafa Information Centre in northern California.

Liu, who is also president of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG), was thought to have attended Friday evening's opening ceremony of the 19th Winter Olympics in the Utah state capital.

Zhang said the civil lawsuit was filed against Liu by six Falungong members from Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Sweden and the United States.

The papers charged Liu with "torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, arbitrary detention, crimes against humanity and interference with freedom of religion and belief", Zhang said.

Neither Liu nor any other members of the Chinese delegation could be immediately contacted to verify the claim.

Earlier this week Human Rights Watch released a report saying China had brutally repressed the Falungong through widespread torture, deaths in custody and the detention of tens of thousands of members without trial.

The Chinese government banned the group in July 1999, calling it the biggest threat to one party communist rule since the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests.

Shortly after Beijing was awarded the rights to host the 2008 Summer Games last July, the government said its successful Olympic bid justified its tough crackdown on the spiritual movement.

The Torture Victims Protection Act and the Alien Tort Claims Act gives US courts jurisdiction over acts of torture committed outside the country. But a suit can only proceed if defendants are served with legal papers while in the United States.

Defendants have 20 days to reply to a suit or a default judgement can be lodged against them. Ultimately a damages claim can be made by the plaintiffs and their assets in the United States seized.

Zhang said she knew that at least two of the six plaintiffs were part of a group of 36 Westerners who were expelled from China on November 21, a day after they were arrested for protesting in Beijing's Tiananamen Square, a favoured site in the past for Falungong activists.

There they unfurled a banner, performed the trademark meditation exercises advocated by the group and shouted slogans before police swooped, forcing the protestors into vans.

Beijing subsequently denied claims that any of them had been mistreated while in custody.

In August 2001 a Falungong member slapped Zhou Yongkang, Communist Party General Secretary of China's Sichuan province with a civil lawsuit alleging torture and crimes against humanity while he was on a visit to Chicago.

And in July, Falungong activists served a 50 million-dollar process against Zhao Zhifei, Public Security Chief of Hubei province during a visit to New York, also alleging torture, murder and crimes against humanity.

A similar lawsuit was filed against China's former prime minister Li Peng by survivors of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

Meanwhile, more than 300 Falungong members held a candlelight vigil Friday during the opening ceremony of the Winter Games to draw attention to the plight of the spiritual group in China.

The movement says as many as 361 followers have died from brutality in police detention.

----

URGENT ACTION!
From: "LPDC" <lpdc@freepeltier.org>

The House Government Reform Committee is holding hearings on FBI misconduct relating to wrongful convictions. The hearings were prompted by the release of two Boston men who were framed by the FBI and held wrongfully in prison for more than 32 years. Their two co-defendants, also innocent, died in prison. Congressman Burton, who chairs the committee, said on 60 Minutes recently that he will be looking into other cases. Let's let him know about Leonard Peltier! Write, and ask your friends, family, and neighbors to write letters now. Below is a sample letter which you are welcome to use.

Thank you.
In Solidarity,

LPDC Leonard Peltier Defense Committee PO Box 583 Lawrence, KS 66044 785-842-5774 www.freepeltier.org

==

Honorable Dan Burton Chairman, Government Reform Committee 2157 Rayburn House Office Bldg. Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Burton,

Recently you spoke out about the case of James Salvati, who was imprisoned for 32 years for a crime the FBI knew he did not commit. This is a terrible miscarriage of justice and I am grateful that you will be pressing for further investigations regarding this and other injustices of a similar nature.

I would like to bring your attention to a case remarkably similar to that of Mr. Salvati's: the case of American Indian Movement activist, Leonard Peltier. Leonard Peltier has been imprisoned for 26 years, following his highly controversial conviction of the 1975 murders of two FBI agents.

Amnesty International, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Coretta Scott King, amongst many other human rights leaders, consider Mr. Peltier a political prisoner and have called for his immediate release.

During Mr. Peltier's trial, the FBI and U.S. Prosecutors emphatically swore that every FBI document had been handed over to the defense. Yet, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit would force the release of over 12,000 FBI documents that had in fact been withheld. Had the jury been able to consider this evidence at trial, Mr. Peltier would undoubtedly be free.

Among the documents was a formerly concealed ballistic test, which proved that the fatal bullets could not have come from the gun tied to Mr. Peltier at trial. The exposure of the test prompted the U.S. Prosecutor to admit during subsequent oral arguments, "we can't prove who shot those agents". The Eighth Circuit found that "There is a possibility that the jury would have acquitted Leonard Peltier had the records and data improperly withheld from the defense been available to him in order to better exploit and reinforce the inconsistencies casting strong doubts upon the government's case." Yet, a new trial was denied. Judge Heaney, who authored the denial now supports Mr. Peltier's release, stating that the FBI used improper tactics to gain Mr. Peltier's conviction.

Moreover, the FBI continues to withhold over 6000 documents pertaining to the Peltier case today. We are convinced that these files contain even more critical information. We also note that Mr. Peltier's conviction is deeply rooted in a three year period of intense political violence on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. During this period, the FBI cooperated with a brutal tribal chairman and his hired vigilantes who sought to rid the reservation of American Indian Movement (AIM) activity and sentiment. More than 60 traditional tribal members and AIM activists were murdered and scores more were assaulted or otherwise terrorized.

Given all of the above, I am asking you to include the Peltier case in your investigations. We also request the subpoena of the 6000 FBI documents that remain secret. Thank you for your time and consideration to this matter and we hope your efforts to bring about accountability in the Salvati case are successful.

Sincerely,
Until Freedom Is Won!
The New Peltier Justice Campaign


-------

------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)

------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!