------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Still a Mystery: Nazi Germany's Atomic Bomb Failure
$1bn US atomic rocket programme
WAR ON TERRORISM: Nuclear plants' safety is dubious
Nuclear Waste: Tunnel Fire Would Have Ruptured Casks, Report Says
Is America too powerful for its own good?

MILITARY
Unknown Toll in the Fog of War: Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan
The Battle of Tora Bora: Secrets, Money, Mistrust
Afghans Want To Try Former Minister
Afghan Warlord Rules Out Compromise
Fear grows in Liberia's capital as war threatens
UN plays down reports of failure in DR Congo talks
Who Stands to Benefit as Military Expands
Vietnam, U.S. to Jointly Study Agent Orange
Beijing slams CIA chief's warning on Chinese ambitions
Khatami warns against 'unfathomable' war
Let the Axis Rotate
A Risky Message to Iran
Iraq Calls Bush's Bluff on Weapons Scrutiny
US is planning campaign against Iraqi regime
Bush's Team Targets Hussein
Iraq Says It Would Defeat Attack From 'Arrogant' US
Israel alleges PA-Iranian strategic deal
Palestinians Spray Gunfire in Southern Israel, Killing Two
Israeli Troops Enter West Bank City
Israeli Fighter Jet Strikes Security Target in Gaza
Macedonia wants NATO mission extended
Saudi Leader's Anger Revealed Shaky Ties
A New Scrutiny of Somalia as the Old Anarchy Reigns
Israel injures UN personnel in attacks on Gaza
U.N. Envoy's Peacekeeping Push
American power - Armed to the teeth
Defense Budget: Tough Choices Skirted?

POLICE / PRISONERS
US turns away as prisoners face death
China Releases Bible Smuggler
Taliban prisoners restart their lives with $25
War captives baffle US interrogators
Homeland security: Homeland defense in uncharted waters
Tenet Lists Other Groups as Terror Threats

ENERGY AND OTHER
Fluoride wording deleted from bill
Beach Cleanup Begins in New Zealand
Text: Group of Seven issues statement

ACTIVISTS
Court may consider 'pro-life' tactics case
Serbs stage pro-Milosevic rally ahead of trial
Blowing the Whistle: Not for the Fainthearted



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- germany

EDITORIAL OBSERVER
Still a Mystery: Nazi Germany's Atomic Bomb Failure

New York Times
February 10, 2002
By PHILIP M. BOFFEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/10/opinion/_10SUN3.html

A small trove of documents released last week throws cold water on the notion that high-minded German scientists tried to slow work on an atomic bomb for the Nazi regime during World War II. But the documents provide no definitive answer to the question of why German physicists, who were among the best in the world, made so little progress on an atomic weapon compared with their counterparts in the United States.

The idea that German scientists worried about the morality of atomic war and tried to head off the development of a bomb was given wide currency in "Copenhagen," Michael Frayn's award-winning play, which focuses on a pivotal meeting in September 1941 between Werner Heisenberg, the scientific head of the German nuclear project, and Niels Bohr, his Danish mentor. Both were Nobel laureates and towering figures in 20th-century physics.

The play is built around the differing recollections of the two men and the ultimate uncertainty of exactly what happened. In it, the Heisenberg character explains that he visited Bohr to warn him, in highly guarded language, that atomic bombs could be built and to feel him out on whether physicists on both sides could agree to stop the work. The Frayn play was greatly influenced by a book that argued that Heisenberg and his colleagues actually sabotaged the German bomb program from within, a view that is accepted by few historians who have looked into the question.

The puzzle as to why the German atomic bomb program stalled has several overlapping explanations. Some of the best German physicists were Jewish and had been driven into exile, where many worked on the American or British atomic bomb programs. Nazi ideology had only scorn for "Jewish physics" and thus undervalued what theoretical physicists could contribute to the war effort. And as saturation bombing ravaged German cities, the Nazi industrial machine increasingly lacked the ability to mount a vast bomb development project to compete with the American Manhattan Project.

Still, it is clear that German physicists, for whatever reason, did fail to push hard enough to reach the goal. Some attribute that to surprising technical errors, like a grotesque overestimate of the amount of fissile material that was needed and a failure to realize that readily available graphite, if highly purified, could be used to moderate the atomic reaction instead of scarce, hard-to-get heavy water. Others blame arrogance and complacency on the part of German physicists who felt that if the job was hard for them, it would be impossible for the Allies. And some believe that there was a genuine reluctance to work on such an awesome weapon, either for moral reasons or for fear of failing and being blamed for a national defeat.

Recordings made surreptitiously of Heisenberg and other German scientists held in captivity after the German surrender show that they were stunned by news that the United States had exploded an atomic bomb over Hiroshima and refused to believe that it had actually been done. Even in these early recordings, one can discern the beginnings of a search for the moral high ground, as one German physicist contrasts the American development of "this ghastly weapon of war" with more peaceful nuclear reactor research under Hitler.

Heisenberg's own version of his meeting with Bohr was set out years after the war in a letter that was excerpted in a book on the atomic bomb projects. He recalled starting his conversation with Bohr by raising a question about whether it was "right" for physicists to work on uranium during the war, given that it could lead to "grave consequences." He also said he had told Bohr that developing atomic weapons would require such a terrific technical effort that one could hope they would not be ready in time. He felt the situation gave physicists leverage to dissuade government officials from even trying to build the bomb.

That letter so angered Bohr that he drafted a number of responses between 1957 and 1962 that were never sent but were released last week by the Bohr family. As Bohr recalled it, Heisenberg left "the firm impression that, under your leadership, everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons." Bohr said that Heisenberg "gave no hint about efforts on the part of German scientists to prevent such a development."

Even with these latest documents, we are still left with conflicting versions from the two participants. Most historians seem inclined to accept Bohr's version as more probable and Heisenberg's as revisionist history, a view that gains credence by looking at Heisenberg in a broader context than just that single meeting.

David Cassidy, a historian at Hofstra University who wrote a biography of Heisenberg, says there is no evidence from any other sources that moral issues were of particular concern to Heisenberg. Indeed, he says, Heisenberg seemed most concerned about using the war to prove the worth of physics to the nation and its rulers. With those motivations in mind, it seems likely that Heisenberg would have made a bomb if he could.

-------- space

$1bn US atomic rocket programme

10/02/2002
http://www.news24.co.za/News24/Technology/Science_Nature/0%2C1113%2C2-13-46_1140162%2C00.html#top

Washington - Nasa has proposed spending almost $1 billion over the next five years to develop atomic-powered rockets that could speed spacecraft across the heavens and nuclear-reactors to energise outposts on distant planets.

In President George W Bush's 2003 federal budget, released on Monday, the space agency proposes to spend about $46.5 million to begin developing nuclear electric rockets and $79 million more to build atomic-powered generators that can fly on spacecraft.

Such atomic-driven energy systems, said Ed Weiler, Nasa's associate administrator for science, would eventually free Nasa from a dependence on chemical rockets, which are relatively slow and clunky, in the agency's exploration of distant worlds, such as Jupiter's moons or the planet Pluto.

Right now, Nasa spacecraft are launched by a burst of chemical rockets that burn for a few minutes to break away from Earth's gravity. After that, said Weiler, the spacecraft must drift across deep space toward their target or whip around nearby planets to gain speed, voyages that can take years. The spacecraft, in most cases, are powered by solar cells that convert sunlight to electricity. For distant planets, the sunlight often is so dim that there is little electricity for instruments.

"That's like exploring the west using covered wagons," said Weiler.

He envisions rockets that use nuclear fission or fusion that could fire for months, driving the spacecraft to higher and higher speeds, and then slowing the spacecraft when it approaches its target. Such a technique could possibly halve the time of a 17-year voyage to Pluto, the only solar system planet not yet visited.

Weiler said Nasa has used nuclear-powered generators to power 20 spacecraft in the past, but now has only one such generator left in its inventory. Using nuclear generators would free spacecraft from their dependence on the sun for electrical power.

Nuclear generators, Weiler said, could energise long, detailed explorations of Mars, or power mobile laboratories travelling the surface of the Red Planet.

Nasa administrator Sean O'Keefe said nuclear powered rockets and generators would help humans "conquer the problems of distance and time" in space exploration.

The proposal is sure to be opposed by some who fear that a launch accident could cause a nuclear-powered spacecraft to explode and possibly scatter radioactive material around the globe. Some earlier launches of atomic-powered craft attracted pickets, lawsuits and protesters.

Weiler said he believes it is possible to build nuclear-powered rockets and generators that would not present a hazard to Earth when they were launched into space.

"The number one issue would be safety," he said. "Anything that we build would have to safely survive the worst possible scenario, which would be a rocket blowing up on the pad.

"If you can't show that a system could survive that, then don't talk to me," Weiler said he would tell engineers. - Sapa/AP

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

-------- minnesota

WAR ON TERRORISM: Nuclear plants' safety is dubious

BY DENNIS LIEN,
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Sunday February 10 06:37 AM EST
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/2640035.htm

What would happen if terrorists crashed an airliner into either of Minnesota's nuclear power plants at Prairie Island or Monticello?

The question alone is troubling enough for Minnesotans after Sept. 11. But the answer might be even more disturbing.

No one knows for sure.

"It is simply not known whether or not a reactor of those types could or could not withstand that sort of attack,'' said Dean Abrahamson, professor emeritus of energy and environment policy at the University of Minnesota. "I have not heard a responsible person say they can withstand it.''

State and plant officials minimize the threat, emphasizing the sturdiness of the plants' structures and the heightened security there.

But even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the operation of the nation's 103 nuclear power plants, seems less than certain.

The agency concedes that none of the plants - including the two in Minnesota - were designed to withstand hits from large aircraft such as a Boeing 757 or 767. And while it is working on new security guidelines for plants, they won't be issued until later this year.

Concern over the vulnerability of the nation's nuclear power plants to a potential attack has been rekindled in recent days by new disclosures that they may have been targeted by the al-Qaida terrorist network. In his State of the Union address Jan. 29, President Bush revealed that U.S. forces in Afghanistan discovered "diagrams of American nuclear power plants,'' indicating some were cased in person or researched on the Internet.

A successful attack on a nuclear plant's reactors, spent-fuel storage pools or dry-cask containers could not cause a Hiroshima-style explosion. But some observers worry that such an attack could release substantial amounts of radiation.

"Terrorists have demonstrated an intent to cause significant damage to the security interests of the U.S.A.,'' said George Crocker, head of the North American Water Office, an environmental group that has been a persistent critic of the nuclear waste generated at Minnesota plants. "That is the reality. We could continue to pretend that the chances are so infinitely small that we shouldn't pay attention. Evidently, the president thought otherwise the other night.''

So far, U.S. intelligence officials stress, there have been no plausible threats to any U.S. nuclear power plants. Maureen Brown, a spokeswoman for Nuclear Management Co. of Hudson, Wis., which manages Minnesota's Monticello and Prairie Island plants for Xcel Energy, said the company is confident the reactor domes are secure and operational safeguards are in place. She didn't go into detail, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said such actions include increased patrols, better coordination with law enforcement and the military, and more restrictions on access.

"Our belief is that the containment would not be penetrated,'' Brown said.

Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner Charlie Weaver said he's comfortable with precautions at the two plants.

"I'm not naive enough to think there is no way anybody could do anything to cause a problem there, because terrorists are smart, resourceful and suicidal,'' Weaver said. "But I feel very good about the preparedness of both sites and the ability of both sites to respond to any threat, whether a tornado or a terrorist. I don't lose any sleep over this.''

At nuclear power plants, nuclear material often is found in different places, and some plants are more vulnerable than others. Furthermore, each of the materials contain different levels of radioactivity, adding yet another wrinkle to the potential threat they might pose.

At Prairie Island, each of the two nuclear reactors is surrounded by a thick dome. An adjacent building contains a spent-fuel pool, and outside, a short distance away, 14 storage casks hold waste material.

The reactors each contain relatively little of the most potent material. Both structures consist of a reinforced, 21/2-foot-thick concrete dome with a steel liner three-quarters of an inch to 11/2 inches thick.

Next door is a heavily bunkered steel-and-concrete building housing 800 tons of spent fuel submerged in a containment pool. That material isn't as potent, but there's more of it, and because the building isn't as sturdy as the two domes, experts say, it's more vulnerable.

Each cask, meanwhile, contains smaller amounts of even less potent material. Built to withstand strong impact, those cylindrical casks ideally would respond like bowling pins if struck - toppling but not breaking - and would be difficult to breach.

At Monticello, the reactor and spent-fuel pool are in the same containment building. No dry-storage casks are there because nuclear waste generated during the plant's earliest years was disposed of elsewhere years ago.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Jan Strasma called the containment domes and casks exceptionally strong, and he noted an abundance of safety and backup controls at the plants. But he added a cautionary note.

"Pools with highly radioactive spent fuel stored inside are something of a concern,'' he said. But he called protection at Prairie Island adequate.

Abrahamson, Crocker and others aren't reassured.

"There is no way they are going to be, in my opinion, directly open to the public about the risk of their product,'' said state Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul.

Crocker contends that a small plane or even a well-aimed missile could damage the building containing the pool. The resulting loss of water would expose fuel rods to air and overheat them, scattering radioactive debris.

He said the plant should build a separate protective wall to deflect or lessen the impact of a first strike.

David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington, D.C.-based nuclear watchdog organization, said emergency workers might only have minutes or hours to stop a meltdown from occurring in a reactor if cooling were disrupted. But they would have more time - as much as hours to days - to stop a similar problem in the spent-fuel pool.

"At Prairie Island, with the pool below ground, terrorists would have to be a lot more creative,'' Lochbaum said.

Those aren't his only concerns.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he said, has dropped inspections aimed at exposing security weaknesses at nuclear plants since Sept. 11.

"They told me they don't want to do that until they redefine the threat level,'' Lochbaum said.

Strasma said the NRC suspended those inspections so it can concentrate on improving the existing, overall security at the nation's nuclear plants. "We don't want it to distract from focusing on that,'' he said.

Lochbaum also is concerned that past exercises have concentrated on reactor defenses, not the spent-fuel pools and dry casks. And he contends hiring procedures need improvement.

"I still don't think it's such a big threat that people should pack up their bags until safe times return,'' Lochbaum said. "Where do you head to?''

Dennis Lien can be reached at dlien@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-5588.

-------- us nuc waste

Nuclear Waste: Tunnel Fire Would Have Ruptured Casks, Report Says

February 12, 2002
Global Security Newswire
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/newswires/2002_2_12.html

A new report prepared for the state of Nevada says the casks to be used to ship nuclear waste to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository could not have withstood a fire such as the one in a Baltimore railroad tunnel last summer, the Baltimore Sun reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 8).

The Baltimore rail tunnel fire burned for three days and that duration, along with the intense heat, would have been enough to rupture the two types of storage containers used to transport spent nuclear fuel, according to the report compiled by Radioactive Waste Management for Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects (see GSN, Feb. 4).

"While these containers are strong ... they are not designed to withstand everything that could happen on a transportation route," said Matthew Lamb, a co-author of the report. "People who live along these routes should know what the possible consequences are. I don't want to be a fear monger. The probability of these accidents is small, but it is not zero."

If such an accident had occurred in Baltimore's Howard Street Tunnel more than 300,000 people would have been exposed to radioactive materials leaking from the casks, according to the Sun. Officials would have been forced to destroy entire sections of Baltimore to reduce radiation to safe levels, Lamb said.

"It's either that, or the risk of a serious cancer hazard for the people who live close to where the accident took place and downwind," he said.

Nuclear power supporters dismissed the report, according to the Sun. Mitch Singer of the Nuclear Energy Institute said spent fuel has been safely transported by highway and railroad for 35 years.

Eileen Supko, an Energy Resources International nuclear engineer, said the storage containers are subjected to a strenuous testing program that includes thermal tests. The thermal test submits the container to a fire of more than 1,400 degrees for 30 minutes, conditions that go beyond a real-life scenario, Supko said. She added that containers would be transported on a flatbed truck or rail car, and in the event of a fire, the heat would be transferred from the container to the flat surface.

"Truthfully, the purpose of that report from the state of Nevada and its contractors was to stir things up and to scare people," Supko said. "A lot of the rhetoric from the anti-nuclear groups is to generate fear. If you look at the history of spent nuclear shipments, not just in the United States but internationally, there has never been a release of radioactive materials from the containers" (Mike Adams, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 11).

-------- us politics

Is America too powerful for its own good?

Sunder Katwala
Sunday February 10, 2002
Observer Comment Extra
http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,647755,00.html

Just how powerful is the United States? The Observer asked the leading foreign policy experts on both sides of the Atlantic to assess what the unparalleled power of Bush's America means for the world. You can have your say online here - http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?50@@.ee9ef42.

"The United States is more powerful compared to other countries than any entity since Rome, and it is unlikely to be overtaken by other nations in the first half of this century. But this fact diverts attention from the effects of the information revolution and globalization which are making non-state actors (witness Al-Qaeda) more important and weak distant places (witness Afghanistan) more difficult to ignore. That is why I have titled by new book The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone. Being Number One is not going to be what it used to be. American preponderance is a long way from omnipotence, and it will be important for Americans to realize that they must cooperate with others to get the outcomes they want". - Joseph Nye, Dean of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

"The United States still has the fastest gun in the West, but the days of the Lone Ranger are over. Though it is the reigning global hyperpower, tempted after 9/11 more than ever to impose itself - Pax Americana style - on a reluctant world by military and economic means, this is no longer possible. For terrorism is itself a perverse expression of interdependence and the new limits on sovereignty, a tribute to the same extra-national networking forces that drive market globalization. Unless the U.S. begins to operate multilaterally in partnership with others; unless it develops civic, political and democratic strategies to complement its military tactics; and unless it finds ways to globalize democracy and public goods as successfully as it has globalized markets and private profits, it is likely to discover that its strengths will be leveraged by the weak against its interests (as happened on 9/11). In a world of interdependence, the new realism insists that terrorism is less likely to be defeated by plutocracy than by democracy, while the most powerful and prosperous nations will flourish only if the weakest and poorest are allowed to flourish along side of them". -Benjamin R. Barber, author of Jihad vs. McWorld, is Kekst Professor of Civil Society at the University of Maryland and currently the Daimler-Benz Fellow at the American Academy of Berlin.

"The USA is already unchallengeable in terms of military power. A further increase in its defence budget hardly seems necessary, when there's room to redistribute resources from old-fashioned heavy divisions into special forces and new technology. There's a danger that such overwhelming emphasis on military power will lead US policymakers to forget that persuasion is more effective than coercion. The US can go to war on its own; but to maintain a peaceful world order it needs friends and allies. The current unilateralist mood in Washington is a tragic retreat from the enlightened self-interest which led previous US Administrations to build multilateral institutions to underpin an open international order". - William Wallace, Professor of International Studies, London School of Economics and Liberal Democrat peer.

"If by power, is meant military might - the two are very separate concepts - then what follows from the fact of US military predominance depends entirely on how it will be deployed. There are great opportunities here, and great dangers. The deployment of military might, if done so with wisdom and on the basis of a long term political (non-military) view of the world, can greatly enhance the power, image and implications of the whole Western democratic system for those parts of the world that do not at the moment benefit from what that system has to offer. This is clearly what has to be done. On the other hand, the use of military power merely to penalize and destroy without putting anything back in its place, will ultimately weaken US power in the world and lead to its retreat in the decades to come. The US will in these circumstances go the way all great empires have before it in history." - Kanan Makiya, Iraqi expatriate and writer, is author of Republic of Fear: The politics of modern Iraq.

"America's power is unrivalled. It has no military, economic, or political competitors. As the biggest billiard ball on the table, it can force all others to move in its direction. In world politics, power rules and absolute power rules absolutely. This is the Bush world view, and it has a lot going for it. America can achieve much of what it wants because of its sheer dominance in world affairs. Power is unimportant only to those who do not have it.

But there are costs in using power arrogantly. It breeds resentment. It gives others reasons to coalesce in a balance against America. And it provides the weak incentives to expose America's vulnerabilities, which, for all its power, are still aplenty. Power is best used wisely, in ways that does the greatest good for the most. That is what America did in the 1940s, and what it must do now when its power is essentially unchallenged". - Ivo Daalder, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

"If one country must be so dominant militarily, then it is probably better that it is the United States rather than another country. However, history suggests that such dominance leads to abuse and it is encumbent on the rest of the world to find ways of restraining the United States through international law, countervailing power and dialogue.

The European Union, which has achieved parity with the United States in trade and investment, has a major responsibility in this endeavour. Plans for a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) therefore need to be accelerated and EU governments need to commit adequate resource to it". -Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs

"The implications of a unipolar world are bad for everyone concerned. If America stands aloof from global problems, it is accused of isolationism. If it intervenes, it is accused of imperialism. Either way, it becomes a target of resentment and violence. For the rest it means frustration and impotence.

Complaining won't do any good. The rest of us have to raise our game and provide America with partners they can't ignore. For Britain, that means building a more united Europe with a more coherent foreign policy and a strong single currency. It's either that or another American century." - David Clark, former special adviser to Robin Cook at the Foreign Office.

"The USA is militarily dominant in a way that no other power can challenge. The USA is the world's largest economy, but the EU 15 runs it close. Military dominance needs legitimacy in today's world. The USA needs allies and also the fig leaf of the UN. The USA is no longer quite as powerful economically as it was in 1945, the rest of the industrial world has become richer. The US is now a major capital importer and the dollar depends on the international financial markets. So America is only half boss". -Paul Hirst, Professor of Social Theory at Birkbeck College, University of London and co-author of Globalisation in Question.

If for the US the 1970s was a decade of decline, the 1990s turned out to be the years of renewal. It began with the fall of the USSR, continued with Japan's economic implosion and Europe's dithering in the Balkans, and was finally confirmed by Washington's response to September 11th and the Bush militarily build-up.

What are the implications for us? That Europe either puts up - and accepts the American challenge - or shuts up and continues to play the role of complaining, yet compliant, junior partner to the hegemon across the Atlantic. -Professor Michael Cox, Associate Research Fellow, Royal Institute of International Affairs

The rise in US military spending ought to be compared to the decision in the First World War to order up more cavalry when the first wave had been mown down by machine guns. The US has no competitor in high tech military equipment but this is mostly irrelevant against the knives used to carry out the September 11th attacks. The bombing of Afghanistan has created the illusion of victory, there may yet be a long drawn out guerilla war in central asia with the next opium crop the focus. Joint Strike Fighters and new artillery guns are at best irrelevant and are political and financial diversion from the necessary multilateral give and take needed to really isolate the terrorists. -Dan Plesch, Royal United Services Institute.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Unknown Toll in the Fog of War: Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

New York Times
February 10, 2002
By BARRY BEARAK
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/10/international/asia/10AFGH.html?pagewanted=all

This article was reported by Barry Bearak, Eric Schmitt and Craig S. Smith and was written by Mr. Bearak.

In an age of eavesdropping warplanes and satellite-guided bombs, the Pentagon finds itself accused of sometimes relying on faulty intelligence in Afghanistan, leading to an unnecessary toll of civilian deaths.

Scrutiny has grown since a predawn raid on Jan. 24, when U.S. commandos killed at least 15 men presumed to be Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. Officials in the interim Afghan government have since joined grieving survivors in calling the attack a tragic mistake, with some surmising the Americans were duped with false information by a scheming local warlord.

A full-fledged investigation by the Pentagon's Central Command is under way, which is unusual. Despite dozens of credible reports about possibly misdirected airstrikes and sizable civilian losses - accounts from the United Nations, aid agencies and journalists - the military has made detailed inquiries into just a few cases, like the bombing of Red Cross warehouses in Kabul twice within 10 days in October.

Most often, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and military spokesmen have dismissed accusations of mistakes as enemy propaganda. They express confidence in their targeting and voice regret for any "collateral damage." They maintain that extraordinary efforts have been taken to minimize civilian losses, something that even most critics of the war would not dispute.

Nevertheless, certainly hundreds and perhaps thousands of innocent Afghans have been killed in American attacks, a scattering of bodies extraordinarily difficult to tabulate.

Many mournful Afghan families demand a reckoning.

"Tell me why our homes were destroyed and 55 people - even little children - are dead?" asked an angry young man named Gul Nabi, standing in December among the 15 obliterated houses of a village named Madoo. "There were no Arabs here," he said, referring to Al Qaeda fighters. "There were only farmers who lived a good life and prayed to Allah for peace."

The American military routinely reviews the effectiveness of its air raids, but by its own admission it has faced insurmountable difficulty in tracking the toll of civilian deaths. Mr. Rumsfeld has called the task "next to impossible," citing a lack of ground access to bombed targets.

That leaves much unknown. American weaponry, according to a statement Mr. Rumsfeld in October, is "probably 85-90 percent reliable."

Assessing the Damage

For the Afghanistan campaign, the Air Force created a special team at its air operations center in Riyadh to look at cases of possible civilian losses and other unintended damage, and to counter Taliban casualty claims. Pilot reports, targeting data and aerial reconnaissance photos are examined. The team has reviewed "several scores" of reports and acknowledged a handful of bomb malfunctions that have led to unintended casualties.

Mistakes caused by bad intelligence are harder to investigate. Credible reports about such instances are referred to Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla. Field investigations are necessary. Customarily, none have been assigned because of the difficulty of getting troops to the sites.

The military ordered its investigation of the Jan. 24 commando raid only after Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's pro-American interim president, personally complained to Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of the operation in Afghanistan.

"The military knows they'll get pummeled about issues relating to civilian casualties, and they don't have a clue how to address it in a nonpropagandistic way," said William H. Arkin, a former army intelligence analyst who is a military adviser to Human Rights Watch. "The subject ties them in knots. It's an irritant, and they avoid it."

For a war that has so riveted the world's attention, there are tremendous gaps in knowledge about what has occurred. Some of this has been deliberate. For months, the Taliban excluded any foreign observers. Much of what they claimed about civilian casualties has proven false.

But now, even with the Taliban gone, truth remains hard to come by. The sites of past air raids are often in remote locations that are only reachable on unsafe roads. Memory, as always, can be a chameleon. In the Muslim tradition, bodies are buried soon after death. Some answers disappear in the turned earth.

"What we were challenged with each and every time, particularly in the early weeks of the war, was that we did not have people on the ground to check," said Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, senior spokesman for the Central Command.

Now, about 4,000 American troops are in Afghanistan. But most investigations would be unreliable because of the amount of time that has passed, the admiral said. Some of the damage has been repaired, many of the witnesses have moved away.

"You just don't find much," he said.

If that is true, many mysteries will remain unresolved.

What happened at the village of Karam in Nangahar Province on Oct. 11? The Taliban claimed 200 civilians were killed in an air raid. Some survivors put the death count at 50, some 100, some higher. Reporters, visiting the scene days later, found a hamlet of demolished mud huts and interviewed devastated family members. Mr. Rumsfeld called the claims of a high death toll "ridiculous" and said secondary explosions proved that a major arms dump had been struck.

What happened on Dec. 1 when bombs leveled several villages near Tora Bora, the cave complex where Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding? America's anti-Taliban allies said the bombs killed at least 115 civilians and called for the raids to stop. Doctors Without Borders, the aid organization, said they transported 72 dead, including women and children, and left many more bodies behind. The Pentagon said its planes had hit only intended targets.

What happened on Dec. 20 when American planes attacked a convoy in Paktia Province, killing as many as 50 to 60 people on the road and in surrounding villages? The Pentagon said that Taliban leaders were in the vehicles and that the enemy fired first, using antiaircraft missiles. Survivors said the convoy was bringing tribal elders to Kabul for the inauguration of the interim president.

What happened on Dec. 29 in an air raid on Niazi Qala, a village in Paktia? Some survivors said more than 100 civilians were killed. The Pentagon claimed it had hit a Taliban ammunition depot, and journalists later found a huge cache of tank rounds and mortar shells. Villagers, however, said anti-Taliban forces had earlier taken control of the munitions and that many of the people killed, including women and children, had congregated for a wedding.

"We've got about 300 incidents in our database, and I'd say about a third involve some civilian casualties that would be worth taking a second look at," said Mr. Arkin, the Human Rights Watch adviser, who is also an adjunct professor at the U.S. Air Force's School of Advanced Airpower Studies.

Human Rights Accounting

The rights group is making plans to send researchers to Afghanistan in March to estimate the number of civilians killed and to investigate those attacks that might have arisen from a misguided use of force.

America's use of cluster bombs will be studied. Each one sprays a huge area with more than 200 soda- can-size armor-piercing bomblets. Some fail to detonate on contact.

"The duds in effect become land mines that explode when touched," said Joost Hiltermann, executive director of the Human Rights Watch arms division.

By some calculations, he said, the American bombing campaign may have left 36,000 unexploded canisters strewn across Afghanistan's rugged landscape, an estimate that Admiral Quigley said was too high. He declined to provide a better number.

Rights groups often take the lead in counting civilian deaths, and some experts say it would be in the Pentagon's interest to provide its own numbers.

"It hasn't been a major focus of attention for the military, which may well be a mistake.' said Eliot A. Cohen, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who directed the Air Force's definitive study of the 1991 Persian Gulf war. "Frequently, the human rights community will, in the absence of good numbers, put out bad numbers."

A few researchers have already done some arithmetic, basing their calculations on various news reports. Prof. Marc W. Herold, an economist at the University of New Hampshire, added up at least 3,767 civilian casualties from Oct. 7 to Dec. 6. Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, used a more stringent distillation of media accounts and concluded that a better guess would be 1,000 to 1,300 deaths.

Whatever the total, the Pentagon would likely continue to insist that it is a bare, if inevitable, minimum. "There is no question but from time to time, innocent people, noncombatants, undoubtedly are killed and that is always unfortunate," Mr. Rumsfeld has said repeatedly.

Military officials describe a rigorous process of picking targets. In Afghanistan, the Pentagon has used multiple sources of intelligence, including local Afghans, U-2 spy planes, reconnaissance satellites, unpiloted Predator drones and RC-135 Rivet Joint planes that collect electronic transmissions. Sources are crosschecked for accuracy.

Commanders then determine which aircraft to dispatch, the type and size of the bombs, and even the best approach route to minimize the threat to civilians. Lawyers review the targets, also evaluating the risk to civilians.

"This has been the most accurate war ever fought in this nation's history," General Franks told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.

About 60 percent of the 18,000 bombs, missiles and other ordnance used since the air campaign began on Oct. 7 were precision-guided, up from fewer than 10 percent of munitions in the Persian Gulf war, military officials said.

A Raid Gone Awry

But word-of-mouth, rather than faulty high-tech gear, is the main suspect in the seemingly misbegotten Jan. 24 raid. In the pitch of night, relying on surprise, American soldiers and some commandos from an allied country burst into two compounds near the village of Hazar Qadam in Oruzgan Province, more than 100 miles northeast of Kandahar. They were expecting to find secreted members of the Al Qaeda or Taliban leadership. And they were hoping to catch them napping.

Nayaz Muhammad, 27, who had recently gone to work as a soldier in the government's weapon confiscation effort, said he was asleep in a school when he was awakened by a blast. Most of the 11 other men in the room died almost immediately in a barrage of gunfire. He escaped by diving out a window. The attackers were bathing the building in light. He managed to flee to a barn.

"I didn't know why they were shooting," Mr. Muhammad recalled days later.

Neither did Muhammad Yunas, a former district government chief, who had been sleeping in the other compound. He saw the charging Americans.

"I told my men, `Don't shoot, they're our people, they'll come to talk,' " he said. "We were amazed. Why would the Americans come to attack us?"

In the morning light, 21 lay dead, villagers said. Nineteen had been pulled from the school by neighbors. Two of the corpses had their hands bound behind their backs with white plastic strips, witnesses said. Many of the others were burned beyond recognition.

Hours later, back in Washington, a victory was being announced. The commandos had destroyed a large cache of ammunition, it was reported. Twenty-seven prisoners were taken. They were being questioned. Some might be high-level Taliban.

But within two weeks, the raiders themselves were on the defensive. Mr. Rumsfeld conceded that friends might well have been mistaken for foes. Villagers insisted the weapons cache was merely a storehouse for confiscated arms. The 27 prisoners were released to Afghan authorities.

Meanwhile, the military investigation began. Was the raid legitimate? If not, where had the American military gotten the false intelligence? General Franks said that at least some of the detainees were criminals, if not enemy warriors.

Many Afghan officials from the area say the Americans listened to lies and were drawn into a feud of factions fighting to control the town. They wonder why the military did not go to Oruzgan and ask around.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's brother, is based in Kandahar. He said he had tried to settle the dispute. Instead, people are needlessly dead.

"I hope that the Americans are brave enough to name the person who gave them that information," he said.

----

The Battle of Tora Bora: Secrets, Money, Mistrust

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 10, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51720-2002Feb9?language=printer

MILAWA, Afghanistan -- Slowly and incompletely, al Qaeda's secrets have been pulled from the rubble of Osama bin Laden's mountain hide-out at Tora Bora. Three teams of U.S. Special Forces, guided by local fighters, have scoured nearly 200 caves in the eight weeks since the tattered remnants of bin Laden's force fled toward Pakistan, carting away satellite telephones and Stinger missiles from isolated holes carved into the rock.

But the Afghan fighters say the Americans have neither found all the caves nor made extensive efforts to identify at least 300 dead bin Laden fighters whose bodies have been seen scattered in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan. The Americans took photographs and made videotapes, but did not dig into collapsed caves and bunkers to find additional bodies. They ended their search in late January, the Afghans said. The trail never led them to bin Laden or his top lieutenants.

"The Americans lost their will," said Rahim Jan, an Afghan commander whose men combed the mountains here with the U.S. forces.

Just like the inconclusive battle of Tora Bora that preceded it, the incomplete search of al Qaeda's hide-out illustrates the limits of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, a case study in the enormous difficulties of carrying out a secretive military campaign that depended on cooperation with brutal, greedy and incessantly feuding Afghan commanders.

More than two dozen interviews about the battle in the mountains and its aftermath, including extensive discussions with the senior commanders, offered the first on-the-ground account of a mission that failed to get its prey, and provided new details about the role played by the approximately 40 U.S. Special Forces soldiers who operated here. Taken together, the interviews depict the fragile alliance between the Americans and their local proxies, a relationship defined by mutual dependence and hampered by mutual distrust.

As told by the Afghans, it is a story about American money and the warlords who took it, of crisp $100 bills flashed by illiterate gunmen and double agents who promised to betray al Qaeda forces -- but led them to escape instead.

There are differing views about the battle among U.S. military officials. One Pentagon official said that although bin Laden was not captured, the battle of Tora Bora was a success because of the materials about al Qaeda that were seized there. This official said that the media overemphasized the military significance of the conflict because it was the only visible combat at the time, but that other clandestine battles were just as important. Retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark said in a recent interview that bin Laden's presence in the mountain caves may have been faked by his followers. "I think Tora Bora will prove to have been a strategic deception by al Qaeda," he said.

An unusual marriage of U.S. aerial attacks and Afghan fighting, the battle of Tora Bora played out in a starkly beautiful mountain range 25 miles southwest of Jalalabad on the Pakistani border. Hidden amid the peaks of the White Mountains, the Tora Bora cave complex was constructed as a refuge for the mujaheddin, or holy warriors, who battled the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Taken over by bin Laden in the mid-1990s, it became a well-fortified stronghold where an estimated 1,000 of his men regrouped last fall, after the defeat of the Taliban regime.

Three Afghan warlords brought their forces to Tora Bora in late November, competing for credit, booty and U.S. dollars. Returning from years of exile in France, the urbane Pashtun leader Mohammed Zaman Ghun Shareef led one contingent. Zahir, the restless 27-year-old son of regional governor Abdul Qadir, commanded another.

The Americans, however, bet on a third warlord, Hazrat Ali, a veteran guerrilla fighter with a fourth-grade education who got his first military training in the mujaheddin camps of Tora Bora. The Americans gave money to him and weapons to his men; they slept guarded by his fighters and backed him in disputes with rival commanders.

Afghans say the Americans had no choice. "They didn't know the way in Tora Bora, they didn't know the places, they didn't know the atmosphere," said Gul Karim, a top Ali lieutenant who serves as his chief of security in Jalalabad.

Yet, even Ali describes the collaboration in Tora Bora as a "50 percent success" at best, and he is quick to criticize the U.S. soldiers. He cited a Pashtun saying: "If you want to hunt one bird and have more than 100 hunters, it is very possible that the bird will escape." He added, "We had a lot of hunters there, and the bird escaped."

Deep inside Tora Bora today, bitter reminders are everywhere of all that got away from the hunters. The al Qaeda command center in the Milawa Valley is now a quiet heap of rubble, infested by unexploded cluster bombs. The caves are littered with ammunition.

The high peaks rising from the Milawa Valley mark the way to Pakistan. A tame mountain stream trickling down from a quiet forest offers the only visible hint of the hidden trails probably taken by bin Laden's men. The Afghan fighters say it is a 17-hour walk to the border. On the other side, Pakistani authorities rounded up more than 150 al Qaeda fighters fleeing Tora Bora; no one knows how many they didn't catch.

Desultory Battles

From the start, the military campaign against bin Laden's forces at Tora Bora was disorganized and haphazard. On day one, the Afghan commanders warned that bin Laden and his followers could be fleeing over the mountains. But they also boldly proclaimed that bin Laden himself was there, spreading tantalizing rumors that they don't mention now. The Americans, who strongly pressured the Afghans to open the battle, did not arrive on the ground until three days after the fighting began.

The U.S. bombardment, which became a withering daily assault, began in earnest on Nov. 30 with several attacks. The bombs took their toll among civilians. More than 150 people died that weekend, according to local authorities. At the outset, the Americans found themselves drawn into the complicated battlefield politics that would dominate Tora Bora.

In the Agam District building, for example, the missiles killed eight men fighting with Zaman, the Pashtun commander. Zaman's deputy said that they had seized five al Qaeda cars from Tora Bora and that the cars were parked outside the district building. It is not known precisely who ordered the attack, but the building was hit by U.S. bombers. In the village of Pacheer Agam, the U.S. had what it thought was another al Qaeda target: the home of reported al Qaeda intermediary Mirajuddin. He escaped, according to several sources, but some 20 members of his family died, as did about 50 neighbors.

"We told them, 'You missed the target,' " said Malik Haji Nazir, a tribal elder who later worked with the U.S. Special Forces. "They said, 'We never miss the target.' They never apologized."

Mirajuddin had been secretly negotiating with Zaman's top commander, Gul Amir Jan, to hand over bin Laden. When the deal fell through, Amir called in the Americans.

"Before the bombing, Mirajuddin came to me and told me Osama was in Tora Bora with his two sons. I offered him 300,000 rupees," or about $5,084, he said. "Then he told me he would come, but he didn't. The Americans asked me about this conversation, and I told them he didn't come so they bombed his house. I pointed out this house to the Pentagon."

On Monday, Dec. 3, Ali announced the offensive, and fighters scrambled to Tora Bora, unprepared for winter warfare and uncertain of their mission. Eventually, a force of about 2,500 was assembled -- divided among those reporting to Ali, Zaman and Zahir.

"I only heard about the offensive that day at 7 a.m.," recalled Zahir, who has been a fighter since he was a teenager and whose family has long ruled in this part of eastern Afghanistan. "My father told me, 'Just go,' so I left for Tora Bora. I took 700 soldiers. We got there, but I don't know for what. We had no food or anything. We just got there with nothing but these 700 soldiers."

As desultory fighting began around the Tora Bora cave complex, the Americans secretly helicoptered in, working almost exclusively with Ali.

Ali said they had first been in contact with him a few weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, working with him to the north in the Panjshir Valley, where he was a commander of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

"When we started off in Tora Bora, we didn't have enough real information," Ali recalled. "But the Americans were in a big hurry to start the offensive. We had a force there, but we didn't have a good enough intelligence network."

Ali asked the tribal elder, Nazir, to help set up the Americans in Agam, a village at the foot of the White Mountains. They commandeered a school building, covering pane-less windows with cardboard boxes. Eventually, the U.S. Special Forces soldiers, who gave their names as Mike, Dave, Jim and others, were divided into three teams code-named black, silver and red. Nazir led a mule train with one group to set up a mountain camp, finding them a hidden vantage point from which to watch the bombing.

The tribal elder's real job was to sway a hostile local population that had long harbored al Qaeda. He appealed to the villagers for support.

Even so, Nazir was skeptical of the military offensive. "The Americans," he said, "tackled this operation with very bad planning." Beholden to warlords who didn't know the secret paths to Pakistan, the Americans couldn't succeed without help from villagers -- help they never got.

"The Americans were with the commanders, and they were trapped by them," Nazir said. "The villagers know where [the al Qaeda forces] are and where they are living, but the Americans rely on these commanders, who don't know."

The Afghans fought, and then retreated. They seized a command post one day, fell back the next.

Secret Negotiations

What Ali called "the turning point" came Dec. 12, when Zaman announced he had negotiated a cease-fire with the al Qaeda fighters, to take effect the next morning. More than 100 Arabs, he claimed, were prepared to surrender, but only to the United Nations. Ali screamed into his wireless radio at Zaman, trying to block the deal in full view of reporters, saying that it was a trick to allow al Qaeda's escape.

The morning of Dec. 13, the Americans were also furious. Meeting with Ali, Zaman and others in the Agam school building, they made clear there would be no halt in the bombing. Ali said he watched as the Americans called in a new round of airstrikes on their satellite phone, and he recalled that they set up a message, to be written in the air, announcing their disdain.

Soon, a B-52 bomber was streaking over Tora Bora. First, the pilot traced a figure eight in plumes of white smoke -- for 8 a.m., the time of the alleged surrender. Then, the bomber flew around and around in a tight circle, writing 'ON' in the air. The battle continued.

But so did the Afghan intrigue. While blaming Zaman for giving the Arabs time to escape, Ali was also holding secret talks with al Qaeda. His main go-between was Ilas Khel, a local commander. Khel had worked for Yunus Khalis, a legendary leader of the war against the Soviets, who was close to bin Laden.

Ali confirmed that he had paid Khel 500,000 Pakistani rupees (about $8,330) and given him a satellite phone, and that Khel had taken off with the money rather than hand over the Arabs as he had promised.

Such deals didn't surprise his American allies. "Hazrat Ali is very opportunistic, taking money from our side and also the al Qaeda folks," said a Western diplomat who followed the events here. "He even let some of them escape."

To his Afghan rivals, Ali's behavior was suspect. "Everyone knows who gave the help for escape to the Arabs," said Amir, Zaman's commander.

As late as Dec. 14, Ali said of the bin Laden forces, "They cannot escape. The mujaheddin have blocked the road." Better coordinated by then with U.S. warplanes, his fighters roved across the peaks, radioing in urgently for U.S. missiles to rain down on the remaining Arab snipers they encountered. The Afghans were better supplied, too, as evinced by the bottles of Poland Spring water littering the mountains and the U.S.-issue sleeping bags in their camps.

But Ali later acknowledged, "A lot of people escaped during that time." As massive, 15,000-pound "daisy cutter" bombs shook the mountains like earthquakes, there was at least one pitched battle, high up in the peaks in uninhabited areas known as Gharangali and Uchnow. The circumstances are unclear; commanders of Ali, Zaman and Zahir all claim to have taken part. All said that more than 100 of bin Laden's men were killed. Ali said he personally gave the order to fire.

But the rest of the al Qaeda fighters escaped over the mountains. Only a relatively small number were captured -- 57, according to most of the commanders -- and the prisoners never offered more than tantalizing hints of bin Laden's whereabouts to their Afghan captors.

Zahir took possession of many of the al Qaeda captives, parading 10 Arabs and nine Afghans before the media on Dec. 17. It was the battle's final set piece. In front of the cameras, most appeared scared and injured, but one defiant prisoner flashed a victory sign.

Once again, Afghan feuding blocked U.S. intentions as a standoff developed over who would control the prisoners. Ali demanded that they be handed over to the United States; Zahir balked, and the Americans had to wait several days to interrogate them. Ali's and Zahir's men agree on what the prisoners told them about bin Laden: He had been in Tora Bora about two weeks earlier, with two of his sons and several top lieutenants.

"The prisoners said he came . . . and gave us a speech. He said paradise is on your way and you have to fight until death. 'We are in a very good position, so don't feel any fear of death,' " recalled Khan Mohammed, who was in charge of Zahir's improvised jail in Agam. Added Zahir, "I asked these Arabs in Arabic. They said that Osama came here 12 days ago and he drank one cup of tea with us and told us to be strong."

'Not a Real War'

The subsequent search highlighted the collision between U.S. ambitions and Afghan realities. Every morning at 8, the U.S. Special Forces would meet with Musa, Ali's top deputy. "They wanted to see all the dead bodies, all the caves, all the villages, all the mountains. They wanted to see each and every stone," said Musa, a curly-bearded fighter who brags about his three wives and 20 children.

From the caves, they carted away prizes hinting at the mix of high technology and primitive living in Tora Bora, retrieving satellite phones and global positioning system (GPS) receivers, documents and CDs, videotapes, and at least one al Qaeda computer.

But the Afghans never delivered all the spoils. Ali's men freely raided the caves themselves, unabashedly asking visitors if they wanted to buy some of the loot. Ali said he has yet to give the Americans one of his best discoveries: four Stinger missiles from the CIA-funded war against the Soviets.

Not surprisingly, the Americans didn't trust Musa and he didn't trust them. But at the end of the search, Musa said, he felt differently. He and the Americans flew by helicopter to five of the most remote spots in the mountains where al Qaeda bodies had been found, then camped together on the Pakistani border. "After that night on the mountain," he said, "then they trusted me."

But he said he never respected them. "Really, I can't believe they are soldiers. They really looked like schoolboys. Always they were afraid," Musa said. He was, however, in awe of their power to call down bombs from the sky, of the lasers that guided missiles to hidden caves and the GPS devices they taught the Afghans to operate. "I am impressed by the technology," he said, "not the soldiers."

The disdain was mutual. Jalalabad's mayor, Engineer Ghafar, a famous mujaheddin commander from the fight against the Soviets, related one such example. After the battle, he said, the Special Forces went to Farm Hada, a former al Qaeda center outside Jalalabad, to search for families of bin Laden fighters still in hiding. Instead, the Afghans started looting the houses. Furious, the Americans called a halt.

By late January, their mission ending, the Americans had turned sentimental. "They were hugging us, thanking us," recalled one fighter. They were also handing out presents. For Musa, the official gift was a pair of night-vision goggles. The Americans told him it was a personal thank-you from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

But the Special Forces were also asking pointed questions about why their Afghan hunters had failed them. In a meeting late last month with the Jalalabad mayor, "they were angry that they spent so much money here and the Arabs escaped," Ghafar recalled.

The Americans told Ghafar they had challenged Ali during the fighting on why escape routes weren't being cut off and hadn't been satisfied with the answer. "The Americans poured money in their pockets," the mayor said, "but it was not a real war. They are just doing these things for the money."

----

Afghans Want To Try Former Minister

Sun Feb 10
By LAURA KING,
AP Special Correspondent
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20020210/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan_315

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghan authorities say the former Taliban foreign minister, held by the U.S. military after he reportedly gave himself up, should be put on trial to answer for crimes committed during the Islamic militia's rule. A second Taliban figure was reportedly arrested this weekend in Pakistan.

The surrender of Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil has raised hopes that other Taliban leaders may turn themselves in.

Muttawakil, the highest Taliban official known to be in custody, surrendered Friday to Afghan authorities in Kandahar and is being questioned at the southern city's U.S.-commandeered airfield, U.S. military officials said.

Another prominent Taliban commander, Mullah Siddiqullah, was arrested by Pakistani security officials Friday at the Harkat refugee camp near Peshawar, close to the border with Afghanistan (news - web sites), refugees at the camp said Sunday.

Siddiqullah, who has one leg and is in his 50s, was a senior official in the Irrigation Ministry. Refugees said he fled to Pakistan with his family before the Oct. 7 start of U.S. and British airstrikes that brought the Taliban down. Pakistani officials refused to confirm the arrest.

As a former Cabinet minister, Muttawakil could provide information about the movements of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar in the regime's final days. Both men remain at large.

"This is a moment that we have been waiting for - to make sure that these individuals face trial, either in Afghanistan or outside Afghanistan, for their actions and deeds in the past," said Omar Samad, an Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman.

Scoffing at Muttawakil's reputation as a Taliban moderate, Samad said the Afghan government would like to "interrogate him for a while" and wants him tried by U.S., Afghan or international authorities.

"What we do insist on is that he does face trial and he does face some type of justice and answer questions about his past involvement in terrorism activities and human rights violations during the Taliban regime," Samad said Saturday in an interview in Washington. "These are crimes against humanity that include massacres and atrocities, and cultural crimes including destruction of artifacts."

U.S. officials said Muttawakil surrendered to Afghan authorities, but Kandahar officials claimed to know nothing about it.

Meanwhile, Kandahar province's governor said Afghans will accompany U.S. forces on some future operations to avoid a repeat of the commando raid north of Kandahar last month when U.S. troops captured the wrong people and, Afghans allege, killed other innocents too.

"To avoid any misguided military operation, we have made it a rule that in any future U.S. operation which is conducted on the basis of local Afghan intelligence, people from Kandahar administration would be included," Gov. Gul Agha said.

He said he was visiting London when the raid occurred. "That is why this mistake happened," he said. "But it will not be done in future."

The Pentagon (news - web sites) first said the Jan. 23 raid was an attack on an al-Qaida weapons dump, and that troops killed about 15 people and captured 27 Taliban and al-Qaida members. But after Afghans complained that they were wrongly targeted, the U.S. military acknowledged that none of the 27 prisoners was al-Qaida or Taliban and released them.

The United States says it is investigating whether any of those killed also were the wrong people. Afghans said the dead were not Taliban renegades, and instead included members of a government mission sent to disarm Taliban holdouts. Afghans who survived or witnessed the night raid said 19 people were killed, most of them where they slept, and that two others were killed by U.S. bombing.

Speaking Saturday in Quetta, a Pakistani city near the border with Afghanistan, Agha said 50,000 weapons have been collected in a drive to disarm fighters in Kandahar and adjoining provinces.

"There are still some areas that need to be cleansed of arms and we are doing that," he said.

Efforts to bring stability to northern Afghanistan also continue. In a plan reminiscent of stories about taming the American Wild West, militia factions agreed that travelers to Mazar-e-Sharif will have to leave any unauthorized weapons at checkpoints that will encircle the city, the region's largest, an official said Sunday. They will get the weapons back when they leave.

The checkpoints are part of a pact by warlords to establish a 600-member security force under Afghanistan's interim government. Nearly all militiamen have withdrawn from the city and the security force is expected to take full control later this week, said Sayed Noorullah, who heads the government's foreign affairs office for northern Afghanistan.

"We hope that Mazar-e-Sharif will be empty of all armed groups other than police," he said. "Anyone entering Mazar-e-Sharif will have to give up their arms at these posts ... and receive it when they return."

Meanwhile, in a possible conciliatory gesture to the United States, Iran closed the offices of former Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister living in exile in Iran who has opposed the interim Afghan government, one of his aides said Sunday.

Iranian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Washington has accused Iran of trying to destabilize Afghanistan's fledgling administration, saying Tehran gives refuge to anti-government figures or supports them in Afghanistan. Iran has denied the accusations.

Iran's Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari said Wednesday that Iran was considering whether to kick out Hekmatyar and discussing the matter with Afghanistan's interim government.

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Afghan Warlord Rules Out Compromise

February 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Fighting.html

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- An Afghan warlord who led the worst factional warfare since the fall of the Taliban vowed Sunday to fight on rather than step down as governor of a province where tribal leaders have refused to accept his rule.

With a bandoleer of bullets across his chest, Bacha Khan said he has 6,000 fighters ready to do battle again with forces loyal to the town council, or shura, of Gardez, who oppose his appointment as governor of surrounding Paktia province.

``They are no town council,'' Khan thundered. ``They are an al-Qaida council and a Taliban council.''

He added: ``We are ready to fight al-Qaida today, tomorrow or any time.''

Gardez shura leaders deny being al-Qaida or Taliban members and accuse Khan of being unscrupulous and corrupt.

Fighting between the two sides in January killed at least 60 people. The town council's refusal to accept Khan, whose appointment was confirmed by the government only after he had declared himself governor, threatens efforts by the interim Afghan administration of Hamid Karzai to extend its authority across the country.

The fighting ended with a cease-fire. Khan and shura members held talks with the government in Kabul, the Afghan capital, this weekend to seek a longer-term solution.

But Khan, speaking at a news conference after the talks, said he would not step down if Karzai appoints another governor.

If ``he makes another decision and changes his mind there will be problems all over Afghanistan,'' said Khan, who also wore a black turban and camouflaged military jacket.

The news conference started with representatives from all 12 of Paktia's districts pledging loyalty to Khan one by one.

``If he is not accepted, it will cause long-term problems,'' said Dadmohammed Zadran, one district leader. ``There will be instability in other provinces too.''

When a journalist asked Khan if he would accept a limited role as governor, some of the representatives shouted: ``We will not accept anyone else.''

``I have already been appointed as governor,'' Khan said.

Conflict has brewed between the two sides for months. In December, shura supporters accused Khan of calling in a U.S. airstrike on a convoy of Gardez shura members by wrongly identifying them as al-Qaida and former Taliban members. Twelve members of the convoy were killed.

With no national army, Karzai's administration has little power to impose peace on feuding warlords with private militias.

Although U.S. forces did not intervene in the fighting, U.S. aircraft dropped leaflets on Gardez, calling for reconciliation.

U.S. soldiers are in the area hunting for members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and trying to ensure that they do not flee into neighboring Pakistan.

-------- africa

Fear grows in Liberia's capital as war threatens

By Alphonso Toweh
Sunday February 10, 2:28 AM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-88703.html

MONROVIA - Liberia's capital waited edgily on Saturday as government forces fought off rebels a few miles away, a day after President Charles Taylor declared a state of emergency in the anarchic West African country.

Military sources said government troops were consolidating their control of the town of Kley, just 35 km (22 miles) away, which rebels attacked on Thursday in their closest attack to the capital since they began Liberia's latest war in mid-2000.

"They were trying to put up stiff resistance, but our men were able to get them out (of Kley)," said one source in Monrovia who said the rebels were using "hit-and-run" tactics.

"We are still carrying on mopping-up operations," he added.

The fighting sent refugees streaming into Monrovia, their memories still strong of the savage seven-year civil war in the 1990s that left up to 200,000 dead.

"I don't want to take any chances with what is going on there," stammered Rebecca Sessay, visibly exhausted and terrified, her feet swollen from walking.

"What we experienced in 1990 was very sad. I and my children will not like to go through that at all," Sessay said as she sat clutching her two infants.

The conflict has forced thousands from their homes.

"We don't know the whereabouts of thousands of people because we either don't have access or because we can't go there due to the security situation," said Ramin Rafirasme, regional spokesman of the U.N. World Food Programme.

"In Monrovia the situation is tense," he told Reuters. "After years of war it doesn't take much for people to start taking their meagre possessions and move. We are extremely concerned about those displaced people."

REBEL THREAT

Rebels of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) told Reuters in Abidjan by telephone on Friday they would reach Monrovia in a week if Taylor refused to step down.

The rebels, who began their rebellion in the far north of the country and say they have mobile headquarters, emailed news organisations grainy photographs of their leader, Damate Conneh, and small groups of men in a mixture of combat and civilian clothing toting assault rifles and other arms.

On both sides of the war are fighters from the last civil war, which ended in 1997 with the election of Taylor, a suave U.S.-educated former warlord with a penchant for dark glasses.

Liberia was founded by freed American slaves as a haven of liberty in the 19th century but has since become a byword for anarchy in a troubled region.

Declaration of a state of emergency is Taylor's clearest acknowledgement yet of the threat he faces, but otherwise it appears largely symbolic. His forces already have a free rein in the war against rebels who have sworn to oust him.

Taylor's government has blamed the war on a United Nations arms embargo, tightened last May to stop a trade in guns for diamonds mined by rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

The sound of gunshots at Kley sent thousands of refugees fleeing, many of them already escaping fighting elsewhere. Both sides have been accused of atrocities.

"There was still heavy shooting in the area late yesterday," one woman, Annie, told Reuters as she jumped from a military jeep on which she had hitched a ride to town on Saturday. "The only thing the rebels did was they burnt down some buildings in the area."

Liberia's war is part of a regional conflict centred on the diamond-rich area at the junction of its borders with Guinea and Sierra Leone, where a 10-year war officially ended last month.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Sierra Leone on Saturday and praised British forces who have helped beat back Liberian-supported rebels. Britain also led the push for U.N. sanctions on Liberia to be tightened.

----

UN plays down reports of failure in DR Congo talks

Sunday February 10, 12:50 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020209/1/2gc6m.html

The United Nations played down claims by rebels from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that peace talks on the country's complex conflict were a failure, and announced plans to hold a summit meeting on the issue.

UN Deputy Secretary General Ibrahima Fall, who mediated the informal talks here last week between the central government in Kinshasa and the two main rebel groups in the vast country, said Saturday "a climate of confidence, a political will to compromise" had emerged at the talks.

"The final manifestation of this was the decision taken to hold a summit meeting between (DRC) President Joseph Kabila, the president of the MLC (Movement for the Liberation of Congo), Jean-Pierre Bemba, and the president of the RCD (Congolese Rally for Democracy), Adolphe Onusumba," Fall said.

No date was given for the proposed summit meeting, but Fall said it was hoped it would be held before the start of formal talks on the DRC peace process on February 25 in South Africa.

Fall was reacting to a statement made earlier Saturday by rebels from the Rwandan-backed RCD, who said the UN-brokered Geneva talks had been a complete failure.

"The objective of the Geneva meeting was to reach a consensus between the three sides to the conflict. This consensus was not reached, the Geneva meeting was a total failure," the RCD's secretary general Azarias Ruberwa said in the Rwandan capital Kigali.

He blamed the Kinshasa government for the impasse.

On Thursday, four days into the informal talks at the UN's European headquarters in Geneva, the RCD opted to remain silent for the rest of talks when Kinshasa refused to meet some of its demands.

However, it did not go as far as to completely close the door on negotiations, remaining to observe the talks as they continued between the other parties.

The meeting brought together Kinshasa ministers, the Ugandan-backed Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) and the RDC in talks aimed at ending the country's complex war.

Conflict broke out in the huge mineral-rich country in August 1998 when Uganda and Rwanda invaded from the east to support rebels trying to oust the government.

The head of the Kinshasa delegation at the Geneva talks accused the RCD of trying to sabotage the talks.

"They came here with a plan to sabotage the meeting," Augustin Katumba Mwanke told AFP as the informal talks, held with a view to preparing the ground for full-fledged negotiations in South Africa on February 25 between all parties to the DRC's conflict, neared an end Friday.

But the RCD blamed Kinshasa for the talks' failure.

"Our movement wanted Kinshasa to order its allies to cease hostilities... to stop supporting armed groups and leave positions occupied since Lusaka," Ruwerba said, referring to peace talks held in Zambia between Kinshasa and the rebel movements in February last year, which revived a 1999 ceasefire.

"Kinshasa did not respond to these demands. We can not talk about transition and elections when fighting is still going on, if there is no respect for the ceasefire."

The Lusaka peace accord was signed by the Kinshasa government and its military allies, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, and the two main rebel movements and their backers, Rwanda and Uganda.

Only Namibia has withdrawn its troops from the DRC, and intermittent fighting in rebel-controlled areas of the country has jeopardized the ceasefire accord.

-------- business

MARKET INSIGHT
Who Stands to Benefit as Military Expands

New York Times
February 10, 2002
By ROBERT D. HERSHEY Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/10/business/yourmoney/10INSI.html

President Bush's 2003 budget calls for a $48 billion, or 14 percent, jump in military spending, the biggest increase in two decades. While a sizable chunk is for pay raises, health care and the impact of inflation on programs, weapons procurement would rise 12 percent, reversing a general decline through most of the 1990's.

Assuming that Congress approves the bulk of the plan amid patriotic fervor, this implies good times for companies that produce equipment, some of which recently proved itself in the war in Afghanistan.

Howard A. Rubel, aerospace and defense analyst at Goldman Sachs (news/quote), took time last week to discuss the industry and which companies were best positioned to benefit. Following are excerpts from the conversation.

Q. Is this military buildup seen as a pretty big deal on Wall Street?

A. You bet. Many weapons systems and platforms of the 1980's are becoming obsolete. Sept. 11 shined a bright light on a host of needs. For example, the average age of the Air Force fleet is somewhere around 23 years, compared with around 16 years then. If current trends continued, we could be looking at a fleet averaging very close to 30 years, an extreme situation for a country that prides itself on being technologically advanced. We had thought there would be a 4 to 7 percent increase, to about $350 billion; twice that is quite striking.

Q. I suppose it's telling that none of the older systems are to be eliminated. Didn't we expect at least one of the three new jet fighter programs to be canceled or cut?

A. We're using 40-year-old B-52's to bomb the Taliban, but it is the precision weapons they carried that made the substantial difference. The force multiplier of technology really worked. And look what happened: we got all three fighter programs.

Q. What surprised you in the budget?

A. It's hard to have a lot of surprises in a $379 billion budget; it requires a lot of planning. The surprise was the overall size and also dividing it into two elements, the core and an additional $10 billion for discretionary items.

Q. Most of the stocks, with the exception of Boeing (news/quote), are trading near 52-week highs. How do you appraise the group now?

A. There's opportunity for the stocks to deliver very good returns, but it's not a straight line. They are affected by political perceptions, technological innovations and the performance of individual companies. We're at a point where all three are favorable, and this will continue for a while. This industry is much more tightly run, more efficient than the way it used to be.

My call is that we'll see share prices move up in line with earnings growth of from low single digits to midteens, versus probably 7 percent for the market as a whole. But most of the expansion of price- earnings multiples is behind us. We have the group overweighted and have for some time.

Q. Which are your favorites among the military contractors?

A. What I am recommending is a mix of names. One is Boeing. All the civil aviation stocks took a tremendous pounding the first week the market reopened after Sept. 11. To walk away then would have been selling at the bottom, and since then they've provided pretty good returns. While you're going to see declining output at Boeing, its price reflects the essential market risk.

Their space and defense business alone is worth in the low $30's, and with the stock at about $40 you have a call on the global economy when it turns. You don't pay much for a very powerful commercial franchise. Some of its space and defense programs, such as missile defense, are at important crossroads, and they are in the heart of the market as a key supplier of satellite systems such as Wide Band Gap Filler. The company should generate $2.5 billion-plus in free cash this year and possibly more than $3 billion next year, a 9 percent free cash flow yield. The stock should be trading today in the mid-to upper $40's.

Q. What are your other favorite military companies?

A. Last month we added Rockwell Collins, a leading supplier of avionics, to our recommended list. The stock got pounded because investors associated it almost exclusively with Boeing, but the reality is that only about 8 percent of Collins's sales are to Boeing directly. It should earn $1.20 a share this fiscal year and $1.40 in 2003. It has a unique franchise, with many of their commercial applications also serving the military, and a spectacular balance sheet.

Of course, we also like a couple of the big guys that are pure plays, like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. All the major companies have evolved to meet changing needs.

Q. Which companies' stocks would you avoid?

A. We have Northrop Grumman and Raytheon (news/quote) as market performers. We're not recommending them.

-------- chemical weapons

Vietnam, U.S. to Jointly Study Agent Orange

By REUTERS
February 10, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-vietnam-usa-dioxin.html

HANOI (Reuters) - Former foes Vietnam and the United States will begin joint research on the use during their war in the 1960s and 1970s of defoliant Agent Orange and its cancer-causing component dioxin by co-organizing a conference.

Monday's Vietnam News daily quoted the U.S. National Institutes of Environment and Health Science as saying scientists at next month's Hanoi conference would review research results of dioxin impact on human health and the environment.

The United States sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange and other defoliants on Vietnam from 1962 to 1971 to deny communist fighters jungle cover. The chemicals were contaminated by TCDD, the most dangerous form of dioxin, a known carcinogen.

The U.S. body said delegates would discuss measures to reduce the hazards of dioxin and consider further research at the four-day conference, which would start on March 3.

Vietnam News quoted the U.S. institutes as saying ``the conference will mark the start of joint research on the impact of defoliant sprayed by the U.S. Air Force during the war in Vietnam.''

It said the conference would lay a foundation for further cooperation in this field as well as seeking funding for future projects.

Analysts said the conference was an important step forward in addressing one of the most enduring and controversial legacies of the Vietnam War, which ended with communist victory in 1975.

Washington argues there is still no solid scientific proof that Agent Orange was, as Vietnam and some U.S. veterans insist, responsible for a wide range of medical problems, including tens of thousands of mental and physical birth defects.

Vietnam News said two million Vietnamese had been affected by toxic chemicals, mainly Agent Orange. In the first decade after the war, about 50,000 children were born with deformities or paralysis to parents affected by toxic chemicals.

Dioxin causes cancer, immune system malfunction and birth defects.

-------- china

Beijing slams CIA chief's warning on Chinese ambitions

Sunday February 10, 11:54 AM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020210/1/2gg37.html

China has slammed as "unacceptable" recent remarks by CIA chief George Tenet, who warned that Chinese acquiescence in the US anti-terror campaign did not mean Beijing had lost sight of its prime goal of becoming a major Asian power.

The official Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Kong Quan as saying, "Tenet's statement that China will be a challenge to the United States is unreasonable, irresponsible and unacceptable."

In the statement, which Xinhua said was made Saturday, Kong said, "an improvement in bilateral relations would be in the interest of both nations but it does require effort from both sides."

President George W. Bush is to arrive in China on February 21, 30 years to the day after one of his predecessors, Richard Nixon, held epochal talks with then Chinese leader Chairman Mao Zedong.

US officials have in recent months praised Beijing for its role in providing intelligence to the US campaign against terrorism, and for not seeking to actively block American military action in Afghanistan.

But, Tenet warned in a Congressional testimony last week, that approach would not deflect China's bid to emerge as a power likely to challenge US strategic preeminence in Asia.

"September 11 changed the context of China's approach to us, but it did not change the fundamentals," Tenet, head of the Central Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"China is developing an increasingly competitive economy and building a modern military force with the ultimate objective of asserting itself as a great power in East Asia.

"And although Beijing joined the coalition against terrorism, it remains deeply skeptical of US intentions in South Asia.

"It fears we are gaining influence at China's expense, and views our encouragement of a Japanese military role in counterterrorism as support for Japanese rearmament -- something the Chinese oppose."

Tenet also warned that rising nationalist sentiment in China could jar Sino-US relations over the next few years, as Beijing works through a complicated transfer of power to a new generation of leaders.

China has backed the US anti-terror drive but has voiced reservations about some American stances such as the recent characterisation of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil."

-------- iran

Khatami warns against 'unfathomable' war

February 10, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/10022002-064447-6287r.htm

TEHRAN, Iran, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- As Iran prepared for rallies on Monday to mark the 23rd anniversary if its Islamic revolution, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami on Sunday decried a good-versus-evil dichotomy and warned that the idea could push the world to the precipice of a war, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

"Naturally, this self-centered division of the world exposes it to a war whose start is known, but its end is unfathomable," Khatami told a group of Tehran-based ambassadors and foreign representatives.

In a clear reference to President George Bush's recent comments, classifying the states into either "with us" or "with the terrorists," the moderate president described such a view of the world as clamoring for a "war coalition which sees the world divided into two parts of bright and dark or friends and foes."

He invited the world instead to embrace "coalition for peace" which "is based on the common principles of international treaties and the results of many years of international efforts under the United Nations' auspices."

Khatami's remarks, hours after he urged Iranian people to massively participate in the demonstration on Monday, were in reaction to the Bush's Jan. 29 State of the Union address in which he described Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, as part of an "axis of evil."

"This participation is more important than before because of the baseless, erroneous and insulting comments against Iran," he said, joining all other Iranian leaders who, in the past few days, have stepped up their efforts to turn the rallies into a protest against the recent U.S. warnings.

Showing respect for the American people and praising the U.S Constitution, the mild-mannered president cautioned the U.S. leaders against the consequences of the policies they are pursuing.

"It seems that an effective number of the American statespersons today are moving on a track ... which is to the detriment of the American nation," he said, urging them to "revise their policies before it is too late."

A war coalition, ha warned, will lead to arms competition, divergence of the world, spread of terrorism and an ultimate war.

----

Let the Axis Rotate
A Different Approach to Iran Would Better Serve U.S. Interests

By Giandomenico Picco
Sunday, February 10, 2002; Page B05
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48726-2002Feb8?language=printer

The United States and Iran have no formal diplomatic relations. In fact, because the United States has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, there are no economic ties between the two countries either. And now, President Bush has called Iran part of an "axis of evil" -- placing that country in the same basket as Iraq and North Korea.

Yet this seemingly nonexistent relationship has included episodes of cooperation as well as confrontation, promising beginnings as well as abrupt, disappointing endings. Indeed, there is enough substance to this non-relationship to wonder whether an imaginative approach to Iran could lead to more normal ties despite some real and important obstacles. That is why the State of the Union address surprised many people who, like me, have sought to bridge the gap between Washington and Tehran over the years.

Common concerns and a common enemy in Afghanistan had seemed to open a new door for the United States and Iran. Or so many of us thought. After all, back in the 1990s, Iran was the first country to openly oppose the Taliban andits foreign supporters. It opposed that regime politically, militarily and ideologically, from Day One. And it paid a price in terms of human lives lost in the struggle against narcotics trafficking along their common border, before the Taliban claimed to crack down on illegal drugs. The Northern Alliance, which played such a useful role during the U.S. ground operations in Afghanistan, would hardly have existed without Iranian support.

Ideological and religious issues have also divided the al Qaeda group and Iran. Al Qaeda claimed inspiration from the Salafite sub-sect of Wahabism, which refers to the Shiites -- the majority sect in Iran -- as "less than infidels."

Following Sept. 11, the U.S. and Iran shared a common interest: to oust the Taliban and usher in a new unity government in Afghanistan. Iran's actions went beyond studied neutrality or limited assistance for its traditional allies in western Afghanistan. Iran offered assistance, if needed, in search and rescue missions for U.S. personnel during the military campaign. Iranian officials, according to U.S. sources, also cooperated at the Bonn Conference, which gave birth to the interim government in Kabul. And Iran promised economic aid to the Afghan government during the pledging conference in Tokyo.

Afghanistan gave the United States and Iran an opening, but that opportunity didn't emerge from thin air. Iran today is different from the country Americans saw just after the frenzied revolution the Ayatollah Khomeini led in 1979. Of the 65 million Iranians alive today, half were born around the time of the revolution or later. Because Iran's voting age is 16, many young people already have a voice in choosing a government and they tend to have different ideas from their parents and grandparents.

Iran's relations with its neighbors, who once feared the Islamic regime, are another sign of evolution. Kuwait, once deemed an enemy, will soon be importing water from Iran. Saudi Arabia, another former enemy, is investing in Iran. The first Iranian oil and gas pipeline toward the West began pumping few weeks ago. Iranian gas now reaches Ankara. Trade ties with Europe have also strengthened, particularly since June 2001 when European governments and companies stopped waiting for a change in policy from the new U.S. administration.

One relationship that has not improved is Iran's relationship with Iraq. During the Persian Gulf War, Iran provided intelligence to U.S. forces seeking to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait.

The story of U.S.-Iran "non-relations" over the past two decades is full of aborted beginnings. Washington has been ready to reestablish diplomatic relations while Tehran has preferred to start with renewed economic relations. In 1994, for example, Iran chose U.S.-based Conoco Inc. for an oil exploration contract over a French firm, but the United States blocked the deal and broadened economic sanctions. At the same time, the United States looked to Iran to halt military aid to Hezbollah and stop its nuclear program.

Bad feelings exist on both sides. The United States believes Iran has spurned its polite overtures. Iran believes that Washington has imposed sanctions on Iran based on the mere supposition that it has a nuclear development program -- while Pakistan and India, which flagrantly violated arms control accords by testing nuclear weapons, are rewarded for backing the U.S. war on Afghanistan. A few Iranian officials have pointed out to me that even North Korea has received payments to abandon its nuclear development program.

Signals have been sent across the divide many times. Inevitably the sender would be frustrated by what it considered an inadequate response from the other side. I have personally heard officials in both capitals express the same frustrations in the same words. Often I have been told, "They," meaning the other side, "do not understand our domestic constraints." Or, "Don't they know how hard it was just to send that signal?"

Not all obstacles to improved relations are imagined. The U.S. administration has information I can't possibly know about. Consider the case of the Karine A, a boat Israel intercepted with 50 tons of heavy weapons allegedly from Iran and destined for the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. and Iranian governments take diametrically opposite positions on the origin, destination and contents of the ship. Is there any way that the United States and Iran can communicate on this issue? If not, the Karine A, and similar public disputes, only feed the prophets of doom in both countries.

Western governments have for a long time read the situation in Iran as a power struggle between reformists and conservatives. Many in Washington claim that the Europeans have courted Iranian reformists to no avail. This, however, begs the question: Are the conservatives being approached? Thus far the answer seems to be no.

A recent little-known development could have a lasting effect on Iranian politics: The bonyads, foundations of a sort, will now have to pay taxes and follow currency regulations. These bonyads, which inherited the wealth of the Shah's family and manage 20 percent of the economy, have been major instruments of patronage in the hands of the supreme religious leader.

Have recent events really ended any hope of reestablishing relations between the two countries? Or would an imaginative move by one party unmask those who always need an enemy because they have nothing positive to offer?

It seems to me that in the fight against terrorism, generalities might not be useful. In fact, they could be damaging. Thank God, not all terrorists are connected with one another, and not all terrorist groups support each other. That means that no single prescription for Danti-terrorist struggle can be applied all over, though some preventive measures can be. As a result, the larger the anti-terrorist coalition the greater the chance of success in the long term. In Iran, both the supreme leader and the president have declared war against terrorism. Few would doubt that with Iran on the side of anti-terrorism the struggle would be more effective. Perhaps somecreative instrument or framework can be devised for this; the benefit would justify a sustained effort.

Even if all that did not work, if I had three enemies, instead of uniting them as an axis, it would seem useful to keep them apart. The Romans discovered the divide et impera formula very early. They found that uniting their enemies, actual or potential, was notgood.

Perhaps inspiration for an approach to Iran can be found in the words of Yitzhak Rabin, the late Israeli prime minister. He did not need an enemy to rule. He had so much more to offer to his people on the positive side of the ledger. He used to say, "Let's fight terrorism as if therewere no peace process; and let's pursue the peace process as if therewere no terrorism."

Giandomenico Picco is CEO of GDP Associates, a New York consulting firm. He led the U.N. operation to free the Western hostages from Lebanon, where he was seized briefly by kidnappers, and was the U.N. negotiator for the cease-fire between Iran and Iraq in 1988. President George H.W. Bush gave him the Special Award for Exceptional Service.

--------

A Risky Message to Iran

New York Times
February 10, 2002
By ABBAS AMANAT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/10/opinion/10ABBA.html

NEW HAVEN - Iran's recent promotion from a rogue state to a member of the "axis of evil" appears to be a belated rhetorical response to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's portrayal of the United States as the Great Satan. Demonizing Iran may play well with the American audience, but it has already caused discomfort among America's European allies. Actual military action against Iran would be disastrous. But after the United States' success in Afghanistan, there may well be willingness in certain quarters within the Bush administration to entertain that idea, given its statements that Iran supports terrorism and wants to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Making an enemy of Iran - much less attacking it, even surgically - would have the effect of rallying the Iranian public behind the conservative clerics of the Islamic regime led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The losers would be the voices of moderation and political reform among Iranians deeply frustrated with the domination of the hard-line clergy. Mohammad Khatami's lethargic presidency, which has been battered by these hard-liners, can hardly fulfill promises for civil liberties, the rule of law, democracy and political accountability.

But for the electorate that returned him to office with an overwhelming majority last year, Mr. Khatami is still the only option. An aggressive posture by America would give the regime's hard-liners new ability to embarrass Mr. Khatami, repudiate reforms and block further chances to normalize relations with the United States. Having made the rhetoric of "death to America" the centerpiece of the revolution, they cannot afford to abandon that cause now. There can be no underestimating the fear among the hardliners that the ultimate objective of the United States is to dislodge the clergy in power.

Indeed, certain adventurous elements within the regime might even welcome a limited military engagement with a superpower as a way of brightening their sagging fortunes. Memories of the Iraq-Iran war as an effective means of suppressing the regime's domestic opposition are still alive. Although the top clerical figures in the Iranian government will resist the temptation of engaging a superpower, knowing well the risks involved, Washington's threatening words give them an immediate reason to intensify their anti-American diatribe, which indirectly is aimed at Mr. Khatami as well.

Yet despite the internal power struggle, it is important to recognize that Iran is one of the more stable regimes of the Middle East. Destabilizing Iran would have a direct and immediate impact not only on the security of the Persian Gulf and the flow of Middle East oil (Iran has strategic command over the Strait of Hormuz), but on the international efforts to bring stability to Afghanistan. If militarily threatened, Iran is likely to engage in a range of actions to counter the United States and its regional allies.

For instance, it is not implausible for Iran to respond by entering into an implicit alliance with its foe, Iraq, another member of the "axis of evil." The normally unthinkable option of coming to terms with Saddam Hussein may be possible if the regime in Iran were to face a threat to its survival. Both nations may see a benefit to accommodating each other's security needs; neither would welcome an increased American presence on their border or in the region. Furthermore, as an intermediary power between Iraq and Saudia Arabia, with which it has developed closer ties, Iran is positioned to gain a greater strategic advantage in the Persian Gulf than it had in past decades.

Placing Iran on the enemies list may also encourage it to reassert its claims over the offshore Caspian oilfields that are in dispute with the Republic of Azerbaijan. Only last year, Iran reacted with a threat of military action when British Petroleum began its offshore oil exploration. This would be a serious setback for American oil interests and investment in that region. Increased tension between Iran and the United States would also allow Russia to regain its place in Iranian power politics as a counterbalance to Western powers.

Heightened tension also gives the hard-liners within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and their intelligence affiliates, a pretext to back the Lebanese Hezbollah in a new round of attacks against Israel. Under greater American pressure, those elements in Iran may seek to gain Palestinian sympathizers by providing support to Hezbollah and indirect aid to Islamic Jihad. Iran's alleged involvement in shipping arms to the Palestinians aboard the Karine A, though denied by the Iranians, could become the start of a new trend.

This kind of result would isolate the United States across a vast and crucial region stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia. In terms of true security, the United States gains little by threatening Iran. And it stands to lose much: support in the Middle East for its actions in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks and credit as a responsible guarantor of the global order. In the Muslim world, action against Iran would add weight to the belief that the United States is primarily interested in advancing an Israeli agenda at the expense of regional stability. The United States and its allies should recognize Iran's longstanding role in Afghanistan through its support of the Northern Alliance and its sheltering of more than two million Afghan refugees.

The charge that Iran is producing weapons of mass destruction has never been substantiated. If Iran is developing a nuclear program, or chemical and biological weapons, a surgical military strike is unlikely to eliminate such projects entirely. The persistence of such threats in neighboring Iraq is a case in point. But unilateral military action by the United States, if successful, might well be used as license for other nations to take retaliatory actions against their real or perceived enemies. This potential effect is reason enough to oppose the use of force against Iran.

Iran's transition into a less autocratic regime has been slow, but it is coming. As a leader of the international community, the United States can support reformist change without appeasing the Islamic republic. It must remain critical of Iran's conduct on human rights and treatment of its voices of dissent. It should keep pressure on the hard-liners while being careful not to undermine the efforts of the weakened Khatami government to allow more social freedoms.

And it must not lose sight of the complexity of Iranian society, which has its own sense of cultural continuity and yet desires to break out of the isolation imposed after the revolution. The dynamics of a shift into a democratic society should be encouraged, not disrupted at the very moment when reform is supported by most Iranians. The success or failure of Iran's transformation will have important implications for the peaceful resolution of the Muslim world's acute political and religious predicament.

Abbas Amanat is a professor of history at Yale and the author of the forthcoming "In Search of Modern Iran."

-------- iraq

Iraq Calls Bush's Bluff on Weapons Scrutiny

by Scott Ritter
Sunday, February 10, 2002
Los Angeles Times
http://commondreams.org/views02/0210-05.htm

The past week has seen an unprecedented diplomatic offensive on the part of Iraq. This appears to be driven by the harsh rhetoric emanating from the Bush administration since the president's identification of Iraq as an integral part of an "axis of evil."

Whether or not Iraq is sincere, Baghdad's burst of diplomacy appears to be designed to derail a drive for war from within the Bush administration that has been gaining momentum at a startling rate.

Iraq has dispatched representatives to Europe, Russia, China and the Arab world to distance itself from President Bush's characterization of it as evil and to discourage the war-like undertones of such a label. These efforts have borne instant fruit. The "axis of evil" formulation has been criticized in almost every corner of the world as ill-conceived and counterproductive.

There was, however, one issue that caused trouble for Iraq: the return of United Nations weapons inspectors. The focus by Bush on the matter of weapons inspections prior to his State of the Union address resonated in many capitals around the globe, even those sympathetic to Iraq or overtly opposed to renewed military conflict.

The ambiguities that exist concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs are troubling. The shadow cast by Sept. 11, combined with the specter of weapons of mass destruction, made the issue of the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq suddenly relevant.

Russia, China and Turkey all have urged Baghdad to allow the inspectors back to work. Iraq was cool to these overtures until, in a stunning recent reversal, Baghdad communicated to the U.N. secretary general its willingness to engage in discussions on the matter.

In so doing, Iraq has exposed the Achilles' heel of Washington's policy: Is the U.S. truly serious about weapons inspections?

While Iraq has stated that it has set no preconditions for any discussions regarding inspectors, it is widely recognized in the United Nations that the issue of economic sanctions is firmly linked to weapons inspections. Any discussion of sanctions is the last thing the Bush administration would want.

Economic sanctions have been the cornerstone of a policy of containment pursued by three consecutive administrations. Sanctions are essential to Bush's plan to destabilize and eventually overthrow Saddam Hussein.

The resumption of serious weapons inspections would, by their very nature, open the door for the eventual lifting of the sanctions, which in turn would signal an end of containment. This could mean the de facto recognition that Hussein would retain power. Such a process certainly flies in the face of the strong language of confrontation coming from such proponents of the Hussein regime's removal as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Sens. Joe Lieberman, John McCain and Joe Biden.

The Iraqi diplomatic offensive has thrown the administration into a quandary.

Although the Iraqi offer was given short shrift by Secretary of State Colin Powell, the machinery of international diplomacy has been actively engaged and will prove hard to stop. By showing a willingness to discuss the issue of inspectors, Iraq has trumped those who have maintained that Hussein would never permit their return. Baghdad now has raised the question as to whether U.S. support for inspectors has been merely rhetorical, a verbal foil designed to support the primary policy objective of removing Hussein from power.

How the Bush administration answers this new challenge will do much to shape the nature of any global support for future actions against Hussein.

Scott Ritter, a former U.N. weapons inspector, is the author of "Endgame: Solving the Iraqi Problem, Once and For All" (Simon & Schuster, 1999).

----

US is planning campaign against Iraqi regime

Sunday February 10, 8:27 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020210/1/2gj8h.html

The administration of US President George W. Bush is engaged in a major Iraq policy review that may result in massive military action against the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The administration expects to complete this long-delayed Iraq policy review by the time Vice President Richard Cheney makes his Middle East tour next month, so that he can outline American plans to Arab leaders, the daily said, citing senior US officials.

The emerging new Iraq policy is based on two premises, according to the report.

First, the Iraq problem has to be solved, not simply managed as it was during the previous US administrations.

Second, Washington is prepared to push beyond the limitations imposed by international sentiment, Arab public opinion and even the original UN resolutions that opened the way for Operation Desert Storm 11 years ago, The Times said.

According to the report, policymakers are considering three basic scenarios.

A diplomatic option calls for working through the United Nations to pass new "smart sanctions" and press Saddam to allow the return of UN arms inspectors ejected from Iraq in 1998.

Also under consideration is a military campaign, probably relying heavily on air power and potential defections within the Iraqi military, the paper said.

The administration may also opt for tightening the political noose around Baghdad's neck with more coercive actions by neighboring states and the international community, according to the report.

Earlier western alanlysts said the issue of weapons inspectors being allowed into Iraq would be the flashpoint in US-Iraqi relations.

"I think that the United States at some point, probably after the November election, will put themselves in a position to change the regime in Iraq if Saddam does not agree on inspections" demanded by the United Nations, said Lawrence Korb, an undersecretary of defense under president Ronald Reagan.

And though no links exist yet between Baghdad and the September 11 attacks blamed on the al-Qaeda network of top terror suspect Osama bin Laden, Washington has made it clear Saddam's weapons-grade ambitions pose as great a security threat as the Islamist terror network in Afghanistan and beyond.

Within top layers of Bush's Republican party, said Joseph Cirincione, a strategy specialist at the Carnegie Endowment, "it's not a question of should we attack Iraq, but rather when."

Korb said such an assault could begin with support of armed operations by the Iraqi opposition, and be followed, if necessary, by the military engagement of as many as 50,000 troops -- a number bandied about by the Pentagon, according to US media reports.

The US focus on ridding Afghanistan and the rest of the world of al-Qaeda, coupled with the crucial midterm Congressional elections in November, make it unlikely that anything "military" would happen in the near term, Judith Kipper of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said.

It is also important to remember, suggested Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment, that unless the United States has a clear mandate and the support of regional allies, occupying Iraq and the resulting need to rebuild the country "threatens to be more than even Washington can handle."

"Baghdad is not Kabul and (Saddam Hussein's) Republican guard is not the Taliban," he said.

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Bush's Team Targets Hussein
Iraq: Voices of caution fall silent as U.S. plans new campaign that could include military force. Diplomacy, sanctions also may play a role.

By ROBIN WRIGHT,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 10, 2002
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-021002usiraq.story

WASHINGTON -- After a year of internal divisions and military diversions, serious planning is underway within the Bush administration for a campaign against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The administration expects to complete a long-delayed Iraq policy review by the time Vice President Dick Cheney makes his nine-nation Mideast tour next month, so that he can outline American plans to Arab leaders, according to senior U.S. officials.

Any denouement in Iraq is still a long way off, the officials insist. But the broad outlines of favored options have begun to emerge.

At the heart of administration policy are two strategic decisions, according to the officials, who do not want to be identified while the policy review is underway.

First, the Iraq problem has to be solved, not simply managed as it was during the previous two U.S. administrations. The philosophy of so-called containment, or limiting the damage Hussein could do either to the region or at home, is no longer considered enough.

Many analysts, including former Clinton administration officials, now argue that it may even be dangerous to simply contain Iraq, because the regime has enough wiggle room to quietly work on weaponry that would allow it to pull off devastating surprises down the road.

Second, Washington is prepared to push beyond the limitations imposed by international sentiment, Arab public opinion and even the original U.N. resolutions that opened the way for Operation Desert Storm 11 years ago to force Iraq out of tiny oil-rich Kuwait.

Having survived short-lived opposition to the campaign in Afghanistan, U.S. officials express a new confidence about going up against what is still a strong tide of resistance.

The debate continues, however, about what to do next. But the administration's mind-set and the progress of the war in Afghanistan, especially compared with the decade-long Soviet struggle there in the 1980s, have opened the way for new thinking about what might work.

As policymakers deliberate the options, three basic scenarios are emerging:

- The diplomatic route, working through the United Nations to pass new "smart sanctions" and press Hussein's regime to allow the return of inspectors who would look for and dismantle any chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

- A military campaign, probably relying heavily on air power and potential defections within the Iraqi military.

- A tightening of the political noose around Hussein's government with more coercive actions by neighboring states and the international community.

The policy may well end up with some mix of these approaches. But the common denominator behind each is the threat of some kind of military action should Iraq not change its ways. Despite opposition from allies, a major U.S. military effort is no longer out of the question, U.S. officials say.

"There's an evolving consensus that a sizable U.S. military activity will be required," a well-placed source said.

Even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, long the most cautious voice among the principals crafting policy on Iraq, is on board. At two congressional hearings last week, he put the world on notice that President Bush is exploring "the most serious set of options that one might imagine" that will leave "no stone unturned."

The ultimate goal: a change of regimes--and sooner rather than later.

"After the president, Powell now looks like the hardest-line person in the administration," mused a senior State Department official Friday.

The policy review is exploring the possibility of new anti-Hussein opposition inside and outside Iraq, U.S. officials say. Consensus is growing on broadening the makeup of the U.S.-funded Iraqi National Congress, or INC, and encouraging the coalition to find new leadership.

"The INC could still be a useful umbrella to bring other political forces together, but not as it is currently constituted. We need an INC that is more representative of all the forces in Iraq," a senior administration official said.

INC chief Ahmad Chalabi still has support from some quarters, notably at the Pentagon, but "that is not where policy is currently headed," the official added.

Since last year, Pentagon political appointees have advocated using the INC in the same way the American military used Afghan opposition forces, backed by U.S. Special Forces troops, to battle the Taliban. But key officials at the State Department and in the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain skeptical about the INC's military capabilities.

The INC, and the CIA station that supported it, was forced out of northern Iraq by Hussein's troops in 1996. Since then, the INC has been headquartered in London and unable to make any serious challenges at home.

"I don't see us drawing up operations with the INC as it would take too long to build it up as a fighting force," said the well-placed source.

Last month, the U.S. suspended key INC funding because the group failed to account for tens of millions of dollars in aid. After lengthy talks, Washington has restored full funding for three months, during which it will monitor INC accounting.

Even if the INC is reconstituted, however, the administration is still exploring other fronts. One idea gaining currency in Washington is turning to the Iraqi military as allies, according to U.S. officials. The new thinking argues that a U.S. offensive would lead to thousands of defections by Iraqi troops, as happened during Desert Storm. Defectors might then be converted into an anti-Hussein force.

The former Bush and Clinton administrations believed that Hussein's downfall depended on senior officers in his inner circle who might be disillusioned enough to turn on their boss. But a decade of waiting for the generals to act has produced nothing significant.

In contrast, key U.S. officials now argue, the rank and file in the military might easily fold under serious military pressure--and defect to the U.S. side.

"As we learned in Afghanistan, some regimes are not as solid as they pretend to be. The trick is finding the pressure points that can break the structure," the senior State Department official said.

Of the three scenarios, the diplomatic route is gaining speed the fastest, although key U.S. officials are skeptical that it will produce a change of Iraqi regimes. But Washington must be seen to exhaust those possibilities to win allied support for--or at least tolerance of--more aggressive options, U.S. officials say.

After months of negotiations, Washington is close to winning agreement at the United Nations on streamlining the world's toughest economic embargo, U.S. officials say. Russia, which has a veto, has been the last holdout.

U.N. agreement, which could be voted on in May when the embargo is due to be renewed, would open the way for a change in the sanctions that would allow more goods for Iraq's struggling population while limiting Hussein's arsenal.

The United Nations is also pressing harder for return to Iraq of its weapons inspectors, who have been barred since 1998.

The threatening language from Washington, including Bush's description of Iraq as part of an "axis of evil," and the U.N. moves have Hussein on the defensive, U.S. officials claim. Last week he offered to resume "a dialogue" with the world body, although he is resisting any talk of the inspectors.

But the diplomatic route is vulnerable to failure, U.S. officials note. To enforce smart sanctions, the U.N. will have to rely on inspections on the borders of Syria, Iran, Turkey and Jordan, all of which allow Iraq to smuggle oil out in violation of U.N. sanctions in exchange for payoffs or deep discounts on the resource.

Persuading Iraq to allow in the weapons inspectors also may not produce a quick and decisive climax. Just getting the operations going could take months. And then, as his regime did for eight years, Hussein could carry out "cheat and retreat" schemes to prolong the process.

The second scenario, involving a tighter squeeze on Iraq outside the framework of the United Nations, also would try to cut off the regime in high-profile ways. One idea making the rounds in Washington is getting Iraq's neighboring states together to discuss a viable post-Hussein government--similar to the talks in Germany on post-Taliban rule.

But some of these options depend on the cooperation of front-line neighbors and the Arab world, which have been reluctant to sign on to previous proposals.

Indeed, Cheney may find that he has his work cut out for him on his most ambitious diplomatic mission. Arab allies remain deeply concerned about some of the new U.S. ideas. "Our problem is that we see much of it as wishful thinking or a leap of faith--particularly relying on defections. This doesn't have the feel of a workable plan," said an Arab official who asked to remain anonymous.

Arabs are particularly worried about the post-Hussein government. "None of us are defending Saddam Hussein," the envoy added. "But we want to make sure that everyone is better off the day after he's gone, and that means a lot more planning than is going on now."

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Iraq Says It Would Defeat Attack From 'Arrogant' US

February 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-iraq-usa.html

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said Sunday that Baghdad would defeat any U.S. military action against his country.

``America has revealed its hatred against the Arabs and Muslims and this arrogant (Bush) understands concession as weakness,'' Ramadan told reporters after opening an exhibition of Syrian products in Baghdad.

Ramadan rebuffed comments by Secretary of State Colin Powell this week that President Bush was considering military action against Iraq in its war on terrorism.

``America has been saying that over the last 12 years and those who defend their sovereignty and country will defeat the aggressors such as the arrogant Americans.''

The Bush administration is determined to force Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to let back in U.N. weapons inspectors who have been kept out since 1998 and it accuses him of seeking to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

The United Nations announced earlier this week that Iraq had offered talks with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan which could lead to allowing the inspectors to return. Washington has received the Iraqi offer with skepticism.

``We are ready for useful and positive dialogue with the (U.N.) secretary-general and the world body,'' Ramadan said.

Bush said last month Iraq, Iran and North Korea formed an ''axis of evil'' and the United States would act to prevent them developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Various options apart from the military one are available to the administration, which had an official policy of ``regime change'' in Baghdad even before the September 11 attacks on the United States put countries that it calls sponsors of terrorism more firmly at the top of Bush's potential target list.

In a reply to Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's request that Iraq allow U.N. inspectors into the country, Saddam said in a letter this week that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and urged Ankara to oppose U.S. threats against Iraq.

Ramadan said Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri would travel to Ankara this week to attend a joint meeting of the Islamic Conference Organization and the European Union.

``It is a routine visit. We have to explain to officials all the dimensions of the problem and the hidden agenda of the enemy (against Iraq),'' Ramadan said.

-------- israel / palestine

Israel alleges PA-Iranian strategic deal

February 10, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/10022002-040121-5543r.htm

TEL AVIV, Israel, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- On the eve of massive demonstrations in Tehran planned to mark the 24th anniversary of Iran's Islamic revolution, the controversy over Israeli allegations of an Iranian arms shipment to Palestinians surfaced again Sunday.

While Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has repeatedly denied military contacts with Iran, a senior Israeli security source alleged Sunday the 50 tons of arms and ammunition that Israel intercepted last month last month were part of a strategic deal between Iran and the Palestinian Authority in which Arafat was personally involved.

Last week Arafat told supporters he had written U.S. President George W. Bush that he accepted responsibility for the Karine A ship that Israel captured last month carrying 50 tons of arms and explosives from Iran to the Palestinian Territories, but was not personally involved in it.

Arafat said he would prosecute those involved in the affair.