------- 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.

----

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."

----

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.

An Israeli source, who asked not to be identified, told reporters Sunday: "Arafat initiated this deal. Arafat was involved in the deal. Arafat personally authorized people involved in this deal to run this deal."

"We have excellent proof," he said, but would not elaborate.

A brigadier general in military intelligence and senior navy officer presented their evidence in Washington last month then went to several European capitals to show it to their counterparts. The source said the officers presented the information also to the British MI-6.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Javad Zarif, the Iranian deputy foreign minister, denied allegations of Iranian complicity in an arms shipment.

"First of all, we said from the first day, that this was a totally fabricated story," Zarif said. "This is an implausible story."

"Despite the fact that we believe that this is an implausible story, we have asked the United States to provide any information that it has in order for us to investigate. We have done our own investigation, (and)... we have asked the United States to provide information, but the U.S. simply says it has evidence," Zarif continued.

Going a step further, Zarif said, "I can tell you categorically that all segments of the Iranian government, and I mean total government not simply President Khatami's administration, have had nothing to do with the sending of arms to Mr. Yasser Arafat or to the Palestinians."

The allegations by the Israelis surfaced again after President George Bush in his State of the Union address at the end of January, called Iran part of "an axis of evil," in which he included Iraq and North Korea.

The United States is considered Israel's closest ally.

Bush's remarks were made after Iran made several overtures in offering to help the United States battle the Taliban.

On Sunday, while urging people to turn up in force for upcoming anti-U.S. demonstrations, the Iranian government quietly ordered an anti-American Afghan leader to close down all his offices in Iran.

The order, published in the Iranian newspapers on Sunday, indicates that Iran may also expel Gulbadin Hekmatyar if he continued to "misuse the hospitality extended to him by the Iranian people."

Hekmatyar had vowed to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan and opposes the interim government in Kabul.

On Sunday, Zarif said, "I think the rhetoric that was used by the president of the United States to describe Iran was an insult to the Iranian people, not only the rhetoric but, in fact, the content of the speech, the State of the Union address. The president included a large number of allegations that have been present by American officials as cliches against Iran."

"Iranian grievances against the United States are real. We have historical grievances. We have grievances arising from the United State's treatment of our region. We have grievances arising (from) these very allegations made by the United States against Iran."

The United States backed Iraqi President Sadaam Hussein in a bloody eight-year war against Iran, in which chemical weapons were used by the Iraqis against Iranians.

The Israeli source speaking to the press said European Union governments accepted Iranian and Palestinian denials.

"It seems this policy of denial does work. The EU prefers to be deaf and blind," he said.

He told reporters the contacts for the arms shipment began last May when Arafat visited Russia. Some of the meetings were held in Russia, but not only there, he said.

He alleged the deal was part of "a strategic arrangement" among Iran, the Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah and that it was set up under the condition that Palestinians provide Iran with intelligence on Israel.

Dismissing Iranian denials of complicity, he said the Israelis know where the arms were loaded, has the crew in its custody, has the captain's testimony and the map that shows where they had gone. All the arms, except for a few Russian-made weapons, were produced in Iran, he said.

The officer said some 500 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had been in Lebanon, but their numbers dropped first to 300 and now "more than 100" are involved in training and supplies.

Israel has also "some indications that al Qaida people have reached Lebanon," the source added. He said 10 to 20 people apparently arrived via Iran and Syria. It was not clear what they were doing in Lebanon.

The source said Hezbollah gunmen were deliberately firing anti-aircraft guns near the border with Israel so that the shrapnel would fall inside Israeli border towns as Kiryat Shmona and Shlomi.

Recently there were six such instances, he said.

Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said last week they were firing at Israeli planes that flew over Lebanon. The source countered there was only one such overflight.

Israel stopped flying over Lebanon it withdrew from there in May 2000 but resumed the flights later that year after Hezbollah kidnapped three Israeli soldiers.

Until mid-January, Hezbollah had orders not to fire at planes flying over Israel but these orders have changed, he added.

The spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, Timor Goksel, told UPI there was more than one Israeli flight over south Lebanon and aircraft was over UNIFIL positions.

(With reporting by Joshua Brilliant in Tel Aviv and Anwar Iqbal in Washington.)

----

Palestinians Spray Gunfire in Southern Israel, Killing Two

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

BEERSHEBA, Israel (AP) -- Two Palestinian gunmen sprang from a car and sprayed automatic gunfire at Israelis outside a military base in the southern desert city of Beersheba Sunday, killing two soldiers and seriously wounding five people before the attackers were shot dead by troops.

Also, for the first time in more than 16 months of fighting, Palestinians fired two high-powered Qassem-2-type rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, Israel's military said. The rockets landed in farm fields and no one was injured, but Israel said it regards Palestinian use of the weapon as a serious escalation.

In apparent retaliation, Israeli warplanes and helicopters struck the main Palestinian security installation in Gaza City and what Israel said was a rocket factory in the nearby Jebalya refugee camp.

Although the security building had been evacuated before the strike, at least a dozen people were taken to the hospital, most suffering from shock and cuts, hospital officials said. The injured included two workers at the nearby offices of the United Nations, where all the windows were blown out.

The U.N. envoy to the region, Terje Roed-Larsen, condemned the Israeli strike in a statement expressing ``outrage'' over such a heavy bombardment so close to civilian areas and U.N. offices.

``Israel's security needs will not be met by hitting civilian targets or by destroying the Palestinians' ability to police and maintain order,'' the statement said.

In Jebalya, north of Gaza City, seven Israeli helicopters fired eleven missiles at what residents said was a metal workshop. Several homes were heavily damaged and one person was slightly wounded.

``This is part of (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon's crimes against us,'' said Suleiman Abu Araj, 37, whose house was damaged in the strike.

The Israeli army did not comment on the first strike but said the one in Jebalya targeted a mortar shell and rocket factory.

The shooting attack in Beersheba came just hours before Sharon returned home from a U.S. visit. During the visit, the Americans said they would press Yasser Arafat to clamp down on militants but turned down Sharon's request to cut contacts with the Palestinian leader.

The gunmen started shooting with automatic weapons outside a cafe near the gates of the army's southern command headquarters in the center of the city, police said.

Many soldiers were on the streets during their lunch break Sunday afternoon, and they quickly began firing back at the attackers, who were shot dead within minutes, witnesses and officials said.

The seven people shot by the attackers included soldiers and civilians, and two women soldiers died shortly thereafter, according to Israeli officials.

``I was on the street and suddenly the two got out of a car and started firing in all directions,'' Israeli army Capt. Guy Shaham told Israel Radio. ``They were spraying from the hip in all directions.''

``I whipped out my gun and started firing back at them,'' Shaham said, adding that he felled one of the attackers.

The second, wearing a belt of explosives, hid behind a car in a parking lot. He was shot by soldiers as he tried to set off the bomb, witnesses and police said.

No group claimed responsibility for the shooting.

In southern Israel, two Qassem-2-type rockets were shot from inside the Gaza Strip and landed in farm fields, the Israeli army said. The rockets were set off by a timing device from launchers located just inside a Palestinian-controlled area of the Gaza Strip, the army said.

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip have repeatedly fired mortars at Israeli communities in and around Gaza, though these attacks have rarely caused serious damage or injuries.

Israeli officials have warned that the use of the rockets -- which are more powerful than mortars and have a longer range -- would constitute a new level of fighting and bring a strong reaction. Qassem-2 rockets shot from the Gaza Strip could hit the nearby town of Sderot, the army said. ``This constitutes a very serious escalation,'' said government spokesman Avi Pazner.

Also Sunday, Israeli troops pulled out of the West Bank village of Tamoun. They had moved in on Thursday in response to a deadly shooting attack at a nearby Jewish settlement a day earlier. Soldiers had arrested more than 25 residents but released all but three of them by Sunday.

Before dawn Sunday, Israeli troops in tanks briefly entered the West Bank city of Nablus and exchanged heavy fire with Palestinians. The incursion in which seven Palestinians were injured came hours after a Saturday night roadside shooting by a Palestinian killed a 79-year-old Israeli woman and injured her son.

---

Israeli Troops Enter West Bank City

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

NABLUS, West Bank (AP) -- Israeli tanks entered the West Bank city of Nablus early Monday, witnesses said, surrounding a hotly-contested Jewish shrine that Israel had abandoned one month after the current uprising began.

Palestinians said the Israeli invaders encountered heavy resistance and gunfire. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

The incursion was the second in as many days. On Sunday, Israeli tanks, soldiers and armored personnel carriers entered another part of Nablus, seizing an apartment building overlooking the city. A military statement following Sunday's two-hour operation said it was in response to several Palestinian attacks in the Nablus area.

Hard-line Israelis have been clamoring for their government to retake Joseph's Tomb ever since it was evacuated in October 2000 following a two-day pitched battle.

The site, believed by many Jews to be the burial place of the biblical Joseph but claimed by Palestinians as the tomb of an Arab sheik, is inside the West Bank's largest Palestinian city and can be accessed only by entering a crowded Arab neighborhood.

Until Israel pulled out, armed Israeli convoys brought rabbinical students to the site to study in a makeshift college every day and took them out to a nearby Jewish settlement at night.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returned home from talks in Washington, where he told President Bush that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is responsible for the Palestinian violence.

Palestinians charge that Israel is to blame because of its policies of harsh restrictions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank and Gaza and its repeated operations aimed at killing suspected militants.

---

Israeli Fighter Jet Strikes Security Target in Gaza

February 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli army forces entered the Palestinian-ruled city of Nablus in the West Bank on Monday, battling gunmen and arresting at least one suspected militant, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.

They said Israeli troops, backed by five tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters, entered the city from the east and were about 200 yards from the Palestinian Authority headquarters in the center of Nablus, one of the largest Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment.

At least one Palestinian man was arrested and a police officer wounded, witnesses and hospital officials said.

The incursion came a day after Israeli forces clashed with gunmen and arrested militants in east Nablus, and a few hours after Israel launched air strikes in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for an attack by Palestinian gunmen in southern Israel in which two soldiers were killed.

-------- nato

Macedonia wants NATO mission extended

Briefly
Washington Times
February 10, 2002
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020210-6276940.htm

SKOPJE, Macedonia - Macedonia formally asked NATO to extend its mission for three months, visiting NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said Friday.

Mr. Robertson, who arrived here Thursday to press authorities to extend the 700-strong mission beyond the end of March, said he had received a letter of request from Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski.

The mission, which was due to end on March 26, provides security for international observers sent after a peace accord was signed in August to end a seven-month ethnic Albanian uprising.

-------- saudi arabia

Saudi Leader's Anger Revealed Shaky Ties
Bush's Response Eased a Deep Rift On Mideast Policy; Then Came Sept. 11

By Robert G. Kaiser and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 10, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51555-2002Feb9?language=printer

First in a series

On Aug. 24, Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz, the leader of Saudi Arabia, was in his palace in Riyadh watching President Bush's televised news conference in Texas when Bush was asked about the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process," which had again been undermined by a new round of violence.

"The Israelis will not negotiate under terrorist threat, simple as that," Bush said. "And if the Palestinians are interested in a dialogue, then I strongly urge Mr. Arafat to put 100 percent effort into . . . stopping the terrorist activity. And I believe he can do a better job of doing that."

Abdullah interpreted the president's remarks as absolving Israel and blaming Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, for worsening conditions, according to a senior Saudi official. An impulsive, emotional man, Abdullah "just went bananas," the same official said. The crown prince picked up the telephone and called his ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was watching the same news conference at his palatial residence in Aspen, Colo.

Abdullah said he wanted Bandar to see Bush at once and deliver a harsh message, the culmination of months of tension between Saudi Arabia and the new Bush administration. The message delivered by Bandar to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was summarized by a senior Saudi official in these terms:

"We believe there has been a strategic decision by the United States that its national interest in the Middle East is 100-percent based on [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon." This was America's right, the message continued, but Saudi Arabia could not accept the decision. "Starting from today, you're from Uruguay, as they say. You [Americans] go your way, I [Saudi Arabia] go my way. From now on, we will protect our national interests, regardless of where America's interests lie in the region."

Bandar was instructed to cut off further discussion between the two countries. The time had come to "get busy rearranging our lives in the Middle East."

Bandar's message was a shock to the Bush administration. As had often happened in the past, these two countries -- intimate strangers in many respects -- had not really been hearing each other. But over the next two days, the United States went to extraordinary lengths to try to repair the relationship, its closest with any Arab country, finally satisfying the Saudis with a personal letter to Abdullah from the president himself.

Two Disparate Nations

Not really hearing each other has long helped both countries sustain the idea that they are close allies, and not an odd couple. In fact, they could hardly be more different. Saudi Arabia is an Islamic monarchy ruled secretively by one family, the huge Saud clan, in collaboration with Islamic fundamentalists; it has neither free media nor transparent legal institutions, nor any guarantees of human or civil rights.

By not acknowledging their fundamental differences, neither country has had to confront them. Their relations have been a diplomatic version of "don't ask, don't tell," a phrase Bandar said might have been inspired by a verse from the Koran: "Ask not about things which, if made plain to you, may cause you trouble."

What has been plain to officials of both countries is their self-interest. Saudi Arabia wants, and has always received, American protection. The United States needs, and has nearly always received, Saudi oil. What can cause trouble is the realization that these two allies have very little in common beyond security and oil.

"Have we [the United States and Saudi Arabia] understood each other particularly well?" asked Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to the first President Bush. "Probably not. And I think, in a sense, we probably avoid talking about the things that are the real problems between us because it's a very polite relationship. We don't get all that much below the surface."

Oil and security did provide the basis for a fruitful relationship from the mid-1970s through the Persian Gulf War in 1991. With U.S. backing, Saudi Arabia transformed itself from a medieval desert kingdom to a modern and wealthy state. Saudi money greased the relationship and supported U.S. policy goals from Afghanistan to Nicaragua, while Saudi leaders often defended U.S. interests in the councils of Arab states.

Sept. 11 and its aftermath confronted Americans with the impolite fact that their principal Arab ally is a theocratic monarchy that has supported Islamic fundamentalism throughout the Muslim world. Even more upsetting, Osama bin Laden and 15 of the terrorists who crashed planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were Saudis. These discoveries prompted an angry American reaction that alarmed the Saudis and shook their confidence in their most important diplomatic relationship.

But as Abdullah's own anger in August demonstrated, the relationship was coming under serious strain even before Sept. 11. After the Cold War and the Gulf War, "a lot of common interest disappeared," said Chas. W. Freeman Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Sharp differences had already emerged about how to deal with Iraq and Iran -- two of the three countries in Bush's "axis of evil" and both neighbors of Saudi Arabia. Potentially more threatening have been starkly differing views over how to deal with Israel and Arafat, which caused the previously unreported incident in August. Saudis have begun to question the continued efficacy of the U.S. military presence in their country. Altogether, points of disagreement now threaten to overwhelm the two countries' shared interests.

These articles will explore the evolution of this "special relationship" and examine its uncertain future as Bush presses the U.S. war on terrorism beyond Afghanistan. They are based on official documents and more than 60 interviews with U.S. officials and senior Saudi analysts and officials, many of whom insisted on anonymity. Senior U.S. officials refused to discuss the August episode or the future of Saudi-U.S. relations, apparently because of the extreme sensitivity of the relationship. "We've decided we won't be participating in these articles," said Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council.

High Expectations

2001 began hopefully for the Saudis. The new U.S. president was the son of the most popular American in Saudi Arabia, George H.W. Bush, a national hero for his role in protecting the kingdom from Iraq's Saddam Hussein in 1990-91. Saudis, who know about dynasties, had high expectations for the son.

Those expectations turned into bitter disappointment as the year progressed and Israeli-Palestinian relations continued to deteriorate. Throughout the Arab world, frustration grew with theUnited States for standing silently on the sidelines as the violence intensified. Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler because of the prolonged incapacitation of King Fahd, his half-brother, became increasingly angry, according to Saudi sources.

The Americans realized that Abdullah was upset and tried repeatedly to calm him, U.S. officials said. Bush invited him to visit Washington, Camp David, his ranch in Crawford, even the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, N.Y. -- a venue proposed because Roosevelt and Abdullah's father, King Abdulaziz, known also as ibn Saud, established the modern Saudi-American relationship in a meeting onboard a ship on the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal in 1945. The president's father telephoned Abdullah to try to assure the crown prince that the new president's "heart was in the right place." But Abdullah rebuffed all of these advances.

Making Frustrations Clear

Palestine, and then Israel, had been a sensitive subject in Saudi-U.S. relations since Roosevelt's first contacts with ibn Saud. Israel's battlefield successes provoked a Saudi-led oil embargo against the United States in 1973. After Ariel Sharon was elected Israel's prime minister in February 2001, the Saudis pressed the United States repeatedly to restrain Sharon and bring him back to the negotiating table.

In a series of letters to Bush and in other messages to Washington, Abdullah made his frustrations clear. "Don't they see what is happening to Palestinian children, women and the elderly?" Abdullah asked in an interview with the Financial Times in June. He was seeing this himself, his associates said, on television almost every night. Official Saudi television showed extensive film clips of the fighting and of Israel's forceful military actions in nearly every news broadcast.

But the Bush administration did not respond, and did not take action to stop the violence. The new administration sought to distance itself from the policy of Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, who made the last serious effort to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in his final weeks in office. The Bush administration told the Israelis and the Palestinians that if they wanted to resume the peace talks, they should do so themselves.

In July, the Saudis issued a statement in the name of King Fahd, warning that Israel's "systematic actions" against the Palestinians risked plunging the Middle East "into a dangerous phase." Two weeks later, Vice President Cheney gave an interview that appeared to endorse Israel's preemptive attacks against Palestinians whom Israel suspected of terrorism, further upsetting the Saudis.

On Aug. 9, the Saudi ambassador to Britain, Ghazi Qussaibi, published an article in Al Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, that ridiculed Bush as a know-nothing governed by "complexes" -- first of all, a desire to avoid looking like his father or his predecessor. "In a few months, this man created enemies for America to an extent making him worthy of a new prize, to be called the prize for transforming friends into adversaries, effortlessly," wrote Qussaibi. Saudi diplomats learned that Bush saw an account of this article and that he was not amused.

On the night of Aug. 23, Israeli tanks made their deepest incursion yet into the West Bank, into the town of Hebron, marking a new escalation of the fighting. On the same day, according to two Saudi officials, Abdullah saw news footage from the West Bank of an Israeli soldier holding a Palestinian woman to the ground by putting his boot on her head. "Abdullah saw that and he went berserk," one senior Saudi recounted. "A woman being beaten by a man -- he just felt this is the ultimate insult."

Abdullah responded by calling Bandar, his unusual ambassador in Washington. Bandar is the son of Prince Sultan, the Saudi defense minister and Abdullah's half-brother. Bandar's mother was a servant, and Sultan did not recognize him as a legitimate son until he was a teenager. After training as a pilot, Bandar became the Saudi Air Force's one-man acrobatic team -- its version of the Blue Angels. He was then assigned to Washington as a military attaché, lobbying Congress to approve the sale of F-5 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and learning about U.S. politics. He was just 34 when King Fahd, his uncle and mentor, named him ambassador to the United States in 1983.

Over the years, Bandar came to personally embody the Saudi-American relationship. His gregarious charm and gift for the big gesture won him easy access to high-level officials, and he became a close personal friend of the first President Bush, invited to family events at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. The dean of the diplomatic corps by virtue of his long assignment in Washington, Bandar is the only ambassador who has his own State Department security detail -- granted to him because of "threats" and his status as a prince, according to a State Department spokesman. But in the 1990s, held at arm's length by the Clinton administration, he seemed to lose his fire for the job. "I was getting completely bored," Bandar acknowledged.

When Abdullah telephoned that day in August, Bandar was in Aspen at the vast compound he built there, appraised at $55 million by the local tax collector. The 70,000-square-foot main house has 15 bedrooms and 16 baths. Bandar also has a house overlooking the Potomac in McLean, a palace in Saudi Arabia and a country estate in the English countryside.

Bandar was out when the crown prince called, and by the time he got home, according to a Saudi official, it was the middle of the night in Riyadh, the Saudi capital -- too late to talk with Abdullah. The next morning, after the Bush news conference, Abdullah called again to dispatch him with his message.

The Saudi embassy thought there might be a U.S. answer within four or five days, but it came in only 36 hours. "We were told there was an answer ready to go back [to Abdullah] that answers every point," one senior official said. Bandar picked up the letter and took it personally to the crown prince in Riyadh.

Crucial Letter From Bush

For the Saudis, Bush's letter was "groundbreaking. . . . Things in it had never been put in writing," one Saudi official said. According to Saudi accounts, Bush outlined an even-handed approach to settling the Arab-Israeli dispute that differed considerably from Sharon's positions on the peace process. One Saudi official said this was a key element: a U.S. vision of a peace settlement that was acceptable to the Saudis, and that differed from any Israeli plan.

Bush's letter, according to Saudi officials, endorsed the idea of a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He expressed a willingness to begin participating more actively in the peace process. Altogether, said Adel Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to Abdullah, "where he stood was not that much different from where Clinton stood when he left office."

A particularly important passage in Bush's businesslike, two-page letter, Saudi officials said, was his response to Abdullah's complaints about the ways Israelis were treating Palestinians in the occupied territories. In the message to Bush that was conveyed by Bandar, the crown prince said, according to a Saudi official's account: "I reject this extraordinary, un-American bias whereby the blood of an Israeli child is more expensive and holy than the blood of a Palestinian child. I reject people who say when you kill a Palestinian, it is defense; when a Palestinian kills an Israeli, it's a terrorist act." He also referred to the scene he saw on television of the Israeli soldier putting his boot on the head of a Palestinian woman.

In reply, a Saudi official recounted, Bush said he believes the blood of innocent people is the same -- Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Christian or Muslim. He rejected the humiliation of individuals, which Abdullah took as a response to his comment about the Israeli soldier's boot. "Suddenly, what came through in that letter was the humane part of George W.," said a senior Saudi official.

It is impossible to say what might have happened if Bush had not so quickly mollified the crown prince at the end of August. According to well-placed sources, the Saudis had conveyed to the United States their intention to convene an emergency summit meeting of Arab leaders to offer full support to the Palestinians. They alluded to the possibility of ending all law enforcement and intelligence cooperation with the United States -- of which there had been a great deal. And they signaled their intention to reconsider the Saudi-U.S. military relationship.

Abdullah made this last threat virtually explicit. On Aug. 24, the Saudi chief of staff, Gen. Salih Ali bin Muhayya, arrived in Washington for a high-level review of Saudi-U.S. military collaboration. On the 25th, when he spoke to Bandar by telephone, Abdullah ordered that Salih return immediately to Riyadh, without meeting any Americans. He also ordered a delegation of about 40 senior Saudi officers who were about to leave for Washington to get off their plane. The annual review of military relations was canceled.

"You don't cancel visits like this on the day before," said a senior adviser to the crown prince. "It was a big, big event, and we downplayed it completely." In fact, the cancellation received no public attention at all. But it shocked the Pentagon, according to a senior Defense Department official who had expected to join the meetings with the Saudis.

Bush's letter transformed his reputation in the small circle of Saudis who run their country. Before the letter, these people had come to the conclusion that Bush was a lightweight -- "goofy," as one of them put it. After the letter, "he was strong, judicious, deliberate. . . . His reputation went from rock bottom to sky high."

Abdullah decided to share his correspondence with Bush -- his message delivered by Bandar, which filled 25 pages, and Bush's two-page reply -- with other Arab leaders, including the presidents of Egypt and Syria and the king of Jordan. He summoned Arafat, who was in South Africa, to Riyadh to read it.

According to Saudi officials, they extracted from Arafat a written pledge to satisfy Bush's demands for what Arafat had to do to revive the peace talks, and they sent it back to Washington with their own enthusiastic reply to Bush's letter. The crown prince sent Bandar back to Washington to try to convert the letter into policy and action, first by urging the president to say in public what he had told the Saudis in his letter.

Bandar was convinced that Bush could not have adopted the positions outlined in his letter in just 36 hours. "This must have been something . . . that the administration was thinking about, that they just didn't share with everybody [but] were waiting for the right time," he said. But before he could pursue the matter, he needed to patch things up with U.S. officials. A knowledgeable source quoted American officials as telling Bandar when he returned to Washington, "Hey, you guys scared us." And Bandar reportedly replied: "The hell with you -- we scared ourselves."

On Friday, Sept. 7, Bandar told U.S. officials that Saudi Arabia was "pleased and grateful," as one official put it, to discover that it had misread the Bush administration's attitude toward the Middle East. Saudi Arabia would continue to try to protect U.S. interests, he promised. The Americans indicated a willingness to pursue a new Mideast initiative immediately, Saudi officials said -- a sharp departure from the administration's policy for seven months.

Over the weekend of Sept. 8 and 9, officials of the two countries discussed what should happen next: a speech by Bush, or by Powell, or perhaps both? There was also discussion of a Bush-Arafat meeting at the United Nations later in September, an important point for the Saudis, who were pleased that Bush seemed willing to have the meeting. Powell left for a previously scheduled trip to Latin America on Monday, Sept. 10, with these decisions still pending.

Even without the final decisions, Bandar was euphoric. After months in what he called "a yellow mood" over the deteriorating situation in the Middle East, "suddenly I felt the same feeling I had as we were going to Madrid [to the peace conference that followed the Gulf War in 1991], that we really were going to have a major initiative here that could save all of us from ourselves -- mostly -- and from each other."

So "the happiest man in the world that night, on Monday night, was Bandar bin Sultan. I was in the [indoor] swimming pool [of the McLean residence], smoking a cigar. I gave myself a day off because I worked the whole weekend. I had been to Saudi Arabia . . . out with the [Bush] response, back with our response. I worked on the weekend up to 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock in the morning. . . . I worked all Monday. And I said to my office, Tuesday I'm taking the day off."

Tuesday was Sept. 11. Instead of a day off, Bandar got the worst crisis of his career. Dreams of a new Mideast peace initiative evaporated. The realization that most of the hijackers were Saudis "fell on me . . . like the whole house collapsed over my head," Bandar said later. He couldn't imagine a way to "do more damage or worse damage to Islam or to Saudi Arabia."

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

-------- somalia

A New Scrutiny of Somalia as the Old Anarchy Reigns

New York Times
February 10, 2002
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/10/international/africa/10SOMA.html?pagewanted=all

JAMEAO, Somalia - Afghanistan may have been a failed state, but it was a state that Somalis could gaze upon with envy.

Somalia is so fractured that the nominal government controls less than half its capital city and some coastal strips. The north has two breakaway states, and in the rest 30 clans with overlapping borders go to war over land, cattle raids and blood feuds.

With no central bank to object, businessmen have privately printed billions in the national currency, the shilling, rendering it almost worthless. The country's biggest exports, beef and camel meat, were banned 14 months ago for fear of Rift Valley fever, which can be fatal to humans. And in 12 years of civil war, warlords have shelled or looted everything.

Nonetheless, and despite a disastrous street battle in 1993 that unraveled its successful effort to feed Somalia, the United States has taken a new interest in the country since Sept. 11, believing that it may become Osama bin Laden's hiding place, a refuge for experienced terrorists and a breeding ground for new ones.

The fear that the Americans will bomb or invade, omnipresent a month ago, has now ebbed. But American and European warships patrol the coast, looking for ships or planes smuggling in lieutenants of Al Qaeda. There have been unconfirmed reports that American and British commandos have entered - but only on reconnaissance missions.

As Prof. Ken Menkhaus, an expert on Somalia at Davidson College in North Carolina, wrote in a recent academic paper, "There are at this time no terrorist bases or training camps in Somalia, and everyone in the U.S. government knows this."

The president of the transitional government, Abdikassim Salad Hassan, says the same but has cautioned: "That does not mean that terrorist elements are not present. They could be. That's why we are inviting the United States and international community to come see the facts on the ground."

No one publicly argues that Mr. bin Laden himself is here. Saying there are no secrets in Somalia, and with the United States offering a big reward for his capture, everyone makes the same joke: "Somalis are very enterprising. Someone would take bin Laden's money to hide him, and his neighbor would take the $25 million from America."

Indeed, chaos and confusion abound. In Mogadishu, the nominal capital, AK-47's are everywhere and hotel taxis are trailed by trucks full of hired gunmen to protect guests from unemployed gunmen seeking kidnapping victims. On the coast, pirates attack Red Sea shipping.

The languid coastal boulevards are awash with garbage and sand. The cathedral in Mogadishu is shot to pieces, statues have been sold for scrap and the American Embassy was demolished for its reinforcing steel bars. Blocks of houses stand stripped not just of furniture, but of tiles and toilets for resale.

With so much else gone, the warlords now extort "tolls" on roads and tiny airstrips and buy arms to fight for more spots for toll booths.

Somalia scholars say that this land may be the base for people - perhaps 25 or so - linked to Al Qaeda. The Bush administration has named a Somali fundamentalist group, Al Itihaad al Islamiya, or Islamic Unity, as a terrorist organization, whose camps Mr. bin Laden probably visited.

But Al Itihaad is not what it once was, "a nasty, arrogant group with an authoritarian agenda that used to be very violent," according to a researcher in northern Somalia.

Al Itihaad's camps in Al Waq, Luuq and elsewhere were crushed in the mid-1990's by Ethiopian troops in helicopters and armored cars, who killed or captured hundreds.

"They wiped them out," said a United Nations security officer. "There have been no bases since '98."

The courts based on Islamic law that Al Itihaad and less radical groups set up in Mogadishu, underwritten by businesses sick of extortion by warlords, have largely been dismantled, their gunmen absorbed into the growing national army.

Some leading radical sheiks fled, reportedly to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Dubai.

Jihad is still preached in some schools and mosques, but a Kenyan aid official who was a journalist in Somalia said the prominent sympathizers of Al Itihaad are now "a conservative religious organization that helps make business connections, sort of like Opus Dei," the Roman Catholic society.

Any committed terrorists in Somalia, she added, "are so scattered that bombing the Brixton mosque would be more effective" - a reference to the mosque in south London attended by some terrorist suspects.

The prime minister, Hassan Abshir Farah, has publicly promised to keep terrorist sympathizers out of his government. "We can find and arrest anyone they tell us to," he said.

But the American focus on terrorism has become a tool in internal Somali politics, the latest psychological weapon in the war between factions for control of the bulk of the territory called Somalia.

That war - waged by the Transitional National Government, which has its headquarters in Mogadishu, and the Somali Restoration and Reconciliation Council, based in Baidoa - comes to a crux here in Jameao, a town of grass huts occupied by troops so poor that they bring their own AK-47's and buy bullets a handful at a time.

Jameao sits astride a road, a major artery to the coast, that symbolizes Somalia's paralysis. Six days a week, the road is closed. On Mondays, both sides dig up their mines to let a food convoy pass, and charge it steep tolls.

The provisional government was formed in August 2000 after five months of negotiations in Djibouti. Headed by Mr. Abdikassim, 58, an interior minister under the Soviet- era dictatorship of Mohammed Siad Barre, it has the backing of many expatriate Somalis, many Mogadishu businesses, some Persian Gulf states and now the United Nations, which sees it as Somalia's last hope.

Its army commander, Gen. Ismail Kasim Naji, now feels bold enough to say that his troops could easily overwhelm the remaining warlords in Mogadishu who have not joined.

"These people are rebels," he said. "We're still trying the process of reconciliation, but if they're not present at the next Nairobi conference and don't fall in with us, we'll destroy them." The next government-building conference in Nairobi, Kenya, is expected in about six weeks.

But his troops have not been paid for five months. Of $400 million in aid promised by Arab states, only $25 million from Saudi Arabia and Qatar has arrived, officials complain.

The government craves American recognition, help with its budget and closer ties, particularly with the Pentagon. American diplomats who deal with Somalia are in Nairobi and visit infrequently.

In November, President Bush froze the funds and cut the satellite links of Al Barakaat, the country's biggest employer, saying its money- transfer network helped terrorists. But the administration has not publicly offered evidence and the company is frustrated at being unable to appeal.

Meanwhile, the Reconciliation Council in Baidoa, composed of warlords who did not take part in the Djibouti conference, has seized upon the American action as fodder for its campaign to paint the provisional government as terrorist controlled.

"Abdikassim and the Transitional National Government are the political expression of Al Qaeda- and Al Itihaad-connected organizations," insisted Abdullahi Sheik Ismail, the council's co-chairman. "Over 70 percent of their Parliament members are elements of the diaspora closely linked to these."

Mr. Abullahi, a former ambassador, said Al Itihaad's "hidden force, according to my information, is now 10,000 people." Asked where they were, he quoted Mao's dictum that guerrillas must live among the people like a fish in water.

Another council member, Mohammed Said Hirsi, nicknamed General Morgan, put their secret foes at precisely 20,480. Mr. Said Hirsi was General Siad Barre's son-in-law and is remembered for massacring entire towns.

Outside experts dismiss this, but the council warlords have used their connections to get American attention. Five Americans introducing themselves as "U.S. government employees" visited Baidoa on Dec. 9 accompanied by Ethiopian soldiers, their hosts said.

Behind the scenes lurks Ethiopia, the regional power, a country with a large Christian population and a thousand years of enmity with predominantly Muslim Somalia.

"Current political divisions in Somalia are very much a reflection of a proxy war between Ethiopia and the Arab world," Professor Menkhaus wrote. "Ethiopia has its own agenda in Somalia, one which includes exaggerating the threat of Islamic radicalism in Somalia to the U.S."

The Rahanwein Resistance Army, the clan militia guarding Jameao and Baidoa, refuses to let reporters visit its boot camp in Manas, where Ethiopian trainers have been spotted.

Ethiopia is also involved in the civil war in Puntland, the independent state in northeast Somalia, and in Addis Ababa it shelters former warlords who have lost their troops. They include Hussein Mohammed Aidid, a former American marine and water department clerk in West Covina, Calif., who in 1996 took over the subclan of his father, Mohammed Farah Aidid, who fought the battle depicted in the movie "Black Hawk Down."

Mr. Aidid holds regular press conferences in the Ethiopian capital, labeling people in the Mogadishu government as terrorists.

For now, the Restoration Council may be even more cash-strapped than the new government. After agreeing to let a reporter tour the Jameao front with two Baidoa-based generals, a representative quietly asked if a car could be hired for them.

-------- un

Israel injures UN personnel in attacks on Gaza

AFP
10-02-02, 21:46
Irish Times
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2002/0210/breaking39.htm

Israeli F-16 warplanes have bombed Palestinian security headquarters in Yasser Arafat's Gaza City compound. Three bombs hit the building, injuring at least 18 Palestinians, including civilians and security force members.

The attacks were apparently conducted in retaliation for an earlier attack by Palestinian gunmen in which two Israeli soldiers were killed.

Gaza-based UN special coordinator for the Middle East Terje Roed-Larsen said in a statement that two UN employees were injured in the strikes.

Three bombs completely destroyed the building housing the navy police headquarters and badly damaged the command centre for Arafat's elite Force 17 guards, officials said.

The Gaza raids were in retaliation for an attack in the desert city of Beersheva by two Palestinian gunmen, who pulled up in a car in front a the restaurant outside an army base and shot dead two Israeli soldiers.

The two gunmen were then shot dead by Israeli security forces.

The latest deaths raise the toll of the 16-month Palestinian intifada, or uprising, to 1,193, including 913 Palestinians and 258 Israelis.

The helicopter attack on Jabaliya also inflicted damage on a bank, two shops, kindergarten and several nearby houses. Palestinian sources said eight explosions were heard in the area.

The buildings hit in Gaza City were less than 100 metres from Arafat's residence and offices, which the Palestinian leader has not visited since Israel blasted his Gaza heliport and helicopters and confined him to Ramallah in the West Bank two months ago.

Houses in the area had their windows blown out by the blast. Palestinian officials said the house of Jordan's diplomatic representative in the Gaza Strip was also damaged by shrapnel.

Meanwhile, Israeli army officers warned that Palestinians may have entered a new level of warfare amid initial reports that home-made Qassam 2 rockets were fired into Israel for the first time ever, hitting farmland in the south.

On Wednesday, the army said it had intercepted in the West Bank a lorry carrying eight Qassam 2, rockets which are manufactured by armed wing of Hamas - the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades - and have a range of eight kilometres (five miles).

At dawn, soldiers backed by a dozen armoured vehicles entered the Askar refugee camp in the autonomous West Bank town of Nablus and seized several Palestinians.

Palestinian security officials said three Palestinian security officers and three civilians were wounded in the armed clashes before the army pulled out.

Palestinian hospital officials said that a 45-year-old man, Fihmi Duwaikat, had suffered a heart attack and died after firing erupted near his house.

An army statement said that troops "carried out an operation in the northeastern sector of Nablus and conducted searches to prevent a planned attack on Israeli civilians."

----

U.N. Envoy's Peacekeeping Push

By Peter Slevin and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 10, 2002; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51782-2002Feb9?language=printer

United Nations special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is pressing reluctant foreign governments to expand the reach and extend the life of an international security force designed to give the fledgling Afghan government time to develop. U.S. participation in the force, he said yesterday, is "absolutely necessary."

In talks Friday at the White House and State Department, Brahimi said, he advocated an ambitious U.S. military commitment to post-Taliban Afghanistan and warned that the peace is too fragile for American forces to exit quickly and leave peacekeeping duties to others. The Bush administration has ruled out having "foot soldiers" there, he said, but "I think they can participate in one thousand other manners," which he declined to specify.

"It's very difficult to have a major peace operation in Afghanistan without the Americans being involved," he said.

Brahimi also urged the United States not to cut off communications with Iran, which President Bush last month labeled part of an "axis of evil" for its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and its support of Mideast terrorists. The administration has also accused Iran of aiding al Qaeda forces escaping from Afghanistan and of trying to set up its own Afghan power base by funneling money and weapons to warlords in the western and northern parts of the country.

As one of Afghanistan's two most powerful neighbors, Brahimi said, Iran must be dealt with. "They have done a lot of other things that are most welcome" in the struggle to get Afghanistan on its feet, he said. "Are they doing things that they shouldn't be doing? Maybe. But let's talk to them about that. Let's quarrel with them about that. But what we cannot do is ignore them, or fight them."

Brahimi said in an interview that he felt "encouraged" after talks with Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley. Neither was available yesterday for comment.

Brahimi declined to speculate about how much he thought the international security force should grow or where it should be deployed. The British-led operation, totaling about 3,200 troops, is restricted to the area in and around Kabul under a U.N. mandate due to expire at the end of June.

Since the Taliban was routed and interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai's government was installed in December, dozens have died in factional fighting in Gardez, south of Kabul, while skirmishes have broken out in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif. Karzai has publicly asked for the force to be expanded throughout the country lest feuding escalate among regional and ethnic warlords, whose battles in the early 1990s led many Afghans to support the harsh stability offered by the Taliban takeover in 1996.

Brahimi delivered the same message to the U.N. Security Council last week. But rather than sit in their own capitals and decide, Brahimi said, the "important" nations that must participate - including the United States, Britain and Germany - should "go together and see" for themselves the extent of Afghanistan's security needs.

The force cannot be expected to stop all violence in Afghanistan, he said. "What I have been telling people here is, 'Look, you are not going to have Switzerland next week, either in terms of security or in terms of democracy. If that is your objective, then you'd better go somewhere else. Help this country not go back to these armies fighting one another.'‚"

"The force is not to be there to establish total peace and quiet and no problem whatsoever in the human rights perspective overnight," Brahimi said. "There is still going to be unpleasant things happen. You've got to accept that."

Karzai pressed Bush and his top aides to support an expanded multinational force during a visit to the United States last month. Bush demurred, but said he would assign the Pentagon to help train a national army while continuing the search for escaped al Qaeda leaders.

A number of countries suspect the United States, which is spending about $1‚billion a month on the war, will do the minimum necessary to resuscitate Afghanistan once U.S. war aims have been fulfilled. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has said the United States will not abandon the country, declaring last month, "We're in this for as long as it takes, and you can count on us."

Brahimi said yesterday that the veto rights accorded the five permanent Security Council members - the United States, Britain, Russia, China and France - impose special responsibilities. "We've got to shout at them all the time," he said, adding ruefully, "They don't all the time listen."

-------- us

American power - Armed to the teeth

Sunday February 10, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,648112,00.html

There is a United States special forces dog-handler who meets journalists, diplomats and aid workers off the UN flight to Kabul. His job is to search luggage and ensure the security of US troops in Afghanistan. He is short, gingery and aggressive. His skills at persuasion are limited to shouting at the milling crowd: 'Stand back! Stand back! My dog will bite!'

Last week that phrase had become the defining motto and operating credo for the military and foreign policy of the Bush administration. Already President George W. Bush has put Iran, Iraq and North Korea on notice as terrorist-sponsoring nations at the centre of an international 'axis of evil', despite the CIA's recent evidence that none of them was in the business of threatening the United States at present.

Last Monday, to back that explicit threat, he announced an increase in US military spending of 15 per cent, the biggest in 20 years, more than double the military spending in all of the European Union. The rise will be $36 billion (£26.5bn) this year, $48 billion next year and $120 billion over the next five years, rising to a staggering two trillion over the next five years.

Even this is not enough for General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. They want the US defence budget to increase at an even faster rate.

What all this means is clear. Troubled by the 11 September attacks and buoyed by the ease of the war against Afghanistan, Bush's message to the 'evil doers' of the world is that he has a dog; that it is very big, getting bigger, and certainly it will bite.

The puzzle about the latest rise in defence spending is that America at the beginning of the 21st century is already not so much a superpower as a behemoth on the world stage. Economically dominant, it enjoys military and cultural power unrivalled since the days of the Roman emperors, as the American author Robert D. Kaplan reminds us in his new book, Warrior Politics.

Typically, it has been left to the French, traditionally suspicious of US global hegemony, to find the best words to describe it. Gigantisme militaire they call it, in a phrase that describes both the scale of America's ambitions and also a pathological condition: an organism grown so large it is sick.

The question the rest of the world is asking itself is: Who is the enemy America is arming itself so against? And why?

'Ostensibly,' says one European diplomat, 'this is about security. But quite how a massive increase in defence spending is supposed to prevent another terrorist attack remains unclear. Instead this seems to be about repairing the bruised American psyche after 11 September. America's powerlessness in the face of this attack requires big gestures and reassurances, even if they are counter-productive and meaningless.'

Indeed, some analysts say, if it is security that America seeks it is better sought in dialogue with potentially threatening states, rather than in reinforcing the idea already held by many anti-US groups that it is an evil empire bent on world domination.

Cynics have identified more overtly self-serving strands in the Republican obsession with America's defence. The 'war' rhetoric, as some US liberal commentators have pointed out, serves a purely domestic Republican agenda in the post-11 September mood of national paranoia: to win Bush a second presidential term and, in the shorter term, regain Congress.

The reality - even before the latest proposed increases in military spending - is that America could beat the rest of the world at war with one hand tied behind its back. The requirement that US armed forces be able to fight two fully fledged wars with two separate adversaries simultaneously may recently have been dropped, but only because it would be hard pushed to find two such equal foes to fight.

A single US nuclear-powered carrier group - which forms around the USS Enterprise, for example, with a flight deck almost a mile in length and a superstructure 20 storeys high - concentrates more military power in one naval group than most states can manage with all their armed forces. America has seven of these battle groups.

It is not just the scale and power of these weapons systems. The reach of US arms, too, is awesome. When the USS Kitty Hawk was sent with its accompanying warships from Yokohama to the Gulf for the war against Afghanistan, it covered 6,000 miles in just 12 days to be transformed into a vast floating forward attack station for thousands of US special forces.

Its B-52 bombers can fly and refuel across the world armed with cruise missiles that can be fired hundreds of miles away from hostile skies, the missiles themselves directed to their targets by satellites in orbit.

And America's supremacy in bombs, planes, satellites, tanks and real-time intelligence have made the prospect of US casualties remote, except in the event of cock-up or disaster. And, significantly, as the world's only economic hyper-power, it can afford this level of militarisation.

But against all this even the manufacturers of America's arms - like the aviation giant Lockheed-Martin - have been struggling for a decade or so to define the threat its top-shelf jets will be battling in the skies, being forced in one memorable presentation to show the European Eurofighter as a potential adversary.

So why the need for more and better military power? Even military analysts are baffled. 'The rise in US military spending,' says Dan Plesch, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, '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. And what it is spending its money on is mostly irrelevant against the knives used to carry out 11 September. The bombing of Afghanistan has created the illusion of victory.'

Professor Paul Kennedy at Yale University calculates that the US now spends more each year than the next nine largest national defence budgets combined. Indeed America is responsible for about 40 per cent of the world's military spending.

The new defence expenditure will be paid for by a freshly dug deficit and cuts to every other federal spending programme - including social security, Medicare and urban renewal - apart from tax breaks loaded heavily in favour of the upper-income brackets. Amid all this, military might has emerged as the central tenet of America's new power, the defining feature of the Bush administration.

Already it is causing alarm, even among America's closest allies in Nato, where Lord Robertson, the usually unflappable secretary-general, has been moved to warn some members that unless the declining European defence expenditure is reversed then Europe - and the Europeans in Nato - are in danger of becoming military pygmies.

It is not a prospect likely to worry the military hawks in the Bush administration, who favour unilateralism over alliance. Indeed the Nato alliance, built to counter the rival superpower conflict of the Cold War, is already almost redundant, some diplomats claim.

'Will the Americans ever fight a war through Nato again?' asks Carl Bildt, former Swedish Prime Minister. 'It's doubtful. The United States reserves the right to itself to wage war, and dumps on others the messy, expensive business of nation-building and peace keeping'. And the Afghan war has not only put the US in sole command of the world, but fundamentally reshaped the architecture of international alliances. Central Asia is splattered with new American fortresses; the Pacific and Indian oceans are patrolled by aircraft carriers and accompanying fleets of awesome size.

As a consequence, a new matrix of alliances exists of states beholden to the US in exchange for a blank cheque as regards their own internal human rights abuses - China, Pakistan, India and Russia and the former Soviet states. And even among them are flashpoints in Kashmir, Chechnya and Tibet.

The writer and academic David Rieff, recently returned from central Asia, said at a seminar in New York on Thursday night: 'Even for someone who's not against the use of American power, it's hard to believe that the people running the country can limit their ambitions for an empire at its high water mark.

'They're not doing the intelligent thing, which would be to forge multilateral institutions that are favourable to us. What's the point of attacking Saddam, which will only entrench the root causes of the problems we're facing? Or Iran just when they're ready to deal?'

Crucially, the new culture of US military hegemony is not a continuation of the might the US enjoyed under Bill Clinton or any other administration. It is new, and in military terms it began the day that the man at the apex of this awesome edifice took office, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. With him, Rumsfeld brought a tight group of political appointees who did not inherit the Pentagon in order to pursue business as usual.

One of them, a deputy under-secretary, describes the group to The Observer as 'a coherent team of firm believers in unilateral, American military power'.

And the aim of this power?

'The war on terrorism,' says Professor Paul Rogers, of Bradford University's Department of Peace Studies, 'is simply a euphemism for extending US control in the world, whether it is by projecting force through its carriers or building new military bases in central Asia.'

----

Defense Budget: Tough Choices Skirted?
Pentagon Critics Say Bush's Proposed Increase Blunts Drive to Reform the Military

By Vernon Loeb and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 10, 2002; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51603-2002Feb9?language=printer

The Bush administration's proposed $379 billion defense budget for the coming fiscal year has disappointed supporters of military reform who want to create more flexible and efficient armed forces, even as it has left traditionalists complaining about a shortfall of funding for more conventional planes, ships and troops.

The inability to please either camp despite a proposed $48 billion increase in military spending highlights the Pentagon's continuing difficulty in cutting impractical big-ticket programs originally conceived for fighting the Cold War to free up money so it can more capably confront emerging new threats, according to military analysts.

The war on terrorism has cut both ways, the analysts say. It has boosted the need for innovation by demonstrating the utility of such new systems as armed aerial drones and the need for more rapid and precise intelligence on enemy forces. At the same time, it has siphoned off huge amounts of money to pay for maintaining thousands of troops, planes and ships pursuing terrorists in Afghanistan and around the world.

The Bush administration came into office pledging it would force the military to adapt. But the ultimate effect of the war, analysts said, has been to enable the administration to avoid having to make tough choices to achieve that goal. They say it has simply thrown money at the Pentagon and rallied support for the biggest increase in military spending in two decades under the broad banner of combating terrorism.

Given the lack of significant congressional opposition when the budget was sent to Capitol Hill last week, military spending could develop a momentum of its own. The administration has proposed a continued buildup over the next five years that would bring military spending to the peak of the Reagan buildup in 1985, when adjusted for inflation.

"If you wanted to stop the Reagan buildup, you had to do it in the spring of 1981," said Lawrence Korb, who is director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and who served in the Pentagon during the Reagan years. "If you want to stop this, you need to do it now."

Senior defense officials sharply dispute arguments that the budget reflects a setback for either innovation or increased efficiency. "The presupposition seems to be that reform can only be defined as cutting programs," said Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon's comptroller. "Reform is the extent to which the forces you buy and the resources you spend correlate with what's going on in the outside world, and this budget does just that."

Critics of the budget, however, point to such weapons systems as the Crusader, a 42-ton self-propelled howitzer designed for fighting Soviet divisions advancing on Western Europe, to make their point that the administration has avoided tough choices. The budget includes full funding for the $475 million system, which is built by United Defense Industries Inc., a defense contractor controlled by the Carlyle Group Inc., an investment firm whose advisers include former president George H.W. Bush and former secretary of state James A. Baker III.

The budget also includes full funding for three new short-range jet fighters -- $5.2 billion for the F-22 fighter, $3.5 billion for the multi-service Joint Strike Fighter, and $3.3 billion for the Navy F/A-18 Superhornet fighter-bomber. President Bush questioned the need for all three during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Indeed, in a speech at the Citadel in South Carolina in September 2000, Bush said the Pentagon needed to capitalize on "a revolution in the technology of war" by skipping the current generation of technology and creating a more agile, mobile, innovative military.

"I think what is striking is how little the new administration found to change in the Clinton modernization priorities," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense consultant at the conservative Lexington Institute. "Even after Sept. 11, the changes are mostly matters of scale, not of substance. There are no major program deletions from the Clinton years, and there are no major program additions."

The Bush budget funds the Crusader and the three short-range fighter programs, Thompson said, even though Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's Quadrennial Defense Review, completed late last year, played down the need for more fighter jets and called for developing more long-range bombers capable of reaching distant targets.

In addition to its failure to re-think Cold War weapons systems, said Philip E. Coyle, the Pentagon's head of testing and evaluation during the Clinton administration, the Bush buildup would make it harder to end widespread military waste and inefficiency.

"A tighter budget simply forces you to set priorities," Coyle said. "While that's never easy or pleasant for the people who have to do it, it's usually a good thing."

Zakheim said Bush's budget proposal includes $9.3 billion in cuts in existing programs to free up money for new technologies. The recent cancellation of a Navy missile defense program that was over budget and performing poorly, Zakheim said, has sent a message to program managers to control costs or face the ax.

The budget includes lots of money for new technologies, including $2.5 billion for battlefield computer networks, $1.5 billion for high-tech Army armored vehicles, and $1 billion for unmanned aerial vehicles that have emerged as star performers in Afghanistan, to name just a few. All told, it includes $53.9 billion for research, development, evaluation and testing, a $5.5 billion increase, and $68.7 billion for new weapons procurement, a $7.6 billion increase.

Zakheim said Rumsfeld's Pentagon deserves credit for fully and honestly accounting for costs in the budget that have been underfunded in past years. He said this was a point of principle that added more than $7 billion in costs. Other previous obligations for military pay raises and mushrooming health costs for military members and retirees, he added, accounted for $14.1 billion of the proposed $48 billion increase.

The need to fund such high fixed costs, analysts inside and outside the Pentagon said, is one reason why the budget will only support a force of 1.4 million troops -- two-thirds of the 2.1 million active troops when Ronald Reagan was president.

Some members of Congress are already asking why more money can't be spend on troops, bases and existing weapons systems, which are an economic boost to many of their districts.

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, asked Rumsfeld at a hearing last week why there wasn't money in such a large budget to pay for 40,000 additional troops the Army says it needs. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) said he could not understand why there was only enough money to buy 100 new aircraft, when more than 400 a year are needed to modernize the Air Force fleet.

Numerous lawmakers from shipbuilding states complained about a Navy fleet allocation large enough to build only five ships in fiscal 2003 -- half the number Rumsfeld admits are needed to keep the current 310-ship Navy from shrinking.

Paradoxically, the proposed budget increase follows a decision by Rumsfeld last year to drop a decade-old requirement for the armed forces to be ready to win two regional wars simultaneously. He replaced it with a plan for winning one war while marking time in any second regional conflict.

The change would seem to argue for a smaller force and smaller budget. But the wild card, defense officials say, is another element in the new strategy calling for greater military flexibility in meeting new threats, including waging a war on terrorism.

The war, which has cost more than $8 billion so far, is estimated to consume almost $20 billion of the requested $48 billion increase. Half of this, or $10 billion, would go into a contingency fund for continued military operations.

Another $9.4 billion is for what the Pentagon calls "long-term related requirements" for the war on terrorism. This includes $2.7 billion for protecting U.S. forces; $1.2 billion for continued combat air patrols over U.S. cities; $900 million for increased production of precision Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) used extensively in Afghanistan and $800 million for stepped-up production of unmanned aerial vehicles, tankers and AC-130 gunships. A further $2.6 billion in classified programs shows up in this category as well.

"We're going to spend a little more money on unmanned aerial vehicles and we're going to buy more JDAMs," said John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a defense policy think tank in Alexandria. "There's $2 billion you can point to in the budget that's innovative, and the rest of the money just sort of vanished, due to their inability to make hard choices."


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

US turns away as prisoners face death

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Patrick Cockburn in Kabul
10 February 2002
Independent (UK)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=119213

The US has been accused of openly flouting the Geneva Conventions at an Afghan jail where scores of prisoners are at risk of dying from disease and malnutrition, just days after President Bush said Taliban fighters should be protected under international law.

The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Pentagon has "washed its hands" of Shebarghan jail in northern Afghanistan, which it helped to operate and where it interrogated many of its prisoners. It is now hoping that humanitarian groups and charities will step in and improve the conditions at the jail, where 3,300 prisoners are squeezed together in grossly overcrowded, unsanitary cells, and where many have already died from disease.

An inspection team from the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) visited the prison recently and declared it "a quiet atrocity". Their report portrayed an institution where there was no running water and little food or medicine. Up to 110 men were being held in cells designed for no more than 15.

Until the middle of last month, the US helped to operate the prison along with General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the warlord who is now deputy defence minister in the interim Afghan administration. A number of the prisoners - most of whom were captured after the fall of the northern city of Kunduz - were taken to Kandahar or Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for further questioning.

But despite the appalling conditions at the prison, the US says it is no longer having anything to do with it, even though it claims the right to return to interview other prisoners. Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of PHR, said: "The information is that the Pentagon is doing nothing for the conditions at the prison. That is a decision that has been taken at four-star general level. They are not taking responsibility for that prison." The group has argued that under the Geneva Conditions the US still has responsibility for conditions at the jail. "This obligation exists irrespective [of] whether the US physically captured the prisoners, whether it currently has custody of them, or whether the detained individuals are considered prisoners of war of the US," it says in its report.

Last week President Bush announced a partial U-turn on the status of prisoners captured in Afghanistan, saying that the protections of the Geneva Conventions should be afforded to Taliban prisoners, but not al-Qa'ida prisoners. Neither should be considered prisoners of war.

Many of those who are being held at Shebarghan are ordinary Taliban fighters. The US has admitted that higher-ranking fighters have already been moved.

"No one wants to treat the enemy well," Mr Rubenstein said. "But that is exactly why you have the Geneva Conventions. There is a degree of self-interest - it is quite risky [for any US soldiers captured overseas] if the US government does not apply the conventions."

There is another aspect to what has happened at Shebarghan which also worries aid agencies with experience of Afghanistan. An aid official, who did not want to be named, said: "Detention has always been a business affair in Afghanistan. Detainees are always sold back to their families." This factor has made some foreign relief organisations reluctant to provide food and medical supplies to Shebarghan, because they fear this would relieve General Dostum of the cost of keeping the prisoners and give him no incentive to let them go until their families pay ransoms.

"We don't want to substitute ourselves for General Dostum, which would encourage this trade in human beings," said the aid official. But he admitted that if they did nothing, as the cold intensifies in Afghanistan, then more of the prisoners would die.

----

China Releases Bible Smuggler

WORLD In Brief,
Associated Press
Sunday, February 10, 2002; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51939-2002Feb9?language=printer

HONG KONG -- A businessman convicted of smuggling Bibles into China returned to Hong Kong after he was released from a Chinese prison.

A Hong Kong Security Bureau statement said Hong Kong officials were in touch with Li Guangqiang's family after his return. It gave no other details.

President Bush, who is to visit China this month, had expressed concern about Li's case and asked the State Department to look into it. Li was sentenced last month for having brought thousands of Bibles to a banned Chinese Christian group in May.

----

Taliban prisoners restart their lives with $25

By Rosalind Russell
Sunday February 10, 6:57 PM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-88774.html

KABUL - Nazar Mohammad grabbed the thick wad of notes and headed off down a Kabul street on Sunday to start his life again.

The former Taliban fighter was among thousands of Afghan conscripts who have been released from prison and given cash to go back home.

While Taliban commanders and foreign guerrillas of the al Qaeda network are hunted by the U.S. military, Mohammad is free to return to his farm in southern Afghanistan.

"This has been a terrible time," said the skinny, bearded conscript, all his belongings stuffed into one small plastic bag.

"But now we are free, we have money and l can take the bus home."

Mohammad was among 270 prisoners released late on Saturday in an after-dark ceremony at the presidential palace watched by interim leader Hamid Karzai.

Karzai has ordered the release of rank-and-file Taliban soldiers -- "just ordinary Afghans", he says -- to aid the process of reconciliation in war-weary Afghanistan.

The six-month interim administration gave each of the soldiers 500,000 afghanis (around $17). On Sunday morning they queued for a 300,000 afghani top-up from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The total of around $25 was a small fortune for an Afghan subsistence farmer.

"In prison all we had was three pieces of bread a day," said 26-year-old Agham Mohammad from Herat in western Afghanistan. "Now I can buy some food and a bus ticket and some things for my family."

NEW RECRUITS

ICRC spokesman Michael Kleiner said the prisoners were all recruited in the last few months of Taliban rule.

"These people were apparently conscripted towards the end of the Taliban regime, maybe in September and October, to fight against the Northern Alliance," Kleiner said.

"They were all captured by Northern Alliance forces and they've been held in prison for about three months."

All of the conscripts were keen to distance themselves from the Taliban.

"I wasn't a Talib (Taliban soldier), you can't call me a Talib," said Agham Mohammad. "Every man in my village had to join. We were taken to the frontline, but in eight days I was captured."

Most of them illiterate, the low-ranking fighters hold little interest for the U.S. military which is still tracking Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and officials of his al Qaeda network for their suspected role in the September 11 attacks.

U.S. forces have flown 220 prisoners from the Afghan war to the Camp X-ray prison at Guantanamo naval base in Cuba for interrogation.

----

War captives baffle US interrogators
The prison has open-air cells with chain-link walls

Sunday, 10 February, 2002, 03:12 GMT
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1812000/1812068.stm

The US military has admitted to difficulties in identifying Taleban and al-Qaeda detainees as 34 more are put in cells at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The latest batch of detainees, who arrived on Saturday, brought to 220 the total number of Afghan war captives held at the US naval base. The US military is holding another 237 in Afghanistan.

It is the second group to be flown to the base from Kandahar since flights resumed on Wednesday, following a pause while more cells were built.

The US officer in charge of Camp X-Ray - the Guantanamo Bay prison - indicated that interrogations were proceeding slowly, with some detainees giving false information.

"A large number claim to be Taleban, a smaller number we have been able to confirm as al-Qaeda, and a rather large number in the middle we have not been able to determine their status," said Marine Brigadier-General Mike Lehnert.

"Many of the detainees are not forthcoming. Many have been interviewed as many as four times, each time providing a different name and different information," he added.

Status dispute

On Thursday, President George W Bush decided to apply the Geneva Convention on the conduct of war to the Taleban but not to the al-Qaeda prisoners.

But President Bush has refused to bow to pressure from several countries to grant them prisoner-of-war status.

POW status would mean the detainees do not have to submit to interrogation, and would have to be released on the cessation of hostilities.

Al-Qaeda links

Brigadier-General Lehnert said detainees identified as members of al-Qaeda were generally confirmed through other sources and not through their own admission.

The US blames al-Qaeda, led by fugitive Saudi-born dissident Osama Bin Laden, for the 11 September suicide attacks on America.

A Muslim Navy cleric at Camp X-Ray, quoted by the Associated Press news agency, said some of the detainees had expressed regrets to him about the suicide attacks.

According to a senior Pentagon official, the detainees include about 50 Saudis, 30 Yemenis, 25 Pakistanis, eight Algerians, three Britons and small numbers from Egypt, Australia, France, Russia, Belgium and Sweden.

Treatment of the men at the camp has provoked international criticism and claims of human rights abuses.

Washington insists that the detainees - who are kept in open-air cells with walls of chain-link fence - are being treated humanely.

The International Red Cross says it still disagrees with the United States over how to classify the captives.

The Red Cross maintains that, under the Geneva Conventions, only an international tribunal, not the victorious power, can determine whether detainees are entitled to the rights and status of prisoners of war.

----

Homeland security: Homeland defense in uncharted waters

February 10, 2002
UPI Special
By MARK BENJAMIN

Parts 1 through 5
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/10022002-072930-1521r.htm

Parts 6 through 10
http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/10022002-075548-3701r.htm

NORFOLK, Va., Feb. 8 (UPI) -- America Unguarded: How far off is homeland security?

Editor's note: President Bush, in his budget released this week, calls for $38 billion to protect homeland security--an issue that was literally not on the radar until four hijacked airplanes changed America's priorities forever on Sept. 11. But where are the real gaps in homeland security, and what will it take to plug them?

This 10-part series by United Press International takes you from a Coast Guard ship looking for explosive cargo in the Atlantic off Virginia, to the rivers and bridges and wild frontier that make Canada suddenly a more important security front than Mexico.

In between, the series looks at security innovations, political uncertainties, the new face of the immigration debate, holes in financial security, and the economic consequences if checkpoints against terror become chokepoints against trade.

The series' principal reporters are White House Bureau Chief Nicholas M. Horrock and

Congressional Bureau Chief Mark Benjamin, with reporting by UPI Science Editor Dee Ann Divis and writer Charles Choi; Chief Economics Correspondent Ian Campbell and Washington Reporter Kathy Gambrell.

The 500-foot cargo ship has slowed almost to a dead stop 15 miles off of Norfolk in the choppy gray Atlantic. Flying an Italian flag, her last port of call was Bermuda and she wants to head up into the Chesapeake Bay into the heart of Baltimore. Her hull is fully loaded with chemicals, including phosphoric acid, weighing her down into the sea so that just a slim line of her bright orange hull drifts slowly up and down above the frigid, 5-foot swells.

Cmdr. Kevin Quigley, commanding officer of the 270-foot U.S. Coast Guard ship Harriet Lane has pulled his ship up alongside, keeping the freighter about 1,000 yards off the Harriet Lane's starboard quarter where she waits under a slow, bone-chilling drizzle.

The 42-year-old commander has 20 years of experience in the Coast Guard.

He has ordered that the boarding take place in the open sea, so he has enough room to maneuver if he has to.

Boarding Team Charlie, an eight-member crew of men and women trained to board potentially dangerous vessels, has gathered on the Harriet Lane's helicopter flight deck. They are lined up against the port side railings wearing bright orange foul weather gear, pointing their 9-millimeter pistols out to sea and checking ammunition in synchronized movements according to the barked commands of their team leader, Lt. j.g. Jason Slocum.

Before Sept. 11, the cargo ship would be just another vessel heading toward Norfolk. After Sept. 11, she has to be considered a floating bomb.

"He's got a lot of chemicals on board. We are going to take a close look, for obvious reasons," Slocum says of the cargo ship.

"There are a lot of targets around here," he says, gesturing back towards the Atlantic seaboard and the planned path of the ship, which is scheduled to cruise past countless gray Navy cruisers lined up at the docks in Norfolk, past the Chesapeake Bay Bridge humming with traffic and up into Baltimore, only 30 miles northeast of Washington.

Just months ago, the Harriet Lane might have been off the coast of Central America, prowling for drug runners or tiny vessels smuggling refugees toward the Florida shores. But she has been reassigned, along with most of the Coast Guard, as the government has pulled out the stops in a scramble to protect 95,000 miles of coastline and the country's 20 largest ports.

Those 20 ports handle more than 95 percent of U.S. international trade, moving $737 billion in cargo a year, and creating the ballast that keeps the economy afloat.

The federal government has spent decades mostly trying to facilitate the free flow of trade and ensure that goods and services can flow quickly and easily in and out of the United States largely unmolested. U.S. officials readily acknowledge, for example, that those efforts have led to a situation where customs officials probably inspect only two out of every 100 cargo containers that arrive in U.S. ports, a statistic that has galvanized debate over port security inside and outside the U.S. government.

Officials from the White House Office of Homeland Security now identify ports as pressing security vulnerabilities. That office is busy preparing a major report for delivery to the president early this year that will include a series of recommendations designed to revolutionize port security, officials in that office confirm.

In the meantime, the Coast Guard and Navy have dramatically changed their mission to prevent some threats from even reaching those ports. Homeland security operations now make up nearly 60 percent of all Coast Guard operations, as opposed to around 2 percent before Sept. 11, according to the White House.

On Jan. 10, the Navy announced that it would dispatch 13 Cyclone-Class coastal patrol ships to the Coast Guard to help with the new mission, "Operation Noble Eagle," the government's name for military activities to improve homeland security. The 170-foot Navy ships, designed for use in coordination with Special Operations forces, have joined ships such as the Harriet Lane chasing down and boarding countless vessels as they come toward the United States.

Coast Guard officials acknowledge, however, they cannot possibly board and search every cargo ship before it unloads in the United States and are only creating a first line of defense.

Since Sept. 11, the Coast Guard has boarded 1,792 "high interest" vessels on the open seas in what Coast Guard officials said is the biggest port security operation since World War II. But that is only a fraction of the 51,000 arrivals in U.S. ports each year.

"What we are doing out here, frankly, is quite random," Quigley admits as he squints through binoculars at the cargo ship off his starboard side. "Certainly, we are not looking at every ship that comes in. We have made no bones about that."

But they do look for anything unusual.

As government officials scramble to come up with new plans to address a clandestine threat that could be hiding in any one of a thousand ship hulls, politically and economically, whatever schemes they devise cannot slow down commerce. According to the Coast Guard, 95 percent of overseas commerce comes into the United States through ports. Maritime industries contribute $742 billion each year to the gross national product.

For security reasons, Coast Guard officials will not disclose the criteria they consider when deciding whether to board and search an incoming vessel.

But Coast Guard intelligence officers do review cargo manifests, crew and passenger lists. Before Sept. 11, ships would send their manifests in only 24 hours before arriving in port. That number has been increased to 96 hours, in part to give Coast Guard intelligence officers time to make their decisions.

For whatever reason, the 500-foot chemical ship has been identified as a potential threat.

Out on the horizon through the freezing mist appears the bow of one of the 170-foot Navy patrol crafts assigned to the Coast Guard. It is the USS Thunderbolt heading to the scene. This will be a joint boarding using the Harriet Lane's Boarding Team Charlie and a Coast Guard crew that has been dispatched to the Thunderbolt for these operations.

The PCs can easily travel in excess of 30 knots and the Thunderbolt comes into focus off of the horizon with shocking speed, as she bashes the 5-foot seas into a spray off her bow.

Aboard the Harriet Lane, Slocum and his team have already spent hours pouring over the cargo manifests and crew lists. The boarding party members have each received their assignments: inspecting passports and crew lists and cross-checking them with the faces of the 21 crew members they expect to meet, inspecting cargo, and investigating engineering spaces and the ship's superstructure.

Team members say they go so far as to turn on television sets on boarded vessels, to make sure they have not been hollowed out for use as secret containers. They even inspect nautical charts on the bridge for any clues. "We look for anything unusual," Slocum says through the drizzle up on the Harriet Lane's helicopter deck.

Built in the 1980s, the Harriet Lane was originally equipped with torpedoes and depth charges to defend against Soviet submarines. But now she has a new mission, one that Quigley says his crew has embraced with particular vigor since Sept. 11.

"They are pretty gung-ho" Quigley says about his boarding party.

Members of Boarding Team Charlie check their weapons once again: pepper spray, batons, handcuffs, inspection mirrors and ion swipes to detect drug residue while they are searching.

Slocum gives the team final instructions.

"Remember, this is not a race," Slocum tells his team. "If you find something, call me and we will go take a look."

They climb one-by-one down a swinging rope ladder to a small rigid-hull inflatable boat. The 150-horsepower engines kick in and they bounce off across the surf.

A bright orange Coast Guard helicopter has arrived from a routine patrol in the area. It circles the freighter several hundred feet up as Boarding Team Charlie climbs the long ladder up into the freighter.

The sleek gray Thunderbolt was built for speed and sits low and dark on the ocean. She has only about an 8-foot draft, which helps make her fast, but she bobs like a cork in the water. Climbing aboard her is like climbing aboard a floating knife after being aboard the Harriet Lane, with her high, white sides and sturdy decks.

Down below, Thunderbolt Capt. Henry Adams is taking a quick coffee break in the ship's cramped galley while a Coast Guard detachment assigned to his ship is busy inspecting the freighter along with Boarding Team Charlie, from the Harriet Lane.

His ship was one of the first of the 13 PCs ordered into homeland security duty with the Coast Guard. He sits back in the camouflage uniform suited for special operations and removes his dark Ray Ban sunglasses.

The heavily armed Thunderbolt has already been busy that day escorting a freighter full of natural gas out of the Chesapeake Bay past Norfolk. Escorting cargo ships that would make potent terrorist targets is another duty the Navy and Coast Guard have adopted.

"If that ship were to detonate near downtown Norfolk, it would be a serious event," Adams says of the natural gas freighter.

Three hours later, Boarding Team Charlie is back aboard the Harriet Lane, along with the other crew back on the Thunderbolt. It was a relatively quick inspection in comparison to others that can take as long as 12 hours; regardless, they go on continuously for Coast Guard crews 24 hours a day.

On this day, team members did not like the looks of one cargo compartment.

Bolts on the compartment appeared brand new, as if someone had worked on it recently and they had some trouble getting the crew of the freighter to open it.

But in the end, it held legitimate cargo.

The hectic mission pace for the Coast Guard and Navy has settled some since the weeks following Sept. 11. Navy and Coast Guard officials agree they can probably maintain the current level of ship inspections. But they also agree that means they will neglect many other duties the services are supposed to perform.

"Obviously, there is some other mission loss," Adams says about other duties the Coast Guard and Navy can no longer perform. But he notes the fortunate peace at U.S. ports, at least so far, since the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We must be doing something right," says Adams.

--

Part 2: A mission bordering on impossible
By NICHOLAS M. HORROCK AND MARK BENJAMIN

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Next: Policies, politics and politicians collide in the scramble to fix homeland security.

The Bush administration has begun the most sweeping tightening of the nation's ports, borders and air terminals since World War II, creating a new transit security agency bigger than the FBI and proposing vast new resources and powers for the U.S. Coast Guard, the Border Patrol, the Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The president's plans would abandon decades of government efforts to speed foreign trade through America's borders and end official indifference to tidal floods of illegal immigrants. The Bush administration envisions a time when new technology will allow the government to know something about each and every person, shipping container and travel bag that comes into the country.

But in a month-long investigation, United Press International reporters found a task so vast and complex, no public official or private expert would predict a time when the government could promise that a deadly weapon or a deadly terrorist will not be able to slip in undetected. The sheer size of the undertaking--billions of tons of cargo, 7,500 miles of land border, 95,000 miles of coastline--suggest that it could be years and possibly decades before security is drastically improved.

Washington is training its sights on gaping security holes made obvious since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks: the torrent of international trade, travel and immigration that fuels the U.S. economy but also makes it acutely vulnerable to surreptitious attack.

President Bush put border security at the top of his domestic agenda, telling a Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 29 that his 2003 budget "nearly doubles funding for a sustained strategy of homeland security and improved intelligence." The Bush budget will ask Congress for $38 billion to concentrate on homeland security, nearly twice what was dedicated to these tasks in 2002.

Democrats too recognized the nation's vulnerability and called for tightening.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., told a Democratic meeting in January that only two out of every 100 cargo containers that enter U.S. ports are inspected. He also said that while Canadian officials believe 50 terrorist groups operate in that country, only 300 agents are working the 100 ports of entry along the 3,000-mile U.S.-Canadian border.

"These gaps in our homeland security are unacceptable," Daschle said. "We ought to be pursuing homeland security with as much vigor as we are pursuing the war in Afghanistan."

Congress this year might push through a major bipartisan bill that envisions the use of space-age technology to revolutionize passports and visas with "biometrics" to connect attributes of an individual's body--fingerprints or eye-scans, for example--to his or her true identity when he or she arrives at the border. That system is supposed to be in place by October 2003.

Washington already has begun chucking money at trade and travel-related security issues in untold quantities. And a raft of federal agencies that protect the borders are scrambling to pick out the one or two deadly individuals or packages from the millions that pass through the United States every day, even as agencies such as the Coast Guard and U.S. Customs Service are already operating at unsustainable levels because of the continuously high state of alert.

The Council on Foreign Relations' Stephen Flynn has described the task at hand as identifying and removing the transcontinental "muck" that comes with ever-increasing globalization. That task will form one of the most daunting and expensive assignments Washington has faced for decades, experts said.

At the same time, policy-makers must make sure that they do not disrupt the massive flow of people and goods that keep the U.S. economy afloat. Shutting down the borders "would set the country's economy back 150 years," said Theresa Cardinal Brown, manager of labor and immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

In a major address to the U.S. Conference of Mayors last month, Homeland

Security Director Tom Ridge emphasized that border security cannot hamper trade because of the potentially disastrous impact on the economy.

"We are working with Canada and Mexico to institute smart borders that will keep terrorists out, while letting the flow of commerce in," Ridge said. "Again, mayors on bordering communities ... to Mexico and Canada understand it's not only about making your borders more secure, but we have to facilitate the flow of goods and services and people across those borders, because it has economic implications."

Terrorists have unequivocally identified the U.S. economy, propelled forward by voluminous trade, as a prime target for future terrorist attacks. The events of Sept. 11 have illustrated those terrorists' remarkable patience and resourcefulness in carrying out their plans.

"The young people should make an effort to look for the key pillars of the U.S. economy ... (which) should be struck, God willing," Osama bin Laden said in a video sent to the Qatar-based al Jazeera television station in December.

"Most people and most policy-makers are trying to figure out how we can be safer and not put the cork back in the bottle on globalization," said Frank Sharry, executive director at the pro-immigration National Immigration Forum.

The United States has 301 ports of entry where goods and people may enter through 3,700 terminals--border checkpoints. In 2000, 489 million people, 138.5 million trucks and vehicles, 5.8 million maritime containers, and 829,000 commercial planes passed through the U.S. cross-border inspection program, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The United States, Mexico and Canada trade at the rate of $2 billion per day, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But officials at the border still rely largely on physical inspections for the tiny portion of freight they do get to see, and officials inspect only paper passports at popular border crossings while miles of wilderness along the northern and southern borders remain relatively unguarded.

Currently, intelligence agencies and border control officials don't have effective protocol or tools to share information in the first place. And experts said the technological solutions under consideration in Washington to help resolve the problems rely on pricey technology that has not been used on this scale.

"That is my message to everyone on this, it is not as easy as it looks," said the Chamber of Commerce's Brown. "If Congress is really serious about this, they are going to have to put their money where their mouth is."

Already, the Bush administration has predicted that the government will run a $106 billion deficit in fiscal year 2003, and the Congressional Budget Office warned that a $1.6 trillion surplus could be wiped out over the next decade.

Some policy-makers also believe unprecedented international cooperation is urgently needed to help address security and trade issues they see, such as the creation of a North American Security Perimeter in which the United States, Canada and Mexico would forge common immigration and visa policies and create high-tech methods to track and clear goods for trade as they move off the factory floor and before they jam up the borders.

On Dec. 12, the United States and Canada signed a Smart Border Declaration pledging to cooperate on these fronts, but experts said it is unclear whether such a perimeter would ever be formed, how long it would take, and at what cost.

As late as September of last year, Washington was also embroiled in a heated debate over how or whether to grant some form of legal status to 3 million illegal immigrants--mostly from Mexico--already working in the United States.

Before Sept. 11, Bush had pushed for some system to allow the workers to work legally, at the very least on a temporary basis, but he faced a tough fight within his own party. Some Republicans have said those programs simply reward illegal immigration.

Sept. 11 put that debate on ice and many immigration experts said for security reasons it will get rolled into the wider effort in the United States to identify individuals who have crossed the borders.

"All of this, through a security lens, makes a lot more sense," Sharry said. "The idea of, over time, identifying the number of people with false papers is a realistic enforcement goal."

Clearly, Bush's plan to target $38 billion next year toward homeland security struck a popular note in Washington, reflecting broad support for aggressive steps to prevent future attacks, but it masks disagreement over how far those steps should go, lawmakers and political experts agree.

"We are protected from attack only by vigorous action abroad and increased vigilance at home," Bush told a receptive Congress in his State of the Union speech.

"Democrats have stood shoulder to shoulder with the president in fighting the war on terrorism, and protecting our homeland," Daschle responded after the speech.

But interviews with lawmakers on Capitol Hill and political experts in Washington illuminated serious policy fissures--and potential political quagmires--under the veneer of polite agreement.

"It has been mostly bipartisan," Senate Government Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said. "But there have been differences that we have had with the administration."

Lieberman, for example, wants to pass a bill to hand Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge statutory authority to do his job--authority Ridge says he doesn't need to because he has the president's ear. Lawmakers worry that Bush does not want to force his Cabinet to cede authority to Ridge, leaving him weakened.

"It is unusual," Lieberman said. "We are having a debate with the president because we want to give the person he selected to protect our security at home, Gov. Ridge, more power."

Bush brought Ridge, a square-jawed Vietnam veteran and former Pennsylvania governor, to Washington last October as the very symbol of his administration's commitment to protecting the United States from further attack. The importance of coordinating homeland security became graphic as Cabinet officers stumbled over each other in trying to respond to the anthrax attacks that began a week after Ridge arrived.

But there were also clear strains within the administration over what his role really would be. Vice President Dick Cheney had been given the task before Sept. 11 of writing a report on what the administration's response to terrorism would be, but once a real terrorist attack occurred his leadership role in this seemed to disappear.

Cheney was isolated by the need to remain at a secret location for so many weeks as the administration sought to protect the government structure from attack.

At first, Ridge was presented as sort of a domestic Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser. But Rice's team works out of the White House. Ridge has a White House office himself, but his 100-person staff office is located on Nebraska Avenue in northwest Washington nearly 5 miles from the White House. Ridge's staff has been chosen from people "detailed" by the government agencies to work in the White House.

To Washington insiders, this means that their future and their allegiance remains with the government agencies that sent them over. They are unlikely to present a program that would harm the parent agency.

The $38 billion has also sparked a debate among federal, state and local government officials.

Ridge is already locked in a heated battle with mayors and local officials over White House plans to redistribute more than $1 billion in funds that have been flowing each year directly to local police departments.

Mayors are worried that Bush will cut off direct funding for cities and direct it to state governments instead. The mayors' worry it will take longer for the money to trickle down from state capitals and there will be less in the end.

"I understand, as a former governor, that mayors of cities have great concern that the federal government will authorize and appropriate large sums of money and that there may be delays or impediments to the money flowing to your individual communities," Ridge told the U.S. Conference of Mayors last month. "I will assure you that I am very mindful of the way to give you flexibility to meet your needs in a timely way."

"I think the big issue is going to be the methodology of distribution," Gary, Ind., Mayor Scott L. King said at the time. "Is it going to go through the states to the locals, or directly to the locals?"

The White House artfully last week held back the "formula" for distributing the money until the Bush budget is released.

Some members of Congress have responded to that issue with alarm. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has introduced a bill that would focus $3 billion on homeland security and guarantee that 70 percent of that money goes to more than 1,000 cities.

Ridge has met resistance inside the administration on some proposals as well.

The White House had considered a plan to combine the enforcement programs at the INS, U.S. Customs Service and even components of the Agriculture Department into one border service. This had long been a recommendation of groups that studied the confusion and duplication on U.S. borders.

But that plan was buried after the Cabinet officers in charge of those departments fought back to protect their turf, according to GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

One executive of a law enforcement-lobbying group told United Press International that Attorney General John Ashcroft has resisted Ridge's leadership from the beginning. This expert, who asked not to be identified by name, said this might be one reason President Bush chose to have the $3.5 billion direct aid to local responders directed through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by Bush loyalist Joe Allbaugh.

The Justice Department did not return calls seeking comment on the working relationship between Ashcroft and Ridge.

"Obviously, there is bureaucratic politics involved," said Stephen Hess, Brookings Institution government studies senior fellow. "Whenever you talk about moving units from one place to another in the government, you will run into people who want to keep things the way they are."

Throughout it all, Bush faces the task of keeping U.S. citizens and a flighty Congress focused on the task even while the country enjoys peace.

"Time and distance from the events of Sept. 11 will not make us safer unless we act on its lessons," Bush said in his speech.

Hess said that could be one of the biggest challenges in the long run.

"He has got to continue to convince America that we are in this for the long pull. It can be the problem of not fixing the roof when it is not raining."

--

Part 3: Long race to safeguard seaports
By MARK BENJAMIN

Next: America's seaports form a gaping hole in homeland security in the heart of U.S. cities.

The report will land on the president's desk early this year with recommendations to prevent terrorists from shipping a biological or chemical weapon directly into a major U.S city, White House officials confirm.

An interagency group in the White House Office of Homeland Security is working day and night trying to patch up what security and trade experts agree is a gaping whole in America's homeland security: the voluminous flow of unchecked cargo containers rolling off ships and into U.S. ports, most of which are located in the hearts of U.S. cities.

That report will recommend enlisting major companies in the war against terror: Companies that want to ship goods to the United States would become the first line of defense by guaranteeing to the U.S. government that they have searched and sealed cargo as it leaves a foreign plant and that it is secure until it reaches a U.S. port.

In return, those shipments would sail through U.S. customs quickly and largely unmolested, while inspectors concentrate on other more mysterious cargo, according to officials in that office.

The report will also recommend that U.S. ports install a raft of space-age technology to scan cargo containers without opening them as they roll off ships and to signal inspectors if a container has been opened during passage.

It will also outline a lengthy list of new requirements to ensure that companies' cargo manifests are detailed, up-to-date, and delivered electronically long before goods arrive.

U.S. officials will deliver a similar set of recommendations in a "white paper" to the International Maritime Organization, which sets up the rules for trade on the high seas, at a meeting in London set for Feb. 11-14, officials drafting that paper confirm.

Both sets of recommendations represent a drastic departure for the government as it scrambles to pair trade and security, after decades of concentrating almost solely on the former--to the detriment of the latter, some security experts said.

Trade experts agree that the sheer volume -- 5.7 million maritime containers arrived in the United States in 2000, according to Customs officials--far exceeds the patchwork of security mechanism in place to ensure that one does not contain a "dirty" nuclear device set to blow as it arrives near the heart of New York. The Coast Guard can only board and search a fraction of cargo ships before they arrive, and it takes five inspectors an average of 3 hours to search a cargo container, according the Council of Foreign Relations.

Customs and the Coast Guard scan cargo documents and passenger lists to identify possible irregularities, but companies are not required to deliver accurate cargo manifests to Customs officials until weeks after the goods actually arrive in port.

"We have no credible system of security within surface and maritime trade," said the Council on Foreign Relations' Stephen Flynn, an expert on trade and security. "The first time it is exploited, we will shut it down."

Turning off the spigot on maritime containers on the heels of a terrorist attack for any significant period of time could also spell economic doom. U.S. seaports handled nearly $737 billion mostly in containerized cargo in 2000.

"It would set the country's economy back 150 years," said Theresa Cardinal Brown, Manager of Labor and Immigration Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Grounding U.S. airlines for just a few days after Sept. 11 caused catastrophic damage to that industry, spurring Congress to swiftly pass a $15 billion airline bailout package later that same month and contributing to a downward-spiraling economy.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is responsible for overseeing the shipment of around 7,000 maritime containers each day, nearly 3 million last year. Director of Port Commerce Rick Larrabee said that in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, it quickly became clear that the potential threat that comes along with those thousands of containers far exceeds any ability to inspect them.

"As we have begun to talk about it, it became very obvious that the real weak link in the system is that there is no way you can physically inspect these containers and that we did not have very good reliable information about what was inside," Larrabee said.

In what was billed as a major policy speech at the Center for National Policy Jan. 4, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said that only two out of every 100 cargo containers that enter U.S. ports are inspected, a statistic that has galvanized debate over containerized cargo.

For the short term, the government is moving expeditiously to at least boost some security arrangements at U.S. ports and along U.S. borders.

Congress is considering legislation drafted by Sen. John Breaux, D-La., and Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., that would create a national "sea marshal" program to put officers in ports. That bill also would allow Congress to hand ports $400 million to improve physical security at ports.

Breaux chaired a series of hearings this month in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., New Orleans and Houston on security issues at U.S. ports.

"We have to ensure that the ports of America that deliver so much of our goods and services are, in fact, secure, and we are doing everything possible to ensure that,"

Breaux said.

The U.S. Customs Service has dispatched nearly 4,000 small, hand-held "radiation pagers" to help inspectors at borders and seaports look for nuclear weapons as best as they can.

The Coast Guard has shifted many of its assets away from prowling for drug runners and illegal immigrant smugglers and has launched an unprecedented effort to board and search suspect vessels miles off U.S. coasts. On Jan. 10, the U.S. Navy dedicated 13 fast and deadly 170-foot Cyclone Class Navy Patrol Coastal ships to escort commercial ships containing hazardous or explosive materials in and out of U.S. ports.

Some data on a ship's cargo and passengers are now due to the U.S. Customs service 96 hours before ships arrive, as opposed to 24 hours prior to Sept. 11, according to U.S. Coast Guard Director of Port Security Capt. Tony Regalbuto. But companies still are not required to prove those manifests truly match container contents until weeks after the goods arrive.

Larrabee, of the New York port authority, said the Breaux bill is only a step in the right direction and the government must address the broader problem by eliminating threats before they reach U.S. shores.

"It does some good things," Larrabee said of Holling's legislation. "But I don't think the

Hollings bill goes far enough."

The plan that is still under wraps at Gov. Tom Ridge's Office of Homeland Security is designed to go farther, by enlisting companies that do large volumes of trade with the Unites States into the security effort. One idea is to ensure that only certified individuals seal cargo containers overseas at companies that are known trading partners. New technologies would signal officials if those containers were opened in transit.

In return, companies that participate in such a program would get their goods zipped quickly through customs, allowing U.S. officials to concentrate on more mysterious shipments.

That plan has hope, Flynn said, because 58 percent of all imports come from the same 400 companies: "The good news is that most [trade] is milk runs."

--

Part 4: Guarding traffic along 7,500 miles
By NICHOLAS M. HORROCK

NIAGARA, N.Y., Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Border Patrol Agent Richard Warwas of Falfurrias, Texas, is bent against the cold, snow-flecked wind, as he watches the giant freight train slowly approaching over the International Railway Bridge.

Where Warwas was born and normally works, the Texas-Mexican border, a "cold snap" takes the temperature down to 50 degrees, and the temperature has averaged 80 degrees. But on this late January day, he is standing on the shore of the Niagara River, 600 yards from Canada, on a slate gray afternoon with an 18-degree temperature reading. The wind chill factor makes it feel like 5 above zero.

"Goretex," said a visitor "can really protect you against the wind."

"The only thing I like about Goretex," Warwas grumbles, "is the TEX."

But Warwas is there by his own choosing. He volunteered to be in a group of Texas Border Patrol agents sent to serve along the Canadian border in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 as the government desperately tried to seal the 4,000 miles of land and water separating the United States from Canada.

At the time that the 19 airline hijackers flew the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, there were fewer than 500 Border Patrol agents out of a national force of 9,000 deployed along the Canadian border.

The bulk of the rest, more than 8,000, were, like Warwas, stationed along the border of Mexico, trying to interdict the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from Mexico and the largest land narcotics route in the world.

Warwas' assignment, along with seven other agents, is to search slowly moving freight trains as they enter and leave the United States. He is looking for illegal aliens on the incoming freights and possibly fleeing terrorist suspects on the outgoing ones.

The agents fan out on both sides of the train, this one a 60-car freight moving at about 5 mph. Alan Marshall, the largest Border Patrol agent in the team, standing well over 6 feet and husky to boot, is given the precarious assignment of climbing to the top of a rickety signal tower so he can shine a hand-held spotlight down into the freight cars and grain gondolas as they pass. Marshall directs the engineer in the locomotive by hand-held radio.

Warwas's assignment underscores the enormous complications and contradictions of protecting a nation with 7,500 miles of land and inland water borders with Canada and Mexico where 11.2 million trucks and 2.2 million rail cars cross into the United States each year.

Teams of six or seven officers working on a virtually around-the-clock-basis are required to clear these relatively few trains. When these cars continue toward a rail yard in Buffalo, N.Y., the Border Patrol will be assured that there are no aliens hiding under or around the outside of the cars or in empty gondolas.

If the car is closed with a Canadian Customs seal, the agents don't open it and have no idea whether people or even a nuclear bomb is hidden inside. The U.S. Customs Service won't verify the closed cars are safe until they are well within the United States.

Cargo checking is the job of the Customs Service, but manpower shortages make a Customs check at this point impossible. Customs mounts a strobe lit-video device on the Canadian side, which shows them the rail car numbers as they pass. They can check these against pre-filed manifests and choose cars to actually spot-check when the train reaches the yard near Buffalo.

Halfway through the train today was a tank car marked "chlorine."

Chlorine is so hazardous that it is shipped in both Canada and the U.S. under specific rules for loading and unloading. Whether this car had been tampered with, contained explosives or any other hazard, would not be discovered, if at all, until Custom's inspectors looked at it in the rail yards in the United States and close to a population center with hundreds of thousands of people.

Several miles south of the rail bridge is the 75-year-old Peace Bridge, one of the two busiest vehicular land crossings in the United States, stretching more than a mile from Fort Erie, Ont., to Niagara Falls, N.Y.

More than 6.5 million private cars and 1.4 million commercial vehicles cross this bridge annually along 12 traffic lanes.

Within hours of the Sept. 11 attack, the bridge went to Level One alert, causing historic backups. The American Trucking Association, which represents 30,000 trucking companies nationwide, reported 24-hour delays at some crossings and as much as 4 hours to 5 hours for commercial vehicles over the Peace Bridge.

Considering that one-third of all trucks that enter the United States annually traverse the Peace Bridge and three other bridges between Ontario and the United States, the hasty border alerts were part of what Coast Guard Cmdr. Stephen E. Flynn, an expert on world trade, called a "self-imposed embargo" on American trade.

"Nineteen men wielding box cutters," he wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, "ended up accomplishing what no adversary of the world's sole superpower could ever have aspired to: a successful blockade of the U.S. economy."

Flynn reported in his article that the "rule of the thumb in the border-inspection business" is that it takes five inspectors three hours to conduct a thorough physical inspection of a loaded 40-foot container or an 18-wheel truck.

Figuring that nearly 4,000 truck and commercial vehicles cross Peace Bridge each day, Flynn's estimate shows that even in the first days after Sept. 11, achieving that kind of search would be impossible without commerce coming to a standstill.

U.S. Customs Chief Inspector Michael Comerford told United Press International that he and his men are still maintaining Level One security at the bridge, but have managed without major backup through a process of increased manpower and the good judgment of experienced inspectors.

Experience allows inspectors to check trucks where there are anomalies in the paperwork, the credentials of the driver that provoke them to pull a truck out of line, first for a more thorough check of the exterior and then, if necessary, for a complete unloading of the cargo in a series of bays at the plaza on the New York side.

No one UPI interviewed along the Canadian border said any of these methods would guarantee against a terrorist or dangerous device gaining entrance, but Comerford and others say there is simply not enough manpower or time to do anything more thorough.

It has been the job of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and his 100-person staff to try to devise a plan to secure America's borders without stifling the trade that has made the U.S. economy the most powerful and profitable on Earth.

Privately, key sources in Ridge's office admit that the land borders still have them stumped, particularly finding a way of securing of the U.S.-Canadian border.

One key idea for both Canada and Mexico is in a sense extending the border of the three countries, making North America sort of a single trading zone. In effect, U.S. Customs officers would be actually working in Canada and Mexico, clearing cargo at the point of origin and sealing the truck for smooth, unhampered entry into the United States.

Last month, Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner announced that a binational working group is studying this process, but other Customs experts think the idea is too complex. It means that armed U.S. Customs officers would have to be able to enforce U.S. law in a foreign country (Canadian Customs officers are not armed).

"What happens," asked one veteran Customs officer, "if you check a load abroad and find something in it? Can the shipper just back off and say he doesn't want to send it to the United States? Has he violated any law?"

Lots of other people in Customs and the trucking business believe that computers can effect greater security by sifting out trucking companies and shippers that are regular users of the border, certifying the loads and drivers as safe, and also freeing Customs to concentrate on trucks and shipments.

"A high percentage of the trucks and goods," Comerford said, "are repeaters. There are 1,000 shippers that handle two-thirds of all the truck-borne cargo imported into the United States."

The Canadian government was studying a similar proposal that would allow some 7,000 trucks each day to pass U.S. border without inspection. In late January, The New York Times said Bonner rejected this notion and it had sparked a dispute with Ridge's office.

"We're looking at increased security against terrorists at the border," Bonner told the

Times, "but I don't think the Canadians are looking at it the same way."

At present, the Customs Service is still a paper-driven agency, which has really little advance notice of trucks arriving for entry into the United States.

But once it completes a new computer system now under construction, a manifest of the truck's load, driver's identity and credentials could be in the hands of the Customs at U.S. crossing points before the truck left its point of origin.

Martin D. Rojas, who is in charge of border transit issues for the American Trucking Association, claims that the companies are ready to cooperate. Most major shippers are already using electronic communications, he said.

Moreover, large shippers are already working diligently on ways to be sure loads are not hijacked or tampered with.

"The trucking industry loses $10 (billion) to $12 billion a year to theft," he said.

--

Part 5: Life on the Wild Frontier
By NICHOLAS M. HORROCK

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y., Feb. 8 (UPI) -- In Part 5: On the river

The last time Old Fort Niagara was garrisoned to face an enemy coming from Canada was in the war of 1812. From its battlements, the United States launched an attack on Fort George, less than a mile across the Niagara River and in the next two years of war it was to be bombarded a score of times and finally ignominiously overrun by British soldiers in a night attack.

Long before the American Revolution, this windswept pinnacle of land has been an outpost of the nation against danger from the Canadian frontier.

It has seen battles in the French Indian Wars, the American Revolution and the war if 1812.

But for the past 188 years, the more than 4,000-mile border between the United States and Canada has been called the "longest unguarded border in the world," reflecting the closeness of the two nations and why after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the United States faces an enormous task securing this vast land barrier against terrorist intrusion.

In December, President Bush announced a $10.7 billion border security budget, an increase of $2.1 billion over 2002, which will pay for large increases in the numbers of people watching U.S. borders and in the resources and equipment that they can rely upon.

The regular traffic across the U.S., Canadian and Mexican land borders tunnels through "ports of entry," including several bridges here. El Paso, Texas; San Ysidro, Calif; Detroit, St. John's, Vt., are well-known border crossing points, but between these ports are vast miles of open country, where entering the United States may be a matter of crossing a field or hiking through a forest or crossing a street.

In the Northeast alone, there are dozens of unmanned, remote border points, which may only have a video camera recording individuals entering and leaving the country. On the Southern border, the Border Patrol has sewn thousands of electronic censors that can pick up foot and vehicle traffic crossing remote areas and pinpoint it on monitors, but there are far less of these along the Canadian border.

Take the Niagara River. This gorge like river runs 35 miles from Niagara Falls to Lake Ontario. Only 500 yards to 600 yards wide at its widest point, the river has long been a transfer point for smugglers. A house on the American bank was a station on the underground railway where escaped slaves were smuggled into Canada.

Smuggling from Canada now brings illegal aliens, Chinese, Koreans, Bosnians, Arabs. "Every country under the sun," says Michael E. Przybyl, assistant chief patrol agent. They come across the vehicle bridges, rail bridges, in small boats and large.

Native Americans from Canadian and American tribes smuggle hydrophonic marijuana raised on reservations and drug smuggling groups like this busy summer waterway for heroin, cocaine and pills.

"Any of those smugglers could bring a terrorist along," Kelly points out.

Yet along this same river are two major targets for terrorism: the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant and the Lewiston Pump Generating Plant that use water from Niagara Falls to generate 2.4 million kilowatts, serving millions of people in New York and Ontario.

To guard this section of river frontier alone, the Border Patrol and the U.S. Coast Guard combined after Sept. 11 to run a river patrol on a 24-hour basis, requiring some 12 men on 8-hour shifts.

Senior Border Patrol Agent Adrian Cotsworth, 30, of San Diego is part of one three-man team noses his $200,000, 27-foot Sea Ark patrol boat away from a slip at the old fort and begins another icy patrol that will take him and his two companions down the Niagara River almost to the base of Niagara Falls.

On the left seat is Supervisory Patrol Agent Kevin M. Kelly, 35, of Buffalo, N.Y., and on the open deck behind is their Coast Guard counterpart, Boatswain's Mate Third Class, David Jenkins, 25, of Pittsburgh.

Though the river is free of ice, a swimmer would last only minutes in its current and the three men have suited up carefully, donning special survival suits, sealed to keep air close to their bodies and give them as long a chance as they can in the water. The suits have built-in flotation devices and packs that would send out a beacon and radio signal to bring rescuers.

Only last March, two Coast Guardsmen died of hypothermia a few hundred yards from here after their patrol craft overturned in the waves. The men were in the water nearly 4-1/2 hours before rescuers arrived. Two other Coast Guardsmen survived. Jenkins said it was believed that the two who died had not sufficiently sealed their survival suits before starting the patrol and freezing water was allowed to seep in when their craft capsized in the waves.

The Niagara River, like Afghanistan's Kandahar or Kabul, is a frontline of the war on terrorism and the joint day-and-night patrols of the U.S. Border Patrol and the Coast Guard along this rocky gorge were instituted within days of the terrorism attacks on Sept. 11.

For all the millions of illegal aliens that have crossed the Southern U.S. border, Canada's liberal immigration policy has allowed numerous known terrorists to enter Canada and gain citizenship or resident credentials that would facilitate entering the United States.

Before Sept. 11, winter patrols were an occasional thing, but now, on a schedule that is a closely guarded secret, the Buffalo sector of the Border Patrol runs these patrols jointly with the Coast Guard on a "24/7" basis.

"There has never been coordination like this," argues young Jenkins. "We are learning their skills and they're learning ours."

But it also means that Border Patrol and Coast Guard boats are in the water about twice as much as they were before Sept. 11 and shore patrols are also much heavier.

Nevertheless, the key problem to this enforcement is manpower. The Border Patrol's Buffalo sector alone has miles of Lake Ontario shoreline to monitor. In the winter the lake traffic is light, but in the summer the lake is one of the most popular boating areas in the country and hundreds of Canadian boats cross and land everyday.

Beyond the Buffalo sector, up through New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, there are hundreds of roads, trails and other remote entry points. Many small border stations are not even manned and the amount of sensors and video scanners deployed are a tiny fraction of those across the 1,800-mile Mexican border to the South.

As the Sea Ark roars south through the roiling rapids, Kelly points out where only a few weeks ago a boatload of Chinese were landed at night.

"Our boats coordinate shore units," said Przybyl. "They spot the suspects going ashore and direct officers in cars to the spot."

Often he said, the smuggler is Canadian and will try to get back to the Canadian side.

"We have a great working relationship with Canadian officials and we can direct them to where the boat lands and they can snag the suspect," he said.

The Niagara River runs south to north, one of those strange anomalies of nature, and as the Sea Ark gets closer to Niagara Falls, the water gets rougher and rougher pitching the little boat back and forth. Kelly points out the beginning of the most crucial part of their patrol, two giant power plants, the Robert Moses Niagara Power plant on the U.S. side and the Sir Adam Beck Generating Station on the Canadian, which supply electrical power throughout the region.

Despite the cold, snowy day, there are a dozen small boats with fishermen near the restricted area and they pull back when they see the Sea Ark.

"Our patrols," said Kelly "can communicate with the power plan security people."

The plants are vulnerable to explosives that could be fed into the giant out flow valves that dump water into the Niagara.

According to Kelly, this wouldn't work as well without the cooperation of private citizens on both sides of the border.

"We get calls all the time. They see a boat running without lights or some guy coming ashore in their yard, they call us," he said.

Irene J. Elia, mayor of Niagara Falls of New York, which forms the U.S. border says that's no accident.

"The week after Sept. 11," she said, "I formed a domestic preparedness task force, that organize everything from security at the Robert Moses to training for responders."

But for the population municipality of 60,000, which came on hard times three decades ago with economic retrenchment in the Buffalo region, the costs of fighting the war on terror have been acute.

Mayor Elia was in Washington in late January with the U.S. Conference of Mayors to meet with President Bush and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge.

"We need help," she said. "To meet our responsibilities as a border city."

--

Part 6: Security locks up the immigration
By MARK BENJAMIN

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Mexican President Vicente Fox strode on to the U.S. House floor Sept. 6 to address a joint meeting of Congress and delivered a simple message: a new era of trust should mark relations between Mexico and the United States, punctuated by a marked relaxation in immigration law.

"I am sure that many on both sides of the border would rather stick to the old saying that 'good fences make good neighbors,'" Fox told a packed House chamber. "But circumstances have changed. We are now bound closely together."

At the time, Fox had behind him the tacit support of President Bush, who that day had announced he was "willing to consider" a plan for millions of Mexican workers already in the United States to become permanent residents, though they had entered the country illegally.

Fox said the two countries should agree on that plan by the end of the year.

Five days later, three airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and one crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside. Three of the 19 terrorists involved were illegal aliens, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

On Jan. 25, just four months after the attacks, Bush announced that he would seek to double the number of Immigration and Naturalization Service agents patrolling the borders from 9,000 to 18,000 and increase the INS enforcement budget by $1.2 billion.

Congress is also quickly moving a bill that would create "biometric" student visas to match students' physical characteristics, like eye scans, to their true identity by October 2003. The administration has already pledged to have up and running by the beginning of next year a system that will require educational institutions to keep better track of the 547,000 individuals inside the U.S. on student visas.

(The government admits it knows little about where those students are or what they are doing. The government also says that Hani Hanjour, who allegedly flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, entered the country using a student visa.)

According to CIS, a non-profit think tank in favor of strong enforcement of immigration laws, new census data indicates that 115,000 people from Middle Eastern countries live in the United States illegally.

The attacks have galvanized proponents of limited immigration and tight borders who are using them to fuel a much more aggressive agenda to crack down on illegal immigration and establish a new army of INS agents to track and hunt down law breakers who abuse U.S. visa or immigration policies.

"After Sept. 11, people in Washington began to think about the need for borders and what we need to do in order to protect American lives and property," Rep. Thomas Tancredo, R-Colo., told United Press International. "That is the thing that the Constitution establishes as our primary responsibility."

Tancredo leads a congressional delegation opposed to broad-scale relaxation of immigration law and in support of spirited enforcement instead.

"If you think we need a border, then you have to think about what that means in terms of enforcement," Tancredo argued. "That means, determine how many people come into the United States, for what purpose and how long they will stay."

Some of Tancredo's supporters envision a high-tech system that accurately tracks the identity of all individuals entering and leaving the country, a de-facto national identification card patched together by standardized state drivers' licenses and placing new requirements on employers to verify the legal status of potential employees in order to make the U.S. labor market particularly inhospitable to illegal aliens.

Immigration advocates are on their heels as their opponents, like Tancredo, ride a swell of concern over national security. Immigration advocates worry that their opponents will ride that swell too far and use steps ostensibly designed to isolate terrorists for a broad-scale crackdown on immigrants, mostly from Mexico or Latin America, who simply seek gainful employment.

"That has always been our greatest fear," said Lawrence F. Gonzalez, Washington office director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. "Guys like Tom Tancredo are saying, 'Let's round them all up.'"

Advocates of tight borders said the immigration debate has now reached a pivotal moment: the government must decide whether security threats will push politicians to tackle the politically prickly, complicated and expensive security challenges posed by immigration policy.

"It might be harder in the future to sneak into the United States or stay past your (visa) due date, but it is hard to tell," Krikorian said.

"Experience has shown us that Congress boosts enforcement to respond to a particular political situation, corporate and ethnic interests flex their muscles and Congress backs off."

For example, the administration now says it will establish an electronic entry and exit system and move forward with plans to track student visas. President Bush has proposed spending $380 million next year to establish that high-tech system that would track people entering and exiting the United States. Bush has said he wants that system in place by 2004.

But Canadian Deputy Prime Minister John Manley is pressing the United States to make sure that system does not apply to any Canadians in the 200,000 vehicles crossing that border every day.

At a Feb. 2 meeting between Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and Manley at the World Economic Forum in New York, Ridge pledged to exempt Canadians from that system.

"I assured him that we understand we've got a very unique relationship with them," Ridge told reporters later the next week. "I think this is geared -- this is not geared to Canada, but basically the balance of the world."

Both leaders are worried about upsetting $1.3 billion in trade on that border every day --- but exempting Canadians has angered administration critics, who said exempting Canadians from that system opens an obvious vulnerability.

Congress passed legislation to set up a similar system in 1996 in a bill that would also require colleges to track student visas, but later put the plan on the back burner because of inordinate cost and political pressure from colleges and pro-immigration groups, immigration experts said. And even if the administration establishes the student visa-tracking program, there are no plans to put together the army of INS enforcement officials needed to enforce it.

The biometric visa bill now in Congress would also establish biometric passports to attach an international traveler's identity to his physical characteristics, such as fingerprints or eye-scans. That bill would also create a massive database to help those key agencies cooperate on tracking and identifying potentially nefarious individuals.

But the bill relies heavily on technology that has never been used on such a grand scale, assumes that the government will spend billions to put it in place and requires the cooperation of governments around the world to follow suit and begin issuing biometric identifications. It also would not apply to Canadians.

"The practical question is, 'Can we do a better job of monitoring and controlling our borders?'" said CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian. "The answer is 'yes.'"

"The other question is political," Krikorian said. "Is having 3,000 people buried in Manhattan enough to get Congress to do something about that?"

The scattered plans reflect that after Sept. 11, security is the focus of immigration policy. But experts disagree on what the United States should do about it. In the uncertain political playing field, opponents and proponents of immigration worry how the war on terror will affect their cause.

"I know there is a lot of opportunism going on this town," Frank Sherry, executive director of the pro-immigration National Immigration Forum agreed.

The discussion in Congress of a national identification system is one development that has startled immigration advocates and civil libertarians alike. A national I.D. card system, those advocates worry, might isolate illegal immigrants, cut them off from work and drive them into the light where INS agents could apprehend them --- or simply make the United States an inhospitable place to function without that card.

The concepts are anathema to immigration advocates but on the agenda for border control advocates.

Prior to Bush's funding announcement, the White House had tossed around more aggressive plans. The White House briefly considered a revolutionary plan that would combine and boost the enforcement capabilities of the INS, U.S. Customs Service and even parts of the Agriculture Department and Coast Guard. The goal would be enforcement of immigration law.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill said the plan to combine enforcement duties, drafted by Ridge, has now been torpedoed by Bush's own deputes scrambling to keep hold of their own departmental turf.

"Ridge got his teeth knocked in," one House GOP member said.

Instead, the Bush administration has been mostly focusing on making trade safer.

The government has been scrambling to establish short and long-term plans designed to weave a high-tech security apparatus into the torrent of trade humming in and out of U.S. ports, bridges and airports, after decades of trying mainly just to facilitate trade. Now, government experts want to improve security without grinding the economy to a halt.

"We are working with Canada and Mexico to institute smart borders that will keep terrorists out, while letting the flow of commerce in," Ridge told the U.S. Conference of Mayors Jan. 23.

"Mayors on bordering communities ... to Mexico and Canada understand it's not only about making your borders more secure, but we have to facilitate the flow of goods and services, and people across those borders, because it has economic implications."

Advocates of tighter borders predict that the government will not do enough for security for political reasons, including the Hispanic vote.

"The reason why there has not been a full exploration of the connection between security and immigration is because everybody is afraid of it," Krikorian said. "They are actively doing the old, 'Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.'"

--

Part 7: Safe air travel? not yet
By NICHOLAS M. HORROCK

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- At 12:16 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, three hours after the first airliner had hit the World Trade Center, there were no private aircraft in the skies over the United States.

Nineteen men armed with box cutters had grounded the greatest commercial air fleet in the world, crippling the aviation industry of the nation that beginning with the Wright Brothers had led the world to the aviation age.

Save for the excruciatingly tragic loss of life in the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center and in Pennsylvania, the terrorist's most crippling blow to this nation was to the aviation industry.

In the months since that fateful morning, the economic fallout of the aviation disaster has reached across the nation and around the world.

Award-winning chefs were laid off in San Francisco, resorts in Las Vegas and Honolulu shut their doors, aircraft workers were idled at Boeing in Seattle, and hotels in New York went to 20 percent occupancy.

Suddenly, a marvel of the late 20th century U.S. economy, cheap and easy air travel, had come to a halt, undermining all business, crippling the hospitality industry and cutting especially into advertising.

Marketing firms abandoned the face-to-face sales contact, professional conventions were cancelled, school trips foregone, family vacations postponed and trains and highways filled with travelers too anxious to fly.

Perhaps no person was as acutely aware of the disaster to air travel as President Bush. A few days after the terrorist attacks, he flew to Chicago's O'Hare Airport to cheer up American and United Airline employees who were still burying their dead colleagues. He pledged that the U.S. government would take over the security of America's 429 commercial airports, ordered the National Guard to guard baggage screen posts and put armed marshals aboard America's air fleet.

Now nearly six months after the terrorist attacks, the American aviation industry is still struggling to regain normalcy and the Bush administration has learned how complex and difficult the job of securing 600 million air passengers a year really is.

Part of the delay was an angry political tiff on Capitol Hill over whether the 28,000 baggage screeners in the nation should be private or federal employees.

A hard core of the president's own party feared recruiting this many federal employees would renege on the Republican commitment to pare down the federal service and were anxious that these new employees would join the Democratic leaning government unions.

It took eight crucial weeks to resolve this disagreement and pass the Aviation and Transportation Security Act that Rep. John Mica R.-Fla., chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, calls "the most massive overhaul of aviation and transportation security in the history."

Congress compromised on the baggage screeners, making them federal employees but limiting their right to federal job protections and denying them the right to strike.

The bill created a new government bureaucracy, the Transportation Security Administration, which this month takes over all security operations of the Department of Transportation including baggage screeners, sky marshals, airport security officers and a phalanx of federal managers. When recruiting is complete, TSA will be larger than the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service combined.

Even once the bill was signed, action was delayed because the Senate recessed without confirming Bush's nomination for the undersecretary of Transportation, John Magaw, a former head of the Secret Service to carry it out. He finally took office last month.

The continuing vulnerability of air travel to terror is not theoretical. Only a few weeks ago, Richard Reid boarded an American Airline's plane in Paris allegedly wearing shoes rigged with explosives. Crew members said they noticed him trying to light his shoes with a match. He was wrestled down and tied to his seat by passengers and crewmembers.

And following that, a 15-year-old student pilot stole a plane in Tampa, Fla., and flew it into a building.

With 600,000 civilian pilots and 200,000 small planes, Mica suggested at a recent hearing that "we may never be able to stop or prevent an act of suicide by a civilian aircraft."

Only last month, San Francisco's crowded airport was cleared after a man's shoes triggered explosive-detecting alarms. The screener gave the man back his shoes and went to find a supervisor. The man disappeared before authorities could question him.

The FBI said it doesn't know whether he was a potential terrorist or had explosive particles on his shoes from some more benign source like the nitrogen in lawn fertilizer.

It will take a year to recruit and train some 31,000 baggage screeners and supervisory personnel provided for by Congress. John Magaw told a meeting of the nation's mayors in Washington that the federal government hopes to be able to actively take over security in as many as 40 to 60 airports a week by spring with a target of having all the airports under federal control by Dec.31.

The new screeners will be paid in the range of $20,000 a year, have to speak and deal with the public in English, undergo a background security check and be trained on all aspects of their equipment.

The new screeners "will be qualified, trained, uniformed, highly effective and they will be a proud force," said Magaw, who has spent nearly 40 years in law enforcement.

"I view the screeners as the front lines here at home," Magaw said, emphasizing that they are a key element in reassuring American passengers.

Meanwhile, no airport has federal screeners, although in the next six weeks pilot groups will be tested at the Baltimore Washington International Airport.

Still in place are the National Guard soldiers and local police, providing muscle and sometimes supervision to the same low paid privately employed screeners that were on duty on Sept. 11.

Beyond the passengers are the bags. Prior to Sept. 11, the estimated 1.5 million pieces of luggage that are checked by passengers annually to be carried in the plane's cargo hold were not screened for explosives, nor matched up with the passenger.

On Jan. 18, the Transportation department began examining bags under the terms of the Aviation Security bill.

"We began meeting requirement for checking all baggage, screening either by machine, by manual searches, by bomb-sniffing dogs, by trace detectors or by matching each piece of luggage to a passenger on board," Magaw told a House committee last month.

But members of the committee said that well before every bag can be screened for explosives, every bag can and should be matched to a passenger on every flight. This was the sharp lesson of Pan Am 103's destruction over Lockerbie, Scotland, where a bomb rigged bag was checked through from Frankfurt to London to the United States, but no passenger was matched to the bag and it blew up with a pressure fuse, killing 270 Christmas travelers.

Beyond matching is explosive detection. Explosives can be sniffed by dogs, but considering that dogs are needed to detect explosives at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo, N.Y., and at the Super Bowl and the White House and a myriad of other places, there is a major shortage of dogs.

A special scanner that is as big as a Sports Utility Vehicle is the best machine to detect explosives. The United States, Magaw said, has 161 of these machines and needs 2,000 to service all the airports. The two companies that manufacture the machines, he said, cannot produce sufficient new ones to meet these needs in a timely fashion and he is trying to persuade the manufacturers to allow other companies to produce them.

There are hand-held explosive scanners, but they are too few and they do not work as well, according to congressional staff members.

Mica and members of his committee went to Europe in January to study safety measures there.

"It was apparent," he reported at a hearing last month, "that integrating explosive detection equipment into the airport environment will be much more difficult than many people realize.

"If the aviation industry and the flying public were concerned about the chaos created when the new baggage system was installed in Denver, imagine the challenge of retrofitting 400 United States' airport's baggage systems in the next 11 months," Mica said.

Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., may have summed it up at last week's hearing:

"I think the airlines clearly understand that if people aren't getting back on airplanes, it's not because the fares are too high, it's because the public's anxiety level is too high. And the way to get the anxiety level down is to get the security bar raised."

--

Part 8: New devices for national security
By CHARLES CHOI AND DEE ANN DIVIS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Scanners that screen for everything from plastic explosives and biological weapons to deceit on the faces of airline passengers may become tools in securing U.S. borders against terrorism.

Aimed at improving security without slowing down commerce, the new devices will have to contend with the hundreds of millions of people, trucks, shipping containers, airplanes and vehicles that pour over the border every year.

Many of the emerging technologies were supported by Defense Department projects. Among them is face recognition software--developed with the aid of the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va.--that eventually could be deployed in the nation's airports.

The most widely used facial recognition software today originally was nurtured as a research project at Rockefeller University in New York to aid ONR's neural computation program. The software analyzes the placement and angles of between 12 and 40 facial elements. The arrangement of these elements, like the eyes and nose, remains constant irrespective of the angle from which the face is viewed.

"It captures a face and converts it to a digital code," explained Joseph Atick, president of Visionics in Jersey City, N.J. "You can implement it as checkpoint surveillance in a walkthrough situation or in a physical border--for instance, requiring drivers to roll down a window of their car as a requirement for entering the country."

A "faceprint" file is only 88 bytes in size, which enables quick cross-referencing.

"In terms of accuracy and being able to handle large databases of photos, it's the best we can do right now," said neural computing program officer Thomas McKenna of ONR, which sponsored the technology.

There are other types of scanners that use such unique physical information--called biometrics--to match individual identities.

Retinal scanners map the unique pattern of blood vessels in the retina with a low-energy laser. Iris recognition technology analyzes the colored ring in the eyeball. Like fingerprints, no two retinal blood vessel patterns or irises are alike. Such scanners, when used with databases of retinal or iris prints, have the potential to keep known terrorists and criminals out.

Legislation now under consideration in Congress would mandate that biometrics be used on key travel documents, particularly visas and some passports. Sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., bill S. 1749 would mandate the Department of State begin issuing "tamper-resistant, machine-readable" travel documents with biometric identifiers.

The bill also requires aliens entering from countries that have a visa waiver program with the United States to have passports with "standardized biometric identifiers."

Biometric data also has been suggested for inclusion in a national identification card. These cards, perhaps replacing existing driver's licenses, could be used as a form of identification--for example, when boarding an airplane.

Though there are many variations on this more controversial proposal, the fundamental idea is to have a "smart card," perhaps similar in appearance to a credit card, with a magnetic strip or computer chip that contained key data. Biometrics and other measures, such as an imbedded hologram, would make the cards difficult to counterfeit, say proponents.

Some advocates want to see the card used for commercial transactions as well, just like a credit card.

"The potential is endless and the amount of information that can be stored on the cards is virtually unlimited," explained a spokesman for EDS, a leading supplier of smart cards. "Basically it has a computer ship and you can store any type of information in there--whether it's biometric information, fingerprints or facial structure. You can even go so far as putting DNA coding on there. It would all depend on what types of information the individual client wanted on the card."

To make the cards viable though, they need to be standardized, say proponents. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is working on legislation to form a biometric technology clearinghouse that might move the process forward.

The organization "would bring together a number of the different agencies that are involved in this in a public private partnership to develop the best possible biometric information to be used on information cards," said a Feinstein spokesman.

"The idea is to have a public private organization so that we can take advantage of what is out there in the private sector," the spokesman told United Press International.

Data from smart cards might someday find its way into yet another system proposed to improve flight security. This system, being suggested by private companies to the government, would use current fraud detection software to try to identify travelers that might have terrorist intent.

HCN Software, leader of one of at least two teams working on the idea, uses software with artificial intelligence algorithms to detect patterns of out-of-synch buying behavior. They collect data from a wide array of banks, combine it with other data like addresses and search for patterns experience has shown indicate possible credit card fraud. The same approach of searching for unusual, risk-indicative patterns, they say, can find possible terrorists.

"We will take reservations data, and apply these algorithms to score them for risk that a passenger is intending to commit a terrorist act," Joseph Sirosh, HNC executive director of research and development told UPI. "If the score is high (the passenger) will be put into a category that is directed to security people for closer screening. This will be screening at the airport ... before the passenger boards the aircraft."

The software would sift reservation information plus publicly available data like addresses and phone numbers--possibly adding credit card purchases and other restricted information if permission is granted. It could rate the risk of a particular passenger in a matter of seconds of a ticket purchase, said Sirosh--well in advance of the

flight leaving. Because only computers, and not investigators process the data, privacy is protected, he said.

The neural-network system also actually learns as it operates.

"As they see more and more data (the systems) improve themselves on a constant basis and identify what is abnormal and what is normal and clearly learn to separate the two," explained Sirosh.

The system should be ready for demonstration six to eight months and could be in place at airports in as little as a year thereafter if the government and other interested parties agree. It is not clear yet who would actually operate the system or how much it would cost.

"The Government wants a lot of control," Sirosh noted.

The initial data on terrorism behavior for the HCN system will come from a clinical psychologist who worked on counter-terrorism efforts with the government in the late '80s. Accenture, the other firm reportedly developing such a system, declined comment for this report for security reasons.

Though these measures may aid in the identification of terrorists, they do little to stop bombs or suitcases concealing bioweapons.

Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington are working on low frequency radio wave pulse generators that swiftly and safely detect explosives concealed in luggage, mailboxes or on people.

The radio waves momentarily disturb the alignment of atomic nuclei, causing them to emit unique weak radio signals. Sensor coils then detect these signals, which computers analyze to determine the type of material found.

"They've installed the scanners in a small number of airports now," ONR's Audrey Haar told UPI, regarding information she received from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The Defense Department also is looking through more than 12,000 different proposals for new counter-terrorist technologies. The proposals arrived in response to a Pentagon request made in October for new ideas.

"We have them from all sorts of companies, large and small, as well as from individuals and educational institutions," said Maj. Michael Halvig of the U.S. Air Force. "We're not putting a definitive time on when the review process is finished yet ... it will take months probably, one or two, but maybe three or four."

Among these proposals is an acoustic scanner for explosives and radioactive material. The company submitting the idea, Eurotech Ltd., of Fairfax, Va., already has demonstrated the technology for government contractors and U.S. Air Force personnel. The device would screen large volumes of cargo and luggage using sound waves to detect the unique acoustic fingerprints of various materials and help monitor shipping containers from planes, trains, buses and ships.

"This can scan moving objects, such as a truck passing through a weigh station security point," said Don Hahnfeldt, president of Eurotech. "This can also be retrofitted to work with current technologies as well, such as metal detectors at airports."

In several years, thermal sensors also may help detect lies and biological or chemical weapons. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and Honeywell Laboratories in Minneapolis are working with DOD to develop an infrared camera that monitors flashes of heat that develop around the eyes whenever a person lies.

"This kind of technology really is a screening tool that goes along with many other security tools to identify individuals at risk of committing acts of terrorism," said lead researcher James Levine of the Mayo Clinic. The scientists believe the camera may find use at airports and border checkpoints within the next two years.

Researchers at the University of Delaware in Newark are working on a thermal camera-on-a-chip that would be thousands of times faster at identifying possible chemical weapons than existing laboratory-scale infrared sensors.

The camera would detect the unique infrared signature given off by every chemical. Because the chip has no moving parts, it would be rugged enough to be deployed in the field to detect airborne or container-bound biological or chemical warfare agents.

"Right now, the camera for this system cost $40,000, and it has a limited range," said analytical chemist Doug Elmore of the University of Delaware. "It sounds like a lot of money, but the camera that we're using probably cost over $1 million 10 years ago. There's good reason to expect the price to go down considerably in coming years."

Installing new technologies and expecting them to analyze every person and container moving through the 301 ports of entry into the United States will prove a challenge, however.

"In fiscal year 2001, 11,186,909 trucks were processed entering the country through both borders; 214,610 vessels; 2,257,608 rail cars; and 5,709,974 sea containers. So that gives you an idea of the volume," said U.S. Customs Service officer Jim Michie.

"It's a task that's going to take a great deal of planning and a great deal of cooperation between this country and Canada as well as Mexico."

--

Part 9: Bank loophole despite terror war
By KATHY A. GAMBRELL

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Although President Bush announced a new assault on the finances of terrorist organizations, the administration has yet to close a tax code loophole that immigration-reform groups say allows American banks to open financial accounts for illegal immigrants using government-issued numbers requiring little documentation or proof of identity.

Immigration-reform groups are upset that the U.S. Department of Treasury has no plans to review the 5-year-old law that allows foreigners with non-legal immigration status to open checking and saving accounts, and conduct wire transfers, using government-issued taxpayer identification numbers.

"It's a national security threat. Nobody looking at that situation on Sept. 11 could think for a minute that this is OK," said Dean Stein, executive director of the Federation of

American Immigration Reform. "You've big financial interests involved. We all love the story of immigration. It's a great story, but when you clear away the eyewash, it's about making money. It's about greed."

Taxpayer identification numbers, or TINs, are similar to Social Security numbers but require less proof of the applicant's identity. Issued by the Internal Revenue Service, they allow non-legal immigrants who work to file tax returns.

More than 5.3 million TINs have been issued since the law was changed in July 1996, IRS officials in Washington say.

IRS spokesman Tim Harm said TINs were intended to allow individuals to file taxes not open bank accounts. FAIR, however, objects to illegal immigrants using the numbers and says TINs, and through it the IRS, tend to accommodate their illegal presence in the country.

Immigration-reform advocates say that after Sept. 11, money could be moved out of the United States and into the hands of terrorists operating in foreign countries. They say the government should tighten regulations surrounding government-issued identity documents.

Banking industry officials said the U.S. tax code was changed five years ago, giving non-legal foreigners the ability to file tax returns, but TINs have become widely accepted as identification to open accounts. At some banks, only a TIN number and some proof of address are needed.

"It basically allows an individual regardless of their (immigration) status to open up a banking account," said James Ballentine, director of community development for the American Bankers Association, an advocacy group for U.S. financial institutions. "It was a measure that was put in place so that immigrants would have an opportunity to have access to the financial system as we have to really get them to open checking and savings accounts and also in an effort to help them to wire money back to their country by putting it in a regulated financial institution."

He says the law was written to prevent working immigrants from keeping large amounts of cash with them and becoming victims of crime. The program has gained steam in the past few years, particularly among Hispanics, he said.

Ballentine also said the relaxed criteria meant non-legal immigrants could open accounts without fear that banks would turn over their personal information to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Immigration-reform advocates say, however, that banks and the government allow foreigners to live and work in the country illegally and to benefit from tax credits, opening the door to fraud and illegal activity.

Stein says financial institutions together with state and local officials lobby the IRS for the use of less-stringent documentation or a requirement that individuals seeking to open accounts have Social Security numbers.

He said the banking profits from fees generated from wire transactions between foreigners and their home countries.

"The administration has to take the lead in this area. The president staked out a position and set a tone two years ago that is so completely out of step with the political reality of the times."

Michele Waslin, senior immigration policy analyst with the National Council of La Raza, called the TINs a good thing for undocumented workers who want to pay taxes.

"They want to follow the law and be good citizens living in the United States," Waslin said.

She said undocumented workers were encouraged by advocacy groups and law enforcement to place their money in bank accounts to lessen the chance they would become victims of crime.

"No one wants to be undocumented, but it's not easy to become legal," Waslin said. Also, she said, they can, in some states, be used to obtain driver's licenses.

"The feeling is that undocumented immigrants are going to drive. They should be allowed to do so safely," Waslin said. "It's a public safety issue.

Treasury Department officials said they had no plans to review bank accounts opened by non-legal foreigners using TINs, or to track cash passing through those accounts.

"We are always encouraging banks to know who they are dealing with and to properly identify them," said Dean Debuck, a Treasury Department spokesman, told United Press International.

TINs are intended for foreigners who need to file tax returns but are ineligible for Social Security numbers.

Under the tax code, those applying for TINs are required to fill out form W-7, which asks the applicant for basic information. It requires the submission of the original or notarized copies of one or more of the following: a driver's license, an identity card issued by a state or national government authority, birth, marriage, or baptismal certificates, foreign military or military dependent identification card, school records, or a foreign voter registration certificate.

Typically, an individual seeking to open a bank account in the United States is asked for a driver's license, passport, birth certificate, Social Security number or another form of government identification. In some cases, a credit-history review is performed.

Treasury and IRS officials could not say whether background checks were performed on foreigners applying for TINs. The forms used to acquire the number do not indicate that the applicant is subject to any investigations.

The process takes about four weeks to six weeks before the applicant is notified in writing, W-7 says.

Last October, President George W. Bush ordered the Treasury Department to monitor and freeze the assets of individuals and organizations associated with terrorist organizations and their financial backers. Since then, the Treasury has blocked more than $33 million in terrorist assets inside the United States. Other nations, mostly at the request of the United States, have blocked another $33 million of terrorist funds.

The directive blocks some American banks from doing business with entities tied to groups identified as funding terrorist activities, but puts no restrictions on undocumented aliens freely opening accounts.

But the ABA's Ballentine says allowing non-legal immigrants to open accounts reduces the chance of them using hawala transactions, an underground wire-transfer service, to send money overseas.

From the Arabic word for trust, the Hawala trade has gone on for centuries in the Middle East, South Asia and China, traditionally in small villages. They were once used to help trade. Immigrants typically use them to wire money to their families abroad.

People using hawala go to an operator and turn over the money they want wired along with a fee; they get a code in return. The hawala operator then calls or e-mails a "branch" in the area to which the money is destined.

The recipient gives the code to his or her hawala operator --- who typically receives a commission -- for the money. The transaction's paper trail is then destroyed.

In November, the Treasury Department cracked down on a number of hawala operations with links to suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden's al Qaida organization. The move affected not only al Qaida but also the financial lifeline that some immigrants living in the United States provided to their families abroad.

Ballentine said easier banking standards for immigrants typically served populations that maintained low account balances. Individuals with $10,000 or more would likely raise questions among bank officials or regulators, he said.

By law, bank regulators scrutinize financial transactions involving $10,000 or more. But federal authorities said wire transactions between terrorist suspects accused of participating in the Sept. 11 attacks and their associates in other countries involved relatively small amounts of money sent through American wire services.

FAIR's Stein, however, compared TINs to consulate-issued Mexican identification cards now being widely used in Western and Southwestern states.

The Wells Fargo Bank in California announced in November it would accept the cards as documentation for setting up bank accounts in its U.S. branches.

MetroBank in Houston announced it would open accounts for Mexican nationals living in the city if they can produce a consular registration card--a matricula consular--issued as identification by the Mexican consulate, according to American Banker, an online banking industry magazine.

"We're in business to make money, so we're constantly looking for ideas like this," said Allen Brown, the chief executive officer of $732 million-asset MetroBank told American Banker.

--

Part 10: Balancing the economics
By IAN CAMPBELL

From complacency to fear: the murder of thousands of Americans Sept. 11 has created an urgent new agenda in the world's richest and most powerful country. How can the United States secure itself from terrorism while at the same time maintain its freedoms, among which is its freedom to trade, upon which U.S. and global prosperity is built? What are the costs of protection and restriction? Where should the balance be struck?

The question of costs is a big one, and not only for the United States.

The costs are not just ones of expenditure but also costs of trade and opportunity if the United States chooses to restrict the passage of goods and people through its borders. The cost might also be one of reducing U.S. influence overseas if this traditionally open superpower is forced to become more nervous and less welcoming.

It was perhaps this risk that President George W. Bush sought to address in his State of the Union address when he said that a USA Freedom Corps would be created and the Peace Corp of volunteer workers overseas would be doubled. The United States is becoming more "vigilant," Bush was asserting, but it still sought to embrace the world.

The first element of the costs of greater security is easiest to quantify because it is just that, a cost. Bush has announced plans for the 2003 budget that raises spending on homeland security $37.7 billion, almost double the $19.5 billion in the 2002 budget. The Border Patrol and the Immigration and Naturalization service will receive additional funds. More money, personnel and equipment will be invested in making the U.S. ports, airports and borders more secure. The effort will extend overseas, with attempts to eliminate dangers by monitoring foreign ports and exporters more closely.

These measures seem essential yet they may themselves be dangerous. The United States has a huge domestic economy and exports and imports each amount to not much more than one-tenth of U.S. gross domestic product. But the global economy depends on the demand for imported goods from the world's biggest economy.

If the United States spends more time inspecting imports at its borders, or even cuts their inflow from less secure origins or companies, the international impact will be negative. And if the United States imports less, other countries will import less production from the United States.

Security could usher in an unwanted and damaging protectionism.

The concerns about this are nowhere greater than in Canada and Mexico. For both these two neighbors of the United States and fellow members of the North American Free Trade Agreement trade plays a far greater role in national output and therefore in employment and income than in the United States. And they send about 85 percent of their exports to their mutual neighbor. A slowdown in the U.S. economy has dragged the Mexican economy into recession and has brought the Canadian economy close to it. Restriction of exports into the United States would undo some of the good work of the NAFTA and have a permanent deleterious effect on Mexico and Canada.

But the threats from trade and to trade are only one part of the security problem. Dec. 11, an alliance of Canadian business organizations produced a report entitled Rethinking Our Borders. The report addresses many aspects of the security threat. It is indignant about the perception that Canada is a weak link for the United States: the hole through which some of the terrorists of Sept. 11 entered the United States. It calls such reports "erroneous" yet it admits that Canada's government needs to devote more resources to immigration laws and must address "the failure to enforce [immigrant] removal orders, the increased use of locally engaged staff at (overseas) visa offices, and the institution of interview waiver criteria that have increased the potential...for security risk."

Perrin Beatty, president of the Canadian exporters and manufacturers association, says it now appears that none of the 19 terrorists associated with the Sept. 11 attacks entered the United States via Canada.

"It is vital," Beatty asserts, "that the (U.S. and Canada) trading relationship be protected and nurtured."

There have been "long-standing problems that existed before Sept. 11," Beatty says. Trade between the two neighbors, at 200 million border crossings per year, had overwhelmed the levels of infrastructure and staffing. Staff levels on the U.S. side of the border, Beatty points out, remained at 1980 levels. Only now, following the Sept. 11 tragedy, are the twin problems of enhancing the flow of trade across the border and minimizing the security risk from these crossings being addressed with the urgency they deserve.

Beatty finds numerous flaws with border arrangements. He calls for resources to be used "more intelligently." Trucks can be pre-screened. Frequent crossers, such as the 1,600 nurses who cross the border daily to work in the hospitals of Detroit, can be given passes, which include some biometric identification. In this way the border officials will be left to concentrate on the less well-known people crossing the border, some of who may pose a security risk. The chance of catching the "needle in a haystack" will be greater.

But Beatty believes the effort to enhance security must go far beyond this. Canada has a 4,000 mile border with the United States. No matter what resources are thrown at it, the border will always be porous. But, Beatty points out, Canada has "only a handful of international ports and airports."

It is in these ports and in Canadian embassies overseas that the effort must be made to ensure that those immigrants who enter Canada are not criminals or terrorists.

Beatty is concerned about the economic damage that might be done if the effort to enhance security is mishandled. His association states on its Web site that "The tightening of the Canada-U.S. border in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 caused lengthy delays that forced some Canadian plants to temporarily reduce or halt production.

While border conditions have improved, the federal government must act to ensure that such a situation does not become the new status quo."

But the report also states another priority for Canada: the need, given Canada's aging population and labor force, for skilled immigrants. Immigration, the report points out, drawing on government analysis, now provides for 75 percent of the growth in Canada's work force and in 10 years will provide for all of that growth.

"Canada needs skilled newcomers...in order to be competitive in international markets," the report points out.

This aspect of immigration as a source of growth is one underplayed in the United States, where rising productivity has been lauded as the country's trump card. But Stephen King, the Chief Economist of HSBC Bank, writes in a report entitled "Decline and Fall," that "part of America's success in recent years has more to do with labor force growth and reductions in unemployment than productivity growth per se."

King analyses GDP growth per person employed.

At 4.1 percent per year, average annual U.S. growth in the five years to 2000 was double that in Germany and three times that in Japan. But if growth is calculated per person employed, the performance gap between the United States and rival economies declines dramatically.

U.S growth, at 1.7 percent per person employed was not so far ahead of Japan at 1.3 percent per person employed, and of Germany, at 1.1 percent per person employed. Thus U.S. growth in the boom of the second half of the 1990s owes less to a productivity miracle than to the ability to absorb more labor-from the pool of unemployed and from abroad, in the form of immigrants-and to profit from doing so.

The role played by immigration in U.S. growth may be underplayed by these statistics. Immigrant labor accepts low-paid jobs, freeing more skilled workers to obtain other employment. Linda Chavez, initially nominated by Bush as his labor secretary, is not alone among U.S. executives in having an illegal immigrant from Latin America offering domestic assistance in the home.

Such assistance, available cheaply, may help raise U.S. productivity and growth. More restrictive immigration laws in Europe means that cheap labor is less readily available and restrictive labor laws artificially raise wage rates. Output and growth suffer.

Part of America's success is the freedom of its markets, including its labor market, where employers accept workers even if they have entered the country illegally.

Irony fences the border. The U.S. government has made increasing efforts to shut off the Mexican border to illegal immigrants but corporate America welcomes those immigrants and U.S. growth has almost certainly been boosted by them.

The United States gains from the fact that it is an open country: open to trade and still reasonably open to immigrants, whether it wants to be or not. Few of those immigrants pose any risk. But again the problem is identifying and apprehending those who do.

Along the Canadian and Mexican borders heightened security persists and immigration officials are working overtime but, according to Roger Maier of the Customs office in El Paso, Texas, waiting times at the Mexican border are no more than half an hour--as against 3 hours in the wake of Sept. 11. And, Maier adds, the heightened security, with more questioning of people crossing the border and more frequent inspection of containers, has meant that more ordinary criminals have been intercepted and we are, in Maier's words, "turning up more narcotics than we ever have."

So the drug traffickers are at greater risk from the border crackdown, but not, perhaps, the terrorists.

Though border security must be enhanced, the answer to terrorism does not seem to lie on the endless Mexican and Canadian land borders. Bush has been right to take the battle with terrorism overseas, attacking the enemy in its camp.

The U.S. assault on al Qaida has meant that the terrorist organization that has proved itself more dangerous than any other to Americans, is on the run.

The question will be, however, not how the overseas war on terrorism develops, but whether the domestic security measures taken prove enough.

If overseas terrorist groups again infiltrate the United States and again murder its citizens, the restriction of trade and travel and immigration within not only the United States but in North America may be stepped up.

Then the risks that terrorism will harm prosperity in the United States and the wider world will grow. A free society and the free parts of the world will become less free and less prosperous. The terrorists will have achieved one of their goals.

-------- terrorism

Tenet Lists Other Groups as Terror Threats
Four Organizations With No Ties to Al Qaeda Could Become Targets in U.S. War

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 10, 2002; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51676-2002Feb9?language=printer

CIA Director George J. Tenet this week identified terrorist groups in Lebanon, Turkey and Colombia that have no ties to al Qaeda but could be future U.S. targets because they have displayed anti-U.S. sentiments.

In a report to Congress Wednesday, Tenet appeared to broaden the Bush administration's definition of international terrorist groups to include organizations that have threatened but not yet acted against U.S. facilities, personnel or interests overseas.

Tenet named as one threat the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a leftist organization that has not attacked targets inside the United States or Americans abroad. However, he said the FARC "poses a serious threat to U.S. interests in Latin America because it associates us with the government it is fighting against."

Another group identified as a possible target in the terrorism war is the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front in Turkey. Tenet said the group "has publicly criticized the United States and our operations in Afghanistan." Intelligence sources added that U.S. intelligence facilities and air bases in Turkey "have been mentioned as being possible terrorist targets."

Tenet also identified Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hamas. These groups traditionally have focused their attacks on Israel. "If these groups feel that U.S. actions are threatening their existence," Tenet said, "they may begin targeting Americans directly."

Tenet also joined other senior administration officials in publicly criticizing Iran for its apparent acceptance of al Qaeda fighters coming over its border with Afghanistan. The CIA director told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Tehran has "failed to move decisively against al Qaeda members who have relocated to Iran from Afghanistan."

"We have said publicly we expect al Qaeda fighters to be taken into custody and interrogated for valuable information that might deter further attacks on civilians," a senior administration official said.

The administration also wants Iran to discuss "what disposition eventually is made of al Qaeda personnel," the official said, indicating that meant whether they remain in custody, are returned to their home country or sent to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo, Cuba, for further questioning and perhaps trial.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Iran volunteered support in helping U.S. pilots if they needed to land inside the country, was considered helpful in talks in Germany that set up the interim Afghanistan government that replaced the Taliban and allowed U.S. food shipments to Afghan refugees through Iran, according to U.S. officials.

The United States also has criticized Iran for providing arms and uniforms for Afghan leaders near its border.

As one U.S. official noted, however, the leaders it has helped are those who sought refuge in Iran during the Taliban rule and who shared objectives with Iranian leaders in the past, including concern over U.S. policy in the region.


-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Fluoride wording deleted from bill

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
February 10, 2002
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2002/Feb/10/ln/ln07a.html

Yesterday, the state House Committee on Health got an earful from folks who weren't about to swallow the Department of Health's fluoridation claims.

In an often tumultuous hearing that lasted more than six hours, the panel heard citizens voice their disapproval of House Bill 2761, which related to community oral health and included the phrase: "Requires fluoridation of public water systems."

Committee Chairman Dennis Arakaki, D-28th (Kalihi Valley, Kamehameha Heights), who attempted at the outset to conduct an orderly discussion of Hawai'i's dental health needs, finally announced he would recommend that any mention of the word "fluoridation" be stricken from the bill.

With that change, the committee approved the bill - but not before Rep. William Stonebraker, R-15th (Kalama Valley, Portlock), scolded the Department of Health for not responding to public concerns about fluoridation and warned that the agency will get no support from him until "it gets its act together."

To be sure, there were those who spoke in favor of fluoridation.

"I find it shameful that the residents and especially the children of our state continue to suffer from a policy that does not support fluoridation," said Chuck Larson, executive director of Seagull Schools.

But they were outnumbered by fluoridation foes who came armed with placards, petitions, surveys, studies and, in one case, a yards-long list of metropolitan areas that have washed their hands of their own water fluoridation systems and apparently aren't a bit sorry.

The sources cited included the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention conclusion that fluoride is effective against cavities only when applied topically and not if ingested.

Mostly, they expressed consternation at having to address the issue again, having gone through a similar exercise last year.

"Why are we back here again?" demanded Bobby McClintock, representing a group of people who are fluoride-sensitive.

"I'm sure you're tired of hearing us say don't put it in the water," Helen Phillips told the panel. "But we're tired of saying it."

By the time the meeting ended before 4 p.m., civility had returned to the auditorium and people were lining up to thank Arakaki for dropping the "fluoride" from the bill.

==

Comment:

It appears the people of Hawaii have learned about fluoride well. Living on a volcano exposes one to things like heavy metals and fluorides. These toxic effects impair immunity to pathogens and diseases from endogenous viruses passed via DNA.

It was no wonder that when Capt. Cook came to Hawaii and the highly impacted immune resistance that the islands inhabitants were devistated from varied diseases the sailors brought. They had low immunity to disease that was prevalent in other cultures less isolated, but the immune problems stemmed from environmental factors linked to living on volcanos.

----

Beach Cleanup Begins in New Zealand

Sun Feb 10,
By RAY LILLEY,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20020210/ap_on_re_au_an/new_zealand_oil_spill_7

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - Workers with shovels and front-end loaders began cleaning tons of oil from the beaches of a northeastern New Zealand town on Sunday after salvage teams reduced the flow of the heavy fuel from a stricken cargo ship grounded offshore.

The Jody F. Millennium, a Japanese-owned and South Korean-crewed ship carrying a load of logs, caught on a sandbar Wednesday night and began leaking its 198 tons of oil, coating sea birds and threatening to become a major environmental disaster.

By Saturday, up to 44 tons of the heavy fuel oil had leaked, spreading along more than a half mile of pristine beach near Gisborne on the North Island, 330 miles northeast of the capital, Wellington, said Bruce Maroc, deputy director of maritime safety.

Within a few miles of the leaking ship are lagoon breeding grounds for a rare sea bird, the New Zealand spotted dottrel, and many other native species, but no birds were found dead by late Saturday.

Some 75 birds have been found with slight oiling but only one red-billed gull has been treated for oil contamination.

"This has the potential to be disastrous for wildlife of this region," said Department of Conservation marine officer Debbie Freeman.

An international team of salvage experts backed by New Zealand's navy pumped about one-third of the oil from the stricken vessel into storage tanks, reducing the amount escaping into the sea, maritime operations commander John Lee-Richards said.

"We're seeing hardly any oil leaking at all, that's why we've begun the shoreline cleanup," Lee-Richards said.

Salvage teams hoped to have most of the oil out of the vessel before the weather deteriorates later in the week, he said.

Throughout Saturday, helicopters sprayed chemicals to disperse the heavy oil floating in large patches on the sea.

Lee-Richards said floating anti-pollution booms have prevented much of the oil from entering nearby river mouths and the harbor area.

Maritime Safety Authority director Russell Kilvington said a tugboat will arrive at the spill scene Monday to help anchor and stabilize the ship while its fuel oil is transferred to a navy tanker over coming days.

Salvage teams hope to have most of the oil out of the vessel before the weather deteriorates later in the week.

-------- imf / world bank / wto

Text: Group of Seven issues statement

February 9, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/09022002-100530-3428r.htm

OTTAWA, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- The following is the text of the statement issued late Saturday following the meeting of the Group of Seven countries, the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy, Great Britain and France:

We met last night and today to discuss the global economy, the importance of fostering development and our ongoing efforts to combat the financing of terrorism.

In October 2001, we released an Action Plan to Combat the Financing of Terrorism. Our commitment to this objective remains resolute and the international community has demonstrated its strong support. While we have made significant progress, further action is required."

Since we last met, prospects have generally strengthened for resumed expansion in our economies, although risks remain. We remain vigilant and will each continue to take appropriate steps to promote a strong and sustained recovery. We will continue to monitor exchange markets closely and cooperate as appropriate. We welcome the successful introduction of euro notes and coins.

Emerging market economies currently face mixed economic and financial market conditions. They should continue to implement policies conducive to investment and economic growth. We welcome as steps in the right direction recent announcements by Argentine authorities. We encourage them to continue to work closely with the IMF and the international community on a financially and socially sustainable economic reform program that will enhance prospects for growth and future foreign investment.

Recent events have highlighted the importance of an improved, predictable and fair framework, involving the private sector, to prevent and resolve international financial crises. We are committed to playing a leading role in improving this framework and will review progress at our next meeting. In this regard, we welcome the IMF management's proposal on sovereign debt restructuring as a useful contribution that addresses some of the legal and practical obstacles to timely and orderly debt restructuring.

We recognize the difficult challenges that the world's poorest countries face in reducing poverty and raising living standards. We explored ways to enable all countries to benefit more from greater global economic integration. We will continue to work with other donors to resolve outstanding issues on the 13th replenishment of the International Development Association, in order to ensure that additional resources for development are made available.

We underlined the need for more effective use of development assistance and a commitment to sound policies, good governance and the rule of law by all countries. We had a productive discussion of development policy issues, including possible innovative ways to mobilize additional domestic and external resources, trade and external debt, and look forward to continued discussions at the UN Financing for Development conference in Monterrey in March.

We welcomed Russia's strong growth and significant structural reforms, and encourage further progress in strengthening the financial sector, improving corporate governance and the investment climate, and combating terrorist financing. We agreed on the importance of Russia's early accession to the WTO.


-------- activists

Check out http://www.pogo.org/ - The Project On Government Oversight

----

Court may consider 'pro-life' tactics case

By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 10, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020210-738952.htm

The Supreme Court has been asked to hear a high-profile abortion-protest case that could decide if "pro-life" activists will be fined for emulating tactics used by civil rights groups and the anti-war movement.

"The folks who hate abortion and would stoop to any means to end them call what they do civil rights," said Fay Clayton, the Chicago lawyer defending victory by the National Organization for Women (NOW) in a legal fight that has lasted 16 years.

The question divides civil libertarians who support abortion rights and are conflicted about penalties assessed against protesters under the 1961 federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

"This important case involves the controversial use of civil RICO against individuals and organizations engaged in vigorous protests against abortion clinics," wrote Alan Untereiner, attorney for Joseph Scheidler and others in the Pro-Life Action League.

Mr. Untereiner's request to the court said a $258,000 triple-damages award against protesters penalizes free speech in violation of the First Amendment.

The appeal objects to NOW's success in defining protest as extortion and a lower court's applying federal racketeering laws "to social and political protesters whose demonstrations, sit-ins and speech interfered with the operation of clinics."

"To equate a sit-in with criminal extortion and racketeering is an insult to the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement and just about any other serious social protest movement in this nation's history," said Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, who represents Operation Rescue in the same case.

"They've been saying that for 20 years," Miss Clayton said in an interview. "Protest should always be protected, but not when the tools are force, violence or fear."

Miss Clayton said NOW soon will file a response asking the high court to reject the appeal, which would let stand fines against the pro-life groups and end the case after 16 years of litigation.

She rejected comparisons to civil rights actions in the 1950s and 1960s, saying Martin Luther King was willing to be jailed for his dissent, which she said is not the stance of Operation Rescue's Randall Terry, who also has been jailed.

Both sides recalled sit-ins that blocked service at Woolworth's whites-only lunch counters, but Miss Clayton said abortion protests were different because they include threats of violence and economic pressures.

"Scheidler testified arson wasn't violent. He said bombings weren't violent," said Miss Clayton, who got him to testify that he discussed violence hours before it occurred. "When he says he didn't have anything to do with it, he's a liar, he's a bloody liar."

She likened pro-life groups in the case to September 11 terrorists and denied their actions have any justification.

"That's the same argument from those who would say we should have been nicer to Osama bin Laden - that it's our own fault. I see the Pro-Life Action Network as very similar to those brutes. It's thuggery. To coddle them is not the right solution," Miss Clayton said.

The "force, violence or fear" phrase she used comes from a Mississippi Supreme Court decision upholding the victory by 17 businesses in Port Gibson, Miss. They sought payment for losses during a seven-year boycott by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and NAACP field representative Charles Evers.

However, a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case (NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware) reversed that decision and said any violence must be directly connected with those who agitate it, not blamed on everyone involved in an organization's protest.

"This RICO law would have applied to those sit-ins," Mr. Sekulow said. He said there were similarities in testimony of threats at the abortion protests and the NAACP business boycotts.

"I think so, except the threats of violence in Claiborne Hardware were accompanied by gunshots," Mr. Sekulow said.

In unanimously overturning fines for participants in the seven-year Mississippi boycott, the high court said the difference between legal and illegal action by protesters can be determined by whether their goal is legitimate.

The 8-0 opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens said blacks in Port Gibson took part "out of sheer fear" and were bullied by "enforcers" to join the boycott, but that Charles Evers and the NAACP need not pay for it.

"At times the difference between lawful and unlawful collective action may be identified easily by reference to its purpose. In this case, however, [NAACP] objectives were unquestionably legitimate," Justice Stevens wrote in the 1982 opinion upholding the racial boycott.

Nine years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in the earlier round of the Illinois abortion-clinic case that safeguards the justices ordered for Mississippi boycotters should be extended to abortion protesters, as well.

"Any effort to hold a RICO defendant vicariously liable for someone else's unlawful behavior in cases of this sort must also be judged against First Amendment standards," the ACLU said in its 1993 brief.

----

Serbs stage pro-Milosevic rally ahead of trial

By Gordana Kukic
Sunday February 10, 12:33 AM
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-88692.html

Thousands of Serbs, many waving the red, blue and white national flag and pictures of their former president, rallied on Saturday in support of Slobodan Milosevic three days before the start of his war crimes trial.

Carrying placards with slogans such as "Long Live Our Slobo" and "We Love You Slobo", the protesters gathered in Belgrade's central Republic Square, the scene of many anti-government demonstrations during Milosevic's years in power.

The rally, organised by Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia, showed the ex-president of both Serbia and Yugoslavia still has a hard core of supporters. But the turnout was a far cry from the hundreds of thousands he attracted in his heyday.

Most people in the city centre were more interested in shopping. Many in the square were onlookers enjoying warm sunshine, not active participants.

The number of protesters peaked at around 8,000 on a march from the square to the Yugoslav parliament, the focal point of the mass uprising which ousted Milosevic in October 2000.

Milosevic goes on trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Tuesday, accused of crimes against humanity for Serb atrocities committed in the wars in Kosovo and Croatia and facing a charge of genocide over the 1992-95 Bosnian war. "It is clear that this so-called trial in the so-called court in The Hague is a trial of the entire Serbian people and the entire state," Ivica Dacic, a Socialist party leader, said.

"This is not about an individual, or a party, but about the entire Serbian people," he told the crowd.

U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte insists the opposite. "This trial is not about revenge and is also not about collective responsibility," she told a German newspaper in an interview released ahead of publication on Sunday.

"It's about Milosevic's personal responsibility in crimes which he is accused of carrying out or ordering in Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina and in Kosovo," she told Welt am Sonntag.

Speakers at the rally denounced the war crimes tribunal as a tool of U.S. imperialism set up to punish Washington's enemies.

Through a booming sound system, organisers played a recording of a speech Milosevic made to the tribunal two weeks ago in which he called for his release.

The rally was entitled "Free Serbia, Free Slobodan", -- a play on words as Milosevic's first name means "free" in Serbian.

Protesters handed in a demand to parliament for Milosevic's release and asked the Belgrade authorities for help with their campaign. That is highly unlikely from the pro-Western reformers who ousted him and handed him over to the tribunal last June.

Demonstrators insisted Serbs had acted in self-defence in the Balkan wars of the past decade.

"Those who start wars should be tried in The Hague, not those who defended themselves," Mica Miketic, 66, said.

"It's well-known who causes wars -- the United States, and now they're helped by the British and the French."

----

Blowing the Whistle: Not for the Fainthearted

By MARCI ALBOHER NUSBAUM
February 10, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/10/business/yourmoney/10WHIS.html?ex=1014317869&ei=1&en=1abdab49396a47e9

She became an overnight icon of workplace integrity, celebrated as a corporate insider who had the courage to confront her boss about possible wrongdoing in high places. For warning Enron (news/quote)'s chief executive last summer that the energy company could "implode in a wave of accounting scandals," Sherron S. Watkins has been called a fearless upholder of business ethics.

Other whistle-blowers should be so lucky.

Though Ms. Watkins has been basking in the glow of the media's softest lights, experts say such hero treatment is far from the norm. "The lone whistle-blower is often set up against a powerful corporate or government entity with more resources and power," said James E. Fisher, director of the Emerson Electric (news/quote) Center for Business Ethics at St. Louis University. "From the get-go, you have the likelihood of retaliation."

People committed to bringing out the truth need to steel themselves, as well as their families, for difficult times, according to Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit organization for the protection of whistle- blowers in Washington.

That doesn't mean that employees who witness illegal or unethical behavior in their workplaces have to set themselves up as sacrificial lambs, he said. A key is to think carefully before doing anything to shine the spotlight on improprieties. If the organization has an ethics officer and a policy in place for reporting wrongdoing, he recommended that employees use those channels first, rather than making accusations publicly.

Talking to a trusted manager or getting outside advice confidentially can also be wise. "When the whistle-blower is perceived as a threat to expose indefensible misconduct, then the `him versus them' mentality kicks in," Mr. Devine said. "We coach people on how to make a difference without sparking an adversarial relationship."

If an employee suffers retaliation, legal recourse is available under a patchwork of state and federal laws. All but 15 states have enacted some form of general whistle-blowing legislation, and more than 50 state measures provide protections in specific industries or for classes of people, like children or workers exposed to hazardous substances. Some of these laws and regulations affect private employment, while others deal with the public sector. In addition, the Federal Whistle-Blower Protection Act provides shields for federal employees who have experienced retaliation.

Advocates for whistle-blowers say the safeguards are not enough. "Almost any whistle-blower who relies on these rights and fights to the bitter end will spend many years and dollars on legal fees and be virtually guaranteed to get a formal legal ruling that he or she deserved whatever retaliation was received," Mr. Devine said.

Even so, would-be whistle-blowers have some cause for hope. The Enron scandal has increased pressure on companies to create programs that encourage employees to expose wrongdoing without fear of retribution.

Last June, Senator Daniel K. Akaka, Democrat of Hawaii, introduced a bill to make it easier for whistle-blowers to sue their employers and to broaden the protections they receive. The measure would also give the United States Office of Special Counsel, the independent federal agency charged with investigating and prosecuting cases involving government whistle-blowers, greater power to litigate cases.

Lawyers say the strongest legal protection is in cases falling under the federal False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law that has been rediscovered recently as a tool to challenge fraud in obtaining government contracts. It is also one of the few laws that offer financial incentives for whistle-blowers who pursue a case, entitling them to a percentage of the money recovered.

Winning cases is another matter. "Courts are fairly hostile to claims because they so often involve disgruntled employees looking to cash in," said Michael Selmi, an employment law professor at the George Washington Law School in Washington. His advice, particularly if a whistle-blower is interested in keeping his or her job, is to reach the right person and try to handle the problem inside the organization, rather than going directly to law enforcement or regulatory agencies. "Most companies want to stop illegal or fraudulent activities," he said.

Even when evidence of wrongdoing is strong, experts advise potential whistle- blowers to do much soul-searching and planning before reporting it. "If you go into your boss's office and say, `You're a crook and you're not going to get away with it,' it would be a miracle not to have a scorched- earth conflict with only one left standing," Mr. Devine said.

Experts also say whistle-blowers can be successful if they capture the attention of Congress, the news media or other powerful messengers. "If they make it to `60 Minutes,' their issue will get serious consideration," said Roberta Ann Johnson, author of "Whistleblowing: Power and Policy From the Inside Out," which is to be released later this year by Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Still, employees who come forward can expect a rough ride. Talks with whistle-blowers and those who study them paint a picture of David versus Goliath struggles.

Consider Martin Edwin Andersen, a former manager in the Justice Department who complained in 1997 of what he called "a cesspool of official misconduct," including sexual favoritism in hiring, breaches of security and visa fraud in the department's overseas criminal training program.

After voicing his complaints, Mr. Andersen said, he was "stripped of my security clearance and transferred to bureaucratic Siberia." For a month, he said, he continued to receive his $80,000-a-year salary, but was made to work in a warehouse and given virtually no responsibilities. He passed the time by reading histories of the Civil War.

The Office of Special Counsel said Mr. Andersen settled his case with the Justice Department for a package of relief including a lump-sum payment of $87,500. He has since left the agency and joined the Government Accountability Project as media director. The Justice Department declined to comment on his case.

In July 2001, Mr. Andersen was given a public service award by the Office of Special Counsel for his whistle-blowing disclosures. For all the recognition, though, he said, his three-year battle exhausted him. "I have two daughters for whom all of this was a distraction of my attention because the only way you can win is to become totally absorbed in your own vindication," he said.

Though Mr. Andersen did not lose his job, many whistle-blowers do. C. Fred Alford, a government professor at the University of Maryland and author of "Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power" (Cornell University Press, 2001), says that even though retaliation is illegal, it is easy for organizations to punish troublemakers by firing them long enough afterward to obscure the connection between the whistle- blowing and the termination. He found that many whistle-blowers lost their families and homes as well as their jobs and often turned to alcohol for solace. Most surprising, he found, colleagues and even professional organizations usually turned their backs on whistle-blowers.

When whistle-blowers come forward, employers typically seek to discredit them, Dr. Johnson, the author, said. "They try to show you're crazy or have a checkered past - something one academic calls the `nuts and sluts' approach," she said. When she interviewed whistle-blowers, many asked her whether her phone was tapped. "Perspective becomes a little skewed because of the experience, and for good reason," she said.

Lashing back at accusers, however, might not be the wisest option after the Enron debacle. In fact, even before the Enron mess, American companies have been given greater incentives to get their ethical houses in order. Under federal sentencing guidelines adopted in 1991, companies convicted of criminal acts could win leniency if they had procedures to ferret out illegal conduct. In 1996, companies got an additional nudge when the Delaware Chancery Court held that corporate directors could be held personally liable for failing to institute proper compliance programs to prevent illegal acts by employees.

As a result, codes of ethics, ethics officers, anonymous hot lines and other programs have been cropping up in companies large and small. Still, said Mark Schwartz, a business-ethics lecturer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, "When it comes to actually providing for protections for employees against reprisals or other forms of harassment, companies have a long way to go."

When Mr. Andersen gives speeches, he often begins with the line, "Hi, my name is Martin Andersen. and I'm a whistle-blower," a play on the introduction made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous. He says it captures the stigma attached to the word. If the halo effect surrounding Ms. Watkins endures after the Enron case, perhaps he can change his introduction.


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